When Siegyrd returned, Gudrun sat on the edge of the room wrapped in furs shivering, eyes staring into nothingness. Siegyrd strode to her and crouched down, reached out his pale hand and lifted her chin to look into her eyes. There was a darkness in their green that was not there before, a strain of confusion, and the low embers of a smouldering fear. She did not see him at all but rocked back and forth muttering.

  “Wretch!” He shouted as he turned and waived his hand. The giant tapestry split down the middle and moved back to reveal the mountains of treasure. At the back of the treasury was a black stain upon the light, and there hung the ebonblade in the air cocked at a disturbing angle. It seemed to mock by its subtle movements, but it spoke not at all.

  Siegyrd roared, and his form morphed and changed in slow growth as the roar grew louder. His back bent, and he leaned over on all fours, and then he was the size of a small horse, then a carriage, then a house. Soon he filled the cavern almost to bursting. His glistening silver-white scales interlocked in brilliant patterns of icy crystalline which bent the light of the false sun into coruscating rainbow rays.

  His colossal form looked down upon the black blade in the treasury, and his breath roiled in an icy fog among the coins and gems of the hoard.

  “Release her.” He breathed, and there was a movement of the blade almost like a shudder.

  Gudrun screamed as she gathered the furs closer to herself and stared up at the silver dragon with terror and confusion in her eyes. Her scream reverberated off the walls and floors and then, as if surprised at her own voice, abruptly she stopped and grasped her throat. She looked around the room, mouth agape, and gasped for air. “Let me go… They. It. You. We were warned of you, hermits and madmen in the mountains. This is worse!”

  Seigyrd returned to his human form in a twist of the light. He moved to her side, crouching, his mercurial eyes set in brows knit with concern, “Where shall you go, maiden of the mountains?”

  “You want to keep me as pet. I will never be free.”

  “Free for what, daughter of snow?”

  Her eyes flashed. She looked straight into his eyes and spat in his face. A brief blue light bloomed, then the saliva froze and fell with a clink to the floor. Siegyrd heard a sickening laughter inside his head. He ignored the ebonblade’s mockery, and softened his gaze as he looked into the woman’s green eyes. His vision swam in low tides of sorrow.

  “You trick me! Let me go!” She raved at him and tried to push him away. He yielded to her push, stood and moved to the other side of the monstrous cavern. He grabbed a glass chalice from one of the shelves and filled it with some liquid which seemed poured from the empty air. He brought the drink to the woman.

  “Poison!” She slapped it away from him, and the chalice clattered on the luminous stone floor. The liquid spilled across it bending the light in wandering waves.

  Siegyrd stood slowly, retrieved the chalice, filled it again from the hollow air, and drank some before proffering it to the woman.

  “Why won’t you let me leave?” She said as she turned her face away.

  Siegyrd smiled sadly, “you’d die, or worse.”

  “This is worse than death!” Her sneer was thick, and her eyes were shadowed with fragments of dark magic.

  “That voice is a worse poison than this world can produce,” he said coldly as he placed the full chalice next to the woman on the floor and walked over to another portion of the cavern.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Are you going to let me go, monster? You made out to be a friend, selling wares and buying supplies. I had seen you in the village, ever in the coldest months. You didn’t save any of them! Now I know. I know what dragons are! Killers and hoarders and calamities. The stories are all the same.” She stood, and some of the furs fell. The icy cold struck her neck, and she quickly gathered them back up around herself.

  Siegyrd moved to a central place in the cavern where a broad area was clear of all treasure, saying softly, “Stories sadly true, if incomplete.”

  He drew his swords with their oddly crafted grooves.

  “Threats!” Gudrun yelled, but then paused, confused, as Siegyrd moved through martial forms with dancelike fluidity. As he did, the whistle of the songblades played melodic through the gallery.

  “Hey! Listen to me!” She almost snarled, but her eyelids grew heavy. A sense like what she felt in flight swept over her. “Not, no! I…”

  Siegyrd continued his forms, and the first measure filled the space with music. He began to sing in a tongue she did not know. She tried again to speak, but the rolling waves of sound swept her away in their warm embrace. She closed her eyes to the cavern but opened them to a memory of her own home, her family, the great feast of her father’s wedding day. The heavy notes of meat stuffed her nostrils, and pie filling danced on her tongue. Her stepmother’s smile was bright and her eyes like caramel comfort. Gudrun was a little girl, and the sounds of a lute played by a hunchbacked skald brought a broad smile to her face as filling dripped over her lip. Her grown mind tried to resist the fondness of memory. She heard the joy of the past, the confusion of the present, and the fears for a distant future as a complex and haunting harmony.

  Her vision blurred with tears, and, when it cleared, the music swept her to a rocking chair in a broad sitting room. A fire chattered in the background as children gathered at her feet on a rug woven from spellspun threads. Around her stood men and women who she knew to be her sons and daughters. Their sons and daughters sat upon the floor looking up at her with bright eyes; amber hinted with green, storm-gray, dark chocolate brown, emerald infused with yellow sunlight. Her husband stood over her, strong and calm and precious to her, though she could not see his face. Feelings without memory flooded her.

  She blinked and yielded to the flows of time and song and let herself be carried into distant pasts, other people’s lives, and into far flung futures where magical craft soared the skies on wings of diaphanous silver. She awoke in close furs with the ghosts of tears on her cheeks. She felt herself purged of a sickness she did not know she bore.

  #

  Siegyrd’s song ended, and the last trailing note floated in the air for a blissful eternity.

  She stared, and her face softened.

  Siegyrd walked toward her and knelt close to take her hands in his before he spoke. “Daughter of the mountains, what one could call prison, you may yet learn is protection. I cannot simply release you.”

  A small flash of anger rose in her cheeks, but, when she searched Siegyrd’s eyes, she found only warmth and concern.

  “What is your name, woman of the white peaks?”

  “Gudrun.”

  “Ah, a name of legend. Apeiron’s humor never fails.” He laughed softly then said, “I have many names, but most known am I as Siegyrd. Ours will be quite a different tale. Falling in love is strictly forbidden.”

  Despite herself, Gudrun smiled, and the cavern was brighter for that small smile than it had been in centuries.

  “Now, daughter of the mountains, it is time we prepare a proper place. Please, follow me.” He stood and walked toward a far wall opposite the rows of weapons Gudrun had witnessed before.

  She hesitated, then gathered furs around her as best she could, and huddled after him, trying to stay warm. She heard a wicked laughter in her head and shivered, pausing again.

  Siegyrd looked back and laughed, his voice filled with a calming timbre, “I had forgotten how cold my comfort is to humans. It has been long. I will make it right. Please,” He motioned for her to come alongside him as he walked.

  She obliged, and they reached the wall which looked flat and bare as icy stone could be. Siegyrd looked at her and smiled, his teeth pure white and sentineled with fangs. She shrank back, and he sighed then turned to touch his hand to the wall. A series of flashes played along the roof and a doorway filled with shifting luminance opened in front of him. He nodded to her and then stepped forward. His form stretched in her eyes and then flickered like a candle blown in the wind, and he was gone.

  She looked at the doorway with its shifting light, and approached it as she would a wild animal. At a pace away she stopped. A white hand shot out, grabbed her by the wrist, and she could not place the sensations so alien they were to her. In the snap of a finger she stood in an endless corridor lit by blue-flame braziers. Siegyrd released her wrist and smiled again and spoke, “This way to your chambers. They will, I pray, be to your liking, unused though they have been for centuries.”