Neither he nor Nat wanted to search the bodies of the bandits. It was probably a waste if they were carrying anything useful, and by law they were entitled to anything they found, but it just seemed too much like lowering themselves to their attackers’ level. So they simply mounted up without another word.
With Delno on horseback and Nat driving the wagon, they left Geneva to dispose of the carcass. Delno pushed the animals harder than he would have liked, but he wanted to put some distance between the dead bandits’ live companions and themselves. The pony, although unaccustomed to pulling so much, appeared to take it good-naturedly, trotting along. When they stopped more than an hour later, the harness was wet with sweat, but the beast looked like it could continue if asked to do so.
Chapter 25
After they had moved the wagon off the road at a small clearing and made camp, Delno reached out for Geneva mentally. “Where are you, Dear Heart? I would have thought that you’d have made short work of that carcass and joined us by now. It’s been over two hours.”
“I will be along shortly,” she replied, “I am just taking care of a few details that you missed.” Then, sensing his puzzlement, she added, “I will explain shortly when I arrive.”
“Were you communicating with your dragon?” Nat asked delightedly.
“Yes,” he answered, “how did you know?”
“You appeared as though you were concentrating on something, but you had a distant, somewhat unfocused look in your eye.” He seemed pleased with his deductions.
Delno chuckled and was about to say more, but Geneva’s arrival interrupted him. She landed gracefully. “Now then,” he said out loud, “care to tell us what details you were attending to that kept you away for so long? I thought we had pretty much cleaned up after ourselves.”
“I decided to do something with the bodies of the men,” she said. Seeing their astonished looks, she added, “Don’t worry, I didn’t eat them. I did carry them off so that their companions will assume that I ate them, though. I thought that doing so might make them think twice about following us.”
“That’s amazing,” Nat exclaimed, “I knew I was right!”
Both Geneva and Delno looked at him. Then Delno asked, “Right about what?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, “I tend to think out loud sometimes. It’s a habit I’ve gotten into from spending so much time alone. There is some debate among my colleagues about the intelligence of dragons. Of course, up until now, it’s been a purely academic debate based solely on information we have gathered from the books written on the subject.” He then went silent as he became lost in thought while watching Geneva settle herself into a comfortable position.
“Um, some debate. . . .” Delno prompted.
“Oh yes,” he said coming back to the moment. “There’s debate about whether dragons are actually sentient beings capable of independent thought or if they merely borrow the intelligence of their rider.”
Geneva snorted at this, showing her disgusted opinion of the second theory.
“Oh, I don’t hold to the ‘borrowed intelligence’ theory myself, mind you,” he said quickly. “I have always argued that dragons are sentient. Your actions, my dear, prove that you are intelligent and quite capable of independent thought.”
Delno was curious and asked, “How is it that these others can know of the existence of dragons and not believe them to be intelligent?”
“Well,” Nat responded, “those people I’ve argued this point with are scholars who have only read about dragons in books. I’m afraid the books deal much more with care, feeding, and dragon anatomy than they do with dragon intelligence. Those books that do deal with the behavioral aspect of the species are written as second hand accounts of the deeds of dragons and their riders and are looked upon as legends more than any kind of factual accounts.”
“Care, feeding, and anatomy?” Delno asked thoughtfully.
Before Nat could respond to Delno, Geneva spoke up, “Surely these men don’t assume that these books are definitive?”
“Oh, I’m afraid that most do, my dear,” Nat said sadly. “You see, these men don’t travel much, and therefore, don’t get the chance to make their own observations. Even I, who have traveled quite extensively, have never been close enough to a dragon before today to actually speak with the creature. Up until now, the closest I’ve come is having spoken briefly to one or two Riders,” then he added, almost to himself, “They don’t seem to have much need of my medical services.”
“Tell me, Nat,” Delno inquired, “how extensive are the books that you have seen concerning dragons, about their growth and anatomy I mean?”
“Oh, they were quite extensive,” he responded. “The care of dragons, at least in southern libraries, is a fairly common theme in most books concerning dragons. As for anatomy, that’s a little less common, though there have been at least three dissections, and those are well documented in at least two volumes I’ve studied.”
Geneva bristled and said, “Dissections?”
Nat was a bit shaken by the ferocity she put into the question and said, “I’m sorry, Geneva, I don’t mean to make light of the death of any dragon, but the poor dragons who were dissected had died of either natural causes or wounds. Other bonded dragons and their riders decided that not doing an autopsy would be a waste of an opportunity to learn, since the anatomical knowledge gleaned had such potential to help living members of the species. It was all done with the utmost respect, I can assure you.”
Geneva considered the point then settled back down. “Yes,” she said, “I can see the advantages to such an action.”
Delno said, “You know, Nat, perhaps there is a way that you can repay us for helping you.” He then told the older man their entire story from the beginning, only leaving out the details that had no bearing on the present situation.
When he had finished, he said, “So, you see, I have almost no training when it comes to dragons, yet I find myself as a rider. Your knowledge would be invaluable if you would agree to teach us what you know.”
Nat thought about it for so long that Delno was worried that the man would refuse. Then the physician smiled broadly, and said, “I know that I owe you my life and should agree to your request outright, but I will only teach you on one condition.”
Delno was taken aback by the man’s response. “What is your condition?” he asked.
“That you take me with you on your travels,” Nat said firmly.
It was Delno’s turn to be thoughtful. Finally, he asked, “Why would you want to accompany us? Surely you have other concerns more important than following us around the country-side?”
Nat smiled, “Actually, my friend, I don’t.” He drew a deep breath and sighed before continuing. “A while ago I took an apprentice. The man was nearly a journeyman physician then, and he’s been with me for more than two years. He is quite capable of taking over for my practice, and his elevation is merely a matter of formality at this point.”
“So you’d prefer to travel rather than settle into a quiet retirement?”
Nat laughed out loud, “Quiet retirement? If I simply retired, I would just spend my time traveling and studying anyway. One can only learn so much sequestered in a library. By traveling with you and Geneva, I can study dragons first hand and perhaps write a definitive book on the subject.”
Delno smiled at Nat’s reasoning, but said, “While I can appreciate your position on this, and I think that you would be an intriguing traveling companion, I don’t think I can take on the responsibility.”
Nat sat up straighter and said, “No one is asking you to be responsible for me. I will pull my own weight, I assure you.”
Geneva said, “There is no reason he can’t come along. It might be a good idea to have a physician with us, anyway.” Mentally, she added, “You never know when you might find yourself in a bar fight and end up unconscious.”
Delno glared at her, and Nat said, “There, you’re out voted, two to one.”
Delno looked from one to the other and back again. Eventually, he said, “Fine, since you are both so adamant about this, I will relent, but you will have to purchase your own supplies and carry your own weight.”
Nat beamed like a child who had just been given a particularly wonderful new toy. He turned to Delno and said, “My house and practice are in Orlean. Since that is the closest city, and you have already offered to take me there, it won’t be out of the way, so we can rest, re-supply, and I can make arrangements for my apprentice to take over for me.”
“How long do you need in Orlean?”
“Not long, I should be able to put everything in order within a fortnight”
“A fortnight,” Delno groaned. “We’re already behind schedule. I want to get to Palamore as quickly as possible.”
Geneva spoke up, “Since we are going to Palamore to find someone to train us, and we have now found someone to do just that, we no longer have need of such haste.”
Delno rolled his eyes and said, “If I didn’t know better, I would swear that you two had somehow met in secret and conspired together.” At Geneva’s stare, he threw up his hands in resignation, “Fine,” he sighed, “We stop in Orlean while Nat makes his arrangements. As for me, right now, I am hungry and would like to find something for dinner.”
“No problem,” Nat said, “I have some salt pork and plenty of herbs and spices. There are also some edible greens growing at the edge of this clearing that will make a nice salad. You get a fire going, and I’ll start preparing the food.”
Once the fire was ready, the food didn’t take long at all. Within an hour they had a nice meal ready. They ate in silence and then cleaned up the utensils. After dinner, Delno and Nat talked about dragons for quite some time, mostly growth, feeding, and development. Delno told Nat his thoughts about dragons being six-limbed creatures and wondered that they existed in nature at all.
Nat was thoughtful for a long time before finally responding. “According to what I’ve read, dragons aren’t naturally occurring creatures.”
Geneva, who had appeared lost in her own thoughts, turned her head toward him and paid closer attention. Delno asked, “If they aren’t natural creatures, how did they come to be here?”
“That, like most dragon lore, is a subject of much debate,” he said. Then he sighed and continued, “According to all of the books that make mention of the origin of the dragons, they were created by using magic to blend other unrelated creatures until the species of dragon was achieved. Some claim it was a magical experiment gone awry, others claim that it is a magical experiment that was entirely successful.”
“How is that possible?” Geneva asked.
“Well,” he began, then added hastily, “and please don’t take offense, either of you, but long ago there were practitioners of magic who make even the most adept present day masters of magic look like fumbling apprentices. There are hints that there were wars waged between mages that rearranged the very world itself. Mountains were raised up as barriers only to be thrown down a day later. The courses of rivers changed in an instant to wipe entire cities from the map. Even the seas were made to boil to sink fleets of war ships. Some of the mages who wielded such power actually thought of themselves as gods, but they were still only men, subject to all of the desires and other pettiness of any other member of the species.”
He paused to sip some water before continuing. “Then one group of mages finally realized that such power couldn’t be left in the hands of men, so they began to develop spells that would forever limit the amount of magic one man could wield. There was, of course, an opposing group who worked against them. The war between the two groups was the most devastating of all. All life on the planet was nearly destroyed. By the time the first group had emerged victorious, there were only a few small isolated pockets of life left. The mages who had sought to save the world by limiting the potential power of magic users now found themselves called upon to combine their own powers to try and restore the planet. The did their best to restore the land, then they brought forth the species they had managed to save in those few places they had been able to protect and repopulated the world.”
“In the end though, these once noble mages began to put themselves above the other creatures of the world. Again they vied for power. This time, however, their power was limited. Each one could only do so much by himself, and when they worked together they found themselves fighting with their own allies for control. That is why one mage, or it could have been several mages working independently from each other, that point isn’t exactly clear, set out to create a species that would have access to magic but could be controlled. He used different species and magically combined them. The first attempts failed miserably. The books don’t really describe them, but the more fortunate of them died shortly after birth. Later attempts produced things like trolls, but they were merely resistant to magic and hard to control. By combining men and elves with trolls they got the Roracks; more intelligent than trolls, but still unable to directly use magic and completely untrustworthy. At this point, the records that survive are very sketchy about which species were combined, but eventually they came up with dragons before the experimenters were hunted down and stopped. Their creations were thought destroyed with them, and indeed disappeared from history for over a thousand years.”
He paused for a long time lost in his own thoughts, then suddenly seemed to realize that he had not finished, and, smiling embarrassedly, he continued, “Then, of course, those created species reappeared. The Roracks were the first. They swarmed down out of the mountains and attacked everyone they could find. It was during these wars that men found the dragons. The dragons hated the Roracks, and fought them whenever they could. At some point during that war, certain men found that they were able to bond with female dragons, and they formed partnerships. Eventually, they also found that once they were bonded, they were capable of wielding more magic than either could do alone, though even bonded they aren’t as powerful as the mages of old. Together though, they were able, working with the men and elves, to push the Roracks back, though they have never been able to fully defeat them.” Then he added, as an afterthought, “Of course, the trolls were found at some point, but since they lack real intelligence, they aren’t a threat except to lone travelers or small groups who venture into their territory.”
“I didn’t know elves ever took such an active role in human history. I thought they tended to keep to their own lands and ignore the rest of the world,” Delno observed.
“So they do, now. It wasn’t always so, though. If it weren’t for the elves and their ability to control their environment, the mages could never have preserved so much during the mage wars. What was saved was saved on Elvish territory. Of course, their powers were limited by the same machinations that limited human use of magic, and now they have withdrawn to their own realm and ignore us for the most part, though they still send out hunting parties to cull the Roracks.”
They were all thoughtful for a long time. Delno finally said, “Nat, I don’t want to contradict you, but your tale speaks of a time that must be thousands of years in the past.”
“Tens of thousands” Nat corrected.
“Tens of thousands,” Delno said, “how can you be sure it’s not just fables? I have visited libraries; the oldest books I’ve seen are several hundred years old, and those are falling apart. I can’t imagine that you’ve seen actual accounts that were written at the time.”
“Ah,” Nat responded with a smile, “You haven’t been to some of the libraries that I have. The elves have ways of preserving written knowledge that we have either lost or never had.”
Delno was a bit incredulous, “You’ve been allowed in an Elvish library? I thought elves were a bit standoffish toward humans.”
At this point, Nat said, “Since we will be traveling together, and you have been honest with me, I suppose it’s time for me to return the consideration.” Then he pulled up the gray hair that came down
nearly to his collar. Underneath his locks, his ears were slightly pointed. “Not many elves travel much beyond their own borders. Of those who do, even fewer choose to dally with human women. Apparently, my father was a bit lecherous for one of his kind.”
Both Delno and Geneva stared at the man. Nat then told them, “My mother was lovely young farm girl when she met my father. He was tall, handsome, and I suppose somewhat mysterious to a simple girl like her. He stayed around for a few weeks, and then left, not knowing she was pregnant. She died shortly after giving birth to me. I was initially raised by my mother’s parents, but they never liked the idea having a half-elf bastard in the family. I was kept hidden from the community. What I can remember of the time wasn’t all that pleasant. Then, when I was four, my father returned and found me. He couldn’t bring himself to leave his son to the care of unloving grandparents, and they were happy to be rid of me. I spent the rest of my childhood traveling with him. He was a good man, even affectionate. He taught me about both the worlds he traveled through, elvish and human. As his son, I was allowed access to the libraries I have mentioned. When I became old enough to make my own choices in life, I decided to become a healer. I studied with both the elves and the humans and became the best healer I could. In my time as a physician I’ve not only ministered to the sick and injured, but also taught nine apprentices. I believe I’ve done enough for my fellow men and elves, and now I want to accompany you and indulge my own curiosity.”
Delno couldn’t help but ask, “Nat, just how old are you?”
Laughing mischievously, Nat answered, “I am one hundred and thirty-seven years old.”
Delno shook his head in wonder, “I wouldn’t have thought that you were more than fifty.
Chapter 26
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