'A queen like you? So, even then, there were dragons with no wings?'

'I have teeth.' She opened her jaws wide, reminding him.

Across the circle from them, Mercor slowly lifted his head. Since he had been cleaned, his gold scaling flashed in the sunlight. On the sides of his neck, a subtle mottling marked where he might have carried false-eyes in his serpent days. He was not as large as either of them, yet when he lifted his head, he radiated command. 'No fighting,' he said calmly, as if he had the right to regulate them. 'Not today. Not when we are so close to leaving this place and beginning our journey back to what we were. To what we are meant to be.'

'What do you mean?' she demanded of him. Secretly, she was glad of the distraction. She had no desire to fight, not when there was food to eat.

Mercor met her gaze. His eyes were solid, gleaming black, like obsidian set into his eye sockets. She could read nothing there. 'I mean, today we begin our journey back to Kelsingra. Search your memory, and perhaps you will understand.'

'Kelsingra,' Kalo retorted sceptically. Sintara suspected that he, too, was relieved that Mercor had spoken and diverted them from a fight. But he could not admit that, and so he turned his disdain on the golden male.

'Kelsingra,' Mercor agreed, and bent his head and snuffed the ground, searching for any remaining scraps of food. The humans had brought more than they usually did, perhaps as a farewell gift or perhaps to be rid of any surplus they'd been holding in reserve. Even so, the dragons had devoured it quickly, and Sintara knew that she was not the only one who remained hungry. She wished she could remember what it felt like to be full; in this life, she'd never known the sensation.

'Kelsingra,' Veras suddenly echoed Mercor, and around the circle, other dragons lifted their heads.

'Kelsingra!' Fente suddenly trumpeted and actually leapt, her front two legs leaving the ground. Her wings opened and flapped spasmodically and uselessly. She snapped them back to her body as if shamed.

'Kelsingra!' Both orange dragons chorused a response, as if the word brought them joy.

Mercor lifted his head, looked around at all of them and then said ponderously, 'It is time to leave this place. For too long we have been kept here, corralled as humans corral meat animals. We have slept in the place they have left for us, eaten what they fed us, and accepted that we were doomed to these shadow lives. Dragons do not live like this, and I for one will not die like this. If die I must, I will die as a dragon. Let us go.' Then he turned and headed toward the river shallows. For a time, all the dragons just watched him go. Then, without warning, some of the dragons began to follow him.

Sintara found herself trailing after them.

The gash in the silver dragon's tail looked as if it had been made by another dragon's claw. It had never been a clean cut; it looked more like a tear. Thymara wondered if it had been intentional or merely an accident during the daily scramble for food. She also wondered how long ago it had happened. The injury was close to where his tail joined his body and was about as long as her forearm. A raised ridge of flesh along either side of the gaping tear indicated it had tried to close and heal, but had broken open again. It looked bad and smelled worse. Flies, some large and buzzing, others tiny and myriad, swarmed and settled on it.

Alise and Sedric, both her elders, were standing there like timid children, waiting for her to do something about it. The silver seemed to be paying no attention to them; it was at the far end of the crescent of clumped meat and feeding dragons, snatching at what it could reach and then retreating a half-step from the others to eat it. She wished she had something larger to feed him, something that would keep him standing still and his mouth occupied. She watched him pick up a large bird, toss it up, catch it and gulp it down. She had to act soon; when the food was gone, there would be nothing to distract him.

Sedric had fetched his kit of bandages and salves. It lay on the ground, open and ready. Thymara had brought other, more prosaic supplies: a bucket of clean water and a rag. She felt like a messenger who'd forgotten the words he'd been paid to say as they all waited for one of them to begin. She turned away from them and tried to think what she would do if she were here alone, as she had expected to be.

Well, no, she admitted to herself. She'd expected Tats to be here with her, or at least Sylve or Rapskal. She now felt a fool for volunteering to take on the hapless silver dragon. Skymaw was more than enough to deal with. She couldn't possibly care for this dull-witted creature as well. She pushed that thought away and angrily crushed her self-doubt before the two Bingtowners. She set one hand lightly on the silver dragon's dirty hide, well away from the wound on his tail. 'Hello?' she said quietly.

He twitched slightly at her touch, but made no reply. She refused to let herself glance at her companions. She didn't need their approval or guidance. She made her hand more firm on his skin. He didn't pull away. 'Listen, dragon, I'm here to help take care of you. Soon we'll all be going up the river to look for a better place for you to live. But before we start travelling, I want to look at the injury on your tail. It looks infected. I'd like to clean it and bandage it. It may be a bit painful, but I think it has to be done. Otherwise, the river water will eat at it. Will you let me do that?'

The dragon turned his head to look at her. Half of a dead animal hung from his jaws. She couldn't determine what it had been, but it smelled dreadful and she didn't think he should eat it. But before she could frame that warning, he tipped his head up, opened his jaws and swallowed it. She felt her gorge rise. Lots of animals ate carrion, she sternly reminded herself. She couldn't let herself be upset by it.

The dragon looked at her again. His eyes were blue, a mingling of sky and periwinkle that swirled slowly as he stared at her. He made a questioning rumble at her, but she received no sense of words. She tried to find some spark of intelligence in his gaze, something more than bovine acceptance of her presence. 'Silver dragon, will you let me help you with your injury?' she asked him again.

He lowered her head, rubbed his muzzle against his front leg to clear a strand of intestine that dangled from the side of his mouth. He pawed at his nose, snorting, and with a sinking heart she noticed that his nostrils and ears were infested with tightly clinging parasites. Those would have to go, too. But first, the tail, she reminded herself sternly. He opened his mouth, revealing a long jaw full of glistening pointed teeth. He seemed so placid, even unaware, but if she hurt him and it angered him, those teeth could end her life.

'I'm going to start now,' she told the dragon and her companions. She forced herself to turn to the Bingtowners and add, 'Be ready. He's not really responding to anything I say. I don't feel like he's any more intelligent than an ordinary animal. So when I try to look at his tail, there's no telling what he'll do. He may try to attack me. Or all of us.'

Scdric looked properly daunted, but Alise actually bared her teeth in determination. 'We must do something for him,' she said.

Thymara dipped the rag into the water and wrung it out over the gash. Water trickled from the rag into the gash, and ran away in a dirty rivulet down the dragon's tail. It carried off a few maggots and disturbed a cloud of insects, large and small, that rose, buzzed and tried to resettle immediately. It did little more than wash away surface dirt, but at least the dragon had not turned and snapped at her. She mustered her courage and gently pressed the rag to the injury. The dragon rippled his flesh around the area but did not growl. She wiped gently around it, taking off a layer of filth and insects and baring a raw stripe down the centre. She plunged the rag into the bucket, rinsed and wrung it out, and applied it more firmly. Crusty scab came away and there was a sudden trickle of stinking liquid from the wound.