Dragons of the Watch - Donita K. Paul [74]
“Lectures?” asked Bealomondore. “That doesn’t sound very encouraging.”
“Exactly.” Old One broke off another piece of daggart for Orli. “We began to resent his intrusion. But it was his desertion that rankled most. It placed a barrier between him and us. He rode comfortably on his dragon while we suffered seasickness, cold, wet gales of the northern ocean, and then as we came south, times when heat almost smothered us and no winds billowed our sails.”
“But where was the wizard?” asked Ellie. “He and the dragon would have had to rest. They couldn’t fly continuously, could they?”
“Wizard Pater used his knowledge of the way Wulder had made the world to slip through holes in the sky to land. He visited various places and would tell us about them when he called upon us. We didn’t really appreciate the descriptions of his stopovers.”
As they once again tended the baking daggarts, Old One continued the tale. “During his long absences and our uncomfortable voyage, we began to devise our own plans for relating the wonderment of Wulder. We knew that these Chirilians had never seen a urohm. We forgot our first duty as it had been revealed to us.”
The old urohm grimaced, his wrinkles creased in an unhappy mask of tragedy. “We saw a better way. The ignorant people of Chiril would undoubtedly be impressed with our size. We would go another step and impress them with our sophistication.
“We planned to build a huge city with cultural attractions like a theater, a museum, a library, and industry. Once they were dazzled by our superiority, we would invite them to join us in our worship of Wulder, the Maker of all things, the Giver of all that is good. They would be able to see with their own eyes just how much our people had benefited by serving Wulder.”
“You obviously built the city,” said Bealomondore. “What went wrong?”
“Before we landed on Chirilian shores, one more horrendous storm beset our voyage. Wizard Pater had just left us. And we were particularly glad to see him go because he had outlined a plan that emphasized being humble and having a servant’s attitude. We were full of rage and bitterness. The storm seemed to match the fury of our umbrage against the wizard and his plans.
“I now believe that if we had relied more on Wulder, focused our devotion on Him instead of stewing over the injustice of being made to withstand all the elements of nature, all would have been well. During the storm, we feared for our lives yet survived.
“And when we saw that we had not perished, we assumed it was because our party of urohms was great. We’d defeated the sea’s attempt to slay us one more time. We deserved all the good things that would befall us. And I am sorry to say, we assumed that Wizard Pater had perished. He’d never returned.”
“So,” said Bealomondore, leaning across the table and completely caught up in the story, “you landed and built your city.”
Ellie thought about how no one, not one person she knew, told the story of Rumbard City and the urohms. She had never heard a minstrel sing of them. There were no plays given by traveling performers recounting the things Old One talked about. The bottle city, the standing stone dragons, nothing whatsoever tickled the ears of even the closest neighbors.
“We did,” said Old One, and again his tone was of defeat. “We proudly invited the citizens of Chiril to visit our grand metropolis and experience the goodness of Wulder.”
“Did they come?” asked Ellie.
“Oh yes. They came.”
She wanted to know everything, and he stalled, not completing the tale just as it was becoming more interesting. Patience deserted her. “Were they impressed?”
“Yes, though we hadn’t gotten around to explaining much about Wulder. Our first duty had slipped somewhere down an imaginary list to an obscure slot somewhere near