When I finally woke up I was lying on a mound of fern fronds, and the brown stone walls around me were craggy and strange. It took a while to remember what had happened.
Bandits.
Broken glass.
Dragon.
Oh, dear.
My aunt’s hysterical lies had come true: I had been abducted by a dragon and taken away to its lair. But now the question arose of who was going to carry the tale to the nearest village and rouse the local hero to rescue me. I had serious doubts that my terrified harassers would think to do so.
There was a smooth shiver of scales on stone, and the smell of brimstone intensified. I squeezed my eyes shut, pretending to still be asleep, and listened as the dragon breathed like a bellows only a few paces from where I lay.
“You are awake, human child, I saw you looking about,” the dragon said. Its voice rumbled deeply as Theoradus’s had, but there was a softer, more mellifluous tone to it.
“Yes, noble dragon,” I said, opening my eyes and then scrambling to my feet to face my abductor.
This dragon was even larger than the massive dragon of Carlieff. His scales were a rich, mellow gold, and the horns cresting his head gleamed sapphire-blue, matching his eyes. With his wings folded neatly along his back, he was studying me with those huge blue eyes.
“I thank you for saving me from those vagabonds,” I added, remembering my manners.
“I had little choice,” the dragon said, in a voice that sounded stiff, as though somehow offended or upset about the situation. “It was a strange thing …” He trailed off. “I saved you,” he continued, “but my window was smashed beyond repair.”
“Er, yes, I noticed that,” I replied, then hazarded a guess. “Do you collect, um, windows?” It would be an odd thing indeed, if this cave-dwelling creature hoarded chapel windows. But no more odd, I thought, than Theoradus hoarding shoes he could never wear.
“Yes, I do collect windows,” the dragon said testily. “And that one was particularly fine.” Then his gaze sharpened on me. I took a step back, feeling the rough stone wall behind me and wondering wildly where the entrance was. “Do you not assume that I hoard gold?”
I lifted my chin. “You are not the first dragon I have conversed with,” I said in lofty tones, hoping to impress this one with my experience. Perhaps if he thought I was a friend of Theoradus’s he wouldn’t eat me. “I am well aware that dragons napping on piles of gold are the stuff of old grannies’ tales. Why, just the other day I was admiring the shoe collection of Theoradus of Carlieff, and he gave me this pair as a gift.” I raised my skirts to show off my blue slippers.
A gout of flame issued from the gold dragon’s snout as it gave a loud roar. I only just managed to leap out of the way as my bed of ferns and moss was torched by blue-white dragonfire.
“By the Seven Volcanoes,” the gold dragon swore. “Where did you come by those slippers?” Its head dropped down so that its long muzzle lay on the ground and it could gaze at my feet from a distance of less than a pace. I twitched nervously but tried not to move otherwise, still feeling the heat of its fire on my face.
“I got them from Theoradus, the brown dragon of Carlieff,” I repeated, my voice hardly more than a whisper and all my false bravado gone.
“He simply gave them to you? There must have been a reason. Tell me, girl, what caused him to do such a thing?” He lifted his head a little to look at my face.
“Well, my … my aunt started it all,” I said, deciding that it would be better to tell the truth. After all, this was a very large dragon. “She made me go up to his lair so that she could tell the lord’s son I had been abducted. They wanted him to rescue me, y’see, so that he would have to marry me even though I don’t have a dowry.”
The gold dragon raised its head all the way off the ground and stared at me in astonishment. “Go on,” he urged in a strangely gentle voice.
I stumbled my way through the entire strange story of talking with Theoradus and his friend Amacarin, of making the bargain, and trying on hundreds of pairs of shoes.
“They both acted shocked that I had chosen these,” I reported. “But Theoradus did not go back on his part of the bargain: he let me keep them even though he clearly didn’t want to.”
“Of course he did,” the dragon said with a sulphurous snort. “Continue.”
On I went, through meeting the Carlieff lord’s son on the path and starting out for the King’s Seat. I told him about the less-than-kindly farmers I had met and my ambition to find work. By the time I was finished, my throat was hoarse and my nose was running. I pulled out a handkerchief embroidered with delicate spears of gladiolus flowers and blew my nose.
“I see.” The gold dragon’s voice was hardly more than a murmur, or what passed for a murmur coming from a creature so huge. “Those slippers … This is a most intriguing situation.”
“Why?” I asked. What was so fascinating about a pair of women’s shoes? One would think that these enormous, fire-breathing monsters would have something more to do with their time than bicker and snort and stare at my slippers!
The gold paused again. “You truly have no idea what makes those shoes any different?”
“If I had,” I answered, letting my confusion and frustration show through, “I wouldn’t keep asking every dragon I’ve ever met about them.” I folded my arms, taking the same stance my mother had always used when she was in a huff with one of us.
“How many dragons have you met?” The dragon sounded almost amused.
“Three so far, and that’s more than most humans can claim,” I retorted.
“True,” he said. He sounded melancholy. “Things were different once, you know.”
“Were they?” I edged along the wall, trying to look for a way out as stealthily as I could. I hoped that he was not going to reminisce about the olden days, when dragons carried off young girls all the time, or so the town storyteller had led me to believe.
“Yes, four hundred years ago it was not unusual for a human and a dragon to be friends.”
That stopped me. Friends? None of the stories I had heard ever mentioned dragons being friends with a human. They were always eating them or kidnapping them or burning them to ash.
“I-I didn’t know that,” I stammered finally. “But what has that got to do with my slippers?”
“You were given those slippers because Theoradus, whatever else he might be, is a creature of honour,” the gold dragon said with a snap of his jaws. “He promised you any shoes you wanted.”
I had a very strong feeling that there was much more going on here than he was telling me. But I was not foolish enough to pester a dragon, no matter how badly I wanted my questions answered.
The dragon drew his head back and looked off into the dimness at the far end of the cave, which was not large. He hummed a little to himself and it made my back teeth vibrate in a not altogether unpleasant way. I dared to ask a question, carefully avoiding the topic of footwear.
“So, did you have many human friends?” I was hoping that he would say “Yes”, which would indicate that he didn’t always eat the humans he encountered.
“I had one,” he replied shortly.
“Oh,” I said, cursing myself. He probably had eaten them.
“Since you have shared your story, allow me to share mine,” he said finally, with a sigh that blew my skirts against my legs. “I am called Shardas, and I have lived in this hill within this forest for some seven hundred years.”
“Pardon me?” I interrupted as politely as I could. “May I ask two questions?”
“Of course.” He nodded genially.
“First: May I sit down?”
“Oh, certainly! Forgive my lack of manners. It has been some centuries since I have hosted a human.”
I seated myself gingerly on an outcropping of rock, which proved to be surprisingly comfortable. Although my feet were not sore despite all the walking I had done in the past week, they felt sort of itchy, and it was bothering me. I wiggled my toes, but the itching did not subside.
“And your second question?” Shardas prompted.
“Oh, yes. If you’re over seven hundred years old, and Theoradus said that he was six hundred and something, what does that make you?”
“What does that make me what?”
“Are you an old dragon, or a young one? You seem very … spry. But the oldest human I’ve ever heard of was Gammer Tate, and he was only eighty-four when he died.”
“Ah. Let us say that we are comfortably in our middle years, Theoradus and I, though I am a full century older.”
“Goodness.”
“Yes. The oldest dragon I have ever heard of was Minchin One-Eyed, and she lived to near three thousand years.” His scales rippled in a strange motion that I recognised as a shudder. “But if I have to linger on in that state – toothless, blind in my only remaining eye, and with my scales coming off in patches – I want to be harpooned through the ear instead.”
“Er,” was the only response I could think of. Though, remembering what Gammer Tate had looked like at the end of his life, I had to agree. The harpoon seemed a bit excessive, however.
“Where was I?” A long forked tongue ran out of Shardas’s muzzle as he thought.
“Sorry. You’ve lived in this forest for seven hundred years,” I recited.
“Ah. Thank you.” He shook his head. “And in that time, we dragons have all but completely withdrawn from human interaction, though you seem to be the exception to the rule.”
“Well, I hadn’t believed that there really was a dragon living in the Carlieff hills until I met Theoradus three weeks ago,” I admitted. I pursed my lips and thought. “Speaking of Gammer Tate, he always used to tell the story of how he had once seen two green dragons flying together above the trees when he was cutting wood. And my mother was from a town just outside the King’s Seat. There was supposedly a red dragon living near there; it used to fly over the town every autumn.” I nodded my head. “Everyone talks about dragons, but I’ve never heard of anyone else ever seeing one face-to-face, let alone talking with it. Him.”
“Precisely. The stories of maidens being carried off by dragons and rescued by knights have persisted, but for the most part they were never true.
“We used to be sought out by the truly gifted alchemists, for shed scales or drops of blood to use in their medicines and experiments, but no more.” He heaved a sigh. “My friend was an alchemist. We became acquainted during my third century. He very nearly found a cure for the tumour-sickness that afflicts you humans.”
“What became of him?” My grandmother had died of the tumour-sickness, and it had been a terrible thing to see.
“He died of old age on the brink of his breakthrough,” Shardas said sadly. “And I had not enough knowledge of his experiment to finish it.”
“If you used to be friends with an alchemist, and most of the stories about maidens being carried off really are just stories, then why do you continue to avoid humans?” I cocked my head to the side. “What happened?”
“King Milun the First came to the throne,” Shardas said heavily.
“And that was a bad thing?” The teacher of the local school I had attended until the age of twelve had always raved about Milun the Protector, as he was known. In her learned opinion, he was the greatest king Feravel had ever had. “He saved our land from being overrun by the Roulaini.”
Shardas blew through his nostrils a few times, looking at some point over my shoulder. “Let us merely say that while he was a great king for the humans, he was a disaster for the dragons.”
“I didn’t know that he ruled over the dragons, too,” I remarked, bemused. “Although, I do remember that some of the dragons fought with him to repel the Roulaini invaders.”
“He didn’t rule over the dragons,” Shardas said in a haughty voice. “And lest I forget myself and let loose a stream of flame that would almost surely singe the hair from your head, I shall not elaborate on what Milun the First did to the dragons. Suffice it to say, after he came to the throne, my people found it prudent to withdraw from human society.”
“I see,” I said, although I didn’t really. And while Shardas seemed to be kind, I didn’t know how many questions I dared ask before he would grow tired of me, or (worse) burn me to ash or eat me.
“I need to go into my inner chamber and bespeak another dragon,” Shardas said. “You may follow, if you like.”
Lacking anything better to do, I trailed behind his spiked tail. It would be senseless to run, I realised, since I had no idea where I was or how to get back on the King’s Road.
Then I stepped into the inner, much larger chamber and all thought of escape left me. My mouth hanging open like the northern bumpkin I was, I gazed around at the most gorgeous sight I had ever seen, tears coming to my eyes at the beauty of it all.
Glass. Everywhere I looked there was glass. I had had no idea that there were so many colours in the world, let alone that glass could be made in such hues. The cave was filled with stained-glass windows of every size, and depicting every beast and god and legendary hero imaginable. They hung from the ceiling on fine silver chains, and somehow, despite the fact that we were deep in a hill in the middle of Rath Forest, light shone through them.
“How did you do this?” I asked the question reverently, humbly. My fingers itched to find silk and floss and embroider the colours and patterns I was seeing, but I knew that I would never be able to capture the light that gleamed through them. Squares of sapphire blue, emerald green, and ruby red made a patchwork quilt on Shardas’s folded wings and gleaming scales.
“There is a small opening at the top of the cave,” he said in a pleased voice. “And I use mirrors to reflect the light through the windows.”
“Beautiful,” I said, but the word felt inadequate.
“Jerontin, my alchemist friend, helped me position the mirrors,” Shardas told me. “Would you like to see his laboratory?”
I sensed that I was being offered a rare opportunity and nodded my head in a respectful manner. It occurred to me, as Shardas led the way to the curtained doorway into another cavern, that I had never seen an alchemist’s laboratory. I found myself very curious.
It did not disappoint. There were clear glass jars of strange liquids and wooden utensils whose usage I could only guess at. There was a set of brass scales ranging in size from small enough to measure a pinch of salt to large enough to weigh a horse. Heavy pottery crocks stoppered with cork lined a wall, each one labelled with a piece of yellowed vellum that had been glued to the side.
“Yarrow, tansy, juniper, powdered dragon scale, dog hair, tiger teeth, monkey bile,” I read in fascination. “Everything in here is so clean,” I said, after looking around some more.
“I have tried to keep it as he left it,” Shardas said in a sad voice. “Jerontin was very particular about keeping things clean.”
“It’s very –” But then I couldn’t think of anything to say. How could I tell a dragon that I thought it sweet he was keeping up his friend’s laboratory centuries after his death?
“Shardas? Are you there?” A rumbling dragon voice came from the main cavern, saving me from having to think of what else to say. “Shardas?”
“I am here, Feniul,” Shardas called over his shoulder. He turned and walked through the opening at the far end of the cave.
Once again I followed his long tail through the curtained doorway and back into the glory of his glass collection.
“By the First Fires, what is that?” The voice that had summoned us came from a still pool on the floor only a pace away, and I jumped.
“It’s a human,” Shardas said in his dry way. “You’ve seen a human before, haven’t you, Feniul?”
“Of course I know it’s a human, but what are you doing with it?” The other dragon, which I could now see was a bright green, made a disgusted face as best it could. “You’re not going to eat it, are you?”
I started again, and looked anxiously at Shardas.
“No,” Shardas said, rolling his eyes. “I’m not going to eat it. And it’s a she, actually.”
“You haven’t taken to collecting them, too, have you?” The green dragon sounded as if there were nothing more appalling than collecting humans.
“I still prefer glass,” came Shardas’s mild reply. “I was just about to bespeak you, Feniul. But what was it you wanted?”
“Er. Well. The sight of that human female has quite driven it out of my head,” Feniul said prissily. “It was something about this summer’s migration of … Stop that, Azarte!” The dragon’s head bobbed out of view.
Shardas looked at me and said in a low voice, “He collects dogs.”
“I beg your pardon?” I stared down into the pool, but all I could make out was a massive green shoulder and part of a wing. “Dog dogs? Live dogs?”
“What other kind of dog is there?” Feniul’s face had reappeared. “Azarte is altogether too fond of treats,” he said in the tone of a harried mother whose favourite child has got into the jam again.
“Er, yes, that must be a great trial to you,” Shardas replied. “That’s why I don’t collect living things,” he murmured to me, and I stifled a giggle.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Feniul. What did you want to ask about the migration?”
“I didn’t know dragons migrated,” I put in, fascinated.
“Little human, what you don’t know about dragons would fill my cave,” Feniul said nastily. “We don’t migrate. Your species does.”
“Humans don’t migrate,” I argued, more puzzled than offended.
“Then explain why flocks of them clog the roads and paths to your king’s city every summer,” Feniul huffed at me, rippling the water of the pool.
“He’s speaking of the Great Fair and the Merchants’ Ball,” Shardas explained. “We try to keep out of the way of the humans travelling in the forest in general, but at that time of year there are so many that we must plan our hunting even more carefully.”
“What would happen if some humans did see you?” I looked from one dragon to the other. “A farmer travelling to the fair with his prize pig is hardly in a position to slay a dragon, by accident or on purpose.”
“So you say,” Feniul muttered darkly.
“Since the unpleasantness with Milun the First, it is not our habit to allow humans to see us if at all possible,” Shardas told me in his patient way. “It is better like this. For both our kinds.”
“You let me see you,” I pointed out. “You rescued me from those bandits.”
“You did what?” Feniul shook his emerald head with a rattle of scales and horns. “I will never understand you, Shardas. Never.”
“Nor I, you,” Shardas responded, giving a significant look to the brown puppy that could be seen squirming between Feniul’s forelegs. “And yet we remain friends.”
“I suppose,” Feniul said in his prissy manner. “Shall we simply keep to the same schedule as last year, then?” He was giving me the eye, as though he didn’t trust me, which he probably didn’t. But then, I could hardly blame him.
“Yes. If you would be so good as to inform the others?” Shardas folded his legs and gazed down into the pool more intently. He, too, was watching the puppy, his long, forked tongue protruding from the corner of his fanged mouth in what I took to be a sly grin.
“I would be happy to –” Feniul turned his face away sharply, looking at something neither Shardas nor I could see. “Azarte! No! Bad dog! Bad dog!”
We both stared into the enchanted pool in fascination. Feniul had turned mostly away from us, so that all we could see of him were part of his massive hindquarters and his long tail. The fat brown puppy, released from his master’s grip, was happily scrambling among the spiny ridges along Feniul’s tail. Other dogs could now be seen tumbling around the rush-strewn floor of Feniul’s cave or napping on piles of blankets. Large bones that I hoped were from sheep or cattle were scattered around or in the process of being chewed by various dogs.
“Do a lot of dragons collect live animals?” I whispered to Shardas.
“Not really, but Feniul’s always been a bit odd.” Shardas sighed. “He’s a cousin – a very distant cousin, mind you – but I still have a clan obligation to him,” he told me in a mutter.
I recoiled from the pool as a long narrow head suddenly came into view. A lolling red tongue framed by sharp yellow teeth made a startling contrast to the sleek black-and-white fur and backswept ears.
It looked like a hairy dragon.
“Yipe!” I squealed, much to my embarrassment. “What is that? Are baby dragons furry?”
“Of course not.” Shardas snorted. “That’s Azarte, I believe.”
The dog grinned at us and then backed away from the pool, giving me a better view. As dogs went, he was larger than most. In fact, I was willing to bet there were few ponies that could match up to this leggy animal. He was long and narrow, mostly white with a couple of large black patches on his head and back, and he had a long, bushy tail. The woolly fur on his chest was matted with something red and sticky and he was drooling red as well. At first I thought it was blood, and almost averted my eyes in disgust, but then I noticed a definite pinkish hue that was not found in nature.
“Bad dog,” Feniul reasserted, coming back into the frame of the enchanted pool. “He’s broken into a bag of mallow sweets and eaten them all,” the green dragon said with frustration. “No matter where I hide my sweets, he finds them within a day. He’s going to make himself sick!” The enormous beast sounded near to tears.
Azarte, apparently sated, laid his long body down alongside his enormous master and heaved a great sigh. In a matter of seconds he was sound asleep and snoring.
“Yes, well, that’s too bad, Feniul,” Shardas said when it became clear that the other dragon was going to be clucking and fussing over his dog for some time. “But I had better go and figure out what to do with this human maid now.”
“What? Oh, yes! Why was it you picked up that human?” Feniul’s attention was pulled away from his dogs with an effort.
“For reasons that I will explain to you at a later date,” Shardas said. “Perhaps.” And he stirred the pool with one long claw, breaking up the image of his (distant) cousin.
Shardas heaved a sigh not unlike Azarte’s and turned to me. My knees started shaking again. No matter how many hours I spent conversing pleasantly with dragons, they were still dragons: mighty, ferocious damsel-eaters, if the legends were to be believed, although, according to Shardas, at least, they weren’t.
I bit my lip as I looked up at Shardas. He blew smoke out of his nostrils and looked down at me.
“You want to go to the King’s Seat,” he stated finally.
“Yes, sir,” I said in a small voice.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told me gently. “I’m trying to figure out what the best and safest way will be for you to take. What are your plans, again?”
“I want to find work embroidering,” I said. I pulled the gladiolus-decorated handkerchief from my pocket and held it up.
He lowered his head and studied it with one sapphire eye, then the other. He reared back after a moment’s scrutiny and nodded at me.
“I am not a collector of fine embroidery,” he admitted, “but it looks well made to me.”
“Thank you. My mother was very skilled, and she taught me.”
“What do you think you will need in order to find work of this kind?” For a dragon he had a very practical mind.
“Better samples of my work than this dirty handkerchief,” I said after thinking for a moment. “I had some embroidered scarves and woven sashes, but I’ve had to trade them all in return for food or lodging. I need to have different types of embroidery to display, to prove that I know the various techniques. I don’t have the cloth to make a dress or anything, so I suppose my own gown will have to do, to show my skill with plain work.” I sighed at this: my gown was an uninspiring brown colour and not new.
“I see.” Shardas nodded thoughtfully. “What do you require in order to make more embroidery?”
“Just some time.” I shrugged. “I have some linen and a lot of yarn and embroidery floss in my pack.” Then I looked up at him in dismay. “My pack!”
“Your pack is right over there,” he reassured me, pointing with a long claw.
“Oh, thank you!”
“You are welcome. Take all the time you need. I shall not charge you for bed and board, as your people say. And when you are ready, I shall take you to the King’s Seat myself.” He nodded his great head.
“A thousand thank-yous,” I said, tears pricking my eyes. Then a thought struck me. “But why are you being so kind to me?” I tried to keep suspicion out of my voice and simply sound humble. Was he trying to catch me off guard, or fatten me up for better eating?
“Perhaps to prove to you that we dragons are not all as bad as the bards would make us out to be,” he said with an airy wave of one foreleg. “Or perhaps because I miss my alchemist friend.” He strolled over to one of the larger windows and gazed intently at the scene it depicted: a young woman in a green gown playing the harp while a dragon wheeled overhead. “Or perhaps because something about you reminds me of a fair dragoness I knew long, long ago,” he finished in more sombre tones.
“Oh. Thank you.”
I went over to my pack and began to lay out my embroidery floss and needles. I was starting to feel hungry, but ignored it. When my stomach growled loudly, however, Shardas laughed and went into another chamber. He came back with an immense wheel of cheese and a basket of apples. Putting aside my silks, I let the dragon show me how to impale the fruit and chunks of hard cheese on to a stick. I held the stick away from me, and he used the barest trickle of flame to toast our food. We feasted until I thought I would burst. Then Shardas settled himself down in the middle of the room to contemplate his windows, and I began my sampling set.
A few hours later, we heard Feniul call from the pool, insisting that Shardas give Azarte a talking-to. Shardas and I rolled our eyes in unison, and then he began to sing to drown out the sound of barking dogs.
In a great deep voice the gold dragon sang “The Ballad of Jylla and the Fair Youth of Trin”, a song my father had often sung in the evening. Tears pricking my eyes, I bent over my sewing. The piece I was working on was meant to be a curling vine, but in my mind it was the sinuous curve of a dragon’s tail.