“What a marvelous creature!” Dolhal said and thought that the High Queen’s reign would be much easier if she had such assistance—firm but benign, expensive but in part paying its own fee—to aid her.
“Yes,” said Sulinin, “and only half grown!”
“What wonders she must have worked when she reached maturity,” Dolhal mused softly.
“And what an appetite she had,” Sulinin said. “The people loved her, of course, and they loved me and they loved the king for her sake, for she brought them comfort and good crops—her warming of the ground made three plantings feasible and her scat was the most wonderful fertilizer imaginable. Then too, she brought prosperity to the kingdom. For fear of her, all the neighboring kingdoms paid tribute to Bellgarten and we in exchange settled their disputes. This worked very well until the dragon grew so large and her appetite so prodigious that all of the food stores and livestock in the neighboring kingdoms were reduced to starvation rations. The king was reluctant to tax our people further, though in time he had to. Rather than becoming angry at the dragon, people grew angry at the king and there was a rebellion, aided and abetted by subject kingdoms. Of course, my girl and I rapidly put it down and that was when the king decided, why pay an executioner? You understand that I did not like seeing my girl eating human beings—whole, mind you. She ate them whole. But the king was in no mood to listen to suggestions and might have found some other way to slay me.”
“You could have then turned the dragon onto the king,” the emissary suggested, surprised that Sulinin, who had been at court at least as long as the emissary, had failed to think of it himself.
Sulinin looked down at his clawed hand. “I might have but she knew the king nearly as well as she knew me and besides, he was the king and a man and if I asked her to murder him in order to save her from murdering those who had legally wronged the king, what would the point have been? The outcome would have been the same for the dragon. So I kept my peace. It was a mistake. News of the executions brought more insurrections and more border wars among the tribute countries and more executions. When full-scale war broke out, the king did not field soldiers. He simply sent the dragon out to do their job, thinking of the salaries he would save, no doubt.
“It didn’t quite work out that way. As she flew her missions of destruction, she fed and as she fed she grew larger and needed even more feeding to enable her to fly. Soon all of the crops and livestock in Bellgarten were gone and then began—the draft.”
Sulinin grew quiet. The egg was vibrating at greater speed and Dolhal thought he could hear a heartbeat through the shell, which shimmered expectantly.
“Go on,” he told Sulinin, though he had begun to guess the end of the story—indeed, he had seen the end of the story and it was extremely disheartening. What a tragic waste of power and resources.
“As you may guess, the draft was not for soldiers for the field. Draftees were brought to the castle and fed through a doorway that led straight into my girl’s enormous gullet. By now she was so big that a curious thing happened, however. Not all of the people who passed through her were digested or died. Some merely lost limbs or were somewhat scored or otherwise injured but came through her bowel whole and alive save for that. Others, the ones she ate just before sleeping, might emerge whole but completely mad from the process of passing through the dragon’s stomach. But the majority, those who were fed to her before she flew into battle, were totally devoured and no one ever saw them again. I helped those who emerged from her belly alive escape back out into the city, but in time all of them were rounded up again, as were first the old people, then the women and children. By this time, there was no one left in all of the other lands for her to blast but still she kept feeding and still the king gave her the flesh and bones of his people.
“I suppose he had gone quite mad by then. Otherwise, how could he have shoved his own daughter into the dragon’s maw? I heard the princess scream for her father and recognized her voice, for when she was a child she had often come to hear me sing the dragon to sleep. The dragon snapped her jaws shut but I pried them open and tried to wrest the princess from her. My girl never would have hurt me ordinarily, but she was still in her feeding frenzy and she was irritated with me so she let her jaws snap shut and a small flicker of her flame warn me away—which is how I came by these injuries you see.” He touched his face and the stump of his arm. “I stumbled through the door with the roar of the dragon and the princess’s screams echoing in my ears with the screams of all the other victims.”
“I’m surprised the king didn’t feed you to the dragon too.”
“He tried. That’s how he met his end. Even though by now the dragon was far too bulky to fly and there was nothing left for her to eat, she was hungry. She began thrashing about, and broke down the castle in her frenzy. She destroyed Tollin with her writhing and the flames she let forth as she bellowed in frustration and, I realized later, pain.”
“Poor thing!” the emissary said. “I suppose she was starting to lay her egg then. I had no idea dragons had such a difficult time of it.”
“Nor did I. All I knew was that there was nothing more for her to feed on save myself and that when I was gone she would starve to death so I made for her a loaf of explosives, hid, and when she came to feed at my call, lit the fuse. The lighted end was between her teeth before I saw the egg.”
The emissary fixed him with a cold look but said, “I suppose you had to save yourself.”
“Moreover, I didn’t wish her to starve to death. I saw her explode and then—then I remember nothing until you found me.”
The egg stretched and a tiny crack appeared at the top. “Did you not say I must take the egg away before it hatches if I wish it to adapt elsewhere?” Dolhal asked anxiously, stroking the shell and crooning to it.
“Better to let me crack it for you and slay the dragonet while it is still small enough to kill,” Sulinin said, lifting in his one powerful hand the rock he had dropped earlier.
“Never! You’ve betrayed and slain the mother already. I will not let you have this little one.”
“Did you hear none of what I said? The dragon becomes voracious as she grows and nothing can survive—”
“You allowed her to be corrupted. In a good and just land she will be an instrument for goodness and justice.” Dolhal lifted the egg to his chest, shushing it as if hoping that his shushing would calm it and delay its hatching. Then, before the former dragonkeeper could rise to his feet, the emissary was airborne, the dragon egg cradled in his arms.
“Wait—you can’t leave me here,” Sulinin called to him. “Take me on your back as you promised.”
“I must get the dragonet to the High Queen before it can fly,” Dolhal called down to him. “Perhaps we’ll return for you later. Perhaps.” And with three great flaps of his wings he soared further aloft, disappearing from sight as he flew toward the Ogrebones.
Sulinin sighed and burrowed beneath the rubble again for warmth, to restore his strength with rest. Tomorrow he would pack up the rest of the rancid dragon meat and follow on foot in the direction the emissary had flown. Poor Dolhal. The emissary would find nowhere in all of this lifeless land the birds Sulinin’s dragonet had so voluminously devoured upon hatching. Sulinin would travel as far as he could, looking for sign of the emissary and his burden—bits of shell and, the former dragonkeeper fervently hoped for the sake of the High Queen and all of Southworld, a few stray feathers.