Believing Is Seeing

DRAGON RESERVE, HOME EIGHT

Where to begin? Neal and I had had a joke for years about a little green van coming to carry me off—this was when I said anything more than usually mad—and now it was actually happening. Mother and I stood at my bedroom window, watching the van bouncing up the track between the dun green hills, and neither of us smiled. It wasn’t a farm van, and most of our neighbors visit on horseback, anyway. Before long we could see it was dark green with a silver dragon insigne on the side.

“It is the Dragonate,” Mother said. “Siglin, there’s nothing I can do.” It astonished me to hear her say that. Mother only comes up to my shoulder, but she held her land and our household, servants, Neal and me, and all three of her husbands, in a hand like iron, and she drove out to plow or harvest if one of my fathers was ill. “They said the dragons would take you,” she said. “I should have seen. You think Orm informed on you?”

“I know he did,” I said. “It was my fault for going into the Reserve.”

“I’ll blood an ax on him,” Mother said, “one of these days. But I can’t do it over this. The neighbors would say he was quite right.” The van was turning between the stone walls of the farmyard now. Chickens were squirting and flapping out of its way, and our sheepdog pups were barking their heads off. I could see Neal up on the washhouse roof watching yearningly. It’s a good place to watch from because you can hide behind the chimney. Mother saw Neal, too. “Siglin,” she said, “don’t let on Neal knows about you.”

“No,” I said. “Nor you either.”

“Say as little as you can, and wear the old blue dress; it makes you look younger,” Mother said, turning toward the door. “You might just get off. Or they might just have come about something else,” she added. The van was stopping outside the front door now, right underneath my window. “I’d best go and greet them,” Mother said, and hurried downstairs.

While I was forcing my head through the blue dress, I heard heavy boots on the steps and a crashing knock at the door. I shoved my arms into the sleeves, in too much of a hurry even to feel indignant about the dress. It makes me look about twelve, and I am nearly grown up! At least, I was fourteen quite a few weeks ago now. But Mother was right. If I looked too immature to have awakened, they might not question me too hard. I hurried to the head of the stairs while I tied my hair with a childish blue ribbon. I knew they had come for me, but I had to see.

They were already inside when I got there, a whole line of tall men tramping down the stone hallway in the half dark, and Mother was standing by the closed front door as if they had swept her aside. What a lot of them, just for me! I thought. I got a weak, sour feeling and could hardly move for horror. The man at the front of the line kept opening the doors all down the hallway, calm as you please, until he came to the main parlor at the end. “This room will do nicely,” he said. “Out you get, you.” And my oldest father, Timas, came shuffling hurriedly out in his slippers, clutching a pile of accounts and looking scared and worried. I saw Mother fold her arms. She always does when she is angry.

Another of them turned to Mother. “We’ll speak to you first,” he said, “and your daughter after that. Then we want the rest of the household. Don’t any of you try to leave.” And they went into the parlor with Mother and shut the door.

They hadn’t even bothered to guard the doors. They just assumed we would obey them. I was shaking as I walked back to my room, but it was not terror anymore. It was rage. I mean, we have all been brought up to honor the Dragonate. They are the cream of the men of the Ten Worlds. They are supposed to be gallant and kind and dedicated and devote their lives to keeping us safe from Thrallers, not to speak of maintaining justice, law, and order all over the Ten Worlds. Dragonate men swear that oath of Alienation, which means they can never have homes or families like ordinary people. Up to then I’d felt sorry for them for that. They give up so much. But now I saw they felt it gave them the right to behave as if the rest of us were not real people. To walk in as if they owned our house. To order Timas out of his own parlor. Oh, I was angry!

I don’t know how long Mother was in the parlor. I was so angry it felt like seconds until I heard flying feet and Neal hurried into my room. “They want you now.”

I stood up and took some of my anger out on poor Neal. I said, “Do you still want to join the Dragonate? Swear that stupid oath? Behave like you own the Ten Worlds?”

It was mean. Neal looked at the floor. “They said straightaway,” he said. Of course he wanted to join. Every boy does, particularly on Sveridge, where women own most of the land. I swept down the stairs, angrier than ever. All the doors in the hallway were open, and our people were standing in them, staring. The two housemen were at the dining room door, the cattlewomen and two farmhands were looking out of the kitchen, and the stableboy and the second shepherd were craning out of the pantry. I thought, They still will be my people someday! I refuse to be frightened! My fathers were in the doorway of the bookroom. Donal and Yan were in work clothes and had obviously rushed in without taking their boots off. I gave them what I hoped was a smile, but only Timas smiled back. They all know! I thought as I opened the parlor door.

There were only five of them, sitting facing me across our best table. Five was enough. All of them stood up as I came in. The room seemed full of towering green uniforms. It was not at all what I expected. For one thing, the media always show the Dragonate as fair and dashing and handsome, and none of these were. For another, the media had led me to expect uniforms with big silver panels. These were all plain green, and four of them had little silver stripes on one shoulder.

“Are you Sigrid’s daughter, Siglin?” asked the one who had opened all the doors. He was a bleached, pious type like my father Donal, and his hair was dust color.

“Yes,” I said rudely. “Who are you? Those aren’t Dragonate uniforms.”

“Camerati, Lady,” said one who was brown all over with wriggly hair. He was young, younger than my father Yan, and he smiled cheerfully, like Yan does. But he made my stomach go cold. Camerati are the crack force, cream of the Dragonate. They say a man has to be a genius even to be considered for it.

“Then what are you doing here?” I said. “And why are you all standing up?”

The one in the middle, obviously the chief one, said, “We always stand up when a lady enters the room. And we are here because we were on a tour of inspection at Holmstad, anyway, and there was a Slaver scare on this morning. So we offered to take on civic duties for the regular Dragonate. Now if that answers your questions, let me introduce us all.” He smiled, too, which twisted his white, crumpled face like a demon mask. “I am Lewin, and I’m Updriten here. On your far left is Driten Palino, our recorder.” This was the pious type, who nodded. “Next to him is Driten Renick of Law Wing.” Renick was elderly and iron-gray, with one of those necks that look like a chicken’s leg. He just stared. “Underdriten Terens is on my left, my aide and witness.” That was brown-and-wriggly. “And beyond him is Cadet Alectis, who is traveling with us to Home Nine.”

Alectis looked a complete baby, only a year older than I was, with pink cheeks and sandy hair. He and Terens both bowed and smiled so politely that I nearly smiled back. Then I realized that they were treating me as if I were a visitor. In my own home! I bowed freezingly, the way Mother usually does to Orm.

“Please sit down, Siglin,” Lewin said politely.

I nearly didn’t, because that might keep them standing up, too. But they were all so tall I’d already got a crick in my neck. So I sat grandly on the chair they’d put ready facing the table. “Thank you,” I said. “You are a very kind host, Updriten Lewin.” To my great joy, Alectis went bright red at that, but the other four simply sat down, too. Pious Palino took up a memo block and poised his fingers over its keys. This seemed to be in case the recorder in front of Lewin went wrong. Lewin set that going. Wriggly Terens leaned over and passed me another little square box.

“Keep this in your hand,” he said, “or your answers may not come out clearly.”

I caught the words lie detector from his wriggly head as clearly as if he had said them aloud. I don’t think I showed how very scared I was, but my hand made the box wet almost straightaway.

“Court is open,” Lewin said to the recorder. “Presiding Updriten Lewin.” He gave a string of numbers and then said, “First hearing starts on charges against Siglin, of Upland Holding, Wormstow, North Sveridge on Home Eight, accused of being heg and heg concealing its nature. Questions begin. Siglin, are you clear what being heg is?” He crumpled one eyebrow upward at me.

“No,” I said. After all, no one has told me in so many words. It’s just a thing people whisper and shudder at.

“Then you’d better understand this,” Lewin said. He really was the ugliest and most outlandish of the five. Dragonate men are never posted to the world of their birth, and I thought Lewin must come from one a long way off. His hair was black, so black it had blue lights, but, instead of being dark all over to match it, like wriggly Terens, he was a lot whiter than I was, and his eyes were a most piercing blue, almost the color they make the sky on the media. “If the charges are proved,” he said, “you face death by beheading since that is the only form of execution a heg cannot survive. Renick—”

Elderly Renick swept sourly in before Lewin had finished speaking. “The law defines a heg as one with human form who is not human. Medical evidence of brain pattern or nerve and muscle deviations is required prior to execution, but for a first hearing it is enough to establish that the subject can perform one or more of the following: mind reading; kindling fire or moving objects at a distance; healing or killing by the use of the mind alone; surviving shooting, drowning, or suffocation; or enslaving or otherwise afflicting the mind of a beast or human.”

He had the kind of voice that bores you, anyway. I thought, Great gods! I don’t think I can do half those things! Maybe I looked blank. Palino stopped clicking his memo block to say, “It’s very important to understand why these creatures must be stamped out. They can make people into puppets in just the same way that the Slavers can. Foul.” Actually I think he was explaining to Alectis. Alectis nodded humbly. Palino said, definitely to me, “Slavers do it with those V-shaped collars. You must have seen them on the media. Quite foul.”

“We call them Thrallers,” I said. Foul or not, I thought, I’m the only one of me I’ve got! I can’t help being made the way I am.

Lewin flapped his hand to shut Palino up, and Renick went on again. “A heg is required by law to give itself up for execution. Any normal person who knowingly conceals a heg is likewise liable for execution.” Now I knew why Mother had told me to keep Neal out of it.

Then it seemed to be Palino’s turn. He said, “Personal details follow. How old are you, er, Sigrun?”

“Siglin,” I said. “Fourteen last month.”

Renick stretched out his chicken neck. “In this court’s opinion, subject is old enough to have awakened as heg.” He looked at Terens.

Terens said, “I witness. Girls awaken early, don’t they?”

Palino, tapping away, said, “Mother, Sigrid, also of Upland Holding.”

At which Lewin leaned forward. “Cleared by this court,” he said. I was relieved to hear that. Mother is clever. She hadn’t let them know she knew.

Palino said, “And your father is?”

“Timas, Donal, and Yan,” I said. I had to bite the inside of my cheek not to laugh at how annoyed he was by that.

“Great Tew, girl!” he said. “A person can’t have three fathers!”

“Hold it, Palino,” said Lewin. “You’re up against local customs here. Men outnumber women three to one on Home Eight.”

“In Home Eight law a woman’s child is the child of all her husbands equally,” Renick put in. “No more anomalous than the status of the Ahrings on Seven, really.”

“Then tell me how I rephrase my question,” Palino said waspishly, “in the light of the primitive customs on Home Eight.”

I said, “There’s no such place as Home Eight. This world is called Sveridge.” Primitive indeed!

Palino gave me a pale glare. I gave him one back. Lewin cut in, smooth and humorous. “You’re up against primitive Dragonate customs here, Siglin. We refer to all the worlds by numbers, from Albion, Home One, to Yurov, Home Ten, and the worlds of the Outer Manifold are Cath One, Two, Three, and Four to us. Have you really no idea which of your mother’s husbands is actually your father?”

After that they all began asking me. Being heg is inherited, and I knew they were trying to find out if any of my fathers was heg, too. At length even Alectis joined in, clearing his throat and going very red because he was only a cadet. “I know we’re not supposed to know,” he said, “but I bet you’ve tried to guess. I did. I found out in the end.”

That told me he was Sveridge, too. And he suddenly wasn’t a genius in the Camerati anymore, but just a boy. “Then I bet you wished you hadn’t!” I said. “My friend Inga at Hillfoot found out, and hers turned out to be the one she’s always hated.”

“Well,” said Alectis, redder still. “Er, it wasn’t the one I’d hoped—”

“That’s why I’ve never asked,” I said. And that was true. I’d always hoped it was Timas till now. Donal is so moral, and Yan is fun, but he’s under Donal’s thumb even more than he’s under Mother’s. But I didn’t want my dear old Timas in trouble.

“Well, a cell test should settle it,” Lewin said. “Memo for that, Palino. Terens, remind me to ask how the regular Dragonate usually deals with it. Now, Siglin, this charge was laid against you by a man known as Orm the Worm Warden. Do you know this man?”

“Don’t I just!” I said. “He’s been coming here and looking through our windows and giggling ever since I can remember! He lives on the Worm Reserve in a shack. Mother says he’s a bit wrong in the head, but no one’s locked him up because he’s so good at managing dragons.”

There! I thought. That’ll show them you can’t trust a word Orm says! But they just nodded. Terens murmured to Alectis, “Sveridge worm, Draco draco, was adopted as the symbol of the Dragonate—”

“We have all heard of dragons,” Palino said to him nastily.

Lewin cut in again. I suppose it was his job as presiding Updriten. “Siglin, Orm, in his deposition, refers to an incident in the Worm Reserve last Friday. We want you to tell us what happened then, if anything.”

Grim’s teeth! I thought. I’d hoped they’d just ask me questions. You can nearly always get around questions without lying. And I’d no idea what Orm had said. “I don’t usually go to the Dragon Reserve,” I said, “because of being Mother’s heir. When I was born, the Fortune Teller said the dragons would take me.” I saw Renick and Palino exchange looks of contempt at our primitive customs. But Mother had in a good Teller, and I believe it enough to keep away from the Reserve.

“So why did you go last Friday?” said Lewin.

“Neal dared me to,” I said. I couldn’t say anything else with a lie detector in my hands. Neal gets on with Orm, and he goes to the Reserve a lot. Up to Friday he thought I was being silly refusing to go. But the real trouble was that Neal had been there all along, riding Barra beside me on Nellie, and now Lewin had made me mention Neal, I couldn’t think how to pretend he hadn’t been there. “I rode up behind Wormhill,” I said, “and then over the Saddle until we could see the sea. That means you’re in the Reserve.”

“Isn’t the Reserve fenced off at all?” Renick asked disapprovingly.

“No,” I said. “Worms—dragons—can fly, so what’s the point? They stay in because the shepherds bombard them if they don’t, and we all give them so many sheep every month.” And Orm makes them stay in, bad cess to him! “Anyway,” I said, “I was riding down a kyle—that’s what we call those narrow stony valleys—when my horse reared and threw me. Next thing I knew—”

“Question,” said Palino. “Where was your brother at this point?”

He would spot that! I thought. “Some way behind,” I said. Six feet, in fact. Barra is used to dragons and just stood stock-still. “This dragon shuffled head down with its great snout across the kyle,” I said. “I sat on the ground with its great amused eye staring at me and listening to Nellie clattering away up the kyle. It was a youngish one, sort of brown-green, which is why I hadn’t seen it. They can keep awfully still when they want to. And I said a rude word to it.

“‘That’s no way to speak to a dragon!’ Orm said. He was sitting on a rock on the other side of the kyle, quite close, laughing at me.” I wondered whether to fill the gap in my story where Neal was by telling them that Orm always used to be my idea of Jack Frost when I was little. He used to call at Uplands for milk then, to feed dragon fledglings on, but he was so rude to Mother that he goes to Inga’s place now. Orm is long and skinny and brown, with a great white bush of hair and beard, and he smells rather. But they must have smelled him in Holmstad, so I said, “I was scared because the dragon was so near I could feel the heat off it. And then Orm said, ‘You have to speak politely to this dragon. He’s my particular friend. You give me a nice kiss, and he’ll let you go.’”

I think Lewin murmured something like, “Ah, I thought it might be that!” but it may just have been in his mind. I don’t know because I was in real trouble then, trying to pick my way through without mentioning Neal. The little box got so wet it nearly slipped out of my hand. I said, “Every time I tried to get up, Orm beckoned, and the dragon pushed me down with its snout with a gamesome look in its eye. And Orm cackled with laughter. They were both really having fun.” This was true, but the dragon also pushed between me and Neal and mantled its wings when Neal tried to help. And Neal said some pretty awful things to Orm. Orm giggled and insulted Neal back. He called Neal a booby who couldn’t stand up for himself against women. “Then,” I said, “then Orm said I was the image of Mother at the same age—which isn’t true: I’m bigger all over—and he said, ‘Come on, kiss and be friends!’ Then he skipped down from his rock and took hold of my arm—”

I had to stop and swallow there. The really awful thing was that as soon as Orm had hold of me, I got a strong picture from his mind: Orm kissing a pretty lady smaller than me, with another dragon, an older, blacker one, looking on from the background. And I recognized the lady as Mother, and I was absolutely disgusted.

“So I hit Orm and got up and ran away,” I said. “And Orm shouted to me all the time I was running up the kyle and catching Nellie, but I took no notice.”

“Question,” said Renick. “What action did the dragon take?”

“They—they always chase you if you run, I’d heard,” Alectis said shyly.

“And this one appears to have been trained to Orm’s command,” Palino said.

“It didn’t chase me,” I said. “It stayed with Orm.” The reason was that neither of them could move. I still don’t know what I did—I had a picture of myself leaning back inside my own head and swinging mighty blows, the way you do with a pickax—and Neal says the dragon went over like a cartload of potatoes and Orm fell flat on his back. But Orm could speak, and he screamed after us that I’d killed the worm and I’d pay for it. But I was screaming, too, at Neal, to keep away from me because I was heg. That was the thing that horrified me most. Before that I’d tried not to think I was. After all, for all I knew, everyone can read minds and get a book from the bookcase without getting up from his chair. And Neal told me to pull myself together and think what we were going to tell Mother. We decided to say that we’d met a dragon in the Reserve and I’d killed it and found out I was heg. I made Neal promise not to mention Orm. I couldn’t bear even to think of Orm. And Mother was wonderfully understanding, and I really didn’t realize that I’d put her in danger as well as Neal.

Lewin looked down at the recorder. “Dragons are a preserved species,” he said. “Orm claims that you caused grievous bodily harm to a dragon in his care. What have you to say to that?”

“How could I?” I said. Oh, I was scared. “It was nearly as big as a house.”

Renick was on to that at once. “Query,” he said. “Prevarication?”

“Obviously,” said Palino, clicking away at his block.

“We haven’t looked at that dragon yet,” Terens said.

“We’ll do that on our way back,” Lewin said, sighing rather. “Siglin, I regret to say there is enough mismatch between your account and Orm’s, and enough odd activity on that brain measure you hold in your hand, to warrant my taking you to Holmstad Command Center for further examination. Be good enough to go with Terens and Alectis to the van, and wait there while we complete our inquiries here.”

I stood up. Everything seemed to drain out of me. I could lam them like I lammed that dragon, I thought. But Holmstad would only send a troop out to see why they hadn’t come back. And I put my oldest dress on for nothing! I thought as I walked down the hallway with Terens and Alectis. The doors were all closed. Everyone had guessed. The van smelled of clean plastic, and it was very warm and light because the roof was one big window. I sat between Terens and Alectis on the backseat. They pulled straps around us all—safety straps, but they made me feel a true prisoner.

After a while Terens said, “You could sue Orm if the evidence doesn’t hold up, you know.” I think he was trying to be kind, but I couldn’t answer.

After another while Alectis said, “With respect, Driten, I think suspects should be told the truth about the so-called lie detector.”

“Alectis, I didn’t hear you say that,” Terens said. He pretended to look out of the window, but he must have known I knew he had deliberately thought lie detector at me as he passed me the thing. They’re told to. Dragonate think of everything. I sat and thought I’d never hated anything so much as I hated our kind, self-sacrificing Dragonate, and I tried to take a last look at the stony yard, tipped sideways on the hill, with our square stone house at the top of it. But it wouldn’t register somehow.

Then the front door opened, and the other three came out, bringing Neal with them. Behind them the hall was full of our people, with Mother in front, just staring. I just stared, too, while Palino opened the van door and shoved Neal into the seat beside me. “Your brother has admitted being present at the incident,” he said as he strapped himself in beside Neal. I could tell he was pleased.

By this time Lewin and Renick had strapped themselves into the front seat. Lewin drove away without a word. Neal looked back at the house. I couldn’t. “Neal—?” I whispered.

“Just like you said,” Neal said, loudly and defiantly. “Behaving as if they own the Ten Worlds. I wouldn’t join now if they begged me to!” Why did I have to go and say that to him? “Why did you join?” Neal said rudely to Alectis.

“Six brothers,” Alectis said, staring ahead.

The other four all started talking at once. Lewin asked Renick the quickest way to the Reserve by road, and Renick said it was down through Wormstow. “I hope the dragons eat you!” Neal said. This was while Palino was leaning across us to say to Terens, “Where’s our next inspection after this hole?” And Terens said, “We go straight on to Arkloren on Nine. Alectis will get to see some other parts of the Manifold shortly.” Behaving as if we didn’t exist. Neal shrugged and shut up.

The Dragonate van was much smoother and faster than a farm van. We barely bounced over the stony track that loops down to Hillfoot, and it seemed no time before we were speeding down the better road, with the rounded yellowish Upland Hills peeling past on either side. I love my hills, covered with yellow ling that only grows here on Sveridge, and the soft light of the sun through our white and gray clouds. Renick, still making conversation, said he was surprised to find the hills so old and worn down. “I thought Eight was a close parallel with Seven!” he said.

Lewin answered in a boring voice, “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen Seven since I was a cadet.”

“Oh, the mountains are much higher and greener there,” Renick said. “I was posted in Camberia for years. Lovely spot.”

Lewin just grunted. Quite a wave of homesickness filled the van. I could feel Renick thinking of Seven and Alectis not wanting to go to Nine. Terens was remembering boating on Romaine when he was Neal’s age. Lewin was thinking of Seven, in spite of the grunt. We were coming over Jiot Fell already then, with the Giant Stones standing on top of the world against the sky. A few more turns in the road would bring us out above Wormstow where Neal and I went—used to go—to school. What about me? I was thinking. I’m homesick for life. And Neal. Poor Mother.

Then the air suddenly filled with noise, like the most gigantic sheet being torn.

Lewin said, “What the—?” and we all stared upward. A great silvery shape screamed overhead. And another of a fatter shape, more blue than silver, screamed after it, both of them only just inside the clouds. Alectis put up an astonished pointing arm. “Thraller! The one behind’s a Slaver!”

“What’s it doing here?” said Terens. “Someone must have slipped up.”

“Ours was a stratoship!” said Palino. “What’s going on?”

A huge ball of fire rolled into being on the horizon, above the Giant Stones. I felt Lewin slam on the brakes. “We got him!” one of them cried out.

“The Slaver got ours,” Lewin said. The brakes were still yelling like a she-worm when the blast hit.

I lose the next bit. I start remembering again a few seconds later, sitting up straight with a bruised lip, finding the van around sideways a long way on down the road. In front of me Renick’s straps had broken. He was lying kind of folded against the windscreen. I saw Lewin pull himself upright and pull at Renick. And stop pulling quickly. My ears had gone deaf, because I could only hear Lewin as if he were very far off. “—hurt in the back?”

Palino looked along the four of us and shouted, “Fine! Is Renick—?”

“Dead,” Lewin shouted back. “Neck broken.” He was jiggling furiously at buttons in the controls. My ears started to work again, and I heard him say, “Holmstad’s not answering. Nor’s Ranefell. I’m going back to Holmstad. Fast.”

We set off again with a roar. The van seemed to have lost its silencer, and it rattled all over, but it went. And how it went. We must have done nearly a hundred down Jiot, squealing on the bends. In barely minutes we could see Wormstow spread out below, old gray houses and new white ones, and all those imported trees that make the town so pretty. The clouds over the houses seemed to darken and go dense.

“Uh-oh!” said Terens.

The van jolted to another yelling stop. It was not the clouds. Something big and dark was coming down through the clouds, slowly descending over Wormstow. Something enormous. “What is that?” Neal and Alectis said together.

“Hedgehog,” said Terens.

“A slaveship,” Palino explained, sort of mincing the word out to make it mean more. “Are—are we out of range here?”

“I most thoroughly hope so,” Lewin said. “There’s not much we can do with hand weapons.”

We sat and stared as the thing came down. The lower it got, the more Renick’s bent-up shape was in my way. I kept wishing Lewin would do something about him, but nobody seemed to be able to think of anything but that huge descending ship. I saw why they call them hedgehogs. It was rounded above and flat beneath, with bits and pieces sticking out all over like bristles. Hideous somehow. And it came and hung squatting over the roofs of the houses below. There it let out a ramp like a long black tongue, right down into the Market Square. Then another into High Street, between the rows of trees, breaking a tree as it passed.

As soon as the ramps touched ground, Lewin started the van and drove down toward Wormstow.

“No, stop!” I said, even though I knew he couldn’t. The compulsion those Slavers put out is really strong. Some of it shouts inside your head, like your own conscience through an amplifier, and some of it is gentle and creeping and insidious, like Mother telling you gently to come along now and be sensible. I found I was thinking, Oh, well, I’m sure Lewin’s right. Tears rolled down Alectis’s face, and Neal was sniffing. We had to go to the ship, which was now hanging a little above us. I could see people hurrying out of houses and racing to crowd up the ramp in the Market Square. People I knew. So it must be all right, I thought. The van was having to weave past loose horses that people had been riding or driving. That was how I got a glimpse of the other ramp, through trees and the legs of a horse. Soldiers were pouring down it, running like a muddy river, in waves. Each wave had a little group of kings, walking behind it, directing the soldiers. They had shining crowns and shining Vs on their chests and walked mighty, like gods.

That brought me to my senses. “Lewin,” I said, “those are Thrallers, and you’re not to do what they say, do you hear?” Lewin just drove around a driverless cart, toward the Market Square. He was going to be driving up that ramp in a second. I was so frightened then that I lammed Lewin—not like I lammed the dragon, but in a different way. Again it’s hard to describe, except that this time I was giving orders. Lewin was to obey me, not the Thrallers, and my orders were to drive away at once. When nothing seemed to happen, I got so scared that I seemed to be filling the whole van with my orders.

“Thank you,” Lewin said in a croaking sort of voice. He jerked the van around into Worm Parade and roared down it, away from the ship and the terrible ramps. The swerve sent the van door open with a slam, and to my relief, the body of poor Renick tumbled out into the road.

But everyone else screamed out, “No! What are you doing?” and clutched their heads. The compulsion was far, far worse if you disobeyed. I felt as if layers of my brain were being peeled off with hot pincers. Neal was crying, like Alectis. Terens was moaning. It hurt so much that I filled the van frantically with more and more orders. Lewin made grinding sounds deep in his throat and kept on driving away, with the door flapping and banging.

Palino took his straps undone and yelled, “You’re going the wrong way, you damn cariarder!” I couldn’t stop him at all. He started to climb into the front seat to take the controls away from Lewin. Alectis and Neal both rose up, too, and shoved him off Lewin. So Palino gave that up and scrambled for the open flapping door instead. Nobody could do a thing. He just jumped out and went rolling in the road. I didn’t see what he did then, because I was too busy giving orders, but Neal says he simply scrambled up and staggered back toward the ship and the ramp.

We drove for another horrible half mile, and then we must have got out of range. Everything suddenly went easy. It was like when somebody lets go the other end of a rope you’re both pulling, and you go over backward. Wham. And I felt too dim and stunned to move.

“Thank the gods!” I heard Terens more or less howl.

“It’s Siglin you should be thanking,” Lewin said. “Alectis, climb over to the front and shut that door. Then try and raise Holmstad again.”

Neal said the door was too battered to shut. Alectis had to hold it with one hand while he worked the broadcaster with the other. I heard him saying that Holmstad still didn’t answer through the roaring and rattling the van made when Lewin put on speed up the long, looping gradient of Wormjiot. We had nearly got up to the Saddle when Terens said, “It’s going! Aren’t they quick?” I looked back, still feeling dim and horrible, in time to see the squatting hedgehog rise up inside the clouds again.

“Now you can thank the gods,” Lewin said. “They didn’t think we were worth chasing. Try medium wave, Alectis.” There is an outcrop of ragged rock near the head of Wormjiot. Lewin drove off the road and stopped behind it while Alectis fiddled with knobs.

Instead of getting dance music and cookery hints, Alectis got a voice that fizzed and crackled. “This is Dragonate Fanejiot, Sveridge South, with an emergency message for all Dragonate units still in action. You are required to make your way to Fanejiot and report there soonest.” It said that about seven times. Then it said, “We can now confirm earlier reports that Home Nine is in Slaver hands. Here is a list of bases on Home Eight that have been taken by Slavers.” It was a long list. Holmstad came quite early on it, and Ranefell about ten names after that.

Lewin reached across and turned it off. “Did someone say we slipped up?” he said. “That was an understatement.”

“Fanejiot is two thousand flaming miles from here!” Terens said. “With an ocean and who knows how many Slavers in between!”

“Well put,” said Lewin. “Did Palino’s memo block go to the Slavers with him?”

It was lying on the backseat beside Neal. Neal tried to pretend it wasn’t, but Alectis turned around and grabbed it as Neal tried to shove it on the floor. I was lying back in my straps, feeling gray and thinking, We could get away now. I’d better lam them all again. But all I did was lie there and watch Neal and Alectis having an angry tug-of-war. Then watch Lewin turn around and pluck the block away from the pair of them.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said to Neal. “I’ve already erased the recorder. And if I hadn’t had Renick and Palino breathing righteously down our necks, I’d never have recorded anything. It goes against the grain to take in children.”

Lewin pressed the erase on the memo block, and it gave out a satisfied sort of gobble. Neither of the other two said anything, but I could feel Alectis thinking how much he had always hated Palino. Terens was looking down at Wormstow through a fieldglass and trying not to remember a boy in Cadets with him who had turned heg and given himself up. I felt I wanted to say thank you. But I was too shy to do anything but sit up and look at Wormstow, too, between the jags of the rock. Even without a fieldglass, I could see the place throbbing like a broken anthill with all the Slaver troops.

“Getting ready to move out and mop up the countryside,” Terens said.

“Yes, and that’s where most people live,” Lewin said. “Farms and holdings in the hills. What’s the quickest way to the Dragon Reserve?”

“There’s a track on the right around the next bend,” said Neal. “Why?”

“Because it’s the safest place I can think of,” Lewin said.

Neal and I looked at one another. You didn’t need to be heg to tell that Neal was thinking, just as I was, that this was a bit much. They were supposed to help all those people in the holdings. Instead, they thought of the safest place and ran there! So neither of us said that the trade was only a bridle path, and we didn’t try to warn them not to take the van into the Reserve. We just sat there while Lewin drove it uphill and then lumping and bumping and rattling up the path. The path gave out in the marshy patch below the Saddle, but Lewin kept grinding and roaring on, throwing up peat in squirts, until we tipped downhill again and bounced down a yellow fellside. We were in the Reserve by then. The ling was growing in lurid green patches, black at the roots where dragons had burned it in the mating season. They fight a lot then.

We got some way into the Reserve. The van gave out clanging sounds and smelled bad, but Lewin kept it going by driving on the most level parts. We were in a wide stony scoop, with yellow hills all around, when the smell got worse and the van just stopped. Alectis let go of the door. “Worms—dragons,” he said, “don’t like machines, I’ve heard.”

“Now he tells us!” said Terens, and we all got out. We all looked as if we had been in an accident. I mean, I know we had in a way, but we looked worse than I’d expected: sort of ragged and pale and shivery. Lewin turned his foot on a stone, which made him clutch his chest and swear. Neither of the other two even asked if he was all right. That is the Dragonate way. They just set out walking. Neal and I went with them, thinking of the best place to dodge off up a kyle, so that we could run home and try and warn Mother about the Slavers.

“Where that bog turns into a stream—I’ll say when,” Neal was whispering, when a dragon came over the hill into the valley and made straight for us.

“Stand still!” said Alectis. Lewin and Terens each had a gun in his hand without seeming to have moved. Alectis didn’t, and he was white.

“They only eat moving prey,” Neal said, because he was sorry for him. “Make sure not to panic and run, and you’re fine.”

I was sorry for Alectis, too, so I added, “It’s probably only after the van. They love metal.”

Lewin crumpled his face at me and said “Ah!” for some reason.

The dragon came quite slowly, helping itself with its spread wings and hanging its head rather. It was a bad color, sort of creamy through the brown-green. I thought it might be one of the sick ones that turn man-eater, and I tried to brace myself and stop feeling so tired and shaky so that I could lam it. But Neal said, “That’s Orm’s dragon! You didn’t kill it after all!”

It was Orm’s dragon. By this time it was near enough for me to see the heat off it quivering in the air, and I recognized the gamesome, shrewd look in its eye. But since it had every reason to hate me, that didn’t make me feel much better. It came straight for me, too. We all stood like statues. And it came right up to me and bent its neck and laid its huge brown head on the ling in front of my feet, where it puffed out a sigh that made Lewin cough and gasp another swearword.

It had felt me coming, the dragon said, and it was here to say sorry. It hadn’t meant to upset me. It had thought it was a game.

That made me feel terrible. “I’m sorry, too,” I said. “I lost my head. I didn’t mean to hurt you. That was Orm’s fault.”

Orm was only playing, too, the dragon said. Orm called him Huffle, and I could, too, if I liked. Was he forgiven? He was ashamed.

“Of course I forgive you, Huffle,” I said. “Do you forgive me?”

Yes. Huffle lifted his head up and went a proper color at once. Dragons are like people that way.

“Ask him to fetch Orm here,” Lewin said urgently.

I didn’t want to see Orm, and Lewin was a coward. “Ask him yourself,” I said. “He understands.”

“Yes, but I don’t think he’d do it for me,” Lewin said.

“Then, will you fetch Orm for Lewin?” I asked Huffle.

He gave me a cheeky look. Maybe. Presently. He sauntered away past Terens, who moved his head back from Huffle’s rattling right wing, looking as if he thought his last hour had come, and went to have a look at the van. He put out a great clawed foot, in a thoughtful sort of way, and tore the loose door off it. Then he tucked the door under his right front foreleg and departed, deliberately slowly, on three legs, helping himself with his wings, so that rocks rattled and flapped all along the valley.

Alectis sat down rather suddenly. But Lewin made him leap up again and help Terens get the broadcaster out of the van before any more dragons found it. They never did get it out. They were still working and waggling at it to get it loose, and Lewin was standing over Neal and me, so that we couldn’t sneak off, when we heard that humming kind of whistle that you get from a dragon in flight. We whirled around. This dragon was a big black one, coasting low over the hill opposite and gliding down the valley. They don’t often fly high. It came to ground with that grinding of stones and leathery slap of wings closing that always tells you a dragon is landing. It arched its black neck and looked at us disdainfully.

Orm was sitting on its back looking equally disdainful. It was one of those times when Orm looks grave and grand. He sat very upright, with his hair and beard combed straight by the wind of flying, and his big pale eyes hardly looked mad at all. Neal was the only one of us he deigned to notice. “Good afternoon, Neal Sigridsson,” he said. “You keep bad company. Dragonate are not human.”

Neal was very angry with Orm. He put my heart in my mouth by saying, quite calmly, “Then in that case, I’m the only human here.” With that dragon standing glaring! I’ve been brought up to despise boys, but I think that is a mistake.

To my relief, Orm just grinned. “That’s the way, boy,” he said. “Not a booby after all, are you?”

Then Lewin took my breath away by going right up to the dragon. He had his gun, of course, but that wouldn’t have been much use against a dragon. He went so near that the dragon had to turn its head out of his way. “We’ve dropped the charges,” he said. “And you should never have brought them.”

Orm looked down at him. “You,” he said, “know a thing or two.”

“I know dragons don’t willingly attack humans,” Lewin said. “I always read up on a case before I hear it.” At this, Orm put on his crazy look and made his mad cackle. “Stop that!” said Lewin. “The Slavers have invaded. Wormstow’s full of Slaver troops, and we need your help. I want to get everyone from the outlying farms into the Reserve and persuade the dragons to protect them. Can you help us do that?”

That took my breath away again, and Neal’s, too. We did a quick goggle at one another. Perhaps the Dragonate was the way it was supposed to be after all!

Orm said, “Then we’d better get busy,” and slid down from the dragon. He still towered over Lewin. Orm is huge. As soon as he was down, the black dragon lumbered across to the van and started taking it to bits. That brought other dragons coasting, whistling in from all sides of the valley, to crunch to earth and hurry to the van, too. In seconds it was surrounded by black and green-brown shapes the size of hay barns. And Orm talked, at the top of his voice, through the sound of metal tearing, and big claws screaming on iron, and wings clapping, and angry grunts when two dragons happened to get hold of the same piece of van. Orm always talks a lot. But this time he was being particularly garrulous, to give the dragons time to lumber away with their pieces of van, hide them, and come back. “They won’t even do what Orm says until they’ve got their metal,” I whispered to Terens, who got rather impatient with Orm.

Orm said the best place to put people was the high valley at the center of the Reserve. “There’s an old she-drake with a litter just hatched,” he said. “No one will get past her when she’s feared for her young. I’ll speak to her. But the rest are to promise me she’s not disturbed.” As for telling everyone at the farms where to come, Orm said the dragons could do that, provided Lewin could think of a way of sending a message by them. “You see, most folk can’t hear a dragon when it speaks,” he said. “And some who can hear”—with a nasty look at me—“speak back to wound.” He was still very angry with me. I kept on the other side of Terens and Alectis when the dragons all came swooping back.

Terens set the memo block to repeat and tapped out an official message from Lewin. Then he tore off page after page with the same thing on it. Orm handed each page to a dragon, saying things like “Take this to the fat cow up at Hillfoot.” Or “Drop this on young vinegar lady at Crowtop—hard.” Or “This is for Dopey at High Jiot, but don’t give it her; give it to her youngest husband or they’ll never get moving.”

Some of the things he said made me laugh a lot. But it was only when Alectis asked what was so funny and Neal kicked my ankle that I realized I was the only one who could hear the things Orm said. Each dragon, as it got its page, ran down the valley and took off, showering us with stones from the jump it gave to get higher in the air than usual. Their wings boom when they fly high. Orm took off on the black dragon last of all, saying he would go and warn the she-drake.

Lewin crumpled his face ruefully at the few bits of van remaining, and we set off to walk to the valley ourselves. It was a long way. Over ling slopes and up among boulders in the kyles we trudged, looking up nervously every so often when fat bluish Slaver fliers screamed through the clouds overhead. After a while our dragons began booming overhead, too, seaward to roost. Terens counted them and said every one we had sent seemed to have come back now. He said he wished he had wings. It was sunset by the time we reached the valley. By that time Lewin was bent over, holding his chest and swearing every other step. But everyone was still pretending, in that stupid Dragonate way, that he was all right. We came up on the cliffs, where the kyle winds down to the she-drake’s valley, and there was the sunset lighting the sea and the towers of rock out there, and the waves crashing around the rocks, where the young dragons were flying to roost, and Lewin actually pretended to admire the view. “I knew a place like this on Seven,” he said. “Except there were trees instead of dragons. I can’t get used to the way Eight doesn’t have trees.”

He was going to sit down to rest, I think, but Orm came up the kyle just then. Huffle was hulking behind him. “So you got here at last!” Orm said in his rudest way.

“We have,” said Lewin. “Now would you mind telling me what you were playing at bringing those charges against Siglin?”

“You should be glad I did. You’d all be in a slaveship now if I hadn’t,” Orm said.

“But you weren’t to know that, were you?” Terens said.

“Not to speak of risking being charged yourself,” added Lewin.

Orm leaned on his hand against Huffle, as you might against a wall. “She half killed this dragon!” he said. “That’s why! All I did was ask her for a kiss, and she screams and lays into poor Huffle. My own daughter, and she tries to kill a dragon! And I thought, Right, my lady, then you’re no daughter of mine anymore! And I flew Huffle’s mother straight into Holmstad and laid charges. I was that angry! My own father tended dragons, and his mother before him. And my daughter tried to kill one! You wonder I was angry?”

“Nobody told me!” I said. I had that draining-away feeling again.

I was quite glad when Terens took hold of my elbow and said something like “Steady, steady!”

“Are you telling the truth?” Neal said.

“I’m sure he is,” Lewin said. “Your sister has his eyes.”

“Ask Timas,” said Orm. “He married your mother the year after I did. He can take being bossed about. I can’t. I went back to my dragons. But I suppose there’s a record of that?” he said challengingly to Lewin.

“And the divorce,” said Lewin. “Terens looked it up for me. But I expect the Slavers have destroyed it by now.”

“And she never told you?” Orm said to me. He wagged his shaggy eyebrows at me almost forgivingly. “I’ll have a bone to pick with her over that,” he said.

Mother arrived just as we’d all got down into the valley. She looked very indomitable, as she always does on horseback, and all our people were with her, down to both our shepherds. They had carts of clothes and blankets and food. Mother knew the valley as well as Orm did. She used to meet Orm there when she was a girl. She set out for the Reserve as soon as she heard the broadcast about the invasion, and the dragon we sent her met them on the way. That’s Mother for you. The rest of the neighbors didn’t get there for some hours after that.

I didn’t think Mother’s face—or Timas’s—could hold such a mixture of feelings as they did when they saw Neal and me and the Dragonate men all with Orm. When Orm saw Mother, he folded his arms and grinned. Huffle rested his huge chin on Orm’s shoulder, looking interested.

“Here she comes,” Orm said to Huffle. “Oh, I do love a good quarrel!”

They had one. It was one of the loudest I’d ever heard. Terens took Neal and me away to help look after Lewin. He turned out to have broken some ribs when the blast hit the van, but he wouldn’t let anyone look even until I ordered him to. After that Neal, Alectis, and I sat under our hay cart and talked, mostly about the irony of Fate. You see, Neal has always secretly wished Fate had given him Orm as a father, and I’m the one that’s got Orm. Neal’s father is Timas. Alectis says he can see the likeness. We’d both gladly swap. Then Alectis confessed that he’d been hating the Dragonate so much that he was thinking of running away, which is a serious crime. But now the Slavers have come, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a Dragonate anymore, he feels quite different. He admires Lewin.

Lewin consented to rest while Terens and Mother organized everyone into a makeshift camp in the valley, but he was up and about again the next day, because he said the Slavers were bound to come the day after, when they found the holdings were deserted. The big black she-drake sat in her cave at the head of the kyle, with her infants between her forefeet, watching groups of people rushing around to do what Lewin said, and didn’t seem to mind at all. Huffle said she’d been bored and bad-tempered up to then. We made life interesting. Actually that she-drake reminds me of Mother. Both of them made me give them a faithful report of the battle.

I don’t think the Slavers knew about the dragons. They just knew that there was a concentration of people in here, and they came straight across the Reserve to get us. As soon as the dragons told Orm they were coming, Lewin had us all out hiding in the hills in their path, except for Mother and Timas and Inga’s mother and a few more who had shotguns. They had to stay and guard the little kids in the camp. The rest of us had any weapons we could find. Neal and Alectis had bows and arrows. Inga had her airgun. Donal and most of the farmers had scythes. The shepherds all had their slingshots. I was in the front with Lewin, because I was supposed to stop the effect of the Slavers’ collars. Orm was there, too, although nobody had ever admitted in so many words that Orm might be heg. All Orm did was to ask the dragons to keep back because we didn’t want them enslaved by those collars.

And there they came, a huddle of sheeplike troops, and then another huddle, each one being driven by a cluster of kingly Slavers, with crowns and winking V-shaped collars And there again we all got that horrible guilty compulsion to come and give ourselves up. But I don’t think those collars have any effect on dragons. Half of us were standing up to walk into the Slavers’ arms, and I was ordering them as hard as I could not to, when the dragons smelled those golden crowns and collars: there was no holding them. They just whirred down over our heads and took those Slavers to pieces for the metal. Lewin said, “Ah!” and crumpled his face in a grin like a fiend’s. He’d thought the dragons might do that. I think he may really be a genius, like they say Camerati are. But I was so sick at that, and then again at the sight of nice people like Alectis and Yan killing the sheeplike troops, that I’m not going to talk about it anymore. Terens says I’m not to go when the Slavers come next. Apparently I broadcast the way I was feeling, just as the Slavers do, and even the dragons felt queasy. The she-drake snorted at that. Mother says, “Nonsense. Take travel pills and behave as my daughter should.”

Anyway, we have found out how to beat the Slavers. We have no idea what is going on in the other of the Ten Worlds, or even in the rest of Sveridge, but there are fifty more Worm Reserves around the world, and Lewin says there must be stray Dragonate units, too, who might think of using dragons against Slavers. We want to move out and take over some of the farms again soon. The dragons are having far too much fun with the sheep. They keep flying over with woolly bundles dangling from their claws, watched by a gloomy crowd of everyone’s shepherds. “Green dot,” the shepherds say. “The brutes are raiding Hightop now.” They are very annoyed with Orm because Orm just gives his mad cackle and lets the dragons go on.

Orm isn’t mad at all. He’s afraid of people knowing he’s heg; he still won’t admit he is. I think that’s why he left Mother, and Mother doesn’t admit she was ever married to him. Not that Mother minds. I get the feeling she and Orm understand one another rather well. But Mother married Donal, you see, after Timas. Donal, and Yan, too, have both told me that the fact that I’m heg makes no difference to them, but you should see the way they both look at me! I’m not fooled. I don’t blame Orm for being scared stiff Donal would find out he was heg. But I’m not sure I shall ever like Orm, all the same.

I am putting all this down on what is left of Palino’s memo block. Lewin wanted me to, in case there is still some history yet to come. He has made his official version on the recorder. I’m leaning the block on Huffle’s forefoot. Huffle is my friend now. Leaning on a dragon is the best way to keep warm on a chilly evening like this, when you’re forced to camp out in the Reserve. Huffle is letting Lewin lean on him, too, beyond Neal, because Lewin’s ribs still pain him. There is a lot of leaning space along the side of a dragon. Orm has just stepped across Huffle’s tail, into the light, chortling and rubbing his hands in his most irritating way.

“Your mother’s on the warpath,” he says. “Oh, I do love a good quarrel!”

And here comes Mother, ominously upright, and with her arms folded. It’s not Orm she wants. It’s Lewin. “Listen, you,” she says. “What the dickens is the Dragonate thinking of, beheading hegs all these years? They can’t help what they are. And they’re the only people who can stand up to the Thrallers.”

Orm is cheated of his quarrel. Lewin looked up, crumpled into the most friendly smile. “I do so agree with you,” he said. “I’ve just said so in my report. And I’d have got your daughter off somehow, you know.”

Orm is cackling like the she-drake’s young ones. Mother’s mouth is open, and I really think that for once in her life she has no idea what to say.