The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [59]
“A ring. We’re supposed to take a ring off a dragon’s ear. And this is easier than getting a scale?”
“It’s not,” Ailis said petulantly. “Merlin, if you’re listening, this is truly not fair!”
“Hmmmmmppphhhhh.” A giant exhale of air and sound.
Ailis looked at Newt, who looked at Gerard, who looked at Ailis. And then all three of them looked at the dragon.
One great black eye opened, then another, and a puff of smoke rose from the tremendous nostrils. The dragon was waking up.
“Scatter!” Gerard yelled and all three split up, heading in different directions. The lessons hard-learned under the troll’s bridge came into play almost instinctively. Ailis and Newt went left, crossing and recrossing each other’s paths, while Gerard jinked to the right, stopping short and starting again, all three keeping an eye on each other, circling and dodging so that one of them was always moving away from the dragon and one was always moving closer.
The dragon raised its head slowly, its neck arching as it rose so that it had a good view of all three of them. Its eyes operated independently, keeping track of two of the three at any given time. Then the head darted forward, cutting one of them off and forcing them to scramble in another direction, until they were reacting from it rather than distracting it. It was old and canny; as canny as Newt, as smart as Ailis, and as determined as Gerard, and the three humans wore out long before the beast did.
“Stop playing with us!” Gerard roared finally, pulling his sword from its scabbard and racing toward the nest when the dragon’s head darted at him one time too many.
Newt and Ailis both changed direction when they heard Gerard’s roar. They brought him down to his knees and forcibly dragged him out of the dragon’s striking range.
“Are you moonstruck?” Ailis demanded in a loud whisper. “Getting killed won’t help anything!”
“Indeed it won’t,” the dragon said.
The three of them froze. Dragons. Talking.
“This is so unfair,” Newt said, dropping Gerard’s leg and folding to the floor in a pose of resigned exhaustion. “Why is everything bigger, nastier, and toothier than we are?”
Think, girl. Use that brain I suspect you have somewhere.
“Merlin?”
“He’s talking to you again?” Newt tried to take his gaze off the dragon to look at Ailis, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Tell him I’m going to kill him.”
“I don’t know. I think…” She couldn’t take her eyes off the dragon either, watching with fascination as its neck extended, bringing the narrow head closer to them. The dragon’s eyes were huge, bottomless black orbs, and the smoke rising from its red-rimmed nostrils smelled, strangely enough, like the kitchen’s herb garden back home—sweet and spicy and of greenery and dirt, all mixed in together. Ailis found herself drawn to it, swaying on her feet as the dragon’s head moved closer.
And Newt did for her what they had both done for Gerard. He shoved her hard enough to wake her from the trance the dragon’s smoke had put her in, enough to make her skip back several steps, out of reach of the creature’s sharp-toothed mouth. The dragon was no herbivore, that was clear. And while it couldn’t make a meal of her entirely, its mouth was certainly large enough to take an arm or a leg at a time.
Ailis wasn’t sure what Merlin had meant about using her brain, if it was Merlin at all and if she wasn’t merely imagining things. She didn’t feel all that intelligent right now. Just scared. Still, she knew she had to try.
“Wise One,” she said, trying to sound reproachful, the way you would speak to a merchant who was offering less than his best goods as a bargaining chip before starting serious discussions. “Wise One, you see before you three who would trade with you.”
She had no idea what she might trade for a dragon’s earring. But if it worked for the troll, the trick would be to get the beast interested in the idea. They could worry about details later.