Elegy for a Lost Star (43 page)

Within him his dragon sense expanded, rising from its dormancy. The minutiae of the world around him became mammoth; suddenly he was aware of the tiniest of details, the infinitesimal threads of light and sound that made up all the individual things that existed beneath the sun, that stood separate from the wind that blanketed the earth. Every blade of frozen grass in every thawed circle below every leafless tree, every feather on every winter bird that flew above him, every ice-covered branch of every bush was suddenly clear to him, or at least to the ancient beast in his blood.

On the wind he could count the drops of blood he recognized more surely than he knew his own name.

And more—there was blood mixed with hers that echoed his own.

Ashe turned in that instant and surveyed the land between where he stood and the dragon's cave.
Two miles as the raven flies
, he thought, forcing down the fear that was rising within him the way his dragonsense had the moment before. At least ten to ford the river at a low enough place and then circumvent the thickest parts of the virgin forest, where no path had ever been blazed, and where snow still lingered.

The woodlands around him appeared for a split second in his mind to be filled with obstacles that separated him from his treasure, snow-covered deadfalls and white hillocks, hummocks and knolls that barricaded the forest with thick frost that had melted to mere frosting at the onset of Thaw.

And then suddenly the obstacles fell into place as his dragon sense took on a new dimension. No longer confined to being just an awareness, his dragon nature took over, and that side of him rose, rampant, struggling within him no more, but rather asserting itself over nature and the earth around him. A path gleamed in his mind like a beacon, an ethereal guide to Elynsynos's cave.

And as his wyrm nature took over, Ashe felt a loosening of the reins of control that he kept so tightly inside of himself, a calling to the power of the elements all around him.

His body remained human for the moment, even though his conscious mind was now draconic. He began to run, straight into the tree wall before him that kept him separated from what the dragon in his soul considered its treasure.

His wife and unborn child.

Bend to me; let me pass
, the multitoned voice within his soul commanded.

And the earth obeyed.

Trees shrugged in the wind, their trunks bending at barely possible angles to clear the path. Mounds of snow-covered brush parted; the muddy ground hardened in places before him, all in response to the lore of the earth from which his ancestors had sprung. The forest, suddenly silent, seemed to hold its breath as the man who raced through it dragged power from the air around him, passing through the greenwood as if it were nothing more than wind.

Leaving it crackling, dry, a moment later, as if his presence had stripped the life right out of it.

As he ran, all of the thought went out of Ashe's conscious mind, sinking deeper into the primal nature of the dragon in his blood, until the solitary thought—the need to get to Rhapsody—consumed his entire being. That primacy gave him greater speed, and before he knew it he was standing at the mouth of Elynsynos's lair, panting from exertion and sweating in terror.

At the cave entrance his dragon sense was suddenly, rudely slapped away, forced into sharp submission by the greater lore that was extant in the place. Ashe blinked, then listened. From the depths of the cave he could hear a keening wail, the sobbing of pain and despair in a voice that he knew well. The sound of the agony made his blood turn cold; his skin prickled in sweat and nausea threatened to consume him.

Standing before him in the cave's mouth was a Bolg woman, a dark and somber-faced midwife he vaguely remembered Rhapsody introducing to him years before. In Bolgish culture the midwives held a special place of power; the Bolg believed that infants were to be given the best of their crude medical care because they represented the future, even while Ylorc's warriors of great skill and accomplishment might be left to bleed to death of their wounds. The midwives were an iron-fisted lot, a dominant political faction even in Achmed's new order, a silent, stern-demeanored group of women who were rarely known to show emotion or distress.

So it was even more disconcerting to see the expression of stoic fear in the eyes of the woman standing before him.

Ashe struggled to form the words. “My wife?” he whispered. “My child?”

The Bolg woman let her breath out slowly, then spoke three words in the common tongue of the continent.

“I am sorry,” she said.

T
he days of endless snow passed, one into another.

Faron's mind, absent of other things to comprehend, honed a harder focus. He had lost all memory save one, had turned away from acclimating to his new body, his new reality, to keep his attention set on but one goal. Mile by mile, he followed winter's path through unbroken farmland, sighting along the trans-Orlandan thoroughfare, the frozen road that bisected the continent. There was very little traffic on that thoroughfare; Thaw had come, and the people of the towns, villages, and cities of Roland were busy making repairs, stocking up peat, wood, and dung for fuel, and settling in, awaiting winter's return. With the lore of the earth strong within him, Faron had learned to blend into the landscape, so whether it was because of that new ability, or the lack of anyone to see him, he passed unnoticed.

He was following a sound now, a distant call in a vibration he had known all his life, the ancient, primordial song of the scales he had lost. If it had been possible for him to forget the tune, he would have been reminded by the humming of the ones within his possession, their power reverberating through his stone body.

Ofttimes the noise of day served to mute the call, and when it did Faron became angry beyond all measure. The cry of a winter bird, of geese flying overhead in formation, caused him to stop in his snowy tracks, looking up to the firmament of the sky above, muttering silent curses in a long-dead language deep within his brain. He craved the silence of the world, for in that silence, he could hear the call clearly. Once he got a fix on it, he followed it ceaselessly.

Until at last one night he found what he was looking for.

He had come to the top of a rise above a small, low-lying valley, one of the undulating hills of the Orlandan Plateau, on the wide Krevensfield Plain, and there it was below him.

The full moon was shining, bright as day. Its light glazed the snowy fields, making them gleam silvery blue. Even in the dark, the moonlight was so intense that it was easy to see the brightly colored wagons, the crimson and purple flags dressing the carts that by day were pulled by horses. Those beasts were quartered together now, blanketed for the night; they alone noticed the chain in the earth, and nickered in a growing panic.

Within the Monstrosity's camp torches and barrel fires burned, sending sparks skyward to dance with the blazing moonlight.

Around those barrel fires some of the men who served as guards and
laborers sat, drinking foul ale and telling fouler jokes. The hunchback ticket taker had imbibed more than he could handle, and was now being used as a human ball in a grotesque game of Tossabout, to which he seemed to proffer no objection and was, in fact, cackling aloud. The laughter echoed off the empty world of hummocks and rises around them, fading off into the night.

Masking the call of the scales.

M
alik held his battered mug to his lips, blowing the dirty foam off, the ale spattering into his beard as he laughed. He had pulled his legs against his chest in the attempt to warm them when out of the corner of his eye he spied movement.

He looked again, peering out into the darkness, but whatever had been moving was gone.
Nothing more 'an a snow devil
, he decided, taking another draught.
Wind'll be a bitch tonight
.

The wagon closest to their barrel fire reared up off the ground, then was slammed down on it again, shattering into pieces.

For a split second, no sound was heard on the wide expanse of the great plain except for the splintering of the wood. Then the screaming began.

The freaks that had survived the initial impact inside the wagon started to scream; their harsh, alien voices rose in a discordant wail that sliced through the winter wind and the crackle of the fire, blending with the frightened whinnying of the horses. Malik and the others around the barrel fire fell back, covering their faces, then scrambled to their feet in shock. The keeper's mouth flapped, forming two words.

“What the—”

The next nearest wagon suddenly skidded sideways toward them, as if it were being swung from behind. It smashed into the wreckage of the first, doubling the screams and filling the night air with the sounds of gruesome snapping and grinding.

Then it was hoisted up into the darkness, and tossed in much the same manner as they had been tossing the hunchback the moment before, right into their midst.

Through the sheer luck of reflex and favorable positioning Malik dropped on the snow and rolled to his left, bruising himself from face to knee but spared from being crushed, as three of the other men he had been drinking with the moment before were.

As the cacophony swelled around him, and the blood pounded crazily in his ears, Malik's mind tried to determine what was happening, why a pleasant night's drinking in the cold had suddenly become a nightmare. All he could imagine was they had been caught in the middle of a terrible winter storm that had whipped up from nowhere, catching the wagons and sending them flying.

He struggled to regain his feet and his gorge, which had risen into his throat and was choking him; just as he did, Malik thought he saw a shadow pass between the destruction and a third wagon, from which freaks and others that traveled with the Monstrosity were streaming, gibbering in confusion and fear. In the tattered light of the remnants of the barrel fire that had been in their midst and now was scattered over the snow the shadow appeared to be human, but elongated into gianthood by the undulating flames.

The roof of the next wagon splintered into pieces as the chorus of confusion grew into screams of terror.

This time Malik looked up over the top of the broken wagon in time to see the silhouette of two enormous arms and upper body slamming down with fury again. The shadow seized the wagon, shaking it violently, causing whatever other creatures had still been inside, crowding their ways to the exit, to be thrown clear onto the snowy ground, where they huddled, their eyes fixed above them, as it brought the wagon down directly on top of them with a resounding slam.

In the fading light of the barrel fire Malik thought he could make out the entire silhouette now. For a brief moment he had believed that one of the freaks was rampaging; such things had happened before, and a number of their exhibits were very strong. But as the titanic shadow lurched away in the snow toward the Ringmaster's wagon, he could see that whatever was assaulting the monstrosity was no freak, nor was it any man he had ever seen.

And it was making its way to the Ringmaster's abode.

“Fire at it!” he shouted hoarsely to the men who had been on duty while he and the others were drinking with the hunchback. Those men were leveling their crossbows, shaking; they were in better sight of what they were facing, and whatever it was must have been far worse than Malik could imagine by the sight of their faces, frozen in a rictus of fear. His shout seemed to waken them; in unison they fired, one of the bolts going wide, but the other three finding their marks on a target that was hard to miss, even when moving.

The bolts glanced off or shattered, as if they had been fired into a stone wall.

“Again!” Malik screamed, but two of the crossbowmen had already dropped their weapons and run while the third stood motionless; only one of the guards had the presence of mind to fire again, which he did even as the moving earth in man's form brought its arms down in a single clenched fist onto the guard who had frozen.

Amid the spattering of blood and crunching bone that followed, a tiny metallic
clink
could be heard.

The statue reared upright, clutching at the vicinity of its ear, immobile for a moment.

Malik saw the opportunity. “Run!” he screamed to anyone still standing, stunned, in the area. He waved his arms wildly, then glanced about him. “Sally? Sally darlin'!
Sally, where are ye
?!”

“'Ere, Malik,” answered a small, terrified voice behind him as Duckfoot Sally appeared on the step of one of the wagons, logjammed with the others trying to make their way out.

At the sound of her voice, the enormous man stopped, then turned sightless eyes toward her that in the gleam of the torches of the remaining wagons shone blue and milky.

Then began to stride in her direction, following the sound of her voice.

Malik was between them, and saw the intent in the statue's stride. “Run, Sally!” he screamed, interposing himself in the statue's path and grabbing hold of a broken tent pole.
“He's coming fer ye! Run
!”

The giant slapped him away like a leaf in the wind, shattering his bones and flinging them into the snow in several discrete sections.

Duckfoot Sally and the freaks crowded around her screamed in unison. The sound seemed to infuriate the approaching titan; its speed increased, along with the menace in its stance. For a second there was jostling on the porch of the wagon; then the freak known as the Human Bear seized Sally from behind and tossed her over the railing into the statue's path.

She squealed as she tumbled to the ground, then looked up to find two unearthly eyes, eyes whose scleras were stone, but whose irises were blue with filmy cataracts, staring down at her intently.

Choking on her horror and on her own tears, Duckfoot Sally skittered backward a short distance, hampered by the rustling tatters of her many layers of skirts and aprons. Under her breath she began to mutter soft prayers she remembered from childhood, even though their meaning was long lost to her.