Tortall (22 page)

We did not leave them. I went to the far side of the pond and whistled cracking spells at the small rocks there, turning them to gravel, until I had myself under control. Then Spots and I gathered dead wood for a fire, lurching to and fro to get the wood that lay on the ground. Uday crowed and raised his arms for me when we came back, which touched me deeply. Afra, about to swaddle him again, gave me a nod, but the look in her eyes was wary.

I’d just started the fire when we heard the dogs. Afra jumped to her feet, then stumbled as the ground gave a hard shake. She looked at me. “They sound so close,” she whispered.

I raised one claw and put it to my muzzle, to silence her. Then I clambered up over the orange boulders to see how near the villagers had come. The stone rocked beneath me for a moment and then settled. I raced forward before it had another spasm. Finally I saw the last rise, the one before the slope to where the barrier had once been.

This time I did not trip down the crack past the rock hyraxes, if they were still there. I crouched and called my magic, letting it rise as fire all around me. When the stone beneath me begin to scorch, I rose onto my hind legs and walked up the last rise.

The villagers stood at the foot of the orange stone. Three mages were in the lead, each with his Gift blazing in his hands, ready for use. Men and women stood around the mages with dogs on leashes. The dogs were barking and yowling. They knew they were supposed to be hunting
something
. They wanted to be taken off the leash so they could do their jobs. More villagers armed with bows and spears stood behind the leaders and dog handlers. From their reaction as I stood up, they had not expected anyone to meet them.

I went red with rage. When humans say that, they mean their faces go red. When I go red, it is my scales that turn that color, blotting out my normal blue-gold. I let my anger flow into my power, so that the air around me burned scarlet. Some of the villagers began to run. I stood all the way up on
my hind feet, stretched my neck out as far as it would go, raised my head, and blew a long plume of spell breath, shaped as a stream of flame.

More people ran then, but they were not the right ones. “It is the witch’s illusion!” cried the chief mage, who had spoken with Daine only that morning. “Now!” He and the other mages threw fist-sized balls of magic at me. They
hurt
as they struck, though my power devoured them. I screeched a breaking spell, shattering the weapons of those who had stayed to attack. Now most of them ran, too.

“Illusions don’t wield magic,” I heard a mage say.

“Again!” cried the chief mage, not caring.

I did not wait for a second attack. I could endure the hurt. My problem was my own magic. If it devoured more power, it might get too hot for me to bear.

I turned and galloped for Afra’s camp, half-stumbling all the way. The earth, so calm while I had faced the villagers, now shook harder than ever. As I skidded down the last slope, the rock bucked like a stallion, pitching me into the pond. My magic evaporated. The cool water eased the heat that the use of so much power created. I actually rolled there for a moment before I remembered I could not swim.

I scrabbled at the bottom mud, trying to crawl up to the water’s edge. Then two strong hands gripped my forelegs and pulled. I kicked back with my hind legs as Afra dragged me from the mud, water, and clinging strands of weed.

Sitting on the ground, Afra plucked some of it off of my back. “What are these for, if you can’t fly?” she asked, passing a gentle hand over my tiny rudimentary wings.

I shook my head, sprinkling her with more water, and
cupped a paw around my ear. She heard the shouts of humans in the distance.

“You were right?” she whispered. “The barrier is truly gone?”

She did not wait for my answer but jumped to her feet and hurried to tie a bundle of her things to Spots’ back. Even though she had not believed me about the barrier when I left, she had been worried enough about the dogs to pack.

She is quick to work when she is frightened
, Spots said with approval.
She would do well in the army or the Queen’s Riders, if she did not have to worry about Uday
. He pitched as the ground shook harder. I looked for Uday. He was swaddled and tucked in his carry basket once more.

The villagers were still coming. From the sound of their arguments, they feared their mages more than they feared being caught under a rock, at least for the moment.

Afra was hoisting Uday’s carry basket onto her shoulders when I heard new voices in the canyons between us and the imperial camp. One male whined that the protection from earthquakes and falling rocks had best be good. Another cursed “that mad, thieving horse” and “that evil little dragon.” The soldier who had tried to stop Spots was coming to reclaim him. At least one mage came with him, as well as more soldiers. Did I not have enough trouble on my scales?

Afra started to lead Spots toward the stream that flowed away from the pond. I grabbed her arm and towed her toward the trail that we had used to come here.

“No,” she whispered, tugging her arm from my grip. “That goes toward the village.”

I took her arm again and pulled harder.

“They’ll
kill
me,” she snapped. She yanked free.

She would not trust any symbol for mage, even if she knew one. I knew no symbol for emperor. I quickly drew a picture of a crown.

She staggered as the ground shook and clung to Spots’ mane to keep her feet. “A king? Are you mad? We have no kings,” she said, “only an—Oh, no. No, no.” She shook her head, her eyes wild. “The emperor is the judge of all Carthak. He will return me to my master, if he doesn’t execute me for all I’ve stolen!”

We were out of time. The chief mage was the first of the villagers to top the orange stone rise. “Witch!” he cried, pointing. “Thief!”

I got in front of Afra and threw up my best shield as spears of yellow fire sped from his fingers right at her. They struck my power and flew straight into the air. I rose on my hind legs as the other two mages and the remaining villagers joined the chief mage. The dogs were nowhere to be seen. They must have fled for home like sensible creatures.

The mages’ Gifts shimmered and blazed around their hands, the chief mage’s brightest by far. I wriggled my hind feet, seeking good purchase. Then I summoned my own magic, letting it crackle like lightning over my scales. I was almost blind with the rage that comes from using too much power. In my fury, I meant to cook those annoying humans where they stood.

“Kitten!”
I heard Daine cry, her voice shocked. “
Bad
girl!”

I looked over my shoulder and released my magic into
the empty air. Daine stood behind me. She looked cross. She and Numair had come with the imperial soldiers I had heard. Numair held a protective shield of magic over all of them, keeping falling rocks from their heads back in the canyon. I could see its white sparks shimmer against its sheer black fire.

Daine looked at me, then at the villagers, her eyebrows knit in a frown. “Kit, you know better than to threaten humans. And I would like to know why these humans are threatening you and your friends!”

Numair surveyed all of us. “Your pardon, my dear, but the magical energies here are making my ears ring,” he said in his usual mild way. “Something very big is about to happen within these stones.”

That made my ears prick. Magic? Earthquakes weren’t magical.

“Perhaps we should all return to the emperor’s camp and finish this discussion?” Numair asked. “I am certain that Kitten did not adopt such a threatening posture without reason.” His Gift flowed out from him to enclose Afra, Uday, Spots, and me, but not the villagers. My foster father had seen we were under attack from them.

Afra started to raise her hand, her magic gathering around her fingers, but I grabbed her wrist. I was fairly certain that, even with her two-colored magic, she would get hurt if she tried to fight Numair.

She stared at me, her eyes wide with fear. “Is that the emperor?” she whispered.

Spots and I shook our heads.

“Stand away!” screamed the village’s chief mage. “This
woman is a witch and a thief! She is ours to deal with! Call your monster off!”

Daine’s frown deepened. “Kit’s no more a monster than you,” she called back. “Though just now you’re looking fair monstrous to me.”

No one heard what the mage said next. The orange rock under him bucked and split. He and the other villagers were thrown, as I had been, into the pond. Chunks of rock dropped away from the orange stone. The villagers who escaped the pond tried to run down the canyon where the stream flowed, only to find boulders were blocking the way.

No one wanted to come near us. They stayed on the far side of the pond.

As more orange pieces rolled onto the open ground, darker stone was uncovered. The inner rock was brown, glassy stuff. Once most of the orange stone had fallen away, the brown stone began to jerk and rise. Its ridges shifted as larger, angled pieces appeared out of the mass of rock beyond our view. The assemblage of stone, oddly shaped, even sculpted, kept turning toward us. One piece set itself on the sand next to Daine and Numair.

I was looking at a lizard-like foreleg. It was made of a glossy brown stone filled with a multitude of different-colored fires that blazed in sheets, darts, and ripples under each stone scale.

The center section up above bent in a U as the dragon—it was a dragon—hauled its still-captive hindquarters from their stone casings under the earth. Then it had to pull its tail loose, the tail being trapped in a different section of rock.
I saw the foreleg press up. With a roar of shattering stone, the dragon forced its upper body free, then its tail.

Raining gravel and powdered rock, the opal dragon turned. It brought its head around and down to our level, regarding us with glowing crimson eyes. Their pupils, slit just like mine, were the deep green of emeralds. Free now of its prison, it was not so big as I’d thought. Numair was six feet and six inches; the dragon stood that tall at the shoulder. Head to hip it was sixteen feet. The tail I could not measure. This dragon carried it in curled loops on its back. I noticed its other peculiarity right away as well: it had no wings.

It said something that flattened me. I squeaked, in my body or my mind, I don’t know which. I tried to meet its eyes. The dragon spoke again, using very different words and talking slowly. I shook my head in the hope that I could make my ears open up, but my ears were not the problem. The dragon spoke within my skull, expecting me to understand. The language was completely unfamiliar.

Daine raced over and picked me up. “Stop it!” she cried, glaring at the great creature. “She can’t understand you! She’s just a baby!”

I shook her off. I didn’t mean to, but I was
trying
to understand this being. Was it a relative of mine? Didn’t the dragon ancestors mention kindred of ours, dragons fashioned of stone, flame, and water, at the gathering I had attended when I was nine? I was busy playing with my cousins, but I had listened to some of the stories.

The dragon looked at Daine, then at me. It tried another
series of sounds, gentler ones. I heard something familiar,
Sleep
, and called back with my own mind,
Awake?

The dragon flashed a look at the village’s chief mage, who was trying to creep up on it. He shrank away, his hands blazing with his Gift. The dragon stretched its head out on its long neck and blew a puff of air straight at the mage. His Gift vanished from his hands. He gasped and plunged his hands into the pond.

The opal dragon looked at me and spoke within my mind,
Child?

Dragon child
, I thought to her. I knew this dragon was female. It was in the way that she said “child,” as if she had mothered several. She had loved them and scolded them, watched them grow, tended their hurts, and seen them leave in search of their own lives. Somehow I had learned all that just from the way she had thought that one word to me.

The dragon waved her forepaw at the humans around us.
These? Tell
.

I explained about Emperor Kaddar’s journey here. How I’d seen the boys stone Afra, and how Afra had led me to the cave in the rocks hidden by magic. I was almost to the end of how I’d tamed Afra with food when the dragon said,
That is sufficient for me to learn your speech
.

I stared at her.

It has been an age since I last heard the speech of my winged cousins. I had quite forgotten it
. The opal dragon eyed the humans.
Other things have changed as well
. Some note in her voice was different. She was ready to talk to others. She asked,
Have you pestiferous creatures gotten any wiser?

The villagers dropped to their knees, crying out or weeping. Their chief mage was the last to kneel. He quivered as if he could not help himself. Afra clung to Spots. I was so proud that she did not kneel.

Spots bared his teeth at the dragon.
Try your luck against me, big lizard
, he said.
I have fought giants and steel-feathered Stormwings. I have faced Kitten’s family. No dragon, not even a stone one, will make me run
.

So I see
, the dragon replied.

Neither Daine nor Numair had budged, though the emperor’s soldiers were on their knees. My parents, like Spots, had met far larger dragons.

Numair stepped forward. “It depends on how you gauge such things, Great One,” he said quietly, answering her question about humans. “I have met foolish dragons and badgers with great wisdom.”

The dragon regarded him, then Daine.
Mages have improved
, she said.

“Would you favor us with an explanation?” Numair asked in his polite way. “We had no sense of you, or we would not have disturbed you.”

You did not disturb me
, the opal dragon told him. She turned her crimson eyes to Afra.
Nor did you, small mother. I layered my protective spells so that none of my kind, who had been plaguing me with questions and requests for
ages,
would find me. I wanted a nice, long nap. But I set the wards so that any mother or mother-to-be might find sanctuary behind my barriers. I welcomed you in my dreams
.