After a few moments, she turned and used her rear legs to carefully push the pile of excavated sand gravel and debris back over the hole, gently burying the dear cargo. Each brush of a leg brought another load of cover over her eggs. She didn't need to see them to know that they were nearly buried. She let her eyes travel the surface of the lake, not far away, and watched the moonlight splash and caper on the water's surface. It was a near-perfect night. She wondered, briefly, what her mate, Dargo was doing at that moment and if he was still angry with her. His absence was the only mar on a perfect moment.
Not long before she had left to lay her eggs, she, Dargo, and the other dragon turtles had had a heated argument. Lately, that was all they ever did. A slow poison was sweeping across the world and word of it had finally reached the reclusive dragons of the lake. A strange madness that was coming to be referred to as the Rage was blanketing the land. Wyrms of every breed and color seemed to be vulnerable to infection. A near-blinding fury seized them and drove out all reason and sanity. The lunacy blinded some to such an extent that they became vulnerable to attack and too many had already been destroyed. Some were even driven to slaughter their own young. That had brought a shiver to Chorael's cold heart. But she knew Dargo had aimed that barb at her, specifically to frighten Chorael, knowing her time was near.
The only glimmer of hope that had appeared on the bleak horizon was a message from a representative of the lich who commanded the Cult of the Dragon. Long believed, or hoped, to be dead, Sammaster had risen from the ashes and once again commanded the Cult. Simply put, the message promised that if they would swear their allegiance to him, they would be spared the madness of the Rage. And he had a host of unaffected wyrms to authenticate his honeyed words. Mostly solitary, the dragon turtles only gathered in times of great crisis. Such a crisis had come.
"Don't you remember the stories," Dargo had reminded them, "of the earliest years when we first walked the land and swam the waters? There was a Rage like this that washed over the world and we nearly died then. Do we want to face that again?"
Chorael had scanned the cove full of dragons and saw that many were considering his words. Some even nodded openly. She had to speak out even though she knew it would anger Dargo.
"So you would have us turn ourselves over to this lich?" she questioned him, startling him as the only real voice of dissension. "You would choose to be his slaves? And how would that be any better than to be a slave to this Rage, which may not even exist? We haven't seen it. It may not even be real, it might be something transitory, or it might burn itself out. But even if it is real," she admitted as she swam around the others, "wouldn't it be better than slavery?"
"We spend our time here, constantly on the patrol for the humans who hunt and trap us, and now you are considering giving up everything for a different kind of slavery?" she added and sank to the rocky shelf of the cavern and let the currents rock her gently.
Her eggs were nearly full size and she found it difficult to find a comfortable spot for very long.
The others had grown silent at her words. Even Dargo had given pause over it. She knew he had been frustrated and startled that she had not automatically sided with him and perhaps, even angrier that she had made sense. He refused to meet her look, pained that the others had started softly debating the matter.
"She has a point," Okara, one of the oldest in the lake interjected. He was nearly thirty feet long and his shell had more chips and cracks along his carapace than many had years in their lives. He pushed his front claw against the reeds as though annoyed with the vegetation. "Ever since the successful capture of one of our own by Brazhal Kos, the hunters have become increasingly bold. Too often, we spend our time avoiding the growing numbers of hunters that seemed determined to trap and break us. Would service to Sammaster be any different than service to the hunters?"
His final words had brought a hush to the gathered dragons.
Dargo swam away as soon as the meeting was over and Chorael had not seen him for days. She suspected that it was his irritation that her words had turned the tide with many of the others that made him stay away on that special night. It was his way of showing how unhappy he was with her.
And he had missed the moment when she had laid their clutch. She was saddened by his decision but knew Dargo would be even more so after he had time to think on all that had been said. Though he was quicktempered, Chorael knew he was reasonable at heart. She liked to think that she balanced him and was the cool voice of reason to his fiery temper. When he and the others mulled over all the facts that they could gather, she was certain they would see that another option had to exist.
"I won't see you little ones be anyone's slaves," she whispered and patted the newly fashioned mound lovingly. "I promise you that."
With one more look at her nest, Chorael began to shuffle and crawl along the bank back to the frigid waters of the lake. Though tired from the effort of laying her eggs, she felt a renewed sense of hope at seeing them. New life always meant new opportunities, she believed. Caught up in her reverie, she almost didn't see the tiny figure a few hundred feet off on the lake. It was the additional flash of moonlight that caught her eye and for a moment, she hoped it was Dargo and that he had come after her. But as she looked more closely with her keen eyes, Chorael was disappointed.
Splashing about on the lake was not a dragon, but a human. And judging by the way he flailed and thrashed his arms, one not well suited to swimming. Chorael felt the chill water touch her arms and started to pull herself in, meaning to swim away as quickly as she could. Men on the water never boded well for her or any others who called the lake their home. Instinctu-ally, she wanted to flee. But she paused. The night had been one of hope and dreams and full of promise. She found she did not want to have it sullied by any omens or portents of bad luck. And she found that in her icy heart, she didn't want anything to die on that night.
Pushing herself completely into the water, Chorael glided toward the frantic man as he bobbed and bounced. His head appeared at the surface less frequently and it was clear he had started to sink under the relatively calm waters. Chorael knew that humans quickly chilled in the lake. She and the other dragons were not immune to the cold, but their physiology was more adapted to their life there, with a special organ near their heart that helped them store heat and regulate their body temperature. Even though their bodies were cold in the lake, they didn't freeze. But Chorael had seen more than one human perish in no more than the blink of an eye as their limbs turned leaden from the cold and they sunk beneath the waves. The man seemed destined for the same fate.
As his head vanished from view, Chorael made her decision and dived beneath the waves, cleaving the lake surface like a knife. No longer bound by gravity's demands, she maneuvered through the water like a bird through the air, weightless. Though it was past middark, she could see everything with vivid clarity. Her own eyes were protected by three inner eyelids, the last one crystal clear. It was that lid that lowered over her eyes when she was in water and prevented any distortion. As though suspended in midair, the unfortunate man was only a few feet away.
He was dressed like many of the fishermen of Thay, without any sign of the heavier weapons favored by those foolhardy enough to try to capture a dragon. She hated that she paused long enough to verify what he was, but her goodwill didn't extend beyond her own self-preservation. Not far off, she could see the silhouette of a small boat against the shine of the moonlight like some small eclipse. Chorael reasoned that he must have gotten a net tangled or had a strong pull on a line and been yanked into the black waters. She could see no one else nearby and thought he was foolish indeed to be on the water so late and alone. However, she would have been the first to admit that she never could understand the actions of humans and their foolish ways, nor did she try much to fathom them.
As she sped toward him, she could see that even as the cold had taken hold of his limbs and made them dead weight, the human's eyes still held some life in them. She could see their piercing blueness through the slow swirl his brown hair made around his face, and she saw a glimmer of fear in them as though he knew death was near. She wondered what he feared more: drowning or her approaching visage. .
When she was nearly underneath him, Chorael positioned her body carefully. The fisherman somehow found some strength, but he could only flail his useless arms once before giving up. When she felt his weight against her shell, she slowly pulsed her limbs and started to rise straight to the surface. She was careful not to jostle her cargo because she knew if she dropped him, he might not live long enough to survive a second rescue attempt.
Chorael broke the lake's surface for a second time that night and drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs and making herself even more buoyant. She could feel the limp man sprawled across her carapace and she wondered if she had been in time. However, as she started to swim once more, she felt some movement as her burden rolled to one side and retched lake water down her shell. She smiled to herself as she heard his coughs and knew she had been in time. For the second time that evening, she wondered just what he might have been thinking at that moment as he found himself atop a creature such as herself. Briefly, she feared that perhaps she might have made a mistake in saving him.
What if he finds this all to be wondrous and amazing? she thought. What if I just added fuel to an already dangerous situation? Well, what's done is done.
When she reached his boat, some distance away from where she had saved him, she floated there for a moment, hoping the man would simply roll off of her and back into his small vessel. But she could feel his even breathing as he just laid there. Not wanting to hurt him by bucking him off, she sighed inwardly and cleared her throat.
"You are safe," she said in Common.
Choreal tripped over the words because it had been some time since she'd had opportunity or motive to use the language. Her voice was slightly raspy and sounded like rocks scratching against themselves.
She wondered if the human might have lapsed into unconsciousness and was about to say something more when she felt him push himself up to a sitting position. The sensation of his hands on her carapace was strange and foreign, and she found she couldn't decide how it made her feel. She felt herself bob upward slightly as she was free of his meager weight. He slid into his boat.
For a few moments, both regarded each other warily, she from the safety of the water and he crouched behind the thin hull of his boat.
Chorael finally turned to move away when the shivering man rose from his squat and said in a shaky voice, "You saved me."
"Yes," Chorael finally answered.
"But I thought that-" he started and she cut him off.
"That we are monsters?" she asked. "I could say the same about you. It's what I heard."
She turned some more but the human called out to her, "Gregoire. My name is Gregoire. Do you have a name?"
Chorael was growing a bit exasperated and started to reevaluate her decision to help him. Having found his voice, the human seemed determined to use it. She realized it had been better when he had been retching water and silent.
"You couldn't pronounce it even if I told you," she said. "Now, you have enough to tell your tavern cronies tonight. I wish you good fortune and good even."
"Is there any way I can thank you?" he asked.
Chorael looked him over, from his tunic and pants, which upon closer inspection were of a finer weave than many fishermen sported, to his small boat that also looked slightly sturdier and more solid the most fishing vessels on the lake.
"You have nothing that I would desire in payment."
She started to swim away from the tiny boat slowly, so as not to capsize it and dump the hapless human into the water for a second time. He called out to her again.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
Chorael was torn between entering the soothing darkness of the depths and her growing curiosity with the man who didn't seem to want her to leave. Her curiosity finally overcame her desire to leave and she circled back to him. She could see that he was carefully coiling up a line from the water. A sharp tug from that line might have been why he'd found himself in the lake.
"There is one thing," she told him.
"Anything," he replied eagerly, excited she had returned.
"Tell your brothers to leave us in peace," she replied and hoped that her request, coupled with the fact that she had saved him, would negate any desire he or his friends might have to capture one of her kind in the future.
"Of course," he agreed and continued to coil up his line.
Chorael cocked her head some at the sight of it. It struck her as odd that the line was thicker than most she had seen and realized it was almost like rope.
Too heavy for fishing, she thought.
Then it struck her that he seemed slightly out of place as a fisherman, clothes and gear just a bit too fine. And he had been so eager to talk to her when most might have been just too stunned by their near-death to say a word. Almost as if he was distracting her.
She quickly scanned the waters for any other vessels, fearing a trap. But she couldn't see any other boats anywhere else on the water. With a sinking dread she realized that she was not the prey that night, but something else was: her eggs.