Dragon's Milk Read online

  The old woman sat still for a long moment, her hands resting in her lap. Then she nudged the spinner with her unbooted foot, and the wheel began to circle—not in its usual direction, but the other way. Slowly it moved, and then faster, faster than Kaeldra had ever seen it go, until the wheel and the clay blurred in the smoky room. Granmyr closed her eyes and put her hands upon the clay. It came suddenly to life, grew, collapsed in on itself, and gave birth to new shapes.

  Kaeldra moved near, watched the clay form and collapse and re-form like some living thing. Once, she thought she saw Myrrathog, a mountain to the east; but it melted and merged before she could be sure.

  An egg grew up out of the clay, grew until it engulfed the wheel. It turned hard and smooth as a stream-polished stone.

  The egg shattered. Sharp creatures jumped up out of it, tumbled, writhed, coiled.

  Kaeldra heard Ryfenn’s gasp of indrawn breath.

  “A birthing,” Granmyr whispered.

  She opened her eyes, and the wheel began to slow. The creatures sank down into the egg, and then it was only a lump of clay again, soft and red-brown and ordinary. Granmyr laid her hands in her lap, and the wheel slowly slackened and stopped.

  “Wha-what was that?” Ryfenn’s voice was hoarse, as if it were the first time she had spoken that day.

  “The Ancient Ones,” Granmyr said.

  She kicked the spinner with her booted foot, and it began to turn in the opposite direction. A smooth, grooved dome rose beneath her hands. She touched two fingers to the top and the dome hollowed out, became a bowl, an ordinary bowl.

  “The Ancient Ones?” Ryfenn breathed. “You can’t mean—but they’ve been gone these many years.”

  Granmyr stopped the wheel, stretched the cutting thread between her hands and pulled it beneath the bowl base. She set the bowl to dry with the others on the plank, then looked up at Ryfenn.

  “I do mean it,” Granmyr said. “The Ancient Ones. Dragons.”

  chapter 3

  In the old times there flew into the hills of Elythia two dragons. A storm arose; they sought shelter in a mountain cave. The dam, being heavy with eggs, there laid her clutch. Yet finding a village of men too near, the dragons flew on, to return at the hatching, a century hence. And ever after the village was called Wyrmward, Shelter of Dragons.

  —Elythian legend

  Lyf slept.

  All that day and the next she slept. Sometimes it was a peaceful sleep, eyes closed, chest rising and falling in a smooth sleep rhythm. Other times it was a feverish sleep, when Lyf, open eyed, sat propped against a haycock and stared right through Kaeldra. Then Kaeldra made funny faces, tickled Lyf’s ribs to make her laugh and come back. Once or twice Lyf smiled, but more often she seemed lost in a place deep inside herself.

  Granmyr rummaged through her medicines, yellow-root and ringboll and tinewort. She mashed them into broths and pastes in a small stone bowl. The smell of them prickled and clung inside Kaeldra’s nose. Ryfenn held Lyf in her arms as Granmyr tried to feed her. The pastes, pushed by Lyf’s tongue, oozed out the corners of her mouth. The broths dribbled down her chin.

  Now and again Granmyr said strange words over Lyf, half-spoken, half-sung. Often she touched two fingers to Lyf’s forehead, as if hollowing the center of a pot.

  Lyf slept.

  Women drifted in and out of the house, neighbor women and women from the nearby village of Wyrmward. They spoke in hushed voices. They encircled Ryfenn, who sat holding Lyf and rocked and moaned.

  At times, when Kaeldra came in from tending sheep, she stood outside the circle and listened to the women’s talk. The war party, they said, had been victorious. The men had driven the evil thing from the mountains; although what it was, and who had seen it, varied by the teller. A few, casting eyes at Granmyr, whispered of dragons.

  Once, when Kaeldra came in from the graze, the women near Ryfenn looked up quickly, startled into silence. Warming her hands by the fire, Kaeldra felt the weight of their gaze upon her. Then Granmyr strode into the house, and the women scattered like a flock of birds from a cast stone.

  Wynn Calyff came to mend the roof and the clay-house; yet when he had done, Granmyr did not move her wheel from the cottage. Then Wynn discovered a multitude of chores that needed doing. He examined the cage of Granmyr’s seabird, which had disappeared mysteriously after the storm; he found nothing amiss. He repaired a wobbly stool and silenced a creaking door hinge. Mirym tagged along like a duckling who has mistaken a man for her mother.

  Still Lyf slept.

  “Granmyr. When will Lyf get better?”

  It was three quarter-moons since the storm. Granmyr had sent Ryfenn to her cot to rest. Kaeldra tilted Lyf upright in her arms, watched the candlelight spill across her face, illuminating the dread flower-shaped rash high on one cheekbone.

  Granmyr held a cup to Lyf’s lips.

  “Drink,” Granmyr said.

  Lyf’s eyes stared dull ahead at nothing. Of late, she had refused even the honey gruel Ryfenn fed her.

  Slowly, Granmyr poured in the broth. It pooled inside Lyf’s mouth, then trickled out, ran down her chin.

  Silence sat in the room like an enemy whom only Granmyr’s words could drive out. Soon, she must say it. Lyf will be better soon.

  The hearth fire flared and popped. Granmyr did not speak.

  “Granmyr,” Kaeldra said at last. “She will get well?”

  Granmyr turned to face Kaeldra. Her eyes, in the flickering light, held a sorrow Kaeldra had never seen there before.

  “I think not, child.”

  Panic beat its hard wings inside Kaeldra’s rib cage. “But she has to get well. Make another potion. You must know something you can do. You have to make her well.”

  Granmyr touched Kaeldra’s shoulder. “I have done all I can, child. I know no more.”

  Kaeldra tore Granmyr’s hand away. “Do something. You know how, you’re just not doing it. You don’t care about Lyf or you’d do something to save her. You can do anything, you—”

  Kaeldra buried her head in Lyf’s chest. She felt the strange stillness of Lyf’s body—Lyf, who usually squirmed and wiggled so hard that Kaeldra nearly dropped her. She saw the strange stillness in Lyf’s eyes—Lyf, who always brimmed with mischief or wonder or joy or tears.

  “Child, child . . .” Granmyr was saying. And then Kaeldra was in Granmyr’s arms, and Lyf was between them, the butter between the breads as Lyf always said when Kaeldra and Mirym played the hugging game with her.

  My little butter. Get better, little butter.

  Granmyr’s hand stroked Kaeldra’s back and shoulders. Kaeldra squeezed her tight and felt for the first time how small Granmyr was, how small and frail and light.

  Kaeldra pulled away. “You must—you must know something you can do?”

  Granmyr’s fingertips stroked her cheeks. There was a coolness where the tears smeared across her face. Granmyr shook her head.

  “But I thought—”

  “I know, my child. You thought I had powerful magic. But my spells are spells of knowing, not of changing. And the years have worn away most of what poor power I once possessed.”

  “Is there nothing you can do? Nothing?”

  Granmyr turned toward the fire, as if weighing two stones in her mind, one against the other.

  “There is something. Oh, Granmyr, what is it? Tell me what you can do.”

  A sudden draft stirred in the room; the candle guttered and nearly went out. Granmyr turned again toward Kaeldra. “Child,” she said gently, “I am powerless against this thing. Lyf is stricken with vermilion fever. You know that.”

  Kaeldra knew. Rhyl Jaffyg had had vermilion fever two winters ago, and Styffa Gryeg, the winter before that. Both were vermilion-marked: a red rash, high on one cheek, shaped like a tiny vermilion blossom. Both had died in the spring.

  “No medicine of mine is a match for it,” Granmyr said. “There is,” she hesitated, “there is but one hope, and it would be cruelty to hold it out to
you.”

  “Granmyr, what? What is it?”

  Granmyr sighed. “Against my better judgment I will show you. But you must promise not to tell anyone what you see here tonight.”

  “I promise. Oh, I promise. I’ll never tell.”

  Kaeldra laid Lyf in the straw, tucked the woolen blankets around her. She followed Granmyr and sat on a milking stool by the wheel. The old woman scooped out a lump of red clay. She wedged it, thumped it on the wheel, and moistened it with water from a bowl. The wheel began to turn. It turned, Kaeldra saw, not in its usual direction, but the other way, the way it had when Granmyr worked dragons in the clay.

  The clay rose at once to form a jagged peak, one Kaeldra did not know; it was not one of the mountains that lined the eastern sky. It spun faster, blurred, softened, and there was a thing moving low on the mountain. Two things: a man and a woman, toiling up. In the man’s arms, something hung limp.

  Kaeldra leaned closer, to see.

  It was a child.

  Fingers pressed down, and the mountain hollowed into a bowl, with the child curled inside. There was a burning in Kaeldra’s head, a numbing in her limbs. The room tilted, swayed, slipped away into darkness; only the clay remained, merging, shifting, growing until it filled her eyes with other eyes: dragon eyes.

  The dragon regarded her solemnly. It stretched and rolled onto its side. Its belly felt pleasant: leathery and soft. Kaeldra rubbed her cheek against it and something cool was streaming into her mouth, down her throat. It flowed out from the center of her until every part of her felt cool and good, to the tips of her fingers and toes.

  “Kaeldra,” the dragon said.

  Kaeldra blinked.

  “Kaeldra.”

  Granmyr was standing over her. The room was dark, the claywheel still, the fire burning low.

  “What—” Kaeldra rubbed her eyes. She was sitting, as before, on the stool beside the wheel. “What happened?”

  “You visioned.”

  “Didn’t you—didn’t you see it, too? It was made of clay. You made it in the clay.”

  “Some of it. The mountain and something moving up its side. But you watched long after the wheel had stilled.”

  Kaeldra shook her head to clear it. Her heart thumped in her chest; her hands felt cold. “There was a child—and a dragon. And something cool to drink.”

  Granmyr nodded. “Kara. As I thought.”

  “Kara? Who is Kara?”

  “Kara was—” Granmyr sighed. She pulled up another stool and perched on it near Kaeldra. “Time it is you knew.

  “Long ago,” Granmyr began, “when I was a girl, I dwelt for a time among the Krags. My father had some small skill at healing; the Kragish king summoned him to ply his art upon an ailing prince.

  “In those days the Ancient Ones still roamed the earth. Often and again I heard tell of some fierce, blazing battle between a dragon and men. Yet even in those days dragons seldom prevailed. Their numbers dwindled; they retreated into the mountains and ventured out to hunt only at night.

  “Then came the day when Kara-of-the-Green-Eyes, Kara Dragon-sayer, summoned the kyn of dragons to the council bluff.”

  Granmyr’s eyes, unfocused, seemed to see into another time. “Never will I forget—” She shook herself and continued.

  “They call it the Migration, that day when the Ancient Ones took wing from the council bluff at Rog and soared across the Northern Sea. And afterward, King Orrik erected a fastness there and created an army of Sentinels to guard against the dragons’ return. To this day the Sentinels school their troops in dragonslaying. The ancient enmity dies hard,” Granmyr mused, “even when the need for it is past.”

  “Are they really gone?” Kaeldra asked. “No dragons have returned?”

  “I have heard tales of dragon sightings, yet I credit them not. The battles are ended; the dragonpod blooms gone. Yet often have I wondered: What will befall their eggs? Dragons live, they say, for millennia; their eggs must ripen for a hundred years. The hatchings occur in cycles: a spate of hatchings over several years’ time, then none for a very long time, until the next hatching cycle begins.

  “A few eggs at least must have remained in the Suderlands after the Migration. Long have I listened for a hatching wind, and a dragon dam’s return.”

  Kaeldra shivered, remembering the storm and the voices, the hatching Granmyr had worked in the clay. “But why do you tell me this? What has this to do with Lyf?”

  “Kara, it is said, is the only person to survive vermilion fever. When she was a babe, her parents left her for dead entombed in a mountain cave. A moon-turn later she walked whole and hale into a village, unchanged save that her eyes had turned green. In her sleep she spoke of dragon’s milk.”

  “Dragon’s milk!”

  “So it is said.”

  Kaeldra stared into the fire, tried to still her leaping thoughts. Kara. Vermilion fever. Clay eggs that hatched out dragons.

  There was a rustling of hay, a soft moan.

  Lyf.

  “You’re saying Kara was cured by—dragon’s milk?”

  Granmyr nodded.

  “And when you worked the clay after the storm, I thought I recognized Myrrathog. And there was a birthing. A birthing, you said, of dragons.”

  “Yes.”

  “Granmyr! There must be dragons on Myrrathog! A mother, and young—and dragon’s milk.”

  Kaeldra jumped up. “We could take Lyf. We could find the den and leave her there, like Kara.”

  But Granmyr was shaking her head. “Dragons are not known for their generosity to people,” she said dryly. “Perhaps Kara’s dragon had lost her brood and needed relief. To leave Lyf in a den with a dragon and live young—she would only die more quickly.”

  “Well, then what—how could we—” Kaeldra stopped, struck by an idea. “Someone could milk her. Someone—” She cast about for the someone. Granmyr was too old for climbing mountains. And Ryfenn—Ryfenn feared even the sun lizards that basked on rocks in summer. Mirym? Too young. Too clutterbrained.

  “Someone,” she whispered.

  “Kaeldra,” Granmyr said softly. “Kara was your mother’s mother’s mother. It is believed that her descendants, those with green eyes like yours, may be dragon-sayers as well.”

  A shock passed through Kaeldra like a current of icy water. Her glance strayed past the fire, to Lyf.

  Lyf slept.

  chapter 4

  And sith the sire-drake be scarlet-hued, he dare not tarry in the lands held by men, but must hie him away when the clutch is hatched.

  —The Bok of Dragon

  Softly, Kaeldra pulled the door shut behind her. The dawn air splashed cold across her cheeks. Dark and sharp against the pale streak on the horizon, the mountains loomed.

  She drank in a deep breath and set off across the graze.

  There was far to go.

  Kaeldra’s head felt muzzy from too little sleep. But the cold of the air and the stretch of her legs and the crisp, rhythmic thud of her boots sent energy surging through her. Soon she had passed the boggy patch near the brook; soon after, the copse of creaking blackwood lay behind, and she had reached the standing stones atop the first rise.

  The pale streak leaked across the sky. The sun rose. Underfoot, the stiff grasses gave way to rock and bracken crusted with snow. As she walked, the earth tumbled away to the west, hill and bog and ridge. And to the east, where she must go, Myrrathog. Snow clad, it blotted out all but the edges of sky.

  Kaeldra, looking at the mountain, felt a tightening in her chest.

  Last night Granmyr had spoken further of Kara, how she understood the language of dragons and could make known to them her thoughts. “Kara’s gift,” Granmyr called it. Yet Kaeldra devoutly wished to renounce kinship with this farin woman and revoke all claim to her terrifying gift.

  Still, only with the gift might Kaeldra barter for milk to save Lyf. If she possessed it not . . .

  Kaeldra recalled the heat of Lyf’s cheek against hers th
at morning. She stopped to strap on her shoe-baskets, since the snow was deepening, and set off again.

  For long hours, Kaeldra climbed. The ground steepened. Her feet numbed. The mountain was so big. From a distance it had looked smaller, flatter. It had seemed an easy thing, to find a cave large enough for dragons. But once upon it she found gorges and hillocks and precipices, and when it began to snow she knew she had no idea where to go.

  Kaeldra’s shoe-baskets dragged to a stop. What if I can’t find the dragons? she thought. What if there are no dragons?

  She stood, unable to make herself move, and the snow sifted down. The hush was so deep, Kaeldra felt she could almost hear the snowflakes as they lit.

  There was a rumbling in her ears.

  It was a slight trembling, which seemed to emanate from the rock, as if the mountain itself were snoring.

  Kaeldra turned her head to divine its source. She could sense it now, somewhere to her left. Her shoe-baskets began to move, and the rumbling grew until it purred in her mind like a cat. As she crested a small ridge, Kaeldra blinked.

  Things were growing. Ferns and mosses and even lysselblossoms, in the midst of the snow. Kaeldra shut her eyes and opened them again, but they were still there; she had not imagined them. Water dripped from nearby fir trees and beaded on the greenery, which clustered around a high rock face. Kaeldra drew near and saw that some of the rock was not rock at all, but a hole, the mouth of a cave.

  She took off her shoe-baskets, then tiptoed closer, her heart pounding. She peered inside the cave, then caught her breath. It was enormous, much bigger than it had appeared from outside. The floor sloped steeply down into a cavern as tall as a needlecone tree. At the far end, the cave narrowed and was lost in shadow.

  It was empty. At least, she could see nothing there, save for boulders and broken rocks and a sand-and-gravel track that wound down through the half-lit gloom. Yet the rumble continued, seeming to come from the shadowy regions deep inside.

  Legs quaking, Kaeldra ventured down the track.