Song of the Beast (24 page)

“I can do whatever I need to do,” I said. And so I did. Slowly. Painfully. Mumbling curses as the awl slipped out of my grasp a hundred times for every successful hole. Trying to will the thongs and sinew through the tool and the stiff, oiled leather, when a hundred clumsy attempts had me wanting to beat my head on the table. Such a small endeavor, yet for three days it loomed far larger than anything having to do with sentient dragons or the redemption of a people. I utterly forgot where I was and what I was doing and what were the true measures of accomplishment and failure.

I would have preferred to fight my battles outside of Lara's view, but she never said anything. Never watched me. Never seemed to take notice of my driving frustration or my seething anger or my sporadic outbursts of satisfaction at my all-too-rare successes. At first I was sure it was purest Ridemark contempt. But when she wordlessly laid a second stack in front of me while I still stared in exhausted triumph at the first, I glanced up quickly in dismay. On her lips was the glimmer of a smile. It was so faint, such a remote and inconceivable grace, that I called myself seven names for a fool. Most likely she was enjoying the sight of a Senai struggling with such mundane labors ... but it hadn't looked like that sort of smile.

Our work went on, preparing for the equinox, the day the ancients said the eye of the world began to widen with delight at its bride, the earth—the day Elhim lore said the dragons would stir from their winter's sleep. Lara was quite serious about keeping track of the days. On the wall above her sleeping pallet she had used coal to mark off a crude calendar, and each morning she carefully checked off another square. She had certain days noted with circles and half circles and crescents which I took to be phases of the moon, the equinox with a large X, and other days with marks of no easily discernible shape. One of the latter fell at the beginning of my fifth week with her.

All that day she seemed distracted and nervous, absolutely unlike herself. We worked on my armor, and for once I accomplished more than she. The greaves were done, ready to lace about my legs. The breeches were done, thick and stiff and uncomfortable. I was sitting on the floor wrestling with the first two pieces of the vest and the sinew that would bind them together, the material so much stronger than leather laces, and so much thinner, and far more difficult to grasp.

“I'm going out for a while to ... to check the traps,” Lara announced in late afternoon, tossing aside the stiffened wool she had been shaping into a helm.

“I checked them this morning,” I said. “Only two fox kits not fit to keep.”

“You let go more than you keep,” she said in irritation, throwing on her cloak and shouldering her bow. “And you'd eat the same thing every meal of the year. I'm tired of cheese and oatcakes, so I'm going to find something better. I'll be out past nightfall.” I knew better than to question the sense of such a venture.

“I would never doubt you can take care of yourself,” I muttered, my frustration at the task she had set me forcing my words louder than I might otherwise have said them. She heard me and turned blazing red, which was another mark of an unusual day. At any other time she wouldn't have listened, or if she'd listened, she wouldn't have cared. The door slammed so hard behind her that a pot of oatcakes fell off a shelf, and the flat, dry cakes shattered into crumbs on the floor.

I dropped my work and gazed idly about the hut, puzzling over the strange course of the past weeks. It was then I noted the mark on Lara's calendar. I examined it more closely than I'd dared before, and the splotch on this day resolved itself into a D.

Dragon? Departure? Discovery?
All our work at lists of words prompted a torrent of possibilities.

The sun slid lower in the thin, watery blue of the sky. I salvaged a broken oatcake and melted a slab of cheese on it.

An icicle, the last holdout against the afternoon warming, splintered on the stone doorstep, shattering the stillness.

I donned my cloak and set out after Lara in the failing light. Though an hour had passed since her departure, it was easy enough to follow her, for though the remaining patches of snow were crusty and brittle, they were better walking than the muddy strips of meadow in between. Interesting that the small, firm boot prints went nowhere near the trees where our traps lay. I trotted at a good pace, first skirting the meadow, then climbing a steep track up the ridge at its eastern end. By the time I reached the top, the first stars had poked through the deepening blue. The bloated bulge of the moon pushed over the eastern horizon beyond a landscape wrinkled like an old man's face with rocky ridges like the one on which I stood. Lara's trail led me deep into the narrow valley between one ridge and the next. I bore south around rocky slide areas and stunted pine trees growing out of the rock, their roots scarcely grasping the dry slopes. The going was tricky in the dim light until the moon rose high enough to take up its hotter brother's duties in the sky.

Some three hours from the hut, I believed I had lost the trail, and I considered going back. I wasn't at all familiar with the crumpled wasteland, and to stay out all night had its own risks. The first touch of the morning sun would alter the snowy landmarks. As I sat on a rock to rest and take my bearings, I realized that fifty paces beyond my position, behind a cluster of boulder stacks standing sentinel like a giant's wardens, gleamed a pool of light that was far too yellow and far too unsteady to be moonlight.

I scrambled up the steep side of the ravine and crept forward until I had passed the boulder stacks and could look down on a small, protected grotto where a smoky fire flickered next to a half-frozen pool. Lara stood beside the fire, locked in a fierce embrace with a man.

I was stunned ... and unreasoningly embarrassed. Never in all my considerations had I come within fifty leagues of the idea that Lara might have a lover. Why had I thought that because such a blessing was inconceivable for me, it was equally inconceivable for a young woman so filled with passionate life? Her hatreds were for me and my kind, not for everyone in the world. And her scars, so dreadful on an otherwise pleasing face ... I rarely noticed them anymore. Why shouldn't some other man develop the same blindness?

But as quickly as my view of the world was set so profoundly askew, it was reversed again. Lara stepped away from her visitor, but left her hands in his, and I looked back and forth between the two figures and gaped at the revelation. He was of exactly her height, with the same pointed chin, fine-boned cheeks, and huge eyes. He wore the same dusting of freckles across his straight nose, the same generous mouth. Only the breadth of shoulders and back, and the chin-length trim of the gold-brown hair distinguished him ... and, of course, the finished perfection of his face. He could be no one but her brother.

“... all arranged,” he was saying in earnest excitement. “We can go this very night. Everyone is waiting to welcome you back, to give you every privilege that is yours by right.”

“I can't believe it.” Lara bit her lip and wrinkled her brow while examining his face as if to capture every morsel of information left unspoken.

“You were only a child. They've finally come to understand it. A strong-willed child with a warrior's heart and your family's stubbornness. These are virtues, not crimes. The only crime is that it's taken them so long to see it.”

“You heard this with your own ears? From the high commander himself?” Tentative. Touching on the very edge of hope.

“He showed me the order of pardon. The moment you're back, he'll proclaim it to the Council of Twelve.”

Controlled and wary, Lara pulled back a little, while still clinging to his hands. “But he'll never let me ride.” She was not accustomed to hope.

Never had I seen anyone show such triumph as Lara's brother when he produced his gift. “He has promised to consider it. He will hear you. He said to tell you, ‘Riders are born, not chosen. It is a precept to which we've not always been faithful.' Lara, it's as good as done.”

Lara hung limp as he swung her about joyfully, then pulled her back into his fierce embrace. “By the gods, little sister. You will be the first. A woman will ride for the Mark, and you will show them the true heart of a warrior.”

“To ride for the Mark. Oh, Vanir's fire, Desmond.”

She could scarcely speak, and, even as I struggled with my dismay at her betrayal, I caught my first unfiltered glimpse of Lara. Everything I had yet seen of her—except perhaps for that first handclasp with Narim and the brief moment of her night terror—everything had been but layer upon layer of armor, the shell she had fashioned from scars and pain, from loneliness and bitterness. All of it fell away in the moment of her brother's pronouncement, revealing a woman of pride and dignity and lonely strength, whose face shone like a second moon. I had never thought of her as beautiful until that night, never heard the music in her voice, the simple melody laced with her glorious passion. At the same moment I began to be afraid for her. Surely she could sense the danger, the dissonance that marred the harmony of this family reunion.

Lara sank to a fallen tree that had been pulled up to the fire like a garden bench, and her brother crouched on one knee in front of her. I brushed away a clump of stickery jackweed that the wind had lodged under my nose, and edged carefully down the snowy, rock-strewn hillside on my belly, not thinking of danger in my craving to hear more.

“What's changed then?” she said. “A tradition so long bound. I never thought ... never in the last instance believed they would relent.” Yes, she had seen it. Already her shutters were being drawn again.

“I don't know. I've hammered at it so long with every one of the twelve councilors and they've always been deaf to me. Every year for eighteen years another failed petition—”

“You have been my true knight, brother.”

“Then a few weeks ago, MacEachern himself summoned me. He wished me to fetch you right away, but I said our regular meeting was still three weeks hence. He was surprised I didn't know where you lived.” Long grievance festered beneath Desmond's devotion, pushing him to his feet to step away from Lara.

“You know why I can't tell you.”

“Well, now you're to be a Rider of the Mark, you'll no longer have to live with these divided loyalties. It will be your own people who claim you now, and your family and your high commander who shape your path.”

The young man began adjusting the fittings of his saddle as if to accommodate two riders, so he couldn't see Lara's countenance freeze. I saw it and felt a knot in my gut loosen one notch.

“Desmond, did the high commander say anything about what he wants from me when I return? Surely he expects some payment for this honor he does me.”

Yes,
I thought.
A good question. Listen well to his answer. Though he is your brother who cares for you, he has but one heart to give. No question where it is lodged.

“Want from you?” Desmond turned to her, puzzled. “Nothing but what you've wished to give him all these years—your loyalty and service. Come on. We can be home before dawn.”

Lara kicked at the fire, scattering the coals until a cloud of sparks flew about her like a swarm of fireflies. “I've got to think it over.” She flung the words into the air casually, like the sparks from her boot.

Her brother's jaw dropped in shock and disbelief. “Think it over? Lara! What is there to think about?” Anger hardened his pointed jaw. “You will come with me. The head of your family commands you.”

She chucked him playfully under the chin. “Don't fret, sweet Desmond. It's only I've got a bit of business to finish, some debts to pay. This is so unexpected. I've got to get accustomed to the idea.” She laughed uproariously, but with far too little mirth to my ear. A dangerous laugh. I just wasn't sure for whom.

Desmond looked confused. I certainly was. Fatally so, for I was oblivious to the brush of the bushes behind me and the soft grit of footsteps in the crusted snow. Only when the leather strap stung my neck and tightened about it and I was flipped backward onto the hard ground did I know there was a fourth member of our little nighttime party. A heavy boot stomped on my wrist, and my hastily drawn knife leaped out of my fingers of its own volition. A vast landscape of wind-coarsened skin, pitted with deep pores and tufted with wiry red hair, exuding a virulent odor of onion, presented itself a hand's breadth from my nose. That was all I was able to see before he sat his massive bulk on my chest and stomach, making unnatural white stars bloom from the hazy darkness. While I fought to squeeze in a breath, I felt leather straps being wound tightly about my wrists.

“Well, well. What has Vanir set before us? A tasty morsel of a Senai spy? Of a Senai devil?”

The weight was lifted from my chest only to be followed by a powerful jerk on my wrists that insisted I get up on my feet or be dragged down the rocky slope on my face.

“Look here, brother Desmond! Didn't I tell you that one had to be wary of the wild creatures that inhabit this wasteland? I've trapped us a Senai fox.”

Lara snapped her head around as I hobbled into the firelight, only to be pulled up short and collapsed to my knees by the skilled hand of the Rider and his dragon whip. The thong about my throat ensured I could say nothing. Desmond sneered down his straight nose as if I'd crawled out of a dung heap. Before he could speak, Lara shoved him aside. “You!” she said in disgust. “How dare you come creeping after me? Sneaking, nasty beggar.”

“Who is it, Lara? Tell me. And tell me what he's doing spying on you.”