I said, breaking her rambling, “That’s what I always thought. A stone that told which way to go. A signpost, but larger.”
She gave me the look of disappointment that erased her earlier compliment. “Which way to go, you think it means that? However, in Crestfallen, you are already at the upper end of the kingdom, with a ring of impassable mountains directly behind. There is only one direction you can go: Down the mountain on the same road we took. You don’t need a Waystone to know you have to go down from there, or that you have reached the end of the road if you’re going the other way.”
Trying to redeem myself, I added, “The rock it’s made of is the same kind as here, not the same as that around our home. That always struck me as odd that the one at home didn’t match the surrounding rock.”
“Are you sure?”
“This is the exact same color, not like the usual brown rock at Crestfallen. Smooth like it, too. I wish I’d have felt the one at home to see if it’s also warm.”
The idle comment brought her to her feet as her face flushed.
“What is it?” My eyes searched for more Wyverns attacking as my hand reached for my sword.
“Snow. It always melts first around the Waystone at home, leaving a clear circle. I had dismissed it, but you just reminded me. In spring, travelers pitch their tents near it to keep warm, and so they don’t sleep on snow.”
“The sun warms the rock during the day, and it gives off heat until after dark. Simple to explain,” I told her as if I knew what I was talking about. Besides, I’d heard that explanation once when others discussed the Waystone at Crestfallen.
She began to pace the open area, walking almost to the dragon without even seeing it, then back again. “Maybe. What if I told you it does the same thing in deep winter, and when there has been no sun for days? It still melts the snow near it.”
“Is that true?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know for sure, but I intend to find out. This stone was warmer than the air early in the morning. That was before the sun came up. Warmth uses energy. Or magic. There is another thought about Waystones that is going around and around in my head. Waystone. Like two different words. We know what stone is. It’s the material they are made of. Way, in Waystone, may be the key, something different than we’ve considered.”
“That’s understandable, so far. What else? Besides, I don’t yet see why that is important.”
She grinned. “Directions. What if way does not mean directions as we always assumed, like a signpost. What if way means a method, as in telling me the way to build this? Or like going away. Or way over there.”
She paused and waited for me to catch up. My mind took in what she began and carried to a better conclusion. “A way is also a road, or a track, or pathway. A place to travel upon.”
Kendra inhaled deeply and said, “So, a Waystone could be a way to travel from one place to another?”
“It could be,” I told her, expecting another of our arguments to begin, so I spoke quickly, “But if it meant road, it would just say so. Be a lot easier. Same with a signpost. Each would be different because of providing directions to different places.”
“I believe you’re exactly right.”
“Why?” the statement had me speechless. She hadn’t even attempted to contradict or correct me.
She came and sat with her knees almost touching mine as she leaned closer and spoke intently, “I heard a child’s story one time. A mage needed information that could only be found far away across the sea where a great battle raged. A day later, the mage returned from his solitary ‘meditation’ with the information of the battle, and he swore it was correct. A month later it was confirmed when a ship arrived with the truth from the battle across the sea, but the mage had already disappeared, never to be seen again.”
I considered it. There were too many truths to ignore in her children’s story. “That sounds more like a factual event that was passed on as a child’s story to conceal it.”
She smiled. “It does. What better way to discredit a story than to turn it into a fairytale?”
We’d accomplished the climb, found an egg we didn’t know what to do with, fought at the side of a dragon against Wyverns, and perhaps decoded one of the mysteries of the Waystones. Not a bad start before midday. Common sense said to stop there, but one or two small things niggled at the back of my mind. “Kendra, remember those four small stones piled up on the stairs?”
“Of course.”
“Any vibration, even a small puff of wind would have knocked them down.”
“Go on,” she said in a leading sort of way that told me she was getting more interested.
“The little depressions in the steps from all the feet walking on them held water. None of it was cloudy, and there was enough dirt to make mud in several places. No footprints were in the mud. No person climbed those stairs before us this morning.”
She finished for me, “But something piled those stones within the last day.”
“Are we being watched again?”
As if in answer, a faint blue light winked into existence before us. The light shimmered and formed into the outlined shape of a woman in a long dress. We’d encountered her before and called her the Blue Woman, but before either of us spoke, the light faded and disappeared. In the distance, it sounded like the tinkling of laughter amid the breaking of glass coming from far down the mountainside, but it may have been my imagination.
CHAPTER FOUR
K endra and I took the time to search all around what had been the floor of the cave searching for more information, even to the point of making the dragon move out of the way so we could search where she had been resting. We found evidence of the mages’ previous habitation in the forms of scraps of food, bowls, three individual shoes which seemed an odd number, several robes, and a winch for raising things up from the city below on the plain. Mages had probably spent extensive time up there caring for the dragon, feeding and watering it, and perhaps studying it. One of them had probably been here all the time, to care for the dragon in case it required assistance, food, water, or sedation.
What we did not find, was anything pointing to a visitor in the last day, or since the dragon had escaped. As strange as it might sound when speaking of it in the future, I’d have rather had an irate mage leap out at us from hiding and throw a few lightning bolts our way than the unknowns we faced. The feeling of being watched was persistent and upsetting.
The dragon stood. Its head crooked to look at me, then it turned away. Its body tensed. I asked, “Kendra, have you . . .?”
She ignored me. She had halted in her search and tilted her head as if listening to something far away, a sound at the very edge of perception, similar to the action of the dragon. Worse, she also tensed, ready to fight.
My ears heard nothing. My eyes found no danger. But the two of them might be listening with more than their ears. They might hear it in their minds—or some other sense they had developed. Kendra hadn’t yet shared all she knew of her new powers—mostly because she didn’t completely understand what had happened to her. Three or four days ago, she had laughed at the mere mention of being called a Dragon Tamer. Neither of us had even believed a true-dragon existed a month ago, and we’d only seen perhaps three Wyverns in our lives, all within the last ten days.