Arcolin related the tale of the Pargunese stealing a dragon’s egg, of the scathefire, of the dragon-man changing shape in the courtyard into the dragon of legend, and of touching the dragon’s tongue with his. Stammel’s hands, he saw, were now clenched on the chair arms; his body rigid and sweat trickling down his face. Arcolin knew what that was: the memory of those days Stammel had burned inside with the spirit that had tried to consume him.
“You—touched fire, sir?”
“I had to,” Arcolin said. “Kieri would have. I’m sure Kieri did, though the dragon didn’t tell me that.”
“And yet—you live and are not … consumed?”
“No. It seemed burning until I touched it, and then it was warm, no hotter than fresh bread. And that brings me to you, Stammel.” It felt indecent that he could see Stammel’s distress and Stammel could not see him, but there was no help for it. Yet. Maybe never. “At the end, for sealing the bargain so and because I asked nothing in return for the lands I and this realm must lose, the dragon chose to grant me a favor.”
Stammel did not move, though his eyelids flickered.
“I thought of you,” Arcolin said. “I asked if dragonfire could heal blindness, and it asked if I meant blindness of the mind or of the eyes.”
Stammel’s breath came short; his voice sounded different when he asked, “And … you told it of me?”
“Yes.” Arcolin sighed. Perhaps this had been a very bad idea. “It told me to ask you—to see if you were willing to attempt it—but it offered no guarantee. Humankind are fragile to Elders, it said. I don’t know what it will ask of you if you are willing. I do know it was upset at the mention of magelords who can change bodies—”
“Not as upset as I am, sir,” Stammel said. He grinned, the grin of a man facing danger.
“It wants to see you, I gather. It might heal you or might not, but—I must know, what is your wish?”
Stammel said nothing a long moment, then turned his face to the light from the window. “I had given up hoping for sight,” he said. “Despite the glow that tells me where the sun is. I wanted to stay here, among people and places I knew. But to have the chance of real sight—this—a dragon—but fire—” His hands opened and clenched again. “Do you think I will have to … to be burned again?”
Arcolin watched Stammel struggle with his fear. “Did Paks ever tell you the whole story of her becoming paladin?” Arcolin asked. He went on without waiting for an answer. “The Kuakgan raised a magical fire, and she had to reach into it. But it did not burn her. Just as my tongue felt heat, as from hot food, but no worse. Yet if you choose not to, Stammel, no one would call you coward. You have endured more fire than anyone I know, more than we thought you could survive.”
“How could fire heal my eyes, when fire burned out my sight?”
“I don’t know if it can. But the thought of you would not have come to me, standing there with the dragon, if a god had not put it in my head. It may be something beyond your eyes: the dragon seemed interested that a magelord had invaded you. It’s been so long since dragons were here—perhaps they know things about the magelords and Old Aare. And with the regalia Dorrin told me about and the trouble in the South, there may be more than one reason for dragons to return.”
“More than one dragon?”
“I don’t know,” Arcolin said, raking his fingers through his hair. “All I know is the dragon offered a favor, and your face came before me, and … here we are. Think about it, is all I ask.”
Stammel frowned. “I should have gone Girdish back then, when Paks was here and saved us. I just … it felt too easy.”
“I understand,” Arcolin said, thinking of his own years of fading faith, now renewed. “I think she made us all more what we were rather than changing us to something else.”
“I suppose,” Stammel said slowly. “I—I’d rather ask Paks for a healing than a dragon, truth to say, sir. If I was Girdish.”
“I understand,” Arcolin said again. “So would I, if I had that choice. Just … think, will you?”
“Of course, sir. Any idea when the dragon’s coming back?”
“None at all,” Arcolin said. He sighed. “And now I must write another report to King Mikeli … He’s likely to think I’m winter-crazed.”
“Should you go yourself, sir?”
“No—I think not, with the gnomes still unsettled and the move of the border. It’s not that I doubt the dragon—or for that matter the gnomes—but as Count, I should be here, ready to do whatever needs doing. It’s not as settled a situation as when Kieri governed here.”
Stammel nodded. “Makes sense, sir. And you don’t have experienced captains, other than Cracolnya. Though Captain Versin and Captain Arneson are both well respected.”
“I hope Selfer’s found a good one in the south,” Arcolin said. “But that’s not your problem. I’ll be taking Cracolnya and Versin south with me; I think Arneson’s ideal for recruits. If the Pargunese are truly settled, then I’ll need only one captain up here. Especially with the gnomes in the west hills—they’ll know if any orcs threaten.”
“They aren’t very many to fight off orcs, sir,” Stammel said.
“No, they couldn’t drive them off alone, but they’d know where the orcs were when we go after them. And it’d give our young troops some experience, as well.” He shook his head. “Well. Let’s go down.”
Captain Arneson had the recruits paraded in the large courtyard and was delivering as professional a reaming out as Arcolin had seen. Four recruits, it seemed, had taken extra Midwinter sweet tarts and tried to hide them in the barracks for later consumption at a private celebration. As clean as the stronghold was, any place that stored grain and other foodstuffs attracted rats and mice, and when the recruit corporal made his mid-third-shift round through the barracks, he’d seen a couple of rats—undeniable rats—scuttering along the wall behind the bunks.
That led to the discovery of the illicit food—no food was ever allowed in the barracks—and to the guilty parties—and to two other stashes—and thence to the morning spent scrubbing the barracks twice over as punishment. Plus no breakfast.
“My lord Count,” Arneson said when his recruit sergeant announced Arcolin’s arrival. “Your pardon, my lord.”
Arcolin looked at the recruits as if they were darkling beetles. “Captain, they’re your recruits. But if they were my recruits—”
“My lord?”
“I’d hope my commander gave me another turn of the glass alone with them. When you’re quite done, I’d like to see you about another matter, entirely unrelated.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I’ll see you later, Sergeant,” Arcolin said to Stammel, and went back to his office, stopping at his scribe’s cubbyhole to warn him that he’d need to be on hand in the afternoon. He allowed himself a few moments to contrast today’s Captain Arneson—healthy, fit, with only a neat patch over his missing eye—with the starved-wolf-looking man hired last summer in Valdaire. He’d become a superb recruit commander, approved by both Valichi and Stammel, and on top of that a companionable officer to share a dinner with.
Arcolin sighed and forced himself to start writing. Drafting a report to King Mikeli was as difficult as he’d expected. “A dragon came to me last night …” What would the king make of that? What proof did he have other than the gnomes in the cellars? And yet … the tip of his tongue tingled with the remembered heat and flavor of the dragon’s tongue. The dragon was real. If he’d imagined the taste of a dragon’s tongue, it would have been something exotic, spices from Aarenis or a flavor he’d never tasted before. Fresh-baked hot bread-crust … that was real.
“A dragon came to me last night in the guise of a man.” But that wasn’t the beginning. The beginning was the gnomes.
“While inspecting Captain Cracolyna’s dispositions on the Pargunese border”—that was better—“gnomes arrived with a report.” “Demand” was more like it, but “report” sounded better.
?
??My lord, you asked me to come?”
Arcolin looked up with a start. “Captain—yes, I’m sorry, I’m trying to write a letter to the king, and I’m having trouble. Please, sit down.”
“I apologize for my cohort, my lord. By now they should be more disciplined.”
“Think nothing of it. Every recruit cohort does something stupid at Midwinter. Then they get back to business. What I wanted to ask you was this: I need a trusted messenger to carry this letter to the king in Vérella.”
Before he could say more, Arneson spoke up. “Why not Sergeant Stammel, my lord? He’s well known as a senior veteran, trusted by all. I could go myself, of course, but there’s much to do with the recruits before you march them south.”
“He can’t travel alone,” Arcolin said. He did not want to mention the possibility that the dragon might return and heal Stammel.
“Of course, my lord. But with one of Captain Cracolnya’s veterans, perhaps?”
Stammel would be better, Arcolin realized. Arneson had never been at court; he was not known and might not be believed. “Let me tell you what the king must know,” Arcolin said. “Since you will be staying here while I am in the South, you also need to know it.”
It was as hard to say as it was to write. “Last night a dragon came here.” At Arneson’s startled look, Arcolin nodded. “Yes, an actual dragon. You know the gnomes mentioned one, but I did not believe it.” Arneson nodded and listened without asking questions; Arcolin went on, finishing with the dragon’s demand that he touch tongues with it to seal their agreement.
“What did it taste like?” Arneson asked then.
Arcolin felt his brows rise. “Taste like? Like hot bread-crust, fresh from the oven. And the smell, as well, which had been all hot iron before.”
“I wonder if it tastes the same to all,” Arneson said. Once more Arcolin was surprised. “I mean,” Arneson went on, “it is a magical creature, and it can appear in two shapes. Does everyone who sees it see the same thing? Or is its appearance—even its taste—a form of enchantment? Or drawn partly from the person who sees it?”
Arcolin shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “It never occurred to me to ask … If you had seen it, Talvis, I doubt you would have asked anything either.”
“You’re right,” Arneson said with a chuckle. “But the morning after, and in its absence, questions come to me.”
Arcolin went to the map cabinet and spread the map of the domain on his desk. He had already marked the line the gnomes had told him about, using their map as a reference. His preliminary dispositions still looked adequate to him, but what would the king say about them? At the south end of the newly cropped domain, the border angled east abruptly before meeting the old Tsaian-Pargunese line.
“Where is the new Pargunese boundary?” Arneson asked.
“Here,” Arcolin said. He had marked it lightly—two days’ ride from their new one. “I don’t know how one dragon can patrol all that, but it should at least help keep them out.”
“That corner’s going to be the problem,” Arneson said. “Whatever the Pargunese are now, if they cause trouble again, we’ll need a permanent fort in there—right here, I’d say.” He pointed at the angle itself. Then he looked at Arcolin. “I wish I’d seen the dragon.”
“So do I,” Arcolin said. “Then I’d have a witness to send to Vérella.”
Stammel was enjoying a pot of sib with the recruit sergeant, Naris, when Naris said, “Sir Count!” and his chair scraped on the floor. Stammel set his mug on the table and stood, only a little slower.
“Sergeant Stammel, I need you,” Arcolin said. “Get your cloak.” Arcolin sounded tense.
Stammel wondered what it was. He kept one finger on the battered old table around a corner, then took two steps to the wall with its pegs for cloaks, knowing that his was on the end.
“We’ll be awhile,” Arcolin said to Naris. “Any more excitement in barracks?”
“No, sir,” Naris said. “They were glad enough to be back to schedule today, all quiet.”
Stammel had his cloak on when he sensed Arcolin near and put out his hand; Arcolin took it and put it on his shoulder. They went out into the cold wind, out the postern with a word for the watch, and then some distance from the gate but still in the wind shadow of the stronghold when Stammel felt a vague warmth ahead and smelled hot iron. They had gone the wrong direction for the stronghold forge.
“Captain?” He hated the quaver in his voice; he knew what it had to be.
“The dragon I told you of wants to meet you,” Arcolin said.
Stammel felt the prickle of sweat breaking out; his stomach churned. “Where is it?” he asked, but he was already turning toward the warmth and smell.
Densely packed into the shape of a man, fire outlined the parts of an obvious dragon. Snout, neck, sinuous body, legs, tail curled up around the whole … Were dragons so little? Curiosity nudged against his fear.
“Is this your sergeant?” The voice sounded human, a deep man’s voice.
“Yes,” Arcolin said. “This is Sergeant Stammel.”
The shape in his mind jerked nearer, close enough that he could feel the heat on his skin. Stammel fought the urge to step back.
“I would speak with him alone,” the man said. “If that is acceptable to you, Sergeant Stammel.”
Stammel struggled to get any words out. The heat, the unnatural sight of fire shaped like a man and a dragon in one brought back the terror of the invasion he had suffered. “It … is,” he managed at last; his voice sounded to him as harsh as a breaking stick.
“I will not go far, Sergeant,” Arcolin said.
“You may return to your work,” the man said. “I will bring him to you, and I will not hurt him,” the man went on, but Stammel saw the flickering of flames. How could fire not harm him? Yet … Arcolin said he had touched the dragon’s tongue, in its own form, with his own tongue and had not perished.
Stammel heard Arcolin’s boots on the frozen ground, going away, out of hearing. The dragon in man’s shape was near enough to warm him, and despite the midwinter cold, he did not shiver. Not from cold, at least.
“Tell me,” the man’s voice said. “What do you see?”
“Usually nothing,” Stammel said. “Though latterly, a faint blur of light sometimes at midday. Nothing clear enough to tell shape or distance. And what my mind sees now is not from my eyes.”
“Tell me,” the man said again.
“A man’s outline filled with fire shapes that I imagine are … parts of a dragon,” Stammel said. He shuddered despite himself. “I was filled with fire once …”
“Your captain said you were attacked by the spirit of an evil man who tried to take your body … but you say fire?”
“It felt like fire,” Stammel said. His throat closed tight again; the memory choked him.
“That was not my fire,” the man said.
Stammel said nothing.
“Tell me, are you wise?” the man asked.
“Wise? I do not know what wise is,” Stammel said.
“How, then, do you judge what is right to do? Your captain tells me you are good with recruits—what do you think he means by that?”
“I teach them what will most likely keep them alive in war,” Stammel said. “I decide which will make good soldiers and which will not.”
“Judgment,” said the man. “A task impossible without wisdom.” He walked around behind Stammel, the warmth moving with him, and Stammel forced himself to stand still. He could see, with the not-sight of his mind, the fire-shape moving there. “What are you most proud of, Sergeant Stammel, in all your years of training recruits?”
That one was easy. “That I trained a paladin, Paksenarrion. That I saved her from an unjust punishment.”
“And your greatest shame?”
“That I did not see the deeper evil in two other recruits that year.”
“What happened?”
“One of them later did Paksenarrion a grea
t injury; the other was the one who invaded me.”
The man was back in front of him now. “And it is from that invasion you lost your sight?”
“Yes.”
“But your captain said you fought later—shooting a crossbow—how did you do that without sight?”
“I could hear where they were—and there was a kind of … of … not exactly sight, but a bright place.”
“You called yourself the Blind Archer, he told me.”
“Yes. It came to me—I had heard the legend, but in the battle it seemed the right thing to say.”
A sound like steam from a spout, a hiss. “What do you want to be, Sergeant Stammel?”
To be? What did that mean? “I am a soldier,” he said.
“Yes … did you always want that?”
“Yes, from boyhood.” The man-outline, fire-filled, stood in front of him again. Man … dragon … he did not know how to name it.
“You are a brave man,” the voice said after a pause several breaths long. “To endure the mind’s eye seeing a man-shape full of flame when you have been a man full of flame, or so it felt—that alone shows your courage. But I sense more courage: you have not killed yourself by grief, as some might have done. You do not ask for a quick death. You do not beg … and yet, you have no thoughts—this long after your blinding—for what else you might be. You have no plans for being a blind man.”
“I … cannot.”
“May I touch your face?”
“Yes.”
Warm dry hands against his cheeks from chin to brow, thumbs light on his eyelids, warm as summer sun, pushing them gently up. In his mind, eyes stared into his, eyes unlike any he had ever seen. Huge, golden, light flickering in them. A tongue reached out—a wiggling tongue of flame—and he felt himself tremble. It touched his forehead … but did not burn him. Then it withdrew, and the hands lifted away. He felt himself blink.
“Sometimes,” the man said, “what fire has burned can be healed by another fire. And sometimes not. My fire will not heal you, Sergeant, and I am sorry for it. If there is healing for your sight, it is not mine to give, and I do not know where it might be, other than the world-maker.”