As soon as I figured that out, I crouched down and covered myself with my hands. Thank heaven for Judith: she turned me around, whisking a dress over my head and topping it with a cloak before I had a chance to think. She handed me a crutch, then knelt to help me with stockings and boots.
We did the left foot first, as usual. I pulled up the hem of my new dress and saw my twisted foot. No healing miracles there. Just a simple transformation from maiden to dragon and back to maiden. And—and I was happy for it. Mostly. As a dragon, I’d been powerful and fast and sleek and strong, but I couldn’t think right. I’d rather be splayfooted Tilda than Mathilda the Fiery. My mouth quirked in a grin at the strange thought, and I leaned down to pull up my stocking.
“Are you all right?” Judith asked in a low voice.
“I’m better than I was,” I said, and words felt strange but so good in my mouth. Like proper words, not hisses and growls.
Judith nodded and helped me to my feet. I heard something in the darkness, deeper in the cave, and thought I saw the other dragon creeping back into the shadows, her eyes watchful and surprised.
Judith turned me back, and she and Parz embraced me, neither willing to wait for the other.
I hugged them in return.
Movement caught my eye, and I turned to see Horrible Hermannus ducking his head to rub at his temple. He saw my glance and bowed. “Princess,” he said, making the full, deep bow that he used to give to my father.
“Sir Hermannus,” I said. We stared at each other for an uncomfortably long moment.
Judith said, “Come outside, Tilda—there’s a camp, we have a fire. . . . You can have something warm to drink.”
I allowed her to take me out to the fire, but not before bending down to retrieve the Handbook from where it lay on the ground. I plucked up the torn sheet and smoothed it out. It was the book curse, the anathema that rained down rotten noses on anyone who stole the book. I slid it back inside the book with regret.
Outside I found a busy encampment of far too many counts, knights, clerics, and servants. When they caught sight of us emerging from the cave, a ragged cheer rose up.
As cheers went, it technically wasn’t very good, yet I had never heard better. And it was far superior to stone silence and a thousand signs against the evil eye.
I waved at everyone, then asked, “So who is minding Alder Brook?”
Horrible coughed slightly. “The chamberlain stayed behind.”
Father Ripertus pushed through the crowd and, after a quick bow, grabbed me up into a hug. Another cheer rose from the retinue, twice as good as the first. I smiled and leaned into Father Ripertus’s embrace.
“Whose kiss worked?” he asked over my head.
“You were right,” Parz said. “It was Judith’s.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, pulling away.
“Come, sit down,” Judith said, grabbing my hand to drag me to a fire.
Father Ripertus sat beside me and explained. “When Judith said she thought a kiss might be the key to the transformation, I agreed.”
I glanced at Judith. “Like the swan maiden?” I asked. “But you hate the version where the swan is transformed back to a woman by a kiss.”
Parz said, “No, that makes sense. The maiden was a swan first, a woman second. You were a girl first, and a . . . I guess Judith prefers things in their original form.”
Judith glowered. “You both missed my point,” she said. “I objected to the woman being trapped.”
“Anyway,” Father Ripertus said, “I thought it would be a kiss of love that would change you. . . . And I thought, what kind of love would be most effective? Storgí, philía, érôs, or agápé?”
Horrible said, “Sounds Greek to me,” as he carefully maneuvered his sword to a certain position and sat down.
“It is Greek,” Ripertus said. “The Greeks identified four kinds of love: love between family members, love between friends, intimate love, and selfless love. I thought, between Parz and Judith, you might cover the different kinds of love handily enough—oh, stop blushing, all of you. ‘Intimate love’ encompasses what Plato thought about love—”
We’d been avoiding eye contact with each other since Ripertus had begun waxing on about the nature of love, but now Parz and Judith looked at me to see if I knew what Ripertus was talking about.
“Plato was a Greek philosopher,” I said. “I never copied any works by him, but I have copied other things that mentioned him.”
“Yes, yes,” Father Ripertus said. “What I’m trying to say is, Plato thought ‘intimate love’ was actually spiritual—that appreciation of the beauty of another human being brought us back to the appreciation of God’s beauty. Well, not God’s beauty. Plato was a pagan.”
“I think . . . I think that was right,” I said. But I didn’t really think it was Judith’s love for me that turned me back. I thought more it was my love for her.
A distant whinny sounded. “I think they heard your voice,” Horrible said.
The metal mares burst through the trees in a thunder of hooves. They pulled up to snuffle my hair and generally make a nuisance of themselves.
Sir Horrible snorted, and I shot him an annoyed glance. He held up his hand, looking apologetic. “I’d never imagined a demon horse would come swimming up to Alder Brook with Father Ripertus on its back to rescue me; I’m still amazed, thinking about it.”
“They aren’t demons,” Father Ripertus said before I could.
It felt like Joyeuse was combing through every lock of my hair with her teeth and tongue. I reached up to find my head wet and covered with horse slobber. I just sighed and let her continue. “So—they found you.”
“They reached us about five days ago,” Horrible said. “We marched on Thorn Edge the next day.”
From behind me, I heard a muffled, “Move it, or I’ll leave you on a silversmith’s doorstep,” and then Frau Dagmar appeared, elbowing aside Joyeuse to bring us a platter of cheese, fruit, and bread.
I got to my feet but stopped awkwardly short of embracing her. It was hard to hug someone carrying a platter.
She set it down and hugged me tight.
“Will you come to Alder Brook?” I asked when she released me.
“Don’t you already have a handmaiden?” Dagmar asked.
“Yes, but—”
She smiled at me. “I was born to serve at Thorn Edge, and served there long before Egin was installed. I’m hoping that our liege will grant Thorn Edge to a new and better lord.”
“So, Egin is—?” I glanced around the circle of faces, hoping they would explain it to me.
Horrible’s expression was sober. “He’s gone.”
“Dead?” Had he died from the wound I’d given him? Was I a killer? I sucked in an unhappy breath.
“I don’t know. He’s just . . . gone. We were hoping you could tell us what happened,” Horrible said.
No body had been found? Then Egin had to be alive. My bowels twisted in fear, even as I knew there was no way that Egin could reach me in the midst of all of Alder Brook’s knights and Joyeuse. And Durendal. And Judith and Parz and Frau Dagmar.
I tried to explain the place that Egin had taken me, through the tunnels and out onto the mountainside. I tried to explain how I’d turned into a dragon, too. They all nodded and listened, but I think only the fact that they had seen me as a dragon made them believe me.
“And after you became a dragon, but before you broke through the gate at Thorn Edge . . . ,” Judith prompted. “Did you see Sir Egin as you left?”
I tried to remember the order. “I snapped his sword in half. He was bleeding, clutching his throat. I heard . . . thunder. And horses.”
Judith paled. “The Hunt?” she whispered.
I stared at her. “Maybe?”
We speculated on it for some time, and while we speculated, we sat down and ate until our bellies filled, while dawn broke gentle light over us. I inhaled deeply, taking in the metal scents of the horses, who still wou
ldn’t leave my hair alone; of the smoke from the fire; of the freshness of winter’s snow.
It was good to be alive. And human.
An alarming thought took me, and I sat up straight. “What day is it?”
Sir Hermannus said, “It’s Saint Thomas Day.”
Four days ’til Christmas!
“Everyone has been awake all night, so—” Parz was saying as I scrambled to my feet. He broke off, looking at me.
“Sit down, Tilda,” Hermannus said quietly. “It’s all right. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Right. I was just saying we’ve been awake all night—there’s no Thomas Donkey this year,” Parz said. The last person to rise on Saint Thomas Day was the butt of jokes all day, but I was hardly worried about that.
Hermannus reached across Judith to tug my hand downward. “Tilda, all your retinue are here. I don’t think there’s any worry that come Christmas Eve, we’re going to refresh our oaths to anyone but you. Sit back down.”
I stayed standing. “Not just yet. I have unfinished business in the cave.”
JUDITH AND PARZ WOULDN’T let me go alone, and truthfully, I had too strong a memory of the scrape on my dragon haunch to be easy about going to look for Curschin. The scrape had disappeared with my transformation, just as my crooked foot and belly wound had not been present in my dragon form. But now I had both crooked foot and belly wound back, though the latter had scabbed over at some point, and the former . . . well, I remembered how to deal with my foot.
Transformations were strange magic.
I did not go all the way to the treasure hoard, just stopped at a cross-passage and called her name.
She came slinking through the caverns. She blinked her dark-water eyes, adjusting to my torchlight.
“You live,” she said.
“I do,” I said, guarded, but also amazed that she spoke human speech so far beyond the simple, hissed yes from before.
She extended a claw toward me slowly. I forced myself to hold still, and the claw traced the shape of my ear.
“Human skin again,” she said. “I did not know you when you first wore a dragon’s face.”
“You did not know me.” I let out my breath. She hadn’t recognized me!
“Not until I drew your blood, small gold stealer!” Her voice rose, and her posture changed. Behind me, Parz loosened his sword in its sheath, and Judith did the same. Almost unconsciously, I put my hand out, both to reassure and to stop Parz and Judith; Curschin was simply using a dragon posture to communicate possession and dominance, but not to attack.
“Tilda, what are you doing?” Judith whispered.
“She’s fine! It’s fine. Put your swords away. What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you? How you’re talking—this is really creepy.”
“What?”
Curschin laughed. “You speak to me now in Wyrm’s Tongue, small sister.”
It was then that I heard it, heard the difference in words. I was speaking to her in the dragon language!
“Why did you return to this cave, small sister?” Curschin asked. “Your friends worry.”
“I want to know that you do well. I want to know that you hold no grudge against me. You helped me before, and I want you to know that I am grateful.”
Curschin leaned down to breathe into my face. Her breath smelled of ash and meat. “You are wise to ask of grudges. I am cave-host and water-giver to you—and you stole.”
“I was—” I stopped. I didn’t know the word confused in Wyrm’s Tongue. I made spinning gestures with my hands, like winding yarn.
“Wind-snarled?” she suggested, and the word came with a memory of wings that I’d barely used being buffeted by swirling winds. I’d never experienced it, but I could feel it.
“Wind-snarled,” I repeated. “I was overcome by your treasure hoard. Overcome by gold-greed.”
“Gold-greed is hard, for young—for new—dragons,” Curschin said loftily. “You have a gold-debt to me now. I will take it from you in words. I would learn your human writing.”
“Wh-what?”
“Dragons have writing, words, carved into caves.” She reached out a claw and scribed some shapes on the wall, scraping away rock in a quick tumble. “When we have learned the words of the dragons who came before us, we move on to new caves. But there are few caves, and fewer new words, and I would know some other way to learn, through your books. You will teach me all the human words in the human language, and be my wyrmgloss, small sister.” Wyrmgloss. A translator of dragon tongues.
I had great sympathy for her wish, for wanting to learn more, wanting to understand more. I smiled at her. “I will teach you. When I can—if I can,” I said. “I’m a—” I struggled for the word princess in Wyrm Tongue. “I have duties. I have territories and flocks and humans to care for.”
Curschin nodded, and pointed to her crown. “You are a meat-giver. I know this strain. If you can’t come to me, I will come to you. I am the one with wings.”
“If you come to see me,” I said, “you’ll have to come at night.” I hesitated to tell her I lived across the river from a dragon slayer. “You cannot scare my flocks and humans,” I cautioned.
“Yes,” she said. She slid into the shadows for a moment, then returned with a familiar oilcloth wrapped book in her claws. The Sworn Book of Hekate. “You left this here. . . . Now tell me how to get to your cave.”
“SO, SHE WANTS TO learn how to read,” Judith said when I told her about it on the long ride back to Alder Brook. “This is like my horse telling me her greatest ambition is to learn how to use a drop spindle. And you agreed to teach her?”
“I did.”
“Explain to me again how you have a debt to her when you didn’t even get any of her gold?”
“Dragon logic,” I said. I understood it, deep in some part of me that still held a little bit of a dragon’s shape. “There are laws among dragons, just as there are laws among humans. Laws govern gold and blood and debts, meat and flocks and territories, and how you deal with the rest of dragonkind.” It wasn’t that different from all the laws I’d spent my whole life learning. It made no less sense than chivalry; it was no less complicated than the overlapping obligations to your mother’s lords, to your father’s lands, to the emperor.
“But you’re not a dragon anymore,” Judith said, pursing her lips. “The debt doesn’t mean anything to you. So why do you care if this dragon learns to read?”
I couldn’t explain that I still felt the debt, honestly, not without worrying Judith that maybe my transformation wasn’t as complete as it appeared. I didn’t think my feeling of obligation had anything to do with that, anyway. Curschin was different from me. That didn’t make her desires meaningless. People judged me based on my appearance all the time. There was no chance I was going to judge her based on hers, just because she looked like a monster in the eyes of some.
Parz rode up to us, a dazed expression on his face. “Sir Kunibert asked me to rejoin him as his squire,” he said.
Judith and I glanced at each other. “What did you say?” Judith asked.
“I said, ‘Not as long as some dragons are really princesses in disguise.’”
“Is he going to reconsider being a dragon slayer?”
“Noooo,” Parz said. “But he promised that he would leave Curschin alone.”
“But what are you going to do if you don’t stay with Sir Kunibert?” I asked. “We would really miss you if you weren’t across the river.”
“What if I were on your side of the river?”
Judith said, “You asked him? He said yes?”
I frowned. “Are you two keeping secrets from me again? Don’t make me cross.”
Parz grinned. “I’m going to be Sir Hermannus’s squire.” When I groaned, he said, “And you are absolutely not allowed to call him Horrible anymore!”
I put my hand over my mouth. “Wait. I don’t call him that out loud, do I?”
“At least once,
” Parz said.
“Lots more than that,” Judith said.
chapter 32
WE CAMPED THAT NIGHT ON THE WAY BACK TO Alder Brook, being too many to stay together at a guesthouse.
I had a hard time sleeping. Wyrm’s Tongue flowed through my mind as though I’d never transformed back to human, and I lay very still, frightened that I might not be able to hold on to human form.
Then I heard my name, whispered so close and so intimately that I would have thought there was someone standing right beside me and breathing hot words into my ear.
I sat up, staring wildly around in the dim light of campfires that shone through the tent walls. Judith was on her side, wrapped in all the blankets and yet sprawling. Frau Dagmar had returned to Thorn Edge, and there were no other women in the tent with us.
“Tilda,” said the voice in my ear again, a dark, purring whisper.
I leaped out of bed. I grabbed for Joyeuse’s silver dagger—all the horses’ tack and armor had been recovered from Thorn Edge after I broke the siege.
“Come to the forest,” the voice thrummed.
“Who is it?” I whispered fiercely to the air. “What is this magic?”
Judith woke. “What’s going on? Who are you talking to, Tilda?”
“Come now, or the Wild Hunt will come to you,” the voice continued.
And then a second voice, a voice I recognized too well, rasped, “You owe a debt to me, Mathilda of Alder Brook.”
The Hunter.
A spear of ice seemed to sink into my stomach, and fear clenched my bowels.
Judith said, “What—?” but I put my finger to my lips and tilted my head to the tent flap. I didn’t want to speak, in case the voice could hear me, or hear the things I could hear.
Judith pulled the copper sword from the bed—she’d been sleeping with it—and she girded herself with the sword belt. We donned cloaks over our shifts, slid on our shoes, and went out into the snowy night. I was grateful for her silent trust.
We did not try to sneak away from camp and into the forest; it was just that no one was watching us.
The moon was a bruise-yellow thumbnail paring just above the horizon. It seemed the stars cast a brighter light. At least the snow reflected what light there was, and we were able to walk in the darkness without stumbling. Much.
Handbook for Dragon Slayers Page 19
