“In a moment. Lin, where does he keep the rock eggs, the ones with the pretties—”
“You’re going to steal his pretties?” Her voice rose, then hushed quickly, and she grinned at him. “What a sweet vengeance, Ker. I hardly dared think you could think of that—”
“Under the hearthstone?” he asked, turning toward it. The dragon had told him he would feel the pull of the dragonspawn, but all he felt now was Lin’s nearness and his own body’s response.
“Some of them,” she said. “But not all—” And with a gesture very unlike the girl he’d known, she pulled open her bodice to show him the purplish crystal spike hung from a thong around her neck, nestling between her breasts. His heart faltered, then raced.
“Lin, no! Take it off! It will hurt you!”
“Take it off? I will not! Da gave it to me, to make up for sending you away. It’s the one you had; I’ll never take it off.”
“But Lin, they’re dangerous!”
“Ker, don’t be silly. It’s a rock, a pretty rock. How can it be dangerous? The only dangerous thing here is Da, if he finds us. Here—I’ll show you the others—” And she lifted the massive hearthstone as easily as Ker would have lifted a hoe, and scooped up two whole egg-shaped rocks, and a handful of shards. “This should be enough.”
“We have to get them all,” Ker said, and his own voice sounded strange to him. Where had Tam found another egg? He looked around and took a cloth from a hook near the fireplace. “Here—put them in this. We shouldn’t touch them.”
“They don’t burn,” Lin said, but she gave him what she held, then reached down for the other shards. As she did, the banked fire went out with a last hiss, and Ker saw the glow of her skin against the dark hole, and all at once her hand seemed clawlike, the nails talons. When she looked up at him, his stomach clenched at the expression on her face… exultant, hungry, eager…
“Is that all?” Ker asked. “Are you sure?”
“My father was right,” Lin said with a giggle that froze his heart. “You are a greedy thief, aren’t you?”
He could say nothing. He was robbing her father, though it was not greed, and he had no way to explain it. Not to the girl whose skin shone in the dim room. He wanted to tell her everything, but the dwarf’s final warning stopped his tongue. That and his fear.
“Come now,” Lin said, moving to the window. “I don’t mind if you’re greedy. I’m used to that in a man. I know you’ll provide for me—”
“Lin—” What could he say? What he had most feared had happened already; he could not prevent it; he had come too late. He could not go with her, wherever she was going; he could not stay here.
“Come on, Ker,” she said, reaching back to grasp his arm and tug at him. “We need to leave now. We can find a place later, and—”
He moved, hardly aware of moving, following her out through the window, across the garden again, behind Granna Sofi’s house toward the next garden, the next house. Behind them the crowd in the square gave a concerted gasp. Lin did not look around, but Ker did.
Above the square hung a shadow of light, light condensed into form, form overwhelming light. The shape writhed, growing until it filled the air above the square, brightening more and more. Ker paused, terrified but fascinated. What could it be? What was Tam doing? Beneath that light, Tam looked up, and the other villagers edged away, pushing at the children behind them.
“Ker!” Lin’s voice, from the edge of the village, near the ashes of what had been his house. “Come quickly! Before Da sees us!”
Light squirmed in the air; shifting colors flowed over the crowd, then faded. Tam’s face paled; his mouth opened; his hands spread as if to push the light away. Heat pressed down, heavy, inexorable. Something crackled; Ker looked across the crowd and saw a ribbon of flame leap up the thatch of Othrin’s house and spread. Those nearest turned, opened their mouths to start a warning. With a roar two other houses burst into flame, then a third. People screamed; Ker could see their mouths open, but only the roar of the fires sounded in his ears.
Pain stung his hands. He looked down and saw the cloth wrapping of his burden browning like toast over coals.
He ran. He ran without thought, without plan, away from the heat, away from the light, straight into the woods on no path at all, blundering into trees and stumbling over briars until he fell headlong into the stream. Steam hissed away from his burden; the blackened cloth fell to pieces. His hands opened; water flowed between his fingers, cooling, soothing. Under the water he could see the stones: two whole, one broken, a heap of shards.
Behind him in the village fire raged; he could hear the roar, the crackling; he could hear screams. Acrid smoke spread through the trees. Overhead, thunder boomed in the cloudless sky; lighter light departed. Shaking, Ker got to his feet in the shallow water, took off his shirt, and wrapped his scorched hands, then fished the stones and pieces out of the slow current and waded downstream to look for a place to climb out.
When he came around a turn of the stream, Lin stood on the ford waiting for him. She looked flushed and lovely, her hair curling around her shoulders, her body the shape of every man’s dream. She smiled at him.
“We don’t have to worry about Da now,” she said. “We can go back. You can be an Elder—”
“No,” Ker said.
“Well, then, we can go somewhere else. With Da’s pretties we’ll have enough to start a new place—” A little breeze blew a lock of shining hair across her face; she tossed it back, the gesture he remembered from their childhood.
“No,” Ker said.
“You’re not running away,” she said. The smile changed, reshaped into a mask of anger. “Don’t think you can take what’s mine and run away from me, leave me again!” Her hand reached for the crystal she wore, and he could see in her all that he had seen in her father. “Give them back then, thief!”
The words echoed, throbbing in air that once again thickened into light incarnate. He had a momentary image of Lin consumed in light, rising into its maw.
She was gone. The strange light was gone. On the ford stood a man dressed in such finery as Ker had never seen or imagined: brilliant colors, glossy fabrics, feathers and lace… he did not even have the words to say what he saw. The man stood in a shaft of brilliant sunlight that pierced the overarching trees, and the smoke filtering through the trees flowed around him.
“I believe,” the man said, “you have something of mine.”
Ker tightened his grip on his bundle. “It belongs to the rockfolk,” Ker said. “I do not know you.”
“To the rockfolk.” A dry chuckle, thornbush scraping on stone. “I suppose that is one way of saying it. Are you then returning it, or are you the thief she called you?”
“I am not a thief,” Ker said. “I am taking it back to them.”
The man stared at him until Ker coughed on the smoke blowing through the trees, and then the man shrugged and blew away, as if he had been smoke himself. Ker struggled out of the water, and made his way up the trail, coughing now and then as the smoke eddied past him.
Over the first rise, the same man stood by the path, leaning on a tree. “You might fare better if you had a horse,” he said.
“I have never had a horse,” Ker said.
“A walking stick, then,” the man said, and held out a trimmed length of wood with the bark still on. “You have a long way to go.”
“It is ill luck to take gifts of strangers,” Ker said.
“It is ill luck to refuse gifts of dragons,” the man said, and as before he blew away… but this time into the thickening of light, which condensed into a shape the size of a hill. Green as the man’s coat on the back, and yellow as the man’s shirt underneath, clothed in shining scales that shimmered from one color to another. Ker gulped, swallowed, and stood still.