don't have much to recommend it.'
'Bad company,' agreed Filar, 'and bad weather besides. If we're gonna rebuild the camp anyway, we might as well find someplace a little more hospitable.'
Their perfectly rational concerns had nothing whatever to do with abject fear of the mudman, whose exact nature had been called into question by its unexpected conversion to a quadruped. (Subsequent fireside accounts would identify the monster as the lesser-known but equally fearsome mudbear.)
'Move on, then?' suggested Maddock.
'Reckon that's the most reasonable course,' said Ivor, with a very reasonable expression.
Thus agreed, the men withdrew from close proximity to the mudman, taking reasonably quick strides back to camp.
'Cirro, I've come to tell you that I'm leaving the forest.'
The mist dragon did not so much as open his eyes. 'Go away, Zyx,' he growled.
It had been nearly a month since the incident with the humans, and Cirro had not heard a peep from the faerie dragon. Only then did he realize how much he'd enjoyed the reprieve.
'I mean it this time,' Zyx sighed. 'And I just wanted to say that I'm really going to miss you.'
Cirro raised his head. He had never heard Zyx sound so earnest. 'Is this the truth?' he asked. 'Where are you going?'
'The other side of the gorge.'
The mist dragon narrowed his eyes and asked, 'Is that not where the humans were going?'
Zyx's expression was all innocence. 'Someone's got to keep an eye on them,' he pointed out.
But Cirrothamalan was no fool. 'You can't resist, can you? They are simply too tempting a target!'
A coy smile worked its way across Zyx's snout. 'But it was such fun' he murmured. His eyes grew unfocused, as though he was reliving a sweet memory.
'I doubt the humans thought it was much fun,' Cirro noted.
The faerie dragon overlooked that observation with his usual blitheness. 'It will be a grand adventure,' he said. 'But I shall miss you, my friend.'
It seemed Zyx was in earnest after all. Cirro rose to his feet, and with due ceremony offered the traditional farewell of his kind.
'Good-bye, Zyx. May the mysteries of life unfold themselves to you.'
As the tiny dragon flitted away, Cirro felt a peculiar weight in his stomach, as though he had swallowed a large stone. Was it possible? Might he actually miss the little pest?
'I'll come back to visit someday!' Zyx piped as he disappeared from view.
The stone in Cirro's stomach vanished, replaced by an ill-tempered growl. He might have guessed. One was never truly rid of a faerie dragon. They were as clinging as a burr, as nagging as a conscience. He could name several diseases that were easier to be rid of. Still, some part of him welcomed such constants in life. And when Zyx returned, as he no doubt would, some part of Cirro would welcome the faerie dragon too.
THE WOMAN WHO DREW DRAGONS
The Year of the Helm (1362 DR)
Of course, if that female painter hadn't shown up about the same time that Guerner called for more drinks, the tavernkeeper Varney might not have pursued his great idea about dragons. At least, that was what Varney said later. Mrs. Varney just said, 'Well, isn't that like Varney, trying to blame somebody else for his troubles.'
It all started with Varney's customers, as Varney pointed out to Mrs. Varney. Those customers, a group of regulars, were having one of their endless nightly debates about the habits of dragons and their own fortitude during encounters with the scaly beasts.
'So I just twitched the string like this, and up leaps that black dragon. Thought his whole cave was infested by snakes, and he lets out this roar and races away. Leaving me in possession of all his treasure,' said the gnome Silvenestri Silver, wriggling a piece of twine across the table.
In the middle of winter, in the dark days that marked the end of one year and the beginning of the next, Silver spent most of his time in his favorite tavern, the Dragon Defeated, telling tales of his past exploits as a treasure- stealer. When the roads dried out and warmer weather came, he'd be away to a bigger city to look for work. Sembian cities held certain perils for a professional treasure-hunter (like rival claimants to his prizes and unkind people who whined that he'd cheated them of their share), so Silver preferred to wait out winter in Halfknot, the small town with a mixed population of humans, dwarves, and gnomes where nothing much ever happened.
Varney and his wife scrubbed the tables, moving around the group of listeners gathered around the gnome and his string. Mrs. Varney wished that they'd all go home and whispered to Varney that it was time to shoo everyone out the door. But Varney disagreed. Winter was too slow a time for the Dragon Defeated and its owner to lose any chance of an extra purchase.
Looking over the group arguing about dragons, Varney knew the order wouldn't come from the dwarf, Badger Bates. The dwarf would nurse his one drink all night unless someone else paid. If the human, Wyrmbait Nix, hadn't lost all his coin to Silver in one of their numerous bets, he might buy something to eat. The big man was always hungry and not too fussy about Mrs. Varney's cooking. Of course, His Honor, Grangy Guerner, part-time magistrate and full-time ratcatcher, always had plenty of jingle in his pocket, but he rarely lingered in the tavern for any length of time.
'Dragons aren't afraid of snakes,' said the dwarf Badger Bates, taking up the thread of his never-ending dispute with Silver about which of them knew the most about the dragons.
He pointed one dirty finger at the gnome sitting across from him. 'All I'm saying is that proof is proof. I've never seen any proof of your story except a snip of dirty twine. Now folks know when I tell about Malaeragoth, I'm going show them proof of my words. I've got my scale, don't I?'
Bates tapped the iron box sitting beside his plate. The dwarf worked in the local foundry but had once dug gardens and built fountains for the wizard Uvalkhur the Undaunted. When certain rival wizards murdered the old man in his own home, Malaeragoth, the sapphire dragon and sometimes steed of Uvalkhur, suddenly appeared before the thieving wizards ransacking the mansion and revenged his former master. Almost one hundred years had passed since the day that Malaeragoth tore apart the manor to play cat-and-mouse games with the murderers, but the ferocity of his vengeance remained a favorite tale in Sembia. Of all those who'd occupied the manor that day, only Badger Bates had escaped with his life. And from that day to the present, no more had been seen of the sapphire dragon.
'And besides, the last time that you told that story about the black dragon, you said you cast an illusion of one snake crawling across his den,' argued Bates. 'Now when I talk about Malaeragoth-'
'One snake, ten snakes, what does it matter?' Silver said, cutting off Bates's last sentence. 'You're missing the point. What I'm trying to say is that it pays, and pays well if you're hunting someone else's treasure, to know who you're stealing from. Dragons are no different from people. Know their habits, know where they keep their loot, and know how to trick them. That dragon-and I never said that he was the usual sort of black dragon-that dragon had what the wizard called a pho-bee-a. Couldn't abide snakes in any form. And when he saw a snake, or thought he saw one, he ran.'
'I am the last person alive to have actually seen Malaeragoth and I can produce my proof anytime I want,' Bates persisted, flipping open the lid of his iron box. The shimmering sapphire scale inside shone like an evening star in the tavern's dim light. 'Besides, Malaeragoth wasn't one of your commonplace black dragons that any reprobate gnome illusionist could trick,' finished Bates in a huff.
'I paid good gold for information about that black dragon,' snarled Silver, 'and more for a great snake illusion. That's what made it possible for me to defeat that dragon-and a lesser gnome couldn't have done it. You may have been clever enough to pick up that scale, after you crawled out of whatever hole that you hid in, but avoiding Malaeragoth isn't the same as tricking a dragon in his own lair!'
'Humph,' said Badger Bates. 'Proof is proof, and I still don't see anything on the table.'
