by Grace Draven
They both laughed. Elsbeth shouldered her lightened pack. She still wore her dragon armor and desperately craved a bath. “Thank you. Also, if you can put my name in the lottery for me, I’d appreciate it. We only have a nanny goat, a pregnant sow and a small coop of hens, but I can sell a rug or two and buy a ewe or wether from Donal.”
Byderside had not elected the diminutive Irena as a council elder because of her retiring nature. She swelled with indignation. “I most certainly will not. You’ve given your tribute, Elsbeth. You’re part of it. No one expects you to participate in this lottery.”
Elsbeth doubted that and wanted no mutters of unfairness or partiality. She had money saved from sales of her previous rugs. She could afford to buy livestock for the tribute if necessary. Malcolm was the wealthiest man in Byderside, with a sizeable herd of cattle. He’d sell her a cow or bull without hesitation, but for a price she was unwilling to pay. She’d purchase a wether from Donal instead. He was a friend and a good man who’d made his own bargain with the wyvern and done well by it.
She accompanied Irena to the hall’s doors. “Please, I don’t want any more trouble. If my name is picked, I’ll give you the coin for a sale. Buy from old Donal, not Malcolm.”
Irena huffed, reluctant to relent. “I’ll think on it. And I wouldn’t buy a gold crown from Malcolm Miller if he offered it to me for a ha’penny.” She gave Elsbeth a nudge across the threshold. “Get going, lass. Angus has driven me to distraction with all his complaints and wanting his ale warmed just so and his toast buttered on a particular side.” She winked. “It’s your turn to put up with him before you leave him to my tender mercies.”
“Elsbeth, why didn’t you tell me?”
Propped up against a mound of pillows, Angus lay in bed and stared at his granddaughter with accusatory eyes. She sat next to him, holding his hand. The lies about to pour from her lips were enough to earn her an eternity of damnation.
“I’m sorry, Atuk. I didn’t want to worry you. When Lord Tybalt’s factor expressed interest in the rugs, it was on the condition I present them for his review. He insisted on meeting the weaver.” She ran her thumb along his hand, the skin of his twisted fingers as thin and fragile as old parchment. “It was only Durnsdale, Atuk. You and I have made that trip many times in the past. I knew the roads, knew the town, and it looks like we’ll have a profitable sale, but…”
“But what?”
“Lord Tybalt has offered to sponsor me as an applicant to the weaver’s guild.” Elsbeth could hardly meet Angus’s eyes. “I could be accepted, but only if I agree to three weeks of review and demonstration of my skills.”
Angus’s cloudy gaze lit with joy, and he pressed her hand between his palms with a strength that startled her. “My sweet girl, this is wonderful news! Tell me more. I knew the guild would recognize your worth one day!”
Almost two hours passed in which Elsbeth spun her tale of guild acceptance and swallowed tears as Angus, more lively than she’d seen him in months, gave her snippets of advice on how to present herself at the first guild meeting and what the masters looked for in apprentices. By the time she took her leave, he was nearly asleep, worn out by the excitement of her news. She kissed him on the forehead and stared at him for several moments, memorizing his sunken features in case he was gone when she returned.
The blaze of late afternoon sunlight greeted her when she left Irena’s house for her own. Elsbeth, used to the candle-lit luminescence in Angus’s room, was almost blinded by the brightness. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes and found herself face to face with Malcolm.
He blocked her path, a hulking darkness that reeked of sour ale and violence. She tried to step around him, but he matched her movements, holding her captive in the village square’s open space.
“What do you want, Malcolm?”
Suspicion glittered in his black gaze. “‘Twas an easy bargain you made up there, Elsbeth. Armored knights on warhorses couldn’t conquer the serpent, and all you needed was a fiddle?” He reached out a hand to touch her hair, and she jerked away, revolted by the idea of his hands anywhere on her.
Elsbeth shrugged. “The wyvern was reasonable enough. Then again, I didn’t come at it with a javelin and an empty purse waiting to be filled, so it was willing to listen.” She tried to sidestep around him, and once more he blocked her. “Get out of my way, Malcolm. I’ve a house to close, supplies to pack, and a journey to make. You’re wasting my time.”
“Easy, lass. I just want to talk.”
Malcolm didn’t talk. He bullied, fished, and intimidated. If that didn’t work, he used his fists. Elsbeth didn’t think him foolish or bold enough to physically harm her in the public square, but she never underestimated his brutality. Like Donal, she suspected Malcolm’s wife had met a premature and bad end at her husband’s hands.
She crossed her arms and waited for the first opportunity to escape. “Then talk and be done with it.”
He smirked and ran a paw-like hand over his beard. “You say it ain’t a dragon but something close.” His small eyes gleamed. “Did you see its treasure? Were there jewels? Gold?” He leaned closer and closer with every question, almost knocking her senseless with breath that smelled of rotten mutton.
Elsbeth gagged but saw her chance to flee. She whipped around him while he was off balance and sprinted across the courtyard, putting enough distance between them that he wouldn’t catch up before she reached the safety of her house. “Nothing,” she called over her shoulder as she raced through the middle of the center green. “No gold, no jewels. Just a wyvern waiting to slaughter you if you’ve a mind to pay him a visit,” she taunted.
She slammed her door behind her before turning to peer out the small window adjacent to the door. Malcolm still stood in the square, staring at her house with an expression so malevolent that she wouldn’t have been surprised if the roof suddenly caught fire. She leaned against the wall and blew out a long breath. Too bad the wyvern eschewed humans as food, otherwise Elsbeth would find a way to replace a hapless ewe with one Malcolm Miller as part of the tribute.
Less frightened and hesitant about her second trip to Maldoza, Elsbeth made quick time to Donal Grayson’s land. She’d left Byderside at dawn the following day with good wishes this time instead of derisive laughter. Somehow, it didn’t make her feel better. The villagers were placing their faith in her now, faith that the wyvern would uphold its part of the bargain, and faith that she would uphold hers well enough to please it.
She found Donal on his roof, rethatching a section blackened with scorch marks. Her stomach dropped. Had the wyvern abandoned its unspoken accord with the farmer and given his house a warning taste of fire?
Donal saw her and waved, disappearing over the side of the roof and re-emerging around the corner. “Welcome back, lass,” he said with a smile. “How’s Angus?”
“Well enough to annoy Irena.” She eyed the roof. “What happened to your thatch?”
He shrugged. “Bit of a mishap with me hearth. Nothing a little more long straw can’t fix.” He laughed at her relieved sigh. “Worried about the lizard, eh? You needn’t. He’s been behaving himself.”
As before, they stabled Tater and stored the cart. Donal pointed to her clothing, an ensemble of long tunic and trousers in homespun brown. “You’ll have a hard time getting up the cliffs by way of the shortcut. That scrub vine will tear you to ribbons without your armor.”
Elsbeth adjusted the pack on her shoulders. The dragon armor had been useful, but it was hot, and she didn’t miss wearing it. “I’ll take the long way this time. The climb is steeper but clear, and the wyvern gave no set time for my arrival.”
She promised Donal she’d be careful and set out for the cliffs well before noon. A light breeze, smelling of hay and wildflowers, blew off the stretch of fields before her, swirling dust devils on the road in its wake. In the distance, the low chorus of cattle lowing accompanied the buzz of insects.
Maldoza, sparkling in the sun, cast its shadow
over pastureland, a reminder of things darker and more mysterious than Byder County’s peaceful countryside. Elsbeth wondered if the wyvern watched her from the sanctuary of one of the caves. She hoped so. It would know she honored her part of the bargain.
While it might take her longer to reach her destination, the path winding up the cliffs was clear of the vicious scrub vine. Elsbeth had only taken a few steps before a rush of air buffeted her back, and the sun cooled. She turned and nearly jumped out of her skin at finding the wyvern looming over her, folding giant wings against its back.
In full sun, the beast was even more imposing. Scales that had shown black beneath the moon’s luminescence glistened crimson in daylight. They flexed over massive, rippling muscle like a tapestry of rubies. Its underbelly and neck were armored in mottled gray scales streaked with blues, pale yellows and pinks. The colors deepened or faded with the changing light.
Elsbeth’s curiosity overrode her surprise. Camouflage. Like a lizard, the wyvern’s skin changed, adjusting with the play of light so that it blended with sky and clouds as it flew. Anyone looking up might see it only as a fast-moving drift of clouds or a teasing ripple of sunlight to fool the eye.
“Mistress Weaver,” it said, and a murder of crows burst from a nearby withered tree, startled to flight by the resounding voice. “You’ve kept your end of the bargain. Does this mean you trust me not to devour you?”
Prior to her first meeting with the wyvern, Elsbeth didn’t think such a creature capable of amusement, but humor laced its question, and she responded in kind.
“I trust that you want a fiddler to play for you more than a meal to eat. I can’t play if you’re chewing on me.”
The armored skin around the wyvern’s muzzled tightened, stretched back. Silver eyes, rimmed in black, grew darker, and streams of smoke swirled out its nostrils on a deep huff of what sounded like laughter.
“Well said. I shall enjoy your company, mistress, and your conversation.” It lowered its head, drawing close enough so that Elsbeth could see her reflection in the elliptical pupils. “If you could touch the sun, would you?”
She stared at the wyvern, baffled by the question. “Forgive me. I don’t understand you.”
“You can walk up the cliff paths. By the time you reach our meeting place, the sun will have set, and you’ll be thirsty and tired. I can fly you there in a matter of moments.”
Elsbeth’s eyes widened. Fly? On the back of a wyvern?
“It would be a very short trip, and I’ll fly slowly. You can use the down scales on my neck to hold on.” The wyvern blinked once, twice, pinning her in place with a silver-coin stare. “Or, if you’re afraid, you can go the hard way.” She stiffened at the faint challenge in his words. “Your choice.”
What a tale fantastic to tell—one among many she was quickly collecting. Elsbeth, the rug weaver who flew with a wyvern and played it a tune or two on her father’s fiddle. She might plunge to her death on the way to the cliffs, but oh what a way to die. To do something no living man or woman of her acquaintance had ever done—fly like a bird. It was too amazing to refuse. Exhilaration and no little fear surged through her veins in a heady mix.
“You won’t drop me?”
The wyvern’s stance changed, back legs straightening so that it towered even higher above her. It looked down upon her from its impressive height with an equal measure of affront and approval. “No, I won’t drop you.”
Elsbeth inhaled, belted the pack more tightly around her waist and swallowed to fight down the butterflies fluttering madly in her belly. “Never let it be said I’m a coward.”
Again that reverberating huff of laughter. The wyvern lowered its head and stretched out its neck in invitation for her to mount. “I think only a fool would say such a thing about you, Elsbeth Weaver.”
She had never been so deliciously frightened in her life. The wyvern was true to its word, flying slow, if not low, over the fields ringing Maldoza. Elsbeth sat in front of the wyvern’s wings and clutched the softer down scales for purchase. Wind whistled past her ears, lifting her braid so that it whipped behind her. The tip snapped against one of the great wings that beat the air in powerful rhythm.
The wyvern’s neck flexed beneath her legs as they banked away from the cliffs, soaring higher into the sky. Below them, Byder county, mundane, bound by the seasons of planting and harvest, took on a magical appearance. Fields and pastureland spread out in a patchwork quilt of color. Small herds of cattle and sheep grazed peacefully, undisturbed by the great predator flying far above them in the summer haze.
They finally landed on a plateau crowning one of the escarpments jutting from the cliffs. Elsbeth slid off the wyvern’s neck to stand on shaking legs. She grinned when it swiveled its enormous head and regarded her with an unblinking stare.
“That was the most frightening and wonderful thing I’ve ever done,” she said, and laughed.
“Is it?” The wyvern folded its wings. “I’d think walking the paths of Maldoza at night to confront me would be your most frightening moment.”
“My second most frightening experience then, and one I’m glad I had.” Elsbeth smiled at the wyvern. “Thank you…”
What was its name? During their negotiations, she’d never thought to ask its name. She didn’t even know if it was male or female. Elsbeth blushed, feeling unaccountably rude. The wyvern might be helping itself to valuable livestock and angering towns and villages for miles, but it had been courteous to her in every way.
She raised her palms in a supplicant gesture. “Forgive me, I don’t know your…”
A certain tension rose between them. Elsbeth held her breath, waiting for something she couldn’t capture but knew would once again alter her perception of this fascinating creature.
“Names,” it said in a gruff voice, “have great power. They pin a spirit to earth, give it form and weight. Make it beloved or hated, remembered or reviled.” The silver eyes shone bright in the sun. “My given name means ‘kingly’ and is too difficult for the human tongue to pronounce. You may call me Alaric.”
Elsbeth’s heartbeat stuttered in its beating, and she gasped. The memory of storm-cloud eyes soft with laughter filled her mind. Her Alaric had been neither dragon-kind nor king, but a human bard, yet there had always been something noble in his bearing, something powerful in the way he moved and how he measured a person with a penetrating gaze. She smiled, despite the ache in her chest, a longing never lessened over the years. It was fitting somehow that he and this extraordinary creature bore the same name.
The wyvern watched her in silence for a moment. Thin streamers of smoke drifted from its nose. “A name not unknown to you, I see.” The crimson scales along his back rose in a spiky ridge, much like a cat bristling its fur in warning. “Beloved or reviled?”
His reaction puzzled her. Elsbeth knew nothing of wyvern behavior save what she’d learned in the few hours spent in this one’s company, but her instincts warned her answer to his question was crucial, even pivotal to how they might deal with each other over the next three weeks. The stiff scales rose higher at her hesitation, spreading to the ones behind his ears until they created a flared mane.
Alaric repeated the question, his words making the ground tremble beneath her. “Beloved or reviled?”
“Beloved,” she said, “and never forgotten.” She offered a weak smile. “I sometimes play for him, though he does not hear.”
Alaric’s raised scales smoothed down, and his eyes glowed a softer pewter. “Are you sure? Mayhap he hears your music in dreams.”
Elsbeth shrugged. “Mayhap, if he’s still alive.” This strange conversation made her uncomfortable, though she couldn’t explain why. She changed the subject. “Is this where we’ll stay?” She waved an arm over the plateau and the patchwork fields below them.
“No. Only dragons are vain enough to make themselves open targets by basking on an upland perch. Not a few have found themselves made into suits of armor because of it.” The bony r
idge above one of Alaric’s eyes rose, and Elsbeth blushed. “I’ve a lair deep in the cliffs. Difficult to find if you don’t know the way, but you’ll find every comfort there for your stay with me.”
Elsbeth had her doubts. She’d explored a few caves in her lifetime. Some were dry; most were damp and covered in fungus. All were dark and usually decorated in bat guano. She prayed Alaric’s idea of comfort matched her own, and she didn’t have to spend three weeks in some dank, foul-smelling pit.
The hiss of scales rubbing together whispered in her ears as Alaric coiled his long tail around her. It slid against her calf, almost a caress in its slow glide.
“Trust me, fiddler. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
If anyone asked her why, she couldn’t have given them a satisfactory answer, but Elsbeth did trust the wyvern. Alaric was a menacing combination of belching fire, monstrous black claws and teeth like sword blades. Until her meeting with him, he’d terrorized Byderside and Durnsdale, stealing cattle, killing knights and burning down barns. Still, she no longer found it difficult to reconcile the image with that of the courteous, often humorous creature before her. Maybe he was right. Names had power. His had certainly affected her view of him. Alaric the wyvern, reminded her of Alaric the man and long-lost lover. And with that comparison came a measure of reassurance.
She laid a tentative hand against the wyvern’s glossy neck, fascinated by the heated smoothness beneath her palm and the contrast of her skin against the crimson scales. A great shiver rippled from Alaric’s neck to his tail. “I trust you, though you’ll have to watch that I don’t wander off and lose my way.”
“Don’t worry, Elsbeth. I’ll not lose you.” Alaric’s silver eyes went black. “Never again.”
His answer confused her, made her wonder.
Elsbeth sat cross-legged in front of the wyvern with her fiddle resting on her lap. The glow of light from an unseen source surrounded them in the large cave where her host made his home. Magic most likely, she thought. The type all dragon-kind seemed to possess.