Taking Flight

“A dragon?” Kelder looked at her with renewed respect. She was brave, anyway — either that, or crazy.

She nodded. “The reward was a thousand pieces of gold, he said. I knew I couldn’t kill a dragon myself, but I thought maybe I could help out and get a share.”

“Where was this dragon?” Kelder asked. “How big was it?”

“It’s in a place called Dwomor,” Azraya said, “south of here. I don’t really know how big the dragon is — as far as I know, it’s still there.”

Kelder had heard of Dwomor; it was one of the larger Small Kingdoms, up in the high mountains in the central region. If one was looking for a dragon, that was a likely place to start, he had to admit. “You didn’t kill it?” he asked.

“I didn’t try,” Azraya said.

“Why not?”

She sighed.

“They signed up a whole boatload of us,” she said, “and we all sailed off across the Gulf of the East, and up a river to Ekeroa, and then they loaded us in wagons and took us to Dwomor, and we all got introduced to the king, and it all looked good, nobody bothered me, nobody tried to touch me, all they cared about was the dragon, I thought. Dwomor wasn’t exactly beautiful, but it was different, anyway. The whole castle was full of dragon- hunters, and they were forming into teams, and I thought I’d be able to join a team and get a share — and then the Lord Chamberlain took me aside and explained a few things.”

“Like what?”

“Like what the reward was,” Azraya said bitterly. “The recruiter lied. Oh, there were a thousand pieces of gold, and a position in the king’s service, but those weren’t the reward; those were his daughters’ dowry. The reward was that whoever killed the dragon got to marry one of his daughters. He had five of them, not counting the married one, so he was sending the hunters out in five-man teams. Five men.”

“Oh,” Kelder said, understanding the situation immediately. Surplus princesses were a well-known phenomenon in the Small Kingdoms, a common subject of lewd jokes — there were never enough princes to go around, and custom decreed that princesses could only marry commoners under exceptional circumstances. Slaying a dragon qualified a commoner as exceptional.

“I don’t know if they’d have sent me back to Ethshar,” Azraya said. “I didn’t wait to find out. I just set out, to see where I went. I’ve been wandering for months, through Ekeroa and Pethmor and Ressamor, doing what odd jobs I could, stealing when I couldn’t eat any other way, and last night I arrived here in Krithim, and now I need to decide whether to give up and go back to Ethshar, or to keep looking.”

“Looking for what?” Kelder asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Just someplace to live, I guess, where I won’t have to beg or whore or sleep in the mud.”

She paused. Kelder thought she had finished, and was about to say something, when she added, “Or sell my blood to some slimy old wizard.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“We’re staying at the Leaping Fish,” Kelder told Azraya as they parted. “If you’d like to meet us there for supper...”

“Don’t count on it,” Azraya said.

Kelder watched her go, then turned and headed back for the castle. The guards might have misdirected him before, but it still seemed like the best place to look for work. Azraya disagreed, and was going her own way.

He rather regretted that; he liked her.

Maybe, he told himself wryly, he was just a sucker for sad stories and losers. Maybe Zindre had guessed that, and had suggested he would champion the lost and forlorn not from magical foreknowledge, but just from his character. Asha, with her abusive drunkard of a father; Ezdral, with his love spell and alcoholism; even Irith, with her unbreakable enchantments — they were all among the unfortunates of the World.

And poor orphaned Azraya was another.

Azraya wasn’t looking for a champion, though; she could obviously take care of herself.

The four of them made a boring life on a farm in Shulara look pretty good by comparison.

This time, when Kelder asked, the soldiers at the castle gate made no jokes and grinned no grins; the one who had directed him to Senesson was apologetic, the other sullen.

“Sorry,” the first said. “If Senesson can’t use you, I don’t have any suggestions. There must be merchants who could use some help loading their wagons, I suppose.”

Kelder was about to say something more when a cat meowed by his feet. He turned, and Irith was standing beside him.

“Gods and demons!” one of the soldiers exclaimed.

“What’s the matter?” Kelder asked him.

“She just appeared, out of nowhere!” the guard said. “It startled me — I thought my heart would burst!”

“That’s Irith the Flyer,” the other one said. “She can do that.”

“I know who she is,” the first guard said, “but I never saw her do that before, and it startled me, all right?”

“Hello,” Irith said. “I’m here to see the king’s wizard — he does still have one, doesn’t he?”

The guards looked at one another.

“He had one last time I was here,” she said. “Her name was Perina something.”

“Perina the Wise,” one guard said. “She’s still here. There are also two witches and a sorcerer.”

“I’m only looking for wizards, thanks,” Irith said. “May we go in?”

“We?”

“He’s with me,” Irith said, taking Kelder’s hand.

The guards exchanged glances again, and then one of them shrugged.

“What the hell,” he said, “let them in.”

“I think we better send an escort,” the other replied.

The first considered, and agreed.

“Wait here,” he said. Then he turned and hurried inside.

While they were waiting, Kelder remarked, “There’s a wizard a few blocks over that way by the name of Senesson of Yolder — do you think he might have a counterspell?”

“Who knows?” Irith said. “I know who you mean; he’s a nasty old man, but we can ask him when we’re done here.”

Kelder nodded. He was about to say something about meeting Azraya there when the soldier returned, accompanied by yet another soldier. “I’ll escort you to the wizard’s workshop,” the new arrival said, without preamble.

“Thank you,” Kelder said. “Lead on.”

The wizard’s workshop proved to be at the top of a distressingly long staircase; as they finally neared the top, Kelder panting and Irith making a great effort not to, the Flyer turned to her companion and muttered, “You can do what you like, Kelder, but I’m flying down.” She touched the bloodstone at her throat and then stood up straight, her fatigue seemingly vanished, as she took the last few steps.

“I don’t blame you,” he wheezed back. “I would, too, if I could.”

The guardsman seemed untroubled by the climb. He paused for a few seconds at the top of the stair to allow them to catch their breath — not enough seconds, in Kelder’s opinion, but a few — and then rapped on the blackened wood door.

A complex and unfamiliar rune glowed white against the black, and a hollow voice asked, “Who goes there?” It spoke in Trader’s Tongue, Kelder noticed.