He found her waiting in the parlor, staring at the front hallway, her sewing done and heaped on the floor; he remembered suddenly that Dumery was missing.
He snorted under his breath. That damned troublesome boy. The little fool was probably playing some stupid prank, Doran told himself, or else he was staying with friends and had forgotten to tell anyone.
Telling Faléa that wouldn’t do any good, though. She knew it as well as he did, but still, she worried.
Nothing wrong with that, Doran thought. A mother had every right to worry about her youngest. And Dumery was a bright lad, a promising lad-Doran was proud of him. He would have been even prouder had the boy not been so pigheaded and prone to wild fancies and foolhardy adventures.
Still, Dumery would turn up, safe and sound, he was sure. He always had.
Doran waved a good night to his wife and went to bed.
Faléa waved back, half-heartedly, and sat.
An hour later, her head still full of thoughts of her Dumery captured by slavers, or set upon by thieves, or run off on reckless adventures, Faléa joined her husband in bed.
Chapter Nine
Dumery awoke at the sound of rattling harness; a traveler was fetching his mount from the inn’s stable.
The boy blinked up at the bright blue sky, and then panicked. He leapt to his feet, sending the scrap bowl spinning and knocking aside the spriggan that was curled up against him, and he ran for the gate, spooking several horses. The traveler shouted at him angrily, but Dumery paid no attention. He was too worried.
It was morning, and none too early. What if the dragon-hunter had already gone? Dumery didn’t even know which fork of the road the man in brown would be taking, north or west.
He paused at the door of the inn to catch his breath. Looking up, he saw that the torch above the door had burned away to a blackened stub. The sun was still low in the east, but it was clear of the horizon.
If the man in brown was gone Dumery would have no way of finding him again. He would be left with little choice but to give up and head home to Ethshar.
That would mean giving up his dream of becoming a dragon-hunter himself, though, and he wasn’t going to give in that easily if he could help it. He wasdetermined to be a dragon-hunter and rub Thetheran’s nose in it.
He opened the door, and, suddenly nervous about being spotted, peered carefully in.
The man in brown was there, sitting at one of the tables, eating grapes, carefully plucking out the seeds as he went. He wore a different tunic, this one tan wool rather than brown leather, but Dumery was sure it was him. The man’s size and slovenly hair were distinctive enough to make a positive identification.
A sigh of relief escaped the boy. The man was still here. He hadn’t left yet.
Dumery hadn’t lost him.
His ticket to a career in dragon-hunting was still in reach.
Dumery stood in the doorway for a moment, trying to figure out what to do next.
As he stood, it registered with the boy that the man in brown looked clean and well-rested and well-fed and was finishing up a leisurely and generous breakfast. He had undoubtedly slept in a fine bed paid for with Thetheran’s gold, while Dumery had spent the night freezing in the stableyard mud, with nothing to eat but a few nauseating scraps. He was filthy and stinking, his feet still ached, his back was stiff, and his stomach was so empty it was trying to tie itself in knots.
This journey was no great hardship for the man in brown, who was well-prepared and well-financed, but it was clearly going to be torture for an ill-equipped boy who didn’t even know where he was going.
Dumery turned and looked down the road, back toward Ethshar. He couldn’t see any sign of the city, but he knew it was there, and in it his parents’ house.
Should he turn back?
He chewed on his lip as he thought it over.
Back in Ethshar, somewhere over the horizon, he had a home and a family and a fine soft bed, regular meals and a warm fire every night. He had a mother who loved him, a father who treated him fairly well, and three reasonably-tolerable siblings who usually left him alone.
He also had no prospects of any interest for the future, however, and the city was home to a dozen wizards and other magicians who had rejected and humiliated him.
That decided him. He would go on.
He would continue on until he reached the dragon-hunter’s home base, and then he would present himself again anddemand an apprenticeship.
He looked back into the main room of the inn, just as the man in brown pushed back his chair and got to his feet.
The serving maid, Asha, hurried up as the man dropped a heavy coin on the table-a silver piece, by the look and sound of it. The two exchanged a few words that Dumery didn’t catch.
Worried that he might be missing something important, he slipped in the door as they were talking and crept closer.
“So the boat’s there now?” the man asked.
“I think so,” the girl replied.
“Well, that’s fine, then. I might as well wait there as here. My thanks, to you and to Valder.” He reached down and picked up his pack as the girl pocketed the coin-a silver round, all right. That would cover his entire bill, Dumery was sure, and probably leave a bit or two over for the maid.
Well, with a purse full of wizard’s gold, the man could afford to be generous.
Dumery realized suddenly, as the man in brown shouldered his pack, that the man was about to leave.
Not wanting to be seen, the boy ducked back out the front door as the man in brown turned. He scurried back to the stableyard and through the gate; then he turned and watched, peering around the wall as the dragon-hunter emerged.
The man in brown wasted no time in looking around at the scenery, or admiring the weather; he marched around the far corner of the inn and up the northern fork of the highway, out of sight.
Dumery started to hurry after him, only to trip and fall headlong in the mud.
Blinking, he got to his knees and looked around, trying to figure out what had tripped him.
The little monster that had called itself a spriggan was sitting there, looking as dazed as Dumery felt.
The thing was green, as he had guessed, and would have been about eight inches tall standing upright. It looked like a frog that had started to turn into a man and then changed its mind; it was sitting in a human pose, rather than a batrachian one, its hind legs stretched out before it, its forelegs-arms, really, with hands, fingers, and even thumbs-dangling to either side. It had broad pointed ears, far too large for it, and great protruding eyes.
“Ooooh!” it said, in a piercing, squeaky little voice. “We bump!”
“Yes,” Dumery said, “I guess we did.”
The creature looked harmless; Dumery decided to ignore it. He got to his feet.
“Ooh, wait!” the spriggan said. “Where we going?”
Dumery looked down at it. “I don’t have any idea whereyou’re going,” he said, “butI’m goingthat way!” He pointed to the northern fork, where the man in brown had vanished.
“Come with you, yes! You feed, I come!” the spriggan announced enthusiastically.
“I’m not going to feed you,” Dumery said, annoyed. “I don’t even have food for myself.”
“You feed me last night. I come with you,” it insisted, stamping a foot ludicrously.
“Right,” Dumery said. “Try it.” He turned and marched off briskly, almost running.
The spriggan let out a piercing shriek, hopped up, and ran after him.
Dumery’s longer legs made the difference; he easily left the little creature behind as he topped the low ridge that ran behind the inn.
As he did, he suddenly saw why the place was called the Inn at the Bridge.