Dragon's Ring (6 page)

Wulfstan looked at her with some puzzlement. "Who are you, boy? Get to work. We want the fish ready for loading by the time Serbon gets back here with a wagon. Not that it'll be worth as much as if it were properly dry, but we can't just leave it here."

She blinked. Realized it was the boys clothes and haircut. "It's me. Meb," she explained. That she wasn't his favorite person, was something that was belatedly coming back to Meb. Hallgerd had apparently insisted on keeping her, the foundling baby that she'd picked up on the beach, after the great storm. Wulfstan had always said, on every occasion that he had fought with her stepmother—and there were many—that ill-fortune would come of cheating the sea of its prey.

He looked at her incredulously, and then rounded savagely on her. "So. You've done it finally. Brought your evil luck down on all of us. And on poor Hallgerd too. And all the while you've been off behaving like a hoyden somewhere, to come back in some lad's clothes. What kind of decent woman dresses like a boy? So you cut your hair off. Who did you think you'd fool?"

She'd certainly fooled him, initially. "But I . . ."

"Be quiet," he thundered, building himself up into a weak man's rage. "If I want you to speak I'll ask you to. There'd be no place in my village for you, if there still was a village! Get out of my sight, you little trollop." He advanced, swaying on his feet, swinging a piece of burned timber he'd snatched up. "Go and don't come back."

"But where . . . ?"

"Run before I beat you. Go back to the sea that should have kept you." Plainly he'd—somehow—been drinking. And equally plainly he was taking out his fury about his lost boat on her. She was a lot softer target than yesterday's raiders had been. Huh. He should have fought them, not her. He was getting very close. Meb's nerve broke, and she turned and ran. Not too far, but far enough for Wulfstan to give up the chase.

She sat there, in among the gorse, thirsty again, hurt and angry. And half fearful that it might be true. Had the raiders come to destroy the village because the sea had been cheated nearly seventeen years back? And then the logical part of her mind turned to the dragon. Watching over the destruction of the village and its vessels. Destroying their dam. Hating it was a relief. It meant that she didn't have to carry the blame. She'd just stay here for a bit until Wulfstan calmed down, or, more likely, until the drink made him fall over and vomit.

Even if she wasn't to blame, it didn't stop her feeling vastly sorry for herself. She'd tried to help them! Tried her best. Meb sniffled. She was tired enough to cry herself to sleep in a patch of sun between the low prickly bushes.

She didn't realize just how tired she'd been, obviously, because when she woke again, hungry and thirsty, the sun had already slipped so low that she was in deep shade from the ridge. She got up hastily. Now they'd call her lazy for not helping. She ran hurriedly back to the village.

Only—when she got there, there was no one in it.

She walked between the burned-out shells of houses, calling warily. Had the raiders returned again and she'd slept through the attack?

Then she saw a face peeking around the shell of his cottage. Not a particularly welcome face under normal circumstances, but right now, any familiar face was a relief. "Roff. Where is everyone?" she asked the net-maker.

The net-man looked suspiciously at her. "Who are you, boy, and what do you want?" His hands were black and he had a wooden spade with him.

"I just want to find everyone. Mikka and Hrolf. Where has everyone gone?" she asked humbly.

"Tarport, boy. This place is history. It's finished. Lord Zuamar himself let them wipe us out. Our boats are ash. Our water, he destroyed himself. Some of the women saw him do it. Our homes are burned. Nothing left for us here. Now get away with you, snooping around our sorrow."

Gone! Gone to Tarport, the big harbor some miles up the coast . . . Well, it made a kind of sense. With their boats burned, there was no way the village could feed itself. In Tarport there was always a call for crewmen, at worst. And after the attack, she wouldn't mind being inside a bigger settlement herself.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" demanded Roff. "Get along with you, boy. Your friends have gone. Go."

He plainly didn't recognize her. Good. He'd repeatedly tried to lure her into that smelly croft of his. He presumably had something hidden there he wanted to dig up. Village rumor had always made him out to be rich, but mean.

Meb simply turned away and began walking, almost blindly. It was a good nineteen miles to Tarport. She'd never get there before sundown. And she was both hungry and thirsty.

She walked along the rutted track the carters used to fetch the salted fish, wishing that she'd first gone to wherever they'd buried Hallgerd. The fishwife had been as shrewish as could be, and a hard task-master. But she'd taken Meb in, given her a home and food, and in her way, loved her.

The ruts were deep enough to follow even in the growing gloom of twilight. And walking was at least doing something. Behind her was the ruined remains of her home. Her whole life. It seemed that she'd lost what family she had. At least Hallgerd's two sons might be in Tarport. Might be. Roff had not said anything about them. She crossed a stream just before total darkness fell, and was able to slake her thirst. By then she wished that she'd kept the half-dried fish.

At length, walking on, following the ruts in the light of the risen moon, she spotted lamp-light through a chink in a shutter. It was a snug little farmhouse. Meb wondered if she dared to go and beg for shelter. But they'd probably set their dogs on her at this time of night. There was a hay rick, however. That had to be better—and warmer—than out here. Tired, hungry, scared, and very much alone, Meb burrowed into it. It was prickly, ticklish—and out of the night-breeze. At least it wasn't raining. It was coming on for the time of year when the cold autumn rains could endure for a week at a time. By then she would need to have a roof over her head at night.

The place hissed with smokes and steam. Entirely too much steam as far as those who called it their home away from home were concerned. They were creatures of energy, not flesh. The steam in the fumarole would have cooked flesh. Most flesh anyway. Not dragon-flesh, which was a source of some grievance among them. They found the steam cool, and worse, wet. Sulfurous smokes were preferred . . . but they had known from the first that this was a hardship-posting—with great rewards, it was true.

"They failed," said the one who, when not among creatures who were patterns of energy, was sometimes called Haborym. He went by numerous names. He even, with difficulty and for a short period of time, assumed the appearance of flesh. The illusion was hard to maintain, and not a true shape-shifting. It was worth it, however, for dealing with other species.

His master, one who was great enough to keep contact with their master across the twisted dimensions of time and space, simply sat there and waited, staring at him with a vermilion heat. Waiting until Haborym felt he had to add something more. "I destroyed them of course. As soon as the sprite was not there."

"You have set in motion the recruitment of more?"

"King. We recruit constantly. You know that. The amazing thing is that the others have not found the signs of it. I destroyed those merely in case the accursed sprite used her powers later. She was suspicious that I could find a hundred and twenty armed men so close and at such speed."

The demon lord spat, a plume of flaming incandescent matter. "A pity. Why did they fail?"

"Because we mis-guessed the human's power. We'd given the hunters a simple talisman that would have glowed when they found her. But the idea was to round up all the women and take them away. Something alerted the village to the raiders, presumably her. And they were badly mazed by the place. Seeing things that frightened them. A dragon. I presume that she has some skill with illusions. I had to leave all of that to the sprite, and you know how they are about getting too close to conflict. Yet they love others to use it. To kill. I would have sent in a pack-peddlar or something. But she wanted blood spilt. Her worshipers went back there and found one of the villagers. They put him to the knife and lash until he talked, and confirmed that she'd not been seen after the raid. But the people of the village went to Tarport. One of them claimed that he'd seen her."

"Fss." His superior hissed in irritation. "It had to be Yenfar that this human turned up on. Well, subtlety was always been our strength. I assume you have now been able to over-ride the sprite as her plan failed?"

"Yes," said Haborym, glad to have something positive to report. "I have dispatched seven of my very best men from Cark. We are hampered by my not being able to go there."

The demon lord sat and fulminated. But now Haborym had nothing to add, so he simply waited. Eventually, the demon lord spoke. "It would seem that the right answer may be to remove that which blocks us from the place, because I feel that your humans will fail. However, you will have to exert your charm on the sprite. Persuade her that it is her idea to go and remove the treasure from the place where the alvar have kept it. As long as it is not returned to the merrows. It is to be assumed that the magic that keeps us from the place is bound to that object, not the place. They were less trusting of us in those days, the alvar."

The flames that were Haborym nodded, in the fashion of his kind. "I will do this, Lord. But she will not act herself. I know her."

"Point her at a thief or two." The demon lord laughed and so did Haborym. "And get a simulacrum fashioned. One that will at least stand cursory examination. That way we may be able to avoid trouble with the alvar until it is too late."

It was amazing, Meb thought, how a couple of apples and a few handfuls of late blackberries could change the way you looked at things. She'd woken before dawn, and beat a hasty retreat from a sniffing, but tail-wagging dog. She hadn't been able to resist the apples in the orchard next to what was becoming a country lane. She still felt guilty about them. They had just been windfalls, but still. One didn't steal, even if the common sense part of her mind said that the pigs could spare a couple of bruised windfalls. But now she was wearing stolen clothes, and eating stolen fruit. Hallgerd would have said that she was on her way to perdition.

Thinking about her made Meb's eyes misty with sadness and half-realized tears. She didn't even notice that, as she crested the hill, Tarport had come into view.

It was, by Meb's standards, a vast metropolis, and very frightening. Hallgerd had always been full of horrific tales of what happened to nice girls on the streets of that sinful city. Of course the details had been rather vague, possibly because Hallgerd hadn't had much of an imagination, and she'd only been there a few times herself. But girls definitely came to tragic ends if they went there alone, without a male escort.

When Meb looked up, it was there. The great city. Even from a mile away she could smell it—a mixture of fish, smoke, tar from the tar-pits a few miles inland and other less pleasant smells from thousands of people, a handful of dvergar, and an occasional visiting alvar come to oversee the work of their underlings. She didn't have much of a choice but to enter it alone.

A little further on her coastal track joined the main pike from the tar-pits, and from the farmlands inland and from the more populous South Coast. Fresh wares, inclined to spoil, came in by cart, rather than by the canal that ran next to the road. Meb was thirsty, but she didn't want to drink that canal-water! It was dirty green and smelled of rot. Small bubbling tufts of suspicious-looking emerald drifted in it.

Eight-horse drays loaded with stinking barrels—material to calk and seal ships across the seas of Tasmarin—trundled along slowly. Carts and even a carriage with some alvar lord in it made their way among the walkers and donkey trains.

No one seemed to notice a girl in boy's clothes, with bare feet and hair that had been roughly cropped by a merrow knife. It didn't stop Meb looking very warily at the people around her. Anyone of them could be the vehicle of her horrific fate, after all.

Being alone took some of the magic out of the place. Despite the smells, the idea of strange places had always fascinated her. Now, in a large part, she was simply too scared to marvel at wonders like buildings that were three whole stories high. And made of brick too!

In the jostling crowd at the open city gate she did feel ghostly fingers in her pocket, but as she had nothing to steal, these vanished. The men always said that in Tarport you kept your money in your fist, and your fist in your pocket, and even that didn't always work.

Meb had not thought much beyond walking to Tarport. Now that she was here, alone, in the thronging streets, it occurred to her that she had absolutely no idea how to begin looking for the other villagers, let alone her step-brothers. Well, said the sensible voice in her head, if the boys were anywhere, it would be down at the docks. But, in between the houses, she seemed to have lost her sense of direction. Finally, after wandering—for a second time—past a tantalizing smelling bakery, she steeled herself and asked a porter with a load of cloth-bales. He looked a little puzzled. "Back the way you've just come, sonny. Most of the boats are out, though. Yellowtail are running off Headly point. They were taking everybody who could haul a line this morning."