Song of the Beast (25 page)

Unreasonably I wanted to warn Lara of the dangerous undertone in her brother's cold baritone. But the woman quite effectively undercut both my desire and my ability to speak when she laid her gauntleted hand into my mouth so hard I rocked back on my knees and gagged on the blood that ran down my constricted throat. Clearly the D was not only for Desmond, but also for
duplicity
and
double-dealing
, and most certainly for
danger
.

“He's beastly Senai filth,” said Lara, fury boiling out of her like molten lava. “He was found wandering in the mountains half-frozen. The same ones who took me in sheltered him, so I couldn't deal with him as I wished.”

“And what would you suggest we do with him, girl?” asked the red-haired man, addressing Lara with such insolence that a true brother would have bashed him. Desmond only listened.

“Take him with you if you wish,” said the woman. “Or strip him and tie him to a tree for the wolves to find. What do I care for any Senai?”

Lara was not finished unsettling her brother even yet. Now she was done with me, she turned on him with the fullness of her anger. “There are more important matters here than a crippled Senai who cannot even lace his boots. Tell me, Desmond, who is this clan brother? All these years we've come together in secret, and I've asked but one thing: that for my safety and the peace of those who saved my life you not reveal our meeting place to anyone. Yet clearly this man is here by your leave. How do you explain it? Is this a new betrayal or has he been here at every meeting?”

Desmond stammered like a nervous squire on the eve of his first battle. I, struggling to clear my muddy head, had no little sympathy for him.

“Rueddi is a clan brother of the Fifth Family, a Rider in training. MacEachern suggested I bring him to help protect you. He feared this escaped prisoner might be hiding nearby and that he might try to prevent you taking your rightful place. You know”—he regained a bit of his injured dignity—“surely you understand who this Senai is.”

“He could be MacEachern's bastard for all I care,” said Lara. “But you had no right to bring anyone here—even a clan brother—for any reason.”

“I did only as our high commander bade me. He
will
have this Senai, Lara. No king, no god, no man or woman will prevent it. The black-tongued devil should never have been released from Mazadine. It was a terrible mistake. The one who told us that seven years of silence would destroy the singer and break his perverted connection to the kai—that one lied to us. We're going to take back our prisoner and bury him forever.”

Panic devoured my reason and with it all my subtle listening. Better to be dead. I strained against the sharp-edged leather thongs until my wrists bled, and the whip grew tighter about my throat, smearing the world with red. I rolled and lashed out with my feet, first at my red-haired captor, then at Lara and Desmond, but Riders are very skilled with their whips, and I was pulled away choking and gagging. Then a boot landed in my side, leaving my legs as limp as rags, and I had to spend all my energy to take another breath. Somewhere beyond the pounding of my blood and the rasp of my starved lungs, Lara was speaking calmly and coldly.

“So the promises you've made, my pardon, the hope that I would ride ... they were nothing but what? A ruse to draw me out and find out what I knew of the Senai? To snare him if he was nearby? All lies, then? Do the Twelve think I'm in league with this devil?”

“No! I didn't mean—Of course not. The high commander knew the man had escaped into the mountains. He thought it possible that the same ones who helped you would help him. I was going to ask you if you'd seen him. MacEachern does not trust the Elhim, not after—”

Lara pressed her finger firmly over Desmond's mouth. “Do not prattle. My trust will not be won by words. If you love me, brother, you must show me that I'm the true prize you seek. Leave this helpless Senai vermin for the wolves and take me home. When I step into Cor Neuill, I will have put my life in your hands, so I require this proof of your saying: Take back the most important prize and abandon the lesser. And if I am not the most important, then I no longer have any clan, any family, or any brother.”

“Lara!”

“I'll not be used as bait. I'll not have my honor suspect. And I'll not be made a fool by lies and treachery. Prove your words by your deeds, Desmond.”

I had never met man, woman, or beast so mystifyingly unpredictable as Lara. If she were to kiss me full on the lips at that moment, I could as easily believe I was poisoned as that she cared one whit for me. If I'd not been so sick and terrified, I might have laughed at Desmond's dilemma. As it was, I spit blood from my mouth, shifted my cheek that rested on a sharp-edged stone, and watched his face register every conceivable emotion as he gazed from his beloved sister to his despised enemy. She had put him in a wicked fix and me in worse. A wolf's howl echoed eerily from the rocky heights. I was going to lose either way.

Desmond recovered admirably, though if Lara believed his words honest, she was a fool beyond saving. “There is no question here,” he said, not explaining why his decision had taken so long if there was no question in his mind. “You are my first and most sacred quarry—to retrieve you from exile and restore you to your rightful place. I had thought we could bring the Senai as our triumphal gift to our clan. But if you say it is not a worthy gift, if you believe I see his capture as anything but long-delayed good fortune for our house, then so be it. We will dispose of him as you say. The gods will silence his foul tongue.”

“And what of your friend, brother?”

“Rueddi is in my debt. He will carry out my wishes. Exactly.”

The red-haired man bowed to Desmond and smirked at me, even as he pulled tight on the strap around my neck.

Events moved quickly after that. Scarcely two heartbeats and I was left hanging in the freezing night, my wrists secured to a sturdy pine bough above my head, my feet scarcely touching the ground. Lara had seen to the binding; then Rueddi had ripped the cloak, gloves, shirt, and boots off me. My clothes were now scattered across the clearing and down the gorge after being laced generously with blood from a deep cut on my arm. As he led his horse from the bushes Rueddi gave me a playful lash with his whip, and by the time I won the battle to keep from crying out, Lara leaped up behind Desmond, and the three of them rode into the night.

One by one the scattered coals of Lara's fire winked out. The rivulets of blood on my back and my arm and my face froze, and one by one my extremities went numb. The wolf's howl split the night, closer than before. I could hear the change in key as she smelled my blood on the wind.

A race,
I thought dully. The wolves were closer, but Rueddi would certainly be back. Desmond had no intention of leaving me to gods or wolves either one, not when his high commander wanted to bury me himself. Forever. My thoughts began to wander as I hung there slowly freezing in the moonlight. Who had told MacEachern that seven years of silence would destroy me?

I had believed for so long that I was dead, that no amount of pretending to breathe and eat and sleep would ever be able to revive my heart. But my betrayer had been wrong and I had been wrong. Life in all its oddity kept nipping at my heels like a playful pup, daring me to give it up when I had loved it so dearly. Just when I was convinced that poor humanity was alone in the universe and that it mattered not a splinter what happened to me, a being that was not a god, but was beyond all human capacities, had spoken to me with love. And just when death had declared itself inevitable, a woman who had no reason to care for me, who had unfailingly asserted her scorn and dislike, had given me a chance to live. Lara had called me a helpless cripple who could not lace his boots. But she had seen me lace up the armor, and she had chosen the mode of my binding and the branch and the tree. Intriguing possibility stirred me to movement.

I decided early on that my surmise must be wrong. The pine branch from which I was suspended was a hand's breadth in diameter, and the chances of breaking it were depressingly slim. It would be easier to uproot the blasted tree, I thought, as I hung limp and exhausted after the fruitless effort of pulling downward on it.
Uproot ...
I considered the trees I'd seen on my journey, scarcely grasping the rocky soil with their gnarled roots. My prison tree jutted out from the steep embankment almost horizontally. I slid my feet to my right and pulled on the branch again, this time from the slightly different angle. Moved another handspan to the right and pulled again. Again and again until my arms were covered with blood from my wrists, and my shoulders refused to move again. Then I started the other way. Move the feet; pull. Again; pull.

It was no use. My small reserve of strength gave out. I was too cold. My feet were dead stumps, and I couldn't move them anymore. I stumbled and hung from my raw wrists, unable to get my lost feet under me again. All I could do was hang there like meat on a hook and pretend I heard a cracking somewhere above me ... until I slumped completely into the dirt and first the branch, and then the tree, fell on top of me.

Quiet rustlings and feral moans drifted from behind the boulder stacks. I sprawled facedown on the cold ground, the tree trunk a deadweight on the backs of my thighs. Perhaps I should have felt lucky the tree hadn't landed on my head, but that didn't occur to me as I tried to worm my way out from under it. The branches scraped and stung, leaving an occasional warm rivulet of blood trickling across my skin. The bindings about my ankles became hopelessly tangled in the branches, and my wrists were soon stretched awkwardly to one side of my head, so raw I could not bear to pull on them again. It seemed so ridiculous.

I laid my head on the cold ground to try for more leverage, and not two handspans from my nose I saw a soft orange glow—one of the coals from the fire, a good-sized chunk only half-burned. The coal distracted me from my futile writhings. Softly I blew, over and over, praying the coal to take fire to frighten away the encroaching predators and so that something of me would be warm. Hands and feet, legs and arms were long dead. Soon my face and lips were frozen so that I could not even tell if I was pursing my lips to blow on the reluctant coal. At the end I had to rest, to lay down my head and forget the padding steps in the deepest shadows.

“Come on,” I mumbled thickly as my eyelids closed and froze shut. “Get on with it.”

“No, damn you, don't go to sleep. Gods of night, what a mess. Was anyone ever so inept as a Senai?” She had come back.

Chapter 18

“Are you going to sit up and drink this or am I going to have to pour it over your head?”

Steam tickled my nose. Meadowsweet and wintergreen. Pungent and soothing. The best remedy in the world for general aches and pains, of which I had an abundance. The blazing bonfire that seared my face so pleasantly was quickly bringing my frozen parts back to uncomfortable life. I would really rather sleep. Lara had interrupted me just as I drifted off, cutting me loose from the tree, dragging me across the ground, and throwing my cloak on top of me while she built up the fire.

I was lying on my side an arm's reach from the flames, shivering under my cloak, the tin cup just in front of my nose. I didn't look up, afraid I might provoke Lara into leaving again while still in possession of that steaming container of salvation. But as usual I couldn't resist a word.

“I thought you weren't going to cook for me.” My teeth were thawed enough to chatter unmercifully, blunting the careful precision of my wit.

“I decided I would rather cook than dress you. Found your precious herbs in your pocket. If you drink it, then maybe you can take care of yourself.”

Slowly I eased myself to sitting and held out both shaking hands to let her slip the cup between them.

She held back for a moment. “It's very hot.”

“It doesn't matter. The sense ... the feeling ... doesn't work right.”

I clenched my palms about the cup and got it carefully to my mouth, letting the hot liquid begin to quiet my violent shivering and settle into the bruised places.

“I never thought you would uproot the whole tree. The branch was rotten. One good jerk should have broken it.” She sat herself away from the fire where I couldn't see her face, wrapping her arms about her knees. My skin shrank around my aching bones when I saw the dead wolf just beyond her, an arrow protruding from its side.

“I wanted a big fire.”

She laughed then, a quiet laugh that flowed softly about us like the lowest arpeggio on a fine harp. “Have you no blood in your veins? I don't understand you at all.”

“I do murder in my dreams,” I said.

She shook her head. “You weep in your dreams. You scream without making a sound.” She stood up, threw a branch onto the bonfire, and wandered away for a bit. When she came back, she tossed my bloodstained shirt and gloves onto the ground in front of me. “We need to move.”

“You think they'll come back?”

“Desmond will bring the legion. I had to kill Rueddi.”

“Vanir's fires. Lara ...” There was nothing to be said, of course. No comfort possible for one whose hopes were shattered so irrevocably. Not from me, certainly. And she'd want no thanks from me either. “Do we need to warn the Elhim?”

“When we get to the kai's lair, I'll light a watchfire on the peak. Narim will see it and understand. We should have three days' head start. The clan knows the Elhim sanctuary is in the Carag Huim, but not exactly where. I left Desmond afoot, and it will take him at least that long to get back, gather the legion, and find Cor Talaith. Meanwhile, we'll have his horses.”