Ker remembered the curious shape of the “flood drift” he’d found on the rock ledge; his face must have shown that memory because the dwarf nodded sharply. “Yes. Leaving aside the other, that is a thief’s action. And you have polluted this spring—”
“We did not,” Ker said. “My mother sang the blessing.”
The dwarf cocked his head. “Did she now? And does human woman not know that such a blessing sung by a woman must not be heard by a man, and sung by a man must not be heard by a woman?” He looked across at Ker’s mother, now sitting slumped between the other two rockfolk. She said nothing.
“I left so she could sing it—to gather firewood,” Ker said. “I did not hear it.”
“And you took our patteran.”
“I didn’t know it was a marker—a patteran,” Ker said.
“What matters that? You took it. If not for your fire, and your snores, which made you easy to find, we might have gone astray from the path our comrades left for us. But we found you, and you have knowledge we seek. So, human, let us come back to that; if indeed you did not take our treasure, why do you bear its smell? Who took it? Where can this person be found? For if we find it not, and quickly, great peril falls on all this land.”
Ker believed that. Between his dreams and the rockfolk, he believed absolutely in the certainty of some dire fate.
“I will tell you,” he said. “But you must not hurt my mother.”
“That is our business, not yours. Yet I say that it is not our habit to harm human women. Or human men, if they do us no harm.”
With a last glance at his mother, Ker told the story yet again. “I was coming back from the cow pasture with an older man, the father of my betrothed,” Ker said. “I saw a strange rock in the path…” He told about the egg-shaped rocks, about Tam’s reaction to the second and third rock. “He said it was like rocks from Blackbone Hill.”
“Blackbone Hill! Your people travel so far?”
“Most do not, but he had, he said, when he was young. And he had found round rocks with pretty crystals inside, he said, and he wondered if this might be such a one. So he—he broke it on the waystone. It had pretty things inside; he gave me one.”
The dwarf growled something Ker could not understand. Then: “Fool! Idiot! Stupid child of dirt and water! On the way marker! Tell me, is this person accounted a simpleton, one with scant mind?”
“No… he is an Elder.”
The dwarf stared, busy brows raised high. “This man is what you call wise?” Then he scowled. “I do not believe it! No one who has been to Blackbone Hill could fail to know the dangers of such things.”
“He said they fetched a good price at the fair.” Curiosity finally got past fear. “What are they, those rocks?”
“Rocks.” The dwarf turned away and tipped out the packbasket. Pots clattered onto the ground. “Is it in here?”
“No! I gave it back to him,” Ker said. “I told you—” The dwarf paid no attention, pawing through the pile… skeins of wool twisted on wooden knitting needles, his mother’s spare skirt, two aprons, his spare shirt and trews, his winter shoes, last year’s straw rosette from above the fireplace, the jar of bread starter, the jar of lard, the waterskins, the sack of beans. Those hard, stubby fingers probed through the pile, found the bracelet and tossed it aside, found the silver bits and paused.
“Where came these? Did you sell that piece of rock for them?”
“My father,” Ker said. “He had many sheep and sold their fleece; over years, he saved that much.”
“Where is he?”
“Dead,” Ker said. The dwarf grunted.
“Tell me more. This person gave you a piece of the… the broken stone. And you did what with it?”
Ker told the rest, while the dwarf stared at him out of shiny black eyes.
“You put it under the hearthstone? Near a fire?” From the tone, that had been the worst place to put the pretty. Ker nodded.
“And then?”
“I had dreams. Bad dreams.” The dwarf nodded.
“Yes, yes. It is dangerous to put such near fire.”
“But you said it was just a rock,” Ker said. The dwarf grunted again; Ker saw his boots shift a little on the ground. “I don’t understand,” Ker said. “I mean, I understand that if it belongs to you—to the rockfolk—then you must have it back. But why is it dangerous to put it under a hearthstone?”
“You ask too much,” the dwarf said. He looked at the others, and began talking in a language Ker had never heard before. Soon they were arguing—or so it sounded—waving their arms and stamping their feet. Ker wondered if he and his mother might escape unnoticed and glanced across at her, but she was sitting slumped, her head in her hands. The argument died down finally, and the dwarf who had been talking to him turned to him again.
“You have a problem,” the dwarf said. “It is that you have the scent of… of what we seek about you. And you travel on the Way. And you have nedross words.”
“Nedross?”
“Rock is dross or nedross. Dross does not crumble; it is rock to trust, grain pure throughout. Nedross rock cannot be trusted, even if it looks solid and pure in grain: It fails. It is—” he paused, searching, “not truth.”
Ker felt this as another blow. “I am not lying,” he said.
“The words you speak are not whole,” the dwarf said. “You know more you do not say.”
His mother shifted slightly; the dwarf holding her said something that sounded like rocks grinding and the one facing Ker nodded. Then he spoke again to Ker.
“This is who to you?”
“My mother,” Ker said. Did the rockfolk have mothers? Would he understand at all what mothers were to humans?
“Mother is one who birthed you?”
“Yes.” Much more than that, but that was the beginning.
The dwarf left Ker abruptly to the hold of the others and went to his mother. Ker started to move, but the ones holding him tightened their grip. It was like being held by rock.
“No smell of dragonspawn,” the dwarf said, facing Ker’s mother. His hands were clasped behind his back, near the handle of the dagger thrust through his belt. His voice was slightly softer, speaking to her. “You never touched this thing… but you know something. What do you know?”
“I don’t know what you speak of,” Ker’s mother said. “I saw a pretty piece of crystal that Tam said he had given Ker, and he wanted it back.”
“Tam. Tam is this one who picked up the stone and broke it? Tam is where?”
“In the vill—the village you call it. Ravenfield, we say,” Ker’s mother said. Her face, across the fire, was patched with moving light and shadow. Ker could not read her expression. Her voice sounded tense, even angry. “He is an important man in the village, is Tam Gerisson. And he drove us out—drove us out for nothing. For nothing, I say!”
“Your son did not say that.” The dwarf looked back at Ker, scowling. “I said you were not telling all you knew.” Then again, to his mother, “Whose words are nedross, your words or those of your son?”
“Ker is a good boy,” she said. “It is not for the young to condemn their elders or to bear tales of them.”
The dwarf’s clasped hands shifted, the fingers of one spreading and then folding again around the other. He spoke in his language, and a dwarf Ker had not noticed before moved into the firelight carrying wood, and put it on the fire. The fire leapt higher, giving more light. He turned back to Ker’s mother.