Jason cleared his throat, looking somewhat relieved now that Quiris was gone, and asked Dusk, “Out of curiosity, was you mother really ‘friends’ with the dragon before she was a goddess, amigo?”
Dusk said grumpily, “Yes, she was. I did not, and do not, like him.”
The fact that Auraus raised both her eyebrows at this indicated to me that this was something about Dusk that she didn’t know. Interesting. I burned to know more, but before I could ask about it Heather beat me to the punch.
“Why not?” she asked, curiosity rife in her dark eyes.
“Because in conversations he will twist things around so that you will end up either agreeing or disagreeing with whatever it was that you had said earlier, and then he will call you out on it,” the amber-eyed Surface-elf said, still irritated.
Auraus asked, “Dusk? Do you want to share the story with us, so Lise and the others can be prepared for what might happen?”
“It has no bearing on the present situation. All you need to know is what I just said—dragons are tricky by nature, and care is needed when dealing with them,” he said shortly as he turned away from us and poured himself another cup of mead from the pitcher. “It would do no good anyway. If you fortify yourself against one thing, Frelanfur will just slip in behind your defenses somewhere else to take the biggest advantage he can.” Dusk took a fortifying gulp from the silver goblet, then turned around again and said with sudden seriousness, “Lise, if my mother can make the arrangement, and you do decide to go this route, make sure to get something for something. If you say something of knowledge or interest, then make sure he does as well. Otherwise he will take advantage of you and your magic items.”
He drained the rest of the cup’s contents and had just put the empty cup down on the silver tray when his mother faded back into the room like she had the first time she’d appeared.
“Frelanfur has agreed to meet you, and listen to your request. You must journey to the top of the ridge of the valley, and he will meet you there,” Quiris announced with a smile.
“Wonderful,” Dusk grumbled.
Ragar and Auraus looked nervous but determined at her words, and I was torn between being excited and being scared. And if the looks on Heather’s and Jason’s faces meant anything, I was sure they felt the same way I did. A dragon! In fairytales, dragons were everything from vicious and violent, to vain and arrogant, to wise and calm. But most stories I’d read agreed that dragons loved treasure, and the fact that Frelanfur wouldn’t even come to talk to us without a bribe meant that that part was true at least. I wondered to myself what parts of the rest of what I’d read were also true.
“When?” I asked out loud.
“Now,” Quiris replied.
“What?” I cried. So much for my bath, I thought with regret. “It’s going to take us at least a half degree of the sun to get up there!” I finished out loud.
Dusk coughed gently. “You do have the flying carpet, you know. And Auraus can fly herself.”
I mentally smacked my forehead. Right. How could I have forgotten the carpet?
“Que? A flying carpet!?” Jason exclaimed. “A real one, like in the Aladdin movie?”
I blinked again. Oh, yeah, that was right—Jason hadn’t been flying on it yet.
“Yeah, a real one,” I told him. “It’s a lot of fun. All right,” I said, including everyone else now, “Who is coming with me?”
Jason was the first to agree eagerly, and then Ragar. Auraus said she would fly beside us under her own power. But Heather said no.
“I’d like to talk to you instead, if I may, Quiris?” she asked the goddess.
That surprised me, but it wasn’t like I could force Heather to go anywhere she didn’t want to go, and in any event she wasn’t really needed on the parley. But I did wonder what an atheist wanted to talk to a Goddess about.
“Do as you will, Lise,” Dusk said. “I have some last few things to accomplish here anyway. I will see you upon your return. Goodbye, Mother.” He started to leave, but then turned back to me. “Oh, and Lise? Prepare yourself for a challenge.” Then, stiff-legged, Dusk stalked out of the room.
Quiris sighed as she picked up the silver goblet she’d been using and poured herself another mead. “I wish he would get over that.”
“Over what?” Jason asked.
“Frelanfur played a joke on my son the last time he saw Dusk,” said Quiris. “And Dusk has not quite forgotten nor forgiven, it seems.”
“What was it?” I asked curiously. “Would it prevent him from traveling with us?”
“Do not worry on that score,” she said reassuringly. “My son would never let personal feelings get in the way of his responsibilities. But it does mean that you would have to be the Intercessor between him and Frelanfur. And if you are going to do that, then you should be the point of contact for Frelanfur from the beginning.”
“What’s an intercessor?” Jason asked.
“An Intercessor is a go-between between different sides in a conflict. Dusk and Frelanfur may not be in conflict, but I believe that Dusk sees it that way. However, you are wasting time. You should go. Dragons are not patient beings.”
“But I don’t know where to go, or where the carpet is now,” I said fretfully.
“Do not worry. I am sure my son will have it waiting for you in the courtyard,” Quiris replied. “As for where to go, get yourself aloft and head towards the rim of the valley. You will see him easily, I do not doubt.”
We hurried out the map room door, and behind us I heard Heather say, “So, Quiris, I was wondering …” but the door closed behind Ragar and cut me off from hearing the rest of her sentence.
That in turn also reminded me that the goddess hadn’t answered my question about Dusk, but then I guessed it really was Dusk’s business to answer and not his mother’s.
As we walked out into the ruined front courtyard, it came to me that dealing with the dragon sounded like trying to deal with one of the trickster fae from one of my fairytales. But most of the stories I read about trickster fae were from the point of the tricksters themselves. There were precious few that showed someone triumphing over a trickster spirit, especially a human someone. And of those, the human was a faster talker, somehow, than the trickster. How was I, a fifteen year old sophomore in high school who had trouble with oral reports in class, supposed to out trickster a trickster?
The intricately red-patterned flying carpet was waiting in the flagstone courtyard for us, as Quiris had predicted. Jason’s wide smile at the rug indicated that he was looking forward to the flight.
“All right. Let’s get this show on the road,” I said, seating myself in the control spot.
Ragar and Jason sat down behind me while Auraus sprang into the air and did a tight spiral upwards. I rose the carpet straight up like an elevator until we reached the Wind-rider’s cruising height.
“Yahoo!” Jason cried, as I gave the verbal commands to fly us where we needed to go.
I smiled happily at his enthusiasm as we banked in the direction of the closest rim of the valley, and I showed both him and Ragar how to control the carpet.
“Look!” Auraus shouted, pointing ahead of us to where a pair of huge, but shiny, leathery wings disappeared below the tree line on the valley’s lip.
I waved to let her know I heard her and headed us in what had to be the dragon’s direction.
Chapter 4
As we headed for Frelanfur’s landing site, Jason said, “Well, if we do have a flying carpet, why don’t we use it to fly to where we first met Arghen and get underground that way? A flying carpet could whizz us there, and then zoom us through the travel tunnels to Chirasniv. That way we can spare ourselves the trouble of asking favores from a dragon, if it’s as dangerous as Dusk seems to think it is, that is.”
“The rug can only carry so much weight,” I replied. “We found that out trying to get out of the cavern under the keep after the avalanche that cut us off from rescuing you from your Under-elv
en kidnappers. It couldn’t carry the six of us plus all the gear we would need for an extended trip.”
Jason lightly smacked his forehead with his fingers. “Right. It took us a couple of semanas from where we met Arghen to Morsca’s keep by horse, and it took I dunno how long from the keep to Chirasniv. We can’t use Arghen’s way underground if we can’t use the carpet. We need something closer and faster than that,” he said.
“We also need to figure out how it is that we’re going to get into Chirasniv in the first place. The lucky break we had last time won’t happen again,” I replied a little worriedly.
Jason slanted a sideways look at me for my definition of “lucky break.” Most people would not call being chased by an Under-elven patrol and then having a partial cave-in nearly on top of them “lucky.” I knew that, but it was what had helped get us into the Under-elven city-state unnoticed.
“That is why we are going to go treat with a dragon,” said Ragar, speaking up for the first time in a while. “Dragons have magic, or are magic, or are and have magic, some say. But all stories agree it is magic that comes with a price.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him. “And what can you tell us about dragon magic?”
The mountain-cat-elf shrugged. “I can tell you stories and legends, but we do not have enough time for fireside tales.”
“Can you just give us the Tweet version, then?” asked Jason.
Ragar looked blank at Jason’s words, but he must have guessed their meaning because the mountain-cat-elf said, “Dragons can do things that even full mages cannot do, but they have their own rules as the Gods do. Dragons usually do things related to their interests or particular areas of expertise, so their magic can be considered in some sense limited.”
“Are they more powerful than full mages?” I asked.
“Yes, and no. They are more powerful than full mages but only in the area they have chosen.”
“Okay, sort of like academics back home, then,” Jason said.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“Academics or research scientists, or PhDs in general, are usually very intelegente people about a rather small area of knowledge. So while they may know a lot about, say quantum physics, they might not know much about art history or something else like that. In their fields they’re usually tops, but outside their field they’re like anyone else. And when you’re the best in your field, you don’t have the time to bother with other subjects.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “I wonder what field Frelanfur is good at. What if it isn’t what we need?”
“Then maybe he can direct us to a dragon who can help us better?” Jason said hopefully. Then, to Ragar, he said, “You said something about a price, though, Ragar. Who pays the price?”
“All the tales I have heard say that the dragons ultimately do, somehow, which is why they demand recompense from any being who wishes for their magic,” the mountain-cat-elf replied.
“How do they pay it?” I asked.
Ragar just shrugged.
I branched out from my earlier thoughts about trickster fae and quickly tried to run through in my head what fairytales I knew with intelligent dragons, but I couldn’t think of one. Just then we came up over the rise, interrupting my thoughts, and saw the dragon settled on the ground, waiting. My jaw dropped.
“See why I said I was sure the wyvern we fought down below on the way to Chirasniv to rescue Jason was not a dragon, Lise?” said Ragar with a half-smile at the look on my face.
Despite the casual way he said that, though, I could tell that the mountain-cat-elf was nervous. Jason had gone rock-still beside me, and even Auraus, still flying beside us, looked on edge. I was anxious, too. A bumper sticker I had on the wall of my room back home sprang to mind at the sight before me. It had a picture of a dragon’s sharp-toothed open mouth from the front, tongue curling out beyond the teeth, with words in the back of the throat that said: “Annoyance = Appetizer.” I gulped. The dragon—Frelanfur, I had to remember to call him—was big. His body had to be longer and taller than a double tractor trailer truck and probably was about twice as wide. But he wasn’t bulky; he was perfectly in proportion to himself. He was thicker towards the front and slimmed out towards his hind section and his long, muscled tail, which was probably another trailer truck in length. He was colored in a variety of tans and light browns, with rainbow highlights on the edges of his smooth looking scales. His wings were a dark brown, but when looked at just the right way, they still had the same faint rainbow radiance as his scales. His four legs ended in huge, sharp claws, and his face and head crazily put me in mind of Stalker, Arghen’s lizard-like riding dranth—except much bigger, of course.
“Welcome. I am Frelanfur,” the dragon said in a low, rumbly kind of voice as we came in for a landing.
I recognized the place where we were as the top of the rock cliff that Arghen, Jason, and I had climbed up on our first trip to the keep. We stood on a semi-flat mesa-like area where short and weedy scrub vegetation was just starting to grow, so there was plenty of room for the dragon to land without having to crush trees out of his way—a feat he’d’ve been easily able to do if he’d wanted to, though. I got off the carpet with my knees literally knocking together. Jason slid unsteadily to his feet on one side of me, and Ragar did the same on the other. Auraus landed and walked to stand beside Jason not looking like her usual calm and collected self, either. Strangely, that made me feel a bit better.
“Well?” the dragon asked in a loud grumble after a few minutes of us just standing there looking at him. He raised an eye ridge the way Arghen would have raised his eyebrow. “Who speaks for Quiris’ group?”
Chapter 5
“Uh, right,” I said nervously, jolted into awareness that the speaker, or rather, the Intercessor, would be me. Inhaling a big breath, I squared my shoulders. “You can do this,” I whispered to myself.
As I walked to stand in front of Frelanfur’s nose, Jason patted my shoulder, filling me with a hesitant comfort.
“Umm, yes, hi, I–I ….” I said lamely, and I stuttered to a stop.
The dragon lowered his head to bring one of his huge dark eyes level with me. Frelanfur viewed me up close and personal, snaking his agile neck all around me so he could see me from every angle. My clothes ruffled and dust puffed around my feet from the breaths of his nostrils. I felt like a bug on a microscope’s slide at the close inspection, and I stood perfectly still. In truth, I didn’t know if I would have been able to move on my own just then; I was so scared. After a couple of minutes of this the dragon focused his gaze over towards the carpet for a few moments before returning to me. He rumbled in his chest to himself before he spoke out loud.
“You are a Human! And yet you have a connection to the goddess Caelestis? How very curious. And you have another Human with you? Even more curious. You had to have somehow used a mist gate to cross the Disjoin. How is it that you accomplished this?”
My jaw dropped open. He knew about mist gates? “By accident, really,” I said, surprised into speaking without thinking first.
Frelanfur laughed. “I would have to imagine so! Humans do not have magic—or at least, have very little. But the gates were designed to let you into this world if certain conditions were met, so obviously you met them.”
“What do you know about the gates?” I asked eagerly, forgetting Arghen for a second.
“Is that what you wish to bargain for? Knowledge of the gates?” the dragon asked.
I opened my mouth to say “yes,” but a clearing of a throat behind me made me bite my tongue instead. Dusk’s words about Frelanfur came flooding back: make sure to get something for something. If you say something of knowledge or interest, then make sure he does as well. Otherwise he will take advantage of you and your magic items.
I said instead, “Well, I certainly wouldn’t mind knowing about the gates, but that isn’t why Quiris asked you to come. We,” I vaguely waved a hand to indicate my friends behind me, “need a
fast way underground to Chirasniv, and a way back inside the city-state once we get there.”
“Hmmm. Tricky,” Frelanfur rumbled. “Under-elves are secretive, but it seems you already have intimate knowledge of them and their ways. And your words indicate that you have been there once already and have lived to tell the tale. Innnn-teresting.”
I mentally smacked my forehead. Dusk had said to do an exchange for an exchange, and here I had just given Frelanfur information for free.
Well, I guess one side has to start sometime, I thought. “Uh, yes, I thought I would mention that to start our discussion. So what can you tell me now?” I said, trying to brazen it out.
The dragon threw his head back and laughed. “I do not remember agreeing to anything yet, little Human. I think you missed a step in the bargaining process. Where is my incentive to start this Inter-change?”
“Que?” Jason exploded behind me. “You’ve already had your incentive! Quiris gave you three magical items from us!”
Auraus shushed Jason frantically as the dragon snaked his head over mine towards the group at the carpet until his eye was up close and level with Jason. “Make no mistake, other little Human, that those items Quiris gave me were my bribe for coming here at all,” Frelanfur informed Jason with a menacing growl. “Now it is up to you to bargain with me for what you actually want.”
Jason shut up as the big head inspected him the same way I’d been examined. As the dragon looked him over, Frelanfur glanced at the carpet and licked his huge lips. Auraus, sensing the possible danger to our transportation, reached into her pouch and pulled out the golden vial that could pour any drink.
“Please, Frelanfur, will you accept this piece to start the even Interchange?” she asked with only a little quaver in her voice.
The dragon left off eyeing the flying carpet and Jason to inspect the vial instead. His eyes glowed a little as he checked it out, and a smile peeled back the corners of his leathery lips to reveal large, pointy teeth.
“Yes, Wind-rider, I will accept that to start the equal Inter-change.”
Long, Dark Road Page 3