Marie Brennan - Within the Sanctuary of Wings

Streak understood my meaning immediately. After a glance at the others—I could see Wary silently willing its companion not to speak—the Draconean turned back to me, pointed one claw at its muzzle, and said, “Ruzt.”

The one I had dubbed Cook followed suit. “Kahhe.”

Then they glared at Wary until it muttered, “Zam.”

Now all of us had names. They were no longer creatures to me; they were people. And that marked the beginning of many changes among us.

“Zabel.” This was how they tended to pronounce my name. They were not incapable of providing it with its initial and final vowels, but in their speech such things tended to fall away, and I answered readily enough to the truncated form. Ruzt had gone out for a time; now it was back, and it held in its claws my mountaineering clothes, carefully mended.

A thousand possibilities collided in my mind. I was to be escorted home; I was being tossed out on my ear; I was to meet other Draconeans at last; I was being taken to my execution. Would they bother to mend my clothes before killing me? I chided myself for foolishness and dressed with alacrity. Only one thing could I be sure of: I was going outside at last. After so long cooped up in that house, nothing sounded more wonderful.

Despite my still-splinted leg, my step was light as I followed Ruzt through the door it had blocked me from before. The antechamber was stuffed with all manner of sacks and crates; clearly it served as a storeroom for those things which would not suffer from the cold. The wall it shared with the inner room was covered in more of that quilted hessian. Ruzt took garments from a nearby rack, snow-caked enough that I understood why it did not bring them inside, where they would leave meltwater all over the floor. The sight should have warned me of what I would face outside, but I was so caught up in the thought of freedom that I did not follow my observation to its logical conclusion.

Ruzt led me to the exterior door, set a little distance to the side of the first (so the wind would not blow straight through to the interior), and opened it.

I stepped out into a world of diamonds. The sky overhead was a brilliant, unforgiving blue, and the sun reflected off a thousand surfaces around me. From the col I had seen greenery in the valley below; unless Ruzt and the others had taken me someplace entirely different, that green was all buried now. Icicles decorated the eaves of the buildings, hung in dense strings from the trees. Directly ahead of me, dominating the mountain basin, was the peak I had seen from the col, dressed entirely in white. My first step sank me almost knee-deep into the snow, and the air was the coldest I had ever felt.

While I lay ill and then healing inside that house, winter had begun.

Oh, by the calendar perhaps it was not yet there. But in the Mrtyahaima, winter does not wait upon the solstice to come calling; it arrives early and stays late. Though much of the precipitation falls during the monsoon, as rain in the valleys and snow in the heights, winter is not without its storms; and during that season, travel is all but impossible.

I stood as if turned to ice myself. All thoughts of departure withered on the vine. It did not matter how much I had recovered; it did not matter whether the Draconeans helped or hindered me in going. Any attempt to leave this place before spring would be a death sentence—and spring would not show her face before Fructis at the earliest. At a conservative estimate, I would be trapped here for at least four months.

Four months, during which everyone I loved would believe me dead.

Ruzt said something I could not understand. When I did not respond, it bent to peer at me. I shook myself to something like life and nodded, numbly. I could not encompass that thought yet; I would come to terms with it by degrees, for to take in the whole at once would break me. For now, I distracted myself with my surroundings, which I was at last free to explore.

The house stood on the edge of a village. It should, I thought, have looked more exotic; after all, this was a Draconean settlement. But the truth is that sensible architecture stays much the same regardless of species. The steeply pitched roofs were not far different from those of the Nying—or, indeed, those one might find in Siaure or northern Bulskevo. Where there is a large amount of snow, there is a need to shed it, lest it crush the roof with its weight.

I turned the other direction and saw that I had not come so terribly far. The familiar tower of Gyaptse stood proud in the sky, with Cheja alongside. From here, the path up to the col was comparatively easy. But I had no illusions that I could chance it: even if I made it across, I would die attempting to descend the other side alone; and even if I survived the descent, I would still be in the Mrtyahaiman wilderness, with a glacier between me and the nearest human settlement.

When I turned back, all three of my Draconean hosts were watching me. I suspect they guessed my thoughts, but I do not know for certain.

All three of my hosts. Where were the remainder?

Just as when we had come into Hlamtse Rong, I saw no one on the paths between the houses; unlike in Hlamtse Rong, there was no one peering out at me from cover. I could not even see many tracks in the snow. What few I saw, I suspected came from Ruzt, Kahhe, and Zam.

This was why they had permitted me to leave the house. Because no one else was here to see me.

So where had the inhabitants gone? To winter quarters, perhaps? Leaving behind my three, who made no objection as I tentatively began to explore. They let me walk up to one of the other houses; when I knocked on the door, they only looked puzzled. Clearly it was not the Draconean custom to announce themselves in such fashion. Did they clap, as people do in other parts of the world? I had no idea. But the door opened when I tried it, and although Kahhe followed me closely, they permitted me to go inside. The layout of the house was much like the one I had left, but clearly packed up for the season, its inhabitants not expecting to return any time soon. Here, though, part of the quilted hessian had split, exposing the stuffing. Poking at this, I found it was filled with scales like the ones that adorned my companions, but paler.

“Insulation,” I murmured, stepping back to study it. The same material that helped protect their bodies could easily serve the same purpose on their houses. Did the Draconeans shed their scales each year? The quantity suggested they did, and the colour suggested the scales bleached over time, likely as a seasonal adaptation. (In wintertime a pale hide would camouflage them more effectively against the snow, while a darker hide would be much less conspicuous among the trees and bare stones of summer.) They must save their scales with care, stitching them into new fabric casings when the old ones failed.

Zam was hissing something to Ruzt when I came out of the house. It still did not trust me; that much was palpable. I wished I could ask why.

Since I could not, I continued exploring. There seemed no point in going into any of the other houses, but below me on the slope was a building unlike any of the others. It was low and square, but enormous in area, at least compared to everything else in the village. To give the roof a steep pitch would have required it to soar into the sky; instead its gentler slope was oddly lumpy, which I soon realized came from the pine boughs that carpeted it. These could be pried off as needed, taking the encrustation of snow and ice with them, and replaced with a clean covering from a storehouse built for the purpose.