Dragon Rule - E. E. Knight [82]
She felt her throat close up as she remembered Mother’s last, desperate call—Climb, hatchlings, climb!
Wistala climbed onto the egg shelf and sure enough, the recess that hid the tunnel was still there, marked only by some water flow. Father would never have been able to get his horned head inside, but he might have been able to feel his way around with snout and tongue. She could use her eyes.
She searched the little chimney.
“Here is a sign, on this loose rock. I think if I put a little light in here you may just be able to make it out.” She spat a torf of fire on the opposite wall, where it burned, throwing an orange light on the scrapings.
DharSii maneuvered his head as she pointed with her tail. “Yes! The Star of Silverhigh.”
It was a simple design, a little unevenly done. Five sii marks, evenly spaced out, coming together at the center. It reminded Wistala of the Wrimere’s old “Circle of Man” emblem, save that it wasn’t enclosed in a circle, and there was just the slightest curve to the claw slashes, a little like the Wheel of Fire’s standard. Perhaps both the Wheel of Fire emblem and Wrimere’s had been modeled on the Silverhigh Star.
“Well done, Wistala,” DharSii said. “That’s about the right size.”
A piece of her thrilled at the compliment. Another part wondered that he only truly became animated when something of interest to him could be found. Whenever DharSii looked at her he just stared at her as though she were an unusual boulder formation.
She nosed around. “Yes, this stone moves. I’ll pull it out, I think I can get my tongue awoun’ yeeth . . .”
The stone moved. She spat it out.
“Yes! Got it.”
“Is there anything in there?” DharSii asked.
“No,” Wistala said, her wings and tail sagging. “It’s empty. Wait, there’s a little bit of—I don’t know, moss like dried seaweed in the bottom.”
She removed her head from the hole, with something like a brown string clamped in her nostril, and spat out the stone and the remainder out on the egg-shelf.
“That might be—”
“Elf hair,” Wistala said. Though the leaves were long-shriveled, there was no mistaking elf hair. “I don’t remember elves attacking. There were some outside the cave.”
AuRon had been caught by elves soon after they saw Father return. He’d said—
“Wait! Hazeleye!” Wistala said. “She was an expert on dragons, spent many years in NooMoahk’s cave. I met her. She was very old and frail. I expect she’s dead now. Perhaps it’s her hair. I always wondered why someone who apparently loved dragons would go along with murder and enslavement.”
DharSii drooped. “Another wasted trip,” he muttered. “How many just this year?”
“The question is, was the hair an accident, or a token that she’d searched here?” Wistala continued. “Elves often leave a strand of hair as a signal to others. Rainfall used to mark his honeycombs he’d checked, or garden beds he’d planted, or the oldest sack of horse grain with his hair once it began to come back.”
She picked the stone up and put it back. That was how Mother and Father had left it; that’s how the egg cave would remain. Except for a little bit of stained stone, that star was the only evidence that her family had ever lived in this cave.
It was a good cave. Water and light and air and well out of seasonal changes of temperature. It could be improved, of course.
“What does the Star of Silverhigh signify?” she asked DharSii, to get his mind off another dead end.
“One point for each of the gifts of the Four Spirits,” DharSii said. “And a fifth point for the mysterious gift. Our ability to change what we touch.”
“How do you mean?”
DharSii wandered around the cave, inspecting. She supposed he was just being thorough. “No member of another race comes away from an encounter with a dragon unchanged. Some hate us forever, others want nothing more than to be around us, observe us, be protected by us, even if it means a lifetime of shoveling up waste and hauling it to the nearest dung heap.
“Of course, I’m sure you’ve noted the effect of dragon-blood and heard of the strange powers of our dead bones and