growing there were familiar-wheat and barley, grapes and olives. Whoever lived in this city, Gaven surmised, baked bread and drank beer and wine. A few plants he couldn’t identify. Moving farther along, they came upon fields of livestock-hulking beasts the size of cattle, but definitely not cattle. Their horns were curved and sharp, their hides covered with brown-black scales, and their shoulders were ringed with a frill of spines. Still farther, they found some fields that were freshly plowed. And there they saw a long line of people stretched across the far side of one field, stooping or crawling along the ground, planting.
It struck Gaven as absurd, somehow, the mundaneness of it. They were in a distant continent, one that no other native of Khorvaire had ever seen, as far as he knew, and his first sight of the people of this land was a row of farm laborers, planting the next season’s crops. All their talk of Prophecy and eternity, of exploring new lands and walking into unknown danger, and then they stumbled upon a farm. He laughed.
“What are they?” Rienne breathed. The absurdity had escaped her, clearly-she was intent on the distant figures, shielding her eyes from the setting sun.
“What are they?” Gaven echoed. “They’re farmers, laborers. Where’s the mystery in that?”
“No, I mean what race are they? They’re not human.”
The smile dropped from Gaven’s face, and he squinted at the laborers he’d dismissed. Rienne was right-at first they looked human, tall and as broad as you’d expect from people who made their living by heavy labor. They were too far away to make out more detail than that. The discrepancy was in their heads, when from time to time he’d see them in profile. Rather than the gentle contours of a human face, they had long, rounded snouts.
“Gnolls?” he said. Those barbarians, plentiful in the monster nation of Droaam, had heads resembling dogs or hyenas.
“I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of a gnoll city before.”
“They could be slaves of whoever built the city.”
“It’s not the right shape.”
Rienne was right. Gnolls had flat, sloping foreheads, a sharp brow ridge, and a pointed muzzle. These had a single curve from crown to snout, unbroken by a brow. With the addition of a horned frill, they would look just like Vaskar.
“Lizardfolk?” Rienne wondered. Reptilian races were fairly common in the jungles of Q’barra, south of the Lhazaar islands on Khorvaire’s east coast.
“No. They look like dragons.”
Rienne blinked. “I don’t know why I’m so surprised. We just discovered a city in Argonnessen, why shouldn’t it be inhabited by walking dragons?”
Gaven was certain now that he harbored no long-lost memories of Argonnessen in the depths of his mind. If he had ever known that Argonnessen was inhabited by dragon-people, he was certain he would remember it now. He watched one of the creatures stand from its labor, stretch long, strong arms, and then freeze. It lowered its arms slowly.
“They’ve seen us,” Gaven said.
“I wonder if we’re as strange to them as they are to us.”
The one that had seen them was rousing the others, and the dragon-people sprang into action. One took off at a run in the direction of the city, and the rest hustled to a corner of the field.
“I’m not sure I want to find out,” Gaven said. “Let’s get some cover.”
Rienne led the way into the shelter of the forest. Only when the last trace of sunlight was draped in the shadow of the canopy and the stillness of the ancient trees had closed around them did she pause. Gaven turned then and peered back through the brush. The laborers were spreading across the field again, but in a line parallel to the forest edge. They carried spears and halberds with huge, jagged blades.
“They’re prepared for intruders,” Rienne said. “They think we’re scouts from their enemies, perhaps.”
“What will they do when they see we’re not?”
“I doubt we’ll be any less threatening to them.”
“Let’s get out of here.” Gaven strode into the shadows of the trees.
“What?” Rienne said, hurrying after him. “Don’t you want to learn more about these people?”
“Not if that means witnessing their combat techniques, or learning how they treat prisoners of war. Hurry!” Gaven cast one last look over his shoulder to make sure the well-armed farmers had not caught up to them. Still a few steps behind him, Rienne glided across the forest floor, her eyes darting to catch every movement in the forest around them. Satisfied that they had a significant lead on their pursuers-if indeed the dragon-headed people were still pursuing them-he charged onward.
“Gaven.”
Rienne’s voice had the quiet urgency she reserved for truly dire circumstances, and Gaven halted his headlong rush, scanning the trees. He heard the quiet song of Maelstrom sliding from its scabbard, so he pulled the greatsword from his back, though he still couldn’t see what had alarmed Rienne.
The first things he saw emerging from the undergrowth and around the thick trunks of trees were arrowheads-obsidian, he guessed, rough-hewn but viciously sharp. Then strong hands clutching the horn handles of curved bows drawn back. Then the dragon-folk stepped into view.
I’d be dead where I stand, Gaven thought, if Rienne hadn’t seen them. She is watching my back.
“Easy, Gaven,” Rienne said, and Maelstrom slid into its sheath again with a whisper. “If they’d wanted to, they would have loosed their arrows already. See if they speak Draconic.”
Gaven dropped his greatsword to the ground and spread his empty arms wide, palms out. “We mean no harm,” he said in Draconic.
He saw their eyes widen, and he was suddenly struck by how human they seemed. Their faces were wide, and accentuated by small frills extending back from their mouths. Despite his earlier impression, they did have distinct brows-ridges of scales arching up from their snouts over their eyes and meeting those cheek frills. Behind their brows, they had crests resembling thick, ropy hair, formed of horn or scales. Some of them also had protruding scales that extended down from their chins, and Gaven realized suddenly that those were the males-the bodies of the men and the women were quite different in familiar and quite un-reptilian ways. There could be no question about it in Gaven’s mind. The strange creatures that surrounded him in this alien forest were people.
People he shared a common language with.
“What kind of creature are you?” one of the women said in Draconic. Her voice was low but melodious. She wore metal armor, unlike most of the others whose garb was stitched of scaly hide. She held no bow, but carried a shield in her right hand and an axe in the other. Armor, shield, and weapon shared a similar style unlike anything he’d ever seen-graceful curves meeting in points, suggesting tongues of flame. Like the breath of a red or gold dragon.
Gaven opened his mouth to explain what he and Rienne were but found himself at a loss for words. The first word that came to his mind to describe them was “meat”-not how he wanted to identify himself to these people. He turned to Rienne.
“What are we?” he asked. “How do I explain Khoravar to these people?”
“The dragons of Argonnessen certainly know of the elves of Aerenal,” Rienne said. “Try it.”
“We are travelers-on-the-sea,” Gaven said in Draconic. “We have journeyed a great distance to arrive at this land. Some of our ancestors were Aereni.” He paused to judge their reaction to this news.
Their wide mouths curved in unmistakable smiles. At the tips of their snouts, the scales formed a beaklike protrusion, but leathery skin behind it parted to reveal knife-blade teeth. Some of them laughed out loud, deep and throaty. Gaven cast his mind back over what he’d said-had he made some gaffe of manners or grammar?
“You talk like a dragon,” the armored woman said through her smile.
“Or a character in a bad romance,” another one added, letting his bow straighten slightly as he laughed.
Gaven was relieved but confused. He did speak like a dragon-probably because he learned to speak Draconic by holding the memories of an ancient dragon in his mind for twenty-seven years.
He didn’t know any other way to speak Draconic, though he had already puzzled out some idioms and colloquialisms he’d never heard before. “Bad romance” was his best guess, and he could only assume that the dragon-man had meant a play or a work of fiction.
He decided to take advantage of the moment of levity. “And you?” he asked the woman, indicating the whole group of dragon-people. “What manner of creature are you?”
“We are drakatha, of course,” the woman answered. A compound construction-dragon-bred? he wondered.
