She stuck another pitcher under the cider barrel and opened the tap. "Are we expecting anyone else, Darien?"
He smiled at her. "You never know." He set ale steins one by one on a large tray. "Though the gods know where we'd put them."
But a breeze shook the lamp flames as the front door opened. A general cry went up: "Shut that door!" "Frosty out there." "Always a latecomer."
As he always did with strangers, Darien eyed them carefully. They were physically unimpressive, of medium height and wiry build. One had black hair, the other brown, and their teeth flashed white as they smiled automatically to the crowd at the tables.
All the same, it seemed to Darien that they passed by the tables with complete indifference, as though they were something apart from the local families, the traders, and the travelers.
He met them from behind the bar, smiling more broadly than the newcomers had. "And what can I do for you?"
One of them spoke. "Is there any supper?"
Darien shook his head. "Long since eaten. Look at this crowd; every bed full, locals in to eat as well. Barely any bread left. Didn't you take food for the road?" He glanced at their tiny packs.
The two looked at each other. The black-haired one said quickly, "We eat where we can, and only take enough for the day. We've traveled quite a ways."
The innkeeper said dubiously, "Traders, are you?" They shook their heads. "Pilgrims?" He added hesitantly, not wishing to be insulting, "Runaway clerics?"
The brown-haired man said, "I'm Gannie and this"- he hesitated slightly-"is Kory. We're storytellers."
Kory added, "We specialize in telling frightening stories."
Gannie glanced around the inn. "This lot looks like they could use the excitement."
"Ah." Darien scratched his head. "So there's a living in telling stories, is there?"
"If you're good at it." Kory looked pointedly at the ale barrel.
Peilanne filled two more steins and drew closer, intrigued. "And how do you make it pay better if you're good?"
Kory said, not entirely happily, "We wager on ourselves."
"My idea," Gannie said proudly.
Peilanne joined the conversation with a laugh, a light silvery sound. "How does that work?"
Kory said unwillingly, "We bet you and anyone else in the room that we can scare people with our story. If we lose, we don't get paid and we don't eat."
Gannie frowned at him. "But we seldom lose."
Kory looked at him glumly. "It could happen."
Darien nodded. "I see. And to win, you have to scare nearly everyone in the dining room."
"As long as they don't turn out to be disguised kenders, or something else without fear," Kory said dubiously.
"Look around you, young sir. That old man, Brann, is a shepherd, with his flock in the cote out back. Young Elinor, making a mess at the table, is from the village, here with Annella her mother. And that fat one is a merchant out of Solamnia, and those others with him, all human-" He leaned forward. "But are you tricking me? Will you scare them just with the story, or with something else?"
"Oh, our stories are good enough all by themselves," Gannie assured him.
Darien settled back into filling an ale pitcher, watching them closely. "And what must I do if you win?"
"You pay us and you make us a meal."
He glanced automatically at the empty stew pot. "Make you a meal?" Darien chuckled. "For now, at least, have the last of the bread. On the house, pending the outcome of the bet."
Peilanne looked at him with surprise and opened her mouth. He shook his head slightly to silence her, then tapped his gold ring against a cup. Eventually the insistent noise silenced everyone.
"This is Kory"-he hesitated, then pointed to the other man-"and this is Gannie. I have a wager with them."
He explained the terms. As he finished, Gannie bowed low and said, "And anyone else can bet, too!"
They looked around at each other. Bet a stranger that they wouldn't be scared of a story? It seemed like sure money.
Kory went from table to table, checking with interested parties, then returned to Gannie. "I hope we have enough if we lose," he warned.
Gannie rolled his eyes at him. "Have we ever lost?" Quickly putting a hand over Kory's mouth, he bowed to the company again. "And now, our story."
"I want one about owlbears," the little girl insisted.
Her mother said quietly, "Hush, Elinor," and looked apologetically at the two young men. "She loves stories."
"A wonderful girl." Kory dropped to one knee. "Sorry, our best story isn't about owlbears. " He glanced at the surrounding company, and said with surprising force, "Can we tell one about dragons?"
The company sat up, startled. Darien and Peilanne leaned forward, concerned.
"Excellent." Gannie put one foot on one end of the bench and leaned over his audience. "Once, not long enough ago, there were two young men, vagabond wanderers. Tale-tellers and inn-hoppers, spenders of money and chasers of dreams. We'll call them"-he pretended to hesitate-"Koryon and Elgan...."
The similarity of names was lost on no one. Brann the shepherd smiled condescendingly, settling back to enjoy a story within a story. Even Elinor looked with sudden interest on the two storytellers, looking from one to the other as if waiting for their real names to shine on their foreheads.
"On this particular morning, Elgan woke ..."
* * * * *
Elgan woke in the summer sunlight, brushing at his nose. A grass stem was tickling him.
Koryon was holding the stem. "Welcome to morning. Are you all right?"
Elgan wiggled his toes, counted his fingers and finally, with some trepidation, pinched his nostrils and blew his nose. Nothing fell off. "Fine." He disentangled himself from his cloak, crawled to the stream and ducked his face in, drinking deeply.
Koryon said, "Fun night, wasn't it? What nice people."
Elgan glanced down the valley, where smoke from the chimneys came from the cottages and still more smoke floated upward from the hearth of the Inn of Road's Ease. He turned to Koryon. "You really ought to watch yourself more," he said disapprovingly.
"It was just normal entertainment."
"Normal? That trick with the knives? That was reckless."
Elgan grinned. He had palmed a dozen dining knives, one at a time, and made them appear in his hand as he threw them to outline Koryon against the wall.
"And did I hit you with even one knife?"
Koryon, scratching his head, stopped and felt the outline of his left ear. He stared at Elgan accusingly.
"All right, did I hit you with more than one?"
Koryon said morosely, "I ought to be dead."
"Watch what you wish for," Elgan said absently.
"I'm not wishing, simply stating a fact." He quit feeling his ear, but still frowned. "And all those stories about dragon battles-that was simply showing off. I've known you since you were a child-"
"You were a pessimist even then-"
"-and I know for a fact you've never been in a dragon battle." He paused. "I don't think you've even seen a dragon battle."
"Not true," Elgan said firmly. "You may remember, on the occasion of my older brother's birthday, we both saw a pitched battle involving three armed men and three dragons-"
"Gods, Elgan, that was a puppet show!" After a moment's silence in the sun, Koryon said, "You haven't said anything about Beldieze."
"Beldieze." Elgan stretched, eyes shut and dreaming. She had walked up to him after the knife throwing, and had stared straight into his eyes. Hers were blue-silver, and caught the candlelight amazingly; that wasn't all they had caught. Her dark hair, long and nearly straight, framed her face until he looked into it and felt he would never break free and get out. And her voice, like bells when she began asking questions....
He started. "She asked me about dragon fights."
Koryon snorted. "And you told stories all night."
By evening's end, the tables had been pulled together i
n the middle of the hall, Elgan was standing on the center table, waving a flagon of ale and explaining battles. He had hopped on the back of the strong, good-natured innkeeper, commandeered a broom, and charged about the inn to demonstrate the finer points of lance aiming. At one point, Elgan remembered, he had speared a curtain-ring held by Beldieze.
At a later point, he remembered a great deal of kissing and a walk under the stars.
"Where did you go?"
"Out. First for a walk, and then... to see someone."
Koryon frowned suspiciously. He was good at that. "To see who?"
"Someone... an authority. He was good with a pen- writing." He squinted, trying to remember. "Late in the night, we wrote something. Together. I wish I remembered what."
Koryon, pausing as he pulled out a clean shirt and glanced down the hill, said, "Why not ask her?"
Elgan bounded to his feet. "Gods. I'm a mess." He snatched the shirt out of Koryon's hands and muttered "Thanks" as he pulled it on. He bounded downhill, remembering that he had thought her good-looking....
Now that he saw her in the sunlight he decided the Inn of Road's Ease must have been dark, or he must have been blind; she was beautiful. Beldieze had straight dark hair down to her waist, the figure of a dancer, and a full-lipped mouth that had smiled wickedly the night before. And of course, wonderful large eyes, almost luminous. They were staring at him now, and her smile seemed self-conscious. "Beldieze?" he said, mostly to test how her name sounded in his mouth.
"Elgan. I wasn't sure how you'd be feeling today." She put a hand on his arm.
Koryon, cloak draped over his bare chest, stood discreetly in the background, drinking from a water jug and making a show of staying out of earshot.
Elgan put his hand on hers, smiling back. "You still like me, in broad daylight?"
"I still admire you," she said immediately. "Your stories about dragon battles impressed everyone. It wasn't just the way you told them"-she stepped back, throwing her arms open-"but the wealth of detail. The swooping and stalling and silent gliding and air currents and lance thrusts-" She mock-thrust, her arms rippling forward. She moved toward him at the same time, until her arms touched his waist.
He blushed. "I didn't mean to brag."
Koryon, nominally out of earshot, snorted.
"It sounded like expertise, not bragging. In fact"- she touched his nose playfully-"I asked you if you would fight a dragon for me, and you said you would. Remember?"
Elgan didn't like where this was leading. "Of course, I might not really be expert enough to fight a real dragon."
She smiled sadly. "I was afraid last night that you'd feel that way later. I said as much. You swore you could and would. We agreed on a binding contract, composed by a cleric, an older man who lives just outside of town." She added, with light additional emphasis, "He's more of a mage, actually."
The hair on the back of Elgan's neck prickled. "Why a mage?"
"So that the contract would bind." She took it out and showed it to him.
"I'm not going to fight a dragon-"
The parchment flickered out of her hands suddenly and materialized around his right arm, tightening itself slowly. He tugged at it. Nothing happened. He took out a knife and cut at it. The parchment wrapped itself tighter.
"See?" Beldieze stood with her arms folded, looking anxiously at the parchment. "It's exactly what you wanted. It does contract, and it is binding."
The contract pulled still tighter, and his hand turned dark red. Elgan bit his lip, envisioning the cylinder of paper closing on itself until it severed his arm. Koryon looked worried.
Elgan took a quick, shuddering breath. "All right, I'll honor it. For now."
"Good." She pointed down the hill. "Your saddle and lance are at the base of the hill; find your own mount. You have only two days."
She pointed to the parchment, which had loosened but stayed on his arm. Elgan looked at it intently, understanding little of the legal scrawl but recognizing his own signature beneath the words "fight a dragon."
He gave up. "So. Where is this supposed dragon?" he asked skeptically.
Her mouth quirked. "The one named in the contract is Jaegendar."
Koryon, standing presumably out of earshot, made a great sucking sound, and dropping his bottle, doubled over choking.
Elgan ran over and pounded his back-perhaps too fervently; Koryon dropped to his knees, gasping.
"Are you all right?"
Koryon glared. "I'm fine, except for my back."
"You must have choked on something." "Of course," he said coldly.
Elgan turned back to Beldieze, folded his arms and asked casually, "Why Jaegendar?"
"You've heard of him?"
"If it's the same dragon. For instance, this Jaegendar wouldn't be called Jaegendar the Black? Dark Jaegendar?" He added awkwardly, " 'The Wings of Death?' "
"Also Jaegendar the Wealthy. The one and only Jaegendar. Yes."
Elgan frowned. "Why Jaegendar?"
He expected many things-a tale of tragedy and revenge, a story of human greed and dragon horde, a quest for glory or a magic token. What he did not expect was the sudden shimmer of air and whoosh of wings as her human form vanished and a silver dragon appeared before them.
"If he dies," the silver dragon said calmly, "his stepchild will inherit everything." She looked down at the humans, a fanged smile curving on her face. "Not everyone in the inn last night was human."
Koryon started choking again.
Beldieze laughed, a silvery noise that echoed across the hills, and off she flew.
*****
"And off she flew." Kory paused to wink at Peilanne, who frowned back. The reference to her silvery laugh hadn't escaped her.
Peilanne gathered the dining knives back up and rubbed futilely at the scars in the bread board. In case anyone had missed the parallels between themselves and their story, Gannie had palmed four dinner knives from the table, making them disappear; then, one at a time from an apparently empty hand, he had thrown them at Kory, who caught them on the inn's bread board and returned them, palming them himself a final time.
"So," Peilanne leaned across the bar. "So far we have a greedy, vicious dragon and a young, treacherous, murderous dragon. What's next?"
Everyone in the inn was listening.
"Why do you think so ill of dragons? And why does your friend keep looking out the window?"
Gannie pulled back with a start. "Habit. Sorry." He turned around. "Not all dragons are bad, as our tale will tell you. Why, after Beldieze was gone..."
*****
After Beldieze was gone, Koryon walked over to Elgan.
"You," he said with the satisfaction one feels when friends have been foolish, "are in real trouble."
"So we are."
" 'We?' " Koryon looked around in mock confusion.
Elgan looked around as well. "I don't see anyone else."
"Jaegendar," Koryon said firmly, "will laugh until it hurts when he sees you."
Elgan eyed him.
"Us," Koryon added, not happily.
"We'll find a way to beat him. We'll do fine. We're young, smart, clever, coordinated-"
"All that, of course." Koryon shivered. "But Jaegendar!"
"He's just a dragon, right?"
Koryon said in a small voice, "When I was little, my parents used to scare me with Jaegendar stories."
"Me too, if it'll make you feel any better."
Koryon froze, thinking. "Did the contract say 'fight a dragon,' or 'kill a dragon'?"
" 'Fight.' "
"Then there's your answer. We fight for a while, then quit. There's no shame in that."
"There is, actually."
"Maybe so, but I can live with my shame better than I can with my death. Assuming we can even survive a real fight with Jaegendar. Why are you grinning like that?"
"I've got an idea. Dragons are reasonable, right?" He grinned at Koryon. "Most dragons."
"Which reminds me, did you ha
ppen to tell Beldieze how you know so much about dragon battles?"
Elgan shifted uncomfortably. "I didn't say I'd actually been in one."
Koryon seemed to melt, his outline blurring, and a dragon stood before Elgan. "So she doesn't know the truth yet."
Elgan, changing his own form as rapidly, sighed. "No. She doesn't."
*****
"I don't like it at all," Peilanne said firmly as she refilled the table. "A vicious, evil dragon, a greedy, murderous, younger dragon, and two dragon-scoundrels." She emphasized the last word. "Besides, this is an awful lot of shape-changing. All dragons don't change shape."
"Some do."
Everyone turned to look at Annella, Elinor's mother. She flinched at their stare but rallied and said, "Red dragons change shape, and silver ones. Black ones don't."
Brann nodded over his stein. "Young Annella's right about everything, including the black ones. Red and silver do, black don't. So they say."
Gannie nodded approvingly. "And the two dragons, Koryon and Elgan, are silver." He folded his arms.
"Besides," Kory said thoughtfully, "other dragons could use magic."
"True." Gannie let grim disapproval enter his voice. "Even a black dragon like Jaegendar could wear a ring of shaping."
The audience was stirring restlessly. They appealed to the innkeeper.
"They're right," Darien said unwillingly. "If a black dragon could find a ring of shaping somewhere, and if he could wear it, he could change to human shape."
"You see?" Gannie smiled brightly at Peilanne. "A dragon could be among you right now, and no one would know...."
*****
Jaegendar was surprisingly easy to find. As Koryon had said gloomily, "Just follow the weeping." There was a fire in the hills, where a farm was burning. Elgan hiked up to it in human form, not wishing to panic any survivors.
A huge black dragon, fully three times as long as Elgan in dragon form, perched on the edge of a roofless cottage, peering in like a carrion crow. He turned a cold eye this way and that as he checked the corners. He peered down at Elgan, who had stopped well back. "Who is it now?"
2 - The Dragons at War Page 19