A Dragon at Worlds' End (9 page)

Somewhere the other voice was still speaking; he knew that, too. His rational self would not be stilled forever, but his love for Lumbee was so sweet, so direct, and so strong that he was borne away on the tide of the emotions it aroused.

The next few days Relkin seemed to be floating on air, as was Lumbee, and the two of them were in almost continual contact, entwined together, kissing, going off on little moonlit walks. Relkin's attention to the details of existence dimmed, and meals became fewer and further between.

Bazil watched at first with a bemused fondness in his own heart. The boy and the tailed girl practically stopped speaking to him. They were in their own world, and he was just a dimly seen companion moon. After a while, he became a little more resentful. He had splinters in his right foot and Relkin did nothing to remove them all day, not even inquiring about them.

Finally he felt a strange jealousy. They were snuggling together under a protective rock set conveniently across two others while he sat beyond the fire, alone, whetting the blade of Ecator with a piece of very high-grade pumice that Relkin had found a few days before. He worked the sword's edge every night now. Against pujish that towered over him at the point of attack, and which wielded jaws capable of taking his own head in a single bite, he could not afford a dull blade. From the steel came the rasp of the pumice stone. From inside the rocky alcove came soft giggles, punctuated by sighs and kisses.

Bazil swore under his breath, by the fiery breath of the dragon gods, humans had the longest, most teased-out courtship of any creature in the world. He had seen cats in heat teasing a circle of toms; he had seen whales courting their females, but nothing came close to humans in love. They never seemed to get enough of it.

One thing was certain: Humans enjoyed themselves in this way far more than dragons. He recalled his own courtship of the green dragoness atop Mount Ulmo in faraway Kenor. It was a golden memory for the leatherback dragon, but it did not have all this endless kissing and cuddling that the humans went in for so lavishly. With dragons, the lovemaking was fierce and swift. High Wings, the mother of his young, could not be said to have ever become "sweet" at any point in her entire life. The dragon male knew well that if his teeth ever came away from the back of the female's neck, she'd rip his throat out in the next second. This was often cited as one reason the numbers of dragonkind had dwindled over the years, while those of the humans swelled.

The blade was as sharp as he could get it. For a moment he felt a strong urge to have some foe against whom he might wield this blade, the greatest he had ever known. For a brief, unimaginably savage moment he would exhaust himself in the fire of battle. His foe would fall, as all his foes had fallen since the day he took up this witch-made blade, and later, when he cooled, these feelings of jealous isolation would be purged, burned away in the heat of battle.

He put Ecator in the scabbard and then poked around in the hot coals of the fire with a large stick and withdrew the haunch of the old one-horn that had been baking there. A test with an overlong talon told him it was done.

He sucked it for a moment and then sighed. His talons were much too long. He had splinters in the foot and there was something loose in the binding holding the scabbard to the joboquin. He was being neglected. It was not a good feeling for a leatherback dragon that had grown accustomed to the best handling in the Legions.

Once he'd eaten, an unsettled Bazil pulled himself to his feet and took a stroll away from the fire. The lovers paid no heed.

The moonlit hills loomed in the west. Since the travelers were in a race with the approaching rainy season, they were passing close to the hills in their hurry to get on to the southern plains and then the forest.

Something flickered behind him and he turned. Black clouds were mounting in the north, lightning flickering amid them. Such clouds had floated over the previous two nights, too, but they had brought no rain.

These were the harbingers of the monsoon, small storms empty of moisture. Still, they told him that there was not much time left to them in their race to the south.

He walked to the top of a gentle rise and stepped up through a rather battered-looking grove of acacia trees. Something large had been eating them recently; whole branches had been torn off. The splinters in his right foot made him limp. He hoped the boy would get over the worst of this infatuation before too long. He hated to beg for help.

He turned his gaze to the tawny darkness of the plain, dappled by moonlight. Bazil's eyes widened, transfixed by the sight. An enormous herd of big, four-legged animals with heads surrounded by huge frills of horn was spread far and wide in front of him. There were thousands of the beasts. Snorts, rumbles, and an occasional groaning cry came from them. When a nearby brute swung its head in his direction, Bazil saw that it had a pair of wicked-looking horns projecting from above the eyes, and a third horn from its nose. Furthermore, it was about twice his own size and weight. Bazil thought it a most formidable-looking brute, and when he considered its most likely enemies he understood why it was armed so heavily. Only thus could it hope to survive the assaults of the red-brown pujish.

The animal's small beady eyes were peering at him. He realized he must be more visible than he'd thought, so he slid back a half step into the acacias.

The dimensions of this herd of huge animals were awesome. He'd never seen so much flesh on foot, although he thought some of the schools of whales he'd seen might exceed it in sheer mass. But so much meat would draw predators as a matter of course. He presumed he wasn't the only spectator and cast his eyes up and down the crest of the rise on which grew the acacias.

There was one, a darker outline amid the trees, perhaps a half mile away. And then farther away, he caught a glimpse of another—pujish, red-browns from the shape of the big heads.

Bazil took more careful stock of his immediate surroundings. The last thing one wanted was to be caught off guard by one of those things. The red-brown pujish were awfully quick for such hefty animals. He gazed around him intently, studying the battered grove of small trees. After a while he reassured himself that he was alone.

He turned back to contemplation of the huge herd grazing peacefully on the plain. Such a sight was something he had to engrave on his memory. He would want to recite every detail for the Purple Green, if he and his friend were ever reunited. He knew the Purple Green would be entranced by the thought of so much meat on the hoof. Bazil chuckled to himself, but then the Purple Green was just as keen on his dinner as the big red-brown pujish.

Finally he turned away and headed back to their camp. With all these pujish in the area, it was best if he didn't stay away too long. The firelight twinkled in the dark and he moved along as quietly as possible, not wanting to draw the attention of all the red-browns he sensed hiding in the acacia groves. The pujish made no move, however. They were rooted in place, their attention fixed on the herd.

After a while, Bazil relaxed and strolled the rest of the way unconcerned. The pujish were simply not interested on this occasion.

The boy was up, alone for once, taking the early watch. Lumbee was asleep.

"What did you see?" said Relkin.

Bazil lay down by the fire.

"Big herd of horned animals over that rise. Must be thousands of them."

Relkin looked in the direction of the rise; the hills rose beyond. "I don't think they were there when we pitched camp."

"Well, they are now. And they aren't alone. There's a dozen or more of those red-browns just standing there watching them."

Relkin started up nervously at the news. "Just watching?"

"You heard this dragon." Bazil pulled out what was left of the baked haunch of the old one-horn.

"They didn't see you?"

"Don't know. Just not interested, maybe."

"By the gods, I hope not. We better get away in the morning before dawn. Maybe they're trying to work out what to eat tomorrow and they haven't noticed us yet."

Despite his earlier urge to wreak violence in battle, Bazil did not relish fending off a pack of red-browns on the morrow.

"That sound like good thinking. Better turn in now, get some sleep, maybe."

"Why are you limping?"

Ah, the boy had finally noticed that he had a wounded dragon on his hands.

"Splinters in foot, from the morning."

Relkin threw his hands up in the air. "Why didn't you say anything? I mean, you've probably worked them in good and deep by now."

Bazil closed his eyes and did his best to blank out the sudden anger. "Normally this dragon never have to report something like that. Dragonboy usually starts to work with tweezers and pick as soon as something like that happens. Nowadays, dragonboy not seem to care about this dragon."

Relkin groaned. "I should've known. Come on, put the foot closer to the fire so I can see what I'm doing."

Relkin unwrapped his kit and went to work.

"Why does it have to take so long to fertilize the eggs? You should be back to normal by now."

"I'm not a dragon, Baz. We're different. People like to be, well, intimate. We're not solitaries like dragons, not fierce, not pure carnivores."

"You seem to take forever."

"You don't understand. It's not like that. It's more… well, I don't know how to express it—it's what we call love. We don't have any control over it sometimes."

Bazil gave a grunt of pain as Relkin heaved out an inch-long splinter from his foot.

"That's the worst of them," said Relkin.

"Talons are getting too long."

"You're right. Sorry, Baz, I guess I've been a bit neglectful."

Relkin pulled the other splinters, then cut down the longest dragon claws and filed them smooth.

The dragon slept soothed by Relkin's attention to the splinters and overgrown talons. The lightning flickered in the north, and dull thunder beat across the land.

The dragon slept, snoring quite softly, for him. Relkin sat tending the small fire that remained while he kept his eyes peeled for any sign of those red-brown pujish. The travelers had no protective boma and were defenseless except for Bazil and the great sword. But the grassland hissed in the dry night air and no menacing shadows showed themselves, so he let himself relax.

After a while his thoughts wandered. He marveled at the strange cast of Caymo's dice of fate. He'd come halfway around the world, seen terrible battles, and faced the Doom Master Heruta on the very lip of the volcano's fire. Somehow he'd survived all that, only to be cast onto an empty shore.

Was this some ploy of destiny? Were the gods involving him again in their struggle? He shivered. Relkin had reached the point where little that happened in the ordinary turn of events really worried him. Not even battle. Events moved too quickly in a fight, and there was no time for fear. But things like the magical apparitions in the pit below the city of Dzu still scared him. They were the ones that cast the dice. They set you on these tracks of destiny, and then there was nothing you could do about it.

Relkin wondered how they fit in with the pantheon of the Old Gods. Or were they the Old Gods themselves?

In battle, if Caymo rolled your number, that was that, unless perhaps the God of War, old Asgah, intervened. If you were sufficiently brave and valorous, Asgah might save you for his own. Those chosen by Asgah, in the days of Veronath the Golden, lived long lives despite a multitude of risks and dangers.

He shook his head. He was no hero of the golden age.

He prodded the embers of the fire and tossed on another piece of wood. He just did what he had to do, and sometimes he'd been lucky. Those old heroes, they were a different breed, he was sure. But what did the golden beings do? What was their role? And why were even the great witches Ribela and Lessis afraid of the very mention of their names?

Were the golden beings a sinister force directing him toward a dreadful end? It was hard to imagine, since they had always seemed benevolent, but was it possible that he was but a kind of rabbit to them, gulled out of his natural suspicions, to be taken when they wanted and condemned to some horrible demise?

He gave up a prayer to old Caymo for his intercession in the matter. Matters of gods and goddesses seemed too complex, too fraught with awe, for Relkin to feel comfortable with them. Caymo was good enough for him. Roll the dice and see what numbers come up and play them out with whatever skill you could muster. That was the way to deal with life.

He looked up at the stars. There were new stars, that he had only become familiar with since coming to the tropical zone. High above he saw some of the more familiar constellations: There was the goat, and there the ram. He saw one of the red dragonstars was high in the sky, but the other was not. The dragon would be concerned when he saw that.

Looking at the stars was something Relkin had done since he was a lad. He'd been lucky there. The village of Quosh in those days was the home of Ruperno the Astronomer, a didactic old man who loved nothing more than passing on the lore of the stars.

Knowing just how enormous the universe of stars was always brought on a sense of humility. That surely was the Mother's Hand, just as they tried to tell you in the temple. The gods of Veronath were mere dancers on her hand, the priestesses said. Her Hand was their stage on which they strutted. He laughed and shook his head. Gods and goddess, it was too complex for a dragonboy with little education. Who knew what the gods were up to?

The green Salt Star was there, and blue-white Dexterbee, he knew them well. In Kenor they were prominent summer stars. With that awe he always felt there came a sense of peace. In the scale of things his trials were of little importance. Just as he was lost on the immensity of Ryetelth, so the world itself was lost in the enormity of the cosmos.

Something flashed nearby. He looked over his shoulder. The black clouds had slid up the sky from the north. Thunder boomed down and rolled across the plain. Relkin looked around quickly. The plain was softly lit by starlight, no pujish approached, but in the north there was complete dark.