Song of the Beast (6 page)

“Indeed. I never thought of that.”

We walked awhile in silence. It seemed best to wait for him. At last he stopped alongside the dragon fountain, and he was not thinking at all about the childish adventures we had shared. His eyes were like obsidian as they bored into mine. “You've just returned from Eskonia.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

“What were you doing there?”

Easy to say something frivolous. Everyone in the world knew what I did. But he was not asking the question lightly, so I responded with the same seriousness.

“I sang in fifteen cities and uncounted villages, at more than a hundred weddings and coming-of-age feasts, and possibly that many funerals. I explored the ruined temples at Horem, and I spent the night alone in an ice cave at the top of Mount Pelgra, though I can't tell you why, except that I heard the howls of the Denazi wolves and the song of the snow lark that I had never before heard. I refused no call and no invitation and no opportunity to learn, as is my duty and my habit ... and my pleasure.”

I would have guessed he could repeat my words exactly, so intently did he listen, and he was listening to far more than words. Perhaps we had more in common than I'd thought.

“You went to Cor Marag.”

The slightest twinge of ... it was not guilt, but something else—pride, shame, rebellion?—touched me. Cor Marag was where the northern dragon legion camped when they were quartered in Eskonia ... as they had been when I was there.

“I still love to watch them. Never outgrew it.” I smiled as I said it, but my words fell like lead between us. Lies are heavier than other words. Of course, I did not enjoy watching dragons and thinking of what they did. Listening was something else, but I still could not explain why. It was just easier to lie and let it pass.

“So I hear. You follow them. Wherever you travel you find where they are, and wherever they are, that's where you travel.”

I said nothing. I certainly couldn't deny it, but to discuss something so intimate, so holy, with a man I scarcely knew ... I'd not told anyone why I did what I did, not since the night when I was eleven and my music masters insisted that Roelan had used the dragons to punish my pride. It was mystery. It was between Roelan and me and could not be explained in words. But Devlin seemed to want words.

“Aidan, tell me why.” In that moment he was speaking to me as a cousin, not a king, and if I'd understood it, perhaps I would have made some attempt to explain, and my life would have been very different. But I was too much used to living in my own world, and I could not see into his.

“I go where my god commands me.” How stupidly prideful it must have sounded.

He shook his head in exasperation. “Stay away from them.”

“I don't—”

“Just stay away. Don't be seen anywhere near them. Anywhere. Do you understand me? I won't have it. I have no ill will toward you, but this ... whatever it is you're doing ... it will stop now. You are forbidden to be within a league of any dragon legion. Forbidden.”

I stood stunned at this pronouncement, and by the time I sputtered out the words “Devlin, listen,” he was gone. At the doorway into the lighted palace he was met by a huge broad-faced man in the uniform of a Dragon Rider. The fellow's imposing stature, as well as his bald head, hawk's bill of a nose, and full curling lip, announced him as Garn MacEachern, the high commander of the Ridemark and the Elyrian dragon legions. They conferred for a moment, but by the time I recovered my wits and ran to the steps, they had disappeared inside. Two guards barred my way. The chamberlain who had shown me to the garden appeared silently at my elbow and pointed me discreetly to the side gate that led out of the palace.

Devlin left Vallior the next day to lead his warriors against the rebellious state of Kythar far to the east, so I was unable to get an audience. His chamberlains said it was to be at least three months until he returned.

A few weeks later I journeyed into Aberthain, a small country in the southwestern hill country whose king was Devlin's vassal. King Germond had three dragons in his service. Unlike most rulers, he kept them close to his palace, and with them the noble hostages he had captured from his enemies. His capital city was quite vulnerable, and to have the symbols of their strength so near gave his people heart. Though Devlin's warning echoed in my mind, I could not refuse when Germond asked me to sing at his son's coming-of-age feast.

King Germond's dragons were bellowing ferociously as I lay in the fine bed in his palace. I could not sleep for their cries. So I made my way to the barren wasteland where they were kept and sat upon a high, rocky promontory overlooking their encampment. They roamed restlessly across the desolation, vomiting fire that blazed red and went out quickly because there was nothing left to burn, and their voices thundered with anger and sorrow. Some time in the deeps of that night I began to sing, and it was as if the whole chorus of the Seven Gods sang in me. My heart came near bursting with the glory of the music.

Three days after my return to Vallior I was arrested in the middle of the night and charged with treason. Aiding the enemies of Elyria, the two officers said, though no specific accusation was ever made. Naively, foolishly, I demanded audience with the king. I insisted on knowing what were the charges, and I claimed that I was so well known that people would hunt for me and find out what injustice was being committed. But the only information I received was when an officer who remained in the shadows raised his hand to have the burly, hard-faced men drag me away. On his wrist was the red outline of a dragon—the Ridemark. I kicked at a lamp, rolling it toward the tall man, and as the oil pooled and flared into brilliance, it showed me the hawk-nosed high commander of the Ridemark clan.

In a spiraling nightmare of horror and despair, I was forced to watch as the Adairs and old Gwaithir and my manservant Liam and every person who had any personal dealing with me was slaughtered in a secret execution, and a faceless, hooded judge with a red dragon on his wrist pronounced the sentence that would send me to Mazadine. My voice was to be silent for seven years, and only then could I be free to go ... as long as I did not go anywhere near a dragon.

Chapter 5

The refuse heap where Narim had told me to wait lay next to a butcher shop. The hot days had brought the foul mess to such ripeness that even the most abject wretches of Lepan avoided the place. As I crouched beside it in the lingering evening, I did my best to stifle my coughing and get a decent breath without inhaling, a more difficult feat of breath control than anything I'd done when I was singing. If I'd had anything left in my stomach it would not have stayed there, and with enormous regret I considered my glorious bath that seemed far more than half an hour past.

Count to a hundred,
I told myself.
If they're not here by then, I'll go. There's bound to be a boat to steal somewhere along the river, or a wagon going south.
But even as I glared at the rats sitting boldly on their treasure trove of rotting rubbish, I knew I could not leave Callia and Narim to the searchers. No one else was going to die for me. Count to a hundred and I would retrace my steps up the steep embankment to the butcher shop roof and across a half dozen rooftops to the inn where the Elhim was trying to persuade Callia that she had to abandon her life or die. Just as I was about to start back, I heard voices in the lane.

“Vellya's pigs! What charnel house is this? Only for you, Narim, would I dump a good customer and come to such a place. The soldiers wouldn't have bothered me at all if they'd found me with an assistant magistrate.”

“Quiet, girl! There are things you don't understand.”

“I daresay—Oh, there you are!” The flushed, buxom Callia in her shabby green satin bustled past the waiflike, chalk-skinned Elhim. She brushed her hand over my clean-shaven face and examined the rest of me thoroughly. “You look right fine. Maybe there's something to this bathing. Now what's all this about us getting killed because of you? My place has been searched a deal of times. Found it more profit than trouble. Searchers always have money—for bribes and all—and they like spending it on fun instead.”

“I'm sorry,” I rasped, looking helplessly at the Elhim. He folded his arms and looked amused.

“So you've got a tongue, do you? Just like a Senai to use his first words in a month to tear up a woman's life.” Callia set her hands on her hips and screwed her face into a frown. “I'm not going anywhere until you tell me why you're so important.”

“If you want her to do as you say, you're going to have to trust her,” said Narim. “She's a businesswoman and isn't going to abandon it lightly. And you'd best make it quick.”

I think he just wanted me to confirm what he'd guessed, but I wasn't ready to do so, so I gave Callia only the most important detail. “When they took me ... before,” I said, struggling to get out so many words at once, “they killed everyone in the house where I lived ... everyone close to me: servants, friends ... everyone.”

“Why would they do—” Shouts and screams and an explosion of orange flames from the way we had come interrupted her. Callia gaped at me. “They've fired the Drover! Who, in the name of Tjasse,
are
you?”

“He'll tell you all about it later,” said the Elhim. We took off jogging down the dark twisting alleys of Lepan, past deserted shops and dimly lit taverns, past muddy sties, stables, and smithies reeking of coal and ash, always taking the downward-sloping ways that would lead us to the slow-moving Lepander River. Few souls were about in the night. Drunks sprawled in corners, lost in blissful stupor. A growling beggar whose face was ravaged with seeping burns lunged at Narim from a dark doorway, and the Elhim had to struggle fiercely to get away. A few late revelers staggered out of a tavern, but no one else prowled the dark lanes—not at first. The Elhim was taking us to a friend's dinghy tied up down by the docks. If we could just get through the town fast enough ...

But every hundred paces I had to stop and cough, allowing the stitch in my side to subside, persuading some meager reserve of strength to seep back into my legs. I had tried to keep my body from atrophying completely in prison, but with poor food, little space, and the pain of constant injury, it had been impossible. “Sorry,” I gasped for the hundredth time as I bent double, leaning on an empty bin behind a fishmonger's stall. The heavy, ripe air and the steepening pitch of the cluttered lanes told me we were nearing the river, but I had tripped on a rusty wagon tongue and couldn't get moving again. Torches had flared into life all over the sleeping city. Shouts and the pounding of feet and the clangor of armed men on horseback came from every side, the noise grating in my head. “Go on. I can't. ...”

Callia grabbed a dark apron from someone's washing and wrapped it about her like a shawl. Glancing over her shoulder nervously, she tugged at my arm. “Come on. Can't leave you after all this trouble. I'm shiv'd if I'll let you get away without explaining.”

“Look, Callia,” said the Elhim, “head down past the slave docks. Go north until you come to the old customs house. There's an alehouse just past, and an alley between. Down the alley you'll come to some stone steps leading down to the river. The boat will be at the bottom of the steps. Wait for us there. We'll be less noticeable if we go separately.”

Callia must have been wickedly afraid, for she didn't argue at all. She only laid her hand on my cheek and said, “A life for a life. Be there.” Her breath was sweet and only faintly tinged with cheap wine. Silently she slipped into the shadows.

“Now you,” said the Elhim. “We'll take it slower. It's not far. But listen to me ... if we get separated or the boat's gone or something happens to me, find your way to the Bone and Thistle on the Vallior road. Ask for Davyn and tell him I've sent you. He'll help.”

The distance to the rendezvous may not have been far, but our journey was very slow. We cut through the ramshackle riverfront district, constantly forced to backtrack. Parties of armed men roamed the city, asking questions of clusters of sleepy residents.

“Murderer on the loose,” they were saying.

“A Senai gone mad from dragon's breath, I heard.”

“Madman. Fired the Drover 'cause he didn't like the ale! Copped a whore and said he'd gut her if he didn't get his money back.”

Narim, his back flattened to a stable wall, whispered in my ear, “At least they aren't saying you were dissatisfied with the woman. Callia would be most disturbed at that.” I was too tired to appreciate his humor.

Roving bands of ruffians were taking the opportunity to harass people in the streets. In one alleyway we stumbled over a dead Elhim whose face was pulp, bloody clothes half ripped from the slender, mutilated body. His purse had been cut from his belt. Narim was no longer smiling when he locked my arm in the vise of his fingers and dragged me onward.

Staying low, we scuttered across a wide lane, ducking into a stinking alley that sloped sharply downward. Its far end opened onto a broad embankment choked with weeds and rubbish, overlooking the dark, foggy ribbon of the Lepander.

“Down there,” whispered the Elhim from just behind me, nudging me toward a broken stone path that led down the embankment. “Go on down to Callia. I'm to leave a token so my friend will know who took his boat.”

I nodded, praying my watery knees could get me down the stone steps. Somewhere in the yellow fog, water rippled into a backwater with a soft plopping noise. The steps seemed to go on forever. But eventually my searching foot sank into mud instead of jarring on stone. Across a muddy strip was the vague outline of a dinghy bobbing gently beside a plank walkway, dark against the dark water. No sign of Callia—not until torches flared behind and before me to reveal a broad-shouldered man with a hard, cruel mouth holding the terrified girl by the throat, a knife pointed at her eye. Before I could move, a thick, hairy arm was clamped about my own throat, and my right arm was twisted behind my back.