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Chapter Fifty-Three



Druadaen sighed. “Could you please stop chewing for a moment?”

“Again?” the dragon asked pettishly.

“I haven’t finished measuring your jaw.”

The creature’s sigh blew Druadaen’s hair straight back. “Oh, very well.” No sooner had the splintering of bones and scissoring of meat stopped than it glanced sideways at where the group was roasting the last of the goats for their own consumption. “It’s so hard to decide: Cooked or uncooked? They both have their own particular gustatory appeals.”

Druadaen finished reeling out the marked cord with which he had taken the dragon’s various measurements. “Then why don’t you, er, cook more of the ones we bring you?”

“What? When you can do it for me? And so very, very nicely, too. My method sears the outside but leaves almost everything else completely raw. Which is delectable, but when one desires cooked meat, slow roasting is vastly preferable.”

Druadaen nodded absently, stepping back. “And you are still unable to resume your own, er, incendiary exhalations?”

The dragon’s eyes rotated toward him. “As I told you, that is not something I can perform for very long or very frequently. It will be some time before I could hope to do so again.” It seemed miffed. “Perhaps you would be more impressed if I demonstrated it upon you?”

Over the last few days, Druadaen had grown accustomed to the dragon’s preferred form of banter: dire-sounding threats based on the wildest legends of its propensities. He smiled. “I do not require personal immolation to be impressed.”

The dragon huffed. “But you were unimpressed. And do not dissemble; I can tell when I disappoint.”

“Well,” Druadaen explained reasonably, “you yourself have said that almost all stories regarding dragons are just that: stories.”

“True,” it mused, mollified. “But it rankles me when I underwhelm humans.”

“I understand,” Druadaen nodded, waiting for the mouth to become still before measuring and counting the cutlass-sized and -shaped teeth. “I’m sorry that my inquiries are annoying. It is just that I was unable to learn very much.”

“What is there to learn? I breathe fire. Sometimes. And not at the volume or temperature that your ludicrous legends depict. Burning down whole cities with a constant gush of metal-melting flame?” It snorted. “Not even the greatest of my breed would have claimed such absurd abilities. And they were pathological liars. Among other things.” It sighed. “But what have you learned about my underwhelming ability to breathe fire?”

“Well, it’s clear you don’t actually breathe fire.” Druadaen moved to the nostrils. He stared, then decided, in this one regard, to skip measurement and rely upon an estimate.

“As I told you,” the dragon said testily, “the sensation is reminiscent of when your kind regurgitates bile.”

Druadaen stopped. “How do you know what that feels like? Were you reading the mind of someone when it happened to them?” Not unlikely; looking into an angry dragon’s eyes could certainly cause all kinds of spontaneous emissions and excretions. “Or are you able to read memories, as well?”

The dragon raised its head. “You must allow me some secrets, human. Without some measure of mystery, there can be no measure of majesty.”

“Is that a saying among dragons?”

“Well, having just said it, I suppose it is, now. But I will have the unpleasant truth of your observations about my underwhelming pyrotic exhalations.”

Druadaen raised an eyebrow. “Actually, that term is very accurate; they are pyrotic.” Seeing the confusion on the great wyrm’s pronounced, horned brow, he expanded. “Whatever you expel does not ignite until it is beyond your mouth.”

“Well, thank goodness for that! It is unpleasant enough as it is!”

Druadaen nodded. “I cannot tell what the means of ignition is, but I noticed a familiar odor just beforehand.”

A pause. “Well, you see, human, when one eats a great deal of raw meat, one’s breath is sometimes—”

“No, no: this was the scent of what you were expelling. It smelled vaguely like linseed oil.”

“That seems odd. And you seem to attach significance to it.”

Druadaen shrugged. “Rags soaked in linseed oil have been known to combust spontaneously.”

“So you are saying that dragon flame is indistinguishable from a crude agricultural byproduct?” There was far more injured pride than anger in its voice.

“No. I think that is what ignites whatever else you exhale, which I suspect is a gas of some kind. But as I have no way to sample it—”

“Just as well, perhaps,” the dragon huffed, rising up. “Each revelation about my ‘pyrotic exhalations’ is more depressing than the last. At least I will make a good show of flying. And while I’m at it, I will retrieve that goat you could not reach. Are you ready to make your observations?”

“I am,” said Druadaen. But having studied the dragon’s body in great detail over the past two days, he was filled with misgivings that he might once again have to share “underwhelming” results.

* * *

Regardless of how it was accomplished, a dragon aloft was a breathtaking sight. But the process whereby it became airborne was somewhat underwhelming, even though Druadaen had been prepared for that. After all, a body weighing several tons but equipped with wings proportionally no thicker than a bat’s, wasn’t going to launch effortlessly into the air like a sparrow. Or, if it did, then it would be the most profound violation of natural law Druadaen had yet witnessed.

Instead of taking wing and immediately soaring, the dragon exited the cave and started scaling the hill, ascending with a wide-limbed crawl. Once at the summit, the great wyrm turned toward another hill, lifted its head and closed its eyes. It held that pose of arrested readiness for a minute, then another.

Druadaen had begun to wonder if it was possible for a creature to forget how to fly when a breeze blew up the hill from the plain…

The dragon transformed itself in an instant; its wings spread, and its body seemed to grow. But that was just a momentary illusion caused by the sudden unfolding of webbing that that ran from its upper arm to the midpoint of its body. With a prodigious leap, the dragon caught the breeze rolling up the slope and was suddenly soaring with deceptive ease, appearing to float in midair as it ascended.

As the breeze began to fade, more webbing appeared. These new flaps ran from beneath its ribcage to the front of its haunches, and also from the rear of its legs out to the end of the tail, widening it into a serrated stiletto silhouette. All these folds and webbing now worked like lateen sails, tilting and angling to catch smaller gusts and updrafts until the dragon reached the top of the next hill.

Druadaen discovered his mouth had gaped open in wonder. Not at the power of the flight—it was more a matter of strength-assisted gliding—but at the extraordinary elegance of the body’s design and the creature’s use of it.

He started when Ahearn’s voice arose unexpectedly behind him. “I’ll never admit it where he can hear me, but that scaled bastard is one magnificent creature.”

The dragon turned toward them. “So kind of you to say!” he bellowed, and then roared with laughter.

Ahearn stepped forward abruptly, as if he meant to charge at the chortling dragon, which leaped again and soared toward an even higher hill. “Well, that proves your theory, Dunarran.”

“What does?”

Ahearn shook his head angrily. “No natural creature could hear me from that distance. Impossible, particularly with the wind.”

Druadaen nodded, but more to himself, as he observed a different violation of natural law: that now, even as the dragon beat its wings, there was no sign of them ripping or that the long bones upon which they were extended showed any sign of bending, let alone breaking.

Having a reasonable estimate of the dragon’s weight, and an even more precise estimate of the area of the fully extended wings, he knew roughly how much air needed to be moved, how quickly, for the creature to fly actively. But even without that exertion, he knew how much stress was on those wings and those bones simply to remain in place as rising currents carried the immense weight of the dragon upward. And the moment had come when they should have collapsed, cracked, or torn under the strain.

But it didn’t happen. Not on the dragon’s quick flight to the new hill, or on the longer, soaring transit to the closest mountain of the Thelkrag Kar. And upon its return, when it swooped down to claim the goat that had slid down a sheer face after being felled by Umkhira’s arrows, the dragon banked hard, webbed extensions flaring and wings angling to bite into the breeze. Without even bothering to land, it opened its maw and caught up the carcass: effortlessly, swiftly, without landing or wasted motion.

As the dragon swooped down toward the top of the hill on which he waited, Druadaen was once again able to see its face: rapturous glorying in the power and freedom of its flight and a hint of regret that it would soon be earthbound again. It landed and set about devouring the goat, pulling it apart, more by wrenching back with its neck than shearing the meat with its jaws. Its heavier foreparts, stronger neck, and shorter gullet made far more sense than the almost serpentine shapes attributed to the wyrms of legend. This dragon could quickly reduce and consume an entire mountain goat in mere minutes. Longer, narrower jaws would not have had the viselike grip nor the ability to dismember prey so easily. And it was anyone’s guess how long it would take for the meal to work its way down a snakelike throat, to say nothing of the difficulty of bones jamming sideways, or against each other.

When it had gulped down the last of the goat, the dragon spread its wings and almost floated down toward the apron of cleared rock that was the threshold of its cave. It landed without raising the faintest puff of dust. It smiled at Druadaen, who had the sudden impression that its gore-coated maw was equal parts bulldog and bull shark. “Are you underwhelmed this time?” He didn’t bother to look at Ahearn but added, “You do not need to answer, steel-waver. Your unsolicited opinion is already a matter of record.”

As Ahearn fumed, Druadaen shook his head. “It was magnificent. But it made me wonder…”

“Yes?” prompted the dragon with a warning in its tone.

“Just before you returned, I saw the look on your face. If you enjoy flying so much, why do you not do it more often, up in the mountains where no one could find you?”

“Because your species—indeed, all two-legs—are always watching. And because they presume that flying is a precursor to depredations by my breed.”

Druadaen frowned. “I am sorry if my request to see you fly put you at risk. I—”

The dragon raised a stilling paw. “No more. It was my choice, and not one I made out of kindness. The food you brought saved me the necessity of risking a long, vitality-sapping flight, scanning the wilderness for free herds. And all it cost was showing you a few paltry lifts and swoops. And wounded pride.” When Druadaen stared in perplexity, the dragon clarified. “I am reduced to performing circus tricks for my supper.” It spat out a bitter laugh. “Behold the mighty dragon and despair!”

It glanced south. “It was a very short flight and away from the plains, so hopefully your kind has not been agitated.” He released a great sigh before walking regretfully into the cave. “Come. I do not wish to tempt fate. And don’t lag; I won’t step on you.”

Druadaen entered alongside the great wyrm, wondering if it was another violation of natural law that a creature as large as a house—and twice as long, counting the tail—could have such an extraordinarily precise sense of its closest surroundings and similarly precise control of its movements within them.

“Your question about flying,” the dragon rumbled as the cave widened out, “touches on a sore point between our species.”

“Because it attracts angry settlers and possibly armies?”

“Well, that, too…but there is a more basic concern.” It gestured toward a rock suitable for human seating as Ahearn wandered in behind them, silent and sullen. “Flying rapidly depletes my breed’s vitality, makes us very hungry.”

“Understandable.”

“Therefore, if we fly, we must eat a great deal. More than one or two sheep or goats, at any rate.”

“So…cattle, horses?”

Its nod was shallow. “But even those of us who are large enough to take such heavy prizes to our lair cannot do so profitably.”

Druadaen nodded, understanding. “Because flying with that extra weight costs more energy than you get from consuming them.”

“Precisely. So we must eat our kill where we find it.”

Ahearn tilted his head. “Well, then, yer damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you can’t afford to risk hunting across the wilderness, you’ve no choice but to raid livestock and stay while you gulp it down. Which brings out locals with pitchforks.”

The dragon glanced at him. “I may have to revise my unflattering opinion of you, steel-waver. You are correct. There is no way for me to secure enough food.”

“How long can you survive this way?” Druadaen asked in hushed tones.

“Well, I have managed for two centuries so far.”

“Two centuries!”

“Yes. Because, like the giant you met, I enter torpor when I have insufficient food. The difference is that I may remain in that state for a very, very long time.”

“Years?”

“Decades. Possibly more. I do not want to risk discovering the limits.” The dragon extended its wings like an athlete stretching muscles after a long event. “Now, let’s return to a happier subject; you were explaining how seeing me fly was a transformative experience.”

“Well, I’m sure it was…”

“But?”

Druadaen shrugged. “But, given your weight and anatomy, you shouldn’t be able to fly at all. Not even glide. It is physically impossible.”

“Well, I could have told you that. And without all the infernal poking, prodding, and measuring.”

“And doesn’t that bother you?”

“No. Why should it?”

“Because fundamental parts of your existence defy natural law.”

The dragon waved a blithe talon. “And what of it? If one starts asking such questions, there is no end to them. For instance: How do I contact your mind—well, not yours, but others? What are these powers that your breed calls magic and why do they work? And are you any closer to resolving the conundrums you found when examining the Bent and giants?”

The dragon daintily picked at its teeth. “The world is filled with mysteries for which we not only lack answers—and probably always will—but for which we cannot even form adequate questions. As a dragon, understanding the limits of logic is a birthright.” It paused. “Well, ‘birthright’ is not the proper word. In fact, the term is hilariously and ironically misleading when applied to us.”

“How so?”

“Because dragons are not born.”

“By all reports, you lay eggs.”

“That is correct. But you miss my meaning. So I shall rephrase: we do not have offspring.”

As the rest of the fellowship entered the cave, Druadaen tried to reconcile what the dragon told him with what he had read. “But there are accounts of how dragons must mate while in flight in order to—”

The dragon jumped up. “We do what?” it roared.

“Mate,” Druadaen said as evenly as he could. “While flying.”

Its purple eyes closed as it raised a heavily scaled paw to cover them “Only a human could conceive of such a perversity,” the dragon groaned.

Druadaen scratched an ear. “The stories originated with another species, I believe.”

Two of the vast claws parted, revealed a searching violet eye. It roved until it found S’ythreni. “Ah. I should have known. A fabulation of the Iavarain. Before their fall, they were almost all hopeless, if debauched, romantics.”

S’ythreni appeared to be readying a retort but abandoned the effort with a wave that seemed to be more a gesture of admission than futility.

Druadaen rose. “So do you rely upon self-fertilization, then?” When the dragon shook its head with a look of disgust, he put out his hands in an appeal. “So how do you reproduce?”

“We don’t.”

“But the eggs—”

“The eggs are not our offspring. They are us.”

Druadaen glanced at his four companions. They looked every bit as confused as he felt. Maybe more so. “When you say, ‘they are us’—”

“I mean exactly that!” The dragon glared at them all. “Those eggs do not contain young, do not promise a new generation and increase of my breed. Each contains a new body for the dragon that laid them, should it perish.”

Druadaen stammered. “B-but, that would mean that—”

“That we are our own beginning and our own end.” It shrugged. “And now you have the ultimate violation of natural law to add to your collection. You’re welcome.” It preened. “It is integral to the majestic nature of dragons to be the acme of all things. Even contradictions.”

Druadaen was the first to regain his voice. “But…how can that be?”

“I do not know; it simply is.”

“No, no; what I mean to say is, how could such a species even come into existence, how could it start? And how would it increase in number if it produces no new beings?”

“Your deductions follow as inevitably as night does day.”

“But it is quite impossible!”

“As I told you at the outset, my breed’s consciousness is shaped by the understanding that there is no logical explanation for us. Or rather, if there is, it lies beyond our scope, just as we seem to lie beyond the limits of what your book-clutching philosophers call ‘the natural order.’” The dragon waved a paw at the world around them. “We have a saying, ‘Which came first, the dragon or the egg?’ You have a similar saying about chickens, I believe.”

“Yes, but that is a metaphorical question. In your case, the quandary is literal. The first of your bodies must have come from an egg. But where did that first egg come from?”

“Who knows?” Its mouth curved in a sly grin. “Maybe it’s the result of…magic!” The serrated smile persisted.

Druadaen saw the mischievous look. He smiled back. “You don’t believe that.”

“Not for a second,” the creature confirmed with a chortle that sounded like the start of a landslide. “But I do believe—I know—this much: to dwell upon such things invites madness, if done for too long. And since I live a very long time, I could go very, very mad. Not a good outcome for my species or yours, I’m sure you’d agree.”

The dragon dusted off its massive thighs; that smoothing of scales released a shower of smaller coins that had become trapped between and beneath them. “Well, I suppose you certainly will have a great deal to write about when you get back to your archive.”

Druadaen shook his head. “At this point, I’d hardly know where to start.

The dragon nodded slowly. “That might be fortunate, in a way.”

“I don’t see how. I wouldn’t be standing where I am now if those who came before me did not record what they knew so that I might build upon it.”

The dragon folded its paws. “My, but you set great store by these books, don’t you?”

Druadaen tried not to resent the facetious tone. “They have been useful enough so far.”

“Have they? Hmm…shall I tell you what I have observed about all your species’ books over these many centuries?”

Druadaen crossed his arms. “Please do.”

He wondered if the dragon’s raised chin and finger were an unintentional reprise of academic posturing or actually meant to lampoon them. “If there’s any one thing that can be said for most books,” the dragon began with a pedantic flourish, “it is this: the more their authors claim complete authority in a subject, the less they actually have. And since so many of your own investigations arose from old tomes filled with old observations scribbled by old men, let us begin by considering books which purport to deal with legend—I beg your pardon: ‘history.’

“Firstly, the more distant the epoch, the less a modern observer may hope to accurately and adequately represent not merely the events, but the mentality, of those days. And this is because their understanding of both are ineluctably shaped by whatever accounts they themselves have found in archives: accounts written by people who simply happened to live during those times.

“Scholars assume that these accounts are extremely reliable and accurate, but just how accurate is that assumption? After all, who is most likely to take the time and trouble to record contemporary events? Why, those who have something to gain by doing so. Only a very few will be motivated by the desire to preserve knowledge, since there isn’t much money or fame in it.”

“B’gods,” Ahearn muttered, leaning toward Druadaen, “he talks just the way you do. Worse, even.”

The dragon continued without pause. “Now, who is most likely to gain from such scribbling? Why, someone who can accrue power or money by crafting an account that convincingly presents one side in a dispute or conflict as being superior, or innately preferable, to the other.”

Druadaen sighed. “So you believe that the accuracy and objectivity of authors is made suspect by their personal motivations?”

“How could it be anything but? I have seen this phenomenon play out countless times. Let us say a historically faithful account is written. It may be rescribed once, maybe twice, but ultimately, the copies go up in flames during the next of your species’ frequent upheavals. It is a rarity for any to remain after but a few slim centuries. Meanwhile, innumerable partisan diatribes from the same epoch endure because their reproduction was as prodigious and rapid as that of flies breeding in dung. An apt metaphor, actually.”

Druadaen smiled. “For one who finds little of use in books, you seem to have made quite an extensive study of them.”

The dragon’s slow, answering smile grew very broad. “Ah,” it said in a sly tone, “you have caught me.” Druadaen nodded and discovered that it was impossible to see all those teeth and not think of being eaten. “And catching me out demonstrates what may be the best value of books: that if read properly, they do not fill the reader with fixed ideas, but rather, create a habit of interrogating them. And how can true change occur without that skill?”

A delighted grin had been slowly spreading across Ahearn’s broad face. “Well,” he said loudly when the great wyrm had finished, “I didn’t expect to hear good, ordinary sense from such an extraordinary creature, but this has been a journey of many surprises. I am with you, wyrm; whatever value is to be found in books is vastly overrated. Action! Action is what is wanted!”

“That is not what I said,” the dragon sighed, closing its eyes.

“How not? You told my mate here to act more and read less!”

“No, I am merely intimating that if he means to change what your species knows—or what it does—then it would be unwise to rely too uncritically on books, or to assume that greater antiquity implies greater accuracy. Or honesty.”

“And how is that any different than saying a bloke mustn’t let books or endless cogitation get in the way of what makes change happen: action?”

The dragon’s voice took on an edge of irritation. “You mean well-reasoned ‘action’ such as yours? Murdering thinking beings in their warrens for the bounty on their heads or thumbs? Seeking ‘great beasts’ to slay for their presumed treasure? Roaming around the world with no greater goal or purpose than collecting the rubbish you see around me here?”

Ahearn was no longer smiling and had become quite red. “Well, then what’s your idea of action?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe going to an uncrossable river and building a bridge. Going to an orphanage and being kind to a child. Or better still, going to a high mountain and learning to fly.”

“‘Learning to fly’? I don’t have wings—or haven’t you noticed?”

“I noticed. But I was hoping you wouldn’t. At least not until you had taken that first, elucidating leap.”

Ahearn crossed his arms and half smiled, half snarled. “Into the revelations of the great beyond, eh?”

The dragon glanced at him. “Despite your innumerable flaws, you do have a gift for banter. For that, I will overlook much. Now, all this chatter has tired me. I have fed adequately and exerted myself. I shall sleep. So should you.”

“Why?”

“Because you are leaving tomorrow.” Seeing their surprised looks, the dragon explained, “I am ensuring that you observe proper etiquette by not overstaying your welcome. You may thank me when I wake.”


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