“Rumor, rumor, rumor. I’m interested only in facts and expenses and how much I might get from the dwarves for you.”
“I shall ask you to drive a harder bargain than you know. I want several conditions on the sale, all in the interest of my health, of course. Is Brok still with you?”
“Of course.”
“I need him to forge a very stout collar for me, something that even a troll couldn’t break.”
“What, so that the dwarves may better chain you? Suppose you wish to break away and escape?”
“I didn’t say that I wanted to break it. I just want to be able to open it.”
Wistala stood in her new collar at the Ba-drink landing, a tiny escort of circus folk with her.
They’d set up a tent around her, specially sewn for the purpose, purple and patterned with powerful symbols, for she came to the Wheel of Fire dwarves not as an abject slave, but a great treasure, one to be guarded and protected and honored.
Wistala listened to the spring melt pouring over the dam spill and waited.
The collar itself was a thick ring of steel, leathered at the inside and edges, with two forged-steel loops, one at the top and one at the bottom, for the attachment of chains, though only the tiniest wisp of azure blue silk bound her to a silver peg in the floor. There was no latch or spot for a key, and if you ran your hands around the inside only hardened leather met your fingers. Only Wistala knew where, if you opened the stitching, you could insert a claw point and open the lock, which then left only a false weld to break before the collar fell away.
At last she heard the creak of oars in their locks, and shouts and orders and calls of dwarf voices.
“King Fangbreaker comes. Sound the trumpets! Beat the drums!”
If you’re patient enough, and keep still out of sight and smell, the prey will feed itself right to you. . . .
Something took off with a whistling whoosh and exploded far overhead, Wistala guessed it to be a firework. A thundering tattoo broke out on the drums, it sounded like boulders coming down the mountains, and the trumpets pealed so high and clear, it was like sunshine had been turned to music.
Wistala, hearts hammering, waited for the audience.
The tent flap opened, letting in a little fresh air that Wistala welcomed, as Ragwrist was having incense burned to abate the dragon- smell for the honored guests.
“Winged, as you see. And a little grown, a little more appetite at mealtimes, but the same Oracle,” Ragwrist said as he ushered three dwarves in. Wistala saw prostrate dwarves outside, who looked as though they’d been felled or struck by sleeping spells.
Wistala noted the changes in him even as the mighty dwarf looked her over.
Gobold Fangbreaker wore a silver mask now, emblazoned with a four-pointed star, two slits for his eyes and two more beneath flanking the ridges of the star, whose shining points extended beyond the dull plate of the mask. Below, his beard had swirling designs of gold and silver dust worked into it, and a golden cord bound it into a tuft at the bottom from which hung a piece of glass Wistala guessed to be a magnifier. He was somewhat thinner but still broadly built, in a cuirass of silver and leather cushioning, oddly like her own steel collar in its padding, only with more elaborate flourish down the centerline, evocative of spear heads. King Fangbreaker now wore purple caping at back and throat and sash.
The most obvious difference, though, was the absence of his right leg. An inverted half skull—Wistala guessed it to be a hominid’s, though she knew not what branch had such strangely long fangs and a ridge at the temples that almost resembled horns—capped the missing limb at the knee. Projecting out of this and running to the floor was a rod of white crystal, like lighting frozen into immobility. A mundane steel-shod horse hoof at the base gave him some stability on the ground.
He still wore the helm capped with dragon fangs, only now overlarge horn-tips projected from its sides, gilded and filigreed.
Evidently the crown of Masmodon still eluded him.
Behind King Fangbreaker stood two more dwarves, one bearing a tall banner he had to dip somewhat to fit in the tent. It was the old ruby-tipped staff Fangbreaker had carried before, only now grown and with a crossbar added at the top to support a small purple banner, and the ruby was the perch of a stern-looking brass eagle. The other dwarf lugged chests and bags tied on either side of a steel shoulder pole.
Wistala dipped her snout until it almost touched the ground. “I see changes in you, Gobold Fangbreaker. Did my oracle come true, or have you come for my head and claws?”
Why, why, why did you say that? It sounds like a challenge—
“Hmpf,” King Fangbreaker said. “I come to do this, though there are many who will swear, when the tale is told, that it is an impossibility.”
He approached her and threw his strong arms about her neck, and patted her three times with his right hand hard enough to make her scales clatter.
“Yes!” King Fangbreaker said. “So happy am I that I embrace you like a sister! For no sister ever gave brother such encouragement as you gave me. You set my heart afire as though you had spat flame into it! And look!” He cast his arms wide and lifted his purple robes. “Results speak louder than any words.”
He spun on his horse hoof, then stepped over to Ragwrist. “Elf, let us settle the accounting. Name your price, and if it’s her weight in silver, I’ll melt every plate and goblet on both sides of the Titan bridge to meet it.” He turned back to Wistala. “I do not come to buy you, Oracle, but to free you. I would not have one who has done such service choking in the wake of gargant flatus.” He extracted a knife from his sleeve with such speed that it almost looked as though it had grown there and moved to cut the blue silken cord.
“No, I beg you, mighty king,” Wistala said. “That twist could be broke at the slightest pull. I would keep it as a souvenir of happy journeys under the kindest of masters.”
“I’ve never known a dwarf to begin negotiations at such a disadvantage as saying ‘name your price,’ ” Ragwrist said. “I’m quite befuddled. But if that is the case, the negotiations shall be brief. I seek only assurances as to her treatment.”
“Treatment!” King Fangbreaker said. “She may go where she likes. But if she will reside with the Wheel of Fire, she’ll want for nothing as long as I have voice to call for it to be brought to her. I would ask only her counsel in return.”
“Let us adjourn to my tent, if you will accept my hospitality, great king,” Ragwrist said. “It would be unseemly to name a price before the object of the negotiations, methinks.”
“Elves and their protocols. Of course, Circusmaster, of course, but I am tempted to simply behead all present and free the dragon.”
“My king, no!” Wistala said.
King Fangbreaker laughed. “I joke, of course. Let’s get this over with, Ragwrist. It’s too nice a day for tents and incense.”
The party left, and Wistala sagged. Her spine had been tightening, her body closing on itself like a telescope all through the audience, yet she could not account for her fear.
“Shall I read your fortune?” a tiny voice squeaked.
Wistala looked down to see Iatella crouching between brazier and piles of pillows, cradling Intanta’s old, saucer-shaped crystal in her lap as though it were a very fat doll. The girl was on the fire-keeping staff and had come along to work the camp kitchen and get road experience.
“Certainly. Practice away,” Wistala said.
The little girl stood before her gravely, then knelt, all seriousness as is the manner of hominid children when hard at play. She drew designs around the crystal, then found something wrong with its placement, and inclined it a little so it faced her better.
“I see tragedy in your life,” Iatella said.
This was no great secret to anyone with knowledge of Ragwrist’s circus, but it showed the girl had some skill, for you always wanted to start out on firm footing.
“Wonderful,” Wistala said. “I’m most impressed.”
“Elves, dwarves, men—you have seen a good part of the Hypatian Empire,” Iatella went on, pulling at her lip in thought.
“Amazing,” Wistala said.
“Birds, too,” she added. “Birds and death.”
How . . . Where was she going with this?
“I see you. Something in shadow, a dragon with a scarred face the color of an old soup-pot. And one of many colors, turned white as snow. You thought him dead when he turned white.”
How was this possible. Auron? How on earth could she know about Auron, or that morning on the mountainside she thought him frozen to death?
“Oh,” she said, and her voice was no longer that of a little girl, but something older and croakier than even Intanta. “A terrible reckoning. Three dragons, opposition, and the fate of worlds in the balance.”
And then she screamed, such a scream that it seemed to shoot right through Wistala’s body, the tent, the soil itself, and fainted.
A circus dwarf, one of Brok’s staff, and a pair of the Wheel of Fire dwarves rushed into the tent.
“What happened?” the circus dwarf asked, after a dwarvish expostulation from the others.