Dragon's Gold Piers Anthony and Robert E. Margroff Kelvin of Rud, book 1 CONTENTS PROLOGUE Chapter 1. Dragon Scal Chapter 2. Dragon Ire Chapter 3. Memories Chapter 4. Highwayman Chapter 5. Captive Chapter 6. Hero Chapter 7. Gauntlet Chapter 8. Boy Mart Chapter 9. Girl Mart Chapter 10. Auction Chapter 11. Leader Chapter 12. Dragonberries Chapter 13. The Flaw Chapter 14. Messages Chapter 15. Zatana Chapter 16. Doubts Chapter 17. Queen's Ire Chapter 18. Roundear Chapter 19. Skagmore Chapter 20. Nurse Chapter 21. Travel Chapter 22. Tommy Chapter 23. Kian Chapter 24. Irony Chapter 25. Interpretation Chapter 26. Dragon Slayer Chapter 27. Blood Sorcery Chapter 28. Sympathetic Magic Chapter 29. Queen Chapter 30. Recovery EPILOGUE PROLOGUE THE FUGITIVE DID NOT know that his arrival at the small Rud farm was preordained. He would have scoffed at the notion, had he been told. All he knew was that his injured leg hurt abominably, that he was so filthy he was disgusted, and that he was too tired to fight or flee if discovered. It was night again. He had hardly been aware of the passage of time since his escape, except for the awful sun by day and the cruel chill by night. Dehydration and shivering, with little between except fear and fatigue. Yet this was a decent region, he knew, if viewed objectively. He heard froogs croaking loudly in the nearby froogpond, and corbean stalks rustling in the breeze. Appleberries and razzelfruits perfumed the air and set his stomach growling. The natives claimed that these bitter fruits could be charmed to become sweet, but he refused to credit such impossible claims. He was not yet so far gone as to believe in magic! But they certainly looked good! Hunger—there was another curse of the moment! But thought of food had to be pushed aside, as did dreams of a hot bath and a change of clothing. He had come here, he reminded himself sternly, to steal a horse. He hated the necessity, for he regarded himself as an honorable man, but he seemed to have no choice. He crept nearer to the cottage, orienting on its single faint light. How he hoped that there would be no one awake to challenge him! He did not know how close the Queen's guardsmen were, or how quickly they would appear the moment there was any commotion. How ironic it would be to die ignobly as an unsuccessful horse thief! He paused, studying the light. Far off there sounded the trebling screech of a houcat. His pursuers had lost the trail last night, and he doubted that they would swim the river to pick it up again. There were hazards in that water as bad for guardsmen as for thieves, and only a truly desperate man would have been fool enough to risk it. Perhaps the guardsmen thought him dead already. This fool, for the time being, was almost safe. He came close and peered cautiously in the window. A slender girl sat reading by the flickering light of a lamp. He gazed at the coppery sheen of her hair, and the planes other somewhat pointed face, and the gentle swell and ebb of her bosom as she breathed. How lovely she seemed! It was not that she was beautiful, for by his standards she was not, but that she was comfortable and quiet and clean. A girl who read alone at night: what a contrast to the type of woman he had known! There was an aura of decency about her that excited his longing. He could love such a girl and such a life-style, if ever given a chance. For a moment he was crazily tempted to knock on the window, to announce himself, to say, "Haloo there, young woman, are you in need of a man? Give me a bath and some food, and I shall be yours forever!" But he was not yet so tired that no reason remained. If he did that, she would start up and scream, and the guardsmen would come, and it would be over. He ducked past the window and tiptoed to the barn. He held his breath as he tried the latch on the stable door. It opened easily, without even a squeak. This was a well-maintained farm. He felt a certain regret that this should facilitate the theft of an animal. It might have been more fitting to steal from a sloppy farm, but a squeaky door would have been an excellent guardian. From inside came the scent of horse and hay. He felt around in the dark just past the door and found the halter exactly where it should be. The arrangements in good Rud barns were standard. There was the snap of a broken twig. He turned. She stood there in the wan light from the window, garbed in a filmy nightdress and a shawl. The first thing he noticed was the way her firm slim legs showed in gauzy silhouette. The second thing he noticed was the pitchfork she held at waist height, aimed at his chest. He swallowed, trying to judge whether he could dodge aside quickly enough to avoid the thrust of those sharp tines, and whether he retained the strength to wrestle the implement away from her. And if he did, what, then? How could he hurt a girl he would rather embrace? Perhaps it was a trick of the inadequate light, but her eyes seemed to be the exact color of violets back on his native Earth. "Speak!" she said. "What is your business here?" Her voice sent a thrill through him; it was dulcet despite its tone of challenge. What use to lie? He hated this whole business! "I came to steal your horse. I would rather have stolen your heart." And what had possessed him to say that? "You are a thief? A highwayman?" She hadn't thrust her fork at him. That was a good sign. He decided to tell her the rest of it. "I'm not an ordinary thief, not even a good one, as you can see," he said with difficulty. "I just had to have a horse. I know you won't believe that I'm not a criminal." "Why didn't you come openly to my door, then?" "I—I looked in your window, and saw you reading. You were so—so nice! I thought you would scream if you saw me. I—I'm a fugitive from the Queen's dungeon. I know that doesn't make me a hero, but maybe it carries a bit of weight." "You have round ears," she said, her voice assuming a soft, strange quality. "You cannot be of this planet. Certainly you are no ordinary thief. Introduce yourself, Roundear." She seemed to have no fear of him, only a certain caution. It was almost as if she had been expecting him! "John Knight, of Earth," he said. "A name may be an omen. Knight," she said. She smiled a mysterious witching smile and lowered the fork. "You may call me Charlain. We shall be married on the morrow." He stared at her. Then, tentatively, he smiled. She returned the smile. Then, unaccountably, he laughed, and she laughed with him. She took him inside the house and gave him a bath and some food, and when he was clean and fed she kissed him and took him to her bed. He was so tired that he fell almost instantly to sleep despite the presence of her warm body beside him. He didn't even care that this might be a ruse to lull him, so that she could safely turn him in to the Queen's guardsmen. He had to believe in her. Thus did John Knight first encounter the woman he was to marry. She practiced fortune-telling, so had known he was coming: a round-eared man who was a fugitive from the Queen. She had told no one of this vision, so knew that his arrival was no trap by the Queen. She had known that the man would be completely unprepossessing, but would be the one she could truly love, and that though he had known a woman before her, he would never know one after her. They married on the morrow, in a secret ceremony, and that evening he was enough recovered to remain awake in her bed for some time. Their life together had begun abruptly, but had an unspoken understanding that was at times mysterious and at other times thoroughly natural to him. The following year their round-eared baby was born, and two years after that their point-eared baby. The prophecy that John Knight had not known about was on its way to fulfillment. His life was relatively placid after he settled; not so, that of his children. CHAPTER 1 Dragon Scale THE ROAD WOUND LIKE a twisting dragon's tail. Through rank underbrush and skeletal trees. Past boulders the size of cottages. Along a sparkling mountain stream bordered with high piles of debris left by the late spring floods. It did not look like the setting for the beginning of the fulfillment of a long-term prophecy. Two slim figures walked the road, carrying travel-sacks and leading a donkey. One was sixteen, tall enough to be handsome were it not for his round ears. The other was fourteen but looked twelve, with pointed ears. Both wore the garb of Rud rustics: heavy leather walking boots, brownberry shirts, greenbriar pantaloons, and lightweight summer stockelcaps whose long tips ended in tassels of blue and green yarn. They could hardly have looked less like folk destined to commence the fulfillment of a significant prophecy. Kelvin, the elder one, played on his mandajo as he walked, picking out the accompaniment to "Fortune Come a-Callin'," a Rud tune of great antiquity. The three-stringed lute of Rud could be beautiful when properly evoked, but Kelvin was not playing it well. Some had magic that related to music, and some did not; some thought they had magic when they did not. Kelvin was of the latter persuasion, but he wouldn't have cared if he had realized. His thoughts were far away. Jon, the younger one, brushed back long yellow hair. A stranger, looking at Jon's alert greenish eyes and large ears and face that showed no hint of a beard, would have dismissed this as a lively boy. The stranger would have been mistaken, for Jon was Kelvin's sister. Because it could be dangerous for a girl to go alone into the countryside of Rud, the parents had tried to restrict her to the farm and village. But Jon was an adventurous sort, always eager to go out exploring. Realizing that she could not be restrained, they had finally yielded with two stern strictures: always go in company with Kelvin, and go as a boy. That suited Jon just fine, for though she would die rather than say it, she looked up to her brother, and wanted to share his activities. She also rather liked masquerading as a boy, for though her parents had been happy to have a girl, Jon herself envied the freedoms and prospects of the other sex. She had become almost letter-perfect at the masquerade, but now nature was playing on her a disgusting trick. Her hips were broadening and her breasts were swelling. It was getting harder to look the part, and it would be impossible without her solid shirt. What would she do when her rebellious front became too pronounced to conceal? She was disgusted, and the very thought put her in a bad mood. Now Jon peered into the underbrush and up into the branches of the trees, looking for trouble. She carried a sturdy leather sling whose pocket held a carefully positioned rock of the required squirbet-braining size. Just let one of those creatures show its snoot now...! "Fortune come a-callin', but I did hide, ah-oo-ay," Kelvin sang with imperfect pitch. "Fortune come a-callin', but I did hide, bloody saber at my side, ah-oo-ay, ah-oo-ay, ay." "You call that old pig-gutter you're packing a saber?" Jon demanded. She spoke with deceptive good humor, her eyes wandering over to her brother. To the dark handle of the war souvenir protruding from its worn and cracked scabbard. Kelvin lowered his instrument. His thoughts leaped ahead to the deepening gloom and the forbidding mountain pass. "We're not riding either," he said, referring to another verse. "No, but we would be if you hadn't let that horse dealer swindle us," Jon said. She lifted the halter and made a grimace of distaste at their pack animal. "A horse to ride would be great, but you, you jackass, had to buy a jackass!" "I thought," Kelvin said lightly, his attention focusing a bit, "that I could put two of them to work. You and Mockery." "Mockery's the name for it!" Jon snapped. "Anyone but you would have been put off by the name, but you had to go and hand over our last two rudnas for it!" "Jon, Jon, show faith in thy elder," Kelvin teased. "We hadn't the money for a horse, and Mockery was cheap. We'll need his strong back, and yours, to pack out all the gold we'll find." Jon made an uncouth noise. "If he ever lets us load! It took us half the morning to get our pitifully few supplies strapped to his ornery back. He's got a kick like a mule! I suppose when we want our tent, he'll start all over." "Not so, little brother Worrisome Wart!" Kelvin always referred to her in the masculine, maintaining the masquerade; what started as a game had soon enough become second nature. "It's only that he's jealous. We have the lighter loads. Smart animal, Mockery. Smart enough to know when we're in dragon country. Anything that smart, including me and possibly ye, knows the danger." "Do we, Kel?" Her voice was almost pleading. Kelvin narrowed the bluish eyes that seemed almost as strange as his rounded ears, in Rud. This was not like Jon. Usually she tried with pretty good success to appear more recklessly masculine than any ordinary boy could be. Until today she had seemed if anything too confident. What was bothering her? "Jon, if you're afraid—" "Ain't that!" Jon snapped. "Not any more than you are, anyway. But curse it, Kel, if I'm going to get et up by a dragon, I at least want a chance." "Few people have a chance," Kelvin retorted. "Dragons are big and strong and mean. If you run into one, it will devour you fast. Once it bites off your head, which I'm sure it will do early on, I can promise you that you will hardly feel a thing." "Great!" Jon said, not appreciating the humor. "So we just stay away from it?" "That's all anyone with any sense does. Or," he added, giving a slight nod at Mockery, "anything with sense." "But dragons have been killed, haven't they?" "A few times by heroes with armor and war-horses and lances. You know that, Jon. A few have fallen, but not to the likes of us." "But if we had a good sword, and a war-horse, and a lance—" "We'd get et, just the same," Kelvin said confidently. "You ever see me ride a war-horse? Or use a sword except for hacking brush? It takes training, Jon; it doesn't just happen." Jon subsided into silence as they plodded on. The road was becoming narrower with every mile. The debris piles were getting higher and higher. Now the mountain walls seemed to lean inward. The sun hid its face behind the peak of the mountain to the west. The air became noticeably cooler as the bird and animal sounds became more hushed and were heard less often. "I don't like this place," Jon said, looking about at the tangled masses of trees the flood had left. "It's ugly." "Nobody comes here for a picnic, Jon. Riches aren't found in the nicest places. If we're to get gold, we have to put up with ugliness." Jon flushed a little and looked away. Now and then something Kelvin said did have a noticeable effect. But he wondered whether he should caution her about showing any color, that was a trait associated more with girls, and could give her away. He decided to keep quiet; Jon didn't like to have her female mannerisms pointed out. There was a certain irony in this, because in truth she was becoming a rather pretty figure of a girl when she let herself be. Kelvin estimated the time. It was getting to be late in the afternoon. Soon they would stop to build camp, and then early tomorrow they'd find gold. Or at least they'd search for it. If the spring floods had washed it down from the high mountains, they might find nuggets of it along the stream. That was their hope; that was what made this an adventure instead of just a chance to explore. A chance for Jon to be a boy—perhaps one of the last chances, for soon there would be no easy way to conceal her nature. He wondered how he would feel if he knew that he was really a girl, and would have to resign himself to becoming a homemaker and never going out exploring again. He shuddered; he knew he would hate it. He wished he could at least express some sympathy for Jon, but he couldn't; it would come out all wrong, and she would be furious. "Gods, Kel, look what I found!" He blinked as he strained his sight to see what shone so brightly in Jon's hands. His eyes were not the best; if Jon's curse was being a girl, his own was being inadequate in various ways like this. Jon had reached down into a clump of ugly brown weeds, and now held something that filled her cupped palms. Carefully, Kelvin took it from her, bringing it close enough for a decent focus. It was a scale that could have come from a dragon's neck. It had the heft of gold, and some luster through the grime. It could be very valuable. "It's a dragon scale, isn't it? Isn't it?" she demanded, hopping about in her excitement. "Easy, Jon, easy," he cautioned her. "Don't shout or do anything to attract a dragon's attention. This could be fresh, and—" "Think I'm crazy?" Jon asked. Then, "It is, isn't it? Gold that migrated to the scale from the nuggets swallowed by the dragon? It's just as the books said! Just like the shellfish that get metal in their shells from ingesting bits of metal and then become unfit to eat! We're lucky, oh so lucky!" She was dancing again. Kelvin stopped her with an upraised hand. "Quiet, fool! The dragon could be in hearing distance!" For the scale of a dragon meant danger as well as wealth, and suddenly he was quite nervous about this aspect. "Around here?" Jon whirled happily. "If that's so, why isn't smart-ass Mockery a-rearin' and a-rarin' and kicking up his heels? You know dragons shed scales! It probably happened weeks ago." "Yes," Kelvin agreed. "But we can't be sure. We can't be sure it's not lurking and waiting for us." Jon gave him a look of contempt. She had always been bolder than he. "Hah. Do you think that was just dropped?" She pointed to a pile of dried dragon dung. Kelvin looked at the bits of white bone sticking out of the dung, and shivered. That, he thought, could be the remnant of a human being. "We have to be careful, Jon," he said. "We have to check around here to make sure there's no fresh sign. If a dragon's been around in the last day or so, we want to move out. If we don't find fresh sign, we'll set up the tent, cook the squirbet you bagged, eat, and get a good night's sleep. Then, first thing tomorrow, we'll search." His hands felt clammy as he put the scale into a pocket of his pantaloons. The very notion of a nearby dragon gave him the cold sweats. But Jon was already climbing a high mound of rocks and weeds and piled-up tree trunks. As usual she did not appear to have heard a word Kelvin said. CHAPTER 2 Dragon Ire CONTROLLING HIS FEELINGS AS much as he could, Kelvin petted Mockery and made plans for putting up the tent and cooking the squirbet Jon had knocked over earlier during the day. He took off Mockery's pack, put hobbles on the beast, went to the nearest sapling, and cut a sturdy tent pole with his incredibly dull sword. "I found another! Two more!" Jon cried from halfway up the pile. Kelvin's heart leaped. He controlled it. Careful, careful, he thought. Move too fast, make too much noise, and the two of them could become bones in dragon dung. Were those other bones human? Had the dragon eaten the last intrepid gold-hunters to brave this place? "Kel, there's six of them! All in a bunch, and stained! The dragon must have been in a fight with another dragon." So that was why so many downed trees, Kelvin thought. The flooding river hadn't done it all; dragons had added to the carnage of this region. He shivered in spite of himself as he imagined the size of the beasts. Two of them? That would account for the ground being grassless over there and for the dirt showing. Where would the loser go afterward, he wondered, and thought again that he really should be curbing Jon's noisy explorations. "Let's make our camp now, Jon. Please." He hated sounding like a coward, but the possible presence of a dragon made him feel very much like one. Jon ignored him, clambering nimbly on up the rock pile. She had no foolish concern about monsters! He picked at a blister on his hand as he waited for her to finish with the pile and come down. Just how was their tent to be constructed? And what would they eat? The appleberry bushes had been savaged, too; even his most ardent charm was unlikely to make their fruit edible here. "Kel, I've found..." Jon's voice trailed off, forcing Kelvin to look around for her. He spotted her atop a jumble of boulders piled amidst tree trunks, the rock coated with decomposed vegetation and sandy soil from the river bottom. "Kel, I see... I think I see the dragon!" "What!" "The dragon. I think it's dead. It's dead, Kel! It got licked in the fight. All those scales! We're rich, Kel! Come on up, and... oh-oh." "What is it, Jon?" His heart thumped. His throat dried instantly. "Oh, Kel, it's alive, but I think it's almost dead. I think we can kill it and—" "Jon, come away from there!" If the dragon was alive, but badly injured, they might be able to escape. "A fortune, Kel! A fortune! Kel, I'm going to sling a rock at it." Total folly! "No, Jon, no!" Kelvin croaked, his throat so tight with fear he could hardly speak. But the intrepid little sister was already twirling her sling. With the skill of long practice and a natural knack she let fly and followed through with her usual "Got him!" Kelvin couldn't speak; his horror had closed off his throat entirely. He held his breath as Jon stared down the opposite side of the pile. What was she seeing there, anyway? "It sees me, Kel," her voice came back, rising with sudden alarm. "It's awake. It—Kel, it's coming for me!" Kelvin's voice tore loose from his constricted throat. "Run, Jon, run! Back here!" He heard the scramble as Jon moved. Her head appeared at the crest. She seemed to be moving slowly, but Kelvin realized that this was really the effect of his terror: the world seemed to have slowed almost to a standstill. Now it came to him: this huge pile of debris had been kicked up by the fighting dragons! Fighting? Then why wasn't the loser dead? A dragon never left prey or an enemy alive; he would chew it to bits just out of spite, even if he wasn't hungry. Dragons liked to kill, to make blood splatter! Everyone knew that! When they fought each other, the loser always died, because no dragon ever fled from anything. It couldn't have been a fight! Then what had happened? Obviously this dragon had been only sleeping. But why had it scratched up such a mountain of refuse? For he was sure now: the natural hill here had been enhanced by more than flood refuse. Dragons were known to be as lazy as any other creature; they saved their energy for important things like pursuing prey and fighting and— And mating. He remembered the stories now. The mating of dragons was almost indistinguishable from a fight to the death. It seemed that the females never did mate voluntarily, so the males had to run them down and subdue them and rape them. It was said that the effort of doing this tired out a male dragon more than any other activity, and that some dropped into deep sleep on the spot. That must have been the case with this one. Probably it would have slept for several more hours if Jon hadn't jolted him with a rock on the snoot. But even a tired dragon was a worse threat than any other living creature. There was no telling how long this one had had to recover; it might have slept for several days, and now be largely restored, and plenty hungry. And they, like the fools they were, had blundered in, thinking the scales that had been torn off in the ecstasy of rut meant that the dragon was gone. Jon was coming down the ragged slope, slip-sliding across slime-slick stones. The dragons probably hadn't even noticed the havoc they wrought on the landscape! The male had finally tamed the female, probably holding her down with his huge teeth and claws while it rammed into her torso. There would be blood galore, his as well as hers. Once the male's urge was spent, his grip would have relaxed, and the female would have torn free and departed. This was the one encounter in which dragon did not kill dragon; she had to go gestate, and he had to let her go. So, worn but satiated, he slept where he lay... until this moment. With a cry of despair and fright elevated to unadulterated terror, Jon turned and dropped, screaming as she slid through loosely piled debris and river-borne brush. She had fallen into a hole in the pile! But her cries were drowned out in a moment by the loudest and most drawn-out hiss Kelvin had ever heard or imagined. It was the sound of the biggest, most dreaded reptile ever to slither through a nightmare. Then a scrabbling noise, as huge claws dug at smooth rock to find a foothold. No worn-out dragon, that! Kelvin looked wildly around for safety, spotted none, and turned to his faithful steed. The donkey, amazingly enough, was chomping grass. Obviously the animal was stone-deaf; this was the first time Kelvin had realized it. "Kel, Kel! He's going to get me, Kel! He's going to get me! He's climbing up, Kel! He's climbing!" Jon's former boldness had been completely dissipated; now at last she understood what he had feared when he saw the first golden scale. What does one do when one's sister is in dire danger from a menace that cannot be opposed? One does what little one can. Raising the old sword in his already sore hand, Kelvin rushed madly for the pile. A tree trunk lay next to some smaller rocks and made a regular staircase that Jon had followed. Kelvin's running feet found it of their own accord. Panting, he reached the spot where Jon had fallen, looked down between stacked rocks and tree trunks, and saw her frightened face. "I can't get out in time, Kel!" she screamed tearfully. "I'm trapped! Save yourself, Kel! Save yourself!" Kelvin, in a rear portion of his mind, recognized this as one of his sister's better ideas, but somehow he wasn't satisfied with it. Whether he would have taken her up on it he could never afterward be certain, for at that moment the golden-scaled, elongated snout of the dragon appeared over the pile's top boulder. The thing was simultaneously awful and beautiful: deadly living gold. He had known that dragons were monstrous, but from this range that was an appalling understatement. He judged that this one could swallow both of them in a single gulp. He could not see the main torso, but guessed that its size must be equivalent to that of six or seven large war-horses. No wonder so few men had ever dared face such a creature! The wonder was that any who had done so had survived. The monster levered itself up on gigantic scaled claws. Its entire head was now visible, and the front of its body. Kelvin could see the crest on the head and the short, leathery wings. He knew he should be afraid, but his emotion seemed to have shorted out that stage, leaving him strangely clearheaded.