The Dragon's Price (Transference #1)(33)
“Here is what I don’t understand. How do you know so much about the Mayanchi?”
“When I killed her—the Mayanchi—her knowledge merged into my mind like the dragon’s. I know everything she knew.” The soiled cloth I’ve been cleaning my blade with drops from my hand. “Not only did I inherit Zhun’s treasured knowledge, I also inherited the means to gather it the same way he did. Every time Zhun killed something, he stole its knowledge. Now I have that ability.” With that understanding comes the feeling of being filthy. I cringe and wish I could take a bath.
“You took the Mayanchi’s knowledge? That’s…interesting, for lack of a better word,” Golmarr says. “And what about the fighting? How do you know how to fight all of a sudden? Fight like a human? If you got the fire dragon’s knowledge, wouldn’t you try to bite the Mayanchi to death, or gouge it with your fingernails, like a dragon would?”
Before I can answer, Golmarr grabs me from behind, one arm cinching around my throat, the other around my waist. Without conscious thought, I break his hold on my neck and ram my elbow into his ribs. I spin away from him and draw my blade, placing the tip at his chest.
“Whoa!” He jumps away from me and stumbles backward until he comes up against the cave wall.
My hand trembles as I slowly lower the hunting knife. “I didn’t think about what I was doing,” I say, shocked at my response to being restrained.
He grins and rubs his ribs. “That was intense. Do you remember what you did when I unhorsed you the day you tried to steal my father’s stallion?” He doesn’t wait for my answer. “You squirmed and tried to scratch me! That, what you just did, is not how a dragon would fight. It is how a human would fight. How a soldier would fight. A warrior. That is not how a dragon fights. So how…”
I know the answer to his question, and he hasn’t even asked it. “I know how to fight like a human because Zhun stole the knowledge of every single person he ever killed—that was how he gathered his treasure: by killing. Every person he killed increased his treasure of knowledge. And it has all been transferred to me.”
“So your head is filled with the knowledge of every single warrior that fought Zhun and died by his fire?”
“Yes,” I say, and look at Golmarr with wide, shocked eyes. “I think I know everything there is to know.”
He steps up beside me. “You need to add this to your knowledge. I promise I will never hurt you. Just don’t accidentally kill me, all right?” He smiles, and it makes me feel soft and light and warm inside—a welcome change to how I was feeling.
I return his smile. “All right.”
We walk until we are too weary to take another step, and then sleep sitting up, side by side, with our backs against the cave wall and my head resting on Golmarr’s shoulder, or his head resting on mine. We do it a second time, walking until we can go no farther, then sleeping side by side again. When we wake, we discover that the tunnel veers up and the air turns from damp and musty to scented with plants. My bare feet, battered and bruised once more, slip against the steep ground, and I fall more than once, scraping my knees each time.
Up and up we walk, and even though I start sweating with the effort, my fingers are like ice, and my teeth start to chatter. My muscles tremble with weakness from lack of food, and when I stand up too fast, blackness fills my eyes, and I fall back down. Golmarr isn’t much better. I can see how his legs stumble beneath him, how his breathing is labored.
“Surely we will see light up ahead soon,” Golmarr pants as we continue our climb.
Our steps become slower and slower, and I start walking with my eyes narrowed to mere slits, so when we walk around a giant boulder, it isn’t until my feet step on plants, and drops of water splash against my face, that I realize, with a surge of pure joy, that we are out, and it is night, and the sky is merely concealed behind rain clouds. I fall to my bottom and run my hands over rain-soaked vegetation.
Golmarr plops down beside me and laughs a hoarse, weak laugh. “If I weren’t so exhausted, I would kiss you right now, I’m so happy to be out of there,” he says. “But I don’t even have the energy to kiss a pretty girl.”
“That’s good,” I say. “Because I am too tired to be kissed.”
He lifts my hand. “You don’t glow out here.”
“I only glow if I’m underground,” I blurt. Not caring that I am being rained on, I curl up on my side and close my eyes. Every time I start to drift to sleep, though, I shiver with cold and jerk awake, only to find Golmarr studying me with a frown on his face. Silently, he kneels beside me and lifts me into his arms. Cradling me against his chest, he walks back into the cave, leans against the stone wall, and sinks down to sitting. Holding me tight, with the warmth from his body easing my chills, I finally sleep.
I wake and the first things I see are my scabbed knees looped over Golmarr’s arm. And then I see my skirt, piled at the tops of my thighs, with my lacy bloomers hanging out, and have to fight the urge to jump out of his arms and yank it down. Carefully, I lift my head from his shoulder and peer at him. He is sleeping sitting up, his head tilted back against the cave wall, and he is snoring. Dark stubble that matches his eyebrows has grown on his face, giving him a very short beard that makes him look older than he is.