Song of the Beast (26 page)

The kai's lair. Keldar's lair. In all the minutiae of the past weeks, our great enterprise had grown indistinct. “Are we ready?”

I donned my bloody clothing as quickly as I could, while Lara brought the horses from the far end of the grotto. She didn't answer my question until she wrapped the reins of Rueddi's horse about my gloved hands. Then she looked me full in the eye, her own clear blue ones bleak and hopeless. “I don't believe it matters in the least.”

We rode back to the hut, taking a slightly longer, but less steep, route than we had walked, and collapsed on our blankets just before dawn, knowing we could not proceed without rest. I woke first, sometime near midday, and Lara jumped up soon after, diving right into our preparations as if I might be thinking of leaving her behind. We worked for an hour, saying little except to agree on what we needed to keep with us: a bit of food, our armor, a flask of brandy, the fireproofing supplies, Lara's weapons.

We left the hut by separate paths just as the light took on its midafternoon slant. Lara led the horses across the open meadow to the northern end of the valley, where she would point them down the trails leading into the wild lands of northern Elyria, hoping to lead any pursuers astray. Then she would set out directly west on a difficult route through steep, rugged terrain where her passing could not be easily tracked, before turning south to our rendezvous. I took the well-trodden path into the nearby forest, where we set our traps and gathered wood, dragging the sledge behind me to muddle the footprints so no one could tell if they were old or new. Once deep in the trees, I buried the sledge in the snow and set off on a southwesterly course, masking the signs of my passing by climbing steep rockfaces and walking in barely thawed streams, soaking my boots miserably. We could not risk being followed.

The stars claimed it was almost midnight by the time I topped a high saddle and saw the jewellike glimmer of Lara's watchfire blazing on a barren hillside. Half an hour later, I collapsed on the ground beside the fire. I had scarcely begun thawing my fingers enough to give full attention to the fat partridge spitted over it and the onions roasting in the coals, when Lara started instructing me as to our next move. “We've got to decide how we're going to—”

I covered my ears. “Please, no! You can't mean me to listen until I've had a chance to taste this magnificent bird.” I knew we had a thousand things to consider, but my stomach was groaning with delight at the smoky scent. “And I've lugged this brandy about with me for at least five hundred leagues, so I want to get rid of it as well. I think this night warrants a little celebration.” I pulled out the stone flask that held our only spirits and waved it in the air. She scowled and started to complain, but I was tired and feeling fey, and didn't let her. “Call it wanton indulgence stemming from my Senai decadence.”

Under Lara's ferocious glare, I downed my share of the overblackened fowl and rock-hard onions, and only then did I savor the first sip of brandy. Tossing the flask to her, I settled close to the fire, closed my eyes, and let the smooth liquor trickle down my throat. I peeped out from under my eyelids, and watched her shake her head at me, then swig from the flask in the soldier's way—no savoring, no settling, only one long pull. Then she threw the flask at my belly so hard I might have lost what I'd already drunk if I'd not been ready for it. I took another mouthful. Only after it had burned its delightful way to my tired knees did I sigh and admit that indulgence had to give way or I would fall asleep. “So now to business.”

“I have to tell you what we're going to do.”

“An excellent plan. No matter how many words are stuffed in my head, I have no idea how to address them to a dragon. Educate me.”

She pursed her fine lips in prim disapproval. I always seemed to bring out the worst in her. “Narim's journal says the Elhim would stand on a high rock near the dragon's head. They would raise one arm high as they spoke their greeting, then let it drop to their side when the dragon acknowledged them, holding their bodies very still. Excessive motion or any gesturing with arms or hands was irritating to the dragons. The Elhim didn't know why ... whether it was rude or distracting or what. And there's more.” Lara pulled the tin box from her pack and extracted the journal, moving only close enough to the fire to enable her to read.

“ ‘The dragon doth hold her peace after her saying,' ” she read, “ ‘and lowers her head if the speaker doth not likewise.' ” Lara screwed her face into a frown and directed it at me. “So you need to pause as you speak. The last thing you want is for the dragon to lower its head. The nostrils flare and the head is lowered just before it burns.”

“Noted,” I said. “No flared nostrils. No lowered heads. And I must pause between ... words? Sentences? More to the point, how do we get the dragon to remember the rules?”

Lara stared at me without expression, the heat of the fire laying a most charming flush upon the smooth, tanned skin of her unscarred cheek. “There is a cistern just outside the cave. The Elhim have filled it with water from the lake and built a sluiceway from the cistern into the cave. On the day Narim brought you to me, he opened the sluiceway so it would fill the pool inside the cave.”

“The water, yes. And the dragon?”

“Tomorrow I'll wake the kai, and we'll see if it will drink the water. Narim's journal says that the beasts can't resist the water once they've so much as touched it. If it drinks, I'll unlink the kai'cet. As this stone is not the dekai'cet—the stone bound to the kai in the beginning—I will then have no control over the beast.”

“Then I shall say hello with appropriate pauses and without distracting gestures.”

She nodded.

“And then he'll most likely roast me.”

Lara clutched the journal fiercely to her breast and spoke through clenched teeth. “The kai do not have minds. They cannot speak. They are wild and dangerous and vicious. Why do you believe otherwise? The Elhim are the only race with these legends. There are no Senai stories of speaking dragons. In all your songs, you never knew one, did you? They are not mentioned in any Udema legends, nor in those from Florin or Aberthain or other kingdoms. And certainly there are no such tales from the Ridemark. You're a fool! Why will you throw your life away for a myth?”

“Because it cannot be myth. ...” And there in the starry midnight, as the brandy and the fire burned the chill from my soul, and the night wind shifted into the south, a first warm zephyr to blunt the frosty edge of winter, I told Lara of Roelan. I told her things I had never told anyone: of the mystery I had lived, of experiences I had come to believe should not die with me if we should fail, as Lara assumed we would. Someone had to know what had happened to me and find out the truth of it, for whether it was gods or dragons, there was power and magnificence in the world that should not be allowed to vanish. And, inevitably, my tale led to Mazadine, and I told her of that, too.

She listened quietly, resting her chin on her fist that was clenched tightly enough to tell me she was not quiet inside herself. I poured out my life in an unceasing stream of words, whether from the prompting of wine or dread of burning or something else I could not yet name. I spoke more words that night than in the previous eighteen years together, and when I was done, I felt empty and at peace, sure against all reason that I had left my soul's legacy in hands that would take care of it. I had implicit trust in her honor if not her goodwill, and it seemed to make it easier that she despised me so.

A long time passed before Lara said anything. Perhaps the dragons' pause was the same—deep, respectful consideration of all that had been said, even when babbled by a lower being. When she spoke at last, she offered no maudlin sympathy, no pity, no bracing words, no advice or shocked avowals of shared retribution that I could not possibly allow. All the pointless, well-meant offerings I had dreaded from the generous souls I had encountered since my release—Callia, Alfrigg, even Davyn—Lara eschewed. She understood, and she accepted, and her questioning was to answer her own purposes, not to seek remedy for me. I wished there were a way to tell her how grateful I was for her quiet listening, but I could think of no words that she would welcome.

“So it is not your hands that prevent you from taking up your music?” she said.

“Even if I could pluck the strings, it would be nothing but noise.”

“And do you hope that by speaking to this kai, you'll somehow—”

“I have no more hope than you did when you heard your brother's offer of redemption. Hope was gone long ago. If I could just come to some understanding, gain some bit of knowledge that would tell me it was not all for nothing, that would be enough.”

“So you think to avenge yourself on the king and the clan. Turn the dragons on them.”

“What use is that? My cousin is paying a price far greater than I could ever extract from him. Goryx is not worthy of my honor. And where's the justice in taking revenge on the entire clan of the Ridemark? They'll pay enough if we take the dragons away from them.”

She shook her head. “What kind of coward are you?”

“I'll confess to that crime. Someone told MacEachern that seven years of silence would destroy me. That one is the only target who might be worth my aim. Your brother knows who it was. MacEachern knows. In one moment, I want to strangle them until they tell me, and I can throw the bastard into a dragon's fire. But in the next, I want nothing more than to find a place to hide and forget that dragons exist. Coward. No doubt of it. But
I'm
the one who didn't listen when Devlin warned me, who didn't question enough. My pride kept my mystery private; my willful blindness kept me ignorant. What if I were to find out that it was all my own fault? How could I live with that?”

Lara was silent for a while, tapping her fingers on her jaw. Then, suddenly, words burst from her like a summer tempest. “You Senai always think you know everything. Listen to me. Every day after I was burned, I prayed that the one responsible would have his throat severed or his tongue cut out. I prayed his soul would rot and that he would live with the knowledge of it every day of his life. So if you believe that heartfelt prayers are answered, then it is I and not yourself or some mysterious betrayer that you must blame for your torment. I fully intended your destruction. And don't deceive yourself that I've given it up.”

I was astounded. “But why? You didn't know I had anything to do with Keldar ... with your burning. You still don't believe it. I'm not sure I do.”

Her eyes glittered in the firelight. “Oh, I knew well who to blame. Your crime was committed long before I took the kai from Cor Neuill.”

“I don't understand.”

“I told you once that I'd heard you sing. Well, it wasn't only when you came to Cor Neuill before your arrest, but another time long before that. When I was eight years old, you sang in the camp at El'Sagor in Florin. ...”

I remembered it. The first time I had ever sung for the Twelve Families. I was only sixteen. It had been a hot, dismal night, the sultry air pregnant with warning, constant lightning arcing in pink and purple forks across the heavy clouds, exploding in earsplitting thunder. The clansmen were determined to hear me, though, and did not disperse even when the storm broke in wild torrents of rain and turned the plain into a sea of mud. As ever in my years of service, I had no choice but to heed the call, though I had never felt so small as the moment I climbed up to sit on a rock wall in front of a thousand warriors in the midst of a storm from the eye of the world.

But at the very moment I touched my harp strings, the rain and wind ceased, as children called to silence by their mother's hand. Whispers of awe rippled through the crowd; though to me, a youth living in constant wonder, it was but another manifestation of my master's care. The clouds, flickering with soft veils of color, hung low and thick, as if the gods had sent them to shelter and protect me. On that night I never had to strain my voice to be heard as I might have in such a wide-open venue, but was able to shade and color it, and entwine it with the soft clarity of the strings to bring to life my vision. And on that night Roelan had graced me with music of such soaring beauty that even after so many desolate years my breath faltered in my chest and my empty soul ached to remember it.

“You sang that night of flying, of soaring on the wings of the wind until the rivers were but threads winding through the green earth, until the sky was black velvet, and the uncountable stars sharp-edged silver. You made such an image in my head. I could feel the power of muscle and sinew beneath me, and the surge as the wings spread to capture the wind. Such wild and glorious freedom you promised that from that night I could think of nothing else. I took an oath on my father's sword that I would one day fly on the back of a dragon. I swore that I would take that young and handsome Senai singer with me to show him it was as beautiful as he said and that a girl of the Ridemark could make his holy visions come true. I loved you, Aidan MacAllister. I worshiped you. For five years your face and your voice and your images never left my mind. But when I finally got to fly, it was nothing like you said, for I fell out of the sky into the fires of the netherworld. Never has there been such hate in the world as that I've borne for you. If I weren't bound by my debt to Narim, you would already be dead.”

I sat mute as the storm of Lara's bitterness broke over me. What else was there to do? To tell her I was sorry would be to trivialize what had happened to her, as if a few meaningless words from hated lips could cleanse the pain from her memory or the scars from her body. I wanted to tell her how I admired her strength and her honesty, and how I grieved for all she had lost, but she would think it mockery. And unless I could be sure that what I offered had nothing to do with pity or some clumsy, selfish attempt at absolution, I could offer her nothing else. I would not serve up the very dish that I despised.