“Well, what of it?” Tobas demanded. “The gods played a nasty trick on you when you were born that way, but what can you do about it? Where else would you go?” He was not comfortable with the subject; he had never paid much attention to Peren’s coloration, nor thought about how he might deal with those who did think it important.
“I don’t know, not for certain,” Peren replied. “I think I want to go on across the mountains and see what’s on the other side, in Aigoa or whatever land lies to the east.”
Tobas remembered the rows of mountains, marching off into the distance, that they had seen from the peak above the castle. He shuddered at the thought of trying to cross them all, let alone drag the massive tapestry over them. “It’ll just be more miserable little kingdoms like Dwomor,” he said, hoping to discourage Peren. “The Small Kingdoms extend as far as the Great Eastern Desert, don’t they? And that goes right to the edge of the World. There’s nothing out there worth seeing. If you don’t want to come back to Ethshar, if you think the Small Kingdoms are better, you can stay in Dwomor.”
Peren shook his head. “I don’t think so. We didn’t kill their dragon. I don’t think they’d appreciate having us come back rich while the dragon’s still out there somewhere.”
Tobas had no answer for that at first, but finally managed, “Well, not everyone can kill their stupid dragon. We’ve been gone more than a sixnight now; probably one of the other teams found it and killed it.”
Peren shook his head. “You saw that dragon, Tobas, and you saw the hunters; do you really think anyone’s killed it?”
“Uh... maybe the witches?” he suggested hopefully.
“Maybe the witches,” Peren conceded. “I don’t know much about witchcraft.”
“Neither do I,” Tobas admitted.
“You just know fire-magic, isn’t that right?”
Tobas smiled. “That’s right,” he agreed.
Peren smiled back, then turned serious again. “No, Tobas, I don’t want to come back to Dwomor. Would you want to stay there? It’s a pretty dreary little kingdom, even without the dragon rampaging about.”
“What about Ekeroa, then?”
“It’s better,” Peren admitted, “but I really don’t want to go back. We might run into the dragon, for one thing, and we’d have to go by way of Dwomor. I simply don’t want to see that ramshackle castle again. I want to go on to the east, over the mountains.”
Tobas could avoid it no longer. “I don’t,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t. It’s too far, too lonely, and too hard a journey. I’m a lazy person, Peren; that’s how I got into this mess in the first place; I was too lazy to work when I thought I had an inheritance coming. I got this far to keep from starving. But now that I have this tapestry, I don’t need to go any further and I’m not going to. We don’t have enough food to get over the mountains, hell, I’m not sure we have enough to get back! What will you eat?”
“I’ll hunt; I have a sling, a sword, and two good knives.”
Startled, Tobas asked, “You do? Can you use a sling?”
Peren nodded.
“Oh,” Tobas said. “Well, maybe you can do that, then, and catch what you need, but I can’t hunt. And I don’t want to depend on you for food like that. I’m going back. I’m going back to Ethshar, where I’ll sell this tapestry to a wizard, trade it for spells, or melt down its metal, and then I’m going to take the money and settle down quietly somewhere and make a home for myself. That’s all I want, a home; I don’t want any adventures. I’m going back.”
“I’m going on,” Peren said quietly.
“You’re sure?”
He nodded.
Tobas nodded acceptance. “All right. We’ll go in the morning, then, you to the east and I to the west.”
That settled, the conversation died away, and they retired early, Tobas sleeping in the wizard’s bed, Peren sleeping on a blanket in the Great Hall.
CHAPTER 19
Hauling the tapestry was more work than he had anticipated; he had forgotten how much up and down there was to the road back to Dwomor Keep. He was also unsure of the best route; until the foursome had split up on the fourth of Harvest they had been zigzagging about almost at random, looking for the dragon. He had estimated that he would have been able to get back to the castle in four days, unburdened, but the tapestry cut the distance he covered each day by at least half.
The first night found him scarcely to the edge of the magically dead area; he worked Thrindle’s Combustion three times before he got a campfire lit.
The second day he covered slightly more ground, but watched with concern as the sky clouded over. He hoped that the tapestry would not be harmed by rain; when he settled for the night, he slept uncovered, using his blanket to protect his prize instead of himself, draping his pack over the end the blanket could not reach.
As he had expected, rain began falling around midnight, building from a slow sprinkle to a steady drizzle.
The third day he struggled onward, desperately trying to keep the tapestry dry and out of the mud, and far more concerned with finding shelter than with traveling any great distance. At last, around midafternoon, he found a broad overhanging rock ledge protruding from a steep hillside. He crawled under it, pushing the tapestry as far in as he could.
He remained there that night and all through the next day, waiting out the rain; his supply of dried beef gave out, leaving him nothing but raisins and one very stale biscuit.
The thirteenth of Harvest dawned gray and dim, but without rain, and Tobas decided to risk moving on. The skies cleared as the day wore on, and he made good time; he was fairly sure when he made camp that night that he had passed the point where he and the others had encountered the dragon. He judged that to be half a mile or so north or northeast of where he finally stopped.
He finished off his last provisions and awoke ravenously hungry on the morning of the fourteenth. Water was easily found in the wake of the rain, in pools on rocks as well as in streams, but food was not so readily come by.
He did find some nuts, which he cooked with Thrindle’s Combustion and ate from the shell; that helped slightly. He considered hiding the tapestry somewhere and coming back for it later, so as to conserve his strength, but decided against it; he was fairly sure he was nearing civilization, if Dwomor could be considered civilized, and was afraid some wanderer, such as a dragon hunter, might discover it.
He had not yet dared to unroll it and see whether its magic might manifest itself; he did not want to try that alone and unprotected in the mountains, out in the open air.
Around midafternoon he came across a ruined cottage; something had smashed in the door, the windows were gone, and there were scorch marks on the slate roof, but it was basically intact. Tobas wondered at the slate roof, but a look around at the stony ground helped explain that; thatch would not be readily found here. He wondered, then, why the cottage’s builder had wanted his domicile in so barren a spot.
He had no good explanation for that, but he could and did guess at why it was broken and empty; the dragon had undoubtedly eaten the inhabitants, or at any rate had tried to. That heavy, fireproof slate roof might have saved their lives.
And whether it had or not, they might have left some food; he hauled the tapestry inside, dropped it on the floor of the main room, and began exploring the kitchen cupboards.
They were all distressingly empty, in fact, they gave every sign of having been intentionally and systematically stripped bare. Tobas guessed that the cottage’s owners had been besieged for a time and had then gathered up supplies and fled. He wondered whether they had made it to the castle safely.