Fistandantilus Reborn - Douglas Niles [72]
“I can’t help noticing that it seems you have started out on your quest with a rather ill-suited selection of companions and weaponry. What, in fact, do you know of the dangers that might be encountered in these mountains?”
“Tsk,” Foryth replied dismissively. “It is the historian’s job to record the details of those dangers where they are discovered. It is not my place to do battle, to change the face of Krynn through actions of my own.”
“Yet you very nearly didn’t survive to record that history,” replied the bandit. “And you should know that I am not the only thing you need to fear in these heights.” “And what other manner of danger might we encounter?” Foryth reached for his book, then, apparently deciding that the complications of writing and walking outweighed the need for immediate accuracy, dropped the tome back into his pack.
“There’s a dragon.” Danyal spoke boldly, forgetting himself enough that he wanted to contribute to the conversation.
“Ah, the squire speaks. And he is correct.” Kelryn addressed Foryth Teel. “I assume that you caught sight of the wyrm in the days before our meeting?”
“No!” Foryth objected. “I would certainly have remembered such an occurrence.”
“Um, you were asleep,” Danyal said, giving the historian a nudge with his elbow. “I saw the dragon fly over, but I didn’t want to wake you.”
“What?” Foryth scowled at the lad, and for a moment Danyal had a glimpse of what a real squire might feel like after he had displeased his master. “You should always wake me up for a dragon!”
“Yes, sir. I-I’ll make sure I do that,” Dan replied, uncertain as to whether the historian was really making a point or simply going along with the youth’s story.
“And was there enough light that you could see the nature of this serpent?” asked Kelryn, turning his own attention to the youth.
“Yes. It was red-and huge,” Danyal said, his voice thickening as he recalled the monster.
He wanted to say that it had destroyed his village, flown from the sky to bring ruin and death to innocent Waterton. But he dared say no more, or he would risk revealing the charade of his relationship to Foryth Teel, the utterly fictional relationship with its promise of ransom that seemed to be the only thing currently keeping Danyal alive.
“You felt the awe?”
The lad nodded mutely, remembering the way his guts had seemed to liquefy in his belly at the sight of the monster, hating the tears that welled in his eyes with the memory. Fortunately Kelryn seemed to take his emotions as nothing more than the normal reaction in one who had encountered such an awe-inspiring beast.
“I suspect you saw the red dragon known as Flayze,” the bandit lord declared. “He is the bane of these mountains, a bully and predator against elf, dwarf, and man. Wicked to the core, he relishes nothing so much as the slow death of one of his enemies, unless it is gorging himself on a haunch of charred meat.”
“You know him?” Danyal was amazed to hear the man speak of the serpent with such familiarity.
“Indeed. He has something that I cherish, that I want very much. Yet even more, I have had cause to hate him for many long years.”
“What does he have?” asked the youth, only to recoil as Kelryn’s eyes went blank and his face lost every hint of emotion.
Any thoughts of obtaining further information about that history were blocked by the forbidding expression on Kelryn’s face.
“Always wake me up for a dragon!” Foryth insisted once more, as if distressed that the conversation had proceeded so far without him.
“Why?” snapped the lad peevishly. “Would you try to kill it?”
“Of course not!” Foryth was horrified. “Why, such an act would completely shatter any historian’s pretense of neutrality! It’s hard to think of anything that could be more disruptive of the proper observer’s role.”
“Not to mention that killing a dragon is far from an easy thing to do,”
Kelryn noted. Once again his tone was light, and in spite of himself, Danyal