I looked down and saw what she meant. I must have hurt them rather badly in my wild attempt to climb the greystone last night. My musician’s calluses had saved my fingertips for the most part, but my knuckles were scraped badly and crusted with blood. Other parts of me hurt so much that I hadn’t even noticed.

My stomach clenched at the sight of them, but when I opened and closed my hands I could tell they were just painfully skinned, not seriously injured. As a musician, I always worried that something might happen to my hands, and my work as an artificer had doubled that anxiety. “It looks worse than it is,” I said. “How long has the draccus been gone?” I asked.

“At least a couple hours. It wandered away a little after the sun came up.”

I looked down from my high vantage on the greystone arch. Last evening the hilltop had been a uniform expanse of green grass. This morning it looked like a battlefield. The grass was crushed in places, burned to stubble in others. There were deep furrows dug in the earth where the lizard had rolled or dragged its heavy body across the turf.

Getting down from the greystone was harder than getting up had been. The top of the arch was about twelve feet off the ground, higher than was convenient for jumping. Normally I wouldn’t have worried about it, but in my stiff, bruised condition I worried I’d land awkwardly and turn my ankle.

Eventually we managed it by using the strap of my travelsack as a makeshift rope. While Denna braced herself and held one end, I lowered myself down. The sack ripped wide open, of course, scattering my belongings, but I made it to the ground with nothing more serious than a grass stain.

Then Denna hung from the lip of the rock and I grabbed her legs, letting her slide down slowly. Despite the fact that I was bruised all down my front side, the experience did a lot to improve my mood.

I gathered up my things and sat down with needle and thread to sew my travelsack back together. After a moment Denna returned from her brief trip into the trees, pausing briefly to pick up the blanket we’d left below. It had several large claw rents from when the draccus had walked over it.

“Have you ever seen one of these before?” I asked, holding out my hand.

She raised an eyebrow at me. “How many times have I heard that one?” Grinning, I handed her the lump of black iron I’d got from the tinker. She looked it over curiously. “Is this a loden-stone?”

“I’m surprised you recognize it.”

“I knew a fellow who used one as a paperweight.” She sighed disparagingly. “He made a special point of how, despite the fact that it was so valuable and exceedingly rare, he used it as a paperweight.” She sniffed. “He was a prat. Do you have any iron?”

“Fish around in there.” I pointed to my jumbled possessions. “There’s bound to be something.”

Denna sat on one of the low greystones and played with the loden-stone and a piece of broken iron buckle. I slowly sewed up my travelsack, then reattached the strap, stitching it several times so it wouldn’t come loose.

Denna was thoroughly engrossed by the loden-stone. “How does it work?” she asked, pulling the buckle away and letting it snap back. “Where does the pulling come from?”

“It’s a type of galvanic force,” I said, then hesitated. “Which is a fancy way of saying that I’ve got no idea at all.”

“I wonder if it only likes iron because it’s made of iron,” she mused, touching her silver ring to it with no effect. “If someone found a loden-stone made of brass would it like other brass?”

“Maybe it would like copper and zinc,” I said. “That’s what brass is made of.” I turned the bag rightside out and began packing up my things. Denna handed me back the loden-stone and wandered off toward the destroyed remains of the fire pit.

“It ate all the wood before it left,” she said.

I went over to look too. The area around the firepit was a churned-up mess. It looked like an entire legion of cavalry had ridden across it. I prodded a great piece of overturned sod turf with the toe of my boot, then bent to pick something up. “Look at this.”

Denna came closer and I held something up for her to see. It was one of the draccus’ scales, smooth and black, roughly as big as my palm, and shaped like a teardrop. It was a quarter inch thick in the middle, tapering to the edges.

I held it out to Denna. “For you, m’lady A memento.”

She hefted it in her hand. “It’s heavy,” she said. “I’ll go find one for you....” She skipped back to prod through the remains of the firepit. “I think it ate some of the rocks along with the wood. I know I gathered more than this to line the fire last night.”

“Lizards eat rocks all the time,” I said. “It’s how they digest their food. The rocks grind up the food in their guts.” Denna eyed me skeptically “It’s true. Chickens do it, too.”

She shook her head, looked away as she prodded in the churned-up earth. “You know, at first I was kind of hoping you would turn this encounter into a song. But the more you talk about this thing, I’m not so sure. Cows and chickens. Where’s your flair for the dramatic?”

“It does well enough without exaggeration,” I said. “That scale is mostly iron, unless I miss my guess. How can I make that more dramatic than it already is?”

She held up the scale, looking at it closely. “You’re kidding.”

I grinned at her. “The rocks around here are full of iron,” I said. “The draccus eats the rocks and slowly they get ground down in its gizzard. The metal slowly filters into the bones and scales.” I took the scale and walked over to one of the greystones. “Year after year it sheds its skin, then eats it, keeping the iron in its system. After two hundred years ...” I tapped the scale against the stone. It made a sharp ringing sound somewhere between a bell and a piece of glazed ceramic.

I handed it back to her. “Back before modern mining people probably hunted them for their iron. Even nowadays I’m guessing an alchemist would pay a pretty penny for the scales or bones. Organic iron is a real rarity. They could probably do all sorts of things with it.”

Denna looked down at the scale in her hand. “You win. You can write the song.” Her eyes lit with an idea. “Let me see the loden-stone.”

I dug it out of my bag and handed it to her. She brought the scale close to it and they snapped sharply together, making the same odd, ceramic ring again. She grinned and walked back over to the firepit and started pushing the loden-stone through the debris, hunting for more scales.

I looked out toward the northern bluffs. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” I said, pointing off to a faint smudge of smoke rising from the trees. “But something’s smoldering down there. The marker stakes I planted are gone, but I think that’s the direction we saw the blue fire last night.”

Denna moved the loden-stone back and forth over the ruins of the fire pit. “The draccus couldn’t have been responsible for what happened at the Mauthen farm.” She gestured at the churned up earth and sod. “There wasn’t any of this sort of wreckage there.”

“I’m not thinking about the farm,” I said. “I’m thinking someone’s patron might have been roughing it last night with a cheery little campfire....”

Denna’s face fell. “And the draccus saw it.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” I said quickly. “If he’s as clever as you say, he’s probably safe as houses.”

“Show me a house that’s safe from that thing,” she said grimly, handing me back my loden-stone. “Let’s go have a look.”

It was only a few miles to where the faint line of smoke rose from the forest, but we made bad time. We were sore and tired, and neither of us was hopeful about what we would find when we reached our destination.

While we walked we shared my last apple and half of my remaining loaf of flatbread. I cut strips of birch bark and Denna and I both picked at them and chewed. After an hour or so, the muscles in my legs relaxed to the point where walking was no longer painful.