The natural sedative properties of wood betony, chamo-mile leaves, cowslip petals, and valerian root put the already drowsy moose to sleep. At Joad's wordless command, the bands of lightning formed within the maynus, then encircled the moose. The creature snorted and twitched from the movement, but did not awaken. The lightning was benevo shy;lent and didn't set the moose's hair afire any more than it had singed the dragon's scales.
Their captive in tow, the nyphids headed back downhill to their hamlet in the grasslands and the hungry waiting dragon.
* * * * *
Darkness had descended, and Khisanth was sleeping fit shy;fully by the time Kadagan and Joad returned. The glowing bands deposited the moose before her. As the scent pene shy;trated her dreams of food, the dragon's red-rimmed eyes popped open in disbelief.
Khisanth vaguely heard a sound-a voice-but she was beyond hearing, beyond caring. Her jaws stretched wide, and her daggerlike teeth pierced the creature's rib cage. The moose awoke, screaming with surprise and pain and rage, and tried to scramble away from the dragon. Blood sprayed and gushed across the ground. The moose thrashed until Khisanth, strengthened by every grisly bite, slashed and sev shy;ered its head with her mighty tail, silencing its death cries.
Kadagan and Joad watched, both repulsed and mesmer shy;ized. The nighttime sounds of the forest were drowned out by the clamor of crunching bones and slurping. In barely the time it had taken Joad's herbs to put the moose to sleep, the ravenous dragon had consumed the entire corpse, spitting out only the hooves in distaste.
Kadagan stared mutely at the gory remains.
"The hooves are too bitter and tough," Khisanth explained, "not moist on the inside like bones." With that, a great belch
ruffled the dragon's blood-flecked lips. She sighed happily, deeply, then picked at a pearly tooth with a razor-tip claw. "More."
Beyond amazement, the nyphids delivered two beavers, a goat, and four long-eared hares before Khisanth's gluttony was slaked that night.
"Art thou fit enough to speak now?" asked Kadagan after a time. He sat cross-legged in the center of an unusually large, three-foot-wide seed pod, low enough to the ground to be obscured by the surrounding tall grasses. Its soft, waxy sections fanned in a circle around him. Joad was similarly perched in the open center of another of the pale green plants. Khisanth was curled before a fire Joad had made for her. The yellow glow of fireflies blinked on and off across the field, and a small benign swarm even clustered on the fringes of their camp.
"I'm feeling generous," said the dragon, leaning back on an elbow lazily, still picking her teeth. "Go ahead and name the price for your unwanted aid, and I'll consider it."
Kadagan looked mildly surprised by her attitude. "Ny shy;phids do not embrace the concept of indebtedness," he said. "We helped thee because it was mutually beneficial."
Self-interest. Here, at last, was a concept Khisanth could understand.
"We intend to pay thee for thy services." Khisanth's brows raised in surprise. She could not think of anything they could pay her that she would value … gems, perhaps, but unadorned as the nyphids were, jewels seemed unlikely.
"Art thou interested?" pressed Kadagan "You don't waste much time, do you?" asked the dragon. "We have none to waste," Kadagan said, suddenly grim-faced. "Dela is dying."
Khisanth sat up. "I'm listening."
"First, watch the maynus," said Kadagan, then nodded to Joad. The gray-haired nyphid stepped up before the dragon and cupped his slender hands. The bright globe slipped between them. As Khisanth watched, a moving picture began
to form where before small bolts of lightning had danced.
The image of a nyphid in a white tunic appeared, curvy and golden-haired, obviously female, with the same backlit glow of the others. There was an etherealness about her that instantly engendered in the dragon a notable urge to touch the globe. Khisanth looked at Kadagan.
"Dela," the dark-haired nyphid supplied. "My betrothed. Watch closely," he commanded with an insistent gesture toward the globe.
Dela knelt at the bank of a stream that appeared to cut through the grassy plain. Lying on its side in one of her tiny hands was a hummingbird. Its head sagged as it gamely sipped water Dela had scooped into the other palm. With the maynus a barely visible glow at her shoulder in daylight, Dela touched her finger to the bird's diminutive, iridescent breast. Sparks flew. Khisanth thought Dela had killed the thing. But the creature, more butterfly than bird, sprang up, and its wings began to beat so swiftly they blurred.
"Dela heals animals. That is her gift, as herbs are Joad's," explained Kadagan.
Khisanth's eyes remained on the maynus. In the globe, a smiling Dela tossed the rejuvenated hummingbird into the sky, and it flew away. The nyphid pulled herself up to her bare feet and turned away from the creek.
Four creatures sat above her on horseback.
"Human males," supplied Kadagan, noting the dragon's puzzled look. Khisanth had seen all forms of animals as a young dragon before the Sleep, but never a human. She was not particularly impressed.
The men were obviously impressed with Dela, though, their stares entranced, covetous. Dela blanched, flabber shy;gasted by their unexpected and unwanted presence. Diapha shy;nous wings sprang from between her shoulder blades. She had cleared the grass on the bank when a fine net dropped upon her. Its weight knocked the nyphid back to the ground. Two of the men slid from their horses and reached for her, to secure the net and simply to touch. The two still on horse shy;back closed in on either side and waited.
The men's hands fell upon the two-foot nyphid crouched under the net. Dela's mouth opened in a shriek, though the image in the maynus was silent. Two bolts of blue-edged lightning shot from Dela's body. The flashes slammed into the chests of the men who'd touched her, tearing a huge, black-rimmed hole in each and tossing them high into the air.
Their comrades on horseback looked stunned but unafraid. One had vivid green eyes and shoulder-length brown hair. Lashed across the rump of his horse was another human, his hands and feet bound. The other horseman was small and wiry with slanted eyes. They pulled their horses back just slightly. The green-eyed one waved and pointed toward Dela. Abruptly, a number of oddly colored creatures, much taller than the humans, streamed into the maynus's field of vision for the first time and rushed the netted nyphid.
"Ogres," said Kadagan.
"Why doesn't she stand and use the lightning bolt again?" demanded Khisanth as Dela collapsed under the net.
"Dela did not do it intentionally the first time. The electri shy;cal bolt is our involuntary response to contact with humans and others like them. Thou art not like them, which is why we sought thee. Humans cannot help but touch nyphids when they see us, and we cannot help but harm them when they do. The contact with them so drained Dela's energy that she fell unconscious herself."
Khisanth remembered the tingling she felt whenever the nyphids touched her. Shuddering, she looked back into the maynus, where a large drawstring sack of rough weave was being lowered over Dela. The nyphid was carefully hauled up by the strings of the sack. With that, the green-eyed human put two fingers in his mouth, blew, and the entourage set off toward the south, horsemen in the lead. One ogre car shy;ried the sack at arm's length. Then the picture in the globe blurred to the usual yellow glow.
Watching his daughter's kidnapping in her maynus globe had etched deep lines of worry into the elder nyphid's face, cold determination into Kadagan's eyes. "We had heard that humans, ogres, and even red dragons were rising up in the region, but we did not realize they had encroached so far into our forests." Kadagan sighed raggedly. "Had we known, we would not have left Dela even for the few moments it took to gather berries and water for the morning meal."