Gareth met his penetrating eyes with his own, searching for signs of humor and finding none. He said truthfully, “I never intend to get that close to a dragon again.” Because I will rob the nest and be gone long before the dragon returns.
The teacher almost smiled as he shifted the hood over his bald head and pulled the front edge down low to protect his eyes from the sun. “Do you have more questions of me, Master?”
“No.” Then Gareth thought of another, and blurted, “Are there always, at least, four teachers near me?”
“Lately, yes.”
That answer told him all he needed. His venture to the nest had forced increased security, which was why there were now so many of them near him all day long. Without saying good-bye, Gareth spun on his heel and walked away. He’d caught the guarded warnings in the tone of the conversation, and in the admission that more teachers were watching him than before. That gave him a lot to consider. The admission was not a mistake or a slip of the tongue. Teachers didn’t make that sort of slip. They were telling him of the consequence of his venture. He’d gone to the nest. Placed himself in danger. They were protecting him. And warning him.
Faring was right. Gareth didn’t understand how he had missed the obvious when his friend had seen it from the beginning. Could the teachers have misled him, or influenced his perceptions? Had the many days sitting under a tree on Odd’s farm and listening to their stories misled him? Or the cold winter days studying beside the warm stove in the barn swayed his thoughts? Yes, they could have, all of them, and probably did.
His mind reviewed the new information as he walked along the edge of the pine forest towards his hut. The teacher he’d talked to along the path said they also taught other people, but he knew there were no others nearby who received instruction. That told him the teachers were an organization spreading over a larger area. They formed some sort of protective unit, with him as their center, but they also looked out for others. At least, they inferred they taught others.
The teacher had evaded the questions about who was ordering them to watch over him, and why. It gave him the feeling that his teachers were not the friends he’d always imagined them to be. He had to be careful in his escape because if he failed there might not be the second attempt. The night whispers hinted of others who were dangerous, too. Those others seemed to hate the teachers most of all, but there was no liking for the teachers. The tendrils of information from the night whispers shifted and oozed around him when he slept like a heavy fog. They were so real in his dreams, but when he reached out to touch them, there was nothing there.
As he entered his hut, the sun settled low in the sky. He glanced at the forest across the stream and spotted two of the teachers that had been shadowing him. He’d kept them marginally in sight as he walked, so he knew where to look. The other two, the ones who had been lurking deeper in the forest, were unseen, yet he believed them still close. He pulled the rickety door shut, threw the bolt closed, and fell onto his sleeping pallet without eating.
Several times he woke and looked up to the single small window on his east wall. When he judged it completely dark, he eased the door open and quietly slipped outside. The moon was near full. If they watched, he would be easily spotted, so he slipped into the shadows and moved to the path that led up the side of the mountain. While seeing his way in the moonlight presented no problem, he still kept to the shadows, making two full revolutions of the hut and surrounding area. He found no indication of any teachers lurking in the forest. Gareth made his way to the tannery and carried off a half-empty container of the soda solution, a scruffy leather apron that looked as if it hadn’t been used in years, and a pair of cast-off leather gloves that rose to his elbows. He moved past his hut along the path in the direction of the dragon nest and hid his goods under tangled brambles when he tired.
Gareth raced back and slept the rest of the night. The night whispers came again, almost as soon as he closed his eyes. He shouted in his mind that he was preparing to leave Dun Mare so they could stop tormenting him. They quieted for the remainder of the night as if they understood, almost becoming soothing.
Three mornings later, the plowing was completed and the seed for winter crops sown. Odd had little use for Gareth until spring, other than minimal daily chores a farm in winter needs, and of course, splitting firewood for use during the heavy snowfalls and cold nights. The supplies he’d taken from the tannery were now hidden much closer to the nest, carried a further distance each night. Along with the heavy apron and pair of gloves, he managed to remove the rope from the barn at Odd’s farm without notice, and had coiled it over his shoulder to carry. He’d sewn a crude leather sack with a shoulder strap from a scrap of leather he’d found at the tannery for the dragon egg he intended to steal.
It was almost time.
He had located his supplies close enough to the mountain top that another single trip would move everything into position directly above the nest. A bare cliff fell down the other side of the mountain from that high peak, and from there he could look directly down and see the nest. He cautioned himself to think about only snatching one egg, no matter how tempting the others might be. All the stories said that dragons laid two or three eggs. Sometimes four. If a man clever and brave enough managed to take one, the dragon would do its utmost to find and punish the thief, but would soon return to the nest to guard the remaining eggs. Taking all the eggs meant the dragon would pursue a man for weeks; maybe months, if he lived that long. There were tales of dragons going on rampages from the theft of all their eggs, destroying whole towns and villages. He couldn’t put the people of Dun Mare at that sort of risk.
So far, Gareth had managed to avoid the teacher’s attention on his nightly excursions, all of them. He’d carefully examined his footprints when returning to his hut each night, making sure no obvious prints were present, then erasing or scuffing any other evidence of his passing. True, someone knowledgeable of basic tracking wouldn’t be fooled for a heartbeat, but Gareth doubted the teachers were looking for evidence of his excursions, or that they knew what to look for.
More teachers came to Odd’s farm each morning, filling his head with more stories and lessons. He tried to pay attention. Every year, as the farm chores decreased in the fall, the teachers filled his free time with lectures, as a parade of them sat with him, usually within the comfort of the barn. A small stove kept them warm and provided additional light.
Six days after his last discussion with the teachers about ceasing his efforts to steal an egg all his supplies were in place. He was safely in his hut in the early evening, resting, but not sleeping. He been sleeping later than usual each morning after his excursions, but nobody mentioned it if they noticed. Then, at the main farmhouse, he split wood until the woodshed could hold no more, his final chore for the winter. He wouldn’t want to do less than Odd required, or disappoint the old man in any manner.
In the afternoon, he walked to the tannery and waited near the sour apple tree, again. The putrid smell was barely noticeable for the first time in memory. He was either getting used to it or the breeze blew it away. Finally, tired of waiting, he walked closer to the tannery and noticed that no smoke rose from the chimney, which was unusual. There was no movement of workers. No voices shouting orders or insults. He ran the rest of the way down the slope and pushed open the heavy oak doors of the main building. “Anybody here?”
Echoes answered. He rushed through the vacant shed to the area of vats and found most of them empty of any liquid. No hides floated in them. None hung to dry on the stretchers. The usual banter of workers trading verbal barbs was absent. The tannery felt as dead as the skins that had been worked there.