Chapter 5: A Duel That Nobody Wins

SuarJ rose to his full height. The cavern filled with light so fierce that Arjun's shield grew warm in his hands.

"You dare," the dragon rumbled, "enter the Burning Peak?"

"I do," said Arjun. His voice shook, but he did not step back. "I've come for Princess Meera."

"Arjun, wait," said the princess. "It isn't what it looks like."

"It looks like a dragon kidnapped you."

"All right, it's a little bit what it looks like."

The dragon breathed out a warning plume of golden fire over the knight's head. It singed the plume off his helmet. Arjun lifted his blunt sword anyway and charged.

It was, by any fair measure, the least impressive duel in the history of Kesaripur. Arjun's sword bounced off the dragon's scales with a sound like a spoon hitting a pot. SuarJ swatted him gently with one wing and sent him tumbling into a pile of brass lamps. Arjun got up. SuarJ swatted him again. Arjun got up again.

On the seventh time, the dragon stopped.

"Why do you keep standing up?" SuarJ asked, genuinely puzzled. "You cannot win."

Arjun wiped soot from his face. "Because she's still here," he said. "And nobody else came."

The cavern went very quiet.

SuarJ looked at the battered knight, and then at the princess, and then at his enormous, glittering, empty collection.

"Nobody has ever come back for anything I took," the dragon said softly. "Not once, in four hundred years."