Dragonmaster Read Online Free PDF Page A

hair escaped from it and cascaded down her back. He made a move as if to touch them, then caught himself.
    “You had best tuck your hair up,” he said.
    She hastened to do his bidding.
    “Has no one seen your hair before?” he asked. It was only one of the many questions crowding his tongue, demanding to be given voice, but he held them back.
    “The woman who turned me out,” she answered. “That was what frightened her. After that, even young as I was, I had the sense to keep it covered, but she had spread rumours about me and sometimes the village boys tried to rip my cap off. Louts they were, but I fought back and they learned to leave me alone.”
    “How did you make them do that?” Norl asked. “You must have been much smaller than they.”
    “They bullied me, but they were afraid of me, too, so I pretended to put a hex on them. At first they didn’t take me seriously, but then something happened…” She stopped, as if unsure about going on, but Norl’s curiosity was provoked.
    “What?” he asked, insistent.
    “One boy was worse than the others. He wanted to do more than just torment me—he wanted to truly hurt me. He laid hold of me one day when I was alone in the woods and threw me to the ground. I screamed at him and told him he would burn in fire if he did not let me go. He was just fearful enough that he loosened his hold on me for a moment and I wriggled free.” She stopped again. “That night he tripped and fell into the hearth in his hut.”
    “He was burned?” Norl asked.
    “Badly.”
    “Naught but a coincidence,” Norl said. “It must have been.”
    Hhana did not answer him at once. She picked up a stick and poked at the fire, more deliberately this time.
    “Probably,” she agreed, but she did not meet Norl’s gaze. Then she lifted her chin and faced him directly. “But the boys kept away from me after that. At least, at a stone-throw’s distance.”
    There was something in her manner as she held the stick, which had caught fire by now, that disconcerted Norl. By some trick of the firelight, as she stared at him her golden eyes seemed to gleam with a flame of their own deep within.
    “I am not a stray animal to be treated badly and then cast aside,” she said.
    Was there a threat in the words? But before Norl could say anything further, she tossed the burning brand into the fire and curled herself up on the ground with her back to him.
    They slept under the trees again that night without even a morsel of roasted hare to settle their empty bellies. Norl stared long at the sleeping maid before settling himself down as well. In the darkness he could persuade himself that he had let his imagination run away with him. She was not much more than a child. A child who had been mistreated and who had had to make up stories to defendherself. Her hair was just a trick of nature. It must be. And her eyes…Most likely she came from a place far away where everyone looked like her.
    The fire died down and the chill of night was settling in. Obeying an impulse that he did not really understand, Norl took off his cloak and wrapped it around her.
    The next day they walked in silence. The path climbed more steeply now. Hhana tried her best to keep up, but she stumbled often. Norl fretted at their slow pace.
    I could be making much better time were I alone, he thought, and then could not suppress a crooked smile. Was he in such a hurry to die? It would not hurt to let her accompany him for a while longer. Truth be told, he really did not know what to do with her. Could he abandon her in another village to be mistreated yet again? He knew he could not bring himself to do that. But why should he care what happened to her? She was nothing to him and, surely, he was not disconcerted by her implied warning of the night before. That was no more than a child’s threat, made more in fear and worry about being left alone than anything else. He shrugged the question off. No need to make any decision about