“Let me see.” She approached.
I backed away, speaking quickly. “I have some skill at embroidery. I thought perhaps I could make an embroidery of you. I have cloth. . . .” I hurried to my cabinet and fetched the wooden ball Rhys had given me. “And there’s thread aplenty in the wardrobe if I—”
“Hush.” She stared down at my drawing.
In it I had emphasized her grace, the neat lines of her folded wings, her catlike look in slumber. But she might dislike being shown so. She might want a fiercer aspect. Perhaps I should have—
“You portray me sweetly, with a friend’s eye.” Her voice was soft, calmer than I’d yet heard it. “I should like an embroidery of me exactly thus, surrounded by my hoard.” Her voice returned to its ordinary nasal timbre. “And I should like another of me in battle, flaming at a dozen brave knights. We will find cloth for that one too. You have pleased me, little princess. You may take ten things for your hoard.”
“Thank you, but I have no need.”
“Take them. You will have need. In time I will turn against you, and you will have need.”
Before the sun set that day, I embroidered an outline of Vollys onto my cloth, working as slowly as I dared—because how would I entertain her when the job was done? She liked the image and gave me three more things for my “hoard.” After that we shared a dinner provided by my tablecloth. I ate a bowl of stew, and Vollys devoured half a roast boar, saying all the while that she didn’t usually eat between meals.
If she continued to eat with me, she’d never have to leave her cave to hunt. I wouldn’t even be able to try to escape.
The awfulness of it struck me. I’d never be alone again. I’d be in her dragon presence for every moment of what was left of my life, and Meryl’s life, too.
After dinner, while Vollys watched, I picked gold threads and purple ones out of a gown. When I was tired, she permitted me to retire to my pillows, but I felt her eye on me and couldn’t sleep. I lay rigid for a long while, until at last exhaustion overcame me. My last thought before I fell asleep was that Meryl had only seven more days to live.
When I awoke, Vollys and I shared breakfast from the tablecloth. I had a muffin, and Vollys ate an entire roast lamb. After the meal I sewed while Vollys watched me. She stretched out, with her head less than a yard from me. Her metallic breath heated me almost to melting, and her intent eyes unnerved me. I became terrified of dropping a stitch or adding a color she disliked. It was no way to create. The result was turning out pale and insipid.
I found the courage to say, “Did you oversee the work of your carpenter companion so closely?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “He disliked it too.”
“Since I am unlikely ever to meet another dragon—”
She laughed more and agreed. “Most unlikely.”
“And since I’m unskilled at telling tales, would you tell me of your life? Perhaps you can tell me about the battle you’d like me to embroider.”
“Battles are boring, little one.” Her tail switched. “I despise being bored. Have you noticed that my eye turns red when I flame?”
I hadn’t. I said no, and she sent out a tongue of fire. It was a bit to my right, but the flame still singed my hair and missed my ear by inches.
“I’ll warrant you didn’t look at my eye then either.”
She was right. I said nothing, afraid to admit it.
“I must make allowances. You are my youngest guest but one, and you hardly know me. I will take away only one gift. Give me one of the items in your hoard. You may pick. It is a minor punishment. You’ll still have twenty left. You can live for months on twenty. Choose now.”
I didn’t understand, but I went to my cabinet. I selected a brass goblet, one of the last things I’d chosen, and put it into her outstretched claw. She opened one of her chests, dropped the goblet in, and locked the chest. I wondered why—the goblet hadn’t been locked away before.
“Now watch. I shan’t hurt you this time. Stand to my side, out of the way, and watch my eye.”
I did so. She flamed again, burning nothing, and I succeeded in keeping my gaze on her right eye, the one I could see. It turned orange just before the flaming began, and then it turned wine red. When she stopped flaming, it faded back to orange and then to its diamond translucence.
She blinked twice. “In your embroidery of the battle, my eye must glow. Perhaps you could sew in a ruby. Can you do that?”
I nodded.
“Good. For the battle scene, my skirmish with King Willard will do.”
I blinked back sudden tears. King Willard was our bravest king, the king who’d forced a specter to prophesy the cure for the Gray Death. In his thirty-sixth year he had gone off with a company of knights and soldiers to slay monsters, and neither he nor any of his men were ever seen again.
“This is the scene that you will sew: I am swooping low and flaming. Ten archers back away while loosing their arrows at me. Flames dance around their legs. A stallion rears in fright, his mane afire. Three knights run from the fray. You must convey that they are doomed even as they flee. Only one stalwart warrior, King Willard, stands his ground against me.”
She lowered her voice to a whisper, “How dear he was, that brave king.”
“What became of him?”
She sighed. “I tired of him. He vexed me. One by one he forfeited the gifts in his cabinet. When they were all gone, the last of my love for him was gone too, and he died.” Her eyes were moist. “As soon as he was gone, I loved him again and missed him dreadfully. As I shall love and miss you someday.”
Chapter Twenty-three
* * *
VOLLYS SAT UP, and her gaze left me at last. She began to tell me about King Willard and some of her other “guests.” I wondered if any of them had tried to escape and if any had succeeded.
She smiled at a memory. “Willard would rail at me for stealing his subjects’ livestock. But I’d say I was only collecting his taxes for him, since the cattle, a portion of them anyway, were destined for his royal stomach. Oh, I loved to match my wit against his.”
She also loved to watch him cook his meals, an exacting process, because he was fastidious. She told me this over lunch from my magic tablecloth.
“You are fastidious too, but some of my guests, little princess, are not fastidious in the slightest. I remember one man, a duke, ripping into the raw leg of a fawn with his teeth. He was not . . .”
I made myself think of other things. I remembered the view from my castle window. I pictured Rhys bowing, Meryl’s mock swordplay before she got sick, her indignation . . .
If she were here, she wouldn’t ignore a single word spoken by a dragon. I went back to listening. Vollys had returned to her catalogue of King Willard’s virtues. His laugh was hearty, he told a tale well, his figure was fine, his beard was curly.
When she paused for breath, I said, “He seems perfect. Why did you tire of him?”
She yawned. “Even perfection becomes tiresome. He was always brave, always courteous, always kind. I began to wonder if he was stupid. The thought tormented me, that I had spent nine months cosseting a stupid man, and two days later I slew him.”
“Has anyone stayed beyond nine months?”
Would she be angry if I took out my spyglass to look at Meryl?
“No one. Why are you fidgeting? Am I boring you?” She flicked her tail, and her eyes glowed orange.
I gulped. “Bored? I have reason to be interested in the fate of my predecessors.”
The glow faded. She was mollified.
I risked angering her again. “My thoughts often turn to my sister. I cannot help myself.” I asked if I could look through the spyglass.
“Certainly, and I will look too.”
Those evil, bloodshot eyes, staring at Meryl, appraising her. She couldn’t! “Don’t! You can’t!” I rushed to the spyglass, picked it up, and held it close.
Vollys laughed. “I can, Princess Adelina. I will look in it often someday.
But for now, you may use it first.”
Meryl’s face was pale and worn. I didn’t want Vollys to see her this way. I didn’t want Vollys to see her at all, but she took the spyglass after only a minute or two.
“Usually she’s very pretty,” I said.
Vollys held the spyglass up to her left eye. “I can see that. She is lovely, very different from you. Oh, my clumsy tongue.” Vollys’s bells clanged. “You are lovely too, but in a quieter way. In temperament I see that you are different as well. She could lead a charge, but you could last a siege. This is fascinating, little Adelina. The more I look at her, the more clearly I see you. You may be a worthier opponent than even my Willard was.”
She was wrong! I was nothing compared to Meryl. Meryl would have slain her by now. Meryl would be laughing over her bones by now.
“You were great friends, you and your sister. Her name is Meryl, yes?”
I nodded.
“Princess Meryl took care of you, didn’t she? You needn’t answer. I already know. This is dreadfully sad. She is dying, and you are dying.”
Enough!
“I think I must do something. I shall tell you the cure for the Gray Death.”
What?
“I will not set you free, but I will tell you. Bring me those maps of yours. I want the one of the Eskerns.”
I ran and fetched them. Fumble fingered from excitement and nerves, I dropped the stack at Vollys’s feet.
She laughed. “Oh, this is fun. It’s so nice to have a guest. Find the right one, child, and give it to me.”
I found it, and she lifted it close to her eyes. “Now where is the valley? Whoever made this map did not want it to be read. These lines were drawn by mice. I need better light. Come, carry the map outside, and I will tell you what you want to know.” She lowered herself onto four legs and left the cave.
I followed. If she still couldn’t read the map, perhaps I could darken the lines somehow.
Leaving the cave, Vollys spread her wings a bit for balance. The pose reminded me of a woman raising her skirts to navigate a puddle.
She stopped a few feet from the boulder that stood outside the cave. “Now give me the map.” She sat and held out one front claw.
I did so. How marvelous to be outdoors! There was a light breeze. High above I saw a bird.
“Ah. Much better. Hmm . . . Yes! That’s it.” She dropped down on all fours again so that half her claw rested on the precious map. It could tear! I began to reach for it and then stopped myself.
“Take it.” She raised her leg. “I would not destroy your map. I am not in that sort of mood.”
I snatched it away and smoothed it out.
She lay down before me. “Humans are not the only poets and not the only ones to fashion tales to tell their truths. Dragons tell our own tales, and our truths are not the same as yours.
“Have I told you yet who Yune was?”
I shook my head.
“I thought not. Well, before Drualt murdered her, she was my mother.”
How old was Vollys?
“I shall declaim for you.” She sat up and recited in ringing tones,
“Swift-flying Hothi,
Slain by Drualt.
And Zira, flame
Of fury, young beauty,
Her he slew also.
Men call him
The Laugher, the Hero.
Drualt, stifling fire,
Snuffing life,
No hero to dragons.”
Drualt wasn’t cruel! He was kinder than anyone, and no hero to dragons made him a thousand times a hero to us. But it was odd to hear the dragons’ version, like discovering what a wild boar thinks about its hunters.
“Hothi and Zira died slow, dreadful deaths.” Vollys’s voice regained its usual metallic quality. “I was a mere nestling then, but I was shocked. We dragons may fight among ourselves—I admit to liking few of my fellows, perhaps none—but we are clannish. Mother sought revenge against Drualt. Now I shall recite about her.”
I wished she would just tell me the cure.
She began,
“Yune, the Sly One,
The Enduring,
Yearned to set Drualt’s
Sea-green eyes
Atop her treasure hoard.
So she found him
And bore him
Over the peaks,
Across the plains
To her sweet lair. Eagerly
She carried death
To her home.
“The verses go on, Princess Adelina, but they are long in the telling, and you are anxious to learn the cure.”
I was!
“I will summarize. Mother made a single mistake in her battle with Drualt, but she made it again and again. Many times she could have killed him, but she wanted him to die gradually, as Hothi and Zira had. So she only wounded him, scorched his scalp, melted the armor on his chest.”
I ached for poor Drualt.
“He gave Mother no such quarter. He struck, when he could, with all his might, and by the time he cravenly hid in her hoard, her belly was scored in a dozen places. As soon as he desecrated her hoard, though, she wanted to finish him. But, as you know, she was loath to flame at her treasures.
“Yune burned hot and bright
As the first forge
That made her. She
Would have consumed
Man’s hero then, reduced him
To a speck of soot,
A splinter of bone,
But for his treachery.
From her dear hoard
He raised against her
Her own sword taken fairly
(An age ago) from
Arkule’s dead fingers.
Drualt thrust the stolen blade
Through Yune’s ancient
And loyal heart.
“Yune’s fire doused,
Her life fell away.
Yet still she held
A bequest, a death gift
For her enemies. From her belly,
Roiling with noxious smoke,
She belched forth
Contagion, a gray death . . .”
The Gray Death hadn’t swept in from the sea, as some believed. It wasn’t a judgment on us for all the wrongs that men commit, as others thought. It had come from from Yune!
Vollys went on:
“And with a long labored breath,
Yune blew her legacy
To the halls of men.
She sang in a thin thread
Of voice, ‘Some will be spared,
Some will be chosen. The chosen
Will die, the spared
Will live and mourn,
Heartsick, their lost loves.’
Then her voice guttered out,
And she succumbed,
Dying avenged, dying glad.
Yune, the Sly One,
The Enduring, flamed no more.”
Vollys bowed her head.
Don’t stop now. What about the cure? Recite the stanza about the cure.
“It did not suit us to include the cure in the story, but there is one.” Vollys raised her head. “I was only a nestling then, but Mother whispered it to me before she died.”
“What is it?” My voice was soft, but I wanted to scream.
She considered me. “I liked you better before I began to recite. Mother would be alive today if not for humans. Perhaps I shan’t tell you after all.”
Chapter Twenty-four
* * *
IF I COULD HAVE, I would have shaken her until her bones rattled. Instead, I tried to persuade her. “Won’t my death taste sweeter if I know the cure and still can’t save my sister?”
“You have completely failed to understand me. Your death will not taste sweet. I will be mourning you even as you lie dying. But it is nice of you to consider my pleasure.” Her tone was ironic. “However, you will hasten your death if I tell you. I will be uneasy that you know, which will make me irritable.”
She was irritable
now. Her eyes were copper colored, and fire coarsened her voice. “Already I have decided to take away two items in your hoard. If I reveal the cure, you will lose two more, equal perhaps to a week of life. Are you willing to make the sacrifice just for the satisfaction of knowing?”
I nodded, although I was frightened. But she couldn’t see the future. Something unexpected might happen.
“Very well. Do you see the Aisnan Valley?” She pointed to a spot on the map with her claw.
The valley lay between the Eskerns’ tallest mountains. The map showed more ogre camps on their slopes and more gryphon nests on the peaks than anywhere else in the range. Surprisingly, a village of humans wasn’t far away. It was Surmic, the village that hadn’t helped Drualt’s sweetheart, Freya, when she was attacked by gryphons.
“The valley is irrigated by a high waterfall,” Vollys continued. “The water appears to come from the mountain above, but it does not. Instead, it descends directly from the fairies’ Mount Ziriat. When the water reaches the earth, it disappears into the ground and surfaces nowhere else. A sip of that enchanted water will cure the Gray Death, but only if the sufferer drinks it there. You cannot collect the water in a flask and bring it to your sister, because it will have lost its power.
“And now you must give me four items from your hoard.”
Three more days passed, for Meryl the last days before the fever. For me days of torment—knowing the cure and able to do nothing.
Although she’d taken things from me when she told me the cure, at first Vollys didn’t seem angry at me for knowing. On the contrary, I was in high favor. She said she “adored” my embroidery, and she kept showering me with gifts, many more than she’d taken away, until I had seventy-five items in my cabinet.
But then the fourth day dawned, the day Meryl’s fever would begin, her three days of fever before the end.
I reached for the spyglass as soon as I sat up, just as I had the morning before and the morning before that. Vollys was watching me as she always did. Before I could raise the glass to my eyes, she said, “I tire of your devotion to your sister.” Her voice was husky with fire. “Give me the spyglass. We shan’t look at her again.” She plucked it out of my hand before I could protest, and locked it in the same chest that held my seven-league boots.