Jean Rabe - The Lake of Death

What did surprise him was the female dwarf. Enough moonlight had filtered down so that he could see her plainly. She had dragged the satchels under a narrow cedar and was rooting through the one he’d been carrying, pulling out the small magical baubles and holding them up to inspect them, one by one.

Ragh’s tongue was thick, and when he made an attempt to shout to her—wanting to warn her to take care—no words came out. He tried to stand and his first attempt met with abject failure. He was dizzier than he’d ever been. True, he’d finished off the flask, and though he recognized potent ale when he drank it, it shouldn’t have been enough to make him feel so dumb-headed and weak.

Did you drug me? he mouthed. Poison me?

He tried to get up again, this time getting to his knees just as the dwarf pulled out two vials filled with magical elixir. With a harrumph, she dashed them against the tree and dug into the satchel again.

“Hey,” Ragh managed. “Stop that!” The words came out all strung together and unintelligible, but his voice was loud and caught her attention.

She whirled around, suddenly agile despite her years, dropped his pack and stepped on it, grinding her heel against its precious contents. “Ragh, you should’ve stayed sleeping,” Grannaluured said as she reached for her pick. Ragh wobbled to his feet. Then she reached for the pack with Obelia inside and put it on her back. “Sleeping, you’d be the innocent, and here I was starting to like you.”

The draconian readied himself for her charge, though he was having a hard enough time just standing. Instead, she surprised him one last time, grabbing up the satchel she’d stepped on and dashing away between the trunks of two weeping cedars.

“Damn,” he said as he lurched after her, careening into trees and tripping over exposed roots. “Damn it, Needle. I was getting to really like you, too.”

Hours had passed, hours of circular talk without any decision. It seemed to Feril that Dhamon was genuinely torn. That maybe he was better off as a dragon.

“I think you like flying, this swamp, everything better as a dragon.”

“No. There’s one thing that will never be…better.”

“What is that?”

“I’ve thought long and long about it, Feril. I want to be with you. I know I frighten you as a dragon. I know that I have a chance with you, if I become human again, so I want to be human, but I fear you’ll leave again.”

She stood, balancing on his snout, in the darkness finding a trace of her own reflection in his huge shiny eyes. She let the flowers fall from her fingers. “You don’t frighten me, Dhamon. Not as a dragon, or human. I won’t ever leave.”

“Dhamon! Feril!” Ragh stumbled into the clearing. “Needle, she’s not the sweetheart we thought her to be. She’s stolen the magic trinkets from the lake and fled, and she’s got the pack with the Qualinesti spirit in it.” He waved his arm, indicating the direction he thought she’d gone in. “It’s my fault, I trusted her. By the memory of the Dark Queen’s heads, I’ve no idea where she went.”

“Then we’re wasting time,” Dhamon said. “Let’s go.”

Dhamon didn’t dare fly here; Sable’s minions would have passed the alarm, so they crashed through the darkness. Dhamon concentrated on the smell of the dwarf, grateful she’d been working in the mines so long and was rather pungent. He had been taken in by her, too. Perhaps she’d been genuine at first, but their tales about Dhamon, dragon scales, and potent magic artifacts had struck a greedy chord. She had been eyeing their packs and lusting after the magic inside.

It was near dawn when they caught up with her, as the female dwarf had taken a twisting, turning course, at times criss-crossing a sluggish river in an attempt to lose them. Her bootprints here and there were filled with water.

“I’ll give her a nod for her courage,” Ragh said. “All alone in this swamp, a dwarf. She’s gutsy. Even I don’t travel through this swamp alone.”

The sky was lightening; they could see through the gaps overhead. Dhamon pointed a talon toward small objects that she’d dropped. Feril and Ragh were quick to scoop up all the beads and tiny figurines they could gather.

“She doesn’t realize all of this stuff is valuable,” Ragh said. “She’s not a wizard, so she can’t know. She seems to be hoarding the gold and silver bits.” He scowled to spot a carved turtle, missing its head, strewn on their path. He dropped the once-magical item, knowing it was useless now. “Maybe she’s just so mad at us for losing Feldspar and Campfire that she’s trying to punish us.”

“Maybe.” This from Dhamon, who was stretching his neck between the trunks of bald cypress trees. “It’s thick up ahead. I can’t go any farther. Ragh!”

Ragh left the collection of figurines and beads and plunged ahead. The intertwining branches blocked most of the light, but Ragh could see the dwarf now.

Grannaluured was hunched over one of the stolen satchels, back to a reed-thin gum, pick raised above the remainder of the magical baubles that were scattered on the ground in front of her. She was muttering to herself. Nutty as a fruitcake, Ragh told himself sadly. In her left hand was a scroll, one that Feril and Obelia had said was necessary for the spell they intended to cast on Dhamon.

“Stop what you’re doing, Needle!” Ragh approached slowly now, hands out to his side. “We’re sorry about your mining friends. The quake wasn’t our fault, either. I know you have grudges against us, but this is not healthy, what you’re doing.”

“This is not about Campfire, Feldspar, or Churt.” Grannaluured said as she turned, glaring at him, an anger in her eyes that gave the sivak pause. “And it’s not about losing the dragonmetal or the mine collapsing.” She drove the pick down on a tiny glass. Sparks erupted when it shattered. She raised the pick again.

Ragh ran at her, splashing water as his feet pounded across the marshy ground. “That’s enough, Needle!”

“Don’t hurt her!” Feril cried, close behind. She fast followed the sivak, cradling her broken arm. “Let’s talk to her first! See why…”

Ragh had already leaped at the dwarf. Grannaluured’s pick sliced the air beneath his feet. She had pulled back for another swing when Ragh bowled into her, slamming her back into the tree.

He thought the impact would have stunned her, but she was still active, struggling against him, at first trying to jab him with the pick, then dropping it and kicking furiously at his legs.

“There now, Needle,” he said, grunting. “Don’t make it worse on yourself.” He pinned her arms to the ground, grimacing as she landed a few solid kicks to his stomach.

“Ragh, let her up!” Feril was at his side, tugging him off Grannaluured. “Don’t hurt her.”

“Because she’s old? Because we killed a couple of her friends? Because she just ruined a lot of the magical stuff we needed to make Dhamon human again?” Spittle flew from the sivak’s lips as he swiped a claw across her chest. “Don’t hurt her because she’s a good cook, maybe? That’s the only good reason I can think of not to kill her here and now.”

The Kagonesti continued to try to pull him off the dwarf. Finally Ragh gave in, stepping back and planting his feet on the pick so the dwarf couldn’t grab it again. Grannaluured scrambled up, and Ragh grabbed the other pack off her back. She backed up against the tree. The chainmail shirt she wore was shredded in the front by the dragonmetal-tipped claws of the sivak. Where he had cut through the chain-metal, no flesh was revealed. Instead, a black scale gleamed on her body.

Ragh gasped in horror, pointing for Feril’s benefit. “Look! She’s an agent of Sable! Dhamon,” he shouted for the dragon’s benefit, “she wears the Black’s scale. Just like you wore Malys’s scale!”