Song of the Beast (22 page)

Narim's gray eyes were the portrait of ingenuous innocence, but his words had me squirming. I wanted nothing more than to stuff my cloak in his mouth. I hoped Lara would send us away so that I could deal with him as I so sincerely desired, but instead she turned her rigid back to us and slammed her palm into the heavy pine door of the hut. It swung inward, and she disappeared inside. The door remained open.

“I do believe I heard a welcome,” said Narim, tugging on my arm. “Best get inside before she changes her mind.”

“Perhaps we'd better rethink this,” I said, standing my ground. “I can hide in Camarthan. It's a big place and I know it well. Or Cor Talaith. You've said it's only a few who want things to remain as they are. I'll just stay out of their way.”

“You and Lara must come to an accommodation. Your lives will depend on one another. It's only five weeks until the time of the dragon's waking, and we must be as prepared as we can be. The dragons should be flying over the lake of fire, not enslaved to the Twelve Families of the Ridemark. If you and Lara cannot do what is required, we might have to wait another whole year, a year in which thousands may die, in which your life and our enterprise will be at risk every moment. ...”

A year in which Donal, my cousin's child, would remain captive in the dragon camps of Gondar. Donal was the only human being yet walking the earth to whom I could claim any tie of affection—a fragile wisp of a connection that would most likely be dissolved in an instant if we were ever to meet in person. But if anything in the realm of possibility could prevent it, I would not let him suffer the fate to which his father and the wretched state of the world had condemned him. I took a deep breath and followed Narim into Lara's hut.

If I'd not been wary of the woman already, I would have burst out laughing when I stepped inside. Everything I had expected of a Rider's lair and had not found in Zengal's den in Cor Neuill was laid out before me in Lara's domain: greasy food bags and empty wineskins, worn-out sharpening stones, woolen leggings, battered pots, and old boots strewn from one end of the straw-covered stone floor to the other. The hearth was streaked with fifty years' soot, and a month's worth of ashes was packed into its corners, scarcely leaving any space for the yellow, gasping fire. A trail of dropped kindling and dried mud clots led from the door to the half-filled wood box, and the battered trestle table that served with three rickety stools as the only furnishing was littered with dirty cups, inkpots, wood shavings, half a loaf of bread so dry it had developed cracks, and ten shriveled apple cores. A jumble of leather scraps and the bag of Rider's armor were tossed in a corner beside an untidy pile of blankets.

Her weapons would not be in the mess. I glanced about casually. Sure enough, hanging in a place of honor beside the door were a bow of polished yew and a well-oiled scabbard with an immaculately gleaming sword hilt sticking out of it. Beside them was the inevitable—a carefully coiled dragon whip. I was sorely tempted to run away as far as I could go.

Cursing under her breath, Lara kicked a bag of onions out of the corner farthest from the hearth. The bag split and dusty brown orbs began rolling about the floor. “You can sleep there,” she said, pointing at the space she had emptied. “I hope you brought your own blanket. I've none to spare.”

“I'll manage,” I said. “Even without feathers.”

I shouldn't have said it, but the words burst unbidden from my tongue. After so long alone ... to willingly share lodgings with a daughter of the Ridemark ... If there was indeed a god watching, I wanted him or her to know that I appreciated the joke.

Narim kept his face grave and discreetly angled away from my own, while stepping quite viciously on my foot. Nothing of jest was manifest in his words, however. “We've five weeks to get him ready, Lara. I'm trusting you to teach him well. We've brought the materials you specified, and I'm leaving you the journal.”

Lara seemed on the verge of throwing her errant vegetables at me until Narim's words brought her up short. “Your journal!”

Narim shrugged as he pulled from his pack a small, thick leather volume in a condition so fragile I thought it might disintegrate in his hand. “If it's ever to have any use beyond historical oddity, it will be now with the two of you.” He placed the book in Lara's hand and tapped his fingers on it fondly, removing them with clear reluctance. “You'll have a care with it?”

Lara clutched it to her chest. “Every care. I promise.”

“Good enough.” Narim clapped me on the arm. “Behave yourself, Aidan, lad. The girl has a wicked way with a dagger. I'll stop by in a few days to see how you're getting on. For now I'd best get back to the warrens. Our doubters may believe you've gone back to Camarthan with Tarwyl, but they expect me to be at our meeting tonight with a new plan to redeem our souls—one they can be sure will change nothing.”

Lara and I both followed Narim outside. Hard to guess which one of us most regretted his leaving. As he passed beyond the edge of the trees that bordered the open meadow, he turned and waved, and I would have sworn a huge grin crossed his face. Two voices mumbled curses as we turned back to the hut without looking at each other.

Lara did her best to ignore me, jabbing at her fire and throwing a few sticks on it, shoving aside the litter on her table to make a place to—very purposefully and vigorously—sharpen her dagger. I unloaded the bags I'd carried the three leagues uphill from Cor Talaith: two bulky rolls of leather, a cloth bundle of leatherworking tools, a flat tin of thick, foul-smelling grease, a heavy round of cheese, a bag of dried beans, and a few other supplies to augment Lara's stores. I pulled out my blanket, and after a few moments' consideration that included a sideways glance at Lara honing her blade that was likely sharp enough to dissect a flea, I left the hut. It was perhaps five hundred paces to the edge of the trees, and I made the trip three times, hauling back soft pine branches to use for a bed. By the time I was finished, the sun was already low, and my stomach was reminding me of how long it had been since Yura's oatcakes and my farewell to Cor Talaith.

Even if Lara had given me reason to think she was interested, I was not yet ready to break bread with a member of the Twelve Families, so I merely set the supplies on her table, cut myself a piece of cheese, and retreated to my corner. I would have dearly loved to heat a cup of water over her fire and drop in a few of the chamomile leaves I'd brought, but before I got up the courage, Lara hung one of her battered pots over the sputtering flame and threw in a few bits of onion and smoked meat. It smelled unspeakably delicious. My cold cheese sat heavy and unsatisfying in my stomach ... at least until the onion started to burn. Lara yanked the pan from the grate, stabbing her spoon at the mess as if it were an annoying insect and scattering ashes and sparks all over the hearth. Darkness fell quickly and the cold crept through the thick stone, so that I wrapped up in my blanket and my cloak before Lara had eaten her concoction. I fell asleep wondering how on earth we were ever going to get beyond this silliness and do whatever it was Narim had in mind; assuming, of course, that I didn't end the night with a knife between my ribs.

 

Familiar nightmare shoved me beyond the threshold of sleep while the light seeping around the edges of the shutters was still gray. The morning was bitterly cold, and as I struggled to lace up frozen boots with nonworking fingers, I wondered sluggishly how it could be only five weeks until spring. Perhaps the dragons could tolerate more cold than I. If I had the choice of it, I'd sleep until the heart of summer.

Lara was still a shapeless roll of gray in the corner of the room farthest from mine. I knew she was there from the soft puffs of breath frost that drifted upward from the direction of her head. It was the only softness about her that I had seen. I pulled on my heavy wool shirt and my cloak and my thickest gloves, then quietly opened the door and slipped outside. The crags of the Carag Huim were just beginning to take shape in the predawn stillness, and the rolling snowfield of the meadow was taking on a life separate from the dark line of trees to the south and west and the rocky heights to the north and east.

I needed to be moving, so I tramped around the hut, finding what I was looking for on the west side of the house: a neat, knee-high pile of split wood, an ax with its head buried in a thick stump, and a wooden sledge with snow runners under it and a rope tied to one end. The ax would be of no use unless two good hands came with it. I could scarcely manage the knife I shaved with; anything heavier was impossible to grip securely.

So I hitched the rope over one shoulder and hauled the sledge across the meadow into the trees. Making sure to keep my bearings, I searched until I found a downed tree large enough to be worth the bother of stripping its branches and dry enough to make it possible for me to do so. Using my boots and my forearms to break off the branches, I managed to fill the sledge, and then began the long trek back.

The meadow was flushed with fiery pink when I emerged from the trees, and a thin trail of blue smoke rose straight up from the hut's chimney. She was awake. Only the prospect of a fire and something hot in my belly convinced me to go inside rather than find something else—anything else—to do. But she hadn't murdered me in the night, so I unloaded my broken branches next to the cleanly hewn and split logs, then carried an armload of my gatherings into the hut.

She was hacking at the loaf of dried bread with her well-honed dagger, making more crumbs than edible portions. From her glare as I dumped the branches in the wood box, I guessed that the night hadn't warmed her feelings about a Senai houseguest. The dragon whip was still on the wall, so I couldn't say my feelings had changed either. How had I let myself get talked into this?

“I've brought some herbs—chamomile, meadowsweet, wintergreen—for tea,” I said, all plans of clever conversation sunk into mundanity in an instant of her hostile attention. “Would you care for some?”

“I've got what I like,” she said.

I nodded and dug my tin cup from my pack, stepped outside to fill it with snow, then set it beside the tiny fire. Opening the packet of herbs came next. Her scorn scorched my back as I fumbled at it in my heavy gloves. Finally I got a pinch of the finely crumbled leaves and dropped them in my cup that was only a quarter full of water once the snow had melted—scarcely two mouthfuls. Sighing at the delay, I retrieved another handful of snow and slipped it into the cup.

“I won't cook for you,” said Lara, her pointed chin stuck out defiantly. “You'll have to do for yourself, even if you have to get your hands dirty.”

“I would never expect you to,” I said. “I'll do my share of whatever's needed and try not to get too much in your way.”

She snorted as she threw one of my sticks on the fire. “These will burn for exactly no time. Do you understand what an ax is for?”

“I have a vague notion.”

Things didn't seem to be going well. At least she didn't complain about my using the fire. For a little while, every time she turned her back I'd throw on another branch until the fire was big enough to put out a little heat and get my precious cup steaming. The tea was pungent, and I felt it settle pleasantly into my cold extremities. It made me slightly less inclined to abandon the whole enterprise and take my chances in Camarthan.

Lara soaked her dry bread in warmed honey. I munched on a cold oatcake and used my cup to melt more snow. While she spread the rolls of dark leather out on the floor, I cleaned my knife and took my cup of warm water outside. Time for my daily ritual, and I wasn't about to do it where the woman could gawk. A careful half hour and no nicks later, I had my gloves back on and no beard, and I was huddled by the hearth trying to decide if Lara would be any more hostile if I burned up all the wood in one day. Better think about something else.

“So what is it Narim wants you to teach me?” I said.

“The whole business is idiocy.” She was kneeling on the floor beside her materials and she raked me with a scornful eye. “I'm to instruct you in the lore of dragons. He wants you to learn the words, ritual words that should never be used by anyone outside the Twelve, and other words he's got written in his book. And we're supposed to fit you out with Riders' armor.” Her hatred for this idea had her hands clenched so tight, I thought she might cut her flesh with her fingernails.

“Riders' armor?”

“He thinks it's going to protect you when you walk into that cavern and the kai tries to burn you. I told him it's a waste of time. Why would you need it, if you're so friendly with the beast?”

“You're right. It doesn't make sense.”

I think she was astonished that I would agree with her about anything. I certainly was.

“Well, it doesn't matter,” she said. “I've given my word, so there's no getting out of it until you realize this is slightly more dangerous than playacting and decide your noble skin is too precious to risk.” She dragged her bag into the middle of the floor and pulled out stiff, charred leather greaves that stank of the same grease I'd hauled up the mountain—something like rotted hay and lamp oil. “Hold these up to your legs so we'll know how much bigger we'll have to make them.”

All that morning, while I found a dented pail by the woodpile and proceeded to clean out her firepit, Lara cursed and measured and cut. I tried on every piece of her armor so she could see where she needed to make changes to fit me. But when she thrust her gauntlets at me and said to take my own gloves off and put hers on, I gave her my spare pair of gloves instead, saying they would do as a pattern.

“You must be a tender flower indeed who can't take off his gloves inside. Or is it you're afraid of dirtying yourself with a Rider's touch?”