City of Dragons: Volume Three of the Rain Wilds Chronicles (22 page)

Sintara lifted her head and then reared onto her back legs, sniffing the air. Her tongue forked out, tasting for scents. All she scented were the other dragons and their keepers. The riverbank and the open meadow and the deciduous forest that backed it were not as confining as the hatching beach at Cassarick, but they were rapidly becoming as trodden and smelly. Dragons were not creatures to be corralled like cattle, doomed to wander through their own droppings and trampled paths. Yet even without fences or thick rain forest, they were confined here.

Only Heeby was truly free. She flew and hunted and fed. She came back to this place only out of affection for her half-wit keeper. Sintara dropped back onto all fours. And Thymara had gone off with Heeby and Rapskal that morning. Was that what her keeper expected of her? That she should learn to fly so that she could be a mount for Thymara and her friends?

She’d sooner eat them.

Her stomach clenched again. Where was the girl?

Reluctantly, because it was not fitting that a dragon seek a human, let alone admit that she needed her aid, she reached out to touch minds with Thymara.

And could not find her. She was gone.

What shocked her was not just that the girl was gone but the depth of her own dismay.
Gone
. Thymara was gone. Gone most likely meant dead, because it was unlikely that her keeper could have moved so far physically as to make contact difficult, or so quickly learned sufficient control of her thoughts that she could block the dragon from touching her. So her keeper was dead. Her supplier of easy meat and fish was gone. Sintara’s mind leaped to the next step. She’d have to have another keeper. But all of them were taken, unless she focused on Alise again, and Alise was hopeless as a hunter. Amusing to taunt, and excellent at flattery, but useless when one was hungry.

Taking another dragon’s keeper would likely mean a fight. She was not the only dragon who was still painfully dependent on her keeper. And the sad truth was that Thymara had been the best of the lot. Not only could she hunt, she had a mind and some spirit that added spice to their frequent clashes. Her only real alternatives to Thymara were Carson and Tats. The hunter belonged to Spit, and she had no wish to do battle with the nasty little silver. He was potently venomous now and malevolently clever. Besides, Carson was not someone she could bully. Spit had been loud all day long in his complaints that his keeper was starving him in an attempt to force him to fly. She had no desire to accept such an iron-willed keeper.

Tats belonged to Fente, and for a moment, Sintara relished the idea of ripping apart the nasty little green queen. Except that if she struck out at any female, all the males would intervene, especially Mercor. Outnumbered as the males were, they viewed a threat to any of the females as a danger to the possibility that they might someday mate. Not that any of them had much chance of that.

Sintara huffed in anger and felt the poison sacs swell in her throat. The entire situation was completely unacceptable. How had her foolish keeper managed to kill herself in such a way that Sintara had not even noticed? The previous times that Thymara had encountered danger, Sintara’s head had been full of her shrill squeaking and squealing. So what had happened to her?

The answer came to her instantly. Heeby. It was the red dragon’s fault. She’d probably dropped her in the river, to sink like a stone. Or in her dimness, she’d forgotten the girl was Sintara’s keeper and had eaten her. The mere thought that the half-wit red dragon had dared to eat her keeper filled Sintara with fury. She reared onto her hind legs and then came down with a crash, whipping her head on her serpentine neck, stimulating her poison glands to full action. Where was the damned little red newt? She flung her consciousness wide and touched her, and her fury roared to fresh flames. Heeby was
asleep
! Fat and full-bellied, she sprawled asleep beside her third kill of the day. She hadn’t even eaten it all: Sintara could sense how Heeby smelled the pleasing odor of bloody flesh as she slept.

It was too much, insult upon injury. The little scarlet queen would pay, and Sintara did not care how much Mercor or anyone else objected.

Tail lashing, she strode through the scattered trees and out onto the open hillside that fronted the riverbank. She would find Heeby and she would kill her. She could feel her eyes growing scarlet with blood, feel how their colors spun and how her blue wings flushed with blood and color as she unfolded them and shook them out. They were strong, stronger than they had been when she’d hatched, stronger than they had been the time she’d managed that first long glide that had ended so ignominiously in the river. She could fly. The only thing that had been holding her back was foolish caution, her unwillingness to fail before the others or to risk it all in a long glide out over the river. But those fears and cautions were gone, burned away by her fury. Heeby had killed her keeper, and Sintara would not tolerate that insult. The red queen would pay!

She looked at the wide open hillside before her and at the swift cold river at the bottom of it. So be it. She opened her wings and sprang into the air. Beat, beat, touch the ground, beat, beat, beat, touch the ground but more lightly, beat, beat, beat, beat . . .

And suddenly there was a gust of wind off the water and she caught it under her wings and lifted on it. She stroked her wings more strongly, tucking her forelegs to her chest and stretching her back legs into alignment with her tail, until she offered only smoothness and no resistance to the air. Her wings propelled her forward as her head cleaved the wind.
Flying
. Her body reached for memories of how to do this and she allowed it, refusing to let her mind interfere. Flying was like breathing, not a thing to ponder but a thing to do.

She caught another updraft and rose on it, and caught, too, the trumpeting of dragons from far below. She beat her wings more strongly. Let them look at her, let them see that she, the blue queen Sintara, had achieved full flight before any of them! She tipped her wings to circle wide over them, filled her lungs, and trumpeted her triumph to the skies.
Flying!
A dragon was flying! Let all look up in awe!

She glanced down—and saw nothing but moving water below her and felt a lurch of terror. Memories of being trapped and tumbled in the icy flow for a moment overwhelmed her unthinking flight. For a terrifying instant, she forgot how to fly, forgot everything except the danger of the river. Her forelegs twitched reflexively in a swimming motion, and she lashed her tail.
Falling
. She was falling, not flying, and then as full panic set in and she beat her wings frantically, she rose again. But the smooth effortlessness of flight was broken. She felt too clearly the uneven musculature of her wings; sudden weariness made her wings feel heavy. Flight was work, hard work, and she had had almost nothing to eat today, and not much more the day before.

All thoughts of vengeance on Heeby, all fear of the river was suddenly cast out by her overwhelming hunger. She needed food, needed fresh bloody meat now, at any cost. The urgency of her hunger steadied her. Hunt and feed or die, her body told her. It had no patience with her vanity or fear. Hunt and feed. She poured all her effort into the beating of her wings and circled wider, taking her flight over the keepers’ pathetic settlement and beyond, back into the hills and valleys. She opened all her senses to the need for sustenance.

And then she glimpsed them, a small group of horned creatures making its way along a stony ridge. The animals were in clear view, but soon they would vanish into the trees . . .

They became aware of her almost as soon as she spotted them. Two broke from the group, galloping wildly toward the trees, but the other four craned their necks and stared stupidly up at her as she dived on them.

Sintara’s weaker wing buckled just before she hit them, sending her slewing to one side. But her wide reaching claws still laid one open, shoulder to woolly hip, and she landed on top of another. It bleated once as they tumbled together, a most ungainly and bruising landing for a dragon. Then Sintara clutched it to her breast, snaked her head down, and seized it in her jaws. Her mouth enveloped its bony head as her forelegs squeezed its ribs. It was dead before she and the creature skidded to a halt on the steep and rocky hillside. Dead but only just as she tore at it frantically, heedless of bone and horn and hoof as she ripped it into chunks she could gulp down whole.

Feeding in such a way was painful. She swallowed convulsively, not pausing to enjoy any part of it. When it was gone, she hunched, head down, simply breathing past the burden of the food moving through her gullet. There was no sense of satiation, only discomfort.

There was a bleat, and Sintara lifted her head. Another creature! The one she had scored in passing! It was down, kicking all four legs in a way that said it would soon be dead. Sintara clawed her way up the steep hillside, feeling rocks displaced by her feet tear free and bound down the hill behind her. She didn’t care. She gained ground and then literally fell upon her prey. She clutched it to her, feeling the precious warmth of fresh blood and, almost tenderly, closed her jaws on it, squeezing the breath out of it. Moments later, it shuddered and was still. Only then did she drop it.

This animal she ate in a more leisurely fashion, clawing its belly open and eating the tender, steaming entrails before shearing off satisfyingly large pieces of meat with her ranks of sharp teeth. When she had swallowed the last bite, she sank down slowly on the bloody site of her kill, sighed out a deep breath, and sank into a stupefied sleep.

S
he was in love with him as she had never loved any of the other men in her life. Their courtship had been slow and delicious, a delicate dance of shyness and uncertainty, followed by the warlike strategies that her jealous nature and his charming ways were bound to provoke. All of their friends had cautioned both of them against taking the relationship too seriously. She knew how his friends had warned him of her, knew that they thought her jealous and possessive. Well, she was. And she was determined to have him, for herself alone, forever. Never had she felt that way about any other men she had taken to her bed.

Her own companions had warned her she could not hold him. Tellator was too handsome for her, too clever and charming. “Be content with Ramose,” they had urged her. “Go back to him; he’ll take you back and with him you will always be comfortable and safe. Tellator is a warrior, always going into danger, called away at a moment’s notice. He will always put his duty ahead of whatever he feels for you. Ramose is an artist, like you. He will understand your moods. He will grow old with you. Tellator may be handsome and strong, but can you ever be sure he will come home at night?”

But she had lived too long in comfort and safety; that was no longer what she wanted. And she could not ignore Ramose’s infidelities. If all of her was not enough for him, then let him have none of her and seek what he needed elsewhere. As she, Amarinda, had sought and found Tellator.

She awaited Tellator in the garden court outside a little gaming parlor, a venue so discreet and select that it did not even hang a blue lantern by its door to attract its clientele. She had left Tellator throwing the bones of chance with a tubby little merchant newly come to Kelsingra, and she walked through the open doors and out into the summer evening. The music of trickling water in one fountain vied with the leaping flames of a dragon fount in the center of the garden. Evening-blooming jasmine trailed from hanging pots, scenting the air. She found a bench in a very private corner of the grounds and took a seat there. A serving girl, a pretty barefoot child clothed in the shimmering colors of the gaming parlor, followed her and asked if she wished refreshments. After a short time, the girl returned with apricot biscuits and a gentle spring wine. She dismissed the girl, assuring her that she need not return.

Amarinda sipped her wine. And waited.

She knew the risk she took. She was making him choose. He had lifted his eyes briefly as she departed. He could remain where he was, in the light and glitter and sparkle of the gaming parlor with his friends. There was music there and sweet smoke and rare cinnamon wine from the South Islands. And one of the players at the gaming table was a slender Elderling minstrel, newly arrived in Kelsingra from a city in the north, her scaling gold and cobalt around her eyes and the rumors of her amorous skills as exotic and varied as the notes she plucked from her harp. Tellator had looked at her and smiled. Amarinda had smiled, too, as she departed the gathering and left him there to choose, knowing that it was really to herself that she was giving the ultimatum. If she did not win him this night, if he did not forsake all other pleasures to come to her, then she would never give him another chance.

Because the risk to her own heart was too great. She had come to care for him too deeply. If he did not reciprocate fully, then her only choice was to turn aside. She had loved like that once before and vowed never to do so again.

The chained moments of the evening slipped by. The night grew cooler, and so did her heart. The dark jewels set in the walls of the garden awoke, and their soft glow gave back to the night the light they had stolen from the day. There were caged crickets in the garden. They sang for a time, and then stopped as the night deepened. Her heart grew emptier by the moment. Finally, she rose to go. Leaning forward over the small table, she pinched out the flame of the rose-scented candle as if she were pinching a dead blossom from a flowering plant.