She was a statue.
“Quite something, isn’t she?” Honey murmured.
Ainsworth walked closer. In the shadow of the stone, the features were difficult to make out, but he realized the figure looked slightly different and a little younger than Honey. He reached out to touch it—what a strange material,he thought, unable to place the barklike substance. It was all one color, too, a faded gray.
“Don’t touch her!” Honey yelped.
He pulled back his hand. “I— Of course. Apologies. Is this…a depiction of a relative of yours?” Honey looked upon the figure with tenderness, and yet there was a quivering to her hands, a twitch to her tail, to suggest the story behind this monument was not a happy one.
“This figure has been here for, oh, a couple hundred years, according to my family,” Honey replied.
Ainsworth felt his face brighten. “That long? Honey, is this statue in honor of your kin and the inn she established?” He scanned the statue’s feet for any sort of inscription. “This is incredible! If I can find out who made this, perhaps I can trace down the artist if they’re long-lived—or their descendants. I have people at the SkarrowLibrary who can help, and perhaps I can find more documents, more evidence of their travels here to carve this all those years ago! Historical accounts of the journey are finally in reach!” His eyes, he gathered, must surely be sparkling with the ambition that seemed to have dwindled with every hurdle he came across in recent weeks. But as he turned to Honey, he almost felt them dull and gutter out.
“No, Ainsworth. This is not a statue. This is…” She closed her eyes, and several times looked as though she would speak before thinking better ofit.
Ainsworth could not help himself. He walked closer to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. It was slightly damp, like his own, and she seemed to jump slightly at his touch before leaning into it. He tried not to focus on that—on the way her head leaned slightly toward him as if to rest upon his hand, and the way it made his heart beat faster than the uphill battle they had conquered to get here.
She had a story to tell, a history. He could sense it. And he would wait until she was ready to unveilit.
Finally, she sighed. “It is not a statue. It is…her.”
“Her?”
“Or a part of her, at any rate. A curse,” Honey whispered. “From the dragon who resides here.”
Ainsworth kept his tone level as he picked over her words. “This is…your relative? Cursed to stone?”
“It’s more like…a shedding of part of herself. I think,” Honey said, struggling to explain. “A shedding of the self left here, in physical form, to mark that she was touched by the dragon’s curse.”
“The dragon’s curse…” whispered Ainsworth. “What— What is that? What happened to her?” His mind was racing, and he suddenly wondered if this had happened to anyone else. Was there an abundance of souls-made-stone, physical renderings of people’s pasts, all across this mountain?
Honey swallowed. “Well, I do not quite wish to go into that much detail…yet. Personal, you know?” She winked, but there was little heart in it. “It’s been a while since I’ve been up here, since I’ve thought about all this.”
“Yes, of course. I understand,” he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze. She really did lean her head on his hand this time. But as her horns gently grazed the back of his hand, he wondered—would the dragon’s curse, whatever it was, have passed on to Honey, too?
Before he could summon the courage to ask the question, the sound of large paws upon loose stone thundered behind them. He turned and saw Ashe bound down from a path up the mountain. She approached them at incredible speed and ran behind one of the standing stones. When she appeared on the other side she was back in her human form.
“Ashe?” Honey asked, pulling away from Ainsworth. “What is it?”
“It’s time for us to leave. Now, and swiftly.”
In the excitement of academic pursuit, Ainsworth had momentarily forgotten where they were. That, plus the fact he had never seen Ashe disheveled before, had his hands trembling.
“Of course. But why? There’s nothing here you cannot handle,” said Honey.
Ashe turned to the path behind her. “I admire your faith in me, but I stumbled into a few liathain. I stood my ground and tried to herd them away from you, but they were persistent. Don’t know what they’re doing hanging around here, but they’re not happy we’ve intruded. They’ll leave us if we leave them. It’s the smarter option, so we should take it.” She jerked her head toward Ainsworth.
Honey followed the gesture and then nodded with what looked like realization. Wait, did they think him a burden? How absurd!He—
At that moment, three hulking figures appeared over the crest of the path Ashe had come from, and the sight of them sent a shock of icy fear through Ainsworth’s stomach. They stood in humanoid form, but their gargantuan bodies were covered in gray fur, their arms ending in claws. There was a haziness to them, as though they were almost spectral—an effect heightened by the animal skulls that made up their faces: wolf, mountain cat, and a large bird with aparticularly nasty beak. Yet he could not help that he felt a pleased jolt of familiarity even in such terrifying circumstances. He had seen illustrations, so he knew that these beasts were not only possessed of great strength and ferocity but could also wield illusions to fool wanderers into entering their mountain lairs—or plummeting to their deaths.
“Yes, we should perhaps get out of their path!” Ainsworth agreed, already taking a few stumbling steps away from the stones and back the way they came.
Despite the severity of the situation, Ashe gave a snort. “City folk. Go on then, both of you. I’ll trail back in case they try anything.” Ainsworth, scrambling away, did not see Ashe shift behind him. But he heard the great flapping of wings as she took to the sky to watch their backs.
Chapter 11
Those who know of Mount Vengeance’s existence may have heard the whispers of the dragon protecting its hoard upon it. Dragons are now the rarest of beings—completely at odds from their reign during the Great Sweep, almost annihilating civilization before the first adventuring parties rose to the challenge and pushed back. Their current diminished existence suggests they are content with an isolated, lonely life treasuring whatever hoard they have collected—with the odd attacks against their local territories confirming their presence for scholars and adventuring parties. The pursuit of the dragon that inevitably follows is a reminder to dragon-kind that heroic adventurers will go to great lengths to gain glory from their demise.
