Tortall (30 page)

Wizard Halen’s eyes narrowed. He was about to speak when my brother Selm galloped into the square. Normally Selm was calm and slow going, but when he reined up before our father, he was in as much of a lather as his horse.

“I saw it settle on Tower Rock!” he gasped. “Long and bronze, like we were told!”

People came quickly to the square as the word spread, until everyone was there, including my entire family, Riv, Aura, my other friends, and Krista and her parents. Miller Fane and his wife arrived with their horse-drawn cart—the only one in the village—piled high with their things. They could afford to run, to start fresh somewhere else.

Everyone listened as my father, the priest, and the wizard
explained the problem for what seemed like the thousandth time. Were there any choices but flight?

Wizard Halen said, “I may have found a way.”

“Tell us, then,” Tanner Clyd yelled.

Just then Krista’s mother saw the bandage on her girl’s hand was dirty and bedraggled. I watched her tug at the strange knot Lindri had used. At last she gave up trying to undo the knot and cut it with her belt knife.

“I have read the various remedies for a plague of dragons,” Halen said loudly. His squeaky voice quavered with the effort.

Of course, I thought unhappily. He’s been at his precious books. We had fought so often over his teaching me to read that I had finally given up asking.

Halen went on. “A spear made of silver, of course, wielded by a virtuous man—”

Someone called, “If there was enough silver here to make a spear, Wizard, you’d have had it all by now.”

My father scowled. “The wizard is trying to aid us,” he said. “Listen to him.”

Halen looked smug. “A dragon may also be lured to its death in a pit of fire, or buried in a river of ice.” He tugged his nose for a moment. “But there is a fourth way to be rid of a dragon, and I have found it at last.”

“Is it as impossible as the others?” Miller Fane wanted to know. “There are no pits of fire or rivers of ice here!”

People muttered agreement. Halen waited until they were quiet before he replied, “It is not impossible, but it is costly. You may think it better to flee.”

“Where will we go?” Krista’s mother cried. She stopped
unwinding the bandage from her daughter’s palm. “We have lived here for generations! No one has the coin to build new homes!”

Everyone shouted agreement.

“You must give the dragon something,” Halen announced. “You must assuage his hunger.”

“Oh, no,” Lindri whispered tiredly.

I missed Halen’s next words because I was staring at Krista. Her mother had the bandage off at last. She was turning the little one’s palm back and forth in the torchlight, trying to see the cut. So was I. The ugly gash that had marred Krista’s hand when Lindri bandaged it was gone.

“…   a young girl,” I heard Wizard Halen say. “Unmarried. A virgin.”

Everyone was silent. To offer the beast one of our own … A woman began to cry.

“You must draw lots,” Halen went on. “You must be fair.”

“Drivel.” Everyone turned to stare at Lindri, who stood beside her cart, hands on hips. “Absolute nonsense. Do you seriously think a dragon can taste the difference between a virgin and an old man?”

“You are a stranger here,” Miller Fane called. “Speak to our wizard with respect.”

“Your wizard doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Lindri told him calmly and clearly. “Dragons hate the taste of human flesh.”

“Legend is filled with the sacrifices made to dragons!” Halen was turning red. Just when he had everyone’s attention
and respect, this peddler woman was trying to make him look like a fool.

“Of course they’ll eat a human if a human is staked out like a goat,” Lindri replied. “They aren’t very smart. This one will eat your virgin, and then he’ll be sick. A dragon flames only when he is ill. He’ll pass over your homes because he has fed, and then he’ll burn the next village he sees to the ground. You will have killed a girl needlessly, and others will die or lose their homes. All for the lack of a little sense on your part,
Wizard
.”

My father was dark with anger. “You have said more than enough,” he told Lindri. “You are a guest, and Halen is an elder. Be silent, or our young men will see you on your way.”

Lindri eyed my father for a moment, as if she could see through his face into his head. I was angry and ashamed.
I
knew what he was like, but he was my father. What right did a stranger have to look at him as if he were a fool?

Lindri shrugged and sat down. My father stared at us, waiting for another sign of rebellion, then turned to Halen. “How young must they be?”

The wizard swelled with pride. Lindri had been silenced, and now everyone waited for him to tell us what to do. “They must be of marriageable age, and no younger than twelve,” he announced.

There were just seven girls of that age—the village was very small. We seven were separated from the others as Carpenter Daws cut a rod into six long pieces and a short one. The wizard made a bag out of my mother’s shawl, and the pieces were dumped inside. The priest said a prayer. Then
we were told to each step up and take a piece of wood without looking. Lindri was silent, knitting busily.

I got the short piece. When I held it up, everyone looked at my father. They wanted to see if he would try to save me, either because I was his daughter or because after Halen I was the best magic worker in the village. They didn’t know my father. I wish
I
hadn’t known him as well as I did.

My mother was sobbing quietly. My sisters gathered around her and led her home. Not one of them met my eyes. I looked for my brothers and brothers-in-law in the crowd. They, too, looked away.

“Tonya is the one,” my father said. “We will take her to the north meadow tomorrow and leave her there for the dragon.”

Aura ran up to me and hugged me fiercely, weeping. I felt distant and strange, as I had since I had seen that short piece of wood. When Riv kissed my cheek and drew Aura away from me, I felt numbly glad. I knew I ought to say something, to them or the elders or someone, but I couldn’t think.

Lindri came up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re brave, Tonya,” she whispered. “Be brave awhile more.” She returned to her cart, climbing inside and closing the door behind her.

My father, along with two of my brothers, took me to a shed by the north meadow for the rest of the night. Selm was the one who hesitated when they would have closed the door and locked me in.

“We don’t want to do this,” he said, almost as if he were pleading with me. “You’re my sister, and I—” He seemed to
think better of telling me he loved me. “We have to do this,” he told me, hanging his head. “We’ve no choice.” He closed the door. I heard the bolt slide home.

I lay awake all night, staring at the shadowy roof and listening to the men who guarded the shed. None of this felt real, not even the rocks that pressed into my back.

At last I could see bits of pale light through the cracks in the walls. My father, Halen, and Priest Rand came for me.

The post was already standing in the middle of the north meadow. They had found shackles somewhere and hung them from the post. The priest locked them around my hands, muttering a fast prayer as he kept an eye on distant Tower Rock. When a touch of sun showed over the horizon, they left me at the run and hid in the woods at the meadow’s edge.

My numbness evaporated. Giddy with sudden fright, I faced Tower Rock and the humped form that sat on top of it. Once the monster’s in the air, I thought, he’ll be here fast. It’ll be over before I can feel it.

At least, I prayed it would be so.

Then I heard the jingle of a horse’s harness, the clop of hooves, and the creak of wood. Lindri stopped her cart a little way from me, and her piebald gelding put his head down to graze. The elders yelled for her to get away, but they were too afraid to leave the protection of the trees to stop her.

Baffled, I stared at Lindri as she walked over to me. Little things about her struck me as suddenly very important. Her hair was freshly washed and braided. She was wearing a clean blue dress with white embroideries, and she had wiped yesterday’s dust off her boots. She glanced at Tower Rock,
her eyes as clear and alert as if she’d been up for hours. As the distant dragon unfurled its wings, Lindri gathered my shackles in her hands.

“This has gone far enough,” she said, looking the chains over. “If they’d listened to me, you would have been spared a very bad night. I’m sorry for that.”

She tapped each lock with her fingers, just as she had tapped the knot on Krista’s bandage. The shackles sprang open. Then she pulled a length of twine from her pocket. “Go, Tonya. I’ll tend to the dragon.”

It was all too strange. I should have been frightened and hysterical. Instead I quivered with excitement. I went only as far as her cart to wait, stroking the piebald’s nose and warming my cold hands in his mane. My father and the others were still shouting. I ignored them, just as Lindri had.

She faced north, looking just as calm as she had while we gossiped the day before. Only her fingers moved, tying multitudes of knots in her twine. They formed clumps that grew far greater than the amount of string I had seen her take out. Like Riv’s lace, the knots spilled from her working hands to the ground in billows. As the dragon leaped into the air from Tower Rock, Lindri bent, gathered the masses of knots into her hands, and straightened.

I glanced back at the woods. Wizard Halen screamed curses, jumping up and down in a fury. My father was staring at Lindri, white faced. The priest had fallen to his knees and was muttering prayers.

I turned in time to see the dragon as it glided low over the meadow, claws outstretched. Lindri waited until he was directly overhead. She crouched, then leaped, hurling her
bundle of knots into the air. They spread until I could see clearly she had shaped a huge net. Like a living thing, the net wrapped itself around the dragon, wings, snout, claws, and all. The great lizard screeched with alarm as it tumbled to the ground, landing with a thump on the meadow.

As I looked on, the net drew itself tighter and tighter, pulling the dragon’s limbs and wings close to its body. It was beautiful, long, and muscular, with copper-bronze scales, gold claws, and deep amber eyes. It was as long as two bulls and as big around as one—a far cry from the three-bull size that people had claimed for it. Pressing its wings against the clinging net, it cried softly, until I began to feel sorry for the thing that might have eaten me.

Lindri approached, tugging a fresh length of twine until it was a rope. Reaching through the net, she slid her rope around the dragon’s neck, making a leash. The dragon stopped its struggle, rubbing its muzzle against Lindri’s hands. She spoke to it quietly before she pulled her hands free of the net. Now the creature sat and waited, eyeing her curiously.

She grasped a thread of the net and tugged. The web of knotted string fell apart and shrank, leaving her holding only a piece of twine. She tucked that into her pocket and wound the free end of the dragon’s leash around her wrist.

My father and the others had left the safety of the trees and were advancing warily. Lindri waited for them, rocking on her heels as the dragon butted her affectionately with its head.

“You tricked us!” Halen screeched when he was close enough that she could hear. “You never told us—” He
couldn’t seem to remember what she hadn’t told them. His face turned mottled purple as he opened and closed his mouth soundlessly.

“You didn’t believe me when I told you something about their habits,” Lindri said calmly as she rubbed the dragon’s muzzle. The elders stopped twenty feet away from her, refusing to draw closer. “Would you have believed me if I told you about this?”

When they didn’t answer, she led the dragon to her cart and hitched it at the back. The gelding looked at the lizard in a bored way, as if dragons always brought up the rear.

Perhaps dragons always did.

“What will you do with it now?” My father sounded nervous. I looked away from him. Any love I felt for him had gone in the night, but I hated to see him trying to be humble to her now. “We meant you no harm—”

Lindri climbed onto the driver’s seat of her cart and picked up the reins. “He’s lost,” she said briefly. “I’m taking him home to his mountains.”

“Lost?”
Halen whispered.

“He would never have come this far if he hadn’t been lost in the first place.” Her mouth curled scornfully. “Neither would he have done so much damage if folk like you hadn’t insisted on feeding him their children.” She looked down at me. “Why don’t you come with me, Tonya? I’ll take you someplace where you can get a proper magical education.”

I seized the edge of her seat. “I don’t want to learn someplace else,” I told her. “I want to study with you. I want to learn what
you
can teach me.”

Lindri raised her brows, her gray eyes puzzled. “This? It’s just plain magic, Tonya. Nothing spectacular.”

I glanced at the dragon following the cart, attached only by what had once been a piece of string. He—she had said it was a he—nibbled curiously at the wooden step under the rear door. “It’s spectacular enough,” I told her.

Lindri laughed. Suddenly I could see she wasn’t old at all—she was barely a handful of years older than I. “Come up, then,” she said, offering her hand. “What I have to teach you, I will.”