Chapter 19

The hero works with the maids to decode the poem

The next day the girls had to cover for other maids who wanted their time to practice so I went alone to see Kethrinax and apologize for the day before.

"Don't worry about it," she told me, waving a claw in the air. Which given how dangerous they were could be taken two ways, I supposed. "Dragons are fairly laid back, given how long we live. You humans rush, rush, rush all the time, which is fine I'm not saying you should live like we do. You can't. A dragon is still considered young after having lived a whole human lifetime, after all. I figured something came up and you would be back. Or you got jumped by the Dragonlord's minions and you were dead. I would have followed up in a week or so, maybe."

I suppose I can't say I didn't expect something like that. After all, she felt the princess would be fine despite being alone for weeks with no food or water. She didn't leave her post and go asking what to do, she just took it in stride. What's a few weeks or even months to a dragon? "Something did happen, a few things actually. The princess woke up and seems… fine?"

"Is that a human thing? You don't sound convinced."

"She woke up, that's for sure. Started babbling about me needing to love her when I asked about Erdick's token. The healer thinks something might be wrong in her mind, and we need to give her time to come back to herself."

"Hopefully they know what they're talking about."

"I hope so too. With her talking nonsense we needed another clue to where the token was, and made a search of her rooms. It took longer than I expected, for reasons I won't get into, but we did find a poem. Here, you want to see it?" I held it out.

"I'll take a look," she told me, carefully taking it in her claws. She held it up to an eye, squinting at it. "Ugh, Draconic is so much easier to read. Of course we write bigger so there's that."

"Draconic?"

"What?" She looked back down at me. "Oh, you think your language is our native language too? Don't be absurd. We have our own, I'm speaking your language for your convenience."

"Oh right, that word you taught me before. Nowkis. So it isn't just different words than we have, you have a whole different language? And the name of it is Draconic?" The tool shop owner will be miffed he missed that. Oh, don't forget to ask her to come closer to town for him.

She snorted. "Still remember that, huh? Figures." She went back to squinting at the poem.

"What's it sound like?"

"One second, I'm trying to- the last line doesn't even rhyme, ugh, dragon poetry is so much better than this." She handed it back.

Of course it is. "Did you get anything out of it?"

"I would suggest checking some maps, you have those right?"

"We have maps, of course we have maps!"

"Given you can't fly, maybe a dragon made map would be better, but no matter. Look for a mountainous region that leads to a swamp."

"A place no crops would grow, yes, that makes sense," I agreed. "I'll take a look, thanks."

"Of course. Now, as to my language." She paused, thinking. "How about a song?" She took a deep breath and drew herself up.

Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin

Naal ok zin los vahriin

Wah dein vokul mahfaeraak ahst vaal

Ahrk fin norok paal graan

Fod nust hon zindro zaan

Dovahkiin, fah hin kogaan mu draal

"Interesting, thank you. What does it mean?"

She sighed, looking up into the sky. "Not much, since the Dragonlord took over. Basically that those born of dragons, i.e. we dragons swear upon our honor to fight evil. That our foes no matter how strong will tremble when they hear us roar, that dragons will answer the prayers of those that need it. It hasn't been sung in a long while..."

"You'll sing it again, and mean it. All dragons, I mean. This dragon will fall one way or the other."

She looked down at me. "You really think so?"

"I wouldn't have come this far if I didn't."

She gave a short laugh. "I guess that's true. Enough talk, if you want to win the love of the princess for real you have a lot more training to do! Attack!"

I really don't though.

After I stopped for lunch I told Kethrinax I would probably do more level raising in the afternoon, but I would stop back before sundown if I could.

"Whatever," she said. "I have plenty of naps to catch up on if you're not around."

What are you, a cat? I headed back to the castle to get some lunch and headed to the common room where my new friends were working. Shoot, I forgot to ask her, didn't I? Well, when I go back then. They greeted me but had someone else serve as I expected. It would have been quite awkward otherwise. However, Rose shyly made her way over to me and handed me a rolled up parchment.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi yourself. What's this?"

"It's a map I found when I was cleaning. I've been thinking about that poem. I think I have an idea where to find the token."

"That's great!" I exclaimed, popping up out of my seat.

Rose gave a squeak and stepped back.

"Oh, sorry, didn't mean to startle you." Great, nice job, hero. I sat back down again. "I was just excited. I mean this is great news isn't it?"

"If I'm right. I don't know that I am. Um. You're not going to like it."

"Why is that?"

She shook her head. "I can't really talk now. The three of us will come to your room when we're done for the night okay?"

"Fine, that's fine. I'll keep this safe until then." I put it away, not really thinking where or how. It was a huge, rolled up parchment, I couldn't have put it in my pocket but I knew it was "on me" and I could get it out at any time. "Thanks."

"Sure," she told me with a little wave. "See you later."

I headed up to my room and got the map out before I left, looking it over. There did seem to be a lot more towns on it than I recalled seeing on my trip out to Rimuldar to buy keys. Wonder if that guy ever did find his girlfriend… I didn't see any good spots, though there were plenty of mountain passes and areas marked with "dangerous swamp" the token could have been left in. I rolled it up and headed out to bloody my sword on the minions of the Dragonlord.

That evening I was pacing in my room wondering where the three were when finally I heard a knock. I threw the door open and there were my friendly maids, smiling on the other side. At least, Rose and Alita were. Clarissa just looked upset. "Come in," I told them, throwing it open wide. "I've been waiting for you."

"Sorry for taking so long," Clarissa told me as they stepped inside. "The king is still obsessed with finding his so called wine cellar and we maids had to start looking too."

"Personally I think this whole basement of the castle thing was made up," Alita said, plopping down on the bed. She yawned. "I've never seen it. Is this going to take long, I really want to get some sleep."

"It shouldn't take long," Rose assured us quietly.

"And he's been suggesting we should make some cat tails, to go with our cat ears. Can you believe that?" She tore the cat ears off her head and threw them down. "Tails? Don't we have more important things to be doing?"

"Do you?" I asked. She glared at me. "I'm serious though, have you told him about the 'warrior maid' effort you're going through? If he doesn't know, how can you expect him to respect your time? He may think you're just sitting around- How would they even attach?" I moved this way and that, trying to look behind her.

She crushed down her skirt in the back with her hands. "Don't even think about it, hero. And no, we thought, well..."

"He might order us to stop," Alita told me. "And I suppose it is a slight risk to the kingdom, if the Dragonlord found out. We couldn't take the chance. This whole cat thing is really odd." She kicked off a shoe and then the other, wiggling her toes. "I thought maybe he would get better now that his daughter is awake but it seems he's just getting worse."

"Any improvement on that front?" I asked.

"She hasn't demanded that anyone else love her," Rose reported. She did give a little smile and a wink. "I guess that's just for heroes like yourself."

"But she is still okay?"

"She's not up and around," Clarissa clarified. "She'll be in bed recovering for some time, and then have to take it slow to build up her body again. Don't worry, there's no chance she'll sneak into your rooms at night," she added with a smirk.

"That was the furthest thing from my mind," I assured her. Would that even happen? And what would I do if she did?

"So bring out the map, let's see what you found," Alita told her.

"Okay." She unrolled the map and set some weights at the corners to keep it rolling back up. "Can I see the poem again?"

"Sure." I handed it to her and she looked it over again.

"Come and look at this." We all crowded around the table, and I turned the lamp up a little. "I think every part of this poem is a clue," she began. "Let's start at the top. Look at the shape. You remarked on that, Clarissa." She turned the poem up. "Look at the word sand, and it goes out of its way to mention an hourglass. And the poem-"

"Looks like an hourglass," Alita finished. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Um, I'm not done," she said.

"Let her finish, Alita," Clarissa chided.

"Sorry, Rose. Go ahead."

"It's okay. Then there's the word darkness, which is written bolder than the other words. I think that means something too. Then there's the line about the two paths."

"Kethrinax said it probably means a swamp," I told them. "Where no crops grow."

She nodded. "I think so too. Look here, far to the south. There's a mountain path this way that would lead to this part of the swamp here, but if you went this way it would be shorter but miles more swamp as you went east. But this location matches up in so many ways."

"How so?" Clarissa asked, looking back and forth between them.

"Look at the shape of the swamp, and the shape of the poem. Then that last line, you know the one that doesn't even rhyme? What if the 'end of the world' doesn't refer to an event like the Dragonlord taking over, but a location? The end of the world, or as far south as you can go? Put the poem over the swamp," she turned it and set the paper against the map. "I think the word 'darkness' is the location of the token."

"It does fit," Alita breathed. "The shape of the poem, the swamp gets really narrow here like the center of an hourglass. The two paths, it being the end of the world. The word 'darkness' is right in the center on the eastern most part of the swamp, making it the hardest to get to. Makes sense to put it there. Wow, Rose, this is amazing! I think you cracked it."

"Oh, no, it's not that amazing."

"Yes it is, come on! You're the best."

"I just like poetry that's all. And I happened to find this map."

"Maybe you're the ancestor of Erdrick, in that case. Any of us could be really."

"That would be nice."

Everyone looked to me.

"What? You can have it. All it's gotten me is a lot of danger."

"And some new friends?" Clarissa asked.

"That too, of course. Rose, good work with this. The only real problem I see now is… The only two problems I see now are… Among the problems I now see are; how to verify it without going all the way down there, how to survive the swamp once we get there, how to get there without it taking half a year, and what to do if we have it wrong."

"It is a long ways away," Alita agreed. "It's as far south as you can go, but to be fair it is on the same continent."

"Look at what's in the way," Clarissa told us, tracing a path with her finger. "We would have to go all the way to the west to avoid these mountains here, across this bridge, follow the west coast, cross this bridge, cross the southern desert, then make the choice to take the mountain path to the north east or the swamp path to the south east. It's crazy far away, mostly because we can't go directly there. We have to go around all this stuff!"

"Or we could take a boat," I suggested. "I know they still exist, after all. Then we just have to sail around Dragonlord island, head south a bit, and we're there."

"Too bad the world isn't round," Alita grumbled. "If we could hire a ship to sail around here and go north," she indicated sailing around the landmass to the east, "we could meet them here and just go north a little bit more. That would save us even more time and we could still practice as the ship sailed."

"You might as well wish you could fly!" Clarissa said with a laugh. "A round world, you sure do have an imagination!"

"Why couldn't we fly?" I asked. "What ever happened to that bird Loto hatched? In the journal he never said it was killed or anything. Shouldn't it still be around somewhere?"

"That was hundreds of years ago!"

"Didn't he say it was a phoenix? They're supposed to live forever, right? Be reborn again and again?"

"I guess..."

"What about our pledge to use our own ingenuity and not rely on the artifacts of the past? Have you all forgotten? It was just yesterday that brave, brave Rose here reminded us of our honor and our own worth." Alita asked us. "We swore an oath!"

"I don't think we did though," Rose reminded her. "It was just a suggestion."

"Don't recall any oath," Clarissa agreed. "But I do agree. We should spend time searching for a solution based on what we have and know today instead of looking for some mystical bird that may no longer be alive."

"Okay then, what do we know, today, or have, that would allow us to go there more quickly?"

"Could we manipulate the magic of the Wyvern's wings?" asked Alita. "They can magically take you places, and I've seen them for sale in the tool shop. 70 gold, right? That's not so bad."

"They can bring you back to the place you left from," Rose told her. "It's no good. They would just bring us back here. I do agree it's odd they work like that though."

"So it would cut our journey in half, that's not nothing."

"True."

"What about the journal? There were some crazy ideas in there, right?" Clarissa asked.

"Journal?" the other two asked.

"Loto's journal. I found it a few days ago. It does have some crazy ideas in it, but the only one I can see helping us now is the floating basket idea. But how it would help us I don't know."

"Don't the stories say that one of Loto's friends had a magical basket he could fly around with?" Alita asked. "But we don't know how to make those, do we?"

I shook my head. "You're thinking of the right thing, and that's maybe where he got the idea, but Loto wanted to do it without magic. He observed that leaves tossed over a fire rose into the air. He wondered if you couldn't capture that hot air and use it to float."

"Float? In the air?"

"That's the idea."

"But how would you direct it? You would just fly upwards!" Rose protested.

"He imagined sails, just like a sailing ship. Of course they can use oars if the wind dies down and still get somewhere. We would be stuck."

"How much air would we need?" Clarissa asked. "The more wood we had to burn the heavier the basket would be. That's no good."

"As you can see," I told the others, "the design had a lot of flaws."

"Let's see it," Alita demanded, so I got out the journal and showed her. She looked it over and nodded, rubbing her chin. "Okay, okay, there are some challenges I admit. Let's go into town tomorrow and see what we can do. I want to talk to the tool shop owner and the blacksmith. The seamstress as well, we would need a lot of fabric to catch enough hot air for this all to work."

"You don't think it could actually work though, do you?" Clarissa asked.

"We'll see," she answered mysteriously. She sat down to pull her shoes on again and stretched. "I'll see you all in the morning!"

After they left I stood staring at the diagrams and notes Loto had made about the floating basket. What did she see that I'm not seeing? Would such a device really be able to get off the ground? The resources it would require, such as the fabric to make the upper part, and the wood to make the basket itself, would be hard to come by. But to actually make it work? The question is does floating through the air on the wind really cut our travel time by that much? I mean factoring in the time to make the darn thing, just like dressing me up before, I would have to say no. We may be able to go more directly, yes, but can't I walk faster than the wind? Maybe we should just walk, though the thought of all the monsters that are between us and the southern part of the continent… I shudder to think. But the gold. Think of the gold!

I got undressed for bed, wondering what Alita had in mind, and wondered if all the effort for the token was worth it. But at least this is an honest goal. And if the basket works other people can use it. Think of it, baskets floating between towns! We could use them to create better maps, even help guide ships to shore as a light from a basket could probably be seen from further away than one on land. They may have all sorts of uses...