The Princess Golden Cage

In the evenings, around the hearths of home, we teach the rules by which we share this world with the brethren through story. Tales of lovers separated by misfortune, the vain punished with disfigurement, of knights enchanted into forever sleep, and of princesses locked into towers.

We seek out Seers to foretell the future, and mages to bespell swords, but are wary of the Fae with their costly altruism and deceptive beauty, the mischief of household imps, and sirens who sing ship to wreckage.

Most of all, we fear the dragons, beasts of mighty wings and magical power, who demand virgin sacrifice, and turn the bravest knight to ash.

-

My foot slipped on a piece of armour, unseen beneath the ash and dirt. The movement spilled delicate white finger bones out onto the path, reminding me of the children’s game. But this was not a night or place for games.

The evening air was sharp. Winter was setting in, and the tips of the mountain range were capped white. There was no snow here, but the air held the bite and scent of it, where one could detect anything at all above the stink of rotting flesh, sulphur, and char.

I had overcome my horror of bones and corpses within a few minutes of setting my feet to this path. There was an abundance of them upon it, in varying states of decay - knights, and other fortune seekers, who had come in pursuit of the riches that lay above and the glory of slaying a dragon.

I suspected that the ash and dust that coated my boots, the hem of my skirts and my cloak, had once been men, and that they had been the lucky ones, incinerated under dragon flame. These others, either they had caught the tail of the flame and had died of their wounds, or some other ill had befallen them. I did not want to scrutinize them too closely in order to determine how they had died.

The dragon had left them on the path on purpose - warning to those who came this way. Was I foolhardy to ignore the warning? I wondered. I would like to think it bravery that motivated my climb up the steep path, but in truth it was desperation.

Nearer to the mouth of the cave, the bodies thinned. Not so many made it this far, I decided, or the dragon turned the ones who did to ash rather than have them rot within smelling distance of his home. The path dipped and turned, pressing narrowly against the rocky cliff, and dropping away steeply below.

Fear made my lungs tight. One careless step, and I would fall to my death. I pressed my back against the mountain stone, and edged my way closer, as the wind picked up my cloak and my skirts and pulled against me. Foolish princess, I told myself. Why had I not worn trousers and tunic to flee Uyan Taesil in, instead of this gown? It had been designed for courtly riding, not for adventures, and the seams had ripped beneath my arms, the waistline sagged where I had torn stitches when I had stepped on the hem, and the fine fabric was stained and generally bedraggled.

I was both grateful and concerned about the dragon’s absence thus far. Did he not know that I approached? Or was he not at home? Had he moved to other dwellings? The villagers had not been helpful. They had reached an accord with the dragon in recent weeks, and did not want to disrupt it, even if I were a more unusual dragon-seeker to those they normally saw.

But then, if he came, between the narrow ledge that the path had become and the dragon’s fury, I would have little chance of survival. The path curved, and then snaked out again, and I could see the entrance to the cave.

I edged my way slowly closer. It was a large entrance. It would have to be, I thought, for a dragon to fit within. There were scrape marks in the rock from his scales rubbing against them. The ledge before it was large, too – more than big enough to accommodate a sizeable dragon landing upon it. I breathed a sigh of relief as I stepped upon it and wondered how often such a thing occurred. Foolish princess, relieved to reach the dragon’s cave.

The moon was not bright, but it illuminated several meters into the tunnel, after which, it plunged into darkness. The tunnel ran deep, and for the first few meters, the walls were uninterrupted, and then I could see openings into smaller caves, and the hint of things within them. What sort of horrors lay inside a dragon’s cave? I wondered.

Did the dragon sleep inside?

My breath was overloud in my ears, but I could not hear anything else that would give indication of anything within the tunnel. Surely if my breathing were so loud, a creature the size of a dragon would take great big sighs of air that could easily be heard from where I stood.

I edged into the tunnel cautiously as the darkness deepened. My boot slipped again, and I looked down expecting to see armour, but instead saw gold coins gleaming in the moonlight. Scattered, perhaps, when the dragon came and went.

A mine, I thought, from the tool marks in the walls, though I had never been in a mine before. The marks could equally be dragon claws, I amended. But the village below was a mining village, and it made sense that this would be an abandoned mine.