“But all of this over here, I was hoping that you could shed some light on for me…” he said steadily. I swallowed nervously, trying to keep my breathing calm as there was a shuffle of movement, and the Pincher leaned forward to slowly set the work pliers down on his leather roll, and instead slowly draw out a thin metal spike, testing its end before pulling out a small whetstone and starting to strike its end, honing it’s merciless point.
I knew that the Pincher was trying to scare me. It was working.
“Okay…” I breathed, looking down at the map.
I could see a range of circles, and a rough square shape with what appeared to be smaller shapes clustered in it, and around it. The shapes made the central square look vaguely like a skull. Just a little way away from that was a line of humped drawings—sand dunes, perhaps—and then the smudged circled with the legend ‘Vault’ written beside it.
“I’m waiting, girly…” said the captain of the Red Hounds.
I screwed my eyes shut for a moment and looked again. The squiggles on the map weren’t making sense. They were just shapes! Not stories!
Stories, I thought, catching my breath. This was like the Broken Thumb, wasn’t it? I had to look at the map with Daza eyes, as if these pictures were trying to tell stories…
The skull… something tugged at my memory. “The Giant’s Head,” I whispered, nodding to the map, wishing they would untie my hands!
“Excuse me?” Nol Baggar just looked at me with one raised eyebrow.
“That square, that looks like a skull,” I explained. “That could be a place that my tribe calls the Giant’s Head. It’s a ruined city, and at its heart is a ruined keep with a gate that looks a little like a skull. My people say that is because the city and the keep are built on the buried head of an ancient Giant—Fargamir, we call him—but one day the magic of the giant’s head left the people of the city, and the city collapsed.”
“A Giant,” Nol Baggar said flatly.
“And if that is the Giant’s Head, then those circles…” I nodded towards the round shapes near the Head. “Those are the geysers. That is where the Great Mother Dragon fought a battle with the Giant, and her fire burned holes straight to the depths of the world below us, and still smoke to this day…”
I saw the captain of the Red Hounds shift in his crouch a little as he shared a look with the man called the Pincher.
But the map was starting to make sense to me now—now that I had found a way to read it. Beyond the ruins of the Giant’s Head was a place where the Plains grew sandy and golden, turning into rolling dunes that forever changed their position and was almost impossible to navigate through.
“And those humped shapes must be the Shifting Sands,” I said next. “That is where Elim and Luan the Lovers got lost, after they had run away from the city to be secretly married. They got lost in the Shifting Sands and were only rescued when a dragon took pity on them…”
“…when a dragon took pity on them…” Nol Baggar said heavily. When I looked up at him, I could see that his face was full of thunder.
“What?” I looked between him and the Pincher with confusion. I had helped! I had given them everything that they had wanted, hadn’t I? What more did they want from me!?
“A Giant’s Head. Star-crossed lovers, ruined cities…” Nol Baggar sneered at me. “You must take me for a fool. You expect me to believe Inyene would go trust her entire operation to a bunch of half-remembered stories!?” He slowly found his feet and raised himself to standing.
“They’re not stories!” I tried to point out—although, I knew that they were—but it was that this man simply didn’t understand how we Daza told each other stories. They are ways to teach each other things, I thought. It was only in the western Three Kingdoms where stories such as Elim and Luan or the Giant’s Head would be regarded as amusing diversions. It just wasn’t like that for the Daza. We knew that our stories weren’t something as simple as make-believe. They were ways of encapsulating several important messages—everything from a map to how we should live and treat each other, to where our people came from—all rolled into one ‘thing’ called a story.
“I want the truth!” Nol Baggar said sternly at me. “No more fairy stories. What do these pictures represent, how far are they from here, and what dangers do they present to me and my Red Hounds?”
But he was looking at them all wrong, I could see. He had heard what I said with the ears of a captain and a soldier—asking about dangers and distances. I knew that wasn’t how you had to read this map!
“That is the truth!” I said.
“Urgh!” the captain made a disgruntled and disgusted sound as he quickly snatched up both pieces of the map from the floor and turned to go. “Pincher?” he growled. “Make her talk. Call me when she starts making some sense!”
The captain of the Red Hounds swept out of the room with an angry stride, leaving me alone with the balding man called the Pincher, who smiled very slowly as he reached for the tools of his trade…
Chapter 8
A Dragon’s Ire
I looked at the Pincher and watched as his hands picked up the pliers once again. He gave them an experimental squeeze, and its hard edges clacked closed. His grin widened.
“I’m telling you the truth,” I said, pulling my knees up to my chest and flattening my back into the wall of the cave. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide from the man.
“I know.” The Pincher surprised me by speaking candidly and calmly. “I can see it in you. After you’ve been doing my job for as long as I have, you get a sort of talent for spotting lies.” He slowly ran one hand down his apron, smoothing it, and eased himself into a crouch. His movements were disconcertingly languid, gentle even. As if I were a sick patient, and he was a healer making ready to tend to me.
But I think that healing was the last thing on his mind.
“But, if you know that I am telling the truth—why didn’t say anything…!” I gasped, pulling my knees tighter to me. Not that they were going to stop him from creeping steadily towards me, the pliers held high in the air with one hand, while his other hand paused in its reach towards me.
“Oh—it has been a long journey already, and there has been so little for me to do.” The man called the Pincher shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a lucky man—I have found a job that I’m good at and that I like doing!”
His hand reached towards me—
Just as the cavern echoed and shook with a dragon’s furious roar.
Ymmen! My heart soared.
“Little Sister, I have found you!” the dragon said in my mind, as his reptilian voice broke down the tunnels outside, sending up shouts of alarms and screams.
“Dragon!” Nol Baggar shouted from somewhere outside in the caves. “To your feet! We’re under attack!”
“What the—?” The Pincher dropped his arms to turn and look back to the door of the tent in alarm. That was when I moved. I kicked forward, pushing myself with my back and elbows as I speared out with both feet.
“Oof!” I managed to kick the Pincher in the chest, sending him tumbling onto his back as I scrabbled to get my feet under me and to stand. Ymmen may have been here—and he was mighty indeed—but I was still underground, and I doubted that even Ymmen the Black could tear apart the rocks to get at me.