13
IAHIR HAD ONCE been rather interested in dragons, back when he was small.
He didn’t like to think much about that time of his life.
He knew that a number of people were very sentimental about childhood, but to him, it had only been a period of time in his life in which no one had much taken him seriously and everyone had treated him as if there were some series of jokes that they were not keen on sharing with children and where he—crucially—had no control over his day-to-day existence, simply shuffled here and there and forced to do all manner of things that he despised, like tutoring and working figures and learning grammar and geography.
Admittedly, being an adult was not so much better in most respects, but there was at least the illusion of choice.
Perhaps he had simply gotten old enough that he no longer much cared if people disapproved of his choices, and when he had been a child, all of that disapproval had felt like a thousand knives to his chest.
At any rate, dragons were a thing he used to like.
He liked both sorts of dragons—the dragons in the east and the dragons here, in Lothnehil, the solitary dragons, the kinds with wings, the kinds that breathed fire.
The dragons in the east did not have wings and they did not breathe fire.
They weren’t even called dragons in the dragon’s language, after all, they were called loang, but when the explorers had made contact with the countries in the east, they had seen the dragons there and thought they looked like dragons back home, so they had called them dragons.
He was perhaps more interested in the solitary, fire-breathing kind of dragon than the other kind, though he found all things eastern rather intriguing, he had to say.
When he was a child, the idea of being some huge and imposing winged thing, something that could come and go as he pleased, something that wasn’t bothered by the daily annoyances of obligation as the son of an envivtain, it all had been rather appealing.
Of course, it turned out that dragons weren’t actually as solitary as it was believed.
They liked to take captives, it turned out, and they did not eat these captives.
As a general rule, dragons didn’t eat things as big as elves or orcs.
They were more likely to eat smaller prey, nothing larger than a wild boar, and even that was rare.
They ate birds, mostly. Sometimes deer and rabbits, too.
Occasionally, perhaps even a wolf. Sheep, they might take, but most of that had ended after they’d been forced into the treaties that kept them from taking farmers’ livestock.
The treaties were ancient, over two hundred years old, but many of the dragons would remember having signed them because dragons lived a very long time, much longer than elves or orcs or dwarves—and of course there were dragons in the dwarf countries as well, and they had their own treaties with the dwarves.
“Look,” Iahir said now, to Gathren, “the truth is that I know a bit about dragons.”
“You were talking about stories,” said Gathren. “Stories about dragons?”
“Well, didn’t you hear tales about dragons when you were a child?”
“No,” she said. “No, dragons are fearsome things that you don’t tell children about, especially not as a bedtime story!”
He nodded slowly. “Right. Well, in the stories I heard, some elven princess would be captured by a dragon, and then the elven prince would go and do battle with the dragon to get her back.”
“Do battle?” She was entirely surprised. “How does one battle a dragon?”
“Right,” he said, nodding. “The stories tended to be unrealistic. The dragons in question would usually make the prince answer riddles, do strange tasks like gather water, that sort of thing.”
She blinked.
He shrugged. “Well, the dragon would be trying to trick the prince, but he would turn out to be smarter than the dragon, and would trick him right back, and then win back the princess, and usually stab the dragon to death, and that would be that.”
“That is the sort of story they told you as a child?”
“Yes?” He shrugged. “What were your stories about? Rainbows and winged white horses?”
She laughed, shaking her head. “Sometimes, I suppose.” She looked off into the distance. “More often than not, I suppose they would be about girls who were married off to awful men, but then the men would be changeable if she was sweet enough.”
“Awful men?”
“They’d be snake men or bear men or very monstrous in some other way?”
“Right,” he said. “Children’s stories are perhaps disturbing.”
She laughed softly.
“Anyway, the stories notwithstanding, it’s true that dragons take live captives.
They’re not supposed to, not anymore, because it’s against the treaties, but maybe the dragon saw that the orcs are invading the Silvarenna and thought that—since the treaties are with the elves—none of that mattered anymore?
Maybe he figured that since your mother was an orc, he could just take her away? ”
“I am going after the dragon, of course,” she said. “I wasn’t going to tell you that.” She sighed. “I honestly had not figured out what I was going to do about you.”
“Well, going after the dragon on your own?” he said. “How are you going to find it? A bright blue dragon sounds very distinctive, but the odds of finding the dragon again just on the description of its color—”
“I’ve seen that dragon before,” she said. “When I was a girl, it would sometimes be spotted out flying above the mountain range to the northeast. I have heard rumors of where its lair is, in fact. I think I can find it.”
“Well, this bodes well.” He was quite excited, and he grinned at her. “But you must let me come along.”
“No,” she said. “You were supposed to have left me already. You and I have parted ways. You are not supposed to be here. And I am not going to allow you to sleep in this barn, so you have to go find somewhere else to sleep.”
“After you let me put my horse into a stall and take off its saddle and bridle and everything? You’re making me leave?”
She threw up her hands. “Fine. You can stay. But mark my words, my lord, you are never getting between these thighs of mine, do you understand?”
He scratched the side of his neck. “All right, if you want the truth, I don’t want to go home.”
She furrowed her brow.
“Don’t ask why I don’t want to go home, if you please?
I know it’s right on the tip of your tongue, but I don’t wish to speak of that, and I shan’t speak of that, and just understand that I would much rather be here with you, and also I know ever so much about dragons, and I would be an asset, and you need my money, and let me help you rescue your mother from the dragon, please? ”
She huffed.
“All I’ve dreamed of, since I was a boy, was rescuing a fair maiden from a dragon, really. It’s… you cannot deny me this.”
“My mother is hardly a fair maiden.”
He smiled at her. “Well, she captured the eye of the High Chieftain, did she not? She must have been at one point. And look at you. I imagine you look at least something like your mother.”
She scoffed. “Stop that.”
He lifted both of his hands, a hands-off gesture. “All right. I shall cease to reference the fact that I find you attractive.”
“See that you do,” she said. She pointed. “I am sleeping in the loft. You will sleep elsewhere.”
“I understand,” he said.
“Good,” she said.
He thought about bringing up the fact she’d rested her head against his chest and decided against it. “Thank you for letting me come along,” he said instead, even though it was a bit ridiculous that he was thanking her for the privilege of assisting her, after all.
“I am actually glad you’re here,” she said, giving him a look that bespoke a certain kind of exhaustion.
He smiled at her.
She smiled back.
And then she climbed up into the loft without another word.
THE NEXT MORNING, Iahir was frying up eggs that he’d found in the chicken coop on a fire he’d made, using some foldable skillet that had apparently been in the saddle bag of supplies he’d purchased from the inn where they’d stayed the night before last.
Gathren had to admit that waking up to food was nice, and waking up to someone else having done the labor was even nicer. She also could not deny that she was curious about why he did not wish to go home.
She wondered about badgering him about it. However, something in his manner told her she would get nowhere if she did. She wondered if it was something very horrible—and then she wondered what passed as very horrible to the arrogant elf. Had he ever experienced anything like true suffering?
However, the admission itself had soothed her.
She had been rather out of sorts at the idea that he would have followed her all the way up to Notharlien just to try to bed her.
That seemed madness. She was aware that she must be somewhat interesting to him, considering he’d likely never bedded an orc warrioress, but that didn’t seem like the sort of thing that a man like him would be so intent on doing that he’d travel so far out of his way.
Now, she knew he’d been using his attraction for her as an excuse.
After that long and awful conversation they’d had the day before, of course, she was embarrassed to be with him.
She had admitted so many vulnerable things to him primarily because she thought that they were parting ways and she would never see him again.
She certainly would not have spent so much time going on about how she wanted to be loved and cherished if she had thought that they were going to be together like this for days on end. What he must think of her!
He’d said some interesting things, she had to admit.