Valley of the Dragons

Art by Roel Wielinga

"There weren't always dragons in The Valley. There was a time, so they say, when the first families settled here, when the valley was safe, fertile and families grew into tribes. For the most part there was peace. Swords and knives were used only to slaughter pigs and cattle, for weapons were forbidden. The sages told us that far, far back weapons had become so advanced that humankind almost destroyed themselves and the world we live in.

It was said that beyond the valley there were places where the very ground itself spewed forth invisible fire that killed within days. We heard this from the wanderers, the strangers who lived beyond the valley, exploring the Earth for old things to use and trade.

Then, well before I was born, a group of wanderers brought the eggs into the valley. They told us of places far beyond the path of the sun where there was once ice, snow and frozen ground. The ground was now melting, pouring forth water, mud and the corpses of great monsters. And eggs, hundreds of eggs. They were dead, these eggs, the spawn of creatures from the far distant past, all destined to vanish in what the sages called the age of ice and fire.

It was the woman they called the "Mother of Dragons" who discovered that some eggs, those from deep in the cold earth, could be carefully warmed until living creatures would emerge. It was soon learned that if the creatures were fed and nurtured right after they emerged from their eggs, they would bond with us.

The valley soon had great beasts of burden. Some, even, that could fly.

There were always lone troublemakers among the Wanderers. As the egg trade grew, many of them wanted to stay in the valley and share its land and clean water. We would give them water and food and escort them out of the valley. As time passed they formed their own tribes and became warlike. That was when we started to make our own weapons of war.

When my tenth summer had passed, I was given my first egg. This was our tradition by then. If the egg was live and was nurtured, and if the child produced a hatchling, he or she was considered a worthy member of the tribe. If the result were a massive dragon it would become a worker, a beast of burden. They were used to uproot trees, clear land and build our underground earthen homes. If the creature was one of the flyers, it was trained to carry things from one part of the valley to another.

I nurtured my egg and hatched a flyer. By the time I was of fifteen summers it was the greatest dragon in the valley. The oldest of the sages said her name should be Draco. I was the first in the valley to fly upon the back of a dragon. The sages changed my name to Lady DracoWing.

The Wanderer Wars did not amount to much. We fought off small gangs with ease. By the time they had organized into an army, we had trained armed men and women into capable warriors. Best of all, we had flights of airborne archers who could attack from on high. With deadly accuracy we could pick off the leaders, the brave and the determined. It did not take long for the rest to run.

By my nineteenth summer, Draco and I were the leaders of a flight of dragons. There were five flights in all, thirty dragons, twenty-two women and eight male warriors. Each flight would patrol the path of the sun, from rise to fall for ten paths. Another flight would patrol the path of the moon for the same time. We saved the tribes from attack many times. Finally the leaders were all killed and the Wanderers were pushed away from the valley edges out onto the plains beside the great waters."

-o0o-

It was the beginning of her twentieth year when the path of the sun was low over the distant sea. The Lady DracoWing was wrapped in heavy furs against the chill air. Once airborne, the heat from Draco's body would warm her and within minutes her heart would be beating in unison with the great heart throbbing between her thighs.

On this bright morning she was not leading a flight down the great rift of the valley. At the last tribal gathering she had spoken up about the growing concern of all the winged warriors. The Wanderers had all but disappeared. From time to time a lone Wanderer would come to the mountain tops surrounding the valley with items to trade. They would leave their arms and wave to the flights. Once inspected, they could enter, trade and leave. Over the past many flights there were none to be seen.

The Wise Women wanted to know why. Was a new threat gathering beyond the valley? Had some new pestilence oozed from the melting tundra? Was another army gathering beyond the horizon?

The Lady DracoWing was permitted to fly well beyond the borders of the valley. She was to seek out any lone Wanderers she could find, or stay high above any army forming on the plains by the sea.

Draco had been well fed the night before. The great beast clucked a greeting as Lady DracoWing harnessed her for the coming flight. She walked Draco out of her hillside cave into the sunlight, took the leather caps off its wingtip talons, and secured her bow and arrows. Her heart began to race as she mounted Draco and grabbed the pommel of her saddle.

"Fly, Draco, Fly!"

Draco's enormous wings spread as she lumbered awkwardly down the hillside in front of her cave. With long practiced ease, The Lady DracoWing's body leaned against each bodily twist as the dragon gained speed. The ungainly motion of the beast changed immediately to the smoothness of flight as the air flowed under the huge leathery wings. Draco needed little guidance from its mistress. She banked out over the valley, swooping down over the fields and hamlets toward one spot in the valley where thermal vents pushed hot air up into the sky.

Draco circled and climbed on the thermal until she reached the crests of the valley. It was thrilling for both of them to twist and turn at high speed as jagged, craggy fingers of ice rimmed rock flashed by, so dangerously close.

Draco finally rose above the peaks and swept along the ridge of mountains that faced the melting tundra. When winds swept from the tundra toward the sun they would rise against this ridge and make rain. This water was clear and fed a thick forest on the far side of the ridge. The forest supplied the valley with game and water that cascaded from high falls down onto the farming terraces that faced the sun.

The Lady Draco turned her mount toward the sun, now midway on its path to extinction. She began a long, sweeping glide across the valley to the mountain peaks that faced the broad open plains leading to the Great Sea.

It was here that many of the Wanderers had settled. It was a very different world from the slopes that faced the tundra. The sea brought its own wind and clouds. They fed great toxic storms that rained black and brown poisonous water sucked up from the sea. The slopes here were barren but for patches of coarse grasses and scrub dotted among the rain eroded ridges and gullies of ashen soils and sands. The Wanderers made small encampments closer to the sea where it was possible to grow some food plants. There was never enough food or good water. The streams and falls that fell from the mountains on this side of the valley were long ago dammed off. The peaks were much lower than the ones Draco had just climbed on the thermal, they had been eroded by sea rains into weirdly shaped and rounded forms much like skulls of the dead.

The Lady DracoWng shuddered. The stricken land beneath her looked foreboding, evil even. It smelled of death. That was new. She scanned as far as her eyes could see through patches of yellow mist to the horizon where clouds were gathering over the sea. It was not uncommon for these places to be devoid of humans. They were, however, usually infested with snakes and giant bugs able to live within the toxic soil and plants. Of these, The Lady Draco could see nothing. All was eerily silent, the smell of death stronger as Draco glided lower over the stark black fingers of stricken trees.

Draco turned and flew along a familiar route toward the small hamlet of Carna. The few inhabitants specialized in the tanning of hides from animals traded for food from The Valley. The Lady DracoWing expected to find answers to the strange disappearance of the Wanderers from the ocean side plains.

She could already see that all was not well as the little hamlet came into view. There were no movements around the ramshackle huts, no smoke from the roof openings. Draco skimmed across a thatch covered roof and recoiled in horror. The thatch and the ground around the walls were covered in a black slime. Worse, within it glistened skulls and bones.

Draco, not usually given to caring about what she ate, began to retch. The Lady DracoWing felt much the same as her steed instantly winged away and upwards. As they circled the hamlet they could see more of the black slime spattered on the pathways and fields. Every spatter contained skulls and bones. The people of Carna had been consumed, along with every dog and small animal in the path of the deadly ooze.

The trees, grasses, sparse shrubs and plants had also been blackened and consumed by the substance. As Draco flew higher, a trail emerged from the haze. It led toward the sea, several miles away. Minutes later the beaches came into view. The brown ocean tides were wiping away huge track marks in the sands. There were hundreds of them. Lady DracoWing and Draco swept along the coastline for many miles. Everywhere there were tracks from the ocean inland. Everywhere there was death, the bones of the dead, and the marks left by the black ooze.

At one point along the beach the tracks were fresh. Draco was reluctant to fly lower but she eventually obeyed the command to land on a clear patch of headland covered with scrub grass. Lady DracoWing dismounted and walked toward a stream of ooze. it seemed as if it had dropped directly onto the ground from above. It came down on a man wielding a spear. His bones glistened in the midst of the jelly-like fluid. It was then that she saw the child, his black skin blending into the background of dark grass.

The child was folded up, knees to chin, arms wrapped around his legs. He was shaking in fear.

The Lady Draco approached him slowly. "Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you."

He stared at her, then at Draco, and then out towards the sea. He did not resist as she reached out and gently pulled him towards her. He could not have been more than eight years old. He had sought refuge from the ooze on the headland and was now surrounded by it.

"Are you all alone?" He nodded his head, as if afraid to make a sound, looking once again out to sea.

The Lady DracoWing had to make a decision. Soon she would be obliged to start her own family. She would select a favored female from the valley to bear her children, a warrior to father them, and a lover to be her life companion. The first child to the four would be the beginning of their own tribe.

She smiled at the child, picked him up and mounted Draco. "I suppose you are to be the first of the Draco tribe..."

She placed him between her body and her pommel as he shivered in fear, his arms wrapping around her waist. Draco took to the air. The great wings pulled them above the horror on the ground. As they sped away from the coast the Lady DracoWing looked back at the sun as it waned blood red into the darkening mist that was gathering upon the water.

The boy looked at the Lady DracoWing, his eyes still wide with fear. "They come from the sea. They come in the night..."