Dragon Champion

by E. E. Knight

  A crystalline statue, worked with silver, gold, and gems, stood in the center, bathing NooMoahk with cold light. Auron had seen enough artifacts of the hominids to know that it was some kind of artistry, but what it was supposed to depict, he could not say. The crystal leaned out and bulged at the top, cut into thousands upon thousands of facets. There was a faint white glow from within, refracted by the crystal into a blue-white shape that changed and danced as Auron circled the giant gem.

  Hieba pointed at the crystal. “Pretty!” she exclaimed.

  Auron swung his head up and down. From some angles, it looked as if a form with two arms and two legs writhed within, limbs disappearing and reappearing as he shifted his gaze. But if he took two more steps, it turned into a starburst of light. Two more steps, and the starburst shattered into a thousand slivers. The heart of the stone never presented the same image twice. He wondered if this was all that remained of NooMoahk’s hoard.

  He broke away from the stone and walked around to the edges of the cavern. Hieba protested for a moment, but her eyes turned to take in new sights. There were galleries and filled-in passageways. He saw chests and shelves against one side, a dim glow from the cavern roof revealed iron-bound books and scroll tubes. Another wall looked to be some kind of honeycomb with the cells filled in with masonry. A trickle of water, but just a trickle, fell into a pool at another end. Then there was the end of the cavern where they came in. There must have been battles by the chute, the carven stalactites were broken and the walls blackened from dragonfire. Melted metal had sunk into cracks in the cavern floor and hardened.

  Hieba jumped off him and rooted in his saddlebags for a blanket. “Cold,” she explained, wrapping herself up and hugging his back tight. If they were to have a home in the mountain, Auron decided to make it nearer the entrance, where he could have a fire for her.

  Given space and a permanent home, Hieba turned out to be something of a packrat. Odd shapes, vivid colors, and interesting textures collected in the form of broken bricks, agate stones, and bark accumulated in the room they shared within the ruined city. It was built into the wall of the cave: rock face formed their rear wall, and could be gotten to only by ascending the staggered staircases of the building next to them, then traversing a broken bridge. He placed a sapling trunk across the gap in the span and drew it in after them each night. Auron took a lesson from the dwarves and had his hold reachable only by this circuitous route. If the blighters came prowling, he could meet them at the broken bridge or grab Hieba and climb down the far wall.

  There was a sort of a porch at the front of the room formed by the roof of the larger home below. It was thickly coated with soil, though whether in the old city it meant that the porch served as a garden, or simply that over the long years detritus accumulated, Auron could not tell. He stood there with Hieba and tried to picture the city in its glory with both the cavern roof and floor occupied.

  He worried about the blighters because he stole their offerings to NooMoahk. The elder dragon didn’t seem to miss them; he sniffed the empty fountain at the center of the outer city now and then as he passed in and out, not knowing that many of the sacrificial goats and birds ended up in Auron’s hideout. When Auron went back to the cavern to speak with the dragon, the subject never came up. But the blighters set about their offerings with ceremonial bells and gongs, and howling responsorials as the animals were slaughtered. After that kind of effort, if the blighters found that the flesh was going into stomachs other than those the demigod had intended, there would probably be trouble.

  Auron continually planned to set out westward with Hieba, to get her among her kind, but the circumstances never seemed quite right. There were too many blighters coming and going, or NooMoahk was in the mood to tell stories and hear them in return, or Hieba had lamed herself leaping from a broken wall. Her giggles when he chased her through the ruins, or wide-eyed awe when he lit a pile of tinder by spitting on it, or pony rides seemed a more profitable way to spend his time. And then it was winter, though it was a mild one on this side of the mountains, and Auron looked at it as another reason not to travel.

  Hieba never tired of “visits.” She was losing her baby fat, gaining height, and steadily waxing muscular. She took to climbing down the chute to NooMoahk’s cave herself, with Auron beneath, anxious that she would slip. NooMoahk wasn’t awake when underground often, but when he was, he was entertaining to listen to. Unless the subject was his own eventual death.

  “Dwarves and blighters burn their dead; humans bury them. Elves turn into treelike growths that live on for thousands of years, gradually going silent. When a dragon dies, his skull adorns some stinking emperor’s threshold or a wizard’s library,” NooMoahk said, for the third time in Auron’s memory. Hieba swung from the projecting rocks of his platform, amusing herself by hanging from wrists, ankles, or a combination like a monkey in a tree.

  “If it’s found,” Auron said, for NooMoahk’s black grumblings made for long silences between him and Hieba when they returned to their attic. “The blighters don’t go anywhere the sun doesn’t touch in the cavern. They must think a strong spirit lurks here. Super—superstition may keep grave-robbers away. What do the elves do when the tree version dies?” Auron said, trying to change the subject.

  This time he succeeded. “Forest fires take many. The elves then take the ashes and mix them into clay. The elves have a legend that they were formed from a clay pit. Their creator made them through sculpting clay by a riverbank. They then fire and glaze them before they are put in crypts. Good a way as any, I suppose, and if there’s anything to their legend, this creator was a master. I’ve never seen a warty elf.”

  Auron saw an opening to NooMoahk’s mind. “I’ve seen an ugly elf. Scarred from battle.”

  “So have I, come to think of it. Though they were honorable scars, from a fight where the odds in number and weight were against her, to hear her tell it. Could she tell stories! And could she sing! Hazeleyes was her name, it seems to me. As full of questions as you are, Auron. Wanted to know everything about dragons.”

  “Did she learn ‘everything’?”

  “She learned the most important thing. Not to fear us, but to leave us. Dragons don’t hunt hominids unless there’s nothing else to be had: there’s easier prey out there, though blighters breed so fast, we used to eat them like I take fish from the pool. Not many creatures kill for fun; food supplies are too vital to waste in purposeless killing. Blighters do, and they taught the trick to the other twoleggers. Wool-brained barbarians, the lot.”

  “Why did this Hazeleye—Hazeleyes ask so many questions?”

  “The hominids fare poorly with mind-pictures. They keep tales by writing and drawing. Haven’t you seen writing? Fascinating, I’ve got tomes full of it.”

  “Yes. So this Hazeleye was recording dragon stories?”

  “More than stories. How we are born, when we die. How we choose mates. I talked to her because I miss the days before I grew old. When flying was joy, instead of burning torment. When my friend Tindairuss rode atop my back with bow and javelin, in silver armor trimmed with polished black to match my scales. We used to get on better with the lesser races, Auron. Back then, they took the loss of a few cattle as the price paid for a dragon keeping order in the land and the blighters at bay. With the blighters driven away, as they are now, they’ve decided they can get along without us. Now we’re hunted, hunted as blighters, after all we’ve done for them.”

  “Did this elf learn any secrets? Perhaps she was a spy, sent to discover ways to better kill dragons. Probe our weaknesses.”

  “Weaknesses?” NooMoahk snorted. “Bah. I’ve heard that venting. ‘Every worm has a weak spot,’ and so on. Auron, dragons are the acme of all the creatures between the Sun and the Moon. Don’t let legends tell you otherwise. Dragons are all individuals, some better, some worse, and while every now and then there are those that survive into drakehood or beyond defected, each dragon doesn’t necessarily have a failing. Look at y
ou. To some you’re one big ‘weak spot,’ being scaleless, but you seem to do well enough. It’s just stories the hominids have come up with to nerve themselves to kill us.”

  “Then is it our love of precious metals?”

  “Is what?”

  “The defect of dragons. What enemies could use against us. The thing that could be our downfall?”

  “What are you talking about, Auron? I’m tired.”

  Auron felt his fire bladder convulse with frustration. “I heard you were wise; that you had discovered some weakness in dragons. There are fewer and fewer in the world. Everyone has told me so, from my own parents to a dwarf I’ve met. I thought perhaps this elf tricked something out of you, and assassins were using it against us.”

  NooMoahk closed his eyes, and for a moment Auron feared he would drop into one of his unexpected naps. Then he opened them again. “Moon’s treachery, Auron, but you’re a foolish drake. Each dragon is a little different. Perhaps you just haven’t met enough. How could we all share the same failing? As for being tempted and bound by glitter, let me show you my treasure chamber.”

  NooMoahk sighed and heaved himself off his platform. Hieba, who had been lying propped against one of the projections transfixed by the crystal statue, came out of her reverie and jumped down to follow. He walked to the side of the cavern cut into galleries filled with chests and shelves. Auron heard a low humming and felt the air stir. He traced the source to shapes, like little stars, hovering in the formed cavern roof. As they approached, they glowed brighter.

  “What that?” Hieba asked. She pointed with her eyes at the objects.

  NooMoahk either understood her or made a good guess. “Those belonged to some wizard. She wanted to catalog my treasure, but got greedy and tried to steal some of my claws that had fallen out for some bit of alchemy. She got away, but the hair on the back of her head will never grow right again, I expect.”

  Auron looked at a shelf. No stacked coin or trays of gems lay there, but scrolls. Others held books, cloth wrapped palimpsests, even etched tablets and bronze plates.

  “This is treasure?”

  NooMoahk nosed open a chest holding skins stained with faint ideograms. “Treasure, as you understand it, Auron, is a dead thing.”

  “Treasure dead,” Hieba repeated, in creditable Drakine.

  “Yes, dead. It doesn’t know how to make more of itself. This is knowledge. Philosophy. Histories. Poetry. Knowledge is a funny thing, Auron. The more of it that’s in your head, the more your head can hold. It breeds on its own. You never know what the next bit of reading is going to do, what it’s going to meet up with in your head and mate. You’d be surprised at the offspring a piece of science on trees, say, and the description of the wreckage from a naval battle will have.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Do you know why wood floats on water, Auron?”

  “Because . . . because it’s from a tree? Water Spirit made the trees, right? They made it so it would float?”

  “That could be one reason, and perhaps you’d settle for it. Another could be the air pockets inside the wood; as the wood dries, the places that held sap or water empty and fill with air. If the wood is properly treated by the hominids, it takes a long time for the water to get back in. The air is lighter than the water, so it rises to the top.”

  “Then why doesn’t wood fly up in the air?”

  “Because the wood is heavier than the air.”

  “That can’t be. A dragon is heavier than air. A bird is heavier than air.”

  “Auron, I’m tired, I can’t explain air currents across a wing creating lift now.”

  Ha! thought Auron. Every dragon knows the Air Spirit gave his gift of flight to dragons. NooMoahk is just trying to make something simple difficult.

  “My point is that with knowledge, you don’t need treasure. Long before I met Tindairuss, I read anything I could get under my eyes. I collected and guarded these works. Before my mind began to cloud, I had a reputation; sages from across the land mass came to consult. They made me presents of chests of money. Anyone could mine and make money; no money could buy the making of liquid fire, or how to improve fruit crops with a certain kind of insect if the knowledge was lost.”

  “Do they still come?”

  “No. My mind isn’t what it was, and the lands and traditions of the hominids have changed. There are just a few blighters in these mountains now. The Ruby Crowns to the south have fallen back into savagery; jungle lives in their cities. There’s the desert to the north, and the steppe country knows only the lands where they can drive their flocks. Hypat is a shadow of its former self on the Inland Ocean. The hominids put down the pen and took up the sword.”

  “Would you teach me more?”

  At first Hieba stayed with him as he studied. NooMoahk introduced him, as a first step, to the runes of the blighters. Hieba would work with him for a brief time, but grew bored and amused herself elsewhere. NooMoahk’s chamber had nooks and crevices for her to explore. As long as she did not wander up to the ruined city at the cave mouth, Auron left her to roam. He had examined the cavern, and there were no wells for her to fall into. She stayed within the lighted area shining from the crystal on the dais.

  As the weeks progressed, he moved on to an old dwarf-tongue. It was a simple language of counts and tallies, designed more to record facts than ideas.

  “You have a good memory, Auron, even for a dragon,” NooMoahk said as Auron sounded out a list of warriors and gear an ancient dwarf lord took on a vengeance raid.

  “Why did you start to read?”

  “It was not long after I uncased my wings. West of here, near the mountains that mark the end of the Hypatian Empire. I was as hungry for gold as any dragon in those days. I’d thrown in with some men who stole cattle and horses; I’d stampede them down a hill into a dry riverbed or some other rendezvous, and they’d sell them.

  “Their company grew larger, and they decided to try raiding trade caravans the same way. I’d scare off the draft animals, eat a few, and then they’d round up the herd and drive it back to the caravan, then attack it while negotiating. They were always looking at maps of the trade routes and lists of goods, which interested me because it could tell me about a land without me having to fly there and look around. Only later did I find out the information was not always reliable, but that’s another story. One of the thieves was better educated, and would read messages being couriered between cities. He showed me the letters, and explained that the messages were a way men talked over distances. At first I thought it was some magic device, where they spoke to the paper and then the paper spoke back to whoever unrolled the message. He said there were such things, but they required great magic only mighty kings could afford. He showed me how it really worked and I found it fascinating. You can’t imagine how many different things you can learn reading, Auron. It would take dragon-lifetimes to find it out yourself.”

  NooMoahk’s eyes clouded over, as they sometimes did when he was lost in memories of his youth. He wavered for a moment, and Auron thought he would fall asleep. Then he returned to wakefulness, looked at Auron, and growled.

  “What? Insolent youth, come to challenge me?”

  “It’s Auron, NooMoahk.”

  The dragon rose on his feet, pulling up his lips and extending the armored fans down from his massive crest.

  “Whoever you are, you met your doom when you met me. This is my hold, trespasser! Your smell offends my air, drake.”

  His gap-toothed jaws opened, and he lunged at Auron. Auron sprang aside, and dragon-dashed between the shelves of books, knowing NooMoahk wouldn’t use his fire. He crept through a gap at the end of the aisle and came up between more shelves, looking for a dark spot to hide.

  “NooMoahk, you’ve been teaching me to read,” Auron said, clinging to one of the shaped stone columns in the cavern. A blighter with rings in each ear snarled down at him, pointing a trident at the base of the column, formed into the shape of an elf, dwarf, and ma
n, all on their knees.

  The dragon turned towards his voice, sniffing at the lowest shelves.

  “That so? I’ve got a lesson for you then. A final lesson, you might say.”

  Hieba trotted across the cavern, interested in the commotion in the library. Her motion must have caught NooMoahk’s eye; he turned his neck to look at her. Auron heard vertebra bones crackle.

  “Augh! Assassin!” He turned his ponderous form toward her. Auron crept around behind, in horrified agony, ready to dash between his legs and snatch up Hieba. But what if NooMoahk just used his fire?

  “NooMoahk sir, what is wrong?” she squeaked in Drakine.

  The ancient black paused, and sniffed the air in confusion. “Blood and thunder . . . Hieba, little one, what are you doing down here? Where’s Auron?”

  “Here, sir. We were doing some reading, and you had one of your difficulties.”

  “I did?” Doubt and fear clouded NooMoahk’s eyes for a moment. “Auron, I’d better rest for a while.” NooMoahk went to his dais, belly and wings dragging. He curled around the crystal and tucked his nose in the crook of his leg. In a moment he rumbled in his sleep.

  “NooMoahk is sick?” Hieba said.

  “I don’t know, Berrysweet. Come up, and we’ll go.”

  And go they did.

  It was the only choice. Whatever secrets NooMoahk’s failing mind and lost library held, they would take time to worm out. He could hardly leave Hieba in the ruined city, with blighters coming and going, and after the scene in the cavern, he didn’t dare leave her around the black.

  It was good traveling in the mild climate south of the mountains. Hieba had grown into a wolflike child of energy and appetites. Working together, they were a match for even the wariest stag. She improvised leather clothing from their kills of deer and wild pig—though the badly cured hides reeked even to Auron’s nose—and tools of wood, bone, and rock. When a pack of blighters got on their trail, they took refuge on a rocky prominence set in the crotch between two streams, and she hurled fist-size stones and shouted threats down at the blighters crawling up after them. Auron stayed hidden until the two most determined neared the summit. The sight of their burning, twitching corpses cartwheeling back to the base of the hill made the others give up the chase.