The Dragon Book (62 page)

Soon I heard Afra’s footsteps as she came to the cave’s entrance. With my camouflage in place, I eased up to a spot from which I could see her. She stepped into the daylight, sure of the power that hid her retreat in the rocks. She was so confident that she almost crushed my gift before she saw that it was there. Then she jumped back into the cave, vanishing into the darkness.

I waited. Soon she returned, crouching in the shelter of the cave’s mouth, peering around like a frightened creature. She had a rock in each hand. Only her head moved. She was listening for any noise.

In the distance, I heard the village goats and sheep as their shepherds took them to graze in the lands not hidden by the barriers. A rooster in the village suddenly remembered that he had duties of his own. As he cried his name, other roosters joined in.

Afra’s eyes strayed more and more to the bundle of food. I wondered if her nose was as dead as most humans’, or if she could smell the cheese, at least. I scolded myself for not bringing hot meat. She would have smelled that.

She licked her lips. She
could
smell the cheese.

Slowly, she put down her rocks. She rubbed her hands as her Gift moved into her fingers. She wasn’t able to do magic without some gestures, then. For anything subtle, she would need to write the signs in the air. She would require special herbs, oils, or stones for more. Did she have them? It would be good to know.

She wrote a sign for safety before her face. In the sunlight, I could see the color of her Gift at last. I rocked back on my heels. Afra’s sign was shaped in pale blue light, outlined in pale green. I nearly whistled my excitement, then caught myself. None of my human friends except Papa had magic in two colors. Numair’s books spoke of such people, but he said he’d never met anyone else. He would be so glad to meet Afra once I had tamed her!

Had she borrowed her baby’s power? I asked myself. Perhaps
this
explained how she had passed through the magic that turned the village boys around, but not her.

Afra completed her spell and set it in motion. It fell onto the food, oozing over it. Within a breath it had vanished, sinking into everything. The scales stood on the back of my neck. I hoped it wouldn’t harm the food. Cheese in particular reacts badly to some kinds of magic.

Afra waited, looking all around, still wary. Then she darted forward, seized the food, and ran back into the cave. I guessed that if her spell didn’t react, it proved there was no magic on the bundle. I could not see her, but I could hear as she thrust a handful of something into her mouth and chewed. She continued to eat greedily out of my sight as I slowly took the remainder of my stolen goods from my bundle. Daine and I had cared for many starving creatures, so I feared I knew what came next. I had hoped Afra would have better judgment than to stuff herself right away, but I had been wrong. Carefully, retracting my hind claws so they would make no sound on the stone, I carried my next offering to the cave’s entrance and left it there. Then I ran back to my hiding spot.

I was just in time. Afra raced from the cave, her hand to her mouth. She made it to a pocket of sand in the rocks across from me before she spewed everything she had eaten. I cursed myself silently. I should have given her just a mouthful of food to start. She had been living on
garbage
, and I had given her a meal of good fruit and cheese.

She stood there, her back to me, after she’d finished the last of her heaves. I could see bone against her skin where it was not covered by her garment. How was she feeding that baby? She must be giving everything to it and keeping nothing for herself.

A blade of pain stabbed me, an undragonlike hurt. Diamondflame says that sentiment is weakness. Maybe I have been among humans for too long. Or maybe I can never forget that my birth mother had given everything for me.

Finally, Afra straightened, wiping her mouth on her wrist. She knelt and buried her vomit well. I wondered if the magic kept wolves away, if there were wolves in these mountains. I knew there were leopards. Did she use her spells to protect the cave at night, or did the strange magic keep the large killers away, as it did humans?

Afra stumbled back to the cave, unsteady with weakness, and halted when she saw my new gift. She turned. Now she had to know that I had been close, to put that food there, and that maybe I was still close, watching. She scanned the rocks and the ground, searching for any sign of me. I had not left her even my footprints as clues.

It was my first chance to give her a good look. She had the bronze skin of the northern Carthakis, snapping black eyes, and coarse black hair that she tied back with a shred of cloth. She was young and so thin, with strong muscles that stood against her skin. She was trembling, though I could not tell if it was from long weakness or from just vomiting.

Suddenly, she bent and took my second gift of food. She hurried into the cave with it.

I relaxed. I had given her two chicken-and-almond turnovers. I had stolen them, like everything else, from the emperor’s cooks. They were mild and should not make her ill if she ate them slowly.

She would need vegetables, fruits, and meat. I would have to find a way to carry more, somehow. In particular, she had also vomited up the cheese. Daine’s midwife had been very strict with her on the subject of milk and cheese for a nursing mother. She said they needed that more than any other food and that goat’s milk was the best.

I wondered if I could steal a goat.

DAINE found me before I even reached our tent. “Kitten, where were you?” she cried, running up to me. “I’ve been looking everywhere! We were going to the village, remember?”

I sat up on my hind legs and gave her my cutest, wide-eyed look, with chirp.

Daine glared at me. “None of that, mistress. You’ve been up to something. You can’t fool your ma, remember?”

She was right. It was very discouraging. I settled back on my haunches and looked more seriously at her. I sighed, then clasped my forepaws.

“So you’ll tell me when you can. Will it get you in trouble with these folk?” she asked me.

Afra didn’t live in the village. The boys had chased her away with stones. She did not belong to the village, and they did not want her there. I shook my head for Daine. The matter of the goat might be hard to explain, but I hadn’t taken one yet, so I was not lying.

Daine bent down and picked me up. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked as she carried me to the tent.

I shook my head. This was still my discovery.

We had breakfast with Numair before the villagers came for my parents. When we three walked out of our tent, the strangers flinched at the sight of me and drew the Sign on their chests.

Daine stiffened. “This is Skysong, our dragon,” she told them, her voice cold. “When our home was attacked, mages who opened a gate to the Divine Realms drew her mother through just as she was about to give birth.” She was careful not to say that it was their old emperor who had sponsored the attack. “I helped Flamewing deliver her little one, but Flamewing herself died protecting us. She left her child in our care. Kitten—that’s what we call her—is as friendly as can be. She’s saved many lives, human and animal alike.”

“Her face looks like a crocodile’s,” said one of the females, an old and wrinkly one.

Daine drew herself up. Numair settled her with a hand on her shoulder. “Kitten is a dragon,” he said to the old woman. “They are more intelligent than even we humans. She understands every word that you say.”

“Why doesn’t she answer, then?” one of the males wanted to know.

“She is too young,” Numair replied. “You will be centuries in the ground when she is able to talk.”

That caused them to whisper among themselves. I never understood why people would be awed by that, when they were so unpleasant about my looks. Besides, for all they knew, Numair could have been lying. Still, they accepted his word that I would live much longer than they would, which was quite true, unless I was murdered.

“If you wish your animals looked at, you will learn to like Kitten,” Daine told them. “Where I go, she goes. She may even do your creatures more good than I will.”

I didn’t feel like doing good for anyone in the village walls after the way they had treated Afra.

“Well, Master Numair, we’re to take you upriver, if you still wish to go,” the male who’d led these humans said. “No horses, if it please you. The ground’s too rocky along the riverbank as we head into the mountains. Can’t even take a mule that way.”

Poor Spots, I thought. He’s stuck here again. I looked over at the horse lines to see how he did. Most of the soldiers’ mounts were gone, along with the emperor’s favorite riding horse. They were bandit hunting. Spots was talking with one of the horses that hauled the wagons. That would amuse him for a little while. He would escape his tether by midday.

Numair and the men left on foot. The women looked at Daine and me, then seemed to come to a silent agreement. “If you will come with us?” the female who had spoken to Daine asked. We all set forward, the talker on Daine’s left, the other two behind her. I was on Daine’s right. “Two days back, Tahat’s chickens got sick. We’ve locked them in their coop, but that will be useless if it is a curse on the village. We think there is a witch hereabouts.”

My ears pricked up. Did they mean Afra? I looked at Daine, and I had to snort. Her lips and nostrils had tightened right up. It would follow that in this village, whose humans had already irritated her by insulting me, she would first be asked to look at chickens. Her grandfather’s chickens, the ones she had grown up knowing, were the nastiest, trickiest birds she had ever met in her life. Now, even though she had met dozens of perfectly decent chickens, she could not bring herself to like them. She was certain that their pleasantness to her was just another chicken trick.

If she had hated geese, I would have been more understanding. Geese have made
my
life a misery.

While Daine listened to the chickens’ troubles, I let Tahat’s children sneak up on me and poke me with their fingers. When a neighbor boy tried to use a stick, I snatched it from him and hissed. That amused the women who were not watching Daine. They seemed to like me better for it. Tahat, who was too worried about her flock to be afraid of me, even brought me a small dish of milk.

Daine saw that and warmed to her. “It’s no curse, only bird pox,” she said. “You were right to contain them before it spread to the other chickens. I can deal with it.” She looked up at the female who seemed to be the leader. “Will you help me?”

I hardly noticed when one of the older children tugged my tail. There were chickens all over the village. I could hear them. If Daine had to check them for this illness, she would not be paying attention to my activities.

First, she had to make friends with the village’s chief mage. While she had some kind of tea with that man, I busied myself by acquiring a few things: a round of cheese, four eggs, a woman’s robe, two lamb sausages, and more fruit. Covered with camouflage spells and keeping to back paths, I carried those things one at a time outside the open gate, where I piled them against the wall. I hid them with still more camouflage, this time a concealment not just of sight, but of a nest of vipers. I didn’t want the dogs to eat my loot.

Last of all, I found an empty grain sack. I rolled it up and carried it outside the gate. First, I was careful to wrap the eggs well in the robe. If they broke there, they could be washed out. I knew that Afra must have a water source, or she could not survive in the cave at all.

Once I had filled my sack with all I had taken, I realized that I had listened to my ambition instead of my sense. I could not carry it. I was much too small. The path from the gate to our tent, or even partway to the invisible maze where Afra hid, was mostly open ground. If I dragged the sack—I was strong enough to do so, despite my size—folk would see the clear trail that the sack would leave in the dirt.

I whistled my vexation. I had a spell I shaped of breath and will to brush away any marks I left on occasions like this. It did take a great deal of concentration. That was easy enough when I was on horseback with Daine, which was the last time I had needed it. It would be tiring if I had to keep an eye open for humans, hold camouflage magic over my sack and me, and drag that sack. I need to quickly reach the rocks, which were perfectly visible to me and invisible to humans.

Again I had to wonder how Afra had found the cave. Did her dual Gift make it possible for her to see through the old barriers on that piece of land? Was the power that hid the cave hers to begin with?

I shook my head as I tied the sack shut with some cord I had found. If she had used her Gift to create an invisible maze in open scrub, I would have been able to see its colors by daylight. Moreover, I would have been able to shatter all of it with my middling squawk. Also, those boys had acted as if their Maze had always been in that place. They were used to it.

Gripping the neck of the sack in my teeth, I wriggled until it lay over my shoulder. There was no one in view inside the gate or outside. I set out, keeping an eye on my surroundings. Far off to my left, the soldiers who had stayed to guard the emperor’s camp lazily went about their chores. They had shifted the picketed horses off to a line of trees by the river. I hated to think of my friend Spots cooking in the sun, like I was. No one was following as I struggled away from the gate. The bag slid to and fro as I went forward, so that I half carried, half dragged it. I was leaving an unmistakable track.