Dragon Fate

by J. D. Hallowell

  As the sheep succumbed to the blood loss and finally lay down and died, he set about butchering it. As he gutted it, she immediately went for the entrails. While she had been in the throes of her hunger pangs, he had not tried to open the contact enough to communicate more than general assurances that she would be fed soon. Now he decided that he would try and converse with her.

  “I thought you would be more interested in the meat than the gut,” he said.

  “I will eat the meat,” she replied, “but there are substances contained in the gut that can’t be found in the meat alone.”

  “You seem to be quite aware of your needs and how to fill them,” he observed. “Are all dragons born with such knowledge?”

  “Dragons are born with certain. . .” she searched for the right words, “memories,” she finally said. “Such memories are imprinted on us before our egg is laid.”

  “How much do you know?” he asked. “Do you have the full knowledge of an adult?”

  “I have much to learn and much to grow before I will be an adult,” she said. “However, if you don’t either cut up that carcass or get out of my way and let me feed I will not be able to grow.”

  Delno realized that he had stopped working on the carcass while they talked. He returned to the task. He was just starting to skin the animal when she asked plaintively, “What are you doing?”

  “I am skinning the animal for you,” he responded.

  “I will eat the skin with the rest,” she implored, “please just cut it into manageable sections and let me eat.”

  Chuckling as he worked, he did as she asked. He first removed one front leg, separating the shoulder joint and slicing it from the rest of the body. The dragon took it without ceremony, or manners, and devoured it quickly, bones and all. He removed the head and was laying it aside when she sighed out audibly and said mentally, “There’s no need to be dainty and great need to be quick.” So he gave the head to her, and she made short work of it. After that, he simply cut pieces loose and gave them to her indiscriminately.

  As her hunger began to abate, after she had eaten approximately eight stone of meat, he decided that he would have to either move their camp closer to the pasture or figure out some way to bring several animals at time to avoid a repeat of this morning’s frantic run for provisions. When he mentioned this to the dragon, she merely thought that he should do as he felt best. Then, before he could speak with her further, she fell asleep. As he looked at her, he realized that she had eaten so much that he could see the outline of part of the meal through the skin over her belly.

  He took the small portion of one back leg that she hadn’t eaten, and, banking the coals from the fire, he placed that meat, wrapped in leaves, in the heat to bake for himself to eat later. Then, deciding she would be safe enough if he kept the link fully open, he left her sleeping while he went to move several animals to the camp to facilitate feeding her.

  The trip, though uneventful, took much longer than his mad dash to procure her first meal. The sun was past noon when he returned to camp with three sheep and one rather disgruntled pig. He figured after a couple of days she would welcome the change in her diet, and he was sure that he would be ready for something besides mutton by then.

  He sat down beside her and rested his hand on her shoulder. She moved into the touch. He decided that, though she was still very young, she was big enough to rest his head on her. As he did so, she sighed contentedly and soon they were both asleep.

  In his dream, they were standing on a mountain top watching other dragons fly, and she was telling him her lineage. As she told him of her mother, she turned to him and said, “My mother passed on her name to me. I am Geneva, and I am bonded to you, Delno.”

  The dragon awoke with a start, dumping him fully on his back. Coming wholly awake in that instant, he knew that she perceived some danger. He jumped to his feet, hand on his belt knife. “What’s wrong?” he queried, trusting that her senses were much keener than his own.

  “There are two creatures approaching from that way,” she replied, nodding her head to indicate the direction.

  While his hearing wasn’t as acute as hers, the sound of the two beasts tramping through the brush was unmistakable. Realizing just how small his belt knife was, he reached for a log to use as a club. It was too late; the first of the two creatures burst from the bush and caught him full in the chest, taking him to the ground.

  Chapter 13

  As he lay on the ground, expecting to die horribly, the monstrous beast began to lick his face sloppily and breathe its foul breath on him. At that same moment, Nassari’s voice said, “Oh, there you are Del, I was afraid even Chester wouldn’t be able to find you: figured you’d climbed to someplace inaccessible.”

  The young dragon was just about to leap to his defense when he stopped her with a thought. Not fully understanding why, but knowing he was more annoyed than frightened, she held her place, but remained ready to strike.

  “Nassari,” he blurted angrily, “what the hell are you doing here?” Then giving a mighty shove at the huge dog, he growled, “Get off of me, Chester!”

  Nassari started to respond to the question. “Well, I had rather thought. . . .” his words caught in his throat as he noticed the dragon. He raised his hand, pointing at her and trying to speak coherently, but what came out was just the syllable “wha, wha, wha . . . ?” before he was completely dumbstruck.

  As Delno sat up, he looked at his friend. Nassari seemed to have lost his ability to move as well as his ability to speak, so Delno answered the question he assumed that Nassari had been trying to ask. “That, my friend, is a dragon.” He was about to go on, but then thought better of it and let his friend stare mutely while he assimilated that little tidbit of information.

  Chester tried to lick Delno’s hand, so he grabbed the dog’s tongue and held on. After almost a minute, with the dog trying unsuccessfully to extricate its tongue from his grasp, he let go. It was a rather disgusting way to make the dog stop licking him, but it worked without actually hurting the animal. Chester, realizing he wouldn’t be allowed to indulge himself in licking Delno’s hand, turned his attention on the strange new beast in the clearing. As he approached the dragon with his tail wagging and his tongue lolling, she hissed and struck out at him. Even though she was very young, she had a considerable mouth full of teeth, and Delno had seen her snap the leg bone of a sheep like a dried twig.

  As he shouted “NO!” to both animals, the dog, reacting more quickly than its size would have seemed to allow, jumped back just out of range. Mentally he added, in a much softer tone, to the dragon, “Please do not harm this creature. While he can be annoying at times, he is only a faithful pet and means you no harm.”

  “You have a pet?” she responded, her mental tone sounding jealous.

  “No, he is my friend’s pet, but I have known him since he was a puppy.” Then he hastily added, “They won’t be staying too long.”

  While she resonated uncertainty, she settled down and stopped eyeing the dog as though he was her next meal.

  While this was all happening, Nassari once again found his voice, “What in the world is that, and where did you get it?”

  “It’s a very long story, Nassari, one that I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to tell you.” He sighed resignedly, and after a moment’s thought, said, “Sit down, my friend, and I will tell you everything.”

  While his ability to move was returning, Nassari had seen the dragon almost decapitate a dog that weighed nearly thirteen stone, and he was quite reluctant to get any nearer to her, so he simply dropped to the ground where he was standing.

  “As I said, she is a dragon,” Delno began, but was interrupted by waves of hunger that caught him off guard. Realizing that the hunger came from the object of the conversation, he reached out to her mentally, “You can’t be hungry again. I was told that you would eat a third of your body weight each day: you’ve already eaten nearly twice that amount!”

  “Normally
I wouldn’t be so hungry. However, I used up all of my nourishment before my egg was laid, then I waited several days to break free of the shell. I have gone long without food and need sustenance; one more good feeding and I believe that my appetite will diminish some.”

  Telling Nassari he would have to wait for his explanation, Delno fetched one of the sheep and cut its throat as he had done earlier. As before, the dragon caught as much of the blood as she could, and then waited, this time more patiently, for him to begin butchering the animal.

  Once he had opened the animal’s gut, and, much to Nassari’s disgust, given the entrails to her, he started recounting his strange tale to his friend. The dragon ate much more daintily this time, for which he was grateful. The telling, punctuated by pauses as he butchered the sheep and fed the pieces to her, took more than hour. She ate less this time, and there was nearly half a sheep left when she told him the haunch he had just given her would be enough.

  “What am I to do with the rest of the carcass?” he asked.

  “Leave it; I will eat it later.”

  “It will turn quickly in this heat,” he observed.

  She chuckled mentally, “While dragons are not scavengers of carrion, we have strong enough stomachs to eat meat that is slightly tainted.”

  Never being one to be ignored for any length of time, Nassari cleared his throat and said, “So you intend to keep this creature, and to head south?”

  “Of course I do,” he stated. “After all, what choice do I have?”

  “You could let it go free and get on with your life right here,” Nassari retorted. “After all, what do you owe the creature? You saved its life and the life of its mother. Haven’t you already done enough?”

  “It,” her anger at the insult would have been apparent without the mental link. Her sides were puffed out; instead of just the iridescent flashes of red as before, her overall color had take on a reddish tint, and her posture was frighteningly reminiscent of just before she struck out at Chester.

  “Calm yourself, dear one,” he soothed. Out loud he said, in what he hoped was a stern enough tone that even Nassari couldn’t miss his meaning, “She is not some dumb beast that I somehow captured. She is a fully aware being with intelligence and feelings. She can also understand every word you say, and she is quite insulted.”

  “It,” he began; then, noticing the dragon’s bared teeth, quickly corrected himself, “She . . . can understand every word?”

  Delno nodded, “Her name is Geneva.”

  Having just seen the dragon devour half a sheep, and have no problem with even the thickest bones, Nassari shifted a bit uncomfortably and said, “My apologies, Geneva. No dragon lore is taught in the northern kingdoms, so I must plead ignorance and beg your forgiveness.”

  The dragon looked Nassari over intently, causing him to shift slightly to put Delno between her and himself in case the apology wasn’t accepted. Delno found that he was perversely pleased with his friend’s discomfort; like when they children and he would chase Nassari with a particularly nasty looking specimen of some bug or small reptile.

  Geneva settled back down, and the reddish cast of her hide drained away. Nassari breathed a sigh of relief. “Apology accepted,” she said. Delno relayed the thought.

  “So, Del,” Nassari went on, “there’s no way to talk you out of this?” Then he quickly added to Geneva, “I mean no offense to you, of course, it’s just that I don’t like the idea of my best friend going away and never seeing him again.”

  Fortunately, Geneva took no offense.

  “I’ve told you, Nassari, I have no choice in this. She and I are bonded. The only way for that bond to be broken is if one of us dies. If that happens, the other will die also. Besides, I am looking forward to going south. I would probably have moved on anyway. This just gives me a definite purpose for going.”

  “Do you really believe all of it?” Nassari asked. “A bond that only death can sever, the prolonged life, all of it?”

  “Yes,” he responded, “I rather think I do.”

  “But, Del, magic? We’ve been taught all our lives that magic is evil and should be avoided, and here you go rushing headlong into it.”

  Delno took so long to consider his answer that his friend had begun to wonder if he would respond at all. Finally he said, “I can use a hammer to build a structure. If I use that same hammer to kill someone for no reason, does that make the hammer evil?”

  Nassari considered his friend’s words and then said, “A hammer is an inanimate object. It has no will of its own.”

  “Neither does the magic.” He let that hang in the air for a few seconds before pressing on, “Nassari, all of our lives we’ve been taught that magic is evil, that it somehow corrupts a person and makes that person evil. In actuality, it is the person who uses magic for evil purposes who is corrupt. Like the hammer, the magic is merely the tool he uses.”

  Nassari looked as though he was not entirely convinced, but he didn’t pursue the argument. “Having your life prolonged at the expense of the dragon seems a bit one-sided to me. How does that balance out?” he challenged.

  “Well, I’m not exactly sure that you or I would ever consider it balanced, but, according what I’ve been told, female dragons abhor being alone, but nature has forced them to shun their own kind for the good of the species. So, since they would rather live a shorter life than solitary one, they choose to bond with humans.”

  At this point Geneva began speaking to him, and he relayed her words to Nassari. “You see, magic itself can manipulate energy, but it can not create life. The extra life that the rider gets must come from somewhere, and since there is such open flow of magical energy between the dragon and her rider, it is logical for that life to come from her. It is something that all bonded female dragons understand and accept as the price we willingly pay for the companionship and love we receive from the relationship.”

  Nassari thought about this for a few seconds and then asked, “If magic can draw this energy from you to him, couldn’t you, or he, draw this energy from other sources, like the herd beasts or some such?”

  While Delno thought this sounded a bit too much like being a parasite for his liking, even he was surprised by Geneva’s almost violent reaction. She drew herself up as if she was ready to strike and roared at Nassari. Mentally she said, and he translated, “Only the vilest and most evil practitioners of magic would do such a thing. To take from another in such a way is worse than being a parasite. At least a parasite is born to be what it is: a person who sinks to that level does so by choice. He puts himself so far above the rest of the world that he feels that he has a right to drain away what nature has given them for his own use. He has no concern for other life and becomes an entity that is an enemy to all and should be hunted down and destroyed.”

  Delno soothed her mentally while Nassari, more frightened than Delno had ever seen him, apologized.

  “I meant no harm in the question,” he said, “it was merely an academic exercise. You see, until about two hours ago, I hadn’t given much thought to magic at all.”

  Geneva calmed down and said, “It is all right, I’m sure your friend meant no harm, but I am young and my emotions can swing strongly. It is abhorrent to me, as it should be to all thinking-feeling beings. Fortunately, it is an extremely difficult thing to do and most magic users who acquire the mastery of magic required for such a practice are not inclined to do so.”

  Never being one to leave well enough alone, Nassari went on, “I don’t wish to offend, but what about the animals you eat? You are killing them anyway, why is draining their life such a bad thing?”

  Geneva began to bristle at his question, but calmed down as Delno pointed out that Nassari was simply asking questions out of ignorance. She answered, “Nature has produced predators and prey. When an animal is born as a prey animal, it is natural that at some point in its life it may be killed and eaten. Even predators may be eaten by larger predators and eventually all animals are eaten by s
cavengers if they die of old age. That is the natural way of things. When an animal dies, whether it is killed by another or succumbs to old age, its life energy returns to nature and the animal will be reborn. If you take that life energy, then it can not return to nature, and it can not be reborn until you die. It is a perverse practice that places the life energy of those drained in limbo. Some even believe that doing such condemns the poor creature to complete oblivion, unable to ever be reborn.”

  After listening carefully to Delno’s translation of Geneva’s thoughts, Nassari found he was both willing to accept the dragon’s explanation, and rather fascinated with her overall philosophy on death and rebirth.

  He was also quite curious about how the dragon, herself new born to the world, could have such extensive knowledge.

  Delno didn’t wait for Geneva; he supplied his own answer to his friend’s curiosity. “The old female told me that all dragons are born with some racial knowledge. I believe that she also imparted a great deal more than is normal to Geneva just before she left.”

  At his explanation, Geneva nodded in an almost human manner, so he continued. “You see, females have some special bond with the last female offspring they bear. That dragon child is to carry on the female’s name and her family honor. That’s why that dragon carries the name of the mother.”

  Again the dragon nodded in affirmation.

  Nassari was about to ask another question when Delno interrupted him. “Nassari, my friend, I know that you are always one for seeking new knowledge, and I see that you could easily spend the next week asking questions, but we must move on. What has brought you out into the wilds to find me? I thought you had a political campaign to run.”