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Hope gave her tired body new life. She eschewed the cut rocks for a quicker climb down the side of the knob. Going down would be easier than coming back up. . . .
Novosolosk went to the swamp, the tiger padding along just behind, its hot breath on his tail and drops of saliva falling like rain. He expected the tiger to jump at any point . . .
Sure enough, a few of the logs had thick growths of dwarf’s-beard. The plant appeared to like broken-off ends, for some reason, or split trunks. It spilled out of the rotting black wood in a thick thatch of gray, interlaced and layered and almost woven in a way that made it difficult to tell where the growth began and where it ended. It reminded Wistala of the hair shirt from the man Father brought back to the cave for Auron to learn hominid-killing. One final test.
As the tiger groaned away, Novosolosk broke a piece of the moss at a thick joint. It was joined by a whitish band. He blew on the band. It stretched and waved in his breath but did not break. . . .
She tore off two hunks of moss, carried it in her mouth back up the stairs, feeling a bit like a bullfrog she’d seen croaking away in a stream with his windbag expanded under his chin. She took the stairs in a series of leaps.
Novosolosk crushed the moss in his sii and pulled out the arrow with one quick motion. The tiger yowled and swatted him across the crest, but he pressed the mass to either side of the hole the arrow left. Dwarf’s-beard both staunched the flow and cleaned the wound, so powerful is its magic, and the tiger’s angry fever came down. . . .
She listened to Father’s heart when she crept under his wounded sii. Father would not move his limb; she had to wedge herself into the gap between body and arm like a river clam and then flex her back so she could get at the wound.
The ugly red gash gave off a pulse of blood from one end, a steady flow from the other. She packed the wound with dwarf’s-beard, crushing its laced branches with her sii until they were sticky with the whitish gunk. It had been a brave dwarf that came so close to his sii to open the bronze dragon’s breast with his ax.
Father looked relieved as soon as she wiggled free of his armpit, although whether this was from instinct at being able to press the wound closed again or comfort brought by the dwarf’s-beard, she couldn’t say.
The stream of blood feeding the pool Father lay in slowed.
Wistala sank to her joints.
“Thank you, Novosolosk.”
Chapter 8
I still say he’s going to die,” the condor insisted.
Most of his cousins had left by the time the sun set, but a few still circled far above. The old yellowbeak chuckled every time Wistala limped up the long, long staircase, bearing another mouthful of dwarf’s-beard.
Wistala worked from nose-tip to tail, crushing the growth and placing it atop Father’s wounds. Sometimes it fell out again right away, and every time Father shifted his position, he exposed new wounds.
“Prophecies and fallacies, I’m starting to enjoy proving you wrong,” Wistala said.
“Ah, but there I’ve got you, if you’ll take the high view. There’s no hole so deep or airs so lofty for any of us that old Father Death doesn’t visit. He’s more reliable than even your fire. We, his humble retinue, clean up after him. How about giving us a taste and letting me warm my chilled grippers?”
“I’ve no fire yet, and even if I did, I wouldn’t waste it on a grouser like you.”
“Grouse! I’m a High Mountain Condor, hatchling. Barring your kind, no one matches my wingspan save the lost Rocs of the east. And once you dragons are gone—”
“What’s that you say?”
“Please, take no offense. We carrion birds value our manners. If I spoke on a delicate subject—”
“I should have asked you to explain yourself. Do you mean once Father and I leave the river, you’ll be the skyking?”
The condor clacked his beak. “I rarely see a dragon anymore. In the time of my father’s father’s father’s egg, I’m told your kind were thick in these mountains, and there was good feasting on the remains of your kills, for kind dragon lords always offered fresh, delectable heads with eyeballs intact to us of lesser wing.”
Wistala wondered how many other caverns hid butchered, moss-covered families. “Who is driving the dragons away?”
“Perhaps you should ask your father that, if he ever speaks again.”
“You must see everything. I’ve seen you soaring as high as a dragon.”
The condor straightened a little; birds were as vain as dragons sometimes.
“So who can master dragons and bid them depart?”
“The hominids, I suppose. They do shape the world to suit themselves, don’t they?”
