The Dragon Lord's Pet by Loki Renard

Author:Loki Renard [Renard, Loki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stormy Night Publications
Published: 2017-11-03T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Three weeks after he first brought his pet home, Vitomir found his doorstep cluttered with old men wearing black rags one fine morning. Technically, it was his doorman who found them, but it was much of a muchness as they asked to be allowed to see the high lord. Usually Vitomir received such guests at the hall of justice at High Town, which was laid out below his estate, but he had been there much less since taking his pet, and the men refused to go away when the doorman attempted to send them off with a date for such a meeting.

“I am sorry, Lord Vitomir, but short of turning either the chamber pot slops or the dogs on them, I do not think they will leave.”

“Let them come to me,” Vitomir sighed. “I have an hour to burn on relentless superstition.”

Vitomir received the priests in his study. He had an uncomfortable feeling as to what they were there for, and the moment they opened their mouths his feeling was proved correct.

“High Lord Vitomir, by your leave we wish to question the obsidian one.”

There was arrogance in the old priest’s tone. Being bankrupted, driven from their fine homes and becoming little more than beggars during Casimer’s first period of enlightenment had not damaged their egos. Vitomir felt a mixture of pity and derision, looking at the way dirt had gathered in the deep lines of their wrinkled faces. They were priests of dust and nothing more.

“Obsidian one?” Vitomir pretended not to know what they were talking about.

“The… dragoness you have…”

“You mean my half-blooded pet,” he said, his lip curling. “And no. You will not question her. I will not have her head filled with nonsense. There is enough of that in there already.”

A brittle ripple went through the men before their leader spoke again.

“Lord Vitomir, there are some things in this world which cannot be easily dismissed. The legend of the obsidian dragon is as old as the world eaters. It is nothing to be sneered at. It is said that the arrival of the obsidian one heralds the shattering of the empire, the death of the king, the wastage of his line, the rising of a world devourer…”

“…and the terrible stench of a thousand farts,” Vitomir interrupted impatiently. “It is foolishness and it is superstition. And even if it were not, the legend does not fit. Our flight forms have dual colors because we inherit one color from the mother, the other from the father. She had only her father to draw from and so she has a black flight form. She is not a natural obsidian dragoness, she is not even a full-blooded dragoness. She is not an object of veneration. She is a silly little girl who was used by her now passed exile father to try to harm the king we all serve, and she is being punished for that. It would do her no good at all to be surrounded by fawning old men making her believe she should make more chaos.

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