He started to turn back to the young people on the other side of his table, but stopped short and looked out the window again.
"Ah, but maybe it will not be necessary, after all! There comes Retruance!"
They rushed out onto the broad entry court between Foretower and the battlements to watch the Dragon glide down from the blue sky, circle the castle once, and land in front of them.
"Buta but that's a," began Manda.
"Hello, Princess! You sent for me, Murdan?" the Dragon asked. When he spoke, Tom knew at once this was not his friend.
"You must be Furbetrance!" he cried.
"I am Furbetrance Constable," said the beast. "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you, sir. Murdan will shortly close his mouth and introduce us, I guess. Hasn't my brother arrived yet?"
"Been and gone," said Murdan. "Thank you for coming, Furbetrance, but what in blue blazes took you so long?"
"Wella," began the Dragon, looking sheepishly at his foreclaws. "I was a long way away anda"
"Makes no difference!" cried the Historian. "I havea-we havea-a great need of you right now. Your coming is most welcome."
And he began at once to tell the story of his misfortunes .from the fall of Overhall up to the disappearance of Retruance. The Dragon listened carefully, only nodding to Tom when the Historian introduced him, but making no comment until the story was told.
"After a bite to eat, and a few hours' sleepa-I've been traveling for days and days without stop," he said at last. "I'll be refreshed and ready to go look after my brother and your daughter. Historian. To carry the little princess and my brother's Companion will be an honor."
The three led the beast to the Great Hall, where Murdan shouted up a huge meal for the travel-weary Dragon, sending servants and soldiers scurrying. While Purbetrance ate and discussed with Murdan the details of the disappearances, Manda and Tom rushed off to prepare for the journey.
EVEN so, it was dusk by the time they were ready to depart.
"Dragons don't need much sleep, usually," apologized Furbetrance when he met them on the terrace. He'd had his nap by then. "But twelve days is about my limit for being awake, let alone flying at top speed."
"Fly first to Ramhold tonight," the Historian recommended. "Rest there and go on by daylight."
"Just out of curiosity," asked Manda, "what did take you so long getting here?"
"It's a bit embarrassing to admit," said the Dragon. He was actually blushing green. "I was looking for our lost father, you know, and followed a lead someone gave me about a Dragon seen on the isles off the Mantura coast. We'd better get going, now. I'll tell you the tale after we're aloft, lady and gentleman. It'll help pass the time as we fly."
Murdan gave Tom a flat packet bound with broad canvas straps.
66 Don Callander "Maps," he explained. "I arranged them with the nearest lands at the top. Furbetrance has a good idea of the layout of the land hereabouts, as he was hatched not far away, but beyond Ramhold he says he's not traveled before."
"North and west were Retruance's sectors of search for Papa," explained the Dragon. Tom attached the map case to a harness Furbetrance had furnished from among his brother's tack. It provided comfortable saddles for riders, and loops, thongs, and pockets sewn in thick leather to hold luggage and equipment.
"Well, be off!" shouted Murdan. "I'd go myself, you can be sure, but I'm expecting a visit any day from Peter of Gantrell."
"Well, you can tell him I've run away again, to avoid his dragging me back to Momingside," said Manda stoutly. "Don't do anything to make him comfortable, I say."
"Be nice, now. Princess!" the Historian chided her. "Be sure he will not overstay his welcome by a single minute. Mistress Grumble has a particularly prickly spot in her hearta-and her guest roomsa-for Lord Peter. She knew him in Lexor, I understand."
This thought made him cheerful again. After his riders had climbed aboard, the Dragon waved a quick farewell to the watching crowd and threw himself over the battlements, to swoop at once into the darkening sky with a dramatic nourish even Retruance hadn't shown, tilting his wings from side to side and letting out a white-hot stream of burning gas from his nostrils. The flames roared satis-fyingly.
"Well, now about this adventure that made me late," he said, once they were high and smoothly headed very fast west by north. "The Dragon I thought might be Papa lived in a big cave in the Cliffs of Obsidia. Just the sort of place Papa would love to live in, I thought, but when I arrived there was nobody at home. So I made myself comfortable, thinking the Dragon, Papa or whoever, would return shortly."
He beat his wings with a sound like canvas napping in the wind, and went on: "I stayed several weeks but no Dragon came. I passed the time exploring the cavern, and one day I discovered a Dragon's treasure. It was quite a find! Not all Dragons have them. Retruance has one started somewhere, DRAGON COMPANION 67.
I don't know where, but personally, I haven't really been interested.
"This one was huge, and some of the stuff was incredibly valuable! I began to suspect the inhabitant of the cavern could not be Papa, after all. In the first place. Papa is not the collecting kind, and in the second place, he has not been gone long enough to have collected so much."
"Where does a Dragon get a treasure, anyway?" asked Manda, fascinated by the Dragon's tale.
"Oh, mostly fees for jobs taken under contract," said Purbetrance offhandedly. "Most Dragons like collecting jewels and golden trinkets and pick them up wherever they find them. Not many refuse a Dragon when he asks for a jewel or some such odd thing. I never really understood why. I prefer to collect places and people myself, you know."
"Yes, I've heard you're a talented artist," Manda said. "I'd love to see some of your works, one day."
"We're going in the wrong direction to see anything, which is just as well," said the Dragon, obviously pleased with her compliment. "They aren't all that good."
"Not what I heard," said Manda aside to Tom.
"Anyway, they're too large and too far off the track to be seen easily," added Furbetrance. "I usually use sides of mountains or great cliffs for my best stuff. But if you really are interested. Princess, I'll take you to see them one day."
"About the Dragon in the treasure cave?" prompted Tom.
"Oh, yes! Well, I had about decided this Dragon couldn't be Papa. For one thing, indications were that this was a she-Dragon. Certain things like perfumes and ointments that lady Dragons use, you know?"
"Oh, dear!" cried Manda.
"Yes!" said Furbetrance. "Now you begin to see my situation. Why I was late."
"I don't understand. I'm not that familiar with Dragons yet," Tom objected.
"Lady Dragons are a well, ready only once every century or so," explained Manda. "This one a"
"This lady returned home to find me sleeping in her bed and eating her larder and naturally assumed that I was aa suitor, I guess you could say. Once she got that idea in her head, nothing I could say or do would convince 68.DRAGON COMPANION 69.
Don Callander her otherwise. Nothing would do but that we woulda er, mate."
"And you had to stay until the eggs were laid?" asked Manda, delighted by the idea.
"More than that, I had to stay and tend the Dragon lady while she brooded our clutch! That takes four whole years! I fed her and talked to her and rubbed her back. She had strange cravings. I went completely across the Quietness to find the proper kind of pickled beets for her. She must have them, or she would die, she insisted!"
"Poor Furbetrance!" Manda sympathized, but with a gig-gle.
"Don't get me wrong! I was pleased to be her mate and this is my very first brooding! Even Retruance has never had the honor to be selected. But it is time consuming!"
"We'll have to meet this wife and mother," said Tom, winking at Manda. "What is her name, if I may ask?"
"Oh, of course! Hetabelle is her name. I'll bring her and the children to visit, once they are old enough to fly this far."
"I'm surprised you left the nest, even now," said Manda.
"We heard Murdan's calling and I left as soon as the eggs were opened and the little ones safe and cozy with their mother. Normally, I would have stayed a year or two longer and enjoyed teaching the kits fishing and hunting and flying, all the good old Dragon things. But Hetabelle insisted that I should answer the call. She's a stickler for duty, I'm proud to say."
"Those kits must be adorable!" cried Manda, clapping her hands. "I forgive you for being late, Furbie!"
"Thank you. Princess," the Dragon said, blushing even more brightly green around the chin and throat. "I knew you would understand. I'm not so sure about Murdan, however."
"Oh, he's not as bad as all that," scoffed the girl. "His bark's much worse than his bite, believe me."
"It's so, especially if you're a Royal Princess," said Tom.
"Or a valuable Librarian and a Dragon Companion," countered Manda. "And a rare human, to boot."
"1 thought the Companion was a bit unusual!" exclaimed Furbetrance. He tried to roll his eyes about to examine Tom more closely. *That weird hairstyle! I should have realized! Now I see, also, why old Murdan sent him on this journey. With a commonsense princess and a human gentleman, we can't be beaten!"
By the time they swung about and down to land at Murdan's sheep station Ramhold, the pair were just a bit weary of the Dragon's endless talk of his new-hatched children.
"Four girls, and a boy!" he repeated for the seventh time. "I'm thinking of names for them, still. Retruance, after my brother, and Alix Amanda, for you. Princess. Or perhaps Tomasina. It's good luck to name a child after a Companion, of course."
Manda and Tom put their heads together and came up with a number of suggestionsa-such as Altruanza, after a Dragon Tom particularly admired, and Phyllis, after Manda's foster mother.
They'd been flying by full moonlight over an endlessly rolling plain of grass for some hours when they spotted the lights of the station ahead. By the moonlight they could see a long, low main building of grassy sod, which formed one side of a triangle of smaller buildings, evidently workshops, stables, kitchens, and storehouses. The station was almost invisible against the rolling plain, its grass-grown roof tucked against the side of a slightly taller hill that protected it from the winter-chilled winds that blew steadily from the northwest.
To announce their arrival Furbetrance emitted a shrill screama-like a locomotive exhausting its steam chest at one blasta-before he dropped easily into the center of the triangular court.
The sound tumbled shepherds from their bunks at once and they rushed out into the midnight dark, clutching strung bows, long, heavy crooks, and guttering torches to see what had come upon them so suddenly.
Furbetrance lowered his head to allow Manda and Tom to dismount, then gave a short snort of flame to light the scene. The shepherds and their women fell back a pace.
"Hello! We come from Overhall," called Tom, eyeing the drawn bows uneasily. "I am Lord Murdan's Librarian, and this is Princess Alix Amanda, whom you must know."
70 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION 71 "Welcome to Ramhold," called one of the sheepherders, striding forward then. "I am Murdan's Factor, called Talber."
"We seek the Lady Rosemary, of course," said Manda, graciously responding to the factor's low bow. Tom shook the broad-shouldered, tough-looking man's leathery hand.
"And the Dragon Retruance Constable," he added. "This is his brother Furbetrance, who brought us."
The Dragon nodded in greeting. "What news of the Historian's daughter. Factor?"
Talber raised his hand respectfully to the Dragon. "Come inside, out of the chill," he invited. "The large barn should hold your bulk easily. Sir Dragon, if you wish cover. It will snow before morning, I think. Spring comes in fits and starts here."
"I'll just tag along and listen at the window for a while, but thank you for the courtesy, just the same," replied Furbetrance.
Once within the main house, with a fire stirred and fed fragrant turves of peat to warm the common room, Talber had them brought mulled cider and big sugar cookies while he answered their questions.
"I rode over the pass to Old Place, Murdan's mother's Achievement, and just returned yesterday. Summer Pass is clear of ice and snow, and there were no tracks I could make out to tell where Lady Rosemary's party went astray; whether she was taken by some force or merely wandered off the track, which is always possible in those parts."
"The Lady Murtal, Murdan's mother," he went on quickly, "confirmed what we feared. The party left over a week ago, just as the snow melted from the highest places in the pass. She is most distraught, you can believe."
The fifteen station men and women gathered about to listen and contribute what they could.
"The latest news? Not much. Sir Librarian, Lady Princess, Dread Dragon! Yesterday late, a fur trapper came over the pass and asked to spend the night. It's our custom to give such countrymen who come to our door hospitalitya- for their news and despite their calling, which is at odds with ours."
"He is here," someone said, and the crowd pushed to the fore a grimy and very gamey-smelling young man with a black beard, great mane of uncombed black hair, and wary eyes.
"He's unused to crowding people," Talber apologized softly. It was evident the trapper was reluctant to speak before all these strangers.
"Well, let's get you all back to bed now," urged Talber to his own people, waving them off, genially. "A sheepherder has to be up before first light!"
When he'd cleared the room with promises that everyone would hear the outcome in due time, Tom and Manda were able to draw the fur trapper from his quiet bashfulness.
"You came down from the north?" asked the princess, smiling encouragement. "Tell us what you saw, please do. We're looking for my cousin and her party. They came from Old Place."
"I know it well, mistress," said the man, accepting a mug of hot cider. "I stopped at Old Place for two nights earlier and saw Lady Rosemary and played with her three cubs. Fine woman! Lady Murtal's always welcoming to us woodsmen, you see."
"What did you find of Lady Rosemary, though?" asked Tom.
"Well, sir, I went north for a week after that to collect my traps and take them up for summertime. That was around the lakes when the first thaw was over," the trapper said, not to be hurried through his tale.
"So I came back south toward Summer Pass by a different way, over the lakes. I've a cabin there, where I often over-winter, you see. Snug, with good flowing water and lots of game for the larder."
"Yes, I'm sure it is delightfula-but lonely, too," said Manda with interested sympathy.
"Yes, mistress. Quite lonely but that's the way I like it! When I got there a week back I found someone had stopped there recently. Which is all right with me. It's empty land, you are right. When you get guests, you take them in, no matter who they are, and ask no questions, either."
"These guests, though," he went on, warming to the subject, "were not very nice. They ate all my stores and never left payment or replaced a bit of them! Never heard of such goings on! Their horses ate all my fodder and hay, too!" he added, greatly aggrieved by some people's lack of manners.
72.Don Callander "I'd have given them no more thought than a suitable curse or two, however," he said, shaking off his anger. "One reason why I prefers to live alone."
"I certainly understand," said Tom. "Did they steal anything else from you?"
"No, left my pelts alone, which surprised me. Must have been city or castle folk. Woodsmen gone bad woulda stolen the whole lot and beggared me! A whole year's work! But pelts are smelly and greasy to such kinds, and I figure they didn't know their value. No, they stole my hospitality, my food and fodder, is all, nor ever left a word of thanks."
"Who might they have been?" asked Talber. "Mounted parties are not that common in the lake country. Most travel there by water."
"True, Factor!" said the trapper, whose name was Clematis. "It was a considerably large party, mistress! Fully a dozen horses and a half as many mules, by the sign they left. I judge at least eight or ten, in all, some of *em women."
"But no sign of who they were?" urged Manda, refilling the trapper's mug and pushing the cookie plate closer.
"No, mistress! But one thinga"
"Yes?" they asked.
"I found this." Clematis plunged a hand into a huge coat pocket. "Behind one of the bunks, it was."
"Oh, my dear!" cried Manda, snatching the object from the trapper's hand. It was a soft-stuffed rag doll neatly dressed in blue-and-red gingham, with bright button eyes and brown yam for hair. Manda burst into tears.
"Molly's doll!" she sobbed. "I made it for her myself before the Mercenary Knights came. I can be absolutely sure of it! See, Tom? The buttons I cut from the old shirtwaist I wore when I ran away from Granger!"
"We begin to make some progress, then," said Furbetrance from the doorway. "Tell us, which way did they go when they left your house, trapper sir?"