The Dragon's Price (Transference #1)(22)

When he puts his shirt and vest back on, his arms are bare all the way up to his shoulders. He retrieves his bow from where I left it the night before and slings it over his back. I stand and try walking with the shirtsleeves covering my feet. The sandy lakeshore barely penetrates through the fabric, but anything bigger than a pebble is excruciating. I try not to flinch with every step, try to hide the pain so he doesn’t know I can barely walk. Before I have taken five steps, Golmarr is beside me, looping my arm over his shoulder and taking some of my weight.

“It looks like you’re the one who needs a little help this time,” he says, and I realize, barbarian warrior or not, that he is the kindest man I have ever met.



The lake is long and narrow, and at the farthest end from the illusion wall, a narrow stream trickles out of it. We follow the stream as it winds around the bases of the white columns (stalagmites, Golmarr says) protruding from the cave floor. “If we follow the stream, we will still have a water source,” he explains. “And maybe, if we’re lucky, the water will eventually lead to a way out. If we are really lucky, we might not even see the fire dragon.” My stomach turns at the thought of the fire dragon, and I realize how incredibly famished I am. Dragon or not, if we don’t find our way out, we risk dying of starvation.

With Golmarr’s shoulder to lean on, and the fabric on my feet, we make good time. The cave is eternally noisy from the dripping of the stalactites—Golmarr’s word again—to the stalagmites on the floor below them. The dragon scale still shines, reflecting on the milky stalagmites and stalactites, making them look like giant, glowing white opals.

As we walk, we find more little streams, all flowing into the one we are following, so by the time we’ve walked long enough for me to be damp with sweat, the main stream is more like a small river rushing around the strange formations of the cave. The ground begins to slope downward, forcing the water to flow faster, and after a while, the sound of babbling turns to a deeper rumble.

I take a step forward and jerk to a stop, pulling Golmarr hard against my side. His hand darts to his sword hilt. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

I peer down at our feet. The ground disappears into blackness. “I think we’re on the edge of a cliff,” I explain. I take the dragon scale from around my neck and wind it once around my hand, then hang it as far forward as I can reach.

The cave floor looks like lumps of snow, slowly descending down, like a creamy, icy staircase, and the little river is pouring down it. The walls close in around the staircase, giving it the appearance of a narrow, descending black tunnel.

Golmarr sticks the toe of his boot into the water and slides it back and forth against the rock. “How strange—it’s not slippery,” he muses, and looks at me. “What do you think? Should we see where it goes?”

I peer into the darkness. “Do we have any other choice?”

“No.”

I quickly unwrap the sleeves protecting my feet and tuck them into the waistband of my skirt. “Then let us go, an Antharian prince and a Faodarian princess, about to meet their fate together.”

He laughs under his breath. “An unlikely pair,” he agrees. And then he gives me the hand signal for honored friend.

“Friend,” I whisper.





Down and down we walk, eternally encircled by the weak light of the dragon scale. The darkness pressed against the light until I feel at times like I might suffocate on it. Distance means nothing when you can’t see anything. I am simply walking down a never-ending staircase, my cold, aching body weak with hunger, in perpetual darkness.

I stop walking and put my hand against the cave wall. “My feet hurt. I need to rest,” I say, and my teeth chatter. The cold has crept up my legs and into my blood. “I need to sit for a minute.”

Golmarr grabs my hand to keep me from sitting. “Hold on.” He frowns and unfastens the leather strap that secures the bow and quiver to his back. “Turn around,” he says. I do, but watch him over my shoulder. He lifts the leather strap over my head, with the bow and quiver still attached. The black leather stands out against my dirty white shirt, but fits perfectly in the hollow space between my breasts like it was made for me.

“What are you doing?” I ask, shrugging my shoulders up and down against the weight of the bow. I have never worn any type of weapon before, aside from the small dagger that is tied to my wrist. “I don’t know how to shoot this.”

“If we get out of this cave alive, I will teach you to shoot.” Golmarr turns me to face him, then turns his back to me and crouches low. “Climb on.”

“Onto your back?” I ask.

He laughs. “Yes. Onto my back.”

“You’re going to carry me?” I can’t keep the surprise from my voice.

“Sorrowlynn, just climb on. I carry bales of hay out to the horses every day, and you probably don’t weigh much more. So climb on.”

“But it’s not…”

“Proper, I know. But neither is being fed to a dragon, or hacking a Mayanchi to bits, or cutting off your skirt, or sleeping curled up in my arms. But when necessary and proper battle it out, necessary always wins.”

I put my hands on his shoulders and he grabs my bare legs behind my knees, hefting me up onto his back, and everything goes dark. I throw my arms around his neck to keep from falling off backward. He loosens them a bit and bounces me higher. “If you put your legs around me, it will make you easier to carry,” he says.