Chapter Four
Setta spread her wings as she approached the Cloudsong, gliding in between two large kites to land on a wide platform in the middle of the airborne city. Dragon and beast alike got well out of her way as the frantic skydancer stomped among them, looking for a sign, any sign, of her wayward son. She had followed his trail from their lair to the plateau but lost it among the ever-shifting grasses, and now, among so many other creatures than she was used to, she was beginning to lose hope.
Leaping from platform to platform, Setta stopped as she thought she caught a whiff of Arco's scent, the pervasive reek of a plague dragon that she had gotten so used to she hardly noticed anymore. Following it, she was disappointed to discover it was not him, but a sour-looking tundra dragon who was fighting a losing battle against a particularly virulent case of scale rot beneath his furry coat. This was not surprising, since all plague dragons had a tendency to spread disease and decay wherever they went before eventually succumbing themselves. But his red eyes were fierce, and Setta passed him by without saying a word.
Visibly distraught, she made her way through the Windsinger's floating city, and caught Arco's scent again. It was truly his, faint but close, and it took her only a few short moments to find its source: a spiral, bobbing his way forlornly through the crowd ahead of her.
Setta stepped over a family of slow-moving snappers to lunge at him, snarling, "Where is Arco!?" It wasn't until later that she realized that was probably not the best first impression to make.
The spiral must have felt the wind of her passage, turning his head and screaming as he saw her great jaws about to close around his tail. Setta clicked her teeth together on empty air as the green striped serpent barrel rolled out of the way. "Hey, lady!" He cried, wrapping the length of his body around her snout to keep it shut. "Watch who you're snappin' at! I'm on a very important mission!"
Setta shook her head to shake the spiral loose. He skidded across one of the wooden platforms, coming to a stop at its edge. Setta was on him in an instant, pinning him beneath her claws.
"Where is my son?" She repeated. All around them, creatures scattered, not willing to see what would happen to whoever crossed this angry dragon mother. "Where is Arco?"
"Arco? Arco! I don't know any Arco!" The spiral howled.
Gnashing her teeth, Setta growled, "Liar! I can smell him on you. What have you done with him? Where has he gone?"
The noodle stopped thrashing. "Wait! Are you talking about Archie? I know that guy!"
Setta narrowed her eyes and waited.
The spiral began to move about again, squirming like a worm under her foot. "I met him! Out on the plain. Poor sucker said he couldn't even fly!" He cowered as Setta showed off her sharp teeth again. "I mean, he's yours? Nice kid. Carried me while I was taking one of my power naps. He said he was trying to go home!"
"Home?" Setta blinked and let the other dragon up, sitting back on her haunches.
"Yeah. The Scarred Wasteland, y'know, where plague wyrms live." The spiral coiled around a scroll case he was carrying, his claws tapping nervously against its outside.
Setta tossed her head in distress. "The Scarred Wasteland!" Though she had never been there herself, Setta knew, like every dragon knew, how dangerous and unforgiving that land could be. Wedged between the realms of the Windsinger, Shadowbinder, Tidelord, Earthshaker, and the Arcanist, the Scarred Wasteland was ruled over a powerful goddess who was as hostile, toxic, and amorphous as her territory. No one that was not a native to that land ever walked in and later came out. Even seeing a native was rare event, since they were quite unwelcome everywhere they went because of their smell, their tendency to spread disease, and their generally poor attitude. It may have just been another symptom of being born in a land where everything was constantly trying to kill you—but Setta still had no pity for them, especially when her own son was involved.
Even if Arco was born plague dragon, there was no way he was equipped to survive in that horrible place. He wasn't even equipped to survive the journey.
"Where is he!?" Setta roared again, having worked herself up into a real, heart-pounding panic.
"Last I saw him was hours ago!" The spiral instinctively recoiled, nearly toppling off of the edge of the platform, but Setta snatched him up in one of her claws. He squealed. "Try the ferries! Maybe he caught a ride!"
Setta's snarl died on her lips as she absorbed this new information. Of course—the Cloudsong was a hub of transportation among dragons and beast clan, its unique position at the top of the world allowing even those who couldn't fly to ride the winds to every corner of the known lands. Even Arco.
Setta spread her wings and launched herself off of the platform. As she rose to the highest levels of the Cloudsong, the spiral she had been bullying shook himself. His fear of the skydancer quickly faded and was replaced by curiosity. Still clinging to his scroll case, he flapped his wings and trailed after her.
"So, you're Archie's mom?" He asked, implying just how bizarre he thought it was that a clearly healthy, happy, water-aligned dragon claimed to have raised a plague dragon. "I'm Werd. I'm his pal. Did I tell you? We met on the plain, I was flying, see, and there was a squall, a real nor'easter—"
As Werd prattled on, Setta ignored him. When she touched down in the middle of the platform where the hot air balloons were launched, the other dragons and beast clan gave her a wide berth. She stomped across to the far end, where an enormous wooden board displayed a list of destinations and the times when vessels would be leaving for them. It was written in one of the beast clan's languages. Setta couldn't read it, of course, but the young harpy attendant who was perched on the board making announcements could. He squawked as she leapt onto the top of the board and made it sway back and forth. She then spread her wings, both to keep her balance and to make sure he was good and intimidated.
"When did the last balloon bound for the Wasteland leave?" Setta hissed.
The harpy flapped his own wings urgently to stay upright. All of his feathers were puffed up in an effort to make himself look bigger, but it was in vain. "A-an hour ago?" He rasped. "Flight to Dragonhome. Stopover in the Contagion. Over there!" He pointed one sharp talon at an empty berth across the platform where a longneck still stood counting out coins from a bag.
Setta was on top of him in a moment and gave him the same brusque treatment she had given the harpy. The longneck was much less prone to being intimidated, however, and responded to her questions as gruffly and as she asked them. Clearly eager to have her gone, he told her that yes, he'd seen a young dragon matching Arco's description, but no, he hadn't gotten on the balloon. Last he'd seen of the strange dragon was his back as he'd fled, chased by a flock of Talonok who seemed very, very unhappy to see him.
This new detail frightened Setta very much indeed. She turned away from the longneck to find Werd hovering just over her shoulder, having listened to the whole thing.
"Talonok? That's rough stuff," Werd said sympathetically as Setta looked around forlornly. Of course Arco and his pursuers were long gone, and as was any sign of where they were headed. Werd continued, "They've been a real problem lately. That's the word, anyway. Been flying in from every direction and heading north, to the Wasteland. You think it's migration? 'Course, the Wasteland is no place to be spending the winter…"
Setta wanted to take a swipe at him but found that she just didn't have the energy. Instead, she sat heavily on her haunches and tuned Werd's mindless chatter out. She had flown far that day, and subjected herself to much more emotional turmoil than she'd ever expected when she'd first picked up that foul-smelling egg. But she knew she hadn't reached her limits yet. She'd gone out after Arco with the intent to bring him home, and that was just what she was going to do.
Sighing, Setta got back on her feet and moved around the spiral dragon, who was still talking. "Good bye, Werd," said the motherly skydancer as she extended her wings again in preparation to take off.
"Wait a second, where are you going?" Werd said, zipping in front of Setta again. "You know where Archie is?"
"No, but if he's headed to the Scarred Wasteland, maybe I will meet him there." She didn't know if she had it in her to fly the entire breadth of the Windswept Plateau in one day, but she had to keep moving forward. Arco had at least half a day's head start.
"Maybe you'll meet him there? Doesn't sound like a solid plan to me." Werd frowned, sounding much more thoughtful than most other spirals Setta had encountered. "If you don't know where your son is, why don't you just ask the Arcanist?"
Setta snorted and fixed Werd with one glaring blue eye. "Excuse me? Do you think anyone can fly up to the Arcanist's observatory and just ask him for a favor?"
"Well, not just anyone," Werd admitted. "But you can, if you're with me. The Arcanist and I go way, way back. No, really! I work for him." He stuck out his neck so that the silver pendant around his neck came forward and glinted in the sunlight. "And that guy knows everything. I bet he can even tell you where Archie is without looking into his telescope."
The Wandering Contagion. It nibbled at edges of its neighbors like an incessant and unkillable parasite. Outsiders could patrol its borders and repel the advances of the Plaguebringer's loyal forces, but they were only treating the symptoms on the surface. The sickness at the heart of the Scarred Wasteland went deep, deep down to the bones of the world.
Night on the Wasteland was an unsettling time. Darkness never truly fell here on the Abiding Boneyard—like the Ashfall Waste, the land here was also dotted here and there with sources of light. However, these were not cheerfully bubbling pools of lava, but great open sores that festered and frothed green pus that dribbled down scab-like ridges of rock and rubble.
The Talonok flying point in his small flock was sure to give those pools a wide berth. They were known to occasionally spout their awful contents high into the air, like a geyser of guts and goo, raining death on whoever was unfortunate enough to be nearby. The troubling pools became more common and clustered together the closer the Talonok came to the Rotrock Rim, the edge of the huge crater that lay at the center of the Plaguebringer's domain. It too was lit from within by an eerie, otherworldly glow: the Wyrmwound. It was a lake that appeared to be filled with blood, if blood could emit light and the screams of the damned in equal measure. The stench was indescribable. The sights and sounds were worse.
The leader of the flock, a strong male called Klaxon, guided them down to a spot on the shore where tall, bonelike formations of pale stone burst out of the ground like teeth. Also at the edge of the Wyrmwound was an enormous creature that may have resembled a dragon, once, in a time long forgotten. Now, the Plaguebringer's disease-wracked figure hunched over her virulent cauldron as she stirred the Wyrmwound, occasionally pausing to cackle.
Klaxon didn't think that their boss's good humor was going to last.
The small flock settled nervously on the megaliths surrounding the Plaguebringer. They had learned quickly not to touch down anywhere else in her domain, unless they wanted to discover the very painful, very immediate effects of the Wasteland on anything not native to its sickly soil. Klaxon perched as close to the creature as he dared, and waited for her to acknowledge him.
Klaxon had also learned pretty early on not to annoy his boss too much, when she'd tossed the Talonok who had lead their flock before he did into the Wyrmwound and listened to him scream.
The Plaguebringer's spindly limbs finally ceased their steady stirring and she turned one bulbous red eye on him. Set deep in the deep black sockets of a white, skull-like face, they seemed to penetrate Klaxon until he was sure she could read his mind. Then she asked in the rattling voice of one taking their very last breath, "What news do you have of the child?"
Klaxon resigned himself to a long, slow, horrible death and told the Plaguebringer, "We lost him."
The great creature's expression was difficult to read. Still that great eye stared at Klaxon.
"We lost him at the Cloudsong," he began to explain. This was awful. Why didn't she just shriek her displeasure and slap him into sweet oblivion like his predecessor? "The female wasn't with him—he was alone. We thought we had him, for certain this time, when a gust of wind scattered my flock and carried him—"
The Plaguebringer's wings, now only impossibly long and bony fingers held together by thin and rotting membranes, flexed. "Wind?" She snaked her long and leathery neck forward until her snout nearly brushed Klaxon's feathers. The Talonok was paralyzed with terror, and his flock looked on in horror, certain that he was about to be devoured. But to the surprise of everyone present, the Plaguebringer did not eat him, but instead gingerly sniffed him. Once, twice, and then apparently satisfied, she sat slowly back on her haunches. She said again, "Wind."
"Y-yes," Klaxon tried very hard not to squawk. He was unnerved, but alive. "The wind c-c-carried him south-east, out over the Sea of a Thousand—"
"Yes. Good." The Plaguebringer snapped. She picked up her stirring utensil and resumed her work. "The child is on his way. It is good."
Momentarily, Klaxon forgot what a bad idea it was to keep on talking to the Plague Mother when she had decided the conversation was over. He objected, "Good? I don't understand! I thought you wanted us to bring him to you—?"
The Plaguebringer opened her mouth impossibly wide and let out a soul-ripping scream of rage. Her tail, a whiplike length of bone stitched together by tough sinew and peeling skin, slammed against one of the stones at the Wyrmwound's edge and snapped it like a twig. The unfortunate Talonok on top of it could not fly out of the way fast enough before the Plaguebringer's tail struck her down as well. She rolled across the ground, away from the glowing lake of pestilence, but could not escape the snaking tendrils of whatever else lurked in the shadows surrounding them. Her shrieks and squawks of fear and agony were drowned in the dying echoes of the Plaguebringer's scream as she turned her glaring eye on Klaxon once more.
"You fool," she hissed. "He must reach the Labyrinth."
Klaxon asked no more questions. He understood now why the dragons considered the dark creature at the heart of the Wasteland one of their gods. She was not one of his, of course, but he would not discount her awesome power. No longer willing to subject them to her fickle whims and mercies, the leader signaled for his flock to rise into the air and get as far away as they could without looking back.