The Dragon of Despair (23 page)

Not for the first time, Derian wondered if Firekeeper was simply merging those terms or if she was making something of a literal translation of what the Beasts called the Plague. That, of course, implied not only intelligence, but some sort of history that went back for well over a hundred years. He was ready to accept intelligent animals—he had the evidence of his own experience on that matter—but facing that those animals had history, recorded in some fashion, was a leap he was not quite ready to take.

Hesitantly, Derian asked, “You are saying that the Royal Beasts once made a choice not to kill all the humans, that they thought about doing so at the time of the Plague?”

Momentarily, Firekeeper turned to face him and Derian saw the watchful expression on her face. Apparently, however, she thought his question reasonable.

“So my parents say,” she replied, “as their parents did to them. The Beasts have many stories and though I am but a pup in their eyes, they are teaching me some.”

So this is new to her, too,
Derian thought.
No wonder she’s so tense.

Firekeeper went on, speaking a bit more quickly now.

“They tell me that long ago before humans come from Old World, all this land was for the Beasts. When humans come, first there is…” She paused, obviously seeking a word. “If not peace, not war, and even borders. Humans break this as there are more humans and humans have more need for space.”

Derian swallowed a groan. Humans needing space sounded far too much like what had pushed Ewen across the mountains.

“Humans have power then,” Firekeeper went on, “the great magic that Queen Zorana the Great hate so much and try to destroy. Humans tell how this power is used on humans. Humans not tell how it is used on Beasts. In time, Beasts go west, leave humans behind. Iron Mountains become new border. When Fire Plague come and humans die too little, then Beasts think to finish what Plague do. They not do, now some are sorry.”

Derian wasn’t an idiot. He had been spending much of the last year immersed in political game playing. He also understood Firekeeper’s choppy, abbreviated speech better than anyone else.

“So,” he said, choosing his words very carefully, “now the Beasts see the humans coming across the mountains and don’t like it. They also realize that humans no longer have the ‘great powers’—the strong old magic—and some Beasts are no longer content to let humans live on this land, even east of the mountains. They think to kill all the humans.”

“Yes,” Firekeeper said, gratitude and dismay equally mingled in her tone. “That is how it is. Many Beasts would die, I think. Many Beasts, especially four-footers, not know how really dangerous humans is. Wingéd folk know better, but even they think that without great powers humans can be killed so easily.”

“And you?” Derian asked. “What do you think?”

“Maybe so,” Firekeeper replied. “Maybe so, but many Beasts die and for what? Land we not use from time my pack leaders’ own pack leaders not even fat pups? I tell King Tedric, tell him he must make humans stay east.”

Derian rubbed his hands across his face.

“I wonder if he can make them,” he said.

“If he not,” Firekeeper said, “then the humans die and someday the Beasts die.”

“I believe you,” Derian said. “I think King Tedric will believe you. I just wonder if that one tired old man can make a difference. Sometimes people are pretty stubborn. Even if our people don’t go west, what’s to stop people in other countries?”

“For now,” Firekeeper said, “I have heared nothing of that. True, maybe I not get told. Still, even if fighting must start, maybe it can start in other places.”

Her tone became pleading.

“Derian, no you see? If Beasts fight humans then it is my pack, my family who is first to die. Wolves have ever held the land for the Beasts. We watch it as we hunt it, as we raise our pups. My family…”

She obviously could not find the words to clarify what she was trying to explain. Derian wanted to walk over to her, to hold her even as she was holding Blind Seer, but he knew she would not welcome such comfort. He settled instead for words.

“And you want me to tell this to King Tedric if for some reason you aren’t able to do so.”

Firekeeper perked up at this.

“Yes. Do. Some of the Beasts not think I am Beast since the last year and the magical things.” Her voice dropped. “I was to bring those things to them. I not obey to word, though I think I do to heart…to spirit. Still, that I not obey as pup to One, this for some is reason not to trust that I am of heart with my people.”

Derian actually understood. “So you think that some Beast—one of those who wants war with the humans—might come after you.”

Firekeeper nodded. “That is it. And I am small to even the smallest hunter. Even with Blind Seer to help, I might not win. You say war, but from what I learn of human war, war is agreed to like a dance. What Beasts would do would be no war. There would be no dance, no counsel. There would just be deaths, many deaths, and someday humans would understand who is doing the killing, then Beasts would learn of arrows and spears and armor and poison and other horrible human killing things.”

From the length of this speech, Derian knew how upset she was, and guessed that some of her silence over the past several days had been her studying on what words to use.

“I understand,” he said, hesitated, then spoke his own fear. “But if they kill you, won’t they kill me? I’m a human. I’m one of the enemy.”

“Yes, they might,” Firekeeper said as she had before, not soothing him a whit. “But you have gift of making letters that others read. You can write this story over and over and over. We will hide it on the horses in their bags. Maybe Elation, who is not of this thinking, would carry a message. The words will speak when we cannot. It is worth the trying.”

Derian nodded, but as he pulled out paper, quill, and ink, determined to write at least one version of this incredible tale before he went to sleep that night, he thought that Firekeeper might be overestimating the power of her story—whether written or told—to prevent this strange and terrible undeclared war.

IX

THUNDER WAS SHAKING
the canvas walls of the pavilion tent, thunder so loud and pervasive that it was omnipresent, unlike the eye-searing flashes of lightning that periodically lit the interior of the tent. Those washed out the lantern light so effectively that between bolts Elise always felt vaguely surprised to find the lanterns—they’d lit several both for light and warmth—still burning.

She stepped out of her wet riding clothes, cold to the bone, and hastened to draw on a heavy flannel nightdress that was only vaguely damp. Ninette had already done the same for herself and for Citrine, and was now warming water over the lamp.

It was a terrible night to be on the road. A storm had arisen when their small group traveling to the Norwood Grant was in between settled areas where they might have found shelter. There had been nothing to do but pitch the tents on the nearest rise of high ground and huddle within, soaked to the skin, but at least with a dream of getting dry. Elise thanked the Lynx—who as a cat must set some value on being warm and dry—that the escort her father had sent with her was so skilled.

She hoped that they were comfortable and in their own tents. The horses, who could not be put in a tent but had to settle for the shelter offered by a copse of trees, must be miserable.

There was something about the beating of the thunder, about the hard pounding of the rain against the canvas, that made anything outside of the pavilion seem less than real. Elise, Ninette, and Citrine might have been on some island in the middle of the ocean, cut off from everyone and everything.

Citrine, praise every ancestor in their shared lines, had not gone into one of her wild fits when the storm hit. Instead she had sat her pony like a doll, not even raising a hand to wipe the water from her face. Elise had set Ninette to mind the child while she did her best to help with pitching the tents and strapping covers over what remained in their wagon. The skills she’d acquired during last winter’s journey into New Kelvin had been of some use, but she realized oddly that the greatest assistance she had given was by being willing to help. It had put heart in the baron’s men to have their young mistress struggling with them against the elements.

And they needed heart, for Citrine’s odd moods had sucked the spirit out of them far more than any attack by bandits or wild beasts would have done.

Superficially, Citrine was the same sweet-faced little girl she had been the year before, a touch thinner certainly, but that could be explained by a growth spurt, though at nine she was young for such. Yet more had changed than the acquisition of maybe an inch of height and a slimming of build. Even when Citrine was at her most peaceful there was a brooding cynicism in her blue-eyed gaze that should not reside in a child so young. At her wildest she was a screaming terror, flailing out at enemies that dwelled mostly within her own mind. Worse, however, than these screaming fits were the times Citrine turned weird and fey, saying things that almost made sense, couched so that the mind worried over them long after their speaker seemed to have forgotten what she’d said.

Thunder shook the pavilion once more, a basso rumble accompanied by a tattoo of hail beating the canvas. The baron’s men had avoided the child, obeying his orders that she not be troubled so punctiliously that not one had as much as spoken a word to her. Elise had seen more than one touch their amulet bags when Citrine’s oddly vacant blue-eyed gaze had turned their way—a superstitious gesture Elise couldn’t bring herself to rebuke.

Tonight’s storm, so curiously violent, would not help morale. Elise resolved that when the rain let up some she would check on their escort, and began laying out a fresh set of traveling clothes in preparation.

Ninette looked up from adding tea leaves to the water heating over the lamp. She frowned slightly when she saw what Elise was doing, but didn’t protest. Instead, she glanced up at the pavilion roof.

“If that hail keeps up, we’ll have holes through for sure.”

Elise nodded. There wasn’t any use in pretending she hadn’t had the same thought. The pavilion was one of the best in her father’s store, the one he used himself, but even the thickest canvas couldn’t take such punishment forever. Had their roof been of solider stuff, it might have already been pierced, but the canvas gave just enough.

“At least it’s still watertight,” Elise offered by way of consolation. “Freshly treated before we left, and to think I was muttering over my father’s insistence. I didn’t even think we’d need half the gear he insisted we take.”

“Good thing he wouldn’t give in,” Ninette said, even managing a smile, “and that he insisted we lay in such varied stores. I’m glad we won’t need to do without a solid meal.”

Elise nodded. Citrine was sitting on a campstool, a blanket wrapped around her for added warmth, as blank-eyed as a doll. Half a moonspan ago, Elise would have felt pity and a touch of impotent fury. Now she was only glad not to have any additional trouble.

None of the nurses, maids, guards, or other attendants Princess Sapphire had hired to take care of Citrine had volunteered to make the trip to the Norwood Grant—not even when the princess had hinted strongly that she thought this would be a very good idea. Elise had stopped Sapphire from making her hint a direct command.

“After all,” she had said, “when we go into New Kelvin, we will need to leave all those people behind. Best we begin getting used to each other right away.”

And Elise and Ninette had done fairly well, but the reality was, Elise had never been a mother. Moreover, she was an only child, a rather privileged only child. She was not accustomed to having someone depend on her every hour of the day. Ninette was only slightly better prepared for the responsibility. She had siblings, but they were all older than her. She had never had to look out for them. It had been their place to look out for her.

A narrow trickle of water was working its way between the side of the pavilion and the ground cloth. Without really thinking about it, Elise set the wet blouse from her riding habit to sop up the flow and hopefully discourage it from going elsewhere. The hail shifted back to rain, then to hail once more, then back to rain. There seemed no indication that it ever intended to let up.

Elise ate the meal Ninette had prepared for them, a sort of porridge with dried meat suspended in it, this last adding flavor but rather too chewy to be good. The food was warm, though, and filling. As she ate, Elise alternated her own bites with spoonfuls for Citrine. The little girl ate automatically, showing no awareness of her surroundings.

I suppose it’s one way to deal with the situation,
Elise thought.
I wonder if I need check on the men. It’s still raining so hard.

She didn’t want to go out in the rain, but she knew what was expected of her, what her father would think if she didn’t go. Ninette didn’t comment when Elise started changing out of her now warm and comfortable flannel nightdress into her spare riding clothes, so she must have arrived at the same conclusion.