'Your master? 'Velindre sat down warily. 'You're Chazen Kheda's slave?'

Risala's laugh surprised her. 'Slave? No, I'm a free islander and not even Chazen born.''But he's your master nevertheless?' Velindre looked around the blackness of the windowless, cavernous room. 'Calling yourself "free" sounds like making a distinction without a difference.'

Risala poured pale golden liquid from the ewer. 'I thought it was all agreed that you would join us.'

'I need to speak with Dev before I go aboard your ship.' Velindre sipped from her goblet to cover her hesitation. 'Things have turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected.' She wiped a drop of the sweet wine from the corner of her mouth.

'You do know how to defeat the dragon?' Risala demanded.

'Yes,' said Velindre slowly, 'but I need to know more before I agree to try, or even agree to share that knowledge. These are things I must discuss with Dev.'

'What things?' Risala held the ewer tightly between her hands.

'Mage concerns,' responded Velindre composedly. 'I have been trying to reach Dev but he seems unwilling or unable to respond to my spells.' She ignored an uneasy spasm in her belly at the latter notion. 'I don't suppose you want me to work the necessary magic here, so I shall return to my lodging and try again. You can wait here, I take it, for a day or so? I'll let you know where we go from here, both of us, as soon as I have an answer from Dev.' She drained her goblet to avoid looking at the Aldabreshin girl.

Risala topped up the magewoman's drink before she could refuse. 'You're going back on your word?'

'It is more complicated than you imagine.' Velindre found that her throat was dry in the dead, dusty air of the storehouse. That was peculiar - everyone knew Aldabreshin wine was too weak to intoxicate but she would have imagined it would quench a thirst.

'You do know how to defeat the dragon?' Risala repeated her question.

'I've discovered a great many things about dragons, which Dev almost certainly does not know.' Velindre stopped short before continuing, 'I need to discuss these matters with Dev before we can decide our best course of action.'

'I thought we were agreed on the only course of action that matters.' The girl set her own goblet down beside a twist of oiled silk and turned a silver and emerald ring around her finger. 'We must rid Chazen of the dragon.'

'That may be easier said than done-' Velindre broke off as a wave of dizziness swept over her. 'You don't understand ...' Further words clogged in her throat, her tongue thick and awkward. Darkness rushed in from every side, closing around the little lamp's flame. Velindre stared at the golden point of light, her jaw slack. She didn't even feel the spittle sliding down her nerveless face as she fell sideways off the stool and the blackness claimed her. The last thing she heard was the treacherous Risala shouting something in incomprehensible Aldabreshin.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

It's coming.' Kheda watched the fire shrink in on itself in defiance of every natural pattern.

It narrowed and then doubled in height. The solid wall of flame advanced. Trees were silhouetted against it, lilla, tandra and ironwood. Their leaves and branches flared to ash, their blistered trunks vanishing in the scarlet blaze.

Dev glanced over his shoulder to see where they were retreating before returning his sickened gaze to the pursuing fire. 'It wants me dead,' he muttered. 'It looked me in the eye.'

Kheda flicked his gaze up to see the dragon sweeping this way and that across the sky, studying the forest ahead of its fiery barrier. 'While it's trying to kill you, it's not killing anyone else.' He sucked at a hand scratched by a stray tendril of thorny striol. 'All we need is to keep one step ahead of it until we know how to kill it.'

We cannot return to any residence, or risk any ship, if your very presence is going to bring down disaster on us. It may not be following your magic, barbarian, but it's still got your scent somehow. Seventeen days, we've managed to evade it so far. How much longer will we be able to, now it's started burning the forest that covers us?

'My lord!' A swordsman appeared at the edge of a gully cut deep into the forest floor. 'This way!'

The dragon's menacing bellow of challenge sounded overhead again. The wall of flame picked up speed, turning the forest to charcoal before their startled eyes. It roared towards them.'Run!' Kheda shifted his swords in his sash and raced for the shelter of the gully. Dev followed hard on his heels.

The swordsman was scrambling over rocks of all sizes littered between earthen walls parched and crumbling under the long assault of the dry season. The river that had washed the broken stones down from the island's heights was barely a chain of mossy puddles lurking beneath feathery ferns, biding its time until the rains should swell it to foaming ferocity once again.

'This way, my lord.' The swordsman glanced over his shoulder. 'There's a cave and less tinder for the cursed beast to burn around us.'

Mindful of the shattered ground underfoot, Kheda couldn't resist looking up to see the wall of fire accelerating along the edge of the cleft so fast that it left the sturdier trees barely scorched. He shrank into the shadow of a mossy overhang as the dragon wheeled overhead, peering down. The wall of fire curled around a stand of ironwood trees. The circle contracted, flames rising higher and burning white hot. The ironwood trees burst into blinding flame.

Kheda turned his attention back to getting through the gully without breaking an ankle. Stumbling on a patch of loose shale, he grabbed Dev's shoulder to save himself. The wizard's tunic was dry and hot to the touch, while the warlord laboured under the chafing weight of a coarse cotton tunic sodden with sweat.

'Do you need another dose?' he hissed urgently, shaking the mage.

'No.' Dev plunged on, crushing pungent ferns underfoot.

'Here, my lord.' The swordsman disappeared into a dank cavern.

Kheda followed, forcing a rueful smile. 'That was a little too close for comfort.'

'Yes, my lord,' the swordsman replied obediently.

None of the other men pressed against the irregular walls of the cave said anything, mere shadows in the darkness, only their eyes shining as they looked at Kheda.

'Who's here?' The warlord paused for breath, chest heaving, as the men gave their names in muted tones.

'Where's Ridu?'

'Not back yet,' said a surly voice from the blacker recesses of the cave.

fs it better to challenge that or let it pass? Which mould just make things worse?

He looked out of the cave entrance. 'We'll be safe here-'

Kheda's next words were lost as the scrubby bushes lining the opposite edge of the gully burst into flames, swaying with the violence of the dragon's passing. Kheda saw the flash of its pale golden underbelly as its roar of fury shook loose earth from the sides of the crumbling cleft. Dev stood motionless, eyes tight shut, face like carved stone.

The dragon's roar came again, more distant this time. No one moved or spoke. They waited in the musty darkness and listened to a third roar and a fourth.

Like listening for the thunderclap after the lightning flash in the rainy season, to find out how close the danger might be.

'Is everyone here but Ridu?' Kheda asked. He nodded at the ragged murmur of assent. 'Do we have anything to eat tonight? Have all the villages hereabouts been warned?'

'We've plenty of food,' one relieved voice assured him.

The next man sounded more dubious. 'We've told the islanders to hide themselves as best they can.'

'It hasn't flattened any more villages now that we've given each spokesman a bag of jewels to cache somewhere obvious,' Kheda pointed out.

'A lot of the villagers are going down to the coast regardless.' The surly voice spoke again. 'And taking boats to other islands.'

Kheda's eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom and he picked out a tall, lean man blowing on his hands as if to cool them. 'Zicre, isn't it?'

The man froze. 'Yes, my lord?' he said warily.

'If you're hurt, come into the light where I can take a look,' Kheda ordered. 'And where's my physic chest?'

The men in the cave shuffled themselves awkwardly to let Zicre through and Kheda's physic chest waspassed to the fore.

'Do we have fresh water?' Kheda nodded as someone confirmed this. 'Then let's all have a drink. We may as well stay here till Ridu gets back. Take a rest while you can. Zicre, let's see those hands.'

Kheda moved closer to the edge of the cavern as the rest of the men made themselves as comfortable as possible with the ragged assortment of wraps and quilts they had dumped to one side. Zicre joined him and gingerly extended his fingers.

'What happened here?' Kheda saw that both hands were red and swollen and a raw burn ran along the outer edge of his sword hand, black grime crusted around the weeping edges.

'Change in the wind,' the man grunted. 'Too close to the fire.'

'Greenfoot oil will clean it and roseate starflower should help with the healing and keep it from festering.'

Kheda knelt to open his physic coffer, silver bindings tarnished against the ebony.

'If you say so, my lord.' Zicre looked past him out into the gully, face expressionless. Like all the men he wore rough cotton clothes smudged with soot and sweat.

At least we all agreed that we didn't need the burden or noise of armour that wasn't going to save us in any case, if the dragon caught up with us.

Kheda stood up, tipping glutinous lotion from a small blue bottle on to a scrap of cotton waste. 'This is going to hurt,' he warned as he took the man's hand, holding it tight as he swabbed firmly. 'But the quicker I do it, the sooner it will be over.'

Zicre hissed and caught his breath. 'Thank you, my lord,' he said through gritted teeth.

Kheda turned Zicre's hand over as he continued with his ruthless cleansing. 'No real oar calluses. You hadn't been aboard the Mist Dove long. What did you do before that?'

'Huntsman, my lord,' said Zicre tightly, 'from the western slopes.'

'Here on Boal?' Kheda looked up at him as he returned the blue bottle to the chest. 'On the far side of these mountains?'

Zicre nodded, bracing himself for the touch of the ointment Kheda was uncorking.

'When all this is over, you must show me your forests.' Kheda coated the burn thickly with grey salve flecked with pinkish fragments. 'We'll hunt together.'

'If we haven't been hunted down first,' Zicre said incautiously. He ducked his head and studied the burn, clenching and unclenching his fist.

The low murmur of conversation deeper in the cave halted abruptly.

'We've kept ahead of it so far,' Kheda said calmly as he replaced the ointment in the physic chest. 'It's a more dangerous beast than anything else in these forests, I'll grant you. Personally, I'd rather be tracked by some rogue jungle cat with a taste for villagers or pursued by a water ox crazed with foaming madness, but it's still just a beast and we are men. We have our wits and this is the second largest island in the domain, so we have league upon league of forest to hide in. It may be hunting us, but we're not hook-toothed hogs to blunder off a cliff in terror or spotted deer to just lie down and die of heat prostration.'

'But why is it hunting us?' Zicre burst out.

Kheda checked to be sure the lacquered wooden box with the cracked and smudged wax seal was safe before he closed the physic chest. 'We were all on the Mist Dove,' he said carefully.

'Why did it attack the Mist DoveV demanded someone hidden in the cave. Emboldened, a murmur of assent rose to be lost in the hollow space.

You 're the warlord. They look to you for answers. You can't give them the truth, so are you going to dishonour them by giving them lies?

'That was the ship that led the fleet.' Kheda shoved his physic chest backwards and used it as a low stool. He looked into the darkness, meeting the unseen challenge squarely. 'The beast may even have realised that I was aboard. Zicre, you have loals in these forests, don't you?'

'Yes.' The erstwhile hunter was taken unawares by the question. 'Black-cloaked ones.''Have you ever seen what happens when one gang decides to take over another gang's stretch of forest?'

Kheda asked.

'Not seen it so much as heard it,' Zicre said slowly, 'and found the big males from the gang under attack beaten to bloody pulp and half-eaten.'

'Loals know to concentrate on killing the strongest leaders among their rivals.' Kheda shrugged. 'I think that cursed beast is at least as clever as a loal.'

'Loals can't curse us with magic,' muttered a sullen voice in the darkness.

'You all survived attack by men with magic last year,' Kheda shot back. 'You wouldn't be here if you hadn't. I don't call that cursed, to live when so many died. I don't see any curse on Chazen, not with the best pearl harvest in living memory coming out of the sea. We've all survived worse than this dragon.'

'But what are we going to do, my lord?' asked someone desperately. 'Just let it chase us till it's burned every tree on the island?'

'If that's what we must do, to keep it from flying off to burn and devour our homes and families,' Kheda said harshly. The undercurrent of response in the cave took on a surprised note. 'And while it's chasing its tail pursuing us, our other ships and warriors are hunting down the last of the invaders,' he reminded the mutinous darkness.

And when will they kill whoever has summoned this beast to plague us, tell me that?

T read you the last dispatches from the Gossamer Shark. The remaining invaders are scattered on the barren islets beyond Corui now. We'll soon rid Chazen of those vermin. Then, as soon as we find out the barbarians' trick of killing dragons, we'll be rid of that bane as well, won't we? The Green Turtle should be back sometime around the breaking of the rains. We just have to keep one step ahead of the beast till then.' He grinned. 'And it won't find these forests so easy to burn when the real storms start, will it?'

The assent from the darkness was more dutiful than convinced.

'Water, my lord?' A swordsman stepped out of the shadows offering Kheda a battered wooden cup. He shot a look of covert contempt at Dev. The wizard was lying on the bare earth just inside the cavern entrance, eyes closed, apparently asleep.

'Thank you.' Kheda took the cup and drank gratefully.

'Zicre, can you find somewhere to keep watch for Ridu? I don't imagine you'll be able to sleep with that burn. If the rest of us get our heads down we can move on tonight.' The warlord closed his eyes and leaned back against the water-sculpted wall of the cave. He wasn't that tired but it seemed wisest to put an end to this dangerous conversation.

You can take your dissenting notions out of here with you, Zicre, and keep them to yourself. To think I wanted Chazen people to learn to speak their minds to me. As my father said, Be careful what you wish for, lest you get it.

Weariness of mind and body surprised Kheda as the urgency that had kept him on his feet since dawn and through all the long days evading the dragon's pursuit retreated.

Where is Ridu? Is he going to have any news from Itrac? Has she had any news from Risala? What will this mage-woman of Dev's do whenever she gets here, when she finds out what I've done to him? Will she just vanish in a puff of smoke and take whatever knowledge she might have along with her?

A hand shaking his shoulder startled Kheda awake. 'What is it?' he demanded.

/ never meant to sleep. Oh well, no harm done.

'It's Ridu, my lord.' It was Zicre, speaking quietly.

'I'll see him outside.' Kheda rubbed a hand over his beard and glanced at the men dozing further back in the cave. 'No need to disturb everyone.'

He stepped over Dev, who didn't appear to have moved since he'd lain down. Ridu was waiting out in the gully, enjoying the shallow breeze funnelled by the earthen walls. Kheda realised that the worst of the day's heat had passed, not that there would be much evening cool this close to the coming of the rains.

'My lord.' The youthful swordsman looked younger than ever stripped of his armour. He held out a small wooden box. 'The Yellow Serpent was at the rendezvous. It brought dispatches.'

'Excellent news.' Kheda breathed a sigh of relief and took the box, sinking down on to a convenient boulder. 'Sit. Zicre, get him some water, please.' He cracked the seal on the box and opened it to findseveral pages of individually folded and sealed reed paper inside. 'My lady Itrac's taking every precaution, I see.' He looked over at Ridu. 'Are there any stray ships creeping around Chazen waters?'

Ridu shook his head as he drank thirstily, spilling water down his grimy tunic. 'No, my lord,' he gasped.