The Dragon’s Appraiser: Part Three (2 page)

E
ven early in human history
, there were legends of thieves that had made their way into a dragon’s lair, absconding with rare and powerful artifacts. Both of his brothers had been stolen from, one from a guileless human man and the other from a particularly crafty fox spirit. There were even rumors that his sister’s lair had been raided by Mahel, the Kaletani god of wind and war.

No one had ever stolen from Sevrrn or his lair.

There were a lot of reasons for this. Aside his immense power, his lair was relatively isolated. In ancient times, he had used his power to bend the light around the island, making it invisible to all but the most magically inclined beings. When the realms began to drift apart, most immortal beings were forced into the other realm. The unique location of Sevrrn’s lair had allowed him to remain in the human realm while still retaining the bulk of his magical and physical strength.

With the majority of his competition confined to the other realm, all that remained were humans and a few exceptionally powerful beings such as himself. As the locals seemed to regard him as some sort of god, they never attempted to steal from him. Once every few centuries, some foolhardy foreign warrior would come seeking glory, only to meet a swift death between Sevrrn’s teeth. As for his own kind, it was rare that they stole anything. Amongst powerful immortals, information was the only true currency.

And so, from the very first object he’d placed in his lair—a piece of quartz that reflected the light in a rather fascinating way—to his more recent acquisitions—three Erdan coins he’d gotten on his trip to the marketplace—Sevrrn had never lost a single thing. That was why his current situation was particularly disconcerting.

Madja’s forehead was warm. Very warm. Warmer than any human forehead had any business being. There was also something wrong with the way she was breathing. Each time she inhaled, she never seemed to take in enough air. Her pulse was erratic; sometimes too fast and other times too slow. Her scent was…not good. Sweat drenched her body and she did not smell like an ocean breeze, but more like a beach at low tide—salty and stagnant.

After several unsuccessful attempts at waking her, Sevrrn picked her up and carried her to the lake. He hoped that the cool water would serve to lower her temperature, clean the stench of sweat, and bring her to her senses.

Once they were in the water, Madja did wake, but only long enough to vomit. Some of the vomit got on Sevrrn’s arm and she mumbled a barely coherent apology before her head lolled to the side and she slipped back into unconsciousness.

He washed them both up and then carried her back to her bed. He redressed her in a clean silk robe, so focused on the task that he hardly noticed he was handling her nude body. He considered covering her, but it seemed counterintuitive considering how warm she was and so he left her like that.

When Sevrrn returned an hour later, she was shivering. He placed his hand on her forehead to find that she was even warmer than before. It made no sense. Somehow, he managed to wake her.

“Hi,” she said, looking up at him through heavy-lidded eyes. Her voice was unnaturally hoarse and when she smiled her face seemed to tremble.

“I brought you chicken soup.”

Never before had Sevrrn uttered a phrase with so little confidence.

From his night in the human town, he had grasped the basic idea of what a soup was: food prepared in warm water. So, that was exactly what he made for her.

Madja tried to sit up, but Sevrrn took the task from her. He lifted her, easing her into his lap and leaning her back against his firm chest. He picked up the bowl containing the soup and handed it to her, feeling a curious mix of pride and…
apprehension
?

She lifted a spoonful of the liquid, then gave him a questioning look. “Which part of the chicken did you cook?”

Unfamiliar with chicken anatomy, he shrugged. “The insides?”

“I see.”

That was all she said before bringing the spoon to her lips. She sipped, swallowed, and then moved to dip the spoon back in the bowl. That was when she vomited again. This time it was all bile and the fit seemed to take forever to pass. Even after she’d expelled the contents of her stomach, she continued to heave air, inhuman sounds coming from her small body.

When it was finally over, she slumped against him. Crumbled in his arms, she looked more fragile than she ever had before. And he felt so…

Powerless
.

After holding her for a long while, Sevrrn spread her body out on the bed and lay beside her. He stayed with her like that, watching the sunlight pass over her, then the moonlight, and then the sunlight again. She did not wake, not to eat and not to drink.

In his lifetime, Sevrrn had never lost a single thing. And that was why it was particularly disconcerting when the smell of death began to creep over Madja.

M
adja felt
like she was reading a storybook, one that was missing most of the pages. Disjointed scenes played out before her and each time her mind thought it had grasped a strand of continuity, the page turned and she was somewhere else entirely.

Several times, she was interrogated. “What is wrong with you?” “Why is this happening?” “What do I do?” She wanted badly to assuage the raw desperation in that voice, but even if she could have found her voice, she didn’t know any of the answers.

Often, she saw the sky. When it was blue, the clouds looked like the cotton she’d once pulled from an old pillow. As the sky darkened, the clouds turned into unspun wool. Then there were no clouds at all and the sky was full of stars. That was when she flew.

As she soared through the sky, she tried to remember the constellations she’d learned as a child. But as soon as she began connecting the dots, the page turned again.

Yelling. Or maybe it was just elevated voices. Her head hurt a lot. The voices sounded familiar, yet indistinguishable. The more she tried to focus on them, the more her head hurt. Eventually, she gave up and let the page turn again.

Someone was holding her neck back and forcing a rancid liquid down her throat. She tried to struggle, but her body was incapable of doing more than a few small spasms. Even vomiting seemed like too much effort, though she did try. Her captor just made her swallow more of the vile liquid.

A woman’s voice. “There you go. You’re all right. Everything is going to be all right.”

Madja thought she saw her mother, but it may have been a trick of the light.

T
he innkeeper entered
the darkened room, the floorboards creaking beneath him. His frail body was bent with age and he walked with a pronounced limp, using a simplistic wood cane to support his weight. His existence appeared wholly miserable, and on another night, Sevrrn might have wondered why the man bothered with living at all. Tonight, however, there was only one thing on his mind.

“Irina has given her medicine to bring the fever down,” the innkeeper said as he made his way to the chair across from Sevrrn. “She’s sleeping now, but you can go in if you’d like.”

Sevrrn did not need his permission to see Madja. He waited in the dining room by his own choice.

Two days. For two days he had lain by Madja’s side, watching her tan skin turn pale and sallow, smelling her scent grow stagnant with decay and death. All the while, she had been hostage to delirium, unaware of her surroundings. Unaware of him. It was already abundantly clear that he could do nothing for her, so why should he bother going upstairs to see her like that? To watch her die?

“Will she live?” Sevrrn found himself asking.

He had never seen a creature come back once it began to smell of death, but he knew that over the years, humans had made great advancements in extending their lives beyond the limitations of their mortal bodies. This man was a prime example. A thousand years ago, perhaps even half that time, a human would have never lived without full use of his legs or with his eyes fogged by blindness.

The innkeeper rubbed his grizzled chin. “She was very sick, but if the fever goes down, she may be able to drink some broths without vomiting. If she can do that much, then chances are good that she’ll survive.”

If
.

The answer was meant to be optimistic, but Sevrrn found himself wishing the man had instead said that she would die. Then, Sevrrn could have at least dealt with whatever feelings that knowledge would arouse. Instead, he was left in the same limbo that he’d been in for days: hoping Madja would get better, but knowing she may not.

Hope
.

Had he ever hoped for anything before?

No, he decided. He had never felt such a pointless and acutely disturbing emotion.

Lost in grim contemplation, Sevrrn almost forgot that he wasn’t alone in the room.

“I lost my wife to sickness,” the innkeeper said. “Not this sickness. It was a slower one, one that couldn’t be cured by any known medicine. My daughter and I, we watched her waste away for two years. Not a day goes by that we do not miss her.”

Sevrrn frowned, his lips becoming a thin, white line. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I want you to know that I understand your pain.”

“I am not in pain.”

The words snapped out of him reflexively, and even as they spoke them, Sevrrn knew they might be a lie. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was he was feeling, but regardless, he would never expose such a weakness.

But after more consideration, Sevrrn realized how absurd that was. This man was no threat to him. So what if he knew that Sevrrn’s mental state was, perhaps, slightly compromised? What did a lion have to fear from a lamb knowing it had a splinter? It was with that final thought that Sevrrn found himself speaking.

“I should have never allowed her to become a part of my life,” he said. “She was too weak.”
Too human
.

Months ago, he had awoken even before she had breached the innermost confines of his lair. Bending the light around himself, Sevrrn had watched as she stumbled upon his treasure. He would have killed her right then, had she not been so…improbable. With her small stature and peasant’s clothing, she looked nothing like a warrior or even a rogue bent on claiming his treasure.

The few times that such men had tried stealing from him, it had gone one of two ways. They had either come seeking a particular item, in which case they bypassed all of the riches strewn about the floor in favor of seeking out their prize. Or, they came merely to plunder his lair, bringing with them many bags and filling them indiscernibly with whatever was closest to the tunnel they’d come from.

Madja had done neither of these things. She had explored his lair, picking some things up and putting them down, picking other things up and examining them, and even wearing some of the jewelry and garments. Once, she had put on a robe and crown, then grabbed a scepter and danced around, singing a bizarre song. She had not seemed in any hurry to leave, nor had she seemed to be searching for anything in particular. She had seemed to simply be enjoying herself, as though sneaking into a dragon’s lair was some sort of game.

For a while, Sevrrn forgot all about killing her and had found that he was enjoying himself as well. Even when he had later picked her up, dangling her in the air in front of his sharp teeth, he hadn’t really wanted to kill her.

He had wanted to keep her. To watch her. To see what silly thing she would do next.

Then, she had shown him another side of her. Not only did she possess an extensive knowledge of ancient artifacts, but she spoke of them with such genuine enthusiasm. Even when faced with a dragon—a sight that caused most men to soil themselves—Madja was capable of becoming lost in her own stories.

She…
enchanted
him.

Her words were like a spell and he had wanted to hear more of them, had wanted to know everything that was inside her strange mind.

There was a depth to her that he had never experienced in anything before. She possessed endless layers of intrigue. First, he had enjoyed watching her. Then, he found it even more interesting to hear the things she had to say. Then, she surprised him again when he found that he also enjoyed talking to her.

And then there was her body. Her nudity alone had done little for him in the beginning. But when he realized that she desired him, when he saw the way her female body reacted to his—skin flushing, nipples hardening, soft folds growing slick with desire—it had made him feel powerful in a way he had never before experienced. She was surrounded by more gold and treasure than any living human had ever seen, and yet what she seemed to desire most was his body. And his own body had reacted to that knowledge on a deep, primitive level.

When they were together, he was simply a male, claiming his female. Thrusting in and out of her in an age-old ritual of creation.

Perhaps that was why he had forgotten. Just as Madja lost herself in her stories, Sevrrn had lost himself in her body. He had forgotten that when the mating was over, they were what they had always been, always would be. A human and a dragon.

I should have killed her
.

If he had killed her on the night they first met, all she would be right now was a mildly confounding memory. Nothing but a girl who had once danced in a crown and sung a song about a king and his mule. He would never had known what it was like to hear the things she had to say, what it was like to tell her the things that were in his mind, what it was like to bury himself so deep inside of her that he forgot everything and wanted nothing more. He would never have known helplessness, nor this terrible, suffocating hope.

The innkeeper cleared his throat, once again pulling Sevrrn from his musings.

“It cannot be helped,” the innkeeper said. “From the day we are born, we are all marked for death. We must make the most of the time we have with one another, however brief.”

Perhaps that works for mortals
, Sevrrn thought distastefully.

Another thought occurred to him. “Had you known your wife would die, would you not have avoided her?”

He felt almost smug, certain that he had undermined the old man’s logic.

“Of course not. I would have loved her while I could.”

Sevrrn gave a reluctant nod and leaned back in his chair. “I suppose it is easy for you to say that. Your days are numbered. You are old and feeble and soon you will die.”

Sevrrn felt himself tense slightly, bracing for Madja’s smack. She would often smack his forearm when he made such blunt remarks, chastising him as one might an animal. He had always found it to be her most annoying of habits, but when the smack didn’t come, a disturbing coldness prickled over the surface of his skin.

Perhaps he would go visit her. He would tell her all of the ‘tactless’ things he planned on saying to people once she was gone. It would serve her right for dying.

For leaving me
.

Sevrrn’s attention was drawn back to the old man. Using his cane for leverage, he pushed himself up into a hunched, but standing, position. Sevrrn could hear the man’s weathered bones protesting as he hobbled across the room to stop at a wooden cupboard. He opened the drawer and moved a few objects aside before extracting a bulky object wrapped in burlap.

Even obscured as it was, the object seemed to hum with the barest trace of power, one that seemed to call to Sevrrn. How had he not noticed it before?

He watched, eyes narrowed in scrutiny as the man made his way back to the table. He set the object down and then managed to lower himself back into his chair.

“Ordinarily, I would not show this to a stranger,” the old man said, his reluctance evident in his voice. “However, you don’t strike me as the type of man who would have much need for money.”

His age-spotted hand unwrapped the twine bindings and then carefully pulled back the burlap folds, revealing a red scale. On its own, it appeared as nothing more than a flat, red rock. Perhaps a piece of jasper with a unique, golden iridescence. But Sevrrn could see it for what it was, could easily picture it notched alongside thousands like it, all coming together to form the magnificent red coat of his sister Valdyra. If he concentrated, he could even glean the last remnants of her scent.

“Traders aren’t touching our ports right now, but once they return, I’m selling it,” the old man said. “It’s worth two thousand silvers, enough to get my daughter a good husband once I’m gone.”

Sevrrn reached across the table and picked the scale up. He turned it over in his hands, frowning as he felt a twinge of nostalgia.

“So it is true,” he mused. “They harvested her body.”

Nearly a decade ago, his sister had been killed. Unlike the rest of them, she had not been bound by aether. She had somehow found a way to fly freely among the human realms, doing as she pleased and wreaking havoc where she went. But she was as careless as she was powerful, and that carelessness had led her to her demise.

The old man nodded his head. “I’ve heard that the queen of Allona has a gown made of shaved scales. There, they wear earrings and bracelets made from Valdyra’s bones. Merchants peddle all sorts of potions at exorbitant prices, using her blood as an adulterant. Because of her death, they’re now one of the richest and most powerful nations in the world. I suppose it pays to invest all of your money into cannons.”

Sevrrn placed the scale down onto the table, sliding back to the old man. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

“Valdyra was fabled to be the most powerful dragon, rivaling even the Kaletani gods in power. She was an immortal, born at the dawn of time. And now, she is nothing but jewelry and a novelty ingredient in love potions. Be it in twenty years, or in twenty thousand, we are all immortal, until the day we die.”

M
adja woke
with the worst sore throat of her life. Letting out a scratchy groan, she turned to bury her head into the pillow. The fabric was unusually rough and free of any embellishments. She took a deep breath, recognizing the scents of cotton and ocean air.

She knew she wasn’t in her pallet of silks, but was unable to recall where she was or how she got there. Her head, she realized, was throbbing with a massive headache and even remembering her own name seemed like too much of a chore.

She tried going back to sleep, but after a few minutes her curiosity got the best of her and she lifted her head from the pillow. She blinked several times, and then rubbed the crust from her eyes. Slowly, the room around her went from a senseless blur to a very familiar environment. The bedcovers were made of stitched paisley squares. A blue vase sat on a table made of driftwood, which rested by an open window. A cool breeze wafted in, and Madja could smell the sea, tinged with the vague odor of fish.

She was at the inn: the inn where she and her father had once stayed, and the inn where she and Sevrrn had gone to when they spent the night in Bern.

Sevrrn
.

Where was he and how had she ended up here of all places?

The optimist inside of her perked up. Had she dreamed the past couple weeks? Was this the night after the festival? Were they going to head back to the lair now? If so, she hadn’t yet asked Sevrrn that ridiculous question.

But her hope was swiftly dampened as the memories of the past two weeks came back to her. They were too real, to visceral to have been imagined. Not to mention, they all led up to her being sick. Very, very sick.

Madja massaged her temple as she remembered vomiting on Sevrrn, remembered him washing her in the lake, and remembered him trying to feed her. The rest was too disjointed for her to make sense of, but somehow, she had ended up here.

A terrible thought occurred to her then. Had Sevrrn left her?

She sat up with a start, her head and stomach protesting violently. She clutched one hand to her abdomen, the other flying up to her mouth as bile rose up in her throat. When she looked around and realized that there was nowhere to vomit, Madja reluctantly choked it down.

There were footsteps outside the door. A moment later, a familiar woman walked in. Madja recognized her as the innkeeper’s daughter. When they were young girls, she and Irina used to play together when Madja’s father was in Bern on business. Madja had given a fake name the last time they’d come and was a far cry from the barefoot, muddy-clothed urchin she once was, and Irina didn’t recognize her. Despite this, she still greeted Madja with warmth and genuine affection.

“You’re awake! I’m so glad!” There was a roll of clean towels tucked under her arm, a tray of food in one hand, and a cup and saucer in the other. “How are you feeling?”