The Dragon of Despair by Jane Lindskold

for…”
    He paused, not certain if mentioning the failed first expedition might be taken as an insult to this new venture.
    Ewen Brooks, however, didn’t seem at all put out.
    “For the prince’s folks,” he finished for Derian. “That’s good. We found the burial plot and left it untouched. We’ll be glad to have your markers. Kestrel’s idea?”
    “My own,” Derian said. Realizing he sounded affronted, he quickly went on. “I was out by the battlefield at the end of King Allister’s War, making markers for the dead. I kept thinking of these people, buried as best we could, but with their graves unmarked. It seemed their spirits would rest better for the remembrance.”
    “Quite a trip to make for spirits unrelated to you,” Ewen said, and from his tone Derian couldn’t tell whether the other man thought him foolish or honorable.
    “I’ve brought someone who was related to them,” Derian said. He glanced back and found Firekeeper standing alongside the lead mule, so still that she almost vanished in the dusk. “Firekeeper, come and meet our host.”
    He knew he was stretching the point. Ewen Brooks hadn’t precisely invited them to stay, but he had greeted them and had said the grave markers would be welcome.
    “Firekeeper…,” Ewen said almost under his breath. “That’s the…the girl Kestrel adopted, isn’t it?”
    Firekeeper had advanced, walking a touch stiffly, like a dog—or a wolf, Derian thought with some shock—advancing on a stranger.
    “Blysse,” she said bluntly, and her refusal to use her wolf name, what she thought of as her personal name, told Derian that she was less than comfortable with this Ewen Brooks.
    “Blysse,” Ewen said. “Pleased to meet you.”
    Firekeeper nodded stiffly.
    Derian glanced at her, but she didn’t seem to be offering him any specific warning, so he decided to proceed.
    “So,” he said to Ewen, “I’ve been on the trail since dawn. Can I have shelter here or would you prefer me to bed down elsewhere?”
    Ewen, who had been staring rather fixedly at Firekeeper, shook himself.
    “Right! No, don’t go. Come in. We don’t have stabling yet, but there’s corral space enough for your beasts. Nice stock you have there, by the way.”
    “Thanks,” Derian said. “We’re testing the mountain horses. They’ve some qualities my father finds promising.”
    “And the mules?”
    “Tested and first-rate.”
    Derian spoke without thinking. He wasn’t a stable owner’s son for nothing. He could almost smell the other man’s eagerness to own the mules himself.
    Careful, Derian, he thought to himself. These folks aren’t in the city with tokens in their pockets or lines of credit to some Great House. They’re out here without money and you’re here with no one but Firekeeper to keep you safe.
    He smiled ingenuously and as he did so, somewhere out in the darkness a wolf—Blind Seer, he was almost certain—gave a long, plaintive howl.
    The pack animals snorted and stamped. Derian was certain that if Firekeeper had not resumed her place by the lead animal a few might have bolted. Ewen Brooks started as well.
    “Come ahead,” he said. “It’s getting dark and though the palisade isn’t finished, it’s better than nothing.”
    “Had much trouble with predators?” Derian asked, hearing the forced casualness in his own voice.
    “Some,” Ewen admitted. “Not wolves, though. They’re too spooky of a big group like this. Don’t like fire neither.”
    Derian knew better. He’d seen Blind Seer lounging in front of too many hearths, knew that Firekeeper had learned to use flint and steel from a wolf. If the Royal Wolves weren’t bothering the settlement, they had their reason.
    He wondered what it was and, glancing back at Firekeeper, felt certain that she knew the answer.

    THE SETTLEMENT PROVED to be fairly large. Over forty men, women, and children lived in the small community, according to Ewen, and, as Derian quickly learned, more were