"Elizabeth Moon - Fool's Gold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

Fool's Gold
Elizabeth Moon

"It's been done to death," Mirabel Stonefist said.


"It's traditional." Her sister Monica sat primly upright, embroidering tiny poppies on a
pillowcase. All Monica's pillow-cases had poppies on them, just as all the curtains on the
morning side of the house had morning glories.


"Traditional is another word for 'done to death,' " Mirabel said. Her own pillow-cases had
a stamped sigil and the words PROPERTY OF THE ROYAL BARRACKS DO NOT
REMOVE.


"It's unlucky to break with tradition."


"It's unlucky to have anything to do with dragons," Mirabel said, rubbing the burn scar on
her left leg.
***
Cavernous Dire had never intended to be a dragon. He had intended to be a miser, living
a long and peaceful life of solitary selfishness near the Tanglefoot Mountains, but he had,
all unwitting, consumed a seed of dragonsfoot which had beenтАФentirely by accidentтАФ
baked into a gooseberry tart. That wouldn't have changed him, if his neighbor hadn't
made an innocent mistake and handed him dragonstongue, instead of dragonsbane, to
ease a sore tongue. The two plants do look much alike, and usually it makes no difference
whether you nibble a leaf of D. abscondus or D. lingula, since both will ease a cold-
blister, but in those rare instances when someone has an undigested seed of dragonsfoot
in his gut, and then adds to it the potent essence of D. lingula . . . well.


Of course it was all a mistake, and an accident, and the fact that when Cavernous went
back to the village to dig his miser's hoard out from under the hearthstone it was already
gone meant nothing. Probably. And most likely the jar of smelly ointment that broke on
his scaly headтАФfixing him in his draconic form until an exceedingly unlikely conjunction
of eventsтАФwas an accident too, though Goody Chernoff's cackle wasn't.
So Cavernous Dire sloped off to the Tanglefoots in a draconish temper, scorching
fenceposts along the way. He found a proper cave, and would have amassed a hoard from
the passing travelers, if there'd been any. But his cave was a long way from any pass over
the mountains, and he was far too prudent to tangle with the rich and powerful dragons
whose caves lay on more lucrative trade routes.


He was forced to prey on the locals.


At first, sad to say, this gave him wicked satisfaction. They'd robbed him. They'd turned
him into a dragon and robbed him, andтАФlike a true miserтАФhe minded the latter much