That first night back at Deep Moor, Erde was so weak with joy, and so wrung out by all she’d been through, that she forgot to worry about the dreams.
Besides, she felt safe at Deep Moor, even in the snow and wind and unnatural cold. The women there knew things. Surely the dreams would not dare to follow her there.
And it began innocently enough, of course, with a calm and silent landscape, sunk in winter. Gentle mounds of snow scattered here and there across a frozen white plain. A rasping of ravens above. A gleam of river ice in the distance, and mountains.
But then she saw, or rather, understood—in the way of dreams—that the mounds were bodies, soldiers dead on the field and covered with snow. Even in her drifting dream state, Erde was shocked. What kind of army would not make time to bury its dead?
Suddenly, a far-off echo, a drumming of hooves. She wanted to turn toward the sound but could not. Her dream gaze was fixed: on the bodies, on the frozen river, on the mountains beyond. The hard rhythm approached, like metal on stone, and with it, an aura of terrible urgency. As the lead horse pounded past, the urgency snatched her up, as if an arm had been hooked around her throat. She was dragged in the horse’s wake, and still she could not look behind, could only hear the hoarse cries of the men and the struggle of their horses to catch up.
The lead horse was a tall and powerful gray, well lathered but not yet winded. His rider was oddly unhelmeted, despite the cold and the peril of his horse’s mad race. He was hunched forward over the gray’s outstretched neck, and Erde could not see his face. But she knew this rider anyway. She knew him from the bold blue and yellow of his worn battle tabard, from the stubborn set of his ice-flecked shoulders, from the wind-whipped gold of his hair. And because it was always his life that the dreams drew her into.
Her enemy. Adolphus, Baron Köthen. A man she had met only once. Allied with her traitorous father against the King. Or had been. Now his loyalties were unclear. But enemy or no, in the way of dreams, she had no choice but to ride with him. She found this both terrifying and exhilarating.
Behind, the men cried out again, incoherent with distance. It seemed that she recognized one of the voices. But her gaze was still fixed, as Baron Köthen’s was, and he did not look back. She would not have expected him to. He was too intent on urging the utmost out of the speeding gray. As usual, he was unaware of her presence, as she flew along at his ear like a gnat. Only once had he seemed aware, had he seemed to listen when she spoke to him. That time, she had saved his life. Or she thought she had, and it confused her that she’d done so. The man had been her enemy, perhaps still was. Of course, dreams were just dreams, mere illusions, with no connection to real events. Erde told herself this, but in her heart, she did not believe it. Her sense of being there with him was too . . . complete.
The gray swerved suddenly, then launched himself over a snow mound too massive to be avoided. The corpses were strewn more thickly as horse and rider neared the river. The harsh valley winds had scoured the concealing snow, exposing terrible amputations and dark faces frozen in pain and horror. Köthen glanced up now, and Erde saw that there were horses and soldiers between him and the ice-bound shore. Many of them. Ten, twenty knights at least, plus a squad of infantrymen, all of them armed and ready, and watching Baron Köthen’s full-tilt approach. But Köthen did not slow the gray horse or turn him aside. Instead, he reached across his thighs for the sword tucked into its saddle sheath, and aimed the gray straight into the middle of them. Soon they were close enough for Erde to recognize the hell-priest’s colors on some of the infantrymen. Just like Brother Guillemo, Erde thought grimly, to put uniforms even on his foot soldiers. The thought of Guillemo made her shiver. Could Köthen and the hell-priest have made up their differences after all, and was he racing back to rejoin the usurping army? If so, he was her enemy again. Erde’s beloved grandmother the baroness, may she rest in peace, had brought Erde up to be a loyal subject of the King.
Or perhaps the soldiers ahead were some of Baron Köthen’s own men, gone renegade from the priest’s army out of loyalty to their lord. But that hope died in the flash of steel across the closing distance, as the knights converged into defense formation. Erde understood that Baron Köthen’s charge was an attack. What was the man doing? He would be cut to pieces, without a doubt. And still Köthen drove the gray toward them.
Enemy or no, Erde did not wish him dead. In fact, the idea filled her with a surprising dread. She imagined again that, through the dream, she could speak to him, and she begged him to turn aside. She knew he was a brave man, but she had not thought him reckless. Why would he charge willingly into such overwhelming odds? Had he been driven into this trap by the men behind him?
But then those riders’ desperate shouts came to her more clearly, particularly the one voice that had seemed so familiar. They’d been calling him back, and now gave up their shouting to ride as hard as they could. Erde heard their horses coming, faster than before, or was it only that she hoped so for them to catch up? Surely they were too far behind to be able to save him. She pleaded with Köthen to be sensible, to slow down at least, to wait for the others. Dream-wraith that she was, she still could feel the anger in him, heating him like a fever. He was too full of blood-rage to hear her or to listen to reason. Or perhaps he did hear, for once she saw his head jerk when she spoke, as if shaking off a fly. But he neither stopped nor slowed. And glancing ahead, Erde saw why. In their shifting protective dance, the mounted knights drew briefly aside, revealing the man at the center of their formation: the hell-priest himself.
Guillemo. Her nemesis. Stocky and dark, and with his once wild beard now trimmed to obsessiveness, he looked almost ordinary. His white monk’s hood was thrown back from his mailed head as he barked orders to his men and raised his short, southern sword as if it were a processional cross. His big horse gleamed as pure and white as the snow around him, or the frozen river beyond. But, oh, what a danger, to think Guillemo either pure or ordinary! Erde’s blood ran as cold as that ice-bound river. The snake-eyed priest was staring straight at her, his full red mouth curled in a sly smile of welcome.
So, witch. We meet again.
His voice, right there in her head as she slept. Deep, rich, insinuating. Erde was horrified by how surely he homed in on her. No casting about this time, no sniffing the air. He saw her, as surely as if she were a visible presence in his world. He could speak in her mind.
She recoiled from the fierce beam of his stare as if from a blow and pulled herself inward as if she could become infinitesimal and so escape him. Or conceal herself behind Baron Köthen’s head, safe in the warmth beside his ear. But Köthen was barreling full-tilt toward his own destruction, his mind empty of everything but rage and revenge.
The horses behind did seem to be nearing. Erde thought to distract him in some way, if only to slow him down until his allies could catch up, before the big gray burst into the midst of twenty well-armed knights. Forgetting the disembodiment of her dream state, Erde wrapped both invisible hands around Köthen’s bridle arm and hauled back hard. His head jerked up. He tossed a sidelong glance behind him and shook his elbow as if to free it from a thorn branch. But there was no branch. Encouraged, Erde hauled back on him again, with all the strength she could imagine. Köthen’s eyes rolled sideways, widening in confusion and a touch of fear. The gray horse sensed his fear and missed a step, slowing, nearly stumbling. Erde counted the seconds gained.
But ahead of them, she saw the hell-priest grin.
He fears you, witch girl! Remember, he is only a man, without understanding. Whereas . . .
NO!
She screamed it with all her dream-strength, drowning out his poisonous murmur. As much as Baron Köthen drew her, the hell-priest repulsed and terrified her. At first, she’d assumed he was only after her to burn her at the stake. Now it was clear that he wanted something else. His ability to find her in the dream world was frightening enough. If he ever found her again in the real world . . . Erde’s only thoughts were of escape. Her entire being contracted in denial, a vast implosion toward the infinitely small. As her consciousness faded, it occurred to her that anything, even death, would be preferable.
And then someone was shaking her gently awake.
A woman’s voice said, low and calm, “Erde? Come back to us. Come back to us, sweeting.”
“I’ve been trying that for ten minutes!” said another, not nearly as collected as the first. “Ever since I heard her cry out! Look! She’s not even breathing!”
“Shhh. She’s breathing. Help me raise her up a little.”
From the verge of the infinite, Erde heard the women’s voices like a faraway whisper, carried on the wind. The priest was after her, searching, but she knew these voices. These voices meant safety. Moments from the edge, she veered away and sped homeward toward them.
The snow began falling on their way across the meadows, even before the storm clouds closed in. Big crystalline flakes floating down like autumn leaves. Erde tilted her chin to let their weightless ice melt on her tongue. Even the snow of Deep Moor tasted sweet. She’d never thought snow could be so welcome.
But welcome only because familiar, she reminded herself. Welcome to her as proof that she was home. Not so welcome to the two women walking beside her or to anyone in Deep Moor, or even to the laden pony that trudged along behind. Erde wished she could race about kicking up drifts and making snow angels as she might have done months ago when she was still a child in her father’s castle. Snow angels were a proper way to celebrate. She thought she restrained herself out of respect for Raven and Doritt, but in truth, after the events of the early morning, her heart wasn’t in it. Gratitude and relief were the best she could manage. But even that offended the taller woman’s gloom.
“It’s all right for you,” Doritt grumped, winding her knitted scarf one more turn around her long neck. Erde would swear Doritt was taller than she remembered. But surely she was too old to be still growing? Perhaps it was her chin-to-ankle-length coat, snugged around her sturdy frame like a woolen shroud. Or perhaps, her man-sized leather-and-canvas boots.
“Why just for me?” With Erde’s every step, the white layers exploded upward in powdery gusts, reminding her of baking day in the castle kitchens. At that thought, she felt a surge of guilty joy.
“Snows all the time where you come from.”
“At Tor Alte? It does not. At least, it didn’t used to.” Erde wasn’t sure what things were like at Tor Alte lately, and she wouldn’t ever want to be caught in a falsehood.
“Bet it’s snowing right now.” Doritt glanced behind to check on the pony’s progress. His load of hay and grain and dried fruit was rather precariously balanced on his shaggy, narrow back.
“In the winter, it snowed a lot.”
“But it isn’t winter yet,” Doritt noted grimly.
Erde fell silent. She knew Doritt’s concern was not so much the snow itself, but the fact that it was snowing now, only three weeks into September. But she was more worried about the dragons, gone back on an errand of mercy to that hot land she’d so recently returned from, that alien place that made her grateful for snow in September. However bad it was here, it was worse there, and she wished they’d hurry up and come home. She wanted so to talk to them about her dream.
“Doritt doesn’t think snow was meant to be enjoyed,” said Raven.
“Not true! Everything in its place is just fine with me.”
But Raven’s eyes were merry. Erde felt her spirits rise again just looking at her, in her usual feathery blue, layered against the cold, and her dark unfettered hair netted with snowflakes like some kind of woodland queen. Erde always marveled, looking at Raven. If she could choose to look like anyone in the world, it would be Raven, no doubt of it.
“Now,” said Raven, “you promised to tell us what it was like where the dragon took you.”
“It was hot!” Erde allowed herself a little dance step between them, of joy and relief and affection. “Truly! Hot as a smithy’s forge! And smelly. The sun beat down on us all day! And you couldn’t drink any of the water.”
“Why not?”
“N’Doch said it would make us sick. And to make matters worse, he insisted on boiling whatever we drank! Can you believe it?”
“That’s what my mother taught me to do with bad water,” said Doritt.
“Really? Why?”
Raven laughed. “Because her own mother did it, I’ll bet, and her mother’s mother before her. Women’s wisdom.”
Erde made a face. “Well, I hate drinking hot water. I was thirsty the whole time! Couldn’t even wear clothes!”
Doritt’s eyebrows peaked. “No clothes?”
“Well, you know . . . not proper ones.”
“No wonder you turned up so suddenly in your shift!”
Raven’s laugh was so warm and musical that Erde was sure she heard it echo around the entire valley, bouncing off the pine-studded hillsides, tangling in the bare branches of the maples and birches, skating along the winding course of the ice-choked river. But the river reminded her of the dream again. To banish its shadow, she grabbed Raven’s hands and whirled her around, arms outstretched, to make her laugh some more. Together they sketched a circuit of merry pirouettes around tall Doritt as she forged doggedly ahead, refusing to crack a smile.
Erde flung her arms wide in a whirling embrace of sky, moor, and mountains. “I’m so glad to be home!”
And saying it somehow made it so. This was home now, Deep Moor, this magical, hidden valley. Not Tor Alte, the castle of her birth, home of Baron Josef von Alte, her father. Poor deluded man. Interesting that she could finally think of him without a wince, that she could even imagine meeting him face-to-face. Perhaps this was because she finally understood that home didn’t have to be where you came from. It could be where you felt you belonged. Or perhaps it was because, after all she’d seen, in this her fifteenth year, she’d begun to learn how to forgive. She twirled Raven around again, head thrown back in joy. “Hooommmme!”
“Well, you’ve certainly come out of yourself since we’ve known you,” remarked Doritt, not unkindly.
Erde slowed, relaxed her hold on Raven’s hands. “Have I?”
Doritt rolled her eyes.
“Oh, yes.” Raven reached to tousle Erde’s thick, short-cropped hair. “Such a sober young thing when you first came to us.”
“I had a lot to be sober about.”
“You still do,” replied Doritt. “We all do.”
“Oh, again! Mistress Grim!”
But Raven’s retort was halfhearted, and Doritt’s reminder hung in the air like smoke, bringing a momentary silence. Erde’s thoughts strayed back to the dream these women had shaken her out of just hours before. It occurred to her that she didn’t yet know if Adolphus of Köthen was dead or alive.
“Isn’t it time to talk about the war?” she asked. “I wish you’d tell me the news and how things have been going!”
Raven squeezed her shoulder. “Linden insists you’re to be rested and smiling again before we start loading you down with all our problems. Look at how hard you were sleeping this morning!”
“I’m smiling. I’m fine.” She hadn’t told them what they’d woken her from.
Doritt clucked. “You slept for two days straight before that.”
“Please? I know Linden means well, but I’m not a child anymore. Just some little bit of news?” She couldn’t bring herself to actually ask about Baron Köthen. If he were dead, she knew she’d burst into tears like a child, when she more properly ought to be celebrating. “What about Hal?”
“Hal is well, at last report,” offered Raven. “We’ll all tell all at dinner. There’s a lot of your news we haven’t heard either.”
Erde sighed. She’d hoped for news as a distraction as much as anything else. She didn’t feel so giddy anymore, and probably she should tell them why. She glanced over her shoulder at the sky. Billowy gray clouds were massing over the valley’s northern end, above the sprawling farmstead that nestled there. She could almost see a material darkness sifting down like ash to smother all cheer, all life within.
“Sometimes . . .” she began finally. In the quiet, even her murmur sounded like a shout. “Sometimes I can hear him, you know . . . Brother Guillemo . . . in my dreams. Like he’s speaking to me.”
Raven’s glance was sharp. “Really? Have you told Rose?”
“I’ve hardly seen Rose! I’ve been sleeping so much! I was so tired! I’ve been . . .!” She was shaken by the sudden anxiety that gripped her, but she couldn’t make herself admit to them that she’d dreamed the hell-priest right there in Deep Moor. If he could find her so easily in her dreams, could he locate her in life?
“Well, then,” Raven advised, “you can tell her soon as we get back to the house.”
“I will. I promise.”
In unspoken agreement, the three women quickened their pace. With memories of mad—or maybe not so mad—Brother Guillemo dogging Erde’s thoughts, the pristine snow and crisp chill were not so inviting anymore. Instead, a longing gripped her for the sweet tall grasses and wild-flowers of the summer meadows, of the Deep Moor she’d known not even a month ago. She’d felt safer then, even though she’d been in the greatest possible peril. And now, Deep Moor was threatened, too. Not just by the weather, but by the homing eye of the hell-priest. She’d promised herself to act like an adult, even more than they expected her to, but she must have shuddered or made some small sound of distress, for Raven curled an arm about her shoulders and gave her a gentle hug.
“Never fear, sweeting. A lot of good minds and hearts are working on this problem. We’ll think of something.”
Erde nodded dutifully. Before this morning, she had believed that the women of Deep Moor could stand against the hell-priest, against anything. Now she was not so sure.
The Grove loomed ahead like a ruined cathedral. The bare branches of its encircling oaks reached up like burned timbers grabbing at the sky. The thick, dark trunks curved in even ranks like the charred piers of a fallen apse. Erde scolded herself for the childish thinking that had let her hope to find this stand of sacred oaks still green and heavy with summer, with the warm sighing of leaves and birdsong. But the leaves lay buried beneath the snow and the birds were stilled. She moved among the huge, knotted trunks in a daze, as if she’d lost something precious. She wished the dragon were there. His very existence was a comfort. Erde knew she could never completely lose hope, as long as there were dragons in the world.
In the center of the Grove lay a pond no bigger than a cottage and as smoothly circular as the face of the full moon. Erde had suspected there was Power in this pond the first time she laid eyes on it. Now she was sure. The shallow crystalline water glimmered softly, without a trace of ice. All around its perfect silver arc, the snow pulled back, as if out of respect, revealing a brief but cheering fringe of green.
Raven and Doritt led the pony to the bank and began to unpack the load. Doritt untied the two big sheaves of hay and spread them out beside the water. Raven cleared patches of snow, then handed out sacks of fruit and grain to scatter on the ground.
“Hope this’ll hold ’em,” Doritt muttered.
“Oh, tut,” Raven reproved cheerfully. “There’s plenty more for a while.”
“As long as it’s the usual while.”
“We’ve lived through long winters before.”
“Not winters that started in early September.”
“We have stores for a year. You always insist on it.” Raven emptied her last sack with a flourish, then whistled up into the barren branches. A sudden flutter of wings broke the silence, and small flocks of birds whirled in to settle among the seed. Off among the trees, Erde saw the deer waiting. And then something else caught her eye.
“Raven, Doritt, look . . . on the other side of the pond. See that odd bunch of sticks?” The sticks formed a tall but neatly rounded pile, very like something she’d seen before. “Doesn’t it look like . . .?”
“Windfall,” said Doritt. “No, too neat. Someone’s brush pile.”
“No one would be cutting wood in the Grove,” Raven countered.
Then Erde remembered. “I know! It’s . . .”
“Like a beaver lodge,” Raven murmured. “Hmmm.”
“Oh, my,” said Doritt. “Could it be . . . do you suppose . . .?”
“Got to be.”
The two women dropped their empty sacks and hurried around the pond. Erde followed close behind. The pile was larger than it had seemed from across the water, but much smaller and more hastily thrown-together than the one she’d seen before, on the quiet shore of a lake. No soft moss climbed these walls and no comforting smoke coiled up from the center of the roof. Raven circled around to the far side.
“Aha!” she exclaimed, and stepped forward briskly to knock on a crude wood-plank door set among the twigs.
“He won’t answer, you know,” offered Erde faintly, drawing on her own brief experience, now intensely recalled.
Raven smiled and knocked again. “He will for me.”
Erde thought this rather overconfident, even for Raven. “Hal practically had to beat the door down.”
Raven grinned. “That’s always been Hal’s problem.”
“What’s he doing here is the real question.” Doritt leaned in worriedly to peer at the door.
“Exactly what we’re going to find out.” Raven knocked a third time, no louder than the first. “Are you there, Gerrasch? Open up, dear soul—you have visitors!”
A wild rustling and grunting erupted inside, making the stick pile shudder. Erde took a long step backward. The plank door cracked open. In the narrow darkness, she saw a familiar pair of beady eyes above a shiny damp nose.
“About time!” the darkness growled.
Raven trilled her musical laugh. “Well, now, sweet, if you neglect to announce your arrival, you can’t expect your welcome to be spectacular and timely!”
Doritt leaned farther into the doorway. “Hallo, Gerrasch, old thing. What brings you all this way?”
“Cold. Cold cold cold cold.”
“Is it warmer here, then, than out there?” Raven raised an eyebrow at her companions.
“Yes. No. No food, no food. Hungry. A big snow coming.”
“You came to the right place—we’ve food enough to share.”
“What? You? In your cozy lakeside burrow?” Raven crouched to bring her nose level with the beady eyes. “Scared of a little snow?”
“No! No, no. Listen! Men. Horses. Burned my house. No home. All gone.”
“Men burned your house?” The women traded glances. Erde recalled that dark and smoky hovel, hidden in the curl of a brush-choked cove, crammed to its twiggy rafters with jars and bottles and herbs and . . . well, stuff. How awful for him to lose all those years of collecting.
“What men?” asked Doritt.
But Erde shuddered, remembering a terrified woman tied to a stake in a far-off market town. She didn’t need to ask what men. Who else was going around burning everything in sight?
“Guillemo,” muttered Raven darkly.
“Want to burn me!” The planks creaked and swung inward. A furry, long-nailed hand gripped the doorframe, then Gerrasch’s shaggy, rag-draped bulk filled the opening and Erde recalled why she’d first thought he was some kind of gigantic beaver. “Want to burn me!”
“Poor creature!” murmured Raven.
“Burn us all if he could,” Doritt remarked. “How’d you get away?”
Gerrasch’s bright eyes, until now fixed entirely on Raven, shifted to the older woman with a crafty squint. “Run run. Scurry. Around, around, cover trail, around around more, cover trail, around around . . . come here.”
Raven laughed and patted his hand. “Clever thing! Brave old soul! Well, you’re safe here.”
“No!” Gerrasch shook his mane until the whole stick pile trembled. “Not safe! No one safe!”
“For a while at least.”
The creature took a breath, sighed. “Yes.”
But Doritt’s mouth tightened. “How long, do you think?”
Erde shivered. What Doritt was really asking, no one could answer: how long could they keep Deep Moor hidden from outside eyes, now that the priest’s forces ranged the land so widely? One misplaced confidence, one single soldier of the wrong stripe stumbling upon their secret path—that was all it would take to bring the hell-priest’s armies down on top of them. And then there was her dream. What if the hell-priest could follow her here? Gerrasch’s glance slid away again. He let it round an entire circuit of the Grove before returning to settle it for the first time squarely on Erde.
She smiled at him wanly. “Hello, Gerrasch. Remember me?”
He gasped. “It speaks!” Then he cracked a huge grin.
Erde grinned with him. It was impossible not to. “Yes, my voice is back. You were right—there was a word stuck in my throat. It was somebody’s name, a friend I thought had died horribly.”
Gerrasch blinked at her, sobering, then leaned forward to lay one stubby finger gently across her throat. “Yes. Ludolph.”
Raven sucked in a breath. “Ha.”
“No . . .” replied Erde carefully. “That was not his name.”
“Yes.”
“No, Gerrasch, it was . . .”
“Ludolph!” Gerrasch insisted, then he smiled again, dazzlingly. “Will be.”
“Ludolph?” murmured Doritt. “The dead prince?”
“The not-dead prince.” Raven chuckled.
“He’s saying Rainer is Ludolph?”
“He wouldn’t be the first person.”
Doritt clucked. “Oh, how would he know about such things!”
“You have your ways, don’t you, Gerrasch? And won’t our Hal be delighted to hear you agreeing with him for once!”
Erde pondered her own ambivalent response to this news. Did she even care anymore if Rainer was the King’s lost heir? He was lost to her already. Besides, she had more important responsibilities now. And as if this thought was some kind of signal, Gerrasch stepped forward suddenly, his nose lifted in the direction of the farmstead. At the same moment came the familiar soft explosion in Erde’s head that heralded the dragon’s return. Her heart reached out joyously to welcome him.
“They’re back!” she exulted. “They’re back!”
Gerrasch’s nose worked furiously. “Two! Oh, two. Two two two!”
Raven nodded. “Yes, clever thing. Our Earth has found himself a sister. A beautiful blue sister!”
Doritt’s eyes narrowed. “How did he know?”
Erde didn’t care. The dragons were back! Now she could celebrate in earnest. “Yes, a sister! Her name is Water. You’ll like her, Gerrasch! You can go swimming together!” She tugged at Raven’s sleeve. “Come, let’s go back!”
Raven chortled. “Gerrasch hates swimming. Absolutely has to live by water, but never goes in.”
“Come on! Hurry! Let’s all go!”
“Right,” said Doritt. “Come on, Gerrasch. Gather up anything you need, and we’ll load it on the pony.”
Gerrasch raised both hands, exposing his soft pink palms. “No. No no. Big storm.”
“Yes, so you don’t want to stay out here alone, do you? You’d be much safer at the farm.”
“No no no.” He backed into the shadow of his doorway. “New house. I like it.”
“It’ll blow apart in the first gust, Gerrasch!”
“Will not!”
Doritt took a step after him. “Of course it will! You could have a nice warm spot in the barn . . .”
In the barn with the dragon, Erde realized. Probably Gerrasch did, too.
“No!” He withdrew his head entirely and slammed the door.
“You are so rude!” Doritt yelled after him.
Raven touched her arm. “You’ve made him anxious, dear. You can’t pressure him. You know how he is. Let him do as he likes.”
“But . . .”
“He’ll be as safe in the Grove as anywhere. He knows that. That’s why he came here.”
“It could be the dragons,” said Erde. “He didn’t want to meet Earth before either. But he knew, didn’t he . . . he sensed their return almost before I did.”
“He’s connected with them in some way,” guessed Raven. “As he is to many things.”
Indeed, Erde noted. Connected in some way she didn’t understand. She must be sure to ask the dragon about it. Certainly it was no mystery to her why the hell-priest wanted to burn this odd creature. She herself was unsure if Gerrasch was man or animal, or some uncanny combination of the two, and Brother Guillemo feared anything that smacked of a power he couldn’t control or comprehend. She put aside her impatience to be with the dragon long enough to lean close to cracks in the plank door. “Maybe later, if the weather holds, I’ll bring them out to visit you. Would that be all right?”
No reply from inside the stick pile. Erde glanced back at Raven and Doritt, then shrugged and let her dragon’s return fill her mind entirely.