Dragonheart by Charles Edward POGUE

The image had evoked a memory in Einon. It had stopped him, made him rein his horse to stare at the girl and the fire and grope for the memory. But the girl’s defiant eyes had chased the memory from him. Across the quarry she had looked very beautiful. Einon had almost ridden back to her. But he had feared her beauty was only an illusion cast by the fire in her hair. And he had feared her eyes. Even as they had chased his faint memories away, they had chased him from the quarry. He had whipped his horse and ridden off like a frightened child.
    Einon cursed and tossed the dregs of his wine into the fire. The blaze lapped it up with a flaring red thirst.
    Bowen and Gilbert traveled down a sun-dappled forest path. The priest ambled alongside Merlin, reading from another of his inexhaustible supply of scrolls. All morning he had been trying to reintroduce the topic of last night’s conversation. And while Bowen had had no objections to Gilbert’s chattering—and, indeed, seemed to tolerate it amiably—it had been another one-sided discourse, with the knight interjecting only to agree or disagree or make a minor comment of no real consequence or self-revelation. But. truth be told, the subject matter was more Gilbert’s passion than Bowen’s. Avalon was his quest and so, since daylight, he had been unearthing one manuscript after another to prove his quest was not in vain.
    “ ‘. . . and dying Arthur was laid in a land cloaked in water and mist . . .’ Cenwalh writing in the time of Melwas!” Gilbert punctuated the point with a flourish of his scroll . . . and an unintentional tumble. His manuscript flipped from his hand and he flopped to his knees into a large depression in the middle of the path.
    “Kneeling in prayer already, priest?” Bowen laughed and dismounted to help him up. “Is this your holy place?”
    “Just a hole, hardly holy.” Gilbert took Bowen’s hand and struggled to his feet. Bowen brushed the dust from the priest’s shoulders and eyed him with serious curiosity. Gilbert self-consciously arranged his skullcap and wiped at his face, worried that something was awry. But Bowen’s solemn look was merely the preface to his solemn question.
    “If you do find it, friar,” Bowen asked earnestly, “what will you pray for?”
    Ah, he’d piqued the knight’s interest after all. “I’ll pray for a savior the likes of those fallen heroes to rid us of Einon’s evil.”
    “Is it Einon’s evil?” Bowen frowned cryptically and stooped to retrieve Gilbert’s scroll.
    “Has the darkness of these times blinded you, Knight?” Gilbert sputtered in disbelief. “It’s Einon’s rump in the royal seat. Who else’s evil?”
    “Perhaps he was . . . bewitched.”
    “You cannot bewitch the devil. Trust a clergyman on that.”
    Gilbert leaned over Bowen’s shoulder to find out what the knight had thought so intriguing. He was clearing some underbrush from the hole. But before Gilbert could get a good look, Bowen thrust the scroll in his face and rose.
    “Indeed, good friar.” Bowen handed the scroll back and hurried to his steed. “I leave all things ecclesiastical in your capable hands. Farewell.”
    “Farewell!” Gilbert waved cheerily as the knight mounted up, then realized what he was saying. “Farewell?”
    “Farewell!” Bowen repeated, as if Gilbert still wasn’t clear with the concept. “You’ve been a pleasing companion, but now our quests take separate paths. I wish you luck with yours.”
    “Wait! Quests? . . . But . . .”
    But Bowen had turned from the trail and was disappearing down a ravine, his eyes keenly scouring the ground. Gilbert grabbed Merlin’s reins and started after the knight . . . only to fall into the same hole once more. He shook himself with a frustrated sigh, shedding the mossy debris clinging to his cassock. His eyes went wide as he suddenly saw what Bowen had seen and realized the hole he was in wasn’t a hole at all . . . but a huge dragon