City of Dragons

Compensate. Build the muscle. Pretend that it was an injury taken in battle or the hunt rather than a flaw since her emergence from her cocoon.

She opened and shut her wings a dozen times, and then, wings wide, beat them as strongly as she could without battering them against the ground. She wished there were a cliff to launch from, or at least an open hilltop. This sloping meadow with its tall wet grass would have to do. She opened her wings wide, discerned the direction of the wind, and then began a clumsy downhill gallop.

This was no way for a dragon to learn to fly! If she had hatched healthy and whole, her first flight would have been made then, while her body was light and lean and her wings outsized for her. Instead, she lumbered like a runaway cow, her body heavy and muscled for walking, not flight, her wings scarcely developed to lift her bulk. When the wind gusted, she sprang into the air and beat her wings hard. She did not have enough altitude. The tip of her left wing caught in the tall wet grass and spun her to one side. Frantically, she tried to correct and instead slammed to the earth. She landed on her feet, jolted and frustrated.

And angry.

She turned and trudged up the hillside again. She would try again. And again. Until dawn grayed the sky and it was time to slink back to her stable. She had no choice.

Somewhere, Alise thought, there is blue sky. And a warm breeze. She pulled her worn cloak more snugly around her as she watched Heeby turn away from her and charge down the wide street before leaping into the air. Her wide scarlet wings seemed to battle the morning rain as they lifted her. The dragon was becoming more graceful, Alise decided. More competent at getting into the air. And she seemed to grow every day and, with that growth, become more difficult to bestride. She was going to have to convince Rapskal that his dragon needed a harness of some sort. Or she would soon have to give up riding on Heeby to reach Kelsingra.

A sweep of wind pushed her, bringing a stronger shower of rain with it. Rain, rain, rain. Sometimes summer and dry warm days seemed like something she had imagined. Well, standing here and staring after the dwindling dragon would neither warm her nor get her day’s work accomplished. She turned her back on the river and looked up at her city.

She had expected to feel the lift of heart that the sight of it usually brought her. Most days when Heeby brought her here and she looked up at Kelsingra spread out before her, she felt a surge of anticipation for the day’s work. Today, she always told herself. Today might be the day that she made some key discovery, unearthed some find that gave her fresh perspective on the ancient Elderlings. But today, anticipation failed her. She looked up the wide avenue before her, and then lifted her eyes higher, to see the full panorama of the city. Today, instead of lingering on the standing buildings, her eyes seemed to snag on the cracked domes and fallen walls. It was vast, this ancient place. And the task she had taken on and pursued in such an orderly fashion was a hopeless one. She could not complete it even in a dozen years. And she did not have a dozen years.

Even now, Tarman and Captain Leftrin were drawing closer to Cassarick. Once he reported there, once word of their discovery was noised from the Rain Wilds to Bingtown, the stampede would begin. Treasure hunters and younger sons, the rich seeking to get richer and the poor hoping for a chance at fortune would all follow him back. There would be no stopping that flood, and from the moment they set foot on the shore, the city would begin to disappear. A wave of despair swept over her as she imagined them, picks and crowbars on their shoulders, barrels and crates to hold their troves stacked on the shores. When they came, the old city would come to life again. The push to plunder would bring the money to rebuild the docks and bring ships and trade. A mockery of life would precede its destruction.

She took a deep breath and sighed it out. She couldn’t save the city. All she could do was try to document it as it had been when they discovered it.

Suddenly she missed Leftrin with a terrible hollowness that was emptier than hunger. He had been gone for more than a month, and there was no knowing when he would return. It was not that he could change the outcome of what must happen but that he had been here with her for a time, witnessed the amazing stillness of the place, walked with her where no other feet had trod since the time of the Elderlings. His presence had made it all more real; since he had left the things she had seen and found and documented felt less substantial. Unconfirmed by his interest.

Alise started to turn left, to follow a narrower road that would let her resume her careful mapping and exploration in her usual rote way. Then she halted. No. If she kept on the way she was going, she’d never even get to enter the grander buildings before they were plundered. So a change of plan today. It would not be a day of documenting and drawing and note taking. Today she would simply explore, walking wherever she felt drawn.