Getting down from the greystone was harder than getting up had been. The top of the arch was about twelve feet off the ground, higher than was convenient for jumping. Normally I wouldn’t have worried about it, but in my stiff, bruised condition I worried I’d land awkwardly and turn my ankle.
Eventually we managed it by using the strap of my travelsack as a makeshift rope. While Denna braced herself and held one end, I lowered myself down. The sack ripped wide open, of course, scattering my belongings, but I made it to the ground with nothing more serious than a grass stain.
Then Denna hung from the lip of the rock and I grabbed her legs, letting her slide down slowly. Despite the fact that I was bruised all down my front side, the experience did a lot to improve my mood.
I gathered up my things and sat down with needle and thread to sew my travelsack back together. After a moment Denna returned from her brief trip into the trees, pausing briefly to pick up the blanket we’d left below. It had several large claw rents from when the draccus had walked over it.
“Have you ever seen one of these before?” I asked, holding out my hand.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “How many times have I heard that one?” Grinning, I handed her the lump of black iron I’d got from the tinker. She looked it over curiously. “Is this a loden-stone?”
“I’m surprised you recognize it.”
“I knew a fellow who used one as a paperweight.” She sighed disparagingly. “He made a special point of how, despite the fact that it was so valuable and exceedingly rare, he used it as a paperweight.” She sniffed. “He was a prat. Do you have any iron?”
“Fish around in there.” I pointed to my jumbled possessions. “There’s bound to be something.”
Denna sat on one of the low greystones and played with the loden-stone and a piece of broken iron buckle. I slowly sewed up my travelsack, then reattached the strap, stitching it several times so it wouldn’t come loose.
Denna was thoroughly engrossed by the loden-stone. “How does it work?” she asked, pulling the buckle away and letting it snap back. “Where does the pulling come from?”
“It’s a type of galvanic force,” I said, then hesitated. “Which is a fancy way of saying that I’ve got no idea at all.”
“I wonder if it only likes iron because it’s made of iron,” she mused, touching her silver ring to it with no effect. “If someone found a loden-stone made of brass would it like other brass?”
“Maybe it would like copper and zinc,” I said. “That’s what brass is made of.” I turned the bag rightside out and began packing up my things. Denna handed me back the loden-stone and wandered off toward the destroyed remains of the fire pit.
“It ate all the wood before it left,” she said.
I went over to look too. The area around the firepit was a churned-up mess. It looked like an entire legion of cavalry had ridden across it. I prodded a great piece of overturned sod turf with the toe of my boot, then bent to pick something up. “Look at this.”
Denna came closer and I held something up for her to see. It was one of the draccus’ scales, smooth and black, roughly as big as my palm, and shaped like a teardrop. It was a quarter inch thick in the middle, tapering to the edges.
I held it out to Denna. “For you, m’lady. A memento.”
She hefted it in her hand. “It’s heavy,” she said. “I’ll go find one for you….” She skipped back to prod through the remains of the firepit. “I think it ate some of the rocks along with the wood. I know I gathered more than this to line the fire last night.”
“Lizards eat rocks all the time,” I said. “It’s how they digest their food. The rocks grind up the food in their guts.” Denna eyed me skeptically. “It’s true. Chickens do it, too.”
She shook her head, looked away as she prodded in the churned-up earth. “You know, at first I was kind of hoping you would turn this encounter into a song. But the more you talk about this thing, I’m not so sure. Cows and chickens. Where’s your flair for the dramatic?”
“It does well enough without exaggeration,” I said. “That scale is mostly iron, unless I miss my guess. How can I make that more dramatic than it already is?”
She held up the scale, looking at it closely. “You’re kidding.”
I grinned at her. “The rocks around here are full of iron,” I said. “The draccus eats the rocks and slowly they get ground down in its gizzard. The metal slowly filters into the bones and scales.” I took the scale and walked over to one of the greystones. “Year after year it sheds its skin, then eats it, keeping the iron in its system. After two hundred years…” I tapped the scale against the stone. It made a sharp ringing sound somewhere between a bell and a piece of glazed ceramic.
I handed it back to her. “Back before modern mining people probably hunted them for their iron. Even nowadays I’m guessing an alchemist would pay a pretty penny for the scales or bones. Organic iron is a real rarity. They could probably do all sorts of things with it.”
Denna looked down at the scale in her hand. “You win. You can write the song.” Her eyes lit with an idea. “Let me see the loden-stone.”
I dug it out of my bag and handed it to her. She brought the scale close to it and they snapped sharply together, making the same odd, ceramic ring again. She grinned and walked back over to the firepit and started pushing the loden-stone through the debris, hunting for more scales.
I looked out toward the northern bluffs. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” I said, pointing off to a faint smudge of smoke rising from the trees. “But something’s smoldering down there. The marker stakes I planted are gone, but I think that’s the direction we saw the blue fire last night.”
Denna moved the loden-stone back and forth over the ruins of the fire pit. “The draccus couldn’t have been responsible for what happened at the Mauthen farm.” She gestured at the churned up earth and sod. “There wasn’t any of this sort of wreckage there.”
“I’m not thinking about the farm,” I said. “I’m thinking someone’s patron might have been roughing it last night with a cheery little campfire….”
Denna’s face fell. “And the draccus saw it.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” I said quickly. “If he’s as clever as you say, he’s probably safe as houses.”
“Show me a house that’s safe from that thing,” she said grimly, handing me back my loden-stone. “Let’s go have a look.”
It was only a few miles to where the faint line of smoke rose from the forest, but we made bad time. We were sore and tired, and neither of us was hopeful about what we would find when we reached our destination.
While we walked we shared my last apple and half of my remaining loaf of flatbread. I cut strips of birch bark and Denna and I both picked at them and chewed. After an hour or so, the muscles in my legs relaxed to the point where walking was no longer painful.
As we got closer our progress slowed. Rolling hills were replaced with sharp bluffs and scree-covered slopes. We had to climb or go the long way around, sometimes doubling back before we found a way through.
And there were distractions. We stumbled onto a patch of ripe ashberry that slowed us down for almost a full hour. Not long after that we found a stream and stopped to drink and rest and wash. Again my hope for a storybook dalliance was thwarted by the fact that the stream was only about six inches deep. Not ideal for proper bathing.
It was early afternoon before we finally came to the source of the smoke, and what we found was not at all what we expected.
It was a secluded valley tucked into the bluffs. I say valley, but in truth it was more like a gigantic step among the foothills. On one side was a high cliff wall of dark rock, and on the other was a sheer drop-off. Denna and I came at it from two different, unapproachable angles before we finally found a way in. Luckily the day was windless, and the smoke rose straight as an arrow into the clear blue sky. If not for that to guide us, we probably never would have found the place.
Once it had proba
bly been a pleasant little piece of forest, but now it looked like it had been struck by a tornado. Trees were broken, uprooted, charred, and smashed. Huge furrows of exposed earth and rock were dug everywhere, as if some giant farmer had gone raving mad while plowing his field.
Two days ago I wouldn’t have been able to guess what would cause such destruction. But after what I had seen last night….
“I thought you said they were harmless?” Denna said, turning to me. “It went on a rampage here.”
Denna and I began to pick our way through the wreckage. The white smoke rose from the deep hole left by a large maple tree that had been tipped over. The fire was nothing more than a few coals smouldering in the bottom of the hole where the roots had been.
I idly kicked a few more clods of dirt into the hole with the toe of my boot. “Well, the good news is that your patron isn’t here. The bad news is…” I broke off, drawing a deeper breath. “Do you smell that?”
Denna took a deep breath and nodded, wrinkling her nose.
I climbed up onto the side of the fallen maple and looked around. The wind shifted and the smell grew stronger, something dead and rotten.
“I thought you said they don’t eat meat,” Denna said, looking around nervously.
I hopped down from the tree and made my way back to the cliff wall. There was a small log cabin there, smashed to flinders. The rotting smell was stronger.
“Okay,” Denna said, looking over the wreckage. “This does not look harmless at all.”
“We don’t know if the draccus was responsible for this,” I said. “If the Chandrian attacked here, the draccus could have been lured by the fire and caused the destruction while putting it out.”
“You think the Chandrian did this?” she asked. “That doesn’t fit with anything I’ve ever heard of them. They’re supposed to strike like lightning then disappear. They don’t visit, set some fires, then come back later to run a few errands.”
“I don’t know what to think. But two destroyed houses….” I began to sift through the wreckage. “It seems reasonable that they’re related.”
Denna drew in a sharp breath. I followed her line of sight and saw the arm protruding from under several heavy logs.
I moved closer. Flies buzzed up and I covered my mouth a bit in a futile attempt to stave off the smell. “He’s been dead for about two span.” I bent and picked up a tangle of shattered wood and metal. “Look at this.”
“Bring it here and I’ll look at it.”
I brought it back to where she stood. The thing was broken almost beyond recognition. “Crossbow.”
“Didn’t do him much good,” she said.
“The question is why did he have it in the first place?” I looked at the thick piece of blue steel that made the crossbar. “This wasn’t some hunting bow. This is what you use to kill a man in armor from across a field. They’re illegal.”
Denna snorted. “Those sorts of laws don’t get enforced out here. You know that.”
I shrugged. “The fact remains that this was an expensive piece of machinery. Why would someone living in a tiny cabin with a dirt floor own a crossbow worth ten talents?”
“Maybe he knew about the draccus,” Denna said looking around nervously. “I wouldn’t mind a crossbow right about now.”
I shook my head. “Draccus are shy. They stay away from people.”
Denna gave me a frank look, gesturing sarcastically at the wreckage of the cabin.
“Think about every wild creature in the forest,” I said. “All wild creatures avoid contact with people. Like you said, you’ve never even heard of the draccus. There’s a reason for that.”
“Maybe it’s rabid?”
That brought me up short. “That’s a terrifying thought.” I looked around at the ruined landscape. “How on earth would you put something like that down? Can a lizard even catch the froth?”
Denna shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, looking around nervously. “Is there anything else you’d like to look at here? Because I’m done with this place. I don’t want to be here when that thing gets back.”
“Part of me feels like we should give this fellow a decent burial….”
Denna shook her head. “I’m not staying here that long. We can tell someone in town and they can take care of it. It could come back any minute.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why does it keep coming back here?” I pointed. “That tree’s been dead for a span of days, but that one just got torn up a couple days ago….”
“Why do you care?” Denna asked.
“The Chandrian,” I said firmly. “I want to know why they were here. Do they control the draccus?”
“I don’t think they were here,” Denna said. “At the Mauthen farm, maybe. But this is just the work of a rabid cow-lizard.” She gave me a long look, searching my face. “I don’t know what you came here looking for. But I don’t think you’re going to find it.”
I shook my head, looking around. “I feel like this has to be connected to the farm.”
“I think you want it to be connected,” she said gently. “But this fellow’s been dead a long while. You said so yourself. And remember the doorframe and the water trough at the farm?” She bent down and rapped a knuckle against one of the logs from the ruined cabin. It made a solid sound. “And look at the crossbow—the metal isn’t rusted away. They weren’t here.”
I felt my heart sink in my chest. I knew she was right. Deep down I knew I’d been grasping at straws. Still, it felt wrong giving up without trying everything possible.
Denna took hold of my hand. “Come on. Let’s go.” She smiled and tugged on me. Her hand was cool and smooth in my own. “There’s more interesting things to do than hunt….”
There was a loud splintering noise off in the trees: kkkrek-ke-krrk. Denna dropped my hand and turned to face the way we’d come. “No…” she said. “No no no…”
The sudden threat of the draccus brought me back into focus. “We’re fine,” I said looking around. “It can’t climb. It’s too heavy.”
“Climb what? A tree? It’s been knocking those down for fun!”
“The bluffs.” I pointed to the cliff wall that bordered this little section of forest. “Come on…”
We scrambled to the base of the cliff, stumbling through furrows and jumping over fallen trees. Behind us I heard the rumbling, thunderlike grunt. I darted a glance over my shoulder, but the draccus was still somewhere among the trees.
We got to the base of the cliff and I started searching for a section both of us could climb. After a long frantic minute we emerged from a thick patch of sumac to find a swath of wildly churned-up dirt. The draccus had been digging there.
“Look!” Denna pointed to a break in the cliff, a deep crack about two feet across. It was wide enough for a person to squeeze through, but too narrow for the huge lizard. There were sharp claw marks on the cliff wall and broken rocks scattered around the churned-up earth.
Denna and I squeezed into the narrow gap. It was dark, the only light coming from the narrow strip of blue sky high overhead. As I crept along I was forced to turn sideways in places to make it through. When I brought my hands away from the walls my palms were covered in black soot. Unable to dig its way in, apparently the draccus had breathed fire down into the narrow passage.
After only a dozen feet, the crevasse widened slightly. “There’s a ladder,” Denna said. “I’m going up. If that thing breathes fire at us it will be like rain-water down a gully.”
She climbed and I followed her. The ladder was crude but sturdy, and after twenty feet it opened out onto a piece of level ground. Dark stone surrounded us on three sides, but there was a clear view of the ruined cabin and the destroyed trees below. A wooden box was set against the cliff wall.
“Can you see it?” Denna asked, peering down. “Tell me I didn’t just skin my knees running from nothing.”
I heard a dull whump and I felt a wave of hot air rise up against my back. The draccus
grunted again, and another wash of fire ran through the narrow gap below. Then there came a sudden, furious sound like nails on a slate as the draccus clawed madly against the base of the cliff.
Denna gave me a frank look. “Harmless.”
“It’s not after us,” I said. “You saw. It was digging at that wall long before we ever got here.”
Denna sat down. “What is this place?”
“Some sort of lookout,” I said. “You can see the whole valley from here.”
“Obviously it’s a lookout,” she sighed. “I’m talking about the whole place.”
I opened the wooden box that was up against the cliff wall. Inside was a rough wool blanket, a full waterskin, some dried meat, and a dozen wickedly sharp crossbow bolts.
“I don’t know either,” I admitted. “Maybe the fellow was a fugitive.”
The noise stopped below. Denna and I peered out over the ruined valley. Eventually the draccus moved away from the cliff. It walked slowly, its huge body digging an irregular rut into the ground.
“It’s not moving as quickly as it did last night,” I said. “Maybe it is sick.”
“Maybe it’s tired from a hard day’s trying to track us down and kill us.” She looked up at me. “Sit down. You’re making me nervous. We’re not going anywhere for a while.”
I sat down and we watched the draccus make its plodding way to the middle of the valley. It went up to a tree about thirty feet tall and pushed it over without any noticeable effort.
Then it began to eat it, leaves first. Next it crunched up branches thick as my wrist as easily as a sheep would tear up a mouthful of grass. When the trunk was finally stripped bare, I assumed it would have to stop. But it simply clamped its huge, flat mouth down on one end of the trunk and twisted its massive neck. The trunk splintered and broke, leaving the draccus with a large but manageable mouthful that it bolted down more or less whole.