A Natural History of Dragons (24 page)

Her foot vanished, and a moment later, when I truly could not stay down any longer, I floundered to the surface. Air, blessed air, rushed into my lungs. Then Dagmira helped me to my feet. I needed the aid; every part of me seemed to have gone numb, and I was shaking so badly that I surely would have fallen.

The clothing Jacob thrust into the tent was not my own. I could not have gotten such closely tailored garments on just then, and they had all gotten soaked besides. The robe Dagmira flung over my head was soon the same way, but it was thick wool, warm even when wet. She then helped me from the tent and back up onto shore, where Menkem finished his prayers with the holy gesture.

At that moment, I did not care in the slightest what spiritual benefit I might have gained from the exercise. I was in sunlight, and no longer in the stream—all to the good—but the wind cut like a knife. The sooner I got indoors, the better. I stumbled badly, trying to walk, until Jacob took the simple expedient of picking me up and carrying me onward. “You d-d-d-on’t have to do that,” I said, my chattering teeth contradicting my body, which was more than glad to curl up against his chest.

I felt the quick jerk of his laugh. “Nonsense. Carrying you helps warm me up. We both benefit.”

Who could argue with that?

My wet hair was the worst, holding the chill long after my body had started to recover. Jacob and I huddled under the blankets in our bed until I had stopped shaking; then he went out again. I remained there a while longer, feeling like a small child in winter, reluctant to leave my cocoon. Finally I forced myself out, pinned my hair up in a messy knot that at least would not freeze my back, and went downstairs.

Jacob came through the front door as I did. “Wilker and Menkem are off, with Astimir to guide them,” he said, to my questioning look. “Astimir has been to the boyar’s lodge before, and knows the way. I will give the priest this much; when I pointed out that Lord Hilford would be on his way back by the time Wilker caught him, and then it would be days yet before they got back here, he immediately insisted on going with them.” Jacob snorted with quiet laughter. “I should like to be there to see Hilford’s expression, when Wilker tells him he must be dunked in a mountain stream.”

Lord Hilford was not a religious man; he joined us in our studies on Sabbath night, but only because he would spend the night reading anyway. But I hoped, with the superstitious chill that had been plaguing me since the previous night, that he would cooperate.

“Will they be safe?” I asked, rubbing my arms for warmth. “I don’t mean this Zhagrit Mat business—well, that, too—but from the dragons.”

“They’re armed,” Jacob said, “and know to keep an eye out. It’s as safe as they can be, short of hiding indoors.”

He had a point. There had been no trouble in the village—perhaps because there were so many people; predators often prefer lone prey—but anyone who ventured beyond its boundaries was at risk. Mr. Wilker was likely safer than if he were going out with Jacob for research.

I was selfishly glad my husband would not be leaving the village. And yet, how could we answer our questions, and fulfill my promises to Dagmira and Chatzkel, without risking ourselves in the field? We would have to dare it eventually. And as much as I wished to pretend otherwise, we had to do it soon.

SIXTEEN

Idle hands — An odd circle — Plans for investigation — Dagmira’s family

With both of the other gentlemen gone, Jacob was at loose ends. He tried to talk to the villagers, but none of them wanted to come near him until they knew whether the evil of Zhagrit Mat had been banished. Back home in Pasterway, he would have passed the time answering his correspondence; but the difficulty of receiving mail in Drustanev meant no one was writing to us. I recognized the signs of frustrated idleness, and took steps to mitigate them.

I had, as originally advertised, been filing the gentlemen’s notes. It was a more haphazard affair than I would have liked, though, because I had never done such work before, and had no system. Together Jacob and I went through the pages, discussing what we had learned, and writing fair copy of many things that had been jotted down in a messy scrawl.

It was tedious work, but at the same time, it gave me a deep, wordless pleasure. I remembered the naive girl that had stood in the king’s menagerie, never dreaming that Jacob Camherst would become her husband, but hoping he would be her friend. My naivete had been vindicated; we
were
friends now, in what I thought of (at the time) as a queerly masculine way. Ladies did not have these sorts of conversations, speculating as to how the daytime torpor and winter hibernation of rock-wyrms allowed those enormous predators to survive without eating everything in sight—not with each other, nor with gentlemen either, who were not supposed to tax our minds with such weighty matters.

The Manda Lewises of the world will say that is not love, at least not of a romantic kind. I will grant that it certainly is not the sort one finds in plays and sensational novels—but that sort always seems to be causing trouble for everyone involved, and the occasional innocent bystander. (I thought so then, and I think so even more now, having seen that very principle in action.) I argue, to the contrary of Manda and her ilk, that such a deep and pleasant rapport
is
love, the common thread that may link friends and relations and spouses; and furthermore, the mightiest torrent of passion, without that thread woven into it, is mere animal lust.

Such were the thoughts filling the depths of my mind, while the surface occupied itself noting down changes on our map. Many of the lairs marked by the smugglers had proved to be abandoned; Jacob and Mr. Wilker, in the course of their explorations, had found a handful more with new inhabitants within. Clearly the dragons had moved house … but why?

I scowled down at the paper, for I had not thought to provide for alterations when I made my marks, overwriting Jacob’s hasty pencil scratches in more careful ink. Finally I blacked out the X’s of empty lairs until they were solid squares, and drew new X’s where Jacob said they had found dragons unexpectedly in residence. “I should like to know how long ago they started migrating—and where the rest of them have migrated
to,
” I said, and he murmured in agreement.

My eye drifted over the revised map. If migration
was
occurring, I wondered whether there might be an underlying pattern—a certain distance traveled, or a certain direction—which would help us understand the process, and to find the remainder of the dragons.

I did not see an answer to that question. But I saw something else.

My finger traced an arc of lairs, curving around from east to south. It continued, with interruptions, through the west and north, with a diameter of several miles. Not a perfect circle, but …

“Jacob,” I said, “what’s here?”

He leaned over to see where my fingertip rested, in the center of that circle. The map there was blank—entirely without lairs, so far as we had recorded. “There? Let’s see—that’s past the ravine…” He shrugged. “Nothing in particular, that I can think of.”

“You’ve been in there?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Those lairs you just marked are the farthest Wilker and I have been; it’s a fair hike, getting up there.”

“So there
could
be something there, that you haven’t seen?”

Jacob sat back, frowning at me. “Such as what? I’ll grant you it looks oddly regular, but our map is hardly perfect; some of our distances are wrong, and I’m sure we don’t have all the lairs. There might be one right in the middle of that apparent circle.”

“Which is one possible answer to your question,” I pointed out. “We
think
that rock-wyrms are solitary, coming together only to mate, and that they have no hierarchy amongst themselves. What if we’re wrong? There might be some kind of … oh, queen dragon lairing there, and all the others keep their distance.”

“Or it could be there are no suitable caves there.”

A fair point; the reason rock-wyrms are found in clusters, and fly such distances to hunt, is because not all parts of the Vystrani highlands have caves that meet the dragons’ needs. But that circle seemed so very regular. Could it possibly be an accident?

(The answer, by the way, is yes. In this case it proved not to be, but such things happen all the time, when one’s data is as scanty as ours was. The human mind is very good at imagining patterns where none truly exist. If you are reading this book because you have an interest in pursuing a science, whether natural history or some other, bear that warning in mind. It will save you a great deal of humiliation—I speak from experience. But that is a tale for a later book.)

I had enough sense to know I should not leap to conclusions. In fact, there was only one sensible way to proceed. “We must go and look.”

Jacob’s eyebrows rose at the word “we.” “This is where I remind you that it will be at least four days, more likely five, before Wilker and Hilford return.”

I gave him my most charming smile, and the reply he knew was coming. “And where I suggest that we need not wait for them.”

“Isabella…”

“You took me on the hunt.”

“Because it would have been inefficient to lug a dragon’s carcass all the way back here for you to draw. And the attacks are coming more and more often.”

“The fact remains that you
took
me,” I pointed out. “The dangers were no less simply because you had reason. And you have reason now, too: it will be four days, more likely five, before Mr. Wilker and Lord Hilford return, which is four or five days wasted—not to mention four or five days in which the dragons might grow even more aggressive than they already have.”

“You don’t know how to shoot, Isabella.”

A lack I was acutely aware of, these days. “But I can keep watch with the best of them. Truly, can we afford to delay, when we might learn something that could save someone’s life?”

Jacob bit his lip; he was wavering. I pressed my advantage. “If you go out alone, you will certainly
not
be safe; think of the time you fell, when you and Mr. Wilker were mapping caves. What if you had hurt your leg? You need a companion, and I am volunteering.”

“
You
are supposedly being haunted by the spirit of a dead monster,” he said drily.

By that, I knew I was winning the debate. In all honesty, I cannot think of anything Jacob ever truly refused me—even things others would say he should have done.

I was bright enough not to say that myself, though. Instead I addressed his point, as if it were a genuine concern. “We’ll see if anything troubles us tonight. If not, then we can trust that either Menkem Goen’s ritual did some good, or it was some kind of chance occurence, not to be repeated.” We could hardly have set out that day regardless; it was far too late. So it cost me nothing to wait.

Jacob, I suspect, performed the same calculation for himself, but he said nothing of it. “We shall see.”

I must have woken up eight times that night, but I heard nothing, and neither did Jacob. And in the morning, the grass was clear of any new marks, though the ones behind the house remained.

Still, we didn’t leave that day. I think Jacob was quietly looking for ways to dissuade me; we had a number of brief conversations on such matters as the weather (cold and relentlessly windy, as always, but otherwise fair) and the suitability of my clothing for such a hike (I told him I would borrow a pair of his trousers).

Jacob’s own impatience settled the matter. I had not thought of him before as a restless man, but he had none of his usual hobbies to occupy him in Drustanev; and having spent the better part of a month going out nigh daily, he found himself chafing at this sudden inaction. He did not like any better than I did the thought of sitting idle when we might be learning something that could help the villagers.

“If tonight passes quietly,” he said at last, “we’ll go tomorrow.”

I spent the afternoon in preparation, so that we would not waste any time the following morning. The area was a strenuous day’s hike away; allowing a day to explore, that would be three days altogether. We would return when Mr. Wilker and Lord Hilford did, or possibly just before.

My preparations were hardly secret; it is no surprise that Dagmira guessed their general purpose. “Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded, hands on her hips.

Before, I might have fobbed her off with some vague answer, not wanting to face the possibility of argument. Ever since our conversation, though, I felt guilty about the extent to which we ignored the villagers of Drustanev. I told myself we had reason; they’d been largely sullen and unhelpful where our researches were concerned, seeing us as a disruption and possibly a threat. But if Dagmira knew of any danger, she might unbend enough to warn me. “Come with me,” I said, leaving off my packing, and led her downstairs.

Our map still lay on the workroom’s one large table. I pointed to the center of the circle and asked her, “What’s there?”

Dagmira frowned in puzzlement at the map. “On the paper?”

“No, in—” I caught myself. “Do you know how to read a map?”

I actually said “picture of the land”; although I knew the Vystrani term, it temporarily escaped me. Dagmira mouthed through my odd choice of words, even more puzzled. Then her brow cleared. “
Ulyin!
Mayor Mazhustin has one, and Menkem Goen keeps one of Akhia. They’re pretty—much prettier than this.”

Her casual denigration of my work, I surmised, amounted to a “no.” Why should she know how to read a map? Drustanev was so isolated, she might never have been as far as another village. The people here navigated by landmarks, not drawings of them. I described the area to her, based on what Jacob had said of it, and then Dagmira nodded. “In the middle of that area,” I said. “Is there anything there? Anything special, I mean.”

The young woman shook her head. (As I write this, it occurs to me, for the first time, that Dagmira cannot have been much younger than I was. She was not yet married—they wed surprisingly late in the Vystrani highlands; she would not seek a husband until her dowry of weavings was complete—and perhaps that was part of it; but I suspect the larger part of it was simply that I saw myself as a worldly, sophisticated woman, and her as a rural child. What an unfortunate thing to realize, long after I could possibly apologize to her for it.)