Ice & Smoke

by Elizabeth Belyeu

  "Oh... Now that you mention it, I believe he and Rindargeth both spoke of 'call-names.' I thought of it only as different from their clan name. In any case I suppose that is his business.”

  “There is nothing about this particular dragon that is not your business, I think, under the circumstances. And speaking of the circumstances…” Tristan looked around, as if to be sure we had no eavesdroppers, though in the midst of an open field I didn’t see how we could. “I’m sure my brother and your fairy knight will have quite given up on my return by now. Who knows what they will do. I wish there were some way to contact them! I suppose we must be on the lookout for whatever sort of sign or signal they might give us.”

  I made no response further than a nod of the head, distracted by the question of how to deal with this further “aid” when it came. How I should like to box Elaysius’s ears for not giving Tristan the full truth of our situation! If he had done as instructed, we would not be in this mess.

  I worked my way down the row in silence, and Tristan heaved up his stool and came down to sit beside me.

  "I still fervently hope to persuade you to my point of view," he said, "but would rather leave the subject for now, and have you cease frowning so at me."

  "I do not smile at people who threaten death to my friends."

  "You consider him a friend, truly?"

  I sighed, sat back from my weeding and wiped sweat from my face. "We have a common enemy, and that makes us friends, after a fashion."

  "And what of me? Are we not friends?"

  "You will note I have gone to the same lengths for your protection as for his!"

  "That is not what I meant—though I do appreciate that effort."

  "Then what do you mean?"

  He ran a nervous hand through his dark curls. "We have been apart so long, Ariana. The years have changed us both. Not—not in bad ways, I think. But we were friends in childhood, and neither of us are children anymore."

  I rose on my knees to kiss his cheek. "We are still friends, Tristan, for my part. You came for me at last! That would cover a multitude of sins in my eyes, for all our present predicament."

  He squeezed my hand. "Your rescue has weighed heavily on my mind, all this time. When we recovered those girls from the cave, all so bruised and sickly, I hardly knew whether to hope you were among them or not. And then you were not, and I wondered if you were somewhere even worse..."

  "No, I have been luckier than that. Rindargeth was never less than kind to me."

  "I am glad of that, whatever his motivation. And his son, is he kind?"

  My eyes wandered toward the stable. "I think he is, for all his bluster. He may growl and snarl, but seldom bites."

  "Really." He brushed his fingers across the wound—the bite—on my shoulder.

  I shook him off. "He was not in his right mind, Tristan. You saw him, you know he was not. Nor would you be, most likely, were you cut open from waist to collar."

  "I doubt I would bite you."

  "Well, probably not, but you are not—"

  "A dragon."

  I took a deep, calming breath. "Perhaps you are tired, prince, and wish to return to your bed?"

  "Perhaps I am," he said sadly, and limped off to the tower.

  When the garden was well-weeded and a few buckets of water from the stream spread over it, I turned to see how Gareth was faring with the horses—only to see him emerging from the stable with a conspicuously pale figure leaning on his arm. I hurried down the hill.

  "Gareth, what are you doing?"

  "He needs sun," Gareth said.

  "He needs rest!"

  "Sun is rest, for a dragon," Braith said. With Gareth's help, he lowered himself onto the grass in the middle of the pasture; Gareth patted his head and skipped away, leaving Braith to lay with his eyes closed, smiling. "Ahh. Yes, that is immensely better."

  I cocked my head and watched him, trying to remember if I had ever before seen him smiling and relaxed.

  He opened one slit-pupiled eye. "Had you a question for me, princess?"

  "A question? No."

  "I wonder at your staring so, then. My presence can hardly be still a shock to you."

  I snorted. "On the contrary, your presence is at all times shocking to civilized beings."

  His eyes opened again, and a sudden whiff of fire and snow drifted on the air. "You have been spending much time with your dragonslaying betrothed, I perceive, who would have you believe dragons nothing more than animals that speak."

  I blinked. "You misunderstand me slightly, Braith. I spoke in criticism of your character, not your species."

  "Oh." He lay back again, and the smoky scent drifted away. "Well, that I am grown accustomed to, from you."

  Rather than leave Braith out and about unsupervised, I settled onto the grass beside him. Human I might be, with no particular connection to sun and fire, yet the warmth was still relaxing and pleasant, and warm weather would not last much longer. "Braith, why is it that your scent is so different from your father's?"

  He arched a brow at me. "As a note of interest, princess, it is nearly as rude among dragons as among men, to discuss one's bodily odor. As well to ask me why I am not as handsome as my father, nor as intelligent."

  "Those are equally valid questions," I said. "But truly, if you would have me understand the ways of your people, you must needs be willing to answer my questions about them. Your father smelled always of heat and metal"—and how I missed it! that smell had become as dear and comforting as my mother's rosewater—"and I had, perhaps foolishly, assumed all dragons to do so. Yet your own scent seems composed of equal parts fire and ice, with a dry coldness as of a winter morning. I suppose you will tell me it is simply a matter of individual variation, yet such a smell of ice seems very strange for a dragon."

  He sighed heavily before at last consenting to answer. "I gather you know nothing of the ice dragons of the far north, of whom my mother's mother was born."

  "Ice dragons? Indeed, I know nothing at all of them! Pray tell me! Do they breathe ice, then, rather than fire?"

  "They do, or rather, a vapor so chill as to freeze whatever it touches. They are slower of habit and temper than fire dragons, as a rule, though scarcely less dangerous thereby."

  "Is this the source of your pale coloring? Are ice dragons white, to better match their snowy surroundings?"

  "Precisely. Though I am ice dragon of but a quarter-blood, I carry more outward signs of it than my mother did, who was half of each. My mother carried it on the inside, I suppose, for she could breathe fire and ice-vapor both, and I have fire only."

  He fell silent. Thinking of the mother he had never known? What had it been like for him, a dragon-child with no mother? I had been blessed with a double share of maternal attention, between Mother and Tegwen—yet I also knew somewhat of the orphan's life, trapped here so far from them. Rindargeth had been a tender parent to me, in his way, yet I could well imagine him more reserved toward a son, as many men were. Had there been anyone to coddle and pet young Braith, scold and fuss and tickle and hold? Or did dragons do such things at all?

  "I see now what you meant," Braith said, "about the difficulty of keeping one's hair bound. Now that I cannot shift back and forth as I please—unless I wish to bleed to death—I find that shifting a braid, and creating one by hand, are entirely different endeavors." He fiddled ineffectually at the long pale hair that was now less than half braided.

  "Quite the nuisance, unbound," I said, "on so hot a day."

  "Very much so."

  I waited.

  "Oh, for pity's sake, Ariana," he said at last, "will you not plait my hair? I can make nothing of it myself—I can scarcely even sit up to try!"

  "Why certainly, Braith," I said brightly, "I should be delighted to come to your aid. Here." I took his arm, and helped him to sit up (which he did with only a pained breath or two), then knelt at his back to set about untangling the great mess of his hair.

  Having no brush with me, I coul
d only comb through it with my fingers. It was difficult hair, to be sure, easily tangled, too fine and wispy to hold much shape—yet pleasing, all told, as soft and silky as any cat's fur.

  Cat-like, too, was Braith's way of leaning into my hands as I worked. I could not decide whether to be disconcerted or… no, truly, I was disconcerted. Yet I said nothing, nor did I draw away.

  "That is as well as I can do at present," I said when the braid was done, and tied off with a bit of twine, "though I do not imagine it will hold long. Be still and I shall see how your wound is coming along." Shuffling on my knees, I came around him, and managed to check the bandages across his chest without ever looking him in the face. "Truly, we must find you a shirt somewhere," I muttered. "But you have bled no more than a thimble-full, that is most heartening. The stitches are holding. Are you in very much pain?"

  "No," he said, which lie perhaps explained the low roughness of his voice. He cleared his throat, tried again. "It seems you have spilled more blood than I, this day."

  He raised a hand to my shoulder, which, I was startled to see, had bled through my sleeve, the wound likely broken open by my exertions in the garden. Muttering under my breath, I fumbled for the extra bit of bandage I had tucked into a pocket, and tried awkwardly to apply it.

  "Oh, be still." Braith took the bandage from my hand and, before I could muster a protest, folded back my clothing far enough to tie it round my shoulder, considerably neater, firmer and quicker than I could have done.

  "Thank you," I said, and folded my spotted sleeve back down.

  "I owe you an apology," Braith said. "For your shoulder, that is. I did not mean… I seem to hurt you more often, without intention... Humans are such fragile creatures, you are quite terrifying to be around!"

  "An apology? Do you owe me a debt, then?"

  "An apology only, which I have now rendered."

  "You haven't, though. You have alluded to an apology, you have not actually spoken it," I said. "In Caibryn, small debts between a lady and gentleman can be settled with a kiss." Dear heavens, from whence had these words risen? Could I not call them back? "But you have already declared kisses to be awkward and ridiculous," I added quickly, "so we shall have to come to some other—"

  He lifted my hand and pressed fever-hot lips firmly against my fingers.

  I gaped.

  "So my debt is settled," he said, and I did not contradict. In fact, I could think of no reply at all.

  "Found them!" Gareth, whom I had nearly forgotten, shambled up to us with a battered leather pouch in his hand, and cast himself onto the grass before us, grinning.

  I pulled my hand away at the same moment that Braith released it, and we both turned our whole attention to Gareth.

  "Found what, little one?" I asked.

  "My runes. Left 'em in the grass. Here they be." From the pouch he spilled the rune-carved stones he had shown me before. "Ask something!"

  "Er… what is ten times a hundred?" I asked.

  Gareth gave me a withering look. "Ask a question."

  "Will it be sunny tomorrow, or cool?" Braith asked.

  Gareth shook the little stones in his hands, not unlike dice, cast them out onto the grass, and studied the result with almost comical intensity.

  "Sunny afore noon," he said. "Rain comes later. Lightning, all night. Boom! Crash!"

  His exclamation made me jump, which made him laugh and repeat it.

  "All night? You're certain?" Braith said, peering intently at the stones. "This one here, next to the sun—does this not mean a calm dawn?"

  "Aye, rain stops just afore sun-up. I'm glad of that! No good milking Bessie in the rain." He gathered his stones again.

  "Do you mean to say," I murmured to Braith, as discreetly as I was able, "that he is actually reading the stones?"

  "Seems to be," Braith said with a shrug. "I know very little of them, myself."

  "Gareth," I said hesitantly, "ask the stones… ask them where Genevieve came from." Prodded by my conversation with Tristan earlier, it was the first question come to mind.

  Gareth flung the stones, studied them. "Gen come from the sea."

  "Yes, but before then."

  He studied the stones a moment more, and shrugged. "Gen come from the sea."

  I arched a brow at Braith.

  "What do the stones say about game, hereabouts?" Braith asked.

  "Pigs in the woods," Gareth said after consulting. "Deer. Two bears. There was three, but Braith et one."

  Braith's expression acknowledged the truth of this.

  "What do the stones say," I said, "of Braith's master?"

  Now Braith's expression grew less pleasant.

  Gareth studied the runes a long time without answering, face screwed up in tense confusion, so that I nearly told him to forget the question and not distress himself—but he answered at last.

  "Bad man," he said. "Cares only about hisself. Greedy. More more, better better, mine mine." He wrinkled his nose, and said to Braith, "Bad master."

  "Is there another kind?" Braith muttered.

  After a midday meal full of toothy smiles and veiled insults between Tristan and Braith, Tristan requested my company on a visit to his horse.

  "Master Gareth has been taking prodigious good care of her, I am sure,” he said, “but we are accustomed to being much together. She will want reassurance in this strange place."

  "The horse wants reassurance?" Braith said. "And then what, a dolly in its bed to protect it from the dark? And I suppose the chickens wish to hear flute and harp during their dinner."

  I ignored Braith with every fiber of my being, and put my arm through Tristan’s to be escorted to the pasture.

  Tristan's horse trotted up to us, bright-eyed and high-tailed. Star was a compact and muscular mare, dark brown with a white star on her forehead, doubtless the source of her name. She snuffled Tristan's hair and chest in delight—I had to take hold of his arm so he would not be knocked down—and nosed at his pockets until, laughing, he produced a bit of bread filched from the table.

  "Here, you give her a treat as well," Tristan said. "How I wish I could ride! This broken leg is beyond any nuisance."

  I let Star nibble bread from my hand. "It will heal."

  "It will," he agreed, but his voice was graver than I had yet heard it. "It will heal as well as such things ever do—which is to say, I should grow accustomed to the use of a crutch."

  "Perhaps you shall carry a walking-stick and a dignified limp, like an old warrior. Like King Danvael himself did, or so I have heard."

  "Indeed, he did." Tristan sounded bemused. "Obtained much the same way, in fact—in battle with a dragon. Though he was battling with the dragon and not against him."

  This singular sentence made sense to me only because I knew the tale. King Danvael Dragon-friend had risen to greatness through the military advantage of the dragon who served him. Once a mere squire and shoe-maker's son, Danvael had become king of Dewgent's neighbor Gwynhafod. He was a popular figure in the fireside tales of Caibryn, but to Tristan and I the story was a bit more personal. Danvael was something like Tristan's stepfather, in a backwards way—his mother's first husband, father of his brothers Taran and Owain.

  "I shall have to tell Braith the story of King Danvael Dragon-friend," I said. "To prove to him that humans and dragons need not be always enemies." I looked at Tristan intently.

  "Danvael's dragon was as destructive a force as any the world has seen," Tristan said. "Because he aimed that destruction where Danvael wished does not make him into a kitten."

  "Danvael was no kitten either, yet who hunts kings?"

  "Other than dragons?"

  I swallowed a snarl of frustration and turned to stroke shaggy white Winifred, who had come to investigate this special treatment of Star. "Tell me more of my brother," I said.

  This he did, regaling me with anecdotes both heard and witnessed—the little prince's fascination with frogs, cats, and mud, his unusual articulation for his age, the day
he fell out of a window into a hay-wagon and near stopped poor Tegwen's heart. I felt a stir of liking for the tiny, bold lad, and tried to nourish it into true affection. This was my brother, and I was determined to love him, whatever his existence might have cost me.

  Braith being safely inside the tower, we made our way to the stable to seek Tristan's saddlebags. Tristan leaned on my shoulder to walk—how fortunate that I was a strong-built girl, with so many wounded gentlemen about!

  "Quite an accumulation of oddments," Tristan said, gazing around the stable.

  "Well, it is the only proper storage place we have." The debris of five years—a dented wheelbarrow, two gilt shields, a broken pitchfork, wagon parts, locks and pulleys and pails, and a hundred smaller, stranger things from odd lots at the market or the saddlebags of dead knights.

  Tristan toed at a length of rusty chain. "A shame you cannot simply bind the dragon. We would all be spared his company, without giving you the guilt of his blood."

  "He could break it in a trice—by changing form, if nothing else." I gazed at the chain, one part of me thinking it a lovely possibility, while another part hotly protested the idea of Braith as a prisoner in chains. Surely, if chaining him were the only way to keep him from killing Tristan, I would have to do so. Well, the question was moot; the chains would not hold him.

  A shadow fell across the open doorway, and we both looked up. I had hardly time to draw breath in alarm before Braith reached us. With one fist he struck Tristan across the face, and with the other hand snatched the crutch out from beneath his arm. With a cry of equal parts anger and pain, Tristan fell to the hay-strewn floor.

  "Braith, no!" I leaped between them, to prevent whatever blow Braith planned next, but instead he seized my arm, kicking Tristan's outstretched hand away, and fair snatched me out of the stable, slamming the wooden doors behind him, and locking a plank over the latch.

  "Braith, what are you about?" I demanded, trying to free my wrist from his grasp.

  "His Highness the Prince will be sitting this one out, I think," Braith snarled, breathless with exertion. "In the interest of fair combat."