Again Ker sat silently while the dwarf paced back and forth between him and the fire.
“It is ill, very ill, to speak of some things outside the fortresses of stone,” the dwarf said finally. His voice was softer, still gruff but almost pleading. “It will be worse for you and your mother and every one of us, if the wrong ears hear certain things, or the wind carries the tale to certain lands I will not name. You must trust me in this. In time, perhaps, you will know of what I dare not speak. Now—now you must retrieve those stones, to the last splinter, and bring them to us, before… before trouble comes.”
“They were eggs, weren’t they?” Ker said, hardly above a breath in loudness.
The dwarf threw up his hands. “O powers of earth! Save me from this insanity!” He leaned close to Ker then, his strong-smelling breath hot on Ker’s face, and murmured into his ear. “Yes, fool, they are eggs. Dragon’s eggs. And full of dragonspawn, as your dreams tried to convey. Every crystal splinter holds one, and every unbroken splinter can transform into a dragon if nothing stops it. A hundred, two hundred, a thousand dragons from one egg, do you understand? Those eggs were a thousand and three years old, given into the care of my great-great-uncle straight from the mouth of the dragon himself—”
“Males lay eggs?” Ker asked in a normal voice, forgetting in his curiosity the need for quiet. Quick as a snake’s tongue, the dwarf clouted him across the head. He had his dagger in his other hand; he had moved so quickly Ker had not seen him draw it.
“Fool! Idiot! Be quiet before you get us all killed.” He sat back on his heels, then twisted to look at Ker’s mother. “Madam, speak to your son! If you have any of the proper powers of a mother make him be silent—”
“Ker, please,” his mother said. “Please just listen.”
Ker nodded, and the dwarf heaved another sigh before going on. “We must be more careful,” he said. In his own tongue he spoke to the others, and three of the dwarves trotted away from the fire, up toward the trail. Then he turned back to Ker. “Man, if you try to run I will kill you myself with great gladness and your mother’s heart will be reft in twain.”
“I will not run,” Ker said. “I would not leave her.”
“Thanks be for that,” the dwarf said. The dwarves holding Ker let go his arms and walked away; he could not hear their footsteps, and once they passed beyond the bright firelight, they disappeared into the darkness. The remaining dwarf watched Ker, and ran his thumb along the side of his dagger with an unmistakable intent. For a time there was no sound but the crackle and hiss of the fire as it burnt lower, and then the dwarf spoke in a low voice.
“It is a trust, a trust between the firefolk of the mountains and my folk of the rocks. No land could sustain all the firefolk that might be born if they all came hatchlings from the egg, and nothing now in the world can prey upon the great ones, do you understand?”
Ker nodded without speaking. He did not understand what the dwarf meant by all this, but he did understand that the dwarf’s patience had worn to nothing, and the dagger blade, naked in the dwarf’s hand, glinted in the light that ran blood-red along it.
“For ages of ages, we rockfolk have had this trust, and for ages of ages the firefolk have not numbered more than the land could sustain. Some say of us—the Treesingers would say of us—that we and the firefolk are one in power-lust and greed, but this is not so. The hatchlings, aye: the young of every race are hasty and quick to grab and snatch. Human younglings, I have no doubt, run about and take more than they can use.” He turned back to Ker’s mother. “Is it not so, mother of a man?”
“It is so,” she said.
“Age brings long sight and steady thought,” the dwarf said. “The firefolk live long—even longer than we rockfolk, as long as the windfolk perhaps—and the firefolk in their age hold mountains in their care, mountains and valleys and the lands around. They have no wish to despoil what they love.”
Ker opened his mouth to say what he knew of dragonkind, but the look on the dwarf’s face stopped him. He wanted to say: But they are wicked, greedy, vicious; they are misers who heap up stolen treasure; they prey on travelers. Like dwarves. He did not say it.
“Long ago they made pacts with us rockfolk, for we know the ways of stone as they know the ways of fire, and between us great magics wrought protection for both their younglings and the world. Stone only can stand against such fire; only rockfolk can withstand the pressure of their desire to be free. They enter the bodies of those who touch them, bringing the fire of their ancestors but no wisdom, for they are young and full of foolish ambition. They grow, feeding on their host’s body and spirit, until the host is consumed and all but dragonet itself: greedy for power and wealth, proud and lustful.”
“I had dreams,” Ker said. “Something trapped in the crystal. When I woke up I saw a blue flame, a shape, dancing, and then the banked coals went cold.”
“And you touched it with bare hands—”
“It felt cold.”
“It found no host in you. Perhaps in truth you are drossin, as the rockfolk are, for the spawn cannot take a drossin host without its consent. Yet from what you say, one or more found a host in this Tam. You say his face was red, and his touch hot: This is indeed the way humankind reacts when filled with dragonspawn.”
“So it’s… eating him?” Ker’s gut twisted as he thought of it. Would it be like maggots that sometimes infested the sheep?
“Not exactly. Changing him. When it’s grown as far as that host permits, it moves to another. To another of the same household, often. This man has many children?”
“It would go into children?”
“Indeed. For it takes time and more time to mature to its next stage.”
Lin. Whatever was in Tam would get into Lin, would consume her, change her. Ker forgot his earlier concern, that she had inherited her father’s clenched fist. It was not Tam; it was the dragonspawn inside him, and Lin—he could think only of Lin, his Lin, corrupted and consumed by dragonspawn.
“I have to go,” he said abruptly, and stood. The dwarf swung a massive fist and knocked him down with a blow to the chest.
“Stay. I am not finished.”
“You want me to go. I want to go.” Ker could feel his heart pounding. “I have to save her—”
“Save who?”
“Lin. My—Tam’s daughter—the girl I was to marry—”
“Ker, no!” That was his mother, across the fire. “She may already—”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to—”
“You have to find and return the stones and fragments,” the dwarf said. “That is what you must do. Anyone already harboring a dragonspawn is beyond your power. Only a dragon can deal with such a one.”
“But if she isn’t—” Ker could hear his voice rising like a girl’s.
“Take her away, if you can. But I do not think you can.” The dwarf shook his head.
“If they do not kill me first, I will,” Ker said.
“If you rush in to save a girl, they will kill you,” the dwarf said. His voice now held amusement. “By Sertig’s hammer, I find myself where you were but an hour agone. You cannot go without being killed—not in this mood—so you must not go until you see sense.”
“I won’t rush in,” Ker said. “I’ll be careful.”
“And why do you now think being careful will work, while before you did not?”
Ker could not answer that, but an idea came to him. “If you would show me how to do that—what the others did—to not be seen, then I could get in and out and no one would know.”