He heard a panting noise in the third and largest stall. Jakkin peered in. Two broadshouldered women were kneeling over a large brown dragon. The dragon was lying on her side and breathing noisily, tongue lapping the side of her mouth and her earflaps trembling.
“The Great Mother fails.” Makk looked over Jakkin’s shoulder; his brief judgment brutally apt.
The women looked up simultaneously. Although as thickly built as Makk, their faces as blunt and unattractive, they had more emotion in their expressions. The older one pushed her lank dark hair away from her eyes; the younger one sighed. One of them sent a tired gray thought: “Yes. She fails.”
Jakkin went into the stall and moved around the women. He knelt by the dragon’s head and touched one earflap. The skin vibrated against his hand in a fast, erratic manner. Not a good sign. He pried open one of the dragon’s eyes with his fingers, being extremely careful not to tear the inner membrane. A dulled eye stared back at him but did not respond to the torchlight. Another bad sign. He noticed the tongue. A healthy dragon’s tongue was rough and ridged. This one was smooth and velvety, and that meant fever for sure. A very high fever.
He stood, stepped over the dragon’s neck, and walked beside the spine toward the tail.
Gesturing downward, he sent an order to the women: “Hold the tail away from the Great Mother’s body.”
The younger woman stood and came over to the tail. She picked it up, exposing the birth canal.
Jakkin ducked under and examined the channel. It was clogged with pulpy masses, angry swellings the color of a bruise. When he touched one with a tentative finger, the dragon moaned out loud, a sound so foreign in the cave, it echoed eerily. The woman dropped the tail.
Jakkin stood and turned to Makk. He knew he might not get another opportunity and so he formed his sending with great care. “My woman. The one you found. She is a healer. She makes sick ones well. If we are together, she and I, we can save this Great Mother.” He made the sending as positive as he could, though under his breath he murmured, “I hope.”
Makk was concentrating too hard on his sending to notice.
When Makk gave no answer Jakkin sent again; this time his image was unambiguous and linear. He pictured Akki as tall and clean, bright-eyed, narrow-shouldered, and beautiful. Very beautiful.
“No!” Makk sent suddenly, his sending knifing across Jakkin’s. “This one”—and his picture was of a girl thin, malformed, ugly— “this one can bear. Only women past bearing serve Great Mothers.”
Jakkin thought a minute. He would have to lie. He wondered whether these people understood lying. It must be very hard to lie if all you had were the thoughts in your head. Lying was much easier with words. He drew in a deep breath and began, “My woman is a healer and in my Place healers do not bear children.”
Makk’s eyes grew wider and he gave what might be mistaken for a smile. “Good!”
“When?” Jakkin’s sending was as dipped as Makk’s, a single sharp stab of light.
“Soon”.
“If it is not soon,” Jakkin sent, kneeling again by the dragon and slipping his hand under her tail, “this Great Mother will die and her eggs will crack open inside her.” He touched one of the pulpy masses again, put his hand around it, and quite deliberately squeezed.
The dragon screamed.
Makk and the two women placed their hands over their ears and the younger woman fell to her knees. But Jakkin, even though he hated bringing pain to the beast, nonetheless reveled in the sound.
15
BY THE TIME the echo of the scream had faded, Jakkin was once again at the dragon’s head, checking her eyes and tongue. There was no change. He put his head down by the dragon’s mouth and breathed deeply. The smell was slightly sour, not unusual for a dragon, but also strangely bland. In the nursery such a smell usually meant a worm needed extra rations of burnwort, but he’d no idea what they fed dragons here.
At the head of the stall was an iron hook on which several handfuls of dry grasses hung. Jakkin walked over and tore out some. Crumbling it between his fingers, he spread it along his palm. He could identify sedgeseeds and skkagg grass, but there were other things new to him, including a fleshy wine-colored fungus. In the nursery they’d never feed a dragon that. What was it Likkarn used to say? Mushrooms red, dragon dead. He held out his hand and pointed to it. “This?” he sent bluntly.
The older woman came over to him and stared at his hand. She didn’t meet his eyes, and her sending was so tentative, he couldn’t make out any name for the fungus. But it was obviously no surprise to her.
Still, he asked again because of Likkarn’s warning and because food was always the first thing examined when a dragon fell sick. It was just too easy to poison one of them, large as they were, especially a fighting dragon at one of the major pits. He held out his hand and this time sent directly to the woman before him, “This?”
The woman’s answer was clearer this time, though she still wouldn’t look up at him. “That makes bearing easy. Women eat too.”
Jakkin nodded and let the stuff drift to the floor. Both women were quick to broom it away, which made Jakkin smile. No wonder these stalls were so clean. No fewmets, no extra straw, no pieces of half-chewed meals. The women were quicker at their tasks than any stallboy he’d ever known, including himself. He turned back to the dragon. Her tail was twitching ever so slightly.
“Lift that tail again!”
This time both women hauled the tail up and to the side.
Jakkin knelt down. A grayish fluid was leaking from the birth channel. He put his hand in and discovered that the swelling he’d squeezed had burst. The smell of it was overpowering.
Hearing a noise behind him, he turned around. Akki was standing at the entrance to the stall.
“Akk—” he started to say aloud, and her hand went immediately up as if to cover his mouth.
“Shhh,” came her sending, a bright green cloud covering the mouth of a golden sun. It was the loveliest color he’d seen in ages. “Later.” She smiled.
***
IT WAS ONLY after Akki knelt to examine the dragon that Jakkin realized she’d lost weight and her hair was dirty and tangled. There was a bruise under her right eye and a scratch along her right arm. He wanted both to hold her and to shout at her and shake her. But when she turned around at his bubbling sending, he suddenly remembered he’d told Makk she was a healer and not to be thought of as a woman-who-bears. He had to treat her with the cold deference due such a one as long as Makk’s people could overhear their sendings.
“I’m glad you have come, My Healer. I have told Makk and his men of your many skills.”
Akki understood at once and nodded at him, gesturing that he kneel by her side.
He kept a careful distance between them, sketching in what he knew of the dragon’s condition. It was hard to do in a sending. Akki was right about words. But as he formed the pictures Akki followed along, performing the same tests he’d just done. The dragons earflaps still vibrated erratically, and the eyes remained fixed. But the tail had a tiny touch of resilience now.
When she finished her palpation of the birth channel, Akki turned and looked directly at him. “You’re right. The channel is clogged and we’11 have to lance those boils.” She wrinkled her nose. “But without the proper tools . . . I can’t guarantee a worse infection won’t set in.
The women didn’t stir as her complex sending filled their minds. If they understood it, they gave no sign. Makk shuffled selfconsciously. But Jakkin just grinned. Her sending had been filled with wonderful asides, bright-colored pictures that told him more in a single sending then all the dull patterns the mountain clan had offered the whole time he’d been there. But her sending had hidden messages as well: oblique warnings of other dangers, plus a joyous rainbow under which a green tree was twined with a bright blue vine. He knew Makk would never guess what those private images meant. Akki was saying she loved him.
Akki stood, brushed her hair back over
her ears, and looked straight at Makk. He seemed uneasy with her direct gaze, shifting his eyes right and left.
“Bring me water,” Akki said. “Boil it. Bring me knives but first put them in the fire. Bring me cloth. It must be clean.” Then, as an afterthought, really more a mental sigh, she added, “What I’d give for my pack. It had my medkit in it.” The picture of the kit lying on the cave floor was skillfully rendered.
Makk’s eyes seemed to shutter for a moment, and then, as if making up his mind, nodded to a man standing in the doorway and broke into rapid hand signs. The man nodded back and took off down a tunnel to the right of the stalls.
Jakkin watched him go, his curiosity uncurtained. He was still staring after the man when he felt a hand on his arm. Turning, he saw it was Akki. She pulled him close, whispering so quietly he had to strain to hear it, “I think they know where the pack is, Jakkin. It’s got your knife in it, the one Golden gave to you.”
He didn’t dare answer her, not even with a sending.
***
THE MAN RETURNED in minutes with the unopened pack. He handed it carefully to Akki, as if he were afraid of her, making sure their hands did not touch. She took it coldly, then knelt again by the dragon’s tail.
At the same time the two women came back with an iron pot filled with steaming water, the younger woman also carrying two fairly crude knives and strips of yellow weaving.
Rooting around in her pack, Akki found the silver knife. She plunged it into the pot of water and held it there, as if ticking off seconds. Jakkin could feel her visualization of a clock and wondered if the others knew what it was. At the count of sixty she withdrew the knife and held it up to the torchlight, examining it.
“If you know any prayers. . .”
To Jakkin’s surprise, the women immediately began a sending that was a repetition of patterns, like a chant. It had an intensity beyond anything they’d sent before.
Akki gestured for him to kneel beside her and he scrambled to do her bidding.
“Now!” she sent.
He held the dragon’s tail away while she slid the knife into the birth channel and punctured the first of the bruise-colored boils.
Jakkin had never participated in an operation before, though he’d had some experience with minor doctoring in the nursery. One of the nursery stud dragons, Blood Sucker, had frequent mouth infections that always needed attention. And he’d watched countless wingtips sewn up after fights. But this was different and he marveled at how calm Akki remained.
He knew enough to soak the woven strips in the hot water. Then, holding the tail away with his left hand, he wrung out the strips with his right, using the cloth to soak up any infection. When he withdrew the rag and dropped it onto the floor, the waiting women whisked it away. Over and over they repeated their tasks until the work assumed its own rhythms, which coincided with the dragon’s labored breathing.
All of a sudden Akki withdrew her arm from the channel, sat back on her heels, and sighed out loud. She was soaked with sweat. The bruise under her eye seemed to reflect the yellow of the light and the infection. Jakkin guessed he looked as bad, but he smiled at her.
Wiping a filthy hand across her forehead, Akki stood and looked at Makk, focusing a sending on him. “The Great Mother will live. The women must keep cleaning her. In a day or two she should be healed. Then the eggs will drop.”
Makk nodded. “Good.”
“Damned right!” Akki said aloud.
Automatically Makk raised his hand, but Akki stared him down and slowly his hand lowered. It happened so fast, Jakkin hadn’t had time to stand, but as Makk’s hand went down Jakkin got to his feet. He touched Akki’s shoulder.
Akki sent, “We need to wash. We are covered with sickness. Take us to a place of water.”
Jakkin added, “Place of much water. Like a lake.”
Makk made a face and looked uneasy. Then he nodded curtly and signed to the two men in the doorway. Squaring his shoulders, he turned and left.
***
THE MEN LED them through a wide, unadorned tunnel whose turnings were sparingly lighted by widely spaced phosphorescent mosses. After only half a dozen bends they found themselves at the edge of a small lake.
For a long moment Akki hesitated, and Jakkin remembered that she couldn’t swim. He reached out for her hand and led her, fully clothed, into the cold dark water. When they were waist deep he let go and let himself sink down to the lake bottom, thankful for the touch of the clean water on his face and through his hair. When he surfaced Akki was standing where he’d left her, staring out into the darkness. He tried to reach her mind to assure her and was rewarded instead with a crackling sound. He realized that once again his mind had been closed by the water to any sendings.
Motioning with his hand, he tried to call her toward him but she didn’t move, only stared at him strangely. So he went over and led her into even deeper water, away from the two men who glowered at them from the rock ledge.
“I can’t hear any sendings now,” he whispered. “The water blocks it. You go under, too, Akki.”
She turned her back on the men and whispered back, “I wondered why you didn’t answer me.”
“Put your head under and you’ll see.”
Dipping her hands in the water, as if she were still washing, Akki hesitated. “I can’t,” she whispered.
“Can’t what?”
“Can’t put my head under.”
“Why not?”
“I’m too scared and . . . owwww!” Her hand went to her forehead.
“What is it?”
“The men!” She gasped. “They’ve just sent a double command to return. And, Jakkin, it hurts. I have to . . .” She stopped talking and a blank look crept into her eyes. She began to turn around.
Jakkin grabbed her by the waist and pulled her underwater. She struggled violently against him and her right hand smacked his chin. He let her go and she burst up into the air, spluttering and gasping.
“Jakkin, that wasn’t funny!” She stopped, put her hand over his mouth, and stared at him. “My head,” she whispered, “it’s crackling. And . . . and I can’t hear them anymore. I’m all alone in here!”
“It’ll last for only a little while,” he said, glancing quickly over his shoulder at the men and waving at them. They looked puzzled. He turned back, whispering frantically. “Listen, Akki, I don’t think they’ll come into the water unless they have to. Remember, they’ve got only the sendings, no words. They wouldn’t want to lose it. So tell me quickly what you know. I didn’t see anything but the Place of Men. It’s nothing but a dreary cave where they pick out ore and turn it into molten metal. But metal, Akki. Do you realize what that means?”
She nodded, lacing her fingers together.
“I didn’t even know much about the dragons or these caves until today. Or tonight. Or whatever worm-eaten time it is.”
Akki took a deep breath and her words came to him in a rush. “I don’t know much more. The Place of Women is filled with women and children, though there are only a few babies and a good number of them are sickly. They seem to spend a lot of time preparing food. And weaving. And making clothing.”
Jakkin thought a minute. “What about the food? Where does it come from?”
“Come from? I don’t . . . oh, I see what you mean, Jakkin. If they’re growing food—or gathering it—they have to have access to the outside.”
Jakkin nodded.
“But where?”
“And,” he added, “how do we get there, wherever there is?”
Puddling her hand in the water, Akki sighed. “Jakkin . . .” she said.
He waited.
“Something else. It’s been puzzling me a lot. Those babies. They cry like ordinary babies, you know—sounds. But the older ones, the toddlers, they don’t make any noise at all, even when they fall down taking their first steps. They just sprawl on the cave floor and send unhappy-feeling patterns. Somehow something—or someone—teaches them to forget lan
guage and use only their minds. And I don’t know what it is!” Her hands ran through the tangles of her hair.
Jakkin reached over and took her hands in his. Just as they touched, the crackle in his mind stopped and he could feel her puzzlement and fear.
“Quick!” he said. “Duck down into the water again.” But it was too late. The men on the ledge had been joined by Makk. Their sending, strengthened by linking hands, was too strong to be disobeyed.
“COME. COME. COME.”
Jakkin’s last coherent thought was that he’d heard that command before. Then he took Akki’s hand, and they walked out of the lake to stand before the waiting men.
16
FOR TWO SLEEP periods—Jakkin couldn’t be sure they were actual nights—they’d been forced to remain by the dragon’s side. They slept on the stone floor by her stall without even the comfort of grass pallets. Hulking, expressionless guards watched over them, ready to slap them if they tried to speak out loud. Anytime Jakkin tried a sending he was painfully aware that the guards were listening in, painfully because they often doubled their sendings, leaving him with an aching head. He and Akki were reduced to passing looks to remind themselves that they were not stooping, silent cave dwellers.
In her frustration Akki began a frantic round of nursing that was at first welcomed by the dragon, then tolerated, and at last shaken away with tail thumpings and fierce houghing. Jakkin, in his turn, groomed the dragon until her scales were polished to a shine that even old Likkarn, Old Likk-and-Spittle, would have admired. But finally the dragon shook him off, too.
When the dragon started stretching her neck out to the fullest, Jakkin knew she was well again and ready to lay her eggs. Neck stretching was an unconscious gesture left over from the days when dragons had scouted for danger in the mountain caves where they gave birth. Sarkkhan had told him that.