The Dawn Sisters were clearly sparkling in a sun which was not yet visible over the far horizon. Could his ancestors have gone back to them for refuge after the eruption? And how?
Wading out to his waist in the quiet Cove, Jaxom dove and swam under water, mysteriously dark without the sun to lighten its depths. Then he shot himself to the surface. No, there must have been some other sanctuary between the settlement and the sea. The flight had been channeled in one direction.
He called Ruth, reminding the grumbling white dragon that the sun would be much warmer on the Plateau. He collected his flying gear and grabbed some cold meatrolls from the larder, listening for a long moment to see if he had roused anyone else. He’d rather test his theory now and surprise everyone with good news on waking. He hoped.
They were airborne just as the sun became visible on the horizon, touching the clear cloudless sky with yellow and gilding the benign face of the distant cone mountain.
Ruth took them between and then, at Jaxom’s suggestion, circled wide and lazily above the Plateau. They’d made new mounds of their own, Jaxom noticed with amusement, from the debris which the dragons had clawed from the two ancient buildings. He lined Ruth up in the direction of the sea. That goal would have been a long day’s march for terrified people. He decided against calling the firelizards at this point; they’d only overexcite themselves repeating memories of the eruption. He had to get them to a spot where their associative memories tapped a less frantic moment. Surely they would have something to recall of their men in whatever refuge the fleeing people had set out to reach.
Had there perhaps been stables for beasts and wherries built at some distance from the settlement? Considering the scale on which the ancients operated, such a stable would have been large enough to shelter hundreds from the burning rain of a volcano!
He asked Ruth to glide toward the sea, in the general direction of the panic-driven ancients. Once past the grassland, shrubs began to hold root in the ashen soil, giving way to larger trees and thicker vegetation. They’d be lucky if they could spot anything unusual in that thick green mass. He was just about to ask Ruth to turn back and fly another swath when he noticed a break in the jungle. They glided out over a long scar of grassland, several dragonlengths wide and several hundred long. Trees and bushes were sparse on either side, as if struggling to find soil for their roots. Ribbons of water glinted at the far end of the curious scar, like shallow interconnected pools.
Just then the sun rose above the rim of the Plateau, and turning his head to the left to escape that brilliance, Jaxom saw the three shadows lengthening across the top end of the grassy scar. Excitedly, he urged Ruth to the spot, circling until he was certain that these hills couldn’t be hills and certainly were unlike the shape of the ancients’ other buildings. For one thing, their placement was as unnatural as their shape. One was seven dragonlengths or more in advance of the other two, and there’d be ten or more dragonlengths between them.
He had Ruth fly past and noticed the curious conformation: a larger mass was discernible at one end, while the other tapered slightly downward, a difference visible despite grass, earth and the small bushes that covered these so-called hills.
As excited as he was, Ruth came to rest between the leading two. The hills were not as obviously unnatural on the ground but they would have appeared odd even to someone arriving on foot.
No sooner had he asked Ruth to land than firelizards erupted about them, chittering with wild excitement and unbelievable pleasure.
“What are they saying, Ruth? Let’s try to keep them calm enough to make sense. Do they have any images about these hills?”
Too many. Ruth raised his head, crooning softly to the firelizards. They were dipping and darting about so erratically that Jaxom gave up trying to see if any were banded. They are happy. They are glad you are come back. It has been so long.