Geralt's Arc

Chapter 7 of 17

The marsh began where the road ended. Geralt and Rain left their horses on the last dry ground and looked out over the bog. Black water spread flat under a gray sky. Reeds hid the ground beneath. Somewhere past it stood the rogue mage's tower, but Geralt saw no path. Just wet death that looked like solid earth. "One wrong step and the mud takes you," Rain said. "It swallows slow. You'd have time to know it." Geralt crouched and pushed a long branch into the muck. It sank to his elbow and found no bottom. He tried again, a step to the left. The same. The marsh gave no safe line he could read. "We go blind, we drown," he said. Rain studied the water. Her cold face went still, the way it did before she reached for power. "There's a way to see it," she said. "But you won't like who I'm asking." She raised both hands and spoke low words. The air over the bog shivered. Geralt felt the hair on his neck lift. Then a shape cut down from the clouds, wings wide, scales dark red and bruised blue. The dragon he had freed. It landed on a hummock of solid ground, claws sinking deep, and folded its wings. Its golden eye fixed on him. Geralt did not reach for a sword. He had broken this beast's chains himself. "You called it," he said. "It remembers you," Rain said. "It owes you. Dragons know the marsh. They can smell where the ground holds." She kept her eyes on the creature, careful, respectful. "Walk where it walks." The dragon lowered its head. It set one foreclaw forward and pressed. The ground held. It stepped again, slow, testing each spot before it trusted its weight. Geralt followed, planting his boot in the fresh print. Water welled around his heel but the earth beneath stayed firm. They crossed like that for an hour. The dragon led, huge and patient, choosing the hidden ridges under the water. Twice it stopped and swung its head, refusing a path that looked solid, and Geralt saw the bog beyond it churn where a step would have killed him. Rain walked at his back, her heels sinking, her jaw set, trusting the beast neither of them owned. The tower rose from the mist ahead. Stone stained black, one high window lit. The dragon reached the last band of firm ground and stopped. It would go no closer to the place that had chained it once. It looked at Geralt a long moment, then beat its wings and climbed back into the sky. Geralt stood on solid earth at the tower's foot. The marsh was behind him. The rogue mage was in front, awake, and near enough to hear a fist on the door. He drew a breath and looked up at the lit window. "He knows we're coming now," Rain said. "The whole bog felt that dragon."