“I understand the need for friends,” Stegoman said, musing. “My kinfolk would be loyal to me in great need, but they mistrust me.”
“What have you done to them, then? Are you as caustic and aggravating to them as you are to me? You are arrogant and condescending, patronizing and impatient! Do you think yourself a sorcerer?”
Now, “sorcerer” was the second worst insult a dragon could give, since sorcerers wanted dragons' blood, and the only way to get it was from hatchlings. The only insult worse was “hatchling hunter,” the men who actually tracked and killed the hatchlings for their blood, to sell to sorcerers—and Stegoman, in his own infancy, had had a very bad experience with one such. Matt held his breath, waiting for the explosion.
But someone had blown out the fuse. Stegoman said only, “I think I am a dragon who keeps company with a wizard, and I own to have given him a drop or two of my blood when there was great need.”
“Oh, you are impossible!” Dimetrolas cried. “Have you no pride, no sense of honor?” She was working herself into a royal rage now. “To give your blood to a wizard—not to have it wrested from you by sorcery, not to fight to the death to defend it, but to actually give it meekly, like a lamb to the slaughter! You are no dragon, but a human's pet!”
“I have told you that I am alien among my own kind,” Stegoman said with deadly calm.
“Small wonder, if you league with wizards! You are right in this much at least—that no dragon in her right mind would seek your company! Go your way, and may it not cross mine again!” She leaped into the air, wings beating hard and fast, and flew away into the night.
Stegoman crouched immobile on his hilltop.
Matt waited for the explosion. After a verbal drubbing of that sort, his friend had to let off steam somehow, and it did him great credit that he hadn't tried to vent it on Dimetrolas. But right now Matt had a notion he should stay out of Stegoman 's way.
Wrong again. The dragon's voice came floating down out of the dark, calm, even sad and, strangely, tender. “Matthew?”
“Uh… yeah, Stegoman?” Matt called up.
“You heard?”
“Weil, there was a downdraft, and—”
“You could not easily have done aught but listen. Aye.”
Matt took a breath. “I thought you did a masterful job of being patient.”
“But was patience what she needed of me?” Stegoman asked. “Did she not wish some sign of passion from me, even if it were anger?”
Matt chose his words carefully. “She might have wanted that, but she would have been frightened and hurt if you had given it to her.”
“Then there was no way to do what was right for her,” Stegoman sighed. “Patience frustrated her, but anger would have frightened her.”
“Well, you could have given her a compliment or two when you realized she was trying to get a rise out of you.”
Stegoman was silent awhile, then said, “Perhaps. But would that not have seemed odd?”
“Oh, I don't think she would have minded.”
“Perhaps not.” Stegoman was silent awhile longer, then asked, “Was she angered only because I was not, or did I reveal myself to be something too strange, too frightening?”
“Maybe you did cut a bit close to the bone there. Certainly you were a bit guarded about your own background.”
“Guarded!” Stegoman snorted. “Has she given even that much indication of her own?”
“Well, no, but the frightening parts of your biography aren't exactly going to inspire her with a desire to trust you with the secrets of her own hurts.”
“Even though I have entrusted her with my own,” Stegoman said with a sardonic tone.
“Well, yeah, but you were using them to explain why she should stay away from you. Can't blame her if she decided to take you at your word, can you?”
“I do not blame her at all,” Stegoman returned, “neither for her coming nor for her going.”
Which was to say, of course, that he blamed her for both, for if all she were going to do was to cause him grief by firing off a few insults and flying out of his life, why should she have come into it in the first place?
Still, he thought the two dragons were making progress— if Dimetrolas came back for more.
He had to admit that having Stegoman at his beck and call was very handy, and knew that a female and a full nest would end all that. Nonetheless, he wished that his friend would indeed find a mate—he'd be much happier for it. But if this courtship were anything to go by, he couldn't understand how the species had survived this long—though maybe it wasn't as hopeless as it seemed to human eyes. Dragons, after all, were a naturally prickly breed.
The sidicus finally flew out of the forest into a broad plain that stretched as far as Balkis could see. She looked about but saw only tall grass as high as her knee—and one huge boulder, gilded by the setting sun with a grove of trees behind it.
The sidicus hovered near her, beating its wings furiously and demanding, “Why are you so slow when aid is in sight? Come, bring your swain and hurry!”
An angry denial came to her lips, but the sidicus was already darting away over the plain to perch on the rock.
She quickened her pace, mad with worry about Anthony; the unicorn matched it without effort. She touched Anthony's throat, felt the pulse, and felt somewhat reassured. She also felt a little uneasy, knowing that her leading a unicorn marked both herself and Anthony as virgins, and scolded herself— virginity did not of itself make one more vulnerable.
They came up to the rock, which proved to be about the size of a dining table, though oval in shape. Looking down, she saw that its surface was hollowed in the shape of a mussel shell—like a clam's, only longer. There was clear water in it, about four inches deep.
“Now, pay attention!” the sidicus rapped out. “This boulder is of incredible medical virtue, for it cures Christians or would-be Christians of whatever ailments afflict them—even wounds made by lion's claws.”
Balkis stared at the depression in the boulder's surface, then tried not to let her skepticism show. “Why should it cure only Christians and folk who wish to become Christians?”
“Rawk! Have you no brains, girl? We are in the land of Prester John, the foremost Christian king of Asia! Who else should it cure—the pagan shamans whose people threaten him?” The bird tilted its head back and burst into song.
The music amazed Balkis, for its voice had thus far been only a grating and raucous noise. With even greater surprise, she recognized the notes for a hymn!
The sidicus finished its song and fixed her with a beady eye. “Surprised, are you? Well, witty lady, know that if I can imitate human speech, I can mimic any other sound as well, even the songs of the nightingale and the skylark! If I can manage that, why should I not be able to copy something so simple as one of your hymns?”
The song had acted as a summons, for two old men came from the grove—and with that much of a clue, Balkis was able to discern a cottage in the center of the trees, its walls faced with bark, its roof thatched with leaves, so thoroughly a part of its environment as to escape notice. A suspicion formed in her mind that perhaps the trees that made the little house were still alive and had grown as they did out of kindness to the hermits.
Certainly they seemed to be religious men, for the crowns of their heads were either shaven or bald with age and fringed with white hair, and their brown robes were belted with hempen cords. Each carried a staff, the top carved into a cross. As they came near, they inclined their heads in bows, smiling through their long white beards. The one who looked marginally older said, “Good evening, maiden. Is your companion ill?”
“Not ill, good sir, but wounded.” Balkis noticed that the unicorn seemed completely at ease with the two old men, and she drew her own conclusions. Oddly, it made her more comfortable with them, too.