Whether it was luck or memory that brought them to the lake Jakkin couldn’t say, but within minutes they had found the pool with its green-white center. Akki set the hatchling down and stretched her arms.
“All right, Master Jakkin, now what?”
“We dive in.” He pointed.
“You’re the only one who can swim.”
“I can pull you through and you can hold the hatchling. And Auricle can swim. I’ve seen her. And . . .”
Akki shook her head. “Gravid dragons have extra buoyancy.”
“What’s that?”
“It means she’s going to float to the top.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” Jakkin asked.
“Because you never gave me time before,” Akki said. Then she looked down. “Besides, I just thought of it.”
“Are you sure about the buoyancy?” Jakkin asked.
“Pretty sure,” Akki said.
He sighed. “Well, I could run back and get those chains.”
“What for?”
“Added weight.”
“Not enough.”
“Well, we have to try something.” He scuffed his foot on the stones.
The dragon suddenly sent a gray-and-tan rainbow and there was that same plaintive tone: “Man? Not-man?”
That determined Jakkin. He sent her a command to lower her head, put his hands on each side of her face, below the earflaps, and stared deeply into her eyes. Speaking and sending at the same time, he said, “Auricle, thee must dive in the water and go under, fighting the buoyancy to get down to the light. Else the men will take you. They will take you and . . .” He summoned all his strength and showered her with the bloodiest sending he could manage. As he did so he felt Akki’s hand on his back, lending her strength to his.
Startled, the dragon pulled back, nearly squashing the hatchling, who piped her distress. The piping stopped the dragon in her tracks. She turned and nuzzled the little one.
Akki pushed past Jakkin and put her hand on Auricle’s broad flank. “They will kill this hatchling and those females in thy eggs as well.” Her sending was even redder than the one Jakkin had managed, and it was filled with images of mothering and babies’ blood and bonds.
Auricle lifted her head and a strange red light flickered in the dark shrouds of her eyes. It was the first time they had seen such a reaction from any of the cave dragons.
“Thou fighter,” Jakkin sent strongly. “Thou beauty”
Akki picked up the hatchling and they walked to the edge of the lake.
24
AS THEY SUMMONED the courage to dive, they heard the sound of footsteps in a nearby tunnel.
“Quick!” Jakkin’s voice was suddenly hoarse. He plunged the torch into the water and, as it sizzled out, they were left in the half-shadows of the reflecting lake.
Akki waded in first, the hatchling clutched to her breast. Jakkin gave Auricle a shove with his shoulder against her flank, and she followed Akki into the shallows reluctantly. Jakkin entered the lake last, careful not to let his head get wet.
He whispered to Akki, “Comfort the little one but hold on tight. Once we go under she won’t be getting any sendings from you and might panic. Take a deep breath when I tell you to and hold your nose.”
Akki shifted the hatchling to her right arm and put her left hand up to her face in preparation.
“Good! Once we’re under I’ll grab the back of your shirt and tow you along. You won’t have to do anything but hold on to the hatchling—and don’t breathe.”
“I trust you,” she whispered back.
He turned to the dragon. “Open thine eyes underwater and swim toward the light. I cannot command thee under the water. Nor can any man.”
She answered him with a flash of color.
“Freedom awaits thee outside, my beauty. There are no blood rites there. Thee shall birth thy hatchlings and live to see them fly.”
“?????”
“Jakkin,” Akki hissed. “She doesn’t know what you mean. Cave females never get to fly.”
“Well, they’ve seen the wild males flying, haven’t they?” He sent Auricle a picture of a male dragon in the sky circling a female below. “That is flying, my beauty.”
“!!!!!”
The running footsteps got nearer, honing in on the sendings, and the first tentative feelers from the searchers drifted into their minds.
“Take a deep breath, Akki. Now!” Jakkin said. “Dive!”
The dragon went first, her tail whacking the water with a sound as loud as a thunderbolt, drenching them in the process. Akki was next, taking a noisy breath and ducking under. Jakkin followed immediately, grabbing a handful of her shirt back. With a powerful kick, he began to tow her down toward the inviting green-and-gold light.
As he swam Jakkin felt as if he were moving slowly through a nightmare. Each stroke seemed to take forever. Glancing back, all he could see of Akki was a dark, amorphous figure. He hoped she was still holding the hatchling because he couldn’t tell. Her dead weight slowed his progress. By the time they’d come to the light-colored water, he was practically out of breath and he knew there was still a long passage under rock before he could start toward the surface again.
Ahead of him the green-gold light sud denly went dark and he felt the cold water chill his bones. For a second he considered surrendering himself to the cold. All he needed was one quick intake of breath and the aching in his chest and lungs would be gone forever. Then he thought about Sssasha and Sssargon and Heart’s Blood. They flashed across his thoughts like pictures on a screen. At that very moment the light returned full force and he saw the outline of a tail moving ahead of him. Auricle’s enormous body had been blocking the light. He’d known it subconsciously and that was why he’d thought about the other dragons. Relieved, he kicked his feet extra hard and surged forward, ignoring the fact that he’d no breath left, that he couldn’t feel his towing arm, that his ears were popping. He kept swimming because it was the only thing he could do, for Akki and the hatchling and himself.
And then he was past the rocky overhang and into the pulsing light, bursting up into the air, sobbing and gasping at the same time. Already on the rock ledge, Auricle was shaking herself all over, spraying the cave with water and rainbows.
Jakkin swam toward the ledge, found a footing in the shallower water, and hauled Akki behind him. Her eyes were still squeezed shut, her left hand cupped over her nose. He grabbed the hand and pulled it away, and for a moment she fought him.
“It’s all right, Akki,” he cried, his voice ragged. “We’ve made it. We’re here.”
She opened her eyes slowly, all the while taking in great gulps of air. Her eyelids fluttered and her pupils seemed filmed over and unfocused. The hatchling began to squirm in her arm. They both moved with a slow deliberation, as if they were still underwater.
“Jakkin,” she whispered. Then louder: “Jakkin?” Opening her right arm as if it hurt to do so, she dropped the hatchling into the water. It paddled in awkward circles until Auricle stuck her long neck out and nosed the dragonling to the ledge. It scrambled up, leaving patches of eggskin on the rocks.
Jakkin and Akki lay side by side in the shallows for a minute, neither one with enough energy to move or speak further. Their breathing was rapid and Jakkin could feel the pounding of his heart. After a while he tried flexing his hand, the one that had held on to Akki’s shirt. His fingers were cramped and his thumb ached.
“You’re no lightweight,” he said at last. “Even in the water.”
Stretching her right arm, Akki smiled but kept her eyes closed. “Neither was the hatchling. I don’t think my arm will ever be the same.”
Behind them, on the ledge, the hatchling piped for attention until Auricle stopped its noise with a lick of her tongue, simultaneously removing another small patch of eggskin.
“How do we get out of here?” Akki asked, sitting up at last. “There’s only one tunnel and it’s full of water.”
“W
e float through,” Jakkin said. Noticing Akki’s dismayed face, he added, “We don’t have to go under again. The river does all the work. Trust me. We just lie on our backs and it takes us through. I promise I’ll hold on to you.”
Akki nodded, but they had to wait a few minutes more, until their minds were free of the static and Jakkin could give Auricle her instructions. Then the dragon waddled into the water, where Jakkin placed the hatchling on her broad back, close up to the neck.
“Stay there,” he warned the hatchling with a stem sending, and touched it on the nose. “There thee will be safe, little one.”
The hatchling piped an answer, but whether it understood, Jakkin wasn’t sure. It looked as if it did, cocking its head to one side, a patch of eggskin peeling from its nose.
“The river is slow,” he sent to Auricle. “There is nothing to fear.” He looked again at the hatchling and wondered if it was afraid. Communication with it would be uncertain for days, even weeks. After all, it was only a baby.
“It’s a she, remember?” Akki’s voice had recovered much of its lighthearted quality.
“You stay out of my mind!” Jakkin said gruffly. “Unless I invite you in. That’s one thing the cave people have right.”
“The only thing,” Akki added.
“Concentrate on floating,” Jakkin said. “The rest is easy.”
The current had already caught the dragon and was moving her along in a slow, majestic fashion. Jakkin was reminded of the way Sssasha had floated in the sky. He took Akki’s hand and they pushed off into the middle of the lake. Soon they, too, were caught by the river’s pull.
“The hard part is over,” he called. “Relax and enjoy this.”
Akki, her body stiff, shouted back, “Why do I wish you hadn’t said that?”
“Everything’s going to be just fine,” Jakkin shouted. “Trust me!”
They floated through the round tunnel opening to the outside, where the sun was just rising on a new Austarian day.
25
AS THEY FLOATED they watched the sky, blue and unmarred by clouds. First one black dot, then a second, then three more suddenly peppered the horizon, rising and coming together in a triangular formation that moved closer and closer.
“Look!” Jakkin shouted, waving his free hand in the air. A wave swamped them, causing him to lose his grip on Akki’s hand. They both went under, and Jakkin swam desperately after her, taking nearly a dozen strokes before he caught up with her again.
Grabbing a handful of her shirt, he headed them both toward the riverbank. Once his feet touched bottom he stood up, surrendering himself to a coughing fit. Akki found her footing at the same time and began pounding him on the back. Then they scrambled up the grassy slope and stared at the sky.
The five dots had become much larger, resolving themselves into dragon shapes. Jakkin knew they had to be Heart’s Blood’s hatchlings, but he couldn’t reach their minds because his now crackled with static from his recent ducking in the water. He waved frantically instead.
But the dragons weren’t watching him. They were hovering over a place farther downriver. It was Akki who understood first.
“Auricle!” she cried. “It’s Auricle they’re watching. She’s still in the water.”
Jakkin shaded his eyes, following the path of the twisting river until he could just make out Auricle’s lumpish form. Knowing he couldn’t reach her with a sending until the static cleared, he shouted, “Get out! Auricle—get out now!” But his voice couldn’t compete with the sound of the water.
Akki grabbed his arm. “What’s that sound, Jakkin?”
“You mean the crackle? The static? Or the river?”
“No, there’s another sound. A kind of growling.”
“I don’t know. I heard it before. Why?”
They both strained to listen for a moment, and then Akki said softly, “Waterfall!”
Without another word they began to race along the grassy border, screaming as they went, even though they knew it was futile. Auricle couldn’t hear them. At last they gave up screaming because the more they yelled, the less breath they had for running.
For a while they seemed to be gaining on the waterborne dragon, for her progress was slowed by the many broad river bends. Several times she was spun around completely, bouncing off dangerous-looking rocks. They could see the hatchling balanced on her back. And once she wallowed for a moment in a patch of reeds close to the far shore, giving them time to close the gap. But then the current caught her again and carried her farther downstream. As she approached the place where the river and land dropped away precipitously into the waterfall, things seemed to speed up and she was buffeted from side to side by the ever-increasing white waves, further endangering the hatchling clinging to her back.
Just then Jakkin’s mind cleared and he stopped in order to read the frantic colors of Sssargon’s sending. Akki began to slow down as well, and he waved her past.
“Sssargon worries. Sssargon calls. Sssargon hears nothing.”
More sensibly, Sssasha broadcast advice to the drifting dragon: “Paddle thy wings. Use thy feet. Come to the shore.”
But it was soon apparent to all of them that Auricle was too frightened to do anything but let the current carry her on. Her mind was filled with the same dull terror that Jakkin had first heard in the caves. He guessed the fighter’s light in her eyes would be gone.
He sent instructions to the larger hatchlings. “Go in the water with her. Push her to the shore. Triplets—be my eyes and ears. Stay above. Let me see all.”
Without waiting for an answer he began to run again, concentrating on the precarious footing, for the grass was slippery near the river.
Sssargon launched himself into the water, further drenching Auricle. One of his wings buffeted her and she spun around helplessly. Then Sssasha dropped into the river on Auricle’s other side. Keeping her between them, they tried to ease her to the shore, but by now the water was churning angrily and a wild froth filled the air. All three were perilously close to the edge of the falls.
Standing on the bank, Akki urged them out with frantic shouts and sendings, but Sssargon’s running commentaries had ceased and so had Sssasha’s calm murmurings. Either they were all too intent on staying afloat or the water had once again performed its own strange silencing.
Jakkin caught up with Akki, shouting to her above the noise of the river, “It’s no good trying to send, Akki. They must have each gone under at least once. The water’s cut off any sendings. I don’t understand it. The water in the oasis where I trained Heart’s Blood never did this.”
“Minerals, Jakkin. The same minerals that the cavefolk mined. That has to be it. It has to be. It has—”
He grabbed her arm, wanting to shake her into silence, and at the touch was drawn into the maelstrom of her mind. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to blanket them both with a calming blue. Akki finally stopped mind-babbling.
In the water the three dragons were now fighting the tossing current individually, spinning away from one another, lost in separate whirlpools.
“Why don’t Sssasha and Sssargon get out?” Jakkin cried.
“Because, you idiot, you told them to save her. And they’ll do whatever you ask. You’re both father and mother to them. They’ll die rather than disappoint . . .” She closed her mouth but her mind finished off the thought and Jakkin felt both hot and cold at its touch.
And then the river took the three dragons and tipped them over the edge of the world.
Rushing to the cliff side, Jakkin cast a sending up. “Tri-sss, be my eyes.”
Immediately a picture formed in his mind: three large figures tumbling down the falls. Sssargon, the heaviest, was first. For a moment he stopped, caught on a rocky outcropping. Then he pushed straight out from the water, plummeting through the air, his wet wings too heavy to carry him. As the wind dried his scaly feathers he unfurled his wings with a loud crack. Pumping them once, he flew straight back toward the falls.
br /> “No!” Jakkin shouted.
Deaf to both sound and sending, Sssargon made one or two feints at the falls and then found Sssasha. He plucked her out of the vertical water and dropped her free.
Overweighed by the water she, too, fell straight down. Then suddenly she flipped, shot her wings out, and back-winged away from the plunging water.
“What about Auricle?” shouted Akki.
As if sensing the question, Sssargon and Sssasha both turned back to the falls. Jakkin could see through Tri-sss’s eyes that Auricle was no longer falling but clinging to a rocky outjut, though water was steadily pounding around her. There was no sign of the hatchling.
As if on a signal, Sssargon and Sssasha dashed into the falls at the same moment, emerging again with the drenched Auricle in their claws. Once free of the water, they dropped her. She fell like a stone, tumbling end over end in the glistening air.
“She doesn’t know how to fly,” screamed Akki. “She’s . . .”
Even though they couldn’t hear her, Sssasha and Sssargon had come to the same conclusion. Sssargon swept his wings back hard against his sides and followed Auricle in a long, perilous stoop, diving headfirst toward the ground. Passing Auricle, he flipped over, snapped his wings open once he was below her, and readied himself to cushion her fall.
“If she hits him . . .” Akki began.
“She’ll kill them both,” Jakkin said, his voice flat. He closed his eyes, but Tri-sss’s unrelenting sendings denied him any relief.
Just fifty feet from the ground, as if the air itself had ripped them open, Auricle’s wings spread, fluttered, and caught an updraft that sent her into an off-balance soar.
Surprised, Sssargon almost fell to the ground anyway. At the last moment he turned and pumped his wings, scraping one on a large rock. Then he sailed up to Auricle’s right. Sssasha banked and flew down to her left, sending a bemused thought into Jakkin’s mind:
“No splat!”