Dragon's Heart (10 page)

It's a wonderful life. Why have I forgotten just how wonderful?
It was also predictable. And, if a nursery boy was careful and knew what he was doing, it was safe.
Safer than joining a rebel cell or being in a cave full of murderous trogs,
he reminded himself.
Safer than loving an unpredictable girl.

And then he had another thought:
How could Akki say we're still in bond?
That she should do so rankled. He felt like a hackling dragon. His shoulders went up and his mouth set in a thin line.
She's wrong, so wrong. And in so many ways.
He'd tell her as soon as he saw her again. Or maybe he'd just send her his feelings. Of course, that might charge up the dragons, if they heard him.
And words ... words are so much more precise than sendings.

He must have leaked some of his feelings to the dragon, for Blood Bath looked up and sent a comforting spray of bubbling colors into his mind.

"Okay, okay, I will attend
thee,
old man," Jakkin said at once, feeling stupid to have forgotten that dragons were safe where a bonder took care and paid attention only to them. And then he remembered there weren't any bonders anymore. He forced himself to stop thinking about Akki, about their fight, about home, wherever it might be—and gave himself over to the musk, the moisture, the dragons, and the heat of the mud.

***

AFTER OVERSEEING mud baths for his own three dragons, and then two of Slakk's, Jakkin took the rest of the afternoon off. Yes, he loved the work, but he hadn't been given any other jobs, and he'd suddenly realized that there was something else he wanted to do. Not something to do with the nursery dragons and definitely not something to do with Akki.

So he wandered over to the stone weir at the northernmost corner of the stud barn. Here, water channeled from the Narrakka River was a bright blue, reflecting the clear sky. For a moment he looked across to the sand dunes, remembering how often he'd sneaked away to the hidden oasis where he'd raised Heart's Blood, a stolen dragon, from a miscounted clutch. The best fighting dragon in all of Austar.

Running a hand through his hair, he wondered,
Is it still there?
Meaning the oasis, meaning the wellspring, meaning the reed shelter.
Or has it changed, too?

He plunged into the weir, knee-deep in the blue water, and waded across. At the third join, he climbed out and, by habit, kept low, though it mattered little now if anyone saw him. Heart's Blood was long dead; there were no young, uncounted hatchlings to raise away from the nursery. Since all the nursery folk now owned the dragons together, there was no need to steal one, to raise it secretly in the hopes of training a winning dragon and buying oneself out of bond. He wasn't scheduled for night duty in the incubarn for several days. And since there was no more bond, there was no need for secrecy anymore.

Except for the giant secret he and Akki shared.

The desert air quickly dried his legs and sandals. The water hadn't come anywhere close to his thigh-length pants. Some of the sand from the dunes clung stubbornly to his legs, but he quickly brushed it off. For a moment, he wondered if there was even any reason for visiting the oasis now. And then he simply went on.

Memories were reason enough.

***

JAKKIN WALKED for nearly an hour before he found the place. The steady Austarian winds had blown away any semblance of a path, had recontoured the dunes just enough to confuse him. He hadn't actually gotten lost, but he was bothered for a while.

His first sight of the spring, rising as if from nowhere, was a bright ribbon of blue water threading through the golden sand. It made him sigh in recognition, made him remember Heart's Blood as a hatchling, eager, ready to learn, and waiting for him.

He had to bite his lip not to cry.
Think only of the oasis,
he reminded himself as he looked around. The pool he'd made when he widened the western edge of the stream was smaller than before. Now a rim of kkhan reeds ran around it entirely instead of only on one side.

But everything's still here!
He gazed at it all with both wonder and relief. Running his fingers once more through his hair, he spoke the words out loud: "It's still here." He tried sending the thought back to Akki, though of course she was much too far away to get it. Or to answer.
Even if she wanted to.

Looking a second time around the oasis, he realized not
everything
was there. The little reed shelter was gone. He'd no idea if it had been taken down by human hands or blown away by the wind dervishes that frequented the dunes. Something in his chest hurt. Just for a moment, then it was gone.

He started toward the spot where the shelter had stood, when a sudden sending, like a lightning strike, crashed through his mind, so loud and boisterous, he flinched.

"
Sssargon waits
," came the intrusion. "
Sssargon hungers.
"

"Thou great beauty!" Jakkin cried, spinning around to look for the source of the sending.

About a hundred yards away, Sssargon stood up to his shoulders in a patch of burnwort. The red stalks were fully leafed out and long past their smoldering stage, and tall enough to have hidden the dragon almost completely until now. Sssargon was grazing, his long tongue reaching out to snag the top of a wort plant, then his jaws grinding and crushing the leaves as he walked on to the next.

Sssargon would spit out the burnwort seeds before swallowing. Any that he swallowed by accident would emerge later in his steaming fewmets, to drop into the patch and grow a new crop of wort. Nature on Austar was very conservative. "Waste not, want never" went nursery wisdom. But people had to be taught that wisdom. Dragons lived it without thinking.

"
Sssargon full. Sssargon lies down
." Just as Sssargon sent his thoughts to Jakkin, the big worm swept his pinioned wings close to his sides, the scaly feathers pushing the sand away from his body. Then, with surprising delicacy, he lay down. Surprising because up till now he'd been much more graceful in the air than on the ground.

Growing up.
Jakkin smiled.
My babies!
And then he laughed at himself.
Big babies!

Sssargon fidgeted for a moment before settling into his sandy hammock and making a humming sound.

Are the dragons really all in danger?
Jakkin wondered again.
Only if the secret gets out. Only if we tell.
He really had to talk to Akki about it. Make her see. If there was no real immediate danger, then she had no reason to hurry to finish her training as a doctor. All they really needed was to keep quiet about it.
A secret kept secret can harm no one.

Just then, Jakkin's head was filled with a barrage of red bubbles and sounds like
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
that overwhelmed all thought. Jakkin glanced around the oasis for the rest of the brood, but the only dragon he could see was Sssargon, now fast asleep on the sand.

SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!

He looked up. Far above him were four dots, circling the oasis. Having finally gotten his attention, they sang out to him in color as they came in for a well-timed landing. They touched ground together with hardly a tremor. For all their bulk, the brood was incredibly dainty.

"
Home. Home. Jakkin is home.
" Their voices twined in his head, their phosphorescent sendings welcoming him. The triplets' high-pitched twitterings were still mostly incomprehensible, but Sssasha made up for them with her clarity and warmth.

Gazing around the oasis, at the five dragons, at the bubbling spring, the tall reeds, the bowl of blue sky, Jakkin flung out his arms. They were right, of course. The nursery wasn't home. The oasis was.

AKKI HAD FIRST checked the hens in the incubarn and especially the one Likkarn felt was ready to lay. The dragon was calm—no hackles, no shuttered eyes, her tail lying flat against the stall floor. In fact, she was a lot calmer than Likkarn.

"It's Heart O'Mine and she's never had a successful clutch," he told Akki. His eyes were reddened, and the bad eye's lid was drooping. Clearly he'd had little sleep. "She's just about at the end of her laying days. Another few years and her nursery time will be over."

"Do you want me to check her again?" Akki asked, wondering if she should forget about her ride to The Rokk.

"Please," he said.

Akki wasn't sure she'd ever heard him say that word before, and she wondered if Likkarn, too, wasn't nearing the end of his time in the nursery.

"She was the first hen your father gave me and I thought she'd make my fortune," he explained as she knelt down to examine Heart O'Mine's protruding belly.

The dragon's belly was tight as it should be, and when she put her ear down, she could hear a kind of gurgle, very light and yet constant. "Burble means babies," she recited. It was one of the earliest things she'd ever learned about gravid females.

Likkarn laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, she burbles all right. She goes into heat, freshens, accepts the male, then eggs form and they burble away. She lays them just fine. But the eggs never open up on hatchlings. I don't know why." He turned to the dragon. "Nor do thou, my lovely, my darling."

"She's three or four days away, I'd say."

"Two."

"We'll see."

He stood. "Will
we?
" he asked. "The truck's coming to take you to The Rokk."

She was stunned. Her mouth opened, closed.

"The master of a nursery has to know what's going on at all times," Likkarn said. "Your father taught me that. And if you think you can get Kkarina to do anything without telling me, well, think again."

"Well, perhaps when I think again, I'll change my mind and
not
go." She stood, too. "That's what my father taught
me.
"

"We need a good doctor and a better vet, especially with the embargo. A lot of the old vets and doctors were here on rotation from other Feder worlds and have gone back home. So, if you're set on finishing your apprenticeship, we want you off to The Rokk as soon as possible." His sharp face took on a crafty look. "Your father would have wanted that, too. Now go and check those two ferals."

He meant Auricle and the hatchling. It was his hand that had written the visit with them on the chore list, all the while knowing it might be her last day with them for a while. The master of the nursery.
Yes, I suppose he's that. Now.
For the first time in almost a year, she thought of her father with real regret. He'd been a difficult father, but a great master.

As she left the stall and headed to the rear of the barn, she considered how well Auricle had settled in. Not so the hatchling.
The poor thing has so imprinted on me, she's pining for me as if for a mother.
Akki sighed.
But what can I do?

Henkky's house in The Rokk was no place for a growing dragon, but Akki feared the hatchling would die before she was able to get back for a visit. For all their size and power, dragons could go down fast for any number of reasons, and imprinting on the wrong mother was one of them. In only another month, the hatchling would be ready to fledge.
What if it doesn't last that long without me? Either I wait a month before going or...
That way she could see Likkarn's dragon through this laying, fledge the hatchling, get Jakkin used to the idea of their being apart. But there was always going to be one crisis after another. That's how nurseries worked. As her father always said, "We lurch from bad to worse." If she stayed this time, it would be even easier to stay through the next crisis. And all that time given was time lost. The planet's dragons might all be consigned to death because of her. She felt time weighing heavily on her. The sooner she began working on the problem facing all the dragons, the better. Taking the hatchling along seemed to be her only option.

I have to go to The Rokk now. I have to set up a laboratory now, learn all I can now. Likkarn already knows some of the se
cret. The trogs know the rest.
And if the trogs came boiling out of their caves, it would be a real disaster: the secret out, people killed, and more dragons—maybe
all
the dragons—killed.

But I can't go without telling Jakkin!
She sent a tentative gray sending, trying to find him. But then she realized she was too close to Likkarn and stopped herself. Jakkin was no doubt still in the stud barn, working with the big male dragons. She'd just go and tell him.

Stilling her traitor mind, she went on to Auricle's stall, patted her and sang to her, and settled her down. Then, collecting the hatchling, who'd all but attached herself to Akki's side, she left the barn. There was a truck waiting by the kitchen door.

"Oh, fewmets!" she said aloud. There was no time to see Jakkin and say good-bye. She'd have to send. Something short, definitive. As soon as she was ready to go.

But first she needed to pack. Not that she had anything to pack. At least, nothing for the city. She decided to start with the nursery store.

***

THE STORE
was unattended. It didn't matter. She picked out a change of leathers, a second pair of sandals, and a soft carry bag, then left a note that she'd borrowed them.

Back in her room, with the hatchling perched on her bed, she packed the bag with the new clothes and several of her old hair ties that Kkarina had been keeping. A hairbrush, comb, toothbrush, and that was all she needed.

No,
she thought,
not quite all.
There was a pair of shears on top of the chest of drawers. It gave her an idea. Just in case there were any rebels still roaming The Rokk, she'd make herself unrecognizable. Picking up the shears, she cut off her long hair in three large, dark clumps, and shoved the clumps into the burn sack in the hall.

Back in the bedroom, she took a quick look in the mirror. With that short cap of hair, she barely knew herself. That made her smile. "Good-bye, Akki," she whispered to her reflection.

She picked up the carry bag, but when she tried to gather up the hatchling, it hissed at her.