Seeker of Secrets

by Deck Davis

  This was the traveler gate, and a few minutes north, where the town fence swung in a curve, there was the merchant entrance, where a caravan was parked and looked ready to leave.

  A kamolg male was sitting in the driver’s seat. He held his horses’ reins in one hand and a whip in the other. He raised the whip and seemed ready to lash it down on the horse nearest to him, but then stopped, and he leaned forward and gave it a gentle pat on the rump instead. The horses spurred into motion, and the caravan drove away, its wheels clacking over the rocky road.

  Joshua fixed his sights on the road ahead of him, and he gave Roebuck a stroke. Roebuck walked with a confident trot, seeming like he’d enjoyed the attention the stable boy, who loved his job, had given him. Or maybe it was because Joshua had increased his bond with him after stopping the harpy boy from sitting on him.

  A cry rose from the basket strapped in front of his saddle. Joshua leaned forward and looked into the face of an extremely unhappy goblin baby, its expression caught between terror and anger so that it was impossible to tell what it wanted or why it was crying.

  “It’s your turn to change his loin cloth,” said Benjen, speaking the words with a tone of horror, as though even thinking about having to do it sent a chill through him.

  Joshua sniffed, and from the leafy smell in the air he was pleased to guess that Gobber was crying for a different reason. He reached into the saddle bag to his right and pulled out some of the beef jerky Kordrude had given them back in Dyrewood. A human baby couldn’t have eaten it, but goblin children weren’t just born with facial hair, but had stubbly teeth, too.

  Like Joshua, Gobber was a meat-eater, and he couldn’t get enough of the salty, cured beef. Benjen had tried to get him to chew on carrots a couple of times, but his efforts were in vain. In their company of three, it was meat-eaters two, vegetarians one.

  “You’re a natural,” said Benjen.

  “Anything to stop him crying. At least there are no wolves around here. Not so close to the town, anyway.”

  “Do you ever see yourself having children?”

  “No.”

  “Not ever?”

  “Goblin babies aside, and we really need to do something about him, I don’t think so. This was always the thing for me, you know? The guildhouse, fixing it up, meeting heroes.”

  “I think maybe I’ll have a few.”

  This shocked Joshua enough that he pulled on Roebuck’s reins a little. As much as he thought he knew everything about Benjen, his friend always surprised him. “Really?”

  “Yeah. You can’t drink beer and travel with your best pal forever. And sure, right now I’d run a mile if a, uh, accident happened and I found myself becoming a father, but one day, yeah. You’ve gotta settle down sometime.”

  “Oh.”

  “Something wrong?” asked Benjen.

  “I guess I just didn’t look that far ahead. I mean, this’ll take years and we’ll be too busy with the guild for anything else, and…”

  “And what?”

  “You’ll think I’m being soppy.”

  “Joshua, I know you well enough to know how bloody soppy you can get. Especially after a few too many beers.”

  “It’s just a little weird to think there will be a time when our lives take us different ways. I know it will happen, I’m not that naïve, but it’s weird to think about.”

  Benjen pulled his reins so that Firemane trotted closer to Roebuck. He reached across and squeezed Joshua’s shoulder. “That’s a long way away, pal.”

  Binding of the Seeker

  Store of Secrets updated

  [Minor] Secret added: Benjen’s Secret Wish

  [Minor] Secret Completed: Benjen’s Secret Wish

  Seeker knowledge +2

  Seeker Knowledge Level: 1 [39/50]

  Well, this was new. So far, he’d boosted his seeker binding through seeing new places and new races, but he always thought he’d known Benjen better than he knew anybody else. He hadn’t expected to boost his binding by talking to him.

  Then again, his father had told him that learning secrets would increase the binding, too. His perception and his lie skills would help his discover things about people, and through that he’d boost his seeker binding and level it up.

  He wondered whether to tell Benjen about it, but he doubted that his friend would be happy that his heart-felt confession about wanting children had benefitted Joshua in some way. You didn’t tell people secrets so they could get something out of it.

  He made a pact with himself, right there. As much as he wanted to earn new seeker binding abilities, he’d never cajole secrets out of the people close to him. If they chose to tell him, then fine, but he wouldn’t drag their secrets from them for his own benefit.

  “You’re right, Benjen. It’s a long way away, I guess. To be honest, right now it’s hard to look beyond the dragon.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “I think I have every right to be.”

  “Well,” said Benjen, “Let’s hope this remedy works. What are we supposed to do with it? Eat it?”

  “The priest said it’s the aroma that calms the dragon. Something about the mix of herbs that makes them docile. We just need to rub it on ourselves before we approach.”

  “It’s awful big risk to take, especially on their say-so. But you had them pegged straight away, didn’t you?”

  “Something wasn’t right there. With this whole thing, in fact. Whoever heard of a dragon staying so close to a town? Sure, they swoop over from time to time, but they don’t set up nest near a bunch of people.”

  “I’ve got to admit, those priests had me fooled. But then, you know me. Dung for brains.”

  “You know that isn’t true.”

  “Ah,” said Benjen, “maybe. But it was strange watching you use your negotiator class. It’s almost like you become a different person. Your voice sounds a little strange.”

  “That’s the class at work. It adds weight to what I say. Makes people more inclined to believe me.”

  “Let’s hope the priests didn’t have the same skills, and that they haven’t just sold us some rosemary and basil. When we rub it on ourselves we’ll be like walking, talking, seasoned meat.”

  “Do you think this is insane?” said Joshua. “I mean, think about what we’re planning to do. We’re going to walk up to a dragon and, what? Ask it to leave?”

  “I don’t see what else we can do. We couldn’t afford to pay the priests to move it, and I didn’t travel all the way here to just go home at the first obstacle. Even if it is a bloody big obstacle. Besides, we’re not going to march straight up to it.”

  Joshua nodded. “Right. We’ll use the remedy so that Orogoth doesn’t attack us on sight and hang back and work things out from there. If we can get a little closer, maybe something will stick out.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, something we can do.”

  Their horses carried them down the traveler road, and Joshua did what he hadn’t had chance to do until now; he took a second to just forget everything and look around him.

  He paused to breathe the smells of the trees that couldn’t have grown anywhere but in the east of Fortuna, with its slightly-humid climate that made it prone to storms. To look up at the sky, too, because even the sun was different here. It was the same one that shone on the west, but the light was different.

  The sky back home always had an overcast tint to it, grey and cloudy and always threatening rain. Maybe his own attitude played a part in how he saw it, though. He’d always felt so dragged down by his old village that perhaps that had showed in the way he saw the sky.

  Benjen pulled Firemane to a sudden stop. Roebuck was so accustomed to following the lead of the younger, stronger horse now, that he stopped too.

  “Is that a guy over there?” said Benjen.

  He pointed, and Joshua followed his finger to the hill which the guildhouse rested on. There, at the top of it, was the dragon. Unlike how he’d alway
s imagined them, its scales didn’t glitter in the sun and in fact, it looked a little washed out. He couldn’t see its wings, either, so they must have been tucked under its body.

  In front of the dragon was a madman. He must have been one, because this tall, gangly figure was walking toward the beast. The dragon stared at him with one eye open, the other closed.

  “Wait…is that the guy from Dyrewood? The crow guy?”

  “The crowsie,” said Joshua. “I can’t tell…wait, yeah! That’s him. What the hell is he doing? How did he get here?”

  “He came here seeking death by the looks of it. Doesn’t he know what a dragon is? Don’t they teach little crowsies not to approach sleeping monsters?”

  “We better get over there before he gets killed.”

  Benjen raised his reins, but Joshua put his hand on his shoulder. “The remedy,” he said.

  “Right.”

  Joshua took the glass vial from his coat pocket. Inside it was a pile of green and yellow herbs, with a few red weeds mixed in. They were mostly ground to dust, but some leaves had escaped the grinding and were whole. He popped the cork, and a sour aroma met him.

  “Hells, that stinks,” said Benjen.

  “At least it doesn’t smell like rosemary or basil. Here.”

  Benjen took a pinch of the remedy from him. “And we just rub it on ourselves?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  “I can’t imagine a stink like this calming anything down.”

  With specs of the sour remedy dust on their clothes, and some buried in Benjen’s fiery beard, they were ready; two pungent, slightly-worried, would-be dragon tamers. Or maybe dragon negotiators. Who knew, maybe his class would come in handy here.

  Benjen drew his banana-shaped sword from its sheath on his back. The light hit the dull metal but didn’t glint from it; the metal was so poor a quality that it seemed to suck in the light.

  “No, Benny. The last thing we want to do is ride up there looking like we’re spoiling for a fight.”

  “Right. I’m getting carried away. My pulse is pounding.”

  “Well, we wanted excitement.”

  “I didn’t think it’d make me sick. Who the hell would ever want to be a hero? I’m glad we’re going to be on the business-end of things.”

  “Let’s go. Kordrude isn’t stopping, and I don’t think dragons are known for patience.”

  When they reached the bottom of the hill they got off their horses and commanded them to stay. Joshua left Gobber in his basket, judging that the goblin would be safer with Roebuck and Firemane than going to face a dragon, and after that Benjen was away, tearing up the hill like the figure of a fearless warrior.

  As Joshua followed him, he’d have been lying if he said he wasn’t scared. Maybe in years to come, when he was an old guildmaster and he was telling some rookie hero stories of his youth, he’d lie.

  When he later told the story, his pulse wouldn’t be pounding in his ears, and his stomach wouldn’t have turned to water. He’d be the first one running up the hill, and he’d have a gigantic, diamond-encrusted sword, a weapon worthy of vanquishing a dragon.

  As it was, it was everything he could do to follow his friend. His legs were turning to jelly, and he reminded himself that fear didn’t make you a coward; giving in to it did.

  He reached the top of the hill and there he was; Kordrude, the lanky crow-man, with his long, trailing coat and his minuscule wings. Kordrude’s coat was crumpled, and the feathers around his beak were darker than before, almost as if it was the crowsie version of a few-days-old beard.

  As he stared at Kordrude and the dragon, Joshua noticed two things. One, this dragon, Orogoth the Heart as the townsfolk called her, wasn’t anything like the dragons he’d seen in books. This dragon didn’t look mighty nor did she look majestic.

  What Joshua had taken to be her keeping one of her eyes shut, was in fact something different. Orogoth only had one eye; where the other should have been, there was just a patch of scarred skin.

  Her wings weren’t tucked underneath her body. Rather, she didn’t have full wings, and instead just had two stubby bones on the back of her scaly body.

  This dragon had seen battle, that much was clear. However many fights she’d had, they had ruined her. Her size still made her fearsome; just one of her clawed paws could still have crushed his bones, but he no longer pictured her swooping over a town and breathing a rain of fire down on the rooftops.

  The second, and strangest, thing he noticed was Kordrude himself. He was just four feet away from Orogoth now, closer than most men would have dared go even in their dreams. Hell, closer than most heroes would have dared to tread.

  Forget master swordsmen and fire-slinging mages; right here, on the guildhouse hill, Kordrude the lanky crow was the hero.

  He wasn’t making any move to harm the dragon, though. Instead, he took one more step toward her, saw her flinch, and then kneeled.

  Benjen stayed back, his hands tensed into fists. Joshua felt a glimmer of relief to see that his stronger friend was worried, too.

  “Kordrude,” said Benjen.

  The crowsie turned and put a finger to his beak to shush him.

  “Are you crazy?” said Benjen.

  “Don’t scare her,” said the crow.

  Don’t scare her? Was he crazy? Joshua had half a mind to grab the crowsie and drag him away, but he worried that one quick move would make the dragon pound down with her mighty foot and crush Kordrude.

  Kneeling in front of Orogoth, Kordrude began to make sounds. The noise was so strange that Joshua wondered if the priests’ remedy was in fact a poison, that the herbs were a potent hallucinogenic playing with his ears. Kordrude made guttural growls that didn’t sound possible for his beak to produce. All the while, Orogoth listened patiently, sometimes blinking her one good eye.

  When the crowsie was silent, Orogoth made noises of her own. Kordrude nodded along, sometimes interjecting with his own noises.

  Benjen gave a look to Joshua. After being friends for so long, sometimes they didn’t need words to understand each other. Much like Kordrude and the dragon, in fact. Without moving his lips, Benjen’s face said to Joshua, “what the hell is going on?”

  But Joshua realized what it was now. The crowsie wasn’t just a bureaucrat. Like everyone, he had secondary classes, and Joshua was beginning to understand what one of them was. Linguist, or something like it. It had to be. He had never, ever heard of someone being able to talk to dragons, though. He looked at Kordrude now, and a sense of awe filled him.

  Finally, Kordrude stood up, and he turned away from Orogoth and faced Joshua.

  “She’s from the coast,” he said. “Her dialect was a little strange, at first, but I think we understand each other. My, I never thought I’d actually get to use dragon-tongue.”

  “Is she friendly?” asked Benjen.

  “As friendly as a dragon could ever be. Their emotions aren’t like ours. We could never truly understand the way their brains work. They have feelings, to be sure, but on a grander scale; something more ancient.”

  “But she doesn’t want to kill us?”

  “We’d already be dead,” said Kordrude.

  Benjen warily raised a hand and waved at Orogoth. “Hello,” he said.

  Panic flashed in Kordrude’s features, his black feathers sticking on their ends. “Don’t speak to her! Dragons cannot stand listening to our tongue.”

  “Then maybe we better move away,” said Joshua.

  “She has permitted me to explain a few things to you. But, for Fortuna’s sake, don’t talk to her directly.”

  Joshua felt it now; the sense of menace emanating from the ancient beast. It was an invisible energy but it was there nonetheless, and it was no weaker for her lack of wings or her missing eye.

  “What did she want you to tell us?” asked Joshua.

  “She asks what your business is here.”

  “And did you tell her?”

  Kordrude gave a so
lemn nod. “I did. I explained that the guildhouse is yours.”

  “And?” said Benjen.

  “She asks if you have proof of purchase.”

  “You have to be joking.”

  “A dragon she may be, but she seems to be aware of human customs, and she believes she has not crossed any boundaries by staying here.”

  “Benjen,” said Joshua, “Can you go to the horse and get the deed of sale the estate agent gave us? We need to…uh…prove to the dragon that we own this place.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Kordrude. “A dragon takes a word as its bond. If you have proof, then you have it.”

  “So, she’ll leave?”

  Kordrude grunted at the dragon, who blinked her eye at him. She made a guttural chirping sound back, followed by a long hiss. Joshua waited, impatiently wringing his hands.

  “No.”

  “She won’t leave?”

  “Orogoth has built a nest here for her brood. She expects their delivery soon, and she asks that she be permitted to stay.”

  “Why would she want to? This isn’t an ideal place for a dragon.”

  “You can see from her scars that she has enemies among her own folk. Orogoth can’t go back to her own kin, at least not yet.”

  “So, what?” said Joshua, “She wants to stay her until she gives birth?”

  “Wants isn’t quite the right word,” said Kordrude. “She appears to be insisting on it.”

  “And when does she give birth?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  Kordrude and Orogoth had another back and forth, before the crowsie faced Joshua again.

  “In two years.”

  “What?” said Benjen, and then realized he’d spoken too loudly. Eyeing Orogoth nervously, he spoke in almost a whisper. “We can’t have her hanging around for two years. What kind of hero is going to join a guild that has a dragon living in front of it? What kind of person is going to come to us for help?”

  “A good point. Wait a second.”

  Joshua and Benjen exchanged looks while Kordrude talked to the dragon. They had almost a full conversation in those little glances.