Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [197]
It seemed that he had cried a dweomer spell that melded her with the rock and turned her to a vein of copper—so still did she become. For a long, long moment she crouched unmoving, unbreathing like a dead thing; then with a rushy moan she slumped, her head flopping onto her paws, the enormous eyes rolling under drooped lids.
“I have hated your race for thousands of years, Man!” She spat the name out like an insult. “When you conquered wyrmkind, we fled you, we flew from you, we left our forests and our crags to you, and now you’ve followed us here. What will you take from me this time, Man? My very life?”
Rhodry was too stunned to answer. She lay deathly still, her eyes fixed on his face like a dog watching a cruel master uncurl a whip, and he hated himself for bringing her so low.
“Without your help those I’ve sworn to serve will die, or I’d turn and walk out of here right now.”
“I can tell when someone lies to me, and you speak the truth.” Yet still she did not move. “What do you want from me, Man?”
“When have my people harmed you? I’ve never met anyone who so much as knew that you existed.”
She raised her head and tilted it a little to one side to study him. He felt like laughing aloud just to see the life come back into her eyes.
“You’re speaking the truth again. This is very odd, Man. Or no, I won’t call you by that hateful name. Shall I call you Elf, or will you give me some harmless word to use?”
“My name is Rhodry.”
Her eyes seemed to bore into his and through his very soul.
“So it is,” she whispered. “So it is. Why would you tell me such a thing?”
“The names of elves have no power to bind them.”
For a moment he thought she was growling in a deep rumble under her breath; then he realized that she was laughing.
“Well, so they don’t. Very well, Rhodry. If I am to be enslaved, best it be by an elf like you. What do you want from me, Rhodry Dragonmaster?”
“Far to the south of here the Horsekin, the Meradan as you call them, are besieging a city, and they want to kill every soul in it. I intend to stop them.”
The rumble of her laughter shook the ledge.
“If I am to be enslaved, best it be for a task like that.” She swung her head to stare over his shoulder with one gleaming eye. “That creature behind you? Is it your servant, or may I eat it?”
He glanced round to see Enj standing just at the tunnel’s mouth with his arms clasped round his chest, staring at the dragon as wide-eyed as any worshiper seeing the statue of his god.
“Leave him be. He’s my friend.”
“Stranger yet. Half an elf, half a man, and friend to dwarves. At least you seem to be an interesting sort.”
“My lady, I can promise you this: Many a woman has loved me, a few have hated me, but none have ever called me dull.”
Again she laughed, the boom rolling and echoing round the cavern till Rhodry felt a lash of fear, running ice-cold down his spine. He knew that he needed to reassert his control of her.
“Tell me one thing,” he said. “And then we’ll return to the sunlight. Why do you hate the Meradan?”
She curled a vast paw and studied her talons, each as long as a broadsword.
“Now this telling is an order I’ll take gladly. Many, many years ago now, it was, but still it burns in my heart, I had a mate who pleased me. The hairy ones hunted him down like a beast and slew him, all to swell their king’s vanity. King! If you can call an animal on horseback a king! I slew many of them as they gloated over my mate’s dead body, I slew the king himself, chasing him away from the corpse through the grass. Oh, how he squealed and whined and pissed himself when I had him in my claws! King! I pierced him through his stomach and ripped out his guts, then let him die slowly, whining and screeching to the end. But naught would bring back my dead mate. Always have I longed for further revenge, and if you offer it to me, Dragonmaster, then I will serve you well. Why, I’ll serve you freely. You