A Natural History of Dragons Read online

  Did you not believe me when I wrote earlier of my deranged practicality? Perhaps this will convince you, then. We are not supposed to speak of such things, of course, but on that cold night, my mind performed an even colder arithmetic: it would be better to comply than to be forced, and compliance might preserve my life in the bargain. If I could bring myself to it, which was by no means certain.

  Whether I could or not, such tactics would not be my first resort. I answered the leader’s question honestly. “I’m here to study dragons.”

  By the perplexity in his expression, he thought at first that the differences of language were causing him to misunderstand. I watched him mouth the words, as if tasting them for consonants I might have pronounced wrong, the way Hingese will sometimes say “bear” when they mean “pear.” “Balaur,” I added helpfully, trusting that he would recognize the Vystrani word.

  His eyes widened. “Dra— You mean you are here to hunt them.”

  There were at the time big-game hunters who pursued dragons for sport, despite the impossibility of keeping trophies beyond the odd tooth or claw. I shook my head. “No, I mean study. For science.”

  “You?” he said in disbelief, gesturing at my disheveled and female self. (He did not use the formal pronoun.)

  “Not alone, no,” I said, feeling a twinge of guilt for overstating my role. “I am here with companions. A Scirling earl and his assistant, and my—my husband.” I stumbled over those last words, remembering my bleak calculations of a moment before.

  The leader scratched his beard. “Your husband, eh?”

  I wondered frantically whether to issue the usual melodramatic threats—If you hurt me, he will hunt you to the ends of the earth!—or to attempt to flirt my way free. Or to claim it was my unclean time; Staulerens, I thought, followed the Temple, even though their brethren back in Eiverheim had since become largely Magisterial. In the end, my conflicting impulses produced a smile.

  I cannot describe that smile for you. I have no idea what it looked like to the smuggler; to me it felt like an incoherent blend of hopefulness and desperation. Whatever its appearance, its effect was to make him burst out laughing.

  “Good God, woman,” he said, proving by his blasphemy that if he did follow the Temple, he did not do so very well. “You bat your eyelashes at me and expect me to believe you’re here for science?”

  “I am!” I said, the confusion of a moment before resolving quite neatly into indignance. “Vystrani rock-wyrms. I came along to do sketches—I’m an artist of sorts—at least, I would do sketches if we knew where the dragons were lairing and could get close. But so far—” That last word stretched out comically as inspiration ambushed me. “You must know! Rock-wyrms don’t normally attack people, or so Lord Hilford says—despite what happened to us on the way here—but they are territorial, and don’t like people coming near their lairs. You’re smugglers, aren’t you? So you must know the mountains very well. Surely you know where the dragons are. Oh, if you tell us how to find them, I’m certain Lord Hilford would pay you handsomely. We’ve wasted so much time already.”

  By the time I ran out of breath and words, everyone was staring. In my excitement, I had risen up onto my knees, gesticulating with my bound hands like a Chiavoran street-seller. There was no chance of my captor doubting me now; I would have to have been a stage actress to feign that kind of demented enthusiasm. What sort of woman, upon being kidnapped by smugglers in the middle of the night, would jump for joy at the thought of questioning them about dragons?

  He didn’t doubt me, but he didn’t entirely believe my words, either, simply because they made no sense. “Why do you care about dragons?”

  I’m afraid I stammered in trying to answer; too many replies attempted to come out of my mouth at once. The scrimmage was won by a simple truth, with me from the moment I held little vinegar-soaked Greenie in my palm. “Because they’re beautiful. And, and—for science, because we know so very little about them. I don’t know why Lord Hilford chose Vystrana, except that he hates the desert, and it’s relatively close to Scirland, as such things go. But—” I belatedly tried to gather my wits. “We are here for scholarly purposes, I assure you. My father has some Minsurgrad brandy that may very well have come through these mountains by, shall we say, an unofficial route; he would not thank me if I interfered with your work.”

  My unwise reference to that work hardened his face, but it did not produce violence, as it might have done. The leader sat back on his heels, pulling the kerchief through his fingers as if to smooth it out. “You said three others.” I nodded. “All here to study the dragons?”

  I nodded again, and he glanced over at one of his companions—not the young lover. The other man knelt to mutter in his ear, and between the low volume and the dialect I could not catch a word. The leader scowled, and I tensed. But the scowl, it seemed, was not for me. “Your friends,” he said, addressing me. “They can make the dragons stop attacking people?”

  My gaze slid past him to the other men. Now that I looked properly, I saw that one leaned on a crutch that looked new-cut, and the clothing of another was stained with an ominous amount of blood, likely not his own. Of course they would be in danger, as much as or more than the people of Drustanev.

  Could we make the dragons stop? We had debated possible causes, but without observational data, it was all just speculation. And until we knew the cause, I could only guess at whether we’d be able to affect it.

  It is the prerogative of old women to give unlooked-for advice, so let me offer you this, friend reader: when you are lost in the woods and your safe return home depends on telling a Stauleren smuggler that you can help him, that is not the time for a scientific evaluation of your chances. It is the time for smiling and saying, “Yes, absolutely.”

  The leader considered this, then stood without replying and went off to the side, gathering his men with him. No one bothered to keep watch over me; there was no need. What was I going to do, run off into the night? I had no sense of which way Drustanev lay, except “downhill.” And there were wolves and bears in these mountains—not to mention angry dragons.

  My interlocutor had made some effort to speak distinctly while addressing me, but in conversation with his men it all dissolved into an incomprehensible smear. Besides, I rather thought it would not do to seem like I was eavesdropping. I occupied myself by trying to straighten my nightgown and robe, then hunching over into the most heat-conserving posture I could achieve.

  To my surprise, after a minute or so of this, a rough and smelly blanket was dropped over my shoulders. I looked up in time to see the young lover returning to the group. Even that small gesture of charity gladdened my heart, and changed my perspective on these men. They were not the romanticized figures you think of when you hear the words “Stauleren” or “smuggler”—but neither were they vicious cutthroats, ready to murder at the first opportunity. They were simply men, mostly on the youngish side, who made their living by carting boxes of illicit cargo through the mountains. It is a trade that has gone on for ages in this region, though the boundaries, goods, and carriers have changed with time; as occupations go, it is nearly as venerable as sheep-herding, and the local boyars rarely rouse themselves to stop it.

  Even the “leader” seemed a democratic sort, consulting with his fellows before arriving at a decision. This did not take very long, though. Soon they broke up, and he returned to kneel before me. “At first light,” he said, “we take you back down to the village. You tell your men we want to meet with them, at the spring below the cliff. Can they find the place?”

  I had drawn it on the map myself. “Yes.”

  “We want money,” he said. “And help. Money first; then we tell them where the dragons are. Then they quiet the beasts down. So long as they do that, and don’t try to interfere with us, we’ll leave you alone.”

  He hadn’t named a figure, but bargaining over the price of my safety was a task I would gladly leave to the gentlemen. “I understand.”r />
  The smuggler reached out and untied my hands, then my feet. “Get some sleep.”

  He turned to go, and the words burst out of me: a deep-seated Scirling impulse toward good manners, entirely out of place in my current surroundings. “I am Isabella Camherst.”

  He cast a glance back over his shoulder at me, eyebrows raised. Then a hint of a smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Chatzkel,” he said. Only his given name: well, I could not blame a criminal for not wanting to identify himself more than was necessary.

  “Thank you,” I said, and he went on his way.

  By then it was long past the time that my midnight wakefulness should have ended. With my blood still racing, though, and the ground hard and cold beneath me, I did not manage a second sleep that night.

  TEN

  My triumphant return — A productive meeting — Progress at last in our work

  Sunrise, as seen from high on a mountain, is a truly glorious thing.

  The light cut like a knife blade through the trees, setting aglow the mist that had gathered in the valleys below. Its cold brilliance hurt my eyes, but I was glad to see it all the same; it meant I would soon be going—

  Not home. In fact, that sleepless dawn in the mountains brought with it the strongest tide of homesickness I have ever felt. I often miss Scirland during my travels; there is a great deal to be said for the place where one need not think, all the time, about the right thing to do or say, but simply behave according to well-worn habit, and that feeling has never been more intense than on my morning with the smugglers. But I had spent enough time in Gritelkin’s dark house for it to feel like the closest thing to safety I would find in Vystrana. I very much wanted to return.

  My cold-stiffened legs had other ideas. I tried to stand, failed entirely, and turned my back on the men so I could massage my calves and thighs into something resembling life. My feet remained frozen, but I could not bring myself to beg for stockings. No one gave me breakfast, either; I suspected, by their lean and hungry looks, that they had little enough for themselves.

  Most of the men stayed behind; the leader and two others formed my escort. Each carried a rifle and a pistol, which I hoped were only for such wildlife as we might encounter on the way. I tried to return the blanket to the young lover with a smile and thanks in Eiversch, but he pressed it back onto me, and in truth I was glad for its warmth as we began our hike.

  At first I was also glad to be traveling on my own feet, rather than being carried like a sack of meal. Three falls later, my joy had been firmly tempered. My cold feet were clumsy, and my attire, as I said before, was quite unsuitable; clutching the blanket about myself meant I could not use my hands for balance, until I knotted it around my shoulders like a lumpy shawl. I attempted to question the men about how they survived in the mountains, but was ordered into silence; and so we went down to Drustanev.

  Most of the way. Before we came within sight of the village, however, we heard sound echoing up the narrow valley: shouts, and the barking of dogs. One of the men immediately grabbed my arm; the smuggler threw up a silencing hand. I swallowed a moan as my slow, sleep-deprived mind realized what the racket must be.

  Jacob had turned out the population of Drustanev to search for me.

  Guiltily, I thought what his morning must have been like. He awoke not long after dawn; I was not in bed. He went downstairs, thinking to find me, but found no sign. Dagmira or the cook might have arrived by then, and neither knew where I was. A quick glance would show that I had gone out without dressing. My tracks would lead out of the village, and then …

  I had seen the care with which the smugglers broke and hid our trail on the way down. They might well have done the same during my abduction, which meant the search would not lead back to their camp. But to my husband, it would look like I had wandered inexplicably out of the village—then vanished.

  And the most obvious explanation would be that I had been eaten by a dragon.

  My heart ached for the panic I must have caused him. Ached, and then tightened in fear for what might yet go further wrong. “Let me go on alone,” I said in an urgent whisper. “You don’t wish to be seen, do you? I can find my way from here. And I’ll send the men to meet with you as planned.”

  Daylight had revealed the leader’s face more clearly: weather-worn features, with blue Stauleren eyes and a fortnight’s growth of beard. That latter did not obscure the clenching of his jaw as he considered me. “You have my word of honor,” I said, drawing myself up with as much dignity as I could manage in my current state.

  Whether the word of a Scirling gentlewoman meant anything to him, or whether he simply decided it wasn’t worth the trouble of keeping me, I do not know. But he waved me on with a curt hand. “Tomorrow,” he said as I passed him. “The spring beneath the cliff.”

  I resolved that someone would be there to meet him, if I had to go by myself.

  The barking grew louder as I scrambled down toward the searchers, trying to put distance between myself and my erstwhile hosts before I drew anyone’s attention. When I judged I had gone far enough, I began to shout, and soon they found me.

  I will spare you the tedious details of what followed. (Much of it escaped me anyway, owing to my inferior grasp of Vystrani.) For posterity’s sake, however, I should note the reactions of two individuals upon my return.

  The first, of course, was Jacob, who was leading the search. His first action upon seeing me was to crush me in the tightest embrace we had ever shared; and if the blanket over my shoulder was damp by the time we parted, I made no comment on it. “Thank the Lord you’re safe,” he said, and then on the heels of that, “Where in heaven have you been?”

  He asked that question several more times before I managed to give him an answer, though not for lack of trying on my part; every time I opened my mouth, he declared anew his relief over my safe return, and soon this was further interrupted by orders to call off the search. We were halfway back to Drustanev—I had to insist to Jacob that I was perfectly capable of walking, or he might have carried me—before I could say, “It’s quite a complicated story, and I will tell it, but perhaps we should wait until Lord Hilford and Mr. Wilker can also hear. But oh, Jacob—I have solved our problems. I know where the dragons are lairing.”

  “Dragons!” he exclaimed, stopping dead in a damp meadow. “Isabella, what are you talking about? Were you attacked?”

  “No, no,” I said, fending off a renewed attempt to check me for injury. He had already catalogued the various scrapes resulting from my falls, and fussed over them as if they were a collection of broken legs. “Rather, I don’t know; someone else does—”

  I remembered that we were surrounded by men from Drustanev, and stopped before I could say any more. We were speaking Scirling, of course, which I doubted any of the villagers understood, but better safe than sorry. Jacob finally agreed to wait for the full story, but I think it was more out of conviction that I was overwrought by my experiences than anything else.

  The other noteworthy reaction came later, after I had been fed, doctored, buried under a pile of fire-warmed blankets, and finally permitted to dress. Dagmira undertook this task, and lambasted me up one side and down the other for my stupidity in going out like that.

  “There was a man lurking about,” I said in frustration, trying to stop her tirade. An indiscretion—I had not meant to bring up the man—and one that did no good.

  “A man? A man! Of course there was a man,” she said furiously. “Everyone knows Reveka has her lover, ever since her husband died. One of those Stauleren smugglers. Anyone could have told you that. No need to go running around the mountains to find out!”

  So much for my indiscretion in mentioning him; the smugglers, it seemed, were no secret at all in Drustanev. Except, of course, where the Scirling interlopers were concerned. “Would you have told me, if I asked? Would anyone?”

  “Of course not,” Dagmira snapped. “It’s none of your business.”

  I forebore to
point out that then there was need to go running about the mountains. My fractured interactions with Dagmira—nothing like so fluent as I represent them here, but for my readers’ sakes I will not subject you to a reconstruction of my appalling grammar and circumlocutions—had made it clear to me that the villagers of Drustanev had very little understanding of, let alone sympathy for, our reasons for being there. Gritelkin, I suspected, had not told them much, except that we intended to tramp around the mountains looking for dragons. As a result, we were an intrusion, an imposition upon their lives, and the sooner we were gone the better. As Dagmira said, their affairs were none of our business.

  I let her finish dressing me, and went at last to speak with the three men whose affairs very much were my business—as mine were theirs.

  They let me tell my story in peace, barring the occasional yelp of alarm or disbelief from Jacob. He withheld actual comment until I was done, though, at which point he dropped his face into his hands. “I should never have let you come here,” he said through their muffling barrier.

  “I took no real harm,” I said defiantly. “A scraped knee, at worst. And how much time have I saved you? We could waste the entire summer up here, waiting for Mr. Gritelkin to come back—well, this way we can get on with our research.”

  “If this smuggler can help,” Mr. Wilker said, not bothering to hide his doubt. “His trade may teach him a great deal about the mountains—but dragons?”

  “You can hardly know the one without the other—not if you wish to avoid being eaten,” I said.

  Lord Hilford huffed thoughtfully, sending his moustaches fluttering. “I tell you again, they do not ordinarily attack people. But we stand to lose very little by following this lead. Mrs. Camherst has given her word that the men will be paid for her return; we cannot dishonor that. Furthermore, it sounds likely that the smugglers can tell us more about the dragons’ sudden aggressiveness, which will be of value even without directions to their lairs. Yes, it will do,” he said, with a decisive air. “Tomorrow we will go to meet them.”