“She wants to complete the sacrifice,” I said over the meal.
The other two nodded. “We heard last night.”
“She did not confide in you before that?”
“We are not longtime friends of hers. She thought we didn’t know. But we’d become close, talked about our decisions, …”
I watched her sleeping quietly still, and sighed. “It will be a waste … such a waste.”
Marija stroked my forearm lightly—a gesture of concern. “Is there nothing you can do?”
“It is her choice. I have shown her an alternative. There’s not much more that I can do.”
“Can’t you kill the Dragon?” asked Adrijana.
I thought a bit, then told them, “The Dragon is an old beast … well, beast is not quite the right term, for she is quite intelligent, wily and determined. She is a formidable combatant both physically and magically.
“But the days of Dragons are ending, and she knows it. What she doesn’t know is why. I’m not sure myself, but I think it is because mankind has become cleverer over the generations. The average knight could not face a mature Dragon, but a whole village can quickly deal with a young Dragon shortly out of the nest—and villages have! That vulnerability, and their failure to cooperate with each other, will be Dragons’ undoing in the long run.”
The two women nodded judiciously.
“But to try and take on an old Dragon in its lair is unprecedented. Well … not quite unprecedented. I, myself, tried to take on this very Dragon in my youth. A team of bold adventurers came to the valley, headed by a champion whose name I had heard many times before, Jacques-Pierre de la Fontaine. They got an audience with my father, who rejected out of hand their proposal to ‘rid the valley of this ancient evil.’
“I was there at that audience, ‘to practice your French’, my father said. ‘You are quite out of your league,’ he told the men matter-of-factly and dismissed them with a warning. ‘I and my family will be living in this valley long after you are gone. Don’t do anything that I will have to spend years undoing.’
“I couldn’t understand! I knew he hated the Dragon passionately. I knew he had tried to rid the valley of her. But he flatly turned these people down! I met with them later that evening at a tavern in Falcon’s Rest, the town below Falcon’s Aerie.
“De la Fontaine was as deft with his words as he was with his sword, and by the end of the evening I had joined his group, as we pledged to deal this Dragon a mortal blow!
“I recall that in the tavern the plan seemed exceedingly clever. It called for me to start the battle outside her lair, summoning … certain forces … while the rest of the party sneaked in to find the Dragon. I completed my summoning ritual and waited for the signal to rush in. It never came. I was the only survivor. I don’t know where the Dragon retired to, or how they found and confronted her, or what she did when they succeeded. Whatever happened in there, the Dragon felt so unthreatened that she did not bother to come out looking for accomplices. But though she did not set out to teach anyone a lesson, nonetheless I learned.”
The two looked encouragement at me to go on.
“One thing I learned is to sleep on a plan before executing it. Particularly a plan devised in a tavern with a bunch of drinking buddies!” I laughed bitterly.
“My plan for dealing with the Dragon since then has been to make her surroundings hostile enough that she will decide to move on to some place even more distant and more wild than our humble valley. And for the last few years I’m told the Dragon has wandered far from her present cave, though she has not occupied another. I have wondered if she is looking for a mate, or perhaps has already found him. If she lays eggs, they and the dragonlets that hatch from them will keep her in the valley for decades.
“There are excellent reasons to kill her. But there are even better reasons why killing a Dragon in its lair is a difficult thing, my ladies.”
I said it as if it were the end of the matter, but my story had awakened old thoughts and emotions. I found I was remembering how bitterly I hated the beast!
All that day, I thought about the Dragon. That afternoon, I summoned a Xorn—an earth elemental noted for its speed—and asked it to scout the caves of the Dragon’s lair for me. Although a gazelle among earth elementals, a Xorn is slow by surface standards, so it would be some time before I heard its report. While I waited, I pondered once again what tools I had for dealing with such a formidable creature.