Dragon's Ring by Dave Freer

"I'll bring you the tail end of the squab pie that we had for our dinner. If the lad's got the flux already, I wouldn't eat the stew. Some parts of it died a bit too long ago."
     
    The noise, the warmth and length of her day were finally telling on Meb. She rested her tired head in her hands, elbows on the rough wooden table, her head spinning gently.
     
    "He looks all in, poor mite," said the woman. "Too young for your sort of life, gleeman."
     
    "We all have to start somewhere," said the gleeman. "Now, let's get some food into him, before he falls asleep at the table."
     
    The squab pie was excellent. Succulent, flecked with tarragon and set in crisp pastry. Even struggling to focus and stay awake, Meb knew that it was finer food than she'd ever had in her life, even without hunger adding sauce. Meb did find it a little odd that there should be no fish in it, but maybe other people did sometimes have meals without fish.
     
    It didn't stop her falling asleep on the table.
     
     
     
    Fionn looked at the sleeper across the table from him, her head resting on her arms, with her rough-cut hair a few finger widths from a puddle of spilled beer. He smiled crookedly. Well. Here was a pretty coil he'd got himself into. Somehow he'd have to teach her to leave fewer traces. She probably didn't know what she was doing. Actually, make it that she certainly didn't know what she was doing. When Zuamar came to look at his tax-hall, he would smell magic and dragon fire all over the place.
     
    Fionn had long since given up on any belief in luck . . . or in fate. A planomancer such as he knew that everything revolved around energy. Sometimes you manipulated the energies of the world, and sometimes . . . they manipulated you. Given the way that she was tweaking flow-lines it was not surprising that she'd come to him. In short order Fionn knew that he would have been looking for her. She could very easily ruin his design, even destroy both him and it. It was most amusing that she'd come to the one dragon who really didn't want to find a human with magical skills. To the one who wouldn't either kill her or use her. Still, keeping her would allow him to fix the damage as she caused it and, of course, to thwart the designs of others. That would be sweet. And amusing. As funny as plucking a handful of tail-scales from Zuamar, just as burning his tax-hall had been. Besides, the place really had been a drain on the water-energies of the city. Of course there were other ways that he could have fixed that, but this had been more entertaining.
     
     
     

Chapter 9
    Warmth. Rich food. More alcohol than she was used to . . .  Meb should have slept like the dead. Perhaps it was being in a much softer bed than the thin straw pallet she was used to. This one had, by the smell, old feathers in it. It sagged under her and seemed to threaten to swallow her. It was warm. Too warm. She drifted in and out of sleep and strange shadowy half-nightmare dreams—which were eerily real. Flames, hot, angry and devouring. The spiky dark shape of the dragon etched against the pallid moon. And lines in colors she had no words for. Lines that drifted and wove through everything, in some vast kaleidoscope pattern, that spread out and out and out, shaping waves, edging the very stones of great buildings, a tower that hung over the endless void . . . And then the flames again, flames and a dragon. She woke, sweating.
     
    Finn stood by the window, silhouetted by the moonlight. She saw the flash of white teeth in the dark face. "Ah. A bit warm here under the thatch," he said, fiddling with the window.
     
    It was always confusing in the dark. She could almost have sworn that he was partially closing it.
     
    Meb was unsure how she'd got here. A vague memory of being let upstairs, and a fear that she'd been undressed . . . but no, she was still in the clothes the gleeman had provided. No wonder she was hot! She undid a button. Pushed the cloak aside,