26

Chapter Twenty-Five

"You were awake early."

Ellerie closed the book and looked up. "I was studying a spell, but I ended up just giving myself a headache," she told Leena, shuttering her lantern. There was a small mage light hidden inside, but the sun was cresting the horizon now.

"Which spell?" her lover asked.

"Permanent mage lights, like the ones we found in Tir Yadar."

Leena tilted her head to the side. "I thought no one could learn enchantment spells anymore. Except for Hildra, I mean."

"It probably won't work, but I want to try," Ellerie said. "Some gifts are inborn, but wizards can build up affinities for certain spells the more they cast them."

Venni, Yelena's wife and bondmate, was an example. She could have been any sort of wizard, but she'd chosen to focus on combat spells. She was good with those, but like the elven battle wizards Ellerie had known in Terevas, it was harder for her to learn or use other types of magic.

Ellerie had taken a broader approach, not specializing in any one area. She didn't regret it, but she wondered sometimes what she could have accomplished if she'd focused on a single goal.

"You hope to build an affinity for enchantment spells?" Leena said.

"It doesn't hurt to try," Ellerie said, then rubbed at her aching temples. "Well, it

does

, but it doesn't last."

"Above us! Above us!" came a panicked shout.

There was chaos as the half-awake camp suddenly burst into activity. Watchers had been posted in shifts each night in the hope they'd see the dragon against the stars or the clouds if it came near. Now, though, in the early dawn, there were no stars left to be blocked out by the beast's bulk, and the sun wasn't high enough to light the day. No one had seen the dragon approaching in the hazy gray of the morning.

Not until it got close. It was right above them, high in the sky yet low enough to be sure the shape wasn't a bird.

"To positions!" Corec yelled, still latching his cuirass together as he passed nearby. "Hurry! Ellerie, can you--?" He pointed up, then turned back toward the tents. "Sarette, where are you?" he called out.

"I'm trying!" came the answering shout. A warm, heavy wind blew past from out of nowhere.

Ellerie started casting her beam spell, but let the words trail off as the dragon left her range. It was already past them, flying somewhere to the north.

"It didn't attack," Corec said, staring after it.

Sarette ran up. "Should I try and stop it?" she asked. "There's no storm, and without Shavala..."

Corec let out a heavy breath. "No. We're not ready. Let it go. Bloody hell--we'll be lucky if there aren't any deserters now that the men know it can surprise us."

"I got its signature," Leena said.

It took everyone a moment to realize what she meant.

"You can Seek it?" Corec asked.

Leena hadn't been able to find the dragon on her previous attempts, and she wasn't sure if that meant it had always been out of her range when she tried, or because the painting she'd once seen of a dragon wasn't sufficient detail on which to search.

"Yes, if it's within fifty miles," she said. "How fast can it fly?"

"About as fast as a bird, I think, but I don't know how fast that is. How often can you Seek it?"

"Not all day long. Even with a signature, Seeking is still harder for me than Traveling, and it depends what else you need me to do."

"We're most vulnerable at dusk and dawn," Corec said. "The stories I've heard never mention a dragon attacking at night--the night watch is just a precaution in case the stories are wrong. If you can look for it at dusk and dawn, and then as often throughout the day as you can..."

"I will."

"I'll tell the men. Maybe that'll be enough to reassure them that we won't be surprised again."

#

"You didn't have to come get me. I know the way."

Katrin rolled her eyes. "I

wouldn't

come get you if you didn't always dawdle on the way back," she told Harri. "Ditte, get up here on the walkway. Stay out of the mud. You don't have boots like your brother's."

Harri had to go out to care for the horses several times a day. Some of the animals were stabled at the Three Orders chapter house, but the rest were at the wheelwright's shop the group had taken over, which was a twenty-minute walk away. With his pay of one silver piece a day, the hillfolk boy had money of his own for the first time in his life--a man's wages--and he liked to roam the town on his way back and look for sweets and toys and other trinkets he could now afford.

His job included room and board for both him and his sister, and he always brought a little something back for Ditte, so Katrin couldn't blame him for wanting to spend his money on something fun, but both of the children needed new clothing. She was trying to teach him to be responsible with his coin.

And she intended to have words with Treya and Corec when they returned. They were the ones who'd taken on responsibility for the two children, and when they'd asked her to step in, she hadn't realized how much work it would be. On top of giving performances for the refugees, and attempting to teach those same refugees' kids how to read, she was busier than she could ever remember being.

At least the bulk of the actual teaching fell to the older students from the Three Orders. Katrin herself was only responsible for organizing and overseeing their work. It was unnerving, though, to see just how well-learned the Three Orders girls were compared to herself. Even here, in the free lands, they spent years learning languages, mathematics, politics, discourse, philosophy, and commerce--and they seemed to feel they had to prove it to her, constantly chattering away about topics of which she had no knowledge. She'd taken to reading books from the library late at night just to try to keep up.

Katrin and her two charges had made it halfway back to the chapter house before they heard the screams coming from the south. A shadow passed overhead.

At first, all she could do was stare. The dragon was directly above her before she realized what it was. The beast was huge--so big she couldn't understand how it stayed in the sky. It flew low to the ground, just above the buildings lining the street, close enough that she could see the brown scales lining its belly.

Katrin wanted to scream and hide and run and stay still all at once, and she couldn't pick between them.

Then Harri ran to the center of the muddy street. "Hey!" he shouted, picking up a stone and throwing it at the creature.

It didn't reach--the dragon was already too far beyond them--but Katrin forced her panic down. Someone had to take care of the children.

She rushed into the street and grabbed Harri by the arm. "Stop that!" she said, pulling him back to the wooden walkway. Ditte was still there, shrieking, with tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Come on!" Katrin told her, tugging at her hand. "We have to go!"

The little girl was too terrified to listen, so Katrin picked her up. She was heavier than she looked.

"Go!" Katrin told Harri. "Back to the..." She had to think. To reach the chapter house, they'd have to spend too much time in the open. Her mind was racing as if she was on the run from the constabulary back in Tyrsall after a failed heist. "There's a dry goods store on the next block. Go there. Stay on the covered walkways." The shop had a back door, which would give them an escape route in case the dragon tried to burn it down.

She followed behind Harri as he ran. They stayed close to the buildings to keep out of sight as much as possible.

The dragon made a wide loop to the north, passing out of view before returning back the way it had come. It roared as it went by, an angry, bone-chilling sound. It didn't seem to like what it had seen.

It disappeared behind the buildings to the south, and when it roared again, the sound came from much farther away.

Katrin stopped and set Ditte down, her arms suddenly too weak to hold the girl. "I think it's gone," she said, trying to catch her breath. "I think it's gone. We're safe now."

Judging by the looks on the children's faces, they didn't believe her.

#

Two hours later, Katrin wished she could go back to just dealing with the children. There were only two of them. The townsfolk gathered together at the emergency council meeting were much more numerous, and just as frightened.

"Are they dead?" one of the councilors asked. "The people who went after the dragon? Did it already kill them?"

"They're fine," Katrin repeated, for what had to be the fifth time. "They're still heading south to the keep." Corec was alive, at least. She knew that much from the warden bond. And the Farm Road was angled enough that she could tell when the group was on the move. If something catastrophic had happened, they wouldn't have continued onward to the keep.

Of course, that all depended on the idea that the group was still on the road. If they'd been forced to flee into the countryside, it was harder to guess where they were or what had happened to them. The warden bond only indicated direction, not distance.

But now wasn't the time to mention that. These people needed reassurance.

"How did it get past Lord Corec?" asked a panicked voice from the crowd. Corec wasn't a lord, just the son of one, but people who'd spent their entire lives in the free lands didn't always understand how titles were inherited amongst the nobility.

"We expected this," Katrin lied. "It'll take Corec and the others weeks to reach the keep, and the dragon doesn't have to follow the road. It must have come from a different direction." In retrospect, the possibility should have been obvious. Maybe the others had realized it, but no one had mentioned it to her.

"You're certain they're safe?" Mayor Sammel asked.

"Yes," Katrin told him. "It must not have seen them."

She didn't like this. Other than Mother Yewen, Katrin hadn't had to deal with the town council before. Corec had always been the one to stand up and take charge. He'd always been the one who had to pretend he knew what he was doing, to keep other people--often Katrin herself--from panicking. And before Corec, there'd been Barz and Felix.

But Corec wasn't there. Barz and Felix weren't there. Katrin was on her own.

"We have to leave before it comes back!" someone said.

"And go where?" the mayor said. "We're safer here than out on the road."

"We can go north!"

"Don't be ludicrous!" Mother Yewen said. "Evacuate the entire town to the north in the middle of winter with nothing but the clothes on our backs? Are you trying to freeze or are you trying to starve?"

It was the wrong tack to take. The months of stress had finally gotten to the old woman, and she lost the crowd.

"It's better than staying here!" someone called out, before the entire meeting devolved into a cacophony of shouting.

Mayor Sammel and Mother Yewen exchanged glances, but even if they'd had something to say, no one could have heard them. Katrin didn't like Sammel much, not with the way his eyes followed her, but he and Yewen had managed to keep the town going despite having little help from the other councilors.

Katrin couldn't force people to believe the two of them, but maybe she could calm them down enough to listen.

"It didn't attack the town!" she said, her voice ringing out, cutting through the noise. There was a lull in the shouting, and she slipped into a quieter, soothing cadence. "Corec said it wouldn't attack the town, and it didn't." She kept the push of magic subtle but insistent. "It's safer to stay here."

Ever since Corec had first offered to lead the expedition, he'd become the subject of much of the town's gossip, and Katrin had found that people were more apt to listen when she used his name. There were nearly fifty members of the little army, but for many of the townsfolk, Corec's name was the only one they knew.

Everyone exchanged glances, as if wanting to get their neighbors' opinions before agreeing with her.

"What about the farms?" someone asked. "It's never come this far north before."

"We warned all the farms," the mayor said. "If they decide not to evacuate, then tell them to hide in their cellars if they see the dragon. It might leave them alone."

One of the councilors turned to Katrin. "Why didn't your friends stop the dragon earlier?" he demanded. "They weren't supposed to let it reach the town!"

"No one stopped it earlier because

you

didn't do anything about it!" Katrin snapped. "Corec only got here three weeks ago. How long have

you

known about the dragon? Four months? Five? You just waited, and hoped someone would come along and deal with the problem for you. And now someone's doing just that and you complain?"

Her loss of temper was both real and feigned--she was speaking to the crowd more than the council. If the people had confidence in Corec's forces, they'd be less likely to panic. But to increase their confidence in Corec, she had to show what the alternative would be, and the council wouldn't come out looking good. Four Roads had done as well as could be hoped for in terms of taking care of the refugees--more Mother Yewen's influence than anything--but the town simply wasn't capable of dealing with any sort of real threat.

The free lands had gotten by as independent townships, without any form of central governance, for nearly three hundred years. The sparsely populated region had been conquered or claimed time after time in the past as nations had risen and fallen, but in recent centuries, the nearby rulers hadn't seemed to feel the land was worth holding onto. The surrounding kingdoms already got the benefit of that land by importing the crops grown there, and could charge import taxes on top of it, so why bother spending the coin to protect such a wide area?

That logic didn't work on dragons, though. Four Roads had found itself without the resources to fight off the creature, and no allies willing to provide aid.

Katrin had applied enough of a push to her words that the shouting didn't start back up again after she'd stopped talking.

Most of the councilors exchanged sheepish glances, but the one who'd complained before spoke up again. "We're grateful, of course," he said in a patronizing tone, "but everyone is worried."

"Then

do

something!" Katrin told him. "You say you're grateful, but the council still refuses to help us with the dragon. Corec had to go after it because

you

wouldn't do anything."

"Now, hold on," one of the other councilors said. "That isn't true. There are Four Roads men with the expedition, and our craftsmen built the equipment."

"We paid the soldiers and the workers," Katrin said. "You didn't."

"We gave you the money for that!"

"No," Katrin said. "Mayor Sammel had to go around begging for donations when you refused to help." Ellerie had mentioned that little tidbit. "The expedition is costing us seven hundred gold, and you haven't contributed anything. Corec offered to share the cost, but you haven't paid a single copper."

The crowd murmured at that, and even some of the council members seemed surprised.

It had been almost painful for Katrin to hand over the bulk of her remaining coin, even knowing it was going to a good cause. For the first time in her life she'd been rich, but it hadn't lasted long. She'd kept just enough to live on, plus the twenty gold she hoped to send to her brother. Corec had promised to make it up to everyone somehow, offering to sell the staff-spear he'd taken from Tir Yadar if Ellerie wasn't able to find enough funding.

"This young woman is right," the mayor said. "We haven't given our fair share. I did take out some loans in the town's name, but it hardly matches what our benefactors have contributed, and with the refugee situation, our coffers are empty. As I've said before, we need to levy a one-time tax to deal with both situations. I'm sure our citizens will understand. If Larso or Matagor had come to our aid, they would have demanded a great deal more."

"We're not going to discuss that in an open meeting, Sammel," the annoying councilor said. "You can bring it up in our next regular session."

Katrin sighed, but it had been worth the attempt.

"I'm sure the people of Four Roads are happy to know that the town council refuses to protect them," she told the man, then turned back to the crowd. "But Corec

will

. He can't stop the dragon from flying here until he catches up to it, but he and the knights say it won't attack the town. This is the safest place to be."

And let's hope he's right about that

, she added silently.

No one else argued in favor of leaving, and the discussion degenerated into arguments between the citizens about whether they should have to pay a tax that would go, in part, to feeding refugees. Mayor Sammel called the meeting to a close when it was clear there wouldn't be any more official business.

The people slowly shuffled out of the converted milch barn the town council had been using for their meetings, but Katrin stayed behind while Mother Yewen spoke with the mayor. She'd accompanied the old woman to the meeting and wasn't sure how to get back to the Three Orders chapter house by herself.

While she was waiting, Leena suddenly appeared in front of her. The Sanvari woman's eyes widened at the unusual location, and Mayor Sammel jerked back in surprise. Even Yewen looked startled, and she'd seen it before.

"Is everyone all right?" Katrin said in a rush.

"Yes, why?" Leena asked. "What's wrong?"

Katrin breathed a sigh of relief. "The dragon flew over the town today. Everybody is panicking."

"Oh. It passed by us this morning, but we didn't know it was coming here. I would have warned you."

"It saw you?"

"Yes. Corec's hoping it doesn't think of us as a threat. He says we might be able to surprise it at the keep rather than getting ambushed."

"How long will it take to get there?"

"I don't know. We reached the old part of the road today, so the men have to take turns running ahead with axes and saws, cutting down shrubs and little trees before the carts catch up to them."

Sammel frowned. "You have to clear the entire road?" he asked. "That could take months."

"So far, it's mostly grasses and weeds, and we're leaving those alone if the mules and carts can make it through," Leena said. "When it gets bad, we can usually go around. Being off the road isn't much worse than being on it at this point, but it's slow. We're only going to make about ten miles today, and it might get worse farther on."

"Do you need anything?" Katrin asked.

"The big felling saw isn't working out. I'm just here to get more hand saws."

Katrin let out a burst of relieved laughter. After the panic of the dragon, it was absurdly prosaic to find out that her friends were safe and that Leena had only returned to buy common tools.

"I'll go with you."

#

"Why didn't you tell me we could ward the palace?" Rusol asked Magnus. "She was here, in my study, and nobody could stop her! Nobody could even find her!"

They'd gathered with Rusol's other bondmates in the palace's trophy room. Rusol liked the place because it was usually empty, and because it didn't require bringing the other mages into the family's private quarters.

The priest gave a lazy shrug. "Warding isn't one of my blessings," he said, stretching out on a cushioned chair just below a mounted stag's head. "I don't know much about it. I would have thought the Church of Pallisur handled that sort of thing."

"My father sent most of the blessed priests away! If they were warding anything, they're certainly not doing it now!"

"Wizards can cast wards," Magnus said, turning his eye on the others in the room.

Rodulf's eyes went wide and he turned to Rusol. "I... you... you told me to practice fighting spells," he stammered. The young, runaway apprentice had done as Rusol asked, learning enough to help during the fight against Leonis, but he still sometimes acted like a child who'd been caught disobeying his parents.