“Thank you,” I muttered.
There was a roast pig and a bowl of strawberries the size of a washtub sitting on the floor in the middle of the chamber. Still half asleep, I ate berries and pork and tried to get my bearings. Shardas attempted to make conversation, but when I replied only with grunts, he gave up.
After breakfast, during which he ate most of the pork and all but a handful of the strawberries (stems and all), he took me down the passageway and into another cave.
“This will refresh you, I hope,” he said.
The floor of the chamber sloped away from the entrance to a pool of turquoise-blue water that steamed in the dim light. Shardas’s bulk would fill the pool with only just enough room to turn around, but it was still bigger than the pond I had learned to swim in at home.
“The water is quite hot for humans, though I enjoy it,” Shardas said. “If you do not get too close to the middle, I think you will find it comfortable enough. ”
“Is it a natural hot spring?”
“Oh, yes, there are many such in this land. ”
“Not around Carlieff Town. ”
“You didn’t spend enough time in caves, then. That is why we dragons came to Feravel in the beginning: so many deep caves, with air vents and hidden pools. ” He gave a great sigh, rippling the water. “Even Milun the First couldn’t get rid of us entirely. ” And with that he left me to bathe.
I ran back down the passage and fetched my pack. There was a little nub of soap tied up in a spare handkerchief and a clean set of underthings in the bottom of my pack. Keeping to the edges of the pool as suggested, I scrubbed myself clean. My straight hair was horribly tangled, and I broke two teeth off my comb working through it. Then I took the rest of the soap and scrubbed the dirt and sweat out of my gown and laid it over a rocky outcropping to dry.
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Having nothing else to wear, I crept back down the passageway with a shawl draped over my underthings. I sat and sewed with the shawl around me until the heat of the pool had dried my gown enough to make it wearable again.
After a lunch of peaches and mutton, Shardas asked if I would like to have a proper sleeping chamber, and I gave a heartfelt nod. He took me down the passage that led to Jerontin’s old workroom. On the far side of the laboratory was a curtained opening too small to admit Shardas. Shifting the curtain aside, I found a small sleeping chamber, thick with dust.
“I have not been able to clean it,” Shardas said, his great voice heavy with regret. “I tried reaching in with a cloth to dust from time to time, but it was too awkward. ”
“I see. ”
Stepping inside the room, I walked around slowly. There was a bed of heavy carved wood, and a red-lacquered chest. The bedcoverings looked to be not only dusty but also disintegrating from age, and the rug that covered the rough stone floor was more holes than cloth. Shelves had been carved into the wall, and on them were books with spines faded from age and use.
“More of Jerontin’s alchemical books,” Shardas explained.
“I will clean them up and put them in the laboratory,” I said.
“Thank you. ”
Shardas provided me with some of the cloths he used to shine his windows, and I set to work. I carried out the rotten bedding and rugs, and Shardas gathered them up and took them away. When he came back a few hours later, he had a collection of blankets held carefully in his claws.
“I’ll find you a new rug tomorrow perhaps,” he told me.
“Where did you get these?” I held up the blankets: they smelled freshly laundered and two of them were still damp.
Shardas scraped at the stone wall beside his head with the tip of a blue horn. “Oh, I found them. ” He looked like a little boy who had stolen a pie.
“Where did you find them?”
“Hanging. ”
“Hanging?”
“Hanging on clotheslines near some farms,” he confessed in a rush.
“Shardas!” I was shocked. “You stole these?”
“I only took one from each clothesline,” he argued.
There were four blankets. That meant there were four farmer’s wives wondering just what had happened to the blankets they had washed and left to dry in the spring sunshine.
“But you stole them!” Then a thought struck me. “The food that we’ve been eating – the fruit and the meat … you stole them, didn’t you?” I thought of my father, working so hard to make our farm a success. Imagining a dragon swooping down and denuding our fields made me feel sick.
“No, no, it’s not like that,” Shardas assured me. He reached through the doorway into the little bedchamber as though thinking to pat my head or back with his claws, and then withdrew without touching me, still looking guilty.
“Then what is it like?” I was torn. I really liked Shardas, and I was deeply flattered that a dragon would want to please me this way. But, having been raised on an impoverished farm, the idea of stealing was more than I could bear.
“I only go to very prosperous farms: lots of buildings in good repair, farmhands bustling around. Then I take very, very little. A single blanket, which I haven’t done since Jerontin died. A clawful of peaches. The pig was wild: I caught it here in the forest, and the sheep was a stray. ”
That soothed me to a certain extent. “Oh. Well, I suppose the food is all right, then. But maybe you should take some of these blankets back. ”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know which farm I had got which blanket from,” he admitted. “And it does get cold in these caves at night, for humans. ”
He was certainly right about that. Last night, after pulling my shawl around me and then putting on my winter stockings, I had still shivered. No wonder I had woken up so out of sorts. Aside from waking up in the lair of a dragon, I mean.
At last I accepted the blankets, though I politely refused a rug for the floor. Most of my days would be spent in the window room, I argued, where it was warm and there was better light to sew by. After that I stopped asking where Shardas got our food, and he never told me. But soon I learned to trust and respect him, and I was comforted by the fact that his gentle soul would not allow him to ruin a family’s livelihood.
And so, as stitch after stitch found its place on the handkerchiefs and swatches I embroidered, our days fell into a routine. Shardas with his windows and I with my embroidery sat together companionably for hours while light fell through the jewel-like glass panes and made patterns on the floor of the cave.
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Though I missed Hagen, and sometimes found myself choking back tears as I thought of my parents, I didn’t miss life on our farm. It was delightful to sit and embroider all day without having to worry about wasting candles, or getting my chores done. There was no scrawny cow to milk, no chickens to peck at me as I tried to gather their eggs. My aunt’s shrill voice was nowhere to be heard, and the depressing sight of wilting potato vines did not greet me when I went outside to relieve myself. After only two weeks, I had to admit it: I had never been so happy.
The King’s Seat
When a month had passed in pleasant harmony with Shardas, however, I felt that I should leave. I had woven four sashes and had a respectable sampling of my work exhibited on a number of handkerchiefs and linen squares. Since I had more thread than cloth, I had even decorated the hem, neckline and sleeves of my own gown with stylised floral patterns I copied from Shardas’s windows. I kept nervously asking him if he thought it would be enough of a reference for a future employer, and he replied quite honestly every time that he had no idea. I soon stopped asking.
“Are you certain you want to do this?” Now Shardas was the one asking repetitive questions as we prepared for the short journey to the King’s Seat.
“I have to,” was my automatic reply as I packed my things and made ready to leave.
I would be arriving at the King’s Seat in grand style
aboard the back of a mighty golden-scaled dragon. Not that anyone would know: Shardas would leave me outside the city gates just before dawn to avoid being seen. When the guards opened the gates for the day, they would find me waiting there, pretending to have walked in from the country.
Packing my things made me sad. I would miss Shardas and it had been wonderful to have a room all to myself. I had revelled in the freedom of rising late, lingering in the steaming bathing pool, and eating as much as I liked. Making my sampling set had been a thrill as well, because for once I was doing things I liked, not the patterns that my mother assigned me, copied from the dull, squarish designs the ladies of Carlieff favoured.
I liked to think that Shardas appreciated my company as well. We would talk for long hours as I embroidered. Sometimes he would sing strange dragon songs or human ballads and hymns. I would return the favour by reciting the epic poems popular in Carlieff. He had once asked me to join him in a duet, and with a blush I confessed that I had no singing voice to speak of. He complimented the sewing I was working on, and chose another song.
And then there were the times when we both sat silent, watching the light shift through the gorgeous panes of Shardas’s windows and thinking our own thoughts. We also liked eating peaches and watching the moons rise from atop the hill that housed his lair.
If I hadn’t been so scared at the prospect of flying – and worse, falling – I think I would have been embarrassingly weepy as we climbed to the top of the hill. We had decided to take off four hours before dawn from the top of the wooded hill that housed Shardas’s lair. The hill never looked as big from the outside as it felt on the inside, and I mused aloud about how long it would take to excavate a hill, burrowing deep enough to provide such large chambers within.
“An hour, perhaps two,” Shardas said in an offhand way as he scanned the skies. He was looking for the telltale smoke of tinker and bandit fires, in order to plot a course that would take us over the less-travelled areas of the forest.
“What?” I said.
“You don’t think I spent months digging it out with my claws, do you?” He turned his attention to me with amusement. “And your eyes aren’t playing tricks: it really is bigger on the inside than on the outside. ” Humming to himself in a satisfied way, he picked up my bundle and hunched a shoulder so that I could clamber up.
“Oof! Sorry!” Scrambling up the side of a dragon was not as easy as I had thought. For one thing, Shardas’s gleaming scales were very slick, and some of the edges were sharp. For another, my gown and slippers had not been made for dragon riding. By the time I settled myself between two of his neck ridges, my cheeks were hot, my hair was coming unbraided, and my gown was uncomfortably twisted around. I settled it as best I could.
“Are you all right?” Shardas asked. “My alchemist friend was much more graceful at mounting. ”
“Well, la for him,” I replied testily. I clutched the neck ridge in front of me and gritted my teeth. “Whenever you’re ready. ”
Almost before I had finished speaking, Shardas leaped into the air. His enormous wings unfolded with a snap like wet silk being shaken out and we soared upward. My stomach rose into my throat and I squeezed my eyes shut. I invoked all three gods, and promised that I would enter a hermitage for life if they would just let me live through this.
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I’d thought it would be easy to ride a dragon, but found that I had to concentrate on holding tight to the spiny ridge in front of me, clamping the sides of Shardas’s neck with my legs, and not being sick all over the both of us. He carried my bundle for me so I wouldn’t have to worry about losing it mid-flight. I thanked the Triunity that no one would be able to see me with my skirts hiked up and my teeth chattering from fright.
Wind rushed past my face as my stomach settled back where it belonged. Surprisingly, there was little movement and no sound other than the wind. I cracked open one eye. Then the other.
Shardas’s wingspan was so great that he glided through the air as smoothly as an eagle. I had imagined a more unwieldy, frantic motion, but I should have realised that after centuries of practice, the gold dragon would be an expert flier.
I stared upward in amazement. The stars didn’t appear to be moving at all. Yet when I looked down, the moon-silvered forest was rushing past at a dizzying rate. It was disconcerting, but not unpleasant.
We soared higher so suddenly that my sweaty hands slipped off the ridge in front of me. Fortunately, Shardas’s neck was wide enough that I didn’t fall. Instead, I threw my arms wide and closed my eyes again, pretending that I was the dragon, and that it was I alone who flew over the forest. I opened my eyes and let out an exhilarated whoop of joy.
A vibration shook my legs: Shardas was laughing at me. I whooped again, my arms still flung wide, and he swooped left and then right in a leisurely fashion, glided down to rattle the tops of the trees with his claws, and then flew higher until I felt that I could reach up with either hand and grab hold of a moon.
And then it was over, and we were standing on the wide, paved highway a half mile or so from the gates of the mighty King’s Seat. Even in the wee hours before dawn there were so many lanterns and candles alight in the city that I could no longer see the stars, and the moons seemed sickly and dim.
I had known that the King’s Seat was the largest city in Feravel, but I had not been prepared for what that truly meant. The construction of stone and wood before me was vaster than I ever could have imagined, and in the darkness I could hardly see all of it. My legs quaked from nervousness and the after-effects of keeping my seat on Shardas’s back.
“I had better go; the guards might see me,” Shardas said, but his reluctance was clear in his voice. “Please be careful. ”
“I will. ” I hefted my bundle into my arms, scuffing the road awkwardly with one blue slipper. “And you be careful with the migration and everything,” I said.
“We’ll be fine, despite Feniul’s annual histrionics,” Shardas assured me, and we both chuckled. Feniul had bespoken Shardas through the enchanted pool nearly every day that I had been in the gold dragon’s lair. Between his frustration with his dogs (I managed to count roughly twenty, but Azarte seemed to be the most trouble) and his fears that this year something would go horribly wrong with the migration, he was grating on Shardas’s nerves and mine.
“You may call on me if you need help,” Shardas said. “Please promise me that you will. ”
“Thank you, I shall certainly do so,” I said with polite puzzlement. “But how?” I wondered if he would give me some sort of enchanted water pot or something, and worried that it might attract too much attention.
“Simply call out my name, and I will hear you and come,” Shardas said. His large muzzle opened as though he were about to say something else, but then closed again with a snap of his jaws. “I will hear you. ”
And with that he leaped into the air and glided away, leaving me blinking dust from my eyes and waving sadly. I shouldered my burden and trudged up the road to the gate, then sat on the neatly tended grass beside the road to wait for dawn and the opening of the gates.
Just before dawn a cart carrying wicker cages of geese came along the highway. I slipped into the city in its wake, letting the honking and flapping and flying feathers distract the guards. Anyone might enter the King’s Seat, but the guards took down the number of people in the party, their business, and ultimate destination. Not wanting to admit that I had no idea where I was going, I stood near an exhausted young gooseherd and let them put me down as one of that group. The driver of the cart looked at me curiously, but I just shrugged. It wasn’t my fault if the guards were lax.
It was then that things got complicated. I didn’t know how to find work as a seamstress or fancyworker. The tired gooseherd only knew where the poultry market was, and the cart driver shrugged and spat when I asked if he could give me a ride to the cloth-workers’ district.
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“Never seen it, never cared to,” he grunted, and slapped the reins for his mule team to walk on.
The broad central street of the King’s Seat stretched away before me. If I kept walking along it, I would eventually come to the Jyllite Square, where the two palaces were, or so I had been taught in school. But the walk from the gates to the Jyllite Square would take several hours, as I had also been taught. I started up the street anyway, hoping that the cloth-workers’ district branched off the main thoroughfare.
The King’s Seat sloped gently uphill towards the palaces, but after an hour of walking it felt more like a mountain. I had passed a number of inns, but didn’t have any money to buy food or drink or a bed. I passed cattle markets and horse auctions and the glassblowers’ district. But no seamstresses. No weavers or dyers or cloth workers of any kind.
At the next inn I passed, the innkeeper’s wife was industriously sweeping the front steps, and I stopped to ask the way to the cloth markets.
“Just in from the country, are you?” She paused and leaned her beefy forearms on the broom.
“Yes, good mistress, I’m looking for a place as a fancy-worker. ” I held out my sleeves to show off the decorations I had sewn there.
“Well, then, be off with you and your country fancy-work,” she sneered, and swept a cloud of dust straight at me.
I ran, trying to keep away from the worst of it, my cheeks burning with embarrassment and my eyes smarting with tears at the sound of her raucous laughter. What was I, little Creel of Carlieff Town, doing in the King’s Seat? Did I really think that my crude provincial skills were wanted here in the city?
I kept on going because I had nowhere else to go, but I didn’t ask for directions again. After three hours, when I hadn’t seen anything that looked like the cloth-workers’ district, and yet still was nowhere near the palaces, I turned down one of the side streets, my fingers crossed that it would lead where I wanted to go.
I passed through a market that sold all sorts of exotic fruits and vegetables, and even more exotic animals for fine ladies to keep as pets. There were fantastically plumed birds and brown bears no higher than my knee, and little black monkeys, with wild manes of white hair, that could fit in a pocket.