“No.”
With no warning, a dark-clothed stranger stood in the doorway to the passage, eyes reflecting the yellow firelight. And there had been no alarm—there should have been—
“It is not to burn kapristi or human that I am come,” the man said. He looked like a man, but the room seemed warmer, with a faint tang of hot iron, and as he came nearer, into the light, his dark skin showed a pattern of fine lines. “The kapristi should withdraw, as he is frightened.”
“Go on,” Arcolin said gently to the gnome, who made a wide circle around the stranger and disappeared down the passage. Then to the stranger he said, “I am the Count, if that is whom you seek; my name is Jandelir Arcolin. May I have yours?”
The man smiled. “Bold you are, Jandelir Arcolin, but so I expected from one who had been captain under the new king of Lyonya. Who fares well, though lately having some difficulty.”
“Pargunese,” Arcolin said. Except for the bright eyes, whose yellow gleam seemed brighter than reflected fire would account for, and the tracery of lines on his skin, the man seemed completely human. A spy, perhaps? But certainly not—his mind blanked as the stranger opened his mouth and a tongue red and hot as iron in the forge-fire slid out farther than any human tongue, little flames writhing from its surface. The air wavered with heat; Arcolin felt sweat break out on his body.
“My name does not concern you,” the stranger said, after that tongue withdrew once more into the semblance of a human face. “My nature does. Kapristi told you truth, as kapristi usually do. Tell me, man of war, are you wise?”
For a long moment, Arcolin could say nothing, could scarcely bring his mind to understand those words at all. Then he gathered his thoughts. “You are … a dragon.”
The stranger nodded gravely. “But are you wise?”
“Not … very,” Arcolin said. “As you said, I am a man of war, and war is not often wise.” He nodded to the chair across the desk from him. “You might as well sit, if you will.”
The man sat; Arcolin felt no diminution of menace or power. “If war be not wise, why, then, do you pursue it?”
All the answers Arcolin could think of were too little or too much, and a shrug of the shoulders would be rude. “Choices,” he said finally. “Choices made when I was a lad that made this road the likeliest to follow.”
The stranger leaned back in the chair and tented hands that had ordinary fingernails. Arcolin had half expected talons. Surely dragons had talons … in the old legends they had talons.
“Only in my true shape,” the stranger said, as if Arcolin had asked aloud. “They would be inconvenient here.” He smiled again. “You claim no wisdom, and yet you are correct in your understanding of why you became a man of war. All have choices; choices both create new choices and close off old ones. I think you may be at least somewhat wise. For a human.”
Arcolin wanted to ask what dealings the dragon had with Kieri, what news from Lyonya, but more urgent, he knew, was the dragon’s purpose in coming here.
“I would not come to Vérella if it can be avoided,” the dragon said. “Cities … are inconvenient for my kind, tempting to rash action. But your king must understand that some land is forfeit, and why, and that it is beyond my power to restore it.”
“Our law requires us to accede to gnomish—kapristi—claims of territory,” Arcolin said. “The kapristi told my captain, who told me, and I have sent word already to the king.”
“It is not of kapristi,” the stranger said. “It is of my kind and our history. The kapristi were but stewards of our trust and failed. In their failure lay the seeds of much evil, including that enmity between Pargun and Tsaia. My children—our children—are jealous and most unwise in their youth.”
“Your … children …?” Arcolin could not follow this.
“As it falls on you to lose land you thought you owned, and on you to explain this loss to your king, I will speak plain, though … plain is not always wise.”
Arcolin’s mind drifted to the refreshments on his desk: the jug of golden southern wine, the glasses, the plate of leftover Midwinter pastries. “Will you share a glass?” he asked.
The stranger chuckled. “I judge you meant to impose no host-right, but no—I drink nothing but wind and eat what you cannot eat. It was, however, a courteous impulse, and I consider it well done.” He glanced at the door; it swung closed silently, and Arcolin could just hear the faint snick of the lock. He thought he should be afraid, but he wasn’t.
“Here is the short tale, clear-spoken,” the stranger said. “In times ancient to you, dragons lived here, having come from lands you cannot imagine. But always we had too many children … and our children, as I said, are rash and wild and dangerous. They are fire’s spirit and burn all. The Sinyi, who have few children, begged us to limit our growth for the sake of the taig, and so we did, burying the eggs deep in stone, cold stone, away from any that might disturb them and bring them to life. Then came the Severance.”
“Severance?” Arcolin had not meant to speak.
“In time, humans had been born, and one came near the Sinyi in love for the One Tree. He sang to the Tree; the Tree sang back … and that was the first Kuakgan. You have heard that story?”
“Something of it, yes. It angered some elves.”
“Indeed. Some reproached the tree; all reproached the man. The Sinyi severed in twain—those who left took vengeance on those who stayed, on humans, on the very land itself.” The stranger closed those golden eyes for a long moment, then opened them again, looking past Arcolin into the fire on the hearth, which crackled under that gaze. “We are all Elders. Sinyi of both kinds, rockfolk, and dragons, each created for a purpose in this world by those more powerful, who juggle worlds as you might toss pebbles. As Elders, we too have choices, and the consequences of our choices affect all the lateborn, for we can shape—to some degree—even the fabric of this world. Wisdom meddles little. The iynisin, those elves cursed in the Severance, are not wise. They … meddle. They stole our hidden eggs and loosed scathefire on the world once more.” The stranger looked down at linked hands. “Or it may be that there was no theft, that one of our own turned traitor.”
“How did any survive?” Arcolin asked.
“That is an even longer tale,” the stranger said. “A tale of great loss, great courage, great changes in the world. A night and a day are not long enough to tell it, and we both, man of war, have much to do.”
Arcolin said nothing, though curiosity burned in him.
“These kapristi you shelter had care of one clutch of dragons’ eggs. Mine, in fact. I do not blame the kapristi for the trouble that befell them from Achrya, but they did not send for aid, and in the end their prince gave in to her and told where to find the eggs and how to wake them. For that great unwisdom many have suffered already and yet more will suffer. Wine spilled from a broken jar cannot be gathered back into it, nor can the shards of a dragon’s egg be fitted back together and made whole …” Again the stranger’s eyes closed for a long moment. “What they loosed,” he said, still with shut eyes, “must be destroyed, and yet … they are my children.”
“Is there—?” Arcolin began; the stranger lifted a finger and he fell silent.
“No other way? No. Two of them only, streaming scathefire, rent great holes in the Lyonyan forest taig, tracks it will take more than a human life to bring back to healthy forest.”
“You stopped them,” Arcolin said.
The stranger smiled, a slightly wistful smile. “Not alone. I met a half-Sinyi woman on my way to find the Lyonyan king. Braver than any human woman I had ever met; she helped me.”
“Paks?” Arcolin asked. He could not think of any other woman it might be, though he wondered that someone would think her part-elven.
“That is not her name: she is Half-Song to me, and Arian to her lover, the king.” The stranger shook his head as if to clear it. “But that is not to the point. You, man of war, must be wiser than you believe yourself to be. The place
where the eggs were—where these kapristi lived—is near the border between your land and that of the Pargunese. That is why I told the kapristi to tell you it must be barred to all lateborn. I must find all the eggs, transport those not shattered, find all pieces of those that are … and any that escape will loose scathefire.”
“If Achrya began this evil, will she not attack you? Prevent you?”
The golden eyes opened wide. “Achrya has been given a lesson; she will soon be … nothing again.”
“But she’s a goddess,” Arcolin said.
“No.” The stranger shook his head. “She is not even Elder. She was created of fear and loathing, stealing power from greater powers. You must tell your king why the land is barred and long will be. I can assure you that the Pargunese will take no advantage.”
“The Pargunese are indeed my concern,” Arcolin said. “For my king bids me defend the eastern border and stand ready to help other lords between here and the Honnorgat.”
“The Pargunese have more pressing concerns,” the stranger said. “Including me.” He yawned; the inside of his mouth glowed like a bed of coals, and once more heat rolled out. “You said you sent a courier. Did you tell your king of a dragon?”
“Not … precisely,” Arcolin said. “I told him of gnomes, which our law covers, and what the gnomes told me, but I thought the gnomes—I thought they were mistaken. So tired, so ill, perhaps, that they had mistaken some bane of Achrya’s—”
“And now?”
“I understand they were not mistaken.” What else could he say with those fiery eyes looking at him, that heat and forge smell all around him?
“Good.” The stranger stood. “We must go outside to seal this agreement. There is not room here for the change.”
“The … change?”
The stranger smiled. “You would not want to miss seeing my true form, would you?”
Arcolin shook his head, unable to speak. The door to his office opened before they reached it; they passed through the halls and down the stairs and out into the inner court with no one to see them. The night air struck bitter cold, but warmth and a dim light came off the stranger, less than the light of the oil lamps that burned in their niches either side of the entrance.
“Stand there,” the stranger said, pointing to the well in the center. Arcolin obeyed. Across the court, he could see the orange glow of another lamp in the arch between this courtyard and the larger outer one, where a soldier should have stood guard, but he did not see the soldier. Had the stranger—the dragon—taken his guard away? “I did no one here harm,” the stranger said. Then he shimmered, as if he were made of water on which sunlight glittered, and grew until the space around the well was full of scaled dragon: head and neck and body and tail. Talons rasped the stones; near Arcolin the dragon’s snout blew a jet of forge-smelling steam that warmed him, and above and to his right the dragon’s golden eye peered down at him.
“I named your commander and Lyonya’s king Sorrow-King,” the dragon said. “You I will name … Kindly-Death.”
Arcolin shivered; he felt that naming had a terrible power. “May I ask why?”
“You kill, but you are kind of heart,” the dragon said, as if it were obvious. “Do you not know your own nature?”
“Not … entirely,” Arcolin said. “No human does, I think.”
“Indeed, man of war, you have some wisdom. But we must seal our bargain, that you leave the land that I must take, and allow none to wander there, lest they take hurt.” The dragon opened its mouth and extended its tongue, red-hot and smoking in the cold air. “Come, now: touch your tongue to mine.”
Arcolin stared a long moment. He had not really imagined a dragon at all, and being asked—commanded—to touch tongues … He wanted to ask if Kieri had done so, but thinking of Kieri gave him courage. Of course Kieri would have. He knelt on the cold stone flags and with great difficulty forced himself to open his mouth and extend his tongue into the heat that rose from the dragon’s tongue.
That tongue felt dry and hot, stinging a little, but no hotter than a roll from the oven. It left a taste like bread-crust in his mouth.
“Well done, man of war,” the dragon said. Arcolin sat back on his heels, then stood. “Your courage commends you. Though I take from you lands you were granted and give you a task you may find difficult, convincing your king, and am no kapristi who cannot give or take without exchange, yet I would gift you in return, as you asked no return. Is there aught that dragonfire can do for you or your realm?”
“I do not know what dragonfire can do,” Arcolin said, but as he spoke, one face came unbidden to his mind. Stammel. “Unless it can cure blindness.”
“Blindness of mind or eye?” the dragon asked. “You are not blind either way, I perceive.”
“My sergeant,” Arcolin said. “He was blinded when a magelord tried to steal his body; he fought it off through days of fever, but—”
Scales clattered like dropped armor, echoing off the walls around the court. “What magelord?” the dragon asked. Now Arcolin faced both eyes, the dragon having rearranged itself.
“I do not know the full name,” Arcolin said. “He first appeared in the body of someone who had been a recruit here, but he had apparently yielded his body willingly. Duke Verrakai believes it was a Verrakai who had such powers.”
“So it comes again,” the dragon said.
“What?”
“Mageborn evil,” the dragon said. “Tell me more of your sergeant.”
Arcolin did his best to describe what Stammel had done in that office in Vonja, but the dragon asked more and more questions about Stammel’s life. “He was a paladin’s sergeant,” he said finally. “Paksenarrion’s—”
Steam rushed over him. “He nurtured that paladin?”
Arcolin would not have called a sergeant’s untender care “nurturing” but said Stammel had been her recruit sergeant and her cohort sergeant later.
“Would she not heal his sight?” the dragon asked.
“She heals as Gird commands,” Arcolin said. “Stammel is not Girdish, but Tirian. I think he is drawn somewhat to Gird and if not blinded, might have sworn to Gird soon, but being blinded, he thinks it unfair to do so seeking a cure.”
The dragon blinked. “A man of high honor and courage. I do not know, man of war, if dragonfire can cure what magefire ruined … humans are fragile to Elders. Speak to your sergeant. If he will risk, I will try. Now I must go, lest harm come to all.”
The dragon rose into the air, still in the coil that had circled the courtyard, scales clattering as it then uncurled wings Arcolin had not noticed, black against the stars. It glided away, that dark shape; he shivered and turned to go back inside. By the entrance stood the guards he had not seen before, looking at him with surprise.
“Sir! I—how’d you get past us?”
“No matter,” Arcolin said. He took the route to the cellar stairs; the estvin waited there.
“The dragon’s gone,” he said.
The estvin nodded. “It is felt. Does—does dragon demand we go?”
Arcolin felt his brows going up. “Why would it?”
“For that we did not hold to bargain.”
“No,” Arcolin said. “The dragon said you had failed but no more than that about you. The dragon’s command for me was to tell my king about the lands lost, which I had already done by courier, and prevent my people wandering there. That is all.”
The estvin just stared at him.
“Did you think I would break faith with you?” Arcolin asked.
“Your law is not our Law,” the estvin said. “But I am relieved to see trust justified.”
The next morning, Arcolin went to see Stammel, who had settled into the barracks as usual. He found him in the main courtyard, sparring with the new armsmaster, the two of them rolling around on the cold stone as if it were summer.
“Sir!” the guard at the archway said. The two disentangled and stood, panting puffs of steam in the cold air that loo
ked nothing like the dragon’s.
“Sergeant Stammel,” Arcolin said. “I need to talk to you—barracks empty?”
“Squads still scrubbing out,” Stammel said. “Bit of a problem last night.”
“Ah.” Arcolin didn’t ask; if he needed to know, the recruit sergeant would tell him. “We’ll go to my office, then.” He moved closer; Stammel touched his shoulder, and they started off.
As they came into the inner court, Stammel said, “If it’s about my sight, sir, it’s no better. Just that bit of light blur, is all. And sir—much as I want to be with the Company, I’m not what you need. Like I said before.”
“It’s not just about you,” Arcolin said. “And it will take some explaining.”
Once in his office, with the door closed and Stammel sitting across from him, where light from the window revealed the cloudiness in his eyes, Stammel looked, but for that, the fit, healthy sergeant of middle age he had seemed before. But how many campaign seasons could anyone sustain? Most sergeants retired with the first bad wound. Why, Arcolin asked himself, was he so sure Stammel should not? If the man himself had been willing …
“You remember what the gnomes told me,” Arcolin said. “About the dragon.”
“Yes, sir. And you weren’t sure of it, you said, but don’t tease them.”
“Right. I thought they were frightened, hungry, confused—anything but a dragon, which, Gird and the High Lord know—hasn’t one been seen in Tsaia in generations. Since before Gird’s day, anyway.”
Stammel did not ask anything, just sat, composed and steady as usual.
“Last night,” Arcolin said, “a dragon came here.”
Stammel jerked as if he’d been pricked. “Sir?”
“A dragon. I—I can’t begin to describe it, except that it was here, in this room, in the guise of a man, but for the markings on its skin, its yellow eyes, and its tongue—such a tongue you never saw.”
“A tongue …” Stammel sounded half mazed.
“In the shape of a man who could put out a sword’s length of tongue—my sword’s length—and the tongue like red-hot iron and giving off heat.”