Having opted not to light a fire that evening for fear of being spied upon from afar, they slept a short ways from the river, under cover of a large copse of gum trees. In the morning, they rose lazily from their sandy beds. A couple of their number decided they might not be leaking too badly, and within an hour, were on their way on a north-westerly heading, up toward the snowy slopes of the higher mountains. The battle had taken far more out of him than he had imagined, Dragon discovered. It was he who had to call for an early lunch break.
After lunch, they flew two more shorter stints, ending in a green valley of medium height, one endless meadow of mauve flowers that ran for twenty miles or more up into the Tamarine Range. At Yarimda’s request, they strolled along slowly for an hour, enjoying the warm afternoon sunshine and the fragrant mountain airs.
“So clean. So pure!” Inzashu exclaimed, filling her lungs with delight.
One forgot what it was like to see the world, Dragon told himself, doing the same. Adjusting his spectacles, he gazed about. Forget about the dusty heat and all that death down in the desert – yet he could not help but consider how the sands would run dark with blood once the Skartun armies returned in the full panoply of their might, their dark-tufted helms waving in the breeze. He paused to examine wildflowers close up, and told Inzashu how he would bury her in snow up to her neck.
“Oh, I’ve never seen snow before!” she cried. “Only from a distance, like this. Skartun doesn’t have snow. Is it truly cold?”
“Can you feel the chill in the air? That’s a foretaste.”
“Aye. It’s … bracing.”
He did not have the heart to clarify that they were barely up to one-third of the height they would need to fly to reach Juggernaut’s lair. Instead, he told her that tomorrow, they would be flying over snowfields and between peaks that never lost their white robes. With an ounce of luck, she might see wolves or panthers, and most probably they would be met by a Dragon or two – hopefully friendly ones this time, on the alert for intruders in their territory. He picked pensively at his scales.
When it was time to put his best paw forward, he was looking worse and worse. If he did not know better, he feared to lose the entire coat of scales. What happened then? He had never heard of a draconic moult. Perhaps this was a peculiarity of Sea Dragons?
“Oceans on your mind, young Dragon?” Yarimda inquired.
“A bit,” he admitted.
“Could we find a place to rest? I grow weary, even of joy.”
“At once.” She gave him a withering glance that suggested a keen youngster was being far too polite. “Honoured Yarimda, it might sound trite, but I was worrying about my scales. Dragons of the Tamarine Mountains are not known to moult.”
“A worm forms a chrysalis, and out comes a butterfly.”
There, old narked Dragon made his appearance with a low growl. Worm! She dared the comparison?
Yarimda arched her left eyebrow.
He chose to say, “I would make for a severely overweight butterfly.”
“Oh, severely,” she agreed. “This old woman was trying to come up with a plausible link between the probable origin of your egg and the change to the Sea Dragon migration.”
“Indeed?”
“I remembered a tale I once heard in my youth, of a Dragon who was tragically killed in a storm – near the Kingdom of Amboraine, actually. Do you know of Bonewhite Valley?” He shivered. “Aye. How is it, Dragon, that after all these years – decades, even – the Dragonkind still have a communal aversion to that place? Almost as if there is a racial memory shared from dam to egg, and Dragon to Dragon.”
He could only shake his muzzle. Deep, uncanny lore.
She said, “Here’s a nice spot. Let’s camp here. Azania, would you be a dear and prepare me a sweet herbal brew?”
“Of course, Yarimda. What were you and Dragon talking about?”
“Creepy things,” he intoned, blowing on her hair. “Eerie, ghostly stories.”
“Stop bothering your Princess like that, young Dragon,” Yarimda said tartly, rapping her walking stick against his lower jaw.
Azania thought she could hide that smile from him? Wretch!
He threatened her with a talon behind the old woman’s back. Azania pasted on an innocent expression.
After repeating the story for the Princess, Yarimda added, “I wondered if there might not be a scent memory, to use the Draconian word, which changed the Sea Dragons’ behaviour. Say there was a place from which your egg was stolen, be it by force or by guile, to your dam a tragedy no less than that of Bonewhite Valley. Say that place became to Sea Dragons just such an aversion – nothing you ever think about or could put a talon to – which made them take a different route.”
He rasped, “Where? Up north and all the way around the Vaylarn Archipelago?”
It made sense. With the route changed, the Sea Serpents had found the seas between Vaylarn and the mainland much to their liking. That spelled the end of Azerim’s fleet, and indeed, all coastal shipping from Lymarn in the south to Ermine in the far northeast.
“Possibly. The annual Sea Dragon migration is one of the greatest natural wonders of our realm, young Dragon. I imagine they might circumvent Solixambria itself, or even our entire world in the course of their journeying. It is a sight – ah, such a sight – as to infuse the music of the deepest seas with the magic of one’s soul. I remember it well …”
Sitting upon a blanket the Princess had laid out for her, the old woman clasped her hands to her chest, suddenly lost in the mists of time
