Chapter 4: Al-Khanjar

It was after his partial escape, during the long months when Lindír’s eyes grew wide and dark from lack of sunlight, that the hunger began to set in. It came upon him slowly, creeping, sinking its claws into him before he even noticed the dark thing looming always over his shoulder, but come upon him it did. And it was no ordinary hunger. 

In some ways, it was not so acute as ordinary hunger; in other ways, it was far worse. It did not draw on his attention as greatly as the stabbing pains of ordinary hunger, but unlike ordinary hunger it was never sated. Lindír would devour his salt-pork ration and find his mood unchanged, and stalk about the cell waiting for more. This new hunger sat bone-deep, infiltrating every organ and every limb, inflaming them with nervous energy. It was always on Lindír’s mind, an endless chant reverberating around his skull, calling for meat, meat, meat.

Lindír’s throat grew dry, though he continued to drink, and his chambers felt unaccountably cold even in the midst of summer. His sense of smell, meanwhile, grew very acute. He could sense the arrival of attendants as soon as they arrived at the top of the stair, merely by the stench of humanity drifting through the cracks in the bronze door. The exact contour of the scent would tell him how many were men and how many were women, the latter being subtly more appealing for reasons Lindír could not have expressed even if asked. As his nose sharpened, he soon learned to distinguish the smell of sweat from the smell of muscle, and fresh sweat from that which had been allowed to rot under a padded jacket, and the old blood of the lunar cycle from the fresh blood of slaughtered animals.

A human, though tiny compared to Lindír even at that young age, still bore a substantial quantity of edible flesh. Lindír’s sense of smell reminded him of this every moment a human was near.

There were times, though few and far between, when Lindír mentioned the hunger to his caretakers, and growled his demands for more food. Most such demands were met with general recoiling, the knights raising their blades and the maids preparing to flee, as though the request were a threat. Other times, especially when the Castellan was about, the reaction would be disdain. There would be mutterings, from the Castellan or else from others, about the limitless greed of dragons, that nothing would ever be enough to sate the furnace within. Had not Lindír shown well enough that he had no love for them?

There were times when the hunger got the better of him, and Lindír would lash out, snapping his jaws or swiping his claws in the direction of one of the servants, or even a member of his escort. But the inevitable punishment, weeks or even months locked inside the cell for each infraction, was too great to bear. He learned to suppress the urge, no matter how great, and suffer in silence. More successful were the other meals he was able to find. The castle cats were barely a morsel for a creature larger than an ox and still growing, but they were meat, and any meat was good meat. Lindír would snap them up in a single lunge, before they even knew he was coming. Before long, Lindír found that he no longer saw the castle’s cats on his walks.

The punishment for stealing other kinds of food, primarily the domestic pheasants which were occasionally allowed to wander the wards, was less than that for attacking a human, and they were fatty and plump besides, so he would often devour them as he did the cats. Wild birds would sometimes descend and sit upon the battlements of the walls and towers, but these were too fleet to be caught. Once, and only once, a visitor to the castle brought a large mutt with them. Being unfamiliar with Lindír’s presence, the animal allowed him to come within the same room as it.

But the occasional meal of cat or dog or rat or pheasant did not force the hunger to abate, no more than did the regular salt-pork ration. And so for many months, Lindír’s will waged war against his flesh. He felt an ever-growing desire to go frenzy, tear apart every human who came near him, to glut on raw meat until he was rendered paralyzed, at which point he would presumably be locked in his cell for the rest of his life. With each month that passed, the promise of one day free from the hunger felt more and more as thought it were worth an eternity of entrapment. 

Dragons, as a rule, dream vividly, befitting a hibernating creature. As a child, Lindír’s dreams had been strange and muddled. He would play with other dragons, or run and fly about in his own strange imagining of what the outside world looked like. As he grew, his dreams became darker, dreams of imprisonment, of drowning in molten metal. The hunger infiltrated his dreams. As the fifteenth anniversary of his birth passed him by, and then the sixteenth, Lindír’s dreams were filled with orgiastic violence. He slaughtered empires and feasted on their bones, piled gold and silver and skulls as high as the mountains, watched forests greater than the horizon be burned into ash. In his dreams, he was greater even than Sivnis. He was slaughter incarnate.

Winter turned to spring. A day came when the restlessness took Lindír, and he demanded to be let out. It had been nearly half a year since the last time Lindír had done any wrong worse than the eating of poultry, and he thought that perhaps he had gained some measure of influence over the knights in that way. The knights, in return, were unusually staunch in their refusal. There was something happening that day, something which necessitated that Lindír be kept well away from the public portions of the castle. But Lindír was angry, his fury hot and bright, stoked by the hunger. For hours they argued back and forth, Lindír bellowing and roaring, scraping against the bronze door and digging into the stones beneath it, until at last King Heimir himself came down and told the knights that his son was to be allowed out, so long as they were careful with planning the route.

And so Lindír did that which was familiar, and paced through the nearly-empty passageways of the Red Citadel. He was not allowed to deviate from the route by so much as a single chamber, and there were several times where he would be ordered to stop, or forced to move. But any opportunity to open his wings and breathe the cool air of spring was better than none. 

The knights forced Lindír to halt in a long hallway, near where the innermost wall intersected with the grand keep. He did as he was told, even sitting down on his haunches. But there was something immediately different, this time: the sound of argument emanating from an adjacent room.

Most of the argument was inaudible, muffled by the huge wooden door into vague nonsense. Still, Lindír was intrigued by the sound. The voices pattered back and forth, several often seeming to overlap, but with one voice rising over all of the rest. A somewhat higher-pitched voice shouted down all of the others, even growing so loud that Lindír was able to understand her words. 

“Do not tell me where to go! All I need is a bit of air, and you are not my damned masters!” A couple of seconds later, the heavy wooden door pushed open, and through it stepped a woman who Lindír had never before met. He was immediately entranced. 

She stood about tall enough for the top of her head to be level with the highest point of Lindír’s shoulder, which made her somewhat tall even for a man and quite tall indeed for a woman. She was broad in the shoulder and narrow in the waist, a warrior’s build, though the details were concealed under her suit of armor. The armor was strange; it was not made of the fine rings that armor was supposed to be made of, but out of small plates, almost like Lindír’s own scales replicated in steel. 

Her helmet was of an odd style as well, rounded instead of peaked, with long sheets of metal extending down on either side instead of ending in a brim, and with a tuft of red feathers extending from the top. No face-plate, not even any spectacles to protect the nose, nothing to stop Lindír from seeing every detail of that beautiful face. Her countenance was dark, in every meaning of the word. The skin tone, of course, being a coppery sort of color rare in Hvalheim, and the dark brown eyes with bushy brows, all of these things were dark, as were the few locks of hair that slipped out from under the helm. But her expression was also dark, lips tightly pressed, brow furrowed, a look of deep examination and intense thought, a brooding look.

She smelled of sweat and muscle, and the unfamiliar odor of a human who had never before been within the Red Citadel. The hunger reared up within him, demanding he lunge forward and devour the newcomer. But then she would be, not a human being, but a pile of fresh meat. And he could not have that.

“A dragon?” said the stranger. “And in chains. Odd. What is this?” Her Hvalheimer was thickly accented, even more so than Lindír’s, which was saying something.

One of the knights stepped forward and took it upon himself to explain. “It’s a beast. A curse upon our castle. But worry not, for so long as we are here to keep it under guard, it will be of no threat to you, my lady.”

“My lady?” the stranger said with a chuckle. “If you call me ‘my lady’, then you must not know who I am.”

Lindír, unsure of what to do, bowed, as a horse may be trained to bow, or a long-necked antelope bows to drink from a pool, with legs bent and neck lowered. His instinctive disdain for human affairs clashed with the growing urge to devour her and everyone else around her and somehow nullified one another, leaving behind only a faint politeness. “Lindír Heimirsson. Pleased to meet you. And, erm, good morning.”

“Good morning to you, master dragon. They call me al-Khanjar.”

Lindír’s tongue flickered out, moistening his teeth. He focused on his tongue, his mouth, how he would pronounce the unfamiliar sounds of the foreign alphabet, rather than what his gut was telling him to do. 

The knight, meanwhile, did not think about how to pronounce anything. “Alkansar? That’s an Akunian name, from the south.” One hand went to the grip of his sword. “What are you doing in the Red Citadel?”

One of the castle’s servants, standing in the other room where he and his fellows had failed to prevent al-Khanjar from crossing paths with Lindír, butted in. “My lord, there is no need for suspicion. The king himself has allowed this woman to enter our castle, and under arms at that. She is the leader of a score of Namarlanders, mounted bowmen to be precise, who wish to pledge themselves to the service of King Heimir.”

“For coin, of course,” al-Khanjar added.

There was much muttering from the knights about mercenaries, Akunians, and the unreliability of both, but they at least no longer considered her a threat worthy of an all-out brawl. They began to make preparations to turn Lindír around, carrying him away from the stranger. She, meanwhile, approached closer. Her smell grew stronger, more appealing, and a stab of hunger passed through Lindír’s stomach.

“Lindír Heimirsson,” she said again to herself, though not terribly well-pronounced.

“Al-Khanjar,” Lindír said in turn, his own pronunciation equally terrible.

“So you are a curse? What manner of curse?”

Lindír blinked in confusion. “The curse is, well… That I was born. I am a dragon, after all, I ravage all that I see.”

Al-Khanjar nodded, folding her arms against her breast. “So they lock you in chains. And they try to prevent visitors from seeing you, with quite a bit of effort I might add,” she said, looking at the servants in the adjoining room. “If I do become a servant of your king, how long were you planning on keeping Lindír hidden from me?”

None could answer. Indeed, the knights pretended that they did not hear the question as they secured their grips on Lindír’s chains. Turning a dragon about within a narrow corridor was no easy task, and it grew more difficult with each passing year. He had to very nearly fold himself in half, slowly pivoting about, trying not to smash the walls or any people with his tail. As he was led out through the door through which he entered, though, Lindír turned his neck about and looked back. Even then, Al-Khanjar still stood, watching him with folded arms and a dark expression.

That was an odd encounter by all standards. Foreigners were, of course, a rare sight in the Red Citadel, and rarer still were the times when any of those foreigners would even lay eyes on Lindír. But this one was unique, and Lindír ached to be able to speak to her more than he had ached to speak to any human in many years. As soon as he returned to his cell, he curled up in the corner and fell asleep, his thoughts entangled.

When the sound of the bronze door being raised awoke him, Lindír expected that it would be the next day, and that he was being given the salt-pork ration. But he did not smell salt and dry meat, but sweat and human muscle. He raised his head and saw what he at first could not understand as anything but a dream or vision.

Al-Khanjar was no longer wearing her armor, though she kept her bow and sword at her side. Instead, she wore a fur-lined cloak in the Hvalheimer style, over a shirt and breeches of loose, light cloth which were very much not. Her hair was pitch black and curly, tied back severely.

Lindír slowly unfolded himself, rising onto all four limbs. Again the hunger struck him, even stronger this time, for he was more accustomed to eating within his own cell than he was anywhere else. However, this time, there was no question. Al-Khanjar had returned, visited him in his own cell, apparently of her own volition. No force, not even the hunger, could bring him to consume her before he first learned why.

Al-Khanjar advanced well into the cell, even as the bronze door shut behind her. Lindír advanced as well, though only a step, ready to strike or retreat should she draw her weapons or reveal some cruel joke she had come to carry out. She placed her hand into a pocket or fold of her shirt and withdrew a small object. The room was suddenly full of sharp, hot scents, but pleasantly so. Lindír advanced a couple steps further, his eyes now locked on her hand.

Al-Khanjar nodded, and tossed the object forward. Lindír moved in a flash, faster than even he thought possible, catching it in his jaws and swallowing it whole. It was meat, but no meat like he had ever tasted, encrusted with unfamiliar flavors. He wanted more.

“What was that?”

Al-Khanjar shrugged. “Pork. I don’t know what kind. I don’t eat pork, but I believe dragons do?”

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“You don’t eat pork? Why not?”

“Divine law,” she said. “I do not claim to understand it.”

Lindír took another step forward, as did she. They were close now, very close. Close enough that Lindír could see his own reflection in her eyes as they gazed upon him with an expression normally reserved for the sight of the sky.

“The knights of this castle are pious folk,” Lindír said. “And they eat pork.”

Al-Khanjar chuckled. “Different religion. Different laws.”

Lindír tilted his head slightly to one side, as a young pup might. “There is more than one religion? But all humans follow the laws of the gods, that is what makes them human.”

“You clearly do not know much of the outside world if you believe that all humans follow the same gods,” she said with a grin.

Lindír took offense at the implication, but not enough to raise his ire. Instead, he sat down on his haunches and stretched out his body into a long crescent, his forelimbs tucked under his chest and his wings a blanket of protection. “What are you doing here, Al-Khanjar?”

She sat down as well, cross-legged. “I wish to learn about you, as I have just finished learning of the royal family. And, please, do not call me Al-Khanjar.”

“Is that not your name?”

She shook her head. “It is a…a title. A nickname. Good for soldiers, but not good enough for a dragon. My proper name is Al-Khanjar Razan bint Garas ibn Atrar ibn Yulmes al-Qatratha, but given that not even my mother would have time for that, you may call me Razan. Or Sir Razan, if you wish.”

Lindír paused a moment to consider it. “Razan is a nice name,” he said. “But what were all of those other names?”

“Oh, my father and his father and so on and so forth,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. 

“Isn’t it a bit excessive, including a full genealogy in one’s name?”

Razan raised her eyebrows at Lindír. “Did you not introduce yourself as Lindír Heimirsson?”

“Yes,” Lindír said. “But he is my father. I know him, if not too well, and all who know me would know him as well.”

“But does he not also have a father? Is he not Heimir Someonesson?”

“No! That would be absurd. He is Heimir Soot-Eater.”

“Soot? That is your word for…” Razan made a gesture as though spilling powder through her hands. “The black stuff that forms in fireplaces?”

“Yes, that’s what soot is,” Lindír said.

“Why in the world would he be called Heimir Soot-Eater?”

Lindír licked his teeth and tried to remember. He had asked, once, but this was many years ago, and once given the information he had felt no need to ask again. 

“The name was earned by great deeds, as they are meant to. When he was young, only slightly older than I am today, he and three of his fellows smeared themselves with soot, that they could blend with the night and steal within the castle of a rival of theirs. Doing so, they slit the throats of him and all his retainers, bringing to an end three years of civil war. But my father applied so much soot to his beard that he swallowed a great deal of it, and so became known as the Soot-Eater.”

“A strange tale,” Razan said. “But clever, I suppose. Then, why are you but Lindír Heimirsson? Is being the son of Heimir Soot-Eater so great a feat?”

Lindír exhaled deeply, his head sagging, his eyes swinging low to the floor. “I have done no great deed as of yet. No worthy title has been granted to me.”

Razan nodded, and for a while the both of them were quiet. After some time, Razan spoke again. But this time there was no laughter in her voice, no gentle mocking or jokes. She spoke solemnly, as though of an illness.

“Heimir Soot-Eater is the name of the King of Hvalheim, the lord of this castle. The man who I aim to serve. The most powerful man in all of Hvalheim. You are his child?”

Lindír nodded.

“How did that come to pass?”

Lindír told her everything. First the story that he had been relayed as a child, and then the story he actually remembered, of his captivity, his battles against the knights and the castellan, of the hunger, of his dreams of the outer world. When he was done, Razan did not question or respond, but merely thought. And then, decreeing that a story should be repaid with a story, she spoke of her homeland.

She hailed from Namar, a place of great cities built along a mighty river which flowed through a desert as old as time. Razan spoke of those cities as one might speak of a woman, of the streets and shops and mighty temples and fortresses, of the high walls and immense aqueducts. She spoke also of long days spent riding through the desert, of drinking late at night by the only oasis within a hundred miles. Namar was a beautiful country, ruled by the Zaiqan Empire, which had forged the desert tribes into a single state.

What Razan did not speak of was how she had come to leave Namar, why she sought now to fight for coin in the court of a foreign king. But she spoke with such reverence of her homeland that Lindír could not believe anything other than that she had been forced here by circumstance. Who would leave so beautiful a land by choice?

He asked many questions about Namar, and Zaiqa, and of Razan herself. She was, apparently, twenty-three years of age, and had already been a warrior for some years. The bow she carried because it was her greatest weapon, and she expressed no little confusion about why the warriors of Hvalheim fought primarily with a weapon that could not kill at further than two arms distance. The only questions which Razan fastidiously avoided were any having to do with her childhood or upbringing.

They talked for an hour or more, Lindír did not know how long. But eventually there came a heavy knock at the bronze door, a knight demanding that Al-Khanjar vacate the cell. Razan then stood, and shouted back a quick response. But she did something unexpected. Instead of turning and leaving, she approached Lindír.

They had scarcely moved for all the time they had been conversing, and so kept a healthy distance between them. Razan now annihilated that distance, and came right up to Lindír’s head, which from snout to base measured nearly the distance from her navel to her collarbone. She leaned in very close, and placed one hand upon the crown of his head, sending a quiver down the full length of his spine. Then she bent, and placed her lips very near to his ear.

“I will find a way to set you free.”

Razan kissed him, lightly, on the cheek. Before he could speak, or even understand what she had just said, Razan turned around with all the efficiency of a military woman and walked to the bronze door. It opened for her, and closed behind her, leaving Lindír alone once again. He settled down to sleep once more. But his heart raced.

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