Flight of the Dragon Kyn Read online

  Downriver, the king had said.

  I walked until I was below the downriver tip of the ledge.

  “Well, Skava,” I said, “here we go.”

  I stood facing upriver and called, “Come,” as if I were summoning a bird. It was silent, eerily silent, standing there in that canyon where nothing moved, where even the water was locked in ice. Deep in the shadows beneath the ledge I could make out the tiny forms of men. The sloping rock walls framed a dark strip of sky, where cloudy patches cobbled over the glimmering stars.

  “Come,” I called. “Come.”

  In the distance I heard the cry of a bird, then another and another. Now I saw them coming down the canyon—two ravens, a redpoll, a wind gull—and a terrible thought seized me. What if all the birds from miles around came while I was calling dragons? I would make a laughable spectacle, dragged down by the weight of a hundred birds!

  Yet these birds did not approach too near but circled lazily overhead.

  I had expected Skava to become excited at the sight of the other birds—perhaps to bate off my fist. But she hardly deigned to glance at them. She stood still and intent, staring up the canyon.

  “Come,” I called.

  No dragons. All was silent, save for the calls of the circling birds.

  I took in a deep breath, torn between relief and disappointment.

  Perhaps I was going about this wrongly. Perhaps I should make it clear that this call was to dragons and not birds. “Come, dragons!” I called.

  Nothing.

  “Dragons! Come!”

  I stole a furtive look up the canyon walls where the men crouched in alertness. How long before they grew impatient? How long would they wait before they—what would they do? Would they laugh at me? Would they shun me? Would the king send me home in disgrace?

  At once my dragonfear shrank; I felt bold as a bear.

  “Dragons, come!” I shouted aloud.

  Silence.

  I tried picturing a dragon in my mind as I called.

  No dragons came.

  I tried holding Skava aloft, tried calling the dragons through her, tried drawing a dragon in the snow.

  No dragons came.

  I stood on that river for the greater part of the day, calling aloud and calling silently, pleading with Skava to commune with them, as falcons are reputed to do. I drew more dragons in the snow, and even did a dragon dance, using my arms as wings and causing Skava to break out of her trance and bate and squawk. Though the dance was more for warmth than for calling. For it was bitterly cold. Cold wicked up from the ice through the bottoms of my feet; it numbed my legs and iced my veins. I had to move to warm my blood.

  Twice in that long day the king called me back up to him. The first time, at the day’s height, he invited me to warm myself at the fire beside him. He set food and brew before me, then asked if I had seen or felt anything of dragons. It was too painful to meet his expectant eyes or those of the hearth companions who surrounded him. I studied my dried fish and said that I had not. My glance slipped sideways to Kazan, and I thought I saw him look at me with pity—pity! I did not want his pity, and yet … I was in some strange way glad of it.

  The king said nothing at first. I guessed he was trying to swallow his disappointment before his men. Then, “Well, the day is yet young,” he said. “Try again.”

  The second time came much later, when the sun stains were vibrant in the sky. Now there was a palpable restlessness in the cliffside encampment. I heard men quarreling and dogs fighting before I was halfway up the slope. A pack of warriors converged about us as Orrik motioned me to the fire and brought me food and brew. Rog stood near Orrik—aggressively near—as the king asked me again if I had heard or felt anything.

  I had to say that I had not, save for Skava’s odd demeanor.

  “She has had her chance, now, Orrik!” Rog cried. “We have squatted beneath this miserable ledge all day, freezing our flesh and cramping our bones. I say we go forth at once and flush out the vipers with shield-clashing!” There was a murmur from the assembled men, but the king cut them off.

  “You have agreed to give her the span of a day and a night. And it is well known that dragons venture out oftenest in the deepest night. Would you break your word?”

  “I am not an oath breaker, brother. But I deemed you would repent your folly by now.”

  “It is not folly!” Orrik bellowed. He looked at me, seemed about to ask me something, but then abruptly sent me forth again.

  Now I had no heart for drawing or dances or anything but a tired and constant “come come come come come” I nearly wished the king would call me up to him and proclaim my disgrace so I would no longer have to pretend. Twilight lingered faintly in the southern sky. The ice moon, now full, spilled its silver brightness across the snow, casting all into sharp relief. The encampment was a dark, narrow gash. From time to time a shout or the yip of a dog betrayed the presence of life. The birds had all gone by now; even they ignored my calls.

  The cold numbed me and sapped my strength.

  At times I thought I sensed the thrum of something deeper than my ears could hear, but I deemed it was only my mind, muddled from cold and tiredness and straining.

  “I need not have feared those dragons,” I said to Skava. “This is worse.”

  Skava did not respond but only kept gazing up the canyon.

  I tried to keep my mind upon summoning the dragons, calling “come come come come come”, but my thoughts began to wander more and more, and odd bits of memory drifted in among the summoning.

  “Come come come. ”

  Snuggled between my mother and my father, playing bone-pegs on the bed.

  “Come come come.”

  The doll my grandmother gave me, with the face of a wizened apple and a blue-embroidered gown.

  “Come come come.”

  The time when I was ill, and all the voices around me blurred and retreated beneath the thrumming … the thrumming …

  “Come come. ”

  The dragon … what was her name?

  Flagra.

  The name rolled around inside my mind: the word my mother said that I had called in my sleep. A dragon’s name.

  “Come … Flagra. ”

  And there was a lightning bolt inside my head, fest and bright and blinding.

  A rushing noise grew in the distance; I could hear it stirring in the branches of the stunted trees above the canyon, and then it was upon me, chilling my face, whuffling in my ears.

  All at once a raven shot past me, skimming just above my head. Then the sky was full of birds, far more birds than before. They chirped, cawed, screeched, whizzed past me—not slow and lazy, but frenzied, as if they had gone mad. And beyond them, something glinted in the sky.

  Skava gave a cry, bated off my wrist, and kept on pumping her wings. It took all my strength to grip her jesses, to hold her against the wind. Why had I not tethered her to her leash!

  She lunged away from me, and I felt her jesses slip from between my fingers; she broke away; she was ringing up and up to join the whirlwind of birds.

  “Skava!” I called, running after her. “Come!”

  And then I saw it again, the thing beyond her in the sky.

  It guttered in the moonlight. Wings. It had wings—but like no bird I had ever seen. It was longer, more fluid. And faster. It came faster, growing huger and even huger.

  At last I found my voice, which had been cowering at the back of my throat.

  “It comes!” I shouted. “It comes!”

  Chapter 13

  And dragons, being the most ancient of all creatures, hold by the old way of speech: Say little; convey much.

  —THE BOK OF DRAGON

  There was a deep, sharp, ripping noise in the air, growing louder and louder as if the sky were being rent apart. The dragon was growing, bearing down on me. It twisted through the black strip of sky, glinting green in the moonlight, trailing wind spouts that rustled in the trees and loosed showers of clatter
ing rocks down the sides of the canyon.

  I heard shouting in the encampment; beneath the ledge I saw a churning of movement pricked by quicksilver flashes of moonlight on metal. The king had sworn to protect me, but now I did not see how he could. Not with the dragon coming so fast. Not with the dragon so big, and the men so tiny.

  I tried to root myself to the river where I stood because that was the plan: I would stay and call the dragon to me, and the men would shoot it down. But the dragon sped closer, loomed larger, until it: filled the sky between the canyon walls: a massive, winged eel. And the panic grew and grew and then erupted inside me, and my legs were running, slipping, stumbling up the slope toward the encampment, and I didn’t know how they had begun. I looked back over my shoulder. The dragon was above the canyon—too high for the men to shoot it—almost overhead.

  The rushing, ripping-air sound filled my ears, and I breathed in an alien scent: like sulfur, like hot metal. I threw myself down, covering my head and waited for … what? A blast of fire? A raking of claws?

  I heard it pass above: a whooshing wingbeat, and then a wind-wake roaring in my ears. When I looked up, the dragon was soaring far down the canyon. It crested a rise, then was hidden from view.

  Slowly, I clambered to my feet. The world was still, save for the crying of birds and a faint distant thunder that might have been only an echo in my mind. A sprinkling of arrows littered the slope; I had not heard them loosed. My bearskin lay where I had dropped it on the frozen river.

  The dragon was nowhere in sight. I looked up into the sky at the circling birds and thought I saw Skava among them but could not be sure. “Come,” I called. “Skava, come.” I strained to reach her with my mind but felt only restlessness, confusion.

  Then a shout from the encampment.

  “Kara!” Orrik’s voice echoed off the canyon walls. “Call again!”

  Again?

  Was he mad?

  I had called and it had come and the men had loosed their arrows and nothing had stopped the dragon from killing me, save for its own wild reasons, whatever those had been. And now he wanted me to call … again?

  “I … can’t!” I held out my arms in a shrugging motion and started up for the encampment.

  “Call!” the king shouted.

  I kept climbing up the slope, pretending not to hear.

  There was a commotion in the encampment; then something glanced off a rock to one side of me, sending up a shower of snow.

  An arrow.

  I stared at it, appalled.

  Was he shooting at me?

  No, he hadn’t aimed for me. But he was warning me. He was telling me most forcefully not to come back up.

  I wheeled around and ran toward the river, fighting back tears. He was leaving me here alone; he would make me face the dragon, even when he knew he could not protect me from it.

  I would not call again. I would pretend to call until morning, and then Rog could begin with his shield-beating. I cared not if they held me disgraced.

  I was still running when I felt it, a gust of wind that warmed my back. And a sound—I heard it now—like the breathing of the sky. And a smell—the hot-metal smell. My scalp went tight and prickly; the hairs on my neck stood on end.

  I slowed, stopped, turned warily around.

  It was the dragon.

  Caught full in the glow of the moon, it hovered above the cliff, rowing gently with its wings. I stood transfixed, knowing that the king and his men could not see it; its head was above the ledge. It exhaled and a cloud of steam arose, veiling it in a luminous white mist. But through rents in the mist I clearly saw the green expanse of scales—and the fierce green eyes that looked down at me.

  I stood stock-still, unable to move, to speak, to wave, to scream.

  The dragon’s wings pulsed against the sky—not hard and leathery like the wings of bats—but shimmery, light, as if fashioned from spider-spin. The breath-mist dispersed, and I saw that this dragon was huge, even bigger than it had seemed flying past. Its head alone was as tall as a man standing.

  A twist of water trickled down from the ledge. Melting. The dragon’s breath was melting the snow. Someone called out to me; I realized how I must look to them, standing here, agape.

  I tried to shout, but my voice had frozen in my throat.

  And a word blew into my mind, blew as a fire does, fierce and crackling hot: “Kara.”

  And an answering word formed in my mind: “Flagra. ”

  And I was surprised and yet not surprised to find that I knew this dragon; I had known her long ago. I stared into her long green eyes, and she stared back into mine. A wave of memory rushed through me: a cool, dark place, and a comforting presence. Breath-warmth, a thrumming vibration, and milk—sweeter and thicker than goat’s milk or cow’s milk.

  I moved toward her. “Flagra.”

  So they were true, the tales they told of me and dragons.

  Or just one dragon, I thought. Just this one: Flagra.

  A chunk of snow broke loose, slid down the ledge, and skittered down the slope. And above it … a cluster of dark figures crouched at the very top of the cliff, near the dragon. They were carrying bows….

  “Fly! Flagra, fly!”

  There was a clashing of sword on shield; Flagra whipped her head around to look, and the arrows sped toward her. Three dark needlepricks dotted her throat, bloomed into a spreading red smear.

  There came a roar like a thunderclap, a painful roar that came in through my ears and caromed off the insides of my skull. Flagra lurched forward and down, vomiting flame into the encampment. Through the roar in my head I heard screams, and then a shouted command:

  “Loose!”

  A humming swarm of arrows flew toward Flagra’s throat; they struck with a volley of soft, popping thuds. She roared again, and a blinding bright pain erupted inside my skull. I clasped my head in my hands, but the pain did not abate. I couldn’t see; I couldn’t think; all I knew was pain … until faintly in the distance beyond the pain I heard the echo of a roar and birds screaming and people shouting and then something huge was tumbling down the canyon—tumbling toward me.

  Flagra.

  I ran hard across the river, still half blinded by the light behind my eyes and the raw burning brightness of pain. Behind me: crashing noises, a whoosh of flame. I flung myself past the far riverbank, up the hillside—scrambling, stumbling, crawling—then turned around to look.

  Flagra plunged down the opposite slope, peeled back the snow like a layer of skin and stained it with her blood, setting off a clattering avalanche of rocks and loose boulders. She bounced onto the river ice, which groaned, then creaked, then gave way with a deep, booming crack! The air filled with a hissing roar that drowned out even the screams of the birds. Great plumes of steam churned up from the river.

  It was full of dragon.

  “Flagra!” I called, but I knew that she was dead; I felt nothing in my head but pain.

  I retched and vomited in the snow.

  And then again: the ripping noise, the noise from in the sky. I looked up and saw them, two glimmering things flying low through the canyon.

  Dragons.

  I stood held by them; I couldn’t move. Now I could make out the shapes of their wings; now I could see the twin flashes of their eyes. They were not coming for me, I saw. They were headed straight down into the canyon. Straight for Flagra. Straight into the range of the archers. Up in the cliffside camp I saw movement—glinting pricks of light.

  The men had seen them.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t bear for it to happen again.

  I stood, summoned up all my concentration and bent it upon the dragons. “Flee! Go away!”

  There was a crackling brightness in my mind so quick I would have doubted I had felt it, had I not felt it before with Flagra. The dragons hurtled forward; they were almost in line with the archers; it was late, too late …

  “Flee!”

  And they banked up sharply, skimming the canyon walls. A flur
ry of arrows spewed out from the encampment, but the dragons were nowhere in sight.

  Had they gone?

  There was a moment of hush, when I heard only the cries of the circling birds and the retreating roar of dragonwind in distant trees. The moon hung low, like a pearl caught between the canyon walls. So quiet and so still—save for the birds. So beautiful—save for the track of the falling dragon, which gaped like a bloody wound in the snow, and the steaming puddle of blood near the river. Through rifts in the steam, Flagra’s body loomed, a gleaming, coiled hillock. I could not see her head; it was shrouded too densely in mist.

  A cheer went up from the encampment. Men swarmed down the slopes, slipping through the bloodied snow, brandishing knives for the trophy-taking.

  And a great, aching sadness welled up inside me. I stumbled down toward Flagra, not knowing what I would do when I reached her.

  Then Kazan was at my side. “Kara,” he said, and his face was full of worry. He tried to steer me away from Flagra, but I shook my head and stumbled toward the clot of men around the dragon.

  They opened up before me as they had done in the high hall that day, only this time not at all grudgingly. Then Orrik was there, flushed, jubilant. He grabbed me by the waist, hoisted me into the air, set me down again. “We’ve done it, Kara!” he said. “I knew we could!”

  I tried to answer, tried to tell him that it was wrong, what we had done, but he ran roughshod over my words. “We’ve got the biggest one now, I think. They said a green was biggest, and this one is so much bigger than the others, it must be the one. I’ll carve out the heart and start the bloodletting while the men take their trophy scales, and then we’ll move to another place to call the rest of the beasts. They must have turned back when they saw the green one lying here. But you can call them on the morrow …”

  In some corner of my mind I grasped that he did not know I’d sent the other two dragons away. “But, your grace,” I said, “I—” The king went on, not heeding me. I felt weak, light-headed, as if I had not eaten for days. Orrik said nothing about the danger I had been in, nor his failure to protect me, nor the arrow …