For a space, Wintrow focused only on his survival. Breath caught, then shuddered through his lungs again. His heartbeat steadied. He was peripherally aware of exclamations of relief. Pain still seethed. He tried to pull his mind back from it, to ignore its clamour of serious damage to his body so that his thoughts could focus on the problem the dragon had set him.
He cringed at her sudden flash of irritation. By all that flies, have you no sense at all? How have creatures like you managed to survive and infest the world so thoroughly and yet have so little knowledge of yourselves? Do not pull back from the pain and imagine that makes you strong. Look at it, you dolt! It is trying to tell you what is wrong so you can fix it. No wonder you all have such short life spans. No, look at it! Like this.
The crewmen who had carried the corners of the sheet supporting Wintrow’s body had lowered him gently to the deck. Even so, Kennit had seen the spasm of fresh pain that crossed Wintrow’s face. He supposed that could be taken as an encouraging sign; at least he still reacted to pain. But when the figurehead had spoken to him, he had not even twitched. None of the others surrounding the supine figure could guess how much that worried Kennit. The pirate had been certain that the boy would react to the ship’s voice. That he did not meant that perhaps death would claim him. Kennit believed that there was a place between life and death where a man’s body became no more than a miserable animal, capable only of an animal’s responses. He had seen it. Under Igrot’s cruel guidance, his father had lingered in that state for days. Perhaps that was where Wintrow was now.
The dim light inside the cabin had been merciful. Out here, in the clear light of day, Kennit could not insist to himself that Wintrow would be fine. Every ugly detail of his scalded body was revealed. His brief fit of spasms had disturbed the wet scabs his body had managed to form; fluid ran over his skin from his injuries. Wintrow was dying. His boy-prophet, the priest who would have been his soothsayer was dying, with Kennit’s future still unborn. The injustice of it rose up and choked Kennit. He had come so close, so very close to attaining his dream. Now he would lose it all in the death of this half-grown man. It was too bitter to contemplate. He clenched his eyes shut against the cruelty of fate.
‘Oh, Kennit!’ the ship cried out in a low voice, and he knew that she was feeling his emotions as well as her own. ‘Don’t let him die!’ she begged him. ‘Please. You saved him from the serpent and the sea. Cannot you save him now?’
‘Quiet!’ he commanded her, almost roughly. He had to think. If the boy died now, it would be a denial of all the good luck Kennit had ever mustered. It would be worse than a jinx. Kennit could not allow this to happen.
Unmindful of the gathered crewmen who looked down on the wracked boy in hushed silence, Kennit awkwardly lowered himself to the deck. He looked long at Wintrow’s still face. He laid a single forefinger to an unblemished patch of skin on Wintrow’s face. He was beardless still and his cheek was soft. It wrung his heart to see the lad’s beauty spoiled so. ‘Wintrow,’ he called softly. ‘Lad, it’s me. Kennit. You said you’d follow me. Sa sent you to speak for me. Remember? You can’t go now, boy. Not when we’re so close to our goals.’
He was peripherally aware of the hushed murmur that ran through the watching crewmen. Sympathy, they felt sympathy for him. He felt a flash of irritation that they might construe his speaking so as weakness. But, no, it was not pity they felt. He looked up into their faces, and saw only concern, not just for Wintrow, but for him. They were touched by their captain’s regard for this injured boy. He sighed. Well, if Wintrow must die, he would wring what good from it he could. Gently he stroked his cheek. ‘Poor lad,’ he muttered, just loud enough to be heard. ‘So much pain. It would be merciful to let you go, wouldn’t it?’
He glanced up at Etta. Tears ran unashamedly down her cheeks. ‘Try the water again,’ he bade her gently. ‘But don’t be disappointed. He is in Sa’s hands now, you know.’
The dragon twisted his awareness. Wintrow did not see with his eyes, nor wallow in the sensation of pain. Instead, she bent his awareness in a direction he had never before imagined. What was the pain? Damaged units of his body, breaks in his defences against the outside world. The barriers needed repairing, the damaged units must be broken down and dispersed. Nothing must get in the way of this task. All his resources should be put to it. His body demanded this of him, and pain was the alarm that sounded through him.
‘Wintrow?’ Etta’s voice penetrated the woolly blackness. ‘Here is water.’ A moment later he felt an annoying trickling of moisture against his lips. He moved his lips, choking briefly as he tried to evade it. An instant later, he realized his error. This liquid was what his body needed to repair itself. Water, sustenance and absolute rest, free of the dilemmas that encumbered him.
A light pressure on his cheek. From far away, a voice he knew. ‘Die if you must, lad. But know that it hurts me. Ah, Wintrow, if you have any love for me at all, reach out and live. Don’t forsake the dream that you yourself foretold.’
The words stored themselves in him, to be considered later. He had no time for Kennit just now. The dragon was showing him something, something that was so much of Sa he wondered how it could have been inside himself all this time and remained unseen. The workings of his own body unfolded before him. Air whispered in his lungs, blood flowed through his limbs, and all of it belonged to him. This was not some uncontrollable territory; this was his own body. He could mend it.
He felt himself relax. Unrestricted by tension, the resources of his body now flowed to his injured parts. He knew his needs. After a moment, he found the reluctant muscles of his jaws and his laggard tongue. He moved his mouth. ‘Water,’ he managed to croak. He lifted a stiffened arm in a faint attempt to shield himself. ‘Shade,’ he begged. The touch of the sun and wind on his damaged skin was excruciating.
‘He spoke!’ Etta exulted.
‘It was the Captain,’ someone else declared. ‘Called him right back from death.’
‘Death himself steps back from Kennit!’ declared another.
The rough palm that so gently touched his cheek, and the strong hands that carefully raised his head and held the blessedly cool and dripping cup to his mouth, were Kennit’s. ‘You are mine, Wintrow,’ the pirate declared.
Wintrow drank to that.
‘I think you can hear me.’ She Who Remembers trumpeted the words as she swam in the shadow of the silvery hull. She kept pace with the ship. ‘I smell you. I sense you, but I cannot find you. Do you deliberately hide from me?’
She fell silent, straining with every sense after a response. Something, she tasted something in the water, a bitter scent like the stinging toxins from her own glands. It oozed from the ship’s hull, if such a thing could be. She seemed to hear voices, voices so distant that she could not make out their words, only that they spoke. It made no sense. The serpent half-feared she was going mad. That would be bitter irony, finally to achieve her freedom and then have madness defeat her.
She shuddered her whole length, releasing a thin stream of toxins. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘Where are you? Why do you conceal yourself from me?’
She waited for a response. None came. No one spoke to her, but she was convinced that someone listened.
THE SKY WAS not blue, oh no. Not once she had taken flight, for compared to her own gleaming self, what could claim to be blue? Tintaglia the dragon arched her back and admired the sunlight glinting silver off her deep blue scales. Beautiful beyond words. Yet even this wonder could not distract her keen eyes and keener nostrils from what was even more important than