Shadowed By Wings (18 page)

Reeling, eyes watering, I tasted blood in my mouth. My bleary vision focused on Kratt.

“Now, rishi whelp, I want you to free yourself,” he murmured, tilting his head slightly to one side.

Panting, I could only stare at him, uncomprehending.

“Free yourself,” Kratt repeated, his voice lower, insistent. I pulled against Dono’s grasp. Unclear as to his role, Dono relinquished his hold.

“Do not release her, boy.”

Dono jerked my hand into place again.

“Release yourself, girl,” Kratt ordered, and he slowly began circling Dono and me. I could smell Dono’s fear, sharp and sour, and the overfast rhythm of our breathing grew synchronized. “Show me some of your power and release yourself.”

I pulled with an arm that felt as heavy and useless as a roll of sodden cloth, and was answered by stabbing pain across my neck, down my shoulder, and through my biceps.

“Release yourself.” A whisper from Kratt’s dark shape near my elbow.

Dono stepped away from me slightly, still holding me—Kratt must have guided him to do so with a commanding finger upon his torso—and then
thwack!
Kratt struck me with a quirt upon the fresh bruises of my back.

I cried out, and he hit me again, and I felt myself falling, heard Dono’s grunt as he instinctively reached with his free hand to catch me around the waist, and for a moment there was blackness.

But the blackness did not last.

Kratt’s face before me. Again.

“Summon your bird, rishi whelp. Summon your Skykeeper to save you, hmmm?”

“I can’t,” I gasped, panting. “It won’t come; it won’t obey me.”

“That’s not what you told me before. Did you lie? I deal harshly with liars, rishi whelp.”

“No!”

“Then summon her,” he demanded. “Prove to me that you are what the dragonmaster says. Prove to me that you are this Dirwalan Babu.”

“But I can’t; she won’t come; she only appears when my life is threatened,” I babbled, fear running rampant throughout me.

“Only when your life is threatened, hey-o?” Kratt said.

A slow, humorless smile spread over his face. Oh, Re.

I gaped at him, aghast at what I’d said, at what power I’d just given him.

Because, of course, I knew what was coming next.

“Bring her out into the courtyard, boy,” Kratt murmured to Dono. “I think I’ll require more space.”

The past oft repeats itself, hey-o.

This is how my father died, when I was but nine years old: Four bayen lordlings dragged him from his pottery studio into our clan courtyard, and with the leather laces from his own sandals, they bound his hands and ankles. They led a yearling over to him, man height and twice as long, wings a-tremble and scales contracted, its claws fully intact: one of the warrior lord’s own dragons.

Using bullwhips, they drove the yearling into a frenzy; it attacked my father. Between drawing one breath and another, he was disembowelled.

Dono had seen none of that, had already begun serving his apprenticeship to the dragonmaster. So as he bound me upright against a barrow in the center of the stable’s courtyard, my gibbering story meant nothing to him.

No, not nothing. Confusion flitted across his features and his hands fumbled badly.

Waikar Re Kratt stood some distance away from us, pacing slowly to and fro, examining the long whip he’d uncoiled from his belt as the first evening bats began swooping over the stables. The rest of the apprentices stood clustered some distance away. At a subtle signal from Eidon, I saw Ringus slip away, unnoticed by Kratt, and disappear at a run through the adjacent stable yard.

Dono finished lashing my ankles together and rose from his knees. His narrow, never restful eyes darted over my face.

“Waivia,” he said, voice guttural.

I stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Did she see it?” he said.

Waivia, my sister. He wanted to know if she’d been present when my father had been killed, if she’d witnessed the horror; he
had
been listening to my babble as he’d lashed me to the barrow.

“No,” I said, the truth coming thick as old gruel from my tongue.

He nodded and dropped his eyes. He took a deep breath and mumbled, “You should’ve left when you had the chance, Zarq. I’m sorry.”

He quickly turned away and went over to Kratt.

Words were exchanged. Kratt pointed to one of the destriers in her stall. He knew the dragons in his stables, certainly; he’d chosen the most temperamental of them all.

Dono hesitated, then turned and barked at two of his allies to give him aid. The trio approached the feisty dragon.

Kratt snapped his whip at my belly. It ripped a hole right through my coarse tunic and snapped like fire against my skin. I gasped.

“Now, summon your bird, rishi whelp,” Kratt ordered, and
snap!
the tip of his whip cracked a hand’s breadth away from my mouth. “Summon your bird or be killed.”

The destrier Dono and his helpers led from the stall fought the muzzle hooks inserted in her flared nares. She was a beautiful creature, her crop dewlaps hanging from her throat like milky opals. Even in the gloom of dusk, her quivering wings—hastily bolted by Dono while in her stall so she couldn’t burst into flight—looked like amber, rich and tawny and almost pellucid. The finger claws at the end of her wings twitched like jointed ebony needles, and the talons on her forelegs were as curved and wicked as scimitars. She shied at the sight of me strapped against the barrow, and the muscles in her hindquarters bulged beneath scales green and glossy brown.

She was a magnificent beast, powerful and high-strung. Her talons would easily cut me in half. My vision swooned and my heart thundered like a thousand beaten kettle drums.

Kratt circled behind me and began flicking his whip at the dragon. She reared back, shied left, shied right, snorted and tossed her head.
Flick, flick!
The whip snapped against her muzzled snout. Infuriated, she bugled in her throat, charged forward several feet, and reared up. Her great, wicked talons slashed the air several feet before me.

I inflated my lungs and screamed. I screamed as if expelling my soul. Out of my wits from fear, I screamed and screamed.

Silence from the darkling skies. The slash of talons direct before me, the next blow sure to slit me open from throat to groin.

Then: a scream from the skies. Gravelly, earth-trembling, bloodcurdling.

“Mother!” I shrieked, and the Skykeeper appeared overhead.

She didn’t descend from the heights as she had done at the Lashing Lane, when the crowd had intended to stone me to death. No. She merely circled above us, her vast form casting a chill as cold as ice. Even at that height, her wings filled the air with the stench of carrion.

The smell of death: the smell of my mother.

Those unearthly shrieks: the sound of her love.

The dragon before me bucked and yawed against her restraining muzzle, rage turned to fright. Dono and his helpers could no longer control her. The restraining hook notched into one of her nares ripped loose with a spray of blood, and she whirled and bolted out of the courtyard, dragging, for a short distance, one of the two apprentices holding the reins to her muzzle.

Waikar Re Kratt moved from behind me and came into my view. With an inscrutable glance at me, he gestured at Dono to untie me.

I slumped against my bindings and wept.

When next I looked up, the Skykeeper was gone. The first star twinkled at me in her stead.

By the time Dono finished unlashing me from the barrow, the dragonmaster had appeared. Ringus slipped from the dragonmaster’s side and unobtrusively joined the gathered apprentices before Kratt noticed him.

The Komikon marched up to Kratt, chin braid swinging like an angry cat’s tail.

“Lupini Re!” he barked. “What’s the meaning of this?”

Kratt began languidly coiling his whip, running one palm over it, checking if any grit was embedded in the tightly woven braiding. He looked completely at ease, as if he’d just supped at banquet, not provoked the appearance of a deadly, supernatural creature.

He didn’t answer the dragonmaster.

Flushing, the dragonmaster whirled around to face his apprentices.

“Get yourselves to the hovel, the lot of you! Have you nothing better to do than gawk at your future lord? Go, eat, sleep!” He turned back and stabbed a finger at me. “You stay.”

A superfluous demand; I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. My legs were trembling violently and I was dizzy, breathing too fast. I shivered, feeling terribly, terribly cold, and the desire to curl up on the ground and close my eyes was intense.

“Now, Lupini Re,” the dragonmaster said, his lower jaw thrust out pugnaciously, his eyes rolling as he struggled to retain a measure of control over his emotions. “Please tell me what in the name of Re just occurred here.”

Kratt finished coiling his whip, hooked it back onto his belt, and with a lazy smile, regarded the dragonmaster.

“I had need of proving that your deviant is indeed what you declared she was. Temple is anxious these days, Komikon, and that anxiety spills over into the Daron of my father’s Clutch. He pressures me to execute the girl as a rebel.”

“She’s not Forsaken,” the dragonmaster said, glaring at me. “She’s no insurgent.”

Forsaken?

For a moment, I had the absurd notion that the dragonmaster knew I’d been abandoned as a child by my mother, that being forsaken had somehow branded me. Then I realized he was referring to the Hamlets of Forsaken, the agricultural communes that were springing up throughout Malacar without Temple’s consent—communes that functioned extremely well without Holy Wardens, egg stables, overlords, or Temple Statute.

Communes reputed to be inhabited by insurgents plotting to overthrow the Emperor.

“Insurgent or not, she challenges Temple,” Kratt said. “And Temple looks very unkindly upon any challenges as of late.”

“You must ensure that the Daron leaves her be,” the dragonmaster growled, and his shoulders convulsed once, violently.

“You will not direct me on what I should and should not do, old man. I believe I’ve warned you before.”

The dragonmaster flushed. He rocked to and fro on his feet, muscles in his cheeks twitching in agitation.

“Forgive me,” he eventually rasped, though he sounded anything but contrite. “I’m alarmed that you doubted her identity in the first place.”

“Are you, now? I find that peculiar. You see, I’ve done much reading over the last few months, and I can find no mention of your precious prophecy anywhere.”

“The Djimbi don’t record their prophecies!” the dragonmaster cried. “They sing, they tell stories, they … they …” He tugged his chin braid as he spluttered. “You’ve twice witnessed the appearance of the Skykeeper; what further proof do you need that the girl is what I tell you?”

“The Daron is emphatic that she possesses an evil spirit. He says”—and here Kratt’s lips twisted with wry amusement, though his eyes went hard and bitter—“that the creature she summoned on Mombe Taro was but a demon.”

“And now that you’ve seen it again, what do you think?” the dragonmaster demanded.

Kratt studied me almost indifferently. “The renderings of Skykeepers that I’ve seen upon velum and parchment look remarkably like the creature she just summoned. Her creature does indeed appear to be a Guardian of the Celestial Realm.”

“It is; it is! And think you what power you have, with a Skykeeper answering to this girl’s summons!” The dragonmaster clutched Kratt’s arm in his fervor. “Think what you might achieve with such a creature by your side!”

Kratt looked back at him and disdainfully shook off the dragonmaster’s touch. “I require the Scroll of the Right-Headed Crane, Komikon. The Ranreeb insists upon seeing it himself. Now.”

“It is safe, with someone I trust.”

“That does me little good.”

“The Ranreeb will destroy it.”

“He’ll destroy this deviant if he doesn’t see the scroll for himself. Now is the time to bring forth your proof. I insist.”

The dragonmaster gnashed his teeth.

“Fine. I will … have it brought forth.”

Kratt nodded in lazy satisfaction. “And does she understand dragonspeak yet?”

The dragonmaster scowled and hunched his shoulders. He mumbled something. Neither Kratt nor I heard it. I found myself leaning forward, breath held, heart pounding.

“Speak up, old man,” Kratt barked.

“I said: She’s not yet undergone the rite in my stables.” A defensive, slightly defiant note crept into the dragonmaster’s tone. “I’ve been loath to subject her to it yet.”

Kratt narrowed his eyes. “Is she or is she not the Dirwalan Babu?”

“She is!”

“Then why your reluctance?”

The dragonmaster’s nostrils flared and again his eyes rolled. “I would first practice upon a few more inductees.”

“I’m not known for my patience, Komikon. You told me your dragon was trained.”

“She is.”

“Then delay no more. Is that clear? I want the dragons’ secret before the Daron guesses my true purpose behind keeping the deviant in my stables. I want to see bull wings hatch.”

One of his hands touched the whip coiled at his belt. “I’m under much pressure from Temple concerning her right now. Don’t force me to exert equal pressure upon you, old man. Get the Scroll of the Right-Headed Crane to me, and get her to lay with the dragon. Tonight.”

NINE