Chapter 14 #2
“Eventually we’d hit the Elkinslough, which is the big river that goes by Archenhold.
We could follow it clear to Archon’s Glory, but it’s big and busy compared to the Myrtle—that’s the river south of us.
It’s technically a tributary of the Elkinslough, but they don’t exactly join up.
The Myrtle actually turns into a swamp, and then the swamp drains into the Elkinslough. ”
“I-like-swamps.”
Edmund shot the pillbug a wry look. “Humans don’t do quite so well in them, I’m afraid.”
“But there’s your solution,” said the Dervish.
“What if we head for the swamp instead of the river? If we can get to this swamp, Large Francis can stay hidden there, we go on to this Rat place, they send … I don’t know, wagons or costumes or whatever they need back to extract Francis.
” And meanwhile we’ll go find this person that I am certainly not hoping will break the curse, he thought, but didn’t add aloud.
“That … could work…” said Edmund. “It will take us longer to get to Archon’s Glory going that way, but I’d feel better about Large Francis staying somewhere she’d be comfortable.”
“I-would-not-object-to-proper-humidity-for-a-change. And-I-have-no-better-plan.” The pillbug fiddled pensively with the music-box mechanism.
“This-has-proved-much-more-difficult- than-anticipated. We-did-not-anticipate-the-alarm-that-humans-feel-at-our-appearance. In-our-homeland-the-humans-all-know-that-we-exist-even-if-they-have-not-met-one-of-our-kind-before.”
“It might have been easier if one of them accompanied you,” the Dervish said, privately thinking that it had been nothing short of malfeasance to send Large Francis and her colleague out without a human translator and, at the very least, an armed guard.
Preferably several. Actually, that’s the sort of job we would have loved, back in the old days …
“It-was-suggested-but-no-one-was-available.”
“What, no one?” Edmund stared at her.
“Mikka-had-just-had-her-baby-and-her-husband-and-mother-could-not-leave-her-and-Rolan-would-have-come-but-his-grandfather-was-ill-and-his-great-aunt-Sila-would-have-come-but-she-is-very-frail-and-no-one-thought-it-was-a-good-idea-and-of-course-we-cannot-ask-the-pigkeepers-to-come-because-it-was-the-busiest-season—”
“Large Francis,” said the Dervish, “just how many humans are in your homeland?”
“Oh! Several-hundred-at-the-least-but-of-course-many-of-them-live-on-the-far-side-of-the-swamp.”
“I begin to see why there are no records of Francis’s people in the archives,” Edmund murmured.
“We-have-read-that-some-cities-of-humans-contain-over-a-thousand-people,” said Large Francis doubtfully, “but-some-thought-it-was-a-translation-error.”
Edmund rubbed his forehead. “Anuket City contains nearly a hundred thousand,” he said, “and Morstone and Delta are both larger than that, though they are also more spread out.”
The pillbug actually stopped turning the music-box handle. The equivalent of being struck speechless, I suppose.
Something suddenly clicked for the Dervish. “Wait—Anuket City? You mentioned that before, right?”
Edmund nodded. “I know an artificer there.”
“But I’ve heard of it. I mean really heard of it, before…” It was difficult to make a gesture that really encompassed being stabbed through the heart and trapped in a magical sword, so the Dervish settled for waving his hands wildly.
Edmund got the gist and began to smile. “Really? But that’s wonderful! If you’ve heard of it, then you must have been in the sword for less than six hundred years!”
Since it hadn’t occurred to the Dervish that he might have been in the sword for anything like that long, he wasn’t quite sure how to take this news. “Six hundred years?”
“That’s how long Anuket City has been known as Anuket City.
Prior to that it was New Malanwir. Then Malanwir was destroyed and the name was generally considered unlucky, so they changed it.
Anuket means ‘on the river,’ which is probably the origin, although there’s also a goddess called Anuket whose followers were adamant that it was named after her, although she was represented as a giant parrot, and most parrots can’t actually survive in the area of Anuket City because it’s too cold.
Although a small colony of green parakeets has established in the Artificer Quarter, since—”
But the Dervish never learned what factors allowed a colony of green parakeets to live in the fabled city of artificers, because at that moment a dragon waddled onto the road in front of them.
The Dervish was leading Sweetness and at the sight of the dragon, she froze. He couldn’t blame her, since he was busy freezing himself. The dragon was the size of a small house and deeply, thoroughly unnatural.
It had six legs, which was not, in itself, that strange. Large Francis had a great deal more, and the Dervish had gotten used to that. The legs supported a thick, almost sluglike body with a stumpy tail and a crest of rather half-hearted feathers down the spine.
Attached to the front of this massive trunk was a neck so long and thin and whippy that it looked as if two different animals had simply been bolted together.
The neck was twice as long as the body, soaring a good twenty feet in the air, with a head bobbing on top like a daisy on a flower stalk.
Where the overall color of the beast was a muddy greenish gray, the neck shaded through violet into a delicate blush of lavender.
“Why-have-we-stopped-friends?” asked Large Francis, and the Dervish realized that the pillbug must be desperately nearsighted.
He shot out a hand and grabbed the leg cranking the music box. “Quiet!” he whispered. “It’s a dragon!”
“A dragon is downwind,” Dog Violet said softly. “Otherwise would have smelled it.”
The dragon, fifty yards away, seemed to be ignoring them. It trundled across the road to the far side, where a sheer rock face rose through the trees. When it reached the rock, it stretched its neck up against the surface, pressing it full-length against the cliff.
“What’s it doing?” the Dervish asked.
“I think it’s trying to get warm.” Edmund frowned with concentration. “It’s a reptile, more or less, and it’s cold out, but that’s a dark stone so it’s been soaking up heat all day.”
As if to confirm this, the dragon folded its legs and settled down on the roadway. Dust puffed up around it. It was so long that its tail reached the far side of the road, making a very impressive barrier.
“A gnole thinks maybe we should go around.”
“Ye-e-e-s…” said the Dervish. “Yes, that seems like a very good idea. We want to be well around it by the time it gets cold and decides to … Edmund, are you sketching it?”
“Only a quick sketch,” the scholar said. He had put his glasses on and pulled out his notebook almost as fast as the Dervish could draw his daggers. “I’ve never seen one before. They’re even stranger than the descriptions make them sound.”
Large Francis leaned over Edmund’s shoulder, watching him sketch with interest. The Dervish exchanged a look with Dog Violet. “Humans are all crazy,” she said, “but a gnole has never met one crazy like book-man.”
“I can hear you, you know,” said Edmund, still drawing furiously.
“Just as long as the dragon can’t hear us…”
“No, their hearing is only middling and their eyesight doesn’t seem to be very good either. They’re very attracted to sources of heat, though.”
“Speaking as a very attractive heat source, that is a little concerning.”
Edmund closed his notebook. “Fine, fine. Got the roughs. How far around should we go, do you think?”
“What? You’re the expert on dragons!”
“I illuminated a bestiary entry once. I’d hardly say I’m an expert.”
“A gnole is getting off the road now. Humans can go or stay.”
This struck the Dervish as very wise. He followed Dog Violet, leading Sweetness off the road and down the slope.
Under normal circumstances, he would have expected the mule to object to doing something he clearly wanted her to do, but apparently fear of the dragon was enough to get Sweetness moving in any direction that included away.
Unfortunately mules were not a species known for their stealth. A hoof went onto a dead branch and the resulting crack rang like thunder.
The Dervish froze. The mule froze. The gnole froze. The scholar was still looking over his shoulder at the dragon and ran into the Dervish, and the pillbug hadn’t moved at all.
The dragon turned its head.
“Don’t … move…” hissed the Dervish. Edmund had skidded and was now leaned against him in a very awkward position, a little above him on the slope, so that the Dervish’s head was wedged against Edmund’s stomach.
If the scholar fell one way, he’d hit a tree, and if he fell the other way, he’d hit the mule.
Neither option seemed likely to be soundless.
The dragon pulled slightly away from the cliff and dipped its head a few feet, peering in their direction.
The Dervish could hear Edmund’s breath whooshing in and out of his lungs and had to remind himself that it was only that loud because most of the scholar’s weight lay directly on the Dervish’s left ear.
That is not a load-bearing ear. He shifted his head fractionally, trying to redirect the pressure, and felt Edmund start to slip.
“… aaah…!” The scholar’s scream was whispered, but still a scream.
His feet scrabbled for purchase but found only wet leaves.
The Dervish cursed silently, turned, and wrapped his arms around Edmund before the other man could land on the mule’s hindquarters and start a chain of events that would begin with kicking and end with a remarkable view of a dragon’s gullet.
Violet scales glinted as the dragon tilted its head from side to side, like a puzzled dog.
Edmund had said that their eyesight didn’t seem to be very good. This suddenly seemed remarkably imprecise.
“How good is their eyesight?” the Dervish whispered, his nose now mashed against the other man’s collarbone.