Velindre shook her head. ‘What am I listening for?’
‘What you’re not hearing.’ Kheda walked along the path, Risala at his heels. ‘The loals weren’t singing at dawn but the mean lizards have been fighting among themselves all morning.’ He quickened his pace to catch up with Dev. Now they’ve gone quiet as well. And no birds sing.’
‘Every fisherman and islander knows how to read these signs,’ Risala added. ‘They’ll all be ashore and sheltering in steep, deep valleys or hidden caves.’
‘Let’s hope that’s fortuitous,’ Kheda agreed. No one will see the dragon killed with magic, if we finally manage to slay this cursed beast.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ murmured Risala. Do you mean you hope we slay the beast or that you hope we do it undiscovered in the act of suborning magic? Or both? It’s much the same, isn’t it?
With the tall trees all around, the path was sheltered from the worst of the rain now pouring down steadily, heavily. Kheda could smell the moisture running down the grooved trunks of the ironwoods, channelled along the kinked fronds of the tandra-tree leaves. For the moment, the rain was sinking into the damp leaf litter and the thirsty seeds. It wouldn’t be long before the torrents falling from the sky would overwhelm the sodden earth and seek their own course across the cluttered forest floor. Then this hollowed path would become a stream, the bare earth underfoot slick and treacherous. Kheda increased his pace.
Velindre was pressing close behind the two of them. ‘All these signs and portents to do with the weather, are they all recorded?’
‘Of course.’ The wizard woman’s ignorance astounded Kheda. ‘How else can we reach for the future with one hand if we don’t hold fast to the past with the other?’
‘How far back do these records go?’ The blonde woman in her creased zamorin clothes strode along with him. ‘And these changes in the tides and the ways the birds and animals behave, they would be portents of what you call the earthly compass? It’s just the heavenly compass that’s stargazing?’
‘Ignorant superstition, you mean?’ Kheda stopped so suddenly that Risala bumped into him and Velindre had to pull herself up short. ‘Dev explained all your northern attitudes to our lore. Have you realised yet just why we hold your magic in such contempt? Did your reading on your voyage explain that?’ His anger rose with a recklessness to equal the storm winds shaking the trees all around. ‘You know nothing of the world that surrounds you and you care still less. How can you northerners hope to choose the best path for your future when you are so wilfully ignorant of the signs laid out all around you? You wizards are still worse, heedless of the violence your magic does to the natural order of things. You twist the very fabric of the seas and the skies and the land to suit your own whims, never mind that you are corrupting and destroying everything that the past has written into the present to guide you.’
‘What are you arguing about now?’ Dev had stopped where a scatter of boulders had rolled down from some hidden crag and held back the ironwoods and lilla trees to leave an irregular clearing. Nothing,’ retorted Velindre, indignation darkening the tan on her cheekbones.
Risala looked past Kheda to the barbarian mage. ‘How close are we to the dragon’s lair?’ Dev jerked his head along the trail. Not far.’
‘Good. We don’t have time to waste.’ Velindre squinted up at the sky where racing squalls of darker hue were banding the pewter grey that had hung over them since morning. Not if I’m to raise a cloud dragon from the height of this storm.’
She pushed past Kheda and strode along the path, her cotton-clad legs long and lithe. Dev hastened to stay ahead of her. Risala walked close to Kheda. He kept a wary eye on the forest all around. Lilla trees creaked ominously, torn leaves whipped away before they could fall to the ground. Whole sprays heavy enough to defy the winds came tumbling along the path to whip around their ankles before being snatched by a gust and tossed into the undergrowth. The wind chilled Kheda and the rain soaked them both to the skin, even in the shelter of the trees. The sky overhead rapidly darkened to the colour of twilight. Kheda kept one hand on a sword hilt, straining his ears to try to pick out any hint of a maddened animal above the sounds of the storm-tossed forest. Are you reading the signs aright? The signs of the tempest, certainly. Those are unmistakable. What of the higher portents? What of the heavenly compass and the stars that have been hidden by cloud every night since that first failure to rid the domain of this beast? But the stars are still there, even if we cannot see them. The heavenly jewels continue their dance around the heavenly compass.
The Sea Serpent has just moved to the arc of marriage where the Diamond that is the warlord’s talisman rides. I have no idea what to make of that. But the Pearl is directly across the compass, where the Sailfish swims in the arc of life. That should be a good omen, as the Sailfish rise to greet the moon and fishermen catch the weightiest females just as it wanes.
The Greater Moon is in the next reach of the sky, where we look for portents of wealth and material success, and there’s the Hoe, promising rewards to those who strive for land and family. In the furthest reaches of the sky, the Sapphire rides there as well, unmoving for year after year. Does that promise daylight and clarity in such a conjunction? According to these wizards, the Sapphire is the gem of the cloud dragon. Could it be possible that the heavens are showing me that this abomination will lead us to success?
What of the Ruby, if that’s the gem of this fire dragon, this true creature of wild elemental magic? That still rides in the arc of travel, hardly a surprise given that the creature had to come from somewhere. What has the Horned Fish to do with the beast? That’s a strange creature, warm-blooded and suckling its young in the midst of the cold ocean. Does that show me the dragon has travelled out of its allotted place in its journey here? Hardly something I need telling. The ivory I found on my own journey, that I carved into a dragon’s tail, that came from a horned fish. What does that mean?
He paused in his speculation to negotiate a fallen tree and kept a wary eye on a stand of towering ironwoods creaking and swaying wildly as they fought with the storm assailing them from all sides. There must be something more to the Ruby since the Amethyst lies straight across the compass, where the Canthira Tree spreads its branches and where portents for those close as blood, be they friends or not, can be found. Amethyst for calm and new ideas, new beginnings, with the Canthira Tree that is the first to recover after fire has devastated a forest, whose seeds do not sprout unless they have been through fire. Is that hope for the future to set against this dragon’s destruction?
The Pearl and the Opal are the talisman gems against dragons. If the moons mark the dragon’s head, what lies at its tail? For the Pearl, it’s the Diamond, along with the Sea Serpent. Is that what I have become? A hidden darkness to bring peril and death?
Death itself lies opposite the Opal, in that reach of the sky where the Net embraces such omens, along with portents of inheritance. But there are no significant stars or jewels in that arc of the sky.
What will any of this mean if one of us has our brains dashed out by a falling branch? That will be a plain enough portent: one of utter disaster.
Kheda abandoned such fruitless speculation as the sound of falling water ahead echoed above the rising clamour of the storm. The two wizards stood where the path ended abruptly at the lip of a deeply carved gorge. The rocks were dark and mossy with the return of the rains and the vivid white foam of the cataract splashed noisily below. Spray drifted up to coat the thick ferns of the gorge’s side in a fine mist. ‘It’s in one of those caves, isn’t it?’ Risala wiped rain from her eyes as she stared at a riven cliff face rising out of the tangle of forest on the far side.