We had come at last to the deserted outpost of the lizardfolk: a vast, broken field of towers, haunted by forgotten glories and the ghosts of the scaled people who’d shaped that city from the jungle impossible centuries before. As night fell, we took shelter at the height of one of the towers, though Mirian remained troubled that stairs led deep into tunnels beneath the earth.
We could never have guessed what tragedies lay before us. For doom clutched at our expedition with skeletal hands, and some of us would feel its grasp.
—From The Daughter of the Mist
Ivrian didn’t care much for the tower, not once they’d scaled its height and explored its depths. The crumbling stairs led down through dark chambers and into long corridors lined with that luminous green lichen. Heltan remained so eager to explore that he asked twice more if they might at least venture into the opening halls, but Mirian and Jekka vetoed the idea at the same moment.
The salvagers and the lizardfolk cleared the tower of some undesirables—centipedes as long as a man’s arm, and a few spiders as wide as pineapples—then declared the upper rooms safe for sleeping. Three rounds of sentries were assigned at both the entrance to the underground and the tower’s height, and Ivrian wasn’t sure if he should be pleased or irritated he wasn’t posted to either. Neither was Gombe, for the salvager was still a little weak from his snakebite.
Mirian advised against a cooked meal, saying there was no point attracting attention with smoke.
“The odds are good that if the boggards who made that trail live anywhere close, they already know we’re here,” she said. “But there’s a chance they’ve missed us.”
Jekka voiced agreement for the second time that evening. Ivrian wouldn’t have said that the lizard man’s attitude had become warm, precisely, but a change seemed to have occurred. It had been a day or two since he’d complained about human habits or customs, and more and more Ivrian was seeing him in consultation with Mirian.
Still, the others remained more kindly disposed. Heltan seemed to have struck up an honest friendship with Ivrian’s mother, and Kalina chattered happily with any and all. Even the wary Tokello would talk with her.
After another dinner of dried rations, Ivrian copied the habit of the salvagers and laid his hammock upon the tower’s third floor, one level below its height and two above that yawning door into darkness. The rough fabric was little enough mattress to pad him from the cold stone, but he made do like the others and sat hunched over his writing desk, making notes.
He was roughing out a description of his first view of the city when Kalina trotted up the stairs and crouched at his side, peering at what he did.
Without comment, she suddenly swung her axe about, blade at the ready. Ivrian’s breath caught in his throat. Had he broken some taboo? Were they under attack?
Then he saw the lizard woman draw out a whetstone and set it against the blade with precise, rapid motions. The scraping, whining noise was a bit of an irritant until he realized this, too, was worth noting, and so he stopped trying to conjure metaphors for the ruins and watched Kalina work.
“I’ve never seen an axe like that before.”
“It is a laumahk,” she told him. “A weapon crafted by the elders and handed down to the finest hunter of each generation.” Her lips parted, and she produced a soft hooting noise. It was a mournful sound. “I am by default the best, for I am the last.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he was. He leaned in closer. There was a curious gray sheen to the long blade. “What kind of metal is that?”
“Starmetal,” she said. “I do not know what you humans name it. It was forged from the metal found in the crater of the Pool of Stars. Like the blades of Jekka’s staff.”
“It must be a very old weapon,” Ivrian speculated.
“I do not know how to say the count of years in human words.”
“Centuries are hundreds of years,” he said, then added, “A hundred is ten tens.”
“Then my laumahk is many centuries old. You see that it does not rust.” She stopped her sharpening, and with a deft turn of the knob on the weapon’s pommel she suddenly extended the haft. “It can be wielded two-handed, if I wish.”
Ivrian was more interested than ever. “May I hold it?”
Kalina cocked her head to one side and showed the tip of her forked tongue. “May I see your writing desk?”
“Certainly. Everything I’ve written so far is just notes, though. It will sound much better once I tinker with it a bit.”
“I cannot read your language,” Kalina admitted. “But I want to see your writing and what lies within the compartments.”
They traded places. Odd to think she wanted to see what he did even though she’d understand nothing of it.
While the lizard woman opened and closed the little panels and drawers, examining the pens and pen blades, inkbottles and paper, he gingerly touched the axe—laumahk, he corrected. He kept his fingers away from the razor-sharp blade and instead studied the carved shapes of jungle animals along the haft, and the means Kalina had used to lengthen the weapon. The haft telescoped out nearly two additional feet.
“There used to be a point at the far end, for jabbing,” Kalina told him, “but it broke off against a k’rang. I do not know what you humans call them. A lizard my height, with sharp claws. They hunt in packs.”
“I’m not sure what we call those either,” Ivrian said. “But I’m glad I haven’t met one.”
“Yes. They are very hungry. Show me the symbols where you write of me.”
Smiling, Ivrian set the deadly weapon aside and searched his parchments until he found the first paragraph he’d written about Kalina. He explained to her which words said she was brave and which said she was Ivrian’s friend, pointing to them as he read aloud.
The lizard woman hissed in what he hoped was contentment. She tilted her head and stared at the wall of the tower directly across from them. Mirian sat there, a notebook propped on her knees, working quickly with a pencil while staring at them.
“What does she do?” Kalina asked. Before Ivrian could speculate, she rose and moved quickly to Mirian’s side.
The lizard woman’s frill ruffled and her scales brightened to a lighter green. She let out a soft cooing noise and knelt for a closer look.
As Ivrian walked over, Mirian tilted the paper so Kalina might see what she did.
He leaned in beside the lizard woman, curious that he should feel comfortable enough to do so. He might have expected her to smell of swamp and weeds, but she was almost free of any scent. Certainly she smelled far better than Rendak and Gombe after a long day hiking.
He marveled, for Mirian’s long, calloused fingers had sketched both of them, though she’d put far more detail into Kalina’s portrait than his own.
“You’re very good,” he told her. His artist friends had always told him that hands were hard to draw, but Mirian had great facility with them, including Kalina’s dexterous fingers as her image held the ink bottle for examination.
“Heltan!” Kalina called, “Jekka! Attend!”
Soon both of the male Karshnaar crowded, one to either side.
Jekka asked a question of Kalina in his own language, and she answered in the same. Then she said, “Do you see? She is a crafter.”
“Do you fashion this for gold?” Jekka asked Mirian.
She shook her head. “No. I draw pictures of the places where I journey so my friends can see what I’ve seen.”
Jekka blinked at this information.
There was no mistaking the eagerness in Kalina’s voice. “Do you have other pictures?”
Mirian handed over the sketchbook, demonstrating how to move the pages. “Be careful turning them,” she said. “Some are quite fragile.”
All three of the lizardfolk then gathered about the book, making it hard for Ivrian to see much. He glimpsed a ruined wall carved with Mwangi faces, a trio of unfamiliar natives at work clearing foliage. This was followed by a study of an odd-looking bird with a long beak perched on a low branch.
Heltan and Kalina talked rapidly in their own language as they turned the pages. Jekka remained silent.
“I had no idea you were so talented,” Ivrian said. “At artwork, I mean.”
Mirian shrugged, but she couldn’t completely disguise a glow of pride.
“Do you know what?” he said. “We might combine forces.”
Her eyes transfixed his own, and he felt himself withering, for there was little warmth in her expression. Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to bring up the matter. “I’ve been keeping a record of our journey,” he said. “I am thinking about writing a record of our expedition—”
“I don’t think so,” Mirian said.
“Hear me out. I think there’d be a real market for this sort of thing.”
“No,” Mirian said. “These drawings are private.”
That was a head-scratcher. “You shouldn’t hide talent like that.”
“I’m not hiding it, Ivrian. It’s just not for sale.”
“But—”
“I don’t wish to discuss it. Now, the hour’s late. Tomorrow may be the most dangerous day we’ve yet spent, so you’ll want a good night’s sleep. I suggest you get to it.”
Confused, he nodded. As Mirian retrieved her notebook, he reflected that it was curious he’d won the friendship of a creature not of his own species far more easily than he’d gained that of their expedition leader.