And sith the sire-drake be scarlet-hued, he dare not tarry in the lands held by men, but must hie him away when the clutch is hatched.
—The Bok of Dragon
Softly, Kaeldra pulled the door shut behind her. The dawn air splashed cold across her cheeks. Dark and sharp against the pale streak on the horizon, the mountains loomed.
She drank in a deep breath and set off across the graze.
There was far to go.
Kaeldra’s head felt muzzy from too little sleep. But the cold of the air and the stretch of her legs and the crisp, rhythmic thud of her boots sent energy surging through her. Soon she had passed the boggy patch near the brook; soon after, the copse of creaking blackwood lay behind, and she had reached the standing stones atop the first rise.
The pale streak leaked across the sky. The sun rose. Underfoot, the stiff grasses gave way to rock and bracken crusted with snow. As she walked, the earth tumbled away to the west, hill and bog and ridge. And to the east, where she must go, Myrrathog. Snow clad, it blotted out all but the edges of sky.
Kaeldra, looking at the mountain, felt a tightening in her chest.
Last night Granmyr had spoken further of Kara, how she understood the language of dragons and could make known to them her thoughts. “Kara’s gift,” Granmyr called it. Yet Kaeldra devoutly wished to renounce kinship with this farin woman and revoke all claim to her terrifying gift.
Still, only with the gift might Kaeldra barter for milk to save Lyf. If she possessed it not . . .
Kaeldra recalled the heat of Lyf’s cheek against hers that morning. She stopped to strap on her shoe-baskets, since the snow was deepening, and set off again.
For long hours, Kaeldra climbed. The ground steepened. Her feet numbed. The mountain was so big. From a distance it had looked smaller, flatter. It had seemed an easy thing, to find a cave large enough for dragons. But once upon it she found gorges and hillocks and precipices, and when it began to snow she knew she had no idea where to go.
Kaeldra’s shoe-baskets dragged to a stop. What if I can’t find the dragons? she thought. What if there are no dragons?
She stood, unable to make herself move, and the snow sifted down. The hush was so deep, Kaeldra felt she could almost hear the snowflakes as they lit.
There was a rumbling in her ears.
It was a slight trembling, which seemed to emanate from the rock, as if the mountain itself were snoring.
Kaeldra turned her head to divine its source. She could sense it now, somewhere to her left. Her shoe-baskets began to move, and the rumbling grew until it purred in her mind like a cat. As she crested a small ridge, Kaeldra blinked.
Things were growing. Ferns and mosses and even lysselblossoms, in the midst of the snow. Kaeldra shut her eyes and opened them again, but they were still there; she had not imagined them. Water dripped from nearby fir trees and beaded on the greenery, which clustered around a high rock face. Kaeldra drew near and saw that some of the rock was not rock at all, but a hole, the mouth of a cave.
She took off her shoe-baskets, then tiptoed closer, her heart pounding. She peered inside the cave, then caught her breath. It was enormous, much bigger than it had appeared from outside. The floor sloped steeply down into a cavern as tall as a needlecone tree. At the far end, the cave narrowed and was lost in shadow.
It was empty. At least, she could see nothing there, save for boulders and broken rocks and a sand-and-gravel track that wound down through the half-lit gloom. Yet the rumble continued, seeming to come from the shadowy regions deep inside.
Legs quaking, Kaeldra ventured down the track.
Warm. It was warm inside, much warmer than it ought to have been, even in the shelter of a cave. She smelled smoke and damp and a whiff of something else: a strange, scorched scent she could not identify.
One knee suddenly buckled; Kaeldra slipped. Gravel clattered down the slope, echoed against the cave walls.
When she had pulled herself to her feet, it was quiet.
The rumble had stopped.
Deep inside the cave, something shifted. Something was coming, coming her way. Kaeldra shot a panicked glance back at the cave mouth. It looked small and far away. She threw herself behind a boulder and sensed a nudge at her mind, as if someone were feeling around inside her, questing, probing.
She heard it coming, or thought she heard, through the bloodbeat in her ears, a dragging sound, a scraping of something on sand. She curled herself into a tight ball.
The scorched smell thickened, filled her lungs. Sweat trickled down her forehead into her eyes. A hot wind stirred her hair.
As if drawn by some force outside herself, Kaeldra looked up.
Into an eye. It was as long as her forearm. It glowed green, corner to corner, but for a single black slit at its center.
〈Give me your name.〉
Kaeldra cried out as pain drove like a shaft through her skull.
The pain ebbed. Kaeldra, stunned, held her head in her hands. The words throbbed in her mind as if seared there. Then the pain again:
〈Give me your—〉
“Kaeldra!”
She felt her name being drawn from her, turned over and over, as a woman handles a pot she would buy. She raised her head, and the cavern was full of scales, glinting green in the murk. Her eyes found the shape of the dragon, taller than a cottage, trailing off down the cave’s curving passage.
〈Why come you here? I know of no Kaeldra.〉
Kaeldra held her head, waited for the throbbing to subside.
“For—” Kaeldra’s throat felt dry. She swallowed. “For milk. I need dragon’s milk.”
〈Milk!〉 Blue flame roared past Kaeldra’s cheek; the heat blast crested over her. 〈You came here—for my milk?〉
Kaeldra, choking on the rising smoke, scrambled backward to take refuge behind a pile of boulders. She’s the mother, she thought.
“My sister needs it, my second-sister, Lyf. She is taken with vermilion fever. She will die if she doesn’t get it. Here.” Kaeldra fumbled with the ties on her blanket roll. She shook out its contents on the track. Three small rye cakes Ryfenn had made yesterday. A length of woolen cloth. Five leather pouches of herbs and medicines. A wedge of cheese. A carved wooden box Granmyr had given her when she was a child.
The dragon’s massive head swiveled round. She trained her eyes on the offerings. Kaeldra smelled her smoky breath, saw the throb of pulse beneath her jaw.
The dragon spat out a lick of fire; Kaeldra’s things burst into flame like tinder.
〈Rubbish.〉
Kaeldra worked her way back through the smoke to another stand of rocks. Desperate, she slipped her amulet’s leather thong over her head. “Here,” she said, holding it out. “It’s the most precious thing I own. My granmyr gave it to me when I was little, it is copper wrought, it—”
The dragon moved her head to it, not a foot’s breadth from Kaeldra’s trembling hand. Kaeldra dared not breathe.
The dragon snorted, spraying her with sparks.
Kaeldra’s hand jerked back; the amulet clattered down through a chink between the rocks.
〈Not enough!〉
“Then what—” Kaeldra’s voice came out in a croak. Her mouth felt parched; she licked her lips. “What would you like?” she whispered.
The dragon snorted again; sparks streaked through the cavern. 〈Nothing you could give. Although I might have let you go, had you brought a lamb. I need meat, but cannot hunt. I dare not leave them alone.〉 The dragon turned toward the cave opening, and Kaeldra felt a yearning waft, like a were-wind, through her mind.
The dragon cocked an eye at her. 〈So you will have to do.〉
The dragon’s chest began to swell. She arched her neck and sucked in through her nostrils. Sand swirled toward the dragon; Kaeldra’s cloak flapped in the rush of air.
She’s going to flame, Kaeldra realized. She’s going to flame at me.
Kaeldra ran. She ran toward the dragon, into the dark, for she knew she could not escape by running the other way. There was a roar behind her; a blistering blast of heat. She ran past the dragon’s huge claws, beside her ridged tail. She ran deep into the cave. The tail, endlessly long, began to slither backward through the passage.
The dragon was turning around.
Kaeldra ran.
Darkness thickened around her, and soon she could not see. The ground felt smooth and sandy beneath her boots; she stumbled on, feeling her way along the cave’s rough walls.
Behind her, Kaeldra heard breathing and the hiss of scale on sand. She felt, rather than saw, a narrowing of the passage around her. Perhaps it would become too narrow for the dragon to follow. Perhaps there was another way out.
But the wall turned abruptly and a faint gray light illuminated a second cavern, nearly as large as the first. Snowflakes, stirred by a draft of cold air, sifted down through an opening in the cave roof. Kaeldra ran toward the hole, hoping to find some way out. Her foot thunked into something soft and she fell, sprawled out on the ground. The cave walls lit up blue. She heard a roar, and beneath it, something else, something squeaking.
The dragon stood over her. Her eyes, beneath fierce ridges, glared green.
Something soft nudged Kaeldra’s cheek. Another something crept onto her back. There were soft leathery things all over her, nestling, clinging.
And suddenly Kaeldra knew what they were.
Dragons. Baby dragons.