“Do tell,” she intoned, knowing that he would just keep taunting her if she didn’t directly request him to spill the beans.
He was such a child.
Rui wondered how old he was. How long he’d existed. Perhaps not that long. Perhaps she should have more forbearance.
“You have to ask me nicely.”
Or perhaps he was simply the bane of her existence.
“Please, will you impart your knowledge, oh great one,” she gritted through her teeth, her words dripping acidic sarcasm.
“Well, of course, my little Padawan,” he said magnanimously. “Sharing my wisdom is what I’m here for. Never fear to ask.”
She glared daggers with her eyes.
But he was too comfortable and safe in his lover’s arms to notice.
“We are on the road to a place called Caerleon Castle, which is apparently the only shining metropolis in these gods forsaken dark lands. The city surrounding the base of the castle abuts Cardigan Bay, where a military fleet is stationed, as well as ports for merchant ships.”
“Who rules these lands?” Rui asked.
She was not a student of human history. Beneath the Four Seas and in the Celestial Realm, there was never need to know.
Civilizations came and went. Men’s clothing, mannerisms and languages changed with the times. But their looks and behavior really didn’t vary that much. There were always warlords and wars. And intellectuals like Ere who talked about what others did and wrote it all down.
Ere’s eyes lit up at that question.
After a dramatic pause, he said with relish, “King Arthur.”
Rui merely blinked.
“The legendaryKing Arthur.” he repeated for effect.
Her eyelids dropped to half-mast with sleepiness.
Ere threw up his hands and swiveled toward his Mate.
“You know what I’m talking about, right?”
Sorin gazed calmly back at him and lifted one shoulder in an eloquent shrug.
“I’m surrounded by philistines!”
He patted Sorin’s arm after a brief reflection and said, “At least you have a good reason. You weren’t quite yourself, I know, having suffered in that half-form state for thousands of years. Mostly dead as you were.”
He turned to glare at Rui with narrowed eyes.
“Butyou.Don’t they teach dragons anything?”
“Well,thisdragon learned how to split a melon at fifty paces with a pebble toss before I learned to talk,” she said benignly.
And cracked her knuckles. Bending over to pick up a pebble from the ground of the stables. The luxurious accommodations they shared with a few passed out soldiers and their horses, including the one Ere won in dice.
“It’s amazing how alike melons and human heads are,” she noted with a slight tilt of her own head, as she regarded Ere with speculation. Tossing the pebble up and down like a hypnotic pendulum.
“Want me to show you?”
Ere drew himself up and opened his mouth, ostensibly to blast her with scathing remarks.