Draka

I had slept all of the previous day, but I still managed to nap a few hours in Herald’s tent. I thanked my natural draconic laziness for that. Herald, though, slept like a baby well into the morning, smiling and snoring softly, with her arm draped over me and resisting any attempt of mine to leave.

“That,” she declared as she stretched in front of the tent once I got her up, “was the best night’s sleep I have had in weeks.”

I was still thinking about what the dragon had said the previous night. Her words, combined with Herald’s somewhat extreme reaction to seeing me, and her eagerness to have me stay near her even while she slept, had me worried. It felt like her behaviour was way beyond being happy to see a friend after a week or two. Or even a crush for that matter, which would be kind of weird, but I wasn’t going to judge. But was she that starved for someone who’d listen to her and take her seriously?

As bad as it was, I hoped that it was that simple. Because the alternative, based on what the dragon said, had me worried.

“Still having trouble sleeping?” I asked her as she prepared breakfast. She had made a small fire, boiling water for tea and to soak her hard, dry bread. She’d offered me some, but I’d declined like I always did.

“I have had trouble, yes,” she said, poking at the bread to break it into chunks as she added dry cheese and fruit to the water.

“I’d hoped it’d get better, after we got your people back.”

“Oh, it did,” she said with a small sigh, “but then I started having nightmares again. The last two weeks have been quite bad.”

“Any idea–” I started carefully, but she cut me off.

“You, you scaly idiot!” she said incredulously, but there was no anger in it. “I was worried about you, of course! Where were you?”

“Right. I promised to tell you, didn’t I?”

And so, while Herald ate her weird porridge, I told her about the last two-weeks-and-change. My frustration at not finding the slavers. Hurting my wing and meeting the fisherfolk. I was taken aback at how her face twisted when I told her how they’d tried to collect on that bounty. Anger looked wrong on her, somehow, and she was clearly furious at what I told her. It also wasn’t the first time she heard about it.

“There were some rumours. About a damaged Barlean fishing boat coming into Karakan, with half of the crew dead and the survivors babbling about trying to collect the bounty, and how the wyvern had sworn eternal revenge on them. I do not think that anyone took them seriously. They were supposedly mad, with thirst or fear.”

There was no sympathy at all in Herald’s voice when she told me, only that same steady anger, and I didn’t feel much myself. Not as much as I would have thought I might. Mostly I regretted the deaths, if that was true, as a minor personal failure. I hadn’t been trying to kill them, even though they had tried to kill me first. I especially hoped that the younger boy had survived, since I’d kind of made a deal with him.

“It is good that they spoke of a wyvern, even after seeing you,” Herald said, “No one should mistake a wyvern for a dragon up close. Still, I think this increases the threat to you. If the ‘wyvern’ begins to be taken as a serious threat, the council may add to the bounty, and that would attract more hunters. I know that this was not your fault, but you will need to be more careful, if possible.”

The bounty had been posted by the Alchemists’ Guild, she told me. Apparently wyverns had many parts that were useful as alchemical reagents, and the skins made excellent leather. Her eyes were smouldering as she told me how she’d checked repeatedly if anyone had claimed the bounty, and I had a strong feeling that she would have done something reckless if they had.

I didn’t like seeing her like that, so I pushed on quickly, telling her how I’d been stuck below the cliffs. She brightened a little when I told her how I’d learned about the tides, laughing at my description of waking up with sea water in my nose the second time in one sleep, and cheering enthusiastically when I told her how I’d found that I could climb in shadow form.

I glossed over the days in the forest. Nothing much had happened other than me being too late to meet them at the lake. I apologised for that, but Herald waved it off. “I should have waited,” she said, “but Mak had accepted a job and–”

“No, no, you don’t need to excuse yourself. We set a time and I didn’t show. It’s totally my fault.”

“I felt horrible for leaving. It felt like I was betraying you, but Mak…”

“Hey, no! They’re your family, and they love you. Don’t blame your sister for wanting you around.”

“That’s not why she does it!” Herald protested, raising her voice. “She just wants to keep me away from you!”

“Look…” I paused for a while to consider what to say. Herald’s face was a riot of conflicting emotion. Anger, sadness, fear. A plea for me to understand. “Makanna doesn’t trust me. Obviously. I wish she did, but she doesn’t know me like you do. And I don’t think she wants to. So yeah, I think she’s worried about you getting attached to me. But I saw you two together, in the tunnels. She loves you a lot, you know? I was away with Valmik and your brother for what, fifteen minutes? And when we came back she was ready to give you anything, just to keep you close.”

What I had to say next was difficult and bitter. I was frightened, truly afraid of how she might react. I didn’t want to scare her off, but I was honestly worried about what both she and the dragon had said, so I had to put it out there. Herald deserved for me to be open.

“Makanna doesn’t want to lose you. And I wonder if she’s right to be worried.”

Herald looked at me, confusion writ large on her face. “What do you mean?”

“I…” The words stuck in my throat. I tried again. “I’m worried that you might be obsessed with me.”

“I do not understand.”

“Always siding with me over your sister? Staying here for… you must have been here what, four or five days?”

“Six.”

“Yeah. Losing sleep over me? The way you greeted me? I’m just…” My throat felt thick but I pushed through, and the words spilled out in an uncontrolled stream. “You’re my only real friend here, Herald. I’m so lucky to have met you, yeah? The idea of you getting hurt terrifies me. And I’m scared that this is more than just a friendship to you, that you’re idolising me somehow, putting me on some kind of pedestal where I can’t help but disappoint you and hurting you in the future, or getting you hurt for real somehow, and that you’ll hate me and–”

And I’m afraid that there is something about me, the dragon in me, that’s messing with your head. But I couldn’t say any more. I couldn’t even look at her. I turned my head away, but Herald reached out and put her hands on each side of my jaw, gently but firmly turning my face back towards her. She looked at me seriously for a long while, her mouth twitched, and she smiled wryly, laughing without humour.

“Oh, gods. The arrogance of dragons.” There was a hint of tears in her eyes, but she looked serious and determined. “That will not happen. Listen to me, you silly lizard. I am not some child, with wild, romantic notions. I am not in love with you, if that is what you are afraid of. I am sorry, but you are not my type.”

“Yeah, no dramas. Bit of a relief, really,” I said, trying for humour. “No offence but… Ew. You’re like eight years younger than me.”

She very generously forced a laugh. “This is not some misplaced hero-worship, either,” she insisted. “I know that we have not known each other for long. And I will not deny that I am drawn to you. I want to be around you, and I am unashamed and comfortable with that. When I am with you, I feel safe and excited all at once, and it is a little intoxicating. You are a dragon, and a traveller from another world. How amazing is it that I know someone like that? And on top of that, I like you for who you are. I enjoy our conversations and our silences. I feel fortunate beyond measure to know you. Is that so bad? Is it so hard to understand?”

“Maybe not.” I still tried to avoid her eyes, but she was a big girl who spent a lot of time shooting a bow, so I didn’t have much of a chance. She held my head steady, and turning my eyes away felt ridiculous after a while.

“And what is the alternative? You refuse to meet with me anymore? You would make us both miserable for certain rather than risk it in the future?” I could tell that she was trying to sound stern, but I could see some real worry in her eyes that I might do just that.

I said and stopped fighting her grip. “No. It sounds pretty dumb when you say it like that.”

“Good,” she said and relaxed, as well. “It would be dumb.” She gave my cheeks a little squeeze. Then she hesitated, before quickly leaning forward and kissing me on the nose before releasing my head, her cheeks darkening “Do not read too much into that. Are we done with this, for now? Can you continue the story?”

God forgive me, I still had doubts and worries. It still felt like too much, too fast from her side, but I was too weak and selfish to push it further. If I truly wanted to scare her off I might have told her about the dragon and how it felt about her, and what that made me fear. But I had been so scared to say what I had, and was so relieved at her reaction, that I couldn’t handle the idea of making another effort. I would trust her to be mature beyond her years. I would be the best friend to her that I could, under the circumstances, and if she was wrong I would deal with the pain and the guilt when it happened.

For her sake, I pulled myself together and continued. “Yeah. So, there was no one here…”

I told her almost everything. I skipped most of the time in the forest, but I told her about the archaeologists and what they had found. I had never told anyone about my cave before, but I told her. I talked about how I’d climbed the mountain, and about the cave and the chamber where I had my hoard, and I never felt the least bit of worry about her knowing, either my own or from the dragon. I told her about the pit, and how I’d never worked up the nerve to go down there, and she was very sympathetic.

I even told her about my new hunting technique, which she approved of.

“You know,” she said. “Considering your excellent sight in the dark, and how you blend into the shadows… I would think that you are supposed to hunt at night. Like an owl.”

“Yeah, in hindsight it feels kind of obvious.” I’d been thinking the same thing, but without the animal comparisons. “An owl, huh? I’ll take it. I like owls.”

She was less enthusiastic about my experiments with storing my kills for a few days. I was getting used to it. Sometimes my stomach lurched before I dug in, but I must have learned to suppress it. Besides, it hadn’t made me sick so far.

“So, anyway, here’s the exciting part,” I continued. She was looking a little green after I told her about eating three-days old goat, and I needed to change the topic before she lost her breakfast. ”I told you how I was here and found the note about a week ago, right? Well, I was planning to try to meet you as soon as you got here, but I went to check on the scholars and got kind of trapped. Or maybe lost is a better word for it.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Trapped?”

“Yeah. Not by anyone trying to catch me or anything like that. Those scholars I told you about, the night after I got the note they finished digging out the gate they’d found,. They must have figured out that the sides weren’t interesting, because they’d focused on the important part. Anyway, I was bored and really curious. And the gate was right there! So when they were asleep I, you know. Opened it.”

“Did they not have a guard?”

“Yeah, but the camp wasn’t that close. And I hope that at least some of them were better at fighting than keeping guard, because they were not good at that. I don’t think they even heard the gate opening. Or closing. I closed it after I went inside.”

“You shut yourself in.“ Herald was unimpressed.

“I mean, yeah? I didn’t want someone to come down and find the gate open.”

“Did the doors not leave marks in the dirt? They could see those and know that the gate had been opened.”

I… had not considered that. “Um… well. I hope not. Anyway, there was the same kind of tunnel inside, like where we found the villagers. Long, square, turning. Weirdly dry. This one went up, though. Ended in a big, open chamber, kind of like where we were, but it was a lot more even. It looked almost perfectly round. And there were so many tunnels leading out from it! Every couple of yards, there was another tunnel! There was a lower level, too, and same thing there. Lots of stairs leading down, and a tunnel between every two stairs. Dozens of them!”

“I am guessing that you did not return the way you came?” We had gone back inside the tent by then, and she had settled comfortably on her bedroll, her head propped on a makeshift pillow made of rolled-up clothes.

“Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. I figured I’d be smart, so I went straight across the chamber to the tunnel opposite the one I’d come in through. The opening was bigger than the others, so I figured it would be more important. More interesting, you know? Except that didn’t work out so well.”

The tunnel had continued upward, just like the one I’d come from, but it wasn’t long until it, too, exited into a chamber. This chamber had been very different, though. It was long and wide instead of round, the ceiling far above me. Kind of like a school gym, really, only with a vaulted ceiling. There had been a faint smell in the air, besides the dust, like the ghosts of silver and gold and other lovely things. I’d been understandably intrigued, so I went in and started looking around.

“There were these weird holes in the ceiling. Not a lot of them, and not regularly, just kind of spread out, here and there, except for one big square one in the middle. No doors or tunnels on the floor level, just those holes. So I was poking around, and I swear that there must have been silver or gold dust on the floor or something, because it smelled wonderful. But at the same time I felt a little weird. I was getting anxious, and I couldn’t tell why. Still don’t know why, but then it hit me all at once, and I had to get out. Like… I panicked, and I got the hell out of there!”

“I would love to see it, if you think that you can go back. Now that you know what to expect it might be easier.”

I doubted that. “We’d have to sneak past the scholars, but we could try, I guess. I’d want to try on my own first, though, so I don’t run out on you.”

What I didn’t tell her, of course, was that it was the dragon that had freaked the hell out. She’d been anxious from the moment we entered the second chamber, which had steadily built into a full blown panic attack. Only instead of becoming paralysed, I ran, as fast as I could, the dragon screaming “Out! We must get out!” and stuff like that over and over and over in my ears until I couldn’t think straight.

I could only assume that it was related in some way to the staff of dragon bone that the valkin leader had, though how I couldn’t tell. There was certainly no sign of anything living there, and whatever had been there once it had been cleaned out meticulously. But seeing that staff was the only other time that the dragon had expressed this kind of fear. Sure, there was the pit in my treasure room, but that was more like a very, very strong aversion.

“When I got back to that first big chamber I wasn’t thinking straight.” That wasn’t a lie. A massive understatement, perhaps, but not a lie. “I must have taken the wrong door. And then that tunnel branched and merged, and I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, and I got totally turned around. I must have wandered around in there for… how long have you been here. Six days, right? So three days, I think. The bad feeling wore off pretty quickly, but by then I was hopelessly lost. So I tried to keep going up, and it worked out for me. I finally ended up in a big natural cavern, with water and that glowing stuff on the walls and all.”

“Glow slime,” Herald supplied. She’d been listening to my story with rapt attention, and it was the first thing she’d said for ages.

“Yeah, thanks. Glow slime. Hope it’s not toxic, because I drank some of the water. Probably a bad idea. It was salty and tasted real foul.” I grimaced at the memory. “I found some gremlins there, too, which had me worried for a while. Then I thought maybe I could eat one.”

Herald made a disgusted face.

“Hey, I was pretty hungry! Three days, remember? But the gremlins stayed far away from me, and I didn’t particularly feel like chasing after them in case they ambushed me or something. Anyway, I was worried, because I didn’t know how close I was to my hoard, and I don’t want those little shits stealing my stuff. But once I was in that cavern getting out was pretty straightforward. I came out way north of my mountain, but once I was in the air, getting back was easy.”

“And the remaining three days?”

“Well, I was in there for three days, remember? And I hadn’t exactly had a big meal before I went in. So I hunted down a goat and couldn’t really control myself, and then I kinda… slept a couple of days away. Sorry.

I hadn’t heard from the dragon since it calmed down after that terrified scramble through the tunnels, and it had been a silent, lonely search for an exit. I couldn’t tell if it was embarrassed, or in shock, or what, and it had been getting me more than a little worried. It didn’t usually stay silent for so long. The first thing I had felt from it was the hunger when I ate that goat, and it had been overwhelming. I’d tried to resist, like I’d done before, but this time I hadn’t stood a chance. Thus my delayed arrival here. It had been a shock when the dragon spoke to me after Herald handed over the silver, especially with what it said, but also a relief. As unhealthy as it might be, I was used to my constant companion, and I didn’t want to see her gone.

Herald reached out with one of those long arms of hers and patted me fondly on the side. “You really are just a big lizard, are you not?” she said with a grin.

“You have no idea.”