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"Yes It rained, you were fishing"
"Oh, of course You have an old dragon’s apology Age plays tricks on the mind What is that on the end of your tail?"
"Dwarves made it for me It’s sort of a shield and a weapon"
"You weren’t planning to fight me, I hope"
"No I think you said you’d be happy to let us stay for a tilad of the company," Auron said NooMoahk hadn’t said exactly that, but it wasn’t a lie
"I did? So I did, and I am Come, come, the main entrance to my hall isn’t far I don’t travel more than a few hours froain, and you ht as well arrive dry"
He did not travel up theriver by walking across NooMoahk’s back as if it were a bridge, and then trailed hi its way out of the forest and up the hill It h unearthed sheets of paving rock At each turn a broken tower stood, straddling the road on two legs planted far apart Only one arch reo
"They were pretty," NooMoahk explained "Flowers used to grow froreenstuff down The earthquake that caht thehter road once Never let the other ho of beauty or wonder"
They cli with the re like teeth from the cavern roof The ruins of the h the buildings that hugged the cavern walls had long since collapsed Three roads at one tis and into the mouth of the cave, but only one was still open The others were daranite and blood-brown brick piles
"This was once Kraglad, a city of Ulda, half-a-thousand years in theFiles oftribute Before disaster and war, of course Don’t bother poking your head in the s, uhters have picked it clean as a desert skeleton"
"Were you the disaster?"
"No," NooMoahk said "Though some say I was, it isn’t true I was forons or more to do this I will admit that I drove some squatters out of the halls beneath"
He led theave way to a teres "Blighters are down here again, poking around They won’t trouble us, or you, as long as you’re with round, forgotten underground Not full of s of the Diadem, or so bear The air tasted like it had been placed there at the for of the world and not moved since Echoes of their movements disturbed a bat or thich kept the sides Best of all was the s, or Mother’s coripped his back-ridge with both hands as she rode him
"Dark," she said