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“I’m Wistala. You’re no brother to me. You had a tooth in this.” She felt her fanlike griff expand. Though she had no crest to rattle them against, they could still flutter angrily, she found.
“They lied,” the copper said, but she launched herself off the ledge, jaws agape and sii reaching for him. “A bloody cave, no hoard—”
He dodged as she landed, took advantage of her being off balance to throw himself across her neck. “We need to overcome this, put it behind. Unite. The past can’t be changed!” he said.
Wistala squirmed, couldn’t break free. She gathered her limbs under her body. “No. But it can be avenged.” She lifted herself with all four limbs and her tail, pushing forward.
The copper tipped.
And she struck him, sii, teeth, even dealt shoulder blows, trying to tip him so his vulnerable underbelly would be exposed, gutted and thrown on the waste heap to feed the lichen!
She tried to claw at his eyes, but her sii just rattled off his crest and griff. She found something soft, drove her digits in with claws extended.
The copper squealed, so loudly that it shocked her into releasing him, vague memories of wrestling with Auron during one of his attacks triggering instincts—
Face smeared with blood, the copper scrambled away, striking her between the eyes with his tail as he turned so that she saw dragonflame explode for a moment. She shook her head to clear her vision, and he was gone.
Liquid gurgled and pulsed behind her breastbone, and she spat after him. Her fire bladder bile had a sharp, unpleasant smell, like vomit and sulfur.
She sniffed out the blood trail and followed it. The dribbles led her to the biggest of the cave pools, the one with the waterfall next to it. A fissure in the wall had been widened, and she saw a forgotten spike or two still resting in a piece of wall that had come down and fallen into the pool.
Had he gone to get the dwarves?
I’ll meet that cripple and his dwarves again when I have real dragonfire, instead of bladderbile.
But until then, she had to survive. She took a deep drink of the water from the pool; her brother’s blood could just be tasted on it. Or perhaps it was simply a loosened tooth from the fight. Wistala turned and left her home cave forever.
Chapter 7
Wistala used the walls and ceiling again on her way out, now sure of the route and good places to rest. She wasn’t afraid of being taken unaware by pursuit; the bloody-handed dwarves might as well bang their shields against the walls for all the noise they made.
She feared and hated them. It would be hard to say which emotion was the stronger—perhaps her fear, that she would end up another headless, sii-less, saa-less corpse robbed of life and skin itself.
Her body wasn’t equal to the anger she felt. It hung above her, vast and thick, like a storm cloud. One day she might be able to inhale that cloud, take it into her body and use it to fuel her vengeance for a butchered family.
One day. When I am strong. I’m too weak now.
Weak wasn’t the word for it, more like exhausted, drained . . . Every muscle in Wistala’s body ached as she climbed out of the cave. She inched forward as she emerged, not knowing what sort of help her brother might have summoned. Furtive creeping was her only defense. She wouldn’t be able to put up any more of a fight than a slug, thanks to her weariness and the cold despair in her hearts.
The smell of fresh air steeled her limbs and gave her a last burst. As she climbed up through the creepers at the mouth of the cave and squeezed into an old crack in the battlements, she felt as though her body was sloughing off her limbs to puddle beneath her. She joined it, slid down a rushing slide of fatigue, and slept.
Wistala awoke to alarm that she couldn’t smell Auron. The events of the previous day came back in a rush, along with the tumult of emotions. Not true emotions, rather echoes of them. The fear, the anger, the disgust, the despair all felt cold and dead and dark, leaving her spiritless.
Was it just yesterday she had lost one brother, and fought another?
I’m done for. The world’s too much for me. It’ll have me, too, in the end.
She would have laughed at the dreams of were-blood taken from the dwarves were it not too much effort. Never to smell Mother’s rich, comforting scent, spin gemstones on the egg shelf with Jizara, listen to Father’s approach with awe and a little fear at the bloody odors . . .
A beetle probed the dirt of a crack in the battlement above her eye. She could pick it with a flick of her tongue and crunch it down, but it still sought sustenance with the determination of one who knew only instinct. It knew nothing of doom or enemies or the vast indifference of this uncaring, friendless world.
“I shall be you for a time, beetle.”
The beetle hunted so that it might eat, unaware of its own near destruction. And so should she.
She crept out of the cold crack. Everything on her hurt, especially the gripping maniples of her sii. She got behind an old wall, or perhaps it was a paved path; it was wide and low, and thick brush almost turned it into a tunnel.
It was morning on the other side of the mountains, she guessed. Here the land lay shadowed and cold under a purple sky. The clouds above slowly warmed, and she took advantage of the twilight to explore a broken tower. From an arrow-slit next to a stony ledge, she examined the approaches to the cave.
