That, he had decided, would be his responsibility, as soon as he was free to pursue it—which would be as soon as they reached the Citadel.
Already he felt the stirrings of impatience. He wanted to be at the job; he had the sensation of time pressing in on them from all directions, the feeling that he was only now beginning a race that had started without him.
Perhaps he had. Perhaps they all had.
No matter. They were in it now. They had no choice but to run this race full-out, and hope that they could finish it.
Dawn came much, much too soon for Keman; despite eating to beyond satiation, and sleeping as only a thoroughly bloated dragon could sleep, no matter what form he took, Keman felt as if he would have been a lot happier with a great deal more sleep.
Two or three weeks' worth, as a start.
He politely refused breakfast, and went out to the cleared space that Diric had arranged for them so that they would not frighten the cattle as he and Myre had with their shifts and appearance yesterday. He'd been told they nearly started a stampede… and one was only prevented because all of the warriors were out near the herds playing their war games. Certainly Jamal had not anticipated that, and yet it had been the one action he had taken that had a positive outcome yesterday.
He had half-expected a circle of curious onlookers, but there was no one there, and it wasn't because the Iron People weren't used to getting up at dawn.
They're afraid. I can't really blame them.
That was probably just as well. He planned to take his shift slowly, and that could be very unnerving to two-leggers at the best of times. At the worst—well, he'd seen one or two of Shana's friends grow rather green, and sometimes lose whatever they had in their stomachs.
Queasiness was not generally a draconic problem, unless one was very ill. He still had a hard time understanding creatures that were so quick to lose what they'd eaten. It seemed a very counterproductive trait.
When he completed his shift, he began stretching his muscles, slowly, as his mother, Alara, had taught him to do before he undertook anything that was going to be physically taxing. And this flight would be physically taxing, there was no doubt of that. Besides his burden of Shana and Mero, he would be carrying bundles of heavy iron jewelry, gathered last night by Kala from all the women she could persuade to give it up. Kalamadea would be doing the same, though his riding-burden would be Lorryn and Rena, and he could carry far, far more than Keman.
It was just too bad that no one had ever learned the trick of shifting the mass of something other than himself into the Out, as a dragon did when he had to shift to a smaller, lighter form. Perhaps it simply couldn't be done. It would have been useful, though.
The rising sun gilded the grass, and a light breeze blew up out of the South. His shadow reached to the tents and mingled with their shadows. He stretched each limb separately, several times, warming up the muscles and making them more flexible with each stretch. As he began the series of integrated stretches that would finish his warm-up, some of the Iron People began bringing the bundles of jewelry and supplies he and Kalamadea would be carrying. He watched them out of the corner of his eye and tried not to chuckle. They were very funny, really. They eased up to the edge of the area with one eye on him and the other on where they were going. They tried to look comfortable, casual, but they generally failed utterly. They would always drop the bundle as soon as it was humanly possible, and scuttle away as if they had heard he'd refused breakfast and were afraid that he intended to break his fast with one of them.
The others arrived at about the same time as the bundles. Kalamadea, who had not been the one fighting and flying yesterday, shifted quickly into his draconic form of Father Dragon. He was huge, easily twice the size of Keman, perhaps larger, and Keman was large enough to easily carry one two-legger rider. Dragons grew for as long as they were alive, and Father Dragon was the oldest dragon Keman knew of. Not even Alara knew exactly how old he was. He had been alive at the time of the very first Gate-opening, when the dragons had lived in a world with far more perils in it than this one.
We've grown soft and lazy, Keman thought, contemplating Kalamadea's huge wings fanning the morning air. If those old ones could see us, hiding in our Lairs from mere two-leggers, they'd laugh at us. They had to worry about things so deadly that they would burrow into Lairs to kill and eat the occupants!
Kalamadea might have read his thoughts. :The elven lords, given enough incentive, could be just as deadly to us as the perils our kind once escaped from, Keman,: he said quietly, so that no one else would overhear. :Don't think too badly of those who only want to hide. That was why we escaped here, after all. To hide. We were running away, technically speaking.:
Well, maybe.
He was resolutely keeping his mind on anything and anyone except Dora. He awoke this morning resolved to assume that she would not be coining along. He had tried not to feel too disappointed or hurt.
Unfortunately, as he had learned all too often in the past, resolutions are usually not heeded by the emotions. All the resolve in the world did not help the feeling of disappointment and—yes—loss as the sun rose higher and Dora did not appear. He wasn't sure if it was his heart that was aching, but there was certainly something holding a core of dull pain, deep inside him.
He waited patiently while the others rigged him and Kalamadea with harnesses, both for the benefit of their passengers and to strap the bundles of supplies to.
"You aren't going to like this at all," Shana was telling Lorryn and his sister, as she explained how the harnesses worked. He sensed her tightly wound nerves, and guessed that she was chattering to relieve them. Poor Shana! It was not only the threat of the elven lords that disturbed her, it was, he knew, the threat of revolt from within the wizards' ranks. That was what had undone the wizards in the first war. He only hoped history was not about to repeat that tragedy. "And don't listen to Kalamadea or Keman—dragons don't get flying-sick. I mean, think about it; they couldn't fly if they got sick every time they took wing. But here's the problem. The first thing that happens is that the dragon jumps into the air; if you've ever jumped a horse over a huge obstacle, you'll have a very slight idea of what that feels like."
"So unless we are strapped in, we're going to go tumbling over his back," Lorryn observed dispassionately. He turned a little to look Keman in the eye. "I hope you'll forgive me, my friend, but I have a very hard time reconciling this—" he slapped Keman's shoulder "—with the young wizard who snored all last night."
"I did not snore!" Keman exclaimed indignantly.
"You did," Shana told him firmly. "Most of the night. Loudly."
He snorted, and ignored her, examining those straps of his harness that he could reach himself with ostentatious care.
"Now, at the top of that leap," Shana continued, as if she had not been interrupted—another sign of her nervous tension—"he's going to suddenly snap open his wings and start a series of very powerful wingbeats to gain altitude. They're just like the leap; a series of surges. You're going to be thrown backward with every wingbeat, and if you don't hold on and hunch yourself over like this—" she crouched down, demonstrating the position "—you're going to feel as if your head is going to snap off the end of your spine."
Lorryn nodded, and his sister sighed. "This sounds worse than riding the worst-gaited horse in the universe!"
"It is," Shana assured her. "In fact, it's worse than riding a pack-grel. All right, at some point he's going to reach the height he needs, and that's where the discomfort really begins. These folks don't fly in a straight line. They swoop, like this—" She made an arcing motion with her hand. "Wing-beat, swoop, wingbeat. Your poor stomach is going to think you're falling during part of each swoop. That's where you'll get flight-sick, if it happens at all, and if you have to—well—just tell Kalamadea; he'll bank to one side so that you can—ah—straight down. And Ancestors help whatever is below you."