“Oh. Yeah.”
“Good. That is what I heard. This is very heavy. Will you help me carry it?”
“How much gold are we talking?” I knew the metal was heavy—I’d been paid a few times in gold coins—but unless he had hundreds of ounces of it, I couldn’t imagine it being that hard to carry, even for a three-and-a-half-foot-tall gnome.
“A small chest. I hope it is enough. I rarely worked with gold when I lived on this world before, and I am uncertain about how well it will convert to your currency.”
A small chest sounded promising, but… “Look, you don’t have to pay me. Your problem sounds like Zav’s problem, and we’re…” Saying we were mates always sounded goofy to me, even if all of the magical community seemed to find it a normal term. “We’re dating. His problems have become my problems, however unwise that is. If this can help him, I’ll do it.”
“I wish you to do it whether it helps him or not. Please. That is why I brought gold. To pay you.” Ti scrabbled at something in the dirt. “Here is the chest. Can you lift it?”
“I’m sure I can.” I crouched down and patted around until I found the top half of what felt like an iron chest—no wonder it was heavy. “But I’m positive I can’t do a thing to help your people or those dragons without Zav’s help. I can’t even make a portal.”
“We can offer half the gold to him, if you wish, but I do not think dragons care about money.”
“Not that I’ve seen. We’d have to exchange it for ribs.” I tapped on my flashlight app for a better look, shining the beam over clumps of dirt on the top of a blue iron box. “I’d call that a medium chest, not a small chest, and I’m a lot bigger than you.”
“Can you carry it?”
I spotted rings on either end and tugged at one. “Erg, what else is in here? Someone’s change jar?” Having recently lugged mine from the old apartment to the new house, I could attest to the weight of spare change. “Anything we can dump out and leave?”
Or could we dump out the gold and leave the chest? It had to weigh eighty pounds. I levered it out of the pit of soft dirt and eyed the route through the trees back to my Jeep. This was going to be fun.
“Just gold,” Ti said. “Many of my kin want to ensure the Silverclaws do not rule our people. They were all willing to chip in.”
“Can I see it?” I didn’t believe that the chest itself didn’t account for most of the weight and snorted at the idea that it was a seventy-nine-pound chest with sixteen ounces of gold inside. Not that I would turn up my nose at sixteen ounces. Going by what the gold price had been the last time I’d looked, that would be more than twenty-five thousand dollars.
“Yes. It is right that you should see that I have funds before committing to the deal.”
“There’s no deal, Ti. If Zav wants to storm those Crying Caverns, I’ll help him, but I wouldn’t have a chance without him.”
“There is often only one dragon there at a time.” Ti touched his finger to the chest’s lock, and I sensed a tickle of magic as he opened it. “You would only need to slay one if we timed it right. And I am intimately familiar with the Caverns. I can show you all the booby traps.”
“Wonderful.” I hadn’t been thinking about booby traps, but now I remembered from his story that they’d almost killed his dwarf friend. A dragon and booby traps. Wouldn’t that be a fun mission?
Ti pushed the lid open so I could shine my flashlight on the contents. On… okay, there were a lot of gold bars in there.
“Are those pure gold?” I picked one up. It was heavy enough to be pure gold, but I’d never seen blocks this large. Each one had to weigh ten pounds, and there were eight of them.
“Yes, of course. Gnomes are crafters. We do not cut our metal with inferior substances. The stamp ensures they came from the Official Miners’ Mint.”
I flipped over the bar. A dragon was stamped in the center.
“Is that Ston?” I asked, shortening the dragon’s name.
“His predecessor and sire. The Stormforge Clan loved him. We chose to put his likeness on our money and metal.”
“Sucking up?”
His brow furrowed. Maybe gnomes had another term for it.
I returned the bar to the chest and closed the lid. “We’ll take this to the house, and Zoltan can put it under his coffin as a security measure.” Only a loon would steal from a vampire. “If there’s some way Zav and I can make this work, we can talk about payment then.”
“This will not be enough?”
“This will be too much. You could hire me for ten years for this.” And then some. Even putting aside half of it for taxes, this would likely be enough to buy our house and do all the home improvements Dimitri and I could dream of.
“It is yours if we can free Ston’tareknor and defeat the dragons who held me captive these last twenty years and took me from my family.” Ti’s voice had a forlorn note to it.
I patted him on the shoulder, then lifted the chest without throwing out my back. Barely.
As I waddled back toward the Jeep, I sensed powerful magic at the edge of my range. Familiar powerful magic. It was a portal like the one the orcs had opened above the house. And it was exactly back in the direction of the house.
“Shit.”
I increased my waddle as quickly as I could with the heavy chest in my arms. If it hadn’t been such a ridiculous amount of gold, I would have dumped it so I could get back to the house sooner, but with my luck, someone else would find it before we handled the orcs or whoever was opening portals this time.
Ti whispered something under his breath, and the weight of the chest decreased by half.
“Thanks.” Turning my waddle into a sprint, I ran down the hill toward the parking lot.
Freysha had proven she could take care of herself, and I wasn’t too worried about Zoltan, but Dimitri could make an easy target for orcs. He hadn’t yet built and installed all the defenses he wanted to around the house.
As I reached the Jeep and flung the rear door open, a powerful aura registered on my senses.
“Dragon,” Ti said.
“I know.” Damn it.
It was Shaygor. I hadn’t seen him since our showdown on Mt. Schweitzer, but I hadn’t forgotten what his aura felt like. He was also back in the direction of the house—he must have come through that portal—and I worried anew for my friends. Even Freysha and Zoltan couldn’t handle a dragon. Nobody could. Except for another dragon.
“Zav,” I whispered as I levered the chest into the back of the Jeep. “Where are you?”
“I do not sense your dragon mate,” Ti said.
“I know. That’s a problem. Get in the Jeep.” But even as I ran for the driver-side door, I realized that Shaygor was on the move. In this direction.
Of course. He hadn’t come for our house. He’d come for his escaped gnome prisoner. And I was positive he wouldn’t have a problem incinerating me along the way.
16
“Here.” I unfastened my camouflage charm for the second time that weekend and handed it to Ti. It was probably already too late—Shaygor was flying this way, so he had to have sensed Ti already. “Use this to cloak yourself while I…”
While I what? Slew the dragon? Hah.
“Try to convince him to look somewhere else.”
Ti looked down at the charm, then toward the dark cloudy sky where Shaygor was sure to come into view any second. If not for the trees, he already would be in view.
“Just use it,” I urged. “If you don’t, I will.”
Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. If I hid, I could jump out and attack Shaygor while he was arrowing down to get Ti, but that wouldn’t leave me with any options. I would be committed to fighting him at that point, and I couldn’t beat a dragon one-on-one. No way.
Ti stepped back, activated the charm, and disappeared from my awareness, taking away the ambush possibility. It was just as well. Maybe I could come up with some crazy idea that would convince Shaygor to leave—and let me live.
The mighty silver dragon came into view, powerful wings flapping and bringing him toward me. I walked away from the Jeep, not wanting it to get torched.
On a whim, I hopped the fence and trotted into the dog park and halfway up the hill in the center. There were a few trees inside to hide behind if need be, but the packed earth was also relatively free of obstacles in case I had to run and dodge.
I summoned Sindari, though I knew how he felt about battling dragons. As any sane person would agree, it should be avoided.
Val, Sindari protested as Shaygor flew closer. You should have called me sooner and given me time to prepare myself.
Wouldn’t you have just used that time to tell me how dumb it was for me to get into this situation?
Yes, but I like doing that.
Sorry. I’ll be more considerate next time.
Do.
Shaygor dove for us, and I raised Chopper and whispered, “Eravekt,” so he would know I had the powerful blade. The Dragon Blade apparently. It had lopped off one of his toes once. I doubted that meant he feared it, but maybe it would at least make him pause.
Murderer of dragons! he roared into my mind as Chopper flared bright blue. I am not surprised you are at the center of this.
Center of what? I crouched, ready to swing if he came in close enough to reach, though I expected him to spew fire from twenty feet above me. And watch yourself, dragon. I’ve been honing my skills since the last time we met.
You’ve been holding Zavryd’nokquetal’s tail and tysliir like rabbits since last we met.
Oh, did rabbits do that on other worlds too? Huh.
As I’d feared, Shaygor didn’t come within reach. From twenty feet above, he opened his maw and spewed fired at me.
I dove behind one tree, and Sindari sprang behind another. Heat tried to broil the back of my neck as flames bathed the ground where I’d been standing. It was mostly dirt packed from the passage of thousands of dog paws, but a few timber steps embedded in the hillside charred. Tree branches caught by the flames singed and burned, and I hoped I wasn’t about to get the local park burned down.