“M’excuse, sir. Sir?” Thernadad said, climbing down the cave wall next to him.
“Yes?”
“The mate an m’talked, and since her sister’s come to stay, we thought one more or less wouldn’t make a difference.” He went into a paroxysm of fur smoothing.
“Why are you telling me?”
“It’s me old mum, sir. E’can’t make it to the surface anymore, or survive the dangers out there besides. Pitiful shape she’s in. If e’could just have a lick or two, e’doesn’t have any appetite at all no more, hardly.”
The Copper saw a half-white bat, small and frail, above.
“Oh, very well. I suppose her sister’s somewhere behind, also starving.”
“Oh, no, no. My brother. A great, well-traveled bat e’is; been down every hole in these mountains. Thousand and one stories. Now e’takes care of old Mum. E’pulled her up, again and again, to the cave roof on the trip so she could drop for another glide. E’perishing with exhaustion, e’is.”
“So he needs some blood down his throat, too.” The Copper felt his griff flutter.
“Sir, don’t be a’taking me wrong,” he said as the tiny old bat crawled down his back. “What you’ve done for us poor hangers more than makes up for your life being saved by quick thinking an’ skill and charity. Wonderful thing, charity. Never know how it a’gets paid back in this life or the next. Here, y’be excusing me, her old teeth, you know.”
Thernadad licked him a couple times, and the Copper felt the nook in his saa go numb. With a quick bite Thernadad opened a cut and the old bat began to lap.
Thernadad wiped the corner of his eyes again and again as he licked a smear of blood from his limbs. “Oh, sir. Me poor old mum. You’ve made me so happy. M’won’t forget this kindness till the day I drop. No, sir.”
“Rich good blood, this dragon,” Thernadad’s mother said.
“Oh, dragon,” a great heavy bat said. He’d shifted to directly above the Copper with surprising stealth. “Haven’t tasted that since I flew the whole way ’round the Lavadome. What a place. Thick with dragons. Not as kind as this one, no, nearly got my wings bit off. Y’be falling into the Nor’flow by accident and get carried all this way, m’lord?”
Thick with dragons? “Tell me more,” the Copper said.
“Glad to, m’lord. It’s only my throat, a’be drying up from the exertions.”
“I suppose I can spare a little more.”
The big bat dropped down to his flank.
“Ooooo, is there a party?” Mamedi said, crawling across the cave roof with her sister and brood behind. A couple more bats seemed to have joined the family.
“E’s flowing nicely,” Thernadad’s mother said. “Great strong young dragon.”
Thernadad’s wide-bodied brother shoved his mother out of the way and pushed his nose in and drank. When he came up for air, he wiped his snout with his wing and dragged himself up the Copper’s neck, where he threw a companionable wing around and gave him a bloody leer. “Dragons a’loving treasure stories. Ever heard of CuTar? How about the great glowing stone of NooMoahk? In old Uldam, it is, like a bit of the sun itself dropped into the earth—”
“I’d rather hear about this Lavadome. Where is it, exactly?”
“Oh, an awful journey y’had, to get so lost and confused. To get back y’be having to make it to the Antiope for the southward flow, and there’s no good road, in the sun or in the dark, not hereabouts. M’taking another pull and think on it. Hey! Y’be getting out of it, you greedy beggars!”
Mamedi and her relations fought for a place in a wing-jostling heap at the cut in his tail. One of the bigger ones, more enterprising than the rest, had opened another wound in his tail.
“This is a bit much,” the Copper said. He dragged his tail away from the greedy mouths.
“Y’be molesting our good host,” Thernadad yelled from above.
“Faaaa!” Mamedi answered back.
“Off me mum, you!” Thernadad dropped down on one of his mate’s relations who’d shoved his frail mother aside—less vigorously than her own son, it seemed to the Copper, but he was learning that the insult wasn’t as important as who offered it. A full-out bat brawl started.
He curled his slit tail around himself—it bent in a funny and uneven manner, with bends more like a dwarf tunnel, thanks to the rod injuries to it, and alternately licked and blew on the cuts until the bleeding stopped, as the bats lashed one another with leather wings and tried to bite off oversize hairy ears.
He woke feeling tired and hungry. He checked his cuts and discovered a new wound in the soft spot just behind his shoulder. Though bat bites did heal clean and fast, and he could hardly feel the injuries. His head hurt, and he walked down to the river for a drink.
He sucked cold water, and his head began to feel better almost immediately.
Thernadad swooped by. “Sir, y’be wanting to get away from the river!”
Bing-bing. Bing-bing…Bing-bing! The metallic clatter was regular, and therefore alarming. He saw a light up the tunnel from upstream, reflected on the flowing water.
“Hurry!” Thernadad urged.
BING-BING!
He scrambled backward and set himself against the cave wall.
A long wooden trunk, a clattering bell anchored at the front and swaying lanterns hung in reflective hollows in its sides, rushed down the river, pushed along by the fast-flowing water. Through long, narrow slits he saw dwarves within, sweating backs rising and falling as they worked at some mystery on their craft. He caught one glimpse of a dwarf at the tail, hanging off a flange and working some kind of apparatus that descended into the water from the safety of a metal cage, and it was gone, moving as fast as a quick-walking dragon.
BING-bing…Bing-bing…Bing…Bing.
Thernadad alighted and smoothed his face fur. “Careful at the river now, sir.”
“What was that?”
“The dwarves. They get about on those things here in the Lower World.”
“It came from the same direction I did, with the current.”
“Of course e’did, sir. Always a’coming from that direction.”
“Then how do they get back?”
“Mother! Mother!” Thernadad called back, but not in answer to his question. The Copper heard air move above, and saw the old white-flecked bat turning tight circles low over the underground river.
“M’knew it,” she screeched as she flapped back into the cave and rested. “Flies be riding with the dwarves. Snapped up two while y’be working your jaw.”
The Copper’s appetite had woken with a vengeance, and he began to sniff around the bank of the river. Perhaps fish lived within the fast-flowing current.
“Y’flying days be over, m’thinking!” Thernadad said. “Enjor, e’be saying you could hardly glide nomores.”
She alighted next to the channel bearing a trickle into the cave interior and took in water with her quick, darting tongue.
She smacked her thin lips. “Oh, Thernie, just woke up hale this morning, m’did. Full of guano and ginger. M’wanting a bit of air under me wing.” She brushed the fur forward on her face and dug in an ear and gobbled down whatever she found within. “This young dragon—yeeek!”
A translucent tongue shot up from where it rested next to the channel. It was segmented, with countless legs a blur, its body like living, mottled eyejelly. To the bat, thicker around than she and many times her length, it was a mortal danger, pincers at the front opening for her….
To the Copper it was breakfast.
He scrambled after it and extended his neck, bit down on the back half, and yanked it skyward. Legs tickling at his throat, he gulped it down.
He looked down to see Thernadad flapping his wings in the face of his mother, who blinked awake. She climbed onto his back and he scuttled back up, in that elbows-out fashion of bats, to the cavern roof.
“Twice grateful, sir,” Thernadad said, panting a little.
“Any blood flowing this fine night?” Mamedi said, creeping forward.
“Out of it!” Thernadad bawled. She was out of reach, so he battled the air in her direction with his wings.
“Just thinking of refreshing meself. Like a new-mated bat you were last sunrise. M’be hardly able to keep a grip.”
“Oh, son, m’be pershishing of that scare,” Thernadad’s mother croaked. “Just a wee drop; perhaps y’be persuading our kindly young prince now?”
The Copper saw other eyes shining in the darkness. How many bats had gathered in this cave?
“Sir—” Thernadad said.
“Leave me alone, would you?” the Copper said. He stalked into the cave, leaving the cluster of bats.
“Greedy sots!” Thernadad yelled, and soon the Copper heard the wing-flapping, tooth-snapping sound of a full-out bat brawl.
The Copper found a dark corner and rested. The seemingly still-twitching centipede wasn’t agreeing with him.