“It is not something for humans to learn,” the dwarf said. “It is born in us. But perhaps we can help without that.” He pulled from his pocket a gray cloth about the size his mother draped over the dough trough. “This is not a way to be unseen, but a way to be unnoticed, if someone moves quietly and quickly. I do not know if it will work on you, but we shall see.”
He draped it on Ker’s head; for an instant the fire seemed to blur, then his vision cleared. The dwarf leaned close. “Get up and walk around the fire, very quietly, until you are near your mother. Say nothing. When you are beside her, speak to her.”
Ker stood; he was stiff from sitting so long, but he moved as quietly as possible. When he looked at his mother, she was looking where he had been, not at him. He spoke, then, and her head turned sharply. “Ker! I didn’t see you move! Are you leaving, then?”
“Yes—very soon, now.” He looked back at the dwarf.
“It is only deception, and not as strong on you as on us; I could see you easily. But then, I knew about it. Stay close to hedges and thickets, cast no shadows into someone’s eyes, and you may pass unseen.” Or may not, the dwarf’s expression said. “Rest a little,” the dwarf said. “You will need your rest.” That, as if he and his fellows had not broken Ker’s sleep in the first place. But under that commanding gaze, Ker lay down. When the dwarf shook him awake, dawn was gray to the east. “You had better go now,” the dwarf said. “Take this—” He handed Ker a flattened lump. “It is food, and will give you strength. And whatever you do, do not trust one who might have the dragonspawn already, no matter who it is.”
The journey back went swiftly, for it was mostly downhill and Ker had no burden to carry. The dwarf’s food brought him fully awake with the first bite and lent speed to his feet.
He moved cautiously as he came into the vill’s pasturelands.
No one watched the cattle grazing in the upper pasture; Ker knew where the herdsmen rested, and no herdsmen lay there. No one watched the sheep in their meadow; half had strayed into the hedge where the rustvine grew, which no shepherd would allow, for the thorns that tangled the fleece. Ker wondered at that, for it meant the shepherd had been away for hours. He took the sheep’s path to the stream, to the shelving bank where the sheep drank. Here the water swirled in, clean and clear, but there was no ford and no path on the far side.
The water cooled his feet, and he waded upstream to the women’s bathing pool, alert for voices, half-hoping he would find Lin bathing alone and could speak to her. No voices. He came out into a little glade, the grass dry underfoot, and followed the women’s path back to the village. He saw no one, heard no one, until he was very close, close enough to see through the fringe of vines at the wood’s edge. The blackened ruin of his mother’s house, burnt to ash and scorched stone hearth, lay between him and the rest of the village. It still stank of the burning.
Now he could hear voices, many voices and one angry voice louder than them all. He could see Tam in the middle of the square, yelling, and the other adults talking. The men should have been in the fields at this time of day, and the women in houses and gardens, or at the well, but all the people seemed to be there milling about. Ker watched, trying to hear what they said, but he could not. He wondered what had happened.
“You have to!” Tam yelled louder than before. “I know more! I have power!” He raised a fist.
Ker edged around one house and then another, working his way toward Tam’s. If they were all in the meeting arguing, perhaps he could get in and out with the eggs before someone saw him. At the corner of Granna Sofi’s garden, he looked across at Tam’s house. Its only door faced the square, but two windows looked out on this side. He had only to cross the garden with its clusters of pie plant and redroot, and climb in through the window. If no one was inside.
He dared not look to see if Tam’s family were all in the square; he was too close. Even with the dwarf’s cloth, someone might notice him. He could see safely out of Granna Sofi’s windows though, and she had a back door. He eased through it, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darker room, pulled off the cloth, and took two steps toward the front of the house before he realized that Granna Sofi was there staring at him, her mouth open. She lay on a narrow bed, propped on pillows.
“You…” she breathed in her quavery old woman’s voice.
“Please,” Ker said, not even sure what he was asking. Don’t raise an alarm. Don’t be afraid. Don’t turn your back on me.
“You came back,” she said. Her voice rasped.
“Yes. I have to do something.”
“You said something was wrong with Tam,” she said. He looked more closely at her, with the way she lay, with the shape of her legs and the color of her skin.
“Granna Sofi, what is it?”
“You were right,” she said. “He has changed. He has become something else.”
“I know. I have to stop it—”
“You cannot stop it. He will kill you. He killed me because I spoke against him.”
“But—” But you’re alive, he thought, even as her eyes sagged shut and her last breath rattled free of her ribs. He saw then that her legs were broken, that great bruises marred her arms. Ker made the signs to send her spirit away in peace, and looked around for the necessary herbs. There they were, wrapped in a twist of sourgrass, as if the old woman had known she was going to die that day. Perhaps she had. He shivered, and laid the herbs on her eyes and mouth, at her head and feet.
When he looked out her front window, he could see Tam clearly, the red sun-burnt face and arms, the fierce expression on his face. He could feel the waves of heat that came off the square. Tam’s wife, Ila, stood beside him, and she too looked ruddy under the sun, her yellow hair blazing with light. Around them at a little distance stood the others of the town, children at the back, peering between the adults.
It must be now. He hurried out Granna Sofi’s back door, and quickly stepped across the first row of plants, then the second, and then he was flattened against the wall of Tam’s house. He listened a long moment, hearing nothing from within. Tam continued to harangue the villagers from the square. Ker tried not to listen, as he would have tried not to swallow filth, but some words leaked through his ears anyway.
He must do it. He must enter the house as a thief, and as a thief he must steal away Tam’s treasure, both the dragon’s eggs and the daughter. He turned and climbed in through the low window. As before, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the dimness. He reached for the cloth to take it off, and realized he’d left it in Granna Sofi’s house. He moved aside from the window and stumbled against a bench, and then in an instant he was wrapped in someone’s arms and a hot mouth pressed against his, and the voice he had long dreamed of said, “Oh… you came back…”
Lin. He freed his mouth and said, “Lin. I have to do something.”
“Yes—you have to kiss me. Oh, Ker, I’ve been so unhappy—” She clung to him and he could feel every sweet curve of her body. They had never been this close; he had dreamed of being this close. “Take me away, Ker; take me away with you! I want you, I want you forever.”
He had never imagined that she would choose him over her father’s will. He had expected to have to argue with her, persuade her.
“I will,” he said. “But first I have to do something. Help me, and then we’ll go—”
“No, let’s go now,” she said, dragging him toward the window.
“No, Lin, it’s important—” He pulled back far enough to see her clearly. Lin with her yellow hair inherited from her mother, her clear eyes, her creamy skin… now flushed with passion, with love for him.
“What, then?” she said, clearly impatient. “If Da finds you here, he’ll kill you—maybe both of us. We have to go—”