The Broken Knife

Kaz stared out over the wide underground.… Was it a den? There were buildings, but the people hurrying in and out looked harried and exhausted, not like they were looking forward to resting or spending time with their families. It was almost more akin to the hoyi nest Kaz had once found himself reluctantly infiltrating, where all of the large insects worked constantly, their lives perfectly organized but lacking in any kind of joy.

Nearly all of the figures below were human and adult, but otherwise there was nothing that would link them together. People of all shapes, sizes, and even ages worked beside each other, carrying objects to and fro to no apparent purpose.

The figures who weren’t human had to be what Doran had called scalies, and Kaz was nearly certain were actually the third kind of kobolds, or xiyi, as they called themselves. Most of them wore loincloths, like Kaz’s kobolds, but some also had on shirts, short robes, and even cloaks.

Long tails extended behind them, swaying just above the floor for balance, rather than tucked or raised high, indicating their emotional state. Some of these tails were slender, while others were rounded, thick, or ridged with spikes. They had longer faces than mosui, but shorter snouts than kobolds, and no ears that Kaz could see, though there were darker circles on the sides of their heads about where a human would have ears.

Their scales were primarily red, but he saw a multitude of colors represented. Many, though not all, also had cores, some ki, and one or more open dantians. Like kobold fur, the xiyi’s scales often matched their primary ki-type, though there were some grays and browns, as well.

It was clear that the xiyi were in charge, but not in the same way as the mosui. None of the humans looked like they were prisoners, exactly, and they spoke to the xiyi just as they did each other. The xiyi told the humans where to take their boxes, bags, or jars, but then they picked up an object of their own and carried it along as well. This was more like the relationship between the husede and the captive kobolds, which begged the question: who controlled the xiyi?

Beside Kaz crouched his cousin, her ears flat and eyes huge. She hadn’t spoken since they’d arrived in this alcove, tucked high over the bustling but subdued collection of buildings. Whatever she had expected to find, it wasn’t this, and she clutched Mei to her chest, stroking the fuergar intermittently. The rodent was allowing this, in spite of her clear desire to be elsewhere, so perhaps she knew how much her kobold needed reassurance.

Kaz completely understood, because he was holding Li in much the same way. The difference was that they were reassuring each other, rather than the connection being mostly one-sided. Only instead of staring at the humans and lizard-people, Li was watching the dragons.

There were a dozen of them, perching in their own smaller caves even higher above the people than Kaz, Li, Kyla, and Mei. They were much larger than Li, but smaller than her parents, which made him almost certain that none of Li’s family were here.

Of course, it was always possible that her siblings were a good bit bigger than she was, both because of her smaller size when she hatched and because she’d been starved of ki the first several weeks of her life. He still thought these dragons were too large, since each of them had a wingspan somewhere between fifteen and twenty feet, while Li’s was not quite four feet. Kaz and Kyla together could have ridden on any one of them, at least while Kaz was in his natural shape. Every one of them had a core and ki of some kind or combination.

Li asked, her voice small as she watched a xiyi extend something impaled on a long stick with three prongs on one end toward a dragon. The lovely white beast snapped at the dripping chunk, nearly tearing the pronged stick from the xiyi’s hands. Immediately, the reptilian backed away, retreating to a smaller tunnel the dragon couldn’t fit into. The dragon, for its part, moved as if it would follow, then backed up, swaying from side to side as if confused.

This standoff lasted for most of a minute, with dragon and xiyi each appearing ready to break in either direction. Eventually, however, the dragon settled onto its haunches, and the xiyi edged forward with more food. This time the white dragon delicately removed the food from the stick, swallowing it whole and then waiting patiently for more.

“I think they’re being trained,” Kaz murmured. If he hadn’t seen the kinds of things humans expected Li to do as a ‘trained wyvern’, he wasn’t sure he would have recognized what was going on, but this looked much like the way the human animal trainer expected Li to wait for food, even when it was dangled in front of her face.

Li stiffened, outraged by the very suggestion. It was one thing for her to play at ‘training’ while pretending to be a wyvern, but quite another to see other members of her species being treated like…like pets!

Kyla was watching now, too, but she looked thoughtful. “Is that what I should do with Mei?”

Kaz shook his head slowly. The more he watched these dragons, the more he came to a realization that made him distinctly uncomfortable. “No,” he said. “I think Mei is smarter than these creatures.” Honestly, he hesitated to even call them dragons, because they acted nothing like Li, however much they might look like her. Were they even as intelligent as wyverns, which Raff said were only as smart as dogs?

Li hissed softly, and a flood of worry and fear came through their bond. She turned a hopeful golden gaze on him.

Kaz started to shake his head, then stopped as a thought occurred to him. Li had been like a vicious wild creature when she first hatched. She even bit him hard enough to leave a scar that he could still feel as a bump on his nose. She hadn’t seemed to gain intelligence until after she fell into the pool and they both nearly drowned, requiring Kaz to use his ki to heal her.

If Kaz hadn’t seen the memories of the dragon emperor, he might have believed that these dragons were true representatives of their kind, and Li was the outlier. Having lived a day as Qiangde, however, he knew that wasn’t true. All of the dragons the ancient ruler had spoken to or thought of were like Li, not these simple beasts.

So what had changed? Kaz had two ideas. The first was that there was something about the mountain that allowed the creatures within to reach a higher level of intelligence than elsewhere. But while Li and Qiangde had been hatched in the cave at the top of Kaz’s home, surely not all of the other dragons in that memory had been as well?

Plus, while Raff claimed that kobolds outside of the mountain were little smarter than dogs themselves, Lianhua said that the Diushi emperors each spent a hundred years ruling their country. Even if having a core allowed a kobold or dragon who left the mountain to maintain their intelligence for longer, surely Qiangde and his descendents didn’t spend half of every year in their mountain home. There would be howls about how the empire was left without its ruler for six months at a time.

No, it seemed more likely that this was all tied to one very small, seemingly insignificant thing; something that Kaz had begun to dismiss as either a figment of his imagination or a result of his lack of understanding about the process of cultivation.

When Li hatched, she was wild. After they bonded, she wasn’t. But something else happened besides the joining of their ki cycles. When the black sludge blocking Li’s channels had tried to leave her body, it got stuck in her upper dantian. Kaz managed to clean it out, and in the process, something that looked like a rune broke loose. When Kaz later drew that rune for Lianhua, she said it looked like several runes were layered on top of each other, and the only one she could be fairly certain about was ‘silence’.

Had that rune been intended to limit Li’s intelligence? Keep her silent? Weak? If so, where had it come from? Had someone come in when neither Kaz nor the parent dragons were there and placed the rune onto Li’s egg? Was that why it was so much smaller than the others? Or were all of the hatchlings restricted, and Kaz simply hadn’t been able to tell yet?

Worse, was it possible that someone had managed to create a rune, image, or spell that changed dragons at a fundamental level? Qiangde and his three servants had created kobolds by altering the cores of their parents. That change had then been replicated in the following generations. Had someone else done the same thing, only instead of changing the outward appearance of their subjects, they changed what was inside?

At this thought, Li twitched, a long, slow hiss pouring hot vapor over Kaz’s arm. she said, certain. Her voice was as cold as her breath was hot, far from the funny, thoughtful person he knew her to be. She was glaring at the xiyi as if she could burn them all from where she perched, and Kaz turned slightly, interposing his shoulder between his dragon and the reptilians below.

“I don’t think we really understand what’s going on yet,” he said. “Those people all look frightened and tired. Even if the xiyi had something to do with whatever happened to the dragons, that was hundreds of years ago-”

Li shouted, lifting her wings and her head as if she would dive over Kaz to get to the figures below.

Just then, Kyla let out a little gasp. She held her breath for at least five seconds before releasing it in a shuddering gasp. “Kobolds,” she whispered. Kaz and Li turned to look.

Kyla was right. The kobolds were small, stunted even, standing somewhere closer to Kyla’s height than Kaz’s. Every one of them had fur of some shade of brown, and only one female had a faintly glowing core. None had a necklace, and all were completely naked.

“What are they doing?” Kyla asked, clutching Mei until the fuergar gave a little squeak and finally demanded to be put down. Kyla did so, albeit with great reluctance, but her eyes, like Kaz and Li’s, remained locked on the furry little figures below.

The humans petted them. Fingers patted the kobold’s heads, and shaggy tails wagged happily. It was like watching the human child, Nadia, and her pet dog, Brute. The kobolds didn’t seem to be under duress, and in fact they seemed quite pleased to be helping the humans and xiyi.

A particularly tall, slim xiyi with green scales and a cloak spoke to the only kobold with a core. The cored kobold nodded her head eagerly, long ears flapping, and barked something to the other five who had emerged from one of the buildings with her. Each kobold then picked up a small crate and ran off with it, moving far more quickly than any of the humans.

“They’re all working together,” Kyla said. Her eyes were huge, and when he glanced at her, Kaz couldn’t tell if she was shocked or horrified.

“But what are they doing?” said another voice, and Kaz whipped around just in time to see Mei standing with one paw on Chi Yincang’s shoe. The other paw was shoving a gold coin into her mouth, and she looked very pleased with herself.

Kaz had been expecting the arrival of his other friends for some time, of course, since he made sure they knew where he was, but as always, Chi Yincang somehow managed to startle him. And was that a spark of amusement in the male’s dark eyes? What if Kaz or Kyla had let out a yelp that alerted the people below to their presence?

Reina and Jinn were next to appear, and Kaz wasn’t sure how he felt about that. There was something about them, Reina in particular, that was faintly unpleasant to him. He hadn’t managed to gather it yet, but when he did, he had a feeling he wouldn’t like it.

After the two Holiander females came Lianhua and Yingtao, and, to Kaz’s shock, Adara. They’d even brought Doran, though the male looked even more out of it than he had when Kaz first spoke to him. Had he relapsed because of the long walk, or had someone given him something to keep him quiet and obedient?

Kyla had hunkered down at Chi Yincang’s words, and gave each human a bewildered look as they arrived. She glanced once at Kaz, but didn’t seem to suspect he’d essentially led them here, much to his relief. When they were all together again, she opened her mouth to speak, but someone else beat her to it.

“What in the gods’ name is going on down there?” Adara demanded. She looked like she would shove Kaz and Kyla out of the way so she could get a better look. At least she did right up until she realized they were both kobolds, at which point her lip curled and she drew back.

“Wait,” she said, pointing from the naked kobolds below to Kaz and Kyla. “Is this where you came from? What in the name of Rhydon’s left big toe do you kobolds think you’re doing?”