Dragon's Treasure (36 page)

He said, "I can find things that are lost. Buttons. Buckles."

"Can you find people?"

"Yes. I found Juni Talvela when he was lost. And Taran One-arm."

"Your father found me, when I was lost." She smiled. "I was scarcely two, a cub, and I wandered away from my mother's door, and could not find my way home. It was late in autumn, nearly winter, and I was frightened and cold. I hid in a blackberry thicket. He found me and brought me home."

He said, "Did you know my mother?"

"No. It's a grief to me that I never met your mother. But your father loved her, and so I know she was clever and tender and good. I know that she made him happy."

The gentle words made Shem's throat close up. He swallowed. He could still recall the shape of his mother's face, and her smell. But he could no longer hear her voice.

His stomach fizzed. He was, abruptly, ravenously hungry. How silly he had been not to eat. Perhaps Devin had saved him something, a roll or a bit of goose tart.... His stomach grumbled, more loudly.

Callista said, "I'll wager there are leftovers in the kitchen."

They went to the kitchen. The scullions were scouring the last of the pots. Simon was there, Simon, the stew cook, whom Shem did not like, but so was Ruth, who was always kind, and Boris the head cook, and Taran One-arm, seated at a little table over a checkered board, with a knife in his belt, and no apron, playing keph by lamplight. And there was food: bread, and bits of goose in a rich wine sauce, and something sweet. Sitting on a stool, with a platter on his lap, Shem ate it all so swiftly that he barely had time to taste it.

Then they were alone, in the chamber behind the kitchen. He could see the red glow from the fire, where Devin slept. His stomach was full. He was warm again, and sleepy.

Something niggled in his mind. He said, "Can I ask you a question?"

Callista said, "You can ask me anything, cub."

"When I become wolf, will I still be me?"

She looked down at him. "You will always be you. Who else would you be?"

"When Dragon Changes, he forgets that he is human."

She said, quite sharply, "Who told you that?"

"Captain Lorimir said it to Marek. I heard him. He said,
Never forget, he was Dragon in the womb. When the dragon-rage takes him, all you can do is run, and pray that he remembers who he is before everything around you has turned to ash."

"Ah," Callista said. "It is true that when they are angry, the dragon-changelings have been known to forget that they are human."

"When I am wolf, will I forget, too?"

"No," the wolf-changeling said firmly. "You will not. It is not a thing that happens to wolves."

* * *

He said good-bye to Beryl, which was hard, and to Kiala. She cried. He went to all his favorite places in the Keep and said farewell to them, to the warm place by the kitchen chimney, the old buttery, the green mounds where the ghosts walked.... The dogs in the kennel whined and licked his face when he told them he was leaving.

"I'll be back," he said to them. "I promise I'll come back."

He said good-bye to Mira.
She
cried.

"I'll be back," he said to Devin. "Dragon Keep is my home. Dragon said so."

"I know," Devin said. "I heard him."

He gave Devin the glittery sharp piece of dragon's claw he had found in the buttery. He gave Mira the scrap of velvet that he had picked up from the floor of the sewing room, and kept because it reminded him of the color of his mother's eyes, a color he could no longer remember.... He said good-bye to Rogys. It was hard to do. He liked Rogys very much.

"Safe journey, cub," the rider said, and gave him a brief hard hug about the shoulders.

It saddened him that he could not say good-bye to Maia and Morga, but Maia he knew would understand, and Morga, he thought, would not miss him very long.

The night before he was to leave, he sat at Dragon's table, with Rogys on one side and Hawk on the other. "Here, cub," Dragon said, and poured wine into a cup. Shem sipped—he knew if he drank it all at once it would make him dizzy, or sleepy—and ate, and listened to the officers' talk. At the end of the meal, when the servers had taken the plates from the tables, and left the wine, Dragon said to Hawk, "Hunter. Tell us a story."

Hawk said, "What would you hear, my lord?"

"Let Shem choose." They all looked at him. Dragon was smiling.

He said, as he always did, "Tell a story about a dragon."

"As you wish," Hawk said. She leaned her elbows on the table.

"I shall tell you a story of the First Dragon.

"They say that when the First Dragon fell to earth, thousands of years ago, at the very beginning, when the world was new, he was wholly dragon, not human, and his nature was of starstuff. For Tukalina the Mother had plucked him from the Void, and shaped him with Her hands into dragon form. Wings She gave him, and shimmering scales, and a great proud head, and talons mightier than any eagle's. And when she had finished, She flung him toward the earth.
Go, child of fire,
She said,
and make thy home.

"Burning, the First Dragon fell through the sky. And the denizens of the world looked up and saw that bright burning being falling toward them, and did not know what it was, save that it was beautiful. And the beasts said, 'Surely this is a new kind of thing.'

"But as the dragon fell closer, they saw that he had wings. And the birds said, 'Surely this is a bird, the most beautiful of all birds. We shall call to it and welcome it.' They spoke to the dragon and said, 'Come, bright one. Come make a home among us.'

"So First Dragon looked at all the places where the birds made their home. He saw grouse resting in fields, and sparrows in bushes, and jays and magpies and mockingbirds in trees, and owls in barns. But none of those places seemed good to him. The fields were too low, and the trees too small, and the barns were cramped and dark, and they smelled strange.

" 'I cannot live here,' he told the birds.

"They said, 'Go to the sea, and look there.'

"First Dragon flew to the sea and found birds nesting in the cradle of the waves. But the sea was wet and windswept. 'I cannot live here,' he told the birds.

"They said, 'Go to the ice, and look there.'

"First Dragon flew to the ice, and there he found fat, stubby-winged birds that swim, and do not fly.

" 'I cannot live here,' he told the birds. 'It's cold.'

" 'Go to the desert,' they said.

"He flew to the desert, and found wingless scaly beasts nesting in the sand, who gazed at him with knowing eyes. But the desert had too much sand, and no place to roost. 'I cannot live here,' Dragon told the birds. And First Dragon was very tired, for he had been to fields and sea and ice and desert, and in none of them had he found a resting place.

" 'Go to the mountains,' the birds told him.

"So First Dragon flew to the mountains. They were high and inaccessible and wild, with powerful winds upon which he could soar.

"I could live here, he thought.

"Then he heard a noise unlike any that he had heard before. He followed it, and found a nest, and four little beings in it, with their mouths open. Then a white bird with huge wings holding something in its talons spiraled out of the sky. It dropped into a hollow of rock.

"First Dragon said: 'White bird, what is thy name?'

"The white bird said, 'I am Condor.'

" 'Where dost thou live?'

" 'I live here. This has been my home from the beginning of the world.' And as Condor spoke, she opened her talons, and dropped what she held into her nest. For at the beginning, Condor's nature was not as it is now, an eater of the dead. At the beginning, Condor was a hunter.

"First Dragon looked at Condor's nest. And he said to Condor, 'Go away. I want this place. I want to live here.'

"First Condor said, 'I shall not. I was here first. You go away.'

"But First Dragon did not want to go. So he breathed against the rocks, with his fiery breath. Condor spread her wings, and fled before the fire. But the condor chicks could not fly, for they had just been hatched into the new-made world. And so they died.

"And First Dragon folded his wings, and landed in the place where the Condor's nest had been.

" 'Go,' he said. 'This is my place now.'

"First Condor screamed in grief and rage. So great was Condor's grief that Tukalina, Mother of all, heard it. Spreading Her dark wings, She flew through the sky like a storm cloud until She came to the mountains.

"She said,
Why dost thou lament, my child?

"Condor answered, 'O Goddess, Mother of us all, my babies are dead. This bright burning thing has killed them.'

"And Tukalina, looking down, saw First Dragon, and knew him. And Dragon looked up, and saw his maker, vast and terrible, with stars in Her hair, and all of night riding on Her wings. And he bowed, for even Dragons bow before the gods.

"Tukalina said to him,
What hast thou done, child of fire? Thou hast killed Condor's children.

"Dragon answered, 'I sought a home, Mother.'

"And Tukalina looked at First Dragon, and saw that he did not know what he had done, for though his form was flesh, his nature was still wholly that of starstuff. She passed the shadow of her left wing over First Dragon as he stood amid the rocks. And as the shadow of the goddess's left wing passed over him, First Dragon changed. His wings and tail and claws and fangs dissolved. His integument grew soft and without covering. His eyes shrank. His spine straightened. He grew legs, arms, hands, feet. In short, he became human.

"And First Dragon looked at his new shape, and said to Tukalina, 'What is this? Where are my wings and fangs and claws?'

"Tukalina answered,
This is thy new form.

" 'What wrong have I done, that you so punish me?'

"That thou will learn. Go thou, and make thyself a home among men.

" 'I hear and obey,' First Dragon said. And First Dragon walked down the mountain toward the houses of men. But even though he wore a human shape, those houses still seemed small and dark to him, and they smelled strange. So he halted midway between the human places and Condor's nest, and there he built a shelter. It was a rude place, built of stone. Men called it—still call it, though it is much changed—Dragon's Keep.

"But First Condor stood over the blackened corpses of her children, and shrieked her grief, and would not be comforted.

" 'Give me back my babies!' she cried to Tukalina. 'You are goddess. Make them live!'

"But Tukalina said to her,
I cannot. Cendrai the Gatekeeper has admitted them to the Void, and even I cannot bring them back. To do that would displease Grandmother.
For even Tukalina the Mother Goddess, Maker of the world, fears to displease
Grandmother, Whose bones are the universe itself. She sleeps now, and in the fabric of Her dreams all beings, gods and stars and beasts and changelings and humans, have their being. But if Grandmother were to wake, all, all would change.

" 'Then give me vengeance!' First Condor cried.

"What vengeance dost thou desire?

"And Condor looked down upon the Dragon's Keep, and said, 'Let me eat him.'

"It shall be so,
Tukalina said. And she passed the shadow of Her right wing over Condor's head. Condor's nature changed: she became, not a hunter, but a scavenger. The peak where Dragon first acquired human form became known as the Dragon's Aerie. We call it Dragon's Eye. Condor still lives in the crags above Dragon Keep. And Condor hates the dragon-kindred. Her greatest lust is for the flesh of dragons.

"But the dragon-kindred know this, and for this reason, it is said, that when dragons come to die, they do not die as others do, in the arms of friends and kindred. When their time comes to die, they leap into the sun.

"No one ever finds the bones of dragons."

When it finished, Callista said, "Ah, that was a fine story."

Hawk bowed her head. She said, "Thank you, Callista of Nyo. Your brother, too, enjoyed my stories."

Then Dragon drew a knife from his belt. It was beautiful. The sheath was crimson leather. Shining blue gems studded the hilt.

"Shem Wolfson."

Shem's heartbeat made a little skip. "My lord?"

"I gave this knife as a gift to your father. When he died, it came back to me." Drawing it from the sheath, he turned it to the candlelight, showing the delicate cloudlike pattern on the narrow blade. "It's yours, now. Take it, and wear it. It will remind you of my pledge, that Dragon Keep is your home forever." He slid the knife back into the sheath.

Callista's voice spoke inside Shem's head.
Go. Take it from him, cub.

Squirming from the bench, he walked around the other side of the table to where Dragon sat, and reached both hands for the knife.

Karadur laid it in his palms.