Authors: Mark Acres
Bagsby spent a good hour checking and double-checking the improvised wire hooks and nails to feel certain that the seat was secured firmly to Scratch’s back. At last, the seat as steady as Bagsby could make it and his gear loaded aboard, Bagsby climbed once more up Scratch’s huge side. Then using the ripples of muscle as footing, he grabbed onto the undersides of scales to gain handholds. Gradually he made his way onto the creature’s back, checked his seat one last time, and then stepped inside, extending his legs slightly forward and downward, and leaning his back against the backrest of the seat. He tied off the three straps, and only then did Bagsby allow himself to look down. The height was not that great—Bagsby had been higher many times, climbing the wall of an inviting building to reach a second-story window.
“Ready, Scratch,” the small thief bellowed. “Let’s try it.”
Bagsby felt the subtle motion of the dragon’s back beneath him, then the gentle rocking motion as the great dragon began to move forward. To each side, the huge, folded, reddish brown wings began to open and lower. The rocking of the seat became more violent as Scratch gained speed, hurling himself down the mountainside. The wings flapped once, twice, a third time—and suddenly, as the dragon took a great leap with the power of its rear haunches, Bagsby saw that he was airborne!
The dragon soared off the mountainside, gliding downward at first, while the great wings slowly pumped up and down, up and down, until the downward motion stopped and the huge creature, its head extended upward toward the sun, began to climb in the clear summer sky.
Bagsby gripped the sides of his seat in fear; his breath came in short, dry gasps; he tried to lick his lips, and found he had no spit in his mouth. But it was working! The great dragon’s wings beat faster and faster, and the heavy creature miraculously rose higher and higher in the air. Bagsby worked up the courage to look out to one side and then the other, but he could barely see over Scratch’s huge flanks. Then the dragon turned—for it had been heading west toward Laga and, as they had agreed, did not yet want to be seen by the townspeople. The great body banked hard to the right, and Bagsby gazed out over the vast desert and the city that was already thousands of feet below.
At first he was shocked; he called out in alarm, only to feel a rumble beneath as Scratch chuckled at his exclamation of fear. Then he watched silently, in amazement, as the city passed slowly by below him, the people already so tiny they could barely be seen, the buildings looking like tiny architect’s models, the streams of traffic on the great highway no more than mere trails of ants, already receding out of sight. Bagsby marveled; he knew the dragon was traveling at great speed, yet the ground below seemed to pass beneath them at a leisurely pace, much more slowly than it would from the back of a trotting horse.
Scratch leveled off as he approached the mountain from which he had taken off—high above its top now—and then rose suddenly and swiftly, catching an updraft of warm air from the base of the mountain. Bagsby grappled the sides of his seat again, and fought the rise of his stomach toward his mouth. How long, he wondered, could he bear this?
Then Bagsby spotted Lifefire flying alongside. He saw her incredible grace as she rose on the air, wings fully extended, occasionally beating, occasionally tilting to change direction. The remarkable creature seemed to fly effortlessly, as if she had done it all her life. Which, Bagsby thought, in a sense she had. Somehow, the sight of Lifefire reassured Bagsby. He settled back, and began to enjoy the ride.
Higher and higher Scratch soared, riding the gusts at the edge of the Eastern Mountains, working his way northward. Soon the mountains receded below him, until Bagsby could no longer judge their height above the plains over which they rose. Gradually, the desert yellows of the ground gave way to yellow-greens and then greens as the great beast ploughed toward the north at speeds beyond the imaginings of mortal men. Bagsby saw streams and rivers, and then the great, broad Rigel looking like a ribbon laid out across the ground, shimmering in the sun.
Bagsby’s spirit began to rise with the great dragon. This was wonderful! This was... freedom! Bagsby began to feel a heady elation. No wonder Scratch was so vain! To soar above the earth with the powers of a god—how could one resist this? Then one more thought occurred to Bagsby: Shulana. Shulana had to experience this. As his great mount sliced through the cold air northward, Bagsby lost himself in fantasies of himself and Shulana, soaring up beyond the clouds on the backs of their invincible warrior mounts.
The journey was, for Bagsby, disappointingly brief. It took the great dragons only four days to cover the vast distance from Laga, in the far south, to the icy mountains that formed the northern and northeastern boundaries of the northern kingdom of Parona. Each day, Bagsby became more comfortable in the improvised dragon saddle, more inured to the cold of the high air, more accustomed to the motions of flight. By the fourth day, he felt himself an old veteran of such travel, though he still longed to share its joys with Shulana.
It was just past midday on the fourth day of the journey that Scratch began spiraling downward in broad circles, coming ever closer to the icy surface of the high, frozen, northern mountains. Bagsby sat comfortably in his seat, well wrapped in the furs and skins he had thoughtfully brought with him. He had taken them from the remains of the dragons’ first feast. At length, Scratch thundered to rest on a snow-covered ridge on the side of one of the mountains. Stretched out below were the fertile plains of Parona, separated from the mountains by a land of rolling, tall hills.
“Why have we stopped?” Bagsby called from his perch, surveying the ice and snow-covered granite. The occasional sturdy evergreen struggled for life in the bitter cold. Bagsby saw the steam of his breath, felt the chill start to bite into his hands, and dreaded the contact of his breeches and boots with the cold drifts of snow. “We can’t stop here—this is no place to camp,” he shouted.
“This is where we are going,” Scratch said.
Lifefire glided in just then, landing beside her brother/mate.
“Lifefire!” Bagsby called, having quickly learned that the female dragon was more amenable to both communication and reason than Scratch, whose main concern seemed to be his own magnificence. “Scratch says we are stopping here.”
“We are,” Lifefire said.
“I can’t stop here—I can’t survive in these mountains,” Bagsby complained. “I need to go to Parona, a great city on that plain down there,” Bagsby said, pointing vaguely to the southwest.
“This is where Scratch and I are going. Where you go now is your own affair,” Lifefire said, stating simple facts. “We agreed to give you transportation north in exchange for food. You provided the food. We provided the transportation. The deal is done.”
“The deal is not done,” Bagsby countered. “There is one thing you’ve forgotten.”
“What have we forgotten?” Scratch roared. “Get off of me.”
Bagsby didn’t budge from his seat. He had hoped to save this card to play at a later date, but left alone in the mountains he would starve or freeze before ever making it to Parona.
“You have forgotten,” Bagsby said, an impish grin crossing his face, “your treasure.”
“What?” both the dragons roared in unison.
“Yes, Scratch. You were so impressed with yourself you forgot all about your gold. And Lifefire, you were so busy telling Scratch what to do that you forgot about it, too.”
“Where is it?” Scratch roared, smoke starting to pour from his snout as he craned his huge neck around in a vain effort to see Bagsby. “Where is it?”
“It is safe,” Bagsby said.
“You were told to carry it for us!” Scratch roared.
“That was not part of our agreement,” Bagsby said, folding his arms contentedly.
Scratch howled in anger. A geyser of flame shot from his mouth, devouring the ice and snow in a swath more than thirty feet wide down the ridge. “Eat him!” he bellowed to Lifefire.
“No,” Lifefire said. “He’s right. That was not a stated part of our agreement.”
Scratch howled again.
“Hey, Scratch, breathe some more fire,” Bagsby called merrily. “It helps me keep warm.”
“What do you want in return for revealing the location of our treasure?” Lifefire said flatly.
“I want a ride to the capital of Parona,” Bagsby said.
“Out of the question,” Lifefire said. “The city folk would see us. Soon these mountains would be swarming with....”
“Not if we went at night,” Bagsby said, his grin intact. Dealing with dragons wasn’t as hard as he’d thought at first. They had incredibly literal, legalistic minds. You just had to negotiate very, very carefully.
Elrond sat cross-legged on the cool marble floor, gazing out beyond the elegant columns at the courtyard gardens, enjoying the abundance of green life that was fed by the bubbling springs there. It was true, he thought. Parona was the fairest and most elegant of
the human kingdoms. The land was broad, rich, and fertile—well watered and graced with a moderate climate that still provided the full variety of seasons so dear to elves. The people were generally prosperous, and the mercantile and noble classes had developed refined tastes in dress, manners, rhetoric, and the arts. Parona was still distinctly human—possessed of the strange combination of energy and sloth, purpose and purposelessness, tenderness and savagery that seemed to Elrond to characterize all the kingdoms of man.
Here, listening to the bubbling of the springs and lounging in the graceful cool of the palace courtyard, Elrond could almost forget that his mission was to negotiate a new alliance for the purpose of bloody warfare, warfare brought about by the same creatures who had built this beautiful palace! Elrond shook his head. He must remember Shulana’s learning: all men were not the same; human cultures and human individuals could be radically different from one another.
Parona, for example, was quite different from Heilesheim. Heilesheim was all bluster and force; a violent tide flowing across the world. Parona thus far had refused to become so; despite the pleadings of the invaded lands, Parona’s partners in the so-called Holy Alliance, Parona had refused to take up arms, preferring instead to maintain a posture of guarded neutrality—no doubt in the hope that bloodshed would not be needed to satisfy the demands of the voracious Heilesheim leadership.
Now Elrond would meet with the king of Parona, and the other surviving leaders of the Alliance in an attempt to drag Parona not only into war with Heilesheim, but also into a new understanding of the relations between elves and men that would allow elves to participate in those wars! Strange indeed, Elrond thought. Strange indeed.
Elrond looked again into the courtyard garden. There George and Marta sat peacefully, pleasant flights of their merry conversation borne to Elrond’s ears on the cool breeze that broke the heat of the summer day. Shulana sat by the edge of the bubbling springs, gazing into the blue clearness of the summer sky. Did she long, Elrond wondered, for the human who had duped her? The old elf lowered his head. Even if he were successful in his mission to Parona, there was still the matter of the Golden Eggs. If dragons, and the power to master them, were to fall into the hands of Valdaimon....
“Elrond of the Elven Preserve,” a servant’s formal voice called out from the large doorway that framed the entrance to the king of Parona’s main council chamber. The elf stood slowly and waved an arm to his companions in the garden, then smoothed his flowing tunic. The sheeny, pattern-less fabric seemed to cause rivers of color to flow down and around its length. George and Marta ceased their chattering and walked, as stately as possible, to Elrond’s side. Shulana joined them.
“The High Council of the Holy Alliance, the lords of the lands in conference assembled, will receive the special delegation from the Elven Preserve to discuss an urgent matter pertaining to the great issue of war and peace between elves and men,” the servant droned.
The foursome stepped through the high, double wooden doors, Elrond in the lead, the other three clustered behind. The wide, light council room was dominated by four sets of broad, double, stained-glass windows in the rear, thrown open to the breezy air, and a very large, round, hardwood table in the center. Arrayed around the table were the surviving lords of the conquered lands of the Holy Alliance. Most resplendent of these was King Harold of Argolia who, despite the loss of a kingdom, had lost neither his royal dignity nor his taste in clothes. Though his ermine-trimmed, heavy azure robe was much too warm for the day, causing beads of perspiration to form on his brow, Harold endured the discomfort to maintain the dignity of his kingdom.
The host of the gathering, King Alexis Aliapoulios, felt secure enough on his throne that he had no need of ostentatious display to reinforce his position. The king wore a simple ankle-length tunic of shimmering purple, accented with a plain band of gold trim about its neck, short sleeves, and hem. A thin, gold coronet graced his thick, black, curly hair. The king’s features—graceful and thin without being angular—were pleasing, but Elrond noticed a certain lack of passion on that face, a quiet contentment that defied the impulse to violent action. Elrond immediately sensed that his task would not be easy.
Elrond’s train of thought was interrupted by a sudden, short gasp from Shulana, a growl of anger from George, and a sudden exclamation from Marta.
“Sir John!” the large woman shouted, abandoning the sense of decorum she had carefully cultivated in anticipation of this meeting. “You little rascal, where have you been?” she bellowed, bounding past Elrond into the council room and half-trotting in excitement to the seat where Bagsby sat, at the right of King Harold.
“My dear Marta,” Bagsby said, rising and making a great bow with a flourish. “A pleasure to be reunited with a comrade in arms in the struggle against Heilesheim.”
Marta cooed with awe, for Bagsby’s splendor was second only to that of his patron, King Harold. Though that sovereign had long known Bagsby for what he truly was—a commoner and a thief—he was grateful to the little man for his heroic efforts against Heilesheim at battles before the debacle of Clairton, and at that great conflict as well. Enough of the Argolian treasury had escaped with the king to provide Bagsby, now legally Sir John, with a wardrobe appropriate to the royal esteem in which he stood. He wore a brown velvet doublet with gold brocade over a brilliant scarlet tunic that was barely visible beneath a tasteful, yellow, silk ascot. Tight, full-length breeches of brilliant green stretched down inside his fine, ankle-high, brown boots adorned with gold buckles. On the table beside him was a long cap of green, tapered at the front, with peacock feathers flashing in a spray from the left side.