LITMIR.BIZ

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humans deserved to die for what they had done, every one of them.

      From beside her, Mercor spoke. Despite his size and apparent physical strength, he seldom spoke or asserted himself in any way. A terrible sadness seemed to enervate him, draining him of all ambition and drive. When he did speak, the others found themselves pausing in whatever they were doing to listen to him. Sintara could not know what the others felt, but it annoyed her that she felt both drawn toward him and guilty about his great sadness. His voice made her memory itch, as if when he spoke, she should recall wonderful things, but could not. Tonight he said only, in his deep and sonorous voice, ‘Sintara. Let it go. Your anger is useless without a proper focus.’

      It was another thing he did that bothered her. He spoke as if he could know her thoughts. ‘You know nothing of my anger,’ she hissed at him.

      ‘Don’t I?’ He shifted miserably in the muddy wallow where they slept. ‘I can smell your fury, and I know that your sacs swell with poison.’

      ‘I want to sleep!’ Kalo rumbled. His words were sharp with irritation, but not even he dared to confront Mercor directly.

      On the edge of the huddled group of dragons, one of the small dim-witted ones, probably the green that could barely drag himself around, squeaked in his sleep. ‘Kelsingra! Kelsingra! There, in the distance!’

      Kalo lifted his head on his long neck and roared in the green’s direction, ‘Be silent! I wish to sleep!’

      ‘You do sleep, already,’ Mercor replied, impervious to the big blue’s anger. ‘You sleep so deeply that you no longer dream.’ He lifted his head. He was not bigger than Kalo, but it was still a challenge. ‘Kelsingra!’ he suddenly trumpeted into the night.

      All the dragons stirred. ‘Kelsingra!’ he bellowed again, and Sintara’s keen hearing picked up the distant fluting cries of humans disturbed from their evening slumber. ‘Kelsingra!’

      Mercor threw the name of the ancient city up to the distant stars. ‘Kelsingra, I remember you! We all do, even those who wish we did not! Kelsingra, home of the Elderlings, home of the well of the silver waters and the wide stone plazas baking in the summer heat. The hillsides above the city teemed with game. Do not mock that one who dreams of you still, Kelsingra!’

      ‘I want to go to Kelsingra. I want to lift my wings and fly again.’ A voice rose from somewhere in the night.

      ‘Wings. Fly! Fly!’ The words were muffled and ill formed, but the longing of the dim-witted dragon who uttered them filled them with feeling.

      ‘Kelsingra,’ someone else groaned.

      Sintara lowered her head, tucking it in close to her chest. She was ashamed for them and ashamed for herself. They sounded like penned cattle lowing before the slaughter begins. ‘Then go there,’ she muttered in disgust. ‘Just leave and go there.’

      ‘Would that we could,’ Mercor spoke the words with true longing. ‘But the way is long, even if we had wings that would bear us. And the path is uncertain. As serpents, we could barely find our way home. How much stranger must the land be now that lies between us and the place where Kelsingra used to be?’

      ‘Used to be,’ Kalo repeated. ‘So much used to be, and no longer is. It is useless to speak or think of any of it. I want to go back to sleep.’

      ‘Useless, perhaps, but nonetheless, we do speak of it. And some of us still dream of it. Just as some of us still dream of flying, and killing our own meat and battling for mates. Some of us still dream of living. You do not want to sleep, Kalo. You want to die.’

      Kalo twitched as if struck by an arrow. Sintara felt the big dragon stiffen, sensed how his poison sacs suddenly swelled. A few moments ago, she had thought that resting between the two large males had been a place of safety. Now she perceived that she was in the thick of the danger, trapped between Sestican and Mercor. Kalo lifted his head high and glared down on Mercor. If he spat acid now, Mercor would be helpless to avoid it. And she would also be caught in the spray. She hunched her shoulders uselessly.

      But Kalo spoke rather than exhaled poison. ‘Do not speak to me, Mercor. You know nothing of what I think or feel.’

      ‘Don’t I? I know more of you than you recall yourself, Kalo.’ Mercor suddenly threw his head back and bellowed. ‘I know you all! All of you! And I mourn what you are because I remember what you were and I know what you were meant to be!’

      ‘Quiet! We’re trying to sleep!’ This was no bellow of an outraged dragon, but the shrill cry of a frustrated human. Kalo turned his head toward the source of the sound and gave a roar of fury. Sestican, Ranculos and Mercor suddenly echoed him. When that blast of sound died away, a few of the dimmer dragons on the edge of the herd imitated it.

      ‘You be silent!’ Kalo trumpeted up at the human dwellings. ‘Dragons speak when they wish to speak! You have no control over us!’

      ‘Ah, but they do,’ Mercor said quietly. The very softness of his words seemed to bring all attention to him.

      Kalo turned his head sharply. ‘You, perhaps, are controlled by humans. I am not.’

      ‘You do not, then, eat when they feed you? You do not remain here, where they have corralled us? You do not accept the future they plan for us, that we will remain here, dependent upon them, until we slowly die off and stop being a nuisance to them?’

      Sintara found that, against her will, she was listening raptly to his words. They were frightening and challenging at the same time. When his voice stopped, the quieter sounds of the evening flowed in. She listened to the river lapping at the muddy shore, to the distant noises of humans and birds settling in the trees for the night, and to the sounds of dragons breathing. ‘What should we do then?’ she heard herself ask.

      All heads turned toward her. She did not look at anyone except Mercor. The night had stolen the colours from his scales but she could make out his gleaming black eyes. ‘We should leave,’ he said quietly. ‘We should leave here and try to find our way to Kelsingra. Or to anywhere that is better than this.’

      ‘How?’ Sestican abruptly demanded. ‘Shall we knock down the trees that hem us in? Humans can slip between their trunks and find pathways through the swamp. But if you have not noticed, we are slightly larger than humans. Grest went blundering off, going not where he willed but only where the trees would permit him passage. There is no escape that way, only swamp and dimness and starvation. And poorly fed as we are, at least the humans bring us something to eat each day. If we left here, we’d starve.’

      ‘There’s no need for us to starve at all. We should eat the humans,’ someone on the edge of the herd suggested.

      ‘Be quiet if you cannot make sense,’ Sestican retorted. ‘If we eat the humans, once they are gone, we are still trapped here, with no food.’

      ‘They want us to leave.’ Kalo spoke suddenly, startling everyone.

      ‘Who does?’ Mercor demanded.

      ‘The humans. Their Rain Wild Council sent a man to speak. One of the feeders asked me to talk with him. He told the Council-man that I am the biggest of the dragons and therefore the leader. So he spoke to me. He wanted to know if I knew when or even if Tintaglia would return. I told him I did not. Then he said that they were very upset that someone had eaten a corpse out of the river, and that someone else had chased a worker down into the tunnels that go to the buried city. And he said they were running out of ways to feed us. He said that his hunters have hunted out all the large meat for miles around, and that the fish runs are nearly over for the year. He said the Council wishes us to call Tintaglia, to let her know that the Council demands that she return to help them solve this difficulty.’

      In the darkness, several of the dragons snorted with contempt for such foolishness.

      Mercor spoke with disdain. ‘Call Tintaglia. As if she would respond to us. Kalo, why did you not speak of this before?’

      ‘They told me nothing that we do not all know already. Why bother repeating

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