The Dragon's Price (Transference #1)(36)

The farther down the mountain we go, the steeper the path becomes, and the pine trees grow farther apart. And then, without warning, the trees end, and I am balancing on the edge of a cliff with Golmarr standing silent at my side.

The sky opens up—a spectacular blue dotted with patches of clouds—and seems to go on forever, stretching over the deep, uneven green of a forest far below: the Glass Forest. My heart seems to double in size as I stare at a sight more captivating than the costliest paintings hanging in my mother’s castle, more breathtaking than the finest jewelry I have ever seen. I want to reach out and grab the scene in front of me, and hold it to my heart so that I never forget it. I yearn for wings so that I can fall forward from this cliff and glide on the air above the forest. I shake my head. That is what Zhun wanted, not me. Even so, tears of yearning fill my eyes and coat my lashes, blurring the scene below. I wipe them away and study the endless green. Something dark is circling above the forest, something that makes my nerves shiver a warning. From where I stand, I cannot tell what I am looking at, but my mind keeps whispering one word: dragon. My instincts tell me to hide or run. I grip Golmarr’s shoulder and pull him into the shelter of the pines.

“Did you see that?” I whisper, too on edge to raise my voice.

Golmarr frowns. “See what?”

“There is something down there.” I point to the Glass Forest. Golmarr lowers himself to his belly and crawls to the edge of the cliff. He stays there a long time while I hide in the shadows and watch. Finally, he creeps back.

“I didn’t see anything,” he says. “But we need to hurry and find shelter. There are tales of creatures living in the mountains above the Glass Forest. No one enters these mountains unless they have to.”

“I have an idea,” I say, and start searching the underbrush. After a few minutes, I find a pine bough as thick as my wrist and a little taller than my head lying on the ground. Taking the knife from my waist, I whittle away a patch of the spiky, sappy bark, just big enough for a handhold, and then use it as a walking staff.

“Brilliant,” Golmarr says. “Now, let’s hurry on and see if we can find some shelter for the night.”



Shortly before sunset, the trail loops beneath the base of a steep gray cliff. Two giant rock slabs rest balanced against the cliff, their tops tipped against each other, making a triangular shelter that is closed on three sides. Already there is a shallow hole dug out of the shelter floor, with a few blackened sticks inside of it. I remember seeing a fire there before…except that is impossible, since I have lived my entire life behind castle walls.

“Let’s spend the night here,” Golmarr says. “You sit and rest your feet. I will gather wood and make a fire, and then we can cook these.” He touches the snakes dangling from his belt. I do not know what my face looks like upon hearing we are eating snake for dinner, but Golmarr starts laughing. “Don’t you eat snake for dinner in Faodara?”

“No! Do you eat it in your kingdom?”

He smiles and shakes his head no. “But I guarantee you, it is going to taste incredible. Fresh meat on an empty stomach is always a pleasure.”

He hurries off, leaving me alone in the shelter.

A while later, he returns with his arms laden with wood, several different-sized strips of leather tucked into his belt, and his leather pants cut off above his knees, leaving his boots covering the lower half of his calves and the rest of his calves bare. Seeing a grown man’s legs is almost as scandalous as seeing a man without his shirt on, and despite the fact that my legs have been bare for days, I blush and look away.

“Here.” Golmarr holds two thin, sharpened sticks and the two snake carcasses out to me. “Thread the snakes onto the sticks like you’re sewing stitches into cloth,” he instructs.

I take the snakes and sticks, and before I have time to become squeamish, my mind and body know exactly what to do. Without even thinking about it, my nimble hands stab the stick through the snake flesh, loop beneath it, and pull it back out again, just like I am sewing. In less than a minute, the entire length of the snake is skewered. I do it with the other snake, and when I look up, Golmarr is staring at me.

“You’ve obviously done that before,” he says.

I shake my head. “No, I have never touched raw meat before.” I look at my hands in awe. “It is as if my fingers knew exactly what to do.”

Golmarr studies me for a drawn-out minute. Finally, he says, “Like when you fought the Mayanchi in the cave.”

“Yes, like that.”

“I wonder what else you can do.” He takes his unstrung bow from his back and a long string of leather from his belt, and then measures the leather where the bowstring should go, leaving a lot of slack. He ties a knot into each end of the leather and strings the bow with it. Next, he puts a dry, flat piece of pine bark on the ground and uses his foot to hold it in place. Last, he loops a stick through the loose leather bowstring and places the end of it on the bark. Holding the stick loosely in place, he starts sawing back and forth with his bow, making the stick spin quickly on top of the bark. Back and forth, back and forth he pulls the bow. The faster he does it, the hotter the spinning stick grows where it is pressed to the bark. After a few short minutes, smoke rises from the point where stick and bark meet. A moment later, a small orange flame jumps to life.

Golmarr sets the bow aside and deftly places a stack of brittle brown pine needles on the flame. For a minute, I think the fire has gone out. And then the needles burst with warm light as the fire devours them.