The Dragon's Path

and unclean spirits that haunted the empty places in the world. Even though no new dangers appeared, he slept poorly.
    Geder had spent most of his life within the limits of Antea.Travel had meant the journey from Rivenhalm to Camnipol, or along the king’s winter hunt to Kavinpol, Sevenpol, Estinport. He’d been Kaltfel, royal city of Asterilhold, once as a boy to watch an obscure relation be married. And he had gone on campaign to Vanai under Lord Ternigan, and then Sir Alan Klin. He’d never imagined himself traveling alone or nearly so in lands so barren and cut off that the local villagers had never heard of Antea or the Severed Throne. But when he came to a stand of shacks clumped around a thin, hungry-looking lake, the wary men who came out to meet him shook their heads and shrugged.
    He could as well have told them he’d come from the stars or the deep lands under the earth. It would have meant as much, and possibly more. The mountains’ inhabitants were Firstblood, but of a uniform olive complexion with dark eyes and thick wiry hair that made them seem like members of a single extended family. Some few knew the civilized languages well enough to trade with the outposts, but for the greater part they spoke in a local patois that Geder could almost put together from some of the ancient books he’d read. He felt he’d ridden into the dim past.
    “Sinir,” Geder said. “Are these the Sinir mountains?”
    The young man looked over his shoulder at the dozen men who had come from the village and licked his lips.
    “Not here,” the man said. “East.”
    On the one hand, everyone he met in the empty, ragged mountains seemed to recognize the word, to know what he meant when he asked. On the other, the Sinir mountains had been just a bit to the east for almost two weeks now, retreating before him like a mirage. The thin, dusty paths snaked through the valleys or along the sides of steep, rocky slopes. They were little more than deer trails, and more than once Geder had found himself wondering if he’d left behindall human habitation, only to find another small, desperate village around the next turning.
    “Can you show me?” Geder asked. “Can one of your men take me there? I’ll pay you with copper.”
    Not that copper would have any effect on these people. Coins meant nothing here more than small, particularly bright stones would have done. His black leather cloak would have more use out here, but he didn’t want to part with it, and besides, no one he’d met since he left the Keshet for the unmarked lands had shown the slightest interest in his offers. He asked out of habit. Because he had always asked before. He had no real hope that they would accept the bargain.
    “Why do you want to go there?” the young man asked.
    “I’m looking for something,” Geder said. “An old place. Very old. It has to do with the dragons.”
    The man licked his lips again, hesitated, and nodded.
    “I know the place you mean,” he said. “Stay here tonight, and I can take you in the morning.”
    “Really?”
    “You want the old temple, yes? Where the holy men live?”
    Geder leaned back. It was the first he had heard about a temple or priests, and his heart sped up. There were stories and references in several of the essays on the fall of the Dragon Empire that talked about pods of sleeping dragons lulled into a permanent sleep and hidden in the far corners of the world. This might be a hidden pod of books, scrolls, legends, and tradition. If he could convince the local priest class to let him read the books, or buy copies… He tried to think what he had to offer for trade.
    “Prince?”
    “What?” Geder said. “Oh, yes. Yes, the old temple. That’swhere I’d like to go. Do we have to wait for morning? We could go now.”
    “Morning, sir,” the young man said. “You stay with us tonight.”
    The village boasted two dozen wooden shacks clustered together in a stand of ash. Perhaps a hundred people lived in the dry, quiet squalor. In the high air above them, hawks called and glided, spiraling up toward the sun. Geder had his squire put his tent beside the lakeshore just outside the radius of the village with each of the servants set to keep watch for a part of the night. Not that five servants would be enough to defend him if the locals turned ugly, but if a little warning was the most he could get, he’d take that.
    At sunset, an old woman came to his camp with a bowl of mashed roots with bits of