do more than he did." Wolf glanced at Myr. "I saw a few new people here; are any of them healers?"
"No," replied Myr, disgust rich in his voice, "nor are they hunters, tanners, or cooks. We have six more children, two nobles and a bard. The only one who is of any help is the bard, who is passably good with his knives. The two nobles sit around watching everyone else work or decide to wander out in the main cave system so that a search party has to be sent out."
"You might try just letting them wander next time," commented Wolf.
Myr smiled slowly. "Now there's an idea." Then he shook his head with mock sorrow. "No, it wouldn't work. With my luck they'd run into the dragon and lead it back here."
"Dragon?" asked Aralorn in a startled tone, almost dropping her blanket.
"Or something that looks an awful lot like one. It's been seen by two or three of the hunting parties, although it hasn't seen them yet," replied Myr.
"I guess I must have found its tracks the day I ran into the Uriah - or at least I found the tracks of something big. It was about six miles away and traveling fast. Where have you sighted it?" asked Aralorn.
"East and north, never closer than ten miles. Do you know anything about dragons? Something along the lines of whether or not they eat people would be helpful," said Myr in a hopeful tone, sitting down on one arm of the couch.
"'Fraid not. The only ones that I've heard of are in stories where, for some reason, they seem to only eat virgins chained to rocks. Since I haven't heard of anyplace nearby where there is a steady supply of virgins chained to rocks, I would suppose that it is a safe bet that this one has differing dietary requirements," she answered in a dry tone, and then nodded at Wolf. "Why don't you ask the magical expert around here?"
Wolf shrugged. "The closest that I've ever gotten to one was the one asleep in the cave underneath the ae'Magi's castle. Since it had been asleep for several centuries, I didn't learn much. I thought, though, that it was supposed to be the last of its kind - the reason that it was ensorcelled rather than killed."
"Well," said Myr with a lifted eyebrow, "if this creature isn't a dragon, then it is closely related. I'm not too sure that I'm comfortable with it being so close."
"Maybe it'll eat the nobles that are giving you such a bad time," suggested Aralorn. "You might try chaining them to a rock."
She found that she was starting to get tired, so she leaned back against a cushion and closed her eyes. She didn't sleep but drifted quietly, listening to the others talk quietly. She found it comforting. There was something she wanted to ask. She sat up abruptly when she remembered what it was.
"Astrid," she said, interrupting them in the middle of a discussion on the best method of drying meat. "Did someone find her?"
"I did," replied Wolf, "or what was left of her after the Uriah finished."
Aralorn swallowed, and in a hoarse voice not at all like her own she asked, "Will she ..."
"Will she what?" asked Myr.
Aralorn watched her hand as il traced patterns in the quilt and asked in a low voice, "Will she become one of them, now?"
Myr started as if to say something, but held back, wanting to hear Wolf's answer first.
"No," answered the ae'Magi's son. "There is a ritual that must be followed to turn men into Uriah. She was simply eaten."
She spoke in a monotone, still not looking up. "I'd always heard that they were the creation of some long-forgotten magician who left them to infest the Eastern Swamp - protecting something hidden there. I assumed that the ae'Magi just found some way of controlling them."
"He found out how to control them, yes. He also found out how to make them - it was in the same book." Wolf reached casually to a shelf near Myr's head and pulled a thin ratty volume out of a shelf. "This book, as a matter of fact."
Myr looked over Aralorn's bent head to meet Wolf's eyes. "That's why you put the stone over the guard's graves."
Wolf nodded, replacing the book in the shelf. "The runes that Aralorn traced over the bodies, and the fact that Edom hadn't completed the ritual - the heart must be eaten - should ensure that they