The Dragon's Hoard Read online

  “Must’ve been in a scrum,” Robin chuckled.

  “‘Twould seem.” Carnisha shrugged and brought out a silver goblet, now black with tarnish, and a small dog carved of jade. Amber eyes had been picked out, leaving sockets full of dirt.

  “These are rare treasures.” Frastian breathed. He turned the goblet to see how badly the stem was bent. “This is done in the Beshanthine style, and the sword is from Old Aerde.”

  The menservants traded lustful glances over his head. Carnisha wondered that Frastian trusted them as much as he appeared to.

  “Were these all together?” The scholar’s voice shook, words tumbling over each other. “You may have found a dragon’s lair. Think what I could learn if I studied the place where a dragon once dwelt!”

  “Think of the hoard,” Nick murmured to Robin.

  Frastian scolded, “Don’t be crude. Their value goes far beyond mere gold. Nisha, you must tell me where you found these pieces.”

  “‘Tis my own secret!” She drew back, clutching her pack.

  “Nay, dear Nisha,” Frastian pleaded. “I am a scholar. I simply must study this location!”

  This fervor was exactly what Carnisha needed. She reveled inside, while retorting, “Nay, sir. You could be robbers, after all.” She stuffed the sword hilt back into her pack and reached for the jade statuette.

  “Please, dear lady! These are not just trinkets, they are priceless relics. Each tells a tale from the distant past. And these are the most precious of all.” Frastian gingerly touched a scale. “Allow me to make an offer. I insist!”

  “What’s your price, then?” She rolled the scales up in the felt, but not too quickly.

  “A silver penny for each scale,” he ventured, watching her carefully. “There are sixteen, if my count is correct. The other pieces are damaged, but I still may be able to learn from them. Say fifteen pence for the sword, four for the goblet, and…”

  Priceless relics, he said? What a cheat. Carnisha’s hands didn’t falter.

  “Berlack pays in gold.”

  “You over-estimate my resources,” Frastian protested.

  Carnisha cast a canny eye over his silken robes, the black hair pulled into a sleek top-knot, and the shimmering brocade of his private tent. She plucked the goblet from his fingers and tucked it into her pack.

  “Wait,” the scholar moaned.

  Robin put in, “Now then, Mum. Money ent the only thing. How’d it be if we carried a load down for you? Nick and me, we’re right strong.”

  “Less trips for those poor ol’ legs,” Nick wheedled.

  “What are you saying?” Frastian objected.

  Carnisha quavered, “You bounders, would you take an old woman’s livelihood?”

  “Nay, Mum. You’ve got it wrong,” Robin coaxed. “Master Frastian here has enough to pay for all you’ve got.”

  “Or he can just buy the whole lair,” Nick added.

  Edwin Frastian gaped, horrified. Then he closed his mouth and slowly smiled.

  “I’d need time to make arrangements, but then I could examine the lair thoroughly and record where the artifacts lie. Brilliant!”

  “What a fairy tale.” But Carnisha let them see her hesitate.

  “Leave the hard work to us young’uns,” Nick said. “You can get yourself a little farm or a cottage on the lake.”

  “Think of it,” Rob urged, “living in a warm, dry house ‘stead o’ these cold mountains.”

  “Here now.” Frastian seized control. “I’ll gladly pay a fair price, but I simply must see the location beforehand.”

  “And if you don’t like what you see? You’d still hold my secret,” Carnisha whined.

  “No need to worry,” Frastian said. “If there’s nothing to see, there’s nothing to tell about.”

  Carnisha picked at the felt enclosing the scales. The three men watched her with hopeful dread. More than likely, the two servants would follow her anyway. She was tempted to let them do it, but then Frastian might escape with the warning.

  “It does sound lovely,” she said, tantalizing them.

  “Excellent!” cried Frastian, while Robin and Nick playfully shoved each other in celebration.

  ~ * ~

  Some hours later, Carnisha led her dupes up a steep slope, halfway to the summit of Mount Cragmaw. Every so often she pressed a hand to her side.

  “Me ol’ legs,” she would say. Or, “What a hike.”

  The two servants were hale and hardy, easily keeping pace. However, the scholar struggled. Several hairs had come loose from his topknot and stuck to his pale, sweaty face.

  “Surely we’ll be there soon?” he puffed.

  Before Carnisha could reply, Nick squinted ahead of them. “What’s that?”

  Gray-brown rocks loomed, mottled with lichen and moss. A crack angled between them, darkness lurking beyond.

  Robin smiled. “Looks like a cave.”

  “A crag maw, indeed,” Frastian chuckled as excitement overcame effort.

  They all surged forward, bumping Carnisha. Robin and Nick shouldered each other in the gap.

  “You men,” Frastian scolded. “Let me see before you trample all over it.”

  They scowled, but let the scholar pass. When Carnisha arrived he was practically crawling over the cavern floor, like a bizarre toad emerging from spring mud. Holes and heaps of dirt pocked the surface. Only a little light flowed from the entrance. Frastian bent closer to brush at something.

  “Another scale. Wonderful,” he mused to himself. Nick and Robin edged by.

  “Don’t see any treasures,” Robin muttered.

  Nick whispered, “Hoy,” and jerked his chin toward a further gap leading off the first chamber. “Think it goes through?”

  Frastian was more alert than he seemed. He straightened in time to see the two men slip into the gap. He rushed after them, crying, “Don’t touch anything!”

  Carnisha sneezed as running feet kicked up dust. Already, exclamations echoed from the rocky passage.

  “Worth a hike, I’d say,” cried Nick, and Rob gloated, “Nick, lad, the gods must like us.” All the while Frastian babbled, “A hoard, a real hoard. I hardly dared hope!”

  Carnisha reached the opening. The two ruffians traded back-slaps while Frastian stood rapt. Rays of light from cracks in the ceiling revealed an untidy mound of gold and tarnished silver. Jewels glittered and the occasional shield or urn stuck out. Near the center, several pairs of bright blue eyes flicked open. As soon as they saw Carnisha they winked shut. Tawny scales blended perfectly with the hoard.

  Frastian exulted, “Well, will you hear my offer?”

  “Gladly, good master,” she simpered.

  As soon as Frastian’s back was turned, Nick knelt beside the hoard. Grinning, he buried both hands above the elbow in clinking coins. Then he winced and jumped back.

  “Hoy, something bit me!”

  “Where?” Robin wrestled Nick’s sleeve up, revealing an arc of four oozing punctures. He glared at the hoard.

  Frastian, meanwhile, gave Carnisha a cunning eye. “A thousand should be a fair price.”

  Playing for time, she folded her arms and stared at him.

  “Think of all the work to be done,” he reasoned. “Men to hire, bribes to—”

  Grimacing, Nick rubbed his arm. “Rob, help me! It burns!”

  “Don’t touch it.” Rob began wrapping his belt around Nick’s arm above the bite.

  “What are you two getting into?” Frastian demanded.

  “Look you,” Robin growled. “Nick’s been bit.”

  “He shouldn’t have touched anything. Trying to help himself, no doubt,” Frastian answered suspiciously.

  “What?” Nick stepped forward, still clutching his arm.

  The three of them fell to disputing over who needed whose permission for what. While they argued, Carnisha turned around slowly. She straightened her neck and flexed her wings, grateful to regain her superior form.

  At this signal, her brood rose
among the hoard. Coins clinked and slithered off horny heads, long necks, low bodies plated with scales. The wings were too small for flight, but the talons were sharp enough. Pale blue eyes blazed with glee.

  “What are those?” Rob shrieked. He kicked out, but the first of the brood sank its fangs through his trousers. “Get off me, you devil!”

  “Gods, no!” Nick tried to run, but the venom had done its work. His knees crumpled. Two of the brood held him down as his body arched in spasms.

  “Impossible,” Frastian bleated. He turned to flee, but skidded to a halt as he saw a dragon blocking the only way out.

  Carnisha lowered her horny head to his eye level. “You want to know about dragons, little scholar? We are predators. The hoard is what we use to attract prey.”

  “No,” he pleaded, looking around wildly. “You’re supposed to be gone.”

  “I never left. I adapted.” Her head snaked forward, fangs piercing skin as she clamped about his middle. Frastian screamed and clawed at her eyes. She shook her head and held him until his struggles ceased.

  Shrieks gave way to the rasp of scales as Carnisha’s brood gathered. Wings flapped and excited tails lashed the floor.

  “We did it,” one of the males crowed.

  “So sneaky, so sly,” said a female.

  Another said, “We hid as still as dead bones!”

  “Can we eat now?” asked a different male.

  “Watch,” she commanded. “These colorful robes will be a fine addition to my peddler’s pack.”

  The brood observed with shining eyes as she demonstrated how to remove clothes from a dead human without ripping them. And then, a good feast for the six dragonets.

  “Eat well,” she crooned, as her brood tore into still-warm flesh. “With this you will grow strong.”

  A bloody dragonet raised its head from Frastian’s side. “Thank you, mother!”

  “Soon we’ll be big enough to earn our own names,” a second bragged.

  Carnisha regarded them without affection, for love meant nothing to her, but rather with fierce satisfaction. One day, she and her brood would drive the human intruders out of the Cragmaws, and they would rule their ancient kingdom once again.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  Deby Fredericks has been a writer all her life, but thought of it as just a fun hobby until the late 1990s. She made her first sale, a children's poem, in 2000. Fredericks has six fantasy novels in print through two small presses. The latest is The Grimhold Wolf, released by Sky Warrior in 2015.

  Hosting Happy Hoarders

  Sheryl Normandeau

  It was a trial by fire, that’s for sure. When Bossman Peters came up with the idea, I’ll admit I wasn’t too crazy about it. Mostly because if I messed this one up, I was out of a job. As I had bills to pay and my mother had told me in her sternest voice she was remodelling my bedroom (in mustard yellow, no less!) and I was not to come begging for a place to live when I failed to make good on my broadcast journalism degree, I desperately needed this particular meal ticket. And there was more on the line than just the paycheck: I had my pride to consider, and that was even more valuable than anything I could take to the bank.

  You see, ratings for the television show Happy Hoarders had slumped dramatically after inimitable host Dame Diva Diane had tripped over an inappropriately-stored cache of garden rakes and shovels during filming, and had left the show without her dignity and use of her right eye. Diane’s shtick—a combination of an over-the-top fake Eastern European accent, huge hair, and a domineering personality that bordered on bullying—had made her a superstar among her devoted fans, and we were plummeting without a parachute in her absence. Bossman Peters was determined to halt the inevitable crash, and so devised a foolproof plan: he would pit Jemma-Lee Verity and I against each other over two blockbuster live episodes, and then let the nation hash it out on social media as to who would become the new host of the show. As Jemma-Lee had just come off of hosting the wildly popular ‘Dogs and ‘Burgs series for the Food Channel (where she ate her way—just one bite, mind you!—through the best hotdog and burger joints in the country) and I was a nobody straight out of university, it seemed like #Verity was a shoo-in.

  I wasn’t about to give up and hand it to Jemma-Lee without a fight, however. If there’s anything my mother taught me (besides how not to decorate a bedroom), it’s to flash the claws and come out swinging. So, on the morning of the shoot, I was primed for battle. I came out roaring by straightaway interviewing the neighbors. First off: Mrs. Dannick next door, her hair in rollers and her plump arms waving as she described how her neighbor Mr. Fiereno blatantly disregarded the City’s notices to mow his lawn and tidy the yard. “Do you see all those garden gnomes?” she sputtered, gesturing wildly. I had to admit, even for a hoarder, there did seem to be an extraordinary amount of bric-a-brac in the front yard, some of it still in shipping crates. Not all of it was ornamental—no less than six washer and dryer sets and at least three refrigerators were planted on the grass, every one of them still on pallets and bound with straps. “It’s a disgusting eyesore, and it’s driving our property values down!” Mrs. Dannick continued to rage, as we kept filming. This kind of stuff made for great TV, as Bossman Peters was fond of preaching. “And this is nothing compared to the back yard—it looks like a tornado ran through.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “People in the neighborhood think he’s got animals buried back there—why, just the other day, Mrs. Wrightworth from number six-nineteen reported her cat missing. And just a couple of days before that, Lila Lucjek across the street lost her little shih-tzu. Everyone thinks Fiereno is responsible.”

  I asked Mr. Jackson, the neighbor on the other side, if he had ever seen Mr. Fiereno leave the house. “Well, no,” Mr. Jackson acknowledged. He seemed surprised. “I don’t think anyone has. He didn’t open his door to the Welcome Wagon when he moved in, that’s for sure. My wife is on the neighborhood WW—they made three attempts but gave up after that. We figure the guy is some kind of recluse, and a bit off-kilter given the way he keeps his property. I wish he’d move, and soon.”

  One of the logistical problems with the live show was the fact we sprang ourselves on our unsuspecting guests—which, in Jemma-Lee’s case, had meant she had met with resistance the second she rang the doorbell of the target in the episode she had filmed the week previous. The resident was initially enraged, completely in denial she needed any help from the crew of a reality TV show, and had slammed the door in their faces. Unfortunately for me, the viewers lapped that part up—and stayed on in droves to watch Jemma-Lee and Pixie Washington, our De-Clutter Expert, massage the ego of the homeowner and eventually gain entry into an abject pigsty, which they then proceeded, with the help of a slew of minions and four epic hours of airtime, to successfully turn into showpiece of organization. Despite several bouts of tears, screaming hysteria, and threats (mostly, but not strictly, executed by the homeowner), smiles and high fives all abounded in the end, of course.

  Bah humbug.

  I was positively jangly with nerves as we bashed our way through the piles of car batteries, birdbaths, and RC helicopters that littered the steps to Mr. Fiereno’s door, but I kept on a running monologue with the viewers, smiling with my just-whitened teeth and that perfect shade of Revelry Rose lipstick I had picked up at the drugstore the night before. My cameraman, Jonesy, was working the scene beautifully, offering the Happy Hoarders fans tantalizing views of the garbage on the walkway and stoop. I paused dramatically to examine the notices stapled by City bylaw officers on the doorframe, the citations ordering Mr. Fiereno thirty days to clean up or face severe penalty. Jonesy zoomed in so the nation could see the yellow papers flapping in the slight breeze, the newest one dated four months previous, and Pixie made some vague, but terribly serious pronouncement about the psychological state of people who allow their lives to become dominated by material goods. (Pixie was actually a waitress from New Mexico, so to keep our network’s Legal department happy, she tended not to offer
much in the way of highly specific counsel).

  I could hear our director Barry’s voice in my earpiece, offering encouragement from the comfort of the studio. I plunged my finger into the doorbell. The mics picked up the muffled ring within the house. In the subsequent wait for an answer, I chatted with Pixie about what she considered the best ways to tackle a big clean up job, and she rattled off a few pointers she had undoubtedly scooped from someone’s Pinterest page the night before.

  When Mr. Fiereno did not deign to answer the bell, I knocked, then brazenly tried the doorknob. The actual phrase “break and enter” had not been used at the meeting where the cast and crew had been informed to “make the show happen, at all costs” so I figured I was perfectly in line. To my astonishment (which I was careful not to show), it was unlocked. Barry whooped his approval in my earpiece as Pixie and I ducked inside, followed by Jonesy, who switched on the lamp on the camera and quickly swept our surroundings with his lens.

  We only had a paltry few square inches to move around in the entranceway, which made for some tricky camera angles. The place was stacked wall-to-wall with stuff of every description, skids on skids on skids of boxes. I called out for Mr. Fiereno, but the sound of my voice was absorbed by all of the cardboard, foam packing materials, and crates marked “TOASTER OVEN”, “TOMATO SOUP”, “COPPER-BASED SAUCEPAN, 8-INCH”, and “ALUMINUM FOIL”.

  “Clearly a man who likes to purchase bargains in bulk,” Pixie observed. “That’s a good idea and can save a lot of money in the long run, but you have to be sure to buy only the things you will use up within a prescribed period of time. Don’t just buy things to have them—that’s a surefire way to go broke, not to mention end up with a house full of clutter.”

  I led the way on a tour of the lower floor of the house, plowing through piles of ironing boards, bolts of fabric, pallets containing toothpaste and dishwasher tabs (even though no dishwasher was yet in sight) and totes full of shoes that didn’t seem to match. In one room, three billiard tables were racked up in the center, with boxes of tennis balls piled high on top. Below the tables were cartons of refill ink cartridges for a printer I was certain was obsolete. Stuffed in a corner and nearly reaching the ceiling was a rainbow-colored assortment of foam noodles and a skid of algae-skim for a swimming pool Mr. Fiereno didn’t own. The kitchen held more surprises: three vintage pinball machines, a rack of wedding dresses (all size 18), five kegs of beer, and a panel of brand-new microwave ovens. We found two bins filled with bark chips in the dining room, sitting next to a displayer of calendars from 1999 and twenty brand new vacuum cleaners. The dishwasher turned up in the living room, cozied up with more garden gnomes, a fleet of bicycles, and a huge unopened crate that smelled pleasantly like cinnamon.