The Dragon's Price

  Bending, I cup my hands and scoop water to my parched lips, swallowing it down with loud, needy gulps. When I have filled my belly to bursting, and am shivering with cold, I go back the way I have come.

  The rock wall I entered through does not look like a rock wall from this side. It is a massive, jagged rent in the stone leading from the lake room to the passage. I can see the bright, burning well of light, and beyond it, Golmarr.

  I hurry back into the passage and kneel beside him. He doesn’t appear to be breathing. Pressing my hand to his cheek, I lean my face so close to his that our noses bump. “Golmarr,” I whisper. “I found water.” He doesn’t move a muscle. “Golmarr.” I shake his shoulder. “Golmarr.” I pat his cheek. “Golmarr!” I yell, and slap him hard across the face. His head rolls to the side and stops, and tears fill my eyes. “Golmarr?” I plead, and my voice catches on a sob. “Please wake up.” I put both my hands on his face and turn it toward mine again. A drop of water trickles out of my soaked hair, down my forehead, along the bridge of my nose, and plops right onto his lips. He sucks his bottom lip in, and I laugh with relief, pressing my cheek to his. His skin is like fire against mine. Reluctant to give up his body heat, I stand over him and wring my skirt out onto his face.

  The skin between his eyebrows creases and he flinches as the water rains down on him. His dark lashes flutter, and then he blinks his hazel eyes and peers at me, and they are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen, even if they are a bit bleary.

  “I found water,” I say, and smile.

  Without a word, his lips part. I kneel at his side and wring my shirt out into his mouth. His tongue darts out and licks his lips as the water drips onto them, and then he swallows. “That’s good,” he whispers. “How far is it? My arm…” He lifts his injured arm an inch off the floor, and then it falls back down.

  “It’s not far. It’s just through that wall.” I point.

  He moves his eyes in the direction I am pointing and blinks. “Am I dreaming? What is that light?”

  “There’s a hole in the ground. Something at the bottom is shining up through it.” I take his healthy arm in my hands and tug. “Come on. The water helps with the Mayanchi blood. It might help your arm.”

  His eyes meet mine. “I can barely move, Sorrowlynn. You’re going to have to help me.”

  “I know.” I put his arm down and crouch behind him, pushing his broad, muscular shoulders up until he is sitting. Next, I loop his good arm over my shoulders. “Ready?” I take his silence to mean yes. “Get up!” He grunts with effort, and I wobble and sway beneath his weight. After a minute, he is on his feet, his head is on my shoulder, and we are stumbling and weaving like a couple of drunks. The effort chases the chill from my bones, and after a minute, Golmarr is damp with sweat.

  When we get to the wall, he stops and squints at it. “There’s a stone wall there,” he mumbles.

  “I know it looks like there is, but there really isn’t. We are going to walk through it. The lake is just on the other side.”

  “Whatever you say,” he whispers, and sags a little heavier against me.

  We step through what looks like solid rock and emerge in the columned room. Golmarr stops walking, and his eyes grow round. “I have dreamed of this place,” he whispers, and then he falls to his knees and his eyes roll back in his head. His body seems to go boneless and teeters forward and back before tipping headlong onto the cave floor. I sigh and remove the bow and quiver from his back before using his ankle to drag him the last few steps to the lake. Trembling with exertion, I flip him from his belly onto his back and submerge his injured arm in the icy water, all the way to his shoulder.

  Using the hunting knife, I cut off another layer of my skirt and soak it, then drip the water onto his parched lips and into his mouth. Next, I wash his face. All the fierceness has vanished from his expression. My heart swells with gratitude for this man who risked his life to follow me into a dragon’s cave, and I trail my fingers over his stubbly jawline. “Thank you, Prince Golmarr,” I whisper.

  By the time I have tended to him, my damp clothes are clinging to my skin and I am shivering with cold again, so I curl my body up against his, lay my head on his shoulder, and fall asleep.

  I am cocooned in warmth. I sigh and scoot closer to the heat, pressing my forehead against it. Air stirs the skin behind my ear, and I open my eyes. Before me is soft brown leather. I try to move my legs and find them entangled with…another pair of legs. Arms are secured around my back, cradling me to the warmth, and my head is resting on a bicep. “Are you awake?” a deep, accented voice asks. My heart starts pounding and I look up into a pair of pale hazel eyes framed by black lashes.

  We are lying on the side of the lake, facing each other, our limbs intertwined like two trees that have grown so close you can’t tell their branches apart. “You were shivering in your sleep, so I kept you warm,” he says, tightening his arms around me and pressing his cheek to the top of my head. I shiver again, but it has nothing to do with being cold. Golmarr pulls me even closer, wraps his legs tighter with mine, and runs a hand down my back. “I figure keeping you warm is the least I can do after you saved my life again.”

  I force myself not to shiver and ask, “How is your arm?”

  “A lot better. The Mayanchi venom must only be temporary, used to paralyze.” As if to prove his point, he unwraps his legs from mine and sits up. “See?” He holds his arm out and wiggles his fingers. The swelling has gone down, and the puncture is simply a wound that needs a few days to heal. While I look at his arm, I can feel his eyes on me, and all of a sudden I wonder what I look like. My hair must be a mess. And my legs! My skirt is halfway up my thighs. I sit up and yank the skirt down almost to my knees, and Golmarr laughs. “Still worried about that?” he asks with a twinkle in his eyes.

  He turns and uses his left hand to scoop water to his mouth, and I realize the cave isn’t dark. The water is pale blue and so clear it looks like glass. Nothing is in the water: no bugs, no fish, nothing. On the water’s surface is a shimmer of sunlight. High above, between two massive white columns, is a jagged crack in the ceiling, and sunlight is pouring through it.

  “A way out?” I ask, sticking my feet into the cold water.

  “Maybe if we were bats.”

  I pull my feet out and cringe. They are black and blue, and have cuts all over them. One of my toenails is torn half off, the broken half glued to the skin with dried blood. I lift the corner of the broken half and give it a swift yank, separating it from the bit of skin still holding it in place. With a shudder, I throw it into the water.

  Golmarr sits down beside me and removes his brown leather vest. The inside is inlaid with bits of smooth, flat metal.

  “What are those for?” I ask. “Usually ornamentation is worn on the outside.”

  “This is a jerkin. It is armor,” he explains, touching the metal. “It covers my heart and ribs. That way, if I am shot with an arrow, it won’t kill me.”

  My eyes grow round. “Have you ever been shot before?”

  He presses his lips together and flips the vest over. “Look.” He touches a spot in the middle of the vest where the leather has a small tear. “Someone tried to shoot me in the back when we were crossing the Glass Forest to your kingdom. We traded our light armor for chain mail after that. That is why we arrived at your palace armed and injured.” My gaze automatically moves to the long cut on his cheek, a black scab now. “That is how I got this,” he says, touching the healing wound. “We fought back, and I got slashed with a knife.” He sets the vest down away from the edge of the water and untucks his dirty white shirt from his pants, pulling it over his head. My face flames, and I avert my eyes. Golmarr laughs again. “Haven’t you ever seen a man without his shirt on?”

  I shake my head. “Definitely not.”

  “My brothers and I never wear shirts if it is warm outside and we’re working or practicing our fighting. It saves a lot of shirts from the laundry.”

  I peer a
t him from the corner of my eye. On his left wrist is a small belt-like contraption that holds his dagger. He removes the dagger and begins sawing at the seam where his sleeve attaches to the rest of his shirt. After he’s gotten the sleeve off, he starts on the other. “What are you doing?” I ask, almost forgetting that he’s half-naked.

  “I need fabric, and I don’t want to keep taking it from your skirt if we can help it.” When he cuts, the muscles in his arm tighten beneath his warm golden skin. I study him, the way his body moves, the bulge of his bicep leading to angular shoulders, the dip of his collarbone, which slopes up to his neck and his mouth. I study his lips, and my blood grows warmer. They are framed by black stubble and naturally curve up at the corners. My gaze wanders to his nose, which is long and narrow, and quite nice, and then I look at his eyes. He’s staring at me, his cheeks slightly pink. “Now you’ve seen a man without his shirt on.” His pale eyes turn predatory as he leans toward me, and for a heartbeat, his gaze lowers to my lips. “Was it as scandalous as you imagined it would be?” he whispers. I do not know what to say to that, so I shrug and turn away from him and hope he can’t tell that my face is so hot even my neck and scalp are burning. He chuckles.

  Kneeling in front of me, he takes my foot out of the water and gently pats it dry with his sleeve. Next, he wraps the cut sleeve around it, covering my foot from my toes to my heel, and securely tucks the end of the fabric under one of the layers.

  My chest fills with warmth. “You cut your shirtsleeves off for me?”

  “If my boots would fit you, I’d give you my boots.” He dries the other foot and wraps it. When he finishes, his fingers slide up my ankle and touch one of the big, thick scars on my calf. I hold my breath and watch as he brushes his thumb over the entire length of it. His eyes meet mine. “In Anthar, scars are a badge of honor. They prove that you have faced pain and overcome it.”

  I swallow against a lump in my throat and throw my arms around his neck, hugging him tight. “Thank you, Golmarr.” His hands press against my back and I hug him tighter, pulling against his bare skin. My body stiffens. I am hugging a man who is not wearing a shirt. I quickly shove him away and clear my throat. He throws his head back and laughs again, and I realize that laughing out loud like that is not quite as barbaric as I once thought it was.

  When he puts his shirt and vest back on, his arms are bare all the way up to his shoulders. He retrieves his bow from where I left it the night before and slings it over his back. I stand and try walking with the shirtsleeves covering my feet. The sandy lakeshore barely penetrates through the fabric, but anything bigger than a pebble is excruciating. I try not to flinch with every step, try to hide the pain so he doesn’t know I can barely walk. Before I have taken five steps, Golmarr is beside me, looping my arm over his shoulder and taking some of my weight.

  “It looks like you’re the one who needs a little help this time,” he says, and I realize, barbarian warrior or not, that he is the kindest man I have ever met.

  The lake is long and narrow, and at the farthest end from the illusion wall, a narrow stream trickles out of it. We follow the stream as it winds around the bases of the white columns (stalagmites, Golmarr says) protruding from the cave floor. “If we follow the stream, we will still have a water source,” he explains. “And maybe, if we’re lucky, the water will eventually lead to a way out. If we are really lucky, we might not even see the fire dragon.” My stomach turns at the thought of the fire dragon, and I realize how incredibly famished I am. Dragon or not, if we don’t find our way out, we risk dying of starvation.

  With Golmarr’s shoulder to lean on, and the fabric on my feet, we make good time. The cave is eternally noisy from the dripping of the stalactites—Golmarr’s word again—to the stalagmites on the floor below them. The dragon scale still shines, reflecting on the milky stalagmites and stalactites, making them look like giant, glowing white opals.

  As we walk, we find more little streams, all flowing into the one we are following, so by the time we’ve walked long enough for me to be damp with sweat, the main stream is more like a small river rushing around the strange formations of the cave. The ground begins to slope downward, forcing the water to flow faster, and after a while, the sound of babbling turns to a deeper rumble.

  I take a step forward and jerk to a stop, pulling Golmarr hard against my side. His hand darts to his sword hilt. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  I peer down at our feet. The ground disappears into blackness. “I think we’re on the edge of a cliff,” I explain. I take the dragon scale from around my neck and wind it once around my hand, then hang it as far forward as I can reach.

  The cave floor looks like lumps of snow, slowly descending down, like a creamy, icy staircase, and the little river is pouring down it. The walls close in around the staircase, giving it the appearance of a narrow, descending black tunnel.

  Golmarr sticks the toe of his boot into the water and slides it back and forth against the rock. “How strange—it’s not slippery,” he muses, and looks at me. “What do you think? Should we see where it goes?”

  I peer into the darkness. “Do we have any other choice?”

  “No.”

  I quickly unwrap the sleeves protecting my feet and tuck them into the waistband of my skirt. “Then let us go, an Antharian prince and a Faodarian princess, about to meet their fate together.”

  He laughs under his breath. “An unlikely pair,” he agrees. And then he gives me the hand signal for honored friend.

  “Friend,” I whisper.

  Down and down we walk, eternally encircled by the weak light of the dragon scale. The darkness pressed against the light until I feel at times like I might suffocate on it. Distance means nothing when you can’t see anything. I am simply walking down a never-ending staircase, my cold, aching body weak with hunger, in perpetual darkness.

  I stop walking and put my hand against the cave wall. “My feet hurt. I need to rest,” I say, and my teeth chatter. The cold has crept up my legs and into my blood. “I need to sit for a minute.”

  Golmarr grabs my hand to keep me from sitting. “Hold on.” He frowns and unfastens the leather strap that secures the bow and quiver to his back. “Turn around,” he says. I do, but watch him over my shoulder. He lifts the leather strap over my head, with the bow and quiver still attached. The black leather stands out against my dirty white shirt, but fits perfectly in the hollow space between my breasts like it was made for me.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, shrugging my shoulders up and down against the weight of the bow. I have never worn any type of weapon before, aside from the small dagger that is tied to my wrist. “I don’t know how to shoot this.”

  “If we get out of this cave alive, I will teach you to shoot.” Golmarr turns me to face him, then turns his back to me and crouches low. “Climb on.”

  “Onto your back?” I ask.

  He laughs. “Yes. Onto my back.”

  “You’re going to carry me?” I can’t keep the surprise from my voice.

  “Sorrowlynn, just climb on. I carry bales of hay out to the horses every day, and you probably don’t weigh much more. So climb on.”

  “But it’s not…”

  “Proper, I know. But neither is being fed to a dragon, or hacking a Mayanchi to bits, or cutting off your skirt, or sleeping curled up in my arms. But when necessary and proper battle it out, necessary always wins.”

  I put my hands on his shoulders and he grabs my bare legs behind my knees, hefting me up onto his back, and everything goes dark. I throw my arms around his neck to keep from falling off backward. He loosens them a bit and bounces me higher. “If you put your legs around me, it will make you easier to carry,” he says.

  I hook my ankles in front of him, and then pull the dragon scale out from between us, and light fills the stairwell once more. With me on his back, Golmarr continues down the never-ending staircase. I ease into him, my cheek beside his left ear, and try to absorb his body heat.

  “Se
e?” he says, walking down the waterfall stairs just as fast as he did without me on his back. “I’m strong. This isn’t any more difficult than a day’s hard work.”

  “Why do you work if you’re a prince?” I ask. “Don’t you have servants to carry the hay to your horses?”

  “I work because I like it. I love being with the horses. And I don’t live in a palace like you. My father’s house is big, and he has a cook and a housekeeper, but that is only since my mom died. Someone has to feed us and clean up after him.”

  “But he is the king, right?” I ask, confused.

  “He is the horse lord. He governs the land. Some call him king, but he isn’t a king the way your mother is a queen. He doesn’t sit on a throne, or have to always be on a dais so that he can look down on his people. And he never goes anywhere with an armed escort…unless you count me and my brothers as armed escorts,” he adds.

  I think of his tall, strapping brothers and the way Golmarr fought the Mayanchi. I feel his muscular body against mine as he carries me down the stairs. “I would count you as an armed escort. No one would dare to touch your father with his sons by his side. Is your father not worried that one of his subjects will try to assassinate him?”

  “No. My people honor him and love him because they respect him. They would never hurt him. When we leave our lands, though, he worries.” He bounces me up a little higher on his hips and keeps steadily splashing his way downward.

  “Does he have more than one wife?”

  Golmarr stops walking and frowns at me over his shoulder. “He has no wife. She died in childbirth. We don’t have multiple wives.”

  “But I thought you said if your brother—Ingvar—married me, I would be his second wife.”

  “I was teasing you, Sorrowlynn. He was never going to pick you, since he was already married. It was a joke.” He shakes his head. “And that is why you picked the fire dragon in the first place, isn’t it?”