“I’d rather Hypatia come to the mountain,” King Fangbreaker said. “But if we can find this boy, we’ll decide then. An odd sort of vision, Tala.” He scratched at his beard. “Hmfp! If it brings happiness to my people, I am satisfied. Let every one of our trading houses know to make inquiries about this boy. Say he is being ransomed through us, that none may learn his value before we acquire him. When it comes time to bring him here, I imagine I must let Lobok handle it, as the duty seems to have fallen on his doorstep along with the feather—though he is the nervous type.”

“I will take no more of your time, Lord,” Wistala said.

“And keep that out of my court,” Fangbreaker said, fixing his eye about Yellowteeth, who lurked behind Wistala.

Oddly enough, the blighter smiled back at the king as he gave a nodding bow. Wistala might even have called the expression defiant.

Chapter 26

Wistala flapped in the night sky above Galahall, a cold fall wind from the northwest helping keep her aloft as she turned circles, falling in a glide and then rising with a few hard wing-beats, wondering what transpired within.

Hammar had new hutments on the edge of his lands, the round structures of the northern barbarians with their roofs like a single-pole tent.

She accompanied the expedition at King Fangbreaker’s request. He was nervous about Lord Lobok, who’d set out from Thul’s Hardhold with an armed force some of the dwarvish lords laughed at as being oversize, especially considering the small amount of money borne as the agreed price for the youth.

“He never was the steadiest warrior, and always called for more axes and artillerists, whatever his situation,” Fangbreaker said, watching the barges set out from his balcony ten days before.

“But the feather fell on his doorstep,” Wistala said. She’d seen the purple feather, produced after some delay for the King’s court; it smelled like a white one freshly dyed. “In case of treachery, would it not be better to have a large, well-arrayed force at hand?”

“This is the simplest of transactions. Why the word treachery?” King Fangbreaker asked.

“I cannot say. I speak what comes out of my mind; why it was that word instead of another is as much a mystery to me as to you.”

“Hmpf,” he said in return.

“Are there commanders to see that the force is well handled, whether it is a peaceful march or a warlike one?” Wistala asked.

“From anyone else I’d call that an insult, Tala,” he rumbled. “But you’ve little opportunity to learn decent manners.”

“May I hazard my manners with another question?”

“Of course.”

“What happens to those gift baskets of food given to you in your throne hall? Do you eat them all?”

“I eat not a one,” King Fangbreaker said. “I’ve a queer stomach, and mostly eat gruel a-mealtimes, which is easily digested and nutritious. And I have a terrible sweet tooth at night, which is responsible for this,” he patted his paunch. “The baskets go to the poor of our city. There are many widows and orphans without a dwarf in a guild to support them. Can’t have young dwarves growing up all stoop-backed and knockkneed, coughing and feverish from malnutrition.”

Wistala felt the lordly dwarves moving about her flanks, some were pointing to her underside and talked among themselves, perhaps discussing assorted methods and tactics of dragon-killing.

“How did you get the title Fangbreaker, my king?” Wistala asked.

“I was cheated by a pair of dragons,” he said. “They were a wretched, misfortunate pair, who we helped restore to health and vitality with foods and metals. In return they fought for us, as some of the mercenary Ironriders do on the eastern side of this mountain, but they abandoned us to start their family without taking proper leave and asking permission to bear eggs. For we had a market for those eggs, a rich market, and they’d agreed that their bodies would be ours for a period under contract.

“Now I was not unreasonable. I just asked for one clutch. After that, they would be free to go where they wished, to the ends of the breaking earth in the west or the jeweled kingdoms of the east for all I cared, and hatch as many eggs as they liked. But I’d promised a full clutch of eggs to a buyer, and he would have them.

“The dragons argued that their services included only flying and fighting, not eggs, and when I stood firm, they fled. The laying time must have been close, for they did not flee far, though they turned up in an unexpected cave, one we’d gone to much trouble to seal from below to cut off the blighters within from the darkroads.

“I caught up to them in the end, so that I might turn over hatchlings to my buyer, if not eggs. Though that Dragonblade got overzealous in the fight and in attempting to pinion a hatchling killed it. I poked a hole in the female who’d lied to me, spilling her fire bladder and rendering her harmless and gasping, and smashed in her lying mouth with my gauntlet for defying me, turning her teeth into bloody ruin. She died cursing me through a broken jaw. Does this talk sicken you, Tala?”

Wistala, wondering how King Fangbreaker’s body would dance as flame consumed it, took a deep breath. “There are good dragons and bad dragons, just as there are good and bad dwarves, Dread King.”

“But so I was titled and given a place at the council table, for we managed to hunt one hatchling down and the Drakossozh killed another with his dogs.”

“Bad luck, for the Dragonblade to kill two while trying for capture.”

“You’re a dragon yourself. You must know that it is not the easiest of tasks. But I feel for you, at the unfortunate loss of others of your kind. Would that more dragons grew up to live useful lives!”

Would that more dwarves did the same, Wistala thought.

“How can I ease your mind about Lobok?” Wistala said. “I can go to my tower and try to force a vision. Perhaps if you gave me some personal tokens—”

“No. I wouldn’t care to force a wrong reading from you. But hear! You could act as a courier between my throne room and Lobok’s camp. You can bring a message in a few hours over a distance that a rider would take a day to cover.”

“Nothing that would make me happier,” Wistala said. “Than to be able to set your mind at ease.”

So she’d gone to Lobok’s camp twice carrying messages from the mountain king, carrying reassurance that all was going according to plan—and made a side trip or two to the vicinity of the Green Dragon Inn to speak to Forstrel among his honeycombs.

“I wonder why he asks for word?” Lord Lobok asked. His hands kept coming together and then running up his arms and back down again as he paced and thought, as though the right was worried that the left had eloped with an elbow.

“I do not know all the messages King Fangbreaker, high may he remain, receives. I only do my duty,” Wistala said. “You have ample dwarves for a march through enemy territory.”

“Enemy?” Lobok asked. “Lord Hammar is a good friend, we’ve had much commerce with him. The dwarves just come to guard our prize on the way back.”

“I’ve heard he’s been calling himself King Hammar,” Wistala said, and flew off back to Fangbreaker with Lobok’s reply.

So as she hung in the darkness over Galahall, seeing the lights go on within and the carpets laid on the doorstep, she turned and made a careful approach to the nearby stream where the dwarves were camped at the base of the ridge she’d crossed so many years ago in the company of Stog.

She asked for a meeting with Lord Lobok, busy dressing for the court dinner celebrating another successful transaction, for the boy Rayg waited at Galahall to be sold to the dwarves. She was admitted with the expediency one would expect of a courier from King Fangbreaker, and found him buttoning a formal robe over a chain shirt. He wore a mask of red silk stretched under and over a decorative wooden frame, like a child’s kite.

“Lord Lobok, are you going yourself?” she asked, putting her head in his tent so as not to crowd him and the servant-dwarf helping his lord dress.

“Of course. It’s a welcoming dinner, and as leader and emissary I’m expected. You don’t—”

“The night feels wrong to me,” Wistala said. “Are your soldiers arrayed well?”

“We’re on the thane’s land,” Lord Lobok said, fingers fluttering against his chain shirt. “There’s nothing to fear here.”

“As long as the thane is true. I’ve had horrible dreams, but they must be wrong. They must be.”

Lobok left off dressing, turned his silk-masked face to her. “Why do you say your impressions must be wrong? You are King Fangbreaker’s, honors upon his name and so forth, famous Oracle.”

“Who could mistake such omens? The feather landed on your doorstep. The Fates have chosen you.”

Lobok and his servant exchanged a glance. “Of course.”

“Yes. I am overwrought, seeing those barbarian encampments around the thane’s hall. I’m imagining things.” She began to shake. “But beware, O lord; if anyone speaks of a blood relationship between Hammar and the child you are receiving tonight, blood will be shed. A dagger at your back.”