The Dragondain by Richard Due

Author:Richard Due
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook
ISBN: 9780983886747
Publisher: Gibbering Gnome Press, A Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink
Published: 2012-09-01T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Tavin’s Last Stand

THE wagon ride through the narrow streets of Bairne was a slow one. Not wanting to be out in the open, Cora kept them within the city for as long as possible before entering the valley. As a result, Grimm and Falin spent their time walking in front of the wagon, clearing the crowded alleyways and streets. Riding through the poorest areas, where the inhabitants worked in the outermost fields, Lily was astonished to see mostly women and children, many with no more than rags for clothing, and not a shoe in sight. Could these really be the proud and valiant people of Dain Uncle Ebb talked about? Whatever had become of their dragon friends of old, with their mighty wings and intelligent minds? And why was Bairne bereft of perches? How had the dragons ever lived here without their tall towers to land on and take off from? How were they fed and cared for without the families who lived in the towers keeping the storerooms stocked, the grooming tools sharp, the cisterns full?

Finally they passed the last tumbledown shack, rolling over the last vestiges of wall with nary a bump. Once they cleared the haze and stink of Bairne, a band of sky opened between the sheer valley walls, revealing Taw. Filling a third of the visible sky, the moon stared down at them like a great green eye with half its forested surface lit in bright sunlight and half hidden in creeping shadow. As Lily watched the drifting shadow, she wondered what moon of the realm was responsible for it: was it Dain’s shadow, or was it cast by some other moon she couldn’t see?

Peeking around Taw was the only other moon presently visible: a smaller, partial disc of bright blue, which Lily assumed was the ocean moon Dik Dek, where the merfolk swam in their terraced, undersea cities. Back home, in Ebb’s house, there were paintings of the twin cities Pearl and Shell hanging side by side in Mr. Phixit’s twilit room. The underwater nighttime scenes were painted with luminescent pigments, so the light spilling from the many windowed balconies appeared eerily realistic and liquid. The tiny magic pearls that lit the underwater street lamps actually seemed to glow, casting their pools of trapped sunlight on the murky kelp-lined streets.

They saw no other moons until they exited the valley and rolled onto the moors. Here the sky opened wide, and Barreth, with its deep oranges and blues, as well as the white-misted Rel’ Kah, joined their sisters. Lily wanted to know what other moons might be hiding behind them. She wondered now who might be plotting their strange gyrations, and for what purposes. Surely, the Rinn lunamancer Mowra was, among other things, a lunarithmatist. Was she currently toiling away in the tower Clawforge, rapidly attempting to plot the time and place of Darwyth’s next crossover? The Rinn had great need of that knowledge; was the royal court of Dain just as curious? Obviously,

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