Chapter 18 The Eeyrie
~ brEN ~
“…It should be full of eggs, at least twenty or thirty. We have fifteen, including two we’re not sure are viable.”
Lieutenant Barak stood below us on one of the boulders that made the floor of the cavern, hands on his hips.
He’d crawled into the dragon Eeyrie first to make certain it was safe—if an egg was soon to hatch, the mother would be close and might attack if a stranger touched it. But none of these were due soon.
The cavern had been chosen by the dragons because heated pools made the air warm and steamy, and kept the rocks warm even in cooler weather.
In my leathers, I was already beginning to sweat as I followed Donavyn over the rocky lip of the cave mouth and dropped down to the stony earth below.
It was a sprawling space that narrowed at the back and snaked deeper in a wide tunnel. Barak had warned me never to come here without him, unless Akhane brought me.
“Hopefully, it will be her turn to lay soon,” he said easily.
A little trill of excitement, and some fear, twisted in my chest, but I kept moving forward, towards the Furymaster, following Donavyn as he weaved between rocks and… oh.
It wasn’t just boulders down here.
Some of those massive rounds, the ones that were more oval in shape, and had smoother surfaces, were dragon eggs.
As I drew closer to one—careful not to touch it, as Barak had warned us before we came down here—I could see that its shell wasn’t just the flat gray of the stone, but peppered with very fine speckles of color.
“Is the color the same as the dragon inside?” I asked breathlessly.
“Yes. Usually. Some of the colors are difficult to discern—we’ve had many hatched that we weren’t sure if they were blue or green or gray, for example. But yes, the speckles will match the dragon within. And often one of the parents.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “So, Akhane and Kgosi might have a gray, or a blackscale?” I asked, trying to keep the excitement from my voice.
“Gray or… do you know what color Kgosi was before he turned black, General?”
“Wait, he wasn’t born black?” I asked quickly, surprised.
Donavyn shook his head at me, then turned back to Barak. “He was blue.”
Barak nodded as if that made sense, but my brows rose. “Kgosi was blue?” Blues were known for their steadiness in crisis and their stamina, both physically, and in battle. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised. But Kgosi seemed like so much more…
“A blackscale is born of his own dominance,” the Furymaster explained to me.
“He would have hatched a normal bluescale, but as he grew in strength, and then in authority over others, his scales would turn. It’s both a visual reminder of a leader’s authority, and the way the dragons express the leaders belonging to all.
If he were to remain blue, he would raise the prominence of other blue dragons, whether they deserved it or not.
The dragons are nothing if not fair,” he chuckled.
I nodded, but my mind reeled. I didn’t realize a dragon could change color. I made a mental note to ask Akhane what she knew about Kgosi’s change. When it had happened, and why.
“Once a Primarch takes the herd—shows himself wise enough, and has dominated any challengers—his scales will deepen to black over the course of weeks. And they won’t return to his birth color until he concedes to another dragon, or is killed.
As you know, all dragons lose their color as they lose their lives. ”
I frowned, thinking of the poor dragon who’d returned from Draeventhall.
He was still alive, but there was a lot of uncertainty about whether or not he’d survive.
And Donavyn admitted Kgosi was concerned.
He felt the dragon should have turned, for better or worse, before now.
Akhane worried the dragon’s reluctance to talk might be part of why he hadn’t revived.
Even among Furyknights, he was spoken of in hushed tones. None of us liked to see a dragon suffer, but it was impossible to look on his sloughing skin and pale eyes and not think of our own bonded dragonfuries.
I’d hugged Akhane over and over again after visiting Ciar with Donavyn.
Barak looked around, an expression of deep satisfaction flickering with worry on his face.
“Let’s keep moving. You’ll see there’s only half a dozen eggs this close to the cave opening.
There’s more in the next chamber. We should have many more, which is frustrating.
But at least we can show you what a healthy egg looks like. Come.”
He started towards that coiled tunnel at the back of the cavern, Donavyn and I hurrying after him.
Donavyn had brought me here to explain how the dragon breeding worked, so I could speak in an educated way with those in Fyrehold.
I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought about the breeding of dragons much before.
Especially with Akhane going into heat. But so many things had happened.
This was the first time I imagined what it might be like to have her give birth. It made my heart flutter.
“The females don’t have to sit on the eggs?” I asked as we walked.
“When they first lay, they spend several days here, choosing the place for their egg—it’s the most vulnerable time for their young.
First, the shell hasn’t hardened, so they can be wounded.
But it’s also when the baby is weakest. If the temperature isn’t right, they can grow sick and die.
The females will stay close until the shell hardens and they can feel the babe’s heartbeat is steady.
Then they’ll leave. In this hatching ground the air is so warm, their body heat isn’t needed.
It’s worth asking the Fyrehold Furymaster if they have a different kind of Eeyrie, their dragons might need to attend their eggs more diligently. ”
Donavyn asked a couple of logistical questions while we walked. He’d be the one expected to drive those conversations, but we had to continue the ruse that I worked with the dragons, and would be assisting him and Kgosi in establishing any new members of our herd. So, I listened closely.
“The birthrates have been dropping for thirty years,” Barak said darkly. “My first season we had almost fifty. It seems every year we have one or two fewer births, and now… well, you can see. I worry for what will happen to our herd in a decade if we don’t have more young.”
Donavyn had already explained to me that, though the dragons lived so long they might take more than one rider in their lifetime, the devastation of losing a rider could kill a dragon, and often left them weaker than they’d been before. Plus, not every dragon took a rider.
Apparently, the herd had been Choosing less and less often every year, the females taking mates less frequently, along with some leaving the herd.
“Every herd has some who choose to leave—either because they wish to take a position in the hierarchy somewhere else, or because they can’t find a mate among those in their home herd.
But that percentage is small. A handful a year.
But when we aren’t replenishing those numbers with new dragons joining us and new mate pairs breeding, it becomes a problem. ”
“How long do they mate? And how old? Akhane’s fifty. How many years does she have?”
“She has decades yet. And most pairs produce at least two or three offspring, if they’re both healthy and young when they bond. But again, we’ve been experiencing lower birth rates as well. Fewer offspring from the pairs that do bond. We just don’t know why.”
A chilly knot tangled in my chest. ‘Do you think you’re pregnant, Akhane?’ I asked carefully through our link. She’d been agitated this morning after I told her I was coming here. Was this why?
‘I do not know, Little Flame. The Creator hasn’t seen fit to tell me. So, we will wait and see.’
‘When will you know?’
‘In a few months. If a babe has begun, I’ll lay in the spring.’
‘And if not?’
‘I’ll have another chance in a few years.’
“A few years?” I squeaked.
Donavyn looked at me curiously, but Barak apparently figured out what I was talking to my dragon about.
He chuckled. “As a rule, most females enter heat every four or five years. Sometimes longer if they’re already raising young. I think mothering is a drain on their energy.”
“Do the males not help?” I asked.
“They do, but mostly when the babies are much older. Those first years, the entire herd will assist the young in growing and learning. But it’s the mother they shadow. As they reach puberty, they tend to be drawn towards their fathers—especially the males.”
“When do they reach puberty?”
Barak shrugged. “Fifteen, twenty years?”
I gaped. “They’re babies until then?”
The Furymaster chuckled again. “A baby dragon is the size of a wagon horse. A ten year old wouldn’t fit in that horse’s stable. As I said, the young are raised by the herd at large—taught and disciplined by all the mature dragons. But they follow the mother to learn how to be a dragon.”
I tried to imagine what it would be like to have a baby following Akhane, and my heart thrilled. “Do they all stay?”
“After they’re sexually mature, the young males may fly solo for a time, either to increase their strength before returning to the herd, or, if the herd needs thinning, they may look for a mate or another herd in which they’ll have higher status.
Or if they cross paths with a Primarch who dominates and orders them to stay.
I frowned. “Kgosi would let them leave for another Primarch?”