Empire of Ivory Page 0,110

them together, the outer enclosure was built in an oval shape, with no entrances but a few, at the base, formed with great overlapping slabs of stone laid one against another like the old stone circles in England. It stood in the middle of a grassy field, undisturbed, as he would have expected from some ancient unused ruin; only a few faintly worn tracks showed where men had come into the entries on foot, mostly from the river, where stakes had been driven in the ground, and a few simple boats were tied up.

But they flew in directly over the walls, and there were no signs of disuse within. The same drymortar method of construction had raised a series of terraces, topped and leveled out with more stone slabs, laid flat, and irregularly arranged; instead of even tiers, narrow stairways divided the theater into sections, each a haphazard arrangement of boxes intended for human use and filled with wooden benches and stools, some beautifully carved, and large stalls surrounding them for dragons. The higher levels simplified further, into wide-open stands with sections marked off only with rope; at the center of it all, a large grassy oval stood bare, broken up with three large stone platforms, and on the last of these, a prisoner with drooping head, was Temeraire.

Laurence was set down a few lengths away, with the usual carelessness, jarring his back sorely; at his repressed gasp, Temeraire growled, a deep and queerly stifled noise. He had been muzzled, with a piece of dreadful iron basketry, secured upon his head with many thick leather straps, which allowed his jaws a scant range of motion: not enough to roar. A thick iron collar around his throat, at the top of his neck, was leashed with three of the massive grey hawsers, which Laurence could now see were made of braided wire, rather than rope; these were fixed to iron rings set in the ground, equidistant from one another, and preventing Temeraire from throwing his weight against any one of them more than the others.

"Laurence, Laurence," Temeraire said, straining his head towards him with all the inches the cables would yield; Laurence would have gone to him at once, but the dragon which had brought him set its foreleg down between them: he was not permitted.

"Pray do not hurt yourself, my dear; I am perfectly well," Laurence called, forcing himself to straighten; he was anxious lest Temeraire should have done himself some mischief, flinging himself against the collar: it looked to be digging into the flesh. "You are not very uncomfortable, I hope?"

"Oh, it is nothing," Temeraire said, panting with a distress which belied his words, "nothing, now I see you again; only I could not move very much, and no-one comes to talk to me, so I did not know anything: if you were well or hurt; and you were so strange, when I saw you last."

He backed slowly and cautiously one pace and let himself down again, still breathing heavily, and gave his head a little shake, as much as the chains would allow, so they rang around him; like a horse in traces. "And it makes eating a little difficult," he added bravely, "and water taste of rust, but it does not signify: are you sure you are well? You do not look well."

"I am, and very glad to see you," Laurence said, business-like, though in truth he was at some pains to keep his feet, "if beyond words with surprise; we were mortally certain we should never be found."

"Sutton said we would never find you, by roaming wild about the continent," Temeraire said, low and angry, "and that we ought to go back to Capetown. But I told him that was a very great piece of nonsense, for however unlikely we should find you looking in the interior, it was very much less likely we should find you back at the Cape. So we asked directions - "

"Directions?" Laurence said, baffled.

He had consulted with some of the local dragons, who, living farther to the south, had not been subject yet to the slave-raiding, and were not so disposed to be hostile. "At least, not once we had made them a few presents of some particularly nice cows - which, I am sorry, Laurence, we took quite without permission, from some of the settlers, so I suppose we must pay them when we have got back to Capetown," Temeraire added, as confidently as if nothing stood in the