(Continued)

From then on, twice a week, the blue dragon would visit the log cabin at night, and the trapper would play upon the ice flute, and every time, the snow before his cabin would be wet with rainbow tears. Secretly, he was glad for the company of another being, for he did not care to be alone upon the cold, dark mountain. However, when winter neared, the trapper knew he would have to return to the village in the valley below him until spring returned, and he told the dragon thus.

Go, it reassured him with a flick of its talons. I will wait for spring--and your music, the music of my mate’s breath.

So the trapper gathered the furs and snow-packed barrels of meats upon a sled, and pushed it through the passes before they were snowed in by the winter. Upon reaching the village, he gave some of them to the innkeeper as payment for his stay, and sold the rest to a passing merchant from the south. Through the lean, long winter, the inn’s bar was filled with many people, all seeking the warmth and company of others. The trapper played tunes of love and loss to entertain the patrons, and all showed at least passing interest in the ice flute. The dwarves who borrowed it played tunes of the earth, praising Mother Isabelli for her gifts hidden deep in the soil. The young women who borrowed it played tunes of dreams and romance. Even the local priestess borrowed it to play a low, solemn tune, beseeching Hydros of the waves and snow to make the winter short, and the snowstorms end.

While all the patrons could not agree whose tune had been the most melodious or whose fingers had been the most nimble, they acknowledged that the trapper’s tunes had struck them the most deeply, and asked him to play for them again. When asked where the flute had come from, the trapper smiled and said it had been a payment from a passing magus who needed food and furs, for even magi were mortals, and needed to eat and be warm.

And so spring came, and the Rounds passed. Silver began to creep into the trapper’s hair, and the villagers whispered amongst themselves how long the trapper could continue to set his snares amongst the trees of the mountain. Still without fail, the trapper would ascend past the passes in the spring, and play upon the ice flute for the blue dragon who would come to his house before leaving, the ground wet with tears. In the winter, he would come down, and cajole the folk of the village with his tunes.

The trapper feared black-lung but he loved his sister even more, and he gathered his possessions before moving south to see his brother-in-law. There he lingered for a season, tending to his sister even as she wasted away to nothing, consumed by the disease. Finally, there was nothing to do but to toss her body upon the pyre with so many others, for the city guard had ordained that all those who died had to be burned to prevent the disease from spreading further. Restorers had said it was carried not through air or touch, but through the vapours that a body emitted after death. Consoling his brother-in-law and nephews even as he himself wept, the trapper knew he had to return to whence he had come from.

So he returned to his beloved log cabin upon the slopes of the Northern Ranges, and although he waited a full month, the Ice-Wyrm did not return to hear him play. Worried that something might have befallen his friend, the trapper set out to seek the dragon, and his feet carried him once again to the cave that he had chanced upon so many seasons ago. This time he had a torch and dared to venture further in, and the sight was horrifying.

Entombed in ice upon one wall were the bodies of twenty men and women, alongside them a sled with a blue dragon’s head tied to it, and the trapper recognized one of the men as the baron who had gone missing fifty Rounds ago. Preserved by the bitter cold so high up on the slopes, the carcass of a headless dragon rested, and curled up against it was the trapper’s friend. Opening one dim, wet eye, the blue dragon once again stared out at the trapper.

Obliging, the trapper put the ice flute to his lips and played a tune of sorrow, of death. As his sister’s death came to his mind, the tune darkened and twisted, notes of finality emanating from the ice. When he lowered the flute from his lips, the Ice-Wyrm breathed no more and was still, despite it scales still being bright and young. Realizing his music had been the thing which had given the blue dragon the will to live, waves of guilt crashed across the cliffs of the trappers’ soul, for he understood that despite the beast before him being mighty, its heart was no less fragile than any mortal’s. Stowing away the ice flute in his pack, the trapper climbed down, back to his log cabin.

In time, the trapper sold his cabin to an enterprising young man in the same profession, citing his age as the reason for wanting to leave the mountain. Moving down into the village in the valley, he lived out the rest of his days amongst the folk there, but although he lent it out freely, he refused to play on the ice flute, for it held too many bitter memories for him.

Soon after the trapper retired, a new baron came to the village, a man with intensely dark hair and eyes upon a wolfish face. The trapper had seen enough wolves with their packs during his life to know one when he saw it, and stayed far from the baron and his entourage of eighty men, even as they ascended the mountain. Days passed before they returned, their previously empty sleds filled with beautiful figurines of ice and a blue dragon’s head, the baron pleasantly announcing they had chanced upon a dead dragon’s lair while upon the mountain, and that these treasures would befit the baron’s new keep in the town of Silverstone to the west. As the noble and his entourage rested in the inn, his eyes fell upon the trapper’s ice flute, and the baron offered a pouch of silver coins for such an exquisite treasure.

“Take it, milord,” the trapper said. “I should be acting my age now.” But the baron would not hear of it, for he was a fair man, and pressed the silver into the trapper’s hand. Cheering for their lord, the baron’s men asked for a song. Smiling, the wolfish baron raised the ice flute to his lips, and blew.

But what emerged was not a merry tune, but the sorrowful voice of a dragon’s long-dead breath.