Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [196]
Rhodry realized that they stood halfway up the southern wall and looked across some hundred yards and down some fifty feet. The whole cavern stank of wyrm, and of steam and minerals—the walls dripped and oozed with condensation. Looking down to the misty floor he wondered if this fire mountain was as dead as the dragon seemed to think, because it lay pitted and pooled with springs of sulfurous smelling water, oozing out of rust and yellowish mud, sending out long tendrils of steam to the irregular roof, where in places light shone through in slits. Down to his left, the cavern continued into shadows so dark that he couldn’t estimate how far it stretched, although he could see how the floor fell sharply away. Down its slope stood dim shapes of what might be spires of rock and other tunnel mouths.
To his right, half-shrouded by steaming mists the great wyrm lay coiled upon a wide ledge that overhung the hot springs themselves. In the faint light from the cracks in the cavern ceiling, it glittered all black and greeny-black, the great head, resting on one clawed paw, more of a copper verdure, the long body and folded wings tending toward jet.
“Warm in here,” Enj whispered. “It’ll be awake.”
The head snapped up, the eyes opened wide, the color of polished copper and gleaming as they searched out the source of the voice. One wing unfurled with a dry rustle and swept out—and out and out, a vast expanse of green-black skin and delicate bone that roofed half the cavern beneath. Rhodry could only wonder at himself, that he felt no fear, only an awe at how beautiful she was. He was certain—he’d never been so certain of anything in his life—that the dragon was female.
“Get back,” Rhodry said. “Leave her to me.”
As Enj scrambled into the tunnel, the massive head swung Rhodry’s way, and slowly, with a sound like wind in a thousand trees, the wing furled again.
“Leave her, you say? You have sharp eyes, elf.” The voice was more a hiss than a roar, but it boomed and echoed through the cavern in a winter flood of Elvish words. Rhodry stepped forward onto the ledge. As he faced her, not twenty feet away, he felt himself laughing, his low berserker’s chortle half under his breath. The huge mouth opened to reveal a hedge of crooked fangs like swords.
“You laugh at your dying?” She yawned, extending a long, long pink tongue, then curling it back like a cat. “Very good. I like courage in a male.”
“Do you, my lady? Because noble you are, truly, as noble and grand as a thousand queens.” He made her a low bow, as courtly as he could manage. “And my lady as well, because I’m sure as I can be that my death’s riding on your wings, and always have I served the lady called Death.”
“Is that why you’re here, elf? To die? If the woman you loved left you disconsolate or some such thing, it would have been easier to fall on your sword.” She paused, the eyes flashing copper sparks. “Look round you! There’s no treasure hoard here. I’ve nothing to steal, no gold, no jewels, none of those things your stupid stories tell about.” “Why do you think me one of the People?” “Who else would you be? You smell elven, you’re too large for a dwarf, and not hairy enough for a man of the Meradan.”
“Half an elf I am, my lady, but only half. My mother was of the race of men. Do you know us?”
With a snarl that stabbed his ears she raised herself up on her forelegs, and at that moment Rhodry saw his death in her eyes. If the fate of literally thousands of souls hadn’t rested upon him, he would have welcomed it from such a terrible beauty, but as it was, with a sigh of sincere regret, he flung up his hand and let the silver ring catch the light and flash.
“Arzosah