Dragon - Dragon Companion - Dragon - Dragon Companion Part 17
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Dragon - Dragon Companion Part 17

"Isn't that wonderful!" Manda exclaimed in a whisper. "They're called sequins, but I've never s^en so many at once or such magnificent ones! My father ^as a pool for them in his courtyard in Lexor, but he has Only a fraction 132 Don Callander of this many! What a richness they are!"

The pair knelt side by side, watching enchanted as pattern after pattern, no two alike, were formed by the little golden fishes.

"You like my fish?" said a deep, dry voice behind them.

They spun about, caught completely off guard, tangling arms and legs.

Manda gasped a small scream and Tom drew breath but couldn't muster a shout. Before them at the edge of the wood sat an enormous, magnificently muscled, smoothly furred golden cat with black-tufted ears and gleaming, sharp teeth exposed in a sardonic smile.

"Er, ah, oh, yes!" stuttered the Librarian, smiling back rather weakly. "Splendid show, the fish."

The cat sank to its stomach and blinked back at them, comfortably.

"Ah, I'm Princess Royal Alix Amanda," said Manda, gathering her courage.

"I am pleased to meet youa-aha-Princess," said the cat, her tone implying a measure of disbelief, cynicism. "I am called Julia, for some reason I have never quite understood. I am a jaguar!"

This last was dropped into a silence as deep as the pool at their feet.

"I, ah, I've never seen a jaguar as large or as beautiful as you, Julia," Tom said politely. "Most jaguars where I come from are a third your size."

"Well, yes, we do grow large here," admitted the cat, beginning to groom her ears with a forepaw dampened with a rough, pink tongue. "What is your name, please?"

"Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot my manners in my surprise," cried Manda. *This is Thomas the Librarian of Overhall, Achievement of Murdan the Historian."

"My, how you elfin-kind do love your fancy titles," mocked the jaguar. "As for me, the only title I need is *cat,' and everyone knows who and what I am."

*That's very true! I've always thought," said Tom, "the only title I need or want is *Librarian.' "

"I could do without *princess' myself," added Manda. "It's more a big nuisance than anything I can think of."

"Modest to a fault!" chuckled the jaguar, shaking her head. "What do you want here, eh?"

DRAGON COMPANION 133.

These words were shot out unexpectedly, snapping at them like a whip crack. The cat's eyes had suddenly turned cold and cruel.

"Come, come! I asked you a question and I expect an answer," Julia snarled. "You come here into my private canyon coveting my fish and my forest! Account for your actions. This is my territory!"

"We came looking for a friend lost in these mountains," said Tom, swallowing his fear, despite the fact that the great cat was lazily running her claws in and out, tearing daintily at the moss that covered the rock upon which she lay.

"As he isn't here, we'll be leaving any minute," promised Manda.

"Only if I allow it!" purred Julia. "You must know that we jaguars are carnivores."

"I would have guessed it," said Tom, diplomatically.

"Meat isn't too easy to come by here in my little box canyon. I have all the fish I care to eat, of course, and an occasional desert hare wanders ina-stringy, dry, bitter critters they are, at best."

"It explains why there are no birds," Manda whispered.

"Birds? If I can catch them, I eat them," said Julia, with the most wicked smile imaginable. "Unfortunately, they've learned to stay away from my canyon."

"So these sequins are your larder?" Manda asked, shivering despite the desert heat.

"What? Of course not! " cried the cat, jumping to her feet. "Destroy such beauty? Never!"

"I'm so sorry!" cried Manda, jumping back to the very edge of the lake.

"I am a cultured creature," said Julia coldly, swishing her tail angrily. "I don't eat beautiful things, my dear self-styled princess. I must point out, therefore, that I wouldn't hesitate to devour you. You aren't so pretty as all that!"

"You may not think me pretty," Manda retorted, anger in her eyes and her stance, "but I am a princess and I won't allow you or anyone to deny me that!"

"Well! Fire in the royal eye, eh?" the great cat jeered. "I've decided that you are what you say you are, after all. Welcome, Princess Alix Amanda, to my hidden lair. I've never had a real princess for dinner before."

134 Don Callander "We've just had lunch, and we've got to be running along, now, very sorry and all that," Manda said hastily. "Maybe some other time!"

"What, running away already? How distressing!"

"We must find our friend we told you about," said Tom, taking Manda's hand and edging off up the way they had come. "Retruance may be in danger!"

"Too bad for him!" sneered the cat, moving forward on her belly after them, gathering her hind legs to spring. "What's a retruance, anyway?"

"A Dragon!" said a very slow, thunder-deep, sulfurous voice from high overhead. "A large, fierce, fire-breathing, foul-tempered Dragon half again as big as me, who isn't particularly fond of cats of any size."

Julia leaped up, startled. Her jaw fell open. She cringed back, flat against a willow's trunk.

"Retruance is also my brother," continued Furbetrance, more calmly. "And I take most unkindly to anyone or anything standing in the way of rescuing him."

Julia rolled over on her back, wriggled her hips and shoulders imploringly, and stuck all four paws in the air, claws well retracted into her pads.

"D-d-d-dragon? How interesting!" she gulped. "Bigger than you, eh?"

"Much bigger!" breathed Furbetrance, charring half a willow and sending it into flame. "Introduce us. Princess. If I have to incinerate this haughty feline I'd like her to know my name."

Manda grinned in relief and made the introductions quite formally. The huge cat remained on her backside, paws in air, but nodded politely to the Dragon leaning over her, breathing tiny puffs of acrid smoke.

"Very pleased! Wish I could stay to chat, but must run along," Julia purred jerkily. "Understand you have urgent business in hand yourself. Master Dragon!"

"Oh, get to your feet!" sniffed the Dragon. "I hate a groveler!"

"It seemed best to do a little groveling rather than a little smoldering," said Julia, regaining her feet and showing her most pleasant smile. "Nothing personal, beautiful Princess Alix Amanda and handsome young Librarian! Well, nice to have made your acquaintances, all!"

DRAGON COMPANION 135.

She started to draw back into the trees, bowing and smiling warmly at them as she left but keeping her eye on the Dragon towering over the trees at the water's edge.

"Wait a minute!" Tom called after her. "Have you heard of any unusual happenings in this neighborhood, Julia? A Dragon flying overhead? Anything at all to help us find Retruance?"

The jaguar paused just within the trees, sat on her haunches, and scratched her muzzle thoughtfully.

"Come to think of it," she said, "I've been hearing strange rumblings from over to the east a ways. If it weren't so far over the hot ridges and rocks, I'd have gone to investigate, out of curiosity. But you know what they say about curiosity and cats."

"I do indeed," replied Tom. "Thank you, Julia. We'll listen for these rumblings."

A moment later the cat had disappeared. Furbetrance scooped the young couple up and placed them atop his head in front of the maid and the trapper who had watched the confrontation with the jaguar with more glee than concern.

"This is not Overhall or Lexor," the Dragon chided Manda and Tom severely. "No more wandering off! Lucky for you we were ready to go and came to find you just then."

"She didn't seem so very wicked," Manda protested now that she was safe. "I might have liked her, you know!"

Furbetrance snorted derisively. "She might make a good friend, providing she wasn't hungry."

"You have to make allowances for an animal's nature," Clem admonished them. "We men are meat eaters and don't hesitate to kill for food. Why should we be surprised when a jaguar kills to feed herself?"

"I wasn't surprised," wept Manda, burying her face in Tom's shoulder and clinging to him. "I was terrified!"

"And will not wander off again without telling me where you're going, eh?" asked Furbetrance.

"Yes, Furbetrance Constable," the princess answered meekly.

The next two canyons were dry as old bones and about the same color. The third, which they reached very late in the afternoon, long after the sunshine had ceased to reach the canyon's floor, was graced with a small, tangled copse of greasewood and stunted cedars around a spring 136 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION.

137.

of sweet water that tinkled from a cleft in the rock and fell into a rock basin barely larger than a horse trough at Overhall.

"No big, hungry carnivores, here," announced Clem after a careful scout. "It's a safer place to spend the dark hours than the other one."

They set about pitching tents and making a good fire, for the barren canyon, as soon as the sun's rays left the bottom, turned quite cold.

"Small hungry beasties we do have," said Tom. He pointed to several pairs of yellow eyes watching them from the dark. As they turned to look, the eyes blinked and disappeared.

"Come on in and share supper with us," called Clem, making clicking noises with his tongue, as men call a dog. "Here, girl! Come, boy! Supper is ready to eat."

But the shining eyes didn't reappear, nor did their owners come to supper.

"COMPANION!" hissed Furbetrance, urgently shaking the Librarian by the shoulder. "Hoy! Wake and listen, Tom!"

Tom shrugged off his blanket. The cold night air awoke him at once.

He crawled from his tent, being careful not to awaken the trapper or the Princess and her maid in the other tent. No moon shone, at least not in the slice of sky visible from the canyon floor, but a million stars provided enough light to move around the edge of the pool to where the Dragon waited, his head lifted, listening intently.

"What?" asked the sleepy Librarian.

"Wait! Something I heard a moment ago. Maybe it'll repeat itself."

They stood in the cold starlight for a long time, hardly daring to breathe. Tom began to shiver.

"What was it?"

"The strange sort of rumblings the cat spoke about, I think. It sounded familiar, somehow."

"Well, I'm turning to ice," said Tom at last. "You listen all you want, but I'm going back under my blanket."

He had just turned back to the tents when he heard it. It reminded him of a distant someone rolling a grand piano over the stone floor of a vast and empty warehouse, bell-like, musical in tone. The Librarian and the Dragon listened as it rose and fell and finally faded away entirely.

"Well, what do you make of that?" asked Tom. He'd forgotten his chill.

"I've heard that somewhere before," mused Furbetrance. "I have the merest recollection.a"

"It was familiar to me, too," admitted Tom, mystified. The two sat on a broad rock beside the tiny pool as dawn began to light the thin strip of sky overhead. The sound didn't recur.

THE next morning they checked into three more canyons, finding each dry and short, none extending more than a mile or two back into the mountain range's flank.

Now that they had some idea of what they sought, the Dragon didn't waste time backtracking to the desert after exploring each valley, but soared over intervening ridges and dropped down only when they decided a canyon was worth investigating.

"Too narrow, you see?" called Clem, who had the best eye for distances and proportions. "A full-grown Dragon would have trouble squeezing through that cleft, wouldn't you say, friend Furbetrance?"

Furbetrance eyed the narrow gap. "I am sure I couldn't get through there," he said, "and Retruance is bigger'n me."

*Try one more before lunch," urged Tom. "We've covered a lot of ground this morning, fellows! Don't lose heart!"

Manda wet her handkerchief with water from a canteen and wiped her eyelids and lips. The hot desert air made their eyes sting from grit and cracked lips painfully in a few minutes. "I must look a true fright!"

Furbetrance climbed over the next knife-edge ridge. Momie burrowed in one of the rucksacks she and her Princess had brought along, at length finding a small stone jar of ointment.

"Try this, ma'am," she said, handing it to Manda. "It may help your lips, at least."

"Thank you, Momie!" cried Manda. "Oh, they feel better already."

138.

DRAGON COMPANION 139.

Don Callander She passed the jar on to Tom and then to Clem, who declared it was better than goose grease, which was used for the same purpose, up north.

"You use it, too, Momie," Manda insisted.

"There is so little in the jar," protested the maid.

Manda examined the jar bottom closely and shook her head.

"This is a lotion prepared by an old household sprite who served my Aunt Phyllis. The jar itself has a spell that keeps it ever filled."

"Handy to have on a trip like this," said Clem, approvingly. "Your sprite could make a fortune out here providing canteens that never emptied."

"I'm afraid, yes, that we are overusing water supplies," agreed Tom. "Furbetrance, unless we find clean water in this canyon, we may have to turn back to the spring where we spent the night."