Straken (19 page)

He wondered if it planned to.

He became aware all at once that it was looking at him. It was watching through half-closed lids with a sleepy, almost dreamy gaze. It seemed mesmerized, like a cat stretched out for a nap, lazy and content, drifting in and out of private reveries. Then it occurred to him, almost as an afterthought, that the dragon wasn’t looking at him.

It was looking at the darkwand.

Or, more particularly, at the glow of its runes.

At first, he thought he must be mistaken. After all, why would the dragon be interested in the staff and its runes? Was the beast sentient? It certainly didn’t look it. But maybe it understood something of magic and of talismans and recognized the darkwand for what it was.

He didn’t think that was right, though. The way the dragon was watching the staff suggested that it was all but hypnotized, that its interest was one of almost primordial attraction. Pen glanced down, watching the way the light played across the runes, how it worked itself up and down the staff in ever-changing patterns, how it brightened and dimmed, pulsed and steadied, reinventing itself over and over. The dragon was watching, too, fascinated by the movement of the light as it danced from rune to rune.

Pen tried an experiment. Taking his cloak, he covered the top half of the staff, blocking the light.

Instantly, the great horn-encrusted head lifted, the triangular snout swung about, and its maw split wide in a hiss that sounded like an explosion. Rows of blackened teeth revealed themselves, some still clotted with bits of flesh, some with bones wedged between them. A gaping throat as black as damp ashes pulsed and shimmered, and the stench of carrion on its breath flattened the boy against the rock wall of his all-too-inadequate shelter. Pen gagged and nearly fainted, but he retained sufficient presence of mind to uncloak the darkwand at once. As the runes began anew their intricate play across the polished surface of the wood, the dragon slowly
settled back into place, its maw closing, its eyelids drooping, content.

That was a really bad idea
, Pen thought, taking great gulps of air to clear his head.

He remained where he was for a moment, sagging against the wall of his shelter, the darkwand held firmly in front of him, his talisman against a monster with breath that would melt iron. He hung his head for a time, thinking he was going to vomit, but when the nausea had passed, he straightened and looked out again at the dragon, trying to think what to do. He still wasn’t certain what was happening with the darkwand, which until then he had assumed would respond only to his thoughts of the Ard Rhys. But it had apparently begun to glow even before he was awake and knew what was happening. How could that be?

He returned his attention to the dragon, saw how its eyes were fixed on the glowing runes, listened to how its breathing came slowly and evenly as it crouched there, waiting. Waiting on what? He didn’t know. How long did dragons wait on things, anyway? He wondered suddenly if he was trapped. He hadn’t thought of it before, but it might well be that just as the dragon wouldn’t let him cover up the light, it wouldn’t let him take it away, either. That would mean he was stuck in these rocks until the dragon tired of him and moved on.

Which might take a very long time, he realized. Time he didn’t have to spare.

He took a moment to consider his options. He didn’t have many to consider. He could stay where he was until the dragon grew bored and went away, or he could try leaving and hope the dragon didn’t follow—or if it did follow, that it wouldn’t follow for long. And that it wouldn’t eat him.

He didn’t like where his thinking was taking him, so he abandoned it in favor of trying to decide what else he might do to help himself. The long knife he carried was all but useless against something the size of the dragon, so there was no point in relying on that. Of course, any weapon was all but useless against a beast as big as that one. A whole army was probably useless.

He might try using his magic.

It was a reach. He didn’t even know if his magic would work
in the Forbidding. But he didn’t have anything else he could look to for help, and he had to do more than sit around waiting for the dragon to decide to eat him. His magic had worked with the moor cat they had encountered in the Slags, well enough that it had saved his life. It was conceivable that it might work here, as well.

But how should he try to use it?

He decided to find out first if it irritated the beast, because if it did, that was the end of the matter. He began by reaching out with his five senses, taking in everything he could discover about the creature, from the sound of its breathing to the baleful look in its sleepy eye. He scoured the monster from head to tail and back again, working at finding a connection, at trying to feel something of what the dragon felt. It was hard work, and in the end it yielded almost nothing.

Dragons, apparently, didn’t give much away.

There was nothing for it but to try using the magic in the only way that seemed feasible—as a tool of communication. He had no idea how dragons communicated. All he had learned so far was how they breathed and how they reacted when irritated. Perhaps if he started there, a way might reveal itself. What made his efforts so difficult was that the dragon wasn’t really interested in him at all; it was only interested in the darkwand. If it were the darkwand that was trying to communicate, he was certain that he would make better progress. But that wasn’t possible, of course, so he would have to settle for using his own voice and hope the dragon gave something back.

He began with an imitation of the dragon’s breathing, slow and heavy and raw. Enhancing his efforts with his magic, giving them life, it still took him a while to get it right. Eventually, he was sounding exactly like a miniature version of the larger thing. The dragon blinked—once, twice. When he began alternating the breathing with variations on the disgruntled hissing, the dragon lifted its head off its forefeet and looked at him. But it didn’t seem inclined to do anything more than stare. Still, Pen kept at it, hoping for something more.

Nothing happened. Eventually, the dragon lost interest, lowered its head to its forefeet and went back to watching the dancing glow of the runes.

Pen sank back, exhausted. He was getting nowhere. Worse, he was growing weak from the effort. He had not eaten or drunk anything since arriving and could not remember when he had done so before that. It had been more than a day. His throat was parched, and he was feeling light-headed. If he didn’t get away soon, he was going to pass out from lack of nourishment.

But what in the world was he supposed to do?

He spent several hours trying to figure that out. He used his small magic in every conceivable way to entice the dragon into communicating, but the beast simply ignored him. It lay there across the opening to his shelter, a great scaly lump that refused to move. With one eye fixed steadily on the darkwand and its intriguing runes, it dozed like a monstrous cat in front of a mouse hole, transfixed by the movement of the light. It barely stirred for the whole of the time it kept watch and then only to shift positions.

After a while, Pen dozed off. He wasn’t sure how long he slept, as the gray light that marked daytime in the Forbidding was virtually unchanging from dawn to dusk. But when he awoke, he came to a decision. Rather than experiment further with the magic, he would simply try to leave. He had no idea if the dragon would permit it. But anything was better than doing nothing.

Holding the darkwand in front of him so as not to disturb or obscure the play of the light across its runes, he stood and gathered his strength. He was so weak by then that it took him a few minutes to do so. When he felt sufficiently ready, he took a single step out from his shelter.

The dragon blinked slowly.

He took another step. And then another.

The dragon’s head came up, the horn-encrusted snout swung toward him, and a sharp hiss escaped through a pair of wide-flaring nostrils.

Pen stopped at once, held his ground, and waited. The dragon continued to watch him, head lifted, yellow eyes fixed. They stared at each other for long moments, each waiting to see what the other would do. Pen listened to the sound of the dragon’s breathing and smelled its fetid stench. He forced himself to ignore
the urge to gag. Instead, he focused on his determination to keep going.

When he felt he had waited long enough, he took another step.

This time the dragon slowly extended one great spiked foreleg in the manner of a cat toying with a mouse that had become its favorite plaything. It took its time, reaching out slowly and leisurely until the foreleg was stretched directly across the path Pen had intended to take, blocking it.

Pen stared at the dragon in dismay, then slowly backed into the rocks once more.

He spent the rest of the day hoping for a miracle. If only the dragon would grow bored. If only it would grow hungry. If only it would leave for just a few minutes. Didn’t it have something else to do or somewhere else to go? Dragons must have lives like other creatures, habits and patterns of behavior that this one would be compelled to act on eventually. If he was just patient, if he could just wait it out, it would have to move on.

Daylight faded and night set in. It began to rain, a soft steady drizzle. Pen stuck his head far enough out of the shelter to catch a few drops in his open mouth, then used his cloak to gather a little more and sucked the water from the cloth. All the while, the dragon lay there, its scaly hide glistening, its eyes lidded, watching the darkwand and its glowing runes.

Eventually, Pen grew sleepy once more. He worried for a short while about what the staff would do when he closed his eyes, then dismissed the matter. Apparently, it would continue to glow, just as it must have done the previous night when the dragon was first attracted, just as it must have done while he was napping earlier. Otherwise, the dragon would have eaten him already. He wondered again how the staff could function independently of his thoughts when it had seemed before that it relied on them. He was missing something, wasn’t picking up on what should have been obvious if he wasn’t so hungry and exhausted. He wished he could think more clearly, that he could reason better.

He closed his eyes and dreamed about his home and his parents, about how things had been not two months earlier. He had been so anxious for an adventure, so willing for a change in his mundane existence. He had embraced the chance to go in search of the tanequil
with Tagwen and the others. He had relished the excitement that would result.

He wished now that none of it had ever happened. He wished that things were back to the way they had been.

He fell asleep, and his wishes drifted away.

D
reams, bits and pieces of incomplete thoughts and unfinished stories, came and went with the swiftness of shadows and light in a cloud-swept forest. They were bright and bold and filled with promise, and Bek Ohmsford rode them like a bird across landscapes that stretched away forever. Sometimes he was in motion for the duration of the dream without ever touching the earth. Sometimes he felt the solid ground just long enough to be reassured that it was still there before winging away again. Nothing of what he saw was familiar to him. People came and went in the course of his travels, but he did not know who they were or why they were there. He had left his waking life behind; he had gone ahead of those he once knew.

It could have been a time of peace and contentment, but the dreams were interspersed with nightmares, and the nightmares were horrifying. Some were memories of things in his past, of creatures and events that he could never forget. Some were dark prophecies of what lay ahead if he could not turn aside in time. All were populated with predators that pursued him relentlessly, hunters of a sort that lacked recognizable purpose or intent. They came at him in waves, and no matter where he fled or tried to hide, they meant to have him.

Dreams and nightmares. There was no recognizable connection between the one and the other, and he transitioned between light
and dark visions with distressing unpredictability. He slept, but his sleep was not sound or restful. The strange mix left him plagued with anxiety over which would appear next and how he would deal with it. He sought to combat them by gaining a measure of control, but his efforts fragmented and failed. He sought to wake, swimming upward through the waters of his sleep toward the bright surface of waking, but the distance was too great. Each time he felt himself getting close, the nightmares would come and drag him down again.