Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [77]
“Not true, Rhoddo, not true. Up in the Roof of the World there are a few, a very few, of the great wyrms, living in solitude, and they’re much like the legends and bard tales paint them, too. Or so I have it on the very best authority.”
“Now wait a minute. Whose authority?”
“Er, well.” She glanced away in faked indifference. “Evandar’s.”
“Ye gods! That crazed creature? How by all the hells and their privies can you trust one word of what he says?”
“I had a feeling you were going to be difficult about this.”
Rhodry snorted profoundly and began pacing back and forth, his hands shoved into his brigga pockets.
“Will you listen to me?” she snapped.
“I’m listening. Spout away. The bard here’s a melancholy man, and I could use a good jest.”
He heard her make a sound that was almost a growl.
“Still as pigheaded as always, aren’t you?” she said at last.
“I’m pigheaded? You drag me up here and start telling me crazed tales, and then when I don’t hang on every word like a truckler you call me pigheaded.”
“Well, maybe I’ve been a bit unfair.”
It was his turn to growl.
“Will you stop pacing like that? You’re driving me daft.”
With a melodramatic sigh he sat down on the roof near her feet.
“Very well. Talk away.”
“I’ll try to make things clear. You remember your father’s tale, that a mysterious being gave him the ring, announcing that it was for one of his sons. Well, that person was Evandar in disguise. He’s the one who graved the name into the ring, because of a vision he had.”
“And can we believe a word of anything Evandar tells us?”
She considered this question seriously.
“I think we can in this case. Besides, Meer’s told me much dragon lore, and it matches what Evandar says. They can think and speak, and they put great store in their names. They believe that if a man knows their true name, he controls them.”
“I’m not sure if I trust Meer any more than I do Evandar.”
“Well, he’s the only loremaster we’ve got who knows one wretched thing about dragons.”
“I suppose so. Do you think that’s true, about the name controlling them?”
“It doesn’t matter if it is, so long as they believe it.”
“Sounds a risky thing to me, frankly, hoping they’ll believe when the least thing could prove them wrong. But now wait. I don’t understand. Why is the dragon so important?”
“Evandar had a vision. He saw the beast guarding Carra’s child once it was born, and helping Dallandra in her work, and then at length guarding the ruins of a city he thought to be Rinbaladelan. So he found the dragon of his vision and wheedled its name out of it, somehow or other. I don’t know how he managed, but he did.”
“Oh, very well. Suppose I accept that. Suppose, for the sake of argument alone, that he did indeed have the vision, find the wyrm, and grave its name on this convenient little bauble. Why give the ring to me?”
She tilted her head to one side and considered him for so long that he began to feel uneasy.
“I’ll answer that if you wish,” she said at last. “If you truly, truly wish it, Rhodry, I will answer. But I warn you, the answer will tear the way you think about the world into pieces, and the way you look at your life and at other men’s lives as well.”
He got up and began pacing again, back and forth. To the south the hills dropped away to farmland and the settled kingdoms that had bounded his whole life. To the north he could see with his half-elven sight to a far horizon where hovered white peaks, whether only clouds or the actual mountains he couldn’t tell, but a promise of the Roof of the World. The view was beautiful, even alluring, calling him, daring him, even, to risk that distant height. He could climb another height, this one of the soul, if he dared. All he had to do was ask. She would answer. He spun round to find Jill waiting, her hands patient in her lap. All he had to do was ask.
“You want me to go hunt this dragon,” he said instead.
She smiled, and the moment broke between them.
“Not to kill it or suchlike. To find it and get it onto our side,”