with, “She says her name is Beramun, and claims to bring dire news for you, Arkuden.”
The name caused Beramun to stiffen. “Arkuden?” she repeated. “You’re a dragon’s son?”
He smiled, his hazel eyes filled with restored good humor. “I’m Amero, son of Oto and Kinar. ‘Arkuden’ is a name the folk hereabout call me. What news have you, Beramun?”
He had a kind face and pleasant voice, and Beramun relaxed a little. “Before Soli last waned, I was taken prisoner by raiders on the south plain. These men have horses and range all over, robbing and killing as they please. Their leader is called Zannian.” She noticed Tiphan glaring at her, obviously irritated by her interruption.
“Go on,” Amero said kindly, giving Tiphan a stern look.
“This Zannian is planning to make war on all the peoples of the plain,” she finished. “I spent some days in the raiders’ camp, making leather shirts for their warriors. I saw many, many spears being piled up.”
“We have nothing to fear from raider trash,” said a stout fellow with a reddish beard, standing nearby. “We have our wall, and we have the mighty protector, Duranix.” His words inspired many approving murmurs.
“What is Duranix?” asked Beramun.
“A dragon,” Tiphan said, looking down his thin nose at her. “Powerful in spirit, wise in counsel, mighty — ”
Beramun recoiled. “Dragon! You also serve a monster?” She was horrified. Had she come so far, endured so much, only to find herself prisoner of yet another evil beast?
The crowd jeered and called her names for insulting the one they kept calling “the Protector.” Amero quieted them. Then, his soothing tone gone and his voice edged with urgency, he asked, “What did you mean by ‘you also serve a monster?’”
“Zannian and his band have a dragon master, too!”
All talk ceased. Tiphan stared hard at Beramun, his eyes narrowing. “What dragon is this?” he demanded.
“His name is Sthenn. He’s a green dragon who lives in the forest at the Edge of the World.”
For five or six heartbeats there was no sound, then every man and woman present began exclaiming loudly and at once. They surged around Beramun like a storm-tossed sea, waving their hands wildly, pointing to the mountains, pointing to the sky.
“Sthenn!”
“- evil dragon who created the yevi — ”
“- as powerful as Duranix?”
“Duranix? Where is Duranix?”
“He must help — !”
On and on, until Beramun pressed her hands over her ears to muffle the cacophony. She closed her eyes as well, trying to shield her aching head from the tumult. Someone touched her on the shoulder. Opening her eyes, she saw it was the headman, Amero.
“Come with me,” he said close to her ear. “We’ll go some place quiet to talk.”
Trust was difficult. The news that these people were the followers of yet another dragon had shaken her badly. However, the kindness in his face and the appeal of a quiet place swayed her, and she let herself be led away from the agitated crowd.
Amero brought her through the throng to the cliff face close by. A basket made of wooden poles lashed together stood there. He climbed in and held out his hand to her.
She hesitated, and he said, “You’re safe here, Beramun. No one will harm you, least of all me. Come.”
More than the words themselves, his gentle manner reassured her. He explained that the hoist would lift them safely up. After a moment of nervous hesitation, she climbed in with him.
During the ascent, she held tightly to the sides of the basket. When the contraption finally bumped to a stop high off the ground, she tried not to look, but her eyes were drawn to the drop.
By the ancestors! The people below looked small as beetles! The thought made Beramun smile. Not so threatening from a height, the crowd did resemble a swarm of beetles roiling in the sunlight after their rotten log home had been turned over.
Amero tied off the basket and helped her climb out. The interior of the cavern was huge and dimly lit.
“You live here?” she exclaimed. Her voice echoed off the high ceiling, the words coming back to her over and over. She laughed with childish delight at the effect.
“Duranix made it,” Amero explained. “He and I both live here.”
Mention of the dragon’s name killed Beramun’s playful mood. “Dragons are monsters,” she said flatly. “How can a man live with one?”
“Duranix is no monster. He’s the greatest friend a man could have. All that I’ve become, all that Yala-tene is, is due to my friendship with Duranix.”
Even through her mistrust, Beramun could hear the sincerity in his words. He went to the pit hearth and stirred the embers until they flamed. An elk haunch was on the spit there. He sliced off several generous pieces and offered them to her on the point of his knife. She hesitated only an instant before taking the knife and gnawing the meat with evident hunger.
Amero filled a leather cup from a pool of water by the cave wall. The basin was kept full by a rent in the outer cave wall that allowed water from the falls to trickle in.
He handed the cup to Beramun, then moved away, puttering in the recesses of the cave, allowing her to eat in peace.
After blunting her hunger pangs, Beramun rinsed her face and arms. When she returned to sit by the fire, Amero came back to question her about Sthenn, Zannian, and the raiders.
She told him all she knew, from the moment she’d been captured to her final escape down the river.
“Two hundred raiders or more you say, with a dragon behind them?” Amero muttered. He was standing at the entrance to the cave, frowning thoughtfully. The setting sun painted the sky scarlet beyond him.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
He nodded, and she sighed gustily, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Arkuden, if you’ll give me a quiet corner in this beehive of a village, I’d like to rest a bit. It’s been a long journey from the Edge of the World.”
“It’s better if you stay up here,” Amero said absently. “Duranix is away, and there are things going on in the village I’d rather you not get involved in.”
Beramun demanded, “Are you keeping me prisoner?”
He regarded her with a distracted expression. “You can come and go as you please. It really would be best if you stayed here, at least until Duranix returns. He’ll want to hear your story. Sthenn is his ancient enemy. They’ve fought each other before.”
Beramun chewed her lip, thinking. She hated confinement, but after many days on the run, always terrified Zannian or Sthenn would appear over the next hill or beyond the next grove of trees, she was weary beyond belief. The cave was blessedly calm and free of the hurly-burly of the teeming streets below. The constant rumble of the waterfall was actually rather soothing, and the food was better than anything she could scrounge on the plain.
Amero’s deep musings were interrupted by loud snoring. Turning, he saw Beramun leaning against the hearth, fast asleep. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. Her brief wash had removed the worst of the mud from her face, revealing her to be a pretty girl, thinned by too much hardship. Young, too. Her self-assured manner had fooled him at first, but looking at her now, he knew she couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen.
Something about her arrival bothered him. He couldn’t decide exactly what, so he cut himself a helping of roast elk and sat nearby, eating quietly. Duranix’s warning about an unknown peril loomed larger than ever. They had their choice of dangers: elves on the move in the east, Sthenn and his human host reported in the southwest, and perhaps worst of all, the strange incident involving Tiphan. The facts were indisputable. Tiphan had been transformed by some unknown power, and his naked ambition to take over Yala-tene was now as shockingly plain as his newly whitened hair.
Amero suddenly felt small in the great cave, small and insignificant. He wondered where Duranix was just then. Swallowing the last bite of elk, he sat down on the hearth across from Beramun and watched her sleep.
