“Ekorraodde,” the king began, and stopped. The dragon swung its head around and locked its gaze on the man’s. There was something frighteningly similar about the depths in their eyes, Leilis thought, but she could not have begun to describe what it was.
“King of Lonne,” said the dragon. “Give me your name, O king.”
“I am Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes,” answered the king. “Great-grandson of Taliente Neredde ken Seriantes, whom I think you knew.” His voice was steady, but his hand on his son’s shoulder was white knuckled with strain and exhaustion. He lifted his hand to show the dragon, Leilis suddenly understood, his ring. The iron was cast in the shape of a dragon, she saw; the rubies were its eyes.
“Yes,” said the dragon. “I remember Taliente Seriantes. You are much like him. Also, little like him. He offered me his heart. Will you give me yours?”
“It is yours already, O Ekorraodde.”
“Yes.” The dragon opened its hand. The king’s heart gleamed dully against the dragon’s brilliance, a thing of black iron and stone, of smooth powerful lines and sudden sharp angles. “It is not the heart of a dragon. Would you have a dragon’s heart, O king? That is what Taliente Neredde ken Seriantes desired. I could give you the heart of a dragon. It would be impervious to harm.”
Geriodde Seriantes looked, beneath his calm mask, subtly horrified. “… That is not my ambition. No.”
The dragon tilted its head. Leilis thought it was amused, but not with any familiar human amusement. “No?” It closed its hand again, and the iron heart vanished. “Then where lies your ambition? What would you have of me, O king?”
The king made a little gesture of negation. “Nothing. I would never have… called you into the ephemeral. I ask nothing of you, O Ekorraodde.” He hesitated, then continued carefully, “What should I dare ask: I, who was blind to the heart of the mage?”
“And to your own heart?”
Leilis glanced from one dragon to the other, trying to understand the undercurrents that lay beneath their words. She felt that she was missing half the exchange, but if the dragon was baiting the king, he did not rise to the bait. He said merely, “Perhaps.”
“And to mine?”
But at this, surprisingly, the king shook his head. “No. Yours, I recognize, O Ekorraodde.”
The dragon tilted its head, regarding the king from one great black eye. “What would you have of me, grandson of Taliente Neredde ken Seriantes, King of Lirionne, in exchange for your heart? Ask.”
The king bowed his head. “My heart was always yours. But as you ask me, O Ekorraodde—I, too, would be pleased to see the transient cities of men prosper.”
“Then see to it that they do,” said the dragon, and sank its long head down to rest on one taloned hand, regarding the king almost from his own level.
After that there was at last a discreet, relieved withdrawal. Several of the King’s Own guards carried Taudde, carefully, but with an air of bearing a prisoner and not merely a wounded man. Leilis watched them with covert anxiety. She had attached herself as by right to Karah’s company, and thus by implication to the protection of Prince Tepres. It might have been this that prevented any guardsman from laying a hand on her. Or they might merely have thought her held safely enough without going to the trouble, as was clearly true.
Karah walked hand in hand with her sister, both girls quiet and strained. But Karah’s other hand was laid on Prince Tepres’s arm, and there was no mistaking the possessiveness with which the prince regarded the young keiso. But the prince also cast one and another distracted glance back toward the dragon’s cavern. His father had not left the cavern with the rest but had remained to speak further with the Dragon of Lonne. Leilis wondered what they would say to one another, the king and the dragon, but was not sorry to have been dismissed with the others. The big smoke-and-silver cat had stayed behind with the king, but the little gray cat with the white foot walked before their little company and Karah’s kitten perched on her shoulder, guides and guards and whatever else they might be. They were a comforting presence in the dark places of the mountain.
The caverns scrolled out before them and around them, graceful curtains and spires of white stone barely revealed by the simple lanterns of men. For a while their path lay beside a swift rivulet of opaque water. The sound of it running across the stone made Leilis realize that she was desperately thirsty. She saw some of the King’s Own guardsmen also glance wistfully at the water, but no one was rash enough to drink from this stream.