The Sworn Knight, Robert Ryan [good beach reads .txt] 📗

area where the legs and wingsjoined the body. In those places, the skin might have been weaker, forpliability was needed there to aid movement.

They moved along a little more, in awe of the size of thecreature.

“Look at the earth,” Ferla said. “See how it’s all churnedby the dragon’s claws in its death throes.”

Kubodin stepped into such a tear in the earth and jumped upand down. At the deepest point, normal ground level was up to his calves.

“But how is it after all this time,” Asana asked, “that themarks remain? Surely they should have been filled up now by dirt?”

Ferla bent down and ran her hand over the bare dirt. It washard and shiny in places.

“I think the fire of the dragon was so hot that the soilhere has been baked like clay bricks in an oven. That’s why nothing grows, andwhy there’s no loose soil to fill in the channels gouged by its claws.”

Kubodin took out a dagger and knelt down. Several times hedrove the tip into the surface of the land, but it skittered away and on thelast attempt he cut himself. He cursed, and wiped blood away from his palm onthe nearest rib.

“Well, you were right about that,” he said. “The ground ishard as stone.”

Ferla did not answer. She was growing increasingly uneasy,but she was not sure why. The dragon had been dead for thousands of years. Butshe could still sense the residue of magic all about her. Most was from thedragon, but not all. There was sorcery here too, and it was said in the legendsthat sometimes elùgroths had ridden the great beasts in the air, raining downsorcerous blasts from on high even as the dragon spurted its killing fire.

“Time to be gone,” Ferla said. “We cannot spend too muchtime in the one place, not out in the open like this. We need to find some shelterfor a camp.”

Asana reluctantly agreed, and she could sense that he wantedto study the scene in more detail. She understood, because it was the nature ofa warrior and a soldier to learn how a creature such as this had been fought.Who knew when they would be called upon to fight such a thing themselves?Knowledge was power.

“Let’s have a quick look at the head,” Asana said, “and thengo. I have a theory I want to confirm.”

They walked beyond the massive rib cage now, sticking upinto the air like bent trees. Ahead, was the long neck. The bones here werestill massive, though smaller than many of the others. But the skull was notsmall.

Whitened by the sun, it lay turned on its side at the end ofthe neck. A vast eye socket peered up at them, empty and dark. In the longsnout, a nostril opened up, and strangely it seemed to Ferla that a wisp ofsmoke rose from it. She blinked, and it was gone, but her unease grew further.

Asana drew close, and he unsheathed his sword. Using justthe tip of the blade, he poked around inside the vast cavity. Then he flickedout what appeared to be a spear head, then several more. He worked at it for alittle while, eventually inserting his whole hand, and then he withdrew morespear heads and several arrow heads.

“It’s as I believed,” he said. “They immobilized it as bestthey could, and then they killed it via its most vulnerable point.” He insertedhis sword deep in the eye socket again. “No creature can withstand damage toits head, and they drove spears and loosed arrows into the eyes until some atleast reached the brain.”

Ferla shuddered. Even in war, that would be a horrible wayto die.

“Time to go, then. This place gives me the creeps.”

No one argued with her, but even as they began to move awaythey heard a noise and looked back. The skull appeared to have shifted. Maybesome ancient bit of bone had finally decayed, and Asana’s poking around hadcaused it to shift. Maybe.

But even as Ferla watched, smoke twirled up from the hugenostril, and this time she knew she was not imagining it.

She drew her sword. Beside her Asana did likewise, sinkinglower into a fighting stance. Kubodin loosed his axe from its belt loop aswell, holding it high with a wild look in his eyes.

“My blood,” the little man whispered. “I should have knownbetter.”

Ferla watched, and the smoke took a form, hovering above thegreat skull and looking down on them with disdain.

It was Lindercroft, either in spirit or conjured by thelong-dead magic of the dragon woken to life by the touch of fresh blood.

“I see you, seventh knight,” the form whispered, and itsvoice was not Lindercroft’s but rather like the distant roar of the ocean.

“I see you, and I know you. For the future and the past areone, and the eyes of the dead see all at once. I see you, and I know your fate.Shall I tell it to you. Do you dare listen?”

“Speak, or speak not. Lindercroft that was, or dragon maybe.I care nothing for the lies of either.”

“Brave words,” the voice answered. “And maybe wise, or maybefoolish. Who is to tell? Except the dead who know all.”

Ferla began to back away. She did not take her eyes from thevision before her, but she spoke to Asana and Kubodin.

“I trust no sorcery. Let us go, but carefully.”

They all began to back away, but the voice of the image cameat them louder, and it commanded rather than just spoke.

“Stay! You will hear me, will ye or nill ye.”

And all three of them ceased to move, such was the authorityof the voice.

“I know all and see all,” the voice said, and the imageebbed and flowed, moving down from the air above the head of the dragon andstanding before them.

Ferla watched, unable to move, and the hair on the back ofher neck stood on end.

“You are hunted, and this you know. But he that comesagainst you is grown greater than any knight. He possesses magic. It willdestroy you, or save you. Only I know which.”

Ferla found her voice, and though it seemed the hardestthing she had ever done in