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shopkeepers and children, to murder carelessly,
easily. Not even the same as a king’s army. For an army is made of
men like themselves, while a dragon . . . a singing
dragon’s fierce power was well beyond even these men. Why he felt
the power of the dragon so strongly within his own small body, as
if he knew it well, Teb had no idea.
    Well, these big sweating soldiers were no
match for it. He smiled to himself, warmed with pleasure at the
prospect of it eating them all, and imagined how it would be, each
one devoured slowly, with crushing pain.
    Then in the silent room someone repeated the
question in a harsh rasping voice. “How would you catch such a
creature?”
    Sivich drained his mug and wiped his mouth.
“With bait, man.”
    “Bait?”
    “Bait inside a snare.”
    “What bait would a dragon come to? Surely
. . .”
    “What snare would hold such a
. . . ?”
    Sivich’s stare silenced the speakers. The
men shifted, and Teb waited, all held equally now.
    “A snare made of barge chain and pine logs,”
Sivich said. The pines on the coast of Baylentha were tall and
straight. The barge chain used in Auric was as thick as a man’s
leg. The men stirred again, mulling the idea over.
    “And what kind of bait?” Pischen
breathed.
    There was silence again. Then Sivich turned
and looked over the heads of his men, directly toward Teb’s corner.
His voice came low and cold.
    “The boy will be the bait.”
    Teb sat very still. He could not have heard
right. He forgot to breathe, was afraid to breathe. Goose bumps
came on his arms, and the blood in his wrists felt like ice. What
boy did Sivich mean? Every man had turned to stare at him. Half
drunk, smirking, every face had gone blood-hungry. Teb’s mind
flailed in panic, like a moth trapped in a jar. He wanted to run,
but there was nowhere to run to. The jackals edged closer as they
sensed his fear. Sivich crossed the room, kicked the jackals aside,
and stood over Teb with one boot on Teb’s hand where he crouched,
the dark leader filling his vision, his eyes boring down into
him.
    Sivich jerked him up by his ear so his body
went hot with pain and he stumbled and choked back a cry. Sivich
snatched Teb’s wrist in a greasy hand and twisted his arm back. Teb
turned with the arm, to ease the pain. Sivich stared at his forearm
where the little birthmark shone against his pale skin. Then the
dark leader dragged him across the room toward the staring men.
    They crowded at once to look. Hibben of the
twisted hand drew in his breath sharply. But it was only a
birthmark, Teb thought. He had always had it. Why were they staring
at it? It was a dark mark, no bigger than the ball of his thumb,
and looked like a three-clawed animal foot.
    Sivich’s fingers were hard as steel. “This
will trap a dragon. With bait like this we’ll have us a dragon easy
as trapping fox.”
    The men sighed and muttered. Some pushed
closer to Teb, leaning over him to stare, pawing at his arm, their
strong breath making him feel ill.
    “How can that catch a dragon? It’s only a
little mark. . . .”
    “What does it mean? How can . . .
?”
    But others among them nodded knowingly. “Ay,
that will trap a dragon—trap the singing
dragon. . . .” They stared at Teb strangely.
    When at last Sivich was done with Teb, he
shoved him back toward the corner. Teb went quickly, sick inside
himself with something unnameable.
    He crouched against the stone wall,
listening as Sivich described how the snare would be built, how Teb
would be bound in the center of it as the rabbit is bound in the
fox snare. And, Teb thought, with the same result, a bloody,
painful death, the dragon’s great hulk hovering over him as it tore
his flesh, just as the fox tears at the rabbit.
    For even a singing dragon—if in truth it was
such—had to eat. No one ever said that singing dragons were
different in that way from common dragons. Surely the fables about
their skills as oracles were only that, fables born of