Free Dragon's Boy by Jane Yolen Page A

“Did you…did you bring me any stew?”
    â€œOnly two seed cakes.”
    â€œI like seed cakes.”
    â€œThen I’ll bring them over to you.”
    â€œNooooooooooo.” The sound held only the faintest memory of that old, powerful voice.
    But Artos had already started toward the back of the cave, one hand cradling the cakes against his chest, the other well in front to guide himself around the treacherous overhanging rocks. He was halfway there when he stumbled against something and fell heavily to his knees. Feeling around, he touched a long, metallic, curved blade.
    Fearing the worst, he cried out, “A sword! Oh, dragon, has someone else been here? Has someone killed you?” His mind pictured Bedvere bumbling about in the dark, blade in hand, though he knew that Bed had been along with him on the journey. Perhaps one of the guards, or even Sir Ector himself on the hunt, had stumbled across the cave, though he knew in his heart the guards never chanced the peat bogs and the hunt had taken place west of Nethy in the deep forest, not across the fen so close to Beau Regarde .
    Before the dragon could answer, Artos’ hand traveled farther along the blade to its strange metallic base. It didn’t feel like a sword at all. It felt like…
    His hands told him what his eyes could not; his mouth spoke what his heart did not want to hear.
    â€œThe dragon’s foot.”
    He leaped over the metal construct and scrambled across a small rocky wall. Behind it, in the glow of a brazier, lay an old man on a straw bed. Near him were tables containing beakers full of colored liquids—amber, rose, green, and gold. From the gold a small, steady stream of clouds issued forth. On the near wall was a maze of strange toothed wheels locked one onto the other, with polished wooden handles at either end. On the far wall was a great door, carved with strange runes. By the old man’s head was an open-mouthed cylinder with a long tubing attached, snaking all the way down to an opening in the wall.
    The old man raised himself wearily onto one arm and tried to set his mouth into a welcoming smile.
    â€œPendragon,” he said, though a tremor in his yellowish lips betrayed him and slurred the syllables. “Son.”
    â€œOld Linn?” Artos was suddenly shaking with anger. The dragon, so powerful, so dangerous, so all-wise—his secret father, his teacher, his friend—was this ? On this he’d expended his fear, his faith, his…his love? If anyone ever found out, he’d be a joke. And what kind of wisdom had he gotten if its fount was a feeble, dying spring? He felt sick.
    â€œYou are a cheat. A pismire. A chinch .” The boyish swears rose easily to his lips.
    The apothecary forced himself into a sitting position, his robes falling open to display knobby legs with prominent veins running from knee to ankle like old, meandering blue rivers. In a late attempt at dignity, he clutched the two sides of the robe together and began to speak quickly, before Artos’ anger had time to set into rigid hate.
    â€œListen, boy. There was once a mighty king who would know Truth and so he put on a beggar’s robe and traveled all over the world in his search.”
    His voice was quieter than the dragon’s had ever been, of course, but the rhythms were the same. Artos cursed himself that he’d never noticed. Yet, without willing it, he was pulled into the old man’s tale.
    â€œThe king looked along the seacoasts and in the quiet farm dales,” Old Linn continued. “He went into the country of lakes and across the sandy deserts. He went into the uninhabited forests and through the noisy towns, seeking Truth. And at last, one dark night, in a small cave atop a high tor, he found her. Truth. Truth was a wizened old woman with but a single tooth left in her head. Her eyes were cloudy and her hair greasy, lank strands. But when she called him into her cave,