Dragon's Fire (24 page)

Moran woke, shivering. It was still dark. He thrust his head out of the cave opening and looked up into the night sky. It was clear of clouds. The stars shown brightly above him. It was late; both of Pern’s moons had set. Moran paused, listening intently for whatever it was that had disturbed him.

There! Something moved overhead in the night. He cocked his head sideways, trying to track. A meteor? A pair of meteors? The lights almost looked like dragon eyes, but Moran had never heard of dragons flying at this hour. A fire-lizard? No, they were even less willing to fly at night. The brilliant lights grew larger, were coming toward him, and then, just as suddenly, were gone, whizzing over the mountain.

Moran skidded back into the cave and hastily folded his sleep roll and donned his gear. As soon as he could, he set off after the creature, hopeful of finding food or game.

The air was freezing and his breath came in wisps, but he ignored it as he scampered up the hillside. He quickly lost sight of the flying eyes, but he continued climbing, his breath coming in increasingly faster gasps, his lungs protesting the effort, his tired legs threatening to cramp with each upward step.

Finally, just as he felt he could breathe no more or take another step, Moran reached the summit of the hill. He paused, his breath coming in white clouds and searing his lungs, his legs trembling with exertion.

He scanned the new vistas before him. His breath returned to normal and his legs stopped trembling before he finally spotted it: some imperfection in the distance, something that didn’t look natural.

It was a camp, he was sure of it. Perhaps a camp for traders or some Shunned. He doubted that it was a regular hold or temporary quarters—it was too high in the cold mountain air for that. No, whoever was there hoped not to be found. But the wisp of smoke, just barely visible in the dark of night, gave the camp away. For better or worse Moran started toward the camp; he knew he did not have enough supplies to return to Keogh.

He stepped out briskly, eager for his journey’s end and a warm fire, too briskly, his eyes on his goal and not on his footing. Whether it was the snow or the rocks underneath didn’t matter; the slip caused his left calf to spasm into a tight, painful knot, and then he was sliding down the hillside on his right side. His painful slide was finally halted when his head struck a large rock and he remembered nothing more.

Pellar was out inspecting his traps when he spotted the tracks. He checked the back trail—the tracks were headed nearly on a straight line for the wherhandlers’ camp. Pellar quickly removed his traps and started obliterating the trail, replacing it with one that led northward, away from the camp.

Pellar paused, sent a thought to Chitter and smiled when the little fire-lizard appeared directly above him from
between.
The fire-lizard had brought a pocket of warm, campfire air with him, and that air mixed with the cold air to produce a fine mist that dissipated almost before Pellar noticed it.

Pellar wrote a quick note, tied it to Chitter’s harness, and carefully constructed a mental image of Aleesa for the fire-lizard. Chitter chirped once—happy at the thought of returning to the warm fire—and disappeared
between.

Pellar was about to start once more on his work when a nearby noise startled him. He looked around quickly and saw the trail of a rock rolling not far from him. Another rock landed nearby. It came from behind him. Pellar twirled around—and spied a small figure in the distance behind him. The figure was vaguely familiar. It raised a hand to its mouth in a shushing gesture, then held up both hands in a gesture of peace and started walking toward Pellar.

The figure stopped when it was close enough for Pellar to recognize it as a girl.

“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” the girl asked, still keeping her hands out. Pellar recognized her. She was Halla, the trapper who had been caught in one of his traps. The girl who had kept his existence a secret.

Pellar nodded in answer to her question.

She looked around and gestured to his handiwork, saying, “That’s good work you’ve done, disguising the trail.

“That’s Moran’s trail,” she continued. She looked at Pellar. “Have you seen him?”

Pellar shook his head.

Halla’s eyes narrowed as she considered his answer. Finally, she declared, “You’re changing his trail because of the direction he’s taking.”

Pellar gave the girl a long, frank look before, with a sigh, he nodded. She was too smart to fool, and he decided that trying to would only raise her suspicions further.

“That’s a good idea,” Halla said, moving cautiously closer. “I think Tenim’s after him. Moran’s got a purse full of marks, and Tenim wants it.

“What’s your name?” she asked as she drew closer.

Pellar shook his head and waved in front of his mouth to show that he couldn’t talk. Cautiously he pulled out his slate and wrote on it.

Halla noted his caution and cocked her head at him quizzically. “Do you trust me?”

Pellar gave her an appraising look. She was small, taller than when he’d met her last, but still not much more than skin and bones. He couldn’t imagine that she’d be all that tough if she chose to fight him. And she hadn’t betrayed him back at the camp. He nodded, yes, he trusted her.

He beckoned for her to come closer, lifting the strap of the slate over his head and placing it on the boulder, then moving warily away from her.

Halla raised an eyebrow in surprise. After a moment she shrugged, approached the boulder, and lifted the slate.

“Pellar,” she read aloud. She looked up from the slate to meet his eyes. “Is that your name?”

Pellar nodded.

Suddenly Chitter burst into the air. Halla ducked and stepped back, her eyes wide with fear until she identified the fire-lizard, then she cautiously stood back up, her eyes shining with excitement.

Chitter chirped when he found Pellar and quickly flew to him. The fire-lizard had a message. With one eye on Halla, Pellar carefully removed the message and read it: Come quick, need healer.

“I thought it was Grief,” Halla admitted as she stood up straight once more. Pellar looked questioningly at her. “Tenim has a falcon that spies for him.”

Pellar pursed his lips tight. If Tenim could use his bird to track, then perhaps the camp was already in danger.

“If there’s anything at your camp of value, Tenim will want that, too,” Halla told him.

Pellar nodded in agreement; he remembered too well his fight with the larger lad. He gave Halla one more frank appraisal and then passed the message over for her to read.

Halla read it quickly and glanced back up at him. “Do you want me to follow you and hide our tracks?”

Pellar nodded and grinned, glad that this little girl was so quick in her thinking.

Halla frowned. “If Tenim follows the false trail, it’ll end here and he’ll backtrack. He’ll probably find our trail no matter what we do.”

Pellar wiped his slate and quickly wrote, “Hurry, hope for snow.”

“That might work,” Halla agreed. While Pellar wrote a note and sent Chitter back, Halla worked on extending their false trail to a realistic dead end, a nearby stream that was not completely frozen over. She ended the trail opposite some wind-exposed rocks in the hope that Tenim might decide that Moran had climbed out the other side of the stream by the rocks.

When she turned back she was surprised to see Pellar watching her with great interest. He smiled oddly at her and waved a beckoning hand: “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER 7

A
LEESA’S
C
AMP,
AL 494.1

M
oran woke up warm and disoriented. He was wrapped in blankets and he could smell a coal fire burning nearby. He could also smell the cold winter air billowing in from some distant entrance.

“He’s awake,” a young girl’s voice declared. Halla.

“Wh-where’s Tenim?” Moran asked, surprised at the weakness of his voice.

“Not far,” a deeper voice replied. A face came into Moran’s view. The face was hard-edged and looked bitterly upon him. “You’ve done us no favors, Harper.”

Oddly, the last words weren’t directed at Moran but at someone else. Moran swiveled his head around and regretted it as pain lanced through his joints. He guessed that he must have fallen hard. His head throbbed.

An amazingly painful sound clawed at his ears, the sound of chalk on slate. Moran winced more as he found the origin of the sound—was that Pellar?

“Your leg is broken and you have a nasty knock on your head,” an old woman told him. “Pellar here set your leg and nursed you.”

A face swam into view. The woman was old, much older than Moran.

“Why’d you come here?” she asked, eyeing him without favor.

Moran shook his head and again regretted the motion. “I was cold and saw the fire.”

“Put out the fire, Jaythen,” the woman ordered. The hard-faced man moved to obey. The woman turned to Pellar. “What are we going to do now?”

Pellar scrawled an answer on his slate. The woman read it and frowned thoughtfully. She looked back down at Moran.

“Do you know who I am?”

“No,” Moran replied feebly, having learned not to shake his head.

“I’m Aleesa and you’ve stumbled on our hold.”

Aleesa. The one who was selling watch-wher eggs. Moran tried to sit up. He could only imagine what Tenim would do if he found them.

A hand forced him back down.

“Pellar says to lie still,” Halla told him. Another scraping noise and Halla turned to peer at Pellar’s slate. “He says he’s got a plan, but you’ll have to agree to it.”

“A plan?” Moran repeated. He licked his lips and continued, “Tenim wants a watch-wher egg—”

“They’re all gone!” Aleesa declared with a derisive snort.

“But he doesn’t know that,” Halla said, rereading Pellar’s plan. She looked up at the older boy and warned him, “If he catches you—”

Moran realized he was too sick to move. If Tenim arrived, he’d want his marks, if not more. He decided it was a good idea that Pellar not be dissuaded from his plan, so he cleared his throat and asked, “What do you want me to do?”

It all depended upon Chitter. Chitter and the falcon, Grief. Tenim’s falcon had to spot Chitter, and Chitter had to lead Tenim to Pellar’s trail. But not too soon, not until Halla had managed to disguise Pellar’s original track and blend his trail in with Moran’s.

Pellar set out as soon as he could finish constructing his bait. The pack was heavy and its straps tore into his shoulders as he trudged along in the cold winter countryside, heading north and west in a large loop around Keogh.

If Tenim found him anytime in the next three days, it was likely that the older lad would corner him before he could complete his plan. At least, Pellar thought ruefully, Tenim couldn’t make him talk.

Pellar looked down at Moran’s huge shoes as he trudged along in them and regretted that part of the plan, too. His feet were already raw and chafed and he’d only traveled for a day. But it was vital that Tenim think he was following Moran.

Pellar hoped that Halla would be all right. In some ways she reminded him of Cristov, both needing a better example in their lives.

Pellar allowed himself a fond smile as he thought of the little girl waving after him as they parted. She had insisted on leading the youngest of the wherhold’s children back to the safety of Keogh despite both Moran’s and Pellar’s protests.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured them. “And with the fires out, they’ll perish here.”

She’d been right about that, Pellar realized, thinking of the small cold children all bundled up in the freezing caves of the wherhold. Moran had admitted reluctantly that Halla had a way with children, even those slightly older than herself, and that it would be best to get them out of the way of the harsh winter or any trouble that might come.

That
part of Pellar’s plan—leaving Moran behind as harper—had worked out better than he’d imagined. While neither Aleesa nor Jaythen were likely to ever look upon the older harper without distrust, it was obvious that they were willing to take advantage of his presence. After all, there were some things that were best explained without chalk and slate.

Pellar stumbled on an icy patch and caught himself, berating himself for his inattention. The snowy night wind howled around him and he started forward again, hoping to spot the lights of Keogh in the distance but not really expecting to see anything until late the next day at the earliest. He paused for a moment to glance at the mountains around him before setting on again, making a slight correction in his direction. He didn’t need to get turned around in the middle of the night.

The next evening, just after he spotted Keogh to the south and west of him, Pellar allowed himself a broad grin.

It was time to start the next phase of his plan. Gratefully he built a small fire and laid some stones around it for heat. Satisfied that the fire was going well, Pellar unlimbered his pack; he rooted around in the special pocket he’d had added, pulled out his bait, and made sure that a little of the protecting sand scattered on to the ground around him before he placed the bait to warm by the stones.

Tenim swore long and slow to himself as he lost Moran’s tracks for the third time in the past several days. It was obvious to him that the harper knew he was on his trail. Tenim’s pack had grown lighter faster than he’d expected and his stomach was now emptier than his purse. He snorted to himself as he imagined Moran getting gaunter from all the exercise—the harper rarely put on such a hefty pace.

But if Moran was carrying so many marks, why didn’t he simply buy his passage? The answer came to Tenim as quickly as the question—because neither he nor Moran were willing to risk that there wasn’t someone else eager to take their hard-won marks. Just as Moran had decided he’d no further need of that useless Conni. Tenim snorted as he remembered her ranting and raving when he caught up with her at the tavern.

When he picked up the harper’s trail again, he found signs that Moran had stopped at last. A fire—a day old. Some rocks gathered around. Something placed near the fire. What? Tenim wondered and peered closer. He sifted among the ashes. Sand? Why would the harper be carrying sand? And keeping it warm?

With a curse, Tenim sprang up and broke into a steady trot. Moran had found a fire-lizard egg or, better, a watch-wher egg.

One day. If he could catch up with Moran before Crom Hold, he’d have more than a fortune. He’d have a winter’s worth of coal, or the same amount of marks.

Pellar was glad to see the great walls of Crom Hold rising up in the morning sun as he approached. So far his plan had worked—Chitter had spotted Tenim a full day behind. Now all he had to do was get to Camp Natalon and Master Zist. Faced with a camp full of miners and a harper with a complete set of drums at his command, Tenim would have to give up the chase.

He paid for some provisions and sped through the far side of Crom Hold, catching up with a trader caravan that was heading near Camp Natalon. He was surprised that the traders would risk the snowy passes in the dead of winter.

“It’s good to see you again,” Tarri said cheerfully.

“And you,” Pellar wrote. “Although, I’m surprised you’re venturing up to the camp at this time of year.”

“Cromcoal’s worth a lot,” said Tarri, the young trader who’d agreed to his passage. “Master Zist worked out a good deal and we’ve got a well-paved road—unless some of it’s washed out.”

She eyed his pack warily but said nothing as Pellar climbed aboard.

“You ride up front,” she said, crawling through the curtains to the back of her wagon. She threw him a thick blanket. “Use this against the cold.”

Pellar nodded in thanks. Tarri kept an eye on him until she was certain that he had the workbeasts well in hand and then she went back through the curtains. A while later she emerged.

“It’s only warm,” she said, handing him a mug of
klah.
“We keep heated rocks in a pail so’s we don’t freeze entirely.”

Pellar took the mug gratefully and drained it quickly. The residual warmth of the mug itself he used to heat his cold fingers before regretfully passing it back to Tarri.

The trader kept her eyes on him as they drove. To Pellar’s relief, she took the reins in some of the more difficult passes.

When not driving the wagon, Pellar dozed off, glad enough of the thick blanket Tarri had loaned him.