And then he was back at Shen's mound, with no Shen and with the sun passing beyond the Crown of Heaven. He swam heedless of the brush and grass, plowing along the line the thief had followed. He found his furthest point, and slowed, and tasted the water and the air.
The traces faded and staled with the time he'd lost, as sun and wind and water fought him. He followed. Her scent remained mixed with the taint of the Old One. It swelled and ebbed, turned fresher and aged, as if he followed through eddies in the stream of time.
He found drips and smears of blood, but far less than he would wish. Small teeth could not do much damage. Once the hatchlings had minds and memories, he could teach them where to bite their prey and their enemies, places where even a nip could kill.
Tension grew again, pulling him forward and pulling him back. He felt as if he had two brains, one commanding the forelegs and one his rear and tail. They argued over his path. He pushed on through the swamp and neared the far shore. He touched solid ground. He had to return. He had to go forward. Shen needed him. Ka and Ghu and Po and the others needed him.
He sighted on the keep, and the large tree on a distant hill, and memorized the shape of the hard lands. He turned back. The heat built inside him and told him that he was pushing too hard, too fast. His bulk wasn't suited for a long chase. He turned and swam on, ignoring it. He had to.
Ka clung to a branch, nearly halfway to Ghu's mound. Khe'sha knew that she would rest, and swim on, and finally she would reach that tantalizing smell. She would keep trying until she did. Persistence -- it was a virtue in adult dragons. It kept him going. However, it would be her death if he didn't stop her. He nipped her up and carried her back to her mound and buried her in the muck to slow her down. He swam on.
Ghu attacked him, always attacking anything that moved. Po had wandered. He circled the swamp, feeding, capturing, guarding his hatchlings. His brain started to buzz with the heat building inside his body. He pushed on from Shen's mound, straight to the hard lands and his last scent of her. He followed the reek of the Old Blood into forest and up hill, until it turned and headed straight for the gray keep on the horizon. He turned back.
He dove into the cold black waters of the wallow he'd dug in the center of the marsh. A spring flowed there, fresh and clean and icy, and he bathed in it to chill his body. But he couldn't stay. He soaked in the depths until his heartbeat slowed, though only to the rate he would normally call high. He drank deep from the coldest flow. He swam on.
Ka had dug herself out, a tunnel narrow and straight and perfectly aimed at Ghu's mound, barely disturbing her own. He turned and drove through the water, tail and legs pushing like the final lunge to take his prey. He followed her scent as she had followed Ghu's. He passed the shrub where she had rested. He did not find her. His head buzzed and his vision blurred, throbbing with the beat of his heart.
He found Ka. He found both of them. Ka was dead. Ghu crouched over her body, her half-eaten body, flattened his head against her torn hide, and hissed, a dragon defending his kill.
Khe'sha felt the world spin, his body's heat pounding in his head. His eyes darkened and his legs shook. He slumped forward until his chin rested on the mound.
Shen and Ka. Two females, both gone. Six remaining mounds, six remaining hatchlings. Four males and two females. Trouble, in this land where nest-mates must become life-mates because there were no other nests.
Khe'sha found his thoughts and forced them back into place. The heat had nearly killed him. Or he had nearly killed himself, pushing his body too far, too fast, too long. Humans and Old Ones could do such things. So could the hounds they trained for the chase. Their bodies allowed it, even encouraged it. They could hunt and kill by sheer endurance, wearing their prey into the ground.
Dragons could not.
The old songs told that story, as they told all things. They told of dragons pushing beyond their bodies' limits, performing great deeds that echoed down the centuries and dying in their triumph. Pan'gu had been the first.
But I have failed. Heroes triumph and we remember them in song. Failure is forgotten. Ka is dead and eaten. Shen has gone to the stone tower. I remain.
And the hatchlings still needed him. He rose, legs weak and dark spots whirling across his eyes. He slid down from Ghu's nest and pointed his nose along the open water that led to Po's mound. He swam, slowly, weakly, still feeling the heat flow from his body into the water.
The stone tower stood above him on its hilltop. He looked up at it from time to time in his rounds, remembering. The hatchlings would grow, their scales would harden, they would learn to think. He would be free.
He would compose the song of Sha'khe and teach it to the hatchlings. Only then could he destroy the tower and all that lived within it. That might not fit the dark witch's plan. She wanted to follow a fresher trail, heedless of the cost to others. He must wait. Even so, time swirled strangely, and he wondered if the days now passed the same for Shen as they did for him and for her nest-mates.
He would find out when he destroyed the keep. That would be his song.
* * *
Fergus wiped sweat from his forehead. Part of it was fading horror,
