Bones of the Dragon - Margaret Weis [189]
He did not look back.
“Come inside,” Treia ordered with a dire glance about the woods. “Evil walks in the night.”
“I’m not sleepy,” said Aylaen, and her voice sounded muffled. “You go on. I’ll be there in a moment.”
Treia shrugged and walked off. Aylaen waited a moment; then she walked over to the Hall of Vindrash and went inside, shutting the door behind her.
Wulfe yawned. He was growing sleepy, and he still had to find a good hiding place on board ship. He had found two: the large empty chest the warriors had hauled aboard, meant to hold all the treasure they were certain they would be bringing back, and a pile of furs and blankets Treia had carried on board to be used for her bedding.
He was not worried about Treia finding him. She would be busy communing with the Dragon Kahg as the ships were setting sail. She would have no time to go poking about the bedding on the off chance a boy might be hiding there.
As for Skylan, he would be busy with his tasks. Wulfe had told Skylan he meant to stay with Owl Mother, and Skylan had no reason to doubt him. Skylan had yet to learn that he was Wulfe’s geas, a charge that was usually magically laid on a person. In this instance, Wulfe had taken the geas upon himself.
Wulfe went loping down the path, trying to decide between the chest and the bedding, when his eye was caught by a flickering pinprick of light. He thought at first it was a will-o’-the-wisp. After his encounter with the draugr, Wulfe did not want to have any more dealings with restless dead, and he was about to take to his heels when a second glance revealed that the light was stationary, not moving.
Curious, Wulfe crept closer. Was everyone in the village up and about this night? He could move like his namesake through the underbrush, treading quietly on bare feet. As he drew nearer, the flame began to waver, and he saw that it came from a bundle of burning rushes, giving off smoke and a sweet smell. The fire illuminated a face. Wulfe recognized Raegar.
Wulfe hunkered down comfortably among the trees to watch. Raegar was on his knees in a clearing. In front of him was a large silver basin filled with water. The druids cared nothing for precious metals, and thus Wulfe had no way of knowing that such a basin was a thing of immense value. He knew only that it was metal, and therefore made his skin crawl, but he did admire the way it reflected the firelight.
Raegar held the rushes in one hand. With the other, he reached into a pouch he had strung onto his belt and drew out a small vial, the kind Owl Mother used to store her healing oils. Raegar drew out the vial’s stopper with his teeth and spit it onto the ground. He dribbled the contents of the vial into the silver basin and then touched the burning rushes to the water.
Flames flared, lighting Raegar’s face. Wulfe watched, enchanted, to see fire burning water. Raegar waited for the flames to die and then hunched over the basin. His lips moved. Wulfe could not hear what he was saying, for Raegar kept his voice low.
Wulfe lay on his belly on the ground, his chin propped in his hands, waiting for something exciting to happen. Perhaps a daemon to burst out of the bowl.
Nothing did. Raegar picked up the basin, dumped out the water, and thrust the basin into a sack. Using the flame of the burning rushes to light his way, he stood up and walked toward his dwelling.
Wulfe gave a shrug, and thinking he’d wasted enough time and that morning could not be far away, he hurried off.
All in all, it had been an eventful night.
As his mother had often told him, and as Wulfe had often observed, the Ugly Ones were very strange.
Aylaen sank to her knees on the dirt floor of the Hall of Vindrash. The outline of the base of the now broken and burned statue of Vindrash could be seen clearly in the dirt. Treia had brought a new statue of the goddess from Vindraholm and put it in the place of the old. The new statue was much smaller than the old one had been. It looked forlorn and shrunken to Aylaen.
She closed her eyes and imagined the old statue, the one that had frightened