Dragon's Kin (16 page)

Kindan nodded, mumbling something in his throat about being glad to start out this watch-wher with the best possible feeding in between his thanks for her suggestion. Then she turned back to deal with the newcomers.

“Well done, Kindan,” Zist said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Well done, lad. What sort of soft talk did you employ?”

“Something learned from you, no doubt, Zist,” M’tal said teasingly. “No matter, Kindan, well done. Let’s get the two younglings back home, and then we can all celebrate.”

“And in time, please,” Zist said with a bit of a bow to the dragonrider.

“No easier said than done,” M’tal replied. “Come, lad, step up on Gaminth’s knee and grab the safety strap. I’ll give you a bit of a heave.”

Keeping one hand firmly under his egg, Kindan made it to the dragon’s back and settled down between two ridges with a sigh of relief. Curious, he glanced over at the lair just in time to see the man erupting out of it as if propelled by something strong and annoyed. He couldn’t help giggling at Zist’s remark about some folks not knowing when they weren’t welcome.

“Didn’t know how to sweet-talk her, I guess,” M’tal added. “Proud of you, boy. Glad to have been able to help you out.”

“This is just the beginning,” Natalon remarked. “Are you up to it, lad?”

“Sir,” Kindan said, swiveling around to speak to Natalon, “would you give Ima”—who was the main hunter and butcher for the camp—“the orders to let me get the blood I’ll need? And to Swanee to allow me enough oats?”

“Of course I will,” Natalon said briskly. “And loan you a big enough pot to make porridge for the watch-wher in. I doubt you’d have one large enough for the purpose.”

The Miner looked a bit uncomfortable at the reminder that the lad was no longer living in his own home, where he would have had a good selection of pots.

“And I have some herbal candles to burn to get rid of the stench,” Zist said, making a face as if he already knew how noxious the mixture would smell. “And you must promise me not to burn the oats.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Kindan said and fixed his face forward just as M’tal warned them of their passage
between
.

When they returned to the camp, it seemed to Kindan as if they had only just left. It must have taken several hours to complete their mission, and yet not much had changed; the first carts, full of the black rock, still hadn’t reached the top of the rail where their contents would be tilted over in the huge storage area. He shook his head as the dragon made a careful landing near the watch-wher’s lair.

Natalon called out as the dragon settled to the ground. Tarik came rushing out of the shaft.

Natalon motioned for Kindan to descend first. “Help him down, Tarik,” he ordered.

“You got the egg then?” Tarik asked, though it should have been obvious from the sack weighing down Kindan’s shoulder that they had been successful. As Kindan swung his leg over the dragon’s ridge, he was certain that Tarik had expected the journey to be fruitless. But he helped Kindan as if the boy had suddenly become fragile.

Politely, Kindan thanked Tarik, then made his way as fast as he could to the watch-wher’s shed. He had prepared it carefully, with lots of straw. He felt the warm bricks he had placed under the floor of the small den. They hadn’t cooled at all—which
was
odd, but he was just as glad that he didn’t have to wrangle more in here just yet. Choosing a spot that he thought was just as warm as the hatching lair had been, he carefully took the egg out of the sack and set it down, piling the warm straw around it to approximate the cover and warmth of the queen’s wing. He looked down at his handiwork and passed his hand over it, close to the straw. The heat felt sufficient. He was very hungry, though he had eaten a good breakfast just before the dragonrider had arrived.

Tarik and Natalon were talking together while Zist chatted with his old friend.

“Come, Kindan, we owe M’tal some hospitality. All that traveling made me hungry. How about you?” Zist held out his hand and, when Kindan reached him, waved in the direction of his cothold.

CHAPTER VIII

Watch-wher, watch-wher in the egg,
Grant to me the boon I beg.

M’tal begged off lunch, as he had to return to his Weyr soon.

“I don’t want my stomach to get the wrong idea about what time it is,” he explained with a wink at Kindan.

Kindan and Zist made a quick lunch of the bread and soup that had been kindly left for them in the Harper’s kitchen. Kindan wished he’d asked Aleesa more questions, which he could have easily added when he explained that Dask had been a hatchling before he was born. When he mentioned this to Zist, the Harper frowned slightly.

“I shall see what I have here,” he said, waving toward his small collection of hide-bound books on the shelf in the living area. “I don’t recall there being much about watch-whers.” He grimaced. “They weren’t high on the Archival list when I did my time with the Master Archivist. Still, there might be some.”

“I know my father—” Kindan faltered, still keenly feeling the loss of the one parent he had known. “—trained Dask with the other two Crom Hold watch-whers. They seem to educate each other.”

“But you were talking to it,” Zist said.

“I was talking to the queen, not the hatchling. Kids have to be taught to speak, you know.”

“Yes, well, that is true enough,” Zist admitted. “So you have to teach it to respond to the sounds. Do other watch-whers always use the same ones?”

“I don’t really know,” Kindan admitted.

The Harper stared into space, idly stirring the last of the soup. “Well, the important thing is that you got the egg, Kindan. We can wing anything else, somehow. M’tal’s our ally, and they have watch-whers at Benden Hold. A few adroit questions—you’ll have to think what you need to know—could be answered surreptitiously.”

Kindan was more impressed than ever with his teacher and with the morning’s incredible events. He mopped the rest of the soup from his bowl with a fresh piece of bread. Then he took his things to the sink and stacked them.

“I’ll wash them when I get back from checking the bricks,” he told Master Zist as he left the cothold.

That seemed to be all he did every waking hour. At night he slept in the shed, wrapped warmly in his worn fur; often he started from sleep to rise and make sure the egg was warm enough. He had increased the cothold’s supply of oats, and had made a mess of porridge in the big kettle that had been placed on the back of the oven range. A pail of blood was already in the cooler. Natalon had quickly given the orders for Kindan to receive whatever he needed to tend to the watch-wher.

The first evening, after the day shift, Zenor popped in to see the egg. His expression of awe made Kindan feel warm inside. All right, it was only Zenor, but to receive such unalloyed approval alleviated some of his worst anxieties. He kept delving back in his memory for all references his father had made about watch-wher tending. He
had
remembered the right sounds and gestures. He
had
gotten the egg back to the camp. It was warm and it would hatch.

“When?” Zenor asked, his eyes glowing as he regarded the egg under its blanket of straw.

“Master Aleesa said in a couple of days,” Kindan replied as nonchalantly as he could. “Would you mind getting me some more coal so I can keep the bricks warm?”

“No, no, of course not,” Zenor said and darted out of the shed.

Kindan felt the shell of the egg, then started burrowing in the straw to find which bricks were cool enough to be reheated.

He was using the tongs to haul heated bricks out of the fire and filling in the spaces with cool ones when Zenor returned, staggering behind a loaded wheelbarrow. With an exaggerated sigh, Zenor upended it near the fire.

“Thanks, Zenor, I appreciate your help.”

“Can you let me see the hatching, too?” Zenor asked wistfully.

“It’s nothing like a dragon Impression,” Kindan replied, rather wanting that moment to be private.

“Which I haven’t seen anyhow, so please, huh, Kindan?”

“Well, I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything, especially as you may be on shift.”

“If possible, please, Kindan? I’ll bring all the coal you need.”

“All right,” Kindan said, relenting. Zenor was his very best friend. “Would you stay in the shed while I make another batch of porridge? I like to keep it as fresh as possible.”

“Sure, sure,” Zenor said.

Kindan had to scour the pot to remove the brown bits that had stuck to the bottom before he could start a fresh batch. He thought he’d be wasting a lot of oats, but he wanted to be sure he had porridge ready and waiting when the egg cracked. He knew how important it was for the hatchling to be fed as soon as possible after it emerged from its shell.

Three mornings later, he was startled awake from a restless sleep by a loud noise. He sat up, momentarily confused, then opened the glow and carefully pulled the straw off the egg. A large crack almost bisected the center of the egg. He put a hand on it and felt something beat against his palm. He stroked the egg.

“Lemme get the porridge,” he said, struggling to disentangle himself from his sleeping fur and dashing barefoot across the short distance to the Harper’s cothold. He got the pail of fresh blood he had acquired that afternoon from the cooler, hauled the cookpot to the front of the range, and carefully poured in the blood, mixing it with the stiff porridge. He tried not to wake the Harper, but Zist heard the clink of the spoon against the side of the pot and, holding his fur about him, came into the kitchen.

“It’s hatching?” he asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes and finger-combing his hair back.

“It’s got one great crack across its middle,” Kindan said. Carrying the pot, he returned to the shed, the Harper following him. Kindan did remember his promise to Zenor but didn’t dare leave the shed. Nor could he consider the effrontery of asking Master Zist to wake his friend.

The crack had widened, and a chip of the eggshell lay in the straw.

“I believe a watch-wher is born light-sensitive,” Zist remarked, half-closing the glowbasket and turning it to face the back of the shed so as not to blind the creature on its emergence.

The oval rocked, and Kindan wondered if he should move it away from the bricks. Would they be too warm for the hatchling? He compromised by pulling his sleeping fur over as a carpet.

The egg gave one more lurch and fell into two sections. The hatchling reared up and tumbled out, landing on its nose on the fur.

Kindan chirruped encouragingly and reached out to touch the watch-wher. It managed to raise its head, open its mouth, and squawk.

“Feed it,” Zist urged, and Kindan inserted his hand in the not-too-warm porridge mix and offered it to the watch-wher. Or, to be specific, dumped it on the hatchling’s tongue. It gulped back the offering, swallowing instantly and opening its mouth for more.

Kindan used the spoon this time. Considering how the hatchling seemed to inhale the porridge, he could see why feeding it cubes of meat might cause it to choke to death. He continued feeding it until the pan was empty. The watch-wher cocked its head as if surprised its feeding was interrupted.

“I’ll make another pot,” Zist said, leaving the shed while Kindan stroked the hatchling and crooned encouragingly. Kindan guessed by the dim light that the watch-wher was green. Female, then. Wanting confirmation, he examined her carefully to be sure all the necessary parts were there. Yes, there were, and she was.

He worked the stumpy wings to be sure they functioned, and stroked the eye ridges and scratched her ears. The watch-wher butted at Kindan, squawking urgently and trying to take his fingers into her toothless mouth. Kindan remembered that watch-whers teethed, not unlike human babies, and with the same pain and discomfort. He made a mental note to get fresh numbweed, or some of the distilled spirits human mothers resorted to for teething infants. Not that any mother he knew would find the watch-wher lovable. It had a really misshapen, ugly kind of dragon face. Like its stumpy wings, which were sort of draconic, but not quite, so was this watch-wher, with eyes that blinked furiously until Kindan dimmed the glow to a thin sliver of light, earning a purr of pleasure from the hatchling.

Master Zist stumbled back into the shed, holding the pot in front of him. The hatchling made a snarling noise, smelling the proximity of food, and lunged in the right direction. Luckily, Kindan was able to seize the pot, grab the spoon, and dump a big glob into the watch-wher’s open maw. This time, the moment Kindan felt the spoon scrape the bottom of the pot, he asked Master Zist to prepare a new batch. As Zist obeyed, it occurred to Kindan that maybe it wasn’t proper for him to order his Master about like this.

When would this creature have eaten enough? Her belly was well rounded, and she still opened her mouth or nudged Kindan’s body when she felt she had been unfed too long. Finally, though, she gave a monumental burp, emitting a sour, bloody smell, and crawled to a spot of straw that seemed appropriate, curled up, laid her head on her forepaws, and started to snore.

Zist got wearily to his feet and scrubbed at his mussed hair.

“I shall get properly attired and announce the arrival of . . .” He looked down at Kindan, who was lying back in the straw. “Did it give you a name?”

Kindan shook his head. “I didn’t ask.”

“Is it enough like a dragon to know its own name?”

Kindan shook his head. “I don’t know. I wish we knew more about watch-whers.”

“Is it male or female? Though I don’t suppose it matters.”

“It’s a green. They’re like dragons that way, so she’s a female.”

“Then I shall report that to Natalon.” He reached over and tousled Kindan’s hair. “You’ve done very well, lad. Very well indeed.”

Master Zist left and wearily Kindan gathered up the odorous porridge pot and took it inside to the sink to clean. Then he started a new batch on a back burner, not knowing how long the current feeding would stave off the pangs of hunger in his new charge. While the pot simmered, he went back to the shed and settled down to await developments.

He roused somewhat to the sound of Zist’s soft voice and Natalon’s pleased remarks.

“And no idea what its name is?” Natalon asked Kindan.

“She didn’t say . . . she was too busy stuffing her mouth and swallowing. Next time she’s awake, I must blood her,” Kindan said, giving a convulsive shudder.

“Is that essential?” Zist asked, wincing slightly.

“It’s how watch-whers know who they answer to. And that tradition has already served me well.”

Zist held out his hand. “Do you have a belt knife? I’ll sharpen it for you. That way you won’t feel the cut as much.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Natalon said, giving Kindan a sympathetic wave in farewell.

Kindan handed over his belt knife, murmuring a thank-you. He hated to tell the Harper that he was going to ask him to make the cut, as he wasn’t brave enough to slash his own hand. He shuddered again as Zist left the shed. With nothing to do, Kindan settled himself on the warmest spot of straw he could find . . . and then remembered that he hadn’t let Zenor know about the hatching. His friend would be topside by now from his shift, and maybe still awake.

Zenor
was
still awake but yawning mightily when Kindan called at his window.

“You were on shift, when the shell cracked,” Kindan said apologetically.

Zenor muttered under his breath but slipped back into his tunic and joined Kindan.

“You actually didn’t miss much. One single big crack woke me and then, it fell into two pieces. It’s a green, so it’s a female.”

“Is that what you wanted?”

“I wanted a live, healthy watch-wher . . . and I suppose a female is as good as a male. Shards, does she eat!”

Zenor grinned. “My mother says my sisters eat more than I do.”

“C’mon,” Kindan urged, quickening his pace. “I don’t know how long she goes between feedings and I still have to blood her.”

They entered the shed, Zenor with a properly respectful attitude. He looked around.

“Where is she?”

A head rose instantly from the straw in which it had burrowed, the wide eyes blinking.

“She’s not as big as I thought she would be,” he murmured.

“Big enough to have the appetite of nine dragons,” Kindan said, almost proudly.

The hatchling worked her way across the straw to where Kindan stood and, opening her mouth, made a noise that he instantly interpreted as a demand for food.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, giving the watch-wher a reassuring
chirp
.

When he got to the cothold, Master Zist had just put down his sharpening stone, and the new knife-edge glistened in the sunlight. Kindan gulped, thinking of that edge cutting into his hand, and stirred the simmering porridge.

“Hungry again?” Zist asked.

“Would you mind coming with me now so I can blood her?” Kindan asked. “And then start another batch?”

“Is there enough blood left in the pail for more?”

“I think so. I’ll get more as soon as she’s asleep again.”

The Harper followed him out to the shed and greeted Zenor, who hadn’t moved from the spot in which Kindan had left him. The hatchling had been trying to crawl up his legs, her hungry
bleek
more insistent.