The dragon Azarath had lived at the top of the Ashenmount for six hundred years, and in that time, no one had climbed to his ledge and survived. The mountain had claimed the lives of would-be heroes, treasure hunters, knights errant, and one very determined princess who had made it to the summit two centuries ago and whose armor, according to the songs, still lay scattered across the ledge in pieces. Until Torin.
Torin was fourteen, barefoot, missing three fingers on his left handâan accident with a smelting furnace at the forge where he worked, which had cost him his job and his future as an apprentice metalsmith, which had cost him everything except the ability to keep walkingâand completely certain that he was about to die. The dragon regarded him with one eye the size of a millstone, ancient and gold, and did not seem impressed.
“You smell of iron and desperation,” the dragon said. Its voice was like an avalanche learning to speak, like the grinding of tectonic plates given language. “I despise both. Iron is what heroes carry. Desperation is what they feel when they realize iron is not enough. You have climbed my mountain smelling of both. That is either very brave or very stupid.”
“I think it’s the second one,” Torin said.
“Honesty. Another thing I despise. But at least it is not pretense.” The dragon shifted on the ledge, and the mountain trembled. “You are not a hero. Heroes announce themselves. They carry flags and play horns and make speeches. You have climbed in silence, in bare feet, with a wounded hand and no supplies. Why?”
“Because my village is dying.”
The dragon was quiet. In the silence, the wind screamed around the mountain’s peak, carrying the sound of the valley far belowâTorin’s village, a collection of smoke-stained rooftops, waiting to learn whether its youngest messenger had succeeded or failed.
“The river stopped flowing three months ago,” Torin continued. “The wells are poisoned. The crops are failing. The elders say it’s the dragon’s curseâthat you took the water as payment for some ancient wrong committed by our ancestors.”
Azarath laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. It was the sound of something vast finding genuine amusement in the small concerns of smaller creatures. “I took no water. I require none. I am a creature of fire and stone. Your village’s misfortune is not my doing. It is geologyâa magma intrusion has dammed the underground aquifer that feeds your valley. Your people are dying of continental drift. It is not personal. It is physics.”
Torin had not expected the dragon to explain. He had expected threats, fire, possibly a dramatic final monologue before the eating began. This was worse. This was an answer.
“Can you fix it?”
“No. I am fire. You do not ask fire to unblock a waterway. You would not ask the ocean to rearrange its currents because a coastal village finds the tides inconvenient.”
“Can you teach me to fix it?”
The dragon’s eye shiftedâfocusedâand Torin felt the weight of centuries of attention settle on him like a physical thing. Six hundred years of accumulated existence, looking at a fourteen-year-old boy with nine fingers and no options, and seeing something that merited more than dismissal.
“You have no magic,” Azarath said. “You have no lineage. You have nine fingers and more stupidity than sense. Why would I waste six hundred years of accumulated knowledge on you? What do I gain?”
“Nothing,” Torin said. “But if you don’t teach me, my village dies. And if you do, maybe I live long enough to find out whether that was a wise trade. Either way, you’re entertained.”
Silence. The wind screamed. The mountain trembled.
“You have audacity,” Azarath said. “That is not a compliment. But it is also not nothing. Audacity is the beginning of courage. And courage, in sufficient quantities, can accomplish what magic cannot.”
The dragon descended from his ledge, coiling his vast body on the volcanic rock with the casual grace of something that had never known a predator. He lowered his head until one eye was level with Torin’s face, and the heat from his breath was like standing three feet from a forge.
“I will teach you one thing,” he said. “One thing only. And if you fail to learn it, I will eat you. If you succeed, you will have earned the right to return to your village and tell them their apprentice spoke to a dragon and lived. Either way, I will have settled the question of whether the mountain was worth climbing, which is more than most heroes manage. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“The thing I will teach you,” Azarath said, “is how to listen to stone. Because stone remembers everything it has ever touchedâthe water that carved it, the fire that shaped it, the footsteps of creatures that walked across it a million years before your species learned to stand upright. And somewhere in the memory of the mountain beneath your village, there is a passage that leads to the water. You will find it. Or you will not. Either way, I will have given you more than anyone else has ever given you, and you will have the rest of your short life to decide whether it was worth the climb.”
Torin sat down on the volcanic rock. He had no idea how to listen to stone. He had been a metalsmith’s apprentice for two years and had learned to listen to metalâthe way it rang when it was properly forged, the way it whispered when it was about to crack. Stone was different. Stone was older. Stone did not speak in sounds.
But he had nine fingers and no other options.
The dragon began to teach him.
And somewhere beneath the Ashenmount, in the memory of ancient rock, the water waited to be found.