Dragon's Ring (14 page)

She really did like him.

"Ah, I'd like to say that I couldn't stay away, but that'd be stretching the truth," he said easily. Merrows were fairly solitary, but it was good to have words with his own kind now and again.

"And you'd have given the dogfish indigestion. So: to what do I owe this momentous privilege?" she said, lazily. Hrodenynbrys was not fooled. She was intensely curious.

"Well, I thought you might have a passing interest in knowing that great things were on the swim. Strange tides are moving," he said in a passable imitation of a sententious courtier.

"And there I was thinking that you'd come to tell me that the dogfish didn't like the taste. So: what news is this? More important than a dogfish's sudden discrimination?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," said Hrodenynbrys. "I was summonsed."

She scowled. "It's something that happens."

"Ah, but not recently by a human mage."

With a sinuous flick Margetha was out of her chair, all pretense of lethargy gone, green eyes narrow, intent. "You're sure, Hrodenynbrys?"

"Sure as death. That's why I bothered to come and tell you."

"Where?" she asked.

"Ah, that's more interesting still. On the coast of Yenfar."

"What?" They both knew the significance of that place.

Hrodenynbrys nodded. "And it was no little 'if you happen to be passing come closer' spell either. A working of great power. I must have been fifty miles away. I left my second best trident in a skip-jack," he said regretfully.

"Whisht! It's come to this at last," said Margetha, biting a webbed finger.

"I was thinking the same," said Hrodenynbrys. "Maybe those sprite-folk knew more than we thought they did, when they came seeking a bargain."

"They're not to be trusted," said Margetha, grimly. "It's to be wished that you could have got a bit of cloth or something of hers."

"Oh I have that, and better than that. I've got the hair off her head, given in free exchange, yet," said the merrow, hauling it out of his pouch.

She laughed incredulously. "Hrodenynbrys, how is it for someone so ugly you're so beautiful?

"Ah, 'tis my natural charm," he said grinning like a shark. "And I am clever too."

It had taken relatively little effort for Zuamar to find the dragon Jakarin. She had not found a new lair. Instead she clung to the cliff top on what remained of her island. It was a bare shard of broken rock, balancing above the hungry waves. The hole in the fabric of Tasmarin had healed up, but there was not enough of an island left to be really habitable. Lord Zuamar wondered if Vorlian could possibly be misinformed. She was in gold-grief by the looks of her. On the other hand her loose scales indicated that she was coming up to molt. Dragons always needed gold. But in molt . . . well, they had to eat some of it. If she had none, and some human made an offer . . . Dragons had been trapped like that before.

She hissed angrily at him, eyes wide and angry, teeth exposed. "This is mine, mine. GO."

"I hear you've been consorting with humans," said Zuamar.

She did not answer. She simply attacked. Launched straight off the cliff edge at him, spewing a clumsy ill-directed fountain of flame.

It was so unexpected it almost succeeded. Zuamar folded his wings and dropped like a stone, the ferocious heat of her flame hot on his tail. He turned the maneuver—which left him dangerously exposed from above—a dragon never willingly gave up height advantage—into a steep banking turn. She followed, clumsy in her haste, revealing her youth and anger in doing so, instead of gaining height. His wings were bigger than hers, even if she had youth on her side. She tried to flame him again . . . but either she had less breath or flame than she thought she had, for it came nowhere near him.

He beat his way up into the sky, tendrils feeling for the advantage on the thermal above the sunbaked rocks of her island. She was doing no more than to try to follow him by sheer wing-power. Had she never dueled with another dragon of similar size? Zuamar knew that the answer would be "probably not." Once, before Tasmarin, dragon had fought dragon, often. They'd been SENT to fight—aside from anything else. Zuamar was the veteran of a dozen such duels, and many more minor skirmishes. Nowadays . . . picking on something your own size was not a particularly clever thing to do, and there was seldom a reason to do so. He turned his head to give her a burst of flame . . . but she'd lost ground. She was out of range. Zuamar knew his range precisely, and would not waste dragonfire. Besides, if he could get above and behind her . . .  He gained more height. Too late she worked out what a precarious position she was getting herself into. He dove. Frantically, with what was plainly every ounce of her strength, she managed to veer away from a direct impact. But his talons tore one of the webs on her wing, and his blast of flame seared her delicate wind-tendrils. He banked and used the momentum to regain some of his lost height.

She began . . . to flee.

Zuamar simply continued to climb. She was struggling to fly, losing height, trying to reach that piteous island of hers. A worthless strategy, as she had no cave to retreat into! He dove again. This time she failed to evade his talons. In a spiraling wash of crimson fire—mostly his, they fought. She fought with the desperation of one who knows that there is but one possible end to it all. He—largely out of reach of her claws—ripped through her scales and wing-webbing, tearing great gouges into her muscles. Dragon blood spewed as they fell towards the broken and shattered stone of her old eyrie. At the last minute, Zuamar tore himself clear.

She could not halt her fall. Dragon scale, skin and bone were tough beyond all other forms of living flesh, but not harder than the new-splintered rocks.

Lord Zuamar roared his triumph to the sky. And then, as was ancient tradition, he sank down onto her carcass and began to feast.

He felt . . . younger and stronger afterwards. They might claim that here, on a plane of Dragons, that dragon should not devour dragon, but he was larger than most of them. And those that he was not larger than, would not raise a single claw against him.

He quested about for her hoard. It was—rather like her attempts to fight—pathetic. Barely a dozen bits of gold. Several rings, a bracelet, and the rest in coins. One of those caught his attention. It was something he had not seen for many years. A ducat. He wondered how such a treasure had come into the hands of the fat-witted Jakarin. Well, he couldn't ask her now.

It was good to be out in the sunlight again, Meb realized. The leaves were turning and changing the land into a vast canvas in shades of reds, ochres and yellows. The countryside so far from the sea was strange and unfamiliar. There were no gulls, and the breeze carried a thousand smells that were not salt or rotting seaweed or fish. Decay, yes. A wet-leafy, mushroomy smell, which, to her surprise, she discovered went along with huge numbers of mushrooms. She'd never had much to do with them before. It was rapidly apparent that Finn had.

Mushrooms, it appeared, were something that came out in the woods and fields after the rain. The trees were still dripping. That didn't stop her master bounding around under them, pushing over little hummocks of wet leaves and chortling with glee when he found a good mushroom. She did her best to join in. Her efforts were hampered by not having the slightest idea what she was doing. He was not impressed by the red and white spotted ones. "Hallucinogenic. Throw them away." Her next effort was, if anything, worse. "Good grief, Scrap. Do you not know anything about mushrooms? In the name of the First don't touch your mouth, nose or eyes. Here, rub them thoroughly on that moss. There is a bit of a trickle over there by the sounds of it. You need to wash those hands of yours. And rub under your fingernails with that moss too."

"I'm sorry," she said humbly. "Mushrooms don't grow much in the cove. And no one picks them. I thought those were the same as the ones you had."

"Ink caps. You had deadly destroying angels. Look at them carefully. Remember them. Notice details. Anyway, I think we have enough for a feed. Now we'll need a fire."

That was something they were unlikely to get in the wet woods. But it seemed that she had underestimated Finn's ability to find semi-dry wood, and to make it burn. He also seemed to have the most amazing assortment of useful things about him, and in that pack of his, including a little piece of fat bacon and a small iron skillet. And he had very tough hands and a mouth that seemed impervious to heat. He could eat sizzling bacon fat fried mushrooms with his fingers, straight from the pan into his mouth. Meb had to spike them on a knife-point and then blow on them. They were, however, worth running around the damp forest for.

When the last mushroom and scrap of bacon had been devoured, Finn looked regretfully at the pan. "Well, it's a change from frogs and fish. I've been told it's an unnatural taste for one of my kind, but wild mushrooms are one of my weaknesses. One of many," he said with a grin. "And now, looking at that sky, unless you have a fancy for a soaking, we'd better move along."

He cleaned the pan roughly with some leaves, kicked out the fire, and they set off again. A mile or two down the road they came to a large rock that someone had crudely chipped an arrow onto, with what Meb imagined was the name of the next settlement and of course, the distance. She could read some numbers. She was very proud of the skill.

Finn clicked his tongue, looking at it. "We'll have to move that. Come on, Scrap. Push and shove time."

Meb looked at the boulder. There was no way they'd budge it! But he was already putting his shoulder to it so she scampered to join him, and pushed.

She nearly fell on her face because it moved . . . it came free of the earth with a ripping crack, and rolled onto the track.

"Phew!" Finn blew on his hands. "Now. Let's see . . . Over there."

Between them they rolled the rock about five yards down the hill. It took all their strength . . . but it moved. The arrow now pointed at the hillside, though a generous tangle of bramble.

"A job well done," said Finn with some satisfaction. "No respect, these people. That stone was put there for another purpose and didn't like being a signpost. Things are better balanced now. Come on, let's go. We're still racing the rain."

They walked on. Meb wondered just what local people would make of the rock's movements. It seemed a lot of hard work for a practical joke . . . to the extent that she wondered if it was.

It was starting to rain when they reached a hamlet, complete with a local inn. "Time for us to sing for our supper, Scrap," said Finn.

Meb hoped that she didn't really have to sing. Somehow she thought sea-chanties would not get them much supper, and she didn't know anything else. The locals looked pleased enough to see the gleeman, though. They were hauled into the tap room, which was a long step down from the inn in Tarport. This one had old straw on a dirt floor, and a few rough-hewn benches. And beer. Meb realized that she was going to have to get used to that. So she set about doing so. It wasn't that she'd never tasted the stuff before. Just not much of it. People said you got used to it.

Fionn was expecting another quiet night of some mediocre brew, ordinary food and providing a little entertainment in exchange for the same. Of course he knew that humans got hopelessly drunk and disorderly. They often did. Dragons had multiple and complex livers for dealing with toxins. It took some very special spells bound to gold to have much effect on him. He'd almost forgotten that Scrap wasn't his kind when he'd seen the mushrooms. She was too observant for her own good, let alone his. He could—and did—eat mushrooms that would have killed her. She was trying hard to fit in. He'd been careful enough to keep her to actual hard practical work which took concentration, not daydreaming. He was fairly sure she had no idea what that imagination of hers could do, given the right cues and stimulus. So juggling had seemed a good thing to teach her. Of course, because she wanted to please, and wanted to do it well, she was bending the rules of causality a bit. Nothing that would cause more than a few misshapen trees, un-seasonal sunlight or strangely human faces on occasional root vegetables. Nothing to worry about.

Until she'd added beer into it.

They'd started much as usual. A bit of juggling. A bit of patter. A tumble or two. A break for beer and a few coins. Small coins here at a rural inn, but enough for food and shelter.

Fionn cursed himself for a fool. He should have seen to it that food came before beer, and that the human brat kept to drinking a minimum of the beer.

In part it had been his fault, he admitted. The craft of the dvergar-made wares was legendary, and of Dvalinn and his brothers more so. It was their reason for keeping themselves to themselves, and their names a secret. They also had the reputation of taking people literally. It would make her what she wanted to be. He'd meant in appearance. They, it seemed, hadn't. Of course it
would
work as he'd intended, but possibly not when her inhibitions were awash with beer.