Empire of Ivory Page 0,100
perfect docility the supervision of two dragons and some thirty men, who ambled along comfortably behind, only a few lengths short of the rear of the herd.
The herdsmen carried long sticks with dangling rattles, by which means they kept the herd from turning back; a little farther along, perhaps a quarter-of-a-mile into the wreckage the herd had left behind, women worked busily, spreading great bushels of red-stained manure and planting young shrubs: they sang as they worked, rhythmically.
The prisoners were let down. Laurence almost was distracted from the water-bag for staring at the fat, sluggish creatures, larger than any he had ever heard bragged of. He had visited India twice, as a naval officer, and once seen an impressive old creature carrying a native potentate and his retinue upon its head, some six tons in weight. The most impressive here would have he guessed outweighed that one by half again, and rivaled Nitidus or Dulcia in size, with great ivory tusks jutting out like spears some three feet beyond its head. Another of the behemoths put its head down against a young tree, of no mean size, and with a groaning implacable push brought it crashing to the ground; pleased with its success, the elephant ambled lazily down its length, to devour at leisure the tender shoots from the crown.
After some little conversation with their captors, the herd-dragons went aloft and chivvied away a few of the beasts from the main body of the herd: older animals, by the length of their tusks, without young. These having been coaxed downwind and behind the line of herdsmen, Kefentse and the two other dragons fell upon them skillfully: a single piercing of talons slew the creatures, before they could make any outcry which might have distressed the rest. The dragons made their repast greedily, murmuring with satisfaction, as might a contented gentleman over his pleasing dinner; when they were done, the hyenas crept out of the grass to deal with the bloody remains, and cackled all through the night.
Throughout the next two days, they were scarcely an hour aloft without sight of some other dragons, calling greetings from afar; more villages flashed past beneath them, and occasionally some small fortification with walls of clay and rock, until in the distance they glimpsed a tremendous plume of smoke rising, like a great grass-fire, and a thin silvery line winding away over the earth.
"Mosi oa Tunya," Mrs. Erasmus had told them, was the name of their destination, meaning smoke that thunders; and a low and continuous roaring built higher around them as Kefentse angled directly towards the plume.
The narrow shining line upon the earth resolved itself swiftly into a river of great immensity: slow and very broad, fractured into many smaller streams, all winding together past rocks and small grassy islets towards a narrow crack in the earth like an eggshell broken down the middle, where the river suddenly boiled up and plunged into the thunder of a waterfall more vast than anything Laurence might have conceived, the gorges of its descent so full of white-plumed spray that its base could not be seen.
Into these narrow gorges, which seemed barely wide enough for him to go abreast, Kefentse dived at speed, pocket rainbows gleaming in puddles collected upon his hide through the first clouds of steam. Pressed hard up against the netting, Laurence wiped water from his face and one-week's beard, and palmed it away from the hollows of his eyes, squinting as they broke through into a widening canyon.
The lower slopes were thickly forested, a jewel-green tangle of tropical growth reaching some halfway up the walls, where abruptly the vegetation ended and the cliff faces rose sheer and smooth to the plain above, gleaming like polished marble and pockmarked only by the gaping holes of caverns. And then Laurence realized he was not looking at caverns, but at great carved archways, mouths for vaulted halls which penetrated deep within the mountain-side. The cliff walls did not gleam like polished marble; they were polished marble, or as good as: a smooth speckled stone, with quantities of ivory and gold inlaid directly into the rock in fantastical pattern.
Façades were carved and sculpted around the openings, ornamented gorgeously in vivid color and odd abstract patterns, and towering more vast than Westminster or St. Paul's, the only and inadequate measures of comparison which Laurence possessed. Narrow stairs, their railings carved of stone and smoothed by the water-spray, climbed between the archways to give the perspective: five ordinary