Dragon Champion

by E. E. Knight

  Auron took a mouthful of the coins. They had no taste, and he spat them out again.

  “Why—” Father exclaimed. “Oh, of course—scaleless. That would explain your docility. When my father first showed me his hoard, I actually attacked him when he came near it.”

  “Why won’t I grow scales?”

  “Grays are different, my son. It means you must be careful: your skin will be pierced more easily. But on the other sii, having no hunger for gems and gold will allow you to live in the Upper World and far from men if you wish. Other dragons must seek heavy metals out in the Lower World, where there are dwarves and blighters to deal with—or steal it from men or elves above.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Towns, caravans . . . Some came from your Mother. She once did a favor for some dwarves, and cleared out a cavern of blighters. They gave her the silver you see in return. Pretty, isn’t it? Reminds me of moonshine.”

  “The dwarves didn’t kill her?”

  “She was careful. She met them only in pairs, well above ground. Her gift with languages, you see.”

  “Why do dragons help hominids who will try to kill us?”

  “ ’The enemy of my enemy is my friend, until my enemy is dead,’ ” Father quoted. “But while helping clear out the blighters, she found this cavern. She decided it would make a good nesting chamber. She knocked off two riders with one tailswipe, you might say.”

  “I shall remember that, Father.”

  “That’s my drake.” Father chuckled. “Clever little blighter. You think, don’t you? Like your mother. They’ll have a time of it, hunting you, once you put on some size.”

  “Hunting me? Does something want to eat us?”

  Father extended his neck, and Auron shrank back, afraid of the great crested-and-horned head. Father always looked angry, but perhaps it was just the ridges of his brow.

  But Father just gave him a gentle lick of his tongue. “No, Champion, nothing eats a dragon, except through luck.”

  “Then why?”

  Father lowered his head, offering Auron an easy path out of the hoard-cave. Auron climbed over the horned crest and ran up his father’s neck.

  “That is your favorite word, according to your mother. Well, that’s a story. I’ll tell it as best as I can. My father told it to me long ago, just as my grandsire told him. I think I was older than you when I first heard it, but you are already word-wise, so I’ll tell you, if you like.

  “Yes, please.”

  Father closed his eyes for a long moment, and then opened them. And so he began. . . .

  “Long ago, so long ago that the Upper World was shapeless, and the Lower chaos, the Sun had four Great Spirits work together to give form to the two worlds: one of light, the other of darkness. They formed mountains and valleys, oceans and deserts, caves and clouds. When the worlds, Upper and Lower, were done, two of them were ordered by the shining Sun to fill the Upper World with life to worship Her. These Spirits were Air and Water. Water made many green plants and growing things that love the Sun. Air made birds to fly with the wind and beasts to roam everywhere, and all worshiped the Sun. Flowers opened their petals to her; birds sang to welcome her rising.

  “The Moon grew jealous of all this attention, for he’s ugly and pockmarked, so gruesome that wolves of the forest warn everyone of his coming. He persuaded two other Spirits, Fire and Earth, to create from their depths a being to murder the Sun worshipers. They made the blighters. You haven’t seen a blighter yet, have you? They’re sort of stooped-over things, with big hairy arms and long-fingered hands that could wring a hatchling’s neck.

  “It was a bad time for the world. The blighters killed and ate many of the things Air and Water made, and the more they ate, the more they bred, spoiling everything like flies. The Sun grew angry and told the Moon to apologize, but the Moon refused and evermore hid from the sun. The Sun ordered the four Spirits to work together and do something about the blighters.

  “Now Earth, Air, Fire, and Water can kill, but they mostly do it by accident when trying to accomplish something else. They are very busy keeping the world clean and renewed, and they did not have time to fight the blighters. But they could create life, and they decided to work together to make something that the blighters could not eat, like the animals and birds, or cut like plants and trees. They worked and thought, and after many attempts, some of which still wander the world today, they brought the dragons to life.

  “Each of the Great Spirits gave a gift to dragons as they created them. Earth gave them his armor like forged metal. The blighters could not bite or claw through it. Air gave them her ability to fly, so they could go where they willed in the world at need. Water gave them her supple strength. Fire gave them a kingly gift: his ability to bring flame.

  “The dragons had a great hunger and flew over the world, eating the blighters and taming them. The blighters hate us, yet in a way, they worship us, too. So we drove and ate and ordered the blighters as we saw fit. The Upper and Lower Worlds were again in balance with the blighters checked, and the Sun looked down and was satisfied.

  “ ‘Fine work, Great Spirits. Whom do I have to thank for setting things to rights? I wish to reward the one responsible.’

  “Each Spirit claimed the credit, saying that the gift he or she had given dragons was the one that made us supreme. There were endless disputes and arguments.

  “‘Since you have fallen back to squabbling, and none can prove his case, I shall withhold the reward,’ the Sun said, showing her disgust.

  “Each Great Spirit retreated to his place in the Upper and Lower Worlds, and thought black thoughts. Being of similar greedy mind, each had the same idea: ‘If I can prove I am the greatest, I will get the reward. But how to prove I am the master of the others? I know: I shall create something that can kill even dragons!’

  “Earth, deep in the ground, made the delving dwarves. He gave them the ability to fashion arms and armor that could pierce dragon-scale, and the fearless solidity of mountains.

  “Water, in her slow wisdom, made the elves that live amongst the green growing things she nourishes. They age like trees and move like windblown leaves. They are patient hunters, keen eyed and eared.

  “Air, far above, made men. Man the wanderer, man the hunter, man the flexible. Man does not stand like a mountain in the face of difficulty, or wait like trees for the season to change, but figures a way over, under, or around it.

  “Fire was lazy and capricious; Fire did no work. Instead he took aside a few of the others and turned them to his own purposes, and taught them magic. These mages would kill or control all the dragons, then kill or control all the other races in time, and one day put Fire in the sky to replace even the Sun. Even worse, Fire taught these mages some of the secrets of Making, so he would have someone else to do his bidding.

  “But like the Spirits that created them, these people fell to squabbling. The Spirits’ peoples spent their time in feuds. Men fought men when there were no elves to slay. Sadly, each race did manage to kill its share of dragons, for we were too arrogant in those early ages, before we learned to fear.

  “Without the dragons ordering things, the blighters also came back and made trouble for the other races. Since then, the world’s history has been little more than a litany of wars among the Spirits’ creations.

  “So now we dragons must hide, or assassins will come to slay our families. The dragons who knew better times are almost gone. The dwarves find our caves, the elves trap us by wood and water, and always more and more men come with their flocks, their forts, their roads, and their cities.

  “I know more of fighting than I do of wisdom, little gray. But I will offer you this: Learn something of the ways of all the races, but especially learn of men. Your grandsire, my father, destroyed an army of them, but a new army came filled with survivors of the old. When he came to smash and burn their war machines, they surrounded him, and that was the end of a very mighty red. They adapted—a word I learned
from your mother—to him and his manner of fighting. If we dragons are to last, we must adapt to this new age, or the work of the Four Great Spirits in creating us will come to naught. Dragon kind will continue to dwindle, until one day there are no more eggs.”

  Father stared off in the direction of the egg shelf, his nostrils taking in great drafts of cavern air, as though searching its approaches for the sight or smell of enemies.

  “What’s dwindle, father?” Auron asked.

  “Nothing for you to worry about today.”

  They finished the remains of the man. Auron smelled his blood on the man’s knife again, and made to kick it down the hoard-shaft, but Father made him carry the weapon back to the shelf to share his lesson with his sisters.

  Chapter 4

  Change came with new air. The season above had finally turned, and faint traces of spring life filtered down to the cavern.

  It could not come too soon for Auron. Even dead bats were becoming scarce.

  With the renewed air came water, first dripping, then trickling, then cascading in torrents from the melt above to some unknown reservoir below. Auron did not mind the wet; it rolled off his hide as easily as it ran down stone. He drank from the accumulated pools, smelling and tasting the world above through the liquid conductor.

  At the touch of the water, the dead lichen gave way, leaving little patches of growth. The bats started their nightly ventures, returning to the cave to leave a shower of fresh, ammonia-smelling fertilizer for the moss.

  The life returning to the cave affected even Mother. She still had a listless, pinched look to her, but sniffed the air coming down from above with some of her old energy.

  “Soon we’ll be in the Upper World, little gems. Meat and heat, no more dead bats for you.”

  “Father will have an easier time hunting?” Wistala, his smaller sister, asked.

  “Yes, but we won’t see much of him. He will be flying far and wide, to make sure other dragons do not encroach upon us. Besides, the appetites of a family of dragons soon exhaust an area. Overhunt a forest one year, and you will starve the next.”

  “What is the Upper World like? Dangerous?” Auron asked.

  “Big and beautiful. There’s life everywhere, all singing different songs to the four Great Spirits. You could fly your whole life and see only a part of it. Now you just have the music of the melt on its way through our cave. In the Upper World you will hear rain fall from the sky, wind in the trees and on the grasslands, the crash of the ocean probing the land for weakness. Lightning will light up a place she wants her lover Thunder to visit. And far above, the Sun and Moon travel in silence, listening to the music.

  “There is danger there, yes, but remember, you, too, are dangerous. In all the world there is nothing more dangerous than a wary dragon. What is a dragon’s most deadly weapon?”

  “His fire!” Auron ejaculated.

  “Strength?” Jizara asked.

  “The senses,” Wistala said after a moment’s thought.

  “All right, in a way, but not right enough,” Mother said. “It is the dragon’s cunning, which guides all the other weapons. To know when to fight and when to run, to fool the strong into thinking you are stronger than they, to fool the weak into thinking you are weaker and encourage them to rashness. Let your prey think you are harmless, give those hunting you the impression you are going one place, and then be where they do not expect you.”

  All very well, Auron thought. I will be running all the time, to save my scaleless skin. My sisters will have less to fear in the Upper World than I.

  “You think your skin is a weakness, Auron?” Mother asked.

  Auron looked up at Mother. She sniffed at him, her head cocked affectionately. He could not lie; she read his mind as easily as his expression.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Jizara, climb that stalagmite, would you?”

  Jizara, obedient as always, moved to the wide base of a large stone prominence.

  “Now listen, Auron.”

  Jizara began to climb, and Auron heard her scales rasp against the stone.

  “Climb the wall, Auron. Keep your claws sheathed, use the strength in your sii.”

  The wall was a harder proposition than the stalagmite, but using his neck as well as his tail, he managed to reach the cavern roof. He hung upside down, hugging the stone.

  Mother raised her head to stare levelly into his eyes. “Auron, you did not make a sound doing that, apart from your breathing. Was that a weakness or a strength?”

  “What good is it?”

  “There will be times when you will not want to be heard. If I were an elf venturing into this cave, all sharp eyes and ears, I would not hear you climb up there to hide, nor would I see you in the shadows. You reflect no light—your coloring lets you blend perfectly. By the time the elf got close enough to see you, it would be too late.”

  Auron felt flush with achievement. Even Father could not lurk in this manner. “I understand, Mother.”

  “But will any dragonelles want a mating flight with Auron, Mother?” Wistala asked. “He hardly looks a dragon. More like a lizard.”

  “Keep a civil tongue, Tala,” Mother scolded. “My mother was a dragonelle who had her choice, yet she chose my gray father. There is more to a dragon than the shine of his scales.”

  “My mate will be a mighty red, Mother. Red like a ruby!”

  “I want a bronze, who shines like Father,” Jizara said, still atop the stalagmite. “Though less horns and scars.”

  Mother chuckled. “His horns seem ugly to you now, girls, but someday you will have a belly full of waiting eggs. You’ll think differently!”

  “Who cares for dragonelles?” Auron said, scooting sideways to find a crevice to better camouflage his shape. “I’ll never mate!”

  Mother rubbed the top of her head along his back. “My little clutchwinner, life still has much to teach you.”

  “You’ll teach me more, though, won’t you, Mother?”

  “Of course. But in another year or two, it will be time for more eggs. And then Father will bar you from this cave.”

  “We won’t see each other?”

  “Other things will occupy your mind. But I’ll always be with you. I’m part of your song.”

  Auron stalked the floor of the cavern. He explored his brother’s stale scent near the fishing pool. He smelled Copper’s marks all around a deep crack in the wall of the cave, where a trickle had found a new outlet. Where his brother came once, he would come again, so Auron found a perch and froze against it to await his return.

  It was time for the cave to be Auron’s. He would drive his brother out, or kill him. The scent of another young male so close to his sisters was intolerable. Auron rubbed his egg horn in anticipation. This vestige of his hatching was firmly fixed to the end of his nose now: a sharpened spur he could drive through even his brother’s scales if it came to killing.

  Stillness never suited Auron. His sisters were better at sitting and waiting; he wanted to be up and following a trail. With nothing to occupy his mind but looking and listening, he dozed.

  Splash(tap) . . . Splash(tap) . . . Splash-splash(tap-tap).

  Auron woke, nerves racing with danger, though he did not know the source of his alarm. He opened an eye and rolled it to and fro across the pool. The splash-tap rhythm repeated itself over and over. Auron’s ears located the source: the wall of the pool and the trickling fissure.

  Whatever was making the noise was behind the wall, in some hidden cavern curtained off by a sheet of rock and flowing melt.

  Auron slipped down from his stalagmite and crept to the pool. The stranger behind the wall was timing its work with the sound of water falling from above. He could not be certain, but the fissure seemed wider than when he had smelled his brother’s footprints at the crack. He wanted a better look, but there was no cover close to the crack—

  —save the pool! Auron slipped into the icy water; his hearts jumped. There was a shelf under the waterf
all, and he laid his head atop it, keeping his body submerged. The water showered off his skull before entering the pool below. Through the veil of droplets, he could see the crack, and his eyes picked up flecks of stone flying out with each tap.

  He wished he could find Father and tell him, but Father was away hunting. He had just left the day before, and would be gone for days on his search.

  A section of cavern wall fell away into the hidden chamber. Auron could tell it was pulled and supported by some unknown strength: it did not fall naturally.

  A pointed, shining dome appeared at the new hole, and it turned left and right. Auron saw eyes behind thin slits in the shell. A figure stepped out into the cavern, pressed its back against the wall, and froze.

  It was thick-limbed, standing on two legs, not as tall as the man Father had brought, but far more broad. A great helm sat on its head, and Auron heard breath moving through the faceplate. It probably weighed three times what Auron did with all its metal trappings added. Something sharp on a long pole emerged next, passed from the shadows to the intruder. Ornately wrought barbs decorated the pointed head.

  A spear!

  He heard voices exchanging words in low tones, very different from Drakine. “Az-klatta. Mu-bieblun,” the one on the outside growled to another.

  Auron shivered at the foreign sounds, which made the danger all the more real. They must be dwarves, and dwarves hunted dragons. He flinched, but stopped himself from leaping away outright. Instead he sank back into the pool, shielded by the waterfall, and swam away underwater. He poked just his eyes and crest above the water against the cave wall at the far end, careful to keep the cascade between himself and the dwarves.

  He scrambled out of the water and into cover as quick as four legs could carry him. He wove between stalagmites, making for the egg shelf. He had to warn Mother before more dwarves—

  Something crashed atop his back.

  “Got you! Death has come for you, softling.” The copper hissed.

  Auron clawed at his brother with his free leg; he felt his saa rake against layers of scale.