Dragon Business, The (22 page)

G
ROWING UP IN
her father’s castle, Affonyl had always felt like an odd duck. Although she tried to empty her mind of challenging thoughts and focus her attention on giggles and gossip, she simply couldn’t stand it.

The most intricate lacework couldn’t hold a candle to dissecting frogs, testing various earthworm-and-chemical mixtures, studying alchemy texts, or spending far too much of King Norrimun’s discretionary coinage on Wizard Edgar’s experiments. To her delight, she had once succeeded in turning gold into lead (which, unfortunately, did not help her father’s treasury).

But Wizard Edgar had left for a better job. Mother Singra offered a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, but much as she cared for Affonyl, the old woman was still invested in the traditional ways of the kingdom.

When Affonyl had decided flee her “princess is a princess” life to run off with the merchant prince Indico, he had merely been an excuse—her chemistry texts would have called him a
catalyst
. Indico had given her a reason to escape the marriage with Duke Kerrl, run away from the castle, and strike out on her own. She realized she wasn’t meant to be a princess. To her, being a person seemed far preferable.

In the court of old Queen Faria, however, Affonyl found few kindred spirits. She tried to make friends, but the serving girls, muffin maidens, and pot scrubbers were utterly lacking in curiosity, like most of her former ladies-in-waiting. The serving men, carpenters, bag haulers, masons, tinkers, chimney sweeps, torch-lighters, and candle-snuffers seemed unimaginative and rude. Their gossip was about a different sort of people, but it was gossip nevertheless. They brushed her aside, ordered her around, and treated her as an outsider, talking
about
her instead of
to
her.

She was assigned numerous chores, generally the jobs the management wenches least liked to do. Affonyl served as a chamber-pot emptier and polisher, flowerbed fertilizer distribution engineer (which went hand-in-hand with the job of chamber-pot emptier), trellis-vine detangler, and embroidery needle organizer. This was worse than selling seashells by the seashore.

One morning when she had to deliver Princess Minima’s breakfast tray of tea and scones, she took time to observe the girl. Minima seemed nice enough, pretty enough, but barely sufficient otherwise. The princess was a princess and seemed to have no interest in becoming a person. Affonyl was reminded of what her father had wanted her to be: passive, unimaginative, and obedient, with plenty of possessions but no personality.

She really did enjoy the company of Dalbry and Reeger—and, of course, Cullin.
That
was where she fit in. Though she’d been terrified during the real dragon attack in the abandoned village, Affonyl was proud of herself for her quick thinking and innovative solution. Now that she understood the dragon business better, her life was just getting exciting.

While Cullin and Sir Dalbry went off on their adventures, Affonyl was not pleased to be left behind. Besides, when Reeger had ducked into the forest with the mule, he’d also taken her sack of necessary items, including her precious books and experimental chemicals.

She did not belong here. She had to get out.

The next morning, she roused herself at the crack of dawn, which she thought was early enough for her to slip out of the castle unseen while everyone else slept. When she did embark on her escape, though, Affonyl found that getting up at the crack of dawn was not particularly early for castle servants or kitchen crew. The kitchens were abustle with workers preparing breakfast, the ovens hot as they baked fresh bread. Stable boys prepared the horses for the day’s horse business. Dismayed, Affonyl wondered if she had missed her chance.

When the head kitchen maid gave her a bowl of porridge topped with colorful sprinkles for the dowager queen, she took it with a meek smile. Instead of going up to the queen’s chambers, though, she found a quiet corridor where she wolfed down the porridge herself, knowing she would need the energy.

She left the bowl on a windowsill, straightened her clothing, and walked out of the castle with a demeanor that told any observer she had important instructions from important people to do an important task.

She found Reeger out in the forest by sheer coincidence—which was a good thing, because otherwise she would have spent a long time looking for him.

The mule brayed, sounding like either a welcoming committee or an intruder alarm. Seeing her, Reeger raised his uneven eyebrows. “Bloodrust, girl! What took you so long? I’ve had to make plans with very little information. What’s going on?”

When Affonyl explained Sir Tremayne’s dragon-slaying plans and how the dowager queen had offered the knights a chest of gold coins as well as the hand of Princess Minima, Reeger wasn’t impressed. “What are we going to do with a princess? They’re useless—why would anybody want one?” After Affonyl gave an indignant sniff, Reeger remembered who she was. “Present company excepted.”

He didn’t seem surprised by her story, however, and when she pressed him he admitted that he had spent the last several days snooping around town, haunting the taverns (for informational purposes only), and gathering most of the story himself. “I could use a hand for the next phase. I usually have to do everything myself, but you may as well give me a reason to keep you around.”

“Oh, really? Didn’t I drive away a dragon that would have killed us all?”

“That’s why I’ll admit that you might be useful. With all those other knights in the game, and a real dragon in the mix, this is going to be more complicated than usual. I wish we could have started fresh in some other queendom, but that ship has sailed—and sunk. Now we have to find a way to finish this in a satisfactory fashion . . . by which I mean the dragon is dead, we’re all alive, and we win the treasure.”

“And another princess, for what that’s worth,” Affonyl said.

“Let’s just focus on figuring out how to kill a dragon and stay alive.”

Reeger was uncouth, unwashed, ill mannered, and rough around the edges. But he was quite skilled at finding dragon lairs. By the end of the afternoon, he had tracked down where the monster slumbered between depredations.

The cave was nestled in the rugged hills, surrounded by dark pines that made rushing sounds in the breezes. Reeger led her to the edge of the trees near a befouled rocky clearing, where a deep black opening resembled the yawning mouth of a dead man. Sounds of growling and snoring came from within, echoing in the deep cave.

The dragon had uprooted trees around the mouth of the lair, then set them on fire in a sort of landscaping that played to reptilian sensibilities. A few charred remains lay strewn about.

“Rust, this looks better than anything I could set up,” Reeger whispered. “It’s got a real sense of primal evil about it. Imagine the appetite of that thing.”

“I’d rather imagine it from out here, thank you,” Affonyl said. “Now that we’ve found the place, what do we do about it? What’s our plan?”

“Unless you want to kill the dragon yourself, girl, I’d say we leave it to the professionals.”

“Like Sir Dalbry, you mean? Or Cullin?”

Reeger shook his head. “They’re smart enough to let the others try first. Five puffed-up knights ready to show their testosterone—maybe one of those heroes wants Princess Minima enough to fight a dragon for her.”

Affonyl didn’t add her opinion of Princess Minima. In fact, she thought the dowager queen had made an error in letting the consortium of knights see the uninspiring girl as an incentive.

“Dalbry has to keep up appearances, though,” Reeger said. “As the senior dragon slayer among them, he’s supposed to know how to track down the monster. That’s where I’ll need your help.”

“How?” she asked.

Reeger led her away from the ominous cave, keeping his voice low so they didn’t disturb the slumbering creature. “Sneak in to wherever the knights are camping see if you can catch Cullin while he’s doing one of his squirely tasks and tell him how to find the lair. He can slip clues to Dalbry, so he leads that group of knights right to the dragon’s doorstep.”

Affonyl nodded. “I can do that, but I don’t know that I’m doing them any favors.”

T
HE MASSACRE SITE
at the queen’s flea market shook the brave knights to the core. In their minds, the quest had now changed from a theoretical job to something that might well kill them all.

The knights looked to Sir Dalbry to bolster their confidence, since he portrayed himself as a brave warrior with many successful kills, but the devastation they had witnessed in the marketplace beggared his ability to cope. In reality, Dalbry did not have much experience battling powerful foes, reptilian or otherwise.

When the knights asked him for tales of his exploits, Cullin noted that Dalbry told stories about his father’s various crusades, rather than concocting his own victories. “After a lifetime of adventures and triumphs, my father wanted nothing more than a comfortable home, a wife who was fond of him, and an apricot orchard to tend.”

Sir Tremayne cited a chapter in the Manual that allowed such an end to a knight’s life, provided that dying in battle or on a quest was not a viable option.

Feeling generous, Dalbry reached into his magic sack and offered dried apricots to everyone in the company, including Cullin, asking only that they return the apricot pits to him when they were finished. Dalbry didn’t admit that mercenary knights had chased him out of his own fief, and he had not dared to fight them.

The consortium members headed toward the hills, because that was where they decided a dragon was likely to live. As a matter of fact (though he couldn’t admit it aloud, as Sir Dalbry’s handpicked “apprentice dragon slayer”), Cullin wasn’t eager to find the monster’s lair. He was also skeptical about Tremayne, Jems, Hernon, Artimo, and Morgan, all of whom were expert at telling stories, although the young man was not quite sure he could believe them.

For Cullin, being youthful and energetic had its disadvantages. The knights in the chivalrous consortium had no problem making the token squire keep watch during the longest, loneliest hours of the night. Sir Tremayne insisted that the real knights needed their dragon-slaying sleep so they could be refreshed to fight the monster with full vigor.

During his late-night watch, Cullin sat in the dark of the camp listening to insects and hoping not to hear the horrible hissing shriek that had awakened them in the abandoned tourist village. Unless somebody stopped the monster, it would devastate the land and move to the next kingdom and the next. Sir Dalbry’s dragon-slaying services would be in more demand than ever—and it might be time for him to choose a different career.

Cullin stirred the embers of their campfire, eliciting a small flame. He had let the blaze die down so as not to attract any prowling dragons. Beyond the perimeter of their camp, he heard the crack of a twig, a rustle of leaves, and he came instantly alert. Rising to his feet, he put a hand to his small, dull practice sword.

He considered shouting “Who goes there?” to rouse the knights and send them scrambling to defend against nighttime marauders. Fortunately, before he could sound an alarm, he saw Affonyl’s shadowy form slip out from between the trees; she put a finger to her lips.

Cullin hurried over to Affonyl, bending close. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in Queen Faria’s castle making muffins?”

“I’d rather be part of the dragon business, so I ran away and found Reeger.” Her lips curved in a smile. “I miss your squirrel cooking.”

Sir Dalbry cracked an eye open, then silently rose from his camp blanket and crept over to join their conversation. “We are honor bound to do this deed. All six knights accepted the quest from Queen Faria.” He put a hand on Cullin’s shoulder. “As did my apprentice dragon slayer.”

Affonyl frowned. “I understand about the treasure, but what does Cullin want with a princess?”

“I do want a princess,” he said, “but I had my sights set on a different one.”

Dalbry glanced back toward the camp, afraid their conversation would wake the other knights. Sir Artimo fidgeted and rolled over, but Hernon snored so loudly that the noise covered the distraction.

Affonyl quickly gave Cullin and Dalbry directions to the dragon’s lair. “You can’t miss the place—a giant cave with a bad stink and bones scattered all around.”

Dalbry nodded. “Thank you. If you and Reeger find any additional information, come here at the dead of night with your report. I’ll make sure Cullin stands the late watch from now on.”

The young man groaned. His eyes were already scratchy and bloodshot, and now his situation wouldn’t improve. “I’m not going to get a good night’s sleep until that dragon is dead.”

Affonyl flashed a quick smile toward Cullin before she slipped away into the forest.

After a day of wandering through the forests and looking for signs, Cullin and Sir Dalbry led the band into the rugged foothills. When they reached an area where the rock outcroppings stood taller and the stunted black pines bent over, the older knight nodded and nudged Drizzle forward. “We’re close. This type of terrain is a dragon’s natural habitat.”

They wound their way up a gorge, climbed a steep hillside, and tethered the horses so they could proceed on foot. The knights insisted on wearing their armor for protection, though Cullin supposed that so much metal would do more cooking than protecting in the presence of a real fire-breathing dragon. Also, the plate mail, boots, shields, and swords made an unstealthy clanking sound as the six men tried to creep forward.

According to Affonyl’s directions, they were almost upon the lair. By now, the sun had set and long shadows draped the gorge. The pine forests grew more ominous, and the whispering boughs produced an evil snicker instead of a shushing lullaby.

The air smelled of cooked flesh, brimstone, and something especially pungent. The other knights wrinkled their noses. Dalbry grimaced. “Dragon feces—the stink is unmistakable.”

Cullin was not eager to keep going in the gathering dusk, though he wouldn’t have been eager in broad daylight, either. The six knights fell silent as they pushed past the last line of trees and saw the ominous cave overhang. The gnawed and burned bones looked more realistic than any scene Reeger had ever staged.

Straight-backed, Sir Tremayne emerged from the trees and stood exposed. Sir Artimo and Sir Morgan backed away; burly Sir Hernon stepped forward to get a better look, and Sir Jems hid behind Sir Hernon, while Dalbry and Cullin pulled Sir Tremayne back out of sight. “We don’t want the dragon to spot us.”

They heard a stirring inside the cave, a rattle of rocks, and a phlegmy huffing sound like a blacksmith’s bellows half full of swamp water. In the last light of the gloaming, they saw the enormous angular shape of a hideous primeval monster. A long head emerged from the cave, shaped like a spearpoint with blazing eyes and several rows of teeth. It crawled forward, its wings tucked against its body until it was free of the cave opening. The dragon spread its wings, let out a horrifying shriek, and spat fire into the sky.

Cullin ducked, sure they would be seen, but the dragon turned its head skyward. With a thrust of its muscular legs, the dragon launched itself into the air. The giant wings beat downward, and the heavy monster rose above the trees, flapping into the starlit night and leaving its lair behind.

Cullin stared in awe. He and Sir Dalbry had seen the creature before, and this second encounter was as terrifying as the first. The other five knights were speechless, eyes wide, mouths open.

Sir Jems had brought his wineskin with him, and now he drained the entire thing. “Maybe we should reconsider. Princess Minima isn’t all
that
pretty.”

Sir Tremayne rounded on him. “How dare you! You are a knight. You swore an oath. You read the Manual. The reputation of all knights rests on our shoulders—it’s up to us to promulgate the mystique.”

Dalbry took Tremayne’s side. “If knights have no honor, then no one does. You saw the bodies in the flea market. This beast will kill again. Do you want minstrels to sing about the group of knights who accepted a sacred quest, took one look at a dragon, and fled?”

Sir Morgan nodded slowly. “We should find a safe and sheltered place far enough from the lair that we can build a camp and discuss strategy. It will serve as our base of operations.”