“I don’t know,” she said. “What areyou going to do?”
“I should head back north,” Adar said uneasily, “as soon as possible. I need to get farther from the Source.”
The witch nodded. “I’ll come with you and help,” she said. “At least until you’re safe again.”
Adar smiled. “Good,” he said. “Now?”
Teneria hesitated again, and a yawn caught her. “In the morning,” she said.
“Right now I need some rest.”
Adar’s smile vanished.
“But, Teneria,” he said, “you can’t sleep.”
“Huh?” She blinked, smothering another yawn. “Why not?”
“Because if you sleep...” he began. Then he stopped, and demanded, “Can you work witchcraft in your sleep?”
“No, of course not,” she replied, baffled.
“Then if you sleep...” He took a deep breath, then said, “If you sleep, it’ll get me.”
A sudden coldness clamped down on Teneria’s heart.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Dumery woke he found himself lying on something warm and soft, surrounded by the scents of soap and lavender. He heard gentle creakings and rustlings and thumps, the sounds of a household going about its ordinary business.
It took a moment before he had the nerve to open his eyes, but when he did he was looking up at an undistinguished plank ceiling.
His eyes worked their way down from there.
He was in a small bedroom, lying in a well-fluffed featherbed, under a fine warm blanket. Blue sky was visible through the one window. A wash-stand stood at the bedside, and two plain wooden chairs were nearby. A boy perhaps half his own age was standing at the window, looking out at the World.
Dumery coughed.
The boy turned, looked at him, then ran to the door of the room and shouted something in some language other than Ethsharitic-Sardironese, presumably.
Then the boy turned back and stared at Dumery.
“Hello,” Dumery said. His voice didn’t sound very good.
The boy just stared.
Footsteps sounded, and people began pouring into the room.
The first was an old man, surely at least sixty years old, Dumery thought. He had been a big man once, and was still tall, but he was bent now, and his muscles sagged, rather than bulged. His left arm was gone from the elbow down, the long-healed stump projecting from the shortened sleeve of his tunic.
Behind this rather frightening figure came a swarm of small children-Dumery thought there were four of them, but they moved about so much he wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t missed one.
And finally, a black-haired woman, small and pretty, appeared and stood in the doorway.
The one-armed old man said something in Sardironese.
Dumery blinked up at him, and tried to sit up, but wound up leaning on one elbow instead.
“Does anyone here...” he began, before being interrupted by a cough. He cleared his throat and tried again.
“Does anyone here speak Ethsharitic?” he asked.
“Yes,” the old man said. “Of course I do. Could never have done much business without it. Is it your only language? You don’t know any Sardironese?”
Dumery nodded.
“That’s too bad,” the old man said. “The little ones won’t be able to follow what we’re saying, then.” He smiled. “Well, when I tell them all about it later I can dress it up a little, make it sound better, right?”
As he spoke, the woman in the doorway slipped away.
A girl, perhaps four years old, tugged at the old man’s tunic and asked him a question in Sardironese.
The old man answered, and Dumery caught a word that sounded like “Ethsharit”
in his reply.
The girl asked another question, and the old man shook his head. “Ku den nor Sardironis,” he said.
The child started to ask again, but the man held up a hand and said something.
Dumery could only guess what all this was about, and he was still too battered and worn to give it much thought, but he supposed the girl had wanted to know why he and the old man were talking funny.
In any case, the girl stopped asking questions after that, and the old man turned his attention back to Dumery.
“Now, boy,” he said, “who are you, and just what were you doing turning up on my doorstep? You looked half-starved, and half-frozen, and you weren’t wearing anything but some rags that look like they used to be fancy city street clothes-how in the World did you get way up here in the mountains?”
This mention of his clothes brought to Dumery’s attention that he was wearing an unfamiliar, but very comfortable, flannel nightshirt. He wondered what had become of his own attire, but he didn’t ask; instead he answered, “I’m Dumery of Shiphaven. From Ethshar.”
“Which Ethshar?” the old man asked, before Dumery could say anything else.
“Ethshar of the Spices,” Dumery replied, startled. It wasn’t a question he had ever been asked before.
But then, he had never left the city until this trip.
The old man nodded. “Go on,” he said. “How did you get way up here?”
Dumery hesitated, unsure what to say.
If he told the truth, that he had followed Kensher Kinner’s son into the mountains, what would happen?
Where was he, anyway? Was this the house at the dragon farm? If so, where was Kensher? Wasn’t it his farm?
“I was lost,” he said.
The old man frowned.
“Where am I, anyway?” Dumery asked, a trifle belatedly. “And who are all you people?”
“My name’s Kinner,” the old man said, and Dumery’s heart jumped at the name.
“That’s Talger, Kalthen, Kirsha, Shatha, and Tarissa, some of my grandchildren,” the old man went on, pointing first to the boy who had been in the room when Dumery awoke, then to another boy, then to three girls. Kirsha had been the one asking questions.
Just then the black-haired woman reappeared in the doorway, holding a tray, and the old man added, “And that’s Pancha, my son’s wife.”
“I brought soup,” the woman said in heavily-accented Ethsharitic, raising the tray.
Dumery groped for words as he sat up, and couldn’t find them; he settled for looking as grateful as he could as the tray was set down atop the washstand.
Then he didn’t worry about words or appearances as he began slurping up the soup. It was a thick beef broth with carrots and peas and other vegetables in it, and Dumery considered it the most wonderful thing he had ever eaten in his entire life. It was warm and filling and savory and settled very nicely in his empty gut.
When he had to stop eating to catch his breath he managed to say, “Thank you.”
Then he picked up the spoon again and continued.
When the last trace was gone, the bowl almost dry, he looked up and realized that the old man, the woman, and the five children were all staring at him.
They had apparently been whispering among themselves, but that stopped when they saw his eyes upon them.
“Thank you, lady,” he said. “That was delicious.”
She shrugged, but a pleased smile lit her face.
“Now,” old Kinner said, “you were explaining how you got here.”
That wasn’t quite how Dumery remembered the conversation, but he had learned long ago that arguing with adults was usually a mistake. “I walked,” he said.
Kinner looked exasperated. “But whyhere?” he demanded.
Dumery hesitated. These people seemed friendly enough, and he was grateful that they had taken him in and fed them-but on the other hand, it seemed very likely that the existence of this farm was supposed to be a secret, and he had stumbled upon it. Admitting that he was interested in a career involving dragons would draw attention to that fact.