Draka

Though I was curious – and a bit worried – about what the scholars might do now that I’d opened the gate for them, I still had to leave for a while every day. I had to eat, drink, and take care of the natural consequences of that, and I checked on the lake every day. On the second day I found a message, but to my disappointment it was only that. At first I was very confused. I couldn’t understand a single word. I began reading the first line over and over, sounding it out, until I realised that it was not actually in Karakanian, but in Tekereteki, spelled out phonetically in the script I’d learned. It made reading slow, but it left no doubt about who’d sent the message.

My dear friend,

I hope that you are well. I am sorry that I have not been to see you, but there is much to take care of, and we have not been able to spare a day. Soon, I promise. My brother and his love are travelling to Tavvanar, to meet a possible buyer for the item. They left yesterday, and will be away some time.

Well, that sounded promising. I wondered how much we’d get for the book. From what the others had said when we found it, they may be set for life, or at least rich enough to make adventuring something they did for its own sake, and not a necessity to meet basic needs.

My sister and I have spent some time dealing with the temple, and are now looking for investment opportunities in the city. We hope to purchase a profitable business or something in that vein. If the item brings in enough money, we may even be able to justify establishing a family name. It is a strange thing to think about, but exciting.

Again, I promise that I will see you as soon as I can. Another two days, at most. I cannot stand to be apart for so long, and I have not forgotten my promise to go hunting with you. I look forward to it.

Yours forever,

Herald

She’d signed it with the feminine form of the Tekereteki word. Clever. That ‘yours forever’ worried me a little, but I had no idea how you’d usually end a letter here, and it wasn’t really any worse than ‘I am, of course, eternally your humble servant’ and whatever else people used to write.

And I couldn’t deny that on a purely selfish level I liked the sound of ‘Yours forever’. Herald was my best friend. She was mine. Every confirmation that she felt the same way made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and I had learned to accept that.

With Val and Tam away, that left Herald and Mak to talk to, and I couldn’t blame them for not coming out if they were busy. I had no doubt that when they were done for the day they wanted to relax and spend some of their hard-earned silver, and the six-or-so hours round-trip by foot from the city to the lake wasn’t exactly something you’d do casually. But this drove home something I’d been thinking about: I had no way of getting in touch with them. Right then I really wanted to talk to someone about these scholars and how to handle them. The fact that I couldn’t contact anyone, and that every meeting happened on a minimum of a one day delay, was beginning to bother me. I mentally added an eighth item to my list: figure out a way to contact people when I wanted to. This would soon be moot, but how was I supposed to know that?

Going back a couple of thoughts, it struck me that I had lumped in Mak with Herald as someone I might be able to talk to. And the more I thought about it, I realised that, yes, I probably could. We’d talked more on our adventure north than ever before, and on the way south it had changed from her scolding me for my recklessness to actual friendly, if short, exchanges. I still didn’t feel like she trusted me fully, though. There was always something between us, and it was safe to assume that the something was a certain young, six-foot-something woman. On something like this, though, I thought that she might give me good advice.

In total I spent four days and nights watching the scholars waste time. It got to the point where I fantasised about the monster bear I’d fought wandering up from the south and solving my problem for me, but I hadn’t seen the beast since my trip with Lalia. For something so large it sure was good at hiding. Maybe it had gone into the mountains to terrorise the local goat population?

Or perhaps someone had already killed it. One thing that I learned during those four days was that the situation around my mountain had changed in the last month or so. I had heard the guard Barran tell the scholars that the ‘wyvern’ had been spotted in the area, and clearly he was not the only one who knew. Three separate groups of would-be monster hunters approached the camp during those days, being sent off with polite determination each time with the news that no, no one had seen the creature as long as they’d been camping there. Neither did any of them even hint at seeing me as I watched them from the trees, so I wasn’t too worried.

I had a moment of recognition when one of the groups turned out to be Big Beardy, Short-and-Wide, Awesome Curls, and Baran, the adventurers I’d seen on my first day watching the road, and a few times since. I followed them for a while after they were sent off. Curls and Baran seemed to have made up at some point over the last month, and were being cloyingly sweet with each other, to the constant discomfort and eye-rolling of their two companions. It was all very cute, and I hoped that I wouldn’t have to kill them.

After the first group the scholars had the guards rig up a large sheet over the open gate. They were guarding their find jealously, and I approved. Both because the fewer people who knew about it, the better, and because it meant that they were unlikely to tell anyone themselves.

On the morning of the fifth day after I opened the gate, things were different at the camp. The packs that the scholars and their usual companion had prepared were bigger, and Tavia, whose excitement had been falling the last few days, was back to the same exuberant self I’d first seen when she found the gate open.

They were going in, and they were staying. At least one night, maybe more. And I badly wanted to follow them. I checked in with the dragon, and she agreed. As uncomfortable as she was with going back inside, she wanted to know what the humans were up to. And what they might find.

Unfortunately, the two remaining guards seemed to take their duty seriously. One of them was always present at the gate, changing every few hours, and the whole day I never had a chance to slip in. Of course, once the light began to fail it was they who didn’t stand a chance of keeping me out.

The sun set behind the mountains, and as night set in fully I shifted into the shadows. I slid down the side of the dig, and the guard didn’t even glance my way. He didn’t have any light; a good idea, I’d learned, since it would make him stand out but wouldn’t help him see anything more than a few metres off, anyway. The guy was taking his job seriously, but against someone who was functionally invisible it didn’t matter how good or dedicated he was.

Silently, I slid in past him. I went a hundred yards or so before I shifted back, just to be sure, and then I set off up the tunnel at a trott, only slowing down and focusing on stealth once I felt that I should be getting close. I expected the scholars to be asleep, but who could know with those two? Or with Tavia, at least. She definitely seemed like the kind of person to pull an all-nighter if she got into something. But even if they were settled in for the night they’d probably have one person sitting guard, and I didn’t want to spook them.

They had set up near the entrance of the ‘hub,’ as they called it. They had a fire set up. It must have been for light and peace of mind rather than heat, since the inside of the mountain was perfectly comfortable no matter how warm or cold it was outside. Not that I was a good judge of that; I walked around naked, which didn’t mean much anymore, and neither temperature nor weather made me particularly uncomfortable. I’d have to see when winter came, or if there was a real scorcher one day. I imagined that my black scales might make that uncomfortable.

Either way, they did have a fire. It didn’t seem like a great idea to me, since they couldn’t know for sure if there was any way for smoke to get out or fresh air to get in, but I couldn’t blame them. The hub was big, empty, and silent, and even with the fire the far walls were lost in the dark.

The older scholar, Ramban, was sitting guard when I found them. Because of how close the fire was to the entrance I couldn’t get past them without pushing shadows ahead of me, and I decided not to risk it. I could have probably gotten away with it, though. Ramban was very much a scholar and not a guard. He spent his shift reading in the firelight, instead of being alert to possible dangers. And even if they thought that the place was safe and empty, I knew that there was a cave full of gremlins connected to it. A good way off, but still. If any of them got in here they’d probably have Ramban dead before he even knew that he was in danger. That would be a good start to solving my most immediate issue, but the idea was to avoid that ‘solution.’

After a few hours of nothing, Ramban woke Barro, who took over the watch. A few hours later he did the same with Tavia, and when her watch was over she woke both of the others. As they ate a simple breakfast the two scholars talked about which tunnel they’d explore. They were clearly in new territory here – my territory, a very central part of me insisted – and none of their texts were any real help when it came to what they might find where. All they had, as far as I could tell, were second- or third-hand accounts of people who had been here, either when the ‘Dark One’ still lived, or afterwards, when humans had taken over his lair. Ramban repeated the same objection as the first time I’d heard them talk about the subject, and many times after: that they didn’t know that the Dark One was real.

To be fair to Ramban, his insistence that the Dark One had never been proven to be a historical figure was pretty well supported by a lot of the texts. He could quote plenty of authors who doubted whether it was an actual person – or creature – or a myth.

But, to be fair to Tavia, it was impossible not to connect this Dark One to my dragon’s Big One. Her, or our, father. Maybe.

Considering that the authors that the scholars were quoting had lived hundreds of years ago, and that was after the Dark One’s time, I wondered again just what had happened to my dragon, and how long she’d been– what, exactly? Sleeping? Frozen in time? All she remembered was being trapped in the ‘throne room’ and unable to escape. Maybe chained up or caged by whatever group had killed her father. And then, nothing. Hundreds of years of nothing, until I crashed into her head.

I wonder what these two would give to talk to my dragon.

… there was an idea. I’d been hiding myself – mostly, at least – because the humans might try to hunt me down if they found out about me. Like, on a governmental level. But two scholars, who were obviously excited about this place…

Of course, they’d never mentioned the word ‘dragon.’ I didn’t know if they had any idea what the Dark One was supposed to be, assuming that my hunch was correct. Maybe they thought it was some warlord, or another powerful monster. The tunnels certainly didn’t look big enough for a giant, terrifying reptile. Unless that reptile could do what I could, of course, which would make sense if they called it ‘The Dark One.’

But Herald had never heard of a black dragon, so maybe I was wrong, or maybe whoever had killed it had kept the details secret. More reasons to talk to the scholars!

I needed a list. Two columns: Kill, and Talk. Live or Die, and reasons to do either. That would make everything clearer, right? Live: they may know useful things, and maybe I could get some silver out of them. Die: they had found a place that had a direct connection to my hoard.

My dragon's opinion on the matter was clear, but she was willing to defer to me when it came to dealing with humans. Lucky them.

Something else struck me. Something that I had known for a while, sure, but that I hadn't understood the implications of. My dragon had been here. As far as I could tell, she had grown up here. And her last memories of this place were of fear and pain. She had suffered for an unknown time, and then she had woken with me in her head. I'd thought that must have been strange for her, but I'd never really thought about it, so to speak.

And there was something else. From what my dragon had told me, it sounded like she was barely self-aware when all of that happened. She’d slunk around, hiding from her father when he was there and stealing food from him when he wasn’t. But that wasn’t right, was it? Herald had told me, way back when we barely knew each other, that I was too small. That I should still be in a nest, being fed by my mother. The throne room could be a nest, couldn’t it? And our father kept bringing food, which he left conveniently lying around for us to ‘steal’.

We were basically an infant, weren’t we? No wonder we were growing so fast. And maybe it was objectively true that whatever happened to her was hundreds of years ago, but from her perspective it had been two months.

That… no wonder she was such an emotional mess. Her old life ended horribly, and then she had to deal with me, both muscling in and sharing space in her head and possibly, I suspected, forcing her suddenly into full sapience.

"I don't need your pity," she grumbled.

… and of course she'd heard that.

So what do you think about it? I asked, since I had her attention.

"I have told you before. I do not remember those times well. I thought I was too young… if you are right, perhaps I still am. Perhaps your presence made me more." There came a mental scoff. "Or more likely the time between has rotted my mind. It matters little."

Still, I thought, putting all my sincerity into the statement, I’m sorry for being dismissive before. Saying that whatever happened was long ago. It wasn’t, to you. Was it?

After a pause, the dragon replied, “No. It wasn’t.”

But whoever killed the Big One. Your father. They are long gone. They can’t hurt us.

“Perhaps you are right. But know that I feel your intent, and that my… aversions will not be cured so easily.”

I know. Take your time. I waited, but didn’t get a response. You’re talking more, now, I tried.

“You are becoming more worth talking to,” she answered, “now that you are more focused on worthwhile things.”

Like what?

“Properly securing the hoard. Establishing our dominance over our territory. Finding hidden ways to relay commands to our servants. All fine goals,” she said, her approval clear in her voice.

Friends, I corrected. And associates, I suppose. Not servants.

“If they serve our purposes and further our goals, the distinction is meaningless. We can coddle them, if you wish.”

I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose, I thought with some annoyance. Of course you’d think that.

“We can only have servants and enemies. You know this as well as I do. Or maybe you learned nothing from the sell-swords?”

My thoughts immediately went back to the fear and awe that I’d seen on the scouts’ faces.

“You think we can trust them? An ally who fears us is only an enemy who hasn’t realised their position yet. They must adore us, or be so terrified that they would never act against us, or die. Nothing else will do. Nothing else will keep us and what is ours safe. The same is true of your current dilemma.”

The scholars, I said.

“They know too much. Subjugate them, or kill them. Only stop dithering.”

And, like that, I knew what to do.