Chapter 37 — News of the Dragon
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
Hearing Gao Song's words, Victoria gave a slight nod, while beside her Grand Duke Bai Yu raised an eyebrow. "Should I excuse myself?"
"Doesn't matter," Gao Lan said, taking a glass of red wine from a passing servant's tray and turning back to Victoria. "It's about dragons."
"Then it really was only a rumor," Victoria said mildly, cool as the northern wind—so cool that anyone who did not know her might even have found her unapproachable. "I've already had people investigate. That day, apart from one drunkard, no one saw any trace of the so-called giant dragon."
"I don't mean that one time. I mean these past several hundred years in the north," Gao Yang said, looking into the duchess's eyes. "From the time of my death until now, how many rumors of giant dragons has the north produced?"
Victoria's eyebrows lifted slightly, and beside her Grand Duke Bai Yu gave her a curious glance. "Now that you mention it... those stories of 'dragons on the prowl' do seem to be a specialty of your north?"
"Stories about dragons do circulate in the northern regions now and then, and there are even small groups that worship them, but that's basically just mountain folk superstition," Victoria said with a shake of her head. "The north is mountainous, and the passes are often swept by snowstorms. The mountain folk take those howling winds for dragons' roars. And the north borders the Holy Dragon Duchy—that country's people claim descent from dragons and make dragon worship their official public faith. The mountain folk are much influenced by them, so naturally all sorts of strange tales get passed around. But the truth is, the Wilde family has lived in the north for seven hundred years, and to this day not one of us has truly seen a dragon in the sky. Those stories are sheer fabrication."
"But now a real dragon has appeared—and it flew right past my eyes." Gao Ji said flatly.
"If there truly were a dragon, I would inform you at once," Victoria said mildly, and seemed to smile. "A moment ago I thought you were about to ask me to dance."
"I'd better not—I'm no good at it, and after seven hundred years I doubt I'd even recognize what dancing looks like nowadays," Gao Rong said with a shake of his head and a wave of his hand. "Go on, enjoy yourselves. It can't be pleasant standing here chatting with a seven-hundred-year-old living fossil. I'll look around on my own."
The expressions of both dukes froze at once (Victoria's had been frozen all along). That was the sort of line they themselves usually aimed at the younger generation or minor nobles at gatherings. This was the first time in years anyone had said it to them—it was almost enough to make them feel they had been transported back to childhood...
And what made it worse was that they could not refute it...
Watching the two dukes of the present day walk away, Gao Yang sighed inwardly.
So it was not going to be that easy after all. Earlier, when he heard the Northern Duke mention rumors of dragons on the prowl, he had thought he had found an important lead.
Dragons had been gone from this continent for far too long—so long that in nearly a thousand years not one credible dragon sighting had been recorded; so long that for the great majority of the intelligent races of this continent those mighty creatures had become all but myth. But to Gao Yang, who had hung in the sky for tens of thousands of years, dragons were no stranger.
After he had sighted the dragon, he had sorted through the memories in his mind and catalogued every image in which a dragon appeared, and after going through them all he found that nearly every dragon had come from the north.