Dragon's Ring (11 page)

Unselfconsciously, he stripped off, washed, dressed. Meb tried as best as she could not to stare. Or blush. Or behave as a boy would not. But he didn't seem too observant, to her relief. They took the stained and mucky smocks back to the night-soil men, busy emptying the cart, seemingly oblivious to the smell.

Soon they were making their way cross country, away from Tarport. Finn led them to a rutted lane, overhung with hedgerows. He seemed very wary. "When I tell you to get into the bushes, do it."

"Why?"

"Because Zuamar plainly hasn't heard about his tax hall. Someone will take word to his eyrie, eventually, little as they may want to. And he's a bit sharper than those dozy guards."

Sure enough, a little later Finn said "Bushes" sharply, and even though she was busy obeying, he hoicked her sideways into the hedge. She hadn't even been aware that there was a gap there, but there was enough space for them to hide. The autumn sunlight was cut by a sudden shadow. Meb was deathly afraid. Wished herself invisible. The shadow passed along with the ponderous wings of the great dragon.

"He's going to be really mad, soon," said Finn. "How do you feel about running, Scrap? Every bit of distance counts, and there is running water just up the hill."

Meb hoped it was clean water. She could use a drink and, indeed, some breakfast. She had a feeling that it might be a while before she ate, though.

Fionn had worried that she might just have given them away with the power of those magics of hers. It was plain that the child had no idea just what she was doing, let alone what surges of power she was putting out. Although it had undoubtedly been with her since birth, in humans this sort of thing usually began to flower at puberty. She would probably go on developing for several more years. Her little village had no idea how lucky it had been. And how lucky it had been not to be destroyed. That 'not here' of hers that she'd pulled down on them must have looked like someone had cut a hole in the fabric of reality. He'd been hard-pressed to weave an illusion above it, and afraid that Zuamar would notice the working. Some dragons were more sensitive than others at range. All of them were aware of it from close at hand.

Zuamar would be getting a reek of it in his big nostrils now, thought Fionn, sniggering. And they'd cast a powerful illusion over themselves in leaving the town. More than a few would remember the nightsoil men. But they'd remember them as nightsoil men. Too obvious to suspect. And while those big nostrils of Zuamar would be smelling for human and dragon magic, the smell of shit would help to hide it.

Fionn could have left the town as he'd come. But there was this human girl-child. He wondered just where she'd come from. She was human, all right . . . but the dragons of Tasmarin had hunted down far smaller traces of magic than that. Magic ability was heritable, and he'd thought that there wasn't much left in the gene-pool. Perhaps she was a throwback . . . but she felt as if she came from elsewhere. Whatever she was, he would have to train her somehow, or she'd create enough trouble to enmesh even him.

Anyway, she was almost falling over from exhaustion. Panting like an angry centaur. They'd have to take shelter where she could believe it was safe, soon. Otherwise powers of water, earth and sky alone knew what she would do next. Well, he'd avoided the dvergar for some years, after last time. They'd probably got over it by now.

Meb was gasping for breath, and her feet seemed to have lost touch with her eyes. They kept tripping over things that she knew she'd seen. And the gleeman just seemed tireless in his long easy strides. Maybe she'd just fall over. Lord Zuamar could catch her.

Then she heard, or rather felt, the dragon's roar of rage. At least . . . she must have heard it. They were nearly a league from Tarport, she was sure. But it seemed to echo in her skull. She swayed, and her tired feet managed to trip her, and send her sprawling and slithering on hands and knees into the stream. The gleeman hauled her upright by the scruff of her tunic. "He's loud and he's angry," he said, grinning. "Come on. Pull your boots off, and walk in the water. Couple of hundred yards more. Can you do it?"

"Ye . . . es," she panted. Really what she wanted to do was to lie down and then drink. Her spit was dry and sticky and clung to her lips. She was sweating like it was the midsummer ship-haul for careening—yet her feet were in agony. The stream-water was numbingly cold. "I . . . icy."

"It comes down off the mountains," said Finn, pointing. She could just see the distant tops of the purple-blue mountains of the interior. It was a place of fear and strangeness to the fishermen, a mysterious place where the alvar had their palaces and, somewhere on the highest peaks, Lord Zuamar had his eyrie.

Somehow she kept walking through the pebbly shallows after Fionn. A fish darted from her feet, and she nearly fell over. They came to a series of small waterfalls. Finn did not let her touch the dry rocks on either side but made her scramble up through the slippery splash. And then they came to a long narrow pool between huge boulders—boulders the size of two houses each. A far larger waterfall poured splashily into the far side, maybe thirty yards away, but the ripples from it were lost in the mirror smoothness of the water. The pool fell away from the clear yellow and brown pebbled shallows into the blue-grey depths. Her heart fell. It looked deep, and she already knew that it would be bitterly cold. She was relieved when he held his hand up for her to stop. He whistled.

She hadn't seen it until it moved. The furry head dropped under water with a plop and a set of rings on the still water. A dark shape swirled away.

"Otr," said the Jester.

"Otter?" She'd heard of those, and had seen sea-otters.

"No. Otr. He's a tricky one. One the oldest. He'll have gone to talk with the rest."

Meb looked back toward the town they'd left that morning. Finn caught the glance.

"Zuamar's rising. You feel it, do you, Scrap?"

She did. She could feel the rage. And she wanted to run and hide. He put a steadying hand on her shoulder. "You are safest in the water. Anyway, with luck we'll have a hiding place."

Fionn knew that he was taking a chance. He'd stretched their traveling as much as he could . . . and she'd showed that the working did not affect her. He'd seen her response to Zuamar's fountain of rage. She'd clutched her ears. Fionn knew that it wasn't actual sound that she was aware of. The principle of reciprocity applied well with magical forces. If you could feel the other, the other could probably feel you. The water would help. Water force would dissipate her sendings, scatter them down the stream. But it was time to call a favor due. The dvergar owed him. Of course no one liked being reminded of that.

The furry, sleek head poked itself up out of the water. "What do you want, Fionn Troublemaker?" asked the otter. He sounded, Meb thought, both suspicious and resigned.

"Is that any way to greet an old friend?" said Finn, grinning.

"Means you're in trouble again," said the creature wrinkling its whiskers. "The human with you? Breshy will have to bring a boat."

The otter submerged again, this time a fraction more slowly, with barely a ripple.

"What . . . ?" Meb stared.

"They're water-dvergar," explained Finn. "Black water dvergar. Shape shifters. They have chancy tempers so you want to be cautious with them. But they're all right if they take to you."

Meb knew of shape-shifters. There were wolves that could take the form of men, and other terrifying things whispered about in fire-side stories. "W . . . won't they kill us?"

Finn laughed. "Their food might. They like to eat frogs."

"Frogs," said a gruff voice, "are good for you."

Meb looked up. The speaker was paddling a coracle made of skin and withy along the pool. Fierce dark eyes peered back at her out of a mane of black hair. There was almost more hair than person . . . but the person was small and stocky, half her height if about the same weight. "I can only take one of you. You'll have to swim, Fionn."

"You can come back for my new apprentice," said the jester, walking through the shallows to the small boat, and getting into it. "You stay put, Scrap. Exactly where you are, and don't touch the shore."

So Meb stood. Her feet were numb now, anyway.

The black dverg turned the little boat and stirred it back up the pool to an overhanging wall of one of the huge boulders. Then . . . he vanished. Meb shivered superstitiously, and not just from the cold. Next thing he was back, without Finn. Cautiously . . . nervous, but not knowing where to run to, Meb got into the small round boat. The dverg never actually took his paddle out of the water, he just flicked and turned the handle, sending them wriggling upstream. Meb wondered if it—and the disappearance—were magic; maybe there was a huge fish on the end of the paddle-shaft. Maybe it wasn't a shaft, but its fin-spine. Now, in the overhang shadow, Meb saw a low lip, maybe three hand-spans above the water level—a dark opening below it.

"Get your head down," said the gravel-voiced Breshy.

So Meb ducked. Breshy tossed the paddle into the boat, grabbed the lip and pushed the coracle down into the water so a little slopped over the edge—and the boat went under the edge. Next the dverg dropped down into the bottom of the boat, gave a quick shove on the roof . . . and they popped back up again. In darkness. All Meb could see was the tiny slit of light where they'd come under the rock, which they moved swiftly and silently away from. The coracle bumped against something. A strong hand hauled her out of the craft, up onto cold rock.

"Give us some light, will you," said Finn.

"Ach. In a moment. I seem to have a fish on my paddle blade," said the dverg.

So the jester made a flame himself. He must have had flint and a steel, because there was a spark and a flare of a fire. He lit a wick—one of a bunch in a clay bowl. The black-haired dverg was wrestling with a fish.

"A nice salmon," said Finn. "A change from frogs."

"Give us a hand," said Breshy, beaming, square teeth showing in the bearded face. "Pull the boat close to the quay. The current will suck it away to the mill otherwise. What a bit of luck! I must have hit it with the paddle."

So Finn and Meb pulled the coracle up—the dverg was not letting go of the fish. "Otr will be green with envy," said the dwarf, cheerfully. "Follow me."

So they did, along the rock-cut passage next to the water, past the slow turning waterwheel and down another passage. More of the simple lanterns lit the way down. "Where are we going?" whispered Meb.

"Under the stream. They mine and work gravels from it. Living directly under the water keeps them safe from dragons."

Meb could—right now—see the value of that. But . . . this was Lord Zuamar's land. He protected it . . . or was supposed to. "Er . . . why?"

The gleeman chuckled. "They mine gold. Dragons are uncanny about finding it. The black dvergar don't like parting with it. Not without payment."

A few days ago that would have seemed very wrong. Then Lord Zuamar was their overlord, entitled to take whatever he saw fit to take. Now Meb saw their point. The passage curved yet again, and now the sounds of hammering metal—almost lost in the splashing of the waterwheel earlier, came echoing loudly. The passage opened into a cave, in which a forge-fire burned and several more of the small hairy dvergar were working. They looked up as Breshy bounded in with his fish.

"Look!" he said, triumphantly.

It was plain that it was a welcome sight. "How did you get that!" demanded one of the bellows-men.

"I think it was one of his tricks," said Breshy, jerking his head at Finn. "But a good one this time."

"Better than frogs," said Finn, with a sly grin.

The dverg was not used to being teased, and the comment simply went over his head. "Frogs are good eating, but it's a change," he said, seriously. "Otr has caught everything that isn't a small trout by now. It's not the biggest of streams."

Up to then Meb had not been too sure if the frogs had been a complicated joke that she wasn't party to. Now she realized it hadn't been. Maybe . . . eating frogs was normal, away from a fishing village? She didn't think that she wanted to find out, even though, right now, she felt as if she might just fall over.

Someone must have noticed because they did catch her before she actually hit the flagged floor, or landed in the gutters that took water back to the pumps.

They all gathered in a large rock-chamber with ornate metal lamps, a cheerful fire and rather a low stone table with equally low benches around it. Dvergar carried in steaming platters and dumped them on the table. "They're not long on manners," said Finn, "come and sit or you'll get none."

Meb, driven by the smells of cooked food, had her feet under the table and herself in front of a trencher so fast she even beat Finn and some of the little black haired folk.

The dvergar made a meal look like a battle-zone, with knives stabbing this and hacking that, and spearing the other, and little strong hands grabbing to pile on the trenchers. As there was no blood spurting and she was very hungry, Meb took a deep breath and joined in the carnage. She thought that what she'd snatched were the drumsticks off very small birds at first.