“Hgnh – what…?” I coughed, groaning as my body shook as if there were a thousand lightning-ants running up and down inside my bones. “Urgh…” I hacked and coughed. “Where am I…?” I whispered.
“Nari – you have to wake up, now!” There were hands on my shoulders, bony hands, that were lifting me up to my feet. My vision swam into focus as I realized who it was – Tamin, looking at me with a worried and tense expression. We were still in the freezing cold tent, but the sounds of the storm winds had abated to a low hiss and slur of noise. That was something, at least… I thought disconsolately. I had clearly failed. The Lady Red had challenged me, and I didn’t have the strength, courage, or will to convince her…
“Abioye? Torvald?” I whispered, wiping my eyes that felt gummed and heavy as if I had been asleep for an entire season.
“Nari, you have to come with me, now,” my Uncle said, pulling me on my stumbling feet towards the flap of my tent—
“It’s no use, Uncle, I failed…” I was gasping. “Get your things. We should leave this place…” But I had no idea where to. Where was going to be safe now, in the world? I could take Tamin back to the Plains. He might have a few seasons out there before Inyene came looking for us.
And I will go back to Torvald, I thought as I let my Uncle cajole and encourage me outside. I could find Abioye and Montfre, I thought as a sob rose in my throat. Maybe we will all stand together, before the end—
“Little Sister! Raise your eyes and cast aside your tears!” Ymmen’s voice was suddenly booming and loud in my mind, making me blink and look up—
To see dragons. Lots and lots of dragons.
“But – I thought…” I stammered a little in the cold air. The morning’s storm had completely subsided, but that didn’t mean that this high air of the Dragon Spine Mountains weren’t still fiercely cold. The winds of last night were now replaced with different air: the frankincense, cinnamon and soot-laden wingbeats that came from the dragons that were flocking and settling on every outcrop and crag around us.
There were the Sinuous Blues, wrapping their long and thin bodies in loops around boulders, interspersed with squat haunches of the Stocky Greens. A collection of the smaller Orange dragons, with their long necks and short, almost viper-like faces forming a clacking, clamoring committee right on the edges of the Circle of Grom, comfortable on the cliff-like edges.
And still more. More dragons than I had ever seen in one place, which was a marvel, though I doubted that they numbered more than fifty in all. A scattering of Reds – who were of a similar structure to Ymmen’s Black, (what I thought of as the ‘perfect’ dragon form, with everything in proportion) but the Reds were smaller by a half to the Great Black. There were also more numerous, but far smaller dragons with light blue or faint orange hides and cream bellies, each one no bigger than my outstretched arm. The smaller, bird-like wyrms rushed and spun, biting and hissing at each other in constant exuberance.
And even larger than Ymmen stood a couple of ancient Whites – heavy, ponderous sorts of dragons that moved slowly and did not appear to mind the clamorous snapping and hissings of the smaller drakes.
It’s still morning, a part of me recognized the low glow of the sun – the pinkish alchemical fire on the horizon had gone, and I wondered if that meant that Torvald had succeeded, or…?
“How long was I asleep?” I whispered warily to Tamin as I stepped amongst the dragons that sprawled, clutched, chirruped, or scratched on the sides of the mountain around me. I could sense their eyes on me, but at the moment their attention also appeared distracted.
“The storm lasted a day and a night, and you slept all the way through it,” Tamin said gently. He appeared far more owl-eyed than I felt around these boisterous and noble creatures.
They came. They came when I called, I kept thinking, feeling a foolish, soppy grin spread over my face.
“Lady Dragon-Sister!” A voice cut across the noise of the draconians, strange because it was a human voice. I turned in shock to see that there was a young man stepping very, very carefully past the outstretched claws of a Stocky Green, with a small group of humans behind him.
What!? Are they Dragon Riders? I immediately wondered.
But these people did not look like the Dragon Riders of the Middle Kingdom. For one, their skin was darker than the lighter tones that predominated Torvald, and the man ahead of me had skin the color of light chestnut, with glossy black hair that was trying to escape from a headscarf that wrapped around his head. He was taller than me, but not as broad as Abioye, and he and his fellows wore cloaks of a sanded, dusty-ochre sort of color over loose-fitting, light black pantaloons and shirts, constrained by a leather vest. My eyes widened when I saw the matching curved sabers at the man’s belt. When he and his fellows halted in front of me, I saw that he was older than I had first thought, with white flecking the stubble of his chin.
“My name is Akir Dar-Awil Akeem, Samir of the Binshee—” the man said in a firm, but not altogether cruel voice. There was an interrupting cough from one of his accompanying people behind him, a woman with hair that was thick and black, which she had released from her own headscarf. Her eyes flashed at me and the man in front, scornfully.
“Ah, yes. Meena is always setting me right.” A small, embarrassed smile flashed across his features, before it faded as Akir turned back to square his shoulders at me. “I am Samir of the Binshee Tribe of the Fury Mountains, and I am Second Prince to the Southern Kingdom.”
Oh. It was hard to say why I didn’t react with amazement or shock at this sudden arrival of a royal. I had already met a king, as well as people who called themselves courtiers and lords and ladies. Perhaps I was getting used to it.
But this Akir-who-was-a-Second-Prince did not look like any king or prince or noble that I had so far met in Torvald. In fact, he and his company looked, if anything, like soldiers or adventurers.
And he said he was from a tribal family? I frowned. “Excuse me.” I bobbed my head more out of courtesy than respect. “But I have never heard of the Binshee family, and my mother, the Imanu of the Souda, taught me all of the names of the Daza…”
“Ah, Daza!” The man’s stubbled face suddenly lit up in a much wider smile, as he turned around, back to his group as the dragons continued their hissing and whistling confusions all around. “See! I told you this wasn’t more Torvald business!” he called out, earning a deeper snort and a frown from the angry Meena.
“You know of us?” I looked at them again. They were Dragon Riders, I saw – as their dragons were clustered to one edge of the rocks, and were the same breed of Oranges that were elsewhere around us, but they had reins and halters and blanket saddles on.
“Oh yes! We Binshee don’t travel to the Plains much, preferring our Fury Mountains or the deep deserts of the South – but the Southern Kingdom has a lively trade with Tranta!” the second prince said. I knew of where he meant at least – Tranta was the only ‘city’ on the Plains, if it could be called that – really a confluence of rivers far to the south of the Plains, near the foothills of the Masaka Mountains, where there were wooden hall structures and a constantly changing, shifting collection of yurts and tents. It was the biggest trading and bartering area in all of the Plains, and received many visitors from the Southern Kingdom.