“No wonder Theoradus didn’t want to part with them,” I said aloud as I began another sash. “They really are the work of a master!”
Whistling through dry lips, I walked on.
For three weeks I had been walking, endlessly walking, and I had managed to weave four sashes so far. I traded the sashes where I could, and when I had none to trade I gathered eggs or darned socks or mucked out stalls. If I was lucky, I was given stale bread and dry cheese and the occasional boiled egg and sent off to the hayloft to sleep. In the morning I was roused at dawn, given a rusk and a drink of water, and sent on my way.
While a carter or two did take pity on me and give me a ride every few days, it seemed that most of them, like the householders, were wary of a young lass travelling by herself. They believed my story of being an orphan; I had no doubt of that. But they also suspected that I was a runaway apprentice or a maidservant who had stolen her mistress’s necklace.
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Two days’ walk from the King’s Seat I ran into real trouble. Infinitely worse trouble than having to walk all day or sleep in a draughty hayloft while pigs snored loudly on the barn floor beneath me. The King’s Road curved west here, actually heading away from the King’s Seat, so that it skirted the edges of the Rath Forest before it doubled back to reach the gates of the city. Very few people braved the more direct route through the forest, which was rumoured to be full of wolves, imps who guided travellers to their doom just for fun, and even dragons. It was said that tinkers and bandits lived in the fringes as well, but the King’s Road was well trafficked, and I had not concerned myself with them until that day.
A group of young men, hardly older than I, came out of the trees as I walked along the edge of the forest. There were eight of them, and they were filthy, with straggly beards, which I took to be a personal choice rather than an indication of desperation. They wore a motley assortment of clothes that were in dire need of laundering, but nonetheless seemed to be of good quality, which made me swallow hard. The easiest explanation that came to my mind was that they had taken these clothes from a wide variety of travellers – some of them women, I realised, as I got a closer look at the brocade vest sported by one lanky bandit.
“Good evening, gentle maiden,” a tall youth said, stepping forward. He would have been handsome if he had been more careful about washing. And had his teeth not been stained and worn down from the pipe he clenched in the corner of his mouth even as he leered at me.
“Good evening,” I replied, giving them a faint nod. I continued to walk along, working hard not to alter my pace. I was sure that, like dogs, they could sense my fear, so I did my best to show no outward signs of it.
“Won’t you stop a while with us? It is growing dark, and a pretty young maiden should not be travelling this dangerous road alone. ” The leader moved to keep pace with me, stepping over the low curb of the King’s Road and joining me on the smooth pavement. The others stayed on the grassy verge, but trailed only a pace or two behind.
The bitter truth was that he was right. It was growing dark, and while my prettiness was debatable, an unescorted maiden should not be anywhere near this road alone. My legs shook, but I kept walking. I thought about inventing a large and loving family waiting for me at our cottage just around the bend of the road, but feared that my voice would tremble if I opened my mouth again. Besides, they knew the region far better than I, and would see through my lie in an instant if there was no cottage around the bend. Truth be known, I had already begun to worry about the fact that I had seen neither fellow traveller nor human habitation for some hours. I was in trouble, and I knew it as well as the vagabond youths dogging my steps did.
My family had never been very devout, but my mother had taught us how to pray to the Triune Gods and when to beseech them individually for favours. I wanted to pray now, but took a moment to think first. Should I address my plea to the mighty, stern-faced Regunin, ruler of the heavens, and beg him to smite my harassers? Or should I pray to his gentle brother, thrice-dead Caxon, lord of animals and plants, and ask that a bear or wolf come out of the forest and eat the bandits? Jylla, their merry, golden-haired sister, was the patron of women and I normally prayed to her. But her nature was on the lusty, pleasure-seeking side, and I was not sure that she would see my situation as perilous.
“O Gods,” I prayed silently, deciding to throw the matter open to all three and hope for the best. “Please help me. I am young and foolish, but innocent, and have done no harm to man nor beast on this journey. Please deliver me from these bandits. Please. ”
I sped up just slightly, trying to seem casual about it, and forced a tiny smile to my lips. The leader was saucily continuing in praise of my beauty, and jesting that I had blinded him to all other girls. I did not make eye contact, but thought that my tight smile might at least somewhat mollify him.
“Please, please,” I begged in my head. “Please let someone come along and save me. Please let there be a camp of friendly tinkers just through those trees … a shepherd on his way to market with a flock coming ’round the bend … a farmhouse just over that rise. Please, Regunin, Caxon, Jylla, anyone. ”
“Come now, pretty maiden, don’t walk so fast,” the chief bandit said in a cajoling voice. “It’s getting cold out. You should join us at our fire. ”
“No, I thank you,” I said, and began to walk even faster, doing my best not to break into a trot.
“Yes, I thank you,” he sneered back, and lunged at me.
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I couldn’t help it: I screamed. Then I grabbed my skirts, hiked them as high as I could, and literally ran for my life. As I ran I yelled and screamed for help, even though I knew deep down that no help would come.
It did not take them long to catch me. One of the youths trailing behind leaped forward and tackled me, wrapping thick arms around my legs and bearing me to the ground. The leader stepped forward, almost leisurely, and removed my small pack from my back, tossing it aside. He clucked his tongue at me as I screamed and struggled, clawing at my attackers.
“That’s not at all friendly,” he chided.
“You mangy dogs!” I spat back. “Let me go!” I was crying out of anger and fear, and continued to writhe and scratch. “Someone help me!”
The leader opened his mouth, displaying the brown stumps of his teeth, and started to speak. Probably to mock my pleas and tell me that there was no one to help me. But whatever he meant to say was lost in a shout as a huge flat object fell out of the sky and struck the bandit’s head before shattering into a million pieces on the road.
A shard of something bright blue bounced up from the ground and then ricocheted off my forehead with a small prick, coming to rest right before me. It was a piece of thick blue glass, with a small segment of lead attached to one side.
There were more brightly coloured pieces all around, strewn like flowers over the body of the fallen bandit. There was also a heavy wooden frame and more dark grey pieces of lead. It took me a moment to recognise the remains of what must have been an enormous stained-glass window.
The other bandits were looking from their leader up to the sky, trying fearfully to reason how a window had crashed down on him from nowhere. They had let go of me, and I staggered to my feet and stumbled through the broken glass, grabbing my bundle as I went.
“Stop!” One of the more clearheaded youths seized my wrists. “What’s happening? Are you a witch?”
“Let me go!” I tried to twist free, but fear had given him extra strength, and I couldn’t even make him shift his grip.
A roar filled the air. The bandit released me, and I clapped my hands to my ears and squeezed my eyes shut in agony. When the noise stopped I opened my eyes a crack, then took my hands from my ears. The bandits, including the one who had accused me of witchery, were fleeing with yelps of fright down the highway, slipping on the scattered shards of glass as they went.
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br /> I began to run, myself, but in the opposite direction, my skin crawling and my arms and legs trembling more than they had when I first encountered the brown dragon of Carlieff. What in the names of the Triunity had attacked us? Was this the miracle I had prayed for? I hadn’t truly believed that Regunin would smite my attackers … but what else could it have been?
My question was answered a heartbeat later, when a large pair of golden claws swooped down into my line of vision, wrapped themselves around me like a cage, and carried me off into the air. I looked down at the King’s Road becoming narrow in the distance below me, and up at the body of the massive beast that had captured me, and fainted dead away.
I woke briefly and found myself still being carried at a great height by what could only be a dragon, and felt the blackness rising again in my mind. My last coherent thought was that I was glad my brother, Hagen, wasn’t here. He would laugh until his sides split to see me swooning like some lord’s delicate daughter.
And then I was blissfully unconscious.
The Gold Dragon of Rath Forest
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.
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“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.
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“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 in
to 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. ”
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