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Auron heard a cough, and looked to see Naf standing there with the loaded camel on a lead Naf pointed to a pile of supplies he had scavenged The man winked at hiirl kicked her feet into the water
With Naf gone, the circling carrion birds swept into the canyon and alighted near the bodies, transforirl pointed to them and barked out a word
"You can’t speak Parl, can you?" Auron asked the girl At the ru in the water and started to gabble in her own tongue, though whether it was a language of her own invention or not, Auron could not say He set her down and swung the end of his tail gently before her She grabbed on to the point Djer had fashioned, and then dropped it again
"Iss," she said, definitively Auron soht it was cold and hard, not like the rest of his skin Hoould he know that?
He forgot the sound of Naf whistling as he walked out of the canyon, forgot the vultures now dropping to the corpses piled in the dead-pit, forgot even the little girl who had dropped to her knees to look at his toes He concentrated hard and tried to send acame back, but she jerked her head up and looked around He continued to project the picture Her face screwed up as she shut her eyes Auron snorted If Naf were just here, he would think her face worthy of a laugh
The picture faded froether She slowly got to her feet and cli to do soht When she was perched atop the central arc in his long spine, she set her hands on her hips, as if to say, "Nohat?"
What was a journey toward the irl found it s and lay her head along his spine, the food-filled blanket cushioning her froe of his backbone Auron looked back at her now and then and decided she was sleeping, perhaps the slight back-and-forth motion of his body as he walked reminded her of the cradles humans kept their children in He slowed his pace and was careful to choose an easy path The flat ground was beginning to give way to the first foothills of the reddish mountains He found a watercourse that looked as if it led to a notch leading to a et a decent look-round from there
If NooMoahk claimed this part of the waste, he did not patrol it often Auron son, justthes and pack, and ate and drank when it suited her, which was often She went to pains to conceal herself behind a rock when she had to answer other needs, but giggled and hung off his back to watch when Auron paused to do the saht in a little notch at the base of the watercourse wall; Auron wrapped himself like a snake around her
The second day she talked less and ate more They came to the shoulder of the mountain, and from it Auron saw valleys of scattered tall trees, with fernlike leaves sprouting from the top Auron took her into the valley and found a trickle or two of water, and he set Hieba down to drink and bathe while he looked at the strange trees They came in two varieties, a short kind with a wide base that narrowed before the fronds sprouted at the top, and a taller kind with a rowths of bark that stuck out like a phalanx of dwarves in a circle holding swords to their enes on the trunk, and Auron irl washed herself Farther above on the hills, he saw shaggy things that oats
He let the girl walk on the flatter, sandy floor of the valley, and she clung to his tail as he explored
Sorowled at theirl but seemed wary of Auron When he showed his teeth and extended the fans down from his crest to cover his earholes, it slunk away
They exchanged words rather than conversation Hieba would touch things and announce their naue, and if it was easier than the word in Parl, he would use that Otherwise he would teach her the Parl She i cat, and as an experiment, he tried a word or two of Drakine on her That she found a terrific gah she tired of it and went back to her native chattering She chased soed with a red ers Auron startled for a moment and almost loosed his fire on the bushes, when he realized it was just the remainders of some berries she had found