“Be silent, mortal” said Makho. “You know nothing. We need a living dragon. Nothing else will do.”
“Hand Chieftain Makho speaks the truth,” Saomeji said. “Finding the dragon’s carcass is a rare thing, and I will write the tale of what we found for the Onyx Library, but it does not fulfill Lord Akhenabi’s needs.”
“The queen’s needs, I think you mean,” said Makho.
“Of course. As you say.” Saomeji quickly made the sign for Peaceful Withdrawal from Conflict, but his face told Nezeru a more complicated story. Was the Singer losing his patience with Makho as well? “In any case,” said Saomeji, “it is getting dark, and I do not like the look of the sky. We should find a place to shelter for the night.”
“A good idea,” said Jarnulf. “I have almost no strength left in my limbs.”
“By the Voiceless Ones, does every one of you think you have the right to give orders here?” The dead dragon seemed to have put Makho in a foul mood, although his face, as always, was nearly empty of expression. “I will say when we go and when we stop. I will say what tasks we perform and for whom. Does anyone doubt this?”
Nezeru knew better than to provoke the hand chieftain when such a mood was on him. As she turned away, the slanting light, filtered through thick mountain mists, made a strange shadow on the snow above the path.
“Perhaps the mortal would like to take a faster way down the mountain,” suggested Kemme. “Plenty of time to regain his strength before he hits bottom.”
“Perhaps you will take that trip with me.” Jarnulf dropped his hand to the hilt of his sword. “I can think of worse ways to go to my rest.”
“What is that there?” Nezeru asked. Nobody replied, and when she turned to see why, the others were ignoring her, staring at each other like suspicious dogs. “Stop strutting and come here,” she said. “All of you. Chieftain, I think you should see this.”
Makho’s tone was more disgusted than angry. “What? What now?”
“You cannot see it from there. I only noticed it because I am close. Look.” She pointed to the marks scraped in the snow. “That is the print of something’s foot. Something large.”
Kemme shook his head in dismissal. “We have seen many prints on this mountain. It is likely only the slot of a goat, broadened as the snow melted—”
“No goat made this,” she said, “unless goats have claws and are big as wagons.”
Makho’s attention was finally caught. He came to stand beside her on the path, staring up the slope where she pointed. There, by itself in the middle of an undisturbed patch of snow, was the track of some large creature, longer and wider than even Goh Gam Gar’s, with four clawed toes.
“By my masters,” said Saomeji, joining them. “She is right!”
“Could it be something like that rat-thing we killed?” she asked Jarnulf. “A larger one?”
He shook his head. “I have seen claws like that just moments ago—although these are smaller, thank—.” He hesitated for a mere instant; Nezeru thought only she noticed it. “Thank the Mother of All,” he finished. “But if that is not a dragon’s track, what else could it be?”
“So the creature left tracks before it fell to its death,” said Kemme. “What could that matter?”
“Did you not see the dragon’s carcass, Sacrifice Kemme?” said Saomeji. “It had been lying among the rocks of the mountainside for many, many years. Not just frozen, but dried like a salt fish from the Hidden Sea. And this dragon, from its prints, is far smaller.”
“A quarter the size at most,” agreed Jarnulf.
“It is not the difference of size that tells the most important tale,” Nezeru said, surprised by her own annoyance at their pointless disputes. “Do you not understand? This print is on new snow.”
Makho stared at the print, then at Nezeru, clearly interested, but irritated that it had been her to point it out. “Its maker may be close by,” he said at last, conceding her point without acknowledging her. “And a living dragon is what we need, so we will search until the last of the sun is gone and only seek shelter afterward. That is what our queen would want, so that is what we will do.”
? ? ?
Makho kept them hunting far into evening, until the mountain had become a death trap of wind, mist, flying ice, and nearly invisible precipices. They found a few more tracks before blowing whiteness covered them, all made by what seemed to be the same creature, the edges of the prints sharp enough to suggest they had been made in the last day or two. At last the Talons made camp in a sheltered spot a few hundred steps above the path where they had found the second track.
Nezeru wrapped herself in her cloak, choosing a spot near Jarnulf, not because of any softness in her heart toward him, but because she did not want to be near Makho and Kemme. Quite separate from the dishonor of it, she was disgusted that they had considered killing the mortal while he might still be useful to achieve the queen’s will.
“We could search this mountainside for days and not find anything, even if the dragon is here,” said Jarnulf. “We should set a trap.”
“Why must I hear your voice, mortal?” Makho demanded. “This task was given to me by the queen herself. You are nothing.”
Jarnulf’s mouth set in a tight line but he said no more.
“In truth, what the mortal says makes some sense, Chieftain Makho,” said Saomeji. “Our time here is limited by our supplies and—”
Makho whirled and lashed out so quickly that for a moment Nezeru thought he had slit Saomeji’s throat, but he had only grasped the Singer’s neck, his long white fingers pressing deeply into flesh. “One more word from you and it will be the last you ever speak, spellwright,” Makho hissed. “I do not care that you are Akhenabi’s favorite. Did you not hear me? I was chosen by the queen herself. And nobody else will suffer as I will suffer if we fail.” He turned on Nezeru, who had not spoken or moved. “Do you doubt me, halfblood? Before we left Nakkiga to retrieve Hakatri’s bones from their resting place, I was shown what my fate would be if I came back without them, or if I failed the Great Mother in any way.”
Jarnulf took a sudden breath behind her. Nezeru guessed it was the first time the mortal had heard about what they had done on the Island of the Bones before they met him.
“I was taken down into the Cold, Slow Halls,” Makho continued. “Yes, Singer, I see you have heard of that place, although I doubt much you have seen it. But I did. And that is where I will be taken again if we fail, whether the fault is mine or not, and where I will be made to suffer as you cannot imagine. Every cut, every burn, every blow there feels as though it lasts a thousand years.” Makho roughly pushed Saomeji away from him, so that he almost fell over. Outside their shelter the world had gone white with flying snow, and the wind sounded like the voice of something hungry. “No more argument from any of you. I will decide what we do and how we do it. And I will kill without hesitation anyone who threatens our task.”
Nobody spoke again for a long time. Nezeru listened to the wind groaning and shrieking around the great, rock-studded mass of Jinyaha-yu’a and wished she had been less ambitious. For the first time, it had become clear that even this deadly quest might be less dangerous than her companions, and especially her leader.
? ? ?
An hour had passed in silence.
“Father once told me that to hunt something you must know it, but to catch something you must become it,” said Jarnulf. He did not say it loudly, but everyone heard him. Makho snapped a glance at him, then looked away, but Saomeji straightened up as if he had heard his name called.
“But it is not possible to know dragons,” the Singer pronounced. “It is no common beast, like a cow or sheep, or even a rare but fearsome one, like a lion.”
“What do you mean?” asked Nezeru.
“Dragons did not grow in these lands of their own accord, as the other beasts of the field. They came here with our ancestors, from the Garden.”
“I have never heard such a thing,” she said.
“The failure of your education does not make what I say any less true,” Saomeji chided her. “In fact, like the changeling Tinukeda’ya, dragons were . . .” He stopped suddenly, as if someone had signaled him to be quiet, though no one had: Makho was talking with Kemme and, despite his earlier anger, did not appear to be listening. “I have a tongue that is sometimes hard to govern,” Saomeji said to no one in particular. “Forgive my foolishness.”
Nezeru felt certain he had been about to say something important, but she could not guess what it might have been. She looked at Jarnulf, who only shook his head, but so subtly that she doubted anyone else saw.