She looked around for Tats and the slender green dragon he'd approached. She didn't see either of them at first, and then spotted them at the water's edge. Tats had his fish spear out and was walking along the bank while the green dragon watched with avid interest. Thymara doubted that he'd find anything large enough to spear if he saw any fish at all, but he'd obviously won his dragon's attention. Unlike her. The dragon hadn't even responded to her last comment.

'Thank you for speaking with me,' Thymara replied hopelessly. She turned and walked quietly away. The silver, she decided. The injury on its tail needed to be cleaned and bandaged. Thymara suspected they'd be travelling in or near the river water, and untreated, the acid waters would enlarge and ulcerate the injury. As for the skinny copper dragon, if she could find some ruskin leaves and catch a fish, she'd try worming him. She wondered if ruskin leaves worked to cleanse a dragon's system. Studying him as she walked toward him, she decided that they couldn't hurt. There was no one she could ask for advice for physicking a dragon. If he got any thinner, he'd die soon anyway.

Abruptly she realized there was someone she could ask. She turned back to the blue dragon who was regarding Thymara with ill-concealed hostility. Thymara steeled her courage. 'May I ask you a question about dragons and parasites?'

'Where did you learn your manners?' The question was followed with a hiss. None of her breath reached Thymara, but the mist of weak venom that rode her breath was faintly visible.

Thymara was jolted. Cautiously she asked, 'Is it rude to ask such a question?' She wanted to take a step back but dared not move.

'How dare you turn your back on me?'

On the dragon's long neck, the 'frills' of scaled plates were lifting. Thymara hadn't understood their use before, but from all she knew of animals, such a display would indicate aggression. A brilliant yellow underlay was revealed as the scaled flaps rose like the opening petals of a reptilian flower. The dragon's large copper eyes were fixed on her and as Thymara met that gaze, the eyes appeared to slowly spin. It was like watching twin whirlpools of molten copper. The sight was as breathtakingly beautiful as it was terrifying. 'I'm sorry,' she apologized hopelessly. 'I didn't know it was rude. I thought you wanted me to go away.'

Something was wrong, and Sintara didn't know what. By now, the girl should have been completely infatuated with her, on her knees, begging for the dragon's attention. Instead, she had turned her back on her and started to wander off. Humans were notoriously easy prey for a dragon's glamour. She opened her ruff more widely and gave her head a shake to disperse a mist of charm. 'Do not you wish to serve me?' she prompted the girl. 'Do not you find me beautiful?'

'Of course you are beautiful!' the human exclaimed, but her stance and the rank scent of fear she gave betrayed that she was frightened, not entranced. 'When first I saw you today, I chose you as the dragon that I most wished to care for. But our conversation has been . . .' The girl's words trickled away.

Sintara reached for her thoughts but found only fog. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps the girl was too stupid to be charmed by her. She searched her dragon memories and found evidence of such humans. Some were so dense that they could not even understand a dragon's speech. This girl seemed to grasp her words clearly enough. So what ailed her? Sintara decided on a small test of her powers, to see if the girl was susceptible to her at all. 'What is your name, small human?'

'Thymara,' she replied instantly. But as Sintara began to gloat at her leverage, the girl asked her, 'And what is your name?'

'I don't think you've earned the right to my name yet!' Sintara rebuked her, and saw her cower. But Thymara stank of true fear with no traces of the despair that such a refusal should have wakened in her. When the human said nothing, did not beg again for the favour of her name, Sintara asked her directly, 'Don't you wish you knew my name?'

'It would make it much easier for me to talk to you, yes,' the girl said hesitantly.

Sintara chuckled. 'But you don't seek it in order to have power over me?' she asked sarcastically.

'What power would your name give me?'

Sintara stared down at her. Could she truly be ignorant of the power of a dragon's name? One who knew a dragon's true name could, if she employed it correctly, compel the dragon to speak truth, to keep a promise, even to grant a favour. If this Thymara was ignorant of such things, Sintara certainly wasn't going to enlighten her. Instead she asked her, 'What would you like to call me, if you were choosing a name to know me by?'

The girl looked more intrigued than frightened now. Sintara spun her eyes more slowly, and Thymara actually came a step closer to her. There. That was better. 'Well?' she prompted her again. 'What name would you give me?'

The girl bit her upper lip for a moment, than said, 'You are such a lovely blue. High in the canopy, there is a twining vine that roots in the clefts of trees. It has flowers that are deep blue with bright yellow centres. It has a wonderful fragrance that entrances insects and small birds and little lizards. Even it is not as beautiful as you are, but you remind me of it. We call the flowers skymaws.'

'So you would name me after a flower? Skymaw?' Sintara was not pleased. It seemed a silly, fragile name to her, but she had asked the girl. Perhaps in this one thing, she could humour the human. But still, she asked her, 'Do you not think I deserve a name that has more teeth to it?'

The girl looked down at her feet as if the dragon had caught her in a lie. Quietly, she admitted, 'Skymaws are dangerous to touch. They are beautiful and the fragrance is alluring, but the nectar inside will dissolve a butterfly instantly and devour a hummingbird in less than a hour.'

Sintara stretched her jaws wide in pleasure and concluded, 'Then it is not just the colour of the flower that makes you think of me? It is the danger it poses?'

'I suppose. Yes.'

'Then you may call me Skymaw. Do you see what the boy over there is doing to the runty red dragon?'

The girl followed Sintara's glance. Rapskal had pulled an armful of needled branches from a tree and was energetically scrubbing his dragon's back. Cleansed of mud and dust, even that stumpy little dragon sparkled like a ruby in the sunlight. 'I don't think he means any harm. I think he's trying to get some of the parasites off her.'

'Exactly. And the wax from the needles is good for the skin.' Graciously, Sintara told her, 'You are allowed to perform that service for me.'

As the Tarman slowly nosed its way onto the muddy bank, Alise looked over the fantastic scene before her and felt rankest envy. Sun and heat baked the bare riverbank as the final hours of afternoon dwindled away. Scattered about on the bank were at least a dozen dragons in every imaginable colour tended by young Rain Wilders. Some of the dragons were stretched out in peaceful sleep. Two stood by the water, waiting impatiently as a couple of boys holding spears walked slowly up and down the riverbank, looking for fish. On the ebbing edge of a sun-washed mudbank, a long gold dragon sprawled, his blue-white underbelly turned toward the last kiss of the sun. Lying against him slept a little girl, her pink-scaled scalp glittering as brightly as the dragon she tended. At one end of the long bank of mud stood the largest dragon of all, tall and black. The sun struck glittering dark blue sparks from his outstretched wings. A bare-chested young man, almost as heavily scaled as a dragon himself, was grooming the creature's wings. At the opposite end of the beach, as if in counterpoint, a girl with a broom made of cedar boughs was diligently sweeping a sprawled blue dragon. The girl's black braids danced against the back of her neck as she worked. The dragon shifted as Alise watched, stretching out a hind leg so that the girl might groom it.