She shook her head. “Good-bye, Lodger,” she whispered. “I wish we’d had more . . . time.”
One of the dragons must have given a signal she didn’t perceive. In turns, running around the arc, they each spat fire on the corpse of the Lodger. Soon his flesh was alight. Horribly, the smell made her hungry.
He took a long time to burn. It seemed like hours. As soon as the flames began to go out, a couple of the dragons departed. Finally the rest nudged the blackened remains into the lake, sweeping fallen scale in with their tails.
“He is with his line now,” the elder dragon said to her. “It is over.”
“Is this how you always do it?”
“Sadly we can’t always be this formal. Leave it to [3] to die at the joining of water, earth, and sky, good and proper traditionalist that he was. I imagine he planned it all out. There’s always a proper wind off the mountains here.”
Ileth’s teeth chattered in agreement. Oddly, the knowledge that he died in a place of his choosing made her feel better. Almost happy. No, actually happy. Happy? Maybe she was going mad.
“Do you want to fly back to the caves with us, or walk?” the elder dragon said.
“I can’t, I’ve never flown.”
“As you like. But you came here to fly.”
“Would it be appropriate?”
“I knew him. He had a generous soul. He’d like nothing better.”
“Ausperex, you’ve no saddle. She’ll be impaled on one of your horns,” a female dragon said. She was mostly green but had white flecks blended into her scale. “Even after all these years, you land like a catapulted elephant.” Ausperex did have a somewhat overgrown ridge of spikes running down his back, save where they were trimmed down somewhat for a saddle, though evidently one hadn’t been on him in some time, so they’d grown back.
The dragonelle settled down next to Ileth. “My name is Taresscon. I don’t fly as much as I once did. I’d be glad to carry you back.”
She knew the female by sight, as she’d often seen her pace through the passages of the Beehive, speaking to all and sundry, but wasn’t familiar with her role. She usually had a staff of humans with her, but she’d never seen Taresscon with a dragoneer.
Females had a webbed fringe running down their backs, much softer than that of the males, and Taresscon’s fringe was neatly snipped off where a saddle would rest and much cut down elsewhere.
“I should carry you anyway,” Taresscon added. “I have been meaning to thank you personally for what you did for some time now, but I’ve been so busy polishing diplomats and sealing assents. Your friend and I go back to, well, let me just be modest and say I don’t go quite so far back as he did. I am happy he didn’t die in a cave. There’s a natural little well where my neck meets my shoulders, see, girl? Sit tight there. Helps if you tip yourself a bit forward. If you want to set your teeth in my fringe, go right ahead; I can’t feel a thing there.”
She didn’t see and even if she did she was busy summoning her courage. The Beehive suddenly seemed high up and far off. Now that she had a chance to fly, she was afraid to do it.
“I find if I sit around thinking about a fear it gets even worse,” Taresscon said. “Climb up and let me worry about keeping you on. Not that different from a horse.”
Somehow knowing that dragons had their own fears helped. Ileth hadn’t had much more experience with horses than she did with dragons. There was just that time when she was six. She’d sat on farm horses a couple of times as a child. She’d never done anything that could be called riding on any kind of beast.
“I’ll stick out my front leg so. This is my on side, you know on side and off, right? Good. Use the top of my front arm as a step. My, you’re limber for being new, and up you go.”
Ileth surveyed the world from atop a dragon’s back for the second time. She was going up and taking whatever fears she had about it with her. With the energy that three days of hunger often brings, she shifted about until her hips felt comfortable.
“Just grab on to my fringe in front of you and lean way forward. Pull all you want, you can rip it out and it won’t hurt. Go forward and grip with your legs like you’re jumping a wall on your horse. Don’t be afraid to dig your heels in. I hardly feel it these days. Hoo, I used to be tender about my throat.”
What little she knew of flying on a dragon mostly suggested cold. The dragoneers wore layers of material and shields over their faces to keep the worst of it out. “We’re not going up high, are w-we?”
“Stars, no. Just to the Long Bridge. I don’t think either of us is ready for an attempt at a flight cave landing.” The dragon jumped up and down in a quick hop, warming her wings. “Hold tight, we’ll be there in a moment.” Ileth gasped and tightened her grip. She felt the dragon jump in the air, but something bumped. When she opened her eyes again she found they were still on the ground.
“See, if you can hang on through that, you can make it to the bridge. I’ll set down as soft as if I were carrying my own eggs.”
Ileth nodded.
“Once we take off, I have to circle where we buried our relative. I won’t do it like the others. You’ll hardly know I’m turning.”
Ileth, now that it had been pointed out to her, did see that the dragons above were swooping around the funeral site.
The dragon began to beat her wings, warming the muscles in earnest. “Once for your grip, twice for your legs, three times and we’re off,” Taresscon sang out, coiling her body along the spine and then springing into the air like a cat jumping for a ledge.
She felt the dragon’s mighty blood vessels working through her skin and heard the wings behind her beating furiously. But she was in the air! Ileth, of the Captain’s Lodge, with her stutter and her patched dresses, sat astride a dragon in flight!
She was so excited watching the tilt of her mount’s head and the way the female’s fringe rippled in the wind that she missed circling the funeral site entirely—guilt hammered her when she thought back on that fact in bed that night—they were approaching the Pillar Rocks before she knew it. It looked strange, and she realized the feast lights had been taken down and put away. Only the ordinary lamps glowed, with the reflected beams of the lighthouse above.
Taresscon was practically the last dragon to leave the funeral site. Only Aurue, the youngest, still remained at the water’s edge, she noticed, looking back.
Ileth looked at the burned remains, and the joy of the moment turned to ash, ash as cold and wet as the philosophical old dragon’s remains. Leave it to life to squeeze the triumph she should feel at this moment out of her spirit. She was a dirty dishrag passed from fate to fate, wrung out and tossed.
The line of dragons came in one after another, tails waving about as they balanced at the last moment for the landing, slapping them down to absorb the shock of alighting. Most stalked straight through the wide tunnel to the Rotunda but two males stepped off onto the wide plaza before the tunnel entrance to scratch at their scale like giant dogs and shake off the ash before going inside.
As promised, Taresscon set down so gently Ileth hardly knew they were on the ground until the leathery rustle of her wings folding in on themselves tipped her to the fact. She felt dazed.
“Just slip off, girl. No, other way. Off side, remember? That’s it. Start your habits well, dear, and you’ll save yourself trouble.”
“Th-Thank you for your advice,” Ileth said, back on the ground again, her legs a little wobbly from the unaccustomed work of gripping a dragon’s neck. Now she was physically wrung out as well as emotionally.
“I’ve had enough practice,” the senior dragon said. “I served six years sort of attached to the Assembly. Speaking for the dragons. Humph. I’m for my shelf. It’s been one of those days where the joy and sorrow keep changing places, no? Anytime you want more practice, girl, look me up. I get tired of all the meetings.”