A Sending of Dragons (19 page)

Jakkin and Akki lay side by side in the shallows for a minute, neither one with enough energy to move or speak further. Their breathing was rapid and Jakkin could feel the pounding of his heart. After a while
he tried flexing his hand, the one that had held on to Akki's shirt. His fingers were cramped and his thumb ached.

“You're no lightweight,” he said at last. “Even in the water.”

Stretching her right arm, Akki smiled but kept her eyes closed. “Neither was the hatchling. I don't think my arm will ever be the same.”

Behind them, on the ledge, the hatchling piped for attention until Auricle stopped its noise with a lick of her tongue, simultaneously removing another small patch of eggskin.

“How do we get out of here?” Akki asked, sitting up at last. “There's only one tunnel and it's full of water.”

“We float through,” Jakkin said. Noticing Akki's dismayed face, he added, “We don't have to go under again. The river does all the work. Trust me. We just lie on our backs and it takes us through. I promise I'll hold on to you.”

Akki nodded, but they had to wait a few minutes more, until their minds were free of the static and Jakkin could give Auricle her instructions. Then the dragon waddled into
the water, where Jakkin placed the hatchling on her broad back, close up to the neck.

“
Stay there,
” he warned the hatchling with a stem sending, and touched it on the nose. “
There thee will be safe, little one.
”

The hatchling piped an answer, but whether it understood, Jakkin wasn't sure. It looked as if it did, cocking its head to one side, a patch of eggskin peeling from its nose.

“
The river is slow,
” he sent to Auricle. “
There is nothing to fear.
” He looked again at the hatchling and wondered if it was afraid. Communication with it would be uncertain for days, even weeks. After all, it was only a baby.

“It's a she, remember?” Akki's voice had recovered much of its lighthearted quality.

“You stay out of my mind!” Jakkin said gruffly. “Unless I invite you in. That's one thing the cave people have right.”

“The
only
thing,” Akki added.

“Concentrate on floating,” Jakkin said. “The rest is easy.”

The current had already caught the dragon and was moving her along in a slow, majestic fashion. Jakkin was reminded of the
way Sssasha had floated in the sky. He took Akki's hand and they pushed off into the middle of the lake. Soon they, too, were caught by the river's pull.

“The hard part is over,” he called. “Relax and enjoy this.”

Akki, her body stiff, shouted back, “Why do I wish you hadn't said that?”

“Everything's going to be just fine,” Jakkin shouted. “Trust me!”

They floated through the round tunnel opening to the outside, where the sun was just rising on a new Austarian day.

A
S THEY FLOATED
they watched the sky, blue and unmarred by clouds. First one black dot, then a second, then three more suddenly peppered the horizon, rising and coming together in a triangular formation that moved closer and closer.

“Look!” Jakkin shouted, waving his free hand in the air. A wave swamped them, causing him to lose his grip on Akki's hand. They both went under, and Jakkin swam desperately after her, taking nearly a dozen strokes before he caught up with her again.

Grabbing a handful of her shirt, he headed them both toward the riverbank. Once his feet touched bottom he stood up, surrendering himself to a coughing fit. Akki found her
footing at the same time and began pounding him on the back. Then they scrambled up the grassy slope and stared at the sky.

The five dots had become much larger, resolving themselves into dragon shapes. Jakkin knew they had to be Heart's Blood's hatchlings, but he couldn't reach their minds because his now crackled with static from his recent ducking in the water. He waved frantically instead.

But the dragons weren't watching him. They were hovering over a place farther downriver. It was Akki who understood first.

“Auricle!” she cried. “It's Auricle they're watching. She's still in the water.”

Jakkin shaded his eyes, following the path of the twisting river until he could just make out Auricle's lumpish form. Knowing he couldn't reach her with a sending until the static cleared, he shouted, “Get out! Auricle—get out now!” But his voice couldn't compete with the sound of the water.

Akki grabbed his arm. “What's that sound, Jakkin?”

“You mean the crackle? The static? Or the river?”

“No, there's another sound. A kind of growling.”

“I don't know. I heard it before. Why?”

They both strained to listen for a moment, and then Akki said softly, “Waterfall!”

Without another word they began to race along the grassy border, screaming as they went, even though they knew it was futile. Auricle couldn't hear them. At last they gave up screaming because the more they yelled, the less breath they had for running.

For a while they seemed to be gaining on the waterborne dragon, for her progress was slowed by the many broad river bends. Several times she was spun around completely, bouncing off dangerous-looking rocks. They could see the hatchling balanced on her back. And once she wallowed for a moment in a patch of reeds close to the far shore, giving them time to close the gap. But then the current caught her again and carried her farther downstream. As she approached the place where the river and land dropped away precipitously into the waterfall, things seemed to speed up and she was buffeted from side to side by the ever-increasing white waves,
further endangering the hatchling clinging to her back.

Just then Jakkin's mind cleared and he stopped in order to read the frantic colors of Sssargon's sending. Akki began to slow down as well, and he waved her past.

“
Sssargon worries. Sssargon calls. Sssargon hears nothing.
”

More sensibly, Sssasha broadcast advice to the drifting dragon: “
Paddle thy wings. Use thy feet. Come to the shore.
”

But it was soon apparent to all of them that Auricle was too frightened to do anything but let the current carry her on. Her mind was filled with the same dull terror that Jakkin had first heard in the caves. He guessed the fighter's light in her eyes would be gone.

He sent instructions to the larger hatchlings. “
Go in the water with her. Push her to the shore. Triplets—be my eyes and ears. Stay above. Let me see all.
”

Without waiting for an answer he began to run again, concentrating on the precarious footing, for the grass was slippery near the river.

Sssargon launched himself into the water,
further drenching Auricle. One of his wings buffeted her and she spun around helplessly. Then Sssasha dropped into the river on Auricle's other side. Keeping her between them, they tried to ease her to the shore, but by now the water was churning angrily and a wild froth filled the air. All three were perilously close to the edge of the falls.

Standing on the bank, Akki urged them out with frantic shouts and sendings, but Sssargon's running commentaries had ceased and so had Sssasha's calm murmurings. Either they were all too intent on staying afloat or the water had once again performed its own strange silencing.

Jakkin caught up with Akki, shouting to her above the noise of the river, “It's no good trying to send, Akki. They must have each gone under at least once. The water's cut off any sendings. I don't understand it. The water in the oasis where I trained Heart's Blood never did this.”

“Minerals, Jakkin. The same minerals that the cavefolk mined. That has to be it. It has to be. It has—”

He grabbed her arm, wanting to shake her
into silence, and at the touch was drawn into the maelstrom of her mind. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to blanket them both with a calming blue. Akki finally stopped mind-babbling.

In the water the three dragons were now fighting the tossing current individually, spinning away from one another, lost in separate whirlpools.

“Why don't Sssasha and Sssargon get out?” Jakkin cried.

“Because, you idiot, you told them to save her. And they'll do whatever you ask. You're both father and mother to them. They'll die rather than disappoint . . .” She closed her mouth but her mind finished off the thought and Jakkin felt both hot and cold at its touch.

And then the river took the three dragons and tipped them over the edge of the world.

Rushing to the cliff side, Jakkin cast a sending up. “
Tri-sss, be my eyes.
”

Immediately a picture formed in his mind: three large figures tumbling down the falls. Sssargon, the heaviest, was first. For a moment he stopped, caught on a rocky outcropping. Then he pushed straight out from the water,
plummeting through the air, his wet wings too heavy to carry him. As the wind dried his scaly feathers he unfurled his wings with a loud crack. Pumping them once, he flew straight back toward the falls.

“No!” Jakkin shouted.

Deaf to both sound and sending, Sssargon made one or two feints at the falls and then found Sssasha. He plucked her out of the vertical water and dropped her free.

Overweighed by the water she, too, fell straight down. Then suddenly she flipped, shot her wings out, and back-winged away from the plunging water.

“What about Auricle?” shouted Akki.

As if sensing the question, Sssargon and Sssasha both turned back to the falls. Jakkin could see through Tri-sss's eyes that Auricle was no longer falling but clinging to a rocky outjut, though water was steadily pounding around her. There was no sign of the hatchling.

As if on a signal, Sssargon and Sssasha dashed into the falls at the same moment, emerging again with the drenched Auricle in their claws. Once free of the water, they
dropped her. She fell like a stone, tumbling end over end in the glistening air.

“She doesn't know how to fly,” screamed Akki. “She's . . .”

Even though they couldn't hear her, Sssasha and Sssargon had come to the same conclusion. Sssargon swept his wings back hard against his sides and followed Auricle in a long, perilous stoop, diving headfirst toward the ground. Passing Auricle, he flipped over, snapped his wings open once he was below her, and readied himself to cushion her fall.

“If she hits him . . .” Akki began.

“She'll kill them both,” Jakkin said, his voice flat. He closed his eyes, but Tri-sss's unrelenting sendings denied him any relief.

Just fifty feet from the ground, as if the air itself had ripped them open, Auricle's wings spread, fluttered, and caught an updraft that sent her into an off-balance soar.

Surprised, Sssargon almost fell to the ground anyway. At the last moment he turned and pumped his wings, scraping one on a large rock. Then he sailed up to Auricle's right. Sssasha banked and flew down to her
left, sending a bemused thought into Jakkin's mind:

“
No splat!
”

“No splat indeed,” Jakkin whispered. He threw his arms around Akki, unashamed of the tears running down his cheeks.

A horrible thought hit them both at the same time, though it was Akki who said it aloud.

“The hatchling!”

Already aware of the danger, the triplets were broadcasting simultaneous signals of distress: flashes of haunch and head as the little dragon tumbled head over heels through the water all the way down the treacherous falls.

***

I
T TOOK
J
AKKIN
and Akki nearly an hour to scramble down the cliffside, but when they got to the bottom, where the falls puddled into several rocky pools before fanning out into five small fingerlike rivers, there were the triplets and Sssasha, Sssargon, and Auricle, all standing over the dragonling.

Akki screamed, “You didn't tell us! You let us think she was dead.” She ran over and
grabbed up the hatchling, who wriggled delightedly in her arms.

A splash of chuckles ran through Jakkin's head. “
No splat, no splat, no splat.
”

Akki turned to him, her eyes full of laughter. “Jakkin, don't you see—proof positive that they're not just animals. Animals couldn't play a practical joke.” She nuzzled the hatchling.

Jakkin nodded. “But what really happened?” he asked, letting his mind send the question to them.

It took many minutes of patchworked sendings before he and Akki really understood the whole thing. Each dragon added a part or contradicted another. But finally the story came clear. The hatchling, being so small, had tumbled easily and landed in the pooling water at the bottom of the falls without hitting any rocks along the way. She was hardly the worse for her hazardous trip and, in fact, had rather enjoyed it all.

If dragons could smile, they smiled.

Without her medkit Akki couldn't do much for the scratches and bruises. Sssasha had tom her secundum while carrying Au
ricle, and the endpiece of Sssargon's left wing was ripped. Auricle was missing some scales in both wings and there was blood on her nose. None of it was serious. Only the hatchling seemed unbruised, though its eggskin was peeling off more quickly than was natural.

“We'll have to be careful with her,” Akki cautioned, “or she'll get sunburned on her new scales.”

The dragons licked their wounds and Akki reminded Jakkin that that was, after all, the best medicine for them, since there was something in the saliva that promoted healing.

“What really worries me, though,” Akki said later, gesturing to Auricle, “are her eggs. She's taken quite a beating these last few hours. It may not show on the outside but . . .” She let the sentence dangle.

“Even if she loses this clutch,” Jakkin said, “it won't be so bad. She'll be able to have another. And at least she's alive.”

“Alive—and lost. Just like the rest of us,” Akki said.