Dragon Magic by Andre Norton Page A

oars.
    “Master!” He called to Regin-Mimir, who sat still upon a rock gazing at the river with a strange smile on his lips. “Master, we must go to Lord Sigurd!”
    “Ay.” The Master Smith arose and came to take up one of the oars. And he pulled with a will to match Sig’s, as they sent the boat over water.
    Hardly had they touched the shore so torn by the dragon’s last struggles than Sig leaped up it and ran to Fafnir’s path. For Sigurd had not come forth from that hiding place and the boy feared that the worst must have happened—that in slaying he had also been slain.
    The trenchway was half full of the dark liquid which had gushed from Fafnir’s body, and from it a great stench arose. Sig prepared to plunge into it, poisonous though it was. However, as he reached the place where he thought the pit must be, there was movement. And out of that stinking flow arose he whom they sought, but so bedaubed and encrusted he did not seem a man. And he staggered and wavered as if wounded.
    Somehow Sig drew his lord forth and wrenched off his own kirtle for want of a better cleanser to wipe the slime from Sigurd, who was gasping as if he could not draw enough air into his laboring lungs.
    “Lord, where are your hurts?” Sig worked frantically to clean away the muck and see how badly the other had suffered.
    But already Sigurd stood straighter and breathed more freely. “No hurts,” he panted. “It was but the stench of the beast and that which flowed from it. Balmung did well its work. Fafnir is dead, the treasure freed.”
    Again and again he thrust the great sword deep into the ground to clean its blade. Then with Sig he turned to look over the plain where lay the piles of riches. Though the dark of night was full upon them, the fires lit by the dragon’s hoard allowed them to see not only what lay there but the stark land itself.
    And running from one heap to the next was a small, shrunken figure.
    Here it plucked a crown and held it high, only to let it clatter back again.
    There it swung a glittering necklace as a slinger swings his weapon before he hurls the stone. Again it kicked at a shield and sent it clanging. Then it flung forth its arms as if to gather to its shrunken chest all that lay there, to hold it so forever.
    Regin-Mimir! But where was the wise Master Smith whom Sig had known for most of his short life? This—this creature was not him.
    Regin-Mimir was changed, perhaps not into a dragon, but—
    Suddenly the figure capering among the piles of treasure turned to face them. And Sig saw lips pull tight against teeth in a grin which was not that of a man. The figure swooped upon a pile of glitter and came up with a flashing thing in one hand. Then it ran toward them with a speed greater than Greykell’s gallop.
    “Mine! Mine!” Regin-Mimir screeched as he came. “Mine the treasure.
    Death to those who would take it!”
    He took no measures for defense but, wild of eye, rushed at Sigurd. Sig saw that what he held was a long-bladed dagger, very bright and keen of edge. But Balmung arose and Sigurd struck.
    The stooped and withered body, which had drawn age more and more about it as a cloak during these past hours, fell. Yet still the head strained upward from the hunched shoulders, and out of that twisted mouth came one last word, flung as a challenge: “Mine!”
    Sig shrank back. Sigurd unfastened his stained and bedraggled cloak and stooped to throw it over the huddled form.
    “He was a master smith and once a man of honor,” he said in a low voice. “He could not slay his dragon, but was slain thereby.”
    “His dragon?”
    “Ay. Greed was his dragon, and it bides here still. So Fafnir shall guard, though he be dead. The treasure is rightly cursed. Let who dares lift it. But it is better to leave it here until the end of the world.”
    And Sig, watching those pale, ghostly lights burning here like damning fires, knew this to be the truth.
    So in the end they rode forth from the waste,