Dragon Spear (17 page)
Vannyn had spoken at length to his people, urging them to remember the old stories. Never had humans been kept by dragons, not until well after the death of their first queen, who had started the schism with Velika’s many-times-great-grandmother. If the dragon they considered their true queen had not condoned human slaves, who were they to do such a thing? Furthermore, who were they to order a queen about, holding her captive and shunning her chosen king?
Vannyn was an eloquent, passionate speaker, and I realized after a little while that I had tears silently sliding down my face. Luka saw them as well, and put his arms around me. Tucking my head against his shoulder, I whispered that it felt like we might win this battle at last.
But there was still much to be done. The Noble One sent his followers, human and dragon, into the jungle to spread the word, then sat and talked with us for a time. We shared our stories, relating the events of the Dragon Wars briefly, but also telling how we came here and what Velika’s situation was now. He told us he was in fact one of the council of elders, but that his collection of humans was really just a village he kept an eye on. None of them had come to the meeting, because it was too far for them to walk, and he never carried humans around “like goat carcasses.”
We all agreed that things needed to move quickly. He had two days to win more converts to the cause while we watched over the queen. He would come to the cavern in two days’ time, either to set us free with the blessing of the other elders, or to help us escape. We needed to be ready for either situation.
“What does that mean?” Velika fretted over her eggs. “How can we escape with the eggs? Shardas and I are too large to fit down that little tunnel, and the eggs are too large to be carried by a human.”
“Oh, we’ll have to fly out the main entrance,” Luka said. He reached into his pack and pulled out a coil of rope. “But first we’ll need to play with this.”
I opened my own pack, and showed them that it was as full of blankets. Luka, in turn, took more and more rope out of his.
“It’s for a net,” I said. “We’re going to pad it with blankets to carry the eggs in.
If
the local dragons won’t agree to set us free. If they want to make peace, we can carry the eggs up one at a time and take them somewhere more comfortable. But if that old dragon won’t release you, and Vannyn cannot convince the other elders, we will have to put the eggs in a net and make a run for it.”
I smiled nervously. “It will be all right,” I said, more for my own sake than for theirs.
“It will,” Shardas agreed. “You have done great things, both of you. Let us take this rope across the lava, so that we can spread it out better.”
When some of the human minions came to bring us a meal, they were startled to see Luka there. Startling too, I’m sure, was the bizarre way Shardas was sprawled across the floor.
After they left, we all looked at each other and started to laugh. Shardas got up and we went back to work, still snorting with laughter, on the ropes he had hidden with his bulk.
“It is tempting just to flame anyone or anything that gets in my way, you know,” Shardas said confidentially, as I bent over a knot. “But Velika will not have it.”
“And she’s right,” I said reprovingly. “That won’t help bring ’round the locals here. Which you must do, unless you want to be fighting with them all your life,” I reminded him.
“I know, and I don’t want more war. But I’ve only just truly begun to act as a king again. And it is hard not to take my duties as leader and protector to heart.”
“If someone kidnapped you, I’d kill them,” Luka told me almost cheerfully. He threw down another coil of rope, and whistled as he wove it through the others.
“You’re both incorrigible,” I said, but I couldn’t help feeling a little bit flattered.
Just a little.
I had never made a fishing net, but I had tatted little mesh purses, and this was much the same. Well, instead of a small copper tatting shuttle, I had a coil of rope draped over my shoulder. And our concern was less that we would lose our coins out the holes than that an egg would fall and smash, but it was essentially the same.
Or so I told myself as I ducked and skipped, using my entire body to weave the net, while Luka followed in my wake. He was pulling the ropes taut, and tying bits of twine around the intersections of warp and weft, so that the net wouldn’t loosen at any key points. Shardas was using his bulk to hold down the ends of the ropes, plucking and tightening where directed, or cutting the heavy ropes with a swipe of his claws.
When the basic net had taken shape, we stopped to look over our work. A large square of rope mesh, just big enough to nestle the eight eggs, was spread before us. Next we would have to find a way to gather up the corners, and rig a harness for Velika. The ropes looked rough, and I worried that our coarse woolen blankets would not be enough to protect the eggs.
Velika leaped across the river to look at it.
“Ingenious,” she murmured. “I am tempted to leave with the eggs as soon as you can finish this.”
“We must give them the chance to make peace with us,” Shardas said, as though he hadn’t been considering an all-out battle himself only hours before.
“I suppose.” Velika sighed. “Still, it will be reassuring to know that an escape is ready if we need it.”
We checked the knots and then rolled the net up and hid it in Velika’s bedding. We didn’t want to risk our captors seeing the net when they brought us breakfast the next morning.
But there would be no time to dwell on that.
T
he next day we were awakened by bands of light shining down from the cavern entrance. Usually we were awakened by the scraping of the bars across the tunnel when they brought our food, but not so today. We blinked around groggily, and when no breakfast was forthcoming, we went to work on the net with our ears cocked for approaching footfalls.
It was Velika who finally noticed something truly amiss. She had been on the verge of hopping across the lava river to help us fit her to the harness, but stopped short and called out to Shardas.
“My love, come quickly!”
We had been busy on the far side of the cavern, all three of us with our backs to the lava. The heat was nearly unbearable, but it always was, and Luka and I had been running back and forth with coils of rope, until we were dripping with sweat anyway.
What we saw when we turned around made us perspire even more, however.
The river of lava was overflowing its banks, coming dangerously close to Velika and the eggs. She was pulling them clear with her tail, but even as we watched, a blob of molten rock spat out with a hiss and ignited some of the dry brush that formed her bed. She smothered it with a claw, and exchanged frantic looks with Shardas.
“The volcano,” she said.
“It’s erupting.” Shardas finished the thought for her.
“Surely not,” Luka said, trying to look calm despite the pallor coming over the red heat of his cheeks. “We would have heard more . . . rumblings or some such thing.” He looked from one dragon to the other. “Wouldn’t we?”
“I have felt them, deep within the mountain as I lay here, but assumed it was normal,” Velika said.
“We’re getting out of here,” I announced, my voice shaking. “Right now, peace or no peace.” I looked at the entrance to the tunnel. “Three guesses why they haven’t brought us breakfast.”
“You don’t think they would leave the queen and her eggs?” Luka was aghast.
“Rats will flee from the scythe with or without their babies,” I said dourly. It had been a saying of my father’s. “And so, apparently, will the local dragons.”
“But we won’t,” Shardas said firmly. “We shall bring the eggs across,” he told Velika. “And lay them directly in the net.”
“I’ll get the padding ready,” I said.
First we laid all our blankets atop the net; then Shardas brought over the dried boughs and rushes of Velika’s bedding in huge clawfuls. We made the best nest that we could, and at last we were ready to load the eggs.
Holding the first one so delicately in his claws that it looked like it might slip from his grip, Shardas carried the egg over the churning river of lava. He set it gently into the nest, and Luka and I packed more rushes around it to keep it from hitting against the next egg.
When all the eggs had been carried across, Velika stood above them and we set to work tying the net to her belly. Shardas had volunteered to do it himself, but we pointed out that we needed him to guard us.
Now he helped place the ropes for the harness over Velika’s back, taking care that they wouldn’t interfere with her wings. Luka and I ran about underneath her, adjusting the net and tying the ropes as Shardas passed them to us.
When we had knotted and tied and adjusted, Velika stood and took a few steps, testing the balance and strength of the carrier. My heart flew to my mouth as I heard two of the eggs knock together, and Velika went rigid with horror.
Emptying our packs, Luka and I burrowed into the net ourselves and shoved our spare clothing between the eggs. We even took off our tunics and sashes to add them to the ever-more- slapdash contraption, so that we were now in just our trousers, undershirts, and boots. By then the cavern was too hot for more clothes anyway.
Soon all we had left was the basket containing my wedding gown, which I fastened to Shardas’s back before it, too, became a casualty of the situation.
Velika walked in a tight circle, the most she could manage in our increasingly small cavern. “It seems to be holding,” she said, her voice concerned. “Thus far.”
“It will have to do, until we get up to the surface at least,” Luka said, looking at the lava river with anxiety. “We haven’t much time left.”
Shardas flew to the entrance above us and began to rip the logs from their moorings. We held our breath, both from the hot, strange smell of the lava, and from fear that our guards would try to stop him. But no one interfered, and Shardas ventured out into the clearing, returning a minute later with a bundle of glass spears held loosely in his foreclaws.
“There is no one above,” he said. “They appear to have abandoned us.” His lip curled at their cowardice, and I felt my own expression mirroring the dragon king’s.
Luka and I climbed aboard Shardas, and he soared up to the entrance and out. Crouched on the edge of the rift that led to the cavern below, we looked around to see . . . nothing.
There were no guards, human or dragon. The torches had burned out, and from the forest there was only silence. No birds called, no wild goats bleated. All was still, save for a faint rumble that had been going on so long I only now noticed it. It was the volcano. At its tip I could see a glow, a brightness that pulsed in my eyes and stained my retinas.
“Velika, it is safe,” Shardas called to his mate.
With a roar of defiance, she burst up through the opening and prepared to land heavily beside us.
There was a creaking and groaning, and then a
snap
. We looked on in horror as several of the ropes binding the net of eggs to Velika’s belly separated. The net plunged to the mossy ground, and Shardas prostrated himself, dropping the spears and thrusting his foreclaws under the eggs to break their fall.
Luka and I leaped from Shardas’s back to help. The eggs appeared to be fine: they were tightly packed and their father had gotten his claws under them just in time.
Surveying the points where the harness had broken, I could see that it was the twine that had been the problem. The stress of Velika’s movements, her powerful leap into the air, had made it unravel. I exchanged glances with Luka. Where would we get more twine? And what good would more do if it wasn’t strong enough to take the strain of Velika’s movements anyway?
Taking his foreclaws from under the net, Shardas too puzzled over the knots. “We need something stronger,” he said hopelessly.
“And soon,” Velika said softly.
The rumble of the mountain was growing louder, and the sky was darkening, not with clouds, but with smoke and ash from the volcano. We needed to fly, fast.
“We could carry the net between us,” Shardas said.
“But if we are attacked,” Velika argued, “what then? And the net itself may not hold. . . .”
“We can cut my shirt into strips,” Luka offered. “And use it instead of twine.”
“It’s linen,” I said. “It will unravel just as fast as that twine.”
My heart was beating rapidly. My palms were wet and my mouth was dry. There was only one thing to do.
“Hand me your knife, please,” I said to Luka, and my voice caught in my throat.
“What are you going to do?”
“It’s sharper than mine.” I pulled the basket down from Shardas’s back.
“Creel!” Luka stared at me in shock, and Velika and Shardas both snorted smoke in consternation.
“Silk is stronger than most rope,” I said, and laid my wedding gown on the ground. “We’ll need strips about two inches wide, ten inches long.”
“Creel, if we must . . .” Luka put an awkward hand on my shoulder. “I’ll do it.”
“No,” I said, and the word came out as a sob. “I want to.” I took his dagger and jabbed it through the heavy silk of the skirt of my wedding gown. Tears dripped down and spotted the fabric.
“It is . . . was . . . very fine,” Shardas said comfortingly. “One of your best.”
Velika rumbled warningly, and he backpedaled.
“Of course, you are very gifted, and can surely re- create it when we are safe,” the dragon king assured me.
“We don’t need the top part . . . the bodice,” Luka pointed out in what he probably thought was a comforting way. “You can still use that.”
“Of course.” I sniffled, and made another cut.
W
hite strips of silk, their ends fluttering, adorned the harness and net that Velika wore. White strips of silk that had once been a gown that I had begun to think of as my masterpiece. I continued to cry as I tied them around the weak joints of the ropes, but it had to be done.
Down below in the vent, we could see that the cavern floor was now entirely covered with lava. The ground shook, and fire began belching out the top of the mountain.