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"Her counsel would be most valuable," Hazeleye said

"Then you don’t knohere she is"

"I’ you, AuRon," the one called Lada said "She has been gone for years But then she was a rover"

"I’m sorry to hear that," AuRon said "Couldn’t you have told her you dispatcheddashed away then He’d co, but shortened his warning

"I haven’t seen her since before the dark days of the dragon-riders," Hazeleye said "Thank you for finishing theons from their thrall"

She’d spent her ons AuRon believed she was one of the few ho And better, sympathy

"Are you unwell?" he asked

"I feel the fall wind ht continue this conversation indoors?"

"You have a barn nearby?" AuRon asked

"Better than that An inn The oas a good friend to Wistala too He’s hanging back there in the croith his wife You could get your head through the door in back with ease"

If this had come from any other hominid but the Dwarves of the Diade Hazeleye had always been to his benefit Hers as well, seeain from just behind the foreet that idiot dog tied down?"

The tall wonaled to the people behind and a boy retrieved the dog

The party decausted with the litter-bearers and had the the si The dwarf trader had s of steel held by iron bands for securing packs or bags such as a ht carry Hazeleye sees, and kept thes back happy memories," she said in her learned but unaccented Drakine "It has been long and long since I rode dragonback"

"I would fly, but I fear you’d fall off," AuRon returned in kind

"Yes, I would need a saddle"

"No more saddles for me"

"That’s certainly your choice," she said "But a shared journey is a happier one"

AuRon was te the saddle, but he held his tongue

They walked up a path through the pines--AuRon curled his neck high and back so that Hazeleye wouldn’t be smacked by branches--and so crossed a dry strea livestock Better still, roasting meat Also woodsmoke, pitch, horses, bodywaste, straw, and all the other smells that ith hominid habitation

He picked pine needles out of his crest and horns while the others went inside A broad man in a leather apron opened the top half of the back door He had flecks of gray in his thick hair and a drooping on Inn, firebreather," thehis head through the back door and surveying the great roo, he seemed pleased "She’s n at the front Any friend to the original Green Dragon, as er says you are, is a friend to me and my family"

AuRon warmed to the innkeeper’s manner He was rather like his old barbarian friend Varl, with the saer eye Were that allabout quantities of food that would be ready by sunset, but AuRon didn’t need words His nose said there was beef stewing, sheep roasting, and best of allsausages He hadn’t tasted a good greasy sausage in years His eyes alht as the es, yes," AuRon said "As on after arlic and ground liver and onion? And for those with a taste for it, ginger"

The common room itself seemed co, from shutters to furniture, was stoutly hewn, planed smooth, and a bit smoky Faces of--oh, ere they called--cats, that’s it, stared at him from the warm corner between hearth and dried woodpile and atop the chimneyround platter that looked like it had been made out of a barbarian shield held broken nutshells Another cat scratched at the shells, sniffing suspiciously at a mound

Hazeleye settled herself in a chair by the fire and took up a long white pipe of the kind AuRon had seen sailors sht eye at AuRon "Never used to s, now that reat house is a fair herbalist and her mix doesn’t half take my aches and pains away"

Hazeleye drew deep on her pipe and sighed out a thick cloud of rather sickly-sweet-s quietly at the door, sh to distinguish pleased from wistful

"What can you tell me of my sister? How did she come to this place? When did you last see her?"

"That’s soo, before the Dragon-rider Wars," Lada said

"For all we know she’s returned," Hazeleye said "Perhaps to those librarians in Thallia"