Dragon's Heart (2 page)

—excerpt from
The Encyclopedia Galaxia,
thirty-third edition, vol. 1: Aaabarker—Austar

At the end of book 3,
A Sending of Dragons,
Senator Golden has located Jakkin and Akki in a meadow near a high waterfall. Led to them by Heart's Blood's now full-grown hatchlings, Golden has set his copter down and confronted the two runaway teens. He seems not entirely surprised that they are still alive. They'd been accused of being part of a rebel cell and helping in the appalling bombing of the Rokk Major pit, but had in fact been infiltrating the rebels on Golden's orders. Trying to escape, they were helped, surprisingly, by the old bonder Likkarn. After being left for dead in a mountain shoot-out, the two had managed to live in mountain caves for a year. There they discovered new powers, dragon powers—the ability to stay out in the cold of Dark-After, and a telepathic bond with dragons and each other. Near the end of that year, they'd been captured by
trogs
—cave people. Beaten, threatened, they finally escaped through an underground river to the waterfall and meadow, along with two of the trog dragons: a hatchling and a full-grown female they have named Auricle.

Book 3 ended this way:

"Why are you here?" Jakkin asked Golden. "Why now?"

"To find you, obviously, and bring you back."

Akki smiled but Jakkin's eyes narrowed. "Bring us back how? As friends? As prisoners? As criminals? As runaways?"

"Not exactly as prisoners, otherwise I'd be home and the wardens would be here. But not exactly free, either, though all bonders are now technically free. Let's say you are wards of the state."

At their puzzled glances, Golden added, "You see, I ran the investigation of your case from my hospital bed—when Dr. Henkky allowed me!—and cleared you two of the charges of planting the bomb at Rokk Major."

"I don't understand," Akki said. "If you've cleared us of the pit bombing and all bonders are free, why aren't we?"

"Because, my dear Akki," said Golden, putting his hands on her shoulders, "I cleared the names of a romantic young
dead
couple. Once you return alive—well, there are bound to be some difficult questions, which as my wards and prisoners, you won't be obliged to answer."

"Then what comes next?" Jakkin asked.

"I'll take you back to the nursery farm now," said Golden. "If you're ready to come."

"We're ready," Jakkin said.

Akki nodded her agreement and reached down to pick up the hatchling who had been lying against her ankles. The hatchling snuggled into her arms, its tail looped around her wrist.

Jakkin watched as Golden and Akki climbed into the copter. He walked over to Auricle and placed his hands on either side of her broad head.

"
Thou beauty
," he sent. "
Try thy wings once more and, if thee will, follow the other dragons to the place where we live, the nursery. It will be a safe place for thee and thy eggs
."

He didn't wait for an answer. Whether she came to the farm or stayed in the world, she was free of the tyranny of the trogs in the mountain caves. That was all that mattered now.

Climbing into the copter, Jakkin sat behind Akki in a seat that seemed much too soft for comfort. Golden turned and showed him how to buckle his seat belt across his lap. Then Golden turned back to the copter console. As the great machine engine started up, the noise was deafening.

Golden shouted, his voice barely rising above the churring of the rotors. "We won't be able to talk much until we're down again. Too loud." He pointed to the ceiling, then bent to fiddle with the controls, a panel of winking, blinking lights that reminded Jakkin of dragons' eyes.

Jakkin put his hand on Akki's shoulder and their minds touched, a clear, clean, silent meeting. Then he looked out the window as the copter rose into the air. Austar stretched out below him in great swatches of color. He could see the dark mountain with its sharp, jagged peaks and the massive gray cliff faces pocked with caves. He could see tan patches of desert where five ribbons of blue water fanned out from the darker blue of a pool, and the white froth of the waterfall. Running into the waterfall was a blue-black river that gushed from the mountainside like blood from a wound.

He sent a message to Akki full of wonder and light. "
This ... this is true dragon sight, Akki. We're like dragons in flight above our world
."

Mind-to-mind they talked of it all the way back to the nursery and home.

THE COPTER set down in the front yard of the dragon nursery under a burning sun. The whirling blades raised such a dust storm, Jakkin had to squint to see through the windows, and still the world outside seemed filled with sand and grit.

"
Home
..." Akki sent Jakkin the single word as they landed, her mind decorating the sending with a picture of the nursery: gray stone surrounded by red sky, which lay beyond the sand and grit. She pushed a strand of dark hair back from her forehead and pressed her face against the window.

"
Home,
" Jakkin answered, his sending the blue of the five rivers twisting through tan sands. A cooler reaction, almost as if he were afraid. Only he wasn't afraid, just being cautious. It was an old habit, but a good one.

As Golden's slim hands danced across the console of lights, the blades slowed, then stilled. "Good landing," Golden said. Then he turned and grinned at them. "Even if you two don't know the difference."

Soon the dust settled. A minute more and Jakkin could see through the grit that the landscape was neither as red and gray—or as tan and blue—as their sendings.

Akki laughed—a soft, delightful sound—and Jakkin was reminded of other times she'd sounded like that. Not many recently; hardly any when they were on the run in the mountains, and none at all in the caves of the trogs. But he remembered them all.

Overhead, Heart's Blood's five—Sssargon, Sssasha, Trisss, Trisssha, and Trissskkette—wheeled away, disappearing behind a cluster of trees. In his mind, Jakkin heard them bidding a good-bye, their sendings as bright and fluffy as clouds.

"
Sssargon goesss. Sssargon fliesss high
," sent the largest, and only male. As ever, his sendings were full of himself. And full of what he was doing now. Dragon time was always now. They could remember a trainer, their hatchlings, their nest. They could be taught enough movements to fight warily in a pit. They could recall where a particularly fine patch of wort existed. But otherwise they lived in the now. Still, they'd been able to hold on to enough to bring Golden to the rescue, to guide him to where Jakkin and Akki had been on the run from the trogs who slaughtered dragons in their caves.

"
Thanks, my friends
." Jakkin's sending to the dragons was open-ended, brightly colored. Those dragons were the one constant in Jakkin's life besides Akki. He hoped they weren't going far. They linked his past and present, sky and earth, nursery and the wilds. "
Good flying, my friends
." They were behind the trees, so he couldn't see them anymore. Couldn't hear them, either. But just in case, he called out again with his mind, "
Fair wind
."

A sunny image flittered back to him, actually more like a brain tickle.
So at least one of them heard. Probably Sssasha, always the sunny one.

"Here we are," Golden said, flicking the last switches on the console. Turning his head, he nodded at Jakkin and Akki, his river-colored eyes glinting at them. "Home. The nursery. Back where your life begins."

It was unclear if he was making a joke or a simple statement. Jakkin had never been able to read Golden easily, and unlike the dragons' minds, Golden's was closed. Of course Jakkin knew that humans had closed minds, but it was something he would have to get used to, now that they were back.

Back home.

Unbuckling his seat belt, Golden stood and stretched. Walking to the copter door, he pushed it open, then flicked a switch that unfolded a set of stairs. Descending the steps backward, he signaled Jakkin and Akki to follow the same way.

As Jakkin climbed down from the copter, he looked over his shoulder. The shock of it all—gates, wood-and-stone walls, dusty yard, and the blue water in the weir—seemed overwhelmingly like a dream. So self-contained, so comfortable, so ... familiar.

He and Akki had been living for a year as outlaws, exiles. Running, hiding, afraid all the time. Well, maybe not
all
of the time, but a lot of the time. Living in caves, without real beds. Worrying about where their next meal would come from. How often he'd dreamed about coming home to the nursery, but he'd never really believed it could ever happen. Too many people with too many grievances were still looking for them. Like the Austar wardens who wanted to put them in jail; the rebels who wanted to kill them outright.

Yet according to Golden, all that was no longer true. At least the rebels were satisfied, the wardens, too. Jakkin set his lips together. Not that he mistrusted Golden, but it seemed too good to be...

Now, of course, they had another problem—the trogs in the caves probably wanted Jakkin and Akki dead, because they didn't want the secret of their caves to come out. And they probably wanted their two dragons back as well.

I regret none of that,
Jakkin thought.
None.

And none of the past year, either. Oh, it had been a hard year. But, though hard, life in the mountains had given both Jakkin and Akki a taste for freedom. He mulled that over.
A taste for freedom.

He hadn't realized he'd sent it till Akki answered him. "
And a hunger for home
."

Jakkin nodded. Many times he'd been sure they would die up in the mountains, with only Heart's Blood's hatchlings to mourn them.

"
And Sssargon to comment on it all
." This time there was a bubbling laugh in Akki's sending.

But home?
He'd never really believed they could return.

Reaching solid ground, Jakkin turned, then stared at the dragon nursery. Without realizing what he was doing, he rubbed the thin bracelet of scar tissue on his wrist. The whole of that year in the mountains, he'd tried to keep his deepest longings for the nursery shielded so that Akki couldn't read his heartache and add it to her own. Now that they were actually back, he felt he should be elated. What he actually felt was...

"
Scared?
" Akki's sending was tentative, wavery, like the water at the bottom of the falls.

"
Stay out of my mind!
" he answered, with black and gold arrow points. Sharper than he meant. To soften it, he turned back and reached a hand up to help her down, for she was facing forward as she came down the steps, carefully cradling the young dragon hatchling. Its back and belly were still patchworked with the last of its gray eggskin, and it looped its tail securely around her wrist.

"Thanks," she whispered to Jakkin, and smiled—a tremulous, tentative smile. It said even more than her sending.

"
Scared.
"

This time the sending was not Akki's. Anxiously, Jakkin looked around. Finally he spotted the sender—Auricle, the pale red adult dragon they'd brought out of the caves before she could be sacrificed by the trogs. She was crouched on the far side of the nursery yard, tail twitching. Not one of Heart's Blood's brood, she was possibly a cousin, for her color and sendings were reminiscent of the red dragon's. He and Akki had gotten her out of the caves just in time. Into the air. Showed her that she could fly, that she could be free.

Auricle's neck arched downward and her neck scales fluttered, which meant that any moment she might bolt.
It's astonishing that she's landed here and not actually flown off with
the others,
Jakkin thought. In
her
mind, men were not safe. Not even her rescuers.
Not Akki. Not me.

"
Here?
" Jakkin hadn't meant to send the question, blue, stuttering, but Auricle caught a glimpse of it anyway.

"
Here
," she answered in the same color, but even more faded. The membranes on her eyes closed, effectively shuttering them.

Jakkin's thoughts followed one another in quick succession: Auricle was probably
here
because she wasn't used to flying, having been kept in that underground prison the whole of her life except for the one time when she was bred. Or perhaps she was
here
because Akki had the dragonling. Or because she was exhausted. Or because she was...

"
Scared
."

"
Gentle Auricle
." This time Jakkin's blue sending was edged about with soft beige billows. "
Do not be afraid. We are with thee. Soon thee will be altogether safe
." Dragon masters in the nursery always spoke that way to their charges, "thee" and "thou." Jakkin didn't know why. It was just how things were done. And it certainly calmed them down.

Auricle lifted her head slightly. Her eyes were dark but without the fire of a fighting dragon. Even if she hadn't sent her fear to him, he would have known it by her posture: the crouch, the lashing tail, the shuttered eyes. She was afraid of the copter, of the nursery, of the memory of the trogs. Well, she had a right to be afraid of the trogs.
I'm afraid of them, too.

"Jakkin!" Akki's voice gave a warning.

He thought she meant he was broadcasting his own fear to the terrified Auricle, but Akki was pointing in a different direction. He turned, caught something out of the corner of his eye, and startled, before realizing that the door of the bondhouse had flown open.

Out ran the fat cook, Kkarina, though it was more like a fast waddle. Her haste was understandable. Any copter was a rare sight at the nursery. Usually the appearance of one meant bad news. Wiping her hands nervously on her long apron, Kkarina stared at Golden, who was standing several steps away from the copter's blades. Her hands left dark red stains on the white cloth of her apron, stains that could have been either takk or blood.