again.”
Dono.
I closed my eyes, concentrated on keeping my breathing slow and even. Each breath was hard-won, felt as if I’d drawn it through the confines of a burlap bag held over my head and tied tight around my throat with wire. It would have been easy to panic, to succumb to the terror threatening to overwhelm me.
But a growl in my ear stayed the urge. “Breathe, Zarq. So help me.”
I focused on inhaling and exhaling in measured, even breaths. My lips felt foreign and partially detached, my cheeks as if cold starch water were hardening upon them. My ears hummed as though a swarm of insects clouded my head, and as the venom that had touched my skin sank into my bloodstream, I was filled with a familiar illusion of puissance, which had been my goal in provoking the dragon, understand. Though I’d not expected such strength, such violence, in her lashing, and I’d not expected her to go for my face.
The earth beneath my back breathed with me, gently swelling with each inhalation and deflating with each sigh. The destriers in their stalls likewise began to breathe in harmony with me, and even the apprentices asleep in their hovel inhaled in accordance to my demand. Indeed, every man and woman, child and beast, within Clutch Re breathed in rhythm with me, blithely unaware in their sleep that I controlled their very air. Or so I believed, in my inebriation.
I felt that even Dono’s breathing synchronized with mine. I glowed in the triumph of mastering his lungs.
He broke the harmony. “What d’you do that for? No, don’t answer. Keep quiet.”
I cracked an eye open, saw him sitting alongside me, one knee up, arm draped over it. He was looking down at me, running a hand through his locks. Sweat slicked his body silver in the moonlight, and stars like flecks of fine glazed porcelain glittered upon the dark table of night above him.
I had a grunu-engros, then, a dragon-spirit moment. You know of what I speak, yes? That illusory feeling of having already experienced a similar situation, a situation that is a portent of your life yet to come, that muddled, powerful feeling of familiarity and omen.
And I remembered, suddenly, when I’d last seen the sky so illuminated by starlight. It had been the eve following the Sa Gikiro of my ninth year, the night Mother broke Temple Statute for what was to be the first of many times, when she hid glazes and pottery tools in the jungle. On that night, like this, the sky couldn’t be described as black, for it was so bright with luminescence that it looked as if white liquid porcelain had been gently swirled through it.
I shivered.
“How come you know venom so well, Zarq?” Dono said, bringing me back to the present. “Onais aren’t allowed to touch the venom of the kuneus they serve. But you must’ve, hey-o, to have built up the kind of tolerance you’ve got. You should be dead from the amount of venom you just received, so close to your face.” He looked away from me, across the empty courtyard.
After a moment, he spoke again. I realized, then, by the lilting tone of his voice and the unnaturally still focus of his gaze that he, too, was intoxicated by venom. Of course. With his bare palm he’d first scraped the dragon’s poison from my throat.
“They always go for the face, Zarq. It’s instinct. Hatchlings right out of the egg do it. I’ve seen them. They always aim for the mouth.”
He shifted a little, still gazing into the dark. “Y’know how many inductees I’ve seen die that way? Dozens, most of them boys too young to understand what was happening. They convulse on the ground, blood streaming out of their eyes and noses, blisters erupting on their faces so fast it looks like something is crawling around underneath their skin.”
A breeze pushed a strand of hair into his eyes and he brushed it aside, staring into his past. “You think you’ve seen people suffer, Zarq? You’ve seen nothing so far, not compared to what I’ve seen.”
He fell
Dono.
I closed my eyes, concentrated on keeping my breathing slow and even. Each breath was hard-won, felt as if I’d drawn it through the confines of a burlap bag held over my head and tied tight around my throat with wire. It would have been easy to panic, to succumb to the terror threatening to overwhelm me.
But a growl in my ear stayed the urge. “Breathe, Zarq. So help me.”
I focused on inhaling and exhaling in measured, even breaths. My lips felt foreign and partially detached, my cheeks as if cold starch water were hardening upon them. My ears hummed as though a swarm of insects clouded my head, and as the venom that had touched my skin sank into my bloodstream, I was filled with a familiar illusion of puissance, which had been my goal in provoking the dragon, understand. Though I’d not expected such strength, such violence, in her lashing, and I’d not expected her to go for my face.
The earth beneath my back breathed with me, gently swelling with each inhalation and deflating with each sigh. The destriers in their stalls likewise began to breathe in harmony with me, and even the apprentices asleep in their hovel inhaled in accordance to my demand. Indeed, every man and woman, child and beast, within Clutch Re breathed in rhythm with me, blithely unaware in their sleep that I controlled their very air. Or so I believed, in my inebriation.
I felt that even Dono’s breathing synchronized with mine. I glowed in the triumph of mastering his lungs.
He broke the harmony. “What d’you do that for? No, don’t answer. Keep quiet.”
I cracked an eye open, saw him sitting alongside me, one knee up, arm draped over it. He was looking down at me, running a hand through his locks. Sweat slicked his body silver in the moonlight, and stars like flecks of fine glazed porcelain glittered upon the dark table of night above him.
I had a grunu-engros, then, a dragon-spirit moment. You know of what I speak, yes? That illusory feeling of having already experienced a similar situation, a situation that is a portent of your life yet to come, that muddled, powerful feeling of familiarity and omen.
And I remembered, suddenly, when I’d last seen the sky so illuminated by starlight. It had been the eve following the Sa Gikiro of my ninth year, the night Mother broke Temple Statute for what was to be the first of many times, when she hid glazes and pottery tools in the jungle. On that night, like this, the sky couldn’t be described as black, for it was so bright with luminescence that it looked as if white liquid porcelain had been gently swirled through it.
I shivered.
“How come you know venom so well, Zarq?” Dono said, bringing me back to the present. “Onais aren’t allowed to touch the venom of the kuneus they serve. But you must’ve, hey-o, to have built up the kind of tolerance you’ve got. You should be dead from the amount of venom you just received, so close to your face.” He looked away from me, across the empty courtyard.
After a moment, he spoke again. I realized, then, by the lilting tone of his voice and the unnaturally still focus of his gaze that he, too, was intoxicated by venom. Of course. With his bare palm he’d first scraped the dragon’s poison from my throat.
“They always go for the face, Zarq. It’s instinct. Hatchlings right out of the egg do it. I’ve seen them. They always aim for the mouth.”
He shifted a little, still gazing into the dark. “Y’know how many inductees I’ve seen die that way? Dozens, most of them boys too young to understand what was happening. They convulse on the ground, blood streaming out of their eyes and noses, blisters erupting on their faces so fast it looks like something is crawling around underneath their skin.”
A breeze pushed a strand of hair into his eyes and he brushed it aside, staring into his past. “You think you’ve seen people suffer, Zarq? You’ve seen nothing so far, not compared to what I’ve seen.”
He fell
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