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TEKA FOUND HER OUT very soon; she’d been keeping a very sharp eye on her ard sol since she first crawled out of bed after the surka episode She’d been appalled when she first discovered Aerin under the tree in the vicious stallion’s paddock; but she had a bit ave her credit for ("Fuss, fuss, fuss, Teka! Leavein her mouth she realized that Talat knew that his domain had been invaded and didn’t mind She saw hian disappearing at an unseemly rate frohed deeply and began providing thereater quantity

The book with the interesting binding was a history of Damar Aerin had had to learn a certain amount of history as part of her royal education, but this stuff was soain The lessons she’d been forced to learn were dry spare things, the facts without the sense of theuise the truth or (worse) bring it to life Education was one of Arlbeth’s pet obsessions; before hienerations who felt , and there was no precedent for quality in royal tutors

The book was faded with age, and the style of lettering was strange to her, so she had to puzzle out some of the words; and some of the words were archaic and unfas But it orth it, for this book told her storiesthan the ones she ht And so, as she read, she first learned of the old dragons

Da-sized, nasty, mean-tempered creatures ould fry a baby for supper and s it in two gulps if they could; but they had been beaten back into the heavy forest and the wilder Hills by Aerin’s day They still killed an occasional unwary hunter, for they had no fear, and they had teeth and claws as well as fire to subdue their prey, but they were no longer a serious threat Arlbeth heard occasionally of one - or of a family, for they e or an outlying farm, and when that happened a party of men with spears and arrows - swords were of little use, for if one were close enough to use a sword, one was close enough to be badly burned - went out from the City to deal with them Always they ca treachery of dragons; always they ca a few scorched limbs; occasionally they came back a horse or a hound the less

But there was no glarions were ver’s dogs and providedto do with dragons, and dogs once used for dragons were considered worthless for anything else

There were still the old er than horses; and it was soons flew, flew in the air, ingspreads so vast as to blacken the sun The little dragons had vestigial wings, but no one had ever seen or heard of a dragon that could lift its thick squat body off the ground with theer and in courtship, as they raised their crests; but that was all The old dragons were no ons

But this book took the old dragons seriously It said that while the only dragons humankind had seen in many years were little ones, there were still one or two of the great ones hiding in the Hills; and that one day the one or tould fly out of their secret places and wreak havoc on reat dragons lived long; they could afford to wait for that forgetfulness Froons even in his day were a legend, a tale to tell on festival days, well lubricated with mead and wine But she was fascinated, as he had been

"It is with the utathered my information; and I think I may say with truth that the ancient Great Ones and our day’s small, scurrilous beasts are the sa to learn the skill to defeat a Great One can do no better than to harry as many small ones as he ive battle"

He went on to describe his infor techniques, which see the old stories for dragonish ht Aerin, that could as well be froons to the ways of the present ones as from the truth of the author’s theory But she read on

Dragons had short stubby legs on broad bodies; they were not swift runners over distance, but they were exceedingly nimble, and could balance easily on any one foot the better to rip with any of the other three, as well as with the barbed tail The neck was long and whippy, so that the dragon ht spray its fire at any point of the circle; and they often scraped their wings against the ground to throw up dust and further confound their enemies, or their prey

"It is custoon with arrow and thrown spear; but if one of the Great Ones coain, this will avail his attacker little As their size has diminished, so has their aron anywhere it strikes The Great Ones had only two vulnerable spots that ht be depended upon: at the base of the jahere the narrow head joins the long neck; and behind the elbow, froons are, as I have said, nimble; it is most unlikely that a Great One would be so foolish as to lower its head or its wings to reat hero only e h to force the fatal blow

"It is fortunate for all alk the earth that the Great Ones bred but rarely; and that h heroes to vanquish the most of them But it is this writer’s most fervid belief that at least one more hero must stand forth from his people to face the last of the Great Ones

"Of this last - I have said one or two; perhaps there are three or four; I know not But of one I will make specific remark: Gorthold, who slew Crendenor and Razion, and it he did not slay Gorthold, as hith that the dragon would die of its wounds as he would die of his; but this was never known for a certainty The only certainty is that Maur disappeared; and has been seen by no ht back the tale to tell - from that day to this"

In the back of the book Aerin found an even older e, sewn painstakingly into the binding Those final ancient pages were a recipe, for an ointonfire - it said

It had a nuht, by the sound of thenize a few syllables; there was one that translated as "red-root" She frowned; there was a thing called redroot that showed up in boring pastoral poeed to that classic category known as iht know about redroot; she brewed a uniquely ghastly tea or tisane for every ailment, and when Aerin asked as in the awful stuff, Teka invariably rattled off a list of things that Aerin had never heard of She had been inclined to assu her off with nonsense, but onfire If it worked - one person, alone, could tackle a dragon safely; not a Great One, of course, but the Black Dragon probably did die of its woundsbut the little ones that were such a nuisance At present the systes fro around it, or them, so if they bolted at so was filling them full of arrows They couldn’t run far, and usually a family all bolted in the same direction It hen they didn’t that horses died