Chapter 19
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.”