Jean Rabe - The Lake of Death

Dhamon and Feril exchanged looks. “Maybe,” Feril said.

More than an hour passed before Ragh returned, shrugging his shoulders and showing he was empty-handed. “Don’t know where he went. Too hard to sniff him out, all this dirt and stone flying. Lost his tracks. Don’t have wings to hunt from overhead.” He settled close to the fire, ignoring the nervous looks he got from Grannaluured.

Grannaluured was fixing some sort of spiced meat and roots that made the sivak’s mouth water. The skillet simmered over the fire. He waited for her nod, then snatched a piece out of the skillet, blew on it, and stuffed it in his mouth. “By the Dark Queen’s heads, I’m hungry, and this is very good.” Despite herself, Grannaluured beamed at the compliment. The sivak ate several more pieces, noticing she was staring at his dragonmetal-coated talons. “Dhamon, if you want to hunt for that dwarf when the sun comes up, I’ll go with you, but I’m done looking tonight. By the Dark Queen’s heads, I’m tired. This is very, very good.”

Grannaluured nudged Feril, who also took a piece of root mixture and started eating. “Don’t worry, Dawnsprinter. Churt’ll come back. Eventually. Unless some big critter out there got him,” Grannaluured said. “Churt’s too greedy to leave the find, an’ the mountains are his home after all. Probably won’t come back until we’re long gone, though. His hair is probably turning white just thinking about that dragon.” She paused, pushing aside a stray strand of gray hair. “Just where is it you said we’re going to look for a scale?”

“The damnable swamp,” Ragh was quick to answer between bites. “Who said you’re coming with us?”

Feril gave him a sharp look.

“Like I said,” Grannaluured continued, “Churt probably won’t show himself until we’re long out of sight.” She glanced up at Dhamon’s snout. “He doesn’t know you’re not a…ahem, bad dragon, and he doesn’t care for elves…or draconians for that matter. He’ll bide his time and pray you’re long gone. He’ll come back, ’cause he won’t easily give up his share of the find.”

Ragh chewed on the last piece of meat. “You mean the dragonmetal?”

She put on a sour face. “You found it, I can see that plainly.”

Ragh wriggled his fingers for Feril’s benefit. His talons gleamed in the firelight. “Campfire had a pick coated in it. Tried to kill me with it.” Ragh turned and squared his shoulders, boasting the wound the young dwarf had given him.

Feril shook her head, annoyed with herself that she’d paid no attention to the sivak and hadn’t noticed his wound before this. She gingerly stepped toward the draconian, knelt next to him, and prepared her healing magic.

“Don’t you think you’ve got enough to do, healing yourself?” Ragh asked.

“My arm is already feeling better, thanks to Grannaluured, who set it properly. Its healing will continue.” The warmth flowed from the fingers of her left hand into his wound. He closed his eyes, allowing himself to enjoy the healing.

“Thanks, Feril.” To Grannaluured, Ragh added, in as friendly a tone as he could adopt, “I see you’ve got a pick dipped in the dragonmetal, too.”

She nodded. “Not as good as one forged from it, but good enough. Actually, I’ve had it dipped a few times. Working on stone, the coating wears off eventually.”

“You want to go with us? You don’t want to stay with Churt and mine some more of this priceless dragon-metal?” The sivak looked at her meaningfully. “I can’t imagine a dwarf giving up on something like that. It’s the find of a lifetime.”

She laughed, the sound of her laughter craggy and weary. “I’d guess that last quake pretty well buried everything, priceless or no. I’m liking the idea of a new adventure. I don’t like mining alone anyway. If you’ll have me, I’ll go.”

Ragh rolled his shoulders, obviously pleased that Feril had taken most of the pain away. “The clay jugs you had stacked up inside are smashed for certain, and the pool you were working is probably covered, but it could be dug out again.”

“I’m sure Churt will do just that.” Grannaluured started scrubbing at her skillet.

“Campfire said there were more pools.”

“Supposedly.” Grannaluured chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. “I came across them three—Churt, Feldspar and Campfire—not long ago, but I already told you that. They needed a cook, or so I convinced them, and I needed the company. Well, I found me some new company today. Oddest company one could come across. I’ll keep with you for awhile. Churt can find some new partners.”

Ragh still looked skeptical. “You’re really not interested in the dragonmetal?”

Another laugh, this one longer and sounding wholly genuine. “Sivak, take a long look at me. I’m an old woman. I figure I don’t have too many winters left in me, certainly not enough to spend them digging in the mountains for a fortune I won’t likely live long enough to spend. Those other dwarves weren’t the best company anyway, truth be told. ”

Ragh smiled, showing his jagged teeth. He decided he liked the dwarf. She grinned back at him, shedding her nervousness. He wondered just how old she was.

Finished with her healing spell, Feril headed toward the pool. “I’m going to check on Obelia now, if you don’t mind.” Dhamon rose to follow her.

Grannaluured cocked her head in the pair’s direction. “Obelia. I heard her mention someone called Obelia before. Elf name sounds like. Are we meeting up with him somewhere? ”

It was Ragh’s turn to chuckle. “You definitely have found yourself in odd company, Needle. You’ll probably meet Obelia soon enough, sooner than you’d care to.” He coughed. “Ahem, you called yourself an old woman. Just how old are you?”

“Sivak, I’m…”

“Ragh. My name is Ragh.”

“Ragh, then. I saw my four hundredth birthday some years back. I stopped counting at four hundred.”

“That’s old for a dwarf. Ancient.”

She scowled. “Not so old as you, I’d expect.”

“No.”

“You’re older than the elf.”

“I don’t know how old Feril is.”

“She’s got some age to her. I can see it around her eyes. Women are better with age, Ragh. Wiser in all ways, more patient. Should be that way with all the gods’ children, I think. Gonna tell me how you fell in with a dragon and an elf?”

“First I fell in with a human…” Ragh began. He proceeded to entertain Grannaluured with the long story of Dhamon and the scale while he sorted through the baubles in his satchel, making certain nothing had broken during the quake. He left out parts, embroidered others, and considered that he had done a good job of telling the story—judging by Grannaluured’s rapt expression.

“So now you want to make your friend human again.” Grannaluured put her skillet back in her pack. “Odd company I’ve embraced, indeed.” She tugged a small pillow out of the pack and laid her head on it as she stretched out on the ground. She smiled at Ragh then, and within minutes she was softly snoring.

The sivak lay down and closed his eyes too, but he didn’t go to sleep right away. He was thinking about the reflections Feril and Obelia had conjured up in the mountain stream. He remembered spying a large black scale next to a totem of bones in the swamp. He shuddered—the totem was a collection of dragon skulls, prizes Sable had earned during the fabled dragonpurge. The dread totem was a source of magical power for her, but the draconian had no desire to visit it.

The reflections had shown another scale, at the edge of a pool of quicksand in a small glade ringed by old, moss-covered trees. Ragh thought the glade looked somewhat familiar, and now he decided he should talk them into going there first. The scrying spell had shown others—several more scales, all broken or cracked at the edge of a marshy tributary. Two more were near a stand of strange, ancient stones that Ragh was certain he’d seen before. The stand of stones might be even closer than the glade. The last scale he remembered seeing had been set atop a carved wooden statue and was painted with strange symbols. Maybe it marked bakali lands, because he knew some of the tribes worshiped beings with cryptic names, or the statue could belong to lizard-men, weaker cousins to the bakali.