A little side story. We will be back with Stone and family in the next chapter: Dawn.

Stone

Chapter 26 – Here be dragons

Sarn looked over at his sister, Aerith, who was scanning the flock of sheep, as she was supposed to. There were two sheep dogs, running around the edges of the flock, keeping any sheep from straying. Sarn was 15 and Aerith was only 10, old enough to tend the flock when Sarn moved on to working the cattle with his older brothers, once he had trained his sister.

Suddenly there was a great shadow in the air, and Sarn looked up to see a great dragon, nearly 100 feet long, breathing fire as it dipped down to the next field, where the cattle were. It took a large cow in each claw, and then flapped as he regained elevation, roaring as he flew.

Sarn turned back to see his sister, who was looking up at something falling on her. She lifted her arms to ward it from hitting her, and it slipped down around her arms. Then she disappeared. Vanished. One second she was there, but as soon as the golden cylinder descended past her startled eyes, she was gone.

The roar made Sarn look back at the dragon, which had stuffed one of the cows into his fiery mouth, and then descended again at the spot where Aerith had disappeared. The free claw reached out and seemed to grasp at the spot his sister had stood in, and suddenly the dragon disappeared. Sarn did what any boy in the world would do: he ran for home.

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Aerith had fainted. She came to while in the claw of the dragon. Everything looked odd, with no colors. She could also hear the thoughts of the dragon: and they were not pleasant thoughts. It was trying to figure out the best way to get her out of what it called his ring. And all of these methods involved killing her: cutting her into pieces, or cooking her body with his breath. She realized that the ring was magic, and had kept the dragon invisible until it fell onto her. It now made her invisible, which would explain the startled look on her brother’s face after the ring had dropped onto her. While the dragon held her, it was also invisible.

The ring, which the dragon usually wore on his front dewclaw, was wrapped around her torso like a corset. She was surprised to see breasts poking out the top. Only 10, she didn’t have breasts before now. She had bigger hips now as well. Her figure looked like her sister Saran, who was 16.

The dragon could apparently also read her thoughts, and suddenly decided to stop thinking of ways to kill her and free his ring. Apparently the ring has a tendency to slip off his claw. Not often, once every decade or so, but often enough to be annoying. The dragon decided not to kill her, and keep her as a dragonrider.

Aerith was a bit pleased that she was not to be killed, but dearly wanted to get back to her family. They probably wouldn’t recognize her in this older body, but she could try. The dragon explained that this was not possible. While she was wearing the ring, or corset, depending on how you looked at it, she was invisible, and even her speech would not be heard by anyone. And, it pointed out; removing the ring would probably mean her death. Her older body was larger, and now the ring fit her tightly. It had slipped on easily, but would not come off as easily.

Aerith sobbed silently for two days as the dragon flew about, unseen in the air. During this time she found she could delve into the memories of the beast. It was the last of its kind. She saw memories of the skies filled with dragons, back when the dragon was young, thousands of years ago. Then the people came. They were small and puny, hardly worth catching for a hungry dragon. But they had the annoying habit of working together. And while one man could not face a dragon, a hundred could, and did, slowly killing off the race.

At the rare dragon councils, there was talk that the dragons should also band together and wipe the people off the earth. But the dragons were a fiercely independent breed, and could not agree who would be the leader, so nothing was done, and slowly the numbers of dragons dwindled to triple digit numbers, then double digits.

Aerith’s dragon was one of the last born ... dragons only breed once a century, and it was not even a teen (younger than 1200 years) when it had discovered the ring in the north. She wore it back to her home, and discovered that her mother and father could not even see her. She also found out that the little people could not see her, and she could wreak havoc on their puny farms and villages, burning the straw roofs, and stealing their cattle to eat. She did this happily until one day she realized that she was the last dragon in the land, and would never mate. That had been centuries ago.

It was when the dragon swooped down on her own home that Aerith broke out of her funk. She saw Sarn leading the sheep away. Of course the job remained his when his sister had disappeared before his eyes. It would be five years before the next child, another son, would be old enough for the job.

Aerith screamed ‘NO’ as the dragon swooped down on the farm, kindling fire in its belly to burn the barn and house. And that is when she discovered that she had a power over the beast. It swooped back skyward and let out the fire into the air. Sarn saw it, but saw no dragon, so didn’t understand it. Perhaps a shooting star? But it had seemed like real fire. Aerith, two miles above, was amazed that she could hear his thoughts, even though she could not communicate with him.

The dragon had not been hungry until a week after digesting the two cows, but now Aerith would not let him steal any more of the family’s herd. Instead he had to hunt miles away. She also kept him moving, so that no farm lost more than a single cow or ox. Gradually she moved the dragon in a great circle, so that its appetite could be sated with minimal harm to the farmers.

She brought the dragon back to her area after several years, and hovered over the family farm. Sarn had left, and his older brothers were now running the farm while her aged father sat on a chair on the porch. The dragon took his dinner from fields of the neighbors, not touching her family’s farm, although it was now recovered from the loss of two cows and a daughter many years earlier.

By listening into her father’s thoughts she discovered that Sarn was running a small inn in the nearby village, so she had the dragon fly over it, learning that her brother was barely surviving as the smallest of the three inns in the town. So Aerith had her dragon burn down the other two inns, and the entire village had to meet in Sarn’s small inn to discuss the fires, immediately improving his business.

When she came back, several years later, Sarn had the biggest inn in the town, and there were two smaller inns taking some of the business. Both of these also burned and again there was a spike in his business. This second trip was a surprise to Aerith: her brother Sarn was now an old man and his son, also named Sarn was running the inn. Apparently what seemed like a year or two to her was 50 years in the real world.

Once or twice when it seemed that the later generations of the family had fallen on hard luck a bit, so Aerith pulled a scalesheet out from the dragon, and placed it where it could be found. The scales under a dragon’s wings consist of overlapping squares of a scalesheet about a foot square, with 250 gold scales on it, each worth about three gold. The squares on the underside are similar, but with silver scales, each worth one silver. Dropping a few of these allowed the family to get back on track economically. Unfortunately, the dragon could not spare more than one or two at a time, or it would have an area that could be attacked. It took several decades to regrow the missing scalesheets and scales.

Over time she continued to visit her brother’s descendants, discovering a new generation every year or two. They gradually worked their way up the economic scale, become mayor, governor and eventually Duke of an area called Sarn. The last time she had visited the Duke had been a somewhat foolish young man, and Aerith was fairly certain that she would need to leave him a gold scalesheet on the next visit. Instead she found the castle vacant, and learned that the Duke had left the year before, after spending all the family wealth.

But there was another member of the family in town. She went to the small inn Ronald ran, and perched her dragon on the roof. While a dragon is huge, it is actually quite light, and thus could perch on the small inn. The low weight is how dragons are able to fly, after all.

The invisible dragon landed on the inn just before midnight, and Aerith mentally urged all the customers to leave. The place was empty at midnight, two hours earlier than normal, and Ronald began cleaning the place up. When he went out to sweep the rear entrance, he heard the clunk of two metallic items his the cement.

He turned, and saw the scalesheets. The family lore told of these scales appearing in the past, so he scooped them up and carried them inside. When the scalesheets are attached to a dragon, it is nearly impossible to remove the small scales. But when separate, the scales come off easily, leaving the clothlike skin-backing behind. The family lore said that these are valuable in their own way, since heat will not transmit through them. The old Duke had nearly a dozen that had been amassed by the family over the years, until he pawned them.

The next day, before Ronald opened the inn, he went over to a silversmith, and offered him some of the gold.

“That looks like dragon’s gold,” the man said with awe in his eyes. He tried to bend one of the scales. “It is. You can normally bend gold: it is quite soft. But dragon’s gold is stronger than steel. I have never worked it before, but my old master’s master had, and passed on the lore. I can only afford to buy four. I will pay three gold each. But when I get rings made of them, I will be able to buy more.”

“Why are they so valuable?” Ronald asked.

“Rings made from a scale are attuned to each other, apparently. Usually a husband and wife buy them and when they wear them they can always sense the other. Even as to the general distance and direction. Rich folk buy them: I will be able to sell a set of rings for 12 gold the pair.”

Ronald sold the four rings, then went to the other silver and goldsmiths in town, but they would not buy any, since they didn’t have the skills to work the rare metal.

Ronald used the golds he did get to order in food. He had been offering a stew-kitchen for the poor once a week. With this gold, and the silvers from the other scalesheet, he would be able to hold one every other day.