Page 20 of Dragon Lord
Shite.
Sweat popped onto his forehead.She is for Belinus.Belinus, thegod.The sooner Draknart handed her over, the better.
The moment she finished drinking, he called to her.“Come.This way.”
The faerie circle was just a short way down a deer path.‘Twas most unfortunate that they missed twilight.They would not be able to enter right away.As the sun dipped below the horizon to visit another world, so could travelers pass into Fae Land.Still, Draknart wanted to see the gate before he went fishing.
The stones drew him.They drew creatures of the old world: dragons, faeries, trolls, and everything wild.They repelled most everything human and domesticated.The average villager could go in search of the stones and get lost in the forest for weeks.
The path wound around a large rock formation that blocked the view of the glen ahead.Draknart had to go around the rock before he could step into the clearing at last.He stopped in his tracks.An enraged, beastly growl rumbled up his chest.He tossed his head back and shouted his rage to the dark sky, waking the birds in the trees.
Nay!Not after all those cursed decades!Not when he was so close to freeing himself from the damned curse.
The great stones of the faerie circle lay toppled over like storm-crushed trees.
No way in.
He strode up to the circle, picked up the nearest stone, then hurled it, and then another and another, his chest heaving with murderous rage.He would murder the men who had done this.He would pick off their limbs one by one.Slowly.
He didn’t know how much time passed before he turned to look for Einin.
She was nowhere to be seen.
If she ran, gods help me…
Draknart sniffed the air.When he caught her scent nearby, he calmed some.She was just hiding behind a tree.
“Come out.I will not hurt you, lass.”
She did so with caution, stopping as far from him as the clearing allowed, hesitating.Her gaze cut to the stones, then, filled with questions, returned to him.Her voice held undisguised awe as she said, “That’d be the faerie circle, then?”
Draknart wanted to pull trees up by their roots.He restrained himself.“Aye.”
“Who would destroy such a wonder?”
“Men.”
“Why?”
“Why do men do anything?They have no more reason than sheep.”He ground his teeth, plotting bloody murder.“I’d wager one of their priests was involved.”His dragon blood demanded a swift dispensation of justice.He would—
Wolves howled in the distance.
Einin took several hurried steps toward him and rubbed her arms against the chill of the night.Her stomach growled.She kept looking in the direction of the wolf howls.
“We’ll return to the lake.”Draknart swore under his breath as he strode back to the path that had brought them to the circle.He kept an easy pace, to make sure she could keep up with him in the darkness.
On the sandy beach, he picked up enough driftwood to last the night, then built a fire.He could cough up a spark or two even in his human form.When the goddess had cursed him to be a halfling, she also had to bless him, to keep balance.So she’d blessed his human form to retain some of his dragon abilities: keen eyesight, sharp smell and hearing, extraordinary strength, and the odd spark here and there.Not enough.Not nearly.He didn’t want to be a man with a dragon’s senses.He wanted to be dragon.
“You can wash up, if you’d like.I’ll keep track of the wolves,” he told Einin.Then he sniffed the air.“I scent a rabbit to the east.That’ll do as dinner.”He’d promised her a fish, but he didn’t have the patience to start fishing as a man.He’d fish for her when he was dragon again.
The hunt was short.Draknart barely had to stay away from Einin at all.When he returned, she was knee-deep in the water, her britches rolled up to midthigh.Her bare skin caught the moonlight.
“I’ll skin it,” she offered, bending forward to wash her face.Her shirt gaped.Her round breasts swayed with every movement and—
There could be noand.Draknart turned from her and dropped the rabbit next to the fire.One more night.
By the time she joined him at the fire, her britches were rolled down and her shirt buttoned to the top again.Regardless, he looked at her as little as possible.She was doing the same to him, avoiding his naked body.She kept her attention on their dinner instead.She used her sword to skin the rabbit first, then to gut it, then she ran a sharp stick through the small carcass and held it over the fire.
