innocent than he felt.
The woman made a noise like a machine caught
between gears and pitched the table over, mulled wine and
all. Kali could see this was not going to work out as well
as he had hoped.
“Try again,” she said, an evil glint in her eye, “or I’ll
twist your head off.”
“Ahem . . . Well. Ah.. .” Kali’s mind raced for a
moment, trying to remember how much of the tale he told
Oster applied here. “We, ah, I, ah … that is … You were
brought here by a hero who slew the beast you were
riding. He thought it a wild creature, but, when he found
you and realized it was yours, he… ah … brought you here
to recover and, ah … left to gather some healing herbs to
aid you. He says he’s terribly sorry.”
Kali’s words struck the angry woman like a blow. She
visibly sagged for a moment, her shoulders drooping. Kali
could see that the deceased dragon meant as much to her
as a cat or dog would to him, except it would probably not
make her sneeze. She slumped into a chair, and after
taking a few breaths to steady herself, said in a wavering
voice. “The prisoner?”
“He, ammm” – Kali’s mind jumped its track for a
moment – “didn’t make it, I’m afraid.” Perhaps she would
show sympathy, and that would let him comfort her by
revealing that Oster was alive and well. Or maybe even
returned to life by a passing holy man.
“And his body?” she continued. Something in her tone,
her tight smile, the way her fingers dug into the wood of
the table told Kali that sympathy was riot a current priority
for the woman.
“Well,” Kali said, “We ah, tend to burn such things.
Had we known you wanted it, we would have kept it for
you. I didn’t know he meant that much to you.”
The woman laughed – a throaty, deep-seated laugh that
started in orbit around her stony heart and, by the time it
escaped her lips, held the cruelty of a creature who would
throttle birds before breakfast. (See above notes on cats
and dogs. Kali’s case: no birds were endangered by the
laugh.)
“Meant much? I wanted to take him apart in pieces,
cracking each bone, and hang him by his living entrails on
a hook in the village to show how I deal with traitors and
rebels. His kind cost me a treasure train, and now he has
cost me my dragon as well. May Morgion rot his body and
Chemosh stir his bones!”
Kali was struck by the coldness of her oaths, which
carried none of the nobility and passion of Oster’s oaths,
though they invoked the same beings. This human did not
seem to have much difficulty in expressing herself at all. It
now dawned on him that if he brought her together with
Oster, she would be irate – not only at Oster, but at Kali as
well. Best to backtrack, he thought, and try to make the
situation turn out right.
“Well, he seemed a nice sort before he, ah … well. . .”
Kali looked at Eton for support in the conversation. His
fellow gnome had backed up next to the hearth and was
trying to blend in with the fireplace furnishings.
“Did he suffer?” asked the woman. “Were his bones
snapped?
Kali said yes and answered in the affirmative to a long
list of horrible things that she described, just about filling
the dance card with all the things that can happen to an
individual who has fallen from a high place to a low one.
Snapped bones, shattered skull, inner workings scattered
over sharp rocks, just enough breath left in the crushed
body to plead for mercy and deliver a parting rattle. Kali
wondered if this passed for polite conversation where the
woman came from. His answers seemed to get the woman
more agitated and excited, until he would swear her eyes
became like twin pilot lights, glowing and sparking in a
malevolent fashion.
Having exhausted that interesting subject, the woman
demanded, “My weapons? My helm? My armor?”