He opened his eyes to a new nightmare. He dangled face-down from the jaws of a dragon. The dragon was swimming in a white river. The sky had the uncertain light of dawn. Sedric’s head was barely above the water. He could feel the dragon’s teeth pressed lightly against the skin of his back and chest. His arms and legs were outside the dragon’s mouth, dragging through the water. The water pushed against the swimming dragon, shoving them steadily downstream. And the dragon was tired. She swam with a dogged one-two, one-two stroke of her front legs. He turned his head and saw that only the dragon’s front shoulders and head were still above water. The copper was sinking. And when her strength gave out and she went down, Sedric would go with her.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice a croak.
Big water. She gurgled her response, but the words formed in his mind. She pressed an image at him, a crashing wave of white filled with rocks and logs and dead animals. Even now, the moving face of the river was littered with flotsam. She swam downstream beside a tangled mat of creepers and small bits of driftwood. A dead animal’s hoofed feet were partially visible in it. The river caught the tangle and spun it, and it dispersed.
“What happened to everyone else?” The dragon gave him no response. He was so close to the water’s surface that he had no perspective. Nothing but water everywhere. Could that be so? He turned his head slowly from side to side. No Tarman. No boat. No keepers, no other dragons. Just himself, the copper dragon, the wide white river, and the forest in the distance.
He tried to recall what had come before. He’d left the boat. He’d spoken to Thymara. He’d gone looking for the dragon. He’d intended to resolve his situation. Somehow. And there his recall of events ended. He shifted in the dragon’s mouth. That woke points of pain where the dragon’s teeth pressed against him. His dangling legs were cold and nearly numb. The skin of his face stung. He tried to move his arms and found he could, but even that small shift made the dragon’s head wobble. She caught herself and swam on, but now he was barely out of the water. The river threatened to start sloshing into her gullet.
He looked to see how far away the shore was, but could not find any shore. To one side of them, he saw a line of trees sticking out of the water. When he turned his eyes the other way, he saw only more river. When had it become so wide? He blinked, trying to make his eyes focus. Day was growing stronger around them, and light bounced off the white surface of the river. There was no shore under the trees; the river was in a flood stage.
And the dragon was swimming downriver with the current.
“Copper,” he said, trying to get her attention. She paddled doggedly onward.
He searched his mind and came up with her name. “Relpda. Swim toward the shore. Not down the river. Swim toward the trees. Over there.” He started to lift an arm to point, but moving hurt and when he shifted, the dragon turned her head, nearly putting his face in the water. She kept paddling steadily downstream.
“Curse you, listen to me! Turn toward the shore! It’s our only hope. Carry me over there, by the trees, and then you can do what you wish. I don’t want to die in this river.”
If she even noticed he was speaking to her, he could not tell. One-two, one-two. He rocked with the dogged rhythm of her paddling.
He wondered if he could swim to the trees on his own. He’d never been a strong swimmer, but the fear of drowning might lend him a bit of strength. He flexed his legs experimentally, earning himself another dunk in the river and the knowledge that he was chilled to the bone. If the dragon didn’t carry him to shore, he wasn’t going to get there. And the way she was swimming now made him doubt that even she could make it. But she was his only chance, if he could get her to listen to him.
He thought of Alise and Sintara. He lifted a hand to touch Relpda’s jaw, flesh to scale. His hands were tender, the skin deeply wrinkled from immersion in the river. They were red, too, and he suspected that if he warmed them up, they’d burn. He couldn’t think about that now.
“Beauteous one,” he began, feeling foolish. Almost immediately, he felt a warm spark of attention in his mind. “Lovely copper queen, gleaming like a freshly minted coin. You of the swirling eyes and glistening scales, please hear me.”
Hear you.
“Yes, hear me. Turn your head. Do you see the trees there, sticking up from the water? Lovely one, if you carried me there, we could both rest. I could groom you and perhaps find you some food. I know you are hungry. I feel it.” That, he realized, was disconcertingly true. And if he let his mind wander there, he felt her increasing weariness, too. Back away from that! “Let us go there so you can take the rest you so richly deserve, and I can have the pleasure of cleaning your face of mud.”
