'What is this?' Sollos frowned.
'None of, um, your concern, sell-sword, that's what.'
'Looks like witchcraft to me,' muttered Kemir. He took a step away. Even the dragon-knights had fallen silent.
'He's dead,' said Sollos. 'Potions can't help him. If you'd come sooner…'
The alchemist glared at him. 'Where did you get your name, sell-sword? Sollos. It's an, er, alchemist's name, not a soldier's. Clearly a, ah, mistake. Or did you choose it yourself?' Inside the cup the powder and the blood had mixed into a paste. The alchemist lifted his arm and wrapped a strip of white linen tightly around his wound. 'Um. You're right that it's too late to help him live. But not too late to help him talk.'
'Master Huros?' Semian sounded edgy. 'I am not easy with this. Blood magic is-'
'Is what?'
'The queen does not favour such practices. They are outlawed.'
'In, er, her realm perhaps. Not here.' The alchemist gave a little sigh. 'If I smear this on his tongue, he will speak. Um… if my means don't please you, rider, I am sorry.' He tugged the cup from Sollos's fingers. 'Take this and burn it, if you prefer.'
Semian fidgeted. After a few seconds, when he didn't take the cup, the alchemist shrugged. He dipped his finger into the paste and, before anyone could stop him, smeared it in the dead man's mouth.
25
Awakening
Day by day, Kailin watched Snow change. Dragons, he'd been told, were like little children. If that was so then Snow was growing up fast right in front of him. She was frightening, and yet he felt a strange pride and a sense of wonder watching her. There had never been a dragon like her, not with her purity of colour. She was sleek and perfect, and now she was becoming something else as well. Often she terrified him, but at the same time he was her Scales. He'd been waiting for her since she first started tapping her way out of her egg and into the world, and he'd been with her for nearly ten years now. Slowly he understood. Their roles had changed. He'd cared for her, nurtured her, fed her, and now she was doing the same for him.
They developed a routine. Each morning as the sun rose over the mountains, Snow uncurled and launched herself into the air. Kailin watched her go, peering into the sky long after she'd vanished. Then he sat by his fire, drank some warm water and ate some leftover meat. After that there really wasn't much to do but wait for Snow and wonder if today was the day when she wouldn't come back. Usually he made his way across the mountain, through the snows, to the nearest stand of trees and collected some more wood. When the wind blew, cold enough to flay the skin off his flesh, he huddled up in the lee of some nearby rocks and simply waited. When Snow came back, she always knew where to find him. She would be almost too hot to touch, and her warmth melted the snows, dried his clothes and the firewood, and slopped him from freezing in the night. Each day she brought him food to eat, the headless remains of some animal she'd caught. He'd cook it over his fire, and she'd watch him. When he was done, she'd swallow what was left in a single gulp. He knew perfectly well that without her he'd quickly starve or freeze to death.
He talked to her when she was there. Not expecting any answer, but simply because the mountain was so cold and lonely and he felt better hearing the sound of his own voice. Sometimes, from the way she looked at him, he wondered if she was listening.
He got his answer to that when he trod on a loose stone. The first thing he knew, one of his feet was sliding out from under him. The world tumbled, hit him on the head and wound up lying on its side, dim and blurry.
Hurt? asked a voice inside his head.
He tried to move, but for a moment that didn't work. Yes, he decided. I am hurt.
The next thing he knew, Snow was standing over him, the tip of her face inches from his own, blotting out the sky, the scorching-hot wind of her breath almost pinning him to the ground. He put up a hand, flinched away, and she retreated.
Is it hurt? asked the voice again.
He groaned and sat up. His head was starting to throb. When he touched it, his fingers came away with blood on them. Slowly, he looked up at Snow.
'Did you speak?' He laughed and then winced. Dragons Couldn't speak except in myth.
Its head is broken. Is it going to-
Am I going to what? The thought formed inside his head, but the last part of it didn't make any sense. Something to do with getting hotter and hotter and fading away and then waking up wrapped up tight inside an egg.
Snow peered at him and cocked her head. Die?
To Kailin, it seemed as though a giant hand had slapped him in the lace. He went numb. The pain in his head washed away. He stood up and staggered away from Snow. 'You… you… I heard you thinking.'
Snow snorted and shook her head, the way she did when she was excited. It hears! Understands!
Kailin was trembling. 'You understand me! You understand Kailin!'
Kailin? He got a sense of incomprehension.
'That's my name.'
Name? What is a name?
Kailin didn't know how to answer that, but Snow didn't seem to mind. She seemed to pluck the answer out of his head.
All Little Ones have names. Do I have a name?
'Snow.'
Snow. Why?
Kailin picked up a handful of snow. 'Because you're white.' He held it up to show her and then pressed it against the wound on his head.
Hurt? He could feel the tension in her thought.
'A little bit.'
They tried to talk, on into the night until the sun was long gone and stars filled the sky. Most of the time Kailin couldn't make sense of the images that flashed in his head, nor did Snow seem to understand him, no matter how ferociously he thought. He would feel her frustration build up inside her, and then something would burst and their thoughts would somehow align. It would last for a few seconds, maybe a little more before they drifted apart. Eventually he fell asleep, drained. The last thing he felt from Snow was how awake she was, how filled with wonder and awe.
For days afterwards the thoughts that appeared in his head were strange and alien. They rarely made sense, and he would have to ask again and again what Snow was trying to tell him. As time went by, though, they grew sharper, brighter, clearer. He talked to Snow whenever she was there, and she responded. Every day she was changed, filled with new discoveries. Clearer, more articulate, more intelligent than she'd been the day before. A voracious sense of amazement and adventure infected her every thought, and his as well. No Scales had ever experienced what he was seeing, this blossoming.
It is like a veil is lifted in my mind each night, she told him one day as she left to hunt. He spent the rest of the day wondering what use a dragon would have for a veil, until he understood: she wasn't hearing his words any more, she was seeing into his mind. And when she answered him, she was looking inside him for things that he would understand.
'We have to go home,' he told her when she came back from her hunt with fresh blood still on her claws. 'I have to show you to the others.'
I am different. Why?
'I don't know, Snow. It's a miracle.'
Miracle? He felt her confusion. No. Little One Kailin, I feel as if I have awoken from a sleep that has lasted a hundred lifetimes. I do not understand how I have awoken, nor do I understand how I fell into such a slumber. Nor even how much more is to come.
'We'll go back home. We can ask Master Huros or one of the other alchemists, or even Eyrie-Master Isentine-'
NO! She snapped her jaws. Kailin scrabbled away from her in sudden terror, before she bowed her head to the ground, a dragon gesture of submission. I did not mean to frighten you, Little One Kailin. I will not hurt you, but nor will I go bac\ to that place.