He let himself think about such things. It was good to have a keen eye, to keep his vision whetted by noticing the slight difference between today and tomorrow, as the plant shows it, so subtly but so clearly, by its changes. Keep vision whetted by noticing the patterns that insects make in the air, or how certain tamped-down foliage means a deer has slept here with her fawn. He was good at watching.

  And on the old track through the dark woods there was much to watch, evidence of people before him come and gone, and others whose presence, neither friendly nor hostile, he could feel nearby, unseen, ever present. They were people who did not concern themselves with travelers: a knight like himself, a monk or two, or even a company of pilgrims, they just amounted to weather in the woods, passing, not really there.

  The knight felt almost comforted by their presence, at peace with their indifference. Just as he felt indifferent but alert to the trees and herbs he passed by, or slept beneath, or nibbled in the morning, when he knew this leaf was safe, to wake his breath and shape the waking air.

  It was still morning as he rode, and he was beginning to feel the first stirrings of hunger. He had plenty of bread in his saddlebag, and sweet water in his leather bottle, but he was a well-reared young man, and knew that one should not eat while doing some other thing, in this case riding, watching, understanding the world he passed through. Eating takes the soul inside, to survey the food’s journey to the center—that is how he had been taught. And taught too that doing things while eating sapped the nourishment from the food, and also drained the soul from the other thing he might be doing. He had seen other people, some of them knights or priests even, munching while they walked or worked wood or read in a book—he shook his head to think of such folly, that people should live on the earth and not understand the simplest things about their bodies’ relations with the place they lived in.

  The track he followed was narrow but clear. He rode cautiously, frequently having to duck beneath a heavy branch, or gently lift a younger one aside—do not break the tree that shelters the path, that was another thing he knew.

  Just ahead now he could see, in something of a clearing where more sun came through, another traveler on the path. He was seated on a fallen log, it seemed, and the knight could see a big bag slumped beside the man. As the knight drew closer, he saw that the seated man was a leper, his walking staff with rattle top lying beside him, his shabby old tunic still showing clear enough the huge rough heart shape painted on it in rust. The leper was eating, but dropped his loaf and went to pick up the staff and rattle it, to warn the knight.

  “Good morning, Sir Leper,” the knight called out in a friendly way. The leper let the staff fall, and smiled up. His face was mostly still there, and the smile was easy enough to look at.

  “Good morning, Lord Knight,” the leper replied, each man courteously elevating the social status of the other. Perhaps the leper had been a man of better station once upon a time.

  There was not much to say. But the knight lingered, of a mind to share and inquire.

  “Have you food enough, Sir Leper? I have a bit in my satchel.”

  “Thank you kindly, my lord, but I have some meat in mine too. And there is good water in a spring a little way beyond; you’ll pass it in five minutes, if you need. It breaks out of a single rock upright among cool ferns. I like the place, but do not linger there, because I am as you see me.”

  The knight knew no easy way to respond to that, and turned his words aside.

  “What is this place we’re in? Whose forest is this?”

  “I don’t know its name, or it may not have one, and I have lived near at hand most of my life, apart from the years I wandered in the Holy Land that taught me to wear such clothes as these,” said the leper, sweeping one hand down along his tunic, which was blazoned with the Heart of Pity, as they called it, that all lepers in this land must wear. “They say the woods are owned by the Abbey of Saint Ulfric, but no one lives in that abbey any longer, and the last abbot died when I was a child. Whoever may own the land, there is no doubt who controls it. For this whole forest is in the clutches of a dragon who lives in a gorge only a mile or a mile and a half, depending on what path you take to reach it, from where we are sitting.”

  “A dragon!” exclaimed the knight. “Does he do great mischief in the woods?”

  “Not to the trees, but you will have noticed, perhaps, that no animals have crossed your path, and few are the birds that flew over you.”

  “I had not noticed. Why is that?”

  “Most have been consumed by the dragon,” said the leper. “My uncleanness must spoil his appetite, since he has never bothered me, though I have seen him half a dozen times, and I am sure he’s seen me more often than that, since little does he miss in what goes forward.”

  “What does he look like, when you see him, this dragon?”

  “Much as you suppose. Vast and sinuous and mostly green, with flakes of bony stuff atop his spine that would slice a man in half. Wings he has as well, of a pale bluish color, translucent like the wings of a bat, and very long. His face is an interesting one: He has the fangs you’d expect, but set in a muzzle of some nobility, more lion than snake, more eagle than lion. Hard to be sure, since his face seems to change its bones with his mood.”

  “That is very odd,” said the knight. He was silent for a while, thinking of what he had heard. Then asked: “If the dragon has eaten up all the deer and boars and hares in these woods, what does he live on, do you think?”

  “I know the answer to that,” said the leper. “He leaves the woods and raids the towns and granges all about, on the far side of the forest, away from the side from which you came. He is a plague and a bother to them, but strange to say, though he breathes fire like any dragon, he never burns down a house or croft or mill. Mostly he’ll seize cattle or sheep, a goat or a dog, and that will sate him. But sometimes he has been known to snatch a maiden, wrap her in his coils, and fly away with her to his gorge. At least that is what people think. The bones of the girls are never found.”

  “That is a sad and shameful thing, that a young woman be carried off at all, let alone by such a beast.”

  “Beast he may be, though I’m not sure of that, since I have heard him talk.”

  “Talk!”

  “Yes, and not the way crows talk, for example, where you have to hold your heart and mind a certain way to understand what they’re saying. No, this dragon talks as you and I are talking now, using words, most of which I recognize.”

  “Have you spoken with him then?” asked the knight, a little doubtful all at once of the character of this leper.

  “Never, but I have heard him speaking. Whether to himself or to another I could not tell. Out of fear I kept my distance. Damaged and distressed as it is, this is still precious to me, and I would fain keep it a while longer.”

  “What does he say, this dragon? What is there for him to speak about, I wonder.”

  The leper closed his eye and thought a bit before he answered.

  “You know, lord, I am not sure. While he was speaking, I understood perfectly what he said and what he meant. But afterward, and now, all I can do is remember understanding. But what I understood, that I can’t remember.”

  “It seems to me,” said the knight, “that I should go and see what this dragon has to say for himself. And if he does not give a good account, I suppose I must seek with God’s help to slay him, and rid the forest and the farms of his harm. This seems then to be an adventure that has come to me. Thank you, Sir Leper.”

  “That is gracious of you, Lord Knight, but better to thank me later, when you see whether or not this is a good thing you undertake.”

  “How could it, with God’s help, fail to be good?”

  “I could not say, Lord Knight, but the dragon may not be of a mind to be slain. Or he may speak with such wiles as to dissuade you. Or even win you to his cause, whatever that might be.”

  “Speaking of that, you speak well, Sir Leper, if I may say so. Your words are intelligent and suave and well chosen, dare I say it, and much wittier than mine. You remind me of certain clerics who had the kindness to instruct me when I was very young.”

  “Yes, Lord Knight, I was a priest once upon a time, and went with the Jerusalem Farers on their crusades, to give them counsel and keep them honest along the way, much good it did.”

  A leper priest is a scary thing indeed, the young knight thought, but wasn’t sure why it should be so. Why scarier than a leper farmer or a leper soldier? Yet it was, almost as if it meant that something was wrong in the way the world was made. That a priest should give up women and begetting and owning and amassing, and yet be subject to this degrading disease. And all a priest’s learning went for naught. Not naught, though, since here he was being instructed by this wise priest.

  “I grieve for your distress,” said the knight, and the other knew he meant not just the leprosy but also his sadness at the human condition, where rutting soldiers would not listen to their priests, and stole and spoiled and ravened.

  “Bless you for your understanding,” said the leper, and said no more.

  The knight sat a while longer and thought about what he had learned. Now it is a knight’s business to balance the iniquity in the moral world and the imperfections in the natural order with his own virtue and prowess and that special quality of responsible loving-kindness called honesty. It would appear, and so it seemed to him, that the activities of the dragon, as reported, constituted an imperfection in this forest in particular, and the scheme of things in general, one that should be mended. And the code of Holy Adventure, by which knights have always lived, and still do live, calls for the knight who discovers the flaw in the pattern to be the one who heals it.

  The leper was sitting quietly, and the knight supposed the man wanted to get on with his meal—the sun was straight overhead now. But the leper made no gesture one way or another, just sat.

  “Sir Leper,” asked the knight, “could you show me the way to the dragon’s gorge?”

  The leper smiled, and gently thrust his rear leg forward. Only now did the knight see that there was scarcely a foot at the end of the leg, just a mass of clotted cloths tied round a stump that did not bear thinking about.

  “My lord will see that I am not skilled at walking these days, and will forgive me for not keeping him company. I walk little as I can, and on the softest places, where the pine needles let fall the soft, safe road that is my bed as well. I will tell you, though, how to meet your dragon.”

  How strange, the knight thought, that the priest had already made the dragon the knight’s own.

  “From this place keep onward as you were going. As I said before, you will soon come to a spring among the ferns—it will be on your right side as you go. Pause and drink—the water is healthy and bracing. Just past the spring you will see, on the same side, a thickety place, all rustling aspen leaves and shadow. In the thicket you will soon find, God willing, a little path, evident, wide enough for your horse, I think. Take this and follow it. It rises slowly through trees to a bare hill, climbs the hill—it is no more than a mile from the spring—and from the top, you will look down into the gorge of the one of whom we have spoken. God be with you, Lord Knight.”

  “And with you, Sir Priest, and thank you.”

  The knight made a civil gesture, which was returned. Then he urged his horse onward. In a few minutes man and rider came to the rock among ferns. The knight dismounted and drank, and drank again. And felt again the hunger he’d been feeling before the leper. Why not eat his midday meal here?

  He did so. And as he chewed on the good grainy bread, he thought a little about priest and dragon, maiden and duty, then drew his mind back to the bread. Because thinking about things while eating is no better than riding or plowing a field while eating. Eat while eating, ride while riding, sleep while sleeping. But thinking has a way of creeping in, the way dream creeps into blameless sleep and tells its incoherent stories. Not easy not to think. Best to think about bread, his jaws chewing, his dark with waiting.

  When he swallowed as much of his bread as he’d let himself eat this summery day with supper far away, he packed up his things, drank again from the spring, and remounted. Soon enough he spied a little track off through the aspens, and veered that way, hoping it was the right one. A dark way indeed, and the leaves on their slender branches had a way of being mobile, moving before him, beside him, behind him, as if they were opening the curtain of themselves and leading him further in.

  Now that the leper had alerted him to the absence of beast and fowl, the knight kept an ear open for any bird cry he might hear. It was true, the forest was quiet, very quiet, apart from the noises he made brushing through the trees. A few times there did come the clear call of a crow from up ahead, a sound he liked hearing. It made him easier about his choice of path. He trusted crows, and any place where they gathered.

  A mile or so, the leper priest had said. Ambling though the horse was, and the leaves thick around them, he expected he’d find himself at the hill in no great while, and indeed the ground was gradually, perceptibly rising before him. Soon the aspens gave way to a treeless slope close covered with heather, and he spurred his horse up. Again the crows called ahead of him, more than one—three, he guessed, from the timbre of their cries. At the top of what seemed not a hill but a ridge, the knight looked down into the gorge he expected to see.

  Deep it was, and running arrow-straight from south to north (it seemed) through the forest. Seventy or eighty feet down, a feeble stream winked along the narrow valley. On the far side of the gorge, tall pines stood, and two or three crows seemed tossed from branch to branch, but no longer did they cry. He had come, he thought, to where he was supposed to be, so no more directions were needed. Here it is. The steep slopes of the gorge fell away—walking back and forth along the rim, he could spy no trail, and it was too steep for any horse. Where was the dragon?

  The slope in front of him was densely matted with juniper and cedar and heather, while the slope on the far side seemed crusted with a low, thick ground cover, a row of spiky bushes running along it halfway down. What he saw was quiet, and gave him no sense of awe or fear. As a good and honest knight, he knew fear, knew it well, and knew how to deal with it most times. Without fear there could be no courage—his teachers had taught him that. Without fear there can only be a creeping uneasiness, a draining, enervating malaise. Fear is brilliant, though, and summons even cowards to be brave. These were good thoughts to be having, he thought, when looking for dragons. But where was the dragon? No smell, no sound, no glimpse of his presence. Or of what he might have done. In earlier encounters with dragons he had heard about, the knight had always found near the caverns scattered bones, garments stripped from poor travelers devoured, bracelets, pieces of gold even, though most of those were buried deep within some cave or burrow. The knight looked for such evidence now, and found nothing. Was this the right place? He wondered about the leper, whether a man like that, however well spoken and kindly acting, might not have, in his own despair, come to take pleasure in leading other men astray, as once he had tried vainly to lead them toward the good. Where was the dragon?

  The knight slipped off his horse, tethered the creature to a sturdy, thick old juniper bush, and plucked off a few of those cloudy blue berries. He mashed them in his fingers, inhaled the heady smell of them—they smelled like a rain shower on a hot, sunny day. He dropped the seedy pulp but licked his fingers. The taste was nothing at all like the smell. That is how things are. The knight sat down crosslegged, and waited, staring into the ravine.

  It was pleasant being where he was. The horse found nourishment in deep, unvisited grasses among the shrubs. A quiet wind was moving, and it dawned on the knight that it was because the wind was coming from over his shoulder that he smelled none of the stench people had told him to expect anywhere that dragons had stayed a while.

  He wondered what manner of dragon this might be. The description the priest had given could, depending on just how faithful a describer he had been, suit several sorts of dragon: the Cloud Worm (and the blue wings suggested it) ,who nests in earth but spends most of his day aloft; or the Diggon Nail, who burrows straight down in the earth and (it seems an evil miracle) turns himself inside out to shoot out again, arrow swift, from the earth to seize its prey; or the Riverlord, who lived mostly in streams and lakes to keep his fires banked against the moment of need. But the nobility the priest had noted in the dragon’s face, “more lion than snake, more eagle than lion,” did not match any of those three kinds. None of the other dragons he knew about had wings at all, or tall scales on their backbones. So he would await the encounter, and learn.

  As he sat there, reviewing his knowledge of such matters as might be useful to recall in the next while, he grew sleepy. He knew well enough that sleep is not to be fought off—only enemies are to be fought, but not to be indulged either; only bad friends need to be indulged. No, sleep was a good friend, and should be met candidly, and only when the time was right. The time seemed right, nothing asked itself of him, he let his eyelids close, and let himself drift toward sleep.

  A breath of air tickled along his neck, and his eyes opened. And before he let them close again he noticed, or thought he noticed, that there was some subtle difference in the slope on the far side of the ravine. It had changed, its contour was not what it had been, but the knight could not tell just how. He decided to experiment: He closed his eyes, drifted almost away, then quickly opened them. Yes, there was a change; the curve of the bushes was different.