“You’ve taken your claw from it.”
“You dropped that beam on me,” the dragon said, “so that you might cheat?”
“Of course I cheated,” Sarissa yelled through her tears, “how else can I win? I’m sorry about your horn, and I’m sorry if I hurt you, but I have made my move. Now make yours !”
On the dragon’s ancient, weathered face, a small battle played itself out. The forces of anger drew in his breath and loaded his throat with fire. Whatever opposed his rage marshaled his brow into a frown.
“That is admirably insane of you. I have eaten entire villages for less.”
“I am not a villager,” Sarissa screamed, “I am a queen.”
The corners of Fafnaer’s great jaws twitched.
“I see. I misunderstood the game we were playing. That was my error. Let me show you the move I should have made.”
The dragon snatched Sarissa up in one huge talon and deposited her at the center of the chess board. Sarissa realized what was about to happen, and screwed her eyes shut.
“Dragon takes Queen,” Fafnaer bellowed, and bathed the board in fire. Sarissa felt it lick all around her, felt the hem of her shirt whip around her hips. Her hair caught fire and her eyebrows smoldered. The dragon’s terrible roar shook the air to pieces, and she stood rock still, each breath burning the inside of her lungs.
The dragon stopped, and Sarissa opened her eyes. She felt sunburnt and bits of her hair were falling away in pungent, crackling strands. She brushed at her tears and found that the fire had evaporated them.
“You didn’t burn me.”
“Only the skies know why,” the dragon rumbled. Sarissa felt as if a weight was dropping from her.
“I think I do,” she said, staring at the burning queen.
Part Three: Sarissa’s Sixteenth Summer
“You have grown plump,” Fafnaer said, dropping Sarissa lightly from one claw. From the other, he dropped a large bundle tied with rope. Having survived one summer with the dragon, this time Sarissa had packed.
“Oh skies,” she said, “not you too.”
“You should mind your shape. Every part of you is a reflection of your will, from tail to nose scales.”
Sarissa dragged the bundle into the cavern, glaring up at the dragon.
“I would, if it were not so infinitely boring to learn dancing and my pastry chef were not so talented. Now, make way.”
The princess and the dragon did not play chess. Sarissa enjoyed recounting her winter to Fafnaer more than she thought she would. Her father had found a merchant prince who might consent to marry her, probably because he had never met her, and she had failed extensively in her preparations for a future betrothal banquet.
“I hate dancing. I’m clumsy. Dragons don’t know any dark spells that can grant me mystical waltzing abilities, do they?”
Fafnaer thought for a while, then indicated a rack of ancient weapons that lay against one wall.
“No, but I can show you the secrets of the heroes who have tried to slay me with all these legendary swords.”
Sarissa tried to imagine herself swinging a glaive and found she couldn’t. “That’s not what I need at all.”
“Some of those heroes were very hard to kill. Their steps were complicated, and I studied them closely. How different can it possibly be? Besides, if I tire of you, you’ll be able to put up a fight before I eat you. What say you to that?”
Sarissa thought about it.
“I’m warming to the idea,” she said.
Every day Fafnaer made Sarissa disrobe and bind herself in the manner of ancient northern sword-maidens. He hunted sharks and Sarissa ate the diet of the warriors of the distant east. He rhythmically tapped the flagstones with his claws and made her prance and duck and weave, delighting in every moment of her discomfiture.
Sarissa soon lost any semblance of plumpness, and began enjoying herself. Her feet never felt graceful, but they began to feel sure. Fafnaer made her hold a broadsword rigid before her until her shoulders trembled and her fingers screamed.
“You will always be smaller and weaker, even if you only fight men and not dragons. You must learn to win regardless.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Sarissa said, regarding the dragon’s massive bulk and terrifying claws.
“If you don’t like your weakness, change it,” Fafnaer said.
In mid-summer Fafnaer became increasingly irritable, and his attempts to turn Sarissa into the only warrior worthy of opposing him became cruel.
“I won’t be much good to you if I die of exhaustion,” Sarissa said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
The dragon paused, and scratched at his scales.
“I’m molting,” he said.
When Sarissa stopped laughing, she ordered the dragon to heat tubs of water. Sarissa scrubbed him with a succession of brooms until their bristles wore out on his scaly hide.
When the chore was finally done and Sarissa was wringing out her sodden hair, Fafnaer let out an enormous sigh. “That was excellent. Let us drink some wine to celebrate my new coat.”
The dragon went rummaging around the treasure hoard.
“Wait,” Sarissa called after him, “I can have wine?”
Sarissa awoke among her linen tapestries and wanted to die. Her head felt like someone had split it with a wood axe.
With a soft rustle, the dragon’s pointed nose poked through the curtains of the ornate bed.
“Art thou ready to face this vale of tears, noble lady?” Fafnaer whispered. There was enormous mirth in his deep voice.
“Perish, thou thrice-cursed wyvern. Thou corruptor of dignity and subborner of innocent maidens.”
“Fear not, princess,” the dragon said, mockingly, “we will practice, but I have run you a bath.”
Sarissa practiced, and her head did clear.
“Why do you hate my father so?”
“Hold the sword until it hurts. Hold onto it until you your muscles scream at you to drop it.”
It took a while, but the pain came.
“Do you want to let it go?” Fafnaer asked, by way of explanation.
Sarissa gazed up the shivering steel. She hated the exercise, but hated the idea of giving up more.
“No,” she said.
“Indeed. Now show me the Von Falkenbach positions.”
Sarissa’s feet flashed through the steps, and as she twisted and spun the broadsword danced. She chased Fafnaer through the steps, and her blade caught the light like a fish twitching at the end of a line. She finished with a flourish that actually hit the dragon, who was incredibly agile for such a large creature. Fafnaer said nothing, and Sarissa beamed. Her face bragged as eloquently as any paean.
“Not bad, but hide your intentions. That is the first step to winning when no one expects you to.”
Sarissa tried to arrange her features into a serious mien, and suddenly noticed the dragon’s claw. Her face fell.
“I cut you,” she said. A trickle of deep red dripped from beneath the dragon’s scales to tap gently on the floor.
“It’s nothing, I would have an enormous collection of scars, if I didn’t molt,” Fafnaer replied. “No, Sarissa. Do not touch the blood. It will burn. I’m fine.”
Sarissa wanted to touch the dragon. He didn’t move. She dabbed the back of her left hand ever so faintly against the wound, and withdrew it with a yowl. There was a dark, discolored stain on her knuckle. Smoke rose gently from it, and Sarissa cradled it under her other arm. She didn’t cry or make a sound.
“I warned you,” Fafnaer said.
When the summer ended, the dragon seemed a little forlorn.
“I have a gift for you to bring home,” Fafnaer said, indicating a large, gilt mirror.
“I own a lot of mirrors,” Sarissa said, long past being offended by the dragon’s provocation.
The dragon emitted an uncomfortable rumbling.
“This one is slightly
magical; knock upon its frame, and it will show the contents of another mirror, its twin.”
“You want me to stay in touch,” Sarissa said.
Part Four: Sarissa’s Sixteenth Winter
Slumped at her mirror, Sarissa sank her teeth into a sweet roll and marveled at the quality of her pastry chef. She didn’t miss much about rich, sauce-laden royal cooking, but the combination of caramel drizzle and candied walnuts made her feel cured of every ill she had ever suffered and possibly a few she hadn’t.
She munched the perfectly browned confection and failed to decide what to do about her upcoming betrothal banquet. It didn’t seem like a big deal, next to abduction by a dragon, but she didn’t want to go, and couldn’t decide if she should assert herself or just grin and bear it.
“Do sword practice and dance truly overlap?” she asked the mirror. The reflected Sarissa looked as unsure as she was. She decided not to attend, then changed her mind. She had grown used to having someone to talk to about serious things.
“This is silly,” she said, and made up her mind for good. She knocked on the mirror. The glass became hazy, swirled, and in a few moments showed one large, scaly eyelid.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” Sarissa said, “but I have a conundrum.”
She explained her reluctance to the hibernating dragon.
“So,” she said, “what would you suggest?”
Fafnaer’s half-shut eye narrowed slightly, and the dragon’s deep voice rumbled across time and space.
“Kill them all. Put them to the sword. Annihilate everyone you suspect and then eradicate the witnesses. Stun them with curses. Burn them. Take revenge on them until the fifth genera-”
“Thank you, Fafnaer,” Sarissa said, hastily knocking on the mirror, “see you in the spring!”
***
Sarissa danced with the young merchant prince, and it wasn’t all that bad. He seemed just as nervous and unhappy as she was.
“Just imagine you’re learning sword fighting steps,” she said, “and try not to step on my feet.”
Part Five: Sarissa’s Seventeenth Summer
The dragon was surprised when the princess arrived. She had grown taller and rather rounder, but the lean strength of the previous summer was still obvious in her steps. She seemed to have changed only subtly, but completely enough that the dragon couldn’t help feeling he’d missed something. Her talk was still concerned with dancing and the prince and the ridiculous knight Sigmund, but all her questions were about the war that her father refused to end.
Fafnaer loved war, and was content to discuss it for days on end. Sarissa still practiced with the broadsword, and the dragon soon found that just a little training made her more than passable with a falchion as well, but they spent all their best hours recreating battles. Sarissa had learned a great deal from the merchant prince, whose father had not yet refused a possible betrothal, and was quite current on the disposition of the armies in the south. Each morning they constructed some new part of King Reginn’s southern border with piles of gold for hills and inverted chalices for towns.
“I don’t understand why neither my father nor the Caliph has attempted a winning move,” Sarissa said.
“Decisive change is difficult,” Fafnaer replied.
“That may be, but the coffers still drain and harvest after harvest goes unreaped while they tarry. My father should gamble everything on a final blow.”
“Perhaps, but to draw out the infantry you would need bait.”
“We have cavalry.”
“And they have pikemen,” the dragon observed.
“Then the cavalry would have to die,” Sarissa said dispassionately.
“And why would they do that for you?”
That brought Sarissa up short. She thought. “I would be the queen.”
The dragon laughed at her, a deep rumbling that rattled the coins. “That would work once, I admit, but that is all. Why would the sons follow you after you sacrificed their fathers?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why they would ride forth to die for anyone. Why do they?”
The dragon, ever discontent with straight answers, said, “The real question is why don’t you know?”
The princess, ever more used to the dragon’s philosophical musing, answered, “I suppose because I don’t know why I don’t know why.”
“Exactly,” Fafnaer said with satisfaction. “Have you ever seen a battlefield?”
“No,” Sarissa said.
“Dress warmly and bring wine, then, we’ll get there by nightfall. No, not a wine that you like.”
Fafnaer landed and helped Sarissa down. Her boots sank wetly into the earth, though the sky was clear and no rain fell. A field of carnage swept out before her, with lines of men fallen like leaves tossed by the current and left upon the rocks.
With Fafnaer’s wing beats stilled, Sarissa finally heard the battlefield, too. Carrion birds crowed, and there was an ebbing background murmur of moaning men. The smell of decay settled on the back of her tongue, as sweet and putrid as the scent of orchids.
Sarissa threw up, and discovered why she had the wine. She swilled it around her mouth to clear the taste of bile, and the alcohol lessened the whiff of death. She realized why the dragon insisted she bring a spirit she didn’t like; she knew in an instant that she would hate the smell of it for the rest of her life. Marrow frothed from stumps, the wings of vultures flashed white under the moon, and men suffered the fates the manoevering armies had left them to.
Sarissa wandered the plain like a sleepwalker, sick to her soul, until something caught her at her ankle. She barely muffled a shriek. At her feet was a Zenatan pikeman, his belly lain open to the sky, looking up at her as though she were an apparition. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to run, to climb Fafnaer’s flank and beat at his neck until he flew her away from there. She knelt.
The boy was dark-skinned and had a soft, new beard. He had been handsome, and was her age, or close to it. He said something she could not understand. She held his hand.
“Let me know when you’re finished,” Fafnaer said from behind her, “it’s rare I get to eat a Zenatan. Their leather armor doesn’t stick in the teeth the way plate does.”
Sarissa stood after a while, and her face shone with tears.
“Will you fly me away from here, above the clouds?”
“You don’t find me callous?” Fafnaer said, mildly surprised. He edged closer to the Zenatan.
“You’re a dragon,” Sarissa said.
“Flying high will not help you forget this,” he said, lifting the dead soldier to his jaws. Sarissa didn’t seem overly bothered by his chewing.
“I have been terrified every single time we’ve flown. I kept my eyes closed. I don’t want to forget anything, but I do want to see something that will clear my soul.”
The dragon swallowed.
“Climb on my neck,” he said, and Sarissa did. They flew so high the fall stopped meaning anything, so high the clouds created a silver sea in the moonlight, and nothing in the world was the same. Sarissa shivered in her cloak, and didn’t care, and her face shone slick with the dew of clouds.
Part Six: Sarissa’s Eighteenth Summer
Sarissa lounged disconsolately in the bath. A lot had changed that winter. Her conversation with the dragon picked up where it had left off, even if months had passed between the words.
“There is no way to win the war without sacrificing the entire country to do it. It would honestly be better if you ate me, flew to the castle, and ate my father as well. He barely said two words to me all winter, other than to promise my hand in marriage to the merchant prince.”
Fafnaer snorted lightly with one nostril to rekindle the logs below the tub and stared placidly at the bathing princess.
“What do you expect of a king? It is your fate to be raised by maids and tutors and matrons.”
“And dragons.”
That made the drag
on pause.
“It does seem that way.”
Sarissa enjoyed his discomfort. “Still, all you teach me is swords and tactics and how to conquer the unseen realms of the mind. I won’t make much of a wife.”
“I have played my role well, then,” Fafnaer said.
Sarissa sloshed the water irritably.
“Please be serious. Don’t you see this has to end? I’m eighteen. I marry this fall and that’s the end of the Reginn line. Your feud with my father has no road left to travel.”
“You think you know me very well, princess.”
“Don’t I?” Sarissa said.
They stayed silent for a while, and then Sarissa doused her head in warm water and scrubbed at her hair. She stood in the enameled tub, splashed around to rinse herself off, and stepped unselfconsciously out of the water to pad back toward her bed.
“I can’t find King Reginn the third’s towel,” Sarissa said.
“Indeed,” replied the dragon.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Fafnaer craned his long, scaly neck to scrutinize her.
“I lied, all those summers ago, so that you would get into the habit of disrobing. I have gazed upon your nakedness these passing years with the most lascivious enjoyment. Your nudity has been my supreme pleasure. Art thou sure thou knowest me?”
A blush spread from Sarissa’s cheeks toward her neck. She weakly crossed one arm over her chest, to which the flush spread like a prairie fire.
“Thou… slimy sky-forsaken salamander. Thou piteous creep.”
The dragon laughed, deeply, as Sarissa wrapped herself in a sheet.
“I am a dragon, what did you expect?” Fafnaer said, and Sarissa began to laugh.
Part Seven: Sarissa’s First Autumn
Autumn came, and this time when Sarissa sailed home Fafnaer admitted the parting was different. The princess packed her things aboard the best of the little boats adventurers had left behind without a word until she was ready to cast off. Fafnaer held the gunnels close to the rocks so she could step aboard.
Hear Me Roar Page 24
