Tivi's Dagger (21 page)

“
As you wish, my Ned. I’ll join you
when the strength returns to my legs.”

The warmth of the water stung at my arse and
I scrubbed myself hard. I did not tarry long enough for Kari to
join me; instead, I limped back to the rug and began to pull on my
clothes. Without the intense pleasure to mask the pain, I observed
that walking was somewhat uncomfortable, almost as if I was saddle
sore. I flexed my healing hand and observed that here was another
wound I would have to mask from my brother. Like the marks on my
back, my burnt hand only served to remind Brin of my more
undesirable characteristics and with the mending of our
relationship, I did not want to thrust evidence of some other
deviant behavior under his nose which might drive another wedge
between us and make life unbearable once more.

Kari sat up and took my hand. “Are you all
right?”

“
Of course,” I said tersely. I had no
idea why I felt compelled to push him away, but I couldn’t stop
myself. “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed.”

“
But we can sleep here,” he said, and
I could hear the note of disappointment in his voice.

“
It’s too cold. I want my
blankets.”

Realizing that I sounded like a petulant
child, I scrambled up the bank before I could say more. He called
after me, but I fixed my eye on the camp fire and wended my way
through the trees toward it. Lana was lying on her back, mouth open
and sending her snores to the sky, with my brother’s head still
nestling in her lap. Kel was curled up under his blankets with the
Book of Matativi in his hand. Gently, I took the book and tucked it
under his pack, suddenly envious of my cousin’s simple passion for
knowledge. How uncomplicated the world must seem to one such as he,
who saw opportunities to learn in almost every experience and was
satisfied so easily by so little.

I curled up under my blankets and stared at
the dark sky. The moon and stars hid behind the clouds and did not
look down. The landscape around us was the same, but all the same
everything felt different. I wriggled around, trying to get
comfortable in a position that would not disturb my aching arse.
Every time I moved I was reminded of what had just happened and it
just made my heart beat harder with anxiety. Kari, fully dressed,
came back to the camp and shot me a mournful look as he unrolled
his blankets. Perhaps he thought he had hurt me. I did not know
what to think any more.

With a heavy heart, I turned from him and
stared into the darkness.

***

The next morning I labored over packing my
bag as neatly as I could so I did not have to engage in
conversation. Kari stirred the cookpot, which was bubbling with
another stew to line our bellies for the day ahead. He seemed
somewhat subdued and the weight of guilt pressed heavy upon me as I
noticed the miserable bent of his shoulders. I stared at him for a
moment as a lump formed in my throat, then coughed and went back to
my packing. Lana, seemingly oblivious to the gloomy atmosphere
between us, was entertaining Kel with the more family-friendly
jokes she’d learned from her dwarven friends. Brin seemed much
happier now that he was well-rested and he was walking much more
easily than before. He stroked the donkey’s nose and fed it a
carrot, listening to Lana and Kel’s idle chatter.

“
So this really thirsty human walks
into a dwarven bar in the desert, and the barman says ‘Sorry, we
don’t serve long drinks of water.’”

Kel slapped his knees and laughed for a
while, then his face straightened. “I don’t get it.”

“
Why are you laughing then, idiot?”
Lana chuckled and gave my cousin a playful push. He slipped off the
rock he was perched upon and sat down hard upon the
ground.

“
My arse!” Kel exclaimed, twisting to
examine his butt cheek. “Why, you’ve torn a hole in my leathers.
You owe me some needlework, woman.”

“
So this theology student finds out he
has holey pants,” Lana began, but then we heard a strange noise and
I realized that Lana had finally won her wager.

My brother was laughing.

“
Nice,” he said, still chuckling, and
went about loading the donkey up for the day’s journey.

I stared at Lana in amazement, but she just
shrugged and flashed me a sunny grin. Whatever Kari had drugged my
brother with was obviously still having some effect.

After breakfast we were all ready to go when
Kari looked up at the clearing sky and then down at his map. “We
will see Thar Mati today,” he said. “In these pleasant conditions,
there’s no reason why we should suffer any delay.”

“
Sounds good to me,” Brin said, and
led the donkey from our campsite toward the trail we had left the
previous evening. Kari followed closely behind and I tried not to
notice how unhappy he seemed. As if it was our very first day on
the pilgrimage I lagged behind, still aware of my stinging arse, my
heart filled with a creeping misery I could not quite
comprehend.

As we walked I saw nothing of the
cloud-tipped mountains or the strips of land farmed for tea crops
around us. I stared at my feet and kicked a few stones for good
measure. The pack was weighing on my back and I longed to be rid of
it, but it would be many long days before that would happen. We
still had to make our way back to Lis, and I was well aware that
the return journey — much longer as it would be, since my brother
had no intention of allowing me to be possessed by the fae once
more — would be much less enjoyable, since each step in that
direction would bring me closer to the altar.

I stopped putting the thought of my
impending marriage to the back of my mind and faced the ghastly
prospect wholly for the first time.

My bride would be waiting for me in the
circular room of the inner Temple, surrounded by the silhouetted
statues of the Thirteen, who would be gazing at us through a sheer
purple cloth illuminated from behind, thus symbolizing the boundary
between earthly love and theirs. She and I would both be veiled so
that we would not see each other’s faces until whatever Protector
had been chosen to officiate had pronounced us wed. I imagined the
smell of incense and the bowls of fresh rose petals waiting by the
door to be flung over us as we went out of the temple to our new
life. This woman I did not yet know would be living in my house,
rearranging my furniture and adding her own, managing the servants
and our social calendar. She might be prone to annoying behavior
such as brushing her hair in bed, or leaving her smelly shoes
inside the door instead of on the steps. Perhaps she would force me
to attend the high society dinners and balls I hated, as to go
without me would be a signal that our marriage was over and would
bring a great disgrace to me and the Melchion name. She would come
to my bed, dressed in my mother’s wedding gown for the first night
as was tradition and naked thereafter, waiting coyly for me to
perform my husbandly duties. Even though she might have fucked two
dozen men before me, she would still pretend I was her first,
because she would have been groomed from birth for her own role in
a marriage of strategy, just as I had. I felt a growing pity for
her, whoever she was, but not as much as I felt for myself.

My guts knotted inside me and I felt so
thoroughly sick that after a while I had to stop walking and
deposit my breakfast at the side of the trail.

I had hoped I was far enough behind the
others that they would not hear me retching into the grass but alas
it was not to be. Brin stopped and the donkey began to nibble at a
clump of grass. Everyone was looking at me as Kari rushed over, his
face full of concern.

“
Are you ill, my Ned? Did my stew have
some bad effect?”

The touch of his hand on my arm caused
another wave of misery and I gestured to Brin to resume walking,
which he did. I turned to Kari, sick to the bones. “No, it was
fine,” I said with a weak smile. “I’m fine, it’s just a passing
thing. Don’t worry.”

“
I don’t understand,” he said. His
blue eyes had turned the color of rainclouds, and the sadness in
them made my guts twist once more. “What we did last night…when you
did it to me it just made me love you more, not less. I must be a
truly dreadful lover to make you so disagreeable and unhappy
afterwards.”

“
Kari,” I said wretchedly. “You aren’t
a dreadful lover, quite the opposite. Just…I have a lot on my mind.
I know how this is going to sound but…could you leave me alone for
a while?”

A tear dropped down his cheek and he wiped
it away impatiently. “If that is your wish, then I will do it.”

Just then we were overtaken by another group
of Methari soldier monks, who broke formation to pass us like river
water around a stone. They numbered about thirty and did not stop
to greet us. I hadn’t the energy to speculate about yet another
danger that they could be speeding off to deal with and instead
focused my vision on my feet as they trudged along the stony path,
seemingly of their own accord.

Where would I go, if I could choose?

It was a dizzying thought, but I put it to
one side as we rounded yet another mountain and then stopped in our
tracks to stare across the flat land that had opened up in front of
us, zigzagged with rows of tea plants and occasional stilted
dwellings and clumps of trees. The three peaks ahead dominated the
landscape, making the mountains we’d passed already seem like mere
pimples. They were truly majestic, bare black slopes crowned with
snow and rings of cloud.

Thar Mati and the Twin Sisters were in sight
at last.

“
What a view!” Kari exclaimed, roused
from his gloom by the sight of the mountains.

Spurred onwards, we picked up the pace. Even
I had momentarily forgotten my plight in my eagerness to plunge
into the magnificent view before us. We wended our way through a
small path among the tea fields for a half-hour or more. But as we
were about to pass one of the stilted dwellings, we saw the warrior
monks from before, as well as some other travellers, clustered
about the farmyard, talking excitedly to each other and pointing
toward the foot of Thar Mati. I recognized the huge hound from the
inn in Kalati and looked around for its owner, whom I spotted deep
in conversation with one of the monks and looking a lot more
cheerful than she had previously.

Kari hailed the nearest silver-clad figure
and they talked for a moment, gesturing toward the mountains ahead.
The monk fished a brass-ringed telescope from his pocket and handed
it to Kari who peered toward Thar Mati for some minutes before
turning to us with a small smile. “I am afraid we may not be able
to reach the shrine after all,” he said. “The dragon rests just
above it. Look.”

I took the telescope and peered through it.
It was a crude instrument but it allowed me to scan the treeless
black slopes until my eye caught a flight of ancient stone steps
carved into the mountain’s base and ending just a little higher. I
saw the stones of the shrine, bowed and broken and yet somehow
magnificent in their weathered carving; the recognizable outlines
of the Thirteen covered in moss and dead creepers.

Just above the shrine on the slopes lay the
form of a sleeping dragon.

My breath caught in my throat at the sight
of the creature as one of my life’s ambitions came to pass. The
dragon’s thick, overlapping scales glinted a dark sapphire blue in
the sunlight. One of its wings was folded strangely about its side,
bulging with what I speculated to be its foot, while the other was
folded against its spine which was ridged almost as if the bones
lay on the outside. As it breathed, its enormous flanks expanded
and contracted and it twitched the tapered end of its tail, which
was long and coiled about its body. The creature was bigger than
I’d ever imagined, almost as large as the whole shrine itself. I
could only imagine how I would compare against it up close — it was
doubtful that my head would be higher than the top of its
three-toed feet.

And then, as Lana and Kel jostled at my
elbow for a look through the glass, the dragon raised its majestic
head and opened one dark eye. Its enormous wings stretched out to
their furthest span and it gave a loud cry, a raucous, bird-like
shriek that echoed through the valley and brought the hairs on my
arms to attention. And then, miraculously, it was answered by a
smaller cry; more high-pitched and musical.

“
Our dragon is a mother,” I said, as
Lana snatched the telescope from me with a cry of excitement. I was
suddenly and supremely joyful. The baby dragon had blinked out at
the world just for a moment and just for me, for Lana was already
expressing disappointment at it being so well enveloped once more
behind its mother’s wing.

“
You must make a wish, Ned. We all
must!” Lana said, handing the telescope to Kel and beaming. “Men
have waited lifetimes in vain in the hope of seeing such a
wonderful sight as we have seen today. It is a far bigger and more
magnificent creature than I could ever have dreamed of. A fine omen
for all of us, I’m sure of it.”

I thought about what wish I would make
but could think of nothing but negatives.
I wish I didn’t have to marry. I wish I didn’t have to go
back home. I wish I hadn’t been so disagreeable last night.
They flooded my mind like tiny biting fish in a pond and I
shook my head to rid myself of them, for even the auspicious vision
of such a beautiful and legendary creature could not change the
path that was carved out before me. I murmured them all the same,
my gaze fixated on the beautiful, majestic beast before
me.