The Radiant Dragon

trouble this night. We must leave quickly, for I am their leader.'

Teldin stopped taking inventory of his injuries. 'You'd desert your own people?' he demanded.

'What you mean, desert?' the gypsy asked with genuine amazement.

'Abandon, forsake, leave behind, run out on, turn one's back upon,' the pale green dracon said helpfully.

'Hmmph.' The aperusa cast a scathing glance toward the dracon and turned back to Teldin. 'The Astralusian Clan has much trouble. I am their leader, so I have more trouble,' the aperusa explained patiently. He stared at Teldin, obviously waiting for the man to see reason.

Teldin huffed in disbelief. Before he could tell the gypsy what he thought of such self-serving 'logic,' the darker dracon clasped his clawed hands to his cheeks and shrieked like a just-pinched farm maiden. Teldin twisted to see what had frightened the creature.

Bright light spilled out of the tavern and shone on the wooden wall of the alley. Against the wall was a spherical shadow bristling with eyestalks and growing ominously larger. The beholder was following them into the alley.

'Come on!' yelled Teldin, breaking into a run. His oversized companions fell in behind him without argument, showing surprising talent for speed and self-preservation.

As they dashed through a twisted maze of streets, Teldin found himself wondering whether the dracons had been the beholder's real target. After all, the shot had gone past his head. Beholders were not known for having bad aim. For that matter, beholders were not known for self-restraint. As Teldin thought about it, it seemed unlikely that the monster would sit calmly by as a joke was told at its expense. It must have had some reason for holding its peace, something compelling enough to stay its natural urge to commit instant and gratifying mayhem. Dread rose in Teldin like a dark tide. So far, the beholders had stayed out of the race for the cloak, but they could prove to be his deadliest antagonists so far.

On and on Teldin ran, the aches of his body forgotten. Fear, his troubled thoughts, and a disinclination to be trampled by the panicked dracons behind him pushed him along. The alleys widened into streets, and soon the dock area was in sight. Teldin raced across the village green toward the relative safety of the dock, where he'd have a clear view of an approaching beholder.

Teldin stopped when he reached the boardwalk. He bent over to grip his knees as he struggled to regain his breath. A hand on his shoulder startled him, and he jerked upright. With a stab of relief he recognized Hectate Kir, his half-elven navigator.

'Steady, sir,' Hectate said in his quiet voice. He studied Teldin's companions, and, as he did so, he reflexively flattened the cowlick at the crown of his auburn head. After each pass of his hand, the cowlick popped obdurately up, lending the half-elf a puckish air completely at odds with his gravely puzzled expression. 'Are you in any trouble, sir?' he finally asked.

Teldin held up a finger, indicating that he could not yet speak. As he gasped for air, he noted that the dracons also were winded, and their deep, ragged breaths set up a scratchy din reminiscent of a gale blowing through winter trees. The aperusa, on the other hand, did not seem the least bit inconvenienced by their precipitous escape. He merely smoothed a bejeweled hand over his bald pate and straightened the amethyst-silk tabard that covered his quilted yellow coat.

'Ready to sail?' Teldin asked as soon as he could draw enough breath.

'I don't know, sir. I just got back myself.' Hectate glanced at a tall, robust woman, clad in only a short tunic and soft leather boots, striding across the dock. He raised his voice to hail her. 'Dagmar! Were all the supplies delivered?'

'Aye,' she replied, coming close enough to tower over both Teldin and Hectate. 'Delivered and stowed. Ready to set sail.'

Still breathing hard, Teldin merely nodded up at the first mate. Dagmar was a striking woman with blue-gray eyes and thick braids of ash-blond hair so fair that the gray streaks woven in it were almost indiscernible. Her superb physique belied the years etched into her face; Teldin assumed she had seen at least a dozen more summers than his thirty-three. She was also at least two hands taller than any man on board, and she probably could best any two of them in unarmed combat. Noting Teldin's condition, Dagmar placed a firm hand under his arm and began to help him toward the ship.

'Wait!'

The sonorous bass plea stopped Teldin. He extricated himself from Dagmar's grasp and turned to face the aperusa man. The gypsy stepped forward, sweeping into an elaborate bow. 'I have yet to thank you for saving my poor life,' he said dramatically and inaccurately. 'Before you stands Rozloom, King of the Astralusian Clan.'

'We're honored,' Teldin said dryly, not bothering to offer his own name. Experience had taught him to protect his identity even in innocuous circumstances.

'A king! What a shame, Your Majesty, that you lost your crown defending your clan,' put in the dark green dracon in a snide tone. His sarcasm would have done credit to a Krynnish fishwife, and Teldin flashed the creature an amused look as he turned to leave.

'No! Not to go yet.' Rozloom dropped to his knees. 'Please, Captain, you see before you a man in great danger.'

Suspicion came easily to Teldin. 'Captain?' he echoed.

Rozloom's eyes flicked over Hectate Kir, taking in the slight navigator's almond-shaped eyes and slightly pointed ears. 'This one calls you 'sir.' An elf shows you respect?' The gypsy slapped a hand over his heart in pantomimed shock. 'If you are not great captain, you must be small god.'

The gypsy's apt sarcasm so closely paralleled his own opinion of elves that Teldin couldn't resist a smile. To his surprise, the wry smile on Hectate's face echoed his own response.

Encouraged, the gypsy sprang nimbly to his feet. 'No trouble will I be,' he said in a wheedling tone. 'My people were born to wildspace. We need but little air.'

Teldin's eyes dropped to the sash of emerald silk that girded the gypsy's immense waist. If the ship should ever lose one of its smaller sails, there was enough fabric in that sash to make a passable jib. 'Maybe you don't require much air. What about provisions?' he said, as tactfully as he knew how.

'Provisions?' The gypsy roared with laughter and swatted Teldin's shoulder companionably. 'Today much luck has come your way, Captain. Rozloom will be galley master, and never will you feast as well.'

'You can cook?' Hectate asked, hope glowing in his voice.

At the half-elf s reaction, the guilt that was never far from the surface of Teldin's mind welled up once again. Of his skeleton crew, not one person could claim basic culinary skills. So far, not one meal had been more than edible, and few had achieved even that status.

'Cook, certainly. And run fine shipboard tavern,' the aperusa said smugly.

Teldin bit his lip and pondered. Considering the danger he asked his crew to face, providing them with decent food was little enough. He'd learned from Aelfred the importance of crew morale. But taking on an aperusa? He looked Rozloom over carefully.

The gypsy was several inches taller than Teldin, and almost broad enough to carry off his immense girth. Despite his size, Rozloom moved with a nimble, fluid grace. Everything about the man was flamboyant and theatrical: his voice, his gestures, his clothes. The bronzed skin of the gypsy's bald pate gleamed in the dock's lamplight as if it had been oiled, and his long black mustache flowed dramatically into a curly beard. Thick black brows shadowed Rozloom's small, unreadable black eyes, but his broad smile suggested both open friendship and supreme self-satisfaction. Teldin doubted that the gypsy would be much of a fighter; aperusa seldom were. The jeweled daggers tucked into Rozloom's sash and boots obviously were ornaments, not weapons.

Still, the gypsy said he could cook. Teldin turned to Dagmar. 'What do you think?'

The mate shrugged. 'Aperusa are wildspace camels. He's right about that much. He won't use up much air or provisions. On the other hand, if this one breeds true, you can trust him to run from a fight, drink like a duck, and pester the women.'

Rozloom's eyes brightened as he took in the woman's substantial charms, and he rubbed his meaty hands together with anticipation. 'And who is this beauty?' he asked in liquid tones.

'Dagmar, the Valkyries first mate,' Teldin said. The gypsy's bug-eyed disbelief at this revelation was almost comical. Since aperusa men regarded women as inferior- necessary only to the fine art of seduction-they were not accustomed to finding women in positions of power. Teldin considered this attitude to be one of the aperusa's less attractive traits, and he couldn't resist pushing the knife a little deeper. 'As galley master,