Dragon's Fire (7 page)

“And the strangest thing was the watch-wher,” Zist added, shaking his head in awe. “It flew over the ceremony, carrying a basket of glows in its claws.”

Pellar jerked his head up in surprise. He tucked his thumbs under his shoulders and flapped his arms awkwardly, disbelief clear on his face.

“I know, I know,” Zist said, raising a hand to fend off Pellar’s skepticism, “it’s hard to believe a watch-wher flying and no one’s ever reported such a thing before. But then, no one really pays much attention to watch-whers.

“I had a long talk with Danil about it afterward and he claims that he even rode the beast once at night.” Zist shook his head at the notion. “Said that the air was thicker at night.”

Pellar shrugged, then wrote on his slate, “Not as good as dragons.”

“No, certainly not,” Zist agreed. “It’s one thing for a beast to go where it wants, and quite another to train it to go where
you
want it to go.”

Pellar nodded emphatically, recalling his efforts to train Chitter. Zist smiled and shook his head fondly. “There’s no love lost between Tarik and Natalon, that much is obvious,” he continued. “And I’m afraid in my first few days here I also created some stress between Kindan and Kaylek.” He glanced at Pellar, saw his confusion, and explained. “They’re two of Danil’s boys. The younger one has got the makings of a good singer, while the older—well, he’ll do well in the mines.

“Kaylek’s got the makings of a bully,” Zist added after a moment spent with his lips pursed in thought. “And I’m afraid he may take his anger out on Kindan. I’d hate to have the youngster too scared by his big brother to sing from now on.”

Pellar thought, then wrote, “Mentor.”

Zist glanced at the word and nodded.

“I suppose that might work,” he agreed. It was an old Harper Hall trick to assign some of the more difficult personalities the job of mentoring a younger person. Sometimes the responsibility and the assumption of a mantle of authority succeeded in teaching the “mentor” more than the youngster.

“But who?” Zist asked himself, leaning back once more in his chair.

A yawn escaped from Pellar before he could clamp his jaws shut against it. Master Zist looked up and smiled, shaking his head. “There’s no need for you to stay. I can ponder on this by myself.” He rose from his chair and gestured to the kitchen. Pellar smiled and charged forward eagerly, opening his carisak as he moved. After twenty minutes of rummaging through Zist’s stores, Pellar pulled the strings on the carisak tightly closed and put it on his shoulders. Master Zist smiled, asking, “Did you get your fill of supplies?”

Pellar patted his carisak and nodded. He retrieved his slate, hung it back around his neck, and settled it under his tunic.

“Chitter’s guarding your camp?” Zist guessed as they headed for the door, Pellar leading the way. “You can send him here if you need more supplies.”

Pellar turned back to the harper, surprised.

“Oh,” Zist said with a laugh, “if he’s seen I’ll just say that he’s here on harper business.” He winked at Pellar. “And it’ll be true, won’t it?”

Suddenly, as if on cue, a fire-lizard exploded into the hallway, searching desperately for Pellar and screeching anxiously.

“What is this, is he hungry?” Zist asked. Pellar reached out and coaxed the skittish fire-lizard into his arms, stroking him gently with one hand. Once Chitter had settled, Pellar lifted him away from his body in order to look the fire-lizard in the eye. Zist stood by quietly, still marveling at the way Pellar had learned to commune with the creature.

After a moment, Pellar drew Chitter close to his side again and stroked him softly with a finger. Then he launched the fire-lizard into the air and Chitter went
between
again, leaving only a cold patch of air behind.

Pellar turned to the door with an unmistakable air of urgency.

“Pellar, what is it?”

The youngster turned back, pulling his slate from under his tunic at the same time and quickly writing, “Someone found my camp.”

Pellar didn’t return to his camp. Instead he spent the night cold and restless crouched nearby, waiting for dawn.

As the sun rose high enough to spread its rays into the deep valley where he’d made his camp, Pellar willed himself to be calm and motionless, doing his best not to give away his position to anyone who might be looking for him.

He had sent Chitter back to Master Zist with a note to say that he was safe and had told the fire-lizard to wait with the harper until he called for him.

Pellar waited an hour before he was satisfied that no one was lurking near his camp, then he slowly made his way toward it. Someone had found his pack, examined it, and carefully rehidden it.

Except—there was a small bouquet of flowers on top of it.

Pellar smiled. It didn’t take him long to spot the tracks of bark-soled shoes. He was sure that whoever had found his camp was the same person—a little girl?—who had left the flowers at the grave site.

Quickly he gathered his things, careful to leave his campsite no more disturbed than before. Then he shrugged on his backpack and strode away, determined to find a better campsite, resolved to leave no more clues of his presence.

Pellar found his new hiding place high up in the mountains to the east of Camp Natalon. The site itself was a cave whose narrow entrance looked like it was nothing more than a crevice. Inside, the crevice widened out again. Pellar imagined that part of the mountain had split a long time ago to make the hollow he found. A steady, chilling breeze blew through the crevice and up the natural chimney formed by the mountain’s split. Fortunately, part of the hollow was wider and provided a relatively sheltered spot out of the worst of the breeze.

That was just as well, for Pellar was shivering with a bone-deep chill when he finally crawled into the widening part of the crevice and decided to make it his camp. The last rays of the evening sun only partially lit his new hiding place.

He carefully scouted out a collection of small rocks and set them out in a circle, in the center of which he placed the bundle of dead twigs and branches he’d gathered along his way. From one pocket he pulled some dead leaves and from another his precious flint stones.

With the fire going, Pellar rolled out his bedding and pulled off his boots. He made a face when one of the leather laces broke, and made yet another when he reached into his pack for his spare and found only dirtied twine instead. He stared at it dumbly for a moment and then shook his head in chagrin—apparently his flower giver had made him a trade, taking his good leather lace strips for her bark-soled shoes and leaving him her worn-out twine in their place.

With a sigh, Pellar found the least worn, least dirty piece of the twine and cut it off of the rest, carefully knotted it onto his broken lace and laid his boots near the fire to dry. He placed his wet socks on a nearby rock but, mindful of a time early in his training with Master Zist, not so near that they would catch fire.

His feet, socks, and boots were wet not just from the sweat of his exertion in climbing into this new place but also from his trek through a number of streambeds as he worked to hide his trail. Master Zist had told him about the burned-out Shunned wagon that he’d found on his ill-fated sojourn with Cayla and Carissa, and that tale, along with so many others regarding the Shunned, left Pellar certain that at least some of them would think nothing of killing him for his belongings—or even just out of simple spite.

Pellar clenched his jaw as he thought of the little flower girl in the company of such rough men. His thoughts grew darker and he found himself thinking about Moran, Zist’s lost apprentice, imagining him tortured and worse after being unmasked by the Shunned. For a moment, Pellar shook in cold fear, but then got control of himself. He had Chitter and he was better, much better, at tracking and fieldcraft than Moran had ever been—Master Zist had said so repeatedly.

Pellar took a deep calming breath and stared at the fire. With a start he realized that some of the cold he felt was from letting the fire burn low. He smiled at his silliness and gently fed some smaller twigs to the fire until it was strong enough to take another branch.

Satisfied, he searched through his pack for some more jerked beef and chewed on it slowly, doing his best not to think of bubbly pies or sliced roast wherry. When his stomach felt fuller, he put the rest of the jerky away.

He stared at the fire, then craned his head around to get a good look at his surroundings.

Chitter,
he thought, concentrating on the image of the fire-lizard and sending a mental image of his hiding place.

A rush of cold air burst on him and suddenly the hollow was full of ecstatic fire-lizard, warbling in pride at having found Pellar.

Pellar burst into a wide grin and held out an arm for the small creature to perch on.

You are the best,
Pellar thought to him. Chitter preened and stroked his face against Pellar’s.

Pellar soon fell into a routine, meeting every other sevenday with Master Zist while the rest of the time keeping a distant eye on the spot he’d noted at the camp’s coal dump where the Shunned were stealing their coal.

Their depradations were small and carefully timed, occurring when fresh coal had been deposited by a night shift but before the coal could be bagged, making it harder for the theft to be noticed.

Pellar was glad of his visits, not only for the warmth and the food, but also for the chance to hear Zist’s observations of the miners. He was glad to hear that the harper had taken his suggestion regarding Kaylek and pleasantly surprised to learn that it had worked—Kaylek and Cristov had formed a pleasant attachment, the elder Kaylek learning more restraint and the younger Cristov becoming more outgoing and assured by Kaylek’s teachings.

Aside from those visits, Pellar ventured no farther from his cave than he needed, ensuring that he left few tracks. Those tracks he did leave always headed first south before circling back around to the north, and he was careful to break his tracks whenever he could, whether by walking in the middle of stream or by climbing across several trees.

He never used the same observation point two days in a row, and chose each one so that he could observe his previous observation point from his current one, in case someone had spotted him the day before.

He stayed at his observation point only long enough to see what the Shunned had taken from the coal dump the night before. Because he moved when they were sleeping, Pellar was less worried about being discovered by the Shunned than he was about being discovered by Ima, Camp Natalon’s hunter. But his caution worked just as well in keeping him from her sight as it did from the Shunned.

Still, he made it a point to arrive at his day’s observation point an hour or two before dawn, and left as quickly as he could.

He had learned in his two months of observations that the night shift, which included the light-sensitive watch-wher, usually finished before the sun crested the horizon, and he kept a careful eye for when they left the mine, not certain how good the watch-wher’s sight was and whether it might spot him.