As he grasped at the coarse grass and hauled himself out of the mud and onto solid ground, Selden asked him, 'Do you think maybe Malta got out, too?'
'She might have,' Reyn said. He thought he lied, but as he spoke, a sudden lift in his heart told him he not only hoped, he believed it possible. With the flight of the dragon, all things seemed possible. As if in echo of his thought, he heard the far-away echoing of the dragon's trumpeting cry. He glimpsed a flash of a brighter blue against the sky.
'If my mother or brother sees or hears her, they'll know where she came from. They'll search and send help to us. We're going to live.'
Selden met the older man's eyes. 'Until then, let's try to get ourselves out,' he proposed. 'After all we've been through, I don't want to be rescued by someone else. I want to do it myself.'
Reyn grinned and nodded.
TINTAGLIA BANKED OVER THE WIDE RAIN WILD RIVER VALLEY. SHE TASTED the summer air, rich with all the smells of life. She was free, free. She beat her wings strongly, flapping them harder than she must, for the simple joy of experiencing her own strength. She rose through the blue summer day, soaring up to where the air was thin and chill. The river became a sparkling silver thread in the green tapestry below her. She had in her memory the experiences of all her forebears to draw upon, but she savored for the first time her own flight. She was free now, free to create her own memory and life. She circled lazily down, considering all that lay before her.
She had a task before her, the task that she alone remained to perform. She must find the young ones, and protect and guide them in their migration up the river. She hoped that some remained alive to be guided. If not, she would truly be the last of her kind.
She tried to dismiss the humans from her mind. They were not Elderlings, who knew the ways of her kind and accorded dragons proper respect. They were humans. One could not owe anything to such beings. They were creatures of a few breaths, frantic to eat and breed before their brief span of days was done. What could one of her kind owe to something that died and rotted swifter than a tree did? Could one be in debt to a butterfly or a blade of grass?
She touched them briefly with her mind, a final time. They had not long to live. The female struggled like a beetle in a puddle, floating and flailing against moving water. Reyn Khuprus was where she had left him, mired in mud and squirming like a worm. He struggled in the self-same chamber where she had languished for so many years.
The brevity of their lives suddenly touched her. In the momentary twinkling of their existence, each of them had tried to aid her. Each had taken time from their mate quest to try to free her. Poor little bugs. It was a small cost to her, these few moments out of the vast store of years to come. She turned a lazy loop in the sweet summer air. Then with strong, steady beats of her wings, she drove herself back toward the buried city.
'I'm coming!' she called to them both. 'Don't fear. I'll save you.'
EPILOGUE
The Memory of Wings
WE KNOW WHERE WE ARE GOING, AND WHY. WHY MUST WE PUSH OURselves so hard, swimming so swiftly and for so much of the day?' The slender green minstrel was limp in the grasp of the tangle. He lacked even the strength to return the grip of the other serpents. He trusted them to hold him as he swayed in the moving current like seaweed. Shreever pitied him. She lapped another coil of her length around his frail body and held him more securely.
'I think,' she bugled softly, 'that Maulkin drives us so hard because he fears that our memories may fade again. We must reach our goal before we lose our purpose. Before we forget where we go, and why we go there.'
'There is more to it than that,' Sessurea added. He, too, sounded weary. But there was a lilt of pleasure in his voice. There was such comfort in knowing the answer. 'The seasons are turning. We are nearer the end of summer than the beginning. We should have been there by now.'
'We should even now be wrapped in silt and memories, letting the sun bake our memories into us while we make our change,' Kelaro added.
'Our cases must be hard and strong before the rains come and the chill of winter. Otherwise, we may perish before we have completed our metamorphosis,' scarlet Sylic reminded them all.
The other serpents in the tangle added their voices, speaking low to one another. 'The water must still be warm for the threads to form best.'
'Sunlight and warmth are needed for the shell to be hard.'
'It must bake through, solid and firm, before the change can begin.'
Maulkin opened his great eyes. His false eyes shimmered gold with pleasure. 'Sleep and rest, little ones,' he told them blandly, ignoring the fact that several of the serpents were far larger than he was, and many were his equal. 'Dream well and take comfort in all we know. Speak of it to one another. Sharing the memories Draquius gave us will help us to preserve them.'
They trumpeted their agreements softly as they wrapped and secured one another. The tangle had grown. In the wake of Draquius' sacrifice, many of the feral serpents had shown signs of returning memory. Some still did not speak. Nevertheless, from time to time intelligence flashed briefly in their eyes, and they behaved as if they were a true part of the tangle, even to joining the others at rest. There was comfort in greater numbers. When they met other serpents now, the outsiders either avoided Maulkin's tangle or followed and gradually became a part of them. Maulkin had confided to them the hope that when they reached the river and migrated up to the cocooning grounds, even the most bestial might feel the stir of memories.
Shreever lidded her eyes and sank down to dream. That was another recovered pleasure. In her dreams, she flew again, as she recalled her forebears had done. In her dreams, she had already changed to a fine dragon, with the freedom of the three realms.
'But do not become overly confident in these memories,' Maulkin abruptly added. He did not proclaim it loudly. Only she, Sessurea and a few others closest to him opened their eyes to his voice.
'What do you mean?' Shreever asked him in dread. Had not they suffered enough? Now they remembered. What was to stop them from reaching their goal?
'Nothing is quite right,' Maulkin said quietly. 'Nothing is as it was, nothing is exactly as it should be. We must swim fast and well, to allow ourselves time to overcome obstacles along the way. Be assured, there will be obstacles.'
'What do you mean?' Sessurea asked plaintively, but Shreever thought she already knew. She kept silent and listened to the prophet's reply.
'Look around you,' he bade them. 'What do you see?'
Sessurea spoke for them all. 'I see the Plenty. I see the remains of old structures tumbled on the seafloor. I see the Arch of Rythos in the distance…'
'And is not the Arch of Rythos, in all your memories, a pleasant place to perch after an afternoon of flying about the Lack? Did not it stand tall and proud at the entrance to Rythos Harbor? Why is it scattered and broken and swallowed by the Plenty?'
No one replied. All waited for his answer.
'I do not know either,' Maulkin rumbled softly when the silence had grown long. 'However, I suspect that these things are what have long confused us. They are why things were almost familiar, why we could nearly recall the way, and yet could not.'
'Is the fault ours alone?' Tellur demanded. Shreever had thought the slender green minstrel was asleep. His tired voice had an indignant ring to it. 'The memories that Draquius bequeathed to us tell us that we should look for serpents who remember, ones in whom the memories have remained clean and strong. Not only those ones, but also guides are supposed to assist us. Where are the grown dragons that should have stood guard at the
