“Which roamer?”
“Gannet. Why? What’s going on?”
Grendel swept in and landed effortlessly at Gabrial’s side. She scented the fire in the air and was relieved to see that the two weren’t tearing into each other. She called the wearlings, who came scrambling to her.
“I’m going to leave now,” Goodle said, though it was more a hopeful request than a statement. He nodded at Grendel and backed away warily.
Gabrial let him fly.
“What’s happening?” asked Grendel. “What was Goodle doing here?”
Gabrial retracted his claws. “He was a decoy, to keep Ren calm before they took him. Grynt was clever. He didn’t use the Veng to seize Ren from the cave, though they must be involved if Grynt’s holding Ren somewhere. They sent a roamer called Gannet with a false message. Do you know him?”
She shook her head.
Gabrial muscled his shoulders. “Look after these two. I have to go.”
“Where?”
“To hunt down Gannet and find Ren, of course.”
“Gabrial, no.” She put herself in front of him.
“Tada,” pined Gayl, wrapping her tail around one of his legs, a favorite trick to gain his attention.
“You can’t leave,” said Grendel, using her isoscele to stroke Gayl gently. “For one thing, you don’t know where to look. And if you start asking questions or flaming innocent roamers, there’s going to be trouble. Serious trouble. The kind we could do without before the Naming.”
“But—?”
“You’re right: Grynt was clever. If he’d done this any other way, the hills would be running green with blood.” She funneled two wisps of smoke from her nostrils. “We could have been renegades by sunset.”
“Grendel—”
“Listen to me,” she said, speaking over him again. “I feel for Ren just as much as you do. But our duty is to rear these two and see them Named. We are dragon, Gabrial, before all else. Don’t ever forget that.”
As if to make Gabrial’s tension worse, just then none other than Veng Commander Gallen landed outside the cave.
Gabrial’s stigs, which were still half upright, immediately flicked into their full position. His claws zinged out of their protective sockets.
“Gabrial?” Grendel hissed in alarm. She ushered both wearlings into the shadows.
But Gabrial was pushing forward already. “You,” he snarled. “How do you dare to show yourself here when—?”
“Freeze your fire,” Gallen snorted tiredly, making no attempt to defend himself or give off any sign of impending conflict. “I haven’t come to make further orphans of your wearlings. Trust me, it would be a short battle if I had.” He flicked out the rows of sharpened spikes common only to a Veng tail.
Gabrial allowed himself a glance at them. Gallen had been badly injured in the fighting and had almost lost his isoscele. But that hardened triangular scale, which the Veng kept honed with their blistering fire, had repaired itself remarkably quickly. Gallen twisted it to make the point.
“I am the bearer of good news,” he said. “How do you fare in this poky little hole?”
“Not well,” Grendel said truthfully. The cave was small for five of them. Gabrial usually slept outside, with Ren curled up to him on the coldest nights.
“Then you’ll be pleased to know that your thoughtful Prime has asked me to assign a new home to you.”
“Where?” said Gabrial, deeply suspicious of Gallen’s motives. Nothing came from the Veng without a price.
“A natural opening on the slopes of Mount Vargos. It was offered first to Elder Gossana, but she prefers the sun on her wings in the evening; this eyrie faces the wrong way for that.”
“Eyrie?” asked Grendel. A large cave, then. Her eye ridges lifted.
“No,” said Gabrial right away.
“No? What do you mean ‘no’?” argued Grendel.
“There’s only one vacant eyrie on Vargos and we’re not going there. Gossana didn’t refuse it because of the sun. He’s talking about Givnay’s settle.”
“Oh,” said Grendel. Now she appreciated Gabrial’s hesitation. Givnay was a disgraced Elder who had died in the conflict with the goyles. The unnerving nature of his death, coupled with his treacherous actions while alive, had left an air of superstition hanging over the colony. His cave had been avoided ever since.
“Hear me out,” said Gallen, casually drumming his claws on a rock. “I’m sure Gabrial remembers his mentor, per Grogan.”
“Of course I do,” said Gabrial. “What’s your point?” Per Grogan was another casualty of the battles. He had taught Gabrial much about the history of dragons and stood beside him when he’d fought to be a father to the wearlings.
“We have his heart.”
“What?” said Grendel, tilting her head. She wondered if she’d heard the Veng commander correctly.
“You sound surprised,” he said, as if she shouldn’t be. “You witnessed Grogan’s end. You know what happens when a dragon dies the way he did. His primary heart turned to stone.”
“But it happened at the mines,” she murmured, reliving that awful moment when she’d seen per Grogan destroyed in Veng flames. “There was a heavy rockfall. Surely the heart was buried?”
“It was recovered on Givnay’s orders. It was in his keeping before he died.”
Gabrial’s head came up. “You mean it’s in the cave? Grogan’s heart is in that eyrie?”
“It is,” said Gallen, casually examining his secondary claws. “And Prime Grynt wants it guarded. What better candidate could there be than you? You won’t be assigned any roaming duties until the wearlings are independent, and given your natural affinity for Grogan—”
“No,” said Grendel, shuffling back a little. “You can’t expect us to put wearlings close to something like that.”
To her surprise, Gabrial thought otherwise. “We’ll do it,” he said quietly.
“What? Gabrial, no.”
“This is Grogan,” he said. “He was my father’s friend and ally. He’s almost kin to me, Grendel.”
“Then it’s settled,” said Gallen, before Grendel could interject again. “I’m sure you’ll find the eyrie very comfortable. Now, if you’d like to pick up the wearlings and follow me, I’ll escort you there myself …”
“All the slopes you can see,” said Garret, “from that pale gray crag to the point where the snow trails wind down into the valley floor, that’s where we found the fhosforent. A few areas were mapped to either side, but the main body of the ore is concentrated here.”
De:allus Garodor breathed in through his nostrils, rocking with the wind as it curled in blustery arcs around him. He was sitting, wings folded, alongside the mapping dragon, on a peak directly opposite the mining area. He had asked to see the general layout of the mine, but even to his extraordinary eyes there was nothing remarkable about these hills. A run of dull bluffs that barely qualified as mountains. Rocky expanses like this existed all over the southern pole of Ki:mera. “How do you think the first Wearle found it?”
“Under moonlight you can sometimes see a seam twinkling, but I think it more likely they chanced on it. The lower slopes are strewn with a lot of loose chippings. They would have been looking for an easy supply of grit.”
“And the quarry area?”
“Just over that peak.” Garret nodded at a blunted spike. “It’s not a natural pit. We flamed out what we thought was a good location according to the i:mages I mapped. I can take you to it, but I warn you, there is a strange auma about it. A dragon called Grogan died there. Grogan was sent mad by the fhosforent. Some of the roamers believe his spirit haunts the place because his heart … well, I’m sure you know about the heart. Most dragons were reluctant to go near the quarry even before the Prime closed the mine. I haven’t been there since. Shall we go?”
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Garodor said, glancing into the sky where a crow was circling. “But I do need a sample of the ore. Can you show me a
likely seam?”
“Yes, of course.” Garret folded down his wings. “I mapped all the seams from this side of the range into a single i:mage. You may find it helpful to study it.”
As Garret closed his eyes to concentrate his thoughts, a floating i:mage began to form in the space between himself and De:allus Garodor. It showed the profile of the mountains in single green lines, with every silhouetted slant drawn exactly to scale. Between the lines were pale pink patches, all of them annotated in dragon numerals.
Garodor nodded in admiration. Garret was good at his job. “The pink represents the fhosforent caches?”
“Yes. As you can see, most are quite small. We took samples of ore from every part of this range, but concentrated our efforts on seams seven and fifteen.”
“Is it possible to see how deep they go?”
“Certainly.” Garret rotated the i:mage slightly, bringing an extra dimension to it. He rocked it back and forth so that Garodor could get a general impression of how much body there was to each seam.
“They’re quite shallow,” he said. “That surprises me.”
“Initially, the pick of the seams ran deeper,” said Garret, lifting one foot to stretch his claws. “The ore seemed almost to pool below the surface, as if hiding itself from the glare of the sun. It took time to dig those out, and we realized in doing so how fragile the fhosforent is—it degenerates quickly, almost as soon as it’s exposed to air. So we concentrated latterly on shallower seams that were easier to find and quicker to work. Your predecessor, De:allus Graymere, used to say the ore was alive, it bedded so strangely into the rock. A jest, of course. He was a fine dragon with a brilliant mind. One of the cleverest I ever met. With due respect to you, his death was such a blow to the Wearle.”
“I can i:magine,” said Garodor. He dipped his eyes for a moment, as if to catch sight of some passing thought. A quiet ark! brought him slowly out of his reverie. The circling crow had been joined by another. “What else did Graymere say about the seams?”
“That they looked like some kind of spill.”
“Spill?” Garodor glanced at the i:mage again. It was fading as Garret’s concentration weakened.
“I know. It sounds ludicrous,” the mapper sighed. “But I understand why he would describe it so. The seams are at their richest near the tops of the mountains. They trail down and peter out into random spots as you drop. In Graymere’s own words, it looks like the fhosforent was splashed on the mountainsides from above and trickled down them. And there’s another interesting anomaly: the terrain you see here, the basic composition of the rock bed, is no different from many other regions we’ve mapped, yet this is the only place we’ve found the fhosforent. Strange.”
Strange indeed, thought Garodor. “All right, take me to it.”
“This way,” said Garret. He banked left as he launched, soaring across the valley in a minimum of wingbeats.
They landed together on a small area of scree about a third of the way up from the valley floor. There was a curious air of abandonment about the place. Snow had gathered in pockets between the stones and all the tufts of vegetation looked twisted and unnatural, as though they had been poisoned or neglected of nutrients. Garodor could see lengthy furrows in the underlying bedrock where claws had earnestly gouged through the surface. He looked at his own near-perfect talons and wondered how much physical damage the fhosforent had caused before it got into any dragon’s nervous system.
“My apologies for the looseness of the ground,” said Garret, sending chippings shooting down the slope as he scrambled for a better hold. “Be careful, De:allus. Some of the stones are sharp. Healer Grymric spent much of his time mending the soles of feet as well as aiding the repair of claws. I’ve brought you here because the fhosforent lies nearer the surface in places that have suffered the most thermal stress. Where water runs through joints in the rock it freezes and expands, creating fresh cracks that are easier to work. Try scraping there.” He nodded at a likely-looking rut.
Garodor stepped sideways until his right foot was over the crack. He extended a talon and carefully dug into the grit at the base of the hole. Before long, something pink glinted back. He immediately withdrew his foot, instinctively closing the claws into a fist.
“You’ve found some?”
“A few particles, yes.”
Garodor went in again, slowly exposing a larger scratch, a line wide enough to scan with his yellow eyes.
Garret looked on in admiration. De:allus dragons possessed the ability to analyze organic substances just by looking at or tasting them. The most powerful of their class were even rumored to be able to evaluate the fine structure of compounds by setting their optical triggers to burn. Garret had watched De:allus Graymere attempt it soon after fhosforent had been discovered. He remembered that Graymere had been puzzled by the crystals, and how curious (and mildly suspicious) the young De:allus had been about the ore’s capacity to increase the strength of a dragon’s flame.
Garodor, at this point, seemed no wiser. He pulled away, tightening his eye ridges until they creaked. He then hooked his smallest talon under the fhosforent and scraped a small amount of it out of the erth. He extended his tongue and tasted it. At the same time, Garret looked up, distracted by the circling crows. There were four now, flying dangerously close, as if they wanted to share in the discovery.
Without warning, Garodor flashed his tail upward and dug his isoscele into one of the birds, skewering it straight through the chest. The other three screeched and flapped away in terror. Even Garret jumped. It was rare to see a De:allus dragon carry out such an act of violence. Garodor brought his tail down slowly, his prey still on the end of it. The crow twitched and fell limp, its eyes open, its wings flapping loose.
“You’re hungry?” asked Garret.
Garodor turned the bird as if he was considering which way to best put it into his mouth. “No. It was an experiment of sorts. What do you know about the properties of fhosforent?”
Garret lifted his wings at the shoulder. He winced as Garodor thumped the crow’s body against a rock to make the bird bleed. “That it increases the strength and durability of our flame—and if taken in excess, turns us into goyles.” Is that about to happen to Garodor? he wondered. The De:allus had been acting a little strangely since he’d sampled the pink.
“I think it’s more than that,” said Garodor. He lifted the crow again, squeezing it into a curl of his tail. Blood spouted freely from its wound. “In the report I received from Prime Grynt, the Hom boy, Ren, claimed he’d been told by Elder Givnay that the fhosforent could be used to enhance all of a dragon’s natural skills—that would include the ability to strike at speed. I’m too old and too slow to spear anything as agile as a crow. The fhosforent did that.”
“And this?” said Garret, stretching his neck to get a better look as Garodor dripped the crow’s blood into the seam. The pink ore fizzed and a small white wisp rose out of the rocks.
“Another experiment. I’ve analyzed the seam as best I can. I’ve reached a conclusion about it, but the results are stretching the boundaries of my intelligence.”
The white wisp suddenly combusted into flame. “What happened?” said Garodor. “What have you discovered?”
“That fhosforent is not a naturally occurring compound. It’s a crystalline form of a substance that runs through the veins of us all. For some reason I don’t fully comprehend, it reacts powerfully when it engages the same substance from another host.”
“So it’s blood?” said Garret.
“Dried blood,” the De:allus corrected him, “desiccated for centuries.”
“In this amount? Where from?”
“I don’t know,” said Garodor. “But you will say nothing of what you’ve seen today, Garret. Do you understand?”
Garret nodded. “You can trust me, De:allus.”
Garodor bent down and blew out the flame. “I know,” he said. “Now, let’s get out of here.”
The eyrie was comfor
table. Grendel couldn’t deny that. The main cavern, despite the cluster of ice spikes hanging from its roof, was four times the size of their previous cave and had a scopey chamber off to one side. The chamber was dark and ran with moisture. A sheen of mosses coated its walls. Bats trilled and shuffled in its niches. Not ideal conditions for growing dragons, but in its favor, the chamber was out of the wind and offered better shelter than the wearlings had been used to. Looking farther around, Grendel was also pleased to see a number of natural steps and ledges, perfect for the wearlings to fly between and perch upon. What pleased her less was a fleeting thought about Ren and where he would be sleeping tonight. She told herself she must put such worries behind her. Ren was in the custody of the Elders. From now on this would be … a normal dragon family. It was going to be difficult explaining it to Gariffred, but for the moment, at least, the drake was happy. Grendel looked up to see him squabbling with his sister over who should have the highest ledge, even though neither had the wingpower to reach it. She quashed the tiff with a motherly hrrr! then led them away to explore an assortment of warrens and tunnels that wormed back into the body of the mountain, leaving Gabrial to speak alone with the Veng commander, Gallen.
“What exactly am I supposed to do with it, Gallen?”
Grogan’s heart was resting on a stone pillar, nearer the front of the cave than Gabrial would have liked, within plain sight of anything that flew by. It was larger than he’d expected, almost the size of his foot when closed. The only scent coming off it was the flat spoor of stone. No hint of the devastating burning that had destroyed Grogan and caused the heart to harden. It made Gabrial uneasy just to look at the thing, for those muscular convolutions, now set rigid, had once flexed and pumped and kept alive one of the most dependable dragons he’d ever known. A mentor, as Gallen had put it. A true friend to Gabrial, and his father before him.
“You guard it—with your life, if necessary,” Gallen said.
“Guard it from what?”
“From anything that tries to steal it, of course.”