“Someone like you should be thane, then. An elf is better than any man.”

“Oh, that racial rubbish. Have you been listening to the soldiery? There was a time when Hypatian citizenship was what counted, not the shape of your legs and angle of your shoulders.”

Wistala took a last mouthful of fried entrail. “So you’re content to let those blighters in Galahall rut about your granddaughter, and not see her again?”

“What’s that? Rut?”

“That tower. There were babies in it. Well, a baby.”

Her host’s face writhed. “How young? Perhaps he’s warded a child. . . .”

“I’m not sure. Still suckling at his youngish mother, anyway.”

Rainfall passed his hand through his hair, dropping a long, thin willowlike leaf or two. “He wouldn’t. Not wards of the thane! Oh, if only I’d been more provident with my gold plate, I could sell it or melt it.”

A thought struck Wistala. “The form of the wealth doesn’t matter?”

It took a moment for her words to register. “Well, the thane is entitled to assess the value of anything that isn’t Hypatian coin. What do you have in mind?”

“Another expedition.”

Chapter 15

A moon and a blustery week of storms later—five weeks as the hominids reckoned things—Rainfall and a group of local men and boys stood on one of the wall-crossed hills of Tumbledown, speaking with the local shepherds and farmers.

And Stog, incredibly.

Stog stood in this distant field with some other working beasts, all muddy, thin, and miserable.

The expedition had come to fruition easily enough. Wistala, after looking at a map and taking a trip to the nearest hilltop with a good view south of the bridge, decided that the same road Rainfall had in his charge cut through near Tumbledown—or Hesstur, as Rainfall insisted on calling it.

“One of the eight sister cities from the founding of Hypat,” Rainfall explained after Wistala described the three hills and wet ground in between. “It was burned in one of the barbarian wars.”

A good deal more history followed this, but without being able to see the battles and kings and generals and so on Rainfall spoke of, the names and dates left Wistala’s head almost as soon as they entered it. If only hominids could pass mind-pictures down!

Rainfall had no difficulty pulling together some men and their sons for the trip. The killing of the troll had given Rainfall something of a local reputation, Wistala guessed, and it even attracted one of the thanedom’s low priests. She seemed a sturdy woman, in her black robe and tassled hat, white hair at her temples making the rest of her black hair, cut so evenly at the bottom, it might be mistaken as a helmet, look darker.

Wistala had to watch it all from a distance. Her presence had to be kept hidden for her—and Rainfall’s—safety.

They made quite a procession. Thick-shouldered farmers and their thicker-shouldered horses, Jessup with a smart new leather work apron driving his cart loaded with feed for hominid and animal, the low priest with boys in tow, showing them strange roadside mushrooms, flowers, and berries. Rainfall walked at the head, wearing layers of heavy traveling clothes, leather-fringed sandals, a cloak, and even a short, slightly curved sword with a guard at the hilt.

She traveled ahead of the group on the overnight journey south, moving before dawn and after dusk and sleeping out the day while the others caught up. Now and then she met with Rainfall on the road a little ahead of the party. The journey was uneventful, save for some boys throwing dung-balls from cover as they passed through a muddy village. One clod hit Rainfall in the thigh.

“Wish I’d seen that,” Wistala said.

“Boys being boys. Their parents should soap their tongues until they learn civil expression, though,” Rainfall said. “ ‘Elvish maggot.’ Right in the heart of the village, too. An old woman bowed and apologized for the insult. Perhaps it was the star.”

Wistala had not seen the golden device before. It had eight short points around the edge and a blue jewel at the center. Some mark of his status as the bridge-keeper and road-warden, she guessed.

So, led by Rainfall’s star, they came to Tumbledown and saw the field with Stog.

The low priest—her name was Feeney—and Rainfall conducted the negotiations with the locals of Tumbledown. Then both sides withdrew, the newcomers to their tents with a purchased sheep, the shepherds and smallholders to their cottages and ricks and cots.

Rainfall wandered the woods until Wistala caught up to him. They sat together on an old wall dividing one part of identical forest from another.

“I let Mod Feeney do the talking. We will split whatever we find exactly in half with the locals. They claim that the ruins have been explored a dozen times a generation, and that they’ve been stripped to the last lumik.”

“Lumik?”

“A bit of art that throws off light when you rub it.”

“Then they’re doubly wrong. I’ll show you one when we enter. I saw Stog in with the other animals.”

“What other—? Oh, the farmers and so on?”

“Yes,” Wistala said. “I didn’t dare approach. There were horses, and I was afraid they’d scream their heads off.”

“You are certain? Many mules look alike.”

“Yes. Though he looked thin and dirty.”

“I’ll try to buy him back tomorrow.”

The stupid beast didn’t deserve Rainfall’s kindness. “I’ll see if I can talk to him during the day tomorrow,” Wistala said. “Assuming they don’t have him pulling loads of rocks or whatever work these humans do.”

“The night is wasting.”

Rainfall never seemed to need sleep, though his face was less animated at night than at other times.

They walked into Tumbledown. A dog barked in the distance, and they stood close to a wall, but they met no further challenge. Soon they were at the triple broken arches that marked the way down to the rats’ underground realm.

“I smell bats,” Rainfall said. “I should hate to get bitten—they carry sickness.”

Rainfall opened his satchel. He fiddled with a brass bowl that smelled of oil. Then he poured some powder that smelled faintly of rotten eggs into a rough stone channel, and drew a piece of wood all splintered at one end across it. The powder and the wood burst into flame. He touched it to the closed top of the bowl, and a flame glowed.

“All that effort for a bit of fire?” Wistala asked. “You should have just asked me.”

“I couldn’t impose on your great gift for something so mundane as a little light,” Rainfall said. “Doesn’t a wise dragon keep her fire bladder ready?”

“I don’t see a battle breaking out between your construction gang and the sheepherders. There’d be plenty left to torch some rats if they swarm.”

“Show me the way, my shining friend.”

“Fair warning: you’ll get dirty.”

She led him down. When they reached the passage that had the glow bulb, Wistala showed it to him.

“It is a lumik,” Rainfall said, rubbing it so it glowed. “This alone will pay for feasts all the way back to Mossbell, and buy Stog besides.” He pried it loose and worked it with a bit of cloth until it shone like a slice of moon brought underground.

The underground still smelled of bits of worms and rats. Rainfall just squeezed down the dug passage to the sewer. It was drier than Wistala remembered. Rats yeeked at them from the corners as they fled the light.

Had she really been here? Fought a channel-back? The sewers felt like some mind-picture from a distant ancestor.

Rainfall followed, scratching marks onto the walls here and there with a piece of soft stone that left white traces. “I don’t have your tunnel sense, my dear.”

She led him into the room where she and Yari-Tab had fought the rats and spoken to the old milk-eyed specimen. Rainfall didn’t mind the smell or the filth thick on his sandals. He spoke of false walls fallen away as his eyes wandered ever upward, to old writings and chipped drawings running the edge of the chamber’s ceiling. He stepped over to an old doorway, rusting hinges still projected out into a space where the wood had long since rotted away. He reached up and marked the lintel with an X.

“It’s down these stairs,” Wistala said, standing at the gap to a circular passage. Rat eyes glinted in the shadows.

“There’s a high crypt this way—No, I shan’t disturb any bodies.”

Wistala wouldn’t have cared if he wanted to juggle the skulls of kings. But Rainfall continued: “Sets of edicts can sometimes be found with a thane’s remains, or biographies. Both are fascinating reading.”

She caught a whiff of precious metals on the stairs. “I don’t dare go any farther.”

Rainfall’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. “Ho! Is there danger?”

“Only from me. A dragon’s heart can grow fierce at the sight of gold. The last time I came down these steps—it could have ended badly for my friend.”

He raised the crystal, and sharp shadows sprang up on the stairs. As he went down, the shadows retreated and advanced as though terrified of the light. His footsteps were so light, she could only just hear them.