Chapter 10 #2
Gideon slurps loudly from the stream, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Why all the tweed? The rugs, the tapestries, the blankets . . .’
‘So they like tweed,’ I say impatiently. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘It’s all a bit tame, isn’t it?’ Serena says, wrapping a tweed blanket around her shoulders. ‘They’re hardly a match for a Bulgarian dragon.’
My heart sinks, perhaps because a small part of me has been thinking the same thing.
‘There’s nothing tame about their talons,’ I argue, as much with myself as with Serena.
I give them all a steely look. ‘Chumana told me not to underestimate the Hebridean Wyverns. If we do, we’ll never win their trust, and they’ll never help us. ’
‘Make the wyverns who almost ate us, like us,’ Serena jeers. ‘Easy.’
‘I admit that might be hard for you, Serena, seeing how unlikeable you really are,’ I snap.
‘Let’s find out what we can about them at this Twilight Meal, then reconvene afterwards to decide what it is we can offer them,’ Atlas says. He looks around at the others. ‘This is the mission you’ve been given by the Coalition. Did you think it was going to be easy?’
We pull out more tweed blankets to rest on, my legs aching from the many miles of hill-climbing.
I wrap one around me despite the heat and think about my own mission: to speak enough Cannair to make these wyverns trust me, and to understand what it is about them that can help us.
A while later, another wyvern enters the cave.
He’s smaller than Abelio and Cindra, with white rings around his huge eyes.
He bows to us in the archway, our clothes clutched in his talons.
‘It is an honour to host you, friends of the great Clawtail,’ he says in English. ‘I am utterly delighted that you have invoked fasgadh.’
‘You speak our language?’ Marquis says.
‘Indeed. Only a rare few of us do, although some wyverns have begun learning the human tongue Gaelic. My name is Aodahn – bringer of fire. I have come to escort you to the Twilight Meal.’
I stand up as he sets our clothes down. The wyverns have been outside to collect them, but he hasn’t brought the journal or the loquisonus.
‘Where did you learn it?’ I ask him as I pull on my shirt. ‘I thought the Hebridean Wyverns hadn’t seen any humans in years.’
‘Patrick,’ Aodahn says. ‘And human books. They are the reason many of us are applying ourselves to learning –’ he lowers his voice – ‘human tongues. We like to wander the paths of human literature.’
He beckons us out into the passageway and walks at a leisurely pace, the tip of his wing unfurling to point into more chambers.
‘I call this cave here King’s Cross,’ Aodahn says.
‘Come again?’ says Marquis.
‘King’s Cross,’ the wyvern repeats. ‘It is where we design our travel routes, with several new tunnels built each year. I believe it is a place in London, is it not?’
‘Uh, yes,’ I say quickly.
I exchange a look with Marquis, who is trying desperately not to laugh. We move on to the next cave, which slopes downwards, deep into the earth. The only illumination comes from two flaming torches, which give enough light to see the shapes of hundreds of twisted metal hearts stuck in the ground.
‘Bleeding Heart Yard,’ Aodahn says. ‘Where we burn and mourn our dead.’
We pass by another cave but Aodahn doesn’t stop. I glance inside it anyway. The ground is a bed of smouldering feathers, kept alight by several wyverns hovering above and breathing fire. Nestled among the feathers are rows of eggs, and I watch as a wyvern on the ground carefully turns one of them.
‘What’s in here?’ Atlas asks, peering into another cave.
‘Take heed!’ Aodahn cries.
Atlas stops abruptly before he falls off the ledge of the cave entrance. I look in from over his shoulder. It’s a great open space, lit by streams of white light. It must be several miles wide and is so deep that I cannot see the bottom. Ledges jut out from the walls and wyverns perch on them.
‘Wuthering Heights,’ Aodahn says. ‘This is where our wyvernlings partake of flying practice.’
‘Wuthering Heights?’ Serena says. ‘I’ve heard of that book. It’s a novel. The daughter of one of my mother’s friends was reading it.’
‘His English is certainly straight out of a novel,’ Gideon mutters.
The heat becomes stifling as we walk deeper into the tunnel system and when Aodahn brings us to a stop I see why.
We are in a huge cavern with a giant bonfire burning in the middle.
A hundred or so wyverns are gathered around it, basking in the orange glow created by the reflection of the flames in the huge chunks of amber rock in the ceiling.
‘Welcome to the Amber Court,’ Aodahn says.
Every inch of the walls is covered in tweed tapestries, with white scrolls of paper tucked inside.
I peer closer, trying to work out what they could be.
As Aodahn leads us inside, wyverns turn to look at us.
Abelio and Cindra are closest to the fire, sitting with a group of wyverns whose heads are bent in concentration.
When Abelio sees us he stands up and I realise what the wyverns are looking at.
The loquisonus machine.
They’re peering at it in great fascination, examining the dials and the speaker with their snouts and talons.
I imagine their great claws scratching at the metal or spinning the dial off its mechanism and resist the urge to shout at them to stop.
Clawtail’s journal lies open on the ground.
Cindra’s eyes narrow as she sees me watching.
‘Greetings to our human guests,’ Abelio bellows in Cannair.
The cave goes silent as wyverns turn to listen, but Abelio is speaking too fast for me to make sense of what he is saying.
I’m reminded of what it was like when I was a small child learning dragon tongues for the first time, and of the frustration I felt when I was able to understand certain words, only to lose track of them once they were strung together in conversation.
Serena prods me in the back. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I . . . I think something about learning. And a challenge.’
‘Brilliant,’ she mutters.
Abelio must see the confusion on my face because suddenly his speech slows and becomes easier to understand.
‘Today we have the opportunity to offer shelter to a group of humans,’ he says.
‘Some of you have never heard fasgadh called upon before. But there is nothing the Hebridean Wyverns do better than hospitality.’ His eyes land on mine.
‘Our knowledge and tradition lend themselves well to entertaining guests. Indeed, we wyverns are learned creatures, the most erudite and progressive of dragons.’
Aodahn is whispering a translation of Abelio’s speech to the others and Marquis raises his eyebrows.
‘He’s changed his tune.’
Abelio’s manner of speaking is hard to describe, the sound of it jaunty and fluctuating in pitch and tone.
‘Cultivated in the arts, the sciences and the ways of life of our ancestors, we have the ability to shelter these humans from the ills that threaten them. They could walk these tunnels for an eternity without ever wanting for food, water or intellectual stimulation because everything they need is within. We ask only that each human thus protected pays their dues.’
My mind races as I try to keep up and I glance at Atlas. ‘I think he’s about to tell us what he wants in exchange for letting us stay.’
‘Who gave you Patrick Clawtail’s journal?’ Cindra asks.
The question is directed at me.
‘The Academy for Draconic Linguistics,’ I reply in English, before switching back to Cannair.
‘It was founded only –’ I pause, trying to remember any wyvern words for numbers – ‘thirty years ago. No . . . equivalent word –’ I shake my head – ‘in your –’ I point around at them – ‘language. It’s an institution dedicated to recording and –’ I ponder the sentence – ‘translating dragon tongues.’
Abelio’s eyes narrow. ‘And who controls it?’
‘The British government,’ I say.
‘Then you are foes,’ Cindra snarls. ‘Patrick was no friend of the government’s.’
‘Neither are we,’ I say calmly. ‘We are part of the resistance against it. Prime Minister’s Wyvernmire’s government is at war with the rest of Britannia.’
Abelio picks up Clawtail’s journal. ‘But how can one learn an entire tongue from a book?’
I hesitate. ‘I’m a polyglot. Learning languages is something I’m good at. But I’m not fluent, as you can probably hear.’
Cindra’s nostrils twitch.
‘We would like to offer you what we can, in exchange for your fasgadh,’ I say.
‘And you will,’ Abelio growls. ‘You, an nighean leis an inneal òir.’
What did he call me?
‘It’s Gaelic. Such a name does not exist in Cannair,’ Aodahn whispers, his eyes wide as moons. ‘Girl with the golden machine.’
‘You will teach us how your tunnel detector works, giving us a detailed explanation of its inner body and a demonstration above ground.’ He blinks. ‘Such an invention could lead to new, wyvern-originated ideas.’
I find myself nodding vigorously, but my mind is whirring, trying to figure out how to pretend the loquisonus is a tunnel detector while hiding its true purpose.
The wyverns may be different to dragons, but they share their ultrasonic language, and I don’t think they’ll appreciate the fact that my golden machine was made to listen to it.
Abelio points his longest claw at Atlas. ‘What can he offer us?’
I feel Atlas tense beside me. He doesn’t need to speak Cannair to understand the demand.
‘I can whittle wood,’ he says. ‘Craft shapes from tree bark and driftwood, ‘weapons––’
I shake my head, lacking the vocabulary to translate what he said, so Aodahn does it for me.
‘We are well-practised in the art of carpentry,’ Abelio replies.
The wyverns stare at him expectantly, the only sound the roaring of the fire. I count the beads of sweat on Atlas’s brow. It hits me once again that we’re surrounded by dragons. Dragons with teeth and flame who are under no obligation to keep us alive.