Wistala, though thick-bodied and strong, was no exception. After the first burst, all she had to give in her run was determination. She matched it against the fire in her lungs, the pain in her high-joints, the fatigue in her muscles. Her field of vision shrank until she saw the forest as though through a long dark tunnel. Hearing was gone save for the sound of her hearts pounding; all she could smell was blood-tinged saliva flowing from her mouth, thanks to stress-ruptured vessels in her long lungs.
White froth hung from her dry mouth.
She hit the gorge first, crashing through bushes, scattering berries that bruised into sickly scent. Only a quick saa-dig saved her tumble down the hillside.
Steep-sided, fern-covered fells flanked a river of frothing white and mist. Just beyond a rainbow created by the rising water, the river threw a wide loop around a prominence that resembled the upper half of hominid leg bone. A long wall of rock ran out to a knoblike point, surrounded on all sides by water.
The carrion birds circled above the stony bulge. Every now and then one would dip its wings and go lower and the others would follow; then it would rise again, but never quite so high as when she had first marked them.
Just when her body needed to hurry most, it betrayed her. She tripped, she stumbled, lost in a yellow-and-pink fog that played tricks on her vision.
Then she stood on the peninsula, the river rushing in opposite directions a dragon-length to either side, the peninsula riven and notched like vertebrae. Her run became a stagger on stones treacherous with green slimes and gray lichens.
Then to the knob, a scarp like a castle keep with ferns clinging to the side as though they were freshly hatched spiders drying themselves on the egg sac. The birds no longer whirled above.
Wistala smelled dragonblood, and the mists cleared. Ancient irregular steps were cut into the side of the rock prominence, but ferns had taken over. She climbed the stairs on a carpet of green.
The rock was somewhat flatter at the top, stonework like that of the battlements outside the home-cave crowning it. Three mighty toothlike obelisks stood upright, rough hewn, with lichen blurring glyphs carved into the sides facing each other. Had they all been standing, they would have made a roofless cage, but the rest had fallen with broken pieces strewn all about. They lay on their sides, half-covered by jagged pines all leaning upstream.
The ruin of her father lay in a depression in the center, his own blood in a pool all around. Feathered spikes thrust into riven scales covered his back like fur. He had but five horns now, one was broken off at a great notch in his crest, and he couldn’t fold one griff thanks to an ax-head stuck in it. Blood ran from under his sii.
“Father!”
Brown-and-white carrion birds, perched at the tops of the obelisks, took wing at her cry.
She dashed to him, licked at a dimpled wound under one closed eye that hardly even bled. She didn’t begin to know how to manage the rest.
His other side was just as bad. The hilt of some mighty weapon, notched like an arrow but the size of a spear, projected about the length of her tail from his side. The back was attached to a chain, and the chain to a heavy round ball that had cracked the ancient stone where it landed. Had father flown dragging that?
“Ayangthe, I’ve hurt myself on the slate pile. Jumped too far down. Is Mother asmelled?”
“Father, it’s Wistala. Wistala.”
Father grimaced. “You’re a star, Wistala—I saw you twinkling beneath dear Irelia last night. You, Auron, and Jizara all in a row. I’ll be up there soon. Wait.”
“Do open your eye, Father.”
“Can’t. Light hurts.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” one of the condors croaked. “He’s done for.”
Wistala ignored the judgment, though she admired his birdspeech. It had a loftier tone than the grain-brained bush-hoppers.
“You’re only making it harder for him,” the condor continued from his high obelisk.
What had Mother told her to do with wounds? Oh, it was in one of her Lessons. The hatchling and the wounded tiger, of course! Dwarf’s-beard! It loved rotting old logs, especially damp ones.
“Father, I’ll be right back. I’m going to help you.”
Novosolosk, the little black dragon, had just ventured above ground. . . .
She looked up at the condor: “Fair warning! I see any of you pecking at him, I’ll be venting feathers for a week.”
“Perish the thought.” The condor fluffed up his feathers and settled. “I’m eager to see how you manage this.”
While hunting rock rats, Novosolosk found himself trapped atop a low jungle kopje by a great tiger. The tiger prowled round and round the base of the kopje, growling and panting.
She looked off the east side of the knob at the river-turn. Sure enough, masses of logs had washed up against the rocks at the base of the peninsula, wetted by the constant spray of white water. Along with more mundane lichens, tufts of gray hung from cracks and knotholes in the logs.