“No. Merely in need of persuasion.” Samdal set his hands on his knees and began in the old tongue Arcolin had first learned as a child, in the cadence of one relating a legend. “In the days of your fathers, time and time before, Dragon granted your forefather Camwyn two boons. One was the high pass of Horngard for a stronghold, with the dwarf-delved caverns that made it defensible. One was the touch of Dragon to the King, tongue to tongue, that made Camwyn the man Camwyn Dragonsfriend, founder of the House of Dragon. This you were told: do you remember?”

Arcolin remembered, but had not thought of that legend when meeting the dragon himself. He had touched the dragon tongue to tongue—but surely that did not make him a king. Kieri and Kieri’s betrothed—now his wife, no doubt—had done the same, and so had Stammel. And Mikeli of Tsaia and his brother the prince. “I do remember,” he said aloud, “but it is now many years since a dragon sealed that ancient bond. It is the tongue of the dragon statue in the King’s Hall that my father touched with his, and my brothers as well, I presume.”

“True. But that does not mean dragons will never return. And you—if you told me that you had touched Dragon himself, I would believe you.”

“Why?” Arcolin asked.

“There’s something. Your eyes. The scent—though I can see you have a forge here, it’s not forge fire I smell on you, but dragon-fire.”

Arcolin’s hand clenched on the dragonhead of the ring he’d put on. “So … tell me what you must. I make no promises.”

One of the men came in then with wine, pitcher, wooden cups, and another with a platter of bread, cheese, and sliced meat. They set them on the table and—at Arcolin’s nod—poured the wine. Then they left.

The story Samdal told surprised Arcolin except for Perdal’s death: dying by someone’s blade in a quarrel over a gambling throw seemed appropriate for what he remembered of his least favorite half-brother.

“He’d gone soft, you see,” Samdal said. “Been too long a prince, waiting … and he was not a man to thrive on idleness. Oh, he went to the fighting circle now and then, but he wouldn’t listen to his brothers and he always liked his table.”

And his jug, as Arcolin remembered well. Perdal had been a heavy drinker by the time Arcolin left, though back then he had sweated out much of it in the circle and other active sports.

“And now, my lord, Dragon’s come again.”

“What?”

“Yes, my lord. Been seen over the mountains. And Camwyn as well: the dragonfriend with the smell of Dragon on him.”

Camwyn Dragonsfriend, or that shape-shifting Dragon himself? Arcolin motioned for Samdal to go on with his tale.