Sianim 01 - Masques

Wolf, not the Old Man, that they were frightened of—Myr was probably right.
    Only Oras had ignored the ban on the inner caves. Twice. The first time Myr brought him back. The second time Wolf went after him. Wolf wouldn’t tell Aralorn what he’d done, and Oras didn’t volunteer the information, but he’d come back white-faced and had been remarkably subdued ever since.
    As she came to the outer caves, Aralorn slowed to a walk. There were too many people around for her to dodge at a faster speed. When she started down the path that led to the entrance, the first thing that she noticed was the sound of her own footsteps. It took her a minute to realize that the reason she could hear them was because the Uriah weren’t howling.
    Sure enough, when she reached the entrance, there was no sign of the Uriah. The bonfire Myr had ordered laid near the entrance was still unlit.
    She stepped out slowly, moving cautiously in case there were any lying in wait. After so many days in the caves, the sunlight nearly blinded her. The air smelled fresh and pure, without the distinctive odor that accompanied Uriah. Only the smell of burnt grass and other things marred the fragrance of the nearby pine.
    It looked as if a ball of fire had been spewed from the cave’s mouth. A wide blackened path in the grass and soil began from the entrance and traveled in a straight line a fair distance before disappearing. Within the blackened area were ten or fifteen bodies of Uriah, burnt down to the bone. There were some that were less singed, but something had chewed on them.
    Aralorn followed the blackened path up the mountain and found that the trail abruptly stopped on a wide, flat area. She started back and was several lengths down the slope when she realized that she might be thinking backward. What if the fireball hadn’t come from the cave but had been launched at it? Muttering to herself, she trotted back to where the trail stopped.
    Tracking wasn’t her specialty, but it didn’t take her long to find what she sought. When she was looking for them, they were hard to miss—very large, reptilian footprints with marks beside them that could be trailing wings. Just like the ones she’d seen the day she’d been taken by the Uriah.
    “Well, Myr,” she said thoughtfully, going back to examine one of the half-eaten corpses. She hadn’t looked too closely before, assuming that the Uriah had just been practicing their usual cannibalism. Upon closer examination, she could tell that something much bigger than a Uriah had been feeding. “I think I know what dragons eat when there aren’t any virgins chained to rocks.”

    “Well, then,” said Myr in dry tones after Aralorn related her discovery. The main cave was almost empty. Myr had sent out a party to look for the hunters who’d been missing since just before the Uriah had come, and a second group out to find provisions. He’d sent a few of the remaining people to keep watches from the best lookout stations.
    He rubbed his eyes and looked at her. “So what now? We’ve exchanged the Uriah for a dragon. The question that begs is, of course, is this a good thing?”
    “The dragon’s quieter and smells better.” Aralorn leaned against the cave wall and watched Myr pace.
    “At least we knew something about the Uriah,” Myr complained. “A dragon. There aren’t supposed to be any more dragons.” He broke off when the sounds of ragged cheers echoed into the cave, followed by the missing hunting party and the searchers—all of them looking cold and tired.
    When the welcoming was done, Farsi, who’d led the party, told their tale. “We came upon a herd of mountain sheep and got two so we headed back. About halfway here we stumbled upon some tracks, as if an army were wandering around. We followed the trail, and pretty soon we could smell ’em and knew that they were Uriah. Since their path was the same one we were on, it was obvious that the things were coming here.
    “Figuring that we were too late to make much difference, we worked our way up the side of the mountain until we could see the Uriah. We couldn’t see the cave, but the way they were swarming around showed that you must have found a way to keep them out. We decided that there was nothing we could do but wait. Our vantage point was far enough away that the chance of the Uriah seeing us wasn’t considerable.”
    Farsi cleared his throat. “Late last night—just after the moon had set—I heard a cry like a