And Such Are Stones

6. Fido ... Down Boy

Cassan was about the only person who could go into the cut without getting trampled. The drakes weren't usually aggressive or anything ... they were just more like great big dogs. But bad things can happen when you start getting some great big dogs overly excited.

A couple of the drakes, Fido and Bella, were pretty much the leaders of the herd. Each of the drakes had their own personality and individuality, but all the rest would still follow the guidance of the two. They weren't the oldest or the strongest, but they might have been the smartest.

Whenever Cassan was around, even those two turned into big ol' babies, though. Whenever they saw him come to the edge of the cut, they would lumber their massive bodies to the end of their paddock and look up at him with their huge gray eyes. A low, happy rumble would begin in their throat, and their tails would start to wag. The dust from the floor of the cut would be whipped up into a cloud in no time.

Cassan was the fourth generation of drake herders to use this particular cut. The tall, sheer walls were large enough to hold the drakes in. It was an old correy that wasn't used anymore, right at the edge of the Fringe.

After King Braham died, most of these old correys were deserted, especially those out toward the Fringe. Nowadays, most people looking to buy cut stone use the cuts and correys closer to the cities in the east. The people left in the Fringe didn't tend to buy stone anyway, so most of these old places had been abandoned years ago. The drake farmers found them to be precisely what they needed to make their paddocks.

They had a small farm in the hills. It wasn't one of those big operations where they bred the drakes for use in the traders' trams or vans, but they could harvest enough of the "staedthnn," the drake stones, to pay the bills and make a decent living.

Drakes weren't like real dragons. They didn't have wings or anything, but they were every bit as big as a dragon, though. Their heads were surrounded by large bony plates protecting their neck and shoulders, and they had horns that stuck straight out in the front. Their backs were rounded humps that led off to a tail that was half as long as their body.

The adults were massive and strong enough to pull the world behind them. That wasn't why Cassan's family kept them, though. It was the way they digested that was the money-maker for this farm.

Every quarter, the drakes went through a molt, during which they spit up the contents of their gizzard and then swallowed some new stones to start the process all over again. As the stones wore down and became smoother in the gizzard, it became harder for them to crunch up their food, so they would have to replenish it with rougher stones.

In the wild, these stones could be all different shapes and sizes, depending on whatever kind of stones were around when they needed to replenish their grinders. On the farm, though, they were fed specific stones for a particular end product. These staedthnn were prized by jewelers, armorers, and craftsmen throughout the country. It took a lot of organic material to feed the drakes, but the value of the staedthnn was worth it in the end.

Most of the farm workers didn't have to go inside the paddock. They would throw the hay and sillage off the wall of the correy into the pond, where it would begin to soften so the drakes could eat it. When they got hungry, they would go to the pond and swim down to the bottom to eat the rotting vegetation.

You wouldn't think that an eight-thousand-pound drake could swim. They just pulled air in their back sacs, and they could float and swim around like any water turtle. Mud or soft sand was hazardous to them, though. Many wild drakes died by getting mired up in a soft surface. Here in the correy, there wasn't much of that. This was a stone correy.

Cassan was only sixteen now, but he had been working in the correy with the drakes since he was agile enough to avoid getting stepped on. He talked to them, scratched their itchy spots, and would climb up on their backs and play his flute for them. They all accepted him as a friend and were always happy to see him when he came down into the correy.