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“Father didn’t see me.”
Wistala choked back a wail.
The cave mouth showed signs of ancient construction, ruined battlements and cracked towers about wide creeper-hung mouth. Father must have considerable flying skill to land inside without disturbing the overgrowth.
Spilled rock covered the whole mountainside beneath the cave mouth. Moss grew thick out of the wind between the rocks.
Betrayed! The Wheel of Fire!
The power of Father’s mind sent a shudder down her long spine. Not so precisely modulated as Mother’s mind-speech, Father’s was all emotion and imagery. Auron’s mind-picture of the dwarf hold, though this time as clear and painful as naked sunlight, burned into her brain. A roar she felt through the rock as much as she heard emerged from the cave, as though the mountain itself were screaming from its broken-toothed mouth.
After the roar came the dwarven battle cry she’d heard before: Ku! Ku! Kuuuuu!
Father’s pain and need came through to her, as hard and bright as his gemstones they’d thoughtlessly gobbled. She felt wounds as Father emerged, a dwarf with legs set tight against his neck, hacking at Father’s scaly spine with a bloody ax as though trying to cut a tree dodging out of the way.
Off, off my back, you klut!
Wistala could feel the dwarf on her back, winced at the blows. She threw herself off the rock, rolled in the meadow as battle horns blew in the valley below.
“Above you!” Auron shouted in a voice louder than she’d have given him credit for. Then Auron, too, gave in to Father’s pain, and he rolled himself into a ball.
Flee!
She saw Father flapping north, plucking spears from his hide, got another flash of the dwarf halls around the lake. He couldn’t mean to go into battle again!
In the valley below, from hiding places in the mossy rocks, elven heads watched him go.
“Wistala, lie flat!” The words came fast as Auron told her to let him lead the elves away. She would go north and find Father.
Her hearts almost ceased beating at the thought of her brother leaving her. “Blades and raids, let’s run. I want us to be with each other, no matter what.”
“One of us has to make it, Wistala. You hunt better than I. You have a chance of making it alone in the wilderness.”
“I don’t know the way!”
“Follow the mountains north. You can’t miss this lake—it’s on this side of the mountains and very big.” He gave her his fuzzy mind-picture again, but it didn’t matter. She’d never make it—>Auron had a plan to find Father. She went along with it. Having a goal, “a star to fix on,” put hope in his hearts and stopped him from crying in his sleep at night. She listened, learned to find Susiron, the unchanging star, by following the nose-tip of the Bowing Dragon.
Wistala suspected that, small as they were, it was just a matter of time until something got them. The only question was what—and where and when. At one point she thought Auron had died in the night, taken by the frigid wind on his scaleless skin, for when she woke, he was white and cold, until he stirred and she realized he’d just been mimicking the snow.
She hoped that as they traveled west around the shoulder of the mountain toward the main entrance to the cave—Auron had some idea of the topography, thanks to mind-pictures from Father—they’d find a quiet mountain lake where they could spend the coming spring and summer, feeding on frogs and fat bottom-sucking fish. Perhaps they could find a hollow log and enough muck to hide their smell. When one didn’t have a cave, one had to improvise. Without a safe refuge, it was only a matter of time before something got them.
“Quit saying that,” Auron said. “We’re doing all right. We’ve adapted to the Upper World, at least what we’ve seen of it.”
Auron trotted fearlessly through the Upper World, turning from brown to green to white as the surface he paused over changed. Wistala felt that every step she took was through an endless arena under thousands of eyes peeping at her from treetop and slidepile. Voices relayed what the eyes saw, berry-brained birds tittered about the hatchlings passing beneath, not caring a dead twig whose ears might hear of their movements.
Having every field mouse know of their passing bothered her.
Then there was the dirtiness of the Upper World. As she passed through thickets, pine needles and branches caught under her scales; pebbles had an uncanny knack for working themselves inward rather than out, resisting any but the most determined effort of tooth and tongue to extract them. She lost scales in pursuit of biting and stinging insects, stopping to probe and dig for them as Auron stamped impatiently. His leathery skin couldn’t turn arrows, but it kept out the flies admirably.
Then the storm hit. Winds screamed up from the southwest, pursued by lightning and thunder, more terrifying than ten thousand stamping dwarves on the march. They found shelter, if the notch between two boulders could be called shelter, and waited it out.
Auron talked her into trying the rainwater. Its clean taste seemed to clear her mind and wash away the thoughts of danger and doom. It was the first sensation in the Upper World she enjoyed. She stuck out her tongue and let the water run off the boulder, onto her tongue, and into her jowls, where it could be easily swallowed.
And—Sun-bless the Water Spirit—the rain washed her scales clean. She stretched and rippled and lifted her scales to the invigorating flow. Take that, sticky pine sap! Better luck next hatchling, blood-bugs! Even the faint sparking smell in the air from a nearby lightning strike gave her hearts new life.
The rain left the valleys to the south and west clear; individual branches stood out in the storm-washed air. Anything was possible. Finding Father, even. Then the dwarves would taste their own blood and tears.
The rain slackened, and the hatchlings found plentiful soft worms driven to the surface by the moisture. Auron tried to snap his up, but Wistala found that they went down faster and easier if one simply inhaled with one’s lips tight around the worm. Auron thumped his tail in appreciation as she showed him the trick.
