Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [189]
“Ye gods! Then, my love, you’ve given her a splendid gift indeed, life to match her beloved Dar’s.”
Evandar laughed and tossed up one hand. A long spray of silver sparks gushed to the ceiling, then fell in a glittering shower. When it hit the floor, he was gone.
Another pair of beings were discussing Evandar’s riddles that night. In their hollow by the cliff, Rhodry and Arzosah had a blazing fire burning, thanks to the townfolk who’d brought them wood. The dragon lay stretched out, curving her body into a crescent to catch the fire’s heat, and Rhodry leaned comfortably against her belly to watch the flames dance.
“I can’t live like this much longer,” she grumbled. “Fires are all very well, but my back is cold, Rhodry Dragonmaster. I need my nice toasty cave, I do. Can’t we go back there till the snows have been and gone?”
“And what would I eat and suchlike?”
“Huh. Now that, truly, is a problem.” She heaved a vast sigh. “But a slave that dies of cold is of no use to its master.”
Rhodry considered. He was quite sure that feeding a dragon through the winter would strain Cengarn’s depleted stores. Better to let her fly off and feed herself. If he ordered and enjoined her to return in the spring, doubtless the dweomer of his ring would force her back.
“Well, it could be that I’ll let you go home, if and only if we don’t find any Horsekin riding the town’s way. We’ll scout round here for an eightnight, and then we’ll decide.”
“If I had the chance to kill Horsekin, I wouldn’t want to leave. Blood and vengeance would keep me warm.”
Rhodry got up, put more wood on the fire, then sat cross-legged by her head and facing her. She yawned, curling her enormous tongue cat-fashion, then laid her head on her paws and watched him with a glittery eye. More and more, he hated thinking that such a beautiful creature lived as a slave.
“I hear your old enemy appeared in town today,” Rhodry said.
“Evandar, you mean? That oozing slug, that pink and hairy creature of slime and shame! I hate the very sound of his name, and he’s cursed lucky he knows mine.”
“Indeed? You know, there’s somewhat I’ve always wanted to ask you. How did he learn it, anyway?”
Arzosah arched her neck in a rattle of scales.
“He tricked me, the fiend, that scum of three worlds!”
“Well, I figured that. I merely wondered how he could have bested someone as clever as you.”
She relaxed, lowering her head and allowing him to scratch behind her eye-ridge.
“It was a riddling game,” she said at last. “He offered me the ring for a prize, you see, if I won, and I could smell the dweomer on the silver. It intrigued me, wondering what the ring might do if I owned it. And he flattered me, saying that he wished to learn new riddles from a master of riddles, and everyone knew that Wyrmkind produced the greatest riddlemasters of all. Indeed, say I, and what prize will you want if I lose? Oh, come now, says he, there’s no chance of that. Like a dolt, I thought no more about it.”
“And you lost?”
“The contest? Not at all, not at all—that’s how clever the swine was. First I asked a riddle, then he, and each time we answered the other, back and forth, all even, like, for hours and hours, while I could smell the dweomer like the best perfume in the world. Finally, he failed at one, or looking back on it, I’ll wager the oozing slug pretended to fail. If I answered his next, then the ring would be mine.”
She curled a paw and studied her talons for a long moment.
“And?” Rhodry said.
“By then I wanted that ring so badly it was like lust. It was hot, truly, so hot in the sun that I felt all watery. We were sitting on a rocky ledge, you see, very high up it was, and ever so lovely and warm. That must have been it, the sun and the dweomer-lust together.” She looked up, her jet-black lips drawn back from her fangs. “So he asked his last riddle, and like a fool, I blurted out the answer before I could stop to think.”
“The answer was your name?”
“It was.” She tossed back her head and hissed