Free The Erth Dragons Book 1: The Wearle by Chris D'Lacey

sought in vain to protect her young. She was curling her tail around the skaler that Ren had seen breaking from the egg and was all the while calling the blue one to her. Ren could see it, trapped in rubble, kicking its tiny skaler feet. One wing and half its body was buried. The mountain yawned. More rocks fell. A huge lump struck the mother on the head. She lurched forward and her skin split open. Dark green fluid poured out of the wound, coating her neck and the stones around her. Ren thought he saw a tear begin to form in her eye. A single tear, glowing with fire.
    That was it. He leapt into the cavern. It took a heartbeat, no more, to free the skaler. It squealed like an angry storm of caarkers, but folded its wings as he drew it to his breast.
    Through the hail and dust, he looked for the other. It was sheltered by a curl of the mother’s tail. Thinking he could place the rescued one with it, Ren started to pick his way back toward them. But the sleeping mountain was wide awake now. The floor of the cavern whined and split open. Ren was thrown back as a crack the size of a narrow stream divided him from the mother skaler. Pained and spluttering, he got to his feet. The youngster had fixed its claws into his robe as if begging him never to leave it, but the mother was slipping away. One last time she lifted her head – and fixed her gaze on Ren.
    Her thoughts poured into his mind with such force that his neck almost snapped as his head jerked back. And these three words she spoke without speaking: GALAN AUG SCIETH .
    Then her head slackened and thumped against the stone.
    With a smokeless breath, her jewelled eye closed.
    And her fire tear fell.

9
    Other than when he’d been hunting with the men, Ren had only ever seen one animal die. A mutt so old it had buzzers laying eggs in its matted fur and legs so bent they wobbled when it walked. He was a boy of just six winters then, and life and death were still a mystery to him. Where did the ‘life’ go when something died, he wondered? He’d asked the mutt’s keeper that very question: Was that what the dead eyes were staring at, the life drifting to its next dwelling place? The keeper, none other than the gruff Varl Rednose, had bellowed with laughter and flashed his knife in a gouging motion. He had asked Ren if he’d like an eye to stew? Ren had said no. He didn’t understand why Varl had found the question funny. The tribe prayed for help from the Fathers all the time and some of them had been dead for ever . Surely their ‘lives’ must be floating over the settlement somewhere?
    That day in the cave, Ren learned something about the death of skalers. For one thing, their eyes didn’t stare like a mutt’s. As the mother’s tear struck the floor of the cavern, every rock around it shone like gold, including those where Ren was standing. Her life filled his like rising water. His body grew light and his mind touched the stars. He felt the presence of something extraordinary. It moved around him and through him and somehow between him, blowing like a wind from another world. Perhaps the strangest thing of all was what happened to the darkeye horn he still carried. It was lying in a pocket close to Ren’s heart. Later, when he would think to look at his robe, he would find a scorch mark on the cloth around the pocket and remember a burning sensation there. But that was later and this was now.
    The mother’s eye closed and Ren heard the erth breathe as if to welcome her home again. He shook himself alert. He was still in great danger. Rocks were falling. The erth was dancing. The sleeping mountain was no less angry. The skaler in his arms gave a pining cry. Ren stroked it and said a short prayer for the one still minded by the mother’s tail, then started for the tunnel.
    In his bid to rescue the skaler he had jumped a fair way down into the cavern. Going back up would be a far stiffer challenge. The mountain had been kind to him, though. A number of boulders