He caught a breath but could not decide on words. To apologize might be as great an error as to tell her she owed this to Malta. He stilled his tongue and clutched her talons, trying to ease their grip around his ribs.
‘Do you want me to loosen them, Reyn Khuprus?’ the dragon mocked him. She opened her claws, but before he could slip through them to his death, she clamped them shut again. Even as he gasped in terror, she arrested their ascent, tipping her body and sending them in a wide spiral above the river. They were too high to see anything. The forested land below them was an undulating carpet of moss, the river no more than a white ribbon. She spoke to his thought.
‘The eyes of a dragon are not like the eyes of a prey beast, small meat creature. I see as much as I need to see from here. She is not in sight. She must have been swept down the river.’
Reyn’s heart turned over in his chest. ‘We’ll find her,’ the dragon comforted him grudgingly. Her great wings began to sweep steadily, driving them down the course of the river.
‘Go lower,’ he begged her. ‘Let me search for her with my own eyes. If she is in the shallows, she may be hidden by the trees. Please.’
She made no reply, but took him down so swiftly that he saw darkness at the edges of his vision. She flew with him down the river. He clutched at her talons with both his hands and endeavoured to watch all of the broad face of the river and both banks. Her flight was too swift. He tried to believe that the dragon’s keener senses would find Malta even if he missed her, but after a time, despair took root in him. They had gone too far. If they had not found her yet, it was because she was no more.
‘There!’ Tintaglia exclaimed suddenly.
He looked, but saw nothing. She banked and turned as adroitly as a swallow, and brought him back over the same stretch of river. ‘There. In that little boat, with two others. Close to the centre of the river. See her now?’
‘I do!’ Joy leaped in him, followed as quickly by horror. They had found her, and as Tintaglia bore him ever closer, he saw that the Satrap and his Companion were with her. But seeing her was not the same as rescuing her. ‘Can you lift her up from the boat?’ he asked the dragon.
‘Perhaps. If I drop you and swamp the boat in the process. There is a chance I could snatch her up without doing more than breaking her ribs. Is that what you wish?’
‘No!’ He thought frantically. ‘Can dragons swim? Could you land near her on the river?’
‘I am not a duck!’ Her disgust was manifest. ‘If dragons choose to come down on a body of water, we do not stop on the surface, but plunge down to the bottom, and then walk out from there. I don’t think you would enjoy the experience.’
He grasped at straws. ‘Can you drop me into the boat?’
‘To do what? Drown with her? Do not be foolish. The wind off my wings would swamp the boat long before I was close enough to drop you right through the bottom of it. Human, I have done my part. I have found her for you. Now you know where she is, it is up to you and the other humans to save her. My part in her life is over.’
It was no comfort. He had seen Malta’s face turn up to them as they swept over her. He almost imagined he had heard her cry out to him, begging for rescue. Yet, the dragon was right. They could do nothing for Malta without putting all of them in greater danger.
‘Take me back to Trehaug, swiftly,’ he begged her. ‘If the Kendry sets out after her now, with every thread of sail he can muster, we may yet overtake the boat before the river devours it.’
‘A wise plan!’ the dragon rumbled sarcastically. ‘You would have been wiser still to have set out on the ship immediately instead of demanding this of me. I told you that she was on the river.’
The dragon’s cold logic was disheartening. Reyn could think of nothing to say. Once more, her wings worked powerfully, taking them high above the multi-canopied forest. The land passed swiftly away beneath them as she carried him back towards Trehaug.
‘Is there no way you can aid me?’ he asked pitifully as she circled above the city. At the sight of her, all the folk on the dock ran for the shore. The winds off her great wings as she beat them to slow their descent buffeted the Kendry. Once more her heavy hindquarters absorbed the impact of their landing as the wharf plunged and bucked under them. She lifted him in her claws, craning her neck and turning her head to focus one huge silver eye on him.
‘Little human, I am a dragon. I am the last Lord of the Three Realms. If any of my kind remain anywhere, I must seek them out and aid them. I cannot be concerned with a brief little spark like you. So. Fare as well as you can, on your own. I leave. I doubt we shall ever meet again.’
She set him on his feet. If she meant to be gentle, she failed. As he staggered away, he felt a sudden shock, more of mind than body. He was suddenly desperately afraid that he had forgotten something of vast importance. Then he realized that what was gone was his mental link with the dragon. Tintaglia had separated herself from him. The loss dizzied him. He seemed to have been taking some vitality from the link, for he was suddenly aware of hunger, thirst and extreme weariness. He managed to take a few steps before he went to his knees. It was as well that he was down, for otherwise he would have fallen as the dragon jolted the dock with her leap into the sky. A final time the beat of her wing wafted her reptilian stink over him. For no reason that he could understand, tears of loss stung his eyes.
The wharf seemed to keep rocking for a long time. He became aware of his mother kneeling beside him. She cradled his head in her lap. ‘Did she hurt you?’ she demanded. ‘Reyn. Reyn, can you speak? Are you hurt?’
He drew a deep breath. ‘Ready the Kendry to sail immediately. We must make all speed down the river. Malta, and the Satrap and his Companion … in a tiny boat.’ He halted, suddenly too exhausted even to summon words.
‘The Satrap!’ a man exclaimed close by. ‘Sa be praised! If he yet lives and we can recover him, then not all is lost. Haste to the Kendry. Make him ready to sail!’
‘Send me a healer!’ Jani Khuprus’s voice rang out above the sudden murmur. ‘I wish Reyn carried up to my apartments.’
‘No. No.’ He clutched feebly at his mother’s arm. ‘I must go with the Kendry. I must see Malta safe before I can rest.’
‘I DON’T MIN’ A beatin’ when I’m due one. But this’un wasn’t tha. I dint do ennerthin wrong.’
‘Most beatings I’ve had in my life came from just that. Not doing anything wrong, but not doing anything right either,’ Althea observed impartially. She put two fingers under Clef’s chin and turned his face up towards the fading daylight. ‘It’s not much, boy. A split lip and a bruised cheek. It will be gone in less than a week. It’s not like he broke your nose.’
Clef pulled sullenly away from her touch. ‘He woulda if I hadenna seen it comen.’
Althea clapped the ship’s boy on the shoulder. ‘But you did. Because you’re quick and tough. And that’s what makes a good sailor.’
‘S’you think it was right, what he done t’me?’ Clef demanded angrily.
Althea took a breath. She hardened her heart and her voice to reply coolly. ‘I think Lavoy’s the mate, and you’re the ship’s boy and I’m the second. Right and wrong don’t come into it, Clef. Next time, be a bit livelier. And be smart enough to stay out of the mate’s path if he’s in a temper.’
‘He’s allus en a temper,’ Clef observed sullenly. Althea let the remark pass. Every sailor had the right