“I hope he hasn’t cut his hoof,” Siobhan said.
“My best shirt, ruined!” Krystal held up a nightshirt with a wet stain down one side.
“Shut up, Krystal,” they all said.
On the way back to the city, they agreed that Bilious Dire need not know the whole story, only that at the end Cavernous had sacrificed himself for others, and been eaten.
Mirabel’s sister had things to say about the outcome, which left a coolness of glacial dimensions between them for more than a year. At Monica’s instigation, the Weeping Willow Sewing Society paid for a plaque commemorating the Dauntless Courage of Cavernous Dire, in saving the life of four of the King’s Guardswomen from a dragon. Every May-morn, they lay a wreath beneath it. Mirabel Stonefist won’t walk by that corner at all anymore. Siobhan Bladehawk narrowly escaped punishment for defacing the plaque as she tried to correct “Four of the King’s Guardswomen” to “Three of the King’s Guardswomen and One of the King’s Cavalrywomen.”
In the belly of the dragon, Cavernous Dire remains undigested, a situation acceptable to neither him nor the dragon. Neither of them knows that it is Cavernous’s miserly grasp of the pony Dumplings horse-brass which maintains this uneasy stasis.
Meanwhile, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had a very satisfactory chat with Balon of Torm, whose arms, dyed orange to the elbow, proved he had been dipping into the treasury. Sophora Segundiflora may be the only person satisfied by the expedition.
Judgment
“That’s odd,” Ker said, picking up the egg-shaped rock. “I never saw a rock shaped like an egg before.” It was heavy, like any rock, cool in his hand. Smoother than any rock he’d ever seen.
“You find rocks like that in the hills west of here, lad,” Tam said. He sounded as if he’d seen many such rocks before. “Someone dropped it,” he said, looking around as if he expected to see that someone. “Gnome. Dwarf. Rockfolk would have something like that. And what’d they be doing here, I wonder? Never saw them this near the village; they need rocky hills to live in.”
“They wouldn’t drop it, not they.” Ker turned the rock, rubbing it with his thumb. Stories said the rockfolk had grasping hands that never let go what they held. “It’s smoother than most rocks anyway. Like someone’d polished it.”
“Carried in a pocket with a hole in it. A sack—”
“I reckon as it belongs to someone, then,” Ker said, putting the rock back on the path. “Best leave it be.”
“For someone to stub a toe on in the dark?” Tam picked it up, hefted it, ran a calloused thumb over the smooth surface. “You’re right, lad, it is smooth.” He put it down just off the path, near a brambleberry tangle. “Now no one’ll kick it in the dark and call a curse on us for leaving a tripstone, but it’s easy enough to find, if whoever dropped it recalls what way they came.”
Ker nodded and walked on, down past the brambleberry tangle, taking the steps made by its roots and those of the yellowwood thicket, steps worn into hollows by the feet of those who went daily from the creek up to the cow meadows and back. Under his bare feet the warm earth turned cool, and then chill and damp as he neared the stream.
Tam followed; Ker could hear Tam’s slower, more careful footfalls, the slight grunt as he came down the slope. Caution was in Tam’s movements, in his words, as was proper for an older man, an Elder in the vill. Ker would not have worried about someone tripping on a rock in the path at night, though now Tam mentioned it, he knew he should worry. Others than humans used that path; the first humans here had found it bitten deep into the land, so that now the bushes and thickets towered over it, and here near the creek he walked between walls of fern and flowers. The people of light used it, and the people of shadow, singers and unsingers, and the people of earth, those of the law and those of the forge. A curse from any of these might bring desolation to humans within its reach, and the curses of the Elders reached a long way.
Just beyond the old way marker, put there by no human hands in ancient times, he saw another of the odd egg-shaped rocks in the path. He made the sign to avert a curse. The rock remained. He stopped.
“Go on,” said Tam from behind him, touching his shoulder.
“It’s another one,” Ker said.
“Another one what? Oh.” Tam edged past Ker. “It’s not the same color.”
Ker had not noticed that; he had seen the shape only. Now he could not remember just what color the other one was. Stone colored, or he’d have noticed, but what color was stone? His mind threw up images of gray stone and brown, black stone and reddish yellow. This one was pale gray, speckled with dark.
“What if it is eggs?” he asked. “What if something lays stone eggs?”
Tam laughed, a harsh barking laugh. “What—you think maybe dwarfwives lay eggs?”
“I didn’t say that.” Ker stepped carefully around the rock. He wasn’t going to pick it up this time. He’d averted a curse, or tried to, but handling things that might be cursed was a good way to catch bad luck anyway. He wished he hadn’t touched the first one. “I only said—we found two. If they are eggs, what laid them?”
“They’re not eggs. They’re rocks.” Tam bent down, picked up the rock, and shifted it from hand to hand. “This one’s a little grayer. Heavier, not by much. Could be it has pretties inside. Some of them egg-shaped rocks over to Blackbone Hill has pretties inside. Gems, or near as need be.”
Ker shivered. Blackbone Hill had a bad reputation, for all that some claimed to bring burning stone and valuable gemstones out of it. Stories were told about what lay under Blackbone Hill, what bones those were. A dragon, some said, had been killed there for his gold, and others said the dragon had died of old age, and still others argued that the dragon had choked on magegold. Tam had always said the stories were fool’s gold, that only rock lay under the grass.
“Was there as a youngling,” Tam went on. Ker knew that; everyone in the vill had heard Tam’s stories of his travels. “A long ways off, and not much worth the trouble, but for his pretties.” He hefted the rock in his hand. “I’ve half a mind to crack this open and see if it’s that kind. Had to trade all the pretties I found at Blackbone for food by the time I’d come home.”
Ker shook his head. “What if it is something’s egg? Bad luck, then, for sure.”
“It’s not an egg. Nothing lays stone eggs.”
Nothing Tam knew of. Ker knew that he himself knew less than Tam, but surely even Tam did not know everything.
“We should ask somebody,” he said, seeing Tam about to crack the rock egg against the old way marker that stood at the foot of the cut. The way marker came from the Elder People; it might be bad luck to break anything on it.
“Ask who?” Tam said.
That was the stopper. Tam knew more than anyone else Ker could think of; he was an Elder, but…
“Somebody,” he said. “The singers, maybe?”
“Finders, keepers,” Tam said, and his arm came down. The egg-shaped rock hit just on the edge of the way marker, and it broke open to show a serried rank of purple and white crystals.
“Pretties,” Tam said with satisfaction. “Just as I thought. Here, Ker—you can have one.” He probed with thick fingers and broke off a single crystal spike, about the length of his finger from knuckle to nail. He held it out.
Ker felt cold sweat break out on his face and neck. He could not refuse a gift from his future father-in-law, not without risking a quarrel, but he didn’t want to touch that thing, whatever it was. He whipped off his neck cloth, and took the crystal in that. “I don’t want to risk breaking it,” he said. It was partly true, but the partial lie made a bad taste in his mouth. For courtesy, he looked closely at the crystal. Cloudy purple, the eight facets glinting in the light, the point narrowing abruptly at the tip… it looked sharp, and he did not test it with his finger. Carefully he folded the cloth around it and tucked it into his shirt, snugging his belt so it wouldn’t fall out.