Chapter 10
HORROR CREEPS UP MY SPINE. AS the light pierces the gloom, I see the shapes of a crowd.
The creatures are at least a head taller than Marquis and standing on their hind legs, frozen except for their swaying tails, like cats about to pounce on their prey.
And I’ve never felt as much like prey as I do now, half-naked in front of a pack of dragons whose canines are longer than my finger.
The wyverns don’t look as harmless as the watercolours at Canna House suggested.
They have doe-like eyes and rounded snouts, but their bodies are nimble and they have enormous foretalons, the index curved and longer than the others.
One of them bats its feathered wings together and lets out an unwelcoming screech. How do we show them we’re not a threat?
‘Featherswallow?’ Serena hisses.
I suddenly remember we don’t have to rely on body language to communicate.
‘Nà foin,’ I try to say, wincing at my pronunciation. ‘We are sorry to intrude.’
I must have said it wrong, because a low growl sounds from the wyvern’s throat. Its foretalons snap together like a pair of monstrous scissors.
The others follow suit, emitting shrieks that echo through the cave.
I tread water and see the alarm on Marquis’s face.
There’s nowhere to escape to. These wyverns could tear us to pieces here in this pool and no one would ever know.
Explorers will find our skeletons years from now, buried in the rock, and think we were looking for food or shelter.
‘Fasgadh!’ I shout. ‘We need fasgadh.’
The wyverns fall silent.
I remember the word from Clawtail’s journal. It’s Gaelic, but borrowed by the wyverns as part of their tongue, and means shelter. And they take it seriously. Immediately, their wings drop and their heads bow.
‘Hva thu tha?’ the wyvern snarls. ‘Who are you?’
When I hear Cannair spoken out loud for the first time, the puzzle pieces click together inside my head.
It’s like hearing sheet music played by a virtuoso on a fine-tuned instrument, when you’ve only ever heard the notes stabbed at on a broken piano.
It’s as melodious as Gaelic and as smooth as whisky.
‘Tell it we’re not invading,’ Marquis whispers.
‘I . . . We are . . . friends,’ I stutter in Cannair, my mind grasping at the vocabulary I learned from the journal.
The wyverns blink.
‘Gideon,’ Atlas says quietly. ‘You’re a polyglot, too. Don’t you speak Scottish? Maybe it’s similar.’
‘Cannair is descended from Scottish Gaelic, not Scots,’ I snap. ‘They’re two different languages.’
‘And yet somehow neither of you speak either of them,’ Serena whispers shrilly.
I steady my breathing and try to block out their voices as I picture Clawtail’s writings on linguistics.
‘We are . . . friends of Patrick Clawtail,’ I say.
The first wyvern takes a step forward and the scant daylight illuminates the white scars across his face. Most of his wing feathers are white, but some are a luminescent, royal blue.
‘Patrick Clawtail is dead,’ he snarls in Cannair.
Relief crashes over me. The wyvern understood what I said. I smile smugly at Serena. Does she not realise what an important moment this is?
‘Yes,’ I say with a shiver. ‘But we have the journal he wrote when he sought fasgadh with you. That is where I learned Cannair.’
A second wyvern comes forward, this one younger with silver mottling on her blue scales.
‘You learned it,’ she says tentatively, ‘from . . . paper?’
I nod.
The second wyvern says something to the first, who has smoke rising from his nostrils. He glances at the tunnel entrance hidden beneath the water, then back at me.
‘You lie,’ he says. ‘Patrick would never have written of our location.’
This wyvern looks old. Did he know Clawtail personally?
‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘We found your tunnels with a . . . machine.’
‘A machine?’ he says slowly. ‘A human-built machine that detects skugvels?’
I don’t know the word skugvels, but I’m willing to bet it means tunnels.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I left it outside, with the journal. I can show you if you like.’
The other wyverns begin leaving the cave, creeping away down various tunnels while casting curious looks behind them, as if summoned by an inaudible call.
‘From what do you seek shelter?’ the first wyvern growls.
I hesitate, wishing I had discussed this with the others before we entered the tunnel.
‘War,’ I say simply.
‘War?’ he says. ‘What war?’
I cast a look back at the others.
‘He’s asking what war I’m talking about,’ I tell them.
Their expressions echo my own confusion.
‘The war between Prime Minister Wyvernmire and her Bulgarian dragons, and the Human-Dragon Coalition,’ I say.
‘We are not aware of such a war,’ he says.
‘And we are not interested in participating in it,’ the female wyvern adds.
I grab hold of the ledge of the pool, my legs tired from treading water. ‘But you must go above ground sometimes?’ I say slowly.
‘Have you not seen the Bulgarian dragons flying above?’
‘We do not occupy ourselves with the affairs of other species,’ the first says.
I nod, trying to process what I’m hearing. The wyverns we’re supposed to seek an alliance with don’t even know there’s a war going on. I feel a rush of despair.
‘Canna is dangerous for us,’ I say. ‘We are being hunted. We ask that you let us stay.’ I hesitate. ‘Like you did for Patrick and his family.’
‘No,’ he replies. ‘Wyverns have lived in concealment, far from all humans, for half a century. We cannot help you.’
‘They invoked fasgadh, Abelio!’ the female wyvern says.
Abelio.
I remember the name from Clawtail’s last journal entry, the sentence he never finished.
The two wyverns stare at each other, communicating silently. Then Abelio lets out a low hiss.
‘Cindra insists we award you the shelter you claim,’ Abelio says finally. ‘But you must prove yourselves to be amenable to our own requests.’
‘Of course,’ I reply. ‘What are they?’
His talons twitch. ‘All in good time.’
We step out of the water and follow the wyverns down a tunnel.
The air is stiflingly warm and steam rises off our bodies as we walk.
I stare at the wyverns’ backs, studying the way they walk on their hind legs, how they gesture with the scaly limbs attached to their great wings.
They’re much smaller than dragons, though they still tower over humans by several feet.
They move quickly, their gestures fluid and sinuous, and their wings quiver every so often as though lifted by a breeze.
They are like silent, blue phantoms in the dark tunnels, which grow lighter the deeper they wind.
The path ahead is lit by lanterns filled with what seems to be oil-soaked sheep’s wool.
The stone walls drip with condensation and glitter with flecks of tiny orange rock like the ones we found in the dirt by the stream.
Soon my skin and hair are completely dry, but I feel like I’m suffocating from the overpowering heat.
‘They accepted us rather easily, don’t you think?’ says Atlas’s voice in my ear.
I startle, not having realised he was so close. He walks next to me, his hair a sweep of humid curls. Sweat glistens on his bare shoulders and I see him snatch a glance at me before dropping his eyes to the ground. I avert my own.
‘They want something from us, too,’ I whisper.
We turn a corner into a wider passageway.
I see the flames of a roaring fire flickering in a chamber further along.
Tapestries stitched with blue and emerald-green thread cover the walls, depicting wyverns flying across the sea, wyverns hunting in forests, wyverns lighting fires beneath white, oval eggs.
As we walk, we peer into chambers with high ceilings, carpeted with thickly woven rugs.
Each has a fire in its centre, the smoke exiting through a small hole in the ceiling, the same one that lets the light in.
In one of the chambers, I see a wyvern standing as still as a statue, its white wings folded peacefully on its back as it reads a human-size book by the fire, moving only to turn the pages with a long talon.
In another, several wyverns are crowded around what seems to be a metal sculpture of a human boy.
To see such gentle domesticity in these feral, screeching creatures is strange, almost unsettling.
Abelio and Cindra say nothing as they lead us further into the maze of tunnels, maintaining their silence even as other curious inhabitants peer out to look at us with blue, glassy eyes.
At the entrance to another tunnel to my left, two wyvernlings the size of human toddlers chase after a frog, taking turns to attempt to scald it with small puffs of flame.
I stumble, tripping over Cindra’s tail as she halts without warning.
‘Your living quarters,’ she says, gesturing into a large cave with her longest talon.
A small fire is burning in the centre hearth.
There are no tapestries or rugs, but I see several alcoves in the walls containing tweed blankets and books. A small stream trickles around the edge of the room, pooling into a stagnant puddle in the corner.
‘You will wait here until somebody arrives to collect you for the Twilight Meal.’
I nod to show her I’ve understood – at least I think I have – and she backs out of the cave. Abelio gives us a last glare before following her down the passageway.
I turn around to face the others. ‘They want us to dine with them tonight.’
Serena’s hair has doubled in size with the humidity and Gideon’s face is a furious red.
‘Well, shit,’ Marquis says, picking up a book from an alcove before flinging it down again. ‘Are they even dragons?’
‘Of course they’re dragons,’ I say. ‘Have you never seen a dragon read before?’
‘Have I ever seen a dragon read Gulliver’s Travels, you mean?’ Marquis says, glancing at the discarded book. ‘I can’t say I have.’