Chapter 24
Moerrven
Two days since the dragon took him, and the good people of Norloch Village had begun to avoid me. Norloch sat a hard day’s ride south of Frostholm, tucked into the steep peaks that ring the north shore of Stonedeep Lake, and I doubted anything this interesting had happened to it in a century.
I couldn’t blame them. I had arrived at their gates at a dead run with a wagon I’d half-wrecked on the mountain switchbacks, demanding maps, demanding rope, demanding the names of anyone who had ever survived an encounter with the dragon they called Vyranthos, following a trail of Sky’s thoughts so faint that I was starting to believe I was deluding myself.
But the logic checked, too. Vyranthos lived in the mountains above Norloch, and was the only known dragon of that color. Unless you counted Emberrick Korvanthos, his brother, who had been in human form and married to Queen Delsynarea for centuries before he’d disappeared.
This couldn’t have been Korvanthos, though, could it?
No, because Korvanthos had a torn wing from the long war.
I knew this because I had read everything the county archive held on fire dragons, which was thin and unhelpful and written by people who had clearly never met one.
I had paced a groove in the cobblestones of the market square.
I had, at one low point, tried to hire a goatherd to guide me up the Stonecrest peak, and when he sensibly refused, I had begun pricing other methods of transport.
I was going up that mountain. I did not have a plan for what I’d do when I reached the top. I am a writer and a bridge-keeper, not a warrior, and the entirety of my combat experience consisted of one shouting match with a heron. But I was going, because the alternative was standing still.
Late on my second day in Norloch, my sisters arrived, because of course they did.
“We came the moment your bird reached us. We nearly rode for Frostholm, but all the gossip out of Sorrend said you were chasing a dragon in Norloch.” Grunnhild swung down off the ox cart with a battle-axe strapped across her back that I was almost certain was decorative.
“Where is the dragon. Point me at the dragon.”
“You are not fighting a dragon, Grunnhild.”
“I’m not going to fight it. I’m going to have a conversation with it.
With my axe present.” She cracked her knuckles.
Behind her, Dagmarra was already unloading Grunnhild’s casserole, the size of a millstone and wrapped in a brand-new knit bag.
Dagmarra had clearly been worried on the journey.
In our family, grief and food are the same gesture.
“Nobody takes your Sky and just keeps him,” Grunnhild said. “He is part of our family.”
“I — yes,” I said, and my throat closed around the rest, because I hadn’t known, until she said it so plainly, that they’d decided. That it wasn’t only me. “Yes. He’s part of our family.”
“I did not know, the day I met him at that bridge, that he would matter this much,” I added.
Grunnhild went very still. Behind her, Dagmarra set the casserole down on the tailboard with the care of a woman clearing space for a long conversation.
“The day you met him at the bridge,” Grunnhild repeated. “You told us he was your soulmate from a far-off land. The lost bracelet. Moerrven Mossren. Did you invent that entire story while we stood there on the road?”
There was no air left in me for another lie, and no reason for one.
“Yes. He was on my back with both hands on my trolgar, half the road was staring at me, and it was easier to invent a soulmate than to explain a stranger. Then Jodvara had it by pigeon before nightfall, and there was no taking it back, and then—” I stopped.
“And then it came true,” Dagmarra said gently.
Grunnhild snorted. “Blarinda found the hole in your story within the hour, little brother. You have never once lied well. We decided to let you keep the story, and see what you did with him.” She shrugged the axe strap back into place across her back.
“And you hauled him halfway across the north and fell in love. So who cares how it started?”
My sisters had known. All this time, the county’s worst-kept secret had been mine, and the only person I had truly fooled was no one at all. I did not know whether to be mortified or grateful, so I settled, in the family tradition, on both.
The cart had carried a third passenger. She climbed down unhurried, in a traveling cloak, a wooden case held against her chest the way Dagmarra held the casserole, and for one blank moment I could not assemble a single reason she should exist in Norloch.
“Thessaly?”
“I got your letter,” she said.
“I was only asking for—”
“Research. Yes. A fine research question. I have been working it since your bird came, and I finished the research on the road. Your sisters are pretending they’re here to rescue Sky, but the fact is, they saw your letter and they’re here to meddle.
We were already on our way when we got word of what had happened. ”
“So why the axe?” I asked.
“She brought it to cut off the tip of your horn,” Thessaly said. “She said she preferred to do it in a ceremonial fashion.”
I leaned in close. “Please do not let her near me with that axe. She lacks coordination.”
“Noted.”
“So you’ve completed the research?” I asked.
She nodded. “I merely need your horn, his blessing, and a few magical ingredients.” Her eyes went up the mountain, to the peak the whole town would not stop glancing at, and came back to me level as a countertop. “Is he all right? Do you feel him?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
She set the wooden case on the tailboard beside the casserole, beamed at me, and gave me a tight hug. “Well, that’s lovely then, isn’t it? It means that he’s quite all right.”
“I would very much like to have him back, though,” I huffed. “So I can make sure I’m not imagining the way I sense him.”
“So.” Grunnhild surveyed the square, the mountain, the thin determined nothing of my rescue. “What’s the plan, little brother?”
The plan, it turned out, was to settle my sisters and Thessaly into the inn, allow myself to be force-fed some casserole, and then attempt to sneak out so I could climb the mountain.
I was halfway there, a whole bag of climbing gear strapped to my shoulders, when my sisters caught up to me, kitted out in so many ropes and axes that they looked either ridiculous, or like professionals who climbed mountains every day. I couldn’t decide which.
Just as we were crossing through a small gate in the wall at the edge of town, headed toward a footpath that led up the mountain, the light changed.
I turned with my heart already in my mouth, and there it was, the dragon. With Sky loosely cradled in its claw. Sky waved.
The dragon was enormous, terrifying, and everyone nearby scattered, except Grunnhild, who planted herself in front of me with her ceremonial axe raised and bellowed something insulting about its mother.
Sometimes I wondered about my sister’s choices.
It opened one huge foreclaw, gently, and gently set Sky down on his feet in the middle of the meadow.
It did not fly away.
It folded its wings and settled back on its haunches like a very pointy dog, and it looked at me, past Sky, past Grunnhild and her axe.
It fixed its molten gaze on me with an expression I can only describe as baffled.
It tilted its great head, eyes darting from me to Sky and back, the way a man checks a sum that won’t come out right.
“There you are,” Sky said to me, rushing forward. “Sheesh. I’ve been looking for you all day.”
The dragon growled.
Before I could answer, before any of us could move, Sky turned to the dragon and put his hands on his hips. “Oh, don’t you start. He’s a catch. You don’t even know him.” He held out his hand.
“Sky,” I said. “What are you—”
The dragon lowered its head to the ground in front of Sky with a thunk, and Sky pressed both bare palms flat to a ridge above the dragon’s eye.
The dragon shuddered, head to tail, the light of its scales flaring white, and shrank, fast and impossible, until there was no dragon at all but a man kneeling naked in the middle of a meadow, a dragon-shaped scorch mark beneath him.
He was tan-skinned, ember-eyed, devastatingly built, and wearing an expression of pure, affronted dignity.
“Sky,” the man said, making no move to cover a single thing. “We have discussed this. I was just going to drop you off.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I know you want to meet everyone! That’s what friends do!”
What was happening? Sky stepped forward, dragging the naked dragon-man by his hand.
“Moerrven, this is Oallian. Oallian, Moerrven. He’s the dragon. He’s a total sweetheart once you get the rage out of the way, and the tendency to char things. Don’t worry, he’s not hot to the touch unless his magic is going wonky, which it’s not right now.”
“I am not a sweetheart.” Oallian turned his unsettling ember eyes on me, and looked me up and down, the way one assesses a purchase someone else has made and cannot justify. “…Hm,” he said, which I chose to take as a compliment.
Behind me, Dagmarra said faintly, “Should I fetch him the rest of the casserole?”
“He’s not staying. Oh! You’re one of the sisters! Moerrven called you in for backup?” Sky beamed between us. “That’s so sweet!”
“Dagmarra,” Dagmarra said. “And this is Grunnhild.”
“It’s lovely to finally meet you,” Sky said, “since I don’t think we can officially count the bridge incident. Do you, Oallian?”
“He wasn’t there,” I said.
Oallian huffed. “I wasn’t, but I have way too much information about the bridge incident, and about how he swooned for your gorgeous face the moment he met you. Sky talks too much.”
“He’s gorgeous though, isn’t he?” Sky waved his fingers at me like he was presenting a prize.
“Looks like a regular troll to me,” Oallian grumped.
Sky elbowed him in the ribs. “Moerrven Mossren. The author. You have his books, I saw the whole stack in your hoard.”