But I knew it would be worth it, and Tamin agreed that it would not only give us a few days to build our strength, but also to keep an eye on the work camp and try to figure out a plan.
To be honest, our resolution didn’t offer me as much optimism as I had originally thought it would. I still felt powerless and shameful as I made my way back over the boulder field in the late afternoon, intending to catch the fish while Tamin stayed behind to build the stone smokery. He would use our spears as the first set of frames, meaning that I had to fashion another on the way.
I’d set myself up for a lot of work, what with all of this fishing and wood-cutting and spear-making and knapping. But it wasn’t like the work of the mines. This felt good and nourishing in a way that the Mine work could never be. There was an immediate and natural rhythm to these tasks. Once again, my mind reeled at what Inyene was doing to the people unfortunate enough to fall under her thumb. Using us has tools – just like her blasted metal dragon!
We had found a stream not so far from the cave, and it became an extra job to keep running back and forth with Tamin’s water skin, filling up the natural bowls in the available rocks for all of our drinking water.
Ow. My elbow gave me a pang of pain again, and I hesitantly stretched my arm out and around my head in the late afternoon light. Nothing tender or sore this time. I dismissed it, looking up.
And saw the tree ahead of me, to the right of the gulley that I had been about to scramble down. It was a slender and small tree with a whitish bark, but she also looked strong. Her leaves were teardrop-shaped, and they glowed with a healthy, living green.
Use those leaves to heal the dragon’s wing, I thought, and then wondered how I knew that. She wasn’t a tree that I could name, but I knew that was how I was meant to use her leaves. It was almost as if a voice had said the words in my head.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Nari.” I laughed at myself. What a strange notion! I clearly must have worked with trees similar to this one as a child – or maybe I was remembering some old bit of Daza lore that Mother had taught me?
Whatever. It didn’t matter how I knew, just that I did. I would harvest a heavy wodge of the youngest of the green leaves, and I would mash it into a paste to spread on the dragon’s wing. It wouldn’t even take that long.
By the time the sun had set, I was returning back to the camp, having made a sort of pulling-frame with a mixture of woven branches, upon which I had layered my haul of wood, fish, berries, and leaves, and both Tamin and the dragon appeared pleased with what I had managed to do, all in a few watches.
As Tamin set up the smokery, I went to work on the paste, using a dribble of water and a rock to help mash and pound the leaves into a thick, sticky greenish goop. “Hey, look what I got for you!” I called out to the dragon, who surprised me by coming eagerly over, and laying out his damaged wing nearby, as if he had been expecting it.
You’re a lot friendlier than I thought you’d ever be, I thought with a smile as I worked. The mash was almost like a glue, and after gingerly applying it to both sides of the dragon’s wing, I realized that it could form a thick mat over the whole injury. When I had finished, the dragon chirruped once again, and laid the affected wing out over the smokery, turning the goopy mat into a sort off hardened, green scale.
“He knows more about this than I do.” I turned to laugh with Tamin, only to find that he had finished his smokery and was crouching, looking between the pair of us.
“Nari,” he said in a low, warning voice.
What had I done now? This was my promise. I was going to make the dragon better, in return for the safety and warmth of staying with him. What was so wrong about that?
“I didn’t recognize those leaves from any tree on the Plains,” Tamin said gravely. “Did someone tell you that they would help heal the dragon?”
“Tell me?” I said. Why was Tamin getting all weird again around me and the dragon? “No, no one told me. Not in the mines, at least. I think that I must have remembered something from home.”
“No one told you,” Tamin said more firmly. “You haven’t had a dream? Or heard a voice describing to you how to care for a dragon?”
“No!” I said, and my heart fluttered in my chest as I felt like I was being attacked and I had no idea why. “I haven’t had any dreams or been hearing voices – why on earth would you ask?”
Tamin was quiet for a moment, looking at the floor as he was obviously debating something. Finally he spoke. “It is written, quite plainly in the Histories of Torvald, that there were people who would hear things, be able to do things, when they were near dragons. That the dragons talked to them using their minds, and these people could talk back.”
“So?” I said hotly. “It would be a great thing if I could talk to the dragon as easily as I’m talking to you, wouldn’t it?” In fact, it seemed pretty awesome, in fact! I would be just like the Lady Artifex and her red dragon, Maliax, then, wouldn’t I? For a brief second I imagined leaping on the back of the black dragon and screaming through the air, to bring a fanged and fiery justice to Inyene.
Tamin took another deep breath, interrupting my fantasies as he raised his head to look at me. Just across from us, I could sense the dragon regarding us both silently. He was waiting to hear the outcome of our conversation.
“Perhaps it would. I don’t know what the best course is,” Tamin said. “I have no experience of this, and it frightens me. But I have read a small fraction of the Histories of Torvald, and there is much danger, always, around these people.” He struggled to look for words. “They are thrown into wars that break mountains. Some of them are able to use their minds to do amazing, terrible things. It is not so long ago that there was a Sorcerer-Emperor on the throne of Torvald, and although this ‘Enric’ had nothing to do with dragons apparently – he hated them – it was the magic of these ancient beasts that Enric used—”
“Sssss!” There was a sudden spurt of smoke and heat from the dragon beside us as he cocked his head to stare with one eye at Tamin. He huffed heavily into the night air and sank his head down onto his paws as if annoyed at the mere mention of the long-dead Enric.
Tamin had paused at the dragon’s outburst, and in the gap I spoke instead. “Well, I am not hearing any voices, and I don’t think that anyone is about to make me the Emperor of Torvald any time soon!” I kept my voice low, but I was just as fierce.
Tamin looked at me, aghast. “I didn’t mean to upset either of you, I just worry. What with Inyene and those things and our people, our home,” he said, and my anger faded away in an instant. I had always been like that: quick to anger, and just as quick to forget.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” I apologized, reaching over to grasp my uncle’s hand reassuringly. “And I understand. I don’t know what we’re going to do either – but I know that we’ve got each other. I need your strength and your wisdom, Uncle.”
Tamin looked at me with tears in his eyes, but a sad smile on his face. “And I fear that we are going to need your temper, too.”
