Ship of Destiny

He was peripherally aware of the hushed murmur that ran through the watching crewmen. Sympathy, they felt sympathy for him. He felt a flash of irritation that they might construe his speaking so as weakness. But, no, it was not pity they felt. He looked up into their faces, and saw only concern, not just for Wintrow, but for him. They were touched by their captain’s regard for this injured boy. He sighed. Well, if Wintrow must die, he would wring what good from it he could. Gently he stroked his cheek. ‘Poor lad,’ he muttered, just loud enough to be heard. ‘So much pain. It would be merciful to let you go, wouldn’t it?’

He glanced up at Etta. Tears ran unashamedly down her cheeks. ‘Try the water again,’ he bade her gently. ‘But don’t be disappointed. He is in Sa’s hands now, you know.’

The dragon twisted his awareness. Wintrow did not see with his eyes, nor wallow in the sensation of pain. Instead, she bent his awareness in a direction he had never before imagined. What was the pain? Damaged units of his body, breaks in his defences against the outside world. The barriers needed repairing, the damaged units must be broken down and dispersed. Nothing must get in the way of this task. All his resources should be put to it. His body demanded this of him, and pain was the alarm that sounded through him.

‘Wintrow?’ Etta’s voice penetrated the woolly blackness. ‘Here is water.’ A moment later he felt an annoying trickling of moisture against his lips. He moved his lips, choking briefly as he tried to evade it. An instant later, he realized his error. This liquid was what his body needed to repair itself. Water, sustenance and absolute rest, free of the dilemmas that encumbered him.

A light pressure on his cheek. From far away, a voice he knew. ‘Die if you must, lad. But know that it hurts me. Ah, Wintrow, if you have any love for me at all, reach out and live. Don’t forsake the dream that you yourself foretold.’

The words stored themselves in him, to be considered later. He had no time for Kennit just now. The dragon was showing him something, something that was so much of Sa he wondered how it could have been inside himself all this time and remained unseen. The workings of his own body unfolded before him. Air whispered in his lungs, blood flowed through his limbs, and all of it belonged to him. This was not some uncontrollable territory; this was his own body. He could mend it.

He felt himself relax. Unrestricted by tension, the resources of his body now flowed to his injured parts. He knew his needs. After a moment, he found the reluctant muscles of his jaws and his laggard tongue. He moved his mouth. ‘Water,’ he managed to croak. He lifted a stiffened arm in a faint attempt to shield himself. ‘Shade,’ he begged. The touch of the sun and wind on his damaged skin was excruciating.

‘He spoke!’ Etta exulted.

‘It was the Captain,’ someone else declared. ‘Called him right back from death.’

‘Death himself steps back from Kennit!’ declared another.

The rough palm that so gently touched his cheek, and the strong hands that carefully raised his head and held the blessedly cool and dripping cup to his mouth, were Kennit’s. ‘You are mine, Wintrow,’ the pirate declared.

Wintrow drank to that.

‘I think you can hear me.’ She Who Remembers trumpeted the words as she swam in the shadow of the silvery hull. She kept pace with the ship. ‘I smell you. I sense you, but I cannot find you. Do you deliberately hide from me?’

She fell silent, straining with every sense after a response. Something, she tasted something in the water, a bitter scent like the stinging toxins from her own glands. It oozed from the ship’s hull, if such a thing could be. She seemed to hear voices, voices so distant that she could not make out their words, only that they spoke. It made no sense. The serpent half-feared she was going mad. That would be bitter irony, finally to achieve her freedom and then have madness defeat her.

She shuddered her whole length, releasing a thin stream of toxins. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘Where are you? Why do you conceal yourself from me?’

She waited for a response. None came. No one spoke to her, but she was convinced that someone listened.

4 TINTAGLIA’S FLIGHT

THE SKY WAS not blue, oh no. Not once she had taken flight, for compared to her own gleaming self, what could claim to be blue? Tintaglia the dragon arched her back and admired the sunlight glinting silver off her deep blue scales. Beautiful beyond words. Yet even this wonder could not distract her keen eyes and keener nostrils from what was even more important than her glory.

Food moved in a clearing far below her. A doe, fat with summer graze, ventured too bravely out into a forest clearing. Foolish thing! Once no deer would have moved into the open without first casting a watchful glance above. Had dragons truly been gone so long from the world that the hoofed ones had discarded their wariness of the sky? She would soon teach them better. Tintaglia tucked her wings and plummeted. Only when she was so close that there was no possibility the deer could evade her did she give voice to her hunt. The musical trumpet of her Ki-i-i as she stooped split the morning peace. The clutching talons of her forelegs gathered her kill to her breast as her massive hind legs absorbed the impact of her landing. She rebounded effortlessly into the air, carrying the deer with her. The doe was shocked into stillness. A swift bite to the back of her neck had paralysed her. Tintaglia carried her prey to a rocky ledge overlooking the wide Rain River Valley. There she lapped the pooling blood of her meal before scissoring off dark red chunks to sate her hunger, flinging back her head to gulp them down. The incredible sensory pleasure of eating nearly overwhelmed her. The taste of the hot bloody meat, the rank smell of the spilled entrails combined with the physical sensation of loading her gut with large pieces of sustenance. She could feel her body renewing itself. Even the sunlight soaking into her scales replenished her.

She had stretched herself out to sleep after her meal when an annoying thought intruded. Before she had made her kill, she had been on her way to do something. She considered the play of sunlight on her closed eyelids. What was it? Ah. The humans. She had intended to rescue the humans. She sighed heavily, sinking deeper into sleep. But it wasn’t as if she had promised them, for how could a promise between one such as herself and an insect be considered binding on one’s honour?

Still. They had freed her.

But they were probably dead and it was doubtless too late to rescue them anyway. Lazily, she let her mind drift towards them. It was almost annoying to find they were both still alive, though their thoughts were the merest humming of a mosquito now.

She lifted her head with a sigh and then roused herself enough to stand. She’d rescue the male, she compromised with herself. She knew exactly where he was. The female had fallen into water somewhere; she could be anywhere by now.

Tintaglia paced to the edge of the cliff and launched herself.

‘I’m so hungry,’ Selden quavered. He pressed himself more tightly against Reyn, seeking body warmth that Reyn himself was rapidly losing. Reyn couldn’t even find the spirit to reply to the shivering boy. He and Selden lay together on a mat of tree limbs that was gradually sinking into the rising muck. When the mud consumed it, it would devour this last hope as well. The only opening out of the chamber was far overhead. They had attempted to build a platform of debris, but as fast as they piled up fallen earth and tree limbs, the muck swallowed them. Reyn knew they were going to die here, and all the boy could do was whine about being hungry.

He felt like shaking some sense into him, but instead he put his arm around Selden and said comfortingly, ‘Someone must have seen the dragon. My mother and brother will hear of it and guess where she came from. They’ll send help.’ Privately, he doubted his own words. ‘Rest for a bit.’

‘I’m so hungry,’ Selden repeated hopelessly. He sighed. ‘In a way, it was worth it. I saw the dragon rise.’ He turned his face to Reyn’s chest and was still. Reyn let his own eyes close. Could it be as simple as this? Could they simply go to sleep and die? He tried to think of something important enough to make him go on struggling. Malta. But Malta was likely dead already, somewhere in the collapsed city. The city itself was the only thing he had cared about before discovering Malta, and it lay in ruins all around him. He’d never unearth its secrets. Perhaps dying here and becoming one of its secrets was the closest he would ever get to it. He found his heart echoing Selden’s words. At least he had freed the dragon. Tintaglia had risen, to fly free. That was something, but it was not a reason to go on living. Perhaps it was a reason to die content. He had saved her.

He felt another tiny quake. It was followed by a splattering sound as loose earth cascaded from the opening above them to splash into the muck. Perhaps the whole ceiling would cave in; that would furnish him a quick end.

Cool air wafted past his face, heavy with the scent of reptile. He opened his eyes, to find Tintaglia’s pony-sized head thrust down into the chamber. ‘Still alive?’ she greeted him.

‘You came back?’ He was incredulous.

She didn’t reply. She had pulled her head out and her taloned forepaws were tearing at the earth around the opening. Rocks, dirt and bits of ceiling rained down within the chamber. Selden awoke with a cry and cowered against Reyn. ‘No, it’s all right. I think she’s trying to rescue us.’ Reyn tried to sound reassuring as he sheltered the boy from the falling debris.

Earth and stone trickled down and the hole overhead grew larger. More light found its way into the chamber. ‘Climb onto this,’ Tintaglia suddenly commanded them. A moment later her head entered the chamber, a stout section of tree trunk gripped firmly in her jaws as if she were a terrier who had fetched a stick. The breath from her nostrils steamed in the cool chamber and the stench of reptile was overpowering. Reyn summoned his last strength to stand up and lift Selden so he could scrabble up onto the log. Reyn caught hold of the other end. As soon as he gripped it, she lifted them. They snagged for a moment in the opening, but she tore the log free with a fine disregard for how weakly they clung to it. An instant later, she had set them down on mossy earth. They sprawled upon an isolated hummock of land amidst the swampy forest, the long-buried dome beneath them. Selden staggered away from the log and then collapsed, crying in relief. Reyn tottered, but found he could stand. ‘Thank you,’ he managed.

‘You are not obliged to thank me. I’ve done as I said I would.’ She flared her nostrils and a blast of steamy breath briefly warmed him. ‘You’ll live now?’ It was as much statement as question.

His legs began to shake and he dropped down to his knees to keep from collapsing. ‘If we can get back to Trehaug soon. We need food. And warmth.’

‘I suppose I can take you there,’ she conceded unwillingly.

‘Thank Sa,’ Reyn breathed as fervent a prayer as he had ever uttered. He drove himself to his feet and lurched over to Selden. He bent over and seized the boy, intending to lift him, found that his strength was not enough and managed only to pull Selden to his feet. Half-dragging the boy, he lurched towards Tintaglia.

‘I’m exhausted,’ Reyn told her. ‘You will have to crouch down for us to climb onto your back.’

The dragon’s eyes spun in silver disdain. ‘Crouch?’ she demanded. ‘You upon my back? I think not, human.’

‘But…you said you would take us to Trehaug.’

‘I shall. However, no creature will ever bestride me, least of all a human. I shall carry you in my talons. Stand before me, together. I shall gather you up and carry you home.’

Reyn looked dubiously at her scaled forefeet. Her claws were silver, gleaming and sharp. He did not see how she could clutch them tightly enough to carry them without impaling them. He glanced down at Selden, to find the boy’s upturned face mirroring his doubts. ‘Are you afraid?’ he asked him quietly.

Selden considered for a moment. ‘I’m more hungry than I am afraid,’ he decided. He straightened himself. His eyes roved over the dragon. When his gaze returned to Reyn, his face shone. He shook his head in wonder. ‘Legends. Tapestries and paintings. They are all so feeble compared to how she shines. She is too amazing for distrust or fear. Even if she killed me right now, I’d still die in her glory.’ The boy’s extravagant words shocked Reyn. Selden summoned all his remaining strength with a deep breath. Reyn knew what it cost him to stand erect and declare, ‘I’ll let her carry me.’

‘Oh? Will you?’ the dragon teased him wickedly. Her eyes glittered with both amusement and pleasure at the boy’s flattery.

‘We will,’ Reyn declared firmly. Selden was silent beside him, but gasped as the dragon reared suddenly onto her hind legs. She towered above them. It was as difficult a thing as Reyn had ever done to stand still as she reached for them with taloned forepaws. He held Selden at his side and did not move as the dragon closed her clawed hands around them. The tips of the claws walked over him, measuring him before her digits wrapped around him. The sharp ends of two talons rested against his back uncomfortably, but they did not pierce him. She clutched them both to her breast as a squirrel treasures a nut it has found. Selden gave an involuntary cry as she crouched on those tremendous hind legs, and she bounded skyward.

Her blue wings beat and they rose steadily. The trees closed below them. Reyn twisted his neck and got a dizzying view of treetops below him. His stomach lurched, but in the next instant his heart swelled with wonder. He almost forgot his fear in this perilous new aspect of the world. Green and swelling, the Rain Forest Valley unfurled itself far below them. Up and up the dragon carried them in a widening gyre that afforded him glimpses of the open river winding through the lush growth. The river, he saw, was a paler grey than usual. Sometimes, after large quakes, it ran white and acid for days and anyone out in a boat had best be mindful of his craft. When the river ran white, it ate wood swiftly. The dragon tipped her wings and they swung inland and upriver. Then he caught both sight and scent of Trehaug. Seen from above, the city hung throughout the tree branches like decorative lanterns. The smoke of cookfires rose in the still air.

‘That’s it!’ He cried the words aloud to the dragon’s unspoken question, and then realized he needn’t have vocalized it at all. Held this close to her, their old bond had reasserted itself. He felt a chill moment of foreboding, but then sensed her sardonic reply: he needn’t worry. Further involvement with humans held no place in her plans.

He was almost grateful for his empty stomach as they descended in dizzying spirals. He caught whirling glimpses of city and river as they came down, including a brief sighting of pointing and shouting figures that scattered before them. He sensed her disgust that there was no wide, flat space prepared for a dragon to land. What sort of a city was this?

They landed joltingly on the city docks. The platforms, free to rise and fall with the changing flow of the river, gave way to the impact. White spray flew up from the edges of the wharf, causing the nearby Kendry to rock alarmingly. The liveship roared his bewilderment. As the dock rose, rocking under the dragon’s weight, Tintaglia opened her claws. Reyn and Selden fell at her feet. She swivelled aside from them to let her forepaws drop to the wood beside them. ‘Now you will live,’ she asserted.

‘Now…we will…live,’ Reyn panted. Selden lay like a stunned rabbit.

Reyn became aware of the thundering of footsteps and the excited susurrus of hushed conversation. He lifted his gaze. A veritable tide of people was flooding onto the piers. Many were begrimed with the mud of long digging. All looked weary despite the amazement on their faces. Some few gripped excavating tools as if they were weapons. All halted at the end of the dock. The incredulous shouts rose to a confused roar as folk gawked and pointed at Tintaglia. Reyn glimpsed his mother elbowing her way through the crowd. When she reached the front row of awed onlookers, she alone stepped free of the crowd and advanced cautiously towards the dragon. Then she saw him, and lost all interest in the towering beast.

‘Reyn?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Reyn!’ Her voice broke on his name. ‘And you are alive? Praise Sa!’ She ran to him and knelt by him.

He reached up to grip her hand. ‘She lives,’ he said. ‘I was right. The dragon is alive.’

Before she could speak, a long wail interrupted them. Reyn saw Keffria break free of the clustered onlookers and race along the wharf to Selden. She knelt by him, and then gathered her boy up in her arms. ‘Oh, thank Sa, he lives. But what of Malta? Where is Malta, where is my daughter?’

Reyn spoke the difficult words. ‘I did not find her. I fear she perished in the city.’

Like a rising wind, the cry rose from Keffria’s throat until it was a piercing scream of denial. ‘No, no, no!’ she wailed. Selden paled in her grip. The features of the tough little boy who had been Reyn’s companion during their ordeal suddenly quivered into a child’s face again. He added his sobs to her wailing.

‘Mama, Mama, don’t cry, don’t cry!’ He tugged at her but could not gain her attention.

‘The one you call Malta isn’t dead,’ the dragon interrupted sharply. ‘Stop this caterwauling and cease your emotional wallowing.’

‘Not dead?’ Reyn exclaimed.

His words were echoed by Selden. He seized his wailing mother and shook her. ‘Mama, listen, didn’t you hear what the dragon said? She said Malta is not dead. Stop crying, Malta isn’t dead.’ He turned a shining gaze on Tintaglia. ‘You can trust the dragon. When she carried me, I could feel her wisdom right through my skin!’

Behind them on the docks, a rising chorus of talk drowned out Selden’s words. Some folk were exclaiming in wonder. ‘She spoke!’ ‘The dragon spoke!’ ‘Did you hear that?’ Some nodded in surprised agreement, while others demanded to know what their friends meant. ‘I heard nothing.’ ‘It snorted, that was all.’

Tintaglia’s silver eyes greyed with disgust. ‘Their minds are too small even to speak to mine. Humans!’ She limbered her long neck. ‘Stand clear, Reyn Khuprus. I am done with you and your kind now. My bond is fulfilled.’

‘No! Wait!’ Reyn jerked free of his mother’s clutch on his arm. Boldly he gripped the clawed tip of Tintaglia’s gleaming wing. ‘You cannot go yet. You said Malta still lives. But where is she? How do you know she lives? Is she safe?’

Tintaglia twitched her wing tip effortlessly free of him. ‘We were linked for a time, as well you know, Reyn Khuprus. Therefore, I retain some small awareness of her. As to where she is, I know not, save that she floats on water. On the river, I surmise, from the fear she feels. She is hungry and thirsty, but not otherwise injured that I can tell.’

Reyn fell to his knees before the dragon. ‘Take me to her. I beg you. I will be forever in your debt if you will but do this one thing for me.’

Amusement flickered over the dragon’s face. He knew it in the swift swirling of her eye colours, and the small flaring of her nostrils. ‘I have no need of your service, human. And your company bores me. Fare well.’ She lifted her wings and began to open them. ‘Stand clear of me, if you would not be knocked down.’

Instead, Reyn sprang towards her. Her sleekly-scaled body afforded no purchase to his scrabbling hands. He flung himself at her foreleg and wrapped his arms around it as if he were a child clinging to his mother. But his words were full of force and fury. ‘You cannot go, Tintaglia Dragon! Not and leave Malta to die. You know she did as much to free you as I did. She opened herself to the memories of the city. She discovered the secret catches that would open the great wall. But for her seeking you out, I would not have come into the city amidst the quakes. You would be buried even now! You cannot turn your back on such a debt! You cannot.’

Behind him, he was aware of garbled questions and conversation among his mother and Selden and Keffria. He didn’t care what they overheard; he didn’t care what the boy told them. Right now, all he could think of was Malta. ‘The river runs white,’ he went on to the dragon. ‘White water eats boats. If she is on the river on a log or raft, the water will devour it and then her. She will die, because she ventured into the city to try to save you.’

The dragon’s eyes spun silver flecked with scarlet, so great was her anger. She snorted a hot blast of breath that nearly knocked him down. Then with a single forepaw she snatched him up as if he were a doll stuffed with sawdust. Her talons closed painfully around his chest. He could barely take a breath.

‘Very well, insect!’ she hissed. ‘I will help you find her. But after that, I have finished with you and yours. For whatever good you and she may have done me, your kin have committed great wrongs against all my kind.’ She lifted him and thrust him towards the liveship. Kendry stared at them, and his face was that of a dying man. ‘Do not think I do not know! Pray that I forget! Pray that after this day, you never see me again!’

He could not take a breath to reply, nor did she wait for words from him. With a mighty leap, she sprang upwards. The sudden lurch of the dock knocked down those who had ventured onto it. Reyn heard his mother’s shriek of horror as the dragon bore him away. Then all sound was driven from his ears by the swift wind of their ascent.

He had not known, before this, what a care Tintaglia had taken for him and Selden on that earlier flight. Now she rose so swiftly that the blood pounded in his face and his ears popped. His stomach was surely left far below them. He could sense the fury seething through her. He had shamed her, before humans, using her own name. He had revealed her name to those others, who had no right to it.

He caught a breath but could not decide on words. To apologize might be as great an error as to tell her she owed this to Malta. He stilled his tongue and clutched her talons, trying to ease their grip around his ribs.

‘Do you want me to loosen them, Reyn Khuprus?’ the dragon mocked him. She opened her claws, but before he could slip through them to his death, she clamped them shut again. Even as he gasped in terror, she arrested their ascent, tipping her body and sending them in a wide spiral above the river. They were too high to see anything. The forested land below them was an undulating carpet of moss, the river no more than a white ribbon. She spoke to his thought.

‘The eyes of a dragon are not like the eyes of a prey beast, small meat creature. I see as much as I need to see from here. She is not in sight. She must have been swept down the river.’

Reyn’s heart turned over in his chest. ‘We’ll find her,’ the dragon comforted him grudgingly. Her great wings began to sweep steadily, driving them down the course of the river.

‘Go lower,’ he begged her. ‘Let me search for her with my own eyes. If she is in the shallows, she may be hidden by the trees. Please.’

She made no reply, but took him down so swiftly that he saw darkness at the edges of his vision. She flew with him down the river. He clutched at her talons with both his hands and endeavoured to watch all of the broad face of the river and both banks. Her flight was too swift. He tried to believe that the dragon’s keener senses would find Malta even if he missed her, but after a time, despair took root in him. They had gone too far. If they had not found her yet, it was because she was no more.

‘There!’ Tintaglia exclaimed suddenly.

He looked, but saw nothing. She banked and turned as adroitly as a swallow, and brought him back over the same stretch of river. ‘There. In that little boat, with two others. Close to the centre of the river. See her now?’

‘I do!’ Joy leaped in him, followed as quickly by horror. They had found her, and as Tintaglia bore him ever closer, he saw that the Satrap and his Companion were with her. But seeing her was not the same as rescuing her. ‘Can you lift her up from the boat?’ he asked the dragon.