'WHOSOEVER SAVES A SINGLE LIFE HAS SAVED A WORLD.' —Hypatian Low-Priest Proverb

Drifting, flying, but the air—so cold. Impossible to see through the clouds.

Tiring—so she glided. A hurtful pull in the back—had a wing joint slipped?

Now she could see.

A hominid bent over her, face shadowed. Can't raise her claw to strike it—

A sound, sharp and regular tap-top-tap-top, movement in time with the beats, lulling her, and she slept… .

Fighting for breath—cold. Nose must be kept out of water. Drowned dog pulling me under, if I don't get free, I'll die. Bite! Tear! Rushes of warm blood in the cold. Nose up! Nose up! One more breath before I go under!

Wistala stretched, unbelievable warmth and well-being suffusing her body, dreams fair and foul gone.

She opened an eye. She lay stretched out on hairy fabric that caught in her scales. A vast presence, white and curved like a huge dragon egg, gave off heat from a mouthlike opening in its side. Woof-woosh woof-woosh woof-woosh—the sound in her ears reminded her of Father when he got out of breath from his climbs up from the river. She rolled her head and saw a hominid, its back to her, working an apparatus that opened and closed like a dragon's mouth, complete with folding griff at its sides.

A crackling and a glowing came from the huge egg's mouth. She smelled burning charcoal. The heat increased, and she basked in it before she slept again.

She woke to a salubrious greasy smell, like the road-dwarf's sausages, only more powerful.

A steaming double-handled iron pan appeared before her, filled with a greasy broth. She glanced around, saw a roof above held up by thick rounded beams. Doors wide enough to fit a full-grown dragon had been flung open to the summer air and light.

The faint smells of horse and goats interested her, but not half so much as the broth. She found enough strength to take two tonguefuls.

The hominid, standing so still, he might have been one of the timbers holding up the roof, watched her from a good dragon-dash away. Probably a male: he had prominent, angular features, a lean, narrow-hipped body, and a clean-shaven head covered with a thick film that reminded her of the high mountain rocks with winter lichens she and Auron had climbed.

An elf.

Father's stories about the killing prowess of the elves came back to her in a rush of imagery… .

He stayed away. There were windows and the wide doors closer to her than he—though with her body feeling limp and drained, she wondered if she could even manage to right herself for a dash—

A mist-colored horse at the other end of the interior regarded her warily. This place was divided into a number of smaller chambers along a central alley.

Another sip of the hot liquid, and she felt newly hatched, despite the strange surroundings full of disconcertingly straight lines.

Wistala examined her wounds. Cracked scales and any number of brown-stained injuries marked every limb. The brown stains puzzled her. They didn't smell of dried blood, but a sharper smell. But stained or no, the wounds were certainly healing up nicely. She rolled onto her other side and saw that a terrible rend in her saa interior had been sewn like a hominid garment.

Perhaps the elf was healing her to make better sport of her later.

She rested a few minutes, then had a little more broth, rested and then lapped, until finally by midday, the pan had been licked clean. Then she slept, deep and dreamless.

After sundown, she dragged herself—standing hurt her wounded limbs too much—to a central stone cistern, where she smelled water fed by an outlet coming down from the roof beams. She drank deep. Then she slept against the stone.

A gentle cough woke her. The elf stood there, perhaps twice the length of her body away. He squatted, toadlike with his gentle eyes and long, folded limbs.

This time she didn't tremble. Whoever he was, whatever his aim, she read in his eyes that he meant her no harm. He rocked on his haunches. It took her a moment to realize he was inching forward, putting one or the other leather-strap-bound foot after another an almost imperceptible length.

The horse didn't seem to like her presence at the trough. He expelled an angry breath and stamped, chewed on a wooden rail in a sidelong manner. Wistala thought horses timid creatures, but this one seemed to be eager to get out of its alcove and at her.

The elf reached one long hand out, palm empty and toward her. He tickled her under the chin. She couldn't help her griff lowering a little or her fringe standing on end, not with her nostrils full of the terrible odors of elf and horse from that day she lost Auron.

She watched his eyes. They never seemed to be the same color. Brown when they looked at one of the beams holding up the roof, a dull red color when they glanced down at the bricks paving the floor, green when they briefly rested on her. Now, looking at the water in the trough, they became dark and reflective.

The elf pulled up a handful of water, let it trickle through his fingers. "Anua," a voice like a soft fall of rain said. "Anua."

She tried making the sound in her throat. "Ennuh," she managed.

The elf brought a handful of water to her mouth. "Anu sah." He put his lips to his palm and sucked up the water.

"Ehnu-ssa," Wistala repeated, and lapped up some water.

His mouth crinkled. "Anu sah!" he said, pushing a wave of water to her. She took another tongueful.

"Ahnu-ssa," she said, and nosed a wave at him. She splashed him a little by accident, but he didn't seem to mind. Next he taught her his name: Rainfall.

After that, Rainfall drank with his mouth turned up at the corners.

In the following days, as her strength returned, they made slow progress with her Elvish. He learned her name, though he preferred to call her by the familiar Tala, as it was easier for him to pronounce. Dragon traditions weighted lightly on her. She took her lessons in turn, naming things around the stable.

Shortly, she dragged herself outside. The mountaintops to the east were just visible through a part in the trees. She must have come some length down the river, perhaps as far west as Tumbledown, though the hills here were covered with grass and rock, and trees seemed to grow thickly only out of the wind.

That she'd come so far without drowning was as miraculous as if she'd sprouted her wings. Yet she had not the tiniest memory of being in the water beyond the leap off the cliff with the dogs dragging at her.

The elf's behavior surprised her as much as her survival. According to Mother and Father, elves were soft-stepping hunters of spear and bow who blew horns and sang swanlike warbles over the corpses of dead dragons as they danced, holding hands sticky with dragon blood.

The only part of that legend that rang true was the elf's quiet nature. Whether passing over brick, wood planking, or soft grass, he hardly made a sound, save for the whispers of the wind moving around him. The rest of his manner was as gentle and tender as a mother dragon's over still-wet hatchlings.

Thoughts of Mother and Jizara left her cold and sleepy and miserable. Why didn't memories heal and fade like wounds?

That evening he cooked her a platter full of organs and entrails in a sharp-smelling herb she'd learned to call gar-loque, or dragon-buds, as the smell of the white clusters when crushed was faintly dragonish.

The meal filled her gorge but did little for her anguished mind.

To divert her thoughts, the next day Wistala ventured out of the stable and viewed Rainfall's home.

It was a vast home and garden for a single hominid and a few animals. Treble vast when she learned that the wild orchards, melons, and wheat- and tuber-fields around were also his. He made no effort to farm as she understood the word, though he threw the horse's manure on two beds of flowers surrounding the trees on his threshold.

They were the oddest trees Wistala had ever seen. They became positively animated when Rainfall worked in their vicinity. Their leaves rattled, and their branches scraped against each other, and now and then he looked up and spoke to the limbs, or plucked a bloom and left it to rest in one of the trees.

Then there were the goats.

They came in a variety of colors, sizes, and temperaments; the only attribute they shared was a fear of dragon smell. The goats wandered away whenever they saw or smelled her, horned billies keeping a watchful eye as their charges paced away with tails flicking. They climbed to the highest peak of the house—

And such a house!

Wistala had never seen anything like it.

The house stood on, or rather comprised, a hill and the trees that grew on it. The main door stood between those two vast and arching oaks Rainfall attended, beneath a sort of webbing that had any number of brambles and berries stretching from the oaks to the hillside entrance. Several of the tree limbs supported a sort of stone-and-wood balcony that offered shelter to anyone at the door below.

There were smaller balconies of stone, not shaped but cleverly laid together, windows you couldn't see unless the sun hit them just right, and chimneys rising up through old stumps.

The inside had narrow passageways and stairs that opened up on wood-paneled rooms with skylights carrying down birdsong from the outside. It was like a cave with surprises at every turn, including a lower room that held a small waterfall that ran warm after its passage around the chimneys, or so Rainfall explained.

Some of the rooms echoed every claw-click of her saa on the wooden floors, others—the sleeping rooms—absorbed sound with moss-covered walls and ceilings thick with roots. At the uttermost top there stood a room filled with paper bound up in leather wrappers or enclosed in tubes, lit by a cupola of crystal that, when slightly opened to air the room, carried in the bleatings of the nimble-footed goats.

Wistala passed a chamber that made her wonder if it was an armory, with many big-doored cases in between, perhaps for armor and shields.

But the weapons seemed frail and lacking in edges.

Rainfall took down one of the devices, vaguely like a small bow, and ran his long fingers along it. A sharp, clear sound unlike anything Wistala had ever heard came from a series of strings that hummed until they quit vibrating. Wistala's nostrils opened in surprise—was the odd bow alive?

"Senisote," Rainfall said.

Apparently one could create senisote by blowing into tubes and tapping on clay cylinders topped with leather, as Rainfall demonstrated. She enjoyed it all.

He pulled out a wooden construct so he could squat without folding his legs and played on the instrument she liked best of all, a long wooden tube with a hollow chamber on the end like a hulled melon. It created a sound as pure as birdsong, sweet as a sigh a mother dragon might make over her hatchlings, and as varied as a waterfall.

Wistala gave her first prrum in what seemed like an age. Her neck stiffened, and she began to bob her head. Strange magic. Her head rose and fell with the tune.

Rainfall stood and stepped crabwise, his eyes so merry that Wistala couldn't help but move opposite him so she could keep him in view. He turned a circle, and so did she, and the next thing she knew, they were moving this way and that across the floor. He capered as he played, and she imitated; the slight pain in her joints couldn't keep up with the pleasure the music brought.

The tune ended, and her host attempted to strike a pose that involved entwining his legs and spreading his arms, but he must have misstepped, for he collapsed to the floor with a bit of a bump.

And then he began to laugh.

She'd never heard the like. The sound was as pleasing as his music, and infectious besides, for she found her griff fluttering and scraping against her scales.

The elf sat back and wiped his eyes, face split by his mouth that now seemed to stretch from cheekbone to cheekbone. He reached out with his foot and tickled her under the chin, and she couldn't object.

"A rare delight," he said, and she took perfect understanding, for his words came out with such a wave of happiness, it was almost mind-speech.

"Very good," she said back. He used the expression whenever she pronounced an Elvish word particularly well. It must have suited him, for he gave a little bow.

Wistala saw a smaller version of the stool the elf sat on as he played. She ambled over to the seat, thinking she saw a cat-size creature sitting there, but she realized it was only a bit of craft bearing hair and painted-on eyes. She sniffed at the rather dirty thing—it smelled of elf, but differently from her host.

"How this played?" she asked, not seeing strings or blowholes in its design.

At this, the elf stood. "I … you …" He fled from the room, leaving Wistala to sniff and wonder.

The gray-white horse was another puzzle, for he did no work. Wistala knew little about the doings of the hominid world, but in the home cave she'd heard stories enough about horses—usually while dining over a piece of one—to know that hominids had them pull or carry or bear them.

Indeed, he appeared to own Rainfall rather than the reverse, for the elf labored long in keeping his berth clean and the horse properly brushed.

Wistala, while exploring the stable one morning in pursuit of mice, came close to his stall. The horse snorted and reared and kicked. His simple beast-speech was easy enough to understand. "Away! Stomp you! Kick you!"

"You mistake me for a dragon. I'm but a hatchling."

It occurred to her that she was no longer fresh out of the egg; she'd survived aboveground and breathed her first fire. I'm a drakka!

The horse seemed in no mood to make zoological distinctions. He danced in his stall. "Away! Beast! Sharptooth! Away!"

Wistala left him stomping and raging and hopped out the window. She examined the roof and felt up to a climb, using a wide-bellied wheeled contraption—cart, she corrected herself—to gain the roof. She sniffed at the clay-lined holes that guided the rain to the central cistern and gained the peak.

From here, even with some of the treetops, she could see more of the lane leading west away from the hill house and barn. She saw stone walls disappearing into overgrown fields, and a few roofless constructs at the base of two massive, partially bald hills to the north.

She could see nothing of other hominid habitation, unless the ruined houses counted, but she doubted elves, men, or dwarves would live in homes with shrubs growing in the doorways and young trees poking through the roof. The only breathing creatures who seemed to be thriving in the vicinity were the goats.

"Rah-ya! Rah-ya! Rah-ya!" came a joyous cry. The sound traveled from window to chimney to door of the house. Rainfall danced out the door and into the overgrown yard separating home from barn, dressed only in a cross-tied wrap of thin white material. He let out a whoop and ran to the weed-choked pool surrounding a statue of three figures.

Rainfall tipped, plunged his head into the water, looking just like a duck on a dive, save for the long kicking legs.

Wistala couldn't imagine the causes and consequences of such action, so she jumped down from the roof. The impact pained her, but only a little.

By the time she crossed the courtyard, he was head-side-up again.

"Rah-ya, Tala! Rah-ya!" Rainfall said. He pointed to his head.

At his temples a pair of fuzzy growths, like clover heads, hung rather limply from the rest of the lichen growth, and she detected a few patches of fuzz. "See? See?"

"I see—yes. I understand—no."

"You wouldn't, would you?" Rainfall said. "I've been … down. Ill. Wounded."

Wistala saw no scars. "Wounded?"

"Not as you think. I'm old, but still a long way from my final haspadalanesh—age."

"The … greenstuff … means healing?"

"Yes. Means healing. Thanks to you."

Wistala couldn't imagine what she'd done. He'd stuffed her with hearty kid stews, swabbed her wounds. How would that improve his health?

"You know a little of our language, but nothing of our souls," Rainfall said. "In time …"

"In time … ," Wistala repeated.

"Very good."

Time passed, and it was very good.

The elf presented her with books, and she began to learn to read by associating sounds with the simple illustrations within.

Once she began to read, her ability with Rainfall's language took wing. Though she still made him laugh now and then with her pronunciations, they learned each other's minds better through unfettered words.

Now and then men, hairy, oily, and smelly, rode in to visit the estate Wistala learned was called Mossbell. Rainfall received them in his hall with as much food and drink as he could quickly prepare while she hid her body and odor in a masking grove of pines or up a yew tree. These visits always left Rainfall dispirited, and clumps of his bark-colored hair, now sometimes bearing tiny white flowers and red berries, would drop out.

"Just formalities," he apologized upon her return as he fed her in the stable on their leavings, which were ample, as they ate only the choicest goat loin.

"Where are they from?"

"His Rodship Hammar, the Thane of Nure and the Illembrian Foothills."

"Is that like a king?" Wistala asked, using the only human title she knew other than Dragonblade.

"It may as well be, for Hypatia has no more knights to send to keep his ambitions in check in these dark days.

"I must teach you Parl, the Hypatian vernacular, so that you might climb up one of my chimneys and listen. Though you'd fall asleep at their discourse and drop down the chimney like Old King Yule himself. And your appearance would bring no Solstice merrymaking."

"Correct me if I err. Hypatia is all the lands between the Inland Ocean and the mountains?"

"Once it was much more. It ringed all the Inland Ocean like a necklace. But the necklace's caretakers let it fragment, and others have grasped at the loosened jewels. Most are gone now, and even the chain is breaking. Once you were a Citizen of Hypatia first, and only a man, elf, or dwarf second. But tribalism has taken over since then, between the conniving Wheel of Fire and that madman Praskall howling up his humanist mobs in the Varvar lands. I fear I'll live to see the last few jewels of Hypatia torn and stolen."

"Is Mossbell a jewel?"

"Nothing so grand. But Mossbell does have charge of a link in that precious chain. Tomorrow I'll show you."

The next day Rainfall put a light sort of woven saddle on the irascible horse—Avalanche was his name, and a stallion still, she learned as Rainfall spoke to him—and rode out with Wistala trailing along. First he cantered the horse a few times around the buildings to warm him and take the edge off. Only after this would Avalanche walk down the cobblestones to the Road.

The Road impressed Wistala, once it had been explained to her. Fully wide enough for two carts to pass and space for outriders beside, it was raised up and paved with fine stones, smashed so as to give them teeth that allowed wheels and horseshoes to grip, keeping mud down and dry surface against wheel, boot, or sandal. Or so Rainfall said.

"In my grandfather's time, fully six hundred and forty years ago, he'd done his duty to waxing Hypatia in the Battle of the Sword-grass to the south. His skill in battle won him much renown. As a reward, the Imperial Directory awarded him this estate and charged him with keeping the roads and the bridge. He named it Mossbell for an ancient gong he found at the site of the old ferry. A light duty, one would think."

"Bridge?"

"We're coming to it shortly. Happily, it's the cause of our meeting."

The trees grew close about the road here, and it seemed little traveled. Rainfall continually watched and listened to the west side of the road. "If you hear a crashing, or deep and whistling breathing from these woods, hide yourself as best you can."

"Is there something to fear?"

"Rarely in the daylight. There's a pestilence dwelling on the banks of the river south of here in the form of a troll."

Wistala wasn't sure what a troll was, other than that they were more ravenous than a brood of hungry hatchlings.

Rainfall continued: "None dare settle flock or cot here. Much of my grandfather's estate is now the troll's stomping ground. Once many sheep and cattle, even horses, were raised here, along with the best four-season trail oxen in the northlands, if you'll forgive my pride."

"Is there no way to be rid of the troll?"

At this, her host blinked and set his mouth, as if barring a gate to keep the words in. "It's been tried."

They arrived at the bridge, and Wistala stood still in wonder until her eyes could comprehend it.

The gorge here yawned far wider if a bit less high than around Father's retreat, still so steep-sided that a hominid could climb it only with a careful choice of path and much use of hands. Naked rocks and broken timber filled the river, flowing hard but without the bank-to-bank froth.

The bridge crossed the river in four arching leaps, columns of shaped and angled stone like towers bearing the road. There had once been a fifth arch in the center, but it had fallen and been replaced by wooden planking under an arch of its own. A stout stone bridge house stood at the Mossbell end. Wistala would hardly have noticed it, except that Rainfall slipped from the horse and went to the door.

"I was attending to the lock here when I saw you. Oddest thing I ever saw, a condor was circling close over you, but not stopping to eat. You were just there," he said, pointing to a black length of shattered timber sticking out into the river, "lying atop that grandfather bole. Even at the end of your strength, you managed to pull yourself out of the river. I had to pry your tail from one of the knots."

"What did the condor do?"

"Flew off mountainways."

"You climbed all the way down there to inspect a half-drowned drakka?"

"And more. I used my balagan to get you up."

"What is a balagan?"

"A device for lifting things, using ropes and blocks. Another word for it is crane. It allows one to lift the weight of three."

"Whyever would you trouble yourself?"

"Curiosity. Dragons are seen only rarely nowadays."

"And if it weren't for you, they'd be rarer."

Rainfall was a fountain of information about everything but his Rown misfortunes. Only through numerous questions could she piece together his story. She tried asking Avalanche, but he was a simple, literal fellow, and at the slightest head-bob, griff-rattle, or harsh syllable would become enraged and threaten her with a stomping. And most of what Avalanche did know related to the quality of the hay, or displeasure at not being put out to pasture with the chance of meeting females.

So she spent most of her time with Rainfall, his diverting conversation limited to lighter topics.

Other than his grandsire, the only time he talked about his family was in the portrait gallery. Elves, evidently, had a "study" done of themselves once they reached maturity.

A study didn't use paints or inks, but instead bits and pieces found outdoors—tree bark and colored sands being the two most common media. Done in life size, the "portraits" were remarkable once you got away from the odd textures. Rainfall's certainly captured his gentle expression, warm eyes depicted with carefully polished and carved stones.

"And at the end we have my wife, son, and granddaughter," her host said.

Did elves not keep their family about? "I'd like to see them in person to compare with these likenesses," Wistala finally said. "Will I meet them?"

"An impossibility with Nyesta and Eyen, my wife and son. They are dead."

His wife had a softness to her features, done in colored sand and painted shell. "I hope she had a peaceful passing," Wistala said.

"Age and infirmity took her too soon, as it does all humans. But we had many years of comfort together. I met her when she passed through with Old Nightingale's Circus, now under Ragwrist—though, like everything else these days, much reduced in scope and splendor. She left me comfort in my son, transitory though it was; he had something of his mother's temperament and my father's courage."

She looked at his portrait. Some manner of sash was woven about the harness that held his sword. His eyes challenged, as if daring the portraiteer to capture him.

All that served to remember his granddaughter was a sketch. A simple charcoal depicted her; Rainfall apologized that he had no skill with formal portraiture. The girl-child had overlarge eyes compared with the others, but perhaps hominid youth accounted for that, for if the sketch was life-size, she was a good deal younger when drawn than the others. The elf blood came through strong in her cheek-bones and delicate ears.

"She still lives?" Wistala asked. Curiosity about her host made her stop in front of the drawing.

"Yes, but Lada's been away from me these eight years."

"With her mother?"

"We never knew her mother. Or I should say, I never knew her. Some sport of her father in one of the taverns of Quarryness or Sack Harbor, I expect. She arrived on my doorstep as an infant, bearing a note my son burned rather than show to me. She was my comfort after her father's death. Since—since—please excuse me."

Rainfall turned his face to the wall, and after a last look at the charcoal portrait, Wistala crept out of the room.

As the leaves turned color and dropped, Wistala explored the broken houses at the base of the two hills, pulling nails and hinges from the ruins to satisfy her hunger for metal. She'd come terribly close to stealing a small silver candleholder from a side table on one of her passes through the house and decided to hunt metal on her own.

When she returned, all her claws counted thrice worth of horses were standing in the field beyond the barn under the care of two boys who occupied themselves by throwing rotten apples at each other from opposite sides of a stone wall that held the saddles.

She circled the house to get downwind of it and found a yew tree to climb, where she spent an uncomfortable night. The riders left in haste the next morning—she saw only the backs of cloaks and a few gamboling dogs of the ordinary sort, not the huge savage brutes she'd pulled over the ledge.

Somewhat stiffly she climbed down from the tree to hear Rainfall calling:

"Tala Tala Comeoutfree! They're gone, and it is safe."

He hurried to meet her as soon as she extended her neck above the bushes.

"More of the thane's men?" she asked.

"Better and yet worse, at least for you. It was the Dragonblade and a party of hunters."

Breath and death, the Dragonblade! Wistala couldn't help but crouch at the name.

"He said a young dragon had escaped him, blamed the miss over the loss of his beloved pack in the summer. He has to go back to training pups for a while."

"You fed him and his horses, then?"

"What could I do? He carries a Hypatian Knight-Seal. I'm old fashioned enough to bow to any who carries it, even if he hunts a friend. Though I felt no need to disclose your presence, especially as his line of questioning allowed me to keep my honor and your friendship."

"What do you mean?"

"The description he gave was laughable. He got your size right, but had the color wrong—lots of talk of wolves' hides and such. I could honestly say I'd not seen anything like that about the road."

"Why the road?" she wondered. Of course, they first came upon my scent on the same road near Tumbledown.

"I gave his dogs as vast a meal as I could manage so they'd sleep rather than sniff around the barn. Same with the men. I fear our dinner tonight will be their leavings, little though there are."

Wistala was grateful for a moment that she hadn't been hidden in the barn or somewhere closer. There would be danger, yes, but temptation. Men were vulnerable when they took off their armor to sleep. She'd learned the knack of walking silently through the home without letting her claws touch the flooring to save Rainfall's woodwork.

"Have they gone for good, or will they be back?"

"They're hurrying south. They believe you to be heading in that direction, but on what evidence, I can't imagine."

"I may have left southbound marks crossing it from the old hovels beneath the twin hills."

"Or perhaps the Dragonblade makes guesses to impress his men. A right guess is long remembered, and there's always an excuse for a wrong one."

Wistala spent another cold night in the yew tree that evening, just in case the Dragonblade doubled back.

Rainfall had her observe him carrying out his duties on the road, more as a mental diversion for her than anything else. For two active weeks as the temperature dropped, he and a dozen men went along the road, filling in holes; then they applied pitch to the timbers of the bridge to proof them against ice and snow. This part of the north saw frequent freezes and thaws and snow, thanks to the air currents of the Inland Ocean a few horizons to the west. Even once the labor was done, he bargained with the men a little extra to dig up vegetables and bring in hay and slaughter and salt some goats.

Payment was a problem, for Rainfall had little money. He gave away odds and ends from the vast house in return for their work, anything from candlesticks to cooking skillets. Wistala understood now why the place seemed so bare, save for his high room of books and basement of wine.

Then they settled in for the winter.

Wistala had been installed in what had once been what Rainfall called a "health-room," a wooden enclosure of fragrant cedar wood, where stones heated in the furnace would be brought so that water might be dripped on them. It had a gutter in the center that made for easy cleaning, and she was happy to find hatchling scales on the floor each morning, with new ones coming in fast and thick owing to a supply of tarnished brass plates and drinking vessels she smelled out buried in the dirt floor of one of the abandoned houses.

Wistala asked about hominid commerce one night over dinner, and Rainfall did his best to explain it. "A dwarf would make it simple, I'm sure. I've not much of a head for additions and subtractions and excises and taxes."

The last in the list seemed to be his chief worry. As she understood it, twice a year he owed his thane an amount of money that had been set at a time when the estate was prosperous, and though Mossbell had the misfortune of having a troll appear and pillage the lands, he was still expected to produce the same sum. No amount of pleading with the thane could alter it.

"What do you get in return for these taxes?" Wistala asked.

"The thane's protection."

"But not from trolls."

Rainfall poured himself a little more wine. "He has posted a reward, in the form of a small sum and relief from all taxes and excises for five years. But few are willing to take the challenge. What happened to Eyen is still fresh in many minds."

"Your son tried to kill the troll?"

"His death is my fault. The bundle containing Lada had just arrived, and I'd engaged a wet nurse. He and I argued about his scattering bastards around the thanedom. Elf blood passes down an alliance of aspect and tongue that human females find pleasing, and he took advantage of manner and countenance. I … I challenged him to perform some useful duty. I meant that he seek gainful employment to defer the cost of his daughter, but he rode out on Avalanche, the last of his grandsire's line of mighty warhorses, to solve all our difficulties on the point of his lance." Rainfall struck the table with his elbows so hard, the plates and goblets jumped. Then he concealed his face with his long-fingered hands.

Wistala stood still, never having seen a violent move from her host before.

"I beg your pardon," he said when he collected himself. "You've finished your salmon already. Would you care to dispose of mine? Having a drakka about so simplifies the clearing up."

Wistala learned the cloudsign for snow, sleet, and rain that winter—what weather Mossbell saw depended on the direction of the wind. It blew mostly from the west, and if it veered farther south for a while, it grew warmer, but when it came out of the north, it became bitterly cold and made her alternately ravenous and torpid.

Father had hunted in this winter wind a year ago to feed his hatchlings?

Being indoors frustrated her, and on the first sunny day after the sun turned south again, she set out to walk the grounds of Mossbell.

It wasn't an accident that she walked west, crossed the road, and plunged into the broken forests covering old grazing land. The ground was still snow-covered where the afternoon sun couldn't reach, and what wasn't snowy was wet. She found sign for wild pigs and roaming goats.

Finding troll tracks took a little time.

She found several troll-traps easily enough. It took a good deal of ear, nose, and eye-work to establish what they were. The troll would dig holes in the ground, perhaps her full body-length deep, and then cover them with a lattice of slight branches and growth, with fragrant berries in the center. It lined the bottom with flat rocks chipped and broken in the hope that a sheep or pig would blunder in and injure or trap itself.

She found bones at the bottom of one.

Then she cut across its tracks. The troll had huge three-toed feet, though the toes didn't point in the same direction as they did with elves and dragons. Something like the mark of a horse hoof stood in the center, with the digits stretching out not quite in opposite directions, like widely spread bird toes. Here and there, similar, smaller versions of the tracks could be seen that she guessed were its hands.

She found a heap of droppings close to the river-cliff edge. They were like a rotten melon filled with little white worms left on a hillock. Her nostrils closed in disgust.

The ground here had a trodden-on look like a cattle wade, with a profusion of tracks and divots, and grubby prints on the rocks at the edge of the cliff.

Wistala couldn't see her host's bridge from this part of the river, and the twin hills near his estate were just bluish lumps. The river canyon stood so wide here that objects on the far side couldn't be distinguished from each other.

White birds crisscrossed the river, looking for food. Another variety, gray with yellow beaks, poked around the rocks at the base of the cliff under all the marks.

Wistala craned her neck out as far as she dared, digging her tail into the crevice between two sturdy rocks like one of Rainfall's fishhooks buried in a trout's jaw.

A cave marred the fluted sides of the canyon wall, closer to the top edge than the base.

She could imagine what the birds at the base of the cliff were feeding on.

Instincts older than she took over as she evaluated the troll's home. Fresh water would never be a problem. Enemies couldn't reach it without a good deal of difficulty, it would take a huge climbing pole or ladder to reach the cave mouth from the river, and anything that walked on two feet would risk its neck climbing down from above. A dragon might like it even better: you could fly in through the river canyon at night, skimming the surface, and escape observation. She imagined there was usually food of one sort or another to be had near a big body of water as the Inland Ocean, just a horizon downriver.

Wistala examined the cliff until she found a ledge thick with mosses and ferns, downwind from the cave. She wanted to get a look at this troll. She climbed down and settled between the branches. It was cool, with the wind whipping up the river valley, but she'd spend nights in worse spots.

Tired but not exhausted from her trip into the troll's lands, she tried not to sleep, but rather to rest with one eye upon the cave from a perch upriver. Softened by her regular meals at Mossbell, she regretted her missed dinner as the moon rose.

She heard the troll breathing before she saw it. A snerk-snerk-snerk sounded from the cave, startling her into full awareness.

A face emerged in profile from the cave, if it could be called a face. A fleshy orb at the end of a long snakelike body no thicker than Wistala's tail emerged and waved around. Whether the head smelled, heard, or saw the approaches to the cave mouth, Wistala could not say.

Wistala was just congratulating herself on not being afraid of the wormlike body when two giant limbs unfolded themselves from the cave mouth, gripping the rocks above with three-toed hands. They pulled out a stumpy body split by a wide mouth that reminded her of a frog, especially since its skin seemed wet with some kind of oily extrude. At the tail end, a pair of smaller, but still spindly, limbs steadied the body as long forelimbs did the work of climbing.

Wistala realized she'd been mistaken in her analysis of the tracks. The troll was almost all forelimbs—thick near the body and digits but bone-thin through the long middle part and joint. Its hind legs ended in the smaller graspers she'd mistaken for hands.

The troll's body seemed featureless save for warts establishing a striped pattern back from the edges of its wide mouth. A snorting sound came from the troll. It shifted and stiffened, opened the huge mouth, and spat out a mass about the size of a large pumpkin. It splattered on the rocks below, and Wistala recognized the foul smell of troll waste even at that distance.

Wistala watched in wonder as the long arms folded against the stars; then it sent its snakelike sensing-and-breathing (she assumed) organ over the edge of the cliff to examine the ground. The snerksnerk-snerk sounded again, and it reached up with those tree-length arms and pulled itself up and over the ledge. As it breathed, its body expanded and contracted at the pale belly.

Then it was gone.

She argued with herself over exploring the troll's cave. For all she knew, it was full of hungry young trollings or a she-troll, if such even existed. Then there was the danger of the troll coming back and squashing her the way she might burst a tick under her sii.

In the end, caution won. She trembled at the thought of an encounter with the thing. Her nerve wasn't what it was when she explored the ruins of Tumbledown or outwitted bears with Auron. She crept back in the direction of Mossbell.

Rainfall's eyes went agog: "Poison a troll? You might as well poison a stone," Rainfall said. "They thrive on a month's-rotten corpse."

Wistala looked across the wide book table at him. Most of his library shelves held nothing but cobwebs, but a few volumes remained behind glass, and it seemed natural history was a favorite subject of his. If they could somehow get the troll to eat of a poisonous plant—

"He's temporary," Rainfall said. "The troll's ruining the estate, but he won't live forever. Mossbell was standing before he came; it'll still stand after he dies."

Gentle was a fine quality, but this, this, passivity vexed her. "It's not a storm. There's got to be some way to rid a land of a troll."

"Yes. Starve it. But the wild pigs and goats have moved west of the road, and even if we hunted them down to the last piglet, the troll would just feed from the riverbottom. Or worse, come after my goats or Avalanche."

"Apply to your thane—"

Rainfall grew so agitated that he interrupted her. "Tried and tried again."

Wistala hated even to mention her final idea. "This Dragonblade fellow. If he's able to kill dragons, I'm sure he could handle a troll."

"An excellent idea, but I've no money to hire him. The only thing I have of value is the title to Mossbell. The Dragonblade can't expect to profit from the small reward. And then a troll's skin and bones yield little compared with—I beg your pardon."

Yes, the odds and ends of a dead dragon bring a great deal of money. Neither here nor there.

"You must have some weapons. Arm your crew that helps you maintain the roads."

"What are we to do, snare it with the crane? Shovel gravel at it? While it's been long since I've engaged in an argument, I'd wish we could engage over the merits of Swanfellow's songs, or Alfwheat's dramas. The troll! The troll! As if he doesn't hang over this estate like a cloud, you have to bring the gloom into my library."

Spring came.

Wistala feasted on the sun each day as she would on a slaughtered sheep. A wooded copse stood at the base of one of the twin hills, and there was an old half-blown-over walnut still fighting for life, judging from the buds upon the upper branches. Wistala liked to nap on the incline or watch the clouds go by, idly taking up bark beetles with her tongue as they explored the rotting underside of the walnut.

Sometimes she ventured up the easterly of the twin hills and watched the road that ran between, crossing a stream at two short stout bridges. There was little traffic, and as far as she could tell, her host derived no benefit from it. Carts, wagons, and passengers on foot hurried through Rainfall's lands as though the ground were accursed—which it was, in a sense.

Traffic on the road went so far as to time their travel through Rainfall's land. If headed north, the proper hour to step on the bridge seemed to be about two hours after sunrise. If heading south, one wanted to be on the road between the twin hills at about the same time. Each side would take some rest and water their animals at the walls and gates of Mossbell as the sun reached its zenith, but they'd admire its curious lines only from a distance as they ate preserved food out of bags and jars.

As far as Wistala could tell, Rainfall had all the duties of keeping a road open and drew none of the benefits. She explored just outside his lands along the road in the morning light and near dark and saw marketplaces and inns to either end of his lands, but thanks to the troll, no one dared set up so much as an applecart near the bridge.

Of course, need or ignorance or foolishness sometimes had messengers riding across the bridge at night. Rainfall showed her the effects of some combination of the three one morning—a pair of neatly bitten-off horse hooves and a dropped hat lying on the road with the stain and smell of blood on the gravel.

"Probably some young buck from Newcrossing trying to see his girl in Glenn Eoiye," Rainfall said, picking up the hat. "That's a new red feather in his hat, quill cut to write her love notes or a Letter of Intent. In a year, it'll be a sad song, and in ten, they'll have new names in the old tune."

His Elvish fell effortlessly onto her ear with six months of practice. She responded easily: "I don't suppose a company will be formed to kill the troll and avenge him."

"Thane Hammar isn't that energetic. Let's see if we can learn more of the sad tale."

They followed the tracks back to the bridge, and Rainfall gaped at what he saw. One whole side of the bridge's superstructure had been torn away from the wooden repair in the center.

"Oh! I'd have an earthquake come if it would just seal that wretched troll in his cave. This is a month's labor. I'll have to hire timberers and see about chain and staples."

Wistala checked the road for traffic before she ventured out onto the bridge. She crossed the arches, the high-running river filling both banks below, to closer inspect the damage.

"A rider comes," Rainfall said, but Wistala already heard the hoofbeats and scuttled over the edge of the bridge on the downwind side. There was the briefest of ledges there so men might anchor themselves and inspect the stones at the bottom, and she could easily grip it with sii and saa.

She heard Rainfall call a greeting and recognized the Hypatian tongue used by men in these parts. The rider trotted on without reply. Wistala waited some moments as the elves reckoned time before climbing back up and employing her nostrils.

"Not so much as a wave of his hand," Rainfall said. "And he wore the garb of a high tradesman. A man with an eye toward commerce is usually better mannered."

"I found something under the bridge," Wistala said. "I think it tells the tale of the young man with the red feather. The troll lurked under the bridge for some time, and had been there much before. Smears of droppings are all along the pilings."

"It's been a hard winter. Maybe it had trouble finding enough pigs and goats for its appetite. Ah well, the waterfowl return, and it'll get its fill of them. I must get the bridge repaired. A bad storm now could blow the wooden span to bits."

Birds and words! Wistala thought, with her tail as stiff as an icicle. He's got the advantage of the troll, and he doesn't even consider how to use it.

Wistala watched the labor for the next few days, from the felling of two great trees for lumber to the sawing, the ironmongery both in the barn and at the bridge, and then placing the new beams with the crane. The last fascinated her, and Rainfall attempted to explain it over dinner with a great deal of talk about fulcrum points and levers and counterweights and blocks, but as soon as she learned one working of the crane, it seemed to force the previous one out of her head.

It wasn't until she watched it at work the next day that some of his discourse made sense. After the workmen had gone—few dared labor long past noon, as they had to travel home on foot, save for a blacksmith or two who lodged with Rainfall at Mossbell—she stayed up and asked a few more questions about the crane.

"Ah, you're getting it. You've no mind for theory, but when you see it in practice, you learn like lightning. I've noticed that with your Elvish, as well. Just when I thought you'd never get the hang of the extrafamilial oratory, you—"

"Bother oratory forms for now," Wistala said. "The crane looks like it can go to a great height, above most treetops. Could it lift a tree upright?"

"Easily. Vertical, horizontal. Vertical is actually easier to maneuver; you don't have to have stabilizing cables, as the shape of the tree works for you."

"I've got an idea for your crane. But it would have to happen soon. And I expect you'd have to get a group of men willing to brave a shot at the troll."

"Whatever can you mean, Wistala?"

"Get a piece of paper. You shall draw as I speak."

Four nights later, with the bridge still unfinished in its repairs, so excited was Rainfall by her idea, Wistala walked Avalanche back and forth across the bridge.

Nerve, Wistala, where is your dragon courage? A drakka should be firebellied on the night of such a hunt, such a challenge.

The crane stood at the north end, hidden in the trees by the hard climb of stairs leading up the side of the cliff. It held a long, thin, straight pine, shorn of many but not all of its limbs. The wider bottom end had been sharpened, and ax-heads, saw edges, spear-points, and knife-blades stuck out from the bottom in a ring, like porcupine quills, though all had been blackened by soot so as not to catch the light. If it weren't for the intermittent drizzle, she'd be able to see Rainfall atop the crane. But she wanted bad weather for this job to help mask sounds and smells.

Avalanche wore a thick blanket of quilted leather folded and tied across his back and neck, and grumbled a good deal about being out in the wet and not being near the mares of some of the men—only a handful had been willing to take up with Rainfall, mostly friends and relatives of the snatched young man. Not that Wistala had met any of them; her role in all this would hopefully remain secret.

Wistala walked again to the south side of the river, and thought she saw a bulge in the river, but it was hard to tell. She pulled on Avalanche's reins—

"Careful!" Avalanche objected.

—and walked him to the side.

Yes. A dripping arm clung to the side of one of the stone arches. It moved, pulling up a sodden shape.

Her hearts pounded.

Father always said this was the worst moment. The moment before action was inevitable, that there would be no further delay, and from the next beat of your wings you were committed. The moment of choice.

She stood frozen. So big. It will be fast if it can run.

If she could commit herself with words first, maybe the rest would come easier: "It's time, Avalanche."

There. I've said it.

"Now for battle?" His tail flicked up, a white battle banner.

"Now for battle. All you have to do is run from the troll."

"Brave Master Eyen rode battle. Troll came. Brave Master Eyen fell. I ran then." His ears drooped a little, but maybe it was because of the wet.

"This time I want you to run," she said, jumping as lightly as she could onto Avalanche's broad back. Even with her scales, she couldn't weigh as much as a young elf warrior arrayed for battle. "The best thing you can do is run. Faster you're out of its sight, the better. Now walk on."

Avalanche walked, but she could feel him holding himself back at every step. According to Rainfall, the stallion had spent his colt-hood and youth in training, learning to run at other horses and enemies, and the old instincts were coming back with action in the air, though there were wiry gray hairs mixed in with his softer ones on his mane and tail these days.

Wistala was grateful to ride Avalanche. She wasn't certain her feet would be as sure as the stallion's, walking along a bridge toward the spot—just across from the repaired timbers—where she knew the troll lurked.

But she was committed. Avalanche would walk her into peril whether her feet were willing to go or not. She felt her griff extending and contracting nervously, she tried to hold them tight against her neck hearts to stop the rattle.

They clomped across the wooden timbers, a dragon-length expanse covering the fallen arch. She felt certain her hearts were on the verge of quitting.

The snake-head orb at the end of its tendril lay on the side of the bridge, motionless, looking like a forgotten drinking gourd left by some traveler. Though she could smell the troll now, as could Avalanche. But he moved on, stepping faster if at all, with sure-footed courage.

Wistala's claws set themselves into the leather quilting.

She heard the troll shift weight.

"Now, Avalanche!" she squeaked, in Drakine, but she slapped his muscular rump with her tail.

Avalanche let out a cry and leaped forward onto the stonework, hooves slipping just a little in the wet. Wistala hung on for all she was worth, but far better than the excitement of the run was the absence of fear.

The troll's dreadfully huge three-digit hand just brushed Avalanche's tail as it came down, and she felt no fear. The body, all gaping mouth and terrible stench, heaved itself onto the bridge behind them, and she only looked with amazement at the length of its forelimbs illustrated against the familiar width of the bridge.

She urged Avalanche on with another tail-slap.

The troll began to run after them. It used its long front legs and short back limbs in pairs long-then-short, long-then-short, in a strange unbalanced sort of run that made her think of a goose taking flight across a still lake, with wings beating strong and feet frantically working.

Avalanche was almost at the far end of the bridge when Wistala jumped off, giving him a last flick of her tail. She skidded to a stop on the wet bridge stones.

The troll came, Wistala thought its gait ungainly compared with that of a horse—even a dragon-dash was a thing of beauty compared with the troll's careen.

She jumped to the east rail of the bridge, where her rope was tied. This wasn't part of her original plan, but an addition of Rainfall's, who didn't like the idea of her belly-flopping into the river, even with the banks in spring flood.

Now to attract a troll!

She stood on her hind legs and extended her neck as far as she could. Her griff bristled, and she rattled them against her scales for all they were worth.

Tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-TCHK!

Her ears rang with the sound. The troll pulled up, confused by the sound, its waving orb-topped tentacle turning her way, backside expanding and contracting as it breathed.

Avalanche disappeared into the distant rain.

The troll set its arms and legs, ready for anything, battle or flight.

"Here's a mouthful for you!" she shouted. She gripped the leather wrap on the line and dropped over the edge.

She felt the heat of her passage even through the protective grip—again, no fear in her hearts but the odd words friction heat crossing her mind, even with the troll gaping over as she dropped away.

It reached for her and missed, but caught up the line. By the time its slow brain made the connection and it began to draw up the line, Wistala was almost at the river.

She dropped into the water.

A hominid wouldn't have been able to make it to the cut stairs, but drakka were strong swimmers; they could clasp their limbs to their side and put their whole body into the effort, sucking air through the nostrils. Wistala was bothered by the cold more than by the current—it brought back awful half-memories that took the courage out of her.

She reached the landing and pulled herself up, weary as though from a long dragon-dash.

The troll marked her movement, and it reached out with one long arm for the stairs and swung itself down.

"That's right," Wistala croaked, a puny vocalization that didn't even disturb a stalking bird three rocks away. She drew breath and roared her best battle cry.

The orb turned down on her, and the troll hurried its climb. When the troll filled the view between her landing and the suspended pine trunk above, she called on her flame.

She didn't aim her sole effectual weapon at the troll. She loosed it out, as far out into the river as she could. It struck the water and formed a pool there, floating downstream with the current.

She could never be sure what happened next, save that Rainfall saw her orange-red signal and cut the tree trunk free.

Perhaps it was the number of camouflaging branches left on the trunk that made a sound. Perhaps the tightly stretched cable's parting at Rainfall's ax-blow—it made a crack like a nearby lightning strike according to her host, who was in a position to know. Or perhaps the troll's sense-orb could see in all directions, rather than only one—no one had ever lived long enough in the company of a troll to conduct any studies.

Wistala's brain had no time for perhapses—as soon as she gave the signal, she jumped into the river.

The troll shifted as the tree-trunk fell. Rather than hitting it squarely, the projectile opened a gash in its side. This just enraged the troll rather than skewering it. Luckily for Wistala, it took its temper out on the tree, which had lodged itself in the shallow water of the riverbank. The troll picked it up and cracked it against the cliff side, again and again until only a shard remained in its grip.

Only then did it notice the arrows and spears from above.

Brave or foolish, Rainfall's gang flung spears and fired hunting arrows down at the troll as Wistala made it to the first pillar of the bridge. She saw a spear lodge in the troll's back. The sense-stalk stood straight up, and it began to climb.

The next thing Wistala knew, she was climbing. Using the deep crevices between the joined stones, a skilled man could make the long climb, but it would take him ten times the effort it took Wistala, with her four shorter limbs and thick muscles. She crawled up the bridge's support like an ant hurrying up a grass stalk, her pace not greatly reduced from what she could achieve on flat ground.

But she was only halfway up when the troll reached the men.

One, a lumberman, judging by his broad leather girdle, tried his axe on the troll's hand as it came to the cliff top. She heard the sharp thwack of the blade as it bit into the troll's fountain-size hand even from her distance. The troll's other hand came up and struck the lumberman such a blow, he exploded into pieces.

She passed over the bridge-rail to find the troll standing on the cliff top, searching the tree line for the fleeing men. It flushed a man and ran him down on the road, where it smashed and then swallowed him. A group of horses fled screaming from the woods, one or two pulling men along.

Wistala wasn't sure what she could do, but she hurried toward the north end of the bridge anyway. She had one good gout of flame left in her fire bladder, if not two; she'd eaten heartily for months, and there was still an angry liquid ball inside her, waiting to get out.

She'd diverted the troll before; perhaps she could again, long enough for it to lose track of the men… .

A white flash on the road ahead. Wistala, gulping air as she ran, recognized the shape.

Avalanche!

The stallion—with blood in the air, even on a rainy night, and the frightened calls of mares behind him—had given in to instinct and stood his ground, eagerly pawing at the road.

The troll rounded on the stallion.

"Come on! Beast!" Avalanche neighed. Then he screamed and reared up, front hooves cutting the air before him. "Try to take of mine. I'll kick your teeth out!"

Wistala dragon-dashed, her vision red with lost breath. The troll's air sacs bulged from its behind; she could see flaps of raised skin like a pinecone opening and shutting as it tried to catch its breath—or was it damaged in some way? No matter—she homed in on the deep whooshing sound.

Then the troll lunged forward, its gait even stranger because of cradling its wounded hand… .

The troll reared up and reached for the horse as Avalanche charged. But the stallion danced sideways, and lashed out with a hind leg, kicking one of the thin forearms. Avalanche reared up and struck the troll in the mouth-without-a-face that constituted the front of its body.

The troll backed up and lifted itself.

The sense-orb hung over all like a watchful bird. As the troll's mouth dropped open, seemingly with the idea of swallowing Avalanche whole, Wistala slid to a stop and spat her fire, as though trying to get an extra few tail-lengths of distance into it by letting momentum carry the contents of her fire bladder up her throat, accelerated by ring after ring of throat muscles.

The sense-orb whipped around, and Wistala caught one glimpse of a wide-open eye? nostril? ear? in the center of a wormy fringe—

The fire struck the troll in its breathing sac.

It spun, tucking its hindquarters and covering the breathing spicules with its rear legs. An elbow knocked Avalanche aside, and the stallion crashed down, as though tripped. The troll jumped awkwardly away like a spastic frog, stomping on Avalanche in its flight, beating at its hindquarters with its rear feet where Wistala's flame clung and dripped and burned.

It made for the river, by plan or blind flight of instinctive pain. The troll hurled itself into the trees along the roadway and fell in ruin, its limbs no longer capable of supporting the mouth-body. The sense-orb looked this way and that at the twitching limbs before it, too, collapsed.

Wistala couldn't stand and gape—she hurried to Avalanche.

Avalanche fought for breath, his tongue extended and bloody foam on his lips and the roadway. At her approach, the stallion raised his head a little.

"Beast?"

She realized it wasn't an epithet, but a query. "It's dead. You killed it."

"Kicked its head in. Warned it."

"Yes, you did. I heard."

The head fell back to the ground. "The mares. Hear them?"

Wistala couldn't hear anything but the soft rainfall.

Avalanche let out a friendly nicker, sightless eyes rolling this way and that. Then his struggling body ceased to move, and the horribly lolling tongue went still.

Wistala flung herself across her old stablemate, determined to fight off wild pigs, crows, bears, and set Bartleghaff himself ablaze if any but Rainfall came to claim the body.

Rainfall took her to a quiet corner of the estate, a long-sloped hill overlooking the river gorge. It was a scenic spot, but too rocky to be of much use.

Trees thrived there. Well spaced, with thickets of wildflowers all around, bursting with the blues and yellows of spring.

With them was a windburned lumberman named Jessup driving a team of timber-horses pulling a haywain bearing Avalanche. He had been introduced to her as the younger brother of Lessup, the brave lumberman who'd taken his ax to the troll's hand.

Jessup also served as a foreman on his bridge crew and had seen the whole fight from a hiding spot in a muddy ditch beside the road. He was a man of trim beard with the close-cropped head hair married humans in this part of the land wore, and liked to whistle through his teeth, though he didn't do so today out of respect for their duty.

"This is his spot," Rainfall said.

Wistala stood up a bit from the wain. The trees crowned the hill in a half-circle, and within the arms stood a pile of quarried rock, placed so as to make a wide pair of stairs in mirror image facing each other.

"This is the cairn of my son. He loved Avalanche, and Avalanche loved him. It's only right that Avalanche rest at his feet."

Jessup said something to Rainfall. One of the words might have been rocks.

"We should get to work," Rainfall said. A month ago, Wistala would have been happy to dispose of the horseflesh in the most efficient and belly-filling manner possible, but her omnipresent appetite vanished when she looked at the dead horse.

The humans had gathered to do service to their own killed at sunset. Wistala had seen it only from a distance—torches flamed at the spots of their deaths and some kind of priest had passed out powders that the families threw into the torch flame. Puffs of colorful smoke came up, and they marked their faces with fallen ash. Rainfall walked among them, embracing many, but took no other part in the ceremony.

They'd burned the troll's body.

All that was left was Avalanche. Rainfall showed Wistala where to dig, and she began to work.

Wistala enjoyed the labor. It felt good to score up soil under one's claws, pull up rocks, tear through thin tree roots. Her body had recovered from the encounter with the Dragonblade's dogs; even if her spirit was happy at Mossbell, her body craved effort.

She smelled metals under the cairn rocks nearby, and rust bleeding into the soil, a fact she tried to take little notice of. Imagine Rainfall's reaction to her prying up the cairn-stones of his son and gobbling down a few buckles and buttons! But civilization requires ignoring one's instincts, as Rainfall liked to tell her in their fireside chats.

Perverse to have such thoughts about a man who'd saved her life.

Earth … rock … rock … more earth. She smelled a mole and extracted it with her tongue.

Rainfall maneuvered the wain so they could roll Avalanche out from the uphill side. He was a wonder with the horses, who didn't like her smell one bit and shifted nervously whenever Rainfall didn't stand at their noses to calm them. Once the wagon was in place, Rainfall led the horses into the trees so they could rest and eat with dragon out of scent, out of mind.

Jessup helped by widening the channels she dug. Eventually they had a shallow grave and a pile of earth and rock to go atop it.

Wistala rested after they pushed Avalanche out of the wagon. Rainfall and Jessup placed earth and rocks over him.

With that done, Jessup ate and drank from a meal he'd packed in a bag. Rainfall led Wistala up to the crest of the hill and the ring of trees. The canyon wind took up his willow-leaf-like hair, and he tied it together with a bit of red-colored silk.

"How do you like this spot, Wistala?"

She looked across the gorge. A series of small waterfalls ran down the opposite side, though the wind caught much of the spray and turned it into a white mist.

"There must be good fishing under those falls. Look at the birds."

"We're going to have to work on aesthetic appreciation this summer. You're all gastronomy, my child.

"I've ancestors in this ring of trees," he continued. "One day I'll come up here and never return, and learn stories older than any book from my fellow trees."

Wistala didn't understand much of elvish mysticism. Whether they actually became trees or simply lay down at the foot of one and waited to die depended on whose story you listened to.

"Who'll take care of the bridge?"

"There's more to it than just the bridge," Rainfall said. "The whole Hypatian Order is breaking up. Of course, Starfall, the poet-philosopher, tells us all things must pass, even the mountains and oceans, in time. But I love the Hypatian Civilization: the laws I once upheld, the high and low priestdoms, the ceremonies and the titles that brought out the best in us and held the worst at bay.

"Take the thane. Hammar keeps the Hypatian Law, but twists its intent so that he can live in the manner of a Varvar Despot or an Overking of the Ghioz Golden Circle. Half the people of this land are indentured to him, thanks to civil debts—slaves in all but title, myself included."

Wistala was pretty sure a badger had made a home at the hilltop somewhere. And there were birds' nests to raid in the cliff side—

"Can't you petition elsewhere about him?" she asked, realizing Rainfall was waiting for a question or comment.

"That's been tried."

"You can't be the only dissatisfied one. Go burn his house down."

"I'm no firebrand. A new, worse thane would rise from the ashes, perhaps one who wouldn't even make a pretense of adhering to Hypatian Justice. Besides, my Lada is in that very hall."

"Your granddaughter?"

"Yes. He took her as a ward when she was a child. I've been in default on my taxes for some years, you understand, and that gives the thane certain powers. He was able to seize her as thanedroit, thanks to his corruption of the high judge and high priest. Thanedroit! Again, a polite name for a terrible usurpation. She's a hostage to my debts. If I die or quit the estate she inherits, and as she's untitled and of questionable parentage besides, Mossbell would revert to Hypatia—meaning Hammar would get Mossbell."

Wistala's head hurt from trying to see through the hedge of words, but she could see the pain in Rainfall's eyes.

"You should have quit it while the troll still lived," Wistala said. "Let the thane inherit troll-blighted lands."

"Oh, he would have rid himself of the troll quick enough if—" Rainfall stopped, looked anew at Wistala. "You don't think—Oh, the infamy! Black infamy!"

Rainfall was silent and bitter all the ride back to Mossbell. She stretched out in the back of the wain. Jessup kept looking at Wistala in a sidelong manner.

Wistala, more to break Rainfall from his mood than because the human annoyed her, asked her host to inquire after the purpose of Jessup's stares.

After some words, Rainfall handed the horse reins to Jessup and turned around. "He didn't know it bothered you. He said you're beautiful, and he was trying to memorize your proportions."

"Beautiful?" She was her same thick-bodied self, with nothing like Jizara's elegant neck and tail.

"Interested in aesthetics now?" Rainfall asked.

"Has he been in your awful bramble-wines?"

"I agree. I told him he should wait some years, when you have wings. Then he'd behold one of the most perfect creatures in creation. The running horse, the flying frigate bird, the peacock, the fabled Tigers of Ghioz—none of them compare to a dragon with wings held high."

A messenger waited under the somber figures of the silent fountain turnaround of Mossbell, a down-cheeked boy with a sweated mount. At Rainfall's order, Jessup kept the wain at a discreet distance so as not to alarm the horse.

Rainfall jumped lightly down from his seat and welcomed the messenger. After inspecting the seal, he read the contents. He stared at the boy, then hurried into the house, where he remained for only a few moments before he returned the paper to the messenger, resealed, along with a silver coin.

Wistala suspected some sort of crisis; Rainfall had very little coin in his hall, unless he kept a secret noseproofed supply.

Rainfall invited Jessup to stay for dinner, but the timberman had to get back to his family and his brother's widow and children.

As soon as they sat alone, waiting for his bread to cook and drop off the clay-sided oven as a joint sputtered inside, she asked about the message.

"Another of the thane's humiliations, under a masquerade of civility," Rainfall said. "He summons me, ta-hum ta-hally to his hall, so that I might fully tell the story of the death of the troll and claim my reward. Of course, it'll go toward back taxes. The accounting will be announced to all present."

Wistala turned the handle of the spit, rotating the joint. The turn brought a fresh fall of juices into the gravy pan and mouthwatering smells. "Refuse him."

"I cannot. There'll be many a jape about elves not being able to keep two pennies proximate."

"Let them talk. No one ever lost an eye to a joke."

"I'll have to beg some part of the reward that should rightfully go to my crew. Imagine: pleading so that the widows and orphans might see some monies, and the men be rewarded for their courage, when the thane should be bowing to each and opening his purse wide to the survivors!"

"I thought being rid of the troll would solve your problems."

"It will take time to assemble decent tenants for the land, and they'll need roof and stock. I shall have to go beg of the dwarves.

The Wheel of Fire will give me more upfront, but at ruinous rates. The Dwarves of the Diadem are fairer, but only lend a small sum at a time."

"Wheel of Fire?" Wistala asked.

"Your eyes have gone all hot and tight, Wistala. Have you had dealings with them? Oh—the joint burns! Quick, get it out."

They extracted the haunch of mutton and took the baking tubers from their metal case. When dinner was laid out—Wistala had learned to eat neatly from the table, but she still had to lift her head to let the food slide down her throat, a gesture that always made Rainfall shake his head—they continued the conversation in what had been the food-servers' nook, a smaller room off the big, dark, and drafty dining hall, warmed by the heat of the oven.

Rainfall moved on to happier subjects, mostly the chance of seeing his granddaughter at Hammar's hall, and Wistala put the dwarves out of her mind. The mention awoke dark thoughts and set her griff twitching. She'd promised her father to forget the past and live for another generation of dragons.

Wistala kept herself deep inside Mossbell House all while Rainfall visited the thane. Visitors were traipsing across the grounds to see where the troll had fallen.

Rainfall returned in the company of a small ill-favored horse. Its shaggy coat and hooves were thick with layers of dirt. He put it in the stall opposite what had been Avalanche's, and when Wistala made sure there was no one around, she approached Rainfall.

"How passed the audience?"

"As predicted. I bowed and begged. He gave me half the reward to distribute to the men, then sent a low priest along to see the money distributed. As though my word wasn't enough."

Rainfall brightened. "However, he is keeping his pledge as to taxation. I shall have five years breathing space to turn Mossbell around, thanks to you."

Wistala bowed; elves took great pleasure in the giving and receiving of bows.

"The only cloud was that he refused me a visit with my granddaughter. She's living in a room in the fast tower. I should have gone out and shouted for her, but he pulls up the bridge at night."

Wistala saw an opportunity, and questioned him about this curious feature. She learned much about the thane's hall, from its almost windowless first level to the small herb garden on the roof. The thane's hall sounded impressive and extensive.

"Galahall should be fine, for the excises and land tax," Rainfall said.

That night she made friends with the horse—or mule rather, as the beast was quick to correct her—as Rainfall saw to its hooves. The mule was either too stupid or too sick to mind her smell, and seemed ill-disposed to talk.

"There's a spot of hoof-sprout in the cracks," Rainfall grumbled as the mule stamped and swore. "I'll have to make a paste and bag his feet. What kind of stablemen is the thane keeping?"

"How did you come by this unfortunate?" she asked.

"Yet another of the thane's jokes. He frowned when I told him of the death of Avalanche, my last source of steady income, thanks to stud-price, and offered a replacement. Stog here was the most wretched specimen in his stables, so the hostler presented me with him."

The black ears of the mule perked up at the mention of the name.

"Hello, Stog," Wistala said in the beast-tongue the mule had used in his calumnies. "Welcome to Mossbell."

"Drop all the two-leggeds," Stog said to no one in particular. "Left to rot again."

Rainfall worked long into the night on the mule's hooves, gathering plants and then mixing them with a white powder he kept in a clay jar. Then he filled four leather-bottomed canvas bags with the sharp-smelling mix and tied them to the mule's hooves, after fixing a wooden gate around his neck that kept him from lowering his head to chew the poultices free.

"Bug me! That stings," Stog said, and tried to bite Rainfall as he worked.

Too stupid to recognize a kind turn, Wistala thought, and settled down in her old spot to sleep.

Rainfall was still at work when she awoke. He'd cleaned, brushed, and clipped every inch of the mule, who looked immeasurably better but still angry.

"Ah, there you are," Rainfall said as she drank from the central cistern. "Could you watch him for a few hours? He's trying to kick the bags off. I hobbled him"—he pointed at a line between stable and the horse's rear leg—"but I wonder if he's out of tricks."

"I'd be happy to."

Rainfall extended a hand to Stog's nose, but he just tried to bite again.

"As you like," Rainfall said. He left, shoulders sagging.

"You should be grateful," Wistala said from a high perch in the almost-empty loft.

"Gut-kick gratitude," Stog said. "Torturing two-leg. He's burning my hooves right off, I'll signify."

Stog spoke the beast-tongue better than Avalanche. Perhaps he was a well-traveled mule.

"He's kind beyond my ability to tell. It may hurt now, but your feet will feel better soon, I'm sure."

"So speaks the drakka with her claws all clean and cool."

This was strange. Not only had the mule identified her as a female, but he'd correctly guessed that she was no longer a hatchling.

"You know about dragons," she said.

"I know about killing them. I was in the Dragonblade's mule train." The long brown face told her nothing, but the ears twitching this way and that suggested that Stog would welcome a fight.

"The last time I saw the Dragonblade, it was just him and his dogs. No mules."

"You saw the Dragonblade and lived?"

Wistala tried to remain as calm as the mule. His ears were forward with interest. "Big broad man? Black armor like dragonscale?"

"Not like, it is. I've borne many a dragon-hoof or hide-scraping on my back."

"Then why aren't you still carrying pieces of slaughtered dragon?"

Stog tried to stamp, but the hobble prevented his moving. "The Dragonblade was hurrying north, and I came up lame. I was traded for a shaggy-faced pony and left in the blackest hole of an old stable.

"I waited days and days for him to return. How could he forget his stoutest mule?"

Wistala saw the mule's ears droop at the memory. Finally his tail swished, and he looked at her afresh as he spoke: "I pulled a trash-sled in snow up to my fetlocks now and then. The stablehands beat me like a muddy rug. Until the hooves started to go. The hostler tried to sell me off, but the clodclutters took one look at my hooves and wised up."

"So you know the lay of the land around the thane's hold?"

"Some of it."

"Tell me more."

"Why should I do that?"

"To take your mind off your hooves," Wistala said. "Besides, there might be a way for you to give them a bite back for their mistreatment."

"I wouldn't mind catching the hostler bending over with his back turned. I'd send him through the wall. But even a good stomp would fix me. If you hit hominids on the inside of their hoof just right, they hop about shouting. Most gratifying."

The moon changed all the way round once, and then to half so fast Wistala hardly knew time passed, save for the changes for the better to Stog's hooves, healing under Rainfall's constant attention.

She took to exploring outside Mossbell's grounds, particularly to a high ridge to the northeast. From the trees on its top, she could see an even higher ridge with a single line of trees and an old broken watchtower that marked the edge of Galahall's lands, according to Stog. The ground between was little used, as it was poor in soil and water.

She worked on her Parl by asking Jessup about the woods, ostensibly with an eye toward the hunting prospects of the Thickets, as that part of the thanedom was known.

Jessup was working the roadside near the river, sinking a well. He'd laid out a few stones in what Rainfall's study-books called a rectangle on a flat, firm piece of land. Every now and then he would fell a few trees and place them on the rocks so they could dry without touching the ground, whistling more loudly through his teeth as the pile of lumber grew.

He quit working as she nosed around, and took off his ear-flapped cap to scratch his head. "Hunting? Some pheasant, a gobbler or two. No wild boar or deer left—the thane has hunted them all."

"I'd like to avoid notice."

"Then keep to the thorn hollows. Not a problem for you. Your skin should keep them out." He looked doubtful, then took a step closer. "May I touch?"

Wistala raised her head and turned sideways. "The ones on my back are the thickest."

He ran his hand over her scales. "Like … like cast iron, only rougher."

Wistala used a saa to scritch at the back of her shoulder, where a few of her hatchling scales still clung. One dropped off, and she flipped it to him with her nose. "One of your own."

"I may keep this?"

"You may."

He bowed in gratitude.

"Could I ask a favor of you?" Wistala asked.

"I've more wealth than my father saw in his lifetime, thanks to you. I'd do my best."

"I'd like to start bringing home game to Mossbell. Rainfall has been feeding me for so long, I'd like to do the same for him."

"The master gives too much. He's … he's noble that way. Go on."

"I need a sort of harness that will allow me to carry a few birds or a quartered deer. Can you manage it?"

"I'll see the hidesman and blacksmith a-morrow." He scratched his close-cropped head again, circling her and cocking his head this way and that in thought.

Wistala bowed. "Thank you. Anything I can do to help—"

"Stand still."

He took a ball of string from his pocket and measured her, along the back, around her neck, across her shoulders, making little marks on the string with a bit of charcoal. "I expect I'll have it done by blueberry day."

"Which is?" The profusion of hominid holidays were all jumbled in Wistala's head; they celebrated everything from turns of the stars and moon to hop-picking to the ripening of the first plum.

"Eight days."

"Thank you."

"I'm the one obliged, Wisssakle."

"Wistala."

Jessup did better on the second try. When Wistala nuzzled him and gave a bit of a prrum to congratulate him, his face broke into a grin. "Me conversing with a dragon in its own tongue. Like something out of a bedtime story."

With the air warm and spring in full bloom, Stog came outdoors. His hooves had been turned flaky and white by Rainfall's applications, but strong and healthy hoof lived beneath, revealed as the diseased parts fell away.

Wistala took Stog to see Avalanche's grave, as a final proof of Rainfall's goodness and the turn of his fortune marked by the mule's arrival at Mossbell.

Stog snorted. According to the mule, horses got all the glory, and mules did all the work. "We can go twice as far, carrying twice the load, on half the feed as a horse. Up hills they'd break a leg on and down valleys that would mean their necks, too. But where's the poetry, the statuary?"

"Just wait. I'll give you a chance to show a pack of horses a trick or two."

Jessup came through on his harness. It was a clever bit of craft, looping around her neck, tail, and forelimbs. There were eyes here and there in the leather straps, where she could hook game nets (or bags, or waterskins, she thought). She had room in the buckles for her to almost double in size. He took it away almost as soon as she tried it on, insisting on improvements, and returned it with twin linked straps running ladderlike down her back. She found some game nets in Mossbell's dry attic and learned to fix them on herself.

With that, she told Rainfall she'd be gone a few days and plunged into the Thickets. She did hunt, but her real purpose was a trek to Galahall.

Know your hunting ground, Mother always used to say. As hatchlings, Auron had always ignored that advice and plunged straight into the center of the home cave as if expecting a slug to pop up and ask to be eaten. Hunting took patience, knowledge of game trails and habits, and above all, a feel for terrain, weather, and wind.

She waited for an evening that promised rain to approach Galahall. She sneaked onto its lands, circled wide of its herds and flocks, trotted through ditches bordering its fields, and eventually came upon the Thane's Hall.

It had grown over the years, ever larger, she guessed by the quality of the stonework. The oldest, blockiest, and worst-laid stones were in a tall square tower that stood at its corner. The tower, higher than an oak, had narrow windows and an overhanging platform at the top. A building had grown up around it, extending first north and then west and then south again so it turned back on itself, with the tower watching a wide courtyard. The north and west buildings were rough-hewn as the tower on their first level, almost windowless, but the level above was fancier and decorated with flourishes that Wistala thought looked like leaves and faces of woodland creatures.

The south part of Galahall had a huge door facing the tower with a grand balcony above, and windows filled with tinted glass bigger than any door in Mossbell. Smaller supports helped hold up the high, smooth walls of that part of the hall, and there were beds of flowers and shrubs in between under the windows.

If Wistala didn't know better, she would think that a truly splendid fellow lived inside.

The whole of Galahall was surrounded by a wide ditch filled with water, bridged under the tower. She approached the moat and sniffed at the water. It smelled faintly of sewage, but the bottom-feeding fish living in it didn't seem to mind.

She paid close attention to the windows of the tower. Unless the rooms were very small, each level of the tower would probably have only one room. The stairs must be on the inside.

With that, she left, angling for the ridge marked by its single line of trees.

She came home to Mossbell with her bags full of pheasants and rabbits, and her mind full of paths and stream-crossings, thorny runs and thick stands. Crows followed her intermittently on her way home, as if hoping that she'd drop a tidbit, but she arrived at Mossbell with a week's worth of dinners and stews to receive hearty words of welcome and praise from Rainfall.

Even Stog seemed pleased to have her back in the stable. He trotted up to her on healthy hooves. "The mice and rats ran wild while you were hunting," Stog grumbled.

"Next time you'll come along. We'll see if you're a match for the thane's horses."

Wistala planned her venture all the next week, as the pheasants and rabbits made the transition from the cool room to stews and pies and soups. She brought up the subject to Rainfall as he worked in his garden, mentioning that she'd seen deer tracks in the thickets and had a mind to bring back a tender young yearling.

She explained her plans for the next day to him, all the while hugging her real intent to her breast.

"I've found some hollows even the hunters avoid. Stog seems willing to carry a deer home."

"I'm sure he'd enjoy the exercise."

"I'll need a harness for Stog, of course, and a bag of meal."

"I'll rise early and put the harness on," Rainfall said. "If that suits you."

"You're too kind," Wistala said. Her host's pleasant manner inspired frilly language in return. Though she stifled a prrum only with difficulty, imaging Lada's arrival at Mossbell atop Stog's back, and Rainfall's delight at having her returned to him.

She stayed in the house that night, too excited to sleep, and studied Lada's sketched portrait by candlelight long after Rainfall had turned in. Finally she sniffed the doll from the little chair under the musical instruments until she knew the odor, then wrapped it in a clean cloth from the larder.

On her way out, she noted that the house looked even more bare, if that were possible. The cloak room was bulging with a last few treasures Rainfall doted on: everything from furniture to rolls of heavy draperies to a jeweled belt his grandfather had been awarded for a victory to a silver music box that played a tune his mate had been fond of. Rainfall was sacrificing yet more of the home's interior to raise funds to bring tenants and livestock to his lands. Perhaps matters had gone ill with the dwarves.

The doll was hidden in with a few game bags by the time Rainfall entered the stable the next morning. He wished them both farewell and a fortunate hunt.

"All the spits will be cleaned in expectation of a successful return," Rainfall said as he waved them off. "Rah-ya! for an increase to your summer's tally!"

Wistala capered around Stog as soon as they were out of sight of Mossbell, trickery and adventure in her blood. "We're finally off for Galahall."

"Where I get to show up those oat-stuffed horses."

"Yes. When we get to the ridge, you'll have to show me what you can manage. That's the only path I couldn't pick for you."

They passed through the Thickets easily enough. Stog was both strong and sure-footed, following her in and out of the network of thorny hollows with nothing more than a few bitter oaths when a thorn got him. It was a bad place for flies, too, as it turned out. They ignored Wistala, but they clustered around Stog's eyes, ears, and tailvent.

They paused for grain and water at a muddy hole. The flies grew thicker than ever as Stog pawed up mud to gather drinkable water.

"I was bit by a centipede the size of a snake once," Stog said, his teeth working in their strange sideways fashion. "Burned like dragonflame. I've never much minded flies since then."

They rested for an afternoon in the shadow of the ridge with its strange line of sentinel trees. It promised to be a fine night, but they couldn't wait forever. Stog found a path up as the sun set. The other side was steeper still.

"We'll be crossing this again in a hurry, and at night, so keep that in mind when you pick your trail," Wistala said.

The soil was summer-dry and tended to slide as they went down and entered the grounds of Galahall. They cut through fields, watched only by scarecrows.

"I remember the smell of this grass," Stog said as they came within sight of the hall. They stood in a mass of oaks hugging a stream, immature acorns in the boughs above. They rested again until the lights began to go out in the hall's second-floor windows.

She poured out more grain for Stog. "Wait here. I may be coming back in a hurry," Wistala said, checking the fitting of her game-harness. "Wish me luck."

Stog didn't wish her luck. He was chewing.

Wistala kept low as she approached Galahall, making for the old tower that came close to closing the near circle of buildings. She passed through the foul-smelling moat and emerged slimy with duckweed.

Then she began to climb.

She peeked in the first window, open to the warm night, perhaps three lengths up off the ground. Here Wistala had her first doubt: the window was barred, though not reinforced with crosspieces. Oh, why hadn't she climbed the tower before!

Through the bars she could see that this floor of the tower looked to be one big room, with a stairway running up the side and a stout door set into the ceiling—or the next room's floor, depending on how you looked at it. Laundry hung off lines everywhere, and she smelled an odor like boiled cabbage.

The floor above looked more promising from the window: two beds with drawn-back curtains held sleeping figures. She peered carefully inside until her eye adjusted to the gloom. Both had similar reddish curly hair—not Lada, who according to her portrait had straight hair.

There was no connecting door between the two levels; the lower's stairs just ran into the upper. She climbed up the outside to the next level. This one had a single bed, with a miniature bed beside that Wistala recognized as a place for hominids to lay their freshly hatched—No, they didn't hatch; they popped out live in considerable pain and confusion, she corrected herself. There were numerous windows on this floor, all ancient and narrow, perhaps for the firing of arrows. The woman sleeping here was round-faced. She and her infant had fallen asleep together, the child attached to her like a suckling pig. Something about the set of her eyes and nose made Wistala discount this one as a possibility.

She tried to guess if there were two floors above or just one as she climbed.

The next floor marked the end of the stairs. It was cramped and low, with a short ladder propped up at the wall near another hatch. The windows here were round, with one on each side of the tower, and the glass pivoted on a central column to admit the breeze. Wheels edged with gears and pegs stood in a cobwebbed pile on one side of the room, taking up much of the space.

There wasn't a bed such as she'd seen at Mossbell or the floors below, just a fabric mass on the floor with bits of straw coming out at the seams. Someone slept there under a wool blanket, with an oily-smelling dip beside the bed upon a pile of books. The sleeping figure had drawn the thin covering up to her nose.

Wistala examined the fixture in the window. It would break easily enough; nothing but wooden pegs held it in place. Hooks at either side of the round would help hold it against a wind.

She guessed there to be nothing but a watch-platform above, though one of Galahall's owners had added a wooden roof. If another one of this Hammar's wards slept up there, it would be quite cold in winter. The girl in the bed was the most likely candidate, as the others had been eliminated.

She just got her hips through the window, at the cost of a slight scraping sound and a whisper of a creak.

The figure stirred a little.

Wistala took the doll out of its bag and unwrapped it, mindful of the ears at the bottom of the stairs.

Wistala came still closer, feeling her way across rough, dry wood. A washbasin bowl with a little water, a bit glass with a number of dried wildflowers in it, a half-finished woven basket, and a few odd and ends of clothing hanging from some pegs were all the room contained.

A foot with the five ridiculous, almost-useless hominid toes stuck out of the blanket. Wistala gave it an experimental lick.

The figure stirred again.

"Hsssst," said Wistala, as quietly as she could.

A wide green eye opened.

"Don't be afraid," Wistala said in Parl.

The human figure sat bolt upright even as she scooted up against the wall, drawing the covers up with her and bunching them under her eyes. But there was no question, the eyes, forehead, and hair belonged to Rainfall's granddaughter.

Wistala smiled and bowed. "I bring tidings—"

"Aaaaaaaaagh!" Lada shrieked.

"You don't—," Wistala tried, backing away. She held up the doll.

"Heeeeeeelp! Monster! Esithephe, your baby!"

A clunk and a bawling sounded from downstairs. Wistala advanced, tipping the doll right side up and upside down to prove that it was just a bit of craft, but Lada snatched up the waterbasin, and liquid flew.

"Aiiieeee!" the girl—no, young woman, Wistala could see the smallish protrusions wherewith mammals suckled their broods—shouted, throwing the basin. Wistala lowered her head, and it crashed into the pile of pegged and geared wheels, sprinkling her with water as it passed.

Wistala tried again: "No! Your name is—"

A mouthful of pillow cut off that sentence. Lada rammed it home as she fled in a jumble of knees, elbows, and white nightshirt toward the stairs down, still screaming her head off.

The pillow came out of her mouth with a tear, and feathers flew.

Now screams echoed up from the lower levels.

"Lada!" Wistala shouted, spitting feathers.

The girl screamed as she fled down the stairs.

Wistala heard footsteps, shouts from below caught up in a babble of voices and a screaming baby. She considered going after Lada, but a male voice bellowing questions made her turn back to the window.

A heavy tread on the stairs decided her. She squeezed back out the circular window.

Something gripped at her tail, and she pulled it away hard and climbed up the tower.

Up?

She checked herself. She'd instinctively headed toward the safety of the sky. If only she could will her wings into appearing.

She turned around, testing her digits against the rough stones for the climb down. She watched pillow feathers drift, gently turning and rocking as they fell, and realized some of them had stuck in her scales.

A hairy face, pale in the dim moon, looked out the window. The man must have heard her, for he looked up.

She swung her tail down and poked him back inside with its point. He let out a howl.

I must give them an urgency beyond hunting me, if I'm to escape.

She gulped and squeezed her fire bladder, spat a thin jet of flame up into the wooden roof above. She looked across the narrow gap between tower and the south-facing leg of Galahall.

All interior-facing windows were open in the summer air.

She hurried over to the west side of the tower and, clinging rather precariously, extended her neck and spat. Missed—she'd judged the fall of flame badly.

Shouts from the courtyard—she tried again.

This time the flame passed through the window. Orange light glowed within.

She looked into the courtyard. Shirtless, barefoot men were emerging from doors while female faces, holding gowns closed at their throats, peered cautiously from the windows. She caught the gleam of a sword blade and a pike point. A spike-haired boy pointed up the tower—at her or the growing flame, she didn't know—and screamed a warning.

Wistala saw a faster route down. She moved around to the south side of the tower and jumped to the roof of the east-running building, and from that leaped down the wooden roof of an exposed stable by the entrance. She jumped once more and hit the ground running, with men shouting and giving orders behind and a growing clamor of excited dogs.

"Horses! To horse!" the booming voice she'd heard in the tower bellowed.

Wistala hurried off into the night. Her muscles began to burn as her dragon-dash gave out. The tree-crowned ridge seemed very far away.

Stog had vanished. All that remained of him were some tracks and a little of his feed scattered on the ground.

"Stog!" she called, panting. The run had been a nightmare of breathless rushes from hiding spot to hiding spot, with dogs barking and crying behind when the horsemen weren't blowing horns at each other. "Stog," she shouted when she had her wind.

She snuffled around and found the trace of a scent. He'd gone off in the direction of Galahall. Had he seen the flames—the top of the tower still burned like a beacon—and gone off to give assistance? They'd missed each other in the dark, and no wonder: she'd splashed through every ditch she could find to confuse the pursuit. Or had he become frightened at the hunting horns, even now sounding across the wide lands south of Galahall?

Looking for him would be suicide.

She looked up the tall ridge and started up. The slow, steady climb suited her short limbs so much better than the run across the fields. By the time she reached the line of trees, she felt almost herself again. Hunger gnawed at her, but she was nothing like starved. She body-slid down the other side, flying down on chest and tail.

The hunters, if they didn't give up upon reaching the edge of Galahall's grounds, would either have to go round either side of the ridge or lead their horses up a very treacherous climb and then down again. By the time daylight came, she'd be deep in the Thickets.

Stog would have to find his own way home.

Will they never give up?

The question hardly left her mind as she made her best speed through the Thickets, a sort of sore-footed trot. Winded, thirsty, hungry, scratched at nostril and earhole, under-limb and tween-toe by the endless thorns, even her left eye had been poked, and it hurt abominably.

She plunged into yet another strand of bramble as she heard the clattering noise of the men behind.

The men signaled each other by rapping pairs of hollow wooden pegs, setting up a clatter that might have been designed to drive her insane, as though the thickets were full of maddened woodpeckers. Her mouth was so dry, nothing but cottony saliva covered her teeth, and all it did was catch dust and dirt kicked up by the horses thundering past her hiding spots.

Her one solace was the thought that she'd probably burned Galahall to the ground. What else could cause the thane to summon every man with a horse and boy who could whack two sticks together to this wild and uncomfortable corner?

Wistala listened and then crept up another dry ravine. The soil in this part of the Thickets kicked up a chalky dust, and even the thorn-vines and succulents looked sickly and undersize. Nothing took root at the hilltops, or anywhere the wind could reach. She stayed just below the empty crest of it—no need to create a silhouette for one of the hundreds of pairs of eyes looking for her to see—and took a bit out of a green segmented plant. Its buds were bitter-tasting but juicy enough to at least give the illusion of moisture.

She could see the twin hills of Mossbell in the distance, green and alluring, but she didn't dare make for them. Who knew what the thane might do to Rainfall if he thought her host had sent her on purposes of possible assassination or proven arson?

Instead she headed for the river, carefully cresting yet another slope. They wouldn't—couldn't get their horses easily into the gorge, and it would be a brave rider who'd swim his horse into the rocks of the fast-flowing river.

The beaters must have spotted her tracks, for the noise level rose and several came together clack-tchick-clack-clack-tok-clack, no rhythm at all, just a crescendo of sound driving her on.

A man negotiated the precarious rim of the finger of land she had to cross. He bore a horn of metal, a long tube wound about itself like a sleeping snake. Obscenely close-set eyes surveyed the thorny runs from above a scarf wrapped round to keep out the dust. He bore a short spear with a long, sharp head and tapered tail.

He'd chosen his spot well. She couldn't cross behind him, not without a climb in the open, though a brief one, perhaps exposing her to the noisemakers in the thickets.

But a good deal of thornbush filled a gentler slope leading up to his vantage. He amused himself by relieving himself into it.

Wistala was downwind, and the odor struck her nose like a challenge, the clattering in her ears a rattle of an enemy drake's griff. She crept slowly through the densest brambles, sliding around the clusters of branch with their pitiful clumps of earth held tight by roots, until his shadow practically fell on her through the thorny lattice.

She took two steps closer, marked the route she'd use in the final dash—

He saw her approach too late and extended his hand, not the one holding a weapon, but rather to show some kind of talisman.

Wistala exploded out of the thorns, touching rock once as she leaped onto the hunter. She struck high, throwing her weight into his chest to knock him off the narrow crest of the hill.

They tumbled off the hill and down the other side—the direction she needed to go anyway. She dug in with her claws and shut her eyes to keep out the dust. Down—they both broke against a rock, its impact harder on her lighter body but bloodying the unprotected skin on his arm—and she went for his neck.

Vertebrate prey were most vulnerable there. If you got a good grip, you opened windpipes and blood vessels, and they couldn't bite or gore you back. Her teeth closed, and she tasted blood and heard a strange high wheeze. The man's hands raked at her face but found a nostril instead of her more vulnerable eye or ear holes.

He went limp.

She dropped the crushed neck, the man's eyes dry and empty. She opened his gut with her saa to make sure of him, and his body gave a reactive twitch… .

The corpse twitched again as she found his liver.

Tearing the oblong organ loose, she raised her head and let it slide down her throat in two big gulps. She sucked blood from the wound, and saw something in his hand shining in the sun. Tarnished gold or brass—either would be welcome. She nibbled it free from the leather thong fixed to it that the man had wrapped about his wrist.

It was a thin round device of hammered heavy metal, a hominid figure in a circle. Hominids had strange superstitions and believed in invisible forces that attracted or repelled evil or good. Was this some kind of proof against dragons?

She licked it. No sharp taste of poison, just the thick metal-saliva. Satisfied, she sent it down her gullet to join the liver, where it would gravitate to the pocket of her innards that absorbed metals.

Smelling, listening, she picked her way south.

All the way across the next flat, the terrified, dead eyes of the man stayed with her. She'd killed a hominid from ambush. Rainfall might call it murder. While hungry, she wasn't starving, and attacking him had been a foolish risk.

The fact of the matter was, she'd let her temper get the better of her and killed to spite the beaters behind.

She heard a faint, wailing horn. The beaters had probably come across the body. Two more blasts, some kind of signal?

The wind out of the southwest whistled as it cut through the thick thornbushes all around her. The gorge must be near; she couldn't see any more hills to the south.

A faint and rising sound of hoofbeats came across the wind. Wistala found a rock and climbed near the top, keeping to the shadow side so light wouldn't reflect off her scales.

Riders! A dozen at least, traveling in pairs, their horses and legs garbed in some sort of leather tenting, perhaps to keep out the thorns, trotted through the brambles, lance-tips sparkling in the sun.

All moved to cut her off from the south. She heard howling; they had dogs with them. Even if the riding men blundered past, the dogs would smell her out.

The thane's men no doubt wanted her hide in return for some burned shingles and draperies! From Rainfall's description, Hammar wasn't the sort to leave an account unsettled.

Wistala gulped, the blood she'd wetted her throat long since caked over by the dry dust she breathed. Her thoughts felt slow and thick as her blood. The men would probably …

Dry!

She came off the rock, spat one jet of flame into the tangle right, then trotted a few steps and started another fire left.

The thin branches supporting the thorns caught fire easily, and the wind pushed the flame northwest.

She'd set up a signal to every beater in sight.

But the men would keep from downwind if they knew what was good for them.

Wistala walked along between her two columns of conflagration, nostrils held low to keep out the smoke. At new thickets, she helped spread the flame with another torf or two.

Horns, more confused signals from beyond the smoke. But most of the noise was well behind her.

Now the fire raged so she couldn't hear anything but its crackling. Her scales reflected the worst of its heat, but she still panted, trying to see through the smoke. A stand of pine, a little above the flat, was burning, and she made for it.

The flame had already consumed the dropped needles; only the tops of the trees burned now. The tough old pines would be green again next spring, but if she wished to be breathing in a year's time—

Wistala took a deep, lung-filling breath from below the smoke layer, picked a gap, and dashed. She felt flames licking at her flanks. The betweens of sii and saa burned in the hot soil, and she instinctively closed her digits, and she was through, coated with nothing but a thick layer of soot.

And suddenly she breathed cool, dry air, the inferno behind eating its way northwest under a mountain of smoke. From far to the west, she heard more calls as the hunters searched in smoke and confusion.

Wistala got her bearings, noted happily that the sun had fallen almost to the horizon, and moved toward the river.

She negotiated the gorge and swam downriver to the bridge and the landing where they'd tried to smash the troll. The river refreshed after the heat, ash, and dust.

The burns between her digits were painful, made more so once she climbed up the rough stairs from the landing when the blisters burst, but she'd learned a valuable lesson that would outlast the pain about her body's resistance to fire. Next time she'd close up her toes, she thought as she passed over Mossbell's road wall.

A dim light glimmered from the stone-flanked skylight to the library. Perhaps he was still up, reading. She smelled horses in the turnaround by the old fountain.

Wistala decided that the stable might not be the best place for her to sleep. She climbed up her yew tree and made herself as comfortable as possible in the branches.

Exhaustion allowed her to sleep.

She found Rainfall out the next day, gathering blueberries into a satchel that smelled of strawberries, acorns, hickory nuts, and onions.

"How went the hunting expedition, Wistala?" he asked with his back to her. Perhaps he smelled her approach—he had a sensitive nose.

"I …" She groped for the right Elvish word. "I've misspent your trust and lost Stog."

He turned, his countenance a foggy morning. "I heard a most curious story from one of the thane's riders. Two nights ago, the most astonishing creature crept into Galahall."

"Yes—"

"According to the eyewitnesses, it was bluish, had two heads on long necks, one at either end, feathers all about the face, and shot flame from its glowing eyes. Half the country is rooming with their sheep as men stand guard with fire buckets. I don't know what to think. Should I be on my guard that a two-headed featherface come to burn down my hall?"

Wistala's mouth opened and then shut again.

Rainfall suddenly laughed. "Rah-ya! I'm sorry, Wistala—I shouldn't torment you. Come inside and have a little soup and what's left of those rabbits. I wish to hear this story."

Wistala fought the urge to nuzzle his cheek against hers—she could just reach if she stood on her hind legs—and instead turned a quick, happy circle.

"What?" he asked as they walked. "You thought I'd be cross with you? Ever since I dragged you out of the river, there's been excitement. Save for the awful loss of Lessup, and, of course, our Avalanche, I'd say those old tales out of the East about dragons being omens of good fortune have been proved. And don't worry about the mule; Stog will turn up. He's smart enough to find his way home."

They went into the house, and he passed her a platter that held the remains of his stew and grease-fried entrails.

As she ate, she told the whole story—save for the death of the hunter. She didn't feel a bit sorry for the damages to the thane's Galahall, but relating the loss of Stog made her miserable, as well as her confession that she'd failed to return with his granddaughter.

"I wish you'd have discussed this adventure with me before you'd set out. I would have saved your claws the burns and wear."

"But it's not right."

Rainfall poured himself a little more wine and juice squeezings. "Had you come back with her, I would have taken her in both hands. But then I'd have escorted her straight back to Galahall."

"But you could conceal her, as you did me—"

"Tala, how can I make it plain to you? The thane misuses the law, certainly, whether he breaks it in his misuse is not for me to say. But that doesn't relieve me of my obligation to live by it. Laws stand only by common consent; enforcement can do only so much."

He paused and waited until she nodded, then went on: "The thane at least keeps most of the Hypatian traditions, which are just as important as laws in their way. In other provinces, there are thanes who rule like the despots of old. I've heard of thanes who force their landholders to will their estates over to him, lest they be labeled traitors and executed, then find an excuse to execute anyway once everything is set down in writing. All quite legal on the face of it, but appallingly against the Hypatian tradition. Hammar will die or go into his dotage eventually, and Hypat will appoint a new thane."

"Someone like you should be thane, then. An elf is better than any man."

"Oh, that racial rubbish. Have you been listening to the soldiery? There was a time when Hypatian citizenship was what counted, not the shape of your legs and angle of your shoulders."

Wistala took a last mouthful of fried entrail. "So you're content to let those blighters in Galahall rut about your granddaughter, and not see her again?"

"What's that? Rut?"

"That tower. There were babies in it. Well, a baby."

Her host's face writhed. "How young? Perhaps he's warded a child… ."

"I'm not sure. Still suckling at his youngish mother, anyway."

Rainfall passed his hand through his hair, dropping a long, thin willowlike leaf or two. "He wouldn't. Not wards of the thane! Oh, if only I'd been more provident with my gold plate, I could sell it or melt it."

A thought struck Wistala. "The form of the wealth doesn't matter?"

It took a moment for her words to register. "Well, the thane is entitled to assess the value of anything that isn't Hypatian coin. What do you have in mind?"

"Another expedition."

A moon and a blustery week of storms later—five weeks as the hominids reckoned things—Rainfall and a group of local men and boys stood on one of the wall-crossed hills of Tumbledown, speaking with the local shepherds and farmers.

And Stog, incredibly.

Stog stood in this distant field with some other working beasts, all muddy, thin, and miserable.

The expedition had come to fruition easily enough. Wistala, after looking at a map and taking a trip to the nearest hilltop with a good view south of the bridge, decided that the same road Rainfall had in his charge cut through near Tumbledown—or Hesstur, as Rainfall insisted on calling it.

"One of the eight sister cities from the founding of Hypat," Rainfall explained after Wistala described the three hills and wet ground in between. "It was burned in one of the barbarian wars."

A good deal more history followed this, but without being able to see the battles and kings and generals and so on Rainfall spoke of, the names and dates left Wistala's head almost as soon as they entered it. If only hominids could pass mind-pictures down!

Rainfall had no difficulty pulling together some men and their sons for the trip. The killing of the troll had given Rainfall something of a local reputation, Wistala guessed, and it even attracted one of the thanedom's low priests. She seemed a sturdy woman, in her black robe and tassled hat, white hair at her temples making the rest of her black hair, cut so evenly at the bottom, it might be mistaken as a helmet, look darker.

Wistala had to watch it all from a distance. Her presence had to be kept hidden for her—and Rainfall's—safety.

They made quite a procession. Thick-shouldered farmers and their thicker-shouldered horses, Jessup with a smart new leather work apron driving his cart loaded with feed for hominid and animal, the low priest with boys in tow, showing them strange roadside mushrooms, flowers, and berries. Rainfall walked at the head, wearing layers of heavy traveling clothes, leather-fringed sandals, a cloak, and even a short, slightly curved sword with a guard at the hilt.

She traveled ahead of the group on the overnight journey south, moving before dawn and after dusk and sleeping out the day while the others caught up. Now and then she met with Rainfall on the road a little ahead of the party. The journey was uneventful, save for some boys throwing dung-balls from cover as they passed through a muddy village. One clod hit Rainfall in the thigh.

"Wish I'd seen that," Wistala said.

"Boys being boys. Their parents should soap their tongues until they learn civil expression, though," Rainfall said. " 'Elvish maggot.' Right in the heart of the village, too. An old woman bowed and apologized for the insult. Perhaps it was the star."

Wistala had not seen the golden device before. It had eight short points around the edge and a blue jewel at the center. Some mark of his status as the bridge-keeper and road-warden, she guessed.

So, led by Rainfall's star, they came to Tumbledown and saw the field with Stog.

The low priest—her name was Feeney—and Rainfall conducted the negotiations with the locals of Tumbledown. Then both sides withdrew, the newcomers to their tents with a purchased sheep, the shepherds and smallholders to their cottages and ricks and cots.

Rainfall wandered the woods until Wistala caught up to him. They sat together on an old wall dividing one part of identical forest from another.

"I let Mod Feeney do the talking. We will split whatever we find exactly in half with the locals. They claim that the ruins have been explored a dozen times a generation, and that they've been stripped to the last lumik."

"Lumik?"

"A bit of art that throws off light when you rub it."

"Then they're doubly wrong. I'll show you one when we enter. I saw Stog in with the other animals."

"What other—? Oh, the farmers and so on?"

"Yes," Wistala said. "I didn't dare approach. There were horses, and I was afraid they'd scream their heads off."

"You are certain? Many mules look alike."

"Yes. Though he looked thin and dirty."

"I'll try to buy him back tomorrow."

The stupid beast didn't deserve Rainfall's kindness. "I'll see if I can talk to him during the day tomorrow," Wistala said. "Assuming they don't have him pulling loads of rocks or whatever work these humans do."

"The night is wasting."

Rainfall never seemed to need sleep, though his face was less animated at night than at other times.

They walked into Tumbledown. A dog barked in the distance, and they stood close to a wall, but they met no further challenge. Soon they were at the triple broken arches that marked the way down to the rats' underground realm.

"I smell bats," Rainfall said. "I should hate to get bitten—they carry sickness."

Rainfall opened his satchel. He fiddled with a brass bowl that smelled of oil. Then he poured some powder that smelled faintly of rotten eggs into a rough stone channel, and drew a piece of wood all splintered at one end across it. The powder and the wood burst into flame. He touched it to the closed top of the bowl, and a flame glowed.

"All that effort for a bit of fire?" Wistala asked. "You should have just asked me."

"I couldn't impose on your great gift for something so mundane as a little light," Rainfall said. "Doesn't a wise dragon keep her fire bladder ready?"

"I don't see a battle breaking out between your construction gang and the sheepherders. There'd be plenty left to torch some rats if they swarm."

"Show me the way, my shining friend."

"Fair warning: you'll get dirty."

She led him down. When they reached the passage that had the glow bulb, Wistala showed it to him.

"It is a lumik," Rainfall said, rubbing it so it glowed. "This alone will pay for feasts all the way back to Mossbell, and buy Stog besides." He pried it loose and worked it with a bit of cloth until it shone like a slice of moon brought underground.

The underground still smelled of bits of worms and rats. Rainfall just squeezed down the dug passage to the sewer. It was drier than Wistala remembered. Rats yeeked at them from the corners as they fled the light.

Had she really been here? Fought a channel-back? The sewers felt like some mind-picture from a distant ancestor.

Rainfall followed, scratching marks onto the walls here and there with a piece of soft stone that left white traces. "I don't have your tunnel sense, my dear."

She led him into the room where she and Yari-Tab had fought the rats and spoken to the old milk-eyed specimen. Rainfall didn't mind the smell or the filth thick on his sandals. He spoke of false walls fallen away as his eyes wandered ever upward, to old writings and chipped drawings running the edge of the chamber's ceiling. He stepped over to an old doorway, rusting hinges still projected out into a space where the wood had long since rotted away. He reached up and marked the lintel with an X.

"It's down these stairs," Wistala said, standing at the gap to a circular passage. Rat eyes glinted in the shadows.

"There's a high crypt this way—No, I shan't disturb any bodies."

Wistala wouldn't have cared if he wanted to juggle the skulls of kings. But Rainfall continued: "Sets of edicts can sometimes be found with a thane's remains, or biographies. Both are fascinating reading."

She caught a whiff of precious metals on the stairs. "I don't dare go any farther."

Rainfall's hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. "Ho! Is there danger?"

"Only from me. A dragon's heart can grow fierce at the sight of gold. The last time I came down these steps—it could have ended badly for my friend."

He raised the crystal, and sharp shadows sprang up on the stairs. As he went down, the shadows retreated and advanced as though terrified of the light. His footsteps were so light, she could only just hear them.

"Rah-ya, Wistala, here's a hoard worthy of a dragon," he called up. "Silver and gold and baser coins."

"Will you be able to find it again?"

"I'm sure of it. I return. Close your eyes, for I've a handful of gold."

She shut her nostrils, too. Her mouth went wet, and her stomach growled at the faint smell.

Rainfall spoke in her ear. "Now open your mouth."

She complied, and felt a hard fall on her tongue.

Rainfall spoke: "Just a mouthful of the best silver I could find."

The coins slipped easily down her throat, greased by the thick saliva the smell of metals brought to her mouth.

"But you need the coin," she objected. (Once the coins were safe in her stomach!)

"I matched need against deserve, and deserve won. I have some proofs of the money resting there still in my bag." He pulled on the strap of his satchel so the coins within jingled.

Wistala napped out the morning light under a cool slab in a quiet corner of Tumbledown, concealed by a cascade of runners dropped by the ferns clinging above. She'd gone to the pasture to look for Stog, but only a mare and her colt remained. The men must have put him to work.

She felt a soft nuzzle under her chin. "Tchatlassat?" came a familiar purr.

Wistala came wide awake in a flash. "Yari-Tab?"

She'd grown wide-bodied feasting on rats, or had a bellyful of young, perhaps. "I smelled you as I was finishing my night's prowl and followed the trail. Such doings in the Tumbledown. Digging by my entrance to the Deep Run. What's the hunt?"

Wistala had to think for a moment—she was so used to speaking in Elvish. "Hominids come for the gold."

"Will there be fighting? The rats would like that."

"No, my host has arranged a diversion."

"Serves them right, savage beasts. But when mice can't be found—"

Wistala raised her head and stretched. "Sister! I've a wonderful idea!"

"Yes!" Yari-Tab said, settling down in the warm spot left by her throat. "A good nap till noontime. Then perhaps a sunbath."

"No. I know of a catless barn that has the mice running wild. Come along to it, and I can promise you all the hunting you like. Perhaps a little goat milk now and then. The owner is a kindly sort."

Yari-Tab fixed eyes on her. "Warm and dry?"

"Yes."

"Oh, tchatlassat! I would like that."

"You deserve it. I'll explain things to Rainfall. Once he knows that you're the spring from where this new stream of wealth flows, he'll take you in. I'm sure of it."

With Yari-Tab running scout, Wistala made it to a hillside downwind from the sheep and watched events beneath the triple arch from an overhanging slab. Shirtless men brought the coin out in small buckets, to be laid on a clean white sheet spread out on the ground in front of the hole that had been widened. Feeney and another man dressed in similar robes and tassled hat passed the coins back and forth before moving them to a chest—in the case of the visitors—or a low trough.

Stog made an appearance, dragging a sledge piled with firewood. The man leading the mule struck him about the flanks to drive him on, and Wistala felt her fire bladder pulse. Poor Stog—he was an extraordinarily strong beast.

Yari-Tab grew bored with events and fell asleep in the sun.

By evening they'd brought out the last of the small hoard of coins. Rainfall emerged from the tunnel dirtier than ever, holding what looked like a platter of considerable weight wrapped in a piece of leather. He showed it to the pair of priests.

Wistala couldn't see much from her vantage. It looked like a piece of pinkish stone, but the low priests both touched it as they spoke. After they nodded, Rainfall took it away to Jessup's wagon, spoke to him, and placed it on the high driving seat.

As the sun set, the gathered hominids set up a feast. A bonfire was lighted with the pile of wood Stog dragged. Some of the shepherds took out pipes and drums and small hand harps as others roasted a pig.

"That's a mouthwatering smell," Wistala said.

"Aye, but I must hunt," Yari-Tab said. "I've kittens growing fast within, and they're hungry, too."

Wistala marked Rainfall wandering the opposite hill outside the bonfire light, taking a small bite now and then from a joint of the remaining mutton from last night's meal. He probably meant to find her and offer it. "Wait. I might return with something tastier than a sewer rat."

The moonlight-washed ruins frowned down on the figures moving about the bonfire, as though waiting for the merrymakers to disperse so they could return to their gradual collapse.

Wistala saw Rainfall, smelled the mutton, and rattled her griff against her scales to attract his attention.

Rainfall turned and opened his mouth to speak, but a thundering sound rolled through the night. Hoofbeats!

Two lines of riders crested the southernmost hill and rode down toward the bonfire.

Wistala counted seven … eight. One carried a high standard, a banner suspended from a crossbar the length of an ax-handle. Wistala's night-sharp eyes distinguished a thin-legged, long-necked bird standing out white on the material of the standard.

"Dis!" Rainfall said. "Bandits, you think? Go and keep hidden, Wistala. Oh, there can't be fighting!"

He tossed the mutton shank in her direction and ran toward the bonfire, his hair making a sound like leaves hitting a wall on a windy night.

Wistala wouldn't leave the mutton to prowling rats and dogs. She returned it to Yari-Tab at the angled overhang.

Yari-Tab sniffed the greasy, ragged joint. "Tchatlassat, you're a wonder!"

"Please stay here," Wistala said, an eye toward the center of the three hills. "There's a new group arrived in Tumbledown. I don't like the look of it."

Wistala circled around through the ruins and found all a-tumult. Shepherd boys guided their flocks off the grassy hills, dogs barked everywhere, and around the bonfire, the celebrants had divided into two huddled groups.

At the edge of the fire, the men stood their horses, the banner in the center and another man, rather shorter but above the rest thanks to the size of his horse, speaking with Rainfall.

The riders had thrown back their cloaks to reveal metal plates fixed about their chests, hands on sword hilts, save for the tall one with the bird standard. She let the wind carry the words, along with the aroma of roast pig, humans, and the horses, to her.

"I'm thane here, elf. All your legalisms and tricky wordplay won't change that."

"You claim to be thane here, Vog. The maps say differently. The ruins of Hesstur belong to the Directory. You interfere with one of its agents."

Vog, the short man on the tall horse, laughed. He snapped his fingers in the air. "That's for the Directory. All sound and no presence. Those doddards couldn't muster an Imperial Host if Hypat itself had barbarians climbing the First Walls."

"They could if their thanes attended to their duties instead of wine and hunts."

"Do you mean to insult me?" Vog sputtered.

Wistala crept around toward the newcomers' horses.

"I beg your pardon for not making myself understood. If I meant to insult you, I would point out that your roads are so overgrown that a wagon can hardly pass without being tangled in branches, that there are a dozen washouts to a vesk at least, or that I cannot distinguish the difference between a pig-chasing dog's collar and your mens' livery, or that you act and speak in the manner of a barbarian warlord rather than a Hypatian Thane, who would dismount to address a fellow citizen."

Vog put his hand on his sword hilt. "How dare you—"

"How dare you, sir," Rainfall roared. Wistala wouldn't have thought him capable of making such a sound; she froze in her tracks where she crept behind the horses. "How dare you touch your sword when addressing a Knight of the Directory, a Temple Star, and a former Judge Imperial."

Vog's mount danced backwards from Rainfall's fury, unsettling the other horses. Wistala heard a rattle, saw one of the men take a handle with a chain leading back to some metal objects that looked like small metal balls set with dragon teeth.

When Vog had his mount under control again, he leaned forward. "I dare because old titles don't frighten me any more than old moss-backed elves. You're badly in need of a hiding, prissfall. I've a mind to give you one."

"Your having a mind to do anything beyond drawing breath comes as a shock to me," Rainfall said.

"Insult! Bind him!" Vog shouted.

Wistala, at last upwind of the horses, rattled her griff as loudly as she could and loosed her urine. Once before, in her journey with Auron, she'd used her urine to scare off a prowling bear. This time the trick worked to spectacular effect. The horses jumped and plunged as though ghost-ridden. Four riders fell, Vog jumped off, and the rest held on to mane and rein for life and limb as their mounts bolted.

The men of the wading-bird standard must have blamed Rainfall for the madness of their horses. They picked themselves up and, following Vog's example, drew their swords, or swung the whirling metal ball in the case of the man with the chain weapon. It made a sound as it cut the air that reminded Wistala of eagle cries.

The two camps scattered, plucking up their children in the case of the shepherds, while the visitors retreated to Jessup's wagon and Mod Feeney.

Rainfall sniffed the air and chuckled. "Put away your weapons, Vog. A pile of old coins isn't worth blood being spilled."

Vog snorted. "See, men of Lossend! Just like that Praskallian said: 'Elvish insolence ends at the sight of steel.'"

"Sight of steel," repeated the man with the whirling chain.

Vog and his men took a step closer. "Stop!" Mod Feeney shouted. "This is hallowed ground, of temples old and proud. The gods weep."

Rainfall drew his thin saber with one hand, detatched his cloak, and whipped it about his arm. "Vog! Remember yourself!"

"You've breathed your last insult, elf," Vog said. "At him, now."

In later years, Wistala only remembered Rainfall's lower limbs. He fought as though performing one of the little jigs he did when happy, as on the morning his hair began to grow back in. The power of blocks and strikes came out of his legs and hips, not his arm, extended as stiffly as though it and the blade made one long weapon.

In a flash, Rainfall punched a hole through Vog's ear. He sidestepped, knelt, and sent his next thrust into the kneecap of the man with the whirling chain. As the second man fell to the side of his injured limb, Rainfall got out of the way of the whirling balls, which wrapped around the man's helm and went home all about the head and neck.

He fell and did not move again.

Rainfall threw his cloak-wrapped arm around the sword of the next man coming in—Wistala heard a krak! and as Rainfall stepped away, the sword fell and the man clutched his injured limb.

Rainfall rewrapped his cloak about his arm as he put his sword-point before the final pair.

The last two stood shoulder-to-shoulder as they advanced on Rainfall, swords held in both hands in front of them, each urging the other to close and occupy the blood-tipped point while the second finished the job.

Finally one worked up the nerve to raise the sword above his head. With a brave cry he came forward, struck a blow that cleaved the figure before him—

But the figure was Rainfall's cloak, falling to the ground anyway. Rainfall's sword penetrated the thick muscle at the attacker's backside. The second man, seeing his lone ally hop about cursing, thought it best to drop his sword and run.

Vog rejoined the fight with a cry, the side of his head red with blood.

Rainfall parried, parried, ducked out of the way, parried again. Wistala heard the pants of both opponents, but Vog's was the more labored.

Rainfall spoke next: "Blood has washed away whatever quarrels, old and new, we've had. Let us cry 'settled' and remember the example of those who built Hesstur's walls and columns."

Hooves sounded from the darkness, and two of Vog's men trotted up, one with the bird-standard muddied. The thane looked around at his wounded, grunting men.

"I've been a fool," Vog said. "I'll beg your pardon and bury the sword-point." He plunged his weapon into the dirt.

The riders relaxed atop their horses.

Rainfall nodded and turned. "Mod Feeney, let's look to the injured." He wiped his sword on his cloak and resheathed it.

Wistala didn't like the look of the man Vog, the way he turned to his side and glanced around. So when he sprang forward, a dagger aimed at Rainfall's back, she was already in motion.

Just before the blade went home, Rainfall twisted—too late. The dagger still plunged in.

Wistala's dragon-dash had carried her only a third of the way—

Rainfall let out the softest of tired sighs like a man hanging up his hat at the end of a long day. He fell to the earth as Feeney screamed, perhaps at the infamy, or perhaps at the sight of a drakka shooting across the ruins like an arrow.

Vog twirled his dagger. "You forget, star-polisher, that victory's all that matters in the end. And tonight the victory's—"

As victory was so important to him, Wistala felt it only right that it should be the last intelligible word to pass his lips. Her spring cut off the rest.

Terror took the horses of the mounted men yet again.

She landed hard atop Vog's back, sii and saa extended and digging. Vog squeaked, rabbitlike, as she opened him up under the rib cage. She took out a mouthful of neck to be sure of him.

She hurried to Rainfall's side. "Oh, Fa—Rainfall. Speak!"

His eyes still lived, anyway. They fixed on her. "Dragon-daughter."

Footsteps. Mod Feeny rushed forward, a pickax held high.

"I'm helping him, you fool," Wistala said in her best Parl.

She pulled up, still with the point raised, and Wistala made ready to jump out of the way.

But here was Jessup, chasing her down. He put a hand on Feeney's. "Hold. She's friendly."

Rainfall managed to raise his hand. "I still breathe," he whispered.

"We need to leave," Wistala said. "Get him on the cart. Don't forget the coin." To Jessup: "I'll meet you back at Mossbell. If there's a hunt, I'll confuse them." A strange clarity had seized her; she had no idea where the words came from, but they flowed steadily. "Gather those horses and that mule there so more may ride. And weapons, that you might overawe any in the village. Vog's a blackheart and deserves to lose all."

"I'm not leaving the injured lying in the mud," Feeney said.

"Then stay and see how your kindness is rewarded."

Next Stog was there, the bonfire revealing the mud on his sides and the filth about his hooves, a broken rope dangling. "Wistala. Strange fortune brings us together again. Forgive—"

Feeney and Jessup just stared in wonder at the mule, nickering and tossing his head at the drakka.

"No time for words, Stog. Do you wish to return to Mossbell?"

"Is clover sweet? Of course."

"Then you can do me a favor, and bear a burden back."

"I'll carry the master to the icy tundra if I must, and stomp any—"

"No," Wistala said. "He's riding in the cart. I want you to carry a cat."

Stog ended up carrying two cats, Yari-Tab and a night-black female named Jalu-Coke, who had a litter of rambunctious kittens.

"She's a good friend and a stalking good huntress," Yari-Tab said. "She hears like a bat. Speaking of which, I've seen her leap and bring one down—"

"Fascinating," Wistala said, forestalling more anecdotes. Once cats got talking about themselves, they'd go on about whisker length or tail-balancing until the sun came up, and she didn't have that kind of time. Or Rainfall didn't.

Jessup fixed a thick knit blanket and a bread box on Stog's back. The cats and kittens rode easily enough.

Rainfall, his shirt bound about his waist, rested in the back of the cart, gripping his leather-wrapped treasures to his chest. He begged them to leave the shepherds' share of coin.

Mod Feeney was the last to leave the ruins. She bandaged the foemen and spoke many words about how lucky they were to come away with only two dead, and any pursuit would just call up another vengeful fury of red tooth and claw, for the treasure was cursed and only she held the ward-key. Then she hurried down the road after the receding creak of the wagon-wheel.

Wistala watched it all from the ruin-haunted hillside nearest the road. The wounded were helped off to the hovels of the shepherds, leaving the bodies of the two slain men to the rats.

The old milk-eyed rat's prophecy had come true.

Vog's men made a pursuit of it that night after all. As Wistala trotted up the side of the road, she heard them a long way off, a faint but growing sound of hooves. If they'd walked or trotted their mounts, they probably would have caught up to the plodding cart anyway, but perhaps the sight of two bodies, one belonging to their thane, had inflamed them into recklessness. Besides, they were armed and arrayed, and their foes humble.

As to the stories of a scaled beast, confused accounts by injured men and shepherd boys watching from afar might make a freak encounter with a channel-back more than it seemed, and as for the warning of the priestess, trumped-up midwives are always making dire predictions.

How the coin figured into their reckoning of risks, vengeance, and rewards Wistala could guess.

She had to delay them. But how?

Improvise, Mother's voice said to her. She couldn't outfight the men, or outrun the horses. Horses …

Rainfall was right about one thing: the road here was in terrible shape. On the north side of the river, it was trim, dry, and even. Here it was sunken, rutted, and holed, with either side of the verge thick with plants.

Rainfall was right about the washes—a veritable stream cut through the road a little ahead. It had eroded until it was as deep as her neck, almost as treacherous as a troll trap.

Slowing up the men and slowing up their horses were one and the same. Would a troll trap do that?

Wistala went to the wash and placed branches in a grid. Next she tore up twigs and leaves and covered the wash as best as she could. She felt bad for the poor heedless brutes—and the four-legged beasts under them—but they would bring battle.

There was a chance that the men would just leap their horses across the wash. But with a long chase behind and possibly ahead …

Wistala concealed herself a little behind the trap, by the side of the road in the thick undergrowth, listening to the growing noise and wondering how many riders this thane might have seeking vengeance.

She should have made it deeper. She cleaned the moss off a flat stone and sharpened her claws against it as she tried to count the growing hoofbeats.

At last they came, emerging as a solid mass out of the night, filling the tree-circled road like a rush of dirty water coming down a drainspout. Perhaps six or eight. No, ten, counting a last few with that bird-banner at the back. Too many for her to fight, then.

The men urged lather-soaked horses on with bits of rope or sword hilt. They passed her in a solid wall of hair, leather, steel, and thunder.

Then they hit her trap.

A horse went flat on its face, throwing its rider. The next behind was agile enough to leap out of the way, but the third beast skidded on its hooves as it tried to stop, and went into the wash sideways. Another behind jumped into the woods, dismounting its rider on a branch, and yet another rider went over his horse's head as it skidded to a stop.

The banner hung almost above her, where the back three had stopped in safety to laugh at the chaos ahead.

Wistala hated that stitched-up bird. She aimed and spat a thin stream of fire up into it. It burst into flames immediately, and in the subsequent alarm, she quietly backed down the road to cross ahead.

"Elvish magic!" a man shouted, stomping on the flames.

Wistala's nostrils flared. Superstitious hominids. Imagine my tricks taken for spellcraft! She stifled a self-satisfied prrum.

"That old leaf-head is a sorcerer!" another agreed.

"Our horses have grown treacherous. He whispers to them on the wind, I'll set my hand on it!"

Wistala slunk across the road once all eyes turned to the ring of men in argument.

The second rider, the one whose mount managed to dodge the first fall, stayed on his horse. He wore an odd double cloak, one hanging from each shoulder.

"Someone help Plov," he said. "How many are hurt?"

"Two cannot ride," a gruff voice from the group said.

More mumbling. "And three more will not," a shriller voice added. "That elf isn't the only one stabbed from behind by Vog. His landsmen have felt their purse strings cut more than once. Gold is not enough of a lure for us to face sorcery to get it back."

"That leaves four to ride with me!" the two-cloak man said. "Hurry, before they're back to the bridge. The cowardly can tend to the injured horses, as that's all they're fit for."

"A man who promises murder to a priestess on the Old Road at night should be careful about that word," the gruff voice said. "You're down to three, Vorl; I ride no farther with you."

"More gold for us, then. Take up the banner!"

Wistala was having a hard time picking out the words as the argument continued. She found an oak with heavy branches stretching above the road and swarmed up it. She tested how far her tail could drop. Then she searched the underbranches and cracked off a drooping limb almost bereft of leaves. She tested her tail's grip on it.

The hoofbeats came again, and she just had time to press her belly to the limb overhanging the road, watching the riders through the gaps in the leaves. They came on this time at something more than a trot and less than a gallop, the two-cloaked rider the others called Vorl at the lead.

The third man in line held what was left of the scorched bird-banner.

"Let's have a song, men," Vorl shouted. "Some airs of wine and women, and all the diversions that gold may buy!"

"How about—?" the last man said, but screamed when he saw the branch swing down from above, striking the rider with the banner full in the face.

Wistala felt the impact run up her tail with some satisfaction.

The banner bearer flipped backwards across his horse's rump, his heels high and his cloak fluttering. He hit hard and the horse behind jumped to avoid hitting him.

Wistala flattened herself into the branch, barely daring to peep at events with one eye.

All the horses snorted and danced, probably smelling Wistala above.

"What now?" Vorl rasped.

"The tree hit him," the fourth man shouted, getting his horse out from under the oak. "A limb full of twigs reached down and struck Gleshick full in the face. It was the tree!"

"Vorl," the other rider said, searching the dark overhang of branches. "Perhaps it's time to leave reins and take up bedcups."

"My horse cannot be controlled!" the last in line said, spurring his mount away. The beast galloped southward, its rider's hindquarters lifted high as he hung on. "An evil magic drives it! Good luck!"

"Brothel spawn!" Vorl shouted at the receding figure. "Come.

We're a short way from House Gamkley. He'll remember the thane and mount his household."

"What about Gleshick?"

"A bloody nose and a night on the gravel will teach him not to sleep in the saddle. Let's hurry! Perhaps we can catch up to that fool and talk some sense into him."

They galloped off south, and the empty-saddled horse moved to follow them in a halfhearted manner. Wistala dropped from the tree onto its back.

She clung as best as she could, digging her claws into the mane as the men did their fingers.

The horse bucked and screamed. Wistala hung on with all four sets of claws.

"I'm not here to hurt you," Wistala said. "Bear me but short run the other way, and I'll release you."

"No!"

"Otherwise you'll not live another minute," Wistala said. "I haven't had horse since I was a hatchling, and your quivering makes me long for the taste."

The horse tore off up the road north. They hurried through the village where Rainfall had been abused and were out of it again before any but the barking dogs woke.

As their racket faded behind and they reentered the woods, the horse tried to knock Wistala off its back by passing under branches, a difficult proposition as she could flatten herself on the horse's back better than any man and still keep her grip. Wistala struck its rump with her tail. "Keep to the center."

"Pity! Exhausted—"

They left the thicker woods and came to open, rocky ground that smelled of sheep and yellow late-summer wildflowers. Wistala saw distant shepherd fires to both sides of the road. Quartz veins in the protruding rocks caught the moonlight. The river ridge broke the horizon in the distance, notched where the road cut through it. She knew that notch. The river ran just beyond.

"Up this far rise, and you'll be done," Wistala said.

The horse quickened his step but breathed more heavily than ever, snorting and gasping as though each labored breath might be his last. Wistala made out the wagon cresting the notch.

"Well enough," Wistala said, hopping off. "Go where you like, but on the other side of the river—"

The horse tore off down the road, away from the fearful dragon-smell.

"Stupid brute," Wistala muttered. Ah well, of such mentalities meals are made. She trotted at her best pace after the wagon. As the sky grew pink and then orange, she breached the rise.

She couldn't help but think that the notch would make another fine ambush site. Its steep sides meant that with a little work they could block the bend ahead, and she could rain fire upon anyone at their heels… .

And here was the wagon. She scrambled up the ridge—her hearts beat fast and hard at the sight of the river and the bridge—then got ahead of it.

She counted heads. Each face was drawn and exhausted from the long flight. One was missing: that priestess, Mod Feeney. Had she gone off the road?

"Jessup!" she called when they came within the sound of her voice. "Jessup! Does Rainfall still live?"

"The avenger calls!" Jessup said.

What has that man been telling the others? He halted the wagon and set the brake.

"Rainfall asks for you," Jessup shouted. "He begs you to join him."

Wistala came forward.

"That's a dragon?" one of the men said. "I've yearling pigs that weigh more."

The horses didn't like her smell, and only Stog stood quietly next to the wagon, cat-filled breadbox on his back as the other brutes stamped and danced.

Wistala jumped into the wagon, and some of the men gasped at the quick move.

Rainfall's skin had darkened, like fresh game-meat exposed to air. He sat propped up on a sort of cushion of bags of horse feed. A piece of marbled stonecraft, with letters deeply cut and coated with time-tarnished metal, sat at his side. He rubbed it absently as a man might pet a dog while conversing.

"Wistala, daughter," Rainfall said. "You are here."

"And glad to see you still alive."

"Jessup, drive on," he said with some energy. "The sooner we're through Mossbell's gates—" He winced at some inner pain as the wagon lurched into motion.

"How is it?" Wistala asked. Oh, the inadequacy of words, even tuneful Elvish! If he were a dragon, she could let him feel her concern. Let him know …

"I can't move my legs, Wistala. The pain isn't bad at all—if anything I'm cloudheaded. But such wounds … if I should succumb, you must bring Lada to Mossbell, look out for her until she is of age to run the place. I've told Mod Feeney, and I've told Jessup—" He sank back into the cushions again.

"What happened to that priestess?" Wistala asked.

"She rode ahead," Jessup said from his seat. "Hammar has a healer more skilled than she."

It would be hard to say who heard the pursuing hooves first, the horses or Wistala. Both startled.

"Jessup, try to get a little more out of the horses," Rainfall said. "Whip them if you must."

He turned his gaze on the drakka. "Wistala, if they catch up to the wagon, jump on Stog and take that bag of gold to Mod Feeney. She'll see that a judge and a high priest come before the thane and restore Lada to her home."

As dawn came up, some of the men began to run toward the bridge. Home stood just on the other side of the canyon. A more clear-headed one jumped on the lead wagon horse and urged it on.

As they came down the road—the incline helped speed the wagon—Wistala saw the first rider appear behind. Others, ten or eleven in all, came down in a long straggling line. She saw no sign of the bird-banner.

She looked ahead. A group of people stood on the bridge. She recognized Mod Feeney by her odd hat.

Behind, Vorl drew his sword and waved it forward, calling to his men.

Rainfall looked at the coming riders, moving at a pace to catch the wagon before it even crossed the bridge.

"Wistala, on Stog, now!" he gasped.

"No. Wait," Wistala said, seeing the group ahead. What sort of warriors had Mod Feeney gathered at the thane's borders? They seemed dreadfully undersized.

The wagon rattled past Feeney's gathering, the horses' hooves thundering on the wooden planks that bridged the central arch in the ancient masonry. The apron- and tunic-clad assortment were mostly women and children. Wistala guessed them to be families of those in Rainfall's ill-fated expedition, from the way they waved and called to each other.

Jessup halted the column well across the bridge.

The men dismounted and embraced their wives and children. Many of the latter shrieked as they circled the cart with streamers tied to sticks. Curly-tailed dogs barked, adding to the happy chaos.

Wistala peeped at it all through gaps in the wagon-boards. Some of the dogs barked at her.

"For the last time, Wistala, take Stog and go!" Rainfall said. "Look, Vog's armsmen come."

"Your Feeney's building a wall to stop them," Wistala said, watching the activity behind.

Rainfall lifted himself a little higher. "What's this?"

A strange sort of barrier was stretched across the bridge, mostly the women and children holding hands. Their men ran to their families, and Mod Feeney pointed them into place.

"Don't let go of each other. Even if they ride straight for you," Mod Feeney said over the clatter of the approaching hooves.

The riders slowed their horses, pulled up.

"What's this supposed to be," Vorl snarled.

"You'll do no murder in our thanedom," Mod Feeney shouted back.

"Then we'll retrieve that elf and hang him from thane Vog's high lintel," Vorl said. "He stabbed my lord in the back."

"I was there—it was Vog who did the backstabbing," Mod Feeney said.

"Ha! Out of my way, or we'll ride you down," Vorl said. "Stirrup to stirrup now, my men."

"Is it come to this?" Mod Feeney said back, her voice a little more high-pitched. "One Hypatian Thanedom riding down the children of another? High honors to carry home, the blood of babes on your horse's hooves."

"Enough, Vorl," said the compatriot Wistala recognized from her oak-limb perch above the road. "Buy your way into the thane's hall with different coin."

"And Thane Vog not cold yet!" Vorl said. "How dare you—"

"How dare you lie to the men of House Gamkley. Beware, men. He lied to you about Vog's death. He died a scoundrel. I should have spoken then, but I've been a fool. A fool drawn by promises and unearthed gold."

Vorl brought his horse around, pointed it straight at Mod Feeney. His heels went out, and his spurs turned inward.

Wistala nerved herself to jump from the wagon. If Vorl rode through the line of people, she'd turn him into a pyre of burning cloak and horsehair. Nothing would reach the wagon but the stench of charred flesh—

The man who at last spoke the truth to Vorl's company rode up and seized his horse by the throat latch. "Enough, Vorl. Remember the battles of our boyhood. Thanedom against thanedom at Ciril and Starkhollow. Would you see that repeated? Hammar has the friendship of barbarians and more besides, and he's rich enough to hire mercenaries. Let us put away sword, bury Vog, and take counsel."

"Elvish bewitchment, taking the heart out of you!" Vorl shouted, turning his horse south. "You're all under it! I'll call none of you my friends again."

The others gave short head-bows to Mod Feeney and turned for the south end of the bridge.

The man who had grabbed Vorl's horse looked at the linked-arm assembly and smiled. "My compliments on your battlements, Mod," he said. He rode off.

Mod Feeney sank to her knees. "I should have turned to candle-selling and book-copying long ago," she sighed.

"I'll see her a high priestess if it's my last act," Rainfall said, falling back into his feedsack chair. A long brown leaf dropped from his hair. "Jessup," he called. "Take me to Mossbell, that I might die clean in my bed."

Rainfall did not die.

As he recovered from the blood loss, it became clear to all that he would never walk again, barring some kind of miraculous healing. At first Wistala wondered if it was best that he had lived beyond his wounding (though she later looked back on that sentiment with shame). He could not walk, and he made a rather pitiable sight being hauled around like an arrowed deer over the shoulders of Forstrel, Jessup's nephew.

The only time he moved as she remembered him was upon Stog, for he rode the mule about Mossbell's lands, offering advice—that's how it sounded to Wistala. He was far too polite to issue anything that sounded like an order to the new tenants. And at table, he presided from his chair with his former charm.

To help him in the house and on the grounds, the Widow Lessup and her whole family moved into Mossbell. With Rainfall unable to so much as work the handle of his well-pump, he needed a good deal of assistance.

Wistala helped him up and down stairs. She regularly wore her game harness, and Rainfall sat atop her back gripping it as she negotiated the tight, winding stairs of Mossbell.

"I should flood the place and pole about, as they do in Wetside," Rainfall said. She'd heard stories of its famous water gardens before.

Mossbell's old ferry-call rang thrice for dinner, forestalling another tale of spiced shrimp and tuna. The Jessup and Lessup clans trooped in from the fields in answer.

Yari-Tab had her litter of kittens in an old laundry basket upstairs, and Jalu-Coke followed with a fresh litter of her own in the barn. Thanks to Mossbell's odd hole-and-corner architecture and rich gardens, the kittens had no end of places to explore, and the older cats feasted upon the mouse and rat population. The inside cats took to following the Widow Lessup about, for she was constantly moving the remaining pieces of furniture and ordering her daughters and sons to clean, polish, and organize, and the curious kittens had learned that explosions of startled insects or mice could result every time a wardrobe was pulled out.

"A hundred years of dust in this house, if it's a day," the widow said. "Len-boy, fetch fresh rags from the washroom and tell your sister she's falling behind on the laundry again!"

Rainfall could only spread his hands and apologize when the widow found a pile of ancient crockery under a chair in the morning-room, or spider-sacs thick as peas in a pod under his bed, until Wistala wondered who was truly the master of Mossbell now.

"Carpentry and cooking are the only indoor work I've ever been able to manage," he said, after another astonished outburst when she awoke a family of raccoons napping out the day in the upstairs linen armoire.

Wistala had become something of a public figure on the estate. The Lessup boys brought their friends, and they'd watch her napping in the sun, not knowing that dragons often cracked an eye as they slept, nerving themselves for an approach. Eventually they'd come up to her in tight little groups of two or three, and one would reach out his grubby hand and run a fingernail across her scales. She'd lift her fringe and drop her griff and bring round her head with a piping dragon cry, and they'd run away shrieking as though expecting to be roasted.

Little girls clapped their hands over their eyes when they first saw her, but once they got over their initial shyness stepped across the line into overfamiliarity, even outrage, for they liked nothing better than to set wildflowers in her scales and fringe until she looked as though she was sprouting like a young elf.

"That's women for you," Rainfall said, plucking a red blossom from the fold in her skin where she tucked up her griff. "Always improving on nature."

And then it was time for Rainfall's granddaughter to return.

Because of the elf's wounds, the high judge attended Rainfall personally. He came with a dozen attendants and counted out the coin Rainfall owed in back taxes, then sealed Rainfall's petition to have his granddaughter restored to him with a great deal of melted wax and ribbon. Wistala thought the high judge an odd-looking fellow made mostly of wrinkles and sags, with a dismal attire all of black deep as cave-dark, though it made the polished gold star on his collar flap and the golden tips of his boots look all the brighter.

The judge and his men ate vast meals before they left, leaving the Widow Lessup clucking that the whole household would be eating roots and apples for the next week.

The next day music woke her.

She stretched and followed the lilting tune until she found Rainfall in the music room playing his bell-pipe. This time she couldn't dance with him, but she could chase her tail and caper until Widow Lessup stormed in with shrieks about what Wistala's claws were doing to the polished floors.

"I admire your good humor," Wistala said as she left. "You look fully recovered."

"Fully?"

"Your eyes sparkle, and your hair is thickly leaved. Such colors!" The willow-leaf locks in his hair had gone red and gold and orange.

"I am happy. I've had a letter. Lada comes home today."

"Do you mind if I ask a question?"

Rainfall's eyes sparkled. "You've chosen a good day to crave a handful of silver to eat. I'm in no mood to deny anything."

"I should like that. But those tablets with the engraved writing. You held them close all the way back to Mossbell. I'm curious, did you find an old family relic in the ruins?"

Rainfall sat straight upright. "Our legends say dragons sniff out a weak spot the way dogs find bones. There must be some truth in it."

"If it's painful to you—"

"Oh, no, nothing like that. Closer to shame, perhaps. I think I told you that Hesstur was one of Eight Sister Cities who founded Hypatia, yes?"

"Yes," Wistala said.

"Let me sit on you, and you can take us into my library."

Rainfall put away his bell-pipe and got on Wistala. When he patted her side, she stalked off toward the library, and they soon arrived. The lectern that had once stood under the window was gone, probably sold, but a pair of old chairs filled its place with a velvet-covered object like a small tabletop upon one.

Rainfall seated himself beside it. "Such humble accommodations for history so important.

"When it became evident that the city would fall to the barbarians, those inside did their best to hide their valuables. I'm sure some priest had charge of these tablets and sealed them in one of the lower crypts before all entrances were sealed. She—I say she, for the clues were voiced in the feminine—made some signs in the old law-tongue, the father of the Hypatian high-tongue and the grandfather of Parl, though only judges and librarians read it much now. If the fires and collapses left the chamber intact, earthquake or grave-robbers later opened it again, though I expect the only ones to benefit were the rats."

"This doesn't tell me what the object is."

"An idea, more than anything," Rainfall said, removing the velvet. "When the eight sisters joined, they formed the King's Council. The tyrant Masmodon did away with the King's Council when he broke the Imperial Staves, but after the Reformation, the Directory modeled itself—"

You could never get a simple answer out of Rainfall when he fell into history. "What does that have to do with the tablets?"

"These tablets are laws that applied to the Kings on the original Council. It was quite a remarkable idea, kings subject to law. Each of the sister cities were afraid of bad rule, or the assumption of a tyrant like Masmodon, so as a condition of their confederation—"

Wistala wasn't sure what that last word was but dreaded interrupting now that he was getting to the point.

"—made eight laws, one for each city, that the Kings on the Council would have to obey. The idea that laws applied to kings was the work of the dwarf-philosopher Doomzeg, though some say he was inspired by the practice of Royal Responsibilities in the ancient Blighter Uldam Empire. It doesn't do to mention those sorts of theories, especially around the priesthood."

"Naturally," Wistala said, lost again.

"Not that Blighter Civilization is established. It's still much debated in the—" Rainfall cocked his head, and his hair-leaves rustled. "You jest with me. But let me illustrate from the tablets: 'No ruler shall kill, maim, imprison, or exile without trial by judge.' That's an important one. 'No ruler shall make law that applies but to all.' Oh, I fear I've translated that badly, but in essence it prevents a king from issuing an edict preventing, say, one shipmaster from transporting wine if other shipmasters are allowed to. Specific laws were the ruination of many in the days of the despots. 'No ruler shall accept or give divination'—another old practice that might be used to get around the other laws, declaring yourself or a family member a god so that one's word becomes religion rather than law. 'No ruler shall confiscate—'"

Wistala stopped him before he could read through all eight and closely examined the tablets. "Why does the ownership distress you, then?"

"When I found them, I swore to myself that I would make the journey to the Imperial Library at Thallia. Oh, I could lose myself there like a drunkard in a brewery! But I find I can't bear to part with them, even if I had the use of my legs. I've spent much time cleaning the inlay. Now they shine like a mariner's guiding star in these dark times. Is it wrong for me to keep them here?"

"Why in the Two Worlds would you ask me?"

"While your judgment is not yet developed, your heart is usually in the right place."

Wistala didn't correct him that a dragon had several hearts. He continued: "You tell me you are not yet two years of age, yet your mind is so far developed."

"We learn from our parents while still in the egg."

"Fascinating. But what surprises me—"

The tolling of Mossbell's signal interrupted his thought. "It must be Lada," he said. "I asked Forstrel to ring as soon as any riders appeared. Wistala, bear me to the front gallery window!"

The front stairwell had a landing with an arched window in it looking out on the balcony between the two trees, made of glass so fine, there were hardly any distortions when peering through. He worked the latches and forced open the frame.

"Odd that she does not ride," Rainfall said. "She used to love ponies. Yet—it was cool this morning, good of the thane to provide her with more comfortable transport."

A two-wheeled cart—very like but a little more elaborate than that of the wandering dwarf with the ponies Wistala had met on the road—moved up the lane with a rider behind.

"Perhaps you should remain inside, Wistala." Forstrel, all hair and limbs, was still ringing the bell as though the barn was going up in flames.

"Young Lessup!" Rainfall called. "Yes, Forstrel, up here, please. I should like to meet my granddaughter on my steps."

One of the Widow Lessup's daughters had the sense to put out a chair for Rainfall, and Wistala saw that he was installed before the rig had even turned around in front of the house.

The escort, only a little mud-splattered in the blue livery of Thane Hammar, didn't descend from his horse. Wistala could tell from Rainfall's stiff manner that he didn't care for this discourtesy.

"Here's your spawn back, and more besides!" the escort said as the rig-driver stepped down and lowered a support for the cart. When that was locked in place, he opened the doors at the back of the cart, and Lada stepped down.

"Phew, she's tossed all over the inside," the driver said.

Lada, a little stained about the neck, was helped out of the cart. Her eyes were wide and wet, and she shot an accusing look at Rainfall.

"Rah-ya, Lada, my moppet," he said, extending his hands. Wistala saw a little skirt behind and decided that some of the Lessup household were standing behind their master. "I'm sorry for the rough journey."

"Monster! Demon! You've ruined everything! Everything!" she said in so loud a voice, her words cracked. She fled into the house, dodging around Rainfall as he reached for her.

"And you're welcome to her," the thane's liveryman laughed. He reached into a bag on his saddle and drew out the doll Wistala had brought. "Here's her mystery doll, Rainfall. You should be more careful in your plotting than to leave such tokens lying about."

Rainfall put his arm about Forstrel's shoulders, and the youth took him inside as the house went into uproar. She heard doors closed, shouting, crying, and quick steps as the Lessup clan gathered to discuss events.

Wistala could do nothing. She watched the rider and rig disappear, then went to Rainfall's library. If he were greatly troubled, he'd probably go there. She curled up about his tablets and waited, unable to simply fall asleep.

He appeared as the juicy smells of dinner being cooked began to fill the house, brought in by Forstrel in a wheeled basket used for gathering fruit.

"I really must have one of those sick-benches built," he said as he settled into his reading chair. "Thank you, Young Lessup. Ah, Tala, you appear again when you're most needed. You can see about getting some dinner, Lessup. I won't eat tonight."

The boy placed a blanket over Rainfall's legs and left, shutting the door behind.

"So much for homecoming joy. But she's beautiful, do you not agree?"

"I'm just getting so I can tell hominids apart," Wistala said.

"Perhaps not in a way that can be captured by portraits or sculpture, you have to look into her living eyes to appreciate her. Wild and open, like my son's. I wonder what her mother was like."

"Why was she angry to you?"

"I need a glass of wine," Rainfall said. He moved for his bell—

"I'll bring it," Wistala said, glad of an excuse to make the trip to the cellar and back. "Which kind?"

"The blueberry, I think. Something sweet to wash the bitter words from my mouth."

Wistala crept past the room that had been prepared for Lada and heard sobbing from the crack beneath. Her griff extended a little, and she descended to the wine cellar and searched the tags on the month's table wine for the blueberry picture.

She carried it back up in her mouth, startling one of the younger Lessup girls as she emerged from the cellar. The child let out a squeak and ran off toward the kitchen. It was the one who liked to tie her hair up in ribbons, Wistala noted absently; all the others in the family simply watched her as she went about Mossbell.

Rainfall opened the cork-and-wax top and poured himself a generous glass. "Once I had thirty of these," he mused as he rolled around the purple liquid. "And I didn't have to make my own wines. Though if the estate prospers now, I'll continue the practice. There's a satisfaction in enjoying the fruits of one's own labors. That's the one thing I've learned all these wretched years since the troll came. Oh, and about dragons. Forgive me, Tala."

"You ask my forgiveness? Since you saved me from the river, you've lost the use of your legs and your granddaughter's love."

"If you'll indulge me in applying a correction: Don't be so quick to mark fate and toss it into baskets marked 'fortune' and 'misfortune' as though you're sorting apples. It was an illness that forced me to cease traveling as a judge—a heavy misfortune—yet that same illness kept me in Tysander, where I diverted myself at the circus and lost my heart to the most skilled rider that ever sat atop a horse. My wife could stand on a horse's bare back with reins tied to her hair all day and still beat me with her strategy at Advantages when we played at night. I imagine if her father or grandfather had spoke against me, she would have cried out, too. I should never have shouted at her. Unforgivable."

"What is the quarrel?" Wistala asked.

Rainfall looked out the library skylight—still cobwebbed and dusty, the Widow Lessup hadn't climbed a ladder in the library yet—and blinked.

"She's convinced herself she loves Hammar."

"A man who stuck her in a cold attic?"

"Apparently she blossomed up there like a solstice succulent shut in the Yule dark. Hammar is young and wild. Nature and instinct took its course."

"So they are mat—married?" Wistala asked.

"They can't be, not under Hypatian law, because of her age. But sadly, she's not too young to bear his child." Rainfall's fingers tightened on the glass stem, and it broke.

Her host blotted up the wine and his own blood with blotting paper. "And the last of the thirty are gone. Oh, what shall I do, Tala? I've suspected he wanted to add Mossbell to his lands, but to resort to this?"

"Wait, this is about land?" Wistala said.

'"I've no doubt of it. With the land—soon to be prosperous again now that the troll is gone—goes responsibility for the road and bridge. He should like to make all who cross pay a toll."

"How does he stand to get the land?"

"He won't have any difficulty getting me declared an invalid, with the judge in his pocket. It would devolve to Lada, save that she is not of age to run an estate. Lada's child would naturally inherit—I'm pierced from my own quiver, insisting Eyen to confirm his parentage with the priests and courts. And she's only too happy to name Hammar as the father. He would become master of Mossbell."

Wistala's head hurt from trying to follow the convoluted circumstances. "I'm not sure I follow the law, but in all your talk of courts and powers—I thought it was to ensure justice and fairness. This strikes me as quite the opposite."

Rainfall admired the glass one more time before discarding it.

"The law and fairness often dance together, but they are not married," he said. "Lately I've grown too fond of engineering, for one can trust calculation and breaking strengths. No thane may change the weight of a stone, no matter how much he wishes. But! I am still master of Mossbell. Perhaps I shall sell it to the dwarves and move south."

He sniffed the air. "But I'm keeping you from your dinner."

She wasn't hungry; perhaps Rainfall's upset and sour mood had transferred itself to her by something like mind-speech.

Mossbell's problems were like a tar pit, the more she struggled to help her host, the worse his plight became!

She went out to the stable barn and found Stog licking at the remains of his evening grain. Jalu-Coke's kittens, all ears and tails, were chasing each other about on clumsy paws. This was the sort of law she understood: the mice ate Stog's grain, and the cats ate the mice.

"Does the master need me?" Stog asked her.

"Oh, no," Wistala said. "I wanted to think. The house was closing in on me. You're looking well."

"Good grain and clean water," Stog said. "I am lucky. It is a blessing to know how lucky one is."

"What happened that night we parted? Did the men find you?"

"Not the way you think," Stog said, shifting on his hooves. Wistala nipped his bristly tail—the donkey in him showed most at the mane and tail.

"Tell me. I need a diversion. Treks and tracks, I shan't be mad."

"Silly, really. I took my chance to get back to the Dragonblade."

Wistala was so astonished, she couldn't speak.

"What?" she finally said.

"You hate me now," Stog said. "But I've been wanting to tell you since our return. I'm grateful to you, unlike these fool kittens, I know what you've done for me. Let's have honesty between us."

"Was he such a fine master as all that?"

"Not as kind as our good elf. But that didn't signify. It wasn't the treatment; it was the excitement of the hunts. I, a pack mule at column-back, used to have flowers thrown on me as we passed through towns, mouth stuffed with carrots and sugar beets. Cheering. You must know that a dragon can wreck whole lands."

Wistala tried to keep her tail still. "I've heard of dragons being blamed for storms and earthquakes."

"You may well glare, but that doesn't signify. Hominids fear your kind."

"Conceded. So you thought you'd make a try for his hall?"

"Yes, I know the look of the mountains; it's not far south of here. But I stopped in a field to avail myself of some corn … and the next thing I knew I had a rope around my neck and another bad master. Then you appeared again. In the Dragonblade's mule train, I learned not to fear the dragon-smell, but I've never liked it until you."

"So the Dragonblade lives not far south in the mountains? He must be close to the Wheel of Fire dwarves, then?"

Stog's ears went up and forward. "Close? Of course. He lives in their city."

For the second time since entering the barn, Wistala was startled into astonishment. But of course he would live with dwarves, as they helped him kill dragons.

"The Wheel of Fire?" Wistala asked.

"The dwarves build fastnesses like no others, and he must be guarded sky and tunnel. It must signify to you that the Dragonblade's line has made enemies, very powerful enemies, of your kind."

He's made an enemy of me, small, stumpy, and misfortunate. But she'd promised Father nests of hatchlings.

She was making herself miserable and hungry for metals, so much so that the tools hung by the hearth looked tempting. Rainfall had written a letter to the metalsmith's guild in the coastal town of Sack Harbor asking for a quantity of brass and copper meant for the melting pot but so far only an answer had arrived naming a price. Wait, that Jessup fellow said something about spare shingles… .

"Stog, thank you for an honest tale," she said.

As the night deepened, she wandered the grounds, prowling, really, for the vegetable garden's fall planting was coming up, and if she was sharp, she might get a raiding rabbit if wind and shadow favored her.

Were she Father, she'd take Stog's knowledge, every memory, every path, and learn about the Wheel of Fire dwarves and the Dragonblade. There were headless, clawless corpses of her own blood with only her left to mourn. What had those men shouted?

"The Avenger"?

But she was alone and small. Even Father in full fury hadn't been a match for the dwarves, and she had nothing like his experience in battle.

Then there was her promise.

Even the worst cave has a best spot, Mother would say. She'd found a good spot here at Mossbell. But if the thane claimed Mossbell, there'd be no more clean, quiet cellars and hearth-roasted goats or Widow Lessup's mutton stew and gravies. Hammar would certainly turn her out—or worse—and if Rainfall sold his estate, would he be able to find a new home with a growing dragon in tow? They'd make a sight on the road: an invalid elf riding muleback, a pregnant girl hardly out of childhood, and a stumpy-legged drakka. Of course, Mother would tell her to improvise.

Curse Hypatia and its laws and courts and judges, robbing a kindly elf of his all. Hammar shaped the law into an ax to cut down a better citizen than he.

Couldn't the law be used to strike back at Hammar? No. Rainfall understood it better than she; he'd called it hopeless and would sell.

Of course. She hurried back to Mossbell, dragon-dashing when she saw the door and flushing a rabbit.

The household had gone to bed, and she had to draw back his bed curtains and wake him. The room smelled like the hot stones in their grate that warmed the metal plate that supported his bedding.

"Rainfall, I've got it," she said when he left off blinking and rubbing his eyes.

She was disappointed to see the number of leaves left on his pillow as he drew himself up with his new bedrail. "Let's have a light and hear it, then. For—"

"Never mind." She spat into the iron plate that caught the wax from his bedcandle. He lit his candle from the flame. "Some great lord would probably give you employ just to do that," he mused.

"I've had an idea about the estate."

"Let's hear it, then."

If she had the right muscles for it, she would be smiling. She tried pulling her griff as high as she could, and felt the corners of her mouth go up. "Sell Mossbell to me! I'd let you live here until the end of your days, without asking for anything. My way of repaying the debt I owe you for saving me."

Rainfall's face fell. "Ah. An excellent idea, but it wouldn't work, I'm afraid."

"Why not?"

"Wouldn't be legal. There are actually two objections. You must be a Hypatian Citizen to own Hypatian land. The estate also controls the bridge and road, and only a titled Hypatian may own that."

"So to own the estate entire, I must be a Hypatian citizen and titled. No other objection?"

"No. I'd once hoped Lada would marry well, but she's been dishonored beyond any man with a title taking her."

"Why can't I become a Hypatian citizen, and titled, then?"

At that Rainfall's hand gripped the bedrail so hard, his knuckles went bloodless. "By the Guide Divine, you're right! Why not? Rah-ya, Tala. Rah-ya! I know just how to do it. Rah-yah! What a joke! To my library, I'm sure there's a precedent of use."

Rainfall sat in his reception hall with the tablets on his lap. "It's a sacrifice, but one I'm prepared to make for our sake. Look on the words with me one last time, Wistala."

The words may have been illustrious, but the reception hall wasn't much. According to Rainfall, there'd once been a grand set of chairs and trophies in the form of helms, scabbards, and weapons belonging to his grandfather—all long since sold. Only his azure battle sash remained, draped behind the very ordinary chair that sat against the wall opposite the arched door, bereft of the gilding that had once adorned it.

But good light came in through the narrow windows. Yari-Tab protested as she was removed from the sunny ledge in preparation.

"Perhaps you should step into the attendant room, Wistala, until the dwarves have gone. I don't want to startle our guests."

Wistala hooked her sii claw in a wall knothole and pulled open the paneled door with a squeak. She closed it again, and found she could see much of the room admirably through the knothole.

"You may show them in now, Yeo Lessup," Rainfall said.

The lanky boy, in a new suit of clothes and his first pair of attending slippers, raised his eyebrows in surprise at the use of his household title. He gave a little bow as he turned.

"Forstrel," Rainfall said. "When at court, always finish your bow and then go about your business."

"Sorry," he said.

"No need for apologies. Please go about it properly, Yeo Lessup."

This time the youth bowed and came fully upright before leaving.

Within moments, two dwarves entered the room. They wore riding apparel with long scarves woven into diamond patterns. Their faces were masked behind stiffened leather, with gauze covering their beards. They removed their hats and bowed. The foremost was a little taller and heavier than the one behind, and had golden coins set into his belt.

"Ah, couriers of Chartered Company," Rainfall said from the humble chair. "I trust the funds sent were adequate for your appearance?"

"Yes, sir," the foremost answered in easy Parl.

"Well here's a Hypatian Silver for each of you anyway for being so prompt. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?"

The masks turned toward each other.

"The signs of the Diadem are not enough?" the foremost said. "We'll show you our seals, if you like."

"No need. It's simply that I wish to be social."

"Elgee and my nephew Embee, sir, and honored."

"May I address you as such?" Rainfall asked.

"Of course, sir."

"Elgee and Embee, this package and the accompanying letter must arrive at the Imperial Library at Thallia intact. Have you been there?"

"I know Thallia well, sir," Elgee said.

"It is inherently of no great value, but impossible to replace. There should be no danger beyond the usual minor difficulties that go with travel. I would prefer that you go by land rather than water, for the winter winds are coming, and I should hate to lose it to shipwreck."

"Some thanedoms welcome dwarves better than—," the smaller one behind said.

Elgee stamped. "No need for that, lad. Sir, you have the word of couriers of the Diadem that it will arrive."

"Give it to Heloise. If she no longer lives, give it to whoever holds the Hypatian Archive Table-Head. I expect some tokens in return, and would wish you to convey them back here with the same care."

"Barring delays in Thallia, you should see our masks again before the moon comes about again. Will you write your price and terms?"

The younger dwarf drew a small case from his cloak. Wistala thought it looked like it held paper. The dwarf worked the box, and a fresh length appeared at the top. He offered a quill and ink to his elder, who wrote upon it. He knelt and presented it to Rainfall.

Rainfall read it. "Prices have gone up since I last used your services."

"The roads have become treacherous," Elgee countered.

"This covers all expenses?"

"It does. And the bonding: our coin belts shall be yours if aught is lost."

"Ah, you no longer negotiate each separately. It is acceptable, then. Shall I sign and seal?"

"A signature is all that is necessary from a Knight of the Hypatian Directory, sir," Elgee said with a short bow.

Rainfall signed the paper revealed at the top of the box. "Ah, how courtly the tongues of the Diadem remain. You should give lessons to your cousins of the Wheel of Fire."

"They'd rather burn their beards than listen to—," the younger said with a hiccupping cough that Wistala guessed to be dwarf laughter.

"Keep your tongue behind mask," Elgee said. "Forgive my nephew, he's but—"

Rainfall held up his hand. "No, a jest is not out of place after business is concluded. Will you stay and bed this night?"

"Diadem couriers lose not an hour, once commissioned," Elgee said. "It is written on our cloak-latch. We ride at once. Thank you for your business—and the hot sup. There remains only the portion to be paid."

"Beneath my chair there is a chest. Would you be so good as to retrieve it?"

The dwarves turned toward each other again; then the younger stepped forward and lifted the small iron box. He passed it to Rainfall, who opened it.

When the accounting was settled, both dwarves bowed low, with more grace than Wistala would have credited them, and Rainfall bowed in return. After his head came back up, the dwarves raised theirs.

"A good journey," Rainfall said.

"If we are not back by the Winter Solstice, write the Chartered Company and claim your bond. Thank you again."

With that they left, escorted by Yeo Lessup.

"Wistala, come back. I think there's one more bit of business, and I want you for this."

She nosed open the passageway. "Gracious dwarves."

Rainfall locked his chest with a tiny key, which he returned to a small bag he kept about his neck. "You can't always trust appearances with dwarves. They mask more than their faces. But the Chartered Company will keep its bargain. Now all there is to do is hope there's still friendship, or at least honor, at the Imperial Library."

"What do you wish me to do?"

"Sit and be amused, dragon-daughter. Yeo Lessup, send in your uncle."

This time the youth bowed properly. Jessup came in, apologizing for the muddiness of his boots and carrying an oilskin-wrapped object the size of one of Mossbell's larger windows.

"How goes the inn, Jessup?" Rainfall said as he set down his burden in front of him.

"Well enough, sir, but I'll beg you to help me with my figures again. I thought running an inn meant tapping kegs and keeping the bedding aired, but I never dreamt of all the counting!" Jessup was looking at Wistala again in that funny way of his.

Rainfall said: "I admire a full-grown man who is so attentive to lessons. Is it done?"

"Just about," Jessup said. "You were right about the paints at Sack Harbor. Such colors! Who knew there were so many."

"Then let us see."

He untied a string around the oilskins and removed them.

Wistala blinked and looked at the wooden panel again. There were eyebolts in the top and fretwork to let the air pass through. Was it some kind of miniature door? Wait, it had a design on it, a painted figure. She recognized a long figure, depicted in profile, mostly upright, green and black-clawed.

"It's you, Wistala," Rainfall said as the meaning dawned on her.

"I'm calling the inn The Green Dragon," Jessup said. "And a good inn needs a good sign that travelers remember."

"If you've got no objection," Rainfall said. "He does this as a form of compliment."

Wistala understood, but understanding didn't bring a surcease of confusion. "But the troll, my plan, your brother died …"

"All the land round Mossbell and the twin hills honors his bravery and is happier for it," Jessup said. "I can't blame you for the troll's doing."

"So, do we have your agreement?" Rainfall asked.

"Why do you need it? The man may name his inn as he wishes."

"I'd be happier to have you touch the sign," Jessup said.

Wistala didn't answer, but stepped up to the sign. She extended her sharpest sii claw and dug a chunk of wood out at the eye. "You made the eyeblack round, like a hominid's eye or a tailvent. Dragons have eyes like a cat."

"Another story," Jessup said. "The dragon herself marked the south-side eye, to look in the direction of the fight with the troll. A good story to tell over honey-mead."

"When do you open?"

Jessup swiped his nose with a sii—fingertip, Wistala corrected herself. "All is in place. I've been brewing all summer since I bought out Old Golpramp's entire supply of clover-honey. You have advised me on wine. My wife is ready to do the baking, and my son the butchery. There is still much sewing needing to be done, but I can make do. I was going to hang the sign tomorrow."

"Delay another week or two. My old friend Ragwrist leads his troupe south even now, and this is his year to go the north roads. He should stop any day. The presence of his circus would make for a grand door-opening."

"As my landlord wishes," Jessup said.

Lada kept to her room. The only time Wistala saw her speak to her grandfather was when a messenger arrived. Forstrel took the letter to his master despite the outcry from Lada.

So great was the fracas that Wistala couldn't help but attend her host. She found two of the Lessup girls listening outside his library door, whispering to each other.

"What has happened?" Wistala asked.

Both jumped, for Wistala's steps were light on the rag rugs Widow Lessup had made to save the hall floors from dragonclaw and tailscale.

"The moony girl's got a thane-letter," the older of the girls said. "The master insists on reading it before giving it to her."

Lada exploded out of the library like Auron leaping up onto the egg shelf, and all three listeners instinctively flattened themselves against the wall to get out of her way.

"Beast!" she said to Wistala, clutching the open letter to her breast as she fled to her room.

Wistala went into the library, found Forstrel standing behind Rainfall in his chair.

"I think that last was intended for me, my dear," Rainfall said.

Wistala had once seen Jessup turn his younger son over on his lap and strike him for starting a fire out of some scrap wood where the inn was being constructed, and couldn't help but think Lada would benefit from a similar treatment, for she had no snout to tail-snap in Mother's fashion.

Widow Lessup's voice intruded through the door as she sent her girls off to work. Forstrel made himself look busy at the bookshelves.

"Can I get you anything, sir?" Widow Lessup asked, her dark eyes hard and angry.

"A little wine, thank you, ye'en," Rainfall said.

"Perhaps the letter held an offer for her to return to Galahall, that we might have some peace?" Wistala said.

"A brief mention that she was often in his thoughts and that he yearned to see her again," Rainfall said.

"He's well consoled by his other wards," Forstrel said.

"Rumormongering improves nothing, Yeo Lessup," Rainfall said. "He's still the thane, and I won't have that kind of talk. Go save your mother a trip back upstairs, if you please."

"Why doesn't the thane just marry her?" Wistala asked after Forstrel left. "Wouldn't that make his path to ownership that much shorter?"

"Ahh, but Hypatian tradition allows only one wife, so he must choose carefully. Poor Lada is small fry from our river. Hammar has cast his net far at sea looking for a greater catch."

Wistala digested this. "Have these circumstances been explained to Lada?"

"She will not listen. She's like a sleepwalker who will not awaken till she falls off a cliff. Let us survey the road and bridge. I won't have Ragwrist hurling jests as he once did daggers about the state of the roads under my care."

The dwarven couriers returned before Ragwrist arrived, and rather than another formal session in the reception hall, Rainfall invited them to a quiet dinner at the Green Dragon Inn.

While the dwarves saw to their mounts and packhorse in the barn, Rainfall and Jessup together hatched a plan to give the dwarves a fine tale to carry back to their delvings.

Rainfall and Jessup took her in the great common room of the inn, showed her the wide river-stone chimney dividing the kitchen and storerooms from the common room and two of the sleeping rooms upstairs. Rainfall told her what to do when he snapped his fingers once, and then the second time.

She smelled that one of Yari-Tab's kittens had already installed itself as the inn feline. Ah, there it was, sleeping on the mantel of the smaller fireplace on the outer wall of the common room.

Wistala found the inn rough-hewn and bare compared with the careful workmanship of the interiors of Mossbell, but something about the thickness of the logs and stone-and-masonry walls Jessup had used suggested safety and comfort as much as the carven door-frames and window seats of Mossbell. She recognized a mug, a favorite of Rainfall's, on a special shelf all its own behind the counter of the common room.

"The landlord's mug, may it be refilled many times," said Jessup, taking it down and pouring a sweet-smelling liquid from a tapped keg resting on one side of the bar.

"I see you've copied the old style," Rainfall said, reclining on a lounge next to the big fireplace. A blanket covered his legs. "The first Hypatian posthouses were built much like this, when there were barbarians of doubtful behavior to consider." He sampled the mead. "Delicious. My compliments to the innkeeper and Old Golpramp for his clover-honey."

Jessup smiled at being called an innkeeper. He poured himself a pewter mug. "To better days between the Apple and the Whitewater, thanks to troll-killings and dragon hoards."

Wistala felt she should point out that the coin from Tumbledown would be more appropriately called a "rat hoard," but she let the hominids talk. Jessup's family watched her from the doorway to the kitchen. They'd seen Wistala only at a distance until now and stood as still as the painted dragon on the wood panel leaning next to the door.

"Father, the dwarves come," the youngest of Jessup's boys shouted as he came in through the door.

"Very well, Wistala, up the chimney."

Though it was wide, she had a little difficulty backing up it. Her tail end found purchase, and she braced herself with her legs.

"As you bid, we've returned with a response from the scroll-sorters," Elgee said upon entering and after words of introduction. "And a whole host of seals and ribbons their baton contains. Caps are intact, you'll see, Sir Elf."

"Thank you. I've prepared a purse with the balance of your fee. Would you care for it now?"

"Only if you'll deduct the cost of a pouring of this fine-smelling mead!"

Rainfall again: "That's quite impossible, my good dwarf. I rounded up, and there are no pennies within."

"Then the round and sup besides will be paid by our expense purse. A feast, good Innkeeper, and don't skimp on the side dishes!"

Wistala shifted her weight in the chimney, wishing Rainfall would play his trick.

More drinking, lip-smacking, and beard-wiping followed. "This is one dragon I'll be glad to see anytime I'm on the Old North Road," Embee said.

"Would you like to hear the tale of how the inn came to be named?" Rainfall said.

"Stories always make the food come faster," Elgee said.

"Then put that kindling on the fire, would you, Embee."

Wistala saw a short-fingered hand appear, placing the splinters in a stack with plenty of air space between. "Shall I call for the innkeeper's fire?" Embee asked.

"This inn has all the modern conveniences," Rainfall said, and snapped his fingers.

Wistala let loose her foua on the stack of wood, which promptly burst into flame. She heard gasps of astonishment from the dwarves. Then she heard a sizzle like fresh meat thrown on a hot stove, and green smoke boiled up the chimney. Wistala hadn't been expecting that, and as she held her breath, Rainfall snapped his fingers a second time.

She dropped down the chimney and jumped to avoid the small fire. She was a bit clumsy with her tail, knocking the burning wood to the side, but landed credibly.

The dwarves fell backwards off their hearthside bench and did amazing backrolls, coming up with hands at sheath hilt.

"What in the Lavadome?" Elgee sputtered. Embee moved to draw his weapon, but his uncle held his arm.

"Rah-ya," Rainfall said. "I'm sorry, good dwarves, I couldn't resist. Please, laugh with me at this little trick. This is the Green Dragon herself."

"What, have you conjured her?" Embee said.

"Ach, she was hiding up the chimney, blockhead," Elgee said. "Sorry for the violence of our reaction, sir. Robbers may be found round the keg-tap as well as on the road, and we're accustomed to being always on our guard when outside the Delvings. Let me replace the spilled drinks."

When everyone was settled, Wistala told her tale. It came haltingly at first; then the words flowed more smoothly. She found herself imitating the strange, loping, two-by-two run of the troll and mimicking its roars.

The dwarves' eyes were white behind their masks, and they hardly looked away save to take another mouthful from their mugs until she was finished.

"Well told, good drakka," Rainfall said. "You have a talent for pleasing an audience."

Wistala bowed, hoping the dwarves didn't hear her prrum.

"Will she dine with us?" Elgee said.

"You'll find your expense purse lighter than you might like when you pay the tally," Rainfall warned. "I've been feeding her these eight months."

"What's the price on being able to say you dined with a dragon?" Elgee said.

"Though my grandfather said many's the time he feared being dined on," Embee added.

"Keep your—," Elgee warned.

"Oh, I'm sure he meant it as a joke," Wistala said. "You dwarves tweak your beards when you jest, and I saw Embee pull at his."

"So we do," Elgee said. "Mark! I look forward to telling this tale to my directing partner when I return to the Delvings. A courtly dragon!"

Wistala ate, even tasted a little of the honeymead on her tongue, but found it too sweet. But even a drakka's appetite, somewhat guarded by Mother's repeated warnings against gluttony, couldn't compare to the amount of food the dwarves ate.

When farewells were said and the dwarves installed in their room upstairs, weighted by the vast meal, mead, and Rainfall's coin purse, Rainfall sat beside the fire with the bit of craft from the Library at Thallia on his lap.

"Aren't you curious to see this opened, Wistala?"

"Honestly, I am," she admitted. The "baton" was made of black shining leather, stiffened in some manner, and capped at one end.

"Then open Heloise's seal, and let us see their answer."

The wax—it featured what looked like two sets of identical steps rising to a peak—yielded to Wistala's sii-claw with no trouble at all. The seal held a leather thong closed over a tiny metal nub, which in turn secured the leather cap in place, as tight fitting as a hominid's footwear covered the feet. Both a rattle and a rustle came from inside, as she turned the tube.

She looked within. Rolled paper, and something glinting. She extracted the thick paper.

"Fine cotton paper, Wistala," Rainfall said. "I expect good news."

"I can't read it."

"May I?" Rainfall asked.

"Of course." Wistala handed it to him.

"Ah, it's in the priestly tongue, the oldest script of Cloud-temple of Thellasa and therefore Hypat, and only used these days for ritual. I shall translate:

"Be it known within and without the … ahem … civilized land that Wistala of Hesstur, having been of service to scholarship and common enlightenment, is recorded among the ancient and exalted order of Librarians, Keepers, and Archivists; is entitled to call herself an Agent in and of the Librarians; is admitted to the commons of all Hypatian Libraries; and is presented with insignia of rank and station in the Hypatian Order, all of which are to be recognized and held for the remainder of her natural life."

A thin hammered disk of gold had been set into wax and pressed hard into the paper. Wistala inspected the device, another triangular shape with a star at the top.

Rainfall smiled at her. "The old phraseology sounds a little ignorant these days. It was used before Hypatia knew of aught but barbarians beyond its borders. How do you like being an Agent-Librarian, Nuum Wistala?"

"Nuum? Oh, for an expression easier on dragon-tongues."

Wistala sniffed the paper: ink and a dry sandlike smell were overlaid by the gold and the wax. "I can't say yet. What must I do?"

"Avoid swaggering your entitlement about, unless you wish to be laughed at. Even a Surveyor-Mapper will receive more bows, for on his lines are fields and pastures divided. Should you want to take pupils, it is useful, I suppose. Now let us admire your badge of title."

The badge was a triangular gemstone, about the size of Yari-Tab's nose, set in silver and fitted on the top with an eyehook for a chain.

"Golden topaz," Rainfall said. "It matches your eyes nicely. Symbolic of a clear head and clear vision, and enlightenment. The motto on the back reads lun-byedon, 'light-giver,' in the old priestly tongue."

The polish of the stone made the baubles Father used to give Jizara and her seem like dull quartz. "I would like to wear it."

"It would look well set into one of your scales, I suppose, and all elves would smile, for our victory garlands are of wound green and gold—but you shed them, don't you? Chain about your neck? But you'll outgrow anything we can find around here."

"How do the others at the library wear them?" Wistala asked.

"Some fit them into their hair so they hang just above and between the eyes, an old tradition dating back to the priestly scroll-keepers. Or they will puncture the earlobe and dangle them there by a sort of hook."

Wistala looked at her reflection in a polished piece of copper near the door. Hominids made a little ritual of gazing at themselves before stepping outside.

"Then I shall fix it in my fringe, at the fore, as I don't have a hominid head with that grotesque plate of greasy skin above my eyes. You may have to help with your blacksmithing tools. A drakka's fringe is nerveless, but tough."

Jessup returned, and he and Rainfall pointed out different features of the public room to Wistala, and Rainfall suggested the addition of a notice-post outside the door. "I fear I'm becoming in danger of being entirely too pleased with myself," Rainfall said. "Making Wistala a librarian and getting you the rank of postman."

"Postman? I'm hardly able to read, sir," Jessup said.

"Oh, I'll improve you. Without being able to work my gardens, I need more mental diversions, and if I stay within my library all hours, I'll be thought a hermit. A reliable post will bring visitors to the inn. But before making you postman, I must give Tala her oath of citizenship."

Jessup dropped his mug, sending mead across the assembly. "A … a dragon. A citizen?"

"And why not?" Rainfall said, wiping away the stray mead on his hand with a small cloth he kept in his pocket. "There are precedents, albeit ancient ones. She can understand our laws and take the oath."

Jessup chuckled. "The teeth will drop out of his skull."

"But we must hurry. I can administer the citizenship oath, and you shall witness it, Jessup, and then we will have a bill of sale, and it will be done. What say you?"

"I fear."

"What do you fear?" Wistala asked.

"The course of these events. I don't want to be the one whose witness frustrated the thane."

"He'll count me as an enemy if he does anything to you and yours," Wistala said coldly.

Rainfall turned. "I must ask you, Wistala, for something of an imposition."

"Nothing would be too great to my savior and host," Wistala said.

"I'll adopt you as my daughter. That confers on you full citizenship after you reside in Hypatia for six years. A simple oath gives you citizenship for now."

Wistala had been practicing the words daily.

"I'd hoped to hear the words in the Hypatian Hall at Quarryness, but Jessup's Inn won't be hurt for having one more story to tell about its sign."

Jessup looked out the windows, as if fearing hostile eyes in the night.

Rainfall pointed to the floor before him. "It's customary to touch the hem of the officiant's robe of state before taking the oath, but I'm afraid this mead-spattered bit of blanket will have to do; it's the words that matter in the end."

Wistala laid her sii on his blanket.

"The oath-taker usually kneels before the officiant. But having four legs—"

Wistala folded her sii under her. In consequence her saa and tailvent were raised, but as they were facing in the direction of Galahall, it seemed befitting.

"Do you understand the difference between a truth and a lie, and the seriousness of an oath, Nuum Wistala?"

"I do," Wistala said.

"Then take the oath."

"I, Wistala, promise to take up the responsibilities of a Hypatian Citizen. I will obey the Hypatian laws, keep the Hypatian peace, and maintain the Hypatian lands and seas against all enemies. May my strength and honor sustain this oath and Hypatia's glory from now until the end of days."

"Rise, Citizen, and never kneel again," Rainfall said.

"Walls fresh up and already hallowed," Jessup said. "That reminds me: I should have Mod Feeney in to bless the post and lintels."

"Jessup, I must beg for a delay in the rites. Wistala and I must go into Quarryness. Wake up Forstrel and tell him to put my saddle on Stog. Oh, and could I trouble you for a pennysworth for Tala?"

"Of course, sir, but she needs no pennies here. As long as I've got a bit of bone in back, her meals shall be free under this roof."

"Not for food, Jessup. She must purchase Mossbell, and while I'd accept her loosest dragonscale, a land sale's not legal unless it's in Hypatian coin. And it's just bad form for me to lend it to her."

Stog could keep a punishing pace when he put his will into his hooves. Wistala loped along the road northward in the evening dark as best as she could, and finally begged him for a ride behind Rainfall's special strapped saddle.

"Fine," Stog said. "But sheathe your claws."

Wistala climbed up, and Stog broke into his buck-trot again.

The night was foggy and turning cold, the moisture thick enough to collect at the branch-tips and drop with soft, wet taps into the fallen leaves. There would be a thick frost by morning, she expected.

"You dragons are supposed to be able to sing," Stog said. "I'd like to hear a song of the merits of mules. What horse could carry this burden at this pace?"

"Is he complaining about the weight?" Rainfall asked. "My beast-tongue is not that of my forefathers—I've been too long in tamer lands."

"He wants a song," Wistala said.

"Perhaps it would help pass the time," Rainfall said. "Beside, I don't think I've ever heard you sing."

Wistala cleared her throat. "Drakes and dragons are more fond of these kind of displays, and more skilled, but I'll do my best:

 While a horse will carry any fool

 If the going's hard you'll want a mule!

 Twice the load on half the feed,

 A mule is tougher than any steed!

 But treat him well when put to task

 Or he'll knock you on your—

"Ask no more verses of me, I'm out," Wistala finished.

"Prettier than any nightingale," Rainfall said. "And a good deal louder."

"Let's have it again," Stog said. "While a horse will carry any fool …" he brayed in time to his hoofbeats.

And so, with Stog repeating the verses until dogs whined in complaint, they came into the Quarryness around the midnight hour.

The town was bordered by Rainfall's road to the east and a great hill to the west. The hillside facing the town was one long cliff, with some wooden scaffolding up the side where men took building stone. A small watercourse cut through the town, bridged in two places by stone. There were several constructs of two or three levels at the center of town around a rather muddy common and a few leafless trees, but the rest of the town was a small warren of narrow, twisting streets.

"The thane allows for division and subdivision of the town parcels," Rainfall said. "He forgets that the old Hypatian engineering, while somewhat wasteful of space, also prevents fires."

There were still a few lights in some of the upper windows and galleries of the town, but none strode the streets save for a pair of men Rainfall identified as firewardens—also charged with keeping the peace. Downstream Wistala heard faint notes of music and song.

Rainfall turned Stog into the center of town, just off the main road. He stopped Stog before a stout, triangle-topped building with a silver banner-staff at the peak. "High temple," Rainfall said, pointing to a grand, round-topped building. "Low temple," he said, referring to a long, flat-roofed stone-walled building opposite. "Courthouse and muster-hall."

Ranks of carved men carrying spears and shields decorated the sides. "Bring me right up the steps to the door," Rainfall said, in beast-tongue, to Stog.

The doors were metal-covered and fitted in such a way that the hinges were concealed.

"There will be a low judge or two within," Rainfall said. "The law never sleeps, as old Arfold, my law-teacher used to say. Strike the door with your tail, Wistala, and wake them."

Her scales rang on the metal surface, and the pounding echoed within.

The pair of firewardens watched from the common, talking to each other quietly. One hurried away toward the road.

"Again, please," Rainfall said.

Wistala pounded on the door again.

A decorative panel in the door suddenly opened. "I rise, I rise. What have you to say that can't wait until a daylight hour? Is there a murderer to be celled?"

"Good evening, Sobyor," Rainfall said.

The man's rather small eyes widened. "Your Honor!"

"Oh, that title's long since washed to the sea. What are you doing manning the door-minder's garret, Sobyor? You were once the best low judge in the three north thanedoms."

"And high judge for three whole days, thanks to you. What in the worlds is that?" he asked, staring at Wistala.

"She's my legs, if you'll let me through this door. We've some small matters of business to attend, and I'm afraid they cannot wait. Admit us, and help me mind the mule, would you?"

"I'm … I'm not to recognize you," Sobyor said. "Orders from High Judge Kal himself."

"What authority does Judge Kal have to give you such an order? This is a Hypatian Hall, and I require admittance."

"I am … I am not alone in here," Sobyor said with a glance to his right.

"Who is in there with you?" Rainfall asked.

"A pair of firewardens."

"Tell them—," Wistala started to say.

"Hold your temper," Rainfall cut in. "Sobyor, how is your practice in Thellass-tongue?"

"Mus mis palandam," Sobyor responded.

"Rah-ya!" Rainfall said. He rattled off a string of speech Wistala didn't understand, but it meant something to Sobyor.

"Opt," Sobyor replied, shutting the panel.

"What are you about?" Wistala heard a gruff voice inside say. There was a brief rattle inside, perhaps a hand checking the lock on the door.

"My duty," Sobyor's voice replied.

Quieter now: "What was all that grotting about?"

The voices faded.

"Wistala, how would you like to perform your first duty in defense of the Hypatian Order?"

"Sir?" Wistala asked, lowering and raising her head.

"There are airing windows up under the overhang of the roof on the side walls of this building. Climb up and see if you can get through one, and open the door."

Wistala didn't like leaving Rainfall perched on Stog at the big doorway; it seemed the whole town was laid out to look at the stairs leading up to the Hypatian Hall. She couldn't imagine what danger to expect, surrounded by paved streets and rain-collectors in the quiet of the night, but she didn't like it.

The columns were fluted, which served her claws admirably, and alternating grips between sii and saa, she gained the roof despite the slick mist-wet. The roof tiles were long and thicker than her sii, chevron-shapes interlocking as they descended from the peak, and spotted with generations' worth of bird droppings.

She lowered her head to look under the cornice at the side of the building and saw the gaps Rainfall had mentioned. They were recessed so that it would be hard to see them, let alone shoot arrows or other projectiles into them from the street. Wooden shutters filled the intermittent gaps.

Gripping the roof with one saa and her tail, she managed to poke one open. It gave way on a horizontal pivot-point with a loud—to her—squeak. Flattening herself, she crept in under the shutter.

An entrance gallery yawned below her. She looked down on a row of frozen head tops—larger-than-life busts were on display on the inner side of the walls, and there was little to see beneath but a few benches. The back two-thirds of the building was blocked off by a wide staircase leading up to a semicircular forum, with banners on display above wooden doors.

Wistala heard voices from a smaller half-door set beneath the great stairs.

She lowered her tail and managed to test one of the busts below. It seemed solid enough. She jumped down to it and perched for a moment atop the great man's head—he had a heavy brow and a nose of a size to equal the fame he must have gained in life to be so immortalized—and from there leaped down to the floor.

The floor was smooth but a little dirty, and had a series of strange divots and channels carved into its surface, not deep at all and useful only in collecting dirt, as far as she could tell. But the object of this exploration was the door.

Or door within a door, rather. There was a smaller portal set in the mighty wooden doors, barred by simple iron bolts set into tubes. She drew back the bolt on the smaller door and opened it.

"Daughter, you are a wonder," Rainfall said in his elf-tongue.

Wistala took pleasure in hearing the familiar, but wondered if she could ever call Rainfall father—even in elf-tongue.

"I do not think you can ride Stog within unless I open the larger doors," Wistala said.

"I'll have to ask you to bear me inside." He slid off Stog, using a leather strap to lower himself by the hands in the manner of a laborer she'd once seen come down from Jessup's roof by taking a rope hand-under-hand. Then he switched to his rough beast tongue: "Stog, this shall only take a moment. Don't befoul the steps, please."

Once he was seated upon her and holding on to her fringe, she took him through the door.

"Take me to the ingress under the stairs—that's the attendant-judge's office."

Wistala bore him into the hall.

"Locks on a Hypatian hall door. Where are late-riding couriers supposed to shelter, or impoverished travelers? And what's this … the design on the floor's been taken up!" Rainfall said as they passed the channels in the floor. "Where had the poor gold gone, I wonder … gilding the cornices at Galahall, no doubt."

Flickering light and voices came from beneath the stairs.

Rainfall sighed. "This hall has become a tomb to old ideals. In my grandfather's time, at this hour there were travelers sleeping beneath the gaze of Iceandler, or Torus the Elder, the smell of pine knots burning in the braziers. I suppose the only crowds nowadays come on Taxing Day."

Wistala saw at the base of the ingress another door, half wood and half bars, with a sort of cut-off table in the middle and a space just big enough for a man to put his fist through above the table. On the other side, Wistala caught a glimpse of shelving, divided and subdivided into cubbyholes filled with tied scrolls.

Voices and moving shadows came from the other side of the door.

"Careful with that light, there. You'll burn my ear off. Oh, now I can't see anything," Sobyor's voice echoed out into the hall.

"Take me to the grate," Rainfall said.

Wistala went down the eight steps to the area before the barred door. Some old, dirty quill-feathers lay on the floor.

"Ahem," Rainfall said.

Wistala heard quick startled steps inside, but kept her head down and out of sight.

"How did you get in?" a rough voice barked.

"The more interesting question, firewarden, would be by what power you kept me out of a Hypatian Hall."

Rainfall's voice returned to its usual soothing melody: "I just need the court's seal on the two small matters we spoke of earlier, Sobyor," Rainfall said.

"Prepared, and here's the logbook, as well," Sobyor said. "Just as well to have all neat and proper."

"We're not to have any business with him," a shriller voice cut in.

Wistala heard a heavy tread step up to the grate, and smelled gar-locque and onion. The light from inside the room was almost shut off entirely. From seemingly atop her, Sobyor's voice said: "Best sign it fast, sir. The wardens are restless tonight."

"Judge Kal will hear every particular!" the shrill voice warned.

"Certain particulars will catch up to the high judge, one of these days," Rainfall said. She heard him writing. "Wistala, your penny, please."

She passed it up to Rainfall. "The transaction is witnessed by the court," Sobyor said. "Make a record of Nuum Wistala's credentials."

Sobyor again, quieter: "Is that the—?"

"I must make do as best as I can," Rainfall said.

"What are you doing, there?" the rough voice said.

"Completing a little court business," Sobyor said. "You could read it yourself. If you could read." Wistala smelled a candle and hot wax. "There. Signed, sealed, and seconded in the log."

"Thank you, Sobyor," Rainfall said. "You always were the best of men. I'll leave you to this gloom and the barred doors." He tapped Wistala.

"This will really get up the thane's nose," Sobyor cackled.

As she climbed the stairs bearing Rainfall, Wistala glanced back and got her first look at Sobyor. He was an enormous man, both tall and fat, with thick curly hair. No wonder the firewardens protested his behavior with words only. Sobyor closed one eye at her; then they were back in the entrance hall under the statues.

"That went better than expected," Rainfall said. "Had there been a hostile low judge on duty, I would have had to submit petitions and so on, which could have slowed us up."

It seemed a slow enough business to Wistala, who was beginning to wish she'd burned Galahall down with Thane Hammar in it, saving trouble all around. Except that would have brought a frown to Rainfall's face. He set such a store in his legal niceties.

They walked the road a good deal slower on the trip home. Wistala trudged along ahead of Stog to keep the pace comfortable, but even Stog seemed tired. Rainfall passed the time by explaining to Wistala about the importance of the Thanes to the Hypatian Order: they could more effectively lead troops from their thanedom when gathered under a general than strangers and were supposed to be the shield and sword of the other elements of the Hypatian Order, the priesthood and the judges. But military power, pomp, and panoply went to some men's heads like wine.

Wistala was happy to see the twin hills at the edge of Mossbell's lands pop out against a suddenly pink sky. The far-off chain of snowy mountaintops to the east glowed orange as the dawn crept up.

Then she heard a frighteningly familiar sound from ahead.

"I hear hoofbeats," Wistala said. "Many riders."

"What's that?" Rainfall asked, waking. Stog halted.

"Riders ahead," Wistala repeated.

Rainfall looked down at her. "Get off the road, Wistala. I'll handle them."

"I hope there's a few horses from the Galahall stables," Stog said. "I'll give them—"

"I'm not leaving you alone," Wistala said.

"Oh, I suppose your existence is public now. I'd hoped to wait until you were a little older and stronger."

Wistala sat in front of Stog and waited.

There were seven riders, two riding close to the edge of the road on either side, and the rest in back in a bunch that expanded and contracted as the horses trotted close to each other and then veered away.

The riding party spotted Stog, and the five in back formed into a line, blocking the road.

"Rah-ho," Rainfall said quietly to himself. "The thane himself rides. This should be an interesting interview."

Wistala tried to guess which one was the thane. There was a tall powerful man all the way over to the left side in the group of five. He kept looking at the others.

She couldn't tell if they were arrayed for war, for they wore cloaks against the chill. The two in front had short horse-bows, and all wore helms of silver color—no sign of spears or lances.

The men slowed, walking their horses up, the front two falling in a little closer to the others. One dropped back a little, as well. He was shorter than the others, perhaps some kind of servant to the warriors.

Rainfall bowed from his tied-on seat. "Thane Hammar. How nice toto meet you on a chilly morning. Your countenance always warms me."

Astonishingly, the one farthest to the rear spoke. "Greetings! Rainfall of Mossbell. I won't say I was surprised, for I rode looking for you. Your thane recognizes you."

Rainfall bowed again.

Wistala examined him more closely. He was a youth, as far as she could judge men, perhaps Forstrel's age, but more slightly framed. Tiny wisps of facial hair at either side of his mouth made his upper lip look as though it had sprouted wings, and his cheeks were spotted. His red horse, though bigger than the ones the others rode, didn't bring him close to their head-height, and his helm, shinier than the others', swept up to a forward point like a hawk's beak, though it seemed overlarge and heavy for so small a head, for its brim came down almost to the bridge of his nose. He kept looking at Wistala from beneath it.

"News!" Hammar said. "I'm sorry to hear of your injury. I had no idea it was so severe, and word has just reached me. I wish to provide comfort."

"As usual, the thane is all kindness," Rainfall said. "But there is no need for you to exert yourself in my behalf, or add to your cares. I am managing."

"I'll not be dissuaded. Your burdens must be lightened. Especially now that your granddaughter is happily returned to you—"

"Bearing your progeny," Rainfall said in a sterner tone.

"Please! Pay no attention to rumor," Hammar said. "The brat might be anyman's. I've heard it was my stableboy. Or possibly one of the gamekeepers."

Wistala suddenly hated this half-grown bit of tailventing. Like Rainfall's history lectures or talks on leverage, nothing cleared and settled her mind like seeing, smelling, and hearing.

"I'm shocked to see a girl not yet sixteen so insulted, in so many despicable ways," Rainfall said.

"Watch your tongue, elf," the tall man on the left said. "Notch!" He turned his head toward the thane. "I don't like the look of that creature in front of the mule. It seems ready to jump."

The two riders with bows put arrows to their strings, but did not draw.

"Wistala, stay still," Rainfall said.

She tried to keep her tail from moving, but it seemed possessed of a mind of its own.

"The road seems an uncouth place to trade words," Rainfall said. "Perhaps you can return to Mossbell with us and we may talk over breakfast, once weapons are properly hung up."

"Goat-milk yogurt is not to my taste," Hammar said. "I bear a warrant which must be answered in court. You shall appear before Judge Kal to answer. You're no longer fit to be the master of an imperial estate."

"Our opinions are alike, then," Rainfall said.

The thane's eyes widened. "You are wise to acknowledge your limitations."

"Advice that might be taken as well as given. Our opinions are alike, but I've made my own arrangements. I've sold Mossbell."

The red spots on the thane's face suddenly seemed darker against his skin. "To whom?"

"Nuum Wistala, who you see before you."

"No! Nuum? This … creature?" Hammar said.

"The creature before you is a titled Hypatian," Wistala said.

"It speaks," one of the men with the bows said.

"She's an Agent of the Librarians at Thellasa," Rainfall said. "And my legal adopted daughter. Daughter, mind you, which takes precedence over granddaughter, should I meet with some unfortunate accident on this highway. The bill of sale is recorded."

"Ho! You are undone!" Hammar said. "This creature attacked Galahall not three months ago, intent on arson and assassination. I'll have you hanged for treason next to her hide!"

"Please! Pay no attention to rumor," Rainfall said in a rather squeaky tone that mimicked Hammar's. "I heard a two-headed, feathered lizard attacked Galahall. She has but one, and as for feathers, it's plain to see she bears none."

"Kill that creature!" Hammar shrieked.

"Pull and loose!" the tall man ordered.

Wistala hugged the road as the archers fired. The sharp strikes hurt, but the arrows bounded off down the road. The men couldn't have chosen a worse angle to fire upon dragonscale.

Stog screamed piteously, as though mortally wounded, though no arrows came anywhere near him.

She loosed her bladder, and the horses, already unnerved by Stog's bellows, began to dance at the smell. She shot forward, still piddling, a road-hugging green javelin moving straight for the thane. The thane's big red horse reared, its front hooves awhirl, and Hammar, perhaps overbalanced by the enormous helm on too slight a body, went backwards out of his seat.

Wistala pounced upon him, pinned his arms with her sii and left one saa pressed against his belly, ready to pierce and gut.

Hammar screamed, almost as loudly as Stog.

"Anyone draws a blade, and I open him," Wistala said to the men, who were fighting to control their horses.

"Hold, hold everyone!" Rainfall shouted in his deep and commanding tone. Then in beast-tongue: "Quiet, Stog."

Stog left off his bellows.

"Murder will only make things worse," Rainfall said. "Hammar, you would spill blood on a road like some common brigand? You bring shame on your title. Let him up, Wistala."

Wistala, hot anger still in her veins, replied: "Let me at least bite off a finger or two as a reminder not to—"

Hammar squeaked like a rabbit.

"Oh, very well," she said, releasing him. Rainfall knew the best course of action in this odd little world the hominids called civilization.

Hammar wiped his nose as he rose. "Mark! You think you're so clever, elf. There are those who know how to deal with dragons. I've an acquaintance—"

"Killing a Hypatian Citizen of any line is murder, good thane. Come, let us forget this ever happened. I won't have Lada's child growing up fatherless. I will write to you."

"You are a famous correspondent," Hammar said, resettling the helm on his head. The tall man retrieved the thane's horse. "Some might use the word informer. Know! I will write you, and if you do not agree to my terms, you'll find yourself in court again and again until you turn to wood like your forefathers. Then I'll have you made into chamberpot-coals."

His men chuckled. Rainfall came forward with Stog, and they parted. One put hand to hilt, but the thane barked at him and Rainfall passed through.

Wistala watched them until they were out of bowshot, then hurried to catch up with the mule.

They returned to Mossbell to find the household under frosted enchantment. The house looked beautiful beyond words to Wistala, with the greenery silvered. From the ferns clinging to the wide chimney to the grass from the fountain to the wall along the road—a little despoiled by goat tracks—the house looked fairy-dusted in the early dawn light.

The new owner of Mossbell and her steward left Stog to wander on the lawn.

But the enchantment ended as soon as Wistala carried Rainfall into the house.

"Sir, you've returned," Widow Lessup said. "We're agog here. The thane! His Honor came looking for you in the night."

"We saw him on the road. I'm sorry I was out—he didn't threaten anyone, I hope?"

"Oh, no, sir! It's—Lada's room, you must go up to her. She ran out to him, barefoot as a nymph. I'm not sure what was said, but she came back into the house in tears. She's barred her door somehow, and I'm afraid for her. I sent Forstrel for Mod Feeney. I was afraid she'd hurt herself!"

Wistala bore him upstairs. Lada was still in her room, sobbing, with two of the Lessup girls outside, tapping on her door and trying to bring her a morning infusion.

"Anja, tell my granddaughter that I saw the thane on the road. I'd like to see her in my library. And if she doesn't want that infusion, I will be happy to have it. Tala?"

"The library?"

"Yes."

Wistala brought him up to the top floor—the skylight admitted the diffuse morning light through a melting frost pattern. He moved from her back into his desk chair.

Rainfall sighed. "I've not used them, but my legs feel terribly tired."

Anja brought in the infusion, and Rainfall drank it gratefully. "I'm forgetting you, my noble steed. Anja, can you—?"

"I can find food in the kitchen myself," Wistala said. She didn't like people waiting on her; not hunting for her meals seemed dissolute enough.

Lada appeared at the door, a housecoat over her nightdress, though she had on day-slippers and footwrap. Her nose was as red as the spots on the thane's cheeks. The part of her hair not bound up fell in loose curls that reminded Wistala of flowering vines, though unlike her grandfather's locks, her hair took after that of men or dwarves.

"Grandfather, I didn't dress but came at once."

Wistala made for the kitchen, but Rainfall halted her with a word. "Tala, I want you here so you may bear witness to the truth of what I say.

"Lada, I hope you know you have my love, as does the child you are carrying."

Wistala's chin dropped at this.

Rainfall continued: "You must listen to me now. You'll come to the truth of this fixation now or later, and you can spare yourself much pain by accepting it now: Thane Hammar does not love you, does not care for you, and has no intention of taking you into Galahall as his wife or anything else."

"Elves lie so—"

"Let's have none of that," Rainfall thundered. "You're a fair token of elvish blood—"

He spoke no further, for Lada shrieked and threw herself against the bookcase with a wail. She began to cry, and push whole rows of books onto the floor.

Rainfall sighed.

Wistala stood frozen, paralyzed at the emotional display.

"Lada, stop that," Rainfall said.

She threw another set of books on the floor.

Widow Lessup appeared at the library door. "Sir, may I—!" Her mouth clamped shut when she saw Lada knock down a map hung between bookshelves and a scroll-case, and her lips pursed so tightly Wistala would have sworn she was about to spit foua.

"Sir," Widow Lessup said. "May I take her in hand?"

"Perhaps you can bring her to her room. An infusion might do her good."

"As you wish," Widow Lessup said. She marched over to the sobbing girl and grabbed her by the ear, twisting it the way she did her daughter's.

"Now come along… ."

Lada shrieked even more loudly as Widow Lessup dragged her out of the room by the ear.

Rainfall sighed. "Wistala, follow and see that no harm comes to my granddaughter." He moved from his chair to a lounge just behind his desk. "I'm so very tired."

Wistala caught up to the pair just as they disappeared into the upstairs washing room. Lada was still in hysterics, sobbing until Widow Lessup overturned a pitcher of water on her head. That stopped the crying for a moment, and the matron shut the door in Wistala's face.

"Now let's hear your side of the story," Widow Lessup said. "For I know my master's."

No harm seemed likely to come to Lada in the washing room. She was too big to fit down the drain, and a wooden scrub-stick couldn't hurt any worse than the tip of Mother's tail—so Wistala went downstairs and assuaged her appetite in the cool room. She sneaked a pair of brass buttons out of the sewing room, the stress of the fight in the road having left her famished for metal, and immediately felt guilty and went back upstairs to confess to Widow Lessup, but she was still washing-closeted. Her voice could still be heard through the floor crack.

"Men and love! Ho! but that brings back memories. Sonnets and sour cabbage. Let me tell you about men and love, my dear… ."

She checked on Rainfall and found him sleeping on his lounge, and diverted herself by reshelving the thrown-down books as best as she could. Rainfall's system wasn't pleasing to the eye at all; she preferred to shelve the books so that they made rising wings, with the shortest at the center of the shelf and the tallest at the edges.

But for some reason, she could only think of Auron and Father.

Mod Feeney arrived at Mossbell, worried that there were deaths and hangings within the walls at the very least. Within moments she, Lada, and Widow Lessup were all sitting in Lada's room with the two oldest Lessup girls.

The house was considerably calmer when Feeney left, but she had a short interview with Rainfall before returning to her other duties.

"I offered her a position as my acolyte in the Priesthood, after the baby comes," Mod Feeney said. "But she seems bound to have it and wait for Hammar to claim fatherhood."

"He has little reason to, now that the estate is Wistala's."

"I fear for what may be tried next to wrest it from you," Mod Feeney said. "By the rites, I owe my congratulations to our four-legged friend. Nuum Wistala, you have my duty."

Rainfall looked at the splash of sunlight on the floor as Yari-Tab, licking milk from her whiskers, plopped down in it. The feline had more or less adopted the library as hers, as it was the highest, sunniest, and warmest of Mossbell's rooms, and frequently claimed Rainfall's lap against some of her rangy kittens. "Speaking of which, as the crisis seems to have passed, you might be about your rounds. Will you stay for lunch?"

"I will wrap something from your kitchens, if it's not asking overmuch," Feeney replied.

"No, of course not."

The priestess bowed and left.

"She reminds me of my lack of manners. I should congratulate you, as well, Wistala. You're a well-propertied drakka now. Have you any thoughts? I've reason to believe there might be copper in the twin hills, if you wish to look into mines."

Copper. My sole surviving brother. Is there anything of Father and Auron in him?

"All I care to do with these grounds is see that they help preserve you, and our friendship," Wistala said. "And your granddaughter, even if she doesn't deserve you."

"For such a young dragon, you have already an old heart. Have some sympathy for such as her. It's the rare hominid that has much wisdom before a score of years pass."

The weather grew colder in the next few days, and little changed at Mossbell save for fewer harsh words and exasperated sighs from Lada, who seemed sick and moody and had trouble keeping food down. Mod Feeney and the Widow Lessup made a trip to a herbalist in Quarryness for medicines.

They returned following the strangest procession Wistala had ever seen upon the road, or anywhere her travels had taken her.

Three great hairy beasts, almost the size of a dragon though taller, with tusks and flexible snouts that reached the ground and beyond, each pulled a one-and-a-half-level house on iron-rimmed wheels, with ox wagons and horse carts and dwarf-bearers besides.

"Ah, it's Ragwrist's Circus," Rainfall said. "Later this year than usual; perhaps bad weather delayed him."

Forstrel made ready to put him on Stog's back, when summoned to the gates of Mossbell.

Wistala gaped at the long-haired creatures, for fully half the beasts were visible above Mossbell's road wall. Dwarves rode them just behind the head.

"Those are gargants, out of the glacier dells." Wistala just saw the head-tip of another, perhaps a young one, following behind one of the houses.

"What is a circus?" Wistala asked.

"Entertainments, diversions, and wonders," Rainfall said.

An elf on a snow-white horse in a colorful striped coat turned into the gates of Mossbell. "Come, if you please, Mistress Wistala, I think you'll like Ragwrist and he'll like you. At least I hope so."

Wistala couldn't imagine why it would matter if a traveling elf liked her or not, but she pulled her sii down her griff and smoothed her fringe. Mistress Wistala must look her part for greeting guests on her lands.

Rainfall had been calling Wistala by that title whenever in the presence of any of the estate's people, to impress upon them the change in ownership, though Wistala left all decisions in the care of her—what was the position again? Oh yes, steward.

Ragwrist dismounted. He did have a colorful twist of twine about his wrist, but it was the coat that really caught her imagination. It was red and yellow and green and brown and several other colors, pleasantly arranged in panels and pleats, making him look like an aggregation of colorful bird feathers. His riding boots were of the deepest black and matched his hair, which reminded her of tree roots.

"Our homeleaf is graced," Rainfall called in Elvish.

"This traveler is comforted," Ragwrist answered. His voice had a heartiness to it and came from deep within his frame, and though he spoke normally his words carried from the road wall to the stable.

The elves embraced.

"Is that char-oil I smell in your hair?" Rainfall said. "Honorable frost is nothing to make one shamed."

"I'm not here the time it takes a drop to fall from a low cloud, and already I'm undone and reproached," Ragwrist said, though he kept glancing at Wistala.

"Neither," Rainfall said. "How were the barbarian lands?"

Rainfall straightened his coat's lapels and collars. "Tiresome. In some villages they hid their children from us, and without their glad cries, a circus is a joyless place. We've come away with only enough to sustain us, and the wagons need new axles. There are improvements around here I see, and new faces."

Rainfall marked his pointed stare at Wistala. "Poor manners, so glad was I to see your face and get the news. This drakka is Wistala, the rarest gem I've ever met on four feet. She's brought me back into the world, from hair-tip to foot-pad, and saved much more than my lands."

Wistala preferred that Rainfall's effusive manners remain directed at courtesy, as she felt little liking for praise that to her mind she hadn't earned. "If you're old friends with Rainfall, you must know that he does go on sometimes," Wistala said.

Ragwrist danced in an elegant sort of balancing bow that put Wistala in mind of a goose drinking. "Such Elvish!"

"She's gifted with tongues. Her Parl is intelligible, though the palatals sound a bit loud.

"I was hoping you'd set up about the new inn near the bridge," Rainfall suggested. "The owner is our good friend, and if you'd send your criers about, he'd welcome the chance to serve visitors."

Ragwrist sniffed the air about Wistala, looked as though he was going to say something, but turned back to Rainfall. "Of course. Assuming the troll stays west of the road, that is."

"The troll is dead. Wistala's doing."

"This is news! Oh, we must have some wine and hear about this."

"Shall we meet inside in a dwar-hour?"

"Let me say but a word to my lead gargant-dwarf, and then we shall drink. But quick! If we are to perform, I must attend as we encamp."

"May I see the show?" Wistala asked.

"Nothing would please me better," Ragwrist replied. "Provided you stay downwind, if I may abjectly beg your pardon. We have horses, and they are not used to a dragon's airs."

Wistala did watch from downwind, and enjoyed herself immensely.

They placed the three wagons in a line in the fields next to the inn, with tenting flanking wagons to somewhat conceal the behind.

The wagons themselves unfolded on one side so as to make a linked stage, with poles that Rainfall told her were as tall as ship-masts set at either end with a cable between. Balancing acts, exhibitions of swordfighting, and even a comical dwarf negotiated the line from one pole to the other with some skill in the case of the former, and a great many shrieks of fear and expostulations from the latter.

The dwarf wavered midway, trying to prove that he could do anything an elf could and now apparently regretting it, for he kissed his hand and then slapped his behind with a ribald oath in preparation. At the next step he fell to the joined screams of the crowd and disappeared for one eyeblink into the stage with a crash that struck Wistala as coming an instant too soon. But the dwarf bounced back up, high in the air, then came down on the stage with a loud thud.

"Dwarves always bounce back!" he roared to the crowd.

On the stages men threw axes in such a way that they cut plums from branches, which they then threw to the children; hominid females in clothing so scanty that Wistala wondered how they avoided lung infections danced or sang or jumped and turned and tumbled so high, it seemed they were made of air and sunshine.

In between the shows the dwarves brought a gargant out for the amazement of all, and one of the dwarf handlers let the gargants rear up and put an enormous foot on each shoulder as he knelt, then with shaking legs he came to his feet.

The underdressed hominids came out again, riding horses around the crowd as those at the back suddenly had the best view and others fought for position. They stood on their horses' backs, or leaped between mounts, or dropped off the sides of the horses and vaulted from one side to the other, and finished by rearing their horses up and having them turn circles.

Wistala wondered if Rainfall's mate had once performed such tricks from under a few wisps of thin cloth.

With the shows ended, Ragwrist came out and announced that any in the crowd could have their fortune read—"If you dare!"—in the blue tent by the famous Intanta, possessor of a shard of the seeing-star, which fell to earth in the days of the dragons and had been the object of no less than six wars.

Others could visit the green tent, where the finest crafts from around the Hypatian Empire and beyond even the Golden Road in Wa'ah could be found—"Happy is the wife possessed of even the smallest bauble bought or traded from our display!"—at bargains merchant-houses couldn't afford to give thanks to the need to keep a roof overhead.

"So what do you think of the circus, Wistala?" Rainfall asked from Stog's back as Stog's ears followed the pounding hooves around the audience.

"Delightful! I've never seen happier people," Wistala said. "They all perform as though driven by joy, rather than the coins flung at them."

Rainfall leaned down. "Some of the coins are thrown by the circus men themselves, to give others in the audience the example. They are more often paid in eggs and cheese. But I am pleased you enjoyed yourself. Ragwrist is one of my oldest and dearest friends—though a sharp rascal, as you will learn."

Wistala wondered what the last portended. Rainfall sometimes preceded action with an assortment of exploratory statements to judge reaction, like a cook tasting broth as the ingredients went in.

Many of the performers continued their exhibitions, informally of course, in Jessup's tavern that evening. Rainfall held a dinner in his long dining room for Ragwrist and a few of his "Old Guard"—the expression in Parl was one of Rainfall's, but Ragwrist seemed to know who he meant.

They gathered around two mismatched tables covered by a single ill-fitting cloth, sitting on chairs that had been brought in from other rooms—Rainfall's better dining furniture had been sold off in his years of want, and there were candelabras under the fitting for the missing chandelier.

Other than Ragwrist, who had cast off his colorful coat for a plain black long-shirt, were Intanta the fortune-teller—a toothless old woman who turned her food into mash, the dwarf Brok, the long-bearded lead gargant-driver, who stuck his facial hair in a special sleeve to keep the food off it, and a horse trainer named Dsossa, whose tight-bound white hair seemed brittle as ice, though otherwise she looked human.

Dsossa and Rainfall seemed to share some special understanding, for they clasped warmly on her entry and touched hands frequently throughout dinner.

Wistala, who had eaten earlier, sat at the far end of the table and crunched the others' fishheads and tails—smoked fish from the fall's salmon run up the Whitewater River had been served—as they finished their meals and started on their wines. As they reminisced, she learned that Brok, in his wild youth, had been judged by Rainfall after he was caught breaking into a bakery to steal food. Rainfall offered him one year of quarrying stone or two years indentured to Ragwrist.

Of Intanta she learned nothing, for the old woman kept silent save for a polite comment or two. But as the conversation echoed events she'd never seen and faces she'd never known, she began to doze.

She awoke to a rattle before her. Someone had rolled a coin down the table so that it dropped off the edge before her nose.

"Yes?" Wistala asked, as wide awake as she'd been deep asleep a moment before.

"A coin for a good story, green daughter of the skies and the earth's deepest flame," Ragwrist said. "I want to hear how you disposed of the troll!"

"I hardly did it alone," Wistala said. "And I'll tell without asking for payment. I might as well ask for money to look at me."

Ragwrist laughed, and Wistala liked the easy sound of it. "Ho! Our ears are quite closed to that line of argument. Rainfall says coin aids your digestion or somesuch. There'll be another if I'm well entertained."

Wistala told it again, imitating the noises as she had with the courier dwarves. She found she took less pleasure from remembering the events and more from her audience's reaction. She was rewarded with a coin from Ragwrist and another from Brok, and they soon joined the others within, leaving Wistala in a contented mood.

"I have a suggestion, Wistala," Rainfall said. "Will you hear it?"

"I'll hear anything from you," Wistala said.

Rainfall looked around the table and got nods from everyone save Intanta, who dozed. "I'm of the opinion you should travel for a while with Ragwrist's circus."

She didn't have to think about it. "I can neither ride nor clown. I can't imagine what use I'd be."

"Will you hear my reasons?" Rainfall said.

She tired of having her head raised above table edge—she became light-headed if she went nose-up too long—and approached the party and wound herself into a circle next to the table. "Of course."

Rainfall brought two fingers together under his chin. "First: Hammar now has a grudge against you. Your life is all that stands between him and possession of Mossbell, its lands, and the bridge. He's not above hiring even the Dragonblade. He fears no murder charge."

Two more fingers came together. "Second: in happier days it was the custom, as part of a High Hypatian's education, to tour the cities of the Empire, the Inland Ocean, and such lands on the borders as are of interest. I've begun your education with the few poor volumes left in my library, but I want you to become worldly in the best sense of the word, and love the greater Order as I do. You cannot travel in the normal manner—once I'd thought of taking you on a few brief journeys myself, but since—well, I won't repeat the obvious."

He brought the rest of his fingertips together. "Lastly: our rate of sheep and goat, lamb and kid consumption is alarming, and will only grow with you. A prosperous circus should be able to afford your upkeep."

"Prosperous?" Ragwrist objected. "You haven't seen my accounting recently. Bled by—"

Rainfall ignored the interruption. "And consider this: You will eventually sprout your wings, perhaps wish to find a mate. You'll have more knowledge of the lands, though I should like you to return now and again—in fact, the law will require it."

"Why is that?" Wistala asked.

"The thane will have you declared legally dead if you do not show yourself at least every five years. Of course, there are provisions, were you to be serving in the Hypatian forces, for your existence to be verified, but I mention it more in hopes of receiving visits from you than as a legal matter."

"We come up the Old North Road every two or three years, in any case," Ragwrist said.

"What would I do? Stand like an exhibited animal?"

"That would hardly pay for your food," Ragwrist said. "Wistala, I will offer you the same terms all my other entertainers get. You pay me each new moon for your food and sheltering—"

"He only adds the smallest of surcharges," Dsossa said.

"Ho!" Ragwrist said. "I take great trouble managing the supplies; I've yet to receive thanks for procuring palatable wine among the Vang Barbarians or those Pellatrian ascetics! But back to the deal: I receive a tenth-part of such coin as you acquire in your displays—"

"Fair warning," Brok said. "If you keep three coins in ten out of his clutches after upkeep and surcharges, you're doing very well!"

"If I'm such a scoundrel, I wonder why you've been with me these threescore years, my good dwarf?" Ragwrist asked.

"There are skimmers in all walks of life, but few do it with such pleasant smiles and compliments," Brok replied.

"And I've a soft heart and softer head for honeyed words," Dsossa added. "Being cheated by Ragwrist is painless."

Ragwrist extended his arm and pointed to a patch at the elbow of his shirt. "Cheated! Do I look like a rich man? My teeth are worn down from biting off the ends of pencils to keep accurate track of expenses, and my voice grows hoarse haggling over quality of flour, all so my beautiful riders may keep flesh on breast and hip."

"They would happily be spared your frequent evaluations of same," Dsossa said.

"I will sympathize after I see the accounting books of the Diadem dwarves, who you yearly visit with chest-laden pony," Brok said.

"This is the reward for generosity, Wistala!" Ragwrist said, turning to the young drakka. "Wild tales! Accusations."

"How would I earn?" Wistala asked.

"A dragon is an attraction, certainly," Ragwrist said, pulling his hair behind his elegantly shaped ears. "One so well-spoken even more so. But while your aspect inspires admiration, and later awe as you grow, we must marry that quality to a reliable moneymaker for you and the Circus at large."

"I'm all interest," Rainfall said. "I thought she might just do fireworks."

"Any competent chemist can make better," Ragwrist said before turning back to Wistala. "I mean for you to be my new fortune-teller.

Intanta all this year has begged to return to her family, now stretching four generations beyond her, but I've hesitated, for her protégés have been disappointments."

"I've tol' ye manys," Intanta said with a yawn. "A fair smile's fine, but sen' a girl of wits. Lev' her know when to keep those teeth hi' and be silent, for the signs are best read in silence."

Some of Wistala's warmth for Ragwrist left her. "I've no gift at that sort of thing. I can hardly foretell the afternoon weather on a fine morning."

"It's part skill, part showmanship," Ragwrist said. "You can better both with practice."

"To tell folk what they wish to hear takes no skill a'tall," Intanta said. "The trick is the know of which wor' their ears long for. Aye, there's the magic."

"That seems like … lying," Wistala said.

"Not lying," Ragwrist said. "Offering—guidance. Insight. Your opinion. People bring their dreams and fears into Intanta's tent, and come out happier and better prepared for meeting both. Is that so bad?"

Wistala felt confused and crunched some fish bones to hide the fact.

"Ragwrist can talk a falcon out of his talons," Brok said.

"I should decline," Wistala said. "Kind as your offer is."

"Don't be so hasty!" Ragwrist said. "Talk to some of the other performers. Join the circus and see the world! See the fishing boats come in across an Antodean sunset, or the Grand Arena of Hypat, the crystal waters of Ba-drink under the mountain towers of the Wheel of Fire, the red pennants flying from the walls of Kark—"

"Rainfall! Save us from this travelogue!" Brok said. But Wistala didn't hear him. She'd stopped listening as soon as Ragwrist mentioned the Wheel of Fire.

"How often do you visit these places?"

"We have regular routes," Ragwrist said.

"And you'll return to this good elf and enjoy his gentle talk that washes all road-weariness away," Dsossa said. Wistala marked warmth in her gaze and new softness in her voice.

"When does the circus leave?"

"We'll perform again tomorrow, and then pack up," Ragwrist said. "The winter is rather ahead of us."

"You will have my answer before you leave."

Wistala spent a sleepless night thinking of dwarves and the Dragonblade, promises and parentage. Unable to sleep, she walked around and around Mossbell and the barn, until one of Widow Lessup's daughters tossed the cold ashes from last night's fire on others in the dustpile.

The next day Hammar and a party from Galahall rode in to see the circus and sample the wine and drink of the inn. Rainfall, at the urging of his granddaughter, offered him the use of Mossbell's stables. Fortunately his party arrived early, before Lada was properly dressed and coiffed.

Hammar paid only the briefest call on Rainfall, and Wistala watched from her former nook. After barely perceptible bows and cold pleasantries Rainfall invited Hammar to dinner after the show.

"I will decline," Hammar said, refusing a chair brought by Forstrel with a wave. When he didn't have the oversize helmet on his head, he was a more pleasing youth, especially when clad in a dark riding cloak and festive winter neck-cloth.

"Have you read my letter?"

"Unless you have any proof beyond the words of a girl of dubious parentage, I wondered why you bothered."

Rainfall leaned forward. "Both of us are guilty of hard words to each other in the past. I fought your assumption of the thane-title on your father's death, and you have coveted my property as more suitable ground for the thane-seat than Galahall. The coming child gives us a chance at alliance in Hypatia's interest, if for no other reason. I offer you this chance before we become enemies."

"Open enmity?" Hammar asked. "That's not like you. As to chances, I've higher title, better men, and enough good yew bows to feather the creature better than that torn pillow. You took too great a gamble when you put so much hope into one scaly beast. Its head will adorn my trophy room."

Rainfall cocked an ear toward her panel door, perhaps fearing a telltale creek.

"She's a Hypatian Citizen, and I hear murder being threatened against her in my own receiving hall. Hypatian law is greater than any man, yea even a thane."

"Law is only as strong as the men to enforce it," Hammar said. "And here, I'm the law. I'll wish no good day to you, elf." Hammar turned on his heel and strode out the door.

"I sometimes wonder if it would be easier to just give him Mossbell," Rainfall said to her when she emerged.

"How can I ease your cares?" Wistala asked.

"You're careworn enough, stomping around the grounds last night. Go watch the circus and forget all worries."

So Wistala watched the antics again from a discreet corner of the inn's roof, sheltered from the wind by a warm chimney. The audience, prosperous farmers and tradesmen, were better dressed today, and had ridden from farther away to attend, answering the calls of Ragwrist's announcement-riders. Jessup's Inn—she couldn't call it the Green Dragon, the name seemed silly to her—had a number of parties staying.

Numerous bills and messages were tacked to the notice-post in front of the inn, surrounded by those literate enough to read and discuss the news as they passed, but the local talk of villains wanted for hanging and auctions left off when Lada walked across the road from Mossbell, intent on seeing the circus and attended by Forstrel.

She looked lovely, Wistala guessed, judging from the stares of the locals, in her heavy fur-trimmed coat, which hid the small increase at her midsection, hair under its cap curled and tucked so it resembled a bouquet of flowers. Her eyes and cheeks, brightened by the cold of the day, glowed.

All eyes were on her but the ones she sought. When Hammar rose from his chair before the stage and took his party of huntsmen to the inn for a new cask to tap, he walked out of his way to avoid her at the edge of the crowd. She fought her way through, tripped and muddied herself, but managed to come up on the men at last.

Wistala didn't catch what she said, but she did hear her call out to him.

Thane Hammar stared at her for a moment and then turned his back. The tall man who'd given orders on the road stepped forward. Two of the men at the tail-end of Hammar's party slapped each other, pointed to her, and laughed.

Lada broke into tears and fled the circus.

Wistala didn't overly care for Lada, whatever Rainfall's regard for his granddaughter, but even if she was an ungrateful whelp, she didn't deserve contempt.

Wistala decided.

She missed the rest of the circus to hurry back and speak with Rainfall, once he emerged from Lada's room in the small barrow-chair Forstrel moved him about in.

"I want to stay at Mossbell," Wistala told him as Widow Lessup sighed at the dirty dragon-tracks on the stairs. "If things go hard with the thane, I want to be at your side, Father."

"It will fade. Hammar will put an arrow through a winter wolf or a mountain bear and forget all in boasting," Rainfall said. "But your presence here might tempt him into rashness."

"I'm set."

"Oh, my poor floors. I wish she would go away," Widow Lessup said to herself—loudly enough for all in the upstairs to hear—as she bent with a rag.

"Nevertheless," Wistala said.

Rainfall sighed and scratched her between the ears. "I shan't be sorry for your company. You are a far smoother ride up these bumpy stairs than this barrow-chair. I suppose next spring I can teach you how to properly tend the garden, even if vegetables aren't to your taste."

Wistala heard feet hurrying up and down stairs the next morning—more than the usual morning noises. There'd been another raucous celebration with the circus folk, but Wistala had kept to her low room. When Anja threw open the door of Wistala's basement refuge, she knew something had put the household in disarray.

"Is Lada down here?" Anja asked.

"Why should she be?" Wistala asked.

"She's not in her room, and sir's asked for her," she explained, hurrying off.

Wistala wondered at her absence. She might have gone for a walk—save that nothing tempted Lada from a warm bed in the morning until a steaming infusion roused her. She yawned, stretched, and went upstairs to the lively sounds of running feet and doors slamming.

She heard Rainfall in his dressing room. As she walked through his bedroom, she smelled fresh ink by the bed—it was very unlike Rainfall to work in his bedroom. He might stay up all night in his library but believed in leaving any cares elsewhere when it came time to go to the dreamworld.

Forstrel was pulling Rainfall's riding boots on, an easy operation, thanks to the somewhat withered state of the elf's legs.

"She was in a mood last night," Rainfall said. "I should have talked to her."

"What has passed?" Wistala asked.

Forstrel finished with the boots and handed Rainfall a woolen vest.

"Lada has run away, I fear. She took her new winter boots, her hairbrush and comb, her favorite book of Tenessal's poems, and riding habit. Anja said there was a wet quill on her desk, but we found no note."

"Note? Have you checked your bed?"

Forstrell didn't wait to be told but hurried over to the bed and overturned pillows and heavy winter blankets. He came up with a folded piece of paper.

"Wistala, you're a wonder," Rainfall said, accepting the paper. "How—? Oh, I suppose you smelled the ink, or paper, or her footsteps. You'll all excuse me for a moment while I read this?"

Wistala and Forstrel stepped out of his dressing room and eyed each other.

"Fried fish for breakfast, I suppose?" Wistala asked.

"I hope," Forstrel said. "With tart applesauce. But we'll miss it, I'll fear."

Wistala heard a sigh from the dressing room, followed by a chuckle. "The joke's on me, Wistala. Rah-Ya. Forstrel, my cloak and hat!"

"What does she say?"

Rainfall held the letter at arm's length and squinted. "After the usual summation of my crimes against youth, including entailing away Mossbell, which she quite regards as hers, she informs me that she's joining Ragwrist's circus so that the local shepherds no longer snicker at her. So by the circus I gained a bride and lost a grandchild. I must go after her, but I suspect it will be futile."

"Why futile?"

"She's old enough to be apprenticed on her own word. If she's earning her keep, the law gives me no recourse, and I'm not up to dragging her back by her hair."

"I will be happy to pull my share of the locks."

"Then you can come along. It'll give Ragwrist one more chance to talk you into joining. I hope Stog is in the mood for a quick trot. The sun is up, and they'll be across the bridge by now. I don't want to pursue too far into the next thanedom."

Rainfall rode Wistala down to the yard, and Forstrel helped him up on Stog. Stog stamped his foot when he saw Wistala.

"Drakka! Didn't you hear me call out last night?"

Wistala watched Forstrel secure Rainfall on his special saddle. "I heard you bellowing, but I thought it was just another fight with Jalu-Coke about using her claws to get up on your back."

"I saw an old not-friend in the party of the thane's horses. A mountain horse named Hob. Let me tell you what it signifies: Hob is a courier horse for the Dragonblade. One of the Dragonblade's men was in the thane's party yesterday. He poked around the grounds all day. You're in danger."

"I didn't catch all that, Wistala. What's he worried about?"

"Nothing of importance," Wistala said.

"He most definitely said danger, didn't you, Stog?" Rainfall said as he set the mule toward Mossbell's gate.

"Danger to Wistala!" Stog brayed.

"Let's have it!" Rainfall said. "I don't want to play score-question with you."

"One of the Dragonblade's men was here yesterday, riding with the thane."

"Hammar wastes no time. Wistala, all I know of this fellow makes me fear for you. Certainly he won't kick down Mossbell's door to get you—at least I hope he won't—but we must have some thought on the matter together."

They found the circus still packing up, with dwarves frantically fastening harnesses on their gargants, whose appetites added to the cleared meadow behind the inn. Many of Ragwrist's circus folk were red about the eyes—perhaps the empty mead barrels stacked on the south side of the Green Dragon Inn, being cleansed by winter cold and sun, had something to do with it.

Ragwrist, again in his colorful coat and walking his horse about, left off shouting orders and greeted them. He waved Dsossa over, who looked perkier than most in her riding gear with lead lines hanging over her shoulders like a frilled cloak.

"I won't ask why you're here," Ragwrist said with his elegant, balancing bow. "Do you wish to speak to her?"

"Indeed," Rainfall said. "Thank you, old friend."

"Just as well we were delayed in our departure," Ragwrist said.

"Only because you've not issued orders with your usual vigor," Dsossa put in.

"Dsossa, bring your new horsehand forward." She trotted her horse toward the last of the gargant houses-on-wheels.

Wistala watched the gargants being brought into line, along with laden wagons drawn by more brutes. The smell of all the horseflesh reminded her of her missed breakfast.

I've been too long indoors if I'm regretting my third meal in the sun's track, Wistala thought.

Dsossa brought forth Lada. There was some reluctance on the younger's part, but Dsossa kept a firm grip and so brought her to her grandfather.

"I thought your story of the farewell kiss a bit overripe," Ragwrist said to Lada. "Here is your grandfather. Say farewell properly."

"Lada, what are you doing, pray tell?" Rainfall asked.

"I want to leave this place!" she said. "I'll make my own way in the world."

"Sixteen years of experience and already so worldly?" Rainfall asked.

Lada raised her chin. "It is too late, Grandfather. I've signed a contract and been apprenticed."

"Ragwrist!" Rainfall said, and seemed to run out of words after that.

"Ho!" Ragwrist said. "There's always use for a pretty face and figure in a circus. She knows something of horses."

"She used never to leave Avalanche's stall," Rainfall said, leaning forward on Stog's neck for support. "As horses are one of the nobler passions I indulged her. Oh, me!"

"Come, come," Ragwrist said, winking broadly at Rainfall in a manner Lada could not see. "I will not break the contract. It's only a four-year apprenticeship. I intend to teach her much of value. You'll see her when we next go north, perhaps in as little as a year and a season, and she may be better disposed to your roof after an absence."

"Did she tell you she is with child?"

"Don't worry, my friend," Ragwrist said. "She's young and strong, and old Intanta has seen a hundred babes into the world. We've even got a priest in the caravan, so the child will be properly named under her stars and the Hypatian gods."

"I shall still—Wistala!" Rainfall said.

"Yes, Father?" Wistala said, though she suspected what was coming.

"I asked you once before to travel with Ragwrist. Now I beg you, beg you as I've never begged in my life. I'll feel better knowing you are with her."

Wistala looked at the familiar stretch of road, the new inn, the twin hills to the north … Just land. It was the old elf she'd miss, his little readings from books and his lessons—

"I will. But I still say I can tell no fortunes."

"Must she come!" Lada didn't so much ask as shout.

"Watch that tongue, girl. It's for Ragwrist to say," Dsossa said.

"We have no enemies in the circus, Lada," Ragwrist said.

"Sir!" Wistala blurted. "I should tell you—I'm being hunted—maybe—by a man called the Dragonblade."

"She's done him no wrong," Rainfall put in. "She's marked by her breed and by the events I told you of the other night."

"Ho! You've found the soft spot in my heart, Wistala. Lost causes and refugees. No circus is complete without them. Have no fear, we are capable of guarding our own. But I see the gargants are in line and all is ready. Everyone must say their promises and farewells quickly. Rainfall! I look forward to my next visit and Mossbell's table—and the Green Dragon's mead, sir." He extracted a silver tube from his coat; it rattled as though a pea were inside, and he blew into it. A piercing, whistling call like a kingbird song, only amplified, seemed to travel right through Wistala's skull.

The gargants creaked into motion.

Ragwrist led his horse to the head of the column, where some ragged-looking horsemen awaited.

"The place will smell more wholesome with you gone," Stog said quietly.

Wistala couldn't jest with him. "Take care of our master," she said in the beast tongue, and gave the same caution to Forstrel at the lead line in Parl. He bowed.

Rainfall said to her: "You must write often, and let no opportunity for learning pass. Keep an eye out in the bookstalls for the paired volumes of Alantine's moral-plays, would you? I've had no luck buying my copies back. Lada, will you take my hand and go with my blessing?"

She took it, but held it at a distance. "As long as I may go and forget this place and everyone in it."

"Back to the wagon with you, girl," Dsossa said.

Dsossa lingered. "Can I trust you to think of yourself for a change?" she asked Rainfall.

"You're too kind," Rainfall said.

"I grow tired of the road. Are you still thinking of raising horses at Mossbell?"

"That was before my son … ," Rainfall said.

"May I write you with my plans?"

"Ahh, I'm too old to be of any use to you."

"That's not an answer."

Rainfall took her hand. "I delight in letters. Send me as many details as you care to. But any substantial improvements in the place will need the owner's approval."

"Mossbell is yours as it always was," Wistala said.

Dsossa backed away. "I will write. Good-bye, sir."

"It's hard to leave, at the last," Wistala said.

"I fear Mossbell is too small to be much longer a real home to you," Rainfall said. "But hold it in your heart as such."

The gargants were already on the road, and the wagon wheels struck up a chorus of ground gravel.

"Don't eat all the coins you earn," Rainfall said.

Ragwrist trotted up on his horse. "Well, sir, as usual, I wish I could stay with you through the full course of a moon and then some, but duty to my poor fellowship—"

"You may spare me the act, you old rascal," Rainfall said.

"Wistala, you will ride in the second car, second gargant, inside or up top as is your choice. That's Intanta's spot. She shares with a pair of jewel smiths and the laundry pots, but there will be ample room."

Wistala looked at the column, already a dragon-dash away. She must run to catch up.

"Until we meet again, elf-father," she said.

"That will be a happy day, dragon-daughter."

"Go on!" Ragwrist shouted. "Or do you have another list of books your library lacks?"

Wistala hurried away, leaving Ragwrist and Rainfall talking in the road.

She ran as best as she could to catch up, and heard horse hooves behind.

"Don't look so sad, Wistala," Ragwrist called from the saddle. "What dragon heart doesn't yearn for adventures in other lands?"

"One that knew happiness where she was," Wistala said.

"Mossbell keeps a little piece of an older and better world. But our good elf wants you to see what else civilization holds. Believe me, you'll value him all the more after a few months in the heart of Hypat. See the ladder to the roof of the car? Jump to it and knock on the door in back and they will accept you. They know you are coming."

Second Moon of the Winter Solstice, Res 471

 Beloved Father,

 You will recognize the hand as Lada's, though the words are mine. I write you from the Salt Road west of Hypat, with the sound of the ocean near in the great estuary of the Falnges. All in the circus are in good health. (Grandfather, that's not true, I'm sick day and night, but Intanta says it's the babe's doing!—L)

 It turns out we are not the only ones who joined at Jessup's Inn. One of Jalu-Coke's young toms made himself likable to Brok, perhaps an affinity for one almost as dark, big-eyed, and hairy, and now they are inseparable.

 Lada, after a few days with the horses and draft animals (They worked me like a pigfarmer's own hand, Grandfather!) was put to work caring for me (scooping dragon—-t, she means) and under the tutelage of Intanta and the other older women of the circus. Though Intanta has no teeth, I think her tongue has grown overlarge and sharp to replace them, and she keeps your granddaughter busy. (Slaving! At laundry and sewing if there's not filthier duties at hand.)

 We have enough to eat, just, and are only beginning to know our work well during the "open" and "close" that comes with every relocation. They have me climbing up and down poles with lines—I've learned something of knots—I see looking over Lada's shoulder that she is adding commentary. (And why not? I've a right to address my own grandfather!)

 As to fortune-telling, I have observed Intanta and her mysterious crystal through a veiled tent-hole several times. Intanta tries to point out how she makes guesses at the contents of her "seekers' " lives and hearts by dress, or jewelry, or grooming, or even the rough spots on their hands, but I can't keep such details. I can tell elf from dwarf, and that is about all.

 Lada helps with the costumes of the riders during the performances. (She means the girls throw their sweaty rags at me and yell for the next piece of flimsy all at once, eight hands would not be enough!)

 In happier news, I have seen some of the towns and cities of the Falnges and I never imagined such crowds of people. I am brought out to set a straw-stuffed man on fire at shows, and sometimes I am pelted with fruit (which she makes me pick out of her scales!) though Ragwrist overdramatizes the danger of such acts. Fruit is better than arrows or the deadly looking crossbow bolts our dwarven gargant-drivers carry.

 I imagine Ragwrist is regretting the expense of our food rations! I cannot see that I am earning him much money. (So he makes me do twice as much work! He is quite cruel, Grandfather.) I fear your granddaughter has not seen any real cruelty in her life to put that in—and I hope she never will. (I have been treated cruelly by those who I thought loved me!) I fear this letter is dissolving into nonsense.

 We are now at two-moon's camp on the estate of Director Emeritus Pondus, and many of the circus have left to see family or spend their earnings in the spirit houses. The dwarves are busy patching, mending, and building, and Brok is at work on some kind of harness for me. If you write soon, a letter is sure to reach us here. Rainfall has made up the itinerary for our summer in the southlands, and I enclose it so that you may know our schedule.

 I (we) remain your grateful family, Wistala (and Lada, who would like to know if Thane Hammar has spoken of regretting me?)

When the two-moon rest ended, the circus took to the roads south and visited Shryesta, with air fragrant of honey and dates, home of the Amber Palace, where the Hypatian Directors held their spring and fall meetings. They saw Vinde, with its waterfalls and famous jeweled bridges, and the sea-elf city of Krakenoor, thick with water gardens and the lively trade of its boardwalks. They played at Fount Brass, home of a thick-limbed race of men who counted dwarves in their ancestry, who rode on even thicker horned-and-hided mounts, and finally the riverside city of Adipose, whose skilled papermakers and glassblowers brought coin for even the lowliest apprentice and slave.

Wistala grew slowly that summer on her meals of stewed offal mixed with a few choice tidbits saved "for the dragon" by Brok and Dsossa. She found she enjoyed the chaos behind the line of wagons during performances more than the shows themselves—performers painting their faces with dyes and powders, adorning hair and body, readying their props. She bounced on the stretched canvas the clown-dwarf used for his drop from the tightrope, and some of the performers took to rapping her scales or touching the Agent Librarian medallion. She now wore the emblem between her eyes on a double-strand of chain the jeweler-women created for it.

She grew to love them all.

The one personality she still wondered about was Intanta. Fortune-telling seemed like a cheat to Wistala, though the "seekers" left her tent happier than when they entered, and sometimes gave her extra money beyond the fee she asked. She'd met the "family" Intanta wished to return to at the two-moon camp; they seemed a curious bunch, heavy with metal amulets, necklaces, and hair wrapped in seashells, pipes both musical and for smoking tucked into overlarge pockets on the two or three layers of coats many wore. One tried to steal a loose scale from Wistala's tail.

They dined only among themselves, with Lada cooking and cleaning.

If there was any magic to it, it came from the oddly shaped crystal Intanta used. It looked a little like the estuary crabs they sometimes ate boiled.

"A shard from the great crystal of the lost city of Kraglad, enchanted by Dread Anklamere himself!" Intanta said, whenever she removed the rune-woven silk that hid it until her seekers had paid for the telling.

They worked her into the fortune-telling gradually, fixed in a collar and chain harness at the end of pegs hammered into the ground. Wistala could release all by pressing her claw into the keyhole at the collar-join; Brok had built it that way. Intanta became a "medium" between the dragon-seer and her seekers. At first, Wistala kept so still that some of the seekers thought her a statue, so she learned to rock back and forth a little.

Intanta, after consulting with a drunken, disheveled, one-eyed elf who visited the circus to see the dragon—"So it is a drakka. Usually it's just a painted sandrunner," the elf said—suggested mosses and herbs that would make her fire bladder more gassy and smoke appear, but Wistala feared a poisoning of her foua or other harmful effects. The one-eyed elf looked rather disreputable.

Close association with Lada brought little improvement in their opinion of each other. Wistala suspected the girl of spitting in her water as she fetched it, and Lada said dragon reek was making her nauseated day and night and harming the baby.

Once a week, Intanta downed a bottle or two of wine and played dice games with her cronies. Afterwards Intanta was well disposed to all and sundry, and sometimes let Lada hold her magic crystal, which relaxed the girl and soothed her nausea. Intanta often looked into the crystal as it sat on Lada's swelling belly and cackled, or sang or whispered to the growing baby to quiet its movements.

Wistala learned the rhythms of the circus. The shaggy-looking riders who went ahead of the column were scout-outs. If they learned a town had been struck by disease, or recently visited by tax agents, or had suffered some other disaster to commerce like a fish die-off or a mine closing, Ragwrist bypassed it. Otherwise they found a hospitable landlord who would sell them fodder, well-use, and shelter for a few days while the circus encamped. They only ever performed for a day or two and then moved on, usually with all the land's children watching the gargants from fence rails.

They lightened Lada's duties as she entered her final moon of expectation and they traveled at the borders of the southlands. Dark-skinned hominids in silk headwraps visited the circus, and Wistala learned other accents of Parl. Birds that reminded her of Bartleghaff soared above the sunny grasslands, home to vast herds of cattle and horses, and Ragwrist bought beef for all.

Wistala did no better at learning how to read the seekers.

"That one was a prince. Had you but bowed to him when I winked and foretold his rivals in power one day bowing to him, he would have given us his golden bracers, so pleased was he with the telling!" Intanta groused as they went over the afternoon's events.

"But he wasn't showing his teeth," Wistala said.

"People in this land don't show their teeth to any but family! If they're pleased, they purse their lips thus—" Intanta lifted her lips so they almost touched her nose, an expression Wistala found revolting.

"I heard him take in breath and hold it as you spoke of his rivals. He seemed excited. His heart was pounding."

"You could hear his heart?" Intanta said.

"Louder than yours," Wistala said. "Yours makes a faint slooshing sound when you are aggravated, by the way."

"You give me apoplexy, young dragon. But this is of interest. Perhaps instead of reading faces and hands, you should listen to their air and hearts. That'll let you know when you're on the right track."

Moon of the Summer Solstice, Res 471

 Beloved Father,

 I write you from the Lumbriar Heights in the city of Thallia. How right you were about travel, though we see almost nothing of the cities we visit, for we are too busy either opening, closing, or performing.

 I am happy to let you know Lada and her child are well. He is a healthy boy of sparse hair but merry eyes, and his name is Raygnar, a name Lada took a liking to when we visited the Barbarian Passes, for it sounds a bit like good Ragwrist's moniker, and it is the custom in this circus to have babies given names that are some tribute in sound. He came quickly and vigorously into the world, an easy birth according to Intanta (Easy for her to say!—L) but it seems a messy process compared to eggs. Your granddaughter clasped Intanta's odd crystal tight all through the birth, staring into it. (The images summoned within did bring some relief.) We have put his handprint in the margin, though now he mouths the ink—

 I will keep this letter short, for Lada tires easily. (True!)

 I visited the Library at Thallia, and the librarians were somewhat surprised at my appearance. I met your Heloise, who they told me is nearly a hundred, though still keeping busy with her duties. She questioned me closely about you and the tablets restored to them—I think they suspected an arson attempt—but they allowed me into the common room, where I found myself answering questions long into the night.

 Ragwrist and Dsossa, who says she has written separately (Thank the holy soulkeepers!) send their regards. I shall end this now. Ragwrist says next summer we are to go north again.

 Wistala, Lada, and Rayg

"Behold, Wistala, the vale of the Wheel of Fire," Brok said at the end of a long summer day the next year. His black cat, whom he called Chunnel, slept neatly balanced on the gargant's hairy dome.

Wistala, though now the weight of a large pony or a small horse, was borne on the back of the gargant as easily as its fleas. She sat perched atop its spine, a little above Brok at the neck-saddle.

By special request, she was riding gargant-back on the lead animal, offering her the best view of a vista many artists traveled far to depict.

Until they reached the plateau, it seemed another mountain pass, easier than some, along a good road bordering a rushing river of white. But then you passed between two long mountain arms, with a low stone wall running the spine and shorn-off towers at the roads with a catwalk between. According to Brok, the old fortifications were supposed to look deceptively ill-kept.

Once beyond them, the ground rose a little and you came to the Ba-drink.

The Ba-drink was a mountain lake, dammed at the west beneath the towers, surrounded by steep mountainsides and cliffs.

Shaped somewhat like a crescent moon, with horns facing north, its southmost rim was usually enclosed in a thick mist where the colder glacier-fed waters ran into hot springs. Between the horns on the other side were three short, sharp inlets reminiscent of a dragon's footprint, though the digits were somewhat foreshortened. The mountains between the two outer inlets were almost sheer-sided where they met the lake and faced each other.

"They say that rive was formed by the fire god's ax," Brok said. "Though of course, the best view is from the lake. You can just see one side of the Titan bridge at Tall Rock. The sides of Thul's Hardhold and Tall Rock are both much cut with galleries and balconies, though those towers to the south are where the greater dwarves of the Wheel of Fire live, among their terraced gardens of soil brought all the way up from the lowlands. We shall camp here at Whitewater Landing, for the dwarves let few across the lake to their doorsteps."

"Do they have mines in these mountains? It seems an inhospitable spot, and cold!"

"I imagine so. I've visited only a tower or two, and the Titan-bridge. They're descended of warrior-dwarves settled in here to guard the three passes through the Red Mountains, enjoying the patronage and protection of the Hypatian Empire in Masmodon's time, but it doesn't do to mention that now, for now they tell stories of the prophet Thul who led them here."

"Why are they called the Wheel of Fire?"

"Let us hope you never learn this the hard way! Oh, don't look at me like that; I don't mean to be mysterious. It comes from their banners and war formations. I can't explain it—I'm no tactician." He lowered his voice. "To be honest, other dwarves call them the Appeal of Gold, for they fight not for defense or honor or justice, but sell their axes and bolts for money. Shameful."

"Is it?"

"Death is too serious a matter to be a subject of commerce, don't you think?"

They set up camp as they always did, though under the direction of Wheel of Fire road guides. The dwarves dyed their leathers and face-masks a dull red, and black were their flared helms—how ugly the memories associated with that shape!—and cloaks. Wistala found Intanta playing with Rayg, showing him her glowing crystal, and asked for a favor.

"What's that, me scaly student?"

"I would like to handle the dwarves by myself."

The toothless lips formed a perfect o. "Now ye have the courage to do so, but skill lackin'. Still, I've no love for t' dwar beggars and would be happy to have my ease. Let's see to t' tentin'."

Wistala begged a few extra candles from Ragwrist, who sighed about expenses. Lada installed them around and behind the spot where she was "chained" so their shadows played across her face and body in an intimidating manner. Lada did many of her tasks with a happier, more confident air these days, and anything that didn't involve the routine of cleaning, feeding, or sleeping her baby made Lada break into quiet song. She had an eye for artistry, and costume, and pleasing arrangements of even the most mundane candlestick.

Though she still stuck her tongue out at Wistala when she thought she wasn't being watched. Hominids underestimated the sweep of a dragon's gaze.

The first day she had many visitors to her tent, but few of the dwarves asked to have their fortunes read. Wistala wished for Intanta's crystal … perhaps that would invite the dwarves to have a peek and ask a question. Instead they peered from their heavy masks into her eyes, or muttered to each other in the dwarf tongue about she knew not what. They left as soon as she invited them to have their fortunes read.

At last a young dwarf—or one who had lost his beard, for he had but a grassy fringe on his chin—came into the tent and flung himself on his stomach before her, a gesture she wasn't sure how to interpret.

"Oh great daughter of dragonkind," he said in rather glottal Parl. "I crave your advice. What do you ask?"

She used the speech she'd long rehearsed, a variation of Intanta's invocation when she sat in the tent. "Rise and place a coin upon my tongue; the quality of the metal brings quality of insight." She extended her tongue a short distance.

"I'm poor … but I have a ring of my granddame," the dwarf said, coming up to bended knee. He reached into a pocket in his leather vest and extracted a short chain with a few pierced coins and a ring with a shining green crystal at the end. He placed it on her extended tongue—she took the opportunity to smell his hands—and she brought it to her mouth and pretended to swallow. The ring she tucked into her gumline.

"You are troubled. Desperate," Wistala said, which was evident enough.

"Yes!" the dwarf bubbled.

What would a short-bearded dwarf be troubled about? Love or his position, she expected. Perhaps both. The other dwarves smelled of goose grease or salted pork and beer, but this one's hands only had a faint floury smell to them. His eyes looked tired.

"You labor hard. Something to do with wheat." A miller? In the mountains? No! "A baker."

"Truly!" the dwarf said, his mouth dropping open.

"You love what you do?"

"Nothing is better than the smell of rising dough, or the steam from a freshly baked bun just opened."

She shut her eyes. Did his family not want him to be a baker, or was it someone else? "I see a problem. You fear you are not loved and respected by those you wish to keep close to your heart. It is hard to put your images and impressions into words."

"Oh yes! She jests with me almost every day when she comes for her order, and will speak not with the owner but only with me. But she's from a house with a chair at the council table! And who am I?"

So that is it. She jests with him.

"But she smiles at you, good dwarf, every day that you meet?"

"Oh yes, but she's famous for her disposition. She's kindness itself! She laughs when I juggle buns and always buys extra for the poor."

Wistala found herself liking this young dwarf. She'd been prepared to make him miserable, as a member of a clan who'd done murder to those dearest to her … but this fellow seemed so troubled, her heart pitied him. Then of course, he was a baker, who would probably not be foremost in a charge into a dragon's cave.

She spat the ring out. "The stars and winds, waters and stones weep for your unrequited love, and will not have your offering. Take it back. Present the ring to her family, as a pledge of your love for her. Ask that you may borrow gold against the value of the ring and open a bakery of your own. If you prove yourself worthy of her hand, you shall have it."

"How is—?"

Wistala bowed her head. "Do not question the workings of the Great Spirits. Ah, they've gone. I can see no more."

The dwarf sniffled. "Thank you, thank you, great dragon!"

Ragwrist and Intanta were aghast. "You did what?"

They spoke to her in the wheeled cabin of the washerwomen and Intanta's cronies that night by the light of a single candle.

"I couldn't take the ring from one so earnest and desperate. Besides, he needed it as a pledge against borrowed money." The last wasn't quite true, since she'd suggested that the dwarf borrow.

"'Tis the most desperate that needs their fortunes told most," Intanta said.

"Wistala, I cannot deny that you are a draw," Ragwrist said. "Mostly to children who spend not a penny. I cannot pay for your upkeep, or take a percentage, on nothing. You see the position this puts me in? Why, Lada is worth more to the circus than you."

Wistala didn't give a dropped scale for Lada's worth, though her hand had improved somewhat in the letters to Rainfall. "I will try again tomorrow."

"No, Intanta will do the fortune-telling tomorrow. You may sit like a stone statue and keep silent."

"Let her try again," Intanta said. "I'm glad of the chance to mingle. She hurts none."

"And helps none," Ragwrist said. "But this is not the first time I've carried dead weight. Curse my soft heart! Sit in the fortune-telling tent again tomorrow, Wistala, and try not to give away my wagons."

Her supper that night was a poor thin jelly of cooked-down horse hooves—remains such as these were sometimes used as waterproofing or to grease the wagon axles. Short of giving her dirt, she could not see how her rations could get worse.

After nightfall she gathered every particle of information from Brok and the other dwarves about the Wheel of Fire and their habits, then prowled the rocky slopes and managed to get a sick carrion bird. Then she sat and stared at the distant lights glimmering in the tall rocks that faced each other, mirrored in the surface of the Ba-drink. There were towers at the tops of the cliffs. No wonder Father had broken himself against them. Where was the Dragonblade now? In those rocks, or did he hunt her?

The next morning Ragwrist himself woke her, not through noise or touch but by the smell of a thick joint still sizzling on the platter he bore.

"Wistala, up and get to your tent and prepare yourself! There's already a line outside the fortune-tent!"

She rushed her breakfast—meaning it took her three eyeblinks to eat—and hurried through the show preparations for the back flap of the fortune-telling tent. Lada was already inside arranging the candles; Brok stood ready with her chains and collar.

Brok spoke in her ear as he helped fix her in the false collar. "The dwarves all say an ambitious young dwarf named Stava demanded entrance to House Steelforge last night. He was so insistent, so fair-spoken, and so complimentary about their eldest daughter and plans for his betterment that Dwar Steelforge himself put their hands together, and the engagement party will last a week. There's some talk of Stava being an unchaired member of the Wheel of Fire Council. A few say Dwara Steelforge just wanted her overripe eldest out of the way so the younger ones could marry, but there's a sour belly at every feast. But all say it was our dragon's doing, and that you bring fortune."

Much of the morning passed in a blur.

Ragwrist himself helped usher dwarves in and out of the tent. Most offered her silver or gold coin in return for advice with their problems and plans, though a few grumbled when the "Spirits" failed to return the coin as she had the ring. If Wistala seemed stuck, Ragwrist announced that the reading was over. They had to take two breaks to extract the coins from her gums.

"I'm hardly able to speak without rattling or shooting silver into their faces," she said as Lada put new candles in the holders and fresh incense in the brazier Ragwrist had confiscated from the luxury trade-tent.

The afternoon went much like the morning, only more so.

As the sun fell, there was some murmur outside, and the sound of dwarf bodies dropping to the ground.

Ragwrist bowed as he opened the tent flap and a dwarf strode in, a thin red cape of silk hanging down from a light ornamental helm that reminded Wistala of a spiderweb or the loose-knit caps of the librarians in Thallia, for it was more holes than plate save for a line of what looked like dragon teeth at the top, descending in size from large at the front to small at the base of the skull, rather like her own fringe. His faceplate was golden, and had flames at the edge like those used on some sun signs of the astrologers in Hypat. He carried a staff fully as tall as he was in his left hand, and atop it was a reddish crystal the size of his fist.

"Hmpf," the dwarf said. "You're not four years out of the egg."

"Her egg drifted down the Holy River of Mherr," Ragwrist said, still in his odd balancing bow, "and was plucked from the bullrushes by a daughter of—"

The dwarf tapped his staff on the ground. "Spare me the biography. A fortune-telling drakka?"

"I hide nothing from your greatness," Wistala said. Ragwrist bobbed a bit, and Wistala bowed.

"How much am I to give you?" the dwarf said.

Ragwrist raised his thumb three times.

"I can ask nothing from one who has a chair at the Council Table of the Wheel of Fire," Wistala said, and Ragwrist turned his thumb into a fist and shook it at her. "But if you care for my oracle, you may reward me as you wish."

The fist stopped shaking.

The dwarf gave a nod that bent his waist just far enough that a charitably inclined person might take it for a bow. Wistala concentrated every iota of her attention on him; were her perceptions claws, they would be dug into his eyes. "My name is Fangbreaker. That's all I'll tell you, drakka."

"No, it's not," Wistala said, having heard his heart miss a beat as he spoke the name. Ragwrist toppled out of his bow but came to his feet again quietly.

The staff came down hard enough for Wistala to feel it through the packed mountain dirt. "Gnaw! It is!"

"Were you born with that name?"

She saw eyewhites inside the mask. "I am titled Fangbreaker, but you speak the truth. I was born to a common name. Gobold was I on the day of my birth."

"Let us call the score even." She studied his hands. There was a white scar across one set of fingers, those of his right hand. He was wide, even for a dwarf, and still puffed from his walk into the tent. Perhaps wheezed a little.

"I'm not the first dragon you've matched yourself against," Wistala said, feeling her foua pulse. "You're a warrior at heart, now relegated to the table and dusty papers that make you sneeze."

"True. But I wish to speak of the future, not the past."

"You are often opposed at the council table."

"Any rower on the icewater could tell you this. I would know the future."

Wistala wondered what kind of seeds she could plant behind that fiery golden mask. "You will put your armor on again. You will lead your dwarves into battle. You will take an act other generals will call rash, but it will bring you victory and accolades. Complete victory and high accolades."

"Can I trust a dragon?"

"Yes."

"Because I have before, a mated pair who cheated me."

Wistala had trouble forming the words. "If I cross you, I will die as they did."

"Hmpf," Fangbreaker said. "You take the chance that I will not chase you down the mountain road. But I will cross the Inland Ocean and carry vengeance even into the earthquakes of the fire coast beyond if you prove a charlatan."

Wistala took a deep breath. She might as well be skinned for a bull as a calf. How would Prymelete put it? "Then hear my oracle and judge: You must and you will master the council table. You must and will throw away the ways of politic and traditon that hold you back. You must and will master yourself, go down the mountains again, burning off the girdle of fat and replacing it with one of leather and iron. You must and you will master your people, as once Thul did, be firm and they will love you for it. Be hard and they will worship you." She half-heard his lips form a familiar word out of Rainfall's histories. "Forge them into one weapon, and I see no power on the Upper World or Lower that can stand against you—yes, even the ten-jewel crown will be yours—"

"The crown of Masmodon," Fangbreaker whispered. "Such an oracle. Oh, dreams! Oh, dreams!"

Wistala collapsed, knocking over some of the candles. Ragwrist stopped one before it could set the tent alight.

"No more, I beg you, great dwarf," Ragwrist said, falling to his knees. "You'll be the death of my poor dragon."

Wistala watched the dwarf out of a rolling, water-lidded eye. He shook himself from his reverie. "Hmpf. The story's worth some coin, though the pratfall at the end is a bit much." He reached into his purse and flung a handful of golden coin at her. It rattled off her scales like hail. "Spend it quickly if you lied."

"You're too generous!" Ragwrist said, gathering the gold, though he didn't offer any back to make Fangbreaker's payment more equitable. Wistala again heard dwarves dropping on their bellies as the staff tapped its way off.

Ragwrist added to the drama by telling the prone dwarves outside that the fortune-telling was over for the day, but by special engagement, the circus would stay one more day before moving off.

That night Wistala ate at Ragwrist's table.

"Keep up performances like that, and at next two-moon's break this winter, I shall have a new wagon built special for you, drawn by a tusked-and-silvered gargant. Yes."

"Aren't you afraid he'll come after us if my prophecy doesn't pan out?" Wistala asked.

Ragwrist wiped grease from his chin with his multicolored sleeve. "They never do. Most hominids spare themselves the embarrassment of admitting they were cheated. Ah, Wistala, this is the beginning of a profitable friendship."

The circus packed up, though no dwarf children were brought across the lake to see the gargants go, and only a few dwarf-helms showed at the broken towers.

One odd group of humans did come across to watch the circus go, however. A tall handsome woman in a blue cloak, a young girl, and a towhead boy watched the train pack up. The woman knelt beside the boy and continually pointed to Wistala and spoke to the youngest child, and soon the child was pointing, too, but the wind carried her words away.

Wistala wondered if this was the Dragonblade's family, and for one awful moment was tempted to run up the hill and burn them down to charred bones, so that the Dragonblade might come home to destruction and grief, but she suppressed the evil thought.

She was a dragon, after all, and better than the assassins.

A month later, the circus stopped at the prosperous Green Dragon Inn. Wistala couldn't say how she felt about the homecoming: happy that she was again seeing familiar faces, or saddened that she would leave with the next "close."

She appeared at the Quarryness Hypatian Hall and confirmed that she still lived, much to the delight of the children who gathered on the common and stairs to watch.

Rainfall was his same courteous self, and Widow Lessup still despaired at the damage Wistala's scales did to the doorframe and stair walls, though Wistala walked about the house with claws retracted, trying to pad as lightly as Yari-Tab, who now had a velvet cushion under the skylights in the library.

"And the thane? Still angry with you?" Wistala asked at dinner. The same Old Guard sat around the table, with the addition of Lada and the subtraction of Intanta, who was watching over Rayg.

"We correspond but little," Rainfall said, Lada hanging on his arm, as she had from the moment of their arrival. "He has more barbarian emissaries out of the north visiting him than agents of the Hypatian Order."

Rainfall tickled Lada under the chin, and she beamed.

"Circus life agrees with Wistala, who's grown to twice her former size," Rainfall said. "How do you like it, Granddaughter? You seem a little thinner, and not just at the waist."

"They work me from sunpeep to the last red cloud," she said.

Ragwrist refilled his wine goblet. It was not such fine crystal as the glass Rainfall had broken in his library, but it still sparkled, due to Anja's applications of rag and ash. "Such thanks! You've received an education that will last the rest of your life. And I've two more years on my contract."

"Perhaps I can buy her out of the rest."

"I'll ask a heavy price of affection from Lada, before I let her go," Ragwrist said, raising an eyebrow.

Lada frowned suspiciously. "How dare—!"

"Hear him out!" Dsossa said.

"I want but two concessions. I demand first that you mind your grandfather in matters of education and deportment, for both you and your son," Ragwrist said. He winked at Dsossa, and Wistala noticed that she and Rainfall were holding hands under the table. "Secondly, I demand that you accept Dsossa as your grandmother, for she has said she also wishes to quit my circus. Much thanks that I get!"

"I promise," Lada said, kissing her grandfather's hand and then Dsossa's cheek.

"Oh, how will I make up two such losses?" Ragwrist asked.

"Marlil's as good a rider as I, and her bosoms are still high and full," Dsossa said. "I'm sick of the stench of gargant-vents, and would rather smell hay and horse feed."

"Fallen bosoms or no, count yourself lucky that you've not employed with the long-scrub under that point," Lada said. "Gargants have a sense of humor about when they answer nature's call. I would rather shovel up after the dragon."

Second Moon of the Winter Solstice, Res 480

 Beloved Father,

 I hope you can read the hand of my apprentice. She has a lovely voice, and I often think she should be singing rather than learning to be a fortune-teller, but what the Air Spirit gave her in voice—I know as a good Hypatian you tut-tut dragon cosmology, but it is the belief of my sires and it abides with me—dutiful Earth forgot to place in her hand.

 I pray you, Dsossa, Lada, and Rayg are well. I hope the volume of the history of Ghorghars did not go astray. The bookbinders should cover the gilding on the page edges somehow. Does Dsossa still risk her neck at the road wall on her hunter? How is the new Mod Lada handling her duties?

 I am now too big to ride in a house cart without folding myself in halves. Brok tried building one of greater length but the axles wore so on the turns, they were continually breaking off wheels. He believes craftsmen of the Diadem could supply us with a flatbed, but Ragwrist moans at the expense, and besides I am large enough to hang a banner on, so I go down the road ahead of the gargants announcing the circus in words and pictures.

 Speaking of Ragwrist, the dwarves of the Wheel of Fire have written him again asking for my services to be "sold" to their council, as though I am a slave to be bid for in a market square. He shows me the letters, laughs, and then politely declines, though he keeps threatening to accept the Hypat Arena guild's offer whenever I complain about the quality of the fowl and fish he buys.

 I have little news to tell you save that which you've already no doubt heard: your old friend Heloise of the Imperial Library is dead. They asked me to attend a special ceremony for her (as a curiosity, I supposed) at the small Library Hall in Vinde, and as we had only just left it, Ragwrist gave me leave to go with only a few words of regret. I earn his purse and my stomach enough coin each year. After the ceremonies, some of the Librarians warned me about the fortune-telling. They think it reflects badly on my title. I promised them to give up the name "Oracle" soon … for reasons I'll explain below. I caught up to the circus with some deal of bother with the river dwarves and took the first opportunity to write.

 I am weary of fortune-telling. My heart was never really in it; I dispensed more advice such as I saw things rather than prophesy. Sometimes my heart would be so grieved by the stories I heard, I gave away my own small store of coin, but that led to every beggar in Hypatia showing up outside the tent, or so it seemed to the circus. Odd that I should be talented in guessing other races' minds, but there you have it. One improvises to survive. How else could a dragon see the cities of Hypat in such celebration and safety? For this I thank your foresight, in knowing that eventually I'd want mental diversions and new experiences. I love every road, river, and shore of Hypat, but I fear I must leave it within a year or two.

 There are tiny bulges running my back now, elf-father, and they will swell and I shall have my wings and the ability to go wherever there is wind. I have promises to keep and I will go when they come despite the mawkish lamentations of Ragwrist, who, having heard my dictation, has just popped his head in and offered his regards. But don't worry, I shall still fly back to Mossbell every three or four years at least and prove that I am alive. I hope to sell the place back to dear Rayg (is he still raiding Jessup's honeycombs?) one day if his wit continues to so impress you.

 We are readying to go back on the Old North Road again, so you should expect us in springtime.

 Traveling in hope,

 Tala

The Old Guard assembled again in that easy spring, and for the last time, as they had other years under similarly disposed stars.

The party dined in the receiving hall that Wistala might fit, and the youngest Lessup girl who once so feared Wistala darted back and forth with trays beneath her neck with giggles to her sister. Rainfall, who scooted about the house on a wheeled chair made by a journey-man dwarvish artisan, worked the big back wheels with his arms as he circled the table, pouring wine for all despite the gentle imprecations of Yeo Forstrel, who was trying to out-Rainfall Rainfall in courtesy and decorum.

The party adjourned for the Green Dragon Inn, now at one end of a semicircle of a full dozen homes and establishments, from whose narrow windows song carried up and down the road. The post had expanded into a full news-case, with glass, and a special window had been added to the front of the inn to handle letters for Mossbell's tenants, artisans, and a handful of professionals owning houses along the road who liked Rainfall's manners and easy terms.

Wistala, as was the custom, called out the inn's evening company and then stood under the sign and raised herself up a little so that she could touch nose to the weathered board, and all put lips to glass after a glad cry.

Jessup kept his son at the tap and his daughters with the mugs. He now wore a coat with gold buttons, thanks to the sales of his brewery-mead to taverns in Quarryness and Sack Harbor and beyond.

The next day the circus moved on to the common at Quarryness. Wistala promised to return to the quiet of Mossbell in the evening across the twin hills, home to Dsossa's two herds of horses, though as the day progressed, she wondered if the throngs who'd descended on the town to see the show would keep all performing late. After her customary appearance to old Sobyor, who'd grown fatter than she knew humans could achieve, she spent the day letting her apprentice "interpret" the dragon's impressions of the seekers.

Many of the seekers asked their questions in Parl with a barbarous northern accent.

But eventually the crowds trickled off.

As she passed up the road on the way to Mossbell, sniffing the early-summer countryside on a fitful wind, she noticed a blue firework burning atop the eastern of the twin hills. Did Mossbell's shepherds and horseherds signal to each other in some manner? Fireworks, as she knew well from Ragwrist's moanings, even blue signal flares, cost a good deal of money, for only specialists, usually dwarves, could accurately mix the ingredients—

Signal flares?

Hearts hammering, she left the road and cut cross-country to more quickly reach the house, troubled by the strange lights against the night sky. When she finally broke through the last line of the back woods and looked out over the garden—full of beanpoles and tomato vines and fragrant with basil and peppermint—and saw the house at peace, she ceased her headlong, bush-tearing charge.

Worried for nothing. Were you expecting flames from the library skylight?

She still slipped cautiously around to the front, smelling and listening, and pulled on the bell.

Dsossa herself, with Forstrel behind, answered the door. She wore an ordinary housecoat; he still had on a button shirt and polished shoes even at the late hour.

"Our fortunate dragon! We'd given you up."

"It was a rare day at the circus," Wistala said. "Is all well here?"

"I'm sorry, but we've dined already. We did save scraps, and Rainfall is still up. We're having a digestive gruel and infusions—would you join us in that?"

"You mistake my meaning. There aren't strangers or barbarians or anyone dining tonight?" Wistala asked.

Dsossa and Forstrel exchanged glances and shrugs. "What are you fearful of? Don't tell me you've had a premonition."

"The only auspices I read glowed upon the twin hills. Someone burns fireworks on your property."

Dsossa came out from the door and walked around the side of the house. "I see nothing now. Why would shepherds do something like that?"

Forstrel disappeared into the house with a quick step, and the wind died down. There was a vague murmur to the east.

"Hoofbeats?" Wistala asked.

"I hear nothing," Dsossa said.

"You should return to the house," Wistala said.

"No. I hear them," she said, her hand at her throat. "There are no roads to the east—that land is nothing but thickets and gullies."

"I know."

"Rah-ya! Wistala, what passes?" Rainfall called from the tree-flanked balcony above the door. Now the hooves could be heard even when the wind blew.

"Lock the doors and shutters!" Dsossa called as she raced across the lawn toward the stable, the ends of her housecoat flapping.

"Forstrel, the doors! The windows!" Rainfall shouted as he turned his seat on the balcony. He spun around again, completing the circle.

"Wistala, get in here!"

"But the main door—"

"Climb up here. The front gallery is wide enough, and I don't care if the paintwork and floors get scale-chipped. Hurry!"

She could see lights in the tree line to the east, along the little path Jessup had driven the wagon the day they buried Avalanche. "Name of Masmodon!" Rainfall said, his arms falling limp. "What's this?"

"Invasion," Wistala said.

Wistala heard alarmed cries from within the house, both male and female, and Forstrel's echoed voice bellowing orders: "Drop that, girl, and get all the shutters on the top floor. Latch and bolt! Hurry!"

Wistala climbed the tree trunk nearest her easily enough, despite the light-headedness she felt at the thought of a battle, and as she put sii on the balcony rail, the hoofbeats grew thunderous with alarming suddenness.

A clump of torch-bearing horsemen with no more formation than a broken egg emerged from the wood path. They spread as they came, one part riding for the garden, the other for the front turnaround.

"Inside, Wistala," Rainfall said, his voice so deep and hard for a moment, she thought she heard Ragwrist beside.

Her shoulders and hips made it through the double doors. It occurred to her that she'd fit on the grand staircase down, but she might not make the tight squeeze to the third floor, should it become necessary.

Wistala turned—with some difficulty, and stuck her head out of the gallery door next to Rainfall.

Forstrel came down the hall, squeezing past Wistala. "I've seen to the lower level myself, Master," Forstrel said.

"Douse the lights—let's not give archers a mark," Rainfall said. Then he whispered to Forstrel.

Wailing battle horns sounded from the riders, now individually distinguishable. Most were hairy and bearded; they rode blanket-back on shaggy mounts, handles of weapons sticking up from their back and belts like quills on a porcupine. But at the center of the group riding hard for Mossbell's door was a better arrayed company. Wistala marked a man in dark plate with a white sash about him atop a black-armored horse, followed closely behind by a boy-man in black leather with a red sash draped across his shoulder.

Behind that pair rode another score of warriors, and more men at the back with packhorses and strings of those sharp-faced dogs with the twin lightning bolt runes emblazoned on their side.

Wistala remembered the dogs as being bigger and fiercer looking. Now they just appeared to be like any other pack of tongue-lolling hunting hounds, albeit matching in size and color and odd marking.

"How can this be? The thane rides at their head," Rainfall said.

Wistala looked out. Near the man in the black armor rode Thane Hammar, clad in chain armor and blue-and-yellow cloaks and sub-cloaks trailing down across the horse's back to its hocks.

"Mark! What does she do?" Rainfall said.

Dsossa exploded out of the barn in a knot of horseflesh, her bare toes clutching at the saddle stirrups and fingers holding both reins and mane of her mottle-gray horse. Backside raised and head close beside the neck of her horse, she galloped across the lawn toward the road wall, similar horses flanking and behind her, running for no other reason than that the lead had taken flight. At the rear was Stog, gray all around the nose, eyes, and hooves, who gave up the chase at the fountain and turned to watch the intruders with interest.

The black-leather-clad youth, fair hair showing under his cap, said a word to the men behind him. A group of six rode to the other side of the turnaround, taking great recurved bows off their backs and arrows from saddle quivers.

Thane Hammar pointed and cried out, and three of his saddled retinue charged after Dsossa.

"Let the archers bring her down," the armored rider said, pointing with a long crossbarred spear. Wistala's heart went cold; she knew that armor and spear of old.

The archers nocked their arrows and edged their horses so they could fire clean.

"Stog," Wistala shouted in the beast tongue, and the giant black helm on the armored rider turned toward the balcony. "Cry out, as you did that night on the road!"

But Stog was already running, tail up. "Better!" the old mule cried, and threw himself at the heads of the line of horses. As Stog tore through, kicking at the bigger horses left and right, the archers lifted their bows. One arrow shot almost straight up into the sky. Stog plowed into the horse bearing the young man in black leather, knocked it and the rider over, and jumped clear.

"Kill that beast!" the bright-haired youth called.

Stog wheeled and ran so that he'd be a crossing target. The archers fired, and as the arrows hit, Wistala felt their impact in her heart. She no longer feared a fight, but longed to plunge into the array in the courtyard, to rend and tear with claw-tips wet and hot—Rainfall took a breath.

Stog collapsed, falling forward. Wistala lunged, but Rainfall grabbed her by the rattling griff.

"No, Wistala. They want that. There's the Dragonblade out there, with his spear!"

The archers put new arrows in their strings and turned toward the receding figure of Dsossa, heading for the road wall rather than the gate. The Dragonblade passed his spear point across a torch carried by one of his men, and it sparked and sputtered as though it were a firework.

Stog moved and rolled, snapping arrow shafts, then rose, blood running from the piercings. The young man, dusting disgustedly at the dirt on his leather suit, gaped.

Froth dripped from his mouth, Stog stared fixedly at the archers, now drawing against Dsossa. He began to stagger toward them, braying:

While a horse will carry any fool—

"Shoot that wretched animal!" the youth said. The archers turned.

"Eliam! She's getting away," Thane Hammar shouted. He turned his head to the man heating the spear. "Drakossozh, your son's a fool."

The arrows flew again, striking Stog all about the shoulder point, neck, and withers. Stog stumbled but did not fall. Wistala saw his ribs against his skin as he took a deep gasping breath.

"If the going's hard, you'll want a mule … ," Stog brayed, oblivious of the arrows. He staggered forward toward the archers.

"Again!" the man-boy shrieked, his voice breaking. "Will no one find that horse's heart?"

Stog, still lumbering forward, may have understood the words, or at least that he'd been called a horse, for he turned toward the voice, eyes white and staring. The arrows cut air again and struck with wet smacks, and this time Stog's front legs collapsed. The back pair pushed the body forward another nose-length or two, then sagged.

But Dsossa was at the wall, gathered self and horse, and went over a slight sag in its length in a flash of gray white. Wistala heard hooves pounding up the road toward Quarryness.

The three riders after her aimed for the spot, as well, but the first horse balked. It tried to turn, sliding on its hooves, and went over sideways, back crashing into the wall with rider pinned between. The second horse half-sat down as it skidded forward, and the rider, carried by momentum, slid forward up its neck and hit the wall at the knees. He spun feet-up as he went over. The third managed to turn his horse to run along the wall but got tangled in the legs of the mount who'd gone back-first into the bricks, and horse and rider tumbled.

"Get back, Wistala," Rainfall said. "I have to delay them so Dsossa has time."

To do what? Wistala wondered, staring wretchedly at Stog's body, trying to will the old mule back to life. Warn the Inn—no, she'd turned north. Get to the circus? She shifted backwards into the hall.

Wistala counted heads. There were over a hundred riders to the front of the house, and she could hear others in back, probably a like number, though there were still no sounds of destruction to the house. What could anything but an army—?

"Who do I have the dubious pleasure of addressing?" Rainfall shouted from his balcony.

"Into the old wood dry-room behind the chimney," she heard Forstrel saying as light feet ran down the stairs. "Then down. Quickly now." Forstrel approached, the azure blue battle sash of Rainfall's grandfather held as carefully as though it were woven from a morning mist.

The barbarians, who'd been poking around at the stable door and looking into rain barrels, moved to look at the tree-flanked balcony. Thane Hammar turned his horse, but kept to the other side of the fountain, perhaps fearing arrows. "Your Lord Hammar is paying a final call on Mossbell!" he shouted.

Wistala, her fire bladder pulsing, noted that he hadn't had success with his beard, which was still thin and scraggly, for all he tried to shape it into a point below his chin. "It's time for us to finally settle accounts, in a single night-of-blades."

"Night-of-blades—tsk," Rainfall said. "Barbaric phrases, from a Thane of the Hypatian Empire."

The Dragonblade raised his spear; its tip glowed faintly red, like cooling metal from the furnace, but the steel couldn't have been more than torch-hot.

Forstrel knelt beside Rainfall's wheeled chair and tied the sash about his waist, as calmly as though ten-score armed barbarians didn't surround the house. Rainfall raised his arms a little so Forstrel could work the knot after wrapping the silk twice about his waist.

"I appreciate the call, though not the companions. You keep strange and lowly company these days, Hammar."

"Ha!" Hammar shouted. "This from an elf with a pet dragon!"

"You come bearing arms to this estate, do violence to my animals, and attempt to murder my wife," Rainfall said. "I suppose you know your thaneship is now utterly forfeit."

"Glad I am to be free of the title," Hammar said. "You will wish, before the moon reaches its zenith, that you'd shown more loyalty to me. The barbarians have admirable methods for dealing with those who show disloyalty to their lords."

"I've never claimed loyalty to Hammar, only to the office of thane," Rainfall said. "If you had a jot of your father's wisdom, you'd know that way is better."

A rider with a knotted beard and heavy tattooing above his eyes grunted something at Hammar.

As they spoke, Rainfall turned to Forstrel. "Good work, Yeo Lessup," he said quietly. "Now get to the tunnel with the others."

"My mother stands in the hall with her laundry ladle, swearing to brain the first barbarian through the door," Forstrel said.

"Drag her down by the ear if you must," Rainfall said out of the side of his mouth. "I want you in the escape tunnel forthwith. Don't stand there rooted—obey!"

"Master," Forstrel said, bowing, and there were tears in his eyes.

"Watch out for him," Forstrel whispered as he squeezed by Wistala.

Outside, the barbarian finished his speech.

"And you shall have it!" Hammar shouted. "Warriors of Kark, Blacklake, and Turi Fell, all that you may carry off between the Whitewater and the twin hills is yours. Beast, coin, garment, bag, and babe, take what you will."

Rainfall lifted himself out of the chair, gripped the balcony railing in white knuckles. "You know not what you do, Hammar," he shouted, but the barbarians were cheering so loudly, Wistala wondered if he was heard.

The barbarians divided, and Wistala, peering over his shoulder, saw a contingent ride off in the direction of the Green Dragon Inn and the homes around it.

"I know exactly what I do, enemy. I've got men in every town of the Minelands and the Quarterings. Loyal men, and I'm declaring myself Lord. My alliances are set, and my plans are just begun. But there's one small irritant, no more of consequence than a road pebble in my horse's hoof, and that's this estate. I now take what is rightfully mine."

"You and your barbarian wife are welcome to it," Rainfall said. "I will go in peace. Take Mossbell lock and window intact."

Hammar turned to the Dragonblade. "Have you ever heard the like? As though he's doing us a favor! No, that is water long since under your precious bridge. I'll have my justice for the years of insult and hang you by the boughs of your grandfathers!" Hammar turned to the remaining barbarians. "Search this wart of a hill from top to bottom, and bring out that elf and his riches!"

Four of the barbarians—it was hard to see where hair and beard ended and where the fur of their loincloths and vests began—drew war-picks and -axes and hurried for the door. Wistala heard crashes at the back of the house.

Rainfall backed his chair into the hallway.

"A good game while it lasted, Wistala. You should break toward Quarryness. The dogs and riders won't get over the wall, they'll have to go back to—"

A female shriek sounded from below. "Brutes!"

"Oh no," Rainfall said. "Don't tell me she wouldn't—"

Widow Lessup ran up the grand stairs with a speed that did her years credit, clutching an oarlike laundry ladle.

"Oh, sir, they're breaking in," she said. "I couldn't leave, I just couldn't, I tricked For and shut the—"

Rainfall ignored her. "Wistala!" he shouted.

Three barbarians ran up the grand staircase. Wistala extended her neck and spat her foua, its oily odor setting every fringe-tip down her spine aquiver.

The first two men dissolved in the hot spew; the third fell back down the stairs, his arms beating vainly as the liquid fire engulfed his head.

"Go now, Wistala, out the back gallery!"

The railing began to burn.

"No," Wistala said. "Not without you."

She whipped her neck up and crashed her head into the ceiling. A second smash—her vision went white for a moment—and she was through to the floor of the library.

Rearing up, she tore the hole wider with her sii. Rainfall pressed on a wooden panel, and a grid of steel dropped down behind them, closing off the balcony doors … though she imagined arrows could still be shot through.

"Up," she said. Both hominids stood there dumbly. "To the library!"

"I'm to climb your back?" Widow Lessup asked.

"No, go up the stairs," Wistala said, pointing at the nearby stairwell.

"But the master," Widow Lessup said.

Wistala closed her jaws on his seat back and, neck muscles straining, lifted him through the hole.

"Should have thought of this years ago," Rainfall said from the library.

Wistala climbed up and through the hole.

"If we're to die, I'm glad it's here, Wistala," Rainfall said. "Remember when I'd read to you from—"

"Always. But we're not dead yet," she said, looking down into the grand staircase, where smoldering barbarians were setting wood alight.

Widow Lessup ran through the door and shut it behind her. Below, they heard doors breaking, crockery smashing, and assorted calls in tongues perhaps only Rainfall understood.

"May For have the sense to keep them in the tunnel until this is all over," Widow Lessup said.

"I wish you'd gone along," Rainfall said.

"Me? Crawl through all those cobwebs? I'd rather be stripped and carried off by the Hordes of Hesstur out there than breathe spider sacs."

Wistala looked at the desk, nosed open a drawer.

"Whatever are you doing there, Tala?" Rainfall said.

"Your cord-and-seal cutter, there, the short sharp blade. Let's have it."

Widow Lessup ran for it. "Are we to slit each other's throats? This is just like that play … ummm, the one with the old tyrant king and the three children …"

"No. I need my wings. It's a bit early, but I can move them a little, even though they're still encased. I may be able to fly."

"How does a knife—?" Rainfall said. "Oh."

"Widow Lessup," Wistala said, pointing to the twin lines of raised scales on her back. "You'll have to do it. Hard and fast, parallel to my fringe, like you're dressing a goat."

Rainfall grasped her by the hand and pointed.

"Oh, I don't know—"

"Fast!" Wistala said. "But not too deep. Cut the skin along the stretch marks—that's probably the way it would open naturally."

Widow Lessup took a deep breath… .

The first one hurt. The second one hurt even more, because she still had the pain of the first lining her back. Wistala tried to ignore the pain, and concentrated on the crashing sounds on the floor below. She also smelled smoke.

She extended her bloody wings as far as she could in the library, marveling at their form. They seemed a bit undersize compared with her mother's, but then they weren't fully grown yet, as she was in the middle of her final drakka growth spurt.

"I take it you're going to go up and out?" Rainfall said, looking at the crystal cupola.

Wistala plunged her head through the hole in the library floor, as though she were going for a fish through an ice hole. She locked her jaws over the head of a barbarian running with an armful of stolen linens through the corridor below, pulled him up, and flung him skyward and through the glass, which mostly shattered outward from the force with which he was thrown.

Widow Lessup sighed. "It was such a pretty thing. Why must pretty things always be smashed?"

Wistala reared up on her saa and, using the scales on her sii, smashed away the remaining bits of glass. She took a deep breath and roared out her pain and anger into the night: "Let all who would burn these books know that there is an Agent of Librarians here. Enter to curses and peril!"

"You'll have to leave that wondrous chair behind," Wistala said. "I'm not sure I can carry you and it, as well."

"Take Widow Lessup first," Rainfall said.

"Sir!" Widow Lessup objected. "My heart will fail me anyway, carried aloft by a dragon."

He wiped his seal-cutter clean and placed it carefully on his desk next to his ink and quill box. "A Hypatian noble's first duty—and if necessary, his last duty—is to his servants. Carry her to safety, Wistala. I remain to defend my library and all it stands for."

He stared so levelly at her, she knew it was pointless to argue. She plucked Widow Lessup up by her apron and housecoat and lifted her up and out of the cupola. The grounds around Mossbell were bathed in light from the furiously flaming hay and meal of the barn.

"No! No! No!" Widow Lessup screamed as Wistala climbed out next to her and extended her wings, flapped them experimentally. The goats had either fled the smoke or blood and dragonsmell.

Wistala peeped over the roofline that was part hill crest, hoping the bush and wildflowers atop Mossbell hid her skull's outline.

There was chaos in the front by the fountain. The Dragonblade was shouting, pointing at her, and upbraiding one of his men with the back of his hand. The thane was riding in circles, trying to bring together barbarians, many with singed beards, who were running from Mossbell carrying everything from candlesticks to dining chairs.

Other barbarians, under the eye of their chief, stood their ground, waiting for action. Behind them were the Dragonblade's warriors and archers.

Save for one. The leather-clad youth called Eliam was chasing something around the courtyard. A blur of orange—Yari-Tab, running rather stiff-leggedly, for she had seen her share of winters since coming to Mossbell.

She yowled as the man-boy caught her and picked her up, but not a face turned toward the boy running with an old cat.

Wistala felt her fire bladder bulge as Yari-Tab clawed and bit vainly at the leather sleeve and gloves. He ran across the courtyard, laughing, swinging her by the scruff to pitch her into the fire—

Wistala launched herself, loosing her flame in a shower on the Dragonblade's warriors and dogs, who scattered or burned. As for the wretched boy, her mother's medicine would do for him.

She wipped her tail down and lashed him across the face with its scaly tip, knocking him off his feet. She beat her wings madly and gained altitude, a little more loopily than she would have liked, but she banked and turned back toward the roof of Mossbell, where Widow Lessup was running down a goat path with skirts held up.

She saw Yari-Tab dashing into the shadows of the side gardens, and the youth sitting upright in the courtyard, hands held to his face with blood running between his fingers, a sharp shadow thrown by the burning barn behind him.

"Teach you to wear your helmet," the Dragonblade laughed. "Even if it does spoil your hair and hide that handsome face."

She swooped in behind Widow Lessup, corrected—

Using her sii with claws tucked in, she grabbed the woman by the shoulders and pulled her into the sky, hearing late arrows fall through the air behind… .

Wistala, daughter of Irelia, lurched as she soared, thrown off by the strugging woman. It was a worse flight than even an aging sparrow or a sick bat could manage, but flying she was, better than in any dream.