The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [99]
“Dragons heal quickly,” Arzosah said. “But he’d best not fly for a few days.”
Rori muttered some inarticulate curse.
“Neb,” Dallandra said, “you can untie his mouth now. Medea, you can let the tail go. My humble thanks for your aid! Arzosah, you were both splendid.”
She rumbled, then carefully slid off her prostrate mate. Medea let go the tail, stood up and stretched, then backed away. Neb began to uncoil the rope from around Rori’s mouth.
“And my thanks to you and Neb,” Arzosah said. “To think that nasty thing’s been in there all this time! It’s been a trial for all of us, living with him so on edge.”
“It must have been hardest on him,” Neb said.
“Oh, of course.” Arzosah paused to lick Rori’s face, as if to comfort him. “But you know what the old proverb says, when a dragon farts, the whole mountain stinks.”
“Indeed,” Rori said. “Ye gods, that remedy stung almost as bad as the wound! Still, the worst is over, isn’t it?”
“It should be.” Dallandra patted his massive jaw. “Neb, when you finish coiling that rope, you can wash that lump off, and we’ll see what’s inside it.”
“I’m going to boil it,” Neb said. “It’s crawling with live things, Dalla, just like Hound’s bandages were. I can see the auras as a very faint reddish glow.”
“Fascinating!” Dallandra turned to look at the lump, held in Neb’s tongs. When she opened her Sight, she could see the reddish, pulsating glow. “It’s truly remarkable, seeing it for myself. Not that I didn’t believe you, mind. Ah, now the aura’s fading. It’s curdling, actually, like souring milk.”
“There must be a lot of tiny lives in an infection,” Neb said. “Not a few larger ones. Gods, it stinks!” But he was grinning in the sheer pleasure of having solved the puzzle.
Once Neb had finished removing all the matter crusted upon it, both living things and dead pus, Rhodry’s silver dagger did indeed appear. Although the leather binding around the hilt had long since dissolved into the gray matter in the wound, the semi-magical metal itself cleaned up to its former shine. Mic came to watch as Neb polished it with an old rag. When he handed it over to the dwarven jeweler, Mic traced out the falcon device that once had belonged to Cullyn of Cerrmor, graved on the blade.
“Otho himself made this dagger,” Mic said. “He told me the secret of the metal, you see, when we were off in Alban. He tried to tell me how to place the two dweomers upon a piece, too, but I never could work them properly.”
“Two dweomers?” Dallandra said. “I thought there was only one.”
“One to attune the metal to the elven aura and one to bind the dagger to its true owner.” Mic began to say more, paused for a long moment, then laughed in an oddly tense and high-pitched way. “It stuck close to poor old Rhodry, all right, didn’t it?”
Neb laughed at the black jest, and Dallandra joined in, but she was laughing in relief. Not Evandar’s fault, then, she thought. That’s one thing no one can blame him for. She was tempted to tell Valandario, just to defend Evandar further, but she wondered why she’d bother. Why do I get so angry? she thought. I suppose because Val’s right.
One thing, however, she did tell Valandario and Grallezar as well. “The silver dagger was a component of sorts,” she told them. “I’m thinking that removing it could be the start of his giving up the dragon form. What do you think?”
Both of them agreed. “If somewhat be wound,” Grallezar said, “then the unwinding does start with but a few inches of thread.”
For the next few days, Rori stayed on the ground near the alar’s camp. Arzosah brought him venison, and from time to time he would waddle down to the stream to drink. By the time the flocks and herds had grazed down the fodder around the camp, he was well enough to walk after the alar when it moved farther west, a trip of a mere five miles. Dallandra relied on Arzosah’s opinions about his condition; she herself had no idea when a dragon might have recovered enough to fly. Finally, on the fourth day after the surgery, Arzosah announced that he might take to the air for short distances.
“Those gold wires