'Eventually,' the magewoman said thoughtfully. 'We gave it plenty to think about. And it gave Naldeth plenty to think about.'
'What happened to him?' Kheda struggled with the memory of what he had seen.
'I don't know.' Velindre walked over to an empty space
and sat cross-legged on the ground. 'He'll tell us when he's ready.' She drew her belt knife and slit open the spiny leaf. 'Oh.' Her prize proved to be filled with noisome coils of some worm or eel.
'You must have some idea.' Thanks to blind chance, the leaf Kheda opened contained fish, and he used his dagger to skewer a lump. It tasted sweeter than he had expected.
'You have to understand that a wizard must learn to live within the boundaries of his or her elemental affinity.' Velindre gingerly raised a twisted grey coil to her mouth, chewed and swallowed. 'Those wizards who cannot, who become totally enthralled with their element, lose all sense and caution as they go further and further, searching for the limits of their power.' She scowled. 'Only there aren't any limits. Those mages trying to find them either go utterly mad in the process and destroy themselves, or are destroyed by the Council and Archmages of Hadrumal.'
'What has this to do with dragons?' Kheda shook his head, confused.
'A dragon's power is utterly intoxicating.' Velindre closed her eyes, torn between longing and abhorrence. 'It offers a wizard the possibility of going beyond every constraint of elemental affinity that they have learned to live with, without penalty, without fear, to learn secrets undreamt of by countless generations of mages.'
'Do you think Naldeth can resist such temptation?' Kheda asked bluntly.
Velindre opened her eyes and scraped the rank contents from the inside of her leaf with her knife blade. 'Don't you think I could have found a competent mage with two flesh-and-blood feet to bring on this voyage?' She tasted the leaf pulp cautiously.
Kheda ate some more of his fish. 'What do you mean?'
'I've already told you. The puzzles of this place are not about magic, they're about power.' Velindre continued
eating. 'Naldeth, of all the mages I know, understands only too well what it's like to be utterly at the mercy of someone who is more than happy to abuse all the power within his reach.'
'You mean this pirate who cost him his leg?' Kheda prodded at the yellowish-grey pulp underneath his own fish.
'Exactly.' Velindre scraped down to the leathery outer skin of the leaf. 'He wouldn't take that dragon's power, not if the price was abusing these people for the beast's convenience. He didn't only lose his leg when those pirates captured him. He saw a wholly innocent friend clubbed to death.' Her gaze strayed towards the scorched black earth where no trace of the feather-crowned woman now remained.
'You thought other mages you might have brought on this voyage would have succumbed.' Kheda spoke his thoughts aloud without thinking. 'Dev would certainly have been looking for his own best advantage in such a situation.'
'Perhaps. Dev could be quite vile when the mood took him. Mages are just men and women like every Archipelagan or barbarian.' Velindre fixed him with a cold glare. 'Good-hearted or weak-willed and everything in between. Would every Aldabreshi you know behave with impeccable restraint and decorum if they were suddenly raised to a warlord's rank and privilege?'
'It's hardly the same.' Kheda wasn't about to be deterred from his questions. 'Do these wild mages command these dragons or do the dragons command the mages?'
'I don't think it's that simple,' Velindre said slowly. 'Or that complex, if you prefer. The dragons were drawn here by the confluences of elemental power. That's the key to this place, Kheda. Once the dragons arrived, they found easy prey in these people.' She gazed around at
the savages in their crude garb with their mud-caked hair. 'Only with all the raw elemental power hereabouts, amplified through a dragon's aura, any mageborn among these savages would have found the magic to fight back out of sheer instinct. Using magic isn't the difficult part of being mageborn, it's controlling the magic before it kills you or you cause some catastrophe. That's why Hadrumal was founded, to save mageborn from themselves and from mobs who would stone them to death to be rid of them.'
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. 'But as we've seen, these dragons here don't necessarily want to fight each other to the death, despite what Azazir told me about the dragons of legend up in the mountains of the northern mainland. And however it happened, I think these dragons are content not to fight the mageborn either, as long as the mageborn don't stop them eating the lesser folk. Dragons aren't stupid, Kheda. Once one had learned how to live an easy life with easy prey, the rest would soon have copied it.'
'Like a jungle cat preying on villagers who can't run as far and as fast as deer,' the warlord said slowly. 'Where there's one man-eater, others will follow, not least because the mother will teach her kits the same tricks.'
Which is why a warlord will hunt down every spotted cat on an isle once one has turned man-eater. He'1l skin the carcasses and nail the hides on the gates of his residence. Which is, as it happens, what we also customarily do with wizards.
Velindre was staring up into the cloudless sky, unblinking. 'That dragon I made from the air, the one that seized its chance for life by killing the sky dragon, it had no thought of preying on these people. All it wanted to do was fly after the most enticing coils of wind and weather. That sea dragon that we saw had no notion of coming ashore, not with plenty of fish in the sea for it to chase
and eat. The dragons who prey on these people only do it because that's doubtless what they've learned from those who've gone before them. They're not responsible for the choices these wild mageborn have made, whether that be just saving themselves and their allies by offering up captives and slain enemies, or the evil of deliberately feeding anyone useless or burdensome to a dragon.' She forestalled any comment Kheda might have made. 'And that choice didn't arise from any inherent evil in the magic of this place either.'
'If mageborn have all this power, why do these people live like this?' Kheda glowered as he surveyed the dirty, inadequately clad savages. 'Even the poorest islands in the most despoiled domains in the Archipelago live better.'
Velindre raised her brows at him. 'If you had Naldeth's abilities to shape the earth, just for a little while, could you make me a model of a Soluran keep and curtain wall?'
'I don't know what one of those might be.' As Kheda frowned, he realised he had fallen into her trap.
'Do you think these people know any better way to live? Magecraft is a tool.' Velindre waved her smeary blade to and fro at Kheda. 'Of itself, it's no more good or evil than this dagger, which can cut my food or cut your throat. What you do with magic depends on what you know and what you're taught.'
'Perhaps.' Kheda looked around the feeble excuse for a village. 'But as far as I can see, it's still these dragons and the rule of these wizards that keeps these people wretched.'
'If you can suggest any way to improve their lot, I'll be interested to hear it.' Velindre rose to her feet and went over to the cook pit again.
Kheda contemplated the spiny leaf in his hands and realised with some surprise that he had eaten nearly all the fish. He still had no appetite for the greyish-yellow
pulp. Seeing a small child hovering hopefully, he smiled encouragingly and held out the soggy remnants to her.
The little girl approached, hesitantly at first, then snatched the fat, fleshy leaf from Kheda and immediately buried her face in it.
She eats like an animal. Is that because she is no more than an animal? These people don't farm any crops. They hunt, but matias hunt together, to take on snakes too big for one to tackle alone. Loals use sticks or stones to smash stubborn nuts and they fight among themselves in bands led by the strongest. That doesn 't make them men. But loals or matias couldn 't have painted that cave.