“We will find you! We will not let you come to harm!” Ymmen roared.
No, please, Ymmen… I tried to send him the sense of what I had seen before my ill-fated fishing trip. That Homsgud and some of the other guards were thinking of a mutiny, or a desertion—and that they would be far, far crueler to the Daza and Three Kingdomer workers than they had been before.
You cannot let Abioye lose his position… I said, before realizing the error of what I was saying. What could Ymmen do? The rest of the expedition had no idea of his existence, and for his safety, it had to stay that way!
“I can talk to Montfre and Tamin. They will think like a human for me,” Ymmen grumbled, and I could sense the foul taste that this ‘running in circles’ left in his mouth.
Thank you, I said. I will be safe for now, I thought, and tried to hide my doubts from the dragon. If they had wanted to kill me, then they would have already done so—and done so easily… I pointed out.
“No matter. Night is coming. Poison Berry, the Mage, and Uncle can talk. But I will fly all night, in search for you!” Ymmen promised me.
That was about as much an agreement that I could get from a dragon, I thought, and it would have to do.
“Little Sister, you will have to be my ears and my nose, as you are blocked from me. What can you hear? See? Smell?” Ymmen said.
I tried to calm my worries and remember what I had been taught when hunting—breathe gently, clear the mind—let the scents and sensations come to me…
The ground beneath me was rough—I could feel that through the hooves of the horse. It wasn’t the open and rolling plains then, and there wasn’t the muffling, cosseting swish of grasses. We had to be on a choppier, rockier sort of ground—and of course there were many such places out here like that, but it was something.
“Good. Again!” Ymmen was a hard taskmaster.
I tried to remember what I had thought about our journey so far. That we were moving as fast as these horses could, loaded down with captured Daza. That couldn’t put them incredibly far from the fishing river, could it?
And we had crossed another shallow river, the horse’s hooves splashing and sending up spray onto my clothes. The raiders had allowed their steeds to pause and drink for a pause, before continuing on.
Or it could have been a watering hole? I opined.
“More!” Ymmen encouraged me.
I thought about what I could smell—but, aside from the smell of horse and the heavy canvas of my hood, there was nothing that gave anything particular away about my surroundings. Damn! I cursed.
“No matter. A rocky and barren place, past a river or watering hole. That is good,” Ymmen said, and stayed with me as I tried to relay anything that I could about what I was experiencing. It was sadly only a little, until I heard the calls of human voices up ahead, and the thud of the horses became a harder clip as if they were being led across rock.
Slabs of rock? I said. I was also colder than I had been a little while ago—although whether that was due to the fact of the evening, or whether we had taken shelter I could not be sure.
“Good.” Ymmen said, just as there was a grunt from ahead of me and, abruptly, we had stopped.
“Get her inside!” called out the leader of the raiders, and once more I was hauled off the saddle, but not dropped to the floor this time. Instead, I was held upright as someone undid the bonds at my ankles, and then shoved me forward, forcing me to walk.
“Stay alert. Think like a dragon. I go to carry the mage and Uncle to Poison Berry. But I will be here!” Ymmen said fiercely, and I could feel through our bond that he was lifting his great wings and preparing to launch into the sky.
I can do this, I thought. All I have to do is to stay alive until Ymmen can identify the landmarks. That can’t be so hard, can it?
When my captors removed the hood that had kept me ignorant of my surroundings, I found that I was in a cave, lit by the orange haze of small lanterns. It was warm down here and the air smelled of the horses that I could hear champing some way further off, where the raiders must have brought them inside, too—perhaps to weather the storm.
My cave was a small antechamber of rounded stone, leading to a wider passage. I knew instantly the sort of place where I must be—even if I didn’t know precisely where. There were places in the deserts where ancient water flows had sculpted fantastic tunnels through the yellow-gray rock, and when the waters dried up the constant caress of the winds took over their work.
In a cave. Probably wind-sculpted rocks. I threw the thought at Ymmen, and heard his growling assent that he understood in my mind.
The mouth of my little antechamber was covered with a piece of dirty blue canvas, which was swept aside as the stocky man with the silver-and black hair and the calf-high riding boots swaggered in.
“You can leave us.” I watched as the man nodded to the raider who had been my guard, who gave a quick salute.
“Yes, Captain, sir.” The raider left.
Captain, I thought. This didn’t sound like ordinary raiders to me.
The man leaned against the back wall, regarding me quietly for a moment. I didn’t know what to say to greet him with that he would not already know—let me go? What do you want? Instead, when he was the first person to speak, the words he said were a surprise.
“Why are you helping Inyene?” he asked me coolly.
“Helping!?” I burst out, frowning. There was danger here in his words, but I didn’t know what. Did this mean that he was an enemy of Inyene? Could that mean that he could even help us?
“What do you know of Inyene?” I asked him fiercely. I thought about the fact that he wanted the Stone Crown. The object that was so powerful as to command all natural dragon-kind. What if this man was just another Inyene? The raider had certainly captured the Daza who had gone fishing with me, but what did he intend to do next?
“I think that I’m the one who asks the questions here,” the man said in an almost good-humored way.
“Why should I trust you?” I said.
“Trust?” The man’s mouth twisted in a crooked, sarcastic smile. “Trust the fact that I’m the man holding you in ropes, and if you don’t start talking I’m going to be the angry man holding you in ropes, okay?”
He gave a small sigh before pushing off from his lean to walk slowly, and heavily, in my direction. He casually took out what looked to be a small, but very sharp knife as he crouched down in front of me. He very carefully ignored me as he started paring his nails, before speaking.
“Let’s start this again, shall we? Who are you, where did you get the map, and what are you doing helping Inyene?” The man must have seen my discomfort, as he laughed. “No, I’m afraid that we’ve got it.” He said, tapping the breast of his jerkin. “I’ve got it, I should say.” He looked at me expectantly, awaiting answers.
“I…” I opened my mouth, not sure of what I was going to say, or how much I could reveal to this man. What if he just killed me after?
“Go on…” The man gestured at me with his knife.
I came to a decision. “Free the Daza I saw you take.” I thought of the sight of Elid, crashing into the water with the ropes twisting around his legs.