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their dinner in the courtyard of the inn. Bazil held court in the center, and parties of the good folk of Quosh came up to visit him and wish him well. Wyvern dragons have prodigious memories—one area where they score better than men—but still he found it a little tricky, since so many people had grown up or grown old while he'd been away. Recognizing the brood of Nurm Pigget and his wife Iua was hard because they'd all shot up to be blond giants, six feet tall, with Iua's outland looks, since she was a maid of Kenor.
    Everywhere it was the same. What had been babies were tall children, tall children were young adults, and those who had been adult had become white-haired in some cases. Such sights brought on a certain pang of melancholy in both Bazil and Relkin. They too had grown older, even while they'd been fighting battles all over the world. Both had a sense that their youth was slipping away, they were in the last part of their legion service now.
    At some point Relkin caught Bazil's gaze, and between them there flashed the same sensation. They'd lost something, something they'd never realized they'd had. The golden years of late adolescence, which for them had been compressed entirely within the legion life and too many campaigns to want to think about.
    Then the glee-club band took up their instruments and launched into the first of the classic dance tunes of Blue Stone, "The Stepper's Old Sheep." Tarfoot Brandon set down his ale pot for the first time in hours and took Verina Pigget's hand and lead her out to dance on the courtyard. Tarfoot's red nose was aglow as he did the hidy-ho with the wife of Farmer Pigget, Quosh's leading citizen.
     
"Oh, the stepper's old sheep, the steppers old sheep
The stepper's old sheep are they
But the stepper's old sheep, the stepper's old sheep
They're shaved real close in May."
    Farmer Pigget wasn't going to stand around grumbling in such a situation. In a trice he'd found Luchea Brandon, Tarfoot's lovely young daughter, and was dancing the Stepper's Jig with her in a fine exhibition of toe-and-ankle motion. Then Lavinia Pigget and Wil Felber stepped out, along with everyone who could find a partner. By the last chorus of "The Stepper's Old Sheep," the whole center of the village was a whirling mass of dancing folk calling out with many a wild whoop and a holler.
    With barely a moment for a mouthful of ale, the fiddlers stepped up again, the bagpipes came to life, and old Chester Plenth, the ostler, raised the grand old rhythm of the "Blue Stone Waltz" on the drum. And away they went again.
    There was a bonfire lit in Brewery Yard, with old barrels, corn duff, and rotten wood out of the old brewery roof that Avil Bernarbo had set aside to be burned at Fundament Day. Children danced gleeful and wild around the fire while the elders stood in line, arms entwined, swaying gracefully to the ancient song of "Bluestone Hills."
     
"Away to the Bluestone Hills my love
Away while still we can
Away to the Bluestone Hills my love
Away with your handyman."
    And so it went, and on into "La Lili La Loo."
    "A Fine Young Man from Marneri."
    "The Kadein Waltz."
    "Daniel Went a-courting," and even a round of "The Kenor Song," in which the dragons came in on the choruses and sent the volume up so loud you could hear it all the way to Twin Streams and more.
    Then came a hammer of gongs as the pastry makers emerged from the inn, pushing out a huge cart laden with cakes, puffs, and tarts. The children converged on the cart with a collective scream of delight, and the fiddlers paused for refreshment.
    Farmer Shon Pigget wiped the perspiration from his brow with a big red handkerchief and took a mug of ale in the large front room of the Blue Stone Inn. Around him gathered the informal court of the village. Tomas Birch, Avil Bernarbo, Farmer Haleham and old Macumber from the Dragon House. These were the largest producers and the largest consumers of the valley's wheat and barley.
    Surrounding them were