Chapter 133: Dragon Sighting

The morale was high and the village had stopped looking at him with hostile eyes.

The system was urging him to ride the wave carefully.

The day has taken a lot out of him.

He was dozing in his chair when someone knocked.

"Enter."

Graves stood in the doorway holding a cracked leather folio against his chest. He looked like he was reconsidering the reason he was there.

"My lord. There is something I should have told you the day you arrived."

Emeric sat up. "Sit down, Graves."

"I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. I hoped it would pass."

"Graves."

The old butler sat, and the windows rattled.

"It’s going to be a rainy night." He mentioned.

Probably as a deflection tactic.

"Tell me what this is about," he said.

Graves set the folio on the desk and opened it. The pages were brown at the edges, the ink faded to the color of tea.

"What do you know about why the Crown gave you Greyfell?"

"I was told it was a reward."

"Were you told why this place exactly?"

Emeric thought about it. The ceremony was short. There were a few polite words.

"No," he said.

Graves nodded as if that confirmed something. "Then let me list what you received, my lord. An estate with a debt larger than its value. A village the last baron had bled dry. A marsh that swallowed every crop planted in it. A garrison of knights no one else wanted. And that." He turned the folio around and tapped a map. "The Hollowcrest."

Emeric looked at it. The range ran across the north of his land like a row of broken teeth. Beneath the largest peak, someone had drawn a small black mark and written a single word beside it.

"What is that?"

"The Cinder Throat. A cave." Graves’s voice was flat. "The old records say a dragon sleeps beneath it. It wakes once every two hundred years."

The candle blew to punctuate the tension.

"A dragon," Emeric asked?

"Yes, my lord."

"An actual dragon."

"Two centuries ago it burned the town that stood where your marsh is now. The land never recovered. That is why nothing grows there." Graves paused. "The land became fallow and the resulting dip allowed water to stay there, permanently. I think you understand the rest."

Emeric sat back. "And it’s due."

"The last waking was a hundred and ninety-eight years ago, by the Crown’s own count. The royal archivists have been calling it ’any season now’ for about a decade." He closed the folio halfway. "That is why the Crown never invested here." He said; looking his Lord in the eye for the first time ever.

"There are no major roads here, no garrison beyond the minimum, no repercussions for Lord Verity when he was drowning the estate in debt. It took the combined effort of the people before the crown acted."

"So they gave it to me."

"They gave it to you." He said; with a small pause. "I assume you have powerful friends, so they assumed you would take it gratefully and ask next to no questions." Graves met his eyes. "I’m sorry, my lord. I should have said so on the first day. But you arrived with your wife, and you looked so determined, and I thought..." He stopped. "I thought if it could be fixed, you would fix it before it mattered."

Emeric was quiet for a while. He had expected to be angry. What he felt was closer to recognition, as if a puzzle he had been working at for months had just revealed its missing edge.

It was all coming together. Every piece of this place had been chosen because it was something the Crown wanted to be rid of.

"Is it awake?" he asked.

"No. Not that anyone has seen." Graves hesitated. "But there are rumors."

"Tell me."

"Three times in the past two weeks, hunters and shepherds have reported a shadow over the Hollowcrest. Not a cloud. It sits over the peaks in the middle of the day, darker than night, for a few hours. Then it lifts." He turned a page. "A woodcutter swore to me it had a shape. He wouldn’t say what shape. He said he didn’t want to say it aloud."

"And the cave?"

"No one goes there. The shepherds have set cairns along the lower slopes to mark where not to go. Birds don’t nest within a mile of it. There’s a local custom against whistling toward the north." Graves almost smiled. "I always thought it was superstition. I’m no longer sure."

Emeric stood and went to the window. The northern sky was clear and full of stars. The mountains were a black line cut across the bottom of it.

He started working through it, the way he did with any problem. A dragon that might not wake was a risk. A dragon that woke while he wasn’t ready was a funeral.

The difference between the two was information, and he had almost none.

"How far is the cave?"

"Two days’ ride. Less on a Thunderhoof."

"Has anyone seen the dragon?"

"No one living."

"What does the Crown expect me to do?"

"Nothing, my lord. That is the point. They expect Greyfell to burn, and the problem to resolve itself."

Emeric nodded slowly. He didn’t say anything for a minute. When he did, his voice was calm.

"Thank you for telling me. I wish I’d heard it sooner, but I understand why you waited."

Graves bowed his head. The relief on his face was plain. Emeric hadn’t realized the man had been braced for dismissal.

"One more thing," Emeric said. "Give me the folio. I want to read all of it."

"Of course." Graves slid it across. "My lord, may I ask what you intend?"

"I don’t know yet." He picked up the map. "But I won’t be giving up anytime soon."

Graves stayed a moment longer, then bowed and went out. The door clicked shut.

Emeric sat down again with the folio open in front of him. After a while, he spoke to the empty room.

Did the system know about this?

The answer appeared in the corner of his sight.

[QUERY: DRAGON SIGHTING UNCONFIRMED]