If you would seek out dragons, seek first for a green-eyed girl.
—Dragonslayer’s Guyde
Dragons,” said the dragonslayer, “are the sneakiest creatures on Hort’s green earth.”
“Truly?” Mirym asked.
“Oh, yes.” The youth reached for another seedcake. Steam from his tea twined upward, mingled with dust motes in a shaft of morning light. Lyf sat on Kaeldra’s lap, drowsed against her.
“They have to be,” he continued, “because they’re so vulnerable.”
“What! Surely, Master Jeorg, you don’t mean to tell us those dreadful creatures are vulnerable,” Ryfenn said, pushing a crock of corberry sweetpulp in his direction. Last night after supper Ryfenn had bustled about, taking hay and blankets for him into the clayhouse. That poor boy is going to slay those dragons for us, she had said. We can’t send him out again on a night like this.
This farin youth had won Ryfenn over in a few short hours, Kaeldra thought, and she had been trying for years.
Now he slathered his seedcake with sweetpulp and spoke between bites. “It is not widely known—except among those of us who have studied them, of course. But a dragon’s underbelly is as soft as”—he looked round for an object of comparison—“as this loaf of bread. One swift jab, thusly”—he plunged his knife into the loaf—“and pfft. It’s ended.” Kaeldra winced, recalling the softness of the draclings’ bellies.
“Indeed,” the dragonslayer continued, “they’ve been known to kill themselves by accidentally dragging over a sharp rock.”
“That can’t be!” Mirym cried. “Otherwise we wouldn’t need dragonslayers at all, we’d just—”
“Oh, well,” he said, breaking the bread and spreading it with sweetpulp, “I didn’t say it was easy. The problem is getting close enough for that one jab. Somehow you’ve got to keep them from roasting you with their breath or raking you with their claws. Their teeth are no pot of clams, either. And, as I said, they’re sneaky.”
“So what do you do?” Mirym asked. “It sounds hopeless.”
Ryfenn poured more tea into the dragonslayer’s mug. It was strange, almost amusing, Kaeldra thought, how the young man became easy of tongue before the admiring attentions of Mirym and Ryfenn. Before Granmyr had left, he had been more quiet, as if testing the impact of each word.
Strange, too, was the way Kaeldra felt drawn to him one moment and fearful the next. But, “I trust not this Master Jeorg,” Granmyr had told Kaeldra late last night, “and neither should you.”
“There’s an art to it,” he was saying now. “You have to study the lore, plan your strategy. Well, take Porphy, for example. A dragon was laying waste to the countryside near his town, oh, this was hundreds of years ago, but the story is clearly transcribed in our archives. Porphy had read all the writings on dragons, and he knew that their bellies are their most vulnerable parts. He knew also of these.” The youth drew from his tunic a tiny silvery cylinder. “A single, high-pitched note will entrance them. Here, let me show you.” He blew on the pipe; a shrill note pierced the air. He put away the pipe, then continued.
“Trouble is, the trance lasts only until you run out of breath. When you sound the pipe again, the dragon is alerted and will not be tranced a second time. Anyhow, Porphy found the path between the dragon’s lair and its water supply, and he dug a pit. . . .”
Lyf stirred, looked up and smiled a sleepy smile. She had a clean smell to her, Kaeldra thought, a milky smell, like a newborn baby. Kaeldra closed her eyes, still weary from her journey. The Krag’s voice droned on and on like a bee on a summer’s day. The things he spoke of had nothing to do with Kaeldra; had no more substance than steam or light.
Between Kaeldra’s arms, Lyf’s body stretched with breath; under Kaeldra’s hand her heartthrob pulsed.
“. . . incredibly light,” he was saying. “Young dragons actually float in their sleep.”
“No, they don’t,” Kaeldra said.
“What?” the youth asked, taken aback.
“Oh, I—” Kaeldra looked down. Why had she said that? She was supposed to be on her guard. “Nothing,” she said.
Silence filled the room, thick as smoke. Kaeldra concentrated hard on Lyf’s hair, smoothing it with her fingers. And then he was speaking again, of heroes and of dragons, of bravery and of guile.
Granmyr had been silent, too, last night, when Kaeldra had told her privately of the dragons. Later, Granmyr had spoken of eyes. “It is the green in your eyes,” she had said, and it seemed to Kaeldra that her voice held something new, a kind of respect, mixed with sadness. “You must go back. You must not break a promise to a dragon.”
But now, groping back in her mind, Kaeldra could not quite recall having made a promise. What exactly had she said? The memory had dimmed and receded until Kaeldra could almost imagine that it had been a terrible nightmare, that it had not really happened at all.
“. . . a little like Kaeldra’s only greener,” Jeorg was saying.
“Her eyes are hazel.” Granmyr stood in the doorway.
The youth started. “Ah, well, actually—” he began. “If you see them in a certain light—” He leaned forward, gazed into Kaeldra’s eyes and said with sudden defiance, “In my country they say eyes like those are dragon-sayer’s eyes.”
Kaeldra felt the warmth creep up her face. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t, not while this young man was looking at her; she couldn’t pull away from the astonishing blue of his eyes.
“We’re not in your country,” Granmyr snapped.
“True,” the youth said, turning at last from Kaeldra. “Still,” he murmured under his breath, “it’s odd.”
“That it is,” Kaeldra heard Ryfenn say softly. “Odd, indeed.”
The Krag left after breakfast. He retrieved his falcon from the clayhouse and headed across the hills toward Wyrmward on a dapple-white mare. Later that day Granmyr moved her wheel back into the clayhouse. Little by little life slipped again into its familiar pattern, except that it was lambing time, and Kaeldra stayed in the fields from daybreak until long after dusk. Lyf grew in heft and vigor every day, and the rash began to fade from her cheek.
It was easy for Kaeldra to keep the dragons a secret, for sometimes she did not quite believe in them herself. But one evening, a quarter-moon after her return, two days after the dragon’s milk had run out, she came in from the fields early to find Lyf asleep.
“Ryfenn,” Kaeldra asked, “did Lyf miss her nap today?”
“No. She napped.”
“Look, she’s asleep already.”
Ryfenn put down her spoon and came to Kaeldra. Lyf breathed softly on a blanket near the fire. “Well,” Ryfenn said, “she needs her rest. She’s recovering.” Ryfenn went back to her cooking, but for the rest of the evening she was silent, and furrows creased her brow.
Four days later, the rash was back, sharply etched on Lyf’s cheek. Now she was always sleeping when Kaeldra came home. Mirym said Lyf stayed awake all morning, but after the noon meal she lay down and did not rise until the following day.
Kaeldra stroked Lyf’s face and felt a dread and a hopelessness. Fiora reared up in her mind, filled her thoughts.
“The milk was taking, Kael,” Mirym said, as though trying to console her for letting them down. “It just wasn’t—”
“I know. It wasn’t enough.”
As Lyf grew worse, Kaeldra often caught Ryfenn staring at her, as if Lyf’s illness were somehow her fault. Sometimes, as Ryfenn turned away, Kaeldra thought she saw her move her thumb and little finger in the sign-against-evil. Once Kaeldra let a mug slip from her hands; it broke upon the floor.
“Isn’t that just like you,” Ryfenn snapped. “Breaking things, losing your amulet. Now you’ll never marry, and you’ll be on my hands forever.”
On the fourteenth day, the day Fiora had commanded Kaeldra to return, Granmyr came to where she was tending sheep in the graze. Kaeldra watched as she picked her way up the snow-patched hillside, surrounded by a shifting tide of sheep. She sat by Kaeldra, on a boulder near the blackwood copse. “Lyf needs more milk,” Granmyr said.
Kaeldra picked at the moss on the boulder. She knew it.
“When will you go?”
A newborn lamb bleated pitifully. Behind her, Kaeldra felt the shadow of the mountains stretch down and chill her back.
“I don’t want to,” she said.
Granmyr’s hand lightly touched her own. “I know, child,” she said. “But you must.”
“Couldn’t someone else go?”
Granmyr shook her head. “I’ll say that I sent you for medicine. Mirym can tend the flock.”
“I’m afraid,” Kaeldra whispered.
“You are the one fate has named. Your eyes—”
“I don’t care about my eyes! I wish they were brown or gray or even blue. Any color but green!”
Granmyr sighed. “Kara’s gift is not an easy one to own, I grant you. Your mother—”
Kaeldra looked up. Granmyr seldom spoke of her mother. When Kaeldra had used to ask about her, Granmyr avoided answering. In time Kaeldra had come to believe that her mother had done something shameful. No one ever spoke of a father, and Kaeldra was afraid to ask.
“Your mother was forced to flee Kragrom, for the ruling powers feared her gift. They thought she possessed a wizardry that could one day overthrow them. She was the last of Kara’s heirs, except, of course, for you. She was ill and knew she had not long to live. So he sent the two of you to me.”
“Who sent us? My father?”
“No. He was killed in the wars long before. It was—Hush!” Granmyr gripped Kaeldra’s hand. Then Kaeldra heard it, too, a thundering in the ground.
And a motley troop of horsemen galloped up from the valley, scattering sheep. Kaeldra jumped up to collect the flock, but Granmyr would not release her hand.
“What do you want?” Granmyr demanded of the leader, Rhyll Ilyff, the smithy. Behind him, shifting uneasily in their saddles, were men from neighboring farms and from the village of Wyrmward.
“Move aside, old woman. We would speak with the green-eyed one.”
Granmyr pulled Kaeldra behind her, which was absurd, for the top of Granmyr’s head came only to Kaeldra’s chin. “The only eyes here are brown and hazel. Unless you would speak with sheep—”
Rhyll Ilyff leaned forward in his saddle, anger darkening his face. “That girl’s eyes are green enough for our purpose.”
“And what would that be?”
“You know very well, old woman. A dragon menaces the crofts of Elythia; the Kragish youth tells it. A green-eyed one could track the beast, bring us glory in place of shame. Now move aside!”
Granmyr did not budge. Rhyll Ilyff spurred his horse forward; Kaeldra grabbed Granmyr, twisted away and fell, dragging the old woman down with her. But Granmyr shook her off and rose to her feet, shouting, “You, Yan Styval! You bounced Kaeldra on your knee when she was little more than a babe. And now you would send her to track dragons?”
Yan looked embarrassed and squirmed in his saddle. “She always was a strange one,” he muttered.
“And you, Jayk Pyreth, and you, Brys Wyffad, and—Wynn Calyff! Does your mother know you’re here?”
Wynn’s face reddened. He did not meet Granmyr’s eyes. “Yes, she—no, she—I can do what I please; I’m grown now, I don’t have to ask my mother.”
“Grown, are you? Come to get a young girl to do your work. And what would you do? Tie her up like a horse thief and flog her until she produces your dragon? Is this the glory of which you speak? Shame on you! Shame on you all!”
“Don’t listen to the old shrew!” Rhyll Ilyff spun round and addressed the men. “We won’t hurt the girl. She’s got green eyes. I told you what that means. She likely knows where it is even now!”
But the others were muttering amongst themselves, casting furtive glances at Granmyr and Kaeldra. Brys Wyffad turned his horse around and headed back across the graze. Then, two and three at a time, the others followed.
“Cowards!” shouted their leader, galloping after them. “Afraid of an old woman and a girl!”
When the last faint hoofbeat had stilled, Granmyr turned to Kaeldra.
“You must go to the dragon,” she said. “You must leave tonight.”