Gaire entered the inn with a gust of cold winter air at his back, and pulled his sheepskin-lined coat closer about his narrow shoulders. He could see the other inn’s patrons shiver at his escort of chill wind and snowflakes, and quickly closed the oaken door behind him. The room’s warmth soon soaked into his bones, and he walked forward to find an empty table. When was that tracker supposed to meet him again?
A few tired-looking young women bustled about the room, and one offered to take his coat. He declined politely, and found himself a corner table near the fire. Surprised that no one had taken such a prized place yet, he sat down. He removed his coat, and could almost feel half the room’s occupants freeze for a brief second at the sight of the obsidian and silver pendant around his neck. Yes, yes, he thought to himself, you all know what I am. So what? Half grumbling to himself, he leaned back in his chair and waited for a serving girl to head his way.
Most avoided his table. He frowned. Even dragons should get equal service in an inn. He was even going to pay the full amount! Humans these days!
As his eyes roved the room, he noticed that most of the serving girls looked like each other. Family, then? Daughters of the innkeeper? He counted maybe seven, the tallest looking about twenty-four in human terms, the smallest just barely into double-digits. The innkeeper entered the common room at one point, and Gaire nodded to himself. Yes, the girls were the keeper’s daughters. What a cheap way to find hard workers. Gaire wondered what the innkeeper’s wife would be doing, until he heard faint curses coming from the kitchen, and the innkeeper stomped back out of the common room with a scowl on his bulgy red face. Gee, I wonder which one rules the roost? Gaire wondered in amusement. He waved almost impatiently for service.
The small girl—Gaire guessed her age to be no more than thirteen, tops—wandered over, a pad of paper in one hand, a writing stick behind her ear. She had no figure yet, but still wore the same wench clothes that the older serving girls did: a snug vest over a short-sleeved, off-the-shoulder blouse; petticoats under a skirt of brown fabric; a grease-stained apron and the puffed cloth over her hips that made her waist look smaller. Her light brown hair framed her heart-shaped face nicely, and her bright blue eyes seemed to shine in the torch- and sunlight. Her feet were clad in thin-soled ankle boots of a soft leather Gaire recognized as calfskin. She wore no jewelry, save a thin silver band on her right ring finger. She wasn’t promised yet, then. He smiled slightly. She was cute, for a child.
She stopped by his table, and he leaned a bit closer to discreetly catch her scent—old habits died hard. She smelled of the kitchens, woodsmoke and cinnamon, with a hint of something like stew wafting up from her apron. This close, Gaire could see the light dusting of flour on her nose and cheeks, the ends of her hair, and smudged across some of the stains on her apron. She smelled of apple pie too, and Gaire decided that he’d have to order it to see how well she cooked. He allowed himself a grin in her direction, hopefully to make her feel more at home with him. He really didn’t want a child scared of him.
Her thin, rosy lips parted in a small smile, showing straight white teeth, as she looked him in his eyes. No, this one wasn’t scared. “Can I help you?” she asked in a sweet voice, a voice touched with the beginnings of womanhood.
“What’s the special of the house today?” he asked, leaning his elbows on the table.
“We have roast duck, goose, or hare, vegetable soup or chicken broth, warm bread with butter and cheese, white roots or potatoes, and your choice of wine, mead, milk, or water. There’s pie, too. Apple and peach.”
“I think I’ll try the hare, vegetable soup, bread, and potatoes, with watered wine, please. A slice of apple pie sounds good too.”
He saw her mouth quirk into a bigger smile, and knew he had hit the mark with the pie. “It’ll be ready in a bit, sir, if you don’t mind the wait.”
He shook his head. “Not at all, miss....”
She ducked a small curtsey. “Ariyanae. Ariyanae Kithshold.”
“Your father is the innkeeper?”
“Yes sir. He keeps me and my sisters working here till he can find us suitable husbands. My sister Mariane—that’s her over by the bar—she’s been promised to young Elvic Dusaney of Hawkshold.” She turned back to Gaire. “You haven’t told me your name,” she blurted.
“Pardon?”
“I told you mine. It’s customary to exchange names, not take them, Sir Dragon.” He smiled. She was a sharp one, this Ariyanae.
He held out his hand. “Gaire Ahchen. Pleased to meet you, Ariyanae. That’s a lovely name.”
“It was my grandmother’s. Mother said she was a dragon-singer. She traveled with a dragon, and they performed in lots of villages for noblemen and merchants and the like. My parents didn’t like her much, but the name means ‘beloved,’ and Mother likes names that mean pretty things like that.”
Gaire nodded. “It’s from the draconic word liyari. That word means ‘beloved’ too.”
“Oh.” She glanced away. “My parents don’t like dragons,” she whispered, almost too low for his keen ears to catch.
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “They just don’t. They don’t like much of anyone that’s different from them, which means obvious foreigners don’t get much in the way of service here. They would outright forbid the true shapeshifters if they could tell which ones were shapeshifters and which ones were just humans. That’s why my sisters didn’t come over here right away.”
He nodded. “I’m rather used to it by now. I’ve gotten it for several decades.”
She glanced back at him. “What’s it like being a dragon?” she asked in a hushed tone.
He smiled. “It’s like being taken out of time. We sit back and relax and let life go by when we can, and watch as humans who are always in such a rush hurry on with their lives. Human lives seem so fleeting to us at times, and then again, sometimes it is so desirable, just to get back into the flow of time and not have to worry about protecting our sorry hides for centuries on end.” His smile grew sad. “We try not to become really good friends with humans, because we know that they will always die long before we do, unless we are already in old age, and even then dragons are quite resilient. Our kind may live close to a millennium, while the oldest human any of us has ever known lived just short of a century and a score.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. I never knew.”
He tried to brighten his smile again. “But that doesn’t mean we’ve never made friends of humans. Quite often we end up doing just that, no matter how hard we try. I have a friend who happened to fall in love with a human.”
“And did she...?”
“No, she didn’t die, if that’s what you’re asking. She was actually turned into a dragon, but that’s in part because she was soul-bound to him, and in part because she already had the necessary spark of magic. It can’t happen to just anyone, and oftentimes, it doesn’t happen at all.” He shrugged, then folded his arms in front of him and rested his chin on his crossed wrists. His position resembled a dragon lying in front of its chosen victim, considering the best way to strike. Ariyanae backed up a short step, and Gaire immediately changed his position slightly so that he looked like an attentive dragon rather than a hungry one. The difference was subtle, but effective, and Gaire smiled inwardly at how a human would never be able to manage such nuances of gesture with such ease. “So,” he asked, “what’s it like being a human?”
She considered for a moment. “It’s like living in a fast pace of life, but in dreams you can escape and be whatever you want to be.” The innkeeper’s voice called across the room, and she glanced at the pad. “Dinner will be ten gold pieces, Master Ahchen.”
“Please, call me Gaire.”
She smiled. “Ten pieces, Gaire, and it’ll be here in a bit.”
He handed her a twenty-piece coin. “Keep the change.”
She was about to turn to answer her father’s call, when Gaire stopped her with a word. “What do you dream?” he asked her.
“I dream of flying,” she replied, and turned to swish toward the kitchen with the growing grace of a child becoming a woman.
Gaire leaned back in his chair again, and decided he liked Ariyanae. She was easy to get along with, and didn’t have her parents’ biases. Such a trait in a human was refreshing.
A taller serving girl walked brusquely up, bearing a tray with Gaire’s dinner on it. He noticed with gratitude that the food was decent enough, despite the innkeeper’s apparent dislike for dragons. Maybe Gaire’s gold had convinced the keeper that he’d be a good patron. Gaire shrugged inwardly. Who knew what most humans thought, especially xenophobic ones?
The young woman set the tray down with a long-suffering expression and turned to go. Gaire stopped her with a hand on her wrist. “Where’s Ariyanae?” he asked. “I was given to believe that she was serving this table.”
“You thought wrong, sir,” the young woman replied coldly. “Ariyanae has kitchen duties she needs to attend to, and matters of her own to mind. She doesn’t need to be hanging around dragonkind at all.” She glared at Gaire, her eyes challenging him to protest.
He simply met her icy stare with a cool one of his own, seeming to look deep into her soul with his sapphire cat-eyes. He saw her stiffen, glance away, and then turn and hurry back toward the kitchen. Gaire shrugged. Humans were never really comfortable with the odd slit pupils dragons possessed, were they?
He tucked into his meal, ignoring the stares from other inn patrons as he polished off the meat and potatoes, wiped up the dregs of the soup with his bread, and finished the wine. He started on the pie, savoring each bite and admiring young Ariyanae’s prowess as a cook.
When he had finished, he left another few coins on the tray, pulled on his coat, and rose to leave. Four large men barred his way. Two had thick black beards that hid their mouths, the third had wide red sideburns, while the fourth had a mustache as blond as Avra’s hair. The blond one bared brown, tobacco-stained teeth at Gaire’s slight figure.
“We don’t need any dragonkind threatening our womenfolk,” the man growled, cracking his knuckles noisily. The other three flexed their fists. Gaire wished he could be anywhere else. The last thing he needed was a fight with four large human men. True, he was a dragon, but even his strength might fail before four determined, big human fighters. Any one of them could probably snap his bones if they got their hands in the right spots.
“Sirs,” he began as peaceably as he could, “I didn’t threaten that young woman. If you will allow me to explain—”
“We don’t want your explanations,” the blond man spat. “What good is the word of a dragon anyway?”
“Sirs, if you’ll just listen—”
“Listening is for sissies,” the redhead grumbled, and swung at Gaire’s head.
Gaire ducked with all the swiftness of a black dragon and backed up toward the door. “Sirs, I really don’t want to fight you,” he stated. It was true. He might break something—in them—and didn’t really want to face the consequences if he cracked their skulls.
“I don’t care what you want,” the blond man growled. “You don’t menace our womenfolk.” The redhead swung again, and Gaire backed up another step. Two more and he would be outside.
“Sirs—”
“Shut yer jaws, wyrm,” one of the brunets hissed, and unsheathed a knife.
Oh, terrific, was Gaire’s first thought, as he backed up to the door and threw it open, sidling out into the billowing snow. The four men followed.
Gaire unsheathed his long knife—though he fervently hoped he wouldn’t have to use it on them—and deflected the first knife-thrust. The other three men joined the first brunet, and Gaire slipped into his training-trance as he tried to keep his skin intact.
He ducked and bowled over the second brunet as the man rushed him, spilling the man into the snow with the wind knocked out of him. The redhead tried to sneak up behind Gaire and knife him in the back; Gaire grabbed the first brunet and hauled him around to crash into his compatriot. These men were lucky that Gaire was a black, and not a copper like Tey Cios. He would be a perfect match for all four. The blond man drew a greatsword from a baldric and moved to close in with the dragon-man. “Skrell,” Gaire hissed to himself. A long knife was no substitute for a good-sized sword.
The blond man swiped at Gaire’s gut a few times, and only Gaire’s inborn agility kept him from spilling his innards all over the pristine snow. The other three men were rising, if rather groggily, and moving to join their ringleader. If all four of them closed in on him at once, he would be done for.
Suddenly, a monstrous pair of hands gripped his shoulders and lifted him as they would a rag doll. “Pardon,” a thick, gravely voice grated, moving Gaire to the side. “You are in the way.”
Gaire staggered when the large human man set him down again and unsheathed a large axe the size of Tey’s. “Sirs,” the mountain man said amiably, flipping the axe as neatly as if it were a dinner knife, “I don’t think picking a fight with a dragon is exactly a wise idea, especially when he has my people for acquaintances.”
The four men balked as the mountain man slowly advanced. The human men were tall—almost Tey’s height, but the mountain man would tower over even Tey. The man’s wolf-grey hair blended in with the keythrin furs he wore bunched over his large frame, making him look like a very large keythrin or a deep grey dragonhound. His bristly beard stuck out beneath a craggy nose and heavy brows, and the bright green eyes set deep within his face stood out like the eyes of a catamount’s.
“Sirs, I do believe this man meant no harm to your womenfolk, and I do believe he did nothing to provoke this confrontation, so I highly suggest you four leave before I do some head-cracking.”
The four men looked at each other, glanced back at the mountain man, and made a dash for the stables. Gaire flicked his gaze to the inn for a brief second, and almost did a double-take as he saw Ariyanae and her sisters standing at the doorway, watching the entire confrontation. While her sisters had looks of horror and disgust on their faces, Ariyanae’s was awash with awe and amazement that such a thin man as Gaire could possess so much physical strength.
Then the mountain man turned to the dragon and held out a large paw. “I am Tracker Grath. I believe I was supposed to meet you here, Dragon Gaire Ahchen. I am sorry I could not make it sooner. I was...detained.” He gestured to a string of keythrin fangs and claws hanging from his pack. “Such creatures are creatures of nature, and this one was hungry enough to attack something larger.”
Gaire nodded. He had to crane his neck up to look the mountain man in the face, and found himself awestruck at the man’s size. He had never before seen a human so large. Why, this man could probably take on Tey and win!
Grath continued, “One called Farath Vynwarring of the grey color sent me to find you. I am supposed to help you find a certain rogue dragon.”
Gaire nodded. “Thank you. I have reason to believe she disappeared into the Skyhome range, and a tracker would be very helpful there. I don’t know all that much about tracking, let alone surviving in the mountains any further north than Dragonhome.”
Grath nodded. “Understood, dragon-man.” He clapped Gaire firmly on the back in a friendly gesture. Gaire almost went sprawling in the snow. “We will make a good team hunting down this rogue.”
Gaire coughed as he tried to regain his balance. “Yeah, sure,” he rasped. “Whatever you say.”
Grath gestured toward the stables, where a horse just as large as the mountain man stood, whuffling in the chilly mountain air. The creature’s shaggy, mist-grey fur stirred in the wind, and the breath plumed out of its nostrils in great, white clouds. It’s incredibly dark eyes glanced up when Grath whistled, and it trotted over, bearing a burden of heavy saddle and saddlebags. Grath mounted swiftly. “Do you have a mount?” he asked Gaire, a concerned expression crossing his rocky face.
Gaire shook his head. “No need,” he replied, backed up a pace, and swiftly took his dragon-form. Thankfully, the mountain horse didn’t panic in the least. Instead, it whickered and sniffed at Gaire’s polished black scales.
Gaire turned his sleek, graceful head toward the mountain man, folding his wings tightly against his lean sides as he did so. In this form, he stood taller than the mounted mountain man, but not by much. “Shall we go?” he asked fluidly in the human tongue, his deep tenor rumbling through the small village. The humans in the doorway—all but Ariyanae—backed up in surprise at the draconic voice.
“Indeed, friend dragon,” the mountain man replied. He spurred his mount forward, as Gaire took to the air with a strong sweep of his wide wings.
I shall see you again, Ariyanae, he whispered to the wind as he soared higher. And he almost dreamed she heard him far below. My first human friend in a long time. |