Dragon's Heart by Jane Yolen

Author:Jane Yolen [Yolen, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

21

THE TROGS started a fire in the cave, squatting in front of it. In the firelight, Jakkin recognized them. They were wearing eggskin loincloths and leather sandals. Hairy-chested, shaven-headed, they gabbled at one another mind-to-mind for what seemed like hours, the fire shining on their metal bracelets, their "bands." As they mind-spoke, their hands designed images in the air. It was as mesmerizing as it had been back in their own cavern.

Jakkin dozed, woke, dozed again.

It was the second or third time he woke that he realized what was going on. They were waiting for dark. They weren't going to move—or move him—until night, when they'd have little chance of being seen.

Of course.

He sent a little mind fire at them, red and orange, upbeat, even perky. "I need help standing. Help going outside to relieve myself. Something to eat."

They ignored him.

"How about my arms unbound for a minute. Someone to talk to. Maybe a joke? A song?" Anything to remind them he existed.

They ignored him.

He tried to listen in on their mind conversations. They seemed to be using some kind of code. Or dialect. He heard "Bonds"and "Dark-After." They repeated "Great Mother"a good many times. The rest was beyond him.

It was then that he remembered Makk, the leader of the trogs, saying, "One day go to place of Bonds and throw them over." Meaning one day the trogs would rise up and attack the civilized humans, like the nursery folk and the folk in the cities. Not that the trogs could win such a war. Nursery folk had stingers and knives and fighting dragons they'd trained who could breathe fire at will. City folk had trucks, copters, stingers, and guns. The rebels had explosives, or at least they'd had such things a year earlier. But all the trogs had were sticks and some forged metal weapons. Any battles would be bloody but awfully one-sided. Still—if the trogs burned buildings at night, many of the civs would die in the cold of Dark-After. He closed that image out of his mind lest he help the trogs make a plan.

He tried again. "Make water? Eat? Unbind my arms?"

Still they ignored him.

So he began to think about why the trogs were here, now. Why they'd tracked him. Certainly, finding me hasn't been any simple chance encounter. And once he started thinking...

"Great Mother," they'd said not once but many times. That was their name for any female dragon who gave birth. The dragons they worshipped and then killed in order to nestle their own babies in the dragon's egg chamber. Auricle had been one of their Great Mothers, gravid but not yet ready to lay her eggs. And we saved her from that bloody worship. He supposed the trogs had tracked him by his sendings out in the oasis and wanted him to take them to Auricle.

Fewmets! How could they think he'd ever do such a thing?

Except—he could hardly feel his arms now.

He had to pee so badly that he was afraid he'd ruin his leather pants.

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