Dragon's Treasure (5 page)

"She's here. She is getting warm by the fire." Despite the vicious weather, the black dog had followed Maia across the field. She lay panting, while steam rose from her soaked, matted coat.

"I want to see the snow," Rianna said.

"All right. But just for a moment."

Maia opened a window shutter. Cool air swirled into the room. "It smells good," Rianna whispered. The wind dashed snow crystals through the narrow aperture. Lips parted, Rianna leaned into the cold. Her labored breathing eased.

Maura brought a cup. "My sweet, drink your drink."

Rianna took the cup between both hands and sipped. She made a face. "Bitter." She coughed again. "I don't want it."

Maura said, "Love, you must drink. It will make you better."

"Put honey in it," Maia said. "A little will do no harm."

Wind blew through the farmhouse; the candles would not stay lit. Maura kept a kettle at the boil: the moist steam eddying through the room seemed to relieve the hard coughing. With Rianna in his arms, Angus walked from one side of the house to the other. The house rattled in the incessant wind. Rianna coughed and sipped and coughed again. When Angus tired, Maia took his place.

"Tell me a story," Rianna whispered, and Maia told her the story of the wind-giant who lived in the north, and how he and his brother, the south wind, agreed to hold a contest to see which of them could blow the harder.... In the middle, Rianna fell asleep. A little while later she woke again, sweating heavily, and coughing as if her lungs would burst.

"Give her to me," Maura said. She took Rianna in her arms and walked with her, crooning to her as if she were a baby.

Maia curled onto the hearth rug beside her dog. Her face felt numb. A little before dawn, the wind died. Maia woke into the silence. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Maura sat motionless at her loom. In the dark room she was a shape, a stone, a shadow.

Angus, with Rianna in his arms, lay across his and Maura's bed. Maia rose stiffly. Crossing to the window, she thrust the shutter back. A pale quarter-moon hung halfway up the sky. The storm had passed. The snow was wan, the sky a deep grey, as if some wizard's spell had banished color.

Maura lifted her head. "Listen," she said softly. From the bed came the sounds of the ginger cat's purr, and Angus's slow breathing.

Maia walked to the bedside. The ginger cat's purr grew louder. Rianna lay curled in the very center of the bed. Her chest rose and fell evenly.

Stooping, Maia laid the back of her hand against the child's cheek.

It was cool and dry.

3

It was spring in Ippa, and Karadur Atani was looking for his kindred.

He had never flown this high before. The great wind of the sky, whose name, it had told him, was Inatowy, had iced his wings with its deadly breath. It was an effort for him to lift them.

Below him, through the deep blanket of darkness, lay the endless ocean. His home was behind him, days away. He had not meant to come this far. He had been hunting over Kameni, the easternmost province of Ryoka, flying in great slow circles, calling with his mind, as he had learned to do, and listening.... It was painful, listening to silence.

Then silence had been broken by a voice, a soft crystalline singing in the fissures of his mind.
Greetings, bright one....

A strange being hovered above him in the brilliant sky: a naked, white, winged man, whose hands and feet were talons. The winds rushed about it in a great whirling cloud, so that it moved within a vortex of air.

He answered,
Greetings, sky-dweller. Who are you?

I am Inatowy, lord of the upper sky. Hast heard of me?

I have not. What manner of being are you?

I know not what men call it. I am Inatowy. I dance between earth and the Void.

Inatowy, have you seen my kindred?

I have heard them,
the winged being sang.
I have heard them, and I have seen them. I saw them flying over the sunlit sea, scarlet and ebony, white and gold, sapphire and rose.

Every atom of Karadur's being blazed with sudden hope.
When did you see them, lord of the sky?

Long, long ago. They were singing. I called to them to come and dance, but they did not hear me.

Where did they go?

I do not know.
The extraordinary being bent toward him.
Thou art beautiful, bright one, as indeed thy kindred were beautiful. It has been long and long indeed since I danced with the dragon-children. Will you dance with me, bright one?

I know not what you mean,
he said.

And the white-winged being grinned, and opened its mouth, and a great, battering wind lifted him like a dry leaf and flung him through the azure emptiness, and dropped him. Furious, he spread his wings and found the thermal, and rose upon it. Inatowy swooped lazily under his nose. He flung fire at the wind, and it tore his flame to shreds and scattered it like dust.

For a brief, unaccustomed moment he had been afraid.

A voice sang in his mind:
Be not wrathful, bright one. We are kin. I would not harm thee. This is play.
The wind caught him again. This time he slipped its grip, diving beneath it toward the featureless land below.

Caught in a kind of madness, he played with the wind, now hunted, now hunter. At last the white being said to him,
Come, bright one. Let us see who is the faster, thou or I. I shall race thee to the sun!
And they raced, shooting eastward across the dun-colored countryside. But even he could not catch the sun; it drew farther and farther away from him across the endless sky.

And now it was night.

Far above him, the stars, his ancient brothers, shone. They saw him, fighting the will of the wind. They knew him. But there was nothing they could do for him. They dwelt elsewhere, in that great hollow place around the world that humans had named the Void. It felt very close, that place.

If he gave himself to the wind it would take him there. It howled against his skin, and the membrane of his spread wings grew cold. His spent muscles burned. The air barely touched his laboring lungs. His wings seemed not to move. Reason told him that he did not have to stay in this place, battling the wind, but he could not think what to do. His dazed mind seemed frozen.

Inatowy,
he said,
release me
....
I must go home.

Come,
sang a coaxing voice in his mind.
Are we not both great lords, thou and I? I have flown over thy land many times. Now let me show thee
my
kingdom.

It was tempting. All he had to do was cease to struggle: to let the white wind take him.

It is no great thing, bright one. Only surrender.

Deep in his chilled heart, rage woke. Like fire in the night, it leaped through his sluggish muscles. His blood quickened, and with it, his mind began to work. Lifting his golden scaled head, he roared defiantly into the wind. Then he spread his wings, and began to drop through the murderous rushing cold toward the restless ocean.

* * *

Maia diSorvino was fishing in the river when she saw the dragon fall.

He was moving very slowly, his great wings barely holding him. He swooped so close that she saw quite clearly his great rending talons, spread to grip, and the delicate diamond pattern of his soft belly scales. He skimmed the top of the ridge.

Then he vanished, and did not reappear.

She stood trembling. She wanted to run, to thrust herself, like a wounded animal, into a dark, safe hole. She waited, knowing that this was the body's fear. After a while, the shivering went away.

"Morga," she called. The black dog crept from where she had been cowering. She looked ashamed. "It's not your fault," Maia told her. "I was frightened, too. Come."

Leaving her pole and basket where it was, she climbed to the crest of the ridge. A man lay in a clump of purple fire- weed. His massive chest rose and fell. His eyes were shut. A wide gold band gleamed on his forearm. She went closer, noting the lines of exhaustion on his fair face. His limbs appeared unbroken. His clothes were shredded, and there was ice matted in his hair. He wore no sword. The hilt of a knife poked from a sheath in his right boot.

She listened to his even breathing. He was deeply asleep. She wondered if she should wake him.
Only a fool wakes a sleeping dragon.
She wondered if she could wake him. Sleep was physic, and from the look of him, he needed it. She had no fear for his safety. Even asleep, there was no mistaking who he was.

A bee hummed merrily among the flowers. Maia rose, and went back down the hill. In her cottage she found a pillow, and a jug with a stopper. She filled the jug with water, and returned to the slope. The ice in his hair had melted, but the dragon-lord had not moved. She laid the flask near his crooked right elbow. He would be thirsty when he woke. Then, carefully, she slid a hand beneath his head, lifted it, and eased the pillow beneath his cheek.

* * *

Thrice during the day, between her tasks, Maia climbed the hill, Morga at her heels, to look at her visitor. He seemed peaceful.

The second time she found him turned on his side, an arm across his eyes. She lifted the water jug. It was empty. She went to the river, and refilled it. When she returned, he was sitting up. She halted. For a moment he seemed not to see her, and then the blue eyes focused. Her fingers tightened on the jug until she feared it would split.

He said, "It was kind of you to leave me a pillow. How long have I been asleep?"

His voice was very deep.

"Since dawn. I saw you descend. I thought it best not to wake you."

"You were wise," he said. "I was very tired. I don't remember that descent. I remember only wind and sea, and the shape of the hills."

She wondered if he recognized her. She held the jug out. He reached for it, and tipped it to his mouth. His hands were huge. He drained the jug, and started to rise. Morga, motionless and alert at Maia's right knee, stared at him suspiciously and growled a warning.

"Morga, hush," Maia said hastily. The wolfhound's feathery tail drooped, and her ears went down.

The dragon-lord snapped his fingers. "Come, Morga."

The wolfhound glided forward as if drawn on a string. He held a hand out to her. She sniffed it delicately, and then, to Maia's wonder, allowed the big man to stroke her narrow head and soft ears. "Thou shalt know me next time, eh?" Morga's ears pricked. Her tail began to wave. He glanced over the dog's head at Maia. "You are Maia diSorvino. I did not know that you were still in my land."

There was nothing she could say. If he wanted her gone, she would have to leave.

He said, "You needn't fear. I have no quarrel with you."

She had a loaf of poppy-seed bread in her house, Maura's gift, fresh-baked, and the rose-bellied trout she had caught that morning, still in its reed cooler beneath the riverbank. She had intended to cook it for supper.

She said, "My lord, are you hungry? I have food. Bread."

"Hungry. Yes."

She led him to the house. He halted on the threshold, taking in the wreaths and strings of dried herbs that hung from every ceiling beam. The cottage smelled powerfully of their mingled aromas. He stepped into the tiny room.

"Are you an herbalist?" he asked.

She was not sure how to answer. "I have some skill. I was never formally trained."

Morga curled up on her rug beside the hearth. Maia set bread and a pot of clover honey on a tray, and laid it on the narrow wooden plank that served her for a table. She filled a cup with water and set it in front of him. "Please sit, my lord."

He sat, and gestured to the second stool. "This is your house. You must sit."

The courtesy surprised her. She drew up the second stool, and seated herself opposite him. He slathered honey on a slice of bread and ate it in three bites.

His propinquity made the hut seem smaller than it was. It was not an effect simply of his size: she was tall, and she had known other big men. It was the sense of his power, the weight of his presence. She remembered the dragon's fiery inhuman gaze, and the sound of his rage.

That was the Golden Dragon. This is Karadur Atani, lord of Atani Castle.

But she knew they were one and the same.

"You bake good bread," he said. He took another slice.

She said, "It's not mine. It was made by my neighbor, Maura Halland."

"You said you were not an herbalist. But someone taught you."

"I used to play in the garden in my father's house when I was a child. Uta, my nurse, taught me to recognize and find common herbs. She was my first teacher."

"Who was your second?"

"Master Eccio. He was the physician who came to treat my mother."

"What did he teach you?"