The race was on, but Elvira's horse froze to the spot and whinnied, tweaking its ears, even though the dragon had become no bigger than a raven in the cloudless sky.
Ferrante! Elvira thought in exasperation. Sure, when he was a human and a paladin, Ferrante's skills were obvious. He could bring forth a ray of cleansing light to blast the undead or heal a wound on a comrade-in-arms. But she didn't know what he was capable of as a dragon. So she slipped out of the saddle to see what trick he had pulled on her.
The green web tethered her horse's legs. It looked like...
Elvira squatted to see exactly what it looked like and extended her hand to touch the soft threads. The smell left on her fingers was that of the spring grass. The green stuff was the fresh grass, only stretched out by magic to a full midsummer height and tangled beyond hope. Nature magic, pure in its simplicity.
She sighed and lifted her head only to bump the forehead of another woman. The new arrival was bent at her willowy waist to examine whatever Elvira was investigating.
"Ouch. Sorry!" Elvira said.
"I am fine," the woman replied. Her soft golden-brown eyes that could melt a stone—and sometimes did, according to the stories—sparkled with curiosity. Emerald hair swayed on either side of the perfectly oval face, also green, but paler.
Yes, yes, lucky me! Lukrezia nested in the sacred oak. Ferrante scarred its roots with his claws and had blown hundreds of leaves from its boughs... but they left Elvira behind to deal with the dryads. Lucky, lucky, lucky...
"We need to talk," the dryad said, covering its delicate mouth with a fragile hand to stifle a yawn. "We believe you hurt us... earlier, I mean, not just now."
Elvira had heard tales of the tricksters, mainly bards, who lulled the dryads to sleep and stole their acorns, then pressed the dryads into servitude. Naturally, she found enslaving her accuser abhorrent, but the hooded green lids made it tempting to wait it out and tiptoe away once the dryad nodded off.
Alas, that meant abandoning the horse to the grass trap, and she had to gallop to Antikapey before Ferrante made an enemy out of a powerful gnomish city or did Light-knows-what equally hot-headed.
"I don't deny the charges!" Elvira pitched her voice as loud as she could while staying polite.
The dryad startled, then batted her eyelashes. "What charges?"
Great, the infamous short attention span...
The honor dictated for Elvira to act as the accused, the judge and the jury all rolled in one. Also, the network of roots, grasses and mushrooms had a long reach, so it could snitch on her to the Order. But, mainly, it was her integrity on the line.
"Damaging the sacred oak. Bark, leaves and roots." Elvira thought for a moment and added hopefully, "Offset by exterminating a wide range of pests and weeds through applying the dragon breath to the area."
The dryad perked up. "That was the dragon's doing? We saw this magnificent, horrifying, gigantic, brilliant dragon. He was amazing and he did a service for us. We are grateful to him."
"Then... can I go?" Elvira asked tentatively. Maybe all she had to do was listen about the marauding and magnificent dragon and get over prickles of jealousy. Ferrante always made an impression on women, but she had no idea it could develop into a universal following because of his curse. "I need to get somewhere as soon as possible."
Her hopes didn't have time to solidify before the dryad shattered them with a curt "No."
The sun was past zenith, and Antikapey was a long way away, by land and sea. Light-giving light, grant me patience, she prayed and said, "What do the dryads accuse me of?"
"Using us to summon the dragon and the gnome, who, in turn, hurt us."
That was better than she had expected. Logical, no nonsense... Maybe she could still put in a few solid hours of travel before the sunset when the dark things crawled out of the woods. "I agree to these charges."
The dryad clapped her hands, not looking remotely sleepy now. "Splendid! This is going better than we expected. We want you to make us a grove, to erase the ills you inflicted upon us."
"I will!" Elvira exclaimed, glad that things worked out so well... except... "to make you what?"
"You will take us... just this acorn, to be precise, not the tree, with you on your travels. When we see a place that has fertile soil, sweet water and gentle sun, we'll tell you to plant this acorn. From the acorn springs the Mother-and-Father Tree, and from the Tree springs the Grove. Long we wished to become a grove, but our acorns drop into the stream and find no nourishment left for them to thrive in the thin soil here."
"Done!" Elvira cried out. The places she intended to visit would disappoint the sacred oak and the dryads, but it was their problem. The salty sea and the slums of Antikapey offered few opportunities for starting a sacred grove of oak trees. Perhaps in her later travels...
The magical grass around the horse's hooves released its grip and swayed in the wind like normal grass would. The horse whinnied and stepped over it doggedly, avoiding magic with the instinctive distrust of all beasts. Elvira caught the bridle. "Easy, boy, we'll be away from here in a blink of an eye."
The dryad curled up on the ground, ready to fall asleep and become an acorn.
"If you are my traveling companion, I would like to know your name," Elvira asked.
The long eyelashes trembled, "Your travelling companion?"
"Yes. You feel, you speak, you walk. I am not treating you as cargo."
"Like this dragon was, before you lured in and assaulted him?" the dryad asked.
"Yes. No. That is, I didn't want to kill him, I wanted to kill the dragon who had killed my companion. Or I thought he did."
The dryad's mouth opened into a gentle circle, showing even teeth like seed pearls. "You must tell us this story from the beginning. Humans rarely come to this cliff, and when they do, we don't get to talk to them for long."
"I will, once we stop for the night. It would make for one exciting campfire tale." Elvira chuckled. Suddenly, having a dryad join her didn't sound like a burden.
She didn't realize how much she got used to having Ferrante along.
In her first year with the order, she had mentors. In her second year, she rode in solitude. But at the start of the third year, Ferrante joined her to apprehend an enterprising necromancer running a circus show with a skeletal crew. Putting Fun in Funerals, he called it.
Then, somehow, all her quests required a paladin's gift. Ferrante and her grew inseparable... until today.
While Elvira sighed, the dryad stretched like a cat. "Cerne, you can call us. That is, you can call me Cerne."
She curled up, tucking away limbs with inhuman flexibility taken for granted. Her eyes closed to the warm slits. "I suppose I should get used to being on my own, away from the Tree-Mind."
You bet! Elvira answered inwardly, as the svelte maiden with waist-long hair turned transparent, then melted away, leaving behind a shimmering outline. In the middle of that dim glow lay an acorn. It was round, with a pointy tip on one end and a checkered cap on the other, just like any other acorn.
However, Elvira scooped it with gentle care and dropped it into a pouch on her neck that held a cameo pendant with her parents' profiles and a dried flower Ferrante plucked for her from high on a mountainside on a dare. It was on the first day they had met... And to think that she made him climb, when he could have flown up there in one beat of his wings!
I miss him, be he a dragon or a knight... Her heart filled to the brims with a sweet ache, but no electrical charges zapped it to a standstill. The distance didn't just make her heart grow fonder than ever; it seems to have disabled the punishing effects of the curse. It made sense: why waste arcane energy when Sigvart's rights were not in immediate danger of being violated?
But she could think about it while she was riding. "Giddy up!" The dirt exploded from under her steed's hooves. The sacred oak sent farewells by waving its branches. The leaves rustled, cheering on the acorn that hitched a ride into the unknown. Elvira smiled to herself. There was no feeling in the world better than setting off on a quest.