Page 142 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

“What?” she finally said.

“You hate me now,” Stog said. “But I’ve been wanting to tell you since our return. I’m grateful to you, unlike these fool kittens, I know what you’ve done for me. Let’s have honesty between us.”

“Was he such a fine master as all that?”

“Not as kind as our good elf. But that didn’t signify. It wasn’t the treatment; it was the excitement of the hunts. I, a pack mule at column-back, used to have flowers thrown on me as we passed through towns, mouth stuffed with carrots and sugar beets. Cheering. You must know that a dragon can wreck whole lands.”

Wistala tried to keep her tail still. “I’ve heard of dragons being blamed for storms and earthquakes.”

“You may well glare, but that doesn’t signify. Hominids fear your kind.”

“Conceded. So you thought you’d make a try for his hall?”

“Yes, I know the look of the mountains; it’s not far south of here. But I stopped in a field to avail myself of some corn . . . and the next thing I knew I had a rope around my neck and another bad master. Then you appeared again. In the Dragonblade’s mule train, I learned not to fear the dragon-smell, but I’ve never liked it until you.”

“So the Dragonblade lives not far south in the mountains? He must be close to the Wheel of Fire dwarves, then?”

Stog’s ears went up and forward. “Close? Of course. He lives in their city.”

For the second time since entering the barn, Wistala was startled into astonishment. But of course he would live with dwarves, as they helped him kill dragons.

“The Wheel of Fire?” Wistala asked.

“The dwarves build fastnesses like no others, and he must be guarded sky and tunnel. It must signify to you that the Dragonblade’s line has made enemies, very powerful enemies, of your kind.”

He’s made an enemy of me, small, stumpy, and misfortunate. But she’d promised Father nests of hatchlings.>Rainfall put his arm about Forstrel’s shoulders, and the youth took him inside as the house went into uproar. She heard doors closed, shouting, crying, and quick steps as the Lessup clan gathered to discuss events.

Wistala could do nothing. She watched the rider and rig disappear, then went to Rainfall’s library. If he were greatly troubled, he’d probably go there. She curled up about his tablets and waited, unable to simply fall asleep.

He appeared as the juicy smells of dinner being cooked began to fill the house, brought in by Forstrel in a wheeled basket used for gathering fruit.

“I really must have one of those sick-benches built,” he said as he settled into his reading chair. “Thank you, Young Lessup. Ah, Tala, you appear again when you’re most needed. You can see about getting some dinner, Lessup. I won’t eat tonight.”

The boy placed a blanket over Rainfall’s legs and left, shutting the door behind.

“So much for homecoming joy. But she’s beautiful, do you not agree?”

“I’m just getting so I can tell hominids apart,” Wistala said.

“Perhaps not in a way that can be captured by portraits or sculpture, you have to look into her living eyes to appreciate her. Wild and open, like my son’s. I wonder what her mother was like.”

“Why was she angry to you?”

“I need a glass of wine,” Rainfall said. He moved for his bell—

“I’ll bring it,” Wistala said, glad of an excuse to make the trip to the cellar and back. “Which kind?”

“The blueberry, I think. Something sweet to wash the bitter words from my mouth.”

Wistala crept past the room that had been prepared for Lada and heard sobbing from the crack beneath. Her griff extended a little, and she descended to the wine cellar and searched the tags on the month’s table wine for the blueberry picture.

She carried it back up in her mouth, startling one of the younger Lessup girls as she emerged from the cellar. The child let out a squeak and ran off toward the kitchen. It was the one who liked to tie her hair up in ribbons, Wistala noted absently; all the others in the family simply watched her as she went about Mossbell.

Rainfall opened the cork-and-wax top and poured himself a generous glass. “Once I had thirty of these,” he mused as he rolled around the purple liquid. “And I didn’t have to make my own wines. Though if the estate prospers now, I’ll continue the practice. There’s a satisfaction in enjoying the fruits of one’s own labors. That’s the one thing I’ve learned all these wretched years since the troll came. Oh, and about dragons. Forgive me, Tala.”

“You ask my forgiveness? Since you saved me from the river, you’ve lost the use of your legs and your granddaughter’s love.”

“If you’ll indulge me in applying a correction: Don’t be so quick to mark fate and toss it into baskets marked ‘fortune’ and ‘misfortune’ as though you’re sorting apples. It was an illness that forced me to cease traveling as a judge—a heavy misfortune—yet that same illness kept me in Tysander, where I diverted myself at the circus and lost my heart to the most skilled rider that ever sat atop a horse. My wife could stand on a horse’s bare back with reins tied to her hair all day and still beat me with her strategy at Advantages when we played at night. I imagine if her father or grandfather had spoke against me, she would have cried out, too. I should never have shouted at her. Unforgivable.”

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