But if shewasa dragon hunter, it seemed likely she would know not only about the nearby red dragon, but other dragons in the area. It could be everything he sought packaged up neatly in a single human, if he just had enough time to ask the right questions.
He was already here. He had already waited this long. If she didn’t turn back up in the next few days, then he would depart. He would leave it in fate’s hands.
“You all right, there?” the bald man asked, frowning, and Adrissu realized he must have still been speaking, even though he had long since stopped listening.
“Yes, sorry,” he said, standing abruptly. “My apologies, I’ve just remembered I have to go—you’ve been very helpful, thank you. Next round’s on me.” He set a gold coin on the table, and the look of annoyance on the man’s face immediately fell away. Humans could be bought so easily. Maybe this Daiana would be the same.
Chapter Fifteen
Asfatewouldhaveit, Adrissu met Daiana the dragon hunter only two days later.
He had taken to spending the evenings at the tavern, usually in a corner or at the bar, watching humans mill about while drinking wine. It was not his favorite activity, but it passed the time; and he had seen quite a few interesting things, including explosive arguments and mating rituals. He recognized several regular patrons now, nodding politely at them when their eyes met. They were beginning to recognize him as well, and that alone was a sign he should get going.
Then one evening, early enough that only a few people were in the tavern, either indulging in an early dinner or a late lunch, the door swung open and bathed the room in daylight.
“Daiana!” the barkeep exclaimed, grinning, and a cold shiver ran down Adrissu’s spine. “Welcome home. Good to see you. How was the hunt?”
Adrissu glanced behind him as a gravelly woman’s voice answered. “Went just as planned. The pelt’s hanging with the rest of them. It’s a nice centerpiece, I think.”
Daiana sat at the bar a few seats down from Adrissu, the stool squealing loudly when she pulled it out. She was tall and stocky for a woman, wearing a leather vest over a plain tunic and trousers, with dark hair streaked with gray and pulled back in a braid. She glanced toward Adrissu, and he could see a thick scar that curled from the right corner of her nose, slashed diagonally across her lips, and ended along the left side of her chin. He looked away to keep from staring, and he heard her snort as she spotted him.
“What the hell are you doing that you’ve got a fucking elf hanging out in your bar, Luc?” She laughed, but without waiting for him to respond, she spoke again, this time to Adrissu. “Or the better question is, what’s an elf doing in Wintergrove in the first place? You’re about as far from Aefraya as anyone could be, friend.”
Adrissu managed a pained smile; abrasive as her tone was, she didn’t seem outwardly hostile. But still his heart thrummed rapidly in his chest, and distantly, he wondered if this was how humans felt in his own presence.
“I take it you’re Daiana?” he asked smoothly, and she smirked. The scar made it a crooked smile—the corners of her mouth uneven, and her lips dipping inward toward the center where the scars touched.
“My reputation precedes me,” she chuckled with a nod.
“Then I’m here to see you, actually,” he replied. “My name is Adrissu, and I’m a scholar. I study dragons, and I was told you’d be the most reliable source regarding the red dragon that’s rumored to live nearby.”
Her smile couldn’t quite widen, but her eyes brightened at the mention of dragons, making him feel supremely unsettled.
“You’ve been told correctly, then,” she said. “I’m a hunter. I’ve helped bring down three dragons in my time. There’s probably no one who knows more about dragons than me ‘til Gennemont, and even that’s a stretch. What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Adrissu said, smiling with all his teeth. She had no idea what he was. “I want to hear it all.”
Despite her abrasiveness, Daiana clearly was a true expert about dragons, enough so that it made Adrissu anxious to be in her presence all over again. Her boast had been more genuine than she knew: Daiana’s knowledge was even more expansive that what he’d found in the Gennemont library. While she, of course, could not know everything, it was far more than he would have expected of any human. As she showed him the three scales she wore around her neck, two silver and a blue, she described the connotations of each scale color with an eerie accuracy, explaining how the brighter the scales, the better the dragon—an overall accurate, though simplified, assessment about the basis of draconic custom.
“So we confirmed the dragon to the east to be a red. There’s no dispute there,” Daiana explained. “We know it’s at least two hundred or so, probably a bit older. Younger than five hundred, for a certainty, making it an adolescent. Basically, it’s an older teenager as far as humans would go. Er—I’m not sure how that would translate to elven ages, but…”
“I understand,” Adrissu said. “Go on.”
“So it’s young, but established. It wouldn’t be as strong as an older dragon, but is too strong for most groups to stand a chance against it in a fight. All the dragons I’ve killed have been about that age. I don’t know if any dragon over five hundred or so has ever actually been killed, at least not by humans. Elves maybe, if they’re really capable mages.” She paused, sighing. “I’ve considered going after it since it’s so close, and the right age to have a shot at it, but… Reds have a reputation for being particularly cruel and violent. Maybe it's best not to find out how true that is. I don’t know. I’m getting older, which is harder for humans, you know. My dragon hunting days might be behind me.”
Adrissu managed a smile at that. “Do you know anything about its lair, then?”
“Lairs are tricky,” Daiana replied, shaking her head. “You can’t get into one without the dragon knowing—unless it’s already dead, of course. So I’ve only ever seen those three lairs. They’ve all been underground, but usually have above ground entrances. A cave entrance leading to it, or an opening in a canyon… They’re meant to be difficult to get into without being able to fly, or at least climb really, really well. This one lives in the forest, so I would guess it has a cave or something that leads to the rest of its lair. They say some dragons can breathe underwater and have lairs in rivers or lakes, but I’ve never seen that for myself, so who knows?”
“Does it have a name?” Adrissu asked. “The dragon nearby.”
“Most people call him the Red around here, to be honest. They think it’s bad luck to say its true name, like you’d be summoning it, and no one wants that,” Daiana said, snorting with a suppressed chuckle. “I don’t know for sure. But the oldest accounts I’ve heard have been from folks my grandparents’ age, and they called him Tyrsun.”
“I see,” Adrissu said softly. That was something, at least. He had a name, an age, and not much else, but it was more than he’d had before.
There was little else Daiana could tell him that he didn’t already know. She described a few other dragons within several days of travel of Wintergrove, including Zamnes himself; luckily all she said of him was that he was rumored to still live somewhere deep below the city, or perhaps beneath the ocean, but was almost never sighted. But none were new to him, and none were as ideal for his eventual purposes as Tyrsun, the red. Tyrsun was younger than him by a century, so he had some time yet before he needed to worry about the wyrm’s ability to overpower him. He would just have to be more careful, start planning somethingnowso that they weren’t acting rashly—the way he and Kian had with Vantas.
“If you were to track down this Tyrsun,” Adrissu said slowly, not quite looking at her as he spoke. “How would you do it?”
