C HAPTER

If the tales were to be believed, she faced a winged monster. A dragon. A lizard thing of such massive proportions that the beating of its wings snapped trees and blew roofs off houses and sent unfortunate people swirling into the air. It swooped down and grasped cattle two and three at a time, flying loops in the air and tossing its prey like a playful cat. It swallowed cattle whole, in midnight. Its jaws and neck convulsed with the grotesque gluttony of a river crocodile. One farmhouse was destroyed when the thing landed atop it, plunging its claws to snatch at the inhabitants within. High up the southern basin entire herds of goats and their minders had disappeared. It had been spotted as far away as Tabith, which was grave news indeed. If it could travel that far, it might soon discover Bocoum and the bounty of human life all around the Inner Sea, including the isle of Acacia itself.

While Mena had focused her attentions on the tenten creature and on the scourge of the Halaly lake, small bands of Talayan runners had narrowed in on the new creature's lair. They compared one sighting with the next, slowly piecing together when it was on an outbound journey from its lair. It had not been easy to track its movements. The thing was aloft, and it could travel much faster than a person could run.

Still, they managed it, and because of their work Mena was awakened one morning to the news that it had landed a mile away from her new camp. She was up and jogging the distance with her officers immediately. Melio and the rest of her force followed, bearing with them the tools they would need and traveling with stealth. They were in a shallow dale west of Umae, in a land that benefited from the moisture that evaporated from the great lake, blew north on the winds, and then settled nightly to condense among the orchards and pastures that distinguished the country. The marching was easy, the cover good. The Talayan trackers, aided by local farmers and herders, moved them along in the shade of trees, using the lees of hills and the shelter of brush-banked streams.

In no time at all Mena approached the last group of spotters, men and boys with their fingers to their full lips. They indicated with gestures that they were near the top of a hill. Another few paces and she should crawl the last few feet and look over the edge. She did as they advised, awkwardly, with her sword at her side and a waist pack of supplies nestled against the small of her back. She ended elbow to elbow with a herd boy on one side of her and a Talayan tracker on the other.

"Look carefully and you will see it," the Talayan said.

All she saw at first was a wide vale filled with short, rounded, evenly spaced trees. A stream traced a meandering line through the center of it, and here and there she could tell the vegetation had been managed, lanes left open, ponds dug as water catchments. It took her a moment to spot any movement among the tranquillity of the scene, but then a serpentine head moved between two trees. It was there for a second and then gone, and so far away on the other slope of the vale that she was not sure of what she had seen. Squinting, Mena followed it, and was looking in the right spot to see its head rise above the crown of one tree, cock to the side, and, with gingerly precision, nip at the foliage. And then it was hidden again.

Something about what she had just seen sent tingles over her flesh. There was fear in the reaction but a hint of something else also. "What are those trees?" she asked. "How tall are they?"

The local boy whispered an answer in Talayan, two words that Mena repeated. She was quite fluent in the language, but she was constantly being thrown by the Talayan tendency to name things through descriptive use of other words. "Blood… heart?" she asked.

The tracker lying on the other side of her cupped his hand to her ear. "You don't call it blood heart. It's orange in your language, but orange with red inside. The trees are two men in height, some a little more."

"What's it doing here? Is its lair near here?"

He creased his dark-skinned forehead. "No, I don't think so. It just landed here. We did not expect it."

"Just a coincidence, huh?" Mena muttered. She squirmed forward a few more inches and looked back at the orchard.

When she spotted the creature again, it was somewhat closer. It stepped into a lane and paused, raking its head from side to side and then freezing. It was lean and light on its four feet. In that position it must have been no more than a person's height, but that changed when it reared up on its back legs and took in the orchard-again going still as a statue-from a higher vantage. She could see the reptile in it. It was there in the sinuous lines of its neck and the blue patches along its back and in the long, whiplike expanse of its tail. It was, she thought, akin to the sand lizards that lived right in the huts of Talayan villagers. Its eyes were shaped just like those of the harmless creatures. They were larger by many times, but their size did not completely obscure their origins. She had once thought them curious eyes, innocent, fearful, and yet full of mischief.

There was an avian quality to the creature as well: flares around its neck that seemed like feathers, a crest on its forehead that snapped forward and back with a mind of its own, like the plumage a peacock displayed. When it bobbed its head the motion was comical, like both the tiny lizard it reminded her of and the motion of birds. It moved into the trees again, hunting the juiciest oranges, apparently.

Moments later, down away from the hill, Mena tongue-lashed the trackers for the absurdity of what she had just seen. "Does it not seem strange that the scourge of Talay dines on fruit? That thing is the great dragon people have been speaking of?" The group of men and boys stirred uneasily. "It eats the fruit of trees and walks around bobbing its head as if to a tune. It's as dangerous as a hen! Is that truly the thing we hunt? Look me in the face and tell me that's the last of the great foulthings."

Eventually, several affirmed that it was what they hunted. When Mena pressed them as to whether that exact creature was the one they had seen time and again over the last few weeks, they admitted it was. When she asked them why they had not corrected the rumors about its size and ferociousness they let a long silence sit, before a man answered that it was still dangerous. It was much fiercer than it looked. They had seen it in flight and-

"It flies without wings?" she snapped. "I saw no wings. Did you? Has anyone here fought it? Have any of you seen it take cattle, squash homes, terrorize villages?"

When none of them could explain the discrepancy, she turned from them and walked away a few paces, exasperated. Melio followed her, almost laughing, but she hissed, "This is a farce! Do they know how we've prepared? All the precautions? The worry we've lived with-all because of a giant sand lizard? I should have known: dragons have never lived and never will! What's happened to our reason?"

"Well," Melio said smirking, "you know, I did hear about a group of young men caught poaching near the southern basin. Might be that-"

"Poachers? People have been poaching while we risk our lives to protect them?"

Melio shrugged. "Somebody will always take advantage, Mena. On the day that anything happens in the world without somebody finding a way to cheat a profit out of it I'll dance a jig naked before any who will come and watch. Don't sell tickets, though. I doubt I'll ever be called to make such a show."

Leaning toward him, Mena exhaled a long, fatigued breath. She slipped one hand up around his side, feeling the flare of his back muscles. "Okay," she said, "that lizard is our last monster. It's no dragon, but we still must do something with it. Do we toss fruit at it or kill it? Perhaps we could walk up and put a leash around its neck."