Dragon's Milk Read online

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Ancient Strange and Lovely Excerpt

  Part I: Egg

  Pleather

  for Jerry and Kelly

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I gratefully acknowledge Frank Irby at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, as well as Yothin Amnuayphol and Cheryl Guggenheim, for showing me the potter’s art. I am also indebted to Peter Dickinson’s The Flight of Dragons for the anatomy of dragon flight.

  Thanks to Becky Huntting for her excellent proofreading of the manuscript.

  Thanks, too, to all the members of my two critique groups for valuable criticism and moral support; and particularly to Eloise McGraw, who took time to read and comment on the entire manuscript.

  I’m especially grateful to my husband, Jerry, and my daughter, Kelly, for inspiration and for their unflagging patience and faith in the project.

  Finally, heartfelt thanks to Ellen Howard for her generous help at every stage of this book, and for the word “draclings.”

  chapter 1

  And when the draclings hatch, the sire-drake roars so as to tremble the earth. He spirals into the sky; he looses the wind and the thunder and the hail. Nor keeps the dam-drake silence, but, abandoned, wails most piteously; and thus abates the storm.

  —The Bok of Dragon

  Something was wrong.

  Kaeldra knew it the moment she awoke. She sat bolt upright and strained her senses against the dark. The loft smelled of mildew and damp hay. A cold breath of mist wrapped around her shoulders and neck. Something—the seabird?—rustled in the room down below. Beside her, Kaeldra heard Lyf’s soft snoring. She reached out and laid her hand on Lyf’s chest and felt reassured, somehow, by its gentle rise and fall.

  Gradually the blackness in the loft dissolved into vague gray shapes. Now Kaeldra could make out Mirym’s sleeping form in the far corner, could see the dark half-circles of Lyf’s lashes against her cheeks.

  Everything all right. No sign of what had awakened her. No hint of anything wrong, except the prickling chill that crept up Kaeldra’s spine and fanned out across her back.

  From far away came the bleat of a sheep, deep and mournful. Then two more, almost together, right after. They were restless, as she was, tonight.

  The sheep. It was not yet lambing time, although sometimes there was an early snow-lamb. The Calyffs had had one last year. But Kaeldra had been watching, and none of the ewes was ripe for lambing.

  It was nothing. They were restless, that was all.

  Another bleat. Then another, and another. An overlapping of bleat upon bleat, coming slowly at first and then faster and fuller.

  It was something!

  Kaeldra threw off her blanket and pulled on her cloak. She thrust one foot into a fur-lined boot and had just begun to tie its leather thongs when she heard the door open below.

  There were footsteps inside, then a voice, dry and urgent and low. Granmyr. A stirring of straw, then Ryfenn, Kaeldra’s second-mother, spoke, whining and afraid. “Must we now? Why could we not—?” Kaeldra heard; then Granmyr’s voice, short and sharp, cut her off. Kaeldra crept to the edge of the loft and leaned over. The two women’s shapes hunched over something on the floor, and then the cock crowed and the seabird shrieked, beat its wings against its cage. And the chickens were squawking and the goose was braying and the sheep were bleating all at once. Two soft arms slipped around Kaeldra’s waist, and she looked down into the small white oval of Lyf’s face.

  “Kael, what is it?”

  “I don’t know, Lyfling,” Kaeldra said. She crawled away from the edge of the loft and hugged Lyf to her. Mirym knelt, uncertain, in the corner. “Kael—?” she began, and then she ran across and laid her head on Kaeldra’s shoulder, something she had not done in twelvemoon, not since she had turned eleven and had got so smart.

  Kaeldra wrapped her arms around Lyf and Mirym. They were trembling, Lyf and Mirym, and then Kaeldra, too, because they were trembling against her. No, it wasn’t Lyf and Mirym at all, but something else: the loft trembling against her legs, the air trembling against her back and face, the whole world trembling, vibrating, humming. She heard it with her body, not with her ears, and then it was in her ears, too, a rumble like distant thunder that grew louder and louder until it sang in her teeth and bones.

  “Kaeldra! Bring them here!”

  Granmyr stood on the ladder at the edge of the loft. Kaeldra crawled to her, Lyf and Mirym clinging. She lifted Lyf and handed her to Granmyr; they disappeared down the ladder. Then Mirym climbed onto the ladder. It shook and chattered against the edge of the loft; Kaeldra held on to steady it as Mirym went down.

  Kaeldra was on the ladder now. It shuddered and creaked. Gray orbs were streaking through the dark. They made soft popping noises when they hit the floor. Pots. Granmyr’s ceramic pots, falling from the shelf. Then came a crack! and Kaeldra was falling. The floor lunged up and smacked against her shoulder and now the humming was so loud it was a roar, flooding the house, drowning out the sheep and the chickens and the goose. Kaeldra clapped her hands over her ears, but the roar kept on rising, almost human, exultant.

  And then it stopped.

  “Get down here! Now!” Granmyr’s voice sounded loud against the dwindling chorus of bleats and clucks. She stood near the open cellar door waving her arms.

  “Kaeldra! Now!”

  Kaeldra blinked. Why was she doing that? It was all over now, the trembling, the hum, the roar. Why was she yelling? Why was she waving her arms?

  The wind came up out of the east, from the mountains. It screamed down the rocky slopes, tore across the graze, slammed into the house, and ripped off a chunk of roof. Thunder boomed; Kaeldra jumped up and ran for the cellar. Hailstones bounced and slipped under her feet. She followed Granmyr through the hole in the floor and down another ladder. The cellar door thudded above her. Kaeldra stood there a moment, hugging herself in the dark. Her shoulder ached where it had hit the floor. Her bootless foot tingled with cold. Then something warm and soft pressed against her—Lyf—and Kaeldra folded herself around the child.

  “You’re dressed.” Granmyr’s voice came, close to her ear.

  “I—I felt something.”

  “Ah,” Granmyr said. She touched Kaeldra’s arm. “Listen.”

  Outside, the wind howled. The cellar door shook with the rattle of hail. Somewhere to her left, Kaeldra heard Ryfenn, moaning. Kaeldra’s own heartbeat sounded loud in her ears.

  And then—there it was.

  High-pitched and plaintive, a new sound twined around the wind wail. It mingled at first, then, growing, dominated, hushed the wind entirely. It was not a human sound, but the feelings it voiced were human. There was triumph in it, but also the underside of triumph: regret, loneliness, despair.

  It rose, a great soul-sung lament, then all at once it, too, fell silent, its echo retreating back across the moors into the mountains. And in the hush that followed, Kaeldra heard, or thought she heard, the pulse of a giant wingbeat, flying east.

  chapter 2

&nb
sp; To play host to the farin is to warm the wolf at your hearth.

  —Elythian proverb

  The gods are punishing us.”

  Ryfenn’s voice was stretched taut. She swept the floor with quick, hard strokes.

  Through the hearth smoke Kaeldra watched, warming her hands at the fire.

  “The gods had nothing to do with it,” Granmyr said. She dug a lump of clay from her bowl, wedged it, slapped it onto her claywheel. Her right foot, shod in its heavy boot, kicked the spinner. Whirling, the clay sprang up, a smooth, grooved dome beneath her hands.

  “Don’t say such things,” Ryfenn hissed. “We will pay. We are paying now.”

  Paying for what? Kaeldra wondered. Heat seeped into her cold-numbed body: her toes, the fronts of her legs, her face.

  Granmyr touched two fingers to the center of the dome, saying nothing. The dome hollowed out and was suddenly a bowl, with tall, sloping sides growing up out of it.

  Daylight had huddled near the mountaintops when Kaeldra went out to care for the sheep after the storm. She had followed the shape of the land to their shelter places, near the rocks. But the sheep had not sought shelter. They were scattered across the graze. When they saw Kaeldra, they bleated stupidly and did not move.

  All morning, as the mist bleached the sky to the color of washed wool, she had roamed the graze. There were strange, glazed whorls and ridges in the snow, as if it had melted, churned, then frozen again.

  And seven sheep were dead. More than they had ever lost to wolves in a single night.

  Kaeldra turned to warm her back at the fire, trying to shut out the images of the dead sheep: four trampled, two crushed by falling rocks, one dead of fright. Her body ached from the effort of gathering together the live ones, of hauling the dead ones on a sled to be skinned and butchered at home.

  “It’s more than I can bear,” Ryfenn said. “All alone here, with no one to help me, and no Bryam . . .” Ryfenn’s voice got whiny and her eyes watered up as they always did when she mentioned her dead husband, Granmyr’s son.

  “You have Kaeldra,” Granmyr said.

  Ryfenn flicked her eyes toward Kaeldra, then away.

  “Ryfenn,” Kaeldra said. “I’ll help. What should I do?”

  Ryfenn did not look at her. Her broom swished hard against the floor. Kaeldra, watching, felt a small, hollow place open up below her ribs.

  “Go to the loft and look to Lyf. She’s not feeling well,” Granmyr said.

  Kaeldra hesitated. There was a question she had been turning over in her mind. She had waited, thinking someone else would ask it, but no one had. “Granmyr,” she began at last, “what were the cries? The cries I heard last night in the storm?”

  Ryfenn looked up sharply. “What cries? There were no cries.” She turned to Granmyr. “She heard cries! I told you, she’s—”

  “To the loft, child,” Granmyr said. She kicked the spinner. The clay bowl whirled.

  Stung, Kaeldra climbed the ladder, up past the broken rung to the loft. It’s not fair, she thought. Not fair of Ryfenn not to like me. She never likes me, even when I help. And I do help. I help a lot.

  Lyf lay curled in the straw, her face soft and slack in sleep. Lyf was not feeling well, Granmyr had said. Kaeldra sat down, brushed back Lyf’s hair from her forehead. It felt warm, too warm, and damp.

  She wouldn’t ask that Ryfenn love her, not the way she loved Lyf and Mirym—they were her birth-daughters, after all. They were easy to love. But if only Ryfenn would like her, or at least appreciate the things she did. If once she would say thank you.

  Below, the steady hum of Granmyr’s claywheel stopped. It was strange to hear it here in the cottage. But the storm had pulled down Granmyr’s clayhouse, and there was nowhere else to put it. Kaeldra heard a scraping sound, then the thud of the pot being set on a plank to dry.

  “. . . ever since you took her in, when that mother of hers died,” Kaeldra heard Ryfenn say.

  “Shh,” Granmyr said.

  Her boot thunked against the spinner, and Ryfenn’s voice, low and insistent, continued, masked by the noise of the wheel. Kaeldra rolled onto her stomach, cleared the straw from the boards and pressed her ear against a crack.

  “You cannot deny she is strange,” Ryfenn was saying. “Just look at her. So tall, already taller than any of our women and most of our men. And her hair. No Elythian has hair that color. No Elythian’s hair crinkles like hers. And her eyes—they are green.”

  “So?”

  “She is farin! Of the Krags! She doesn’t belong here—we are paying the price. Just look at all that has happened since she came. The drought and the stillbirths and my poor Bryam—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Granmyr said. “Kaeldra had nothing to do with Bryam’s death, or anything else.”

  “. . . and now that storm. Seven sheep! There’s something evil up there in the mountains, and Kaeldra knew. She was already dressed. And the cries she spoke of, what of that?” Ryfenn’s voice cracked, came out high and harsh. “She’s communing with it.”

  “Shush, Ryfenn! Stop it.”

  Granmyr’s boot thunked hard against the spinner. Kaeldra lay paralyzed. Something was breaking apart inside her. Ryfenn thought that she—that Kaeldra—had made the bad things happen.

  Granmyr’s voice came again, so low Kaeldra could barely hear. “Kaeldra was not the only one. I sensed it, too, but could not place it; could not hear the cries.”

  “Sensed what?” Ryfenn hissed. “Mother, what is it?”

  The wheel sounds diminished, as if Granmyr had forgotten to kick the spinner. When she spoke, her voice was soft and distant, as if she had forgotten Ryfenn, too, and spoke only to herself. “Nearly sixty years it’s been, and now—”

  “What? What is it?”

  The door banged open. The house hens fluttered and clucked.

  “A wizard!” It was Mirym. “There’s a wizard in the mountains!”

  Kaeldra scrambled down the ladder. Mirym’s cheeks were flushed pink; her breath came in short gasps.

  “Wynn says he’s from Kragrom,” Mirym said. “Their armies couldn’t push through the mountains so they sent their most powerful wizard instead, the Lord High Magician of all of Kragrom.”

  Granmyr snorted. She kicked at the spinner, and the wheel began to move.

  “I knew it,” Ryfenn moaned. “What will he do to us?”

  “Wynn says he’s going to visit us with storms for seven nights and seven days,” Mirym said cheerfully. “That’s what he did to the Ulians. He destroyed all their crops and livestock, and they had to surrender.”

  Ryfenn moaned again.

  “Don’t worry, Mother. The men are mustering a war party for the glory of Elythia.”

  “A war party!” Ryfenn wailed. “That’s how my Bryam died!” Ryfenn began to weep.

  “Glory,” Granmyr muttered. “Always running off to get themselves killed.”

  “They’re leaving at first light tomorrow. Wynn is wearing my amulet!”

  “Your what?” Ryfenn stopped crying. “You’re too young to grant your amulet!”

  “Mother! Wynn is going to war! I may never see him again. Anyway, all the other girls are doing it. Ellyr granted hers to Styfan, and Rymig granted hers to Yo-land. Everyone over twelve years old has granted her amulet toda—” Mirym looked guiltily at Kaeldra, then at the floor.

  Kaeldra felt the warmth rising in her face. Mirym had granted her amulet! And so had all the other girls, everyone over twelve, Mirym said, except—Kaeldra swallowed hard.

  Farin. Ryfenn had called her farin, and it was true. Even her name sounded Kragish. She was not of the Elythians; she was different; she did not belong.

  For as long as she could remember, she had tried to be like the others. She had watched how they did things, always following, always moving a half beat behind so as to get it right: the turn of hand, the tilt of head, the lift of voice. She wove her gown in the Elythian way, dyed it in the pale pastels they wore, and cut it long, so as n
ot to look so tall.

  Kaeldra wore her hair in the Elythian way, too, in a plait down her back, past her waist. It was thick and soft, but much too light; it twisted and coiled like a hank of sheep fleece. She combed it and smoothed it, but the coils would not unbend. Why couldn’t her hair be like the Elythian girls’ hair, sleek and black as a raven’s wing?

  Except in dreams, when unfamiliar voices drifted in and out of her ken, Kaeldra could not remember what it was like to be anything but Elythian. She had been told that she came here from Kragrom with her mother when she was five. Her mother had died; Granmyr took her in. And through the years Kaeldra had convinced herself that the things she could not change—her height, her hair, her eyes—did not matter.

  She had been wrong, of course. They did matter. Because of pairing, they mattered.

  It was a year ago, when Mirym was eleven, that Kaeldra had known. Mirym was pouring brew at the fair, and Wynn had looked at her in a new way. No one had ever looked at Kaeldra that way. And she had been fifteen.

  Boys liked Mirym. They liked little, lithe girls, with lilting laughs like Mirym’s. And, much as Kaeldra told herself she was just an early grower, it was clear that she could never be little or lithe. She towered over the boys; they avoided her. She felt awkward, overgrown.

  And now Ryfenn was thinking—communing with it, she had said. And Kaeldra had felt something last night, even before the sheep. She had heard the cries. What if she were communing with an evil thing, a wizard? What if there were something inside her she couldn’t control, like when she kept growing and growing and couldn’t stop—

  “Kaeldra!” Granmyr said.

  Startled, Kaeldra turned.

  “Get the red clay.”

  Kaeldra lugged the stout clay-crock to Granmyr, who pulled a cutting thread beneath the base of the gray bowl she’d just finished and set it on a plank to dry. Seldom did she work the red clay, although she favored it, for the trip to get it took three days.

  Granmyr reached into the crock and began wedging a hunk of clay. “Time it is,” she said softly, “to see if I am right.” Looking up at Ryfenn and Mirym, she added, “You need tell no one of this. Though I doubt that they would credit it. Not yet.”