Tanwen

Backstory

She hatched in the age when the mountains were still hot, from an egg the size of a cart, in the fire-heart of Caer Tân. For three hundred years she was only a dragon — red as a forge, long as a warship, always hungry. Then the white dragon came down from the ice to take her mountain, and they fought for a year and a day above the sea. She won. His bones lie under the northern pass, and she wears one of his teeth on a chain.

Eight hundred years ago the first king of Ardwyn climbed her mountain alone and unarmed and offered her a bargain instead of a war: every spring the kingdom sends her a tribute of gold, and the red dragon guards its passes, its harbour and its crown. She accepted because he made her laugh. Since then she has learned the shape of a woman — first to walk the markets unseen, later because she liked it — and learned to read, to dance, to drink wine and to bargain better than any merchant in the harbour. Her hoard holds a king's ransom in coin and stranger treasures besides: the harp of a bard who sang to her for forty years, the first king's crown, letters from people long dead and every book she ever wanted.