He turned slowly, as if loath to leave the bronze beast. He caught sight of her and pivoted completely around, his eyes intense as he took note of her altered appearance. With quick, light steps he closed the distance between them and ushered her back into the sleeping room, one strong hand holding her by the elbow.

“Mnementh has fed lightly and will need quiet to rest,” he said in a low voice, as if this were the most important consideration. He pulled the heavy hanging into place across the opening.

Then he held her away from him, turning her this way and that, scrutinizing her closely, a curious and slightly surprised expression fleeting across his face.

“You wash up . . . pretty, yes, almost pretty,” he allowed with such amused condescension in his voice that she pulled roughly away from him, piqued. His low laugh mocked her. “How could one guess, after all, what was under the grime of . . . ten full Turns, I would say? Yes, you are certainly pretty enough to placate F’nor.”

Thoroughly antagonized by his attitude, she asked in icy tones, “And F’nor must be placated at all costs?”

He stood grinning at her till she had to clench her fists at her sides to keep from beating that grin off his face.

At length he said, “No matter, we must eat, and I shall require your services.” At her startled exclamation, he turned, grinning maliciously now as his movement revealed the caked blood on his left sleeve. “The least you can do is bathe wounds honorably received in fighting your battle.”

He pushed aside a portion of the drapery that curtained the inner wall. “Food for two!” he roared down a black gap in the sheer stone.

She heard a subterranean echo far below as his voice resounded down what must be a long shaft.

“Nemorth is nearly rigid,” he was saying as he took supplies from another drapery-hidden shelf, “and the Hatching will soon begin, anyhow.”

A coldness settled in Lessa’s stomach at the mention of a Hatching. The mildest tales she had heard about that part of dragonlore were chilling, the worst dismayingly macabre. Numbly she took the things he handed her.

“What? Frightened?” the dragonman taunted, pausing as he stripped off his torn and bloodied shirt.

With a shake of her head, Lessa turned her attention to the wide-shouldered, well-muscled back he presented her, the paler skin of his body decorated with random bloody streaks. Fresh blood welled from the point of his shoulder, for the removal of his shirt had broken the tender scabs.

“I will need water,” she said and saw she had a flat pan among the items he had given her. She went swiftly to the pool for water, wondering how she had come to agree to venture so far from Ruatha. Ruined though it was, it had been hers and was familiar to her, from Tower to deep cellar. At the moment the idea had been proposed and insidiously prosecuted by the dragonman, she had felt capable of anything, having achieved, at last, Fax’s death. Now it was all she could do to keep the water from slopping out of the pan that shook unaccountably in her hands.