The Broken Knife

Kaz drew his hand along the right-hand wall, making sure he stayed close to the edge of the cave, and wouldn’t wander into range of the monstrous lopo. As soon as the last vestiges of light cast by Lianhua’s orb and Raff’s rune stone were too far away to help him see, he stopped, once again envisioning the light rune. He made sure to add the little swoop at the end, and then carefully filled it with ki until the dim, flickering radiance surrounded him again.

Once he was certain he could see at least well enough not to walk into a pit or be taken unawares by a predator, he hurried further from the humans. He was almost certain by now that their vision and hearing weren’t as good as his, but he didn’t want to take a chance that Chi Yincang or even Lianhua might see the light and want to know where it came from.

As soon as he was sure he was too far away for them to see anything, he stopped and took stock. Dimly, he could see the hanging mass of darkness that was the now-quiescent lopo. He was getting dangerously close to its territory, given what he could remember of how far its tongues could reach, but the wall of the cavern curved away, and he thought he could edge around it so long as he didn’t get too far from the side.

His pack wriggled, and a questioning whistle emerged from it, making Kaz nearly jump out of his fur. He hesitated, but the dragon in his bag shoved hard against his back, chirping loudly, so he slung the pack around, pulling the string open.

“Shhh,” he hissed, staring into the golden eyes that peered up from the darkness. “I need to find something for Lianhua, and then get back to her as quickly as I can. There’s no time to-”

The dragon put its little paws on the rim of the opening and pulled itself up, then scurried up Kaz’s arm before he could do more than yelp. It butted its head against his cheek, chirping and whistling as its wings stretched out, flapping awkwardly. The invisible thread between their minds hummed, and Kaz felt a sense of alien curiosity flow into him.

He froze. A thousand questions whirled through his mind, and vaguely, he wondered how many of them were crossing over to the dragonling through their bond. Could it sense his astonishment and, yes, fear, in the same way he had sensed its interest?

Still, with every second, Lianhua’s life was fading, so he focused on the task at hand. He needed to find firemoss, and he needed to do it quickly.

As the image of the brownish-red plant formed in his mind, he could almost feel the dragon examine it. The small head tilted, then bobbed up and down. Delicate wings flapped, and the slim reptilian body began to lift from his shoulder.

Panic flooded him. “No! There’s a lopo!” With every fiber of his being, he tried to send an image of the terrible monster that lurked in the darkness at the center of the cavern. He replayed his memory of the barbed, twisting tongues lashing through the air to strike at the humans, and the dragon flinched back, squeaking pitifully.

“That’s right,” he murmured, holding out his arm. “Come back. We’ll find the firemoss together, and then you have to go back in the bag so we can take it to Lianhua.”

The hovering creature shook its head, darting up along the wall beside him. Something pressed at his mind, but all he got was a sense of urgency, then frustration.

Kaz shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”

Li stared at him, its eyes whirling into silver-white, and it spun in place, once, twice, while the pressure mounted inside Kaz’s mind. He clutched at his head, whimpering, and the dragon seemed to give up, flying forward to the edge of the light cast by his dim orb.

Kaz huffed out a breath as the strain on his thoughts vanished. “Fine,” he muttered. “I may not be able to understand, but I can see you’re not going to give up. Let’s just find the moss, and then I’ll figure out what to do with you.”

The dragon whistled, and Kaz felt a rush of pleasure through the bond. The dragon moved away, vanishing into the darkness, and Kaz followed.

Li clung to the wall nearly as tightly as Kaz did, so he was certain that at least some of his warning had reached it. Soon enough, he was able to relax and focus on the floor and wall as he looked for any sign of the thick, rusty filaments that made up the common plant. Now that he was looking, he saw a number of other lichen and mosses, and even a rare fern whose delicate young leaves were a tasty seasoning, especially on fuergar meat.

As he walked, he grabbed a few handfuls of various plants he would have foraged when he was at home. The small patches of life were larger and healthier than the ones he was used to, but they also hadn’t been picked over by generations of kobolds cycling through the area.

It seemed like it took forever to see the familiar shape and color of a patch of firemoss, but it probably wasn’t more than five minutes. It was high above him, a wide swath of it narrowing as it descended, probably following the trickle of water running down the wall.

Halting, he looked around, hoping for a convenient pile of rocks he could climb on, or even throw in an attempt to dislodge a few clumps. This was a little dangerous, since a spark could actually set the patch of moss on fire, but the fresh plant only smoked and smoldered for a long time, rather than producing open flames which could blaze for hours like the oil.

Li had been flying ahead of him, swooping and swirling and doing very little actual searching, so far as Kaz could tell. When he stopped, it continued, but quickly looped back, flying around near the patch of moss as excitement flowed through the bond. He had to chuckle. The little creature was as proud as if it had found the moss, rather than Kaz, and its chirping crows of elation were almost as cute as a pup given a bone for the first time.

His eyes narrowed as he stared up at the prancing beast, and he tried to picture it grabbing some of the moss as he said, “Can you pull it down? It should come off the wall pretty easily.”

The dragon stilled, its only movement the motion of its wings as it stared from the moss to Kaz. Reaching out with its mouth, it tugged at a few strands of the dense layer of moss, which broke off and fell to land at Kaz’s feet when the dragon spat them out. It squeaked in disgust, but threw itself at the wall, reaching out with all four feet, clinging with stubborn determination even as the mat of vegetation began to separate from the stone beneath it.

The whole mass pulled free, dropping moss and dragon alike toward Kaz. The moss seemed to have managed to entangle the dragon’s wings as it fell, and he leaped forward, catching the reptile before it could hit the floor. Carefully, he tugged away the long filaments of rusty red, revealing the thin membranes of the wings, which almost seemed to glow white-gold in Kaz’s light.

Once he was sure the dragon was unhurt, Kaz settled it back on his shoulder and crouched to gather the fallen clumps of moss. He stuffed it into his pack and turned back the way they’d come. The dragon seemed content to remain with him now, and he thought it seemed tired, which made sense. After all, it had only hatched a few days before, and it had spent nearly all of the time since then in his bag. It was amazing that it could fly at all, much less for any real length of time.

Kaz was able to move much more quickly now that he didn’t have to watch for moss, and soon he saw the glint of light ahead. Stopping, he reached up and took the dragon from his shoulder, ignoring the tug as it clung to his fur.

Holding it up so he could stare into the glimmering eyes, he said, “You have to go back in the pack. There will be fuergar nearby, for certain. No kobolds live close enough to keep the population down, so I’ll find one soon. I don’t know how I’ll get the ring on it, but I will. I promise.”

Kaz felt a flood of uncertainty and gloom, but the dragon stopped resisting. He pulled out a few clumps of moss, creating some space inside the pack, and gently tucked the dragon into the soft mass. It wriggled, burrowing down into the stuff, and he tugged at the string, closing the pack again, though he didn’t knot the strip of leather this time. Swinging the bag over his shoulder, he withdrew his power from his flickering light, and blinked as near-darkness descended again.

Trailing his left hand on the wall this time, he trotted toward the glow of the human’s pale white light, and soon Lianhua and the others came into sight once again. Kaz paused just long enough to pick up a fairly flat rock, then stepped within the circle of light, noticing that Lianhua’s ki orb had gone out, so Raff’s stone was now their only source of light. He barely glanced at the males, though he thought that both Gaoda and Raff were now unconscious, and their eyes were closed. With Raff encased in his shell of armor, Kaz couldn’t see the man’s chest to tell if it continued to rise and fall, but he didn’t seem any worse than he had been when Kaz left.

Chi Yincang opened his eyes when Kaz walked past him, and Kaz yipped in surprise when he saw the human’s eyes, which were black from corner to corner, with no white visible at all. Chi Yincang blinked slowly. The black color flowed away like water, leaving his eyes looking like they usually did. The male focused on Kaz, and his lips moved.

“Did you get it?”

Kaz nodded, mutely holding up the moss, and Chi Yincang’s eyes fell closed again. Kaz waited to see if he would say anything else, but when nothing happened, Kaz knelt beside Lianhua. He laid the moss in a slight depression on the limestone floor, and began to pound on it with the flat rock he had picked up. It quickly turned into a dense, fibrous paste, which he picked up and twisted, squeezing out a gelatinous goo. Usually, a female would heat this goo with her power until the last of the fibers separated from the liquid, creating the ‘oil’, a few drops of which would then be combined with fresh moss to create torches for the males of the tribe.

Kaz couldn’t heat the stuff, but he hoped it would be good enough, so he smeared the sticky goo on Lianhua’s leg with trembling fingers. Her skin felt cold and she didn’t react to his touch, but her chest still moved, so he might yet be in time.

Once the firemoss sludge was on Lianhua’s wound, Kaz found himself stymied. He needed to set it on fire, but his fire-striker was in his pack. With the dragon. If, that is, the dragon hadn’t somehow managed to eat or otherwise destroy it.

Casting a furtive glance at Chi Yincang, Kaz pulled his pack around again. Closing his eyes, he reached for the strand that linked his mind to that of the dragonling, and found a sort of sleepy irritability. He pushed a feeling of caution toward it, and got back something that could have been acknowledgement.

With careful fingers, he tugged at the twisted thong, opening the pack just enough that the dragon could start to stick out its nose, but he could still shove it back down if it tried. It didn’t, and he pushed a hand through the mass of firemoss and other things he had stuffed into the bag during his brief foray into the cavern, prompting a very faint hiss and an increase in the level of annoyance the dragon was sending him.

He persisted, however - though he had to gently push a loop of warm dragon-body aside - and eventually his fingers found something hard inside a leather pouch at the bottom of the bag. He nearly yanked it out when he realized that it didn’t feel like the squat, round shape of the striker. He frowned, fingers tracing the long, narrow shape, and only when a blade parted both leather and skin did he remember the pouch Rega had given him just before she died.

Kaz flinched at the pain, and felt hot blood begin to soak the leather he was touching. The bag shifted, and the dragon’s scaly nose pressed to his finger before he felt the flicker of its tongue against his flesh. He shoved it away instinctively, afraid that it would bite at the undoubtedly delicious-smelling wound, but it didn’t.

Instead, a sense of curiosity and faint concern impinged on his consciousness, and he felt the tongue flick against his skin again. This time, he didn’t pull away, but instead nudged the bag containing the knife away from his hand and the dragon, delving underneath it. He brushed against the now-familiar shape of the seed, moved that aside as well, and finally found another leather-encased lump stuck to the very bottom of the pouch by a hard crust that was probably formed of the remnants of the dragon’s meals and whatever else had gone on in the bag since the creature hatched.

With his talons, he scratched at the thick layer of dried muck, pulling little chunks off until the lump came free. The easily-recognizable shape of the striker fit into his palm, and he pulled it out, leaving smears of blood on everything in the pack.

Quickly, he tied the leather string again, his oozing finger staining one end of it a deep rusty red, and tugged open the filthy, crunchy pouch containing the fire-striker. It fell out, the round chunk of flint still tied to the flexible strip of metal that made it work. The little device had belonged to Kaz’s father, and after Ghazt died, Kaz had taken it, though rightfully everything in his father’s pack should have gone to Oda as Ghazt’s mate. It was the only thing Kaz had left from his father, other than his fading memories.

The stone settled easily into Kaz’s curled fingers, while the curve of metal arched up along his thumb. He squeezed his hand, making the metal click sharply against the stone, and a faint spark leapt into the air. Kaz nodded in satisfaction and turned it, squeezing several more times in rapid succession, until one of the sparks landed in the little puddle of goo left after Kaz crushed the firemoss. Instantly, a flame leaped up, blazing with the intense white-orange color produced by freshly ignited firemoss oil.

Kaz picked up a sprig of moss that had fallen to the side and extended it out over the flame. It caught and began to flicker with its own fire, sending up thick tendrils of smoke, and he leaned over, carefully touching it to the goo he’d smeared on Lianhua’s wound. A streak of flame expanded away from the point of contact, and he dropped the burning moss back into the rest of the little fire before turning his attention to the unconscious human.

Lianhua didn’t make a sound, though her face twisted as the flame took hold, so he at least knew she still lived. The smell of burning meat touched Kaz’s sensitive nose, and he had to clench his fists to keep from trying to put out the fire he had worked so hard to create. The firemoss needed to burn itself out, taking the lopo’s paralytic with it, and there was nothing he could do to make that happen any faster.

He caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, and turned to look as Chi Yincang leaned forward slowly and scooped a bit of the burning goo from the depression in the floor with the tip of a knife. The human smeared the flaming gunk onto a long scratch on his neck, barely flinching at the resulting sizzle. He just sat, the wound on his neck flaring as it burned, leaving Kaz to watch in silence.