Luddick and Amalyn

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley,” said Esmer. “They migrated from the mountains in the far north when there wasn’t enough food left in their own land. And their food disappearing was no accident…”

Her son closed his eyes, concentrated on the warm afternoon sun on his face, and wondered why his mother would rehash one of the old fables she used to tell him when he was small. His mind drifted to the first and last time he’d faced a real, live dragon in battle. The old fable struck him differently now that he was a battle-hardened, claw-, tooth-, and blade-scarred hero of the kingdom. He swung a sword for a living, and he didn’t usually concern himself with the history of the things he swung it at.

”Luddick? Are you listening?”

“Of course, mother. Dragons came south when King Ruskan the Restless expanded his borders into the hills and hunted the dragons’ prey to near extinction. Then he began hunting the dragons themselves when they started attacking his settlements. I memorized this story by the time I was seven. I understand a great deal more about dragons now, mother.”

“I thought you might need to hear it again.”

“Mother, dragons are beasts. They burn our villages to the ground. It doesn’t matter why they originally came here. It is my duty to stop them.”

“Two villages in three years, and who knows who attacked first. They’re not mindless beasts. They do things for a reason.”

Luddick wondered where his mother picked up this stubborn streak of sympathy for monsters. “You might think differently if a dragon visited this village.”

“Well, now that you mention it…”

“What, mother?”

“A dragon did visit this village.”

Luddick launched to his feet. “What?”

“Three days ago.”

“Mother—“

“Around noon, I think. I was having my tea.”

“Mother, this is serious!”

“Calm down, Luddick. It’s fine. You can see the village is still standing.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. He wanted to talk.”

Luddick didn’t have an easy time with the idea of a conversation with a dragon. Some part of him knew that they were capable of speech, but the only one he’d faced didn’t say much of anything. Maybe because its mouth was full of fire at the time. “What did he want to talk about?”

“He wanted to talk about Amalyn.”

His alarm sank a bit towards sadness when he heard his sister’s name. He was pretty sure she hated him. Or at least every time he tried to talk to her she asked him if he’d decided to stop being a blunt instrument for the king. “What did he want with Amalyn?”

“I think he wants to ask her for help.”

Luddick felt a bit lost. He felt as if his mother was missing something important about dragons. “You didn’t tell him where she was. Did you?”

“He has as good an idea as I do. But that’s not really the point. He’s a dragon. He can’t go waltzing into the kingdom and asking ‘round the local pubs.”

Still lost. “So, he wanted…”

“He wanted someone to go to the capitol and convince Amalyn to come here.”

“Right. So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll round up some of the king’s best slayers and return as quickly as possible. We’ll lie in wait for him here. Maybe in the barn. Did he say when he’d be returning?”

Esmer looked at her feet. “He’s, um…he’s still here.”

“Pardon?” said Luddick, hoping he’d misheard.

“In the barn.”

He looked across the village toward the old wooden barn and finally noticed the faint wisp of smoke emanating from its windows. Right. Dragon in the barn—why not? he thought.

Luddick swung open the heavy doors to see the large beast nestled in the very center of the barn. He wasn’t a particularly large dragon, but then it wasn’t a particularly large barn. He looked as if he were trying to take up as little space as possible, his legs and tail folded under his sleek indigo torso and his wings plastered to his back.

The terrified assortment of pigs and horses and other more mundane animals huddled against the walls, looking as if they’d rather be anywhere in the world than sharing a barn with a dragon.

“I haven’t eaten any,” said the dragon, raising his head from the floor but otherwise staying bundled.

“Excuse me?” said Luddick.

“Your animals. I haven’t eaten any, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Um, thank you,” said Luddick, doubting his eyes, his ears, and parts of his brain.

“Have you come to kill me, warrior?” said the dragon, as if he were too jaded to expect anything better.

Luddick realized that his hand had instinctively settled on the hilt of his sword.

“No!” said Esmer. “This is my son, Luddick, and he does not mean to harm you.” She glared at her son to make sure he understood that she was talking to him, not the dragon.

Luddick pushed aside his confusion at hearing a dragon speak to him casually in his own language. “What do you want with my sister, dragon?”

“Brinzig.”

“What?”

“My name. Brinzig.”

“What do you want with my sister…Brinzig?”

“I was told she can help me.”

“And who told you that?”

“The goblins.”

This actually made a bit of sense to Luddick. He knew that Amalyn had a history with goblins—specifically the ones who’d set up a merchant colony northeast of the kingdom—but he’d never fully understood that history. She’d run away from home years ago, and it’s not as if she were exactly forthcoming with her life since then. He just knew that she’d settled in the goblin village for a time, and that she’d been arrested more than once for getting into fistfights in pubs after calling the king a cretin for his raids on goblin settlements.

“Why exactly do you think Amalyn can help you?”

“I’ve found myself in a bit of trouble, and I understand that she’s been known to help those who…aren’t well-liked in the kingdom.”

“What kind of trouble?”

The dragon hesitated. “I’d rather tell Amalyn when she gets here. They told me I can trust her.”

“You’ll need to do better than that if I’m going to put my family in danger on your account.”

“Luddick,” said Esmer, “Brinzig came to us in good faith.”

“Could you excuse us for one moment,” said Luddick to the dragon.

"Of course, Luddick." Brinzig rested his chin on the hay-carpeted floor as the two stepped out of the barn.

“Mother, this thing you’re hiding in the barn…this is a dragon.”

“I noticed that.”

“Dragons are enemies of the kingdom.”

“So are goblins, officially, but who do you think sold me the spices for the stew you ate today?”

“Mother—“

“And they have the best teas.”

“This beast could destroy us all.”

“He’s desperate. He needs help.”

“How do you know we can trust him? Did he even tell you who he’s in trouble with? Or what?”

“No, but it must be serious if he’d risk coming to a human village.”

“If he’d risk—” Luddick’s brain struggled to form the words to describe his bewilderment. “Let’s pretend for a moment that we’re not putting the village in serious danger by allowing a fire-breathing monster to hide in the barn,” he said. “How do you expect me to convince Amalyn to even set foot in this village, much less to help a dragon? She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you. She just never stopped being angry with me, and she transfers that anger to you.”

“She disapproves of my work for the king, and she reminds me of it every time I see her.”

“Well, that’s just silly. Doesn’t she undertake jobs for the king herself?”

“I believe she would say that she doesn’t revel in it the way I do. Just does it when she has no other choice. She’ll take pretty much any work she can get, just to stay occupied.”

Esmer shook her head. “She always was a bit restless, ever since…I don’t think she ever wanted to leave the halls of the wizards.”

Luddick suddenly felt guilty. At least he occasionally saw Amalyn and talked to her, even if she never seemed happy to talk to him. As far as he knew, Esmer hadn’t seen her daughter since the day she left over a decade ago. “Is that why she’s so angry? Because you took her away from there?”

“It wasn’t that simple. Your father and I…we weren’t given much of a choice. You were too young to remember.”

It was true, Luddick had almost no memory of his father. He knew that his father was a wizard and that something bad had happened between his parents and the council of wizards. Esmer had left the kingdom with her children when Luddick was three and Amalyn was eight.

But he clearly remembered his sister hating the first village they’d settled in, and especially hating the man their mother had taken up with soon afterward. Amalyn ran away when she was thirteen and hadn’t really been a part of his or his mother's life since then.

As far as Luddick knew, their father was still in the hall of wizards, doing whatever wizards do when the king isn’t ordering them to rain flaming lobsters down on a neighboring kingdom over a border dispute.

“Did he really abandon us?”

Esmer didn’t answer. She turned and took a step toward the barn. “Do you know where to find your sister?”

“More or less. When I’m in the kingdom, I usually find her in the same pub picking a fight with some large man. Or two.”

Esmer smiled. “Does she win?”

“If getting arrested is winning. But, yes, she holds her own.”

“So you’ll go find her?”

Luddick sighed. “Fine.”

“Good. And then maybe after she figures out how to help Brinzig, the three of us—you, me, and your sister—can…talk about things.”

Luddick wasn’t too hopeful about the second part. Trying to get Amalyn to reconnect with her family somehow seemed a more daunting task than anything the dragon could possibly need. It’s not as if Luddick had never attempted it. “I’m sure she can help Brinzig. She is the smart one.”

“You think your sword is sharper than his tongue?” slurred Amalyn.

“What are you on about, girl?” said the soldier, not bothering to look up from his mug.

She placed both palms on the ale-soaked table where two soldiers sat to enjoy a drink—presumably, thought Amalyn, after a stressful day of intimidating a village full of peasants who were having a bit too much fun for the king’s peace of mind. “I overheard you ridiculing my good friend here—”

“Amalyn, this really isn’t worth it,” said Colin, the court jester and the only human Amalyn thought of as a friend, as he tried to peel her away from the table.

Amalyn continued. “—and I thought it was important for you to know that yours will never be as sharp as his. I mean, your sword, his tongue. Understand?”

The soldier glanced at his colleague, then up at Amalyn. “Not a clue, child.”

“What I am saying,” she said, unsticking her hands from the table and standing as upright as she could manage, “is that this man’s intellect towers over your…your little sword, and you can make fun of him all you want, but you will never be half of…the thing that he is.”

“So what you’re saying,” said the soldier, “is that we shouldn’t laugh at the court jester.”

“Yes. No. That is,” Amalyn leaned close to the soldier’s face, “you should confine your laughter to my friend’s hours of employment. Making fun of him in a pub just isn’t…funny.”

“Amalyn,” said Colin, “you’re going to get us thrown out again. At best.”

She patted his chest a bit too hard. “Shhh, s’fine. I was just explaining to these four gentlemen—”

“Two,” said the jester.

Amalyn squinted. “—two gentlemen that, contrary to your reputation as the king’s favored object of absurdity, you’re actually a pillar of dignity and wisdom, and they should respect you enough to let you have a drink in peace. But they don’t seem to want to listen.” She kicked the table, nearly spilling the second soldier’s mug of ale. He shot her a murderous look and began to rise to his feet. But the more talkative soldier put a hand on his shoulder, and said to Amalyn, “You’d best be sitting down before you get yourself hurt.”

Amalyn was eternally ready for a fight, but she did wish that the soldiers had pissed her off before she’d gotten so far along in this evening’s drinking. She hoped that when the fray started she’d know which two of the four to aim for.

The barkeep had been watching all of this with mild annoyance. “The first person who throws a punch pays double here for the rest of their natural life.”

Amalyn put up her hands to show that her fists weren’t even clenched. “No punches. Just a friendly conversation between me and these fine, thick-headed royal automatons.”

The soldier grinned and shouted to the barkeep, “Why don’t you pour one more drink for the outcast wizard girl so that she can pass out and leave everyone in peace?”

“What did you say to me?” she said, swiping his half-full mug clean off the table.

Both soldiers sprang to their feet.

“Amalyn!” shouted the barkeep.

“What?” said Amalyn. “I didn’t throw a punch.“

“Amalyn?” said a different voice.

She looked past the two soldiers and froze when she saw her brother standing in the front doorway. “Oh. Perfect.”

And one of the soldiers punched her.

Amalyn and Luddick sat in a damp, dark cell in the nearest dungeon. The constable had locked them both up overnight for attacking the king’s soldiers, even though Luddick was technically one of them. To be fair, Luddick had knocked out the soldier who punched Amalyn. Amalyn had head-butted the other and tackled him over the table before anyone could break up the fight. Luddick had tried to convince the constable that it was just roughhousing between fellow soldiers, but it seemed his admiration for Luddick couldn’t match his hatred for Amalyn.

“This may be the grimiest place I’ve ever been in my life,” said Luddick, “and I’ve been in three different troll caves.” He leaned forward on the makeshift bench, which was a rotted wooden rack placed on two soggy hay bails. He tapped his foot impatiently.

Amalyn slumped back against the wall. “You haven’t gotten around much. This is only a bit more dank that my current abode.”

“What, are you sleeping in a stable?” Luddick joked.

“Yes.”

He wished he could withdraw the joke. “I know squalor as well. I grew up in the same wretched village as you.”

“No, I grew up after I left that village. And I’m not convinced you grew up at all.”

Luddick held his tongue, since it always seemed to make things worse. He tried again with “How’s your jaw?”

“Fine, thank you very much. If I couldn’t take a punch from one of the king’s lackeys, I would have died a long time ago. Speaking of king’s lackeys, how’s the heroing business?”

“Amalyn, I didn’t come here to fight with you.”

“Why did you come here? To bathe in the adoration of your admiring public? Running short on glory?”

“I need your help.”

Amalyn’s eyebrows shot halfway up to her hairline. “You need my help?”

“Yes, mother and I have a little…problem in the village.”

“What kind of problem?”

“A big, fire-breathing problem.”

“Isn’t that your specialty, dealing with big, fire-breathing problems? Didn’t you kill a dragon once?”

“Yes, but that was…It’s not that kind of problem.”

Amalyn leaned forward. “Interesting. So, spill it. What do you and mother want from me?”

“Okay, let me start at the beginning.” He opened his mouth, then paused when he realized he wasn't sure exactly where the beginning was. “There weren’t always dragons in the valley…”

“You can skip a bit. I had this memorized by the time I was ten.”

Luddick smiled a bit on the inside. “Right, well…”

He related the story as far as he knew it. She listened, occasionally nodding or saying, “Uh, huh.” When he got to the part about the dragon asking for her by name, he half expected her to laugh in his face and say he and mother were on their own—she wasn’t facing a dragon on their account.

Instead she jumped up and said, “Well, we’d better get going.”

“Just like that? You’re not in the least bit worried that a dragon sought you out? What if his motives are…sinister?”

“I seriously doubt that. But either way I’m not going to pass up the chance to meet a dragon.”

This deflated Luddick a bit. It would have been nicer if she’d at least pretended to be as interested in seeing her own family as she was the dragon. But at least she didn’t take much convincing. “There’s still the little problem of our being locked in a dungeon.”

“Right. Ivan!” she yelled through the bars. “I’m ready to go now!”

“Coming!”

Luddick stared at his sister. “You know some kind of mind control spell?”

“No. The jailer owes me a favor, and this is certainly worth calling it in for. Come on, get up, I want to see the dragon.”