Page 47 of Dragonbound

‘I know almost all of your past. I know of your arrival here. I know of the First Speaker. I know of why I live among you. I witnessed much of the events between our two kinds. I can tell you much, but I think it would be better for you to see it. Look into my memories. Take from them what you will. They are my honest recollections.’

As the night sky turned and the sun began to rise, the Other allowed him into her memories. He absorbed them with horror. He had been lied to. For rotations he’d been told to avoid the Others, that they were incapable of anything other than terrible cruelty. All of it lies.

Vaguely, he became aware of the Others extinguishing the lamps and of their astonishment to find him speaking with Emma, although his attention never strayed from her.

By the time they were finished, he felt drained and angry. There was so much he didn’t know. How could he be the Speaker when he knew so little about where drekkikind had come from? Where Emma’s kind lived? Although he asked her why he felt such a connection to the Other on the glacier, she could not tell him. And yet, she agreed that if there was a link being forged, it must be for a reason.

His thoughts became a blur. He had so much to think about. He thanked Emma and went back to his cavern to sleep.

When he slept, his dreams were cloudy and obscure, filled with the memories Emma had given him. The knowledge of what his kind had done to the Others was unsettling – so much so he wasn’t quite ready to look at it too closely. They’d acted rashly and made no effort to understand the Others, merely branding them as dangerous and undesirable. Their actions were in contradiction to everything he’d come to know. He wondered where the truth lay between the version of events bestowed upon him by Naer-Vera and those from Emma’s.

He was jolted awake from his disturbed sleep by the shuddering of his home, and an anguished cry. He gripped the stone floor of his chamber with his claws, startled from his comfortable stone hollow bed by the combined events. Suddenly, he realised the cry had come inside his mind. It could only be from one of the two people he’d freely shared his mind with, and he could sense Emma slept soundly in her bed.

He shouldn’t have left the Other on the glacier.

He flew now, anger powering his mighty wings. When he looked into the Other’s mind, he felt only panic and terror, saw ice and rock.

An avalanche. Caused by a huge ground tremor. And the Other, trapped beneath the avalanche.

How was he to find him?

The glacier was huge. The man’s chaotic thoughts offered a suggestion as to where his Other was travelling, but not where he was when the avalanche tumbled from the giant peak. He didn’t have the time to search for him. The man would only have so much air.

The only consolation that calmed him was he could sense the Other lived. If not, his thoughts wouldn’t be discoverable.

Skaldi berated himself. He should have stayed to ensure the Other’s safety. He should have tried to communicate with him. Maybe together they could have discovered their peoples’ shared past. The more he thought about what Emma told him the more he was certain the man was vital to the future of both their kinds. Or, so Skaldi had made the connections. He had to ensure the man’s survival.

He flew towards where he’d last seen his Other.

He sought the woman’s thoughts but they were too hard to reach. While he didn’t think she was trapped under the avalanche, wherever she was, it was too dark for him to determine the location.

Frustrated, he looked for the wolf travelling with her. He was able to make out some faint smudges and blurred somethings, even the scent of their location, but nothing clear.

Below, a scene of utter devastation opened up across the great glacier. An entire mountainside of snow, ice and rock littered the bottom of the tallest mountain enclosing the glacier. The west face now stood starkly black between its white-blanketed neighbours.

His relief at finally reaching the site of the avalanche was short-lived. How could his Other have survived such a weight tumbling onto him? How was he to find him?

He didn’t even know where to start.

He landed with a soft thud some way from the devastated mountain base and reached out to the Other’s mind. But there was nothing there. Panic gripped him.

Drekki began to pace backwards and forwards, his tail trailing in the snow, straining to hear the man, to feel the edges of his mind. There was something there. Something almost tangible, but no. Every time he reached for it, the thin threads seemed to evaporate, like water in the heat of the inner caverns of rún-ketill.

Then, a cry rent the air.

The woman.

He flew to the base of the next mountain. Debris from the avalanche towered above him, a tangled mixture of snow, ice, rocks and mud.

He scanned it, looking for the slightest trace of the woman.

There – a slight divot in the confusion of snow and rock as if there was a space behind it. He pushed past the panic and fear that overwhelmed the woman’s mind and tried to see what she could see. There was only blackness. He nudged her mind, coaxing out the memory of what had happened, but it was all a blur. A low rumble. A sharp mineral cold. Light being swallowed up. Guilt. But no indication of where the man was.

He focused on her voice. She was shouting. The noise was coming from that little depression against the mountainside. She wailed one word over and over again. Erann.

Was that the Other’s name? As Emma was named Emma?

Forgetting he was the esteemed Speaker of his kind, he began to dig with his massive front claws, throwing huge quantities of snow and ice aside as he laboured to reach the woman. He’d almost excavated a path to the cave opening when he remembered the woman wouldn’t be able to see him. The only Others who could see him were those within rún-ketill, or Erann, as he knew him to be called. She might be terrified if the wall of snow suddenly opened in front of her, fearing another avalanche.