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At her cries, both the captain and Alise turned and hurried towards her. She was out of breath by the time they reached each other, and to Leftrin’s worried, ‘What’s wrong, girl?’ she could only reply, ‘Rasp snake. On Sintara. Biggest I’ve ever seen. Going into her chest, under her wing.’
‘Those damned things!’ he exclaimed and Thymara could only feel gratitude that she didn’t have to explain it.
She caught a gasping breath. ‘My father used liquor to make them back out.’
‘Yes, well, tereben oil works better. Trust me on that. Had to get one out of my own leg once. Come on, girl. I’ve got some on board. Alise! If one dragon has a rasp snake, chances are the others do, too. Tell the keepers to check their animals. And that brown one, the one that’s down? Check her, too. Look on her underbelly. They’ll go for a soft place for an easy bite and then dig in.’
Alise felt a surge of purpose as Leftrin turned away from her and headed back towards the barge. She hastened down the beach, going from keeper to keeper, giving the warning. Greft almost immediately found one dangling from Kalo’s belly, concealed by one of his hind legs. There were three fastened to Sestican; she’d thought for a moment that his keeper, Lecter, was going to faint when he discovered three short ends of snakes poking out from his dragon’s nether regions. She spoke to him sharply to jolt him from his panic, directing him to take his dragon over to where Sintara was and to wait for Leftrin there. The boy seemed shocked that she could speak so severely. He gave a gulp, recovered himself and obeyed her.
She swallowed her own shock at that and hurried on. When she came to Sylve and the golden dragon guarding the dirty brown one, she had to pause and rebuild her courage for a moment. She did not want to confront him; she wanted nothing more than to turn and hasten away. It took her a moment to convince herself that what she felt was not her own cowardice, but the dragon’s efforts to repulse her. She squared her shoulders and marched up to him and his keeper.
‘I’m here to check the brown dragon for parasites. Some of the other dragons have been attacked by rasp snakes. Your keeper should check you over while I look at the brown dragon.’
For a time the gold just stared at her. How could solid black eyes glitter so bleakly?
‘Rasp snakes?’
‘A parasitic burrowing creature. Thymara says she knows of them from the canopy. But these, she thinks, come from the river. They are much larger. It’s a snake that bites and eats its way in, to live off your flesh.’
‘Disgusting!’ Mercor declared. The gold immediately stood and spread his wings. ‘It makes me itch to think of it. Sylve, check me for those creatures immediately.’
‘I groomed you completely today, Mercor. I do not think I would have missed such a thing. But I will check you.’
‘And I must look at the brown dragon to see if he has any,’ Alise asserted firmly.
She had expected Mercor to oppose her. Instead, he seemed completely distracted by the thought that he himself might have such a parasite.
Alise ventured towards the impassive copper dragon. She was crumpled on the ground in a way that was going to make inspecting her underbelly difficult if not impossible. And Sylve was right. The coating of mud on the dragon was so even that it almost looked deliberate. It was going to have to come off before she could tell much of anything about the creature.
She glanced helplessly towards Sylve, but the small girl had her hands full with Mercor. An instant later, her first impulse shamed her. What had she thought to do? Summon the Rain Wild child to have her clean the dragon so that Alise could inspect her without getting her hands dirty? How arrogant a thought was that? For years, she had been claiming she was an expert on dragons, yet at her first opportunity to tend to one, she quailed at a bit of mud? No. Not Alise Kincarron.
Not far from where the copper dragon sprawled, part of a bank of coarse reeds remained untrampled, their tasselled heads standing half again as tall as Alise. She drew her little belt knife, cut half a dozen of them, folded them into a coarse cushion of reeds and returning to the dragon, began to give her a good scrubbing with it, starting at the creature’s upper shoulder.
The dried mud was river silt and it came away surprisingly easily. Alise’s coarse brush bared coppery scales that quickly took on a lovely sheen as she worked on the poor creature. Relpda did not make a sound, yet Alise thought she sensed a dim gratitude from the prostrate dragon. She redoubled her efforts, moving her scrubbing rushes down the dragon’s spine. As she worked, the size of a dragon was forcibly impressed on, not just her mind, but her muscles. The area of skin to be cleaned suddenly reminded her of the routine work of the crew scrubbing the barge’s deck. And this was a small dragon. She glanced over her shoulder at the gleaming gold of Mercor’s scaled hide and mentally compared it to the small pink-scalped girl who tended him. How much of each evening did the girl devote to her task?
As if Sylve had sensed her gaze, she turned to Alise. ‘He’s clean, every inch of him. No snakes on him. I’ll help you with Relpda now.’
Her pride made Alise want to say she had her task well in hand. Instead she heard herself say, ‘Thank you’ with utter gratitude. The girl smiled at her, and for an instant her lips caught a glint of light from the sun. Was her mouth scaled, too? Alise jerked her stare away and renewed her scrubbing efforts, sending a cascade of fine silt from Relpda’s hip to the damp earth below her. Sylve had not seemed so scaly when she’d first seen the girl. Was she changing as much as the dragons were?
Sylve came to join her, carrying a coarse reed ‘brush’ of her own. ‘This is a really good idea. I’ve been using evergreen boughs when I can get them, and handfuls of leaves when I can’t. But this works much better.’
‘If I’d had the time to weave the stems and leaves together, I think it would work even better. But this will get the job done, I think.’ Alise had a hard time speaking and scrubbing at the same time. Her years in Hest’s house had softened her. As a girl, she’d always helped with the household cleaning; her family had not been able to afford many servants. Now she could feel sweat damping her back and blisters starting to form on her hands. Her shoulder already ached. Well, so be it! A little hard work never hurt anyone. And when she looked back over the area of dragon that she had cleaned, she felt a rush of pride.
‘What’s this? What’s this? Is this a snake hole?’ The fear and distress in Sylve’s voice seemed to infect her dragon. Mercor came lumbering over and swung his large head down to snort at a spot on the copper dragon’s neck.
‘What does it look like?’ Alise asked, leery of coming closer while the golden was so intent.
‘A raw spot. The dirt around it was damp, maybe with blood. She’s not bleeding now, but …’
‘Something jabbed her there,’ Mercor opined. ‘But it’s not a “snake hole” my dear. Still, the blood smell is strong, so she bled quite a bit.’
Alise found her wits. ‘I don’t think the snakes make a hole and crawl inside. I think they only stick their heads in and drink blood.’
Mercor stood absolutely still, his head still hanging over the copper dragon. His eyes were black on shining black; still Alise had a sense of that colour slowly swirling in them. He seemed to go away from them for a time. Then he shuddered his coat, rippling his scales in a way that reminded her more of a cat than a reptile. An instant later, she felt again the presence of his mind, and marvelled. If he had not briefly left them, she would never have recognized how strongly he affected her when he was focused on them.
‘I do not know about snakes called rasp snakes. These things you describe, I have heard of, long ago, and then they were called burrowers. They dug in deep. They may be more dangerous than the rasp snakes the other keeper spoke about.’
‘Sa have mercy,’ Sylve said quietly. She stood silently a moment, her rush scrubber still in her hands. Then she abruptly walked around the dragon and pushed her. ‘Relpda!’ she shouted, as if to penetrate the dragon’s stupor. ‘Roll over. I want to see your belly. Roll over!’
To Alise’s astonishment, the sickly dragon stirred. She moved her hind legs feebly against the mud she sprawled in. She lifted a wobbly head, unlidded her eyes, and then let her head drop back to the earth. ‘Move away,’ Mercor directed them roughly, and both women obeyed him promptly, jumping back to be clear of the prone dragon. Mercor lowered his head, thrust his muzzle under Relpda and tried to turn her over. She rumbled a feeble protest and scrabbled her legs as if the motion pained her.
‘Is he eating her? I don’t think she’s dead!’ The protest came from another dragon keeper who had suddenly joined him. Rapskal, Alise thought to herself. Was that his name? He was a handsome lad, despite his Rain Wild strangeness. His thick dark hair and black clawed hands contrasted oddly with his pale blue eyes and angelic smile. His dragon was with him, a dumpy red creature with stumpy legs and a brilliant sheen to his scales. When Rapskal stopped to stare, the small dragon leaned his head affectionately against his young keeper, nearly knocking him over. ‘Stop it, Heeby. You’re bigger and stronger than you know! Stand up on your own feet.’ There was more affection than rebuke in his voice. He gave his dragon a shove and she playfully nudged him back.
‘Mercor’s not trying to eat her.’ Sylve explained indignantly. ‘He’s trying to turn her over so we can check her belly for parasites. There’s a snake kind of creature—’
‘I know. I was just over watching them get them out of Sestican. Just about made me puke to see them back out, and Lecter was almost crying and blaming himself. I never seen him so broken up before.’
‘But they got them out?’
‘Yes indeed they did. Must have hurt, though. That big blue dragon was squeaking like a mouse as they came out. I don’t know what Captain Leftrin had mixed up, but they put it around the hole where the snake went in and pretty soon it started thrashing its tail, and then it started backing out. Lots of blood and goop come with it, and hoo, what a stink! And then when it finally dropped to the ground, Tats jumped on it and chopped it up with an axe. Made me glad I check my Heeby from top to toe every day. Right, Heeby?’
The red dragon gave a snort in response, and shoved Rapskal again, sending the boy staggering. His account had made Alise feel a bit queasy, but Sylve had other things on her mind. ‘Rapskal, can you get Heeby to help Mercor? We’re trying to turn the copper dragon onto her back.’
‘Well, sure I can. All I got to do is ask her. Hey, Heeby! Heeby, look here, look at me. Heeby, listen. Listen, girl. Help Mercor turn the copper dragon onto her back. Understand? Help him turn her over? Can you do it? Can my big strong dragon do that for me? Sure she can. Come on, Heeby. Put your nose under here, right here, just like Mercor. That’s my girl. Now lift and push, Heeby, lift and push!’
The little red dragon dug her feet in. As Alise watched, the muscles in her short thick neck bulged. She made a rumbling noise of great effort and suddenly Relpda began to move. She gave a squeal of pain, but both Mercor and Heeby ignored it. Pushing and grunting, they turned her onto her back. Her legs waved feebly in the air. ‘Hold her there, Heeby. That’s my girl. Hold her there!’ And in response to Rapskal’s cries, the small red dragon braced herself and stood with her head butted up against the copper. Her neck muscles bulged, but her golden eyes spun in pleasure at her keeper’s loud praises.
‘Look there!’ Mercor said, and Alise stared in horror. The copper dragon’s muddy belly was studded with snake tails. There were at least a dozen, the exposed stubs twitching and writhing because their victim had been moved. Sylve covered her mouth with both her hands and stepped back. She rocked her head from side to side and spoke breathlessly through her fingers.
‘She never let me groom her belly. I tried. I did try! She always pulled away from me and rubbed it in the mud. She was trying to get rid of them, wasn’t she, Mercor? She wouldn’t let me groom her belly because it hurt.’
‘Her mind was not clear enough for her to know that you could help her,’ Mercor said heavily. ‘No one blames you, Sylve. You did what you could for her.’
‘Is she dead?’ The call reached them, and all heads turned. Thymara and Tats were coming at a trot. Captain Leftrin was behind them. Sintara was following at a more dignified pace. Behind them, half a dozen other keepers and dragons were converging.
‘No! But she’s infested with them. I don’t know if we can save her.’ Sylve’s voice broke on the words.
‘Try,’ Mercor commanded her sternly, but then he leaned over the girl and gently blew his breath down on her. At most, it could have been a gentle breeze, but Sylve swayed in it. To Alise, the sudden change in the girl’s countenance was stunning. And frightening. Sylve went from a near-hysterical child to a calm woman. She drew herself up taller, glanced up at her dragon and smiled at him.
‘We will.’ She looked over at Alise and said, ‘First, we will use our reed brushes to clean away as much of the mud as we can. Heeby, you will have to hold her in this position, on her back. She will not like what we do, but I think we must clear the mud from her injuries before we can treat them.’
‘That makes sense to me,’ Alise concurred, and wondered where the poise had come from. Was she seeing Sylve as she was when her own doubts didn’t taunt her, or was this, somehow, an overlay of the dragon Mercor? Alise took up her reed scrubber and turned it to a fresh spot. She approached the dragon cautiously. The copper might be small and weak for a dragon, but a kick from any of her gently waving legs would send a human flying. And if she struggled and rolled over onto a keeper, serious injuries would result.
Thymara halted and stared at Alise. For a moment, the Bingtown woman looked like a different person. She was scrubbing away at the belly of the copper dragon, heedless of dust and mud that cascaded onto her trousers and boots. Dust coated her face and her blouse was filthy to the elbows. Even her pale eyelashes were laden with dust. Yet her expression was one of determination, and almost pleasure in her task. When had she changed from being an elegant Bingtown lady, impeccably dressed and with manners to match? A grudging admiration stirred in Thymara.
Heeby stood, her scarlet head lowered and braced against the copper dragon, pinning her in an ungainly belly-up posture. Rapskal stood at her shoulder, proudly patting his dragon and murmuring praise of her. Mercor hovered over the group, while Sylve appeared to be in charge of the operation. The girl also looked different, Thymara thought, though she could not quite put her finger on what it was.
She took two steps closer and felt ill. Barely-exposed snake tails dotted the dragon’s belly. She swallowed hard. It had been awful to watch the writhing parasite exit from Sintara’s body. The snake had not been in her long, and most of its body had still been outside the dragon’s. Once Leftrin had daubed the strong-smelling tereben oil around the injury, the snake had gone limp, and then suddenly began to lash wildly. The dragon had trumpeted her distress. Thymara had stepped forward hastily and seized the lashing snake by the tail. ‘Hold on. I’m applying more oil!’ Leftrin had warned her.
At the second application, the snake had become frantic. It had begun to writhe backwards out of the dragon, and as the length of bloody snake emerged, Thymara had forced herself to seize it and hold on lest it try to re-enter the dragon. It had slithered and slipped in her grip. Sintara had blasted news of her pain and the other dragons and keepers had begun to gather round her. As the final length of the snake had emerged, the creature had whipped its head about, splattering Thymara’s face with blood as it tried to attack the creature who gripped it. She had shrieked as the blood hit her and flung the animal to the ground. Tats had been ready and waiting with a hatchet. It hadn’t got far. She’d stood numbly, shaking with her dragon’s shared pain. She’d dragged her sleeve across her face, but it only smeared the thick blood more. It had smelled and tasted of dragon, and even now, after she’d washed it off, the clinging scent of it filled her nose and she could not be rid of the taste of it. Afterwards, Leftrin had swabbed the injury with rum and then sealed it over with a daub of tar lest the acid river water ulcerate it. The captain spoke as he worked. ‘After this, you’ll have to do nightly checks of your dragons. Those snakes got something in their mouths that numbs the flesh. You don’t even feel one burrowing in. I got a little one in my leg once, didn’t even know it was there until I got out of the water.’
As Alise and Sylve worked, the copper dragon made small sounds of pain. Thymara squatted down beside her to look into her face, but the dragon’s eyes were closed. She wondered if Relpda were even conscious. She stood up again slowly. ‘Well, at least we know what’s wrong with her now. If we can get them out of her, clean her wounds, and seal them against the river water, maybe she’ll have a chance.’
‘We’ve cleaned away enough dirt. Let’s get them off her,’ Sylve decided.
Thymara stood with the circle of watchers, staring in sick fascination. As Leftrin stepped forward with his pot and brush, she turned aside. Ever since Sintara’s blood had hit her face, it was all she could smell or taste. She had no desire to see more of it tonight. She saw Sintara waiting on the outskirts of the gathering, and pushed through the other onlookers to get to her dragon. ‘I don’t want to watch this,’ she told her in a low voice. ‘It was hard to see one snake removed from you, and you hadn’t carried it long. I can’t watch this.’
Sintara turned her head to regard her keeper. Her copper eyes whirled, and suddenly they appeared molten to Thymara, pools of liquid copper whirling against the gleaming backdrop of her lapis lazuli scales. Dragon glamour, she tried to warn herself, but couldn’t care. She let herself be drawn into that gaze, let herself become important because of the dragon’s regard for her. A tiny cynical part of her snidely asked if a dragon’s regard truly made her important. She ignored it.
‘You should go hunting,’ Sintara suggested to her.
She was reluctant to leave the dragon. Moving away from her glorious copper gaze would be like leaving the warmth of a cheery fire on a cold and stormy night. She clung to the dragon’s gaze, refusing to believe her dragon might wish her to leave.
‘I’m hungry,’ Sintara said softly. ‘Won’t you go and find food for me?’
‘Of course,’ Thymara responded promptly, overcome by Sintara’s will.
Sintara’s voice grew very soft, as if it were no more than a breath blowing past Thymara’s ear. ‘Greft and Jerd went into the forest not so long ago. Perhaps they know where the hunting is good. Perhaps you should follow them.’
That stung. ‘I am a better hunter than Greft will ever be,’ she told her dragon. ‘I’ve no need to follow him.’
‘Nonetheless, I think you should,’ Sintara insisted, and suddenly it did not seem like a bad idea. A thought teased at the edge of her mind; if Greft had already made a kill, perhaps she could help herself to a share, just as he had with hers. She still had not paid him back for that trespass.
‘Go on,’ Sintara urged her, and she went.
Each of the keepers had formed the habit of keeping their gear in their boats. Dealing with Rapskal’s untidiness was a daily trial for Thymara. When she thought about it, it seemed unfair that a random choice on the first day had doomed her to be his partner. The others regularly rotated partners, but Rapskal had no interest in such swaps. And she doubted she would find anyone willing to take him on, even if she could persuade him to try it. He was handsome, and adept on the river. And always optimistic. She tried to recall him speaking crossly, and could not. She smiled to herself. So he was strange. It was a strangeness that she could get used to. She pushed his gear bag to one side and rummaged in her own for her hunting items.
Away from Sintara’s gaze, it was easier to think about what she was doing and why. She recognized that the dragon had exerted some sort of glamour over her. Yet even being aware of it did not disperse it entirely. She had nothing more pressing to do, and certainly they could use the meat; they could always use the meat. The copper would benefit from a meal after they’d cleared the snakes off her, and certainly Mercor could do with some meat. But as she slung her bag over her shoulder, she wondered if she were merely trying to find a more acceptable reason to let herself follow the dragon’s suggestion. She shrugged at the uselessness of wondering about it and set off for the forest eaves.
The shores of the Rain Wild River were never the same and never different. Some days, they passed ranks of needled and lacy fronded evergreens. The next day those dark green ranks might give way gradually to endless columns of white-trunked trees with reaching pale green leaves, and all their branches festooned with dangling vines and creepers heavy with late blossoms and ripening fruit. Today there was a wide and reedy bank, with ranks of rushes topped with tufts of fluffy seedheads. The bank was only silt and sand, temporary land that might vanish in the next flood. Beyond it and only slightly elevated above it a forest of grey-barked giants with wide-spreading branches chilled the earth with their eternal shade. Vines as thick as her waist dropped down from those spreading branches, creating an undergrowth as restrictive as the bars of a cage.
It was easy enough to follow Greft’s trail through the marsh grasses. Water was already welling up in some places to fill his boot tracks. The prints of Jerd’s bare feet were less visible. Thymara scarcely gave her mind to her tracking, thinking instead of the dragon. The more time and distance she acquired from Sintara, the clearer came her own thoughts. Why Sintara had sent her hunting was an easy question to answer; the dragon was always hungry. Thymara had intended to hunt today anyway; she did not mind her errand. More puzzling was why the dragon had suddenly decided to make the effort to charm her. She never had before. Did that mean that she now considered Thymara more important than she had previously?
A thought light as wafting bulrush down floated into her mind. ‘Perhaps she could not use her glamour before. Perhaps she grows stronger in many ways, not just physically, as she challenges herself.’
She had whispered the words aloud. Was the thought hers, or had she, briefly, touched minds with one of the other dragons? That question was as disturbing as the thought itself. Was Sintara acquiring more of the powers that legends associated with dragons? Were the other dragons? And if so, how would they use them? Would their keepers be blinded by glamours, to become little more than fawning slaves?
‘It doesn’t work that way. It’s more like a mother loves a wayward child.’ Again she spoke the words aloud. She stopped, just beneath the eaves of the forest, and shook her head wildly, making her black braids whip against her neck. The small charms and beads that adorned them snapped against her neck. ‘Stop it!’ she hissed at whoever was invading her thoughts. ‘Leave me alone.’
Not a wise choice, but the choice is yours, human.
And like a gauzy mantle lifting from her head and shoulders, the presence was gone. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded, but whoever it had been was gone. Mercor? She wondered. ‘I should have asked that question first,’ she muttered to herself as she entered the thick shade of the forest. In the dimmer light, Greft’s trail was not as easy to follow, but he had still left plenty of sign. And she had not gone far before she no longer needed to bother with tracking him. She heard his voice, his words indistinct, and then another voice in reply to his. Jerd, she thought to herself. They must be hunting together. She went more slowly and quietly, and then came to a complete halt.
