The Dragon's Price (Transference #1)(41)
“Why?” Golmarr asks, peering at me over his shoulder.
“Because in the winter the mist freezes on the plants and they look like glass.”
Golmarr shakes his head. “No, Jayah. The forest will freeze any time of year, even in the heat of summer.”
I frown at Golmarr. “But how can that be? When it is warm…” I remember the creature I saw flying above the forest the day before, and think of The History of Dragons, a book too heavy to lift, which I was forced to read in the royal library when I was ten. “A dragon lives here,” I whisper. “And it has breath of ice. The glass dragon.”
“So say the legends, but no one knows that for sure. No one has seen a dragon in this forest and lived to tell about it for years, and no rumors of freezing glass have reached the grasslands since I was thirteen.”
I shake my head. “No, the legend is right—the history books are right—and—” Golmarr presses a finger to his mouth for silence and waits for me to catch up to him.
“We are being watched by several Satari men, Jayah,” he whispers. “Play along with whatever I say.”
“Whatever you say, Ornald,” I reply, gripping my staff a little more tightly. I whisper, “Will they try to kill us?”
“Not if we are lucky. The Satari are incredibly hospitable to anyone they do not consider threatening. If we’d been discovered by Trevonan renegades, we would have had to fight to survive.” We keep walking, but Golmarr doesn’t take the lead, opting instead to stay beside me. I scan the forest, looking for whoever is watching us, and see a tree trunk up ahead shift and move as brown-clad man steps away from it and then ducks into the thick green undergrowth.
“Ornald,” I whisper. Golmarr nods his head so I know he also saw the man, and then he sheathes his sword and stops walking.
“Come here,” he whispers. I walk to his side. He puts his arm around my shoulders and presses his lips to my ear. “Stop holding that confounded walking stick like it is a weapon,” he whispers. And then he looks into my eyes, and his eyes are narrowed, but he smiles so brightly that I can’t help but smile back. “When your father finds out that we aren’t married, he’s going to kill me.” Golmarr taps my nose with his finger and I blink at him. “At least we have a good excuse. Those bandits who stole everything—”
The hiss of steel being unsheathed fills the forest, and it comes from all directions. Golmarr’s arm tenses on my shoulders, but he doesn’t make a move for his sword. “Hello?” he calls, feigning surprise. Six brown-clad men step out from behind trees, and all of them have drawn swords.
“Satari,” Golmarr whispers.
I force myself to keep only one hand on my staff and try my best to look like a helpless, weaponless girl who is lost in the forest.
“What have we found wandering our forest?” one of the men asks. Three gold loops hang from each of his ears, framed by thick, dark sideburns. He scratches his black-and-gray goatee with the hand not pointing a sword at Golmarr and studies us. We make quite a pair, Golmarr and me, with our torn and filthy clothes. The longer the man studies us, the more perplexed he looks, until finally he asks, “Who are you, and what has happened to you?”
“I am Ornald, from Carttown,” Golmarr says, dipping his head in a quick bow, “and this is my true love, Jayah.” He tries to press me forward as he introduces me, but I shove back against his hand. Golmarr chuckles, and the men surrounding us let their sword arms relax, though they do not lower their weapons. “Jayah and I were on our way to be married several days ago.” He turns to me. “How many days do you think have passed since we should have been wed?”
I shrug, clueless as to how much time we spent in Zhun’s cave, and the men laugh.
“Anyhow, we were sneaking off to elope—a union of the heart, not an arranged marriage—but somehow Jayah’s father found out and hired a gang of thugs to stop it. They cut Jayah’s skirt half off for the pearls sewn to the fabric and stripped us of all our belongings but my sword and this knife, which was hidden beneath my sleeve before I tore the sleeve off.” He lifts his arm up, and the man with the goatee snaps and holds his hand out. Golmarr removes his knife and places it on the man’s palm. “After that, they dumped us in the forest to starve or die at the hands of the forest dwellers.” The armed men stand a little taller and nod, pleased with the conclusion of Golmarr’s story. “We have had little to eat for days and are wondering if you might spare a morsel for my true love and me before we continue on our way.”
The Satari leader’s eyes narrow. “Why, pray tell, would the thugs leave a strong lad like you with your sword?”
Golmarr cringes. “Because I was conned into buying a piece of junk,” he says, sounding pained. “The blacksmith said I was buying a sword that was the exact replica of the Anthar prince’s famed dragon sword. But alas, when I tried to sharpen and polish it, I discovered the blade is not even made of real steel.” Golmarr lifts his sword out of the scabbard just enough to show the base of the silver blade. “See? If I so much as cross blades with a well-made weapon, my sword will shatter.” He lets the blade fall back into the scabbard.
The Satari laugh and return their swords to their sheaths. The one with the goatee grins, making his green eyes dance with mischief. “I am Edemond, patriarch of the Satari band called the Black Blades. It just so happens that we are having a feast tonight and you may join us, if you’d like.”