15. A Terrible Plan
Astra is determined to save Traz...
The Lost City continues the journey of Astra, respected Head Librarian of the Tiered Library in the renown monastery Qordashi deep in the Balashilar mountains, after an attack on her home destroyed everything she knew and took the lives of people she loved. Her childhood companion, Traz, has returned after 25 years for mysterious reasons, and along with the Am’Ayat warrior Xavai they are on the run from the attackers: snow dragons and the dreaded tribe of Yosoi warriors.
Previously: Astra's plans hit a set back, but not for long...
Xavai was unconvinced about the idea, but offered nothing better. They spent time looking down on the camp, trying to figure out the pattern of the Yosoi guards’ patrolling. If they were even guards.
It was hard to tell from a distance, and Xavai could not even specify exactly which tent Traz was in, although he said it was one of the two set off to the side of the camp. The snow dragon was dozing off and on, although it got up once and circled the camp before settling down again. The traders had all stopped in their tasks to watch the dragon carefully, so Astra took that to mean there was some distrust there.
She considered how that might help them if they needed a distraction. Nothing good would come of it, she was sure, but as a last resort, it might work.
Every once in a while, the temple dogs would emerge from the darkness of the forest to sniff around Astra, glare at Xavai, and then disappear again. She wished they were trained to commands, but she knew of no way to make them follow orders, if they even understood the concept. They had always acted like they just understood what their doyen superior said or needed, without instructions.
No one had ever questioned that, but she was questioning it now.
Of course, the best disguise was the one worn by the fire dragon, which was the Grail holding the bespelled shawl. She contemplated taking it back—if the dragon would even let her—as it would be easiest to simply walk into the camp unseen and drag Traz out. Xavai agreed, but waved a hand toward the general direction where, she assumed, the dragon was presumably sitting or sleeping. It was being quiet, in any case. She wished she could at least talk to it, the way she had the snow dragon…
“I am such an idiot,” she said, getting up. Not understanding the words, Xavai frowned and circled his finger in the air, as if to ask her to say it again. Astra shook her head. “Where is the dragon?”
He squinted, looking up at the sky, then pointed over towards a dense cluster of large trees. “On a low branch.”
She walked over and, as she got close, held her arms out in front of her, feeling like she was playing the old game called ‘pin the wings on the dragon,’ with the fire dragon’s invisibility standing in for the blindfold. Xavai watched her in confusion, but stayed away. She finally felt the scaly hide under her hands and the dragon shimmered into being, looking down at her with the same dull cow-eyed expression it usually wore.
She was touching one of its front legs (arms? She really had no idea, no one had ever agreed on dragon anatomy) and so had to reach up to keep touching it as her hands trailed over the beast’s skin to the grail. The dragon had pulled its head back to keep watching her, but did not hop away as it easily could.
The grail felt prickly and alive, as always, and was not as strange as the first time Astra had touched it. Keeping her hands on the Grail, she peered up at the dragon.
:Can you understand me? Do you talk?:
It stared at her.
:The snow dragon talked to me. I think. I heard it, and it meant to be heard. Can you communicate at all?:
:SPEAK:
“Yes!” Astra bounced on her toes. “Speak! Yes! You can speak!”
It rolled its eyes. :NOT EGG BABY:
Astra took that to mean it was not a child, although it obviously was, given its size, but she decided not to argue.
:We are going to steal Traz back! My brother? Traz? The one who freed you?:
:I FREED HIM:
:Oh?: Astra decided not to argue about that point, since it was possible and Traz wasn’t there to argue about it. :Thank you, then. For freeing him.:
“Grav Astra.” Xavai spoke from behind her, his voice filled with warning.
“Shhhh, I am talking to the dragon.” She looked back up. :Can you help us? Free him?:
:I FREE HIM AGAIN:
The words came with a feeling of annoyance, and Astra’s mind was filled with the vision of the fire dragon hopping down into the valley, grabbing Traz, and hopping back, leaving chaos in its wake.
:No! Not like that! We have to work together, dragon. You can grab him, but we need to be sneaky. Quiet!:
It eyeballed her suspiciously.
:The snow dragons will be back, and they will be looking for us. We need to make sure we steal him quietly, and sneak away.:
:SNEAKY LIKE THE DOGS?:
:Yes. Right. Like the temple dogs.: She nodded.
:GO NOW: It shifted like it was getting ready to hop off.
:No no no! Not yet. We need a plan. Just be patient, for a moment.:
:WAIT: Again, the words buzzed into her mind with a sense of aggravation, this time colored by impatience.
:Yes, wait.: She turned and looked over at Xavai, keeping her hands on the Grail, wondering if the dragon would understand her words in Deshilli as well at Atyim. “We can send the dragon in to grab Traz, but they will notice quickly that he is gone, and the guardian dragon might sense it.”
“We need a distraction, then?”
“We need to get close enough to cause a distraction, and then find a way to leave quickly.”
He stood there, rubbing his chin. “There are small boats at the camp. They intend to travel the river at some point. It would not be fast travel, nor hold the dragon, but a quicker get-away than running. That still leaves us the problem of getting close enough to the camp to cause a disruption.”
:CARRY YOU:
That answered the question of whether the dragon understood Atyim. But then, Astra wondered if perhaps it was hearing them the same way she “heard” it, as an awareness of another voice in her mind.
“If the dragon carries us, we will be invisible until it puts us down,” she said, and waited for Xavai to complain.
He didn’t. “It would still need to be quiet.”
“You don’t object to the dragon carrying you as it did when before?”
He sighed and rubbed his face. “It cannot fly, so it’s not the same, as you said. I don’t like it, true, but in battle one must grab all ba-tikva one can.” He tapped his chin. “Being able to commandeer one of their odd rafts and travel by river would also benefit us, helping us out of this part of the mountains quickly. We could go far, as long as we don’t meet with rapids, but I think we are too far down the mountain for that.” He did not look too convinced about that, even as he said it.
It was a point that Astra had not considered. She nodded, though, because their options were remarkably thin.
:Dragon, can you carry us all the way into the camp? Can you carry us that far?:
It tapped its chin with a sharp talon, in eerie mimicry of how Xavai had tapped his chin a moment before.
:MAYBE YOU BREAK:
Astra got a vision of her and Xavai with broken necks, and cringed. :Not if you hold us carefully!:
The dragon closed one eye and brought the other near to her, inspecting her carefully from head to foot. She could see the coloration of its iris, which was filled with fine red lines among the starburst of colors. She worked hard not to shudder, and took a deep breath.
:We go down quietly, you place us near the river’s edge where we can make a spectacle of stealing one of the boats while you carefully grab Traz, then meet us downriver. Yes?:
It pulled back up and snorted, sulfurous fumes spilling out of its nose. Astra coughed and waved the smell away with one hand, keeping the other clasped on the grail.
:YES: It’s feelings shifted to resigned — amused — determined.
Astra looked over at Xavai. “It agreed. Let’s pack up and get ready to go.”
“Go?” Xavai crossed his arms.
“Oh. Right. I told it to carry us down, put us near one of the boats that we will steal while it grabs Traz and meets us downriver.”
He tilted his head, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Not a bad plan.”
Astra glared at him, because the surprise was unwarranted. So far she was the one who had saved their lives every time, not him or even Traz.
He gave her a mocking bow, then walked over to their packs and tied everything up carefully. He groaned as he put his own on, but made quick work of using the straps to lash it to his body, then helped Astra into hers, as she was unwilling to let go of the Grail completely just yet.
Dragons and their minds, their ‘language’ if one could call it that, were far too strange for Astra to trust. The fire dragon had never struck her as intelligent and she was unsure if it truly understood what they planned to do, outside of “save Traz.” She was going to have to put her faith in its abilities soon enough; in the meantime, she would be cautious.
Xavai’s version of caution was to take one of the working knives, nearly as long as her forearm, from his own complement of weapons and strap its sheath around her waist. It was a weird and heavy weight that made her realize how dangerous their task was going to be.
Thinking about the knife she did not even know how to use but was now as much a part of her as her travel pack, she disagreed with Xavai—it was a terrible plan.
The problem was, it was the only plan they had.
NEXT: A True Migdaw’Wed
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