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."
Keman listened with real interest; although he had carried passengers before this, he'd never heard any of them explain what it felt like to them. Of course, flying felt perfectly natural and right to
him
, but evidently that was not how it felt to those who rode his back.
"There's also turbulence up there; Keman has done sideslips, been bounced as if he was trying to buck me off, and dropped halfway to the ground, and even turned upside down by winds. I don't get sick, and I hope
you
won't, but I won't promise anything." She shrugged at their expressions of dismay. "No matter what, make sure that every strap is tight, every buckle fastened. Check them while you're flying. They are
all
that is keeping you on his back, and believe me, you need every one of them."
Mero came up as she said that, and nodded solemnly. "If we have to fly through a storm, you're going to wish you had more straps than you do," he added.
"But—the stories all made it seem as if flying was so easy," Rena said plaintively. "As if—you just got on, and off you went!"
Keman laughed. "Well, do remember that it was Myre telling you those tales, right? For us, flying is easy. And anyway, she wouldn't have wanted to discourage your romantic image of dragons." He thought for a moment, men added, "I can at least promise you this—it's easier flying with Kalamadea man with me. I have to take more wingbeats to stay aloft man he does, because he's bigger. Have you ever watched birds?"
At Rena's nod, he went on.
"You've probably seen the way small birds fly; it's very jerky, and it takes a lot of wingbeats. But a big hawk, now—he can glide quite a bit, and when he does take a wing-beat, it's slower because his wings are larger. That's the difference between Kalamadea and me, and you two will be riding Kalamadea, because you're less experienced."
Shana was testing every strap; the leatherworkers had worked all night on the harnesses, and Kalamadea rather approved of them. They certainly
fit
better than anything he'd had rigged up before.
"Ah—here's something else," Shana said as she came around from the other side. "Rena, Lorryn, see the pad here, that's like a saddle?
Don't
let your legs slip off it and don't ever be tempted to wear cloth breeches instead of leather. Dragonscales are very abrasive and they'll scrape you to the bone in a few wingbeats." She had them slide their hands the wrong way along Keman's shoulder, and nodded when they winced. "That's why I asked the leatherworkers to make more than two sets of harnesses and lots of extra straps, so that if some of this gets sliced up, we can just discard the pieces instead of wasting time trying to mend it."
"Would one of those extra harnesses happen to fit me?"
Keman looked up, as startled as everyone else, as a shadow slid over them all. A moment later, Dora landed in a flurry of wingbeats that kicked up dust and sent it flying in every direction.
"I saw the double-saddle on Kalamadea, but Keman is much smaller than the Elder One, and I thought you might need an extra mount," Dora said, shyly and turned to Keman. "You were right," she said, simply, and his heart soared.
:And thank you for not
—
not using emotions to convince me
,: she added, for his benefit only.
Kalamadea was the first one to recover, and he did so with considerable aplomb. "Keman?" he said, quietly. "Would you care to introduce us to your—friend?"
:And is
this
where you've been vanishing at night, when we all thought you were hunting, you young rascal? Or were you hunting after all? Fairer game than plains deer
?: he added.
"Ah—this is Dora," he said lamely, suddenly tongue-tied. "She's from a Lair very far south, where the Iron Clans all live, and she's been watching this Clan the way we used to watch the elven lords. She didn't know there
were
any other dragons except the ones in her Lair until she saw my shadow."
"Really?" was all Kalamadea said, then he turned to Dora, every talon-length the gallant. "Welcome to our group, Dora. We are very pleased to have your help, and very grateful as well."
She ducked her head, her nostrils flushing.
"Now, if I may take command of this situation," Kalamadea continued, looking over his shoulder at the sun, "I believe we should get another harness onto our new friend Dora, and make all speed while we can. Explanations can wait until we are airborne. Lorryn, since you are riding double with your sister, who is the only one of us who cannot speak and hear thoughts, you can simply
tell
-her what is being said. At the least, it will enliven the journey no end."
He clapped his wings sharply, by way of emphasis.
"Come along, my friends!" he finished. "The elven lords are sharpening their talons for our necks! It is time, and more than time, that we were in the air!"
Chapter 10
LORRYN NURSED A cup of thick, too sweet red wine in one of the many taverns he'd been frequenting since he began this part of the "plan." This one was in Whitegates, a trade-city administered by Lord Ordrevel—or more correctly, by Lord Ordrevel's underlings. It didn't matter where he was, really; each of the five trade-cities looked pretty much like the next one, and all these taverns were alike.
He should know. He'd been in every trade-city on the continent, and most of the taverns.
The taverns were all luxuriously appointed—or so it seemed. If you looked closely, though, you saw that most of the "luxury" was only where it could be seen. Leather upholstery extended only to the side of the cushion that showed; satin wallpaper gave way to bare wall where the wall was covered by furniture or something else. Velvet drapes proved on touching to be soft, flocked paper, cheap and disposable.
These taverns
all
had dark rooms in the upper levels where human slaves waited to give whatever pleasuring was required, but the rooms were so dark that neither the slaves nor the surroundings were readily visible. They all served very cheap wine, spiced and honeyed to a fair-thee-well to disguise how cheap it really was.