Chapter 6
The Great Stew Bowl

It was a part of the goddess’s punishment, Verden knew, that she was growing so fast. Day by day—almost hour by hour, it seemed, she gained in size and strength. In a matter of weeks, she nearly tripled her length. Her mass and physical power were multiplied by hundreds, and she could feel within her the capacity for breathing chlorine clouds, though within the confines of the gully dwarves’ realm she was unable to do so.

From the vestigial nubs on her shoulders, great wings grew—wings that stretched almost from wall to wall of the great subterranean chamber when she spread and flexed them. She had attempted to exercise her wings properly, but the results had been disastrous. At first beat, the downdraft had sent every gully dwarf in This Place rolling and tumbling, and her geas had risen to punish her, to remind her painfully: Do not hurt them!

It was all part of the punishment. Until she reached full size and full power, she would not fully appreciate the exquisite humiliation of being powerless against the “least of the least,” the Aghar. The goddess had not allowed her even the slight comfort of a lingering development or chanced the passage of time in which the short-lived creatures might have disappeared entirely.

Within the blink of an eye, it seemed, Verden Leafglow became a fully mature, fully-endowed green dragon. Enormous powers rested within her and festered there in the constant torment of powerlessness.

She had died once, before her rebirth. Now, relegated to servitude among the most contemptible of races, she would gladly have died again to escape the awful humiliation of it. Within weeks, she would have welcomed death. But death, like freedom, was denied her.

Throughout her growth, she was ravenous. The provisions for weeks of gully dwarf fare for the entire tribe were less than a single meal for her, and she was forced to hunt for herself, within the confines of Xak Tsaroth. By the time her growing slowed, there wasn’t a giant salamander left in the ancient city, nor a fish, squid or giant eel in the submerged levels of it. Even the hairless, blind moles of the outer reaches—ugly creatures the size of cattle—were depleted in number.

At least, the constant, gnawing hunger had subsided a bit. Now, her existence settled into a monotony of misery as bumbling Aghar—now used to her presence—came and went about her, and Aghar children played slide-and-tumble on the scaly slopes of her flanks.

Powerless! The reality of it was a never-ending agony. She was commanded to serve them, but for the life of them, not a one of them had been able to think of anything they wanted her to do. It was as though she had become one with the stones, rubble and trash of This Place, except that they wouldn’t leave her alone.

The Highbulp, finally convinced that the dragon posed no threat, had decided that her helplessness was all his doing. Except when he was sleeping or eating, he spent most of his time making life miserable for her. He was forever strutting and preening around her, bragging to anyone who would listen what a glorious Highbulp he was to have his own personal dragon, again. And having no throne now, he had taken to sitting on her nose at times.

Verden would happily have torn the little twit into a thousand bloody shreds and plastered the walls of This Place with him … if only she could.

But the Dark Queen’s curse was total. Verden had no choice but to suffer the indignities, and no hope of ever being free again. Unless …

A memory from that other life tugged at her mind. A memory of the goddess’s voice saying, “You seek mercy? Seek it from them.”

But what Aghar would have mercy in his heart? It seemed hopeless.

For days at a time, she lay inert and immobile, suffering in silence, and many of the gully dwarves simply forgot that she was there. Not all of them, though. Glitch the Most was a constant nuisance to her, old Gandy kept hanging around being inquisitive, and a female called Lady Bruze came now and then to insist arrogantly that the dragon call in some rats for the stew pots.

Verden noticed that there was a real friction between the Lady Bruze and a younger female named Lidda. This one she recognized as the one who had shot the skewer at her.

With nothing much else to do, Verden observed gully dwarves.

They were as dull-minded as she had always thought. They were not exactly stupid, though. Rather, it seemed, they were just incredibly simple. And she began to see distinctive differences among them. Some, like Lidda and old Gandy, showed occasional signs of real intelligence, not always, but now and then, as though their minds held reserves that sometimes came into play for no apparent reason.

Just within the past few days, Verden had seen Lidda dragging a big, shallow bowl of heavy iron across the stone-paved floor, toward her. It had been a lot of work, but the little female finally had the thing in place near the dragon. Lying facedown, it was the shape of a large, shallow bowl. “Here, dragon,” Lidda said, panting. “This for you.”

“For me?” Verden had blinked at her. “What is that thing for?”

“ ’Case dragon want some stew,” Lidda explained. “This nice, big thing for stew bowl.”

It was ridiculous, of course, but it did show a sort of erratic intelligence.

And there were variations in personality. The Lady Bruze, for instance, seemed to enjoy ordering others around and making trouble for those who didn’t respond. The Highbulp, on the other hand, seemed to take no special pleasure in exercising power over others. He did enjoy being the center of attention, but beyond that he didn’t seem to care much whether any orders he might give were followed.

The Grand Notioner came closer to being concerned about the entire tribe than anyone else, though his concerns usually manifested themselves in subtle (for a gully dwarf) manipulations that made trouble about as often as they did good.

Patterns began to emerge. Even among these, the lowest of the low, there was good, and there was a sort of evil. Given their limits, the good was rarely very good, and the evil was nothing more than an occasional cruel streak or a fondness for little chaoses from which one or another might gain status. But there was both good and evil, though the great majority among them had very little of either, and even less interest in the difference.

By and large, each individual seemed to be just that—an individual.

Having nothing else to do, nor hope of any higher kind of association, Verden bided her time, studying gully dwarves. And though she—a mighty dragon, the highest order of life on this world—could never have admitted it, she found herself thinking in ways she had never thought before.

Since she was stuck with them, it would be a small matter to rule them, except that the goddess’s curse pained her at the very thought of that. On the other hand, though, she could easily direct their lives toward a better way of life, which would be better for her, too.

But what she most wanted was simply to be free of them.

*  *  *  *  *

The Highbulp was becoming a bloody nuisance again. For a time, he had been the center of attention, and had loved every minute of it. But there came a time when even the sight of their Lord Protector sitting on the nose of a huge green dragon and preening himself became familiar to the combined clans of Bulp, and their attentions drifted elsewhere.

Realizing that the newness had worn off, Glitch the Most pouted for a while, then pondered the situation. And as usual when he pondered, he fell asleep.

He had been there for some time, snoring loudly between the eyes and the nostrils of Verden Leafglow, when Gandy wandered by, leaning on his mop handle. The Grand Notioner glanced at the Highbulp and the dragon, then glanced again. Glitch looked normal enough, curled up like a chubby child while echoing snores rumbled from his open mouth, but there was something about the dragon … Gandy stepped closer, and peered into a large, fierce eye, frowning in concern as though he saw tears there.

“Dragon got trouble?” he asked, curious.

“You might say that, yes,” Verden Leafglow admitted. As she spoke, the Highbulp on her snout jiggled happily in his sleep.

“What kin’ trouble?”

“This kind!” She narrowed her eyes, indicating Glitch. “This little oaf is driving me out of my mind!”

“Yep,” Gandy said and nodded sympathetically. “Highbulp can do that, alright. How come dragon put up with him?”

“I can’t do anything else,” she said. “Remember, I told you. I am under a curse.”

“Oh, yeah,” Gandy remembered. “That right. Dragon goosy.”

“Not goosy!” she sighed. “I have a geas upon me.”

“Got Highbulp ’pon you right now,” Gandy observed. “Bein’ nuisance, like usual. I got idea ’bout fix that.”

Verden’s nearer eyelid rose slightly. “Oh?”

“Sure,” Gandy nodded. He stepped up on the edge of the iron stew bowl for a better view over Glitch. “Highbulp got too much time for foolin’ ‘roun’. Needs a wife, keep him in line.”

“Oh,” Verden sighed, disappointed. She had been hoping the old gully dwarf might—unlikely as it was—have an idea that would benefit her.

Suddenly, though, the Grand Notioner straightened and seemed to freeze in place. From the bowl where he stood, a rosy glow seemed to float upward, shrouding him with an eerie red radiance. He glowed, as though a lamp burned inside him, and his stance, his demeanor, his entire being seemed subtly changed.

Bathed in the soft, red glow, he seemed to radiate a power that no gully dwarf had ever had, or even imagined. He shifted and gazed up at her with a look she had never seen on an Aghar face—a bright-eyed, shrewd, almost compassionate expression that had real intelligence behind it. Abruptly, then, his eyes closed as though in sleep and the strange, reddish glow pulsed and danced around him.

His eyes remained closed, and the voice that came from him was not like the voice of any gully dwarf. “You might do well to give thought to that idea, Verden Leafglow,” it said.

She stared at the little creature, startled. “What did you say?”

“You heard me very well,” he, or something within him, said. “You do want to escape your fate, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. But how?”

“Nothing is ever hopeless, Verden Leafglow, so long as one is alive, even one who lives for a second time. The curse of a god is absolute, but even a geas might be … revised.”