16
“ALL RIGHT,” IAHIR was saying as he paced in front of the fire.
It was hours later. They had eaten only a small amount of what they had been eating, because they were trying to make the provisions they’d brought last. It was dark now.
“In the stories, the dragons are often sort of symbolic stand-ins for greed. The stories are moral lessons, and the lesson is always that you must not covet things you do not have, and the hero always beats the dragon by rising above the temptation to greed.”
“This isn’t a story,” said Gathren.
He was worried about her. She seemed quite exhausted, but she was also very stubbornly determined they try again to get into the dragon’s lair, and he could understand that. “I know it’s not a story,” he said. “It isn’t going to go like that. I’m sort of wondering if we have it all wrong, dragons.”
She didn’t even say anything. She stared into the fire.
“Think about it,” he said, continuing to pace. “What if dragons do not have those hoards for themselves, but as a deterrent?”
“What?” she said, furrowing her brow.
“What could a dragon do with all of that?” he said.
“What would a dragon want with it? Wealth and riches are only usable within a society, they are only usable if there is trade of some sort. And they are only worth what it is agreed they are worth. If I demand a price for something that no one will pay, then it is not worth that. The price is only whatever someone will agree to pay.”
“I have no idea what you are going on about,” she said.
“Well, they are solitary,” he said. “So, there is absolutely no point in having wealth at all.”
“All right,” she said. “I suppose. Fascinating, really, but I don’t see how that helps us.”
“They have the hoards so that the humans will find the hoards first, take the riches, and leave them be!”
Gathren sat up straight. “Possibly, I suppose.”
“They’re likely frightened of us,” he said. “We have those treaties, you know, but it’s still very common to shoot a dragon down on sight, even before it razes your crops with fire. People see one, and they go get the bows and arrows.”
“It’s a wonder that no one shot this one,” Gathren muttered. She looked at him. “Why do we not have bows and arrows, you and I?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We didn’t really plan for this, did we?”
“But think,” she said. “For hunting.”
“Right,” he said with a sigh. “Would have been useful. All right, well, if we get to another village at some point, I will buy us both something, how is that?”
“It’s no good against the dragon,” she said, gesturing upwards.
“At some point, dragons must have figured out that if they put large piles of riches in the front of their lairs, people would just come and take that, and then they would never go any further,” said Iahir.
“It doesn’t seem as if dragons really need to worry about anything,” said Gathren. “They breathe fire.”
“Yes, and that’s why there’s ever so many of them still around, is it? They’ve all been killed, really.”
“Are we feeling sorry for the dragon?” she said. “Is that what is happening? Because I think it tried to kill us.”
“I don’t think it did. I think if it wanted us dead, it would have killed us already,” said Iahir. “I think it wants us to go away.”
“Well, we can’t! Not until we know about my mother,” said Gathren.
“Right,” said Iahir. “But that’s why I think we go back up there and demand it tell us about her.”
“And I think that’s a grand way to get burned to death,” said Gathren. “I think we need to find some way to kill it the next time it comes out and flies around. Do you think that I could get a knife all the way up—”
“No,” said Iahir. He stopped pacing and looked down at her.
“Let me do it, then. If I don’t come back, then you can try to kill the dragon, but I want to try to talk with it.
Let me do that for you.” He was feeling rather good about this.
If it went well, he could get her mother back.
If it went badly, it was a noble sacrifice, and that warmed him.
He would like to nobly sacrifice himself for the woman he loved, he found.
“That’s idiotic,” she scoffed.
“Well, you lose nothing,” he said. “I shall leave you my coin here, and anyway, after you kill the dragon, you can take all those riches—”
“I lose nothing? Are you listening to yourself? I don’t want you go and kill yourself, Iahir.”
“I won’t,” he said. “Probably.” He swallowed. “Maybe I can kiss you before I go, though? Just in case I do die. I think that would be romantic.”
“And now you say that,” she said, throwing up her hands. “I do not even understand you.”
“I want to please you, Gathren,” he said, quite serious. “I want to do things for you. I want to make your life better in some way. I want to be useful to you. I want—”
“Oh, stop it, really. I am going to think you truly are in love with me.”
“Obviously, I am!”
“You are not,” she said.
“Well, I am,” he said. “But you are not actually in love with me. Or… you might have feelings for me, but you don’t welcome them, which means that you’re not really in love with me.”
“You’re right, I’m not in love with you. I think I hate you instead, in fact. I think I despise you.”
“Fine,” he said. “So, you won’t care if I get myself killed, then.”
“I am not letting you go off and do a bunch of pointless heroics,” she said. “Also, I don’t need you to rescue my mother. I can do that myself. You are not useful to me, my lord, not at all, and the only way you become useful to me is if I lower myself to give you some space to be useful.”
He thought about that. “That may be the way of it between men and women, always.”
She rolled her eyes. “How about this? You talk to the dragon, you distract the dragon, and I sneak in while the dragon is busy with you.”
“Well, the dragon is going to know you’re out there, and he’s going to be looking for you.”
“What if you say I’m badly burned and out of commission?” said Gathren.
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s not a half-bad idea.”
GATHREN HUDDLED IN the darkness, out of sight, as Iahir called into the cavern entrance.
“Oh, dragon! Let’s talk, you and I,” he yelled.
“You have already dispatched my partner, and I find I’m strangely relieved about that, because it means I don’t have to share the treasure.
Something about being here, it casts a spell of greed on me, and now I must have everything in your hoard.
Surely there is some way I can win it from you, like the stories, some riddle I can answer, some task I can perform. ”
But there was nothing from inside the cavern, nothing at all.
Iahir waited and then tried again. “I think you owe me, dragon. You infected me with this greed, after all! Also, you killed the female orc, and I think you should at least apologize to me about that. Even though maybe you did me a favor. But even so, that’s your fault.
If I had never come here, I would never have been this greedy. ”
A voice came from within. “Thou hast contracted no greed, elf. What greed thou feelst in thy chest, it has come from only thy own soul.”
Iahir smiled. “Come closer, dragon. Let me see you.”
“All creatures have the desire to blame others for their own sins,” said the dragon. “But thou elves are more adept at it than nearly any other creature.”
“Let us speak,” said Iahir. “Come out and show yourself. We will talk and make an agreement between ourselves.”
“Thou thinkest to lure me to my death. Dost thou think me a fool?”
“I will lay down my weapons,” cried Iahir, taking off his belt with his sword and knives on it.
Gathren did not think that was wise, but she could say nothing, not unless she wanted to give herself away.
“And this is saying something,” continued Iahir, “because you have already killed my companion, so I have no reason to trust you.”
“It was not my intention to kill anyone,” said the dragon, and its blue snout appeared as it came out of the cavern. It darted forward, quicker than Gathren would have expected, and it snatched up Iahir’s belt and all of his weapons. It drew itself up, spreading its wings and peered down at Iahir.
Who looked up, drinking in the sight of the dragon with an expression of awe. Iahir smiled up at the dragon, the smile of a delighted little boy. “You are so large,” said Iahir. “I used to wish I could see a dragon up close, truly wish it, and I never thought it would ever happen.”
The dragon lowered itself. “Thou art a strange elf.”
Gathren had to take the chance now. The dragon was no longer looking, so she had to go. She moved slowly, deliberately, easing her way through the shadows, as the dragon and Iahir continued to speak.
“I am, I suppose,” said Iahir. “I didn’t think you meant to kill anyone, you know. I think, probably, you dragons are as afraid of us as we are of you. I think you just want to be left alone. Is that it?”
Gathren darted inside the cavern.
It was very dark inside, and she could only make out the outline of the mound of gold and treasure.
She moved as quickly as she could while still being quiet to skirt around it.
From outside the cavern came the sounds of the dragon and Iahir, still talking.
The dragon was still commenting on how odd and bewildering he found Iahir, who had seemingly abandoned his ruse about trying to get the dragon to challenge him to a game of riddles for the treasure, or whatever it was he had said he would do during the plan.
Gathren had to assume that was going to go badly very soon. She needed to move fast.
On the other side of the treasure, the rest of the cavern stretched out dark and bare. She wasn’t sure what she had been hoping for. A little cage with her mother in it, handily right there and ready to rescue?
But she knew there had to be another way into the cavern, because the dragon had been in there when they had come in, and they had been watching the entrance all along. The dragon had not entered through that entrance. It must have come in another way.
She kept moving then, blinking hard to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness and thinking that she wished she wasn’t sneaking around because then she could have had a torch.
And then she saw a door. It was round, perfectly round, with a little gleaming doorknob in the middle, and she hurried over to it and tried the doorknob. But it was locked.
She didn’t know what to do.
She rattled the doorknob. She shook the door. She strained, and she could hear the sounds of Iahir and the dragon speaking to each other beyond the cave. How long until the dragon hurt Iahir and came for her?
Well, she supposed she couldn’t let that happen.
She would have to go back there and stop the dragon from doing any damage to Iahir.
Because, after all, it was one thing if he was sacrificing himself so that she could get to her mother, but it was entirely another thing if he was sacrificing himself so that she could get to a locked door. It was pointless for him to do that.
She started back towards the mound of gold.
The dragon was saying, “Why art thou so convinced I wish to ask thee riddles?”
And then, from behind her, she heard the door open.