Cayce shook her head. “The pixie and the anchorite. Boom and the soldiers…”
“All asleep. Well, all but the golem, but he can’t make a move without his handlers. They’ll all stay asleep for another hour or so.” Rus grinned wickedly. “I made a small fire downwind of us. Tossed in a few herbs and things you haven’t learned about yet. The breeze carried the smoke right to where our party waited.” He held out a small sprig of rounded green leaves. “A whiff of this clovermint brings one right out of it. Pity I didn’t bring enough for everyone. Now get up. I want to get moving.”
Cayce felt the numbness draining out of her arms and legs. “What about our fee, Master?”
“Stuff the fee. We can offset the cost of this little outing and make ourselves a fine profit without so much as a cross word passing between us and the dragon.”
Now fully awake, Cayce felt a chill as she weighed Rus’s words. “We can?”
“Of course. You didn’t really think I would come along on this suicide mission for a handful of pixie’s gold and the ephemeral promise of sharing the big serpent’s treasure? Which, by the way, we’d never live to spend?
“No, Tania, what I have in mind will keep clients and royalty alike begging at our door for years to come. Now, stop asking questions and attend me.”
Cayce struggled to her feet. “Yes, Master Rus. What do you require?”
“Grab your pack and follow. I’ll explain on the way.” Rus hummed a breezy tune as he swept out of Kula’s makeshift camp, nimbly stepping over and around sleeping soldiers. Boom the golem stood and smoldered, perhaps unaffected by Rus’s sleeping vapors but unable to take action without direct orders to do so. Both Vaan and Kula dozed among the roots of a scrawny ash tree.
Cayce wrapped her still-clumsy fingers around her pack and hoisted it onto her shoulder. She was trying to make as little noise as possible, but her master had done his work well. From their placid faces and softly rising chests, she reckoned the dragon could burst from the ground beneath the hunting party’s feet and they would not even stir.
Master Rus moved quickly when he wasn’t posturing for clients. Recently woozy and burdened as Cayce was, she actually had to struggle to keep up with her rotund mentor. By the time they cleared the final ridge before the dragon’s cave, Cayce was red-faced and out of breath.
Rus was waiting for her, crouched behind a jagged boulder. The stony spire jutted from the ground among a dozen similar rock formations. The spires were broken and charred as if by lightning, and the ground below them was flat, cracked, and hard. Rus motioned for Cayce to crouch beside him, his eyes fixed on the hollow depression where the blasted ground met the sheer south face of the mountain.
Cayce crept behind Rus’s boulder and lowered her pack. The ground sloped down toward the depression and into a ragged hole that lay almost hidden in the shadows. According to Kula and Vaan, the hole led to a tunnel they could follow right to the edge of the dragon’s innermost sanctuary. Both the opening and the tunnel were big enough to accommodate a large serpentine dragon, so they could certainly handle a small party of warriors bent on destroying one.
Cayce looked up to where morning sunbeams glittered through the snowmelt. Ascent up the south face would test the most experienced mountaineer, but a climb was never part of the attack. Kula’s plan had been to creep in and confront the dragon head-on, but that plan was asleep with Kula and the others. Now only Rus knew what Rus planned to do. Or rather, what Rus planned for Cayce to do.
Still fixed on the mountainside, Master Rus said, “So you really believed I let that pixie goad me into joining this farce? You must think me an awful fool, my apprentice.”
Here it comes, Cayce thought. She expected Rus would chastise her for correctly citing his own advice about pixies, especially since the only retort he had was to claim he had meant sprites. She had no idea what he would put her through for this, though—for assuming he was every inch the overstuffed, egocentric child he played in front of clients.
But there was no malice in Rus this time. Instead, there was a lilt in his voice and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Still just above a whisper, he fell into the practiced cadence of a master delivering a lecture. “It is good to be thought a fool by one’s enemies, Tania. It makes them careless and overconfident.”
“But it is less desirable to be thought so by one’s students.” He grinned. “Especially in the field. So watch and listen as Rus demonstrates why he is Master. I knew the pixie’s story didn’t smell right. I also knew it didn’t matter, not a jot. That little blue weevil and the wild-eyed giantess could have told us we were going to pray the dragon away and I would have cheerfully come along. I am always happy to follow the client’s lead… at least from the time I accept the retainer to when my own ends take precedence.
“No, all I ever wanted or expected from this engagement was free guide service and an armed escort to the dragon’s nest. This created an opportunity, see? There’s that word again. An opportunity for someone like you to perhaps harvest certain rare and hard-to-acquire ingredients? Ingredients that someone such as me could perhaps put to especially good use?” The poisoner chuckled, his belly shaking in concert with the shimmering yarn on his hat.
Cayce remained silent too long, and Rus snapped, “Remember your lessons, Apprentice. How many rare and exquisite poisons are derived from dragons?”
Cayce’s mind whirled, and she blinked. “Dozens,” she said “Dragons blood can be brewed into a tasteless, odorless—”
“I said remember your lessons, not recite them. We don’t need anything as precious as blood. If we wanted blood I’d have gone along with that forest woman’s attack.” Rus shook his head. “Blood,” he said derisively. “Why don’t we just try for the dragon’s living heart or both its eyes? No. Scales, teeth, and claws will do for us. Dragons slough off and replace them regularly. If we can collect even a small handful of these from the mouth of the cave, we’ll be among the most feared and well-compensated poisoners in the world.”
One small fragment of Rus’s earlier oration stuck in Cayce’s mind. “Master,” she whispered. “Someone like me will collect the ingredients?”
“Someone like you, yes. Someone exactly like you. You, in fact.” Rus’s eyes twinkled merrily. “You, precisely you, exactly you, and only you.”
Rus lifted his cane and pried the crystal skull off the end with a wheezing grunt. “I’ll loan you this, of course,” he said. “If the dragon or one of its minions comes for you, crack the crystal and toss it to the ground between you and the enemy. It releases a miasma that melts living tissue on contact, so if they come any closer they’ll dissolve.”
Cayce dully stretched out her cupped hands. “Minions,” she muttered.
Rus tilted his palm so that the skull rolled into Cayce’s outstretched hands. She closed both fists around the grinning purple totem.
Rus presented his gloved fist to Cayce so that the bright red ring was mere inches from her nose. In a flash of motion he opened his hand and plucked the jeweled ring off. “This”—he held it out for Cayce to accept—“is for you personally. If it comes to close quarters, punch this stone into the dragon’s body. Anywhere will do. It delivers a toxic jolt powerful enough to kill almost anything. That’s the theory, at least. It’s never been properly tested, but I have seen it work on a medium-sized hill giant.
“If you can’t get in one good punch, put the gem in your mouth and bite down.”
Cayce took the ring. “What will that do?”
“It will make your body so toxic that the dragon will keel over after a single bite. A single taste with the tongue, actually, or a single sniff.” Rus dusted his gloved hands against each other. “At the very least it will make him sick long enough for me to escape.”