Sharpstone's head came up. All the way up. And as his pupils shrank to the size of pins with excitement, he goaded Siegfried again. "I see no reason to be nice to a couple of idiots who are too stupid to find some easier way to get rid of their problems," he said gleefully. "Go away! I can't be bothered with you!"
Siegfried's temper snapped. He unloaded an angry lecture on the dragon, who paid no attention whatsoever to what he was saying. Instead, he kept his eyes delightedly fixed on the waterfall of toads, frogs and even an occasional snake that poured from the air in front of Siegfried's lips and rained down the side of the mountain.
Meanwhile, Leopold, who couldn't understand the dragon and was clearly bored with the entire situation, had wandered away until he found a boulder stable enough to sit on. There he slumped, until inspiration struck him again. Well, inspiration, or something else...
He picked up his song of misery just as Siegfried's invective ran out. "Oh, death, come wrap me in your wings!" he sobbed. "In deepest darkness my soul sings! I will not fear the Reaper nigh! Oh take me for I want to die!"
Now Sharpstone turned his attention from the frog-fall to the tuneless troubadour. His mouth gaped open in astonishment.
"Eat him, would you?" the bird said crossly from Siegfried's shoulder. "Put him out of our misery."
"Sadness fills my life with pain! I cannot go on again! Darkness falls across the land! Come to me and take my hand!" Leopold's eyes wore clamped shut as he bleated out the words, caught up in a transport of creation. Or something like creation.
The dragon listened, with his mouth gaping, until he couldn't restrain his mirth any longer. His sides heaved. He began to snort, then gurgle, then belch out smoke and chortles.
"It's not that funny," Siegfried said crossly. More frogs, two of them, joined the others over the cliff. The dragon kept laughing, then fell over on his side, rolling on his ledge as he howled with laughter.
Leopold stopped singing and stared at him. Siegfried grew red-faced, but kept his jaws clamped tightly shut. Perhaps he didn't want to be responsible for the death of any more amphibians.
Finally Sharpstone's laughter subsided somewhat. The dragon clawed himself upright, raising his head weakly, wheezing. Little plumes of smoke leaked from his nostrils.
"Oh...First Egg," the dragon gasped. "I haven't laughed that hard in centuries." He coughed a tiny flame or two. "Shells and stone..." He shook his head. "All right. You've earned it. You've earned it. You've given me endless entertainment here, so you've convinced me to take your cursed baubles." He held out a massive claw, "palm" up. "You needn't try and trick them into my hoard, nor do any more convincing, nor do me a further service, nor offer me something precious to take them. Put them here. I accept them."
Instantly, Siegfried ripped off the gold ring he was wearing and dropped it in the dragon's claw, then scrambled over to Leopold, and over the latter's protests that "he was just getting inspired," ripped the gold chain from his neck and deposited it in the same place.
The moment that the gold of the chain touched the dragon's claw, Leopold went scarlet. He didn't say a word — he simply scrambled to his feet and started down the mountain as fast as he could go without killing himself.
"Thank you," Siegfried said to Sharpstone.
"My pleasure, literally," the dragon replied, then wheezed with laughter a bit more. "Thermals! I'm going to put these things somewhere special and find a way to pass them off on some other unsuspecting booby in a century or two! That was worth double your weight in gold!"
And with that, the dragon turned around and oozed back into this cave. Siegfried followed Leopold down to where they had left their horses.
They rode in silence for a few minutes, until Leopold cleared his throat, and spoke.
"If you ever," he said, quietly, but venomously, "tell anyone what I was doing? And most of all what I was singing? I. Will. Kill. You."
Chapter 15
The contest of the cursed objects had taken its toll on the young men vying for Rosamund's hand and Kingdom. Rather than face a dragon they didn't have the skill to persuade, didn't think to offer a service or gift to, couldn't hurt and weren't allowed to kill, many of them had given up, declared their forfeits and waited to be relieved of their afflictions. It had been rather sad, actually, to see the poor lads queued up when the Godmother had put in an appearance to take their curses away. It had been even sadder to see the procession of the dejected leaving the Palace as they had packed up and departed with figurative tails between their legs.
Most of the adventurers hadn't even tried. Uninvited as they were, now they left unheralded. The tents emptied, the bunks in the Guardhouse went back to their rightful tenants, the tents were packed up and put away, and there was nothing left to show of the horde of hopeful suitors than the trampled-down grass and the burn-rings of their fires. A handful of the adventurers remained, all quartered with the Guards, and Siegfried had a notion that this handful might try to remain, not as suitors, but as new members of the Guard.
The Princes' numbers had been reduced to thirty-one. That was still more than enough to serve as hostages, especially since it still included all of the enemy candidates, but it made the Palace a lot less crowded. Siegfried and Leopold were still sharing quarters, but they had the whole suite to themselves now, and Siegfried had moved his sleeping arrangements into the second room. Someone had even found him an old bed somewhere that he could use. The sun came in that room first thing in the morning, but that scarcely troubled him, since he was still up with the dawn.
The easy part was over. Now things could begin in earnest.
And now, they both instinctively understood, the competition was going to get a great deal more serious. And probably more hazardous.
While the Godmother would not purposefully make the contests deadly, there was no telling what might happen from here on. And Siegfried knew, though Leopold did not, that there was another factor to what could happen in the contests.
The Tradition. Depending on the Path you were taking, The Tradition might raise the hazard to Potentially Fatal.
The Godmother had to be aware of that, as well; she had proven herself to be as sharp as splintered glass so far, and Siegfried didn't see that changing anytime soon.
But Siegfried and Leopold had something else to worry about besides the contests. It appeared that they had real competition for Rosamund's attention in the form of Prince Desmond, for now that the ranks had thinned, Desmond was moving his campaign forward.
"Good evening, Princess." As Rosa entered the ballroom, she felt, for the first time since the hordes had descended, as if there was actually room to move and breathe in there. Her ladies were not as happy, of course, since there were no longer so many Princes to flirt with and be flirted with in return. Her gentlemen were much happier; they had a fighting chance to get their ladies' attentions back. The Princes were much happier, since there was less competition, though none of them was quite as bold about approaching her as this man was.
Rosamund turned, and smiled faintly at Prince Desmond, who smiled back. "Good evening, Desmond," she replied, and self-consciously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. When in her presence he never looked less than perfect, and that triggered an urge in her to be the same. Even though she knew now that this perfection was nothing more than a carefully cultivated facade, it still induced that urge.