“Mortals,” said the dragon. The dragon was not looking at Ker, but up into the air as if talking to it.
Ker took a step forward up the trail, and the dragon’s great eye rolled toward him. He stopped.
“You interest me,” the dragon said. A long flame-colored tongue flicked out of its mouth and touched Ker on the forehead; he felt it as a bee sting, hot and then sore. “I taste my children on you, but not in you. I taste dwarf on you. Perhaps you tell the truth?”
“I—I am,” Ker said. Sweat rolled down his face; heat came off the dragon as off a rock wall on which the sun has lain all day. “They sent me to bring these back—” He shifted the burden in his hands.
“It is… difficult,” the dragon said. “They do belong… there.” The dragon sighed, and the grass before it withered and turned brown at the edges. For a moment the dragon’s eye looked down its snout, then it lifted its head. “Lowland life is so fragile,” it said, as if to itself. Then to Ker: “Approach me.”
With the dragon’s eye on him, he could not disobey. He took one step after another, until the heat beat against his face and body.
“What do your people say of dragons?” the dragon asked.
It was impossible to lie. “My people say dragons are wise,” Ker said. “And greedy, treacherous, and cruel.”
“My people say humans are stupid,” the dragon said. “And greedy, treacherous, and cruel. Which is better if one must be crueclass="underline" stupid and cruel, or wise and cruel?”
In the worst of the nightmares, Ker had never dreamt of holding a conversation with a dragon. “Wisdom is good,” he said, trying for caution.
“Wisdom alone is useless,” the dragon said. “Wisdom without power is wind without air… it can do nothing of itself.” Ker said nothing; he could think of nothing to say. The dragon twitched his head. “And power without wisdom is fatal. Power without wisdom is a mad bull running through the house.” The dragon focused both eyes on Ker. “A fool should have no power, lest he bring ruin with him, but a wise man must have power, lest his wisdom die without issue. So which are you, mortaclass="underline" fool or wise man?”
Something more than his own life hung on his answer, Ker knew, but not what it was. “I try to be good,” he said.
The dragon vented flame from its nostrils, over its head. “Good! Evil! Words for children to use. Can fools ever bring good, or true wisdom do evil? No, no, little man. You must choose: Are you fool or wise man?”
“Anyone would choose to be wise, but it is not possible to choose,” Ker said. “Some are born unable to become wise.”
Something rattled off to his right; Ker glanced that way and saw the tip of the dragon’s tail slithering across its vast hind leg.
“You interest me again,” the dragon said. “So you would choose to be wise if you could be wise?”
“Of course,” Ker said.
“And of what does wisdom consist?” the dragon asked.
Ker could think of no answer for that. He knew he was not wise; how then could he know what wisdom was? Finally he said, “Only the wise know.”
“Does beauty know what beauty is?” the dragon asked. “Does water know wetness, or stone hardness?” Its head tilted so that one great eye was higher than the other, and both looked cross-eyed down its snout at Ker. His mouth went even dryer than before. Scaled eyelids slid up over the dragon’s eyes for a moment and dropped back down, leaving that penetrating gaze even clearer than before. Ker’s stomach twisted; eyelids should not move like that. “Surely not,” the dragon said, hissing slightly. “Nor the blue of the sky know its blueness, nor the green of grass its greenness.”
A throbbing silence followed; Ker could find nothing to say. He glanced around, trying to think of something, anything, that would free him from the dragon’s gaze, and saw that its tail now lay between him and the trail back, a narrow but steep ridge. He was trapped in the dragon’s circle.
“I will tell you,” the dragon said finally, “what wisdom is, if you will promise to become wise.”
“How can I promise that?” Ker blurted in a panic. Sweat ran down his ribs, and dried in the heat of the dragon’s breath.
“Small beings can have small wisdom,” the dragon said. “And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards.”
“Caring for afterwards…?” Ker repeated this without understanding.
“After action, afterwards,” the dragon said. “Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first.”
Ker opened his mouth to say that only fortune-tellers could know what would happen, but fear stopped him: Would he really argue with a dragon while trapped in its circle?”
The dragon’s snout edged closer, nudged him. He staggered back: A dragon’s nudge was like a blow from a strong man. Or a dwarf.
“You see,” the dragon murmured. “You do know.”
He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything except that he was surrounded by large lumps and ridges of dragon and too afraid to shake or fall down. He closed his eyes, expecting searing flame or rending teeth, and tried to think of the village as it had been, before Tam found those terrible eggs… of Lin before she had been invaded… of his mother, who now waited out on the hills in a hollow with a spring and a handful of rockfolk.
Cool air swirled around him, rose to a gale of dust and leaves, then stilled. He opened his eyes. No dragon. No strange light in the air. He blinked. A streak of dead grass, scorched, where the dragon had breathed that tongue of fire… and new grass, growing quick as a flame, brilliant green against the charred ground. At his feet lay the walking stick he had refused before, now sprouting incongruous flowers and leaves.
Ker looked up and around and saw nothing of the dragon, but he had seen nothing of the dragon before. Cautiously, he picked up the stick in his free hand. At once, strength flowed back into his limbs. He felt rested, strong, as if he had just come from a full night’s sleep and a full meal. The scent of those flowers filled his nose. He took a step and stared as the land blurred around him, reappearing when he put that foot down. A league, two leagues, had fled behind him. Already he could see the hill where his mother waited with the rockfolk.
One more step and he was there, standing above the dell and looking down into it with eyes that saw through leaves and wood to where his mother sat knitting, while the rockfolk snored. The ones who should have been watching the trail slumped near it, also snoring. The little camp looked orderly and peaceful; someone had put their scattered belongings back into the packs. Probably his mother; he could not imagine the dwarves being so helpful. Somewhere a bird called, and another answered. Ker looked at the walking stick. Flowers and leaves had disappeared, leaving it bark-covered once more.
Ker came carefully down the slope into camp; his mother looked up and her face brightened but she said nothing.
“I’m back,” he said.
“What happened?”
He did not know how to tell her; he was not sure exactly what had happened.
“Why are they sleeping?” he asked instead. His mother shrugged.
“I know not. Only that at noon the light changed and they all fell into sleep. I would have slept, but their snores were too loud and I was worried… did you bring Lin?”
“No.” Ker leaned the walking stick against a tree; the tree’s foliage thickened. His mother stared at him.
“What happened? What is that? How did you come so soon?”
“I don’t understand,” Ker said. “It was a dragon—” He could say no more; exhaustion fell on him like a sack of wet grain, and he slumped to the ground. In a moment, his mother was at his side. A long drink of water, a hunk of bread smeared with jam, and he struggled up again to sit with his back against a tree. She handed him his spare shirt, and he put it on. He tried to tell her everything, but how could he say what he did not understand?