“A whole bottle! What a treat,” Honey said when he finally arrived in the attic archive. She stood clutching one of Beatrice’s journals in one hand, with her other palm flat in the air, a globule of light emitting fromit.
“I’ve never seen you use magic before,” was all Ainsworth could think to say.
“Ah, well, it gives me away, you know?” she said with a grin. It took Ainsworth a moment to realize that her eyes were as they had been in the dream: a molten, shimmering gold. “As does my temper, which I do my best to keep under wraps. A challenge ever since you stormed into my life!”
“Honey, enough jesting, please!” Ainsworth said, sitting on the rug and uncorking the wine. He gestured at her to sit opposite. Beyond her small globe of light loomed Ainsworth’s work: tightly rolled scrolls and neat piles of parchment, journals, guest logs, and accounts lining the bookshelves. Above, the ghostly light of the full moon shone through the small attic window, which was supplemented by the warm glow of Honey’s light. “Please. What is going on? Who are you?”
The silver charms dangling from her horns caught the moonlight. She sat down as Ainsworth poured them both a generous drink and watched him lift his glass. As he savored the slight burn in his throat, he could not help but notice how the shape of her horns, the arch of her cheekbones, and the swish of her tail all reminded him of the dragon who had pursued him in his dreams. “If you aren’t a Dragon Pèidse, then—?”
Honey sighed, taking a sip of her wine. “I suppose I am a Dragon Pèidse, but they…aren’t what you think.” She put down her glass and placed her hands on the floor beside her, the black claws of her nails tapping against the wood. “I did consider telling you everything sooner. With your book, your research, I knew it was only amatter of time before you figured it out. But still, I…couldn’t quite bring myself to do it, or to turn you away from the inn.”
Without thinking, he reached out and placed a hand on hers, and she looked up at him, startled, but did not move it away.
“The Dragon Pèidse, as the tale is spun…they’re a lie, Ainsworth. A lie spread by dragons themselves, so that their secret is not revealed. There arenoservants of dragons. All right—there are, probably, but they aren’t souls who are cursed or blessed by dragons, or anything so dramatic as that.”
His mind was racing, but he could not put the pieces together. “Then…what are they?” he asked, unwilling to accept the answer he knew, in his heart, was right in front of him.
Honey, restless, got to her feet and, still holding out a hand of light, paced the short length of the room while seemingly browsing the archive’s shelves. “A Dragon Pèidseisa dragon. Shifted into humanoid form, so they can move freely and undetected throughout the land. Every dragon is capable of this.”
Ainsworth cast his mind back to the hooded figure in the bar. “A-all right. And if you came to me in my dream, in the form of a dragon, then—?”
Honey idly pulled a journal from its place on the shelf and flicked it open with one hand. “Then, yes, I am a dragon. I am the dragon who resides on Mount Vengeance. Well, at thefootof Mount Vengeance now, I suppose.”
He tried to let her words settle, but instead they seemed to crash into his awareness like they had been thrown down by the beat of a dragon’s wings. “But—” He struggled for words. He had so many questions! Yet his thirst for knowledge of the wider world, not just who and what was in front of him, won the battle in his mind. “Why? Why would a dragon wish to move through the world in such a form when a dragon’s…for want of a better term,dragonform,is so much more formidable?”
She stared down at him. “That’swhat you want me to answer first?”
He nodded.
“You don’t want to know why I infiltrated your dream? Why I kept this from you?”
“Well, yes, I do. But I need to understand the whole picture before I can understand the details, Honey.”
She seemed, once again, to struggle to contain her laughter. He waited patiently while she composed herself, and wondered if it would be inappropriate to record her words with parchment and quill.
“Ah, Ainsworth. You spent months in this attic, organizing the history that was right there in front of you, and yet…” She shook her head. “Very well, then, scholar. I need to clarify something, though. What I’m about to tell you…Well, I left the path that life set out for me a long time ago, so I do not feel bound to that life’s rules as much as I used to. But it still feels right that I warn you: This is knowledge forbidden for me to share with anyone who is not dragon-kind. And you—you are a scholar with the means to try and distribute this information.”
He bristled. “Well, knowledge is important! It should be widely and freely available.”
She rolled her eyes. “I agree, but this…My kind would come for you, Ainsworth. And most likely for the Skarrow Library, too. They can be foul, spiteful, greedy creatures. Not to mentionviolent—”
He held his hands up. “All right! You have my word.”
She gave a clipped nod and stopped her pacing in the middle of the room, below the window and the cold light of the moon. “Dragons are not typically…maternal creatures. When we hatch, we have only a few weeks of supervision before our mother returns to her hoard. Then we are left to fend for ourselves, wherever she sees fit to place us. I could not even tell you my mother’s name, and I doubt she still lives; the only thing I know of her is that she chose to place me atop the yet unnamed peak that would later be known as Mount Vengeance.”
Ainsworth frowned. “So…?”
“We’ll get to the name later,” Honey said. “But first, when young dragons are left in their new territories, three things spur us on. Firstis the need to hunt. Not just for food, but to establish the territory as our own, to prevent another dragon from dropping her hatchling in a similar area and forcing us to fight for the claim.”
Ainsworth tried to keep his face still and composed, unwilling to reveal his inherent horror. Honey raised a knowing brow but continued. “Second is the need to find, or create, somewhere suitable for our hoard. Caves, chasms…natural or otherwise. As we grow, we become better able to carve these out, with magic or with our own claws. Thankfully, Mount Vengeance was home to some particularly gaping chasms, previously mined and abandoned long ago by the dunelfen, so I soon made it my home and staked my claim.
“And finally,” she said, thrusting the book in her hand at Ainsworth’s chest. He took it, puzzled, and realized it was one of the old accounts noting the outgoing expenditures of the inn. “There was the need to establish and build my hoard. Dragons are destined to search the land and claim wealth however we see fit—even if that means by deceit, theft, or plunder. The biggest, most impressive hoard…” She shrugged. “Wins.”
“Oh my,” said Ainsworth, clutching the logbook to his chest. He was not sure what to say. Should he try for humor? “How very…stereotypical of you?”
She huffed a laugh. “Well, I suppose. I am getting ahead of myself, but how we live now is a shadow of the way the dragons reigned and conquered during the Great Sweep. We have been pushed back, hunted near to extinction, but still we have found ways to live that satisfy our instincts, that let us have power over the land. The instinct to hoard isstrong;it is as natural as seeking out food when hungry. And the more we collect, the stronger we become—both physically and in magic. And yes, I know,” she said, raising a hand to stop Ainsworth from interjecting. “Your dragon scholars have worked out that much; I snuck a look at your manuscript. But there is one thing they have yet to discover. We dragons have the ability to change our form. We become what you might call the Dragon Pèidse so we can navigate the world in secret. Granted, it is difficultto hide some of our features, like our eyes and horns and tails—and sometimes our scales as well. But we do our best to blendin.
“In my case, my humanoid form looked a lot like a tyflan, which I used to my advantage. I wanted to join a group who plundered other monsters’ lairs, or who would fight bandits and bad guys for rewards. I thought it would be a good way to build my hoard while still doing some good in the world. Plus, being among the very people who might one day set out to seek my wealth, even to kill me, seemed a sensible way to get to know them, to understand their weaknesses and how they could be best exploited. I quickly found a party willing to take me, and indeed they thought me a tyflan sorcerer, not realizing that the fire I possessed was inherent and not bound to any spell.” She held up her palm, and the gentle light transformed into a small, ferocious flame.
