'What about Ulla Safar?' challenged Naldeth. 'And I saw as bad as him and worse sailing the Archipelago with Velindre.'
Kheda stared at him. 'There's no comparison and you know it.'
Naldeth was unrepentant. 'At least we wizards curb our own if they abuse our common birthright. The Archmage and the Council of Hadrumal keep a very close eye on any wizard who shows signs of straying down perilous paths.'
'They know you're here, do they?' Kheda retorted. 'Looking for some arcane knowledge to elevate your standing among your peers? Don't pretend you have no interest in power.' He shot an accusing look at Velindre. 'Dev told me you had ambitions to higher rank among your peers. Any benefit to the Archipelago last year was an incidental dividend as long as your curiosity about dragons was satisfied.'
'Dev didn't know all he claimed.' The magewoman's tight expression suggested the contrary. 'And holding rank among the wizards of Hadrumal is a far cry from imposing this kind of magical tyranny.'
'What are we going to do about that wild wizard?' Naldeth turned to her. 'I don't relish the thought of standing before the Council and telling them we hid in a cave until we could run away from him.'
'Kill that sky dragon,' Risala said bluntly. 'You summoned up a false dragon to fight the fire dragon that attacked the Archipelago. If you think that savage mage is no more than a fool in a mask without its power behind his magic'
'No.' Velindre refused absolutely. 'These dragons aren't evil, whatever your Aldabreshin superstitions might say. They're animals, even if elemental affinities make them magical. All they want to do is to thrive and
survive and leave their young to come after them. It's not their fault if these savages have allowed these mages to subjugate them—'
'You think they had a choice?' Kheda waved towards the old woman and was startled to see she had laid her head on her bundle and quietly gone to sleep. Refusing to be distracted, he returned to the argument. 'Facing fire and lightning with bare hands and stone knives? What about that girl who was caught in his spell's clutches?' Kheda turned to Naldeth. 'How should she have fought back?'
'This is getting us nowhere and it's late,' Risala interrupted with sudden weariness. 'There's nothing we can do until the morning. Savage or not, she's got the right idea.' She nodded towards the old woman, who was now sleeping peacefully, curled up like a child.
Naldeth wasn't about to let the argument go. 'What you have to understand about wizardry is—'
'Just hush.' Velindre had lost her taste for debate the same as Risala. 'Go to sleep, Naldeth, or you'll be in no fit state to do anything useful tomorrow.'
The younger mage's chin jutted belligerently, though he didn't say anything further. He settled himself against the wall as best he could and shut his eyes with a huff of irritation.
Velindre sighed and her eyelids closed, her angular face softened just a little by the sinking firelight.
Kheda was still too exasperated to think of sleep. 'I'm going to find more firewood.'
Risala nodded resignedly. 'Don't go too far.'
'I won't.' Kheda scrambled up the steep slope towards the entrance. Out in the dark night, the breeze was chill after the warmth of the cave.
This whole day has just lurched from confusion to chaos time and again. Why did I ever come on this voyage? What are we going to do? What are we going to do with that old
woman? What if we have to make a run for it, to escape that wizard in the beaded cloak or anyone else on this side of the river? Do we abandon her to her fate? If we don't, is she going to be the death of us, deliberately or all unwitting? And Risala expects me to find the answers in the heavens.
He looked up angrily at the blithely twinkling stars.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When she woke, the old woman had no notion where she was. The walls of the painted cave were a meaningless blur in the half-light, while the smell of old wood smoke stirred confused memories of the village she had left behind. Then someone close at hand stirred and murmured, the sound like a brooding bird.
Stealthily, she rubbed her eyes to wipe away the stickiness of morning. As her vision cleared, she looked covertly around, bony fingers clutching her bundle of precious possessions. Satisfied that the strangers were all still asleep, she sat slowly upright, biting her lip against pain and stiffness. Moaning would bring no relief and might wake the strangers.
So they hadn't been some fever dream as she lay senseless somewhere, her only hope that she would be wholly dead before scavengers found her. Who were they? Where had they come from?
She studied the two closest at hand. The girl was lying on her side, her knees drawn up like a child. The man was slumped against a ridge of stone running down from the roof to the floor of the cave, one hand protectively resting on the sleeping girl's shoulder.
The old woman reached out, careful not to touch the sleeping girl, though. She saw that the skin on her own arm was only a little darker. The girl's flesh had all the silkiness of youth and good feeding while the old woman had long been half-starved, but they were not so different.
w
Apart from the girl's hair. Short as it was, the old woman could see it was as straight as falling water. She ran an unconscious hand over her own tight-curled, matted locks.
Quite the strangest thing about the girl was her garb. The old woman risked a feather-light touch on a fold of the loose stuff that covered the girl's arms and body. It wasn't hide, of that much the old woman was certain. Looking more closely, she concluded it was somehow akin to the ropes everyone twisted out of grass and tree bark, but try as she might, she couldn't imagine how the two things were related.
She gazed at the garb. The most wonderful thing about it was the colour. It was the pink of a sunrise sky or a cliff-bird's breast feathers, and patterned with silver leaves. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Not even the most favoured women of the most successful hunters had ever had anything so glorious to wear.
The man stirred in his sleep and the old woman hastily withdrew to crouch beside her bundle, feigning sleep. She didn't hear him wake, so she opened her eyes again and studied him. His skin was a familiar hue but he had hair as brown as a tree scurrier's, even if it curled as tightly as her own. She recalled the reddish-brown tint that sometimes appeared in children's hair when the end of a long dry season left them with swollen bellies and shrunken limbs, their cheeks hollowed by hunger. But like the girl, this man was straight-limbed and well fed and showed no sign of having ever gone hungry.
The old woman looked at the man's long knives, hidden in their hide casings. Whatever were they made of, that could be crafted into so long and narrow a blade? A niomentary pang surprised her. The old man would have been fascinated by these people and their strange knives.
As the strangers slept on, the old woman shifted to sit
cross-legged and considered the other two newcomers. She had never seen anyone like either of them.
The older one, with the golden hair and light-brown skin, was fast asleep in a niche, knees drawn up and head uncomfortably canted to rest on one shoulder. The face was softened in sleep and lacked any hint of a beard, so the old woman concluded this one was most probably a woman, despite her lack of curves at breast or thigh.
She clenched her hand tight against the desire to creep over and touch the golden stranger's hair. It was as straight as the dark-skinned girl's but cut shorter still. Would it feel like the pelt of some animal or like the sun-dried grass it so closely resembled? What lay beneath the stranger's dusty garb? The old woman could see the brown skin end and creamy pallor begin where the fibrous stuff the stranger wore had slipped awry around her neck. Was she parti-coloured like some lizard? Did she have stripes or patterns beneath her strange garments?