The merchant and his wife hesitated, and whispered to each other for a moment, but then they rose from the velvet chairs and made a polite departure.

The moment they were outside Thetheran slammed the door and ran for his laboratory. He snatched his personal book of spells from the shelf and began flipping through the pages, encountering one useless or inappropriate spell after another.

"Eknerwal's Lesser Invisibility," he muttered to himself, "Felshen's First Hypnotic, The Polychrome Smoke, the Dismal Itch. Damn. Love spells, curses, invisibility, levitations, nothing about finding anything. The Iridescent Amusement. Fendel's Aphrodisiac Philtre. The Lesser Spell of Invaded..."

He stopped, and turned back.

"The Lesser Spell of Invaded Dreams," he read. "Requires fine grey dust, incense tainted with morning mist..." He nodded to himself as he read over the instructions and the lessons of his own long-ago apprenticeship came back to him.

Then he got to the detailed description of the spell's effects and stopped, cursing.

"Thatwon't do," he said. He stood staring at the page for a moment, then looked up at the ceiling, thinking. "There's something, though. This isn't quite what I remember."

Then it struck him. "TheLesser Spell," he said, and he began hurriedly flipping pages again.

He found what he wanted and stopped. "Ah!" he said, tapping the page with his finger. "Here we go!" He began reading avidly.

An hour later he was waiting in his cozy front room when Faléa and Doran knocked on the door. Thetheran sent the sylph to let them in, while he stood and adjusted his robe to make the most imposing figure possible.

"I believe, Doran of Shiphaven, Faléa the Slender," the mage declaimed as the pair entered, "that I have just the spell you need."

Doran was suitably impressed. Having spent the intervening time buying and eating a more-than-adequate luncheon, Doran was in a much better mood than before. "Oh?" he said, politely.

Faléa had spent the entire meal worrying about whether Dumery had found anything to eat in the past day or so, and was too upset to say anything.

"Yes," Thetheran said. "It's known as the Greater Spell of Invaded Dreams. It will permit me to speak to your son in his dreams, and to question him regarding his present circumstances. By performing the spell in a certain way, I believe that I can put one of you-not both, however-into the dream as well, so that you, too, will be able to speak to him. Thatis what you wanted, I believe?"

Both of Dumery's parents nodded, Faléa with rather more enthusiasm than her spouse.

"I cannot perform the spell with any chance of success until the boy is asleep, however," Thetheran explained. "That means that I had best wait until well after dark tonight. I will also need to know the boy's true name, if it is not Dumery of Shiphaven..."

"That's the only name he's got," Doran interrupted. "Only one he ever had."

"Then it is his true name," Thetheran said, unperturbed. "Now, which of you will speak to him?"

Doran glanced at his wife, who immediately volunteered.

"I will need your true name, as well, then," Thetheran said, "and it would be easiest if you were to remain here, with me, throughout, though in fact it should be possible to conduct the entire affair successfully if you are at home and asleep in your own bed."

"I'll stay here," Faléa unhesitatingly replied.

Doran eyed her briefly, then looked over the mage, and decided that the risk of being cuckolded was minimal. "All right," he said. "Is there anything else you need, wizard?"

"Not for the spell itself," Thetheran replied, "but there is the matter of my fee..."

Chapter Thirteen

There may, Dumery reflected, be worse ways of paying for one's passage than by shoveling manure, but offhand he couldn't think of any.

Seeing the five crewmen lolling about doing nothing much most of the time didn't make the work any easier or more enjoyable, either. Oh, they fed the cattle four times a day, and directed the gaseous spirit that was pulling the barge along at an impressive speed, but that was about the extent of it.

Dumery wondered why all five of them were along, since it seemed that three would have been plenty, even if he hadn't been there himself to help.

It wasn't any of his business, though. He stuck to his shovel-sometimes literally, when the sweat from his hands mixed with the accumulated crud on the handle-and didn't ask questions.

An hour or two after leaving what the crewmen called Azrad's Bridge came the first really enjoyable part of the journey, when the bargemen hauled out provisions and ate lunch. Dumery was included, and stuffed himself with cold smoked ham, creamy cheese, hard brown bread, and a thin, watery ale.

It was simple food, but after the near starvation of the last day or two it was absolutely delicious and wonderfully filling.

The break didn't last long, though.

Dumery was pleased to see, when he looked up from his shovel and considered the sun's position an hour or so after that excellent repast, that the river had indeed turned north rather than continuing to the west. Sardiron of the Waters, everyone agreed, lay to the north, and the dragon-hunter was on board a boat bound for Sardiron of the Waters.

Not that Dumery had seen any branches where theSunlit Meadows could have turned aside, or that he thought the crew of the barge had lied to him about where they were going; it was just reassuring to know that the World around him was behaving in a consistent and rational manner, and that they hadn't all gone mad or wandered into some demonic netherworld. Being outside the familiar walls of Ethshar was not good for Dumery's peace of mind; he didn't entirely trust the exterior World to stay solid and consistent. The whole experience of gliding along a river had a feeling of unreality to it.

The sun grew steadily less visible as the day wore on; clouds gathered and thickened, but no rain fell that afternoon.

As soon as the barge had pulled over to the side and tied up to a tree for the first night, Dumery and the five crewmen ate a simple, hearty dinner, very similar to their lunch. It wasn't until after they had all finished eating and were settling in for the evening that Dumery got up the courage to ask how long the journey to Sardiron would take.

"Oh, a sixnight or so," the first mate, Kelder the Unpleasant, told him.

"Depends on the weather and how well the sylph does. Those things are pretty unpredictable."

"Short of hiring a seer, anyway," Naral Rander's son remarked.

Dumery guessed that the sylph was the almost-invisible thing that pulled the barge-all he could see of it by day was an occasional flicker, like the distortion in the air over a hot stove, and now that night had fallen it appeared as a faint filminess, like a wisp of steam. Emboldened, he asked,

"Where'd you get the sylph, anyway?"

"Oh, it's not ours," Kelder explained. "The baron who bought this load of cattle has a wizard working for him who sent it along. It's fast. We need to be quick so we can fit enough feed on board; wouldn't want the cattle to starve. The baron likes his meat fat and tender, I guess. Anyway, getting pulled by the sylph is a lot faster than poling upstream, or hiring some sort of tug, or rigging a treadmill and paddlewheel."

Naral snorted. "I'd like to see anyonepole a loaded cattle barge upstream!" he said.

Kelder whacked the back of Naral's head, and the conversation degenerated into general insults.

Not long after that the crew bedded down for the night, four of the five crawling into the tiny, cramped space under the foredeck-too small to be called a cabin, really-where four narrow berths took up virtually the entire space.

The fifth, Kelder the Unpleasant, took the first watch, sitting quietly on the foredeck.

Dumery was tossed a decaying brown blanket and told he could sleep on the afterdeck, a space about two feet fore and aft and thirty feet across.

Dumery eyed his assigned bed nervously. There was no railing across the back, only a low coaming, and the prospect of rolling off the barge into the river was unappealing.

His only other option was to bed down under the hooves of the cattle, however, and getting stepped on seemed rather more likely than rolling into the river, and almost equally undesirable. There were other unpleasant aspects to sleeping in the bottom of the barge, too, since Dumery hadn't done any shoveling since just before supper. The planks of the afterdeck were blackened by several years' accumulation of grease and grime, but the bottom of the barge was far worse.

Reluctantly, Dumery climbed up, dismayed by the slimy feel of the planking, and lay down. He pulled the ragged blanket over himself, curled up, and tried to sleep.

Cramped and uncomfortable as he was, dismayed by the hard planking and the smell of cattle, it took time, time he would have spent counting stars had any been visible through the overcast. The outside world seemed all too real, now.

Eventually he dozed off.

His last waking thought was that that was the end of the day's adventures, but he was wrong. He had been asleep no more than half an hour when he began dreaming.

The dream began in an ordinary enough way; he was on Wizard Street, wandering from door to door, looking for someone-but he didn't know who.

At first none of the doors were open, and no one answered his knocking and calling, but then he saw that all the rest of the shop doorswere open, and he had somehow failed to notice before. He ran up to one, and found himself facing Thetheran the Mage.

He didn't want to talk to Thetheran; he turned away and ran to the next door.

Thetheran was there, too.

Again Dumery turned away, and this time Thetheran was there behind him, looming over him. He looked taller and more gaunt than ever.

"Hello, Dumery," the wizard said.

Dumery turned away, and found himself facing another Thetheran.

"Sorry to bother you, lad," this one said, "but your parents are quite worried about you. You went off without a word of warning, and they were concerned for your safety. They hired me to contact you and make sure you're all right."

Dumery turned, and turned, and turned, and Thetheran was always there in front of him.

"I'm fine!" Dumery said angrily. "Go away and leave me alone!"

"Don't worry," Thetheran told him. "Your parents only paid me to talk to you, in your dreams, not to bring you home. They just want to know what's become of you. Your mother's very worried."

"I'm fine!" Dumery repeated.

"Well, I'll let you tell her that, then." Thetheran stepped aside, and Dumery saw that the door of the shop on Wizard Street led into the front hall of his home in Shiphaven. "Go on in, she's waiting," Thetheran urged him.

Reluctantly, Dumery obeyed; he stepped into the corridor, and Faléa emerged from the parlor to greet him.

"Dumery!" she said. "Is it really you?"

"It'sme," Dumery said a little doubtfully, "but is thatyou?"

"Of course it is!" Faléa replied. "Or at least ... I don't know. I don't understand all this magic. It doesn't matter. All that matters-Dumery, whereare you?"

"I'm on a cattle barge," Dumery said.

"A what?"

"A cattle barge," he explained. "You know, a big flat-bottomed boat with a lot of cows and steers on it."

"What are you doingthere?" Faléa demanded.

"Well..." Dumery wasn't sure what he wanted to say. For one thing, he wasn't entirely certain whether he was talking to his mother, or Thetheran, or himself. He knew he was dreaming, but he didn't know any way to be sure that it was a magical dream sent by the wizard and not just his own imagination running amok.

And if it was really a magical sending, did that mean that he was talking to his mother, or to Thetheran? He had no idea how such things worked.

"I'm going to be an apprentice," he said.

His mother blinked at him, startled.

"On a cattle barge?" she asked.

"Well, that's how I'm getting there. I met a man in Westgate Market, and arranged to meet him in Sardiron, and I didn't have time to tell you before I had to leave."

The possibility that Thetheran had some mystical means of telling truth from falsehood in this dream occurred to him, a trifle belatedly. If the wizarddid have such a spell...

Well, he wouldn't worry about that.

"What kind of an apprenticeship?" Faléa asked.

Dumery hesitated. "Well, dealing in exotic goods, mostly," he said.

"You need to go toSardiron for that? Couldn't your father have found you something here in Ethshar?"

"I wanted to do it on my own!" Dumery burst out.

"Oh," his mother said. "Oh, well, I suppose..." Her voice trailed off, but then she gathered her wits and said, "You be careful! Are you safe? Is everything all right? You tell me about this man!"

Dumery sighed. "I'm fine, Mother," he said. "Really, I am. I'm perfectly safe.

I didn't have the fare for the fancy riverboat, so I'm working my way north on a cattle barge, and the crewmen are treating me well, and I have plenty to eat and a good place to sleep." This was not, perhaps, the exact and literal truth, but it was close enough. "I'm going to meet this man in Sardiron and sign on as his apprentice, and I'll send you a letter telling you all about it as soon as I can."

"Whatman?" Faléa demanded. "Who is he? What's his name? Where did you meet him?"

"He didn't tell me his name-he said he wanted to keep it a secret until I'd earned it." Dumery had considered making up a name, but had caught himself at the last moment; if and when he reallydid sign up as the dragon-hunter's apprentice, he didn't want to have an awkward lie to explain. He continued, "I met him at the Dragon's Tail, and he offered me an apprenticeship if I could prove myself by meeting him on ... on the Blue Docks in Sardiron of the Waters in a sixnight."

Dumery hoped that this impromptu lie would hold up-he had no idea if therewere any "Blue Docks" in Sardiron, or whether his mother would know one way or the other. As far as he knew, she had never been to Sardiron-but he was a bit startled to realize that he didn't really know much of anything about her past, even though she was his own mother.Had she ever been to Sardiron?

Either she hadn't, or there really was such a place as the Blue Docks, because she was somewhat mollified by his tale.

"All right," she said, "but you be careful, and take care of yourself!"

She turned, and was gone; her abrupt disappearance reminded Dumery that this was all a dream.

He looked about, wondering what would happen next, and as he did Thetheran stepped out of nowhere.

The mage told Dumery, "Well, lad, I've done what your parents paid me to do, so I'll let you get on with your regular night's sleep now. In case you aren't sure this dream is really a wizard's sending-well, I can't give you any proof, but I think you'll find you'll remember it more easily and more clearly than a natural dream. I hope that you'll send a letter if and when you can, and save your parents the expense of doing this again-I don't particularly enjoy staying up this late working complicated spells just to talk to an inconsiderate young man who runs off without any warning. Good night, Dumery of Shiphaven, and I hope your other dreams will be pleasant."

Then the mage's image popped like a soap bubble and vanished, taking with it the corridor and everything else, and Dumery woke up, to find himself staring stupidly at the hind end of a steer, faintly visible in the diffuse light from the watch-lantern on the foredeck.

Chapter Fourteen

Faléa stared at the packed dirt of the street as she walked, shading her eyes from the morning sun. "I don't like it," she said.

"Don't like what?" Doran asked. "Arena Street?"

"No," Faléa replied, without rancor. "I don't like it that Dumery's on that barge-if that's really where he is."

"That's where hesaid he was," Doran pointed out. "Why would he lie?"

"That was where thedream said he was, anyway."

Doran looked at his wife, puzzled. "Do you think the wizard was trying to trick you? That there was something wrong with the dream?"

"No," Faléa said. "Or maybe. Or ... I don't know. I just don't like it."

"Well," Doran said, trying to sound determined and cheerful, as if everything was satisfactorily settled, "I can't say I do, either, but if that's what Dumery wants to do..."

"Butis it?" Faléa asked. "There's something wrong here. That man he says he met-whowas that? Why would he arrange to meet Dumery in Sardiron, instead of accompanying him along the way?"

"I don't know," Doran said. "I suppose to see if the boy can follow instructions and handle himself alone."

"But it's dangerous," Faléa said. "And making the boy do something like that before even starting an apprenticeship, isn't that awfully severe?"

"Well, yes," Doran admitted. "I'd have to say it is."

"And this place he's meeting him in Sardiron, what's it like? Is it safe?

Maybe if we knew more about it..."

"Well, then, what did the boysay about it? You didn't mention that. I've been to Sardiron-remember, when you were pregnant with Derath, and I didn't want to be away too long, so instead of the regular run to Tintallion I went up the river to Sardiron, and it took just as long as Tintallion would have, and I didn't get back until two days before he was born?"

"I remember that," Faléa agreed. "Was that Sardiron? I thought it was Shan."

"No, it was Sardiron. Strange place. Cold. Very damp."

"Oh. Do you know the Blue Docks, then?"

"Blue Docks?" Doran puzzled for a moment, then abruptly stopped walking.

Startled, Faléa stopped, as well.

"There aren't any 'Blue Docks' in Sardiron of the Waters," Doran told her.

"The riverfront's not ... everything's named for the person who owns it, usually Baron somebody-or-other. Are you sure Dumery said 'Blue'?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Faléa said. "Areyou sure about the names? Or is there a Baron Blue, perhaps? Or a baron who uses blue as his colors?"

"I never heard of any. And you said Dumery was supposed to meet this man there in a sixnight?"

Faléa nodded.

"A sixnight isn't much time to get to Sardiron, either," Doran pointed out.

"It took me eleven days; you'd almost need magic to get there from here in a sixnight. Or did he mean a sixnight from where he is now?"

"I don't know," Faléa said, worried.

"There's something wrong here," Doran said.

"Do you think Dumery lied to us?"

"Maybe," Doran said. "Or maybe Thetheran did." He turned and said, "Come on, we're going back."

Together they marched back to Wizard Street.

Thetheran listened to their worries in polite silence. When at last both of them had said all they wished, the mage said, "I assure you, to the best of my knowledge the spell worked perfectly, and if it did, then I did in fact speak to your son Dumery. If he did lie about where he is and what he's doing, I have no way of knowing-the spell does not force the truth. At least you know that he is alive and well, and that he is not in any immediate danger. Had he wanted help, he would have said so; one hardly need worry about being overheard in a dream!"

Doran grumbled an uneasy wordless agreement.

Faléa was not so easily swayed. "I want him back," she said."Something is wrong!"

Thetheran sighed. "Lady," he said, "nothing was wrong with my spell. If you wish to pay an additional fee and stay here again tonight, I can perform the spell again, and you will be free to argue with your son all you like-or at any rate, up to half an hour or so; I doubt I can sustain the contact much longer than that."

"I don't want to justtalk to him," Faléa snapped, "I want him brought back here!"

"And what does that have to do with me?" Thetheran asked.

"I want you to fetch him!"

Thetheran blinked at her. "Lady," he said, "while I may be able to find a spell that would transport your son back here, consider carefully. It would be very costly, I make no pretenses about that. Furthermore, if your son does indeed have a legitimate appointment in Sardiron of the Waters a few nights from now, fetching him back here would almost certainly cost him the apprenticeship he has gone to so much trouble to arrange. I doubt he would thank you for that."

"Then you can go and find him and see if his story is true, and bring him back if it's not!" Faléa shouted.

Thetheran stared at her in astonishment. "Lady," he said, "I sincerely doubt that your husband has enough gold to pay me to do that. If he does have that much, I'm sure he has more sense than to waste it so. I am not interested in leaving the city. If you're determined to send someone after your son, find someone else."

"You won't do it?"

"Not willingly."

"Why not?"

Exasperated, Thetheran looked at Doran, who merely shrugged. The mage turned back to Faléa and explained, "I, lady, am a wizard. I make my living from wizardry, not by traveling hither and yon about the countryside. I have a shop here; if I were to go gallivanting off after your son I would need to close it down for a few days, which would undoubtedly hurt my regular business.

Furthermore, there is no telling what sort of hazards I might encounter out there, and I would be hard pressed to know which spells I would need to prepare, which ingredients I would want to take with me. Wizards do not travel well; we are too dependent upon our books and supplies. Or at least, I am. I am not desperate for work; I make a comfortable living here in Ethshar, and see no reason to face hardship and danger elsewhere."

Faléa glared at him for a long moment.

"Then you won't go after him, and you won't send a spell to fetch him back?"

"Lady, I will do either one if you pay me enough," Thetheran said mildly. "I merely state that I think it would be a very, very bad investment to hire me, in this case. Why don't you go after your boy yourself, or hire someone else to do it? I'm not the only one who has magic for sale that can locate him."

Faléa started to say something, but Doran cut her off.

"The wizard has a point," he said. "If he's not interested, we'll find someone who is. Thetheran, is there anyone you'd recommend?"

Thetheran frowned, considering. "Not offhand," he said. "There are wizards who specialize in information, and who could find out exactly what the boy is doing and where he is, but they can be very expensive, and they wouldn't be interested in fetching him back if you did decide on that. You might try another school of magic-they aren'tall charlatans."

Doran nodded. "Is there a theurgist around here?" he asked.

"Dozens of them," Thetheran replied. "And you might also consider a witch-some of them have a knack for finding lost things, I understand. Or a warlock. I'd stay away from sorcerers, though-they make big claims, but half the time their spells don't work. And of course demonology is dangerous, but it might serve, if you want to risk it. I can't see much use for most of the lesser varieties of magic in a case like this..."

"We'll try a theurgist," Doran said.

They tried a theurgist. In fact, they tried three theurgists.

Two of the three said they could find Dumery; one of them even did so, for a fairly modest fee, and reported that the boy was on a cattle barge on the Great River, a good many leagues northwest of the city.

None of the three, however, was willing to go after the boy, nor to fetch him home by magic.

They tried a warlock next.

She claimed she had no way of finding the boy except to go out looking for him. She was perfectly willing to do that, if they could give her rough directions and would pay her rather exorbitant fee.

Or at least, she said she was perfectly willing, right up until they told her about the barge.

"North?" she said. "How far north?"

Faléa and Doran looked at each other.

"We don't know," Doran said. "The theurgist just said it was a long way to the northwest, he didn't say exactly how far."

She looked uneasily about, then down at the ornate carpet that covered most of the floor of her shop.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but I can't go far to the north. It's too ... well, it's risky, for a warlock."

"Why?" Faléa demanded. "I never heard of anything that made the north any more dangerous than any other direction!"

"You aren't a warlock," the warlock told her. "I don't dare go too near to Aldagmor."

"Why not?" Doran asked. "What's in Aldagmor?"

"I don't know," she said, "but I won't go near it."

Dumery's parents argued for another twenty minutes before they gave up and went elsewhere.

The next shop they tried bore a sign reading, "Sella the Witch, Diviner & Seer."

Sella was a smiling, rosy-cheeked woman of fifty or so; Faléa found herself rather resenting the existence of so much bounce and cheerfulness in a woman older than she was. The moment the two of them stepped into the shop, Sella was there, bustling them to a pair of overstuffed chairs and fetching them over-sweetened herb tea. They were so caught up in this whirlwind of domesticity that neither of them had time to spare a thought for the thin, sad-looking girl standing in a shadowy corner of the room.

Once Faléa and Doran were seated, and before either of them could get out a word, the witch said, "You're worried about your son? Well, I'm afraid that I can't tell you very much; he's too far away. He's alive, though, and tired, but healthy."

Doran's eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"No, sir, I'm not a fraud," Sella told him. "Your son's name is ... Dumery, I think? And he ran off to find an apprenticeship, though I can't see the details. You want someone to find out the exact truth of his situation, and to bring him safely home if possible. I can't tell you the exact truth; no witch could, at this distance. Nor am I willing to leave the city myself and fetch him home. However, for the appropriate fee, I would be willing to send my apprentice, Teneria of Fishertown, after your boy." She gestured toward the girl in the corner, who managed a weak smile.

Doran hesitated. This was all going too quickly; he had expected to have to explain the situation, negotiate details, wait while the witch worked her spells-and instead, they had been in the shop scarcely two minutes, and everything seemed to be all but settled.

He didn't like that. It might be witchcraft-or it might be fraud. Sella might have had informants, or a scrying spell, watching while Doran and Faléa talked to the other magicians.

Faléa wasn't worried about authenticity; she had another concern.

"An apprentice?" she asked. "A mere apprentice?"

"Almost a journeyman," Sella said, dismissing that worry with a wave of her hand. "She's ready for journeyman status; in fact, she's as good as some master witches. We're merely waiting for her eighteenth birthday, which is still three sixnights off."

"But if she's..." Doran began.

"Yes," Sella said wearily, "she's over fifteen, but she wasn'tready at fifteen. We witches make our journeymen at eighteen-or at least,I do. I want them to reflect well on me, not just to know a few tricks and fidgets, so I don't let them go until they know all I can teach. And sir, I see you suspect me of some sort of trickery, and I assure you there is none. I worked a spell this morning to see who would come to me, and what they would want-it saves a great deal of time and trouble. And a witch, a good one, can read a man's thoughts before they reach his lips." She smiled wryly. "I'm afraid I'm too impatient to wait for your words to work their way from your tongue to my ears."

Doran considered that, brows lowered. Faléa turned to stare at Teneria.

"He's a little above average in height, for his age," Teneria said, in a low, soft voice, "but thin. His hair is black and his eyes brown, like most Ethsharites; when last you saw him his hair was still fairly short, having been cut for his apprenticeship trial with Thetheran, but had gotten a little ragged. He was wearing a green cotton tunic and an expensive pair of boots, boots meant for looks, rather than hard wear. He left Westgate Market through the gate around mid-morning of the day before yesterday, passing near the south gate-tower. I can follow him from there, I think."

"And the sooner she does, the better," Sella said. "The trail isn't getting any fresher. I have a pack prepared, since I knew you were coming, and Teneria can leave as soon as you pay our fee."

Doran started to speak, but Sella cut him off. "One round of gold-yes, it's a lot, but we will refund all but our expenses should Teneria lose his trail or should Dumery be harmed while in her company, and will swear to that before the overlord's officers, if you insist, or register it as a geas with any competent magician. She will leave immediately, if you consent."

Faléa and Doran looked at each other. Doran saw the look in his wife's eyes and reached for his purse.

Teneria bent down and picked up her pack from the corner. Without a word, she left the shop and headed for Westgate.

Chapter Fifteen

Teneria was understandably nervous as she walked out the city gate, her pack on her shoulder. This expedition was, she knew, the final trial of her apprenticeship. If she succeeded, if she found the boy and either brought him home safely or saw that he reached his destination and was safe there, then she would be a real witch, entitled to call herself Teneria the Witch if she chose, free to travel when and where she pleased, no longer at Sella's beck and call-not that Sella was a harsh mistress, or unpleasant to work for, but any sort of servitude chafed.

If she failed she would need to prove herself all over again. She would still be a mere apprentice.

And as if that weren't enough to worry about, this was very nearly the first time she had ever left the city alone. Oh, once before she had been sent to fetch herbs from outside the walls, alone, at night-but she had always stayed in sight of the gate, Southgate it was that time, and she had known that Sella was watching over her from afar.

This time, Sella would not be watching-at least, not once she had gone a few leagues. Her range was limited.

Teneria's own range was even more limited, of course; she could barely make out a person's aura just a few blocks away, let alone all the way across the city. The Wizards' Quarter-which reallyought to be called the Magicians'

Quarter, she thought for the thousandth time, and probably would have been if not for the political power of the Wizards' Guild-was in the southeastern part of Ethshar of the Spices, a long way from Westgate.

Her native Fishertown was on the waterfront to the north, just to the east of the Grand Canal, and as a child she had roamed through Hempfield and Allston and Newmarket, but she had never been in Westgate before. Even so, she was too concerned with the task before her to pay much attention as she passed through the district and out the gate.

She did spare a glance around at the farmers' wagons along the roadside, and the fields beyond, before she turned her attention inward, looking for the psychic trace her quarry must surely have left.

It wasn't easy. There were somany traces here! A young woman, a farm girl about Teneria's own age, had passed by here recently in a turmoil about an unwanted and unexpected pregnancy. An older farmer had been worried about his debts, hoping he could hold out until the harvest-and that the harvest wouldn't fail this year, as it had last. Thoughts of money, loneliness, worry, love, greed, excitement, anticipation, despair-this was such abusy stretch of highway!

She couldn't find Dumery's.

She wasn't really very surprised; after all, it had been more than two days since he had passed this way, and she had never even met the boy. She doubted even Sella could have tracked Dumery from his traces alone.

Fortunately, that wasn't necessary. Sella had read everything she needed from the minds of Dumery's parents or from Thetheran, or had heard it, and had passed it on to Teneria. All of them had been thinking about nothing else, which made it easy enough to see the needed information.

Teneria smiled to herself. Witchcraft had its advantages. It didn't have the raw power thatany of the other major magicks had, only the strength of the witch's own body, but she had never heard of any wizard or warlock who could do to people's minds what witches could. And it was so easy, really, once one knew how.

She still remembered how, when she was thirteen and still just beginning her apprenticeship, she had first used the witch's trick of convincing someone to do what she wanted without him even knowing that magic was in use. She had gotten credit from a notoriously-stingy candy butcher on Games Street.

She had also overdone it, not realizing how easy it was. She had exhausted herself, pushing at his mind, and had almost collapsed right there on the street. When she had finally made it back to Sella's shop she had fallen into bed and slept for a day and a half-and only found out later that the candy-seller had been so affected that he was giving credit and free samples to every kid in sight for the next sixnight.

And when it wore off, it gradually sank in that he had been the victim of a witch's spell, and Sella had had to use herown persuasive magic on him to prevent retaliation.

Teneria had watched, and had seen how subtly it was done.

She had also, even at that age, seen the hurt and confusion in the candy-seller's mind, and had felt horribly guilty for the next four months.

She saved up what she could, and finally paid the man back for his losses-but that still didn't entirely remove the pain.

When people wondered why some witches were so adamant in their refusal to work harmful magic, no matter how much they were paid, Teneria always remembered the empty candy-basket and the baffled expression of the man holding it, the puzzled discomfort of his aura. It wasn't worth it. Better to just persuade people to go elsewhere for their curses and assassinations-or better still, to persuade them to give them up entirely.

Some witches weren't so sensitive; some had even gotten involved in some of the petty wars that were a permanent feature of the Small Kingdoms. There were even stories about witches helping the Great Warlock establish the Empire of Vond, a few years back.

Teneria didn't understand how they could do that.

Finding a runaway, though-that should be no problem. And once found, it would be easy enough to learn his true situation; no one could lie successfully to a witch.

It was unfortunate, though, that he had a two-day head-start. She picked up her pace a little.

She could levitate, she thought, but there wasn't any point in it. She would just wear herself out. Levitating would be like carrying her ninety-four pounds over her head; walking was far easier, and almost as fast.

And she didn't need to worry about following his trail, not yet; Sella had seen in Faléa's mind that Sander the Theurgist had located Dumery of Shiphaven somewhere on the Great River, and a check of Sander's mind had confirmed as much, so Teneria knew she had to get to the Great River. There was only one road from Ethshar to the river.

She could have gone by sea, of course, and would have preferred to, but Faléa and Doran expected her to follow their son's path exactly, so that was what she was attempting to do.

It was well after dark, and she was nearing exhaustion, when she knocked on the door of the Inn at the Bridge.

The man who opened the door, Teneria knew immediately, was the innkeeper, Valder himself-she could sense in him the presence of someone far, far older than he looked, and she knew that Valder the Innkeeper, also known as Valder of the Magic Sword, had been enchanted long ago.

He helped her to a table, and had food and drink fetched.

She didn't need to say a word, nor to even begin to frame a spell; Valder was well-versed in handling weary travelers.

He did pause, though, just before putting her dinner on the table.

"You do have money, don't you?" he asked.

She nodded; he smiled, and placed the platter before her.

She slept that night in a warm feather bed, too tired to worry about where Dumery might be, or for that matter much of anything else.

At breakfast, however, she pursued her mission, and asked Valder if he remembered seeing a boy of Dumery's description.

He cocked his head and gazed at her warily, and she began to prepare a small coercion spell.

"Why do you ask?" he said.

"His parents hired me to find him," she said.

Valder looked at her for another moment, then shrugged.

"He was here," he said. "The night before last. He looked pretty bad, dirty and frazzled. He didn't have any money, but I let him sleep in the stable and gave him a bowl of scraps. He looked harmless enough."

"So he stayed here all night? In the stable?"

"As far as I know, he did," Valder said. "I didn't see him in the morning. And I'm not sure how much he ate; there were spriggan tracks all over the bowl I'd left him."

"Spriggan tracks?"

"That's right."

"Excuse me, but what's a spriggan?"

Valder looked startled. "You haven't met them yet? Well, maybe you haven't.

We've had them here for months now; they hide in people's baggage, and on wagons."

"But whatare they?" Teneria asked.

"Little creatures about so high," Valder said, holding his hands out to demonstrate. "They look like frogs trying to be human, sort of, with big pointed ears, and they talk, after a fashion. And they get into everything and make real nuisances of themselves. They come from somewhere in the mountains in the Small Kingdoms, I'm told, and the rumor is that they came about from some wizard's spell gone wrong, four or five years ago. No one knows how many there are, or how long they live, or how they breed-ifthey breed. They like to play games, though, and they're always hungry-when one turns up I need to warn the guests and keep a careful eye out, or it'll be stealing food right off customer's plates."

Teneria was fascinated. "I never heard of anything like that," she said. "How do you get rid of them?"

Valder frowned. "Well, you can kill them, of course-they aren'tthat magical.

Run one through with a steel blade and it'll die, just like anything else. I hate to do that, though-the creatures don't really mean any harm. When I can, I just catch them and throw them outside and tell them not to come back, and usually they don't. Most of the time they'll wander off down the road somewhere. Sometimes if there's a whole gang of them-we had six at a time, once-they'll work up their courage and try to slip back in, and I'll have to get more drastic."

"More drastic?" Teneria asked. "How? Magic?"

"No, they're not worth wasting magic on."

"What, then?"

Valder looked around as if slightly embarrassed, then leaned forward and whispered, "I get them drunk."

Teneria smiled. "You do?"

"I do. It was my wife's idea. I put out a bowl of brandy oroushka with cherry syrup in it-they love cherry syrup-and wait. Sooner or later they'll drink it, and when they do they pass out drunk on the floor-can't hold their liquor at all, not even as well as a Tintallionese. And they wake up with hangovers. All I need to do is pick them up while they're unconscious and dump them out by the highway, and when they wake up they're too sick towant to come back."

"Always? None of them develop a taste for the stuff?"

"Well," Valder said, "none have so far, anyway."

"Are there any around now?" Teneria asked, looking about at the inn's main room. "I'd like to see one."

"I haven't seen any lately, but as I said, there were spriggan tracks in the boy's bowl."

Teneria nodded. "Thank you," she said. "You've been very helpful."

She settled her bill, picked up her pack, and left the inn.

Outside she paused and looked about. From this point on, Dumery had had a choice of ways. He could have crossed the bridge to the east bank, or headed up the highway on the west bank, or gone down to the dock and boarded a boat right there.

If he was on a cattle barge by his second night away from home, boarding right there seemed most likely. It alsofelt right. She wasn't sure if it was witchcraft causing her hunch, or common sense, or nothing at all, but she decided to trust it. She headed for the dock.

As she walked, she thought about spriggans. She hadn't heard of them before, at least not by that name.

One of them had gotten at Dumery's food; did that mean anything?

Maybe it did-and if that spriggan was still around maybe she could learn something from it.

That was an idea. She stepped off the path onto the green, lush grass of early spring, and settled down, cross-legged, her skirt spread around her. She rested her hands on her knees and filled her mind with thoughts of warmth and affection, good food and soft fur and friendly smiles; she held those thoughts while she watched the sunlight dancing on the river, projecting them in all directions at once.

A fieldmouse wandered up, walked onto her skirt, curled up, and fell asleep. A rat eyed her warily, but didn't approach-which was just as well, as she didn't like rats.

Some of the people down on the dock were starting to glance in her direction; she realized she was radiating a littletoo much warmth.

Then the grass rustled behind her, and she turned to see a peculiar little figure, seven or eight inches tall, standing there. It was green and had spindly little legs and an immense belly, which did give it a froglike appearance, but its feet and hands were not webbed, and its oversized head was fairly human in appearance, if one ignored the big pointed ears and complete lack of hair.

"Hello," she said quietly, trying not to startle it.

"Hello, hello!" it said back, in a squeaky, rather irritating voice that was not quiet at all. "You like spriggans?"

"Yes, I do," she said.

"We have fun?"

"If you like."

"We havefun!" it emphatically replied.

"All right," Teneria agreed, "we'll have fun. But I'm looking for a friend of mine, first. We could have more fun if we found him. Maybe you can help."

"Friend?" The spriggan looked puzzled.

"Yes, a friend. His name is Dumery of Shiphaven. He slept in the stable up at the inn there the night before last-a half-grown boy with black hair and brown eyes. Did you see him?"

"Saw him, saw him," the spriggan said, bouncing up and down as it spoke. "No fun. No fun at all. Went on boat, went away."

"On a boat?"

"Cow boat, went that way." The spriggan pointed at the river, then waved a hand in a vaguely upstream direction.

"I see," Teneria said. "Then I'm afraid I'll have to go after him."

The spriggan looked suddenly crestfallen, and Teneria had to smother a laugh even as she wanted to cry at the thing's misery. "You go, too?" it asked.

"Yes," Teneria said. "But we can have fun when I get back." She smiled.

The spriggan didn't care. "You go?" it asked, its voice cracking. "Got to?

Can't stay?"

Teneria couldn't stand it; the thing wasso woebegone that her witchcraft-heightened senses could not face it. Besides, she realized that she had a use for the little creature, a very important use. It had seen Dumery, probably talked to him. Stupid as it appeared to be, it might provide a psychic link that she could use.

"Listen," she said, "I could take you with me."

"Go with you?" The spriggan's woe vanished. "Oooooh, fun!" it burbled. "Go, go! Yes, yes, go!" The change was overwhelming; black despair had transformed instantly into golden delight. Teneria burst out giggling.

"Yes, go," she said. "Come on; we'll hire a boat."

Chapter Sixteen

By his third day on the barge Dumery no longer noticed the smell as he worked, nor the stickiness. His feet still hurt, and his back ached, but he was able to do his work without giving it much of his attention, which left him free to admire the scenery-what he could see of it. Most of the time the grassy banks were too high for him to see much of anything from his place down in the bottom of the barge.

Sometimes, though, the river spread out a little, or the land flattened, and he could see farms and fields, pleasant little villages, and, on the western bank, traffic along the highway that paralleled the river. People on foot, ox-carts, even full-sized caravans passed along that road, bound upstream and down.

Since the barge stayed mostly toward the eastern shore, though, Dumery could make out none of the details of these fascinating figures; the wagons were squares of bright color, the people like walking twigs.

Docks were a frequent sight along the river, even where the banks were high.

Some were no more than rotting remnants, while others were large and clean and relatively fresh. Some, Dumery could see, were there to service villages, and those might be individual docks or entire rows of them; others seemed to be alone, out in the middle of nowhere, perhaps serving local farmers or fishermen.

Trails down to the riverbank, where livestock could come and drink, were also commonplace, and every so often one of these would be in use by cattle. The herd on the barge and the herd on the shore were likely to start lowing on such occasions, calling to one another, and Dumery would have to watch carefully for the stamping hooves of the disturbed animals.

There was traffic on the river, as well, of course-boats and barges of every description, from flat-bottomed fishing skiffs that drifted idly by the banks to sharp-prowed express boats that plowed past Dumery's barge as if it were motionless, leaving behind a wake that thumped rhythmically across the barge's underside.

And as if these sights weren't enough, every so often, starting late on the third day, the barge passed a castle, the stone towers and walls brooding heavily over the countryside. Dumery assumed, when he saw the first and finally figured out what it was, that the barge must have left the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, where by the unanimous decree of the ruling triumvirate no castles or other fortifications were permitted outside the walls of the three capital cities.

Dumery decided, however, when he had had a bit more time and had thought the matter over a little more, that although they were at least very near the border, they might not have actually crossed it. He noticed that the castles were always on the east bank of the river, and always set well back from the water. Perhaps the west bank and the river itself were still in the Hegemony.

This came to seem more likely not long after, when the river's curves found them traveling west again, rather than north. The "east bank" was now on the north, the "west" on the south-that meant the occasional castle was to the north.

Sardiron lay to the north of the Hegemony, as everyone knew. This stretch of river, Dumery thought, made a perfectly reasonable border.

He was encouraged by this. He was eager to get to Sardiron and catch up with the man in brown, but on the other hand there was something rather frightening about leaving the Hegemony, and he preferred to put it off as long as possible.

And the third day passed.

That evening, when the sun was down, the barge tied up to a tree. Each evening it had tied up to a tree or a rock. Even when two of the crewmen had waded ashore to buy more provisions, a mere hundred yards from a village pier, the barge's towline was secured not to the pier or a dock, but to a great oak. It was on the third night that Dumery finally got up the nerve to ask why they never used the docks.

"Trees don't charge fees," Kelder told him.

It was around mid-morning of the fourth day that the barge passed under a bridge, the first bridge they had encountered since Dumery came aboard. The whole structure was built of wood, raised into a great arch above elaborate framework, and the central opening was easily wide enough for two barges to pass-though in fact there didn't happen to be another in sight just then.

The roadbed across the bridge, Dumery judged, was wide enough for a wagon-but just barely. He wondered what happened if wagons arrived from both ends at once; how did they decide who would wait while the other crossed?

He was so interested in the bridge that they were well out into the lake beyond before he realized therewas a lake.

Dumery had never seen a lake before, and he stared. It was soflat! Large bodies of water didn't bother him, but he was used to Ethshar's harbor, where the water was in constant motion, waves rippling in from the Gulf and breaking against the piers and quays. Even the river, while it had no waves, had a visible current.

The lake, though, appeared as calm and still as a puddle.

The barge was hugging the right-hand shore-what Dumery thought of as the eastern bank, though in fact at the moment it was still to the north. After a few moments of staring out at the open expanse of water, Dumery turned and saw that they were passing a dozen yards or so from a stone tower.

He blinked in surprise, and looked more closely.

They were passing a castle, a castle built right on the shore of the lake!

"Hai,"Dumery called. "Where are we?"

Naral Rander's son looked up.

"Take a good look, boy," he replied. "We've just crossed the border. Welcome to the Baronies of Sardiron!"

"We have?" Dumery asked.

"That's right; the boundary runs across the middle of this lake-Boundary Lake-from that tower, which is Sardironese, to one on the other side, which is Ethsharitic. From here on we'll be on Sardironese waters-up until now the river was Ethsharitic."

"Oh," Dumery said, looking about uneasily, half expecting to see some difference in the water itself.

There was none; it was still clear and blue.

"There's a third tower over on the western shore," Naral remarked, "between the two rivers that flow into the lake-that's Sardironese, too. The Baronies claim both the rivers going in, the Hegemony has the one going out."

"Tworivers coming in?" Dumery asked, suddenly seriously worried.

"Certainly," Naral said, startled by the question. "The Great River, and the Shanna River."

"Which one are we taking?" Dumery asked.

"The Great River, of course," the crewman said. "We told you when you came aboard, we're bound for Sardiron of the Waters."

"And the Shanna River doesn't go there?"

"No, of course not-it goes to Shanna." Naral considered for a moment, then continued, "Or really, it comesfrom Shanna, since we're downstream here. Not much business out that way, and the river's not easy to navigate, either-it's wider and slower and shallower, and you can run a boat aground if you aren't careful. Even a barge."

Dumery had stopped listening. He had panicked at the thought that maybe the boat he was on was going to take one route, while theSunlit Meadows took the other, and he wouldnever have a chance of catching up with the man in brown.

He was calming down now, though. TheSunlit Meadows was bound for Sardiron of the Waters; the crewman who chased him off had stated that quite definitely.

The barge, too, was bound for Sardiron of the Waters. Neither one had any business in Shanna. There was nothing to worry about.

He looked around, and realized that they were already approaching the western end of the lake-he could see trees, and something that might have been the roof of the other Sardironese tower, beyond the water in that direction.

An hour later they had left the lake behind and were into the Upper Reach of the Great River, inside the borders of the Baronies of Sardiron.

Not long after that they passed under another high-arched wooden bridge; this one was guarded by a castle on the western shore, just in case anyone had had any lingering doubts as to whether this land was truly a part of the Baronies.

The change of government made little difference; the barge still passed farms and fields, trees and villages, docks new and used. The river was still blue, the sky was still blue, and Dumery still had shoveling to do.

It was late in the afternoon of the fifth day when he glanced up from his shovel, to the east, and saw a familiar boat, tied up at a dock that the barge was passing.

It was theSunlit Meadows, gleaming bright in the sun. He had finally caught up to it.

He looked around, but saw only the cattle and the river and the blue sky above. He wished he could swim; the shore wasn't so very far away.

Unfortunately, he couldn't, and trying to get ashore wasn't worth the risk of drowning.

He waited, biding his time, growing steadily more frantic with the thought that even now, the man in brown might be getting farther away-and even if the man was still on that boat, Dumery himself was now moving steadily farther away from it.

The possibility that the dragon-hunter had gotten off theSunlit Meadows days ago hadn't escaped him, but he tried not to think about that. At least, if he could catch up to the crew of the passenger boat, he couldask.

For a moment he considered simply asking the crew of the barge to put him ashore somewhere along the eastern bank, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He had signed on for the journey to Sardiron of the Waters, and he knew that the men were glad to have him there to man the shovel; they weren't likely to let him off that easily.

Particularly not Kelder the Unpleasant, whose goal in life seemed to be to make everyone else miserable. So far he hadn't bothered Dumery much, since the job Dumery had was already about the worst thing that could be inflicted aboard the barge without interfering with business, but the boy didn't doubt for a moment that if Kelder knew Dumery wanted off, he'd make absolutely certain that Dumery stayed on the barge.

So Dumery waited, not saying anything about his plans.

Finally, as the sun dropped below the western horizon, the crew called to the sylph. That seemingly tireless creature obeyed, looping the tow-line around a stump on the steep eastern bank.

Dumery breathed a little easier upon seeing that; he had worried about what he would do if they had tied up on thewestern shore.

Not that they ever had yet.

The remainder of the day was torture. He didn't dare try to slip away until most of the barge's crew was asleep, and until the man on watch was someone he wasn't scared of.

The evening repast and the subsequent chatter seemed interminable, but eventually the men were yawning and stretching and climbing into their narrow little bunks below the foredeck.

Kelder took the first watch, unfortunately, and Dumery lay on his own rough perch at the stern, wrapped in his borrowed blanket, trying to stay awake without letting Kelder know it.

He had dozed off, but started awake at the sound of voices. Kelder was rousing Naral for his shift.

Dumery tensed, but lay still.

He heard Naral complaining about having a particularly pleasant dream interrupted, and Kelder snarling that he was too tired to care, and then, over the steady breathing of the sleeping cattle, he heard scuffling and scraping as Kelder climbed into a berth.

Naral's footsteps sounded as he climbed up to the foredeck and settled onto the stool there. Dumery lifted his head and peered across the length of the barge, over the cargo.

Naral was sitting on the foredeck, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

Dumery slipped out from under his blanket and crept over toward shore.

The barge was tied at the bow, and the stern had been left to drift until it bumped gently against the bank. Dumery knew that in the morning, if the sylph could not tug the barge away because it had snagged or run aground, the cattle would all be herded over to the left-rather, portside, though in fact the barge usually tied up along the starboard-and the barge would be rocked free.

He reached the starboard corner of the stern and got to his feet, casting a cautious glance toward Naral.

The man hadn't noticed anything. If he did happen to look up, he would probably just assume Dumery was answering nature's call.

Dumery looked down; the barge was not hard up against the bank. A couple of feet of dark water, catching occasional flecks of light from the greater moon that rode high overhead, swirled along between the hull and the grass.

He reached out, but he couldn't touch the bank.

It had looked vertical, but it wasn't, really, it sloped away. Dumery glared at it.

He took three steps back, then ran and jumped.

His hands and knees hit the bank, and he discovered that it isn't easy to grab hold of a steep, grassy, dew-covered slope; he slid down until his feet and legs were in the chill water of the river, almost up to his knees.

Naral, Dumery was sure, must have heard the noise. He lay there on the bank, his feet in the water, waiting to see what Naral would do, whether he would come to investigate.

No one came, and after what seemed like hours Dumery turned his attention to climbing.

It could be done, by digging his toes into the sod with each step, wrapping his fingers tightly around the strongest tufts of grass, sometimes inadvertantly pulling them out and jamming his fingers into the hole they left.

He began to worry about whether he would reach the top before dawn, but the night seemed to go on forever, and by the time he was finally able to stretch his arms out full-length onto nearly level ground and pull himself up onto his feet he was more concerned with whether the dawn would ever come at all. Had the sun burned out, was it gone forever? Surely it had taken himyears to climb that slope!

Everything looked normal enough, though. He was at the edge of a farmer's field, and had to climb over a split-rail fence.

Once inside the field he looked up at the stars and moons, then back at the still-dark eastern horizon, and decided the sun was just late. The lesser moon had just risen in the east, almost full, while off to the west the greater moon was still in the sky, a broad crescent, horns upward, like the smile of a small god looking down at him.

Something looked odd about the east, though, and Dumery looked again.

The horizon was in the wrong place. It was too high. The lesser moon's light gleamed pinkly on hilltops that seemed to be halfway up the sky.

The hilltops looked awfully steep and pointed, too.

Mountains, Dumery realized suddenly. Those were mountains. He was looking at mountains.

There were no mountains anywhere in the Hegemony of Ethshar, any more than there were castles. A shudder ran through Dumery at the thought that he had, beyond all doubt, left behind the only civilized land in the World.

He was truly in the Baronies of Sardiron, the cold, wild northern land, where the evil taint of the ancient Empire still lingered, where the people had deliberately turned their backs on Ethsharitic civilization, choosing chaos and brutality over order and sanity. Castles and sorcerers, stone and snow and fire-that's what those mountains promised.

He shuddered.

Then he grimaced wryly. The mountains might be alien and frightening, but they weren't the real problem. The real problem was mostly that his feet were wet.That, he told himself, was why he was shuddering. He needed to get warm and dry.

A glance at the dark farmhouse in the distance was not encouraging. Visitors arriving in the middle of the night were not likely to be made welcome there.

Walking would dry his feet and warm him. He stepped up onto the bottom rail of the fence and peered back over the bank he had just climbed, back down at the river.

The barge was still there, and Naral was still perched on his stool on the foredeck. He appeared to be asleep.

Sleeping on watch, if discovered-well, Dumery didn't know just what that would entail, since he had never been trusted enough to be put on watch, but he was sure it wouldn't be pleasant.

Maybe Naral would replace Dumery in wielding the shovel. Somebody would have to, certainly.

Well, whatever happened to him, it wasn't Dumery's problem. He hopped down, turned left, and began walking downstream, toward the dock where theSunlit Meadows had tied up.

Chapter Seventeen

Riverbanks, Dumery discovered, are not highways.

Riverbanks, he found, can be slippery, boggy, overgrown, leech-infested, mosquito-infested, strewn with sharp rocks and day-old manure, and generally hard to traverse. They can have fences blocking access to them. They can even have rabbit-snares on them that wrap around your ankle and feel like they're going to rip your foot right off, which you have to remove slowly and carefully, in the dark, while sitting on cold, wet mud.

All the same, the sun still hadn't cleared the mountaintops when Dumery, filthy and exhausted but still determined, finally reached the inn and dock where theSunlit Meadows had tied up for the night.

He identified it as the right dock by the simplest possible method: TheSunlit Meadows was still there, its distinctive outline recognizable even in the faint light of approaching dawn, augmented by the lesser moon, which had crossed the sky, set, and was now rising again, a thin bow this time.

In the dimness the upraised sweeps looked more like an insect's legs than ever.

This stretch of waterfront was clear and level and easy to walk. A set of wooden steps led down to the dock; at the top of the steps a plank walk led to the verandah of a good-sized inn. Beyond the inn was a small village, a handful of houses and shops along either side of a single street leading up the slope, away from the water.

Dumery knew the big building by the river was an inn because a signboard hung over the verandah showing a brown pig on a black spit, with a jagged orange border below that was clearly intended to represent a cooking fire. He could see the colors because lanterns hung to either side of the sign, both of them burning.

He found himself faced with a difficult decision. Should he approach the inn, where the man in brown might be staying, or should he go down to the boat?

After some thought, he chose the boat.

He tripped and very nearly fell on the top step, which would have made for a noisy and painful tumble, but he caught himself at the last minute and made his way gingerly down to the dock.

When he stepped off the last step and could spare attention to look at something other than his own feet, he looked up and found he was being watched.

A guard had been posted on theSunlit Meadows, just as on the cattle barge-a man was sitting on a stool on the foredeck, a sword across his lap. He was staring at Dumery.

"Uh ... hello," Dumery said. He spoke loudly enough to be heard over the chirping crickets and the gentle splashing of the river going about its business, and was horrified at how loud his voice sounded. The crickets and water weren't making anywhere near as much noise as he had thought; his normal tone sounded like shouting.

"Hello," the watchman answered warily.

Dumery strolled down the dock, trying to look casual. "I was looking for someone," he said. "I saw him on that boat of yours a few days ago."

"Oh?" the watchman asked.

"Yes," Dumery said. "Big man, dark brown hair, wore brown leather, came aboard at Azrad's Bridge."

"I might know who you mean." For the first time, Dumery noticed that the guard spoke Ethsharitic with an accent.

"Yes, well," Dumery said, "I'm looking for him. I need to talk to him."

The watchman's hand had crept to the hilt of the sword; now he lifted it and gestured at the eastern sky. "Odd hour to go visiting, isn't it?" he asked.

"Oh, well," Dumery said, "I didn't want him to slip away before I had a chance to talk to him, you know."

"Ah. In a hurry, were you?"

Dumery nodded. "Yes, I was," he said.

"In too much of a hurry to clean up?"

Dumery looked down at himself.

His tunic was muddy rags. His breeches were split at the crotch and frayed to threads for much of their length, and his skin was covered with scrapes, scratches, and dirt. His boots were badly scuffed, but still, thank all the gods, sound.

"I missed the road in the dark," he explained. "Fell down a couple of times."

"Well, boy," the guard told him, "I'm sorry, but you're not coming aboard theMeadows like that, and I don't care if you're a boy baron in disguise, or one of the gods themselves."

"He's on board, then?" Dumery asked excitedly. "The man in brown leather? The dragon-hunter?"

The watchman squinted at Dumery. The eastern sky had started to pale; the greater moon had set, but the lesser moon was climbing rapidly, filling out as it rose. A ship's lantern hung at each end of theSunlit Meadows, shining brightly. In short, there was light, but not enough to read faces easily.

The watchman decided it wasn't his problem. "The man's name is Kensher Kinner's son, boy-that the one you're looking for? Anyway, no, he's not aboard. He's probably at the Roasting Pig. This is his stop, where we pick him up twice a year, and drop him off on the way back."

A great weight he hadn't known was there seemed to vanish from Dumery's chest, and his breath rushed in, then out, in a great sigh of relief."Thank you!" he said. "Then Ihaven't missed him!" He whirled and charged back up the steps, ignoring the watchman's shouted admonitions to watch his step and not to say who'd told him.

He even knew the man in brown's name, now-Kensher Kinner's son. Not exactly an ordinary name, by Ethsharitic standards, but not particularly exotic. Dumery had a vague impression that northerners used patronymic names like that more than city-dwellers did.

He dashed headlong up the boardwalk and onto the verandah, and smacked his hands against the door of the inn, expecting it to open.

It didn't. His damp feet slipped on the oiled wood of the verandah, and his nose and chin slammed up against solid oak hard enough to bruise, but not to break anything.

He caught himself and stepped back, rubbing his injured nose, then reached forward and tried the latch.

The door still wouldn't open.

Dumery frowned. Who ever heard of an inn where the door wouldn't open? What good wasthat to anyone?

Well, maybe the owners were worried about bandits wandering in. After all, this wasn't Ethshar. Dumery looked about for a knocker or bell-pull.

A black metal rod hung down just behind the signboard; he hadn't noticed it before, taking it for a shadow or part of the bracket holding the sign. The upper end vanished into a boxy structure protruding from the wall.

He reached up and gave it a tug.

It moved freely, and when he released it it swung back up into place-obviously counterweighted somewhere. He wasn't sure whether he heard a clunk somewhere when he let it go, or not.

An unfamiliar voice, oddly hollow, called,"Ie'kh gamakh."

Dumery blinked. That wasn't Ethsharitic.

It was probably, he realized suddenly, Sardironese. He was presumably somewhere in the Baronies of Sardiron, so that would make sense.

Unfortunately, Dumery didn't know a word of Sardironese, and couldn't begin to guess whether the phrase he had just heard meant, "Welcome," or "Go away," or

"Give the password," or "The key's on the windowsill," or something else entirely.

"I don't speak Sardironese," he called-not too loudly, as he didn't want to annoy anyone.

Nobody answered.

He stood there, looking about and trying to think what he should do, until he was startled by a scraping sound.

He spun back toward the door, and there, an inch or two above the top of his head, a panel the size of a man's hand had slid open. Bleary green eyes beneath bushy white eyebrows were looking out, and from what he could see of them, Dumery thought they looked puzzled.

"Hello," Dumery said.

The eyes blinked, and looked down, suddenly discovering Dumery.

"Hello?" a voice answered, the voice of an old man.

"May I come in?" Dumery asked.

The voice replied,"H'khai debrou ... ie'tshei, yes, one moment." The panel slid shut, metal rattled against metal, and the door swung open.

Dumery stepped in and looked around, to see what he could see, and discovered that mostly he could see the starched white apron and voluminous red nightshirt of the man who had admitted him. That worthy was standing in Dumery's way, looking down at him with an unreadable expression on his face.

"By all the gods, boy, you are a ... amess!" the man exclaimed.

Dumery was relieved to hear the man deliver a complete, coherent sentence in Ethsharitic, even if itwas accented.

But then, an innkeeper would naturally want to speak several languages.

"I'm looking for a man dressed in brown leather, going by the name Kensher Kinner's son," Dumery said.

"He is-ie'tshei,is he expecting you?"

"He's yetchy?"

"No, no. Is he expecting you?"

"Is he here?"

"I am ...ie'tshei, why should I tell you?"

Dumery was tired. He was, in fact, exhausted, and as a result he was in no mood to deal with obstructions when he was so close to his goal. "Just tell me, all right?" he said. "And what's that 'yetchy' mean, anyway?"

The man glared down at him fiercely, and Dumery realized he'd said the wrong thing.

"Ie'tsheiis Sardironese for 'I meant to say,' boy," the man said. "You don't make fun of my Ethsharitic, all right? You want to hear me use all the right words, you talk to me in Sardironese. We aren't in the Hegemony here. Since I was your age, I could speak four languages enough to run this inn. I don't hear you saying anything in anything but Ethsharitic. You don't sound so smart to me, boy, so watch your manners."

"I'm sorry," Dumery said, not really meaning it.

The innkeeper ignored the interruption. "You come in here an hour before dawn, when I need my sleep, you drip mud on my floors and look like the worst garbage, like someone who takes what the dogs won't eat, you don't say who you are, you make fun of how I talk in a foreign language when I'm half asleep, you want to talk to one of my guests who isalso still asleep, assuming he's here, which I haven't said ... boy, you better have the money to pay for a room and a bath and a meal and new clothes, because if you don't you go right back out that door. I don't want you in here like this. You make me look bad."

"I'm sorry," Dumery said again, a little more sincerely.

"Sorry, nothing. You have money?"

Dumery looked down at the purse on his belt. Six bits, he knew, wasn't going to buy him much here. It certainly wasn't going to buy him any sympathy, let alone new clothes and all the rest of it.

The innkeeper saw Dumery's look and interpreted it readily enough.

"No money," he said. "Out, boy. Out." The man put a hand on Dumery's chest and pushed gently.

Until he felt that hand it hadn't really registered with the lad just how big the innkeeper was, which was very big indeed. Dumery doubted very much that this particular innkeeper had ever had to hire anyone else as his bouncer; he was clearly capable of handling the job himself.

Unwillingly, Dumery stepped back out onto the verandah, and the heavy door slammed shut an inch from his face.

Chapter Eighteen

Despite the discomforts of his hiding place in the bushes along the riverbank, Dumery kept dozing off, only waking when he started to fall forward, branches scraping his face.

Each time he would jerk himself back up to a sitting position and stare wildly about before settling back down to watch the door of the inn.

Finally, about mid-morning, the man in brown, the dragon-hunter, emerged. He was wearing his brown leather outfit again, not the more ordinary clothes he had had on when he had left the Inn at the Bridge and boarded theSunlit Meadows.

He stepped out, turned to his right, and marched across the verandah to the steps at the north end. He trotted down the steps without any hesitation, turned again, and strode off to the east, down the main road of the tiny riverside village, away from the inn and toward the mountains.

Dumery scrambled from concealment and followed.

He had had enough of secrecy. He had every intention of running right up to this Kensher person and announcing himself, and then demanding an apprenticeship. After all, Dumery had followed the man all the way from safe, familiar Ethshar out into the wilds of Sardiron-didn't that prove his resolution? Didn't that show how determined he was? Wouldn't that be enough to impressanyone?

Dumery tripped over a branch and fell sprawling. He picked himself up quickly and looked ahead.

Kensher was already well down the road, almost out the far end of the village-if the tiny collection of buildings qualified as a village; being a city boy, Dumery was not sure just how small a village could get and still deserve the name.

The dragon-hunter was walking along quickly, in the brisk, determined stride of a man who knows exactly where he's going and who wants to get there. Dumery broke into a run.

Tired as he was, he couldn't sustain it, and after a hundred feet, when he was scarcely past the inn's stables, he slowed to a stumbling trot. Halfway through the village, as he passed through the rush of warm air from the smithy, that became a walk.

Well, Dumery told himself, he'd catch up eventually. The man would have to stop and rest sometime.

Stopping to rest sounded like an absolutely wonderful idea, but he knew he didn't dare do that.

But maybe just aminute wouldn't hurt.

But he didn't dare lose sight of Kensher!

He trudged on, and on, out of the village, out of sight of the village, past the farms that lined the river, up into the hills and forests where the road narrowed to a trail, and when at last, despite the best his tired legs could do, hedid lose sight of Kensher, he collapsed in a heap by the side of the road. Promising himself he would only rest for a moment, the better to run on and catch up to the dragon-hunter, he immediately fell asleep.

When he awoke, he sat up and looked around, puzzled.

Wherewas he, anyway?

He was sitting in a pile of dead leaves in the midst of a forest, beside a trail that seemed to wander aimlessly through the trees. The ground was uneven; it sloped in various directions. The air seemed unseasonably cool. The sun was sending slanting light down through the leaves, leaves that spattered the ground with shadow, and Dumery, upon consideration, decided that the sun must be in the west.

That gave him a sense of direction. The road ran east and west; to the east it sloped up and over the crest of a hill, while to the west it sloped gently downward and, by the look of it, into a valley.

Dumery's mind gradually cleared, and he remembered the little village by the river, the desperate chase after Kensher Kinner's son, through the village and into the forest and all along that valley and on up here, to where the road had wound up and over the hill and out of sight and he, Dumery, had finally collapsed.

There was no sign of Kensher, of course.

Frustration and lingering fatigue caught up with him, and Dumery burst out crying.

When that was over, he stood up, brushed himself off as best he could, and thought about what he should do.

Back down the valley lay the village and the river, and somewhere downstream-a hundred leagues? More?-lay Azrad's Bridge, and the road back to Ethshar and home.

Up the slope lay-what?

Kensher's home camp might be just across the hill; why not? After all, this was a Sardironese forest; wouldn't there be dragons around?

That was a disturbing thought, and Dumery immediately reconsidered.

No, there wouldn't be. He was still too close to the river, the village, and civilization in general.

All the same, he owed it to himself to go on. Surely, it couldn't be much farther! And to come all this way and then give up-that would be ridiculous.

His brothers would never let him live it down.

At the very least he should take a look over the summit, he told himself.

He wiped his eyes, looked around, and, seeing nothing dangerous, he marched on, up the hill.

At the crest he stopped and looked. There was the road, winding down the other slope-to a fork. Dumery stared at it in dismay.

Which way had Kensher gone? Which fork had he taken? Was there any way to tell?

These questions got Dumery thinking, and he realized that he didn't know whether Kensher was still on the road at all. The man was a dragon-hunter, and therefore he was surely an expert woodsman and dweller in wilderness. He wouldn't need roads. He might have gone off the road anywhere.

Dumery would probablynever find him, then.

But if one dragon-hunter worked in this area, maybe others did, as well. At the next village he came to he could ask, or if he found no villages, then a house or even a camp-somebodylived out here, or there wouldn't be a road, let alone a fork. The locals would know about dragon-hunters in the area.

He didn't need to apprentice himself specifically to Kensher;any dragon-hunter would do, really.

And he might yet catch up to Kensher. If hehad stayed on the road, maybe there would be some way to tell which fork he had taken. The ground around the fork in the road looked soft; there might be footprints, and Dumery hadn't seen any sign of anyone else on the trail.

He made his way down to the fork, where the earth was, to Dumery's delight, damp. Then he knelt down and studied the ground.

The left fork, which led eastward, showed fresh footprints in the soft, moist earth; the right fork, which veered off to the south, did not.

Dumery took the left fork and marched on, over the next hill.

And the next hill.

And the next.

And there, at last, he came across a house.

It was a rather peculiar house, by Dumery's standards, being built entirely of heavy, tarred timbers, with no plaster, no stonework, no fancywork of any kind. The hinges on doors and shutters were simple iron straps. It was set back from the road, among the trees; behind it Dumery could see a few small outbuildings built of grey, weathered planks, and a gigantic woodpile. There were no signs of life.

Still, it was a house, and Dumery was delighted to see it. He quickened his pace-not to a run, he couldn't manage that, but to a brisk walk-and hurried up to the door.

He knocked, and waited.

No one answered, and he knocked again.

"Setsh tukul?"a voice called from inside-a woman's voice.

"Hello!" Dumery called. "Is anyone home?"

The door opened, and a woman looked out-not an old woman, by any means, but one past the full flower of her youth. Her hair was light brown, with no trace of gray, and her skin was still smooth, but there were lines at the corners of her eyes and a certain hardness to her face. She wore a plain brown skirt and a tan tunic, and held a heavy iron fireplace poker.

"Kha bakul t'dnai shin?"the woman demanded.

"Do you speak Ethsharitic?" Dumery asked.

Her eyes narrowed."Ethsharit?" she said."Ie den norakh Ethsharit. Ha d'noresh Sardironis?"

Dumery could make nothing of that, but he correctly concluded that in fact the woman didnot speak Ethsharitic.

Surely, though, she might know a few words.

"Dragon hunters?" Dumery asked. "I'm looking for dragon hunters."

She glared at him."Ie den norakh Ethsharit," she said."D'gash, d'gash!" She gestured for him to leave.

"Dragon hunters!" Dumery repeated. "Please!"

"D'gash!"She pointed angrily at the road.

Desperately, Dumery tried, "Kensher Kinner's son?"

She paused, peered down at him. "Kensher?" she asked. "Kensherfin Kinnerl?"

Dumery nodded, hoping that she meant the man he was looking for, and that he hadn't accidentally spoken some inappropriate Sardironese phrase.

She shook her head."Da khor," she said."Pa-khorú." She pointed down the road in the direction Dumery had been traveling.

Dumery had no idea what the words meant, but the gesture was clear. "That way?" he said. "Thank you, lady! Thank you!" He bowed, and backed away.

She stood and watched until he was back on the highway and heading east again.

Then she stepped inside and slammed the door.

Dumery trudged onward, wondering how far back into these wild hills Kensher was going to go.

Surely, if the woman knew the name, Kensher's home couldn't betoo much farther.

Dumery passed five more houses before night fell, and knocked at each one; three were apparently unoccupied, but at the other two a scene similar to his first attempt was repeated-Dumery would ask questions in Ethsharitic, and receive uncomprehending and incomprehensible replies in Sardironese. At one house even the name Kensher evoked no response, and he gave up and went on; at the other, the name elicited immediate recognition and careful directions, using gestures. Dumery took a moment to grasp that when the man there held out his first two fingers, spread wide apart, while pointing with his other hand, that it represented a fork in the road ahead.

Once he had that, though, the crossed index fingers for a crossroads seemed obvious, and running another finger along to show which fork to take, or drawing an imaginary left turn in the air, was clear enough.

The man gave Dumery a list of four forks and two crossroads, which Dumery carefully memorized.

Surely, he thought, it wouldn't be long now! He marched on almost merrily, and even whistled for a moment or two.

He stopped, however, because it made him notice the cold more when he blew all that air out. The weather had very definitely turned colder-or perhaps it was because he was far to the north, and spring came later here.

Cold or not, though, he expected to find Kensher's home shortly.

By sunset he hadn't even reached the first fork.

Not long after he stopped at a marker stone, bearing an inscription he couldn't make out in the failing light, and decided that he needed to rest. He couldn't go on in the dark; he might wander off the road or get himself eaten by wolves. Besides, he was exhausted.

He was hungry, too, but there was nothing he could do about that.

He would go on in the morning, he decided.

He spent the night curled up by the road, shivering with the cold and listening to his stomach growl. In the stories he'd heard when he was younger the heroes had wandered about in forests for years, living off nuts and berries and roots, picking fruit from the trees-but he could see no nuts or berries or fruit and the roots were mostly well-hidden, while those that weren't looked quite surprisingly unappetizing.

Water was no problem; there were streams and pools all through the hills, especially along the valleys between ridges. It was often dirty, stagnant and foul-tasting, but it was water.

Food, though, he could not find.

He had chewed a few stalks of grass as he walked, but that was not really satisfying. He had eaten reasonably well on the barge, but he hadn't eatenat all since coming ashore, except for the grass, and he was beginning to wonder how long it took to starve to death.

Some of the houses he had passed had had gardens, and he wondered if he might do well to backtrack until he found one and pick a few things, but it was too early in the year for much of anything to be ripe yet, and he didn't like the idea of stealing.

Besides, it was getting dark very rapidly, and he was afraid he'd lose the trail if he tried to go anywhere.

When he awoke the sun was already high up the eastern sky; his discomfort had kept him awake well after he should have slept, but once asleep his exhaustion had taken over. He rose quickly and started on toward the east once again, but almost immediately began to think about turning back and searching for food, maybe going back to the house where he had gotten directions and begging. That man had seemed kind; surely, he would feed a hungry stranger!

This idea grew steadily more appealing for almost half an hour. Then he topped the next ridge and reconsidered.

Ahead of him, at a fork in the road that was surely the first of the four he had been told about, stood an inn.

It had to be an inn. It was much larger than any of the houses he had seen out here in the wilderness, with a large, cleared yard, and a stable attached at one end. The main building was all wood, but decorated with carvings and paint in a way that none of the houses had been. A large herb and vegetable garden spread across the hillside to the rear, with a wellhouse at one back corner and what appeared to be the roof of an icehouse at the other. A signboard hung over the door.

If he had only gone on a little farther in the darkness-but that didn't matter now. Dumery staggered happily down the slope; surely, his six bits would buysomething edible here!

When he got closer he saw that the signboard showed a pine tree splitting in half from the top down, with a jagged yellow line in the center of the split that extended up to the top of the wooden panel-lightning, Dumery guessed.

That hardly seemed like a favorable omen, but Dumery didn't really believe in omens in everyday life.

The front door was open, and Dumery tottered in without hesitation. He found a chair and fell into it, and hauled his few pitiful coins out of his purse.

"Ukhur ie t'yelakh?"

Dumery looked up at the serving maid who stood over him; he had been too busy with his money to notice her approach.

"Do you speak Ethsharitic?" he asked, depressingly certain that she would not.

"Ethsharit?"she asked."D'losh. Shenda!" This last word was shouted in the direction of the kitchens.

Another, older serving maid appeared in reply."Uhu?" she asked.

"Da burei gorn Ethsharit."With that, the younger woman turned and headed for the kitchen, while the older one emerged to take her place.

"Yes, sir?" the new arrival asked.

"You speak Ethsharitic?" Dumery asked, amazed and pleased.

"Yes, sir. What would you like?" Although she spoke politely, Dumery saw her looking askance at the rags he wore.

"I haven't eaten in two days," Dumery said. "This is all the money I have left. May I have something to eat? Anything?"

She looked at the coins and considered. "I think we can manage something," she said. Dumery noticed she had only a very slight Sardironese accent.

She turned and headed for the kitchen, and Dumery sat, waiting nervously.

She emerged a few moments later with a platter and set it before him.

He stared, mouth watering.

There were soft brown rolls, and two green apples, and white-streaked orange cheese, and the remains of a chicken-the legs were gone, and the breast meat stripped away, but one wing was still there, and Dumery could see a fair bit of meat still on the bones.

"Left-overs from breakfast," the serving maid explained. "Four bits."

Hand shaking with anticipation, Dumery pushed over four of his six coins and began eating. The thought of haggling didn't even occur to him.

The rolls were still good, only slightly stale, but the apples weren't anywhere near ripe, the white streaks on the cheese were an unpleasant mold, and the chicken was cold and greasy.

All the same, to Dumery it was all ineffably delicious. When he was done nothing remained on the platter but chicken bones and the stems and seeds of the apples.

He sat back, hands on his stomach, enjoying the sensation of repletion.

The serving maid reappeared at his side.

"Are you a warlock?" she asked. "You look so young!"

"No, I'm not a warlock," Dumery replied, mystified. He stared up at her for a moment, then asked, "Should I be?"

"Oh," she said. "Oh, well, most of the people who come here who have forgotten to eat for long periods are warlocks."

"I didn'tforget," Dumery said, flabberghasted by the very concept of forgetting to eat, "I just didn't have any food!" He continued to stare up at her.

She stared back. Dumery grew uncomfortable.

"Why would ... I mean, do a lot of warlocks come here?" he asked. He couldn't see any reason they would; while the inn was pleasant enough, he saw nothing magical about it.

"Sometimes," she replied.

"Why?" Dumery asked, puzzled.

She shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "They don't talk much. They're always headed southeast, down the main highway. Usually they fly."

This news did not set very well with Dumery. "Southeast, down the main highway" described his own intended route. The idea of encountering several warlocks along the way wasn't appealing. If he couldn't be a magician himself, he preferred not to deal with them at all until he could somehow hold his own.

"Just warlocks?" he asked. "What about wizards, or sorcerers?"

"No, just warlocks," the woman said. "I've never even met a sorcerer, and it's been years since a wizard's stopped here." She paused, then added, "I met a demonologist once when I was a little girl, but that wasn't anywhere near here."

"Oh," Dumery said. He thought for a moment.

He couldn't think of any reason that warlocks would want to travel the area, but then, he didn't know much about warlockry.

It didn't really concern him, he decided.

He would want to stay out of the way of any warlocks he encountered, of course-not just now, but always. Warlocks had a nasty reputation. Being a dragon-hunter and demanding piles of gold for dragon's blood would give him a way to get back at wizards, but warlocks used no potions or spells; even a dragon-hunter wouldn't impress them.

But on the other hand, they would have no reason to bother him. He was harmless enough, and his business wouldn't interfere with theirs.

And now that he thought about his business, he had another question for the serving maid.

"Um..." Dumery said, "I'm looking for an apprenticeship to a dragon-hunter.

Would you know of any around here who might be interested?"

The woman blinked, and thought for a moment.

"I don't think I do," she said. "Of course, there aren't very many dragons right around here; they're mostly to the east, up in the mountains. Or north.

Or south. There are certainly dragon-hunters in Aldagmor, but I don't know where."

"Where's Aldagmor?" Dumery asked.

She stared."Here, of course!"

"I thought this was Sardiron," Dumery said, puzzled.

"It is."

"But you said..."

"The gods help you, boy, Aldagmor ispart of Sardiron! Or at least, it's part of the Baronies of Sardiron."

"Oh," said Dumery. "It's one of the Baronies?"

"The largest of them," the woman replied.

"How many are there?" Dumery asked. "I mean, there are three Ethshars, and everyone knows that because it's called the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, but how many baronies are there?"

"I have no idea," she replied. "I think it varies-barons can divide their lands up between heirs, and sometimes a marriage will merge two of them. Right now, well, there's Sardiron of the Waters, of course, where the Council meets, and there's Tazmor, which is east of the mountains and the richest of them all, and Srigmor, in the north, except much of it's abandoned, and The Passes, where the highways cross the mountains into Tazmor, and then there are all the Lesser Baronies along the river, Hakhai and Tselmin and Takranna and the rest

...I don't know."

"Oh," Dumery said again.

"We're in the North Riding of Aldagmor here," she volunteered, after a moment of awkward silence. "Though I think it's actually more to the west than to the north of the others. You crossed the boundary about a mile back, if you came up the highway from the river-didn't you see the marker stone?"

Dumery remembered where he had slept the night before. "I didn't read it," he admitted.

This was all very interesting, he thought, but they were getting further and further from what he really wanted to know.

"So you don't know where I can find a dragon-hunter who needs an apprentice?"

he asked.

"No," she said, "I'm afraid not."

Dumery sighed, then asked his next question. "Do you know a man named Kensher Kinner's son?"

She stared at him. "Why, yes," she said. "He stayed here last night."

"Hedid?" Dumery yelped.

"Yes, he did," she confirmed. "He comes by about four times a year, and he has for as long as I can remember. Everyone along the road knows him; he always has a good word for everyone he sees. You're not from around here, though; do you know him?"

"Sort of," Dumery said, while cursing himself for not pressing on the night before. He had been so close!

"Well, he just left, oh, half an hour before you got here, at most. Maybe if you hurry, you can catch him on the road."

"Maybe," Dumery said, looking at the platter of chicken bones and wishing he'd stuffed the food in his pocket to eat on the road instead of wasting time at the inn. "I'd better get going." He rose, put his last two bits in his purse, and headed for the door.

"Good luck!" the maid called after him as he rushed out. He didn't take time to answer,

A moment later, though, Dumery's head re-appeared in the doorway. "Which road did he take?" he called.

The servant pointed. "That one," she said, indicating the right fork.

That was in agreement with the gestured directions Dumery had gotten the night before. The boy nodded, turned, and ran.

Chapter Nineteen

Teneria turned and studied the bank again. "Do you think we're getting close?"

she asked.

"Don't know," the spriggan said. "Don't care. Like you better."

"To Sardiron of the Waters, or to the barge?" the boat's owner asked.

"The barge," Teneria replied.

"I doubt it," the boatman said. "Those cattle barges are usually sylph-propelled; they can really move along."

Teneria glanced at him, worried. "They can?"

"Oh, yes. I told you when I picked you up that we weren't likely to catch him this side of Sardiron-the city, not the country, we'rein the Baronies. But it's still a good long way to the city, and we probably won't catch up, not unless you use magic."

"AndI toldyou that I don'thave any magic that can move a boat any faster than you can row it or pole it."

The boatman shrugged. "Well, then," he said, "I'd say you aren't going to catch this fellow, not so long as he's on that barge."

"I wonder," Teneria said, "if heis still on the barge." An odd uneasiness touched her as she thought about it, and she had learned early in her apprenticeship to pay attention to such things.

She stared at the spriggan for a moment, soaking in its memories of Dumery-such as they were; spriggans, she had discovered, weren't much on remembering things. Then she turned to the bank, raised her spread fingers to her forehead, closed her eyes, and worked a locating spell Sella had taught her years ago, using the spriggan as her familiar.

Her eyes flew open.

"He's there!" she shouted. "He went ashore at the inn! Take us back, to that inn we just passed, quickly!" She pointed desperately, jabbing at the air in her excitement.

How perverse of the boy, she thought, to go ashore without warning, instead of continuing on to Sardiron of the Waters as he had said he would! Teneria was beginning to dislike Dumery without ever having met him.

"What?" The boatman stared at her as if she had gone mad, but already he was backing water with one oar. "How do you know?"

"I just know," Teneria said.

"Magic? Is it magic? You're a wizard?" His voice was both eager and apprehensive.

"I'm a witch," Teneria corrected him. Then she corrected herself. "An apprentice, anyway. If I find the boy I'll make journeyman."

"But you said you didn't have any magic..."

"I said I didn't have any magic that could move the boat faster than you can.

I don't. Witchcraft doesn't work that way."

"But you say you know ... I mean, if you can do one kind of magic..."

Teneria decided to just ignore the boatman's questions, and after a moment they trailed away into silence as he concentrated on bringing the boat safely up to the dock.

Teneria fished in her purse and found the silver bits she had promised. She handed them over, tossed the spriggan gently up onto the dock, then climbed up after it.

"Thank you," she called back.

The boatman just nodded as he pushed off. "Crazy witch," he muttered a moment later, clearly unaware that witches were known for their remarkable hearing.

Teneria heard the remark, but paid no attention. She was scanning the area, looking for psychic traces.

There, behind that bush-someone had crouched there for at least an hour, probably much more, yesterday morning. It was a boy, about twelve.

It was Dumery. No doubt at all, it was Dumery. She had found his trail.

From here, it would be easy. The traces weren't as fresh as they might be, but there were no crowds, no conflicting signals, up here in the wilds of Sardiron. The traces were there; all she had to do was follow them.

How difficult could it be?

With a smile on her lips and the spriggan perched unsteadily on her shoulder, she marched up the trail into the forest.

By nightfall it had begun to sink in that Dumery still had a good, solid lead on her, and she wasn't gaining much on him. Oh, she was gaining, but only very slowly; she estimated the traces to be only a day or so old, where she had started a good two days behind.

But she still had a lot of catching up to do.

She passed the spot where Dumery had slept, curled up beside the path, and noted it, even in the darkness. She wasn't about to stop there herself; this was her chance to gain a little ground.

Besides, there was an inn ahead, she could sense it, no more than a mile away.

She forged on, finding her way by moonlight and witch-sight. The spriggan, half asleep, tottered and almost fell from her shoulder; she put a hand up to steady it.

Her legs dragged with weariness, but she kept moving.

After a time she paused to catch her breath. The inn was just over the ridge, she knew that; she was almost there.

Then the night was torn open by a blaze of orange light from above, light that spilled in sharp-edged blades through the dark trees, turning the forest into a jagged maze of bright color and black shadow. She heard the sound of a man's scream, thin with distance, and she looked up, seeking the source of the light.

A man was hanging unsupported in the night sky, perhaps a hundred yards up and two hundred yards to the north, and the light came from his body, burning like a miniature sun.

He was screaming, and appeared to be struggling with the empty air, as if something were pulling at him, dragging him somewhere he didn't want to go.

Then his head jerked, the light went out, the screaming stopped, and he fell.

Teneria stood frozen in astonishment for a moment, listening to the sound of branches snapping beneath the fallen magician's weight-for anyone who flew about glowing like that was clearly a magician.

Then she heard the dull thud of the body hitting the ground, and she came to her senses.

The spriggan, wide awake now, whimpered. She petted it once, quickly, then turned her attention back to the fallen man.

Witchlight was tiring, and she was already very tired indeed, but she managed a small, pale glow from one palm, enough to find an old tree limb; setting it afire at one end also used up more energy than she could really afford, but was not as taxing as maintaining a witchlight would have been.

Once the wood was burning steadily she picked it up and began to pick her way through the forest underbrush by the light of this impromptu torch.

At first she almost walked right past the man because she was expecting to see an orange cloak. Without the magical glow, though, his cloak was black, and she took it for a shadow until the torch's illumination failed to dispel it.

He was lying face-down atop a pile of dead leaves and broken branches, and she was unsure whether he was alive or dead until she heard his breath rustling the leaves. She stooped and pushed at his shoulder, as the spriggan clung precariously.

There was no response; he was at least dazed, more likely unconscious.

In fact, hewas unconscious, she realized; had she not been so weary she would have seen it immediately. His aura was dim but steady, and she could not sense any thought at all.

He was hurt, as well; she worked a quick diagnostic spell and discovered that the fall had broken two of his ribs and cracked the bone in his left wrist.

It was a very good thing, she thought, that he was unconscious, because if she had looked as a witch upon anyone that badly injured while the person was awake,both of them would probably have passed out from the pain. This man was seriously damaged.

He needed attention, and slow healing, and she was in no condition to provide it here in the middle of the forest, alone in the dark.

Just a quarter of a mile away, however, was an inn. The fallen man was tall and broad, but he had clearly not eaten well lately, and his skin was stretched tight on his bones, with little muscle left-she could move him.

Carrying him a quarter-mile, though, through the woods in the dark, without even the trail for much of the way...

Well, did she really have any choice? She couldn'tleave him here!

She plucked the spriggan from her shoulder and placed it gently on the ground; the little creature started to protest, but she hushed it. Then she bent down and picked the unconscious magician up, using a levitation spell to help when her grip was not strong enough or the man's body started to flop in the wrong direction, and got him hoisted up across her shoulders.

She got a look at his face as she lifted him; he was in his thirties, she judged, but his features were lined and troubled, even in his unconscious state.

When he was secure, she started walking-or rather, staggering-toward the inn, the spriggan following in her footsteps, making unhappy little worried noises.

As she walked, she used little pushes of witchcraft to steady her, and a lifting spell whenever her burden started to shift or slide, but she fought the temptation to just levitate him entirely. That was too risky. She could kill herself that way-or so Sella had always warned her.

"Levitation drains just as much from you as lifting with your hands and legs,"

Sella had insisted. "It's just that when you use your muscles, they'll protest when they're overworked, they'll tell you when you're tired, when you're doing too much. They'll ache and twinge and not hold. It's your body's natural warning system. But witchcraft isn't natural, and your body isn't made for it-thereare no warnings. In trance, you can keep up a spell until your body has no life left in it at all, hasn't got the energy remaining to keep your heart pumping. A witch can keel over and die, just like that, if she tries to do too much."

Teneria had taken Sella's word for it; she had seen how she could feel fine and alert during a spell, and exhausted the moment she released her concentration, and had never cared to test the theory any further.

But now, after a long and strenuous day, instead of eating her supper and getting a good night's rest she had worked a whole series of little spells, and in addition she was carrying a weight of at least a hundred and fifty pounds. She could hardly have much of an energy reserve left; if she tried any more spells shemight keel over and die.

She stumbled at the very thought, and almost went headlong, catching herself at the last instant.

When she saw the lights of the inn through the trees she let out her breath in a great sigh of relief-but she wasn't there yet, and she didn't have the energy to shout. She staggered on.

After what seemed like days she dropped her torch, lowered the inert man to the ground, fell heavily against the door of the inn, and managed a weak pounding with one fist.

Someone answered her knock, and she actually got herself inside and into a chair before, amid mutters and exclamations in Sardironese, she passed out.

Chapter Twenty

Teneria came to with a spluttering; someone was holding a glass ofoushka to her mouth, and she felt as if the fiery liquor were burning her lips, its fumes scouring out her nose.

She sneezed, and went into a fit of coughing, then gasped for breath, and when she was finally able to pay attention to something other than her own distress she realized that a woman was talking to her, in a language that she was not quite able to make out-probably Sardironese.

"What?" she said, in Ethsharitic. She didn't have the energy to use an interpretive spell.

"She was asking," another woman's voice said, in Ethsharitic, "whether you are a warlock."

"No," Teneria said, puzzled. "I'm a witch." She wondered why anyone would ask such a question. It seemed an odd thing to ask, under the circumstances. She blinked at the two women, both wearing aprons over simple dresses, who were looking worriedly at one another and muttering in Sardironese.

The one who spoke Ethsharitic turned back to Teneria and asked, "Then the man you brought-ishe a warlock?"

"I don't know," Teneria answered. "He might be."

"Where did you find him?"

"He fell out of the sky near me, in the forest. He was screaming, and glowing orange." She remembered something else, and added, "He has two broken ribs and a cracked wrist; handle him carefully!"

The women looked at one another.

"Listen," the one who spoke Ethsharitic said, "heis a warlock, from what you describe. We have seen this before. We will handle himvery carefully-but we will not let him under this roof. He must stay outside."

Teneria's head was swimming with fatigue, and she had very little idea of what was going on, but she asked, baffled, "Why?"

"Because he is a warlock."

The Sardironese women seemed to think this was a completely adequate explanation, and Teneria was too tired to argue. She let her head fall back against the back of the tall chair she sat in.

Her stomach growled.

The two women glanced at each other, and one studied the purse on Teneria's belt for a moment. It looked reasonably plump.

"Would you like some food?" the older woman asked.

Teneria managed a nod.

A moment later a thick slab of fresh bread, smeared with yellow butter, was in her hand; a moment after that it was in her mouth.

And not long after that she began to feel considerably better. All she had needed was food and rest, to replenish her depleted reserves; she knew that, and had known it all along-or would have if she had had the energy to think about it. She sat up straighter and looked around.

The two women were going about the inn's business; there were half a dozen customers-rather unsavory-looking, all of them, Teneria thought-and a fire, so there were trays and mugs to be carried, logs to be shifted and ashes to be poked. The young witch watched for a few minutes, but when one of the serving-women glanced her way she caught her eye, and gestured.

The woman put down the poker she had been wielding and came over to where Teneria sat.

This was the older of the two, the one who spoke Ethsharitic. "Can I help you?" she asked.

Teneria had any number of questions she wanted to ask, but before she could think of any of them she heard herself saying, "More food, please. Meat, and fruit, and wine. I can pay."

"Yes, lady."

While the servant was fetching food, Teneria considered, and decided questions could wait until after she had eaten.

It was half an hour later and the other customers had all drifted away when Teneria asked the older serving woman, whose name she had learned was Shenda,

"Why won't you let warlocks inside?"

"We will sometimes," Shenda replied. "It depends on the circumstances. But they seem to be prone to a sort of madness, and when we have any doubts about whether the madness is upon them, we keep them out. If we don't, they're likely to damage the place."

"Damage it?" Teneria looked about. The inn did not appear damaged.

Shenda nodded. "The madness," she said, "it ... well, there's a compulsion involved, a geas or something. They all want to gothat way." She pointed to the southeast. "And they don't care what's in the way. And with their magic, if the madness is on them, they can go right through the wall, or the roof-or if they aren'tthat far gone, they may still smash furniture and set fires on the way out." She made an uncomfortable little gesture. "That one you brought-from your description, flying and glowing, the madness was probably very strong in him. He may have been fighting it-that would be why he fell.

But when he wakes up, he may not be ready, and the madness may carry him away." She grimaced. "The south wall has been rebuilt twice in the past twenty years; I don't want to make it three times. And the roof went once."

"They go ... warlocks go rightthrough the wall?" Teneria stared at the plastered stone and timber in disbelief.

Shenda shrugged. "Magic. You're a witch, you said?"

Teneria nodded.

"Couldn't a witch's magic take you through a wall like that?" Shenda asked.

"I don't know," Teneria admitted. "I suppose I could-yes, I think I could break through a wall. But it might kill me, and I certainly wouldn't be going anywhere right afterward."

Shenda had no answer to that.

"Different magicks," Teneria said with a shrug. "There's no connection between witchcraft and warlockry. We have no madness that comes on us." Her eyes narrowed. "In fact, I hadn't heard that warlocks did, either. I wonder about wizards, and sorcerers, and the others?"

Shenda shook her head. "Not around here, anyway. We never see anyone but warlocks. But there are a lot of warlocks around here. I've heard that they're more common in Aldagmor than anywhere else, that it's easier to become one here than elsewhere."

"I wouldn't know," Teneria said.

She was considering what to say next when the screaming started outside.

She leapt to her feet without thinking, and was surprised to find Shenda grabbing her arm, trying to hold her back.

"I've got to go," she said, trying to shake the older woman off.

"No, you don't," Shenda said. "It's dangerous."

"Maybe I can help," Teneria insisted. "I'm a witch, I can heal and calm."

Shenda hesitated, but did not let go; Teneria used a subtle spell, loosening the other's finger muscles and making her own sleeve smoother and more slippery, and pulled free. She hurried to the door.

It slammed open before she could reach it, and brilliant golden light poured in, blinding her momentarily. Artificially speeding the contraction of her pupils, Teneria shaded her eyes and peered out.

The warlock was hanging in the air above the crossroads, eight or nine feet up, spinning like a top and shrieking in agony, light pouring from him as if he were a living flame or a piece of the sun itself. A whirlwind surrounded him, carrying twigs and rotting leaves in circles about him; it was the wind that had flung open the door. The inn's signboard was flapping wildly.

As Teneria watched, the warlock began to drift southward.

Wanting to help, or at least to understand, Teneria reached out with her witchcraft and touched his mind, as delicately as she could, and found a roiling mass of terror and confusion. Something was compelling him, something irresistible that whispered obscenely and unintelligibly directly into his mind; it was dragging him south, pulling at him, and he was fighting against it, hopelessly.

Part of him didn't evenwant to resist, and that part was growing stronger-and he knew it.

That was why he was screaming. It wasn't pain; it was terror and despair.

Teneria stepped forward and reached up with her own thoughts, calming him, pushing his fear back, trying to block off that overpowering lure, whatever it was.

It wasn't easy. In fact, it wasn't possible to close it off completely.

She was able to muffle it slightly, though, and the warlock's own resistance strengthened. His spinning slowed, and he began to look down.

He spotted her, his eyes locked with hers, and then his head snapped away as he continued to rotate.

His gaze met hers again on the next rotation, though, and held for half a second.

His spin slowed further, and three turns later he had stopped.

He sank slowly to the ground, staring fixedly at her, trying to think of nothing else, trying not to think of thething that had been calling him, had been drawing him to it. He tried to think only of this mysterious girl who was somehow helping him fight back. Teneria sensed all this through her telepathic spells, though communication was made difficult by the fact that the warlock was doing all his thinking in his native Sardironese.

She could get the basics, though, and in fact was absorbing the language quickly.

As the warlock's attention became unfocused from his internal conflicts, he became aware of the pain from his ribs and his wrist. Without really thinking about it he repaired the damage to the bones, reshaping the material with his magic as easily and casually as a potter works clay.

Teneria gasped, and her hold on the compulsion slipped for an instant; terror swept across the warlock's face and through his mind, but then she recovered herself.

She had not known that warlocks could heal, and certainly not that they could do so nearly instantaneously. The bone-knitting he had done in seconds would have taken her three or four hours of careful concentration.

The warlock was as surprised at the situation as she was, but for an entirely different reason.

"I didn't think the Calling could be fought," he said, in Sardironese. "My master never taught me that. How do you do it?"

Teneria struggled with the unfamiliar words for a moment, then replied in the same language, "Witchcraft." She concentrated for a moment, trying to find the right words in the unfamiliar tongue, and then asked, "How did you heal your wrist?"

He glanced down at his hand, startled. "Warlockry," he said. He looked up again. "Aren't you a warlock?"

"No," Teneria said. "I'm a witch."

The two of them stared at each other for a long moment.

"I'm afraid I don't know very much about warlocks," Teneria said at last.

"And I don't know much about witches," the warlock replied. "I don't think any warlock does. We keep to ourselves, and avoid the other magicians-ever since the Night of Madness, I'm told."

Teneria cocked her head to one side. "I'd heard that," she said. "I wonder whether it might be a mistake, this avoidance?"

"If you can help us fight the Calling," the warlock said, "then I think itis a mistake."

Teneria nodded. "And if you can heal like that, I'd say we have a lot to talk about."

The warlock nodded. "I think you're right," he said. He looked around.

He was standing at the crossroads, Teneria on the threshold of the inn; behind her, Shenda and the other serving woman were watching cautiously.

"May I come inside to talk?" the warlock asked.

"No!" Shenda shouted, immediately.

Startled, the warlock started to say something, but Teneria held up a hand.

"I'll come out," she said. "These people have had bad experiences with warlocks."

The other serving woman called, "There are benches in the garden, out back."

"Thank you," Teneria replied. She looked around for the spriggan, but didn't see it anywhere-the noise must have frightened it away, she decided.

That was just as well. She held a hand out to the warlock. "Shall we head for the garden, then?"

The warlock nodded, and his tortured face managed a weak smile as he took her hand in his.

Chapter Twenty-One

The first crossroads had almost fooled him; one branch was so small, nothing more than a trail, really, that at first Dumery thought there were only three roads at the intersection.

The man had been quite definite about the order, though-fork, fork, crossroads, crossroads, fork, fork.

There was an inn at the second crossroads, but Dumery didn't stop; it was hardly past midday.

He also ignored various markers along the way; they were all written in Sardironese, which used similar runes to Ethsharitic, but which Dumery could not otherwise read. He recognized the name "Aldagmor" on most of them, now that the tavern girl had alerted him to where he was, but the rest was just gibberish as far as he was concerned.

He passed houses, as well, but didn't stop to investigate any of them.

Since leaving the inn where he had breakfasted the road he followed had run more or less parallel to the ridges, rather than across them; that made traveling significantly easier.

The slopes were getting steeper, though-much steeper.

And the weather was growing steadily colder, which seemed almost unnatural. It was spring, after all-the weather was supposed to be warming up.

The hills undoubtedly had something to do with it, as well as the fact that he was well north of Ethshar.

At sunset he still hadn't found the last two forks, nor an inn. His generous breakfast was long past, and his gnawing hunger had returned. All the same, he had little choice but to curl up by the roadside and try to sleep.

He tried to think of somewhere, anywhere, that he could find food, but nothing came to mind. It had been hours since he had passed a house with a garden, and when he had he hadn't seen anything that was even close to ripe yet. He still hadn't found any of the nuts or berries that always seemed to be at hand in the stories, either.

Well, he had always thought most of those stories were lies. He lay there listening to his stomach growl.

Eventually, exhaustion overcame hunger.

He was awakened well before dawn by a thin, cold drizzle. He sat there, huddled and soaking, until there was enough light to see, and then began stumbling slowly onward, always watching carefully for even the faintest paths.

The rain had ended, the clouds had dispersed, and the sun was finally peering over the mountains when he passed a rather decrepit inn; he was tempted to stop, but remembering that his total fortune was down to a mere two bits, and that Kensher Kinner's son might be just a few steps ahead of him, he reluctantly forged onward.

He found the third fork around midday, and turned left, up into the mountains.

After that the journey got worse. The road ran up and down slopes steeper than Dumery had ever imagined climbing, and often wiggled so much on the way up or down that he felt as if he were constantly doubling back on himself. On occasion he found himself looking straight ahead at the tops of mature pine trees, trees rooted at the base of a cliff or drop-off, sixty or seventy feet down.

The mountains he had seen in the distance back by the river were no longer distant at all; in fact, he wasn't sure whether the hills around him were merely hills, or whether he was actually among the mountains now.

He certainly wasn't up among the highest peaks, which still towered to the east, but the slopes he was climbing were long and steep enough to qualify as mountains by most definitions. Small mountains, perhaps, but mountains.

He passed very few houses along this stretch, and those few were all set well back among the trees, doors closed and windows shuttered. He didn't inquire at any of them.

He might have tried robbing a garden or orchard if he had seen any, no matter how unripe the fruits might be, but he saw none.

His boots, which were soft-soled city boots that had lasted longer than he had really had any right to expect, finally began to give out around midafternoon-the shredded left sole pulled loose from the stitches that had held it, so that it hung down and flapped awkwardly with each step he took.

After tolerating this for the better part of a mile he gave up, took the boots off, and tucked them in his belt as best he could. Then he trudged on, barefoot.

The sun was behind the treetops in the west when he reached the fourth and final fork.

Another of the stone markers was set up at this fork, the first one he had seen in hours, but as it was entirely in Sardironese he couldn't make out any of what it said. He ignored it, and took the right fork.

The left fork was plainly the main trail-it could no longer honestly be called a road, even in comparison to the paths he had followed thus far. The right fork was little more than a trace.

It led almost directly up a mountainside-unquestionably a mountainside, this one, and not a hillside-and Dumery followed it as best he could, but he had not yet reached the peak when the fading sunlight made it impossible to proceed. He was certain he was nearing his goal, the lodge or cabin whence Kensher based his dragon hunts, but stumbling on in the dark would be too dangerous. He could fall over a cliff all too easily.

Reluctantly, he settled in for the night, curling up on a pile of fallen pine branches, all too aware that he hadn't eaten in almost two days. He could hardly hope for an inn up here in the wilderness, of course, and in fact he had seen no human habitations of any kind since a few miles before the final fork. His city-bred eyes had not spotted anything he knew to be edible and reasonably non-toxic anywhere along the way-no apples nor pears nor anything else he recognized as food. The few berries he had seen had been unfamiliar, unripe, and not very appetizing.

He would need to find food very soon. If he didn't catch up to Kensher by midday, or find some place he could beg a meal, he would have to turn back.

Even now, he wasn't entirely sure he could retrace his steps far enough to find food before he collapsed.

With that depressing thought, and the gnawing in his gut, it took him a long time to get to sleep.

When he awoke the sun was already high in the east. He stood, and stretched, and took a moment to orient himself, ignoring the pain in his stomach.

The path led upward, over a rocky outcropping and through a line of pine trees on a shoulder of the mountain; beyond that he couldn't see where it went, but at least it would have to be going down, rather than climbing any farther.

He stretched again, took a deep breath, and marched on.

He only took about fifteen minutes to top the shoulder and look down through the pines, and when he did he stopped dead in his tracks and stared.

The path led down from the rocky shoulder onto a broad, flat plateau, through a large herb-and-vegetable garden, between two small, well-tended flowerbeds, and up to the front door of a large, comfortable-looking farmhouse built of square-cut timbers, topped by a red tile roof. To the left of the house was a cliff, the edge of the plateau; to the right was a sizeable fenced-in pasture extending across the plateau and up the slope toward the mountain's peak, where a few dozen head of cattle were going about their bovine business.

Dumery didn't notice any of this until later; he was too busy staring at what laybehind the house.

There, in huge pens made out of massive black metal beams, were dozens of dragons, ranging from little ones not very much bigger than a housecat up to monsters perhaps twenty feet in length.

Dumery stared, flabberghasted.

One of the larger dragons, a green one, raised its head and looked at him, and Dumery swallowed.

The dragon roared, and was answered by a cacophony of shrieks and bellows from its companions.

Dumery blinked, and felt tears welling up, tears of exhaustion, frustration, and despair.

This was no hunting lodge, no trapper's cabin. Kensher Kinner's son was quite obviously not a dragon-hunter at all.

He was a dragon-farmer.

Dumery let out a sob.

This possibility had never occurred to him, never would have occurred to him.

A dragonfarm? It went against everything he had ever heard. All the stories were about wild, treacherous beasts living free in the forests and mountains.

Oh, there were people who had brought home dragon eggs, hatched them, and kept the dragons as pets until they reached an unmanageable size and had to be butchered-the Arena had had a dragon on display once when he was very young-but he had never dreamt of anything like this.

No wonder Kensher hadn't wanted an apprenticehunter!

Dumery wiped away tears with the back of his hand and tried to get himself under control. Crying wasn't going to do him any good, no good at all.

And besides, wouldn't a dragon farmer need apprentices? There were a lot of dragons in those pens; it must take several hands to do all the chores for an operation this size. There must be special skills involved in running it.

Farming was not an occupation that Dumery had ever taken an interest in; farmers, as he understood it, were generally people too poor or stupid or unambitious to find any better trade. Dragon-farming, though, dragon-farming would have to be different.

Dumery began to feel a little better. Dragon-farming might not be so bad.

And hunting or farming, if he had a supply of dragon's blood, it didn't matter how he got it; he could still lord it over Thetheran and the other wizards who had rejected him.

And most importantly of all, if he didn't get something to eat soon he would never make it back down out of these mountains, he'd die up here, of cold or hunger or something.

Still shocked, he forced himself to march onward, over the rocky shoulder and down toward the farmhouse.

Dumery was in worse shape than he realized; he had barely managed to knock on the door before his legs gave out, and he collapsed heavily on the doorstep.

His cheek was pressed against the cold stone of the threshold, one hand underneath, the other out to the side, his feet off some other direction, and he didn't care about any of it any more. He didn't want to move, and in fact he didn't think hecould move any more. His determination had finally run out.

He just lay there, dazed and unable to move, and even when the door swung open he didn't react. It took too much effort.

In fact, everything took too much effort. Even staying conscious took too much effort.

So he didn't.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The warlock's name was Adar Dagon's son, he told Teneria, and he had grown up a farmer's son in the Passes. On the Night of Madness, in 5202, as a boy of ten, he had woken up with screaming nightmares, and afterward he had found that he could move things without touching them, could sense what lay beneath the surfaces of things, could create heat and light from nothing-had, in short, become one of the original warlocks.

He had had no idea what to do, and had at first treated his new gifts as a toy.

At age twelve an older warlock had taken charge of him and seen to his training and upbringing. This older warlock, Gennar of Tazmor, had told him about the Calling, which had taken hundreds of people on the Night of Madness, and more since.

As Adar explained to Teneria, the Calling was something that came from the same source as a warlock's power. The more magic a warlock used, the more powerful he became-warlocks improved with practice, like anyone else, only more so-and the more powerful a warlock became, the stronger the Call was for him.

The Calling, and the warlocks' power, came from somewhere in southeastern Aldagmor, and when the Calling became too strong to resist warlocks were drawn to the Source, whatever and wherever it was.

Some people referred to the Source as the Warlock Stone, but Adar didn't know why; no one really knew what it was, because nobody who saw it ever came back.

Warlocks who were drawn to it, who gave in to the Calling, were never heard from again.

No onecame back. Even non-warlocks didn't come back. People who got too close to the Sourcebecame warlocks-and most were quickly overpowered by the Calling.

The closer to the Source a warlock got, the more powerful he became-and the stronger the Calling became for him.

Adar had known all this for years, and had taken precautions. He had been careful, or at least he thought he had. He had thought he still had a respectable margin of safety, at least in his native village.

Then he had ventured south from the Passes on an errand for a friend. He had known he shouldn't go south, of course, but it wasn't really that far, and Aldagmor and the Warlock Stone were a long way off, so he had thought it was safe. Oh, he expected a nightmare or two, perhaps, but nothing more than that.

But as he went about his business he felt something slip, and before he knew what was happening he had found himself flying off, destination unknown, out of control of his own mind and powers.

When he realized what was happening he tried to resist, he struggled, and although it had seemed hopeless, he had fought the Calling to a momentary standstill, there over the forest.

Then he had passed out from the strain, and when he had come to and resumed the struggle, there Teneria was, helping him.

And here he was beside her, astonished and relieved, even though he knew the reprieve might be only temporary.

Temporary or not, it was quite a surprise. "We didn't know witches could help," he said.

"Neither did we witches," Teneria replied, smiling. "I'm as surprised as you are."

He nodded, and then asked, jokingly, "If you didn't come just to save me, then what are you doing in Aldagmor?"

"Oh, I came to save somebody else entirely," Teneria said.

He raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

She told him about Dumery; he listened, but quickly lost interest.

Teneria, herself, was not really terribly concerned about the boy at this point. She realized that his trail was growing cold, and that she could be in serious trouble with her mistress if she lost him, but somehow she couldn't bring herself to worry too much about that when she had something as mysterious and important as the warlock's problem to worry about. Dumery surely knew where he was going; he couldn't have wandered this far into the wilds of Aldagmor just by chance. After all, if he had been seeking his fortune, with nothing in particular in mind, wouldn't he have gone to Sardiron of the Waters, rather than Aldagmor?

And thanks to the psychic traces she had been following, she knew he was traveling alone, so he wasn't being kidnapped. What she could sense of his state of mind didn't seem to indicate any particular distress; he was all right, at least so far, even if she didn't know what he was doing.

Whatever he was up to, it could wait. All this new information about warlockry and the Calling was much more intriguing. For one thing, the possibilities of an alliance between witches and warlocks were obvious to both Teneria and Adar.

The two schools of magic used roughly similar magical skills-the sensing from afar, the levitation, and the rest-but in radically different ways. Witches, with the limits imposed by the finite energy of their bodies, had devoted themselves to subtlety, to the crucial fine adjustment, the touch in the right spot. Warlocks, with seemingly-infinite power not just available, but pressing upon them andasking to be used, while at the same time they knew that to use too much power could mean the unknown doom of the Calling, had developed a different style-avoiding the actual use of magic much of the time, but then turning raw brute force onto the matter at hand when called for.

As an example, had Teneria healed Adar's wrist, she would have encouraged the bone to grow back together cell by cell and fiber by fiber. Adar had simply forced the pieces back together and fused them in a single operation. That would have exhausted a witch for hours, but was nothing at all for a warlock.

And another difference was that warlocks lacked the ability to sense, interpret, and manipulate the minds and emotions of others-the talent that was the very heart of witchcraft.

It was those skills at mental manipulation that had made it possible for Teneria to partially block the Calling, and that block was what let Adar resist it.

Teneria's account of her pursuit of Dumery was cut short when Adar asked impatiently, "So which way did this kid go?"

"South," Teneria answered, pointing.

She sensed the worm of fear that stirred in his mind as Adar asked, "Are you going to follow him?"

She hesitated, remembering that south was where the Source was, and then said,

"No. At least, not right away."

Adar sighed with relief.

"What, then?" he asked. "Whatare you going to do?"

Teneria blinked, and looked around at the night-shrouded garden. Torches burned at the rear door of the inn, and the greater moon was in the sky. For a moment she thought she might have seen the spriggan peeping around a rock, but then it was gone, and she was too busy with Adar's mind to probe for the little creature's.

"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.