Dragons
The mountains loom over the dark lake like dragons-- if dragons were in the habit of looming and weren't, you know, extinct. Well, everyone says they're extinct based on some soggy idiot claiming to have killed the last one before I was even born and the whole not being terrorized by them anymore thing. Personally, I don't think dragons were ever much into terrorizing (honestly, what would they take from us? Our wood? Our shiny river stones? We're not exactly tale-wealthy. We don't even have that many animals, some fleets, sure, but I can't imagine anything eating well off one of those, too many bones and too leakin' fast) nor do I think that they are extinct.
The guy who claimed to kill them was a wet-brained drunkard. Everyone knew that, but then he comes back one night with a dragon scale and suddenly everyone hails him as a hero. I don't know how he got the scale, but I don't think he killed anything to get it. But that's me. Most people, especially my tutors in that snottily exasperated voice that only tutors can achieve, say that I'm too much a dreamer, that I'm obviously too bored if I have time to make up such fantasies. I try to explain that there is little fantasy about it-- I did the leakin' research. I base everything, well almost everything, on facts. But no one cares, which is why I'm on this little adventure anyway.
I'm retracing the steps of the great Dragon-slayer. At least, I was. I think I'm lost. According to the map I should be approaching Anduri, a large trading town on this side of the Rengalum Mountains, not a huge, dark, misty lake. Seriously, I am not doing this lake credit. Imagine every story you've heard about the Weik and their lair and quadruple it; you'll still be off. The lake-fog is being weirded by something because it keeps making shapes, vague ones of course. First a building, then a person, then birds. Then nothing again.
I once read about a girl who went crazy trying to unravel the mysteries of the weird. She wrote huge rolls upon rolls about weirded woods, fog, clouds, waves, dirt-- there was even one account of this baby whose eyes were weirded because of something its mama ate before she knew had a baby in her. The girl thought that maybe the weirdings were messages, from another world, the future, the Weik-- she didn't know. She had all kinds of theories though. My tutors made me read her because they thought her story would get my imagination under control. Only thing it accomplished though was me looking for weirded stuff everywhere I went. Drove my parents crazy. Not like I can help it, I was born curious.
I check my map again, trying to figure out if I made a wrong turn somewhere or if someone tampered with it. Tutrix Legra is a spiteful person, she'd do something like that. My marks are all true, though. None of the ink was rubbed off and replaced-- I know how check for that easy. I try to remember if I followed the map right. I'm certain I made all the right steps. I can't imagine that the town just disappeared though.
"Oy!"
I look up. A girl with fat braids wrapped around her head like some kind of hat is walking toward me. She's wearing a skirt, which means she likely doesn't ride fleets or anything similar. Probably a town girl, which would make sense, only there is no town.
"Lost?" she asks, smirking.
"No," I say, a little more proud than I ought to be, but her smirk reminds me too much of Tutrix Legra when she's in a snit.
The girl shrugs. "Fine then." And disappears. Seriously, she took a single step backwards and was gone. Then I remember that traders have illusion magics. I put away my map and walk to where the girl was. I take the extra step and suddenly I can see the gate to the town. The girl is still standing there and she laughs at me. "Took you long enough," she says. "Welcome to Anduri."
"Why the masking?" I ask.
"There's war over the mountains and we don't want part of it. Course, everyone knows where we are still and anyone with even half a mind can see through the mask, but it sends a message."
She's needling me on purpose. I can tell and so I use the best reaction I know of. I apologize. It works wonders for some reason. She looks startled, which is a good beginning for me. While she's still off-balance, I ask, "So, you know a good place?"
She laughs at me again, well snorts more like. "Where do you think we're going? I'm Elen, my aunt runs the best nighthouse in Anduri."
That explains what she was doing by the gate, but I don't care. Only two things matters, the beds and the meals. I've not eaten decent for about a week now. "Good food?"
"You've never tasted the like." She grins back at me, her mouth big and broad. For half a second she almost looks like something pretty. Course, then she starts talking again and ruins it all. "So what are you doing here anyway?"
"You ever hear of Conrick?"
"The Dragon-slayer? Is there a place in Rangul's hearing that hasn't?" Rangul-- that's a name I've not heard in ages. I had a tutor once that believed in the Great Blind One. He taught me a lot of the stories and then got sent off when I make the mistake of repeating those stories where my parents could hear. I guess people are more lax here.
"Guess not," I say. "Well, anyway, I'm following his maps to where he got the dragon scale."
"You have map copies?" She's gaping now like she can't believe that some yokel who couldn't even see through a mask would have maps, but I bet she's never been to where I'm from. We're poor and without magic, but we've got the old book palaces in abundance. Some even got books proper in them, instead of just rolls. Da used to joke that that's where all our wealth went. I was born by accident in one of those palaces. Mama says that's why I'm so leakin' curious about everything. I don't want to tell any of this to some stranger though, so I just nod. "Damp and dry, that's sleet."
Damp and dry. Sleet. I'll have to remember those, I think.
She stops walking. "We're here." The place we stop at looks like a tree.
"A mask?"
"Nope," she says, grinning proud again. "A true change. My uncle did it ages back."
True changes were tough work, I'd heard. "Sleet," I say, hoping I use the new slang right.
"Careful there," she says, "you almost sound like town folk proper. Come on in, my aunt does a fair trade."
"Thanks, Elen."
She shrugs. "It's my job. I do what I do." The inside of the nighthouse doesn't look anything like the outside. I was expecting wood everywhere, but the only wood I see are good, light floors and sturdy chairs. The table looks glass or something like. Elen's aunt is a busy-type woman, the kind with eyes are blinking every which direction just in case something happened in that direction in the last second between looks. Her hair is currency like Elen's, but with some gray in it that shows her age.
Currency-color hair is the storm back where I live, gold, bronze, copper-- I guess because we don't see it all that much is why everyone is wet-brained over it. Course, I'm biased against. No one cares about wet-straw colored hair. Even Rhett, whose normally dry about these kinds of things, started dripping over Gylar, just because his hair was copper perfect. I'm not jealous. I just missed Rhett being sensible. Couldn't talk to the leakin' girl when her brain was all soggy.
Elen's aunt was right decent and gave me a good room up in the branches, not that they looked like from the inside all that much. It was like being in a tower, which was drought and all, but a little chilly. Through my window, I watch Elen skip back down to the gate to tempt more travelers, I guess.
Alone at last, I close my eyes and think about Anduri. It's a trick my Da taught me. He always says do what you're doing first, gawk later.