In The Lair of the Draca (Book 2)

In The Lair of the Draca (Book 2) Chapter 71: The Disc of Secrets

"Yes, yes." Dijaq tried to mask his impatience. "Now what must I do?"

"You wait," said the guide tersely, taking off at a fast trot toward the wood and the waiting predators with his four mountain-men.

And Dijaq waited. Bora's knobby back was beginning to grow increasingly uncomfortable, but he sat as still as he was told while the animal ruminated complacently. Drunk off of the pleasant scents of ice, coolness, the winter chill, and faint traces of mint, Dijaq thought back to all of the events he'd witnessed within the past seventy four hours or so: the gentle washing of Waru's corpse, watching her pyre erupt in flames as greasy-smelling smoke consumed both mother and child; and Pomoq's odd chalk drawings in which he'd etched images of the Disc of Secrets, both as a complete oblong and in cross-section.

Dijaq had gone home and repeated the drawings in the dirt outside of the threshold before his lodge, wondering when, how, and if he would ever have a chance to see this Disc with his own eyes-- and hadn't Pomoq said he must first ensure that Ziuta took her rightful place as Queen of the Dragons? Yet he hardly knew where Ziuta even was; rumor had spread swiftly throughout Looks Thrice that she had been denied admittance to her own adoptive home, and Dijaq's heart felt it would cleave in two just for her. He could not bear to think of her upset, sad, or sullen-- but rejected by the man she had so come to look up to? Ziuta had charged off and out of the palisade in tears, and no one-- not even the few volunteers that Kind Heart had rounded up for the purpose, had been successful in even catching a glimpse of her.

In the new hollows left by Warumachek and Ziuta, young Zee had timidly taken the chance to approach him and had crouched at the stoop after the evening supper, watching with wide eyes as he etched with one finger. Dijaq remembered glancing at her; he knew her from the school-house. While she was not a homely girl by any means, her eyes were a bit too large and watered all the time. Zee managed almost always to look as though she were on the verge of tears.

"So you want to know the Disc of Secrets?" she'd asked him at last, looking into his eyes with something akin to exultation when he paused in his etching and gaped at her.

"You know about that?"

"Oh, come, Dee. Everyone knows about the Disc of Secrets!"

"But few People speak of it. It isn't good luck!"

"Then why are you drawing it in the dirt?" she'd asked, cocking her pretty head at him. "Wouldn't it be even worse than bad luck to render the image of a dangerous talisman into the ground, like you're doing?"

Dijaq had sighed, using the stub end of a twig to scratch out his etchings. "The truth is, I need to go there...to visit the Disc in person."

"But why?" Zee blinked at him with those huge, watering orbs.

"Because I need to find out if what everyone whispers about the great Disc is true: if the people who sleep in its shadow wake up with burns, if the peak of the Disc rises higher than any tree-top, and if the windows can be cleared so we can see inside and--"

"--and see the bodies of our Ancestors?"

Dijaq was taken aback. "Who told you all of these things about the Disc?" he'd asked Zee suspiciously. "Such knowledge is not for girls to muddy their thinking when they should be preparing for marriage to their husbands."

Zee had only snorted lightly. "Since when did you become as old-fashioned as the Matron?" she'd asked playfully. "I know about the Disc because my father took me there when I was a little girl."

"He did? He took you? How old where you? What did you see?" Dijaq could hardly keep the questions from tumbling out of his mouth.

Relishing the attention, Zee (who had an immense crush on the older boy) drew up her knees and encircled them with her arms. "I don't remember much of it," she said, "but the few pieces that do come back to me are that I was sitting on my father's shoulders, and there was a soft humming sound in everyone's ears. Father didn't want me to get too close, lest something were to happen to me."