Denna frowned. “Doesn’t hold together. If all they wanted was the item, they could have waited until after the wedding and just killed the newlyweds. Much easier.”
That took some of the wind out of my sails. “You’re right.”
“It would make more sense if what they really wanted was to get rid of all knowledge of the thing. Like Old King Celon when he thought his regent was going to expose him for treason. Killed the fellow’s whole family and burned down their estate to make sure no word got out or evidence was left for anyone to find.”
Denna gestured off to the south. “Since everyone who knew the secret would be at the wedding, the Chandrian can come in, kill everyone who knows anything, and either destroy or steal whatever it is.” She made a motion with the flat of her hand. “Clean sweep.”
I sat stunned. Not so much by what Denna had said, which was, of course, better than my own guess. I was remembering what had happened to my own troupe. Someone’s parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs. But they hadn’t just killed my parents. They killed everyone who had been close enough to hear even a part of the song.
Denna rolled herself into my blanket and curled up with her back to the fire. “I will allow you to ponder my vast cleverness while I sleep. Wake me when you need anything else figured out.”
I stayed awake mostly through an effort of will. I’d had a long, grueling day, riding sixty miles and walking a half dozen more. But Denna was hurt and needed her sleep more. Besides, I wanted to keep an eye out for any more signs of the blue light to the north.
There weren’t any. I fed the fire and wondered vaguely if Wil and Sim were worried about my sudden disappearance back at the University. What of Arwyl and Elxa Dal and Kilvin? Would they wonder what happened to me? I should have left a note….
I had no way to track the time, as the clouds still hid the stars. But I had fed the fire at least six or seven times when I saw Denna stiffen and come suddenly awake. She didn’t bolt upright, but her breathing stopped and I saw her dark eyes dart about wildly, as if she didn’t know where she was.
“Sorry,” I said, mostly to give her something familiar to focus on. “Did I wake you?”
She relaxed and sat up. “No, I…no. Not at all. I’m done sleeping for a bit. You want a turn?” She rubbed at her eyes and peered at me over the fire. “Silly question. You look like hell.” She began to unwrap the blanket from around herself. “Here…”
I waved it off. “Keep it. My cloak is good enough for me.” I put my hood up and lay down on the grass.
“What a gentleman,” she teased gently, wrapping it across her shoulders.
I pillowed my head with my arm, and while I was trying to think of a clever response, I fell asleep.
I woke from a dim dream of moving through a crowded street to the sight of Denna’s face above me, rosy and sharply shadowed by the firelight. All in all, a very pleasant way to wake up.
I was about to say something to that effect when she put her finger over my lips, distracting me in about eighteen different ways.
“Quiet,” she said softly. “Listen.”
I sat up.
“Do you hear it?” she asked after a moment.
I cocked my head. “Just the wind…”
She shook her head and cut me off with a gesture. “There!”
I did hear it. At first I thought it was some disturbed rocks sliding down the hill, but no, this didn’t fade into the distance like that would. It sounded more like something being dragged up the side of the hill.
I got to my feet and looked around. While I’d slept the clouds had blown away, and now the moon lit the surrounding countryside in pale silver light. Our wide firepit was brim full of shimmering coals.
Just then, not far down the hillside, I heard…to say I heard a branch breaking would mislead you. When a person moving through the woods breaks a branch, it makes a short, sharp snap. This is because any branch a man breaks accidentally is small and breaks quickly.
What I heard was no twig snapping. It was a long cracking sound. The sound a leg-thick branch makes when it’s torn from a tree: kreek-kerrrka-krraakkk.
Then, as I turned to look at Denna, I heard the other noise. How can I describe it?
When I was young my mother took me to see a menagerie in Senarin. It was the only time I had ever seen a lion, and the only time I had heard one roar. The other children in the crowd were frightened, but I laughed, delighted. The sound was so deep and low that I could feel it rumble in my chest. I loved the feeling and remember it to this day.
The sound I heard on the hill near Trebon was not a lion’s roar, but I felt it in my chest the same way. It was a grunt, deeper than a lion’s roar. Closer to the sound of thunder in the distance.
Another branch broke, almost on the crest of the hill. I looked in that direction and saw a huge shape dimly lined by the firelight. I felt the ground shudder slightly under my feet. Denna turned to look at me, her eyes wide with panic.
I grabbed hold of her arm and ran toward the opposite side of the hill. Denna kept up with me at first, then planted her feet when she saw where I was headed. “Don’t be stupid,” she hissed. “We’ll break our necks if we run down that in the dark.” She cast around wildly, then looked up at the nearby greystones. “Get me up there and I’ll haul you up after.”
I laced my fingers together to make a step. She put her foot into it, and I heaved so hard I almost threw her into the air where she could catch the edge of the stone. I waited a brief moment until she swung her leg up, then I slung my travelsack over my shoulder, and scrambled up the side of the massive stone.
Rather I should say I scrambled at the side of the massive stone. It was worn smooth by ages of weather and didn’t have any handholds to speak of. I slid to the ground, my hands scrabbling ineffectually.
I bolted to the other side of the arch, hopped up onto one of the lower stones, and made another leap.
I hit the rock hard, all along the front of my body, knocking the wind out of me and banging my knee. My hands gripped at the top of the arch, but I couldn’t find any purchase—
Denna caught me. If this were some heroic ballad, I would tell you how she clasped my hand firmly and pulled me to safety. But the truth is she got hold of my shirt with one hand while the other made a tight fist in my hair. She hauled hard and kept me from falling long enough for me to catch a grip and scramble to the top of the stone with her.
As we lay there, panting, we peered over the edge of the stone. Down on the hilltop, the dim shape was beginning to move into the circle of our firelight. Half hidden in the shadows, it looked larger than any animal I had ever seen, big as a loaded wagon. It was black, with a massive body like a bull’s. It came closer, moving in an odd shuffle, not like a bull or a horse. The wind fanned the fire, causing it to flare up, and I saw it carried its thick body close to the ground, legs out to the side, like a lizard.
When it came farther into the light the comparison was impossible to avoid. It was a huge lizard. Not long like a snake, it was squat like a cinder brick, its thick neck blending into a head shaped like a massive flat wedge.
It covered half the distance from the crest of the hill to our fire in a single, spastic burst of speed. It grunted again, deep like rumbling thunder, and I felt it in my chest. As it came closer it moved past the other greystone that lay in the grass, and I realized my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. It was bigger than the greystone. Six feet high at the shoulder, fifteen feet long. Big as a horsecart. Massive as a dozen bulls tied together.
It moved its thick head back and forth working its wide mouth open and closed, tasting the air.
Then there was a burst of blue flame. The sudden light of it was blinding, and I heard Denna cry out beside me. I ducked my head and felt a wash of heat roll over us.
Rubbing at my eyes, I looked down again and saw the thing move closer to the fire. It was black, scaled, massive. It grunted again like thunder, then bobbed its head and
breathed another great gout of billowing blue fire.
It was a dragon.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Interlude—Obedience
IN THE WAYSTONE INN, Kvothe paused expectantly. The moment stretched out until Chronicler looked up from his page.
“I’m giving you the opportunity to say something,” Kvothe said. “Something along the lines of, ‘That can’t be!’ or ‘There’s no such thing as dragons….’”
Chronicler wiped the nib of his pen clean, “It’s not really my place to comment on the story,” he said placidly. “If you say you saw a dragon…” He shrugged.
Kvothe gave him a profoundly disappointed look. “This from the author of The Mating Habits of the Common Draccus? This from Devan Lochees, the great debunker?”
“This from Devan Lochees who agreed not to interrupt or change a single word of the story he is recording.” Chronicler lay his pen down and massaged his hand. “Because those were the only conditions under which he could get access to a story he very much desired.”
Kvothe gave him a level look. “Have you ever heard the expression white mutiny?”
“I have,” Chronicler said with a thin smile.
“I could say it, Reshi,” Bast said brightly. “I haven’t agreed to anything.”
Kvothe looked back and forth between them, then sighed. “There are few things as nauseating as pure obedience,” he said. “Both of you would do well to remember that.” He gestured for Chronicler to pick his pen up again. “Very well…. It was a dragon.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
The Mating Habits of the Common Draccus
“IT’S A DRAGON,” Denna whispered. “Tehlu hold and overroll us. It’s a dragon.”
“It’s not a dragon,” I said. “There’s no such thing as dragons.”
“Look at it!” she hissed at me. “It’s right there! Look at the huge Goddamn dragon!”
“It’s a draccus,” I said.
“It’s Goddamn huge,” Denna said with a tinge of hysteria in her voice. “It’s a Goddamn huge dragon and it’s going to come over here and eat us.”
“It doesn’t eat meat,” I said. “It’s an herbivore. It’s like a big cow.”
Denna looked at me and started to laugh. Not hysterical laughter, but the helpless laugher of someone who’s just heard something so funny they can’t help but bubble over with it. She put her hands over her mouth and shook with it, the only sound was a low huffing that escaped through her fingers.
There was another flash of blue fire from below. Denna froze midlaugh, then took her hands away from her mouth. She looked at me, her eyes wide, and spoke softly with a slight quaver in her voice, “Mooooo.”
We had both gone from terrified to safe so quickly that we were close to laughing from sheer relief anyway. So when she convulsed with laughter again, muffling it with her hands, I started to laugh too, my belly shaking as I tried not to make any noise. We lay there like two giggling children while below us the great beast grunted and snuffed around our fire, occasionally sending up gouts of flame.
After a long several minutes, we regained control of ourselves. Denna wiped tears away from her eyes and drew a deep, shaky breath. She slid closer to me until the left side of her body was pressed close up against my right. “Listen,” she said softly as we both looked over the edge of the stone. “That thing does not graze,” she said. “It’s huge. It could never get enough food. And look at its mouth. Look at those teeth.”
“Exactly. They’re flat, not pointed. It eats trees. Whole trees. Look at how big it is. Where could it possibly find enough meat? It would have to eat ten deer every day. There’s no way it could survive!”
She turned her head to look at me. “How the hell do you know this?”
“I read about it at the University,” I said. “A book called The Mating Habits of the Common Draccus. It uses the fire in a mating display. It’s like a bird’s plumage.”
“You mean that that thing down there,” she groped for words, her mouth working silently for a moment, “is going to try and tup our campfire?” She looked for a moment as if she was going to burst into laughter again, but she drew a deep, shuddering breath instead, regaining her composure. “Now that’s something I have to see….”
We both felt a shudder in the stone underneath us, coming up from the ground below. At the same time, things grew noticeably darker.
Looking down, we saw the draccus rolling in the fire like a hog in a wallow. The ground shook as it wriggled around, crushing the fire underneath itself.
“That thing must weigh…” Denna stalled out, shaking her head.
“Maybe five tons,” I guessed. “Five at least.”
“It could come get us. It could push over these stones.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, slapping the stone under my hand, trying to sound more certain than I really was. “These have been here for a long time. We’re safe.”
While rolling in our overlarge campfire, the draccus had scattered burning branches around the top of the hill. It now wandered to where a half-charred log lay smoldering in the grass. The draccus snuffed, then rolled, crushing the log into the earth. Then it came back to its feet, snuffed the log again, and ate it. It didn’t chew. It bolted the log whole, like a frog getting a cricket down into its gullet.
It did this several times, moving in a circle around the now largely extinguished fire. It snuffed, rolled on the burning pieces, then ate them after they were extinguished.
“That makes sense, I suppose,” Denna said, watching it. “It starts fires and lives in the woods. If it didn’t have something in its head that made it want to put out fires, it wouldn’t survive very long.”
“That’s probably why it came here,” I said. “It saw our fire.”
After several minutes of snuffing and rolling, the draccus came back to the flat bed of coals that was all that remained of our fire. It circled it a few times, then walked over it and lay down. I cringed, but it just shifted back and forth like a hen settling into a nest. The hilltop below was now entirely dark except for the pale moonlight.
“How can I never have heard of these things?” Denna asked.
“They’re very rare,” I said. “People tend to kill them because they don’t understand they’re relatively harmless. And they don’t reproduce very quickly. That one down there is probably two hundred years old, about as big as they get.” I marveled at it. “I bet there aren’t more than a couple hundred draccus that size in the whole world.”
We watched for another couple minutes, but there was no movement from below. Denna gave a jaw-popping yawn. “Gods, I’m exhausted. There’s nothing like the certain knowledge of your own death to tucker you out.” She rolled over onto her back, then onto her side, then back facing toward me, trying to get comfortable. “Lord it’s cold up here.” She shivered visibly. “I can see why it’s cuddled up on our fire.”
“We could go down and get the blanket,” I suggested.
She snorted. “Not likely.” She shivered visibly, wrapping her arms around her chest.
“Here,” I stood up and took off my cloak. “Wrap up in this. It’s not much, but it’s better than the bare stone.” I held it out to her. “I’ll watch you while you sleep and make sure you don’t fall off.”
She stared at me for a long moment, and I half expected her to beg off. But after a moment she took it and wrapped it around herself. “You, Master Kvothe, certainly know how to show a girl a good time.”
“Wait until tomorrow,” I said. “I’m just getting started.”
I sat there quietly, trying not to shiver, and eventually Denna’s breathing leveled off. I watched her sleep with the calm contentment of a boy who has no idea of how foolish he is, or what unexpected tragedies the following day will bring.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Bluffs
I WOKE WITHOUT REMEMBERING when I had fallen asleep. Denna was shaking me gently. “Don’t move too quickly,” she said. “
It’s a long way down.”
I slowly uncurled, nearly every muscle in my body complaining at how it had been treated yesterday. My thighs and calves were tight, hard knots of pain.
Only then did I realize I was wearing my cloak again. “Did I wake you up?” I asked Denna. “I don’t remember….”
“In a way you did,” she said. “You nodded off and tipped right onto me. You didn’t even flicker a lid when I cussed you out….” Denna trailed off as she watched me slowly come to my feet. “Good lord, you look like someone’s arthritic grandfather.”
“You know how it is,” I said. “You’re always stiffest when you wake up.”
She smirked. “We womenfolk don’t have that problem, as a rule.” Her expression grew serious as she watched me. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I rode about sixty miles yesterday, before I met up with you,” I said. “I’m not really used to that. And when I jumped last night I hit the rock pretty hard.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Especially in my everywhere.”
“Oh,” she gasped, her hands going to her mouth. “Your beautiful hands!”
I looked down and saw what she meant. I must have hurt them rather badly in my wild attempt to climb the greystone last night. My musician’s calluses had saved my fingertips for the most part, but my knuckles were scraped badly and crusted with blood. Other parts of me hurt so much that I hadn’t even noticed.
My stomach clenched at the sight of them, but when I opened and closed my hands I could tell they were just painfully skinned, not seriously injured. As a musician, I always worried that something might happen to my hands, and my work as an artificer had doubled that anxiety. “It looks worse than it is,” I said. “How long has the draccus been gone?” I asked.
“At least a couple hours. It wandered away a little after the sun came up.”
I looked down from my high vantage on the greystone arch. Last evening the hilltop had been a uniform expanse of green grass. This morning it looked like a battlefield. The grass was crushed in places, burned to stubble in others. There were deep furrows dug in the earth where the lizard had rolled or dragged its heavy body across the turf.