She ran until she was well out of the dim light cast by the gateway lanterns, ran until she could blend with the trees. Her feet found their way by memory. She knew every pothole and rock ledge between the castle walls and the forest. But the mud was deep and treacherous, and the windblown sleet like a barrage of tiny needles. Her boots were full of icy water by the time she reached the first dark firs.
She halted there, gasping more from fear than lack of breath, and resettled her pack to ride her back more securely. A disorderly pursuit was forming in the stable yard. She heard men shouting and dogs barking, eager for the chase. The horses neighed and stomped, fearful of the wind and the dark. She had to think; she had to decide, and she had to do it quickly. Tor Alte’s half-dozen dependent villages were scattered among the alpine meadows a little way down the mountain. The biggest had its own parish church, and briefly she considered seeking sanctuary there. But she feared the long reach of Fra Guill. To take refuge in a church would be like walking right into his arms. She could not risk the villages now.
Then where could she go? She had food and warm clothing, but she was wet through with rain and the guardsman’s blood. Her feet were already numb. Without shelter, she would freeze before morning. Time enough to worry about the long term when she’d found a place where she could light a fire without being discovered. Rainer’s sword was a weight on her back but a goad as well, and Erde would not abandon it on the mountainside the way his poor body had been.
The baying and shouting in the castle yard grew louder and more organized. Numb as she was, Erde felt panic stir beneath her skin, like a torrent swirling below a fragile layer of ice. Only Alla’s instructions, murmured over and over in a soothing litany, kept her from bolting headlong into the night probably to brain herself on a low-hanging branch or fall off the nearest cliff. She guessed the riders would go first to the villages, so she headed upward into the trees, away from the path, away from the settled valleys, toward the caves above the tree line. Winter bears sometimes went to ground there but right then, she’d rather negotiate with a sleepy bear than with her father or Fra Guill.
She recalled a cave she’d found with Rainer when they were children. Or perhaps the baroness had showed it to them, on one of the long hikes she’d favored in their company. It lay deep in a barren jumble of rock. Its narrow crack of an entrance seemed to lead nowhere, but actually it camouflaged a descent into a system of tunnels and caverns that burrowed much deeper into the mountain rock than they’d had the courage to explore. Erde struck out bravely in that direction. When the sounds of pursuit passed below her on the road and receded downward, she slowed a bit and began gathering bits of deadwood as she climbed, as much as she had strength to carry, bundling it under her sodden cloak in the hope it would be dry enough to burn by the time she reached her hiding place.
It was near dawn when she got there, the thin gray light coming as sullen and cold as a morning in mid-December. It was oddly still, as if even the weather disdained this bare, unlovely height. The wind had died, and snow as fine as frost dusted the air. The cave was there as she remembered it, a jagged fissure like a sideways smile in a wind-smoothed rock that turned its back on Tor Alte and faced east. Toward the Russias, Erde thought, the home poor Alla will never see again. Suddenly her exhaustion seemed a weight too great to bear. She staggered through the slitted cave mouth and leaned against the rock wall to catch her breath. So easy to drop the load of wood that cramped her arms and bent her back, so easy to collapse right there in the entrance, cold and wet and shivering, where any pursuer could find her. But while Rainer’s sword lay cool and rigid along her spine, she could not even sit. Moving like a sleep-walker, she dug out one of Alla’s candles, then crept farther into the cave to take a look around.
She passed through shallow chambers musty with old leaves and animal dung. She listened for the whisper of bats. Her small candle wavered fitfully, but without it throwing shadows all about, she would not have found the second narrow cleft hidden by an edge of rock. Pitch-black, with a cool stony draft that stirred her short-cropped hair and raised goose bumps on her skin. Her candle flickered, and she put up a hand to shield it. Her only refuge lay in that unexplored dark. Erde eased through the crack.
The tunnel led downward, sharply at first and slippery with rubble. Erde followed it haltingly, hand to the rough wall, and felt rather than saw it level out, just before the wall beside her ended and the flickering circle of her candle flame vanished into darkness. She knew she had come into some sort of cavern. The long dying echo of her step told her the cavern was enormous. Raising the candle like a beacon as high as she could did not reveal a ceiling. But it tossed long shadows across treelike pillars of rock that reminded her of the great-hall of Tor Alte. Ahead in the darkness, something glimmered, like the flash of light off a living eye. Erde froze, then let herself breathe again. A still pool spread over the cavern floor. She had spied the reflection of her candle dancing across the dark water like a sprite. She would have stumbled right into its depths, had she not stopped short, fearing the approach of some one-eyed cave demon. When her heart ceased racing, she bent to touch the glassy surface. The water was numbingly cold and tasted earthy, like the fresh dirt of her grandmother’s grave. But she palmed it up eagerly, then walked around its shore and lit her fire in a dry high-vaulted side-chamber, where a tiny shard of gray daylight showed far above when she extinguished her candle.
She unslung her pack and laid out her cloak. The dark stains of the guardsman’s blood drew a mottled map of her crime across the fine wool. It was cold in the cave, but Erde kicked the cloak away, unable to wear his death a moment longer. She unstrapped the sword and sank to the ground at last, holding it in her lap. She wasn’t ready to think about how deep in the earth she was now, how alone and how completely without a plan. She did allow herself to wonder if she’d been rash to run away, if the known evil was, finally, preferable to the unknown. But Alla had wanted her to go, had said she must go, to the king, yes, why not? As good a destination as any. But the king was in Erfurt, two hundred miles to the west, down in the lowlands.
The thought of walking two hundred miles made Erde’s head ache. She let it loll back against the cavern wall and closed her eyes, her chill hands still cradling Rainer’s sword. She found herself imagining that the hilt was warm to her touch, as if someone else had been holding it. Warm enough to ease her shivering. She told herself it was Rainer himself, watching over her in spirit. She knew if she thought about it long enough, she could convince herself that he was actually there in the cave, and this was too eerie even for her, so she pushed the notion from her mind and accepted the uncanny warmth as an omen of his approval that his sword was with her. She built up the fire and steamed most of the damp from her shirt and leggings, but could get no more than halfway through a single apple before exhaustion finally claimed her.
* * *
She woke suddenly, as if from a tap on her shoulder, out of a restless sleep colored by vivid nightmares. She was stiff and sore and could not understand why her bed felt so sharp and hard. Then she remembered where she was, and why.
Her small fire had burned out. The cavern was cold and no comforting sliver of daylight from above penetrated the hovering darkness. It was night, then, outside. She had slept through the entire day. Shivering, Erde felt for her cloak and wrapped it around herself, grateful just to be awake.
Her father had raged through her dreams, touching her where a father shouldn’t and calling her by her mother’s name. Alla had died in flames again and again, and Erde saw Rainer bloodily cut down by the guardsmen’s blades, all the while staring at her with stunned, accusing eyes. Fra Guill had stalked her dreams as well, and the man she had murdered.
Murdered. She let the realization settle in. She’d traded a man’s life for her own. She held herself very still, feeling the bloodied cloak close around her like a shroud, bringing her no warmth. She’d been better off before she’d slept, while numbness still dulled her conscience. It was always possible she hadn’t killed him, she told herself, but she knew she had. A man could not bleed such torrents and survive. She felt her stomach turn. This wasn’t right. Too many people were dying for her sake.
Erde threw her head back to moan, and produced only raspy breath. Her voice. She’d forgotten. She pushed her breath up against her throat in frustrated gasps. If only she could howl her anguish, like the lunatic boy who lived in the stable yard, she’d never ask to speak human words again.
As she struggled vainly to be heard, sounds from the outer cavern invaded her unwilling silence. Guilt and grief fled as Erde stilled to listen. She had not imagined it: soft steady splashes, and breathing. Something big was moving slowly through the shallow water, shuffling and snuffling, as a bear might do if it had been stirred from early hibernation by the smoke of her fire.
Erde felt no surge of terror. She had already used up her supply. She gripped Alla’s little dagger, then left it in its sheath. It was sufficient to kill a man, as she knew too well, but small defense against an angry bear. She thought of Rainer’s sword, but couldn’t bear to bloody its pure shining blade. Her sudden calm astonished and confused her, but one thing she was sure of was that she didn’t want to kill anything, or even try. She’d had enough death and killing, and if the proper punishment for her crime was to be eaten alive, then let one of God’s creatures be His avenging angel.
The snuffling neared the entrance to her cave and stopped.
Its presence was more than sound. Erde could feel it out there, its questing like a touch on her skin, the anticipation of it an invisible hand pressing on her brain. The bear, or whatever it was, tried the entrance, with the unmistakable scrape of claws on stone. It seemed to struggle, as if it couldn’t easily fit through. Briefly, Erde was relieved. Then she realized what this meant about the size of the bear. The passage into her cave was tall and not particularly narrow. This must be a bear out of all natural proportion, not God’s bear at all but some terrible demon sent by the Devil to drag her to Hell for her crimes.
A demon. Mere stone would not keep a demon out, and sure enough, in it came. The sound as it squeezed through the opening was the metallic hiss of a sword being drawn. A smell like a snake pit invaded the cavern as the demon dragged itself across the floor.
Some vague terror began to penetrate. Erde clutched the sword to her, rolled herself into a knot beneath her cloak, and waited for fangs and claws and oblivion. The acrid snake smell enveloped her. She sensed the demon hovering above her, heard the creak of bones and scales and a vast hollow rasp of breathing as it lowered its head.
The demon nudged her. Its snout was hard and felt as big as her entire body. It pushed at her gently, snuffled a little, then eased its great weight down beside her, sighed, and began to snore.
Erde didn’t move a muscle. The demon had decided to rest, and was saving her for breakfast. Somewhere inside, a voice screamed at her to get up and run while she had the chance. She knew she should. But she was so cold, and this demon was so pleasantly warm. The deep rhythm of its breathing soothed her. After a long while of listening to it snore, Erde decided that either it had put a spell on her or she was still dreaming. She gave up waiting to die and drifted off to sleep.
* * *
She dreamed of her father again, and poor dead Rainer, fighting. Cruelly they slashed at each other with shining swords much bigger than the one she’d carried away into exile. Their dueling ground was not the familiar battlements or castle yard of Tor Alte. It was flat, a perfect horizon-stretching flatness such as she had never seen, having grown up in a mountain kingdom. It was as flat as she imagined the ocean to be, with no visible end to it. The surface of this plain was unnaturally dark, like earth seared by fire, and so hard that the men’s boots rang against it as if it were hollow, a plain of stone. In the distance behind rose a tall line of towers, shrouded in smoke. A cold wind stung the back of her throat, leaving behind the taste of metal. After a long while watching the terrible battle, unable to turn away, Erde became aware that someone beside her was speaking her name.
* * *
She woke again, the dream call still whispering in her ear. She stirred and looked up into a pair of round windows, side by side, glowing amber with the rising sun.
Erde blinked and reconsidered. She was inside a cave. These could not be windows but . . . She remembered the demon. Eyes. The demon’s eyes! Eyes as big as windows, and lit with their own inner fire. She could not scream, but her body convulsed into a protective ball beneath the folds of her cloak. Breathing shallowly, she waited, but the demon made no move. After a while, she found herself wondering why it didn’t just eat her and be done with it.
With a careful finger, Erde drew away a corner of fabric from her eyes. The glowing windows were gone. Dawn had returned to the mountain and the faint light filtering down from above outlined a great homed head set on a long muscular neck, powerful forearms and chest tapering past strong short haunches to a stubby tail that lay curled partly around her. It looked like . . . Erde decided the demon meant to trick her, looking like that, so like a . . .
A dragon?
She suppressed her sudden thrill of joy. Of course it could not be a dragon, not here in this tiny dark cave. And joy in her situation was not logical. A murderess about to be eaten should not feel joyful. It was the dream still possessing her, or the demon’s spell. But the trouble with dreams and spells was, even if you knew you were in one, it was hard to know how to get yourself out. The joy within her demanded recognition, even if it was a demon’s illusion. Besides, why couldn’t it be a dragon?
Erde considered further. If it was a dragon, it might be just as hungry as a demon. Perhaps Alla had been wrong about dragons not eating people. Perhaps a dragon and a demon were the same, like Fra Guill said, and she’d be no better off than if it was a demon pretending to be a dragon.
The demon opened his eyes again and blinked at her slowly. Its transparent lids glided crossways like shimmering curtains of rain. Erde sighed. Their beauty took her breath away.
Could she really be dreaming? Would she, raised in the rich legacy of her grandmother’s dragon-tales, have ever dreamed a dragon with no wings? And if it was demon-sent, wouldn’t it be a bit more terrifying? This creature seemed big enough when crammed into a hole in the ground with you, but looking it over, she saw it was no match at all for the fantasy dragons of her childhood. Glasswind’s back alone had been the size of her whole bedchamber. This dragon, if it was one, was closer to the size of her bed.
And what would a dream-dragon, or even a demon, expect of her, for the oddest thing about this creature was that it seemed to want something of her rather immediately. It only stared and blinked, very slowly, but Erde could feel its expectation. Strangely, she felt no threat, though beyond the expectation was hunger, hunger like a longing, like the sharp attention of the dogs in the wood yard when she passed them on her way for a walk: demanding looks, as if it was her responsibility to take them with her and tell them what to do.
Erde stirred in her nest of damp wool and clothing. One could not sit forever, waiting to be eaten. The stiffness in her limbs and a desperate need to relieve herself made it seem very likely that she was not dreaming this dragon after all. She needed to see it more clearly. Perhaps then she would know. She sat up slowly and felt for her satchel, found a candle, flint and tinder, and struck a spark. The dragon drew back in surprise, then lowered its big head again to regard the candle flame with something resembling professional interest.
Erde rose, stretching carefully. The luminous eyes followed her. Logic told her this scaly creature might snap her up at any moment, yet she felt inexplicably calm. She faced it bravely, holding the candle high to study it. It definitely looked like a dragon, or at least a sort of dragon. Staring into its eyes was like standing at the top of a tower, windblown and vertiginous, with voices calling you from a distance.
She was seized by a need to touch it. Amazed by her own boldness, she laid her palm on the bony ridge of the dragon’s snout. It felt hard and very rough, like worn granite, but suddenly the joy inside her swelled, as if something warm and needy were pouring into her from outside. The surge abated as soon as she jerked her hand away.
My goodness. Erde sat down again to think.
In her fantasies, she had never bothered about how one communicated with a dragon. She had simply endowed them with human speech. But nose-to-nose with this creature, even an ardent fantast such as herself could not imagine its blunt crocodilian jaw producing comprehensible German. Even if it did by some magic find its tongue, she would not now be able to answer it.
But Erde knew well enough that men’s words are not the only medium of communication. A dragon was, after all, an animal of sorts, and she’d never had any trouble talking with animals. She knew to put her hands on them—dogs liked their heads held and horses preferred an arm slung about their shoulders—while thinking about whatever it was she wanted them to know. Somehow, the messages got through. But dogs had relatively simple agendas and were familiar to her. A dragon was another matter entirely.
As she contemplated it, the dragon began to shift its bulk from one forearm to the other and back again. It’s getting impatient, Erde concluded. If I can’t figure out what it wants, perhaps it will eat me after all, no matter what Alla said.
She decided to test whether it would allow her freedom of movement. Holding her candle high, she stepped over the thick scaled curve of its tail and marched slowly across the cavern. It made no move to stop her. But as she neared the entrance, she was nearly brought to her knees by a piercing sense of loss welling up inside, as if from the depths of her soul. Erde cringed in pain and hugged herself, spilling hot wax on her jerkin. The dragon wrenched its bulk around in the narrow space and came trailing after her, making soft mewling noises like a puppy. When it reached her and she did not back away, it quieted. The sharp pang in her heart receded and she could stand up straight again. She stared at it, breathing hard. It stared back, beseechingly.
Erde knew then that this creature was not going to eat her, that in fact it was going to attach itself to her and did not want her to leave without it. Cautiously, she let herself feel a little of that joy inside. After all her years of dreaming and fantasizing, here was an actual living dragon, and it had chosen her. However remarkable that might be, Erde felt there was nothing in her life so far that she was as well prepared for. She put her hand on the dragon’s nose and bade it follow, and it did.
* * *
She retraced her path around the edge of the underground pool with no destination in mind, wandering for the sheer delight of watching the dragon trudge after her like a worried and faithful hound. It waded through the pool, sending huge dark ripples coursing across the cavern to reflect the candle flame in bright, ever widening circles. It followed her willingly enough through connecting tunnels and caves up toward the surface, but Erde felt its anxiety build with the steady increase of gray light seeping down from the entrance. Where the tunnel began its final ascent, the dragon stopped.
Erde blew out her candle and stowed it in her jerkin. The light from above was just bright enough to see by. She decided to make a quick search for more firewood, and started up the crumbled slope. The dragon swayed uneasily from side to side and broadcast its alarm until Erde put her hands to her ears and begged it to stop. She turned and looked back at it, its head down between its claws like the Devil’s hunting dog, a dog of living rock, all gray and dusty in the dim light.
I will be back, she thought at it carefully, in simple words, as if speaking to a small child. It lay there listlessly, with a dog’s tragic gaze, and she was sure it had not understood.
But it was not just firewood she needed. She needed to be up top under open sky, for a moment at least. The more she thought about it, the more urgent the need became. She headed upward again, her boots skittering across the brittle surface. Small cascades of broken rock rattled down behind her. She knew she was not being careful, but caution came too late. She did not hear the bear entering from above, or see him until he had already seen her, blocking the passage to his winter den.
It was a large bear, and very touchy. His eyes squinted. He could not see well, but smelled her out instantly. He snarled, and one huge paw slashed out warningly. Erde slid backward down the slope and shrank against the wall, but mere retreat did not satisfy the bear. His roar echoed through the tunnel like thunder as he launched himself down the slope. She fumbled uselessly for her dagger, caught in the folds of her shirt, then lost her footing and fell sliding backward.
Dragon! she thought blindly as she plummeted downward in a hail of gravel and angry brown bear. She hit bottom and rolled into a ball, awaiting the crush of rough fur and the terrible rake of claws. Her last tumble brought her face up, in time to see the dragon snatch up the bear, the whole head in its mouth as if that great hairy bulk weighed nothing. While Erde scrambled up, backing against the cavern wall, the dragon shook the big bear once, very hard. It held the limp corpse dangling in its jaws for a moment, then shambled over to lay it down with delicate formality at Erde’s feet.
The baron’s daughter had found a new champion.