Song of the Beast (29 page)

“Drink, beast!” I yelled. “Taste the water of life!”

The head came down as if jerked by an invisible tether, yielding to my will, hiding the man in a cloud of steam as its snout dipped into the water.

I blew softly on the bloodstone until it glowed so brightly my gauntlet looked drenched with blood. Then I whispered the words it had taken me two years to wrest from my clan: sneaking, spying, creeping about like a lair rat until I learned the secrets denied me because I was not a man.
“Ze vra deshai, kai.”
I release you from my command, slave.

Halfway between the cave mouth and the boulder pile was a deep crack in the floor with a wide ledge just below its rim. One could stand on the ledge and duck below the level of the floor to hide or peek over the edge to watch the dragon from safety. The stinking smoke venting from the depths of the crevice would mask my smell. While the kai bellowed, I dropped onto the hidden ledge, then raised my head to peer across the floor of the cave.

It was perhaps a hundred paces from my hiding place to the pool. Though I could see only MacAllister's back and a bit of his right side, I had a clear view of the kai towering over him. It stretched its neck and tossed its head, spewing short, hard bursts of red-orange fire and smoke. The man stretched his right arm upward.

Be still, fool.
But I had no gemstone to command men. Beneath the constant muted roar of menacing breath and fire, of hissing scales and moving air that never ceased when the kai was awake, I heard the man's soft words as clearly as if we were sitting at my own hearth.
“Teng zha nav wyvyr . . .”

The dragon stopped in midstretch, and began to move its head from side to side on its long neck like some huge, ugly flower swaying with the wind. Left to right and back again ... searching ... searching ...

Holy gods, Aidan . . . be silent ... don't move.
But my will was not enough to stop him.

“Hear me, noble Keldar.”

The red snout opened wide, and the neck curled downward. I could not bear to watch, yet I could not hide. The monstrous head shifted right, then left. Hunting.

“I crave speech with thee, wind treader, cloud splitter, lover of your earthbound brothers who fly on four hooved legs through the lower airs.”

The words of the ancient speech took life from the singer's tongue, somehow grown wider and deeper than the dry syllables we of the Ridemark use. He believed the music of his heart was dead, but he was wrong. I heard it in that hour as clearly as I had heard it when I was eight.

I held my breath as the dragon tossed its head again, spit a geyser of fire upward so that sparks rained down from the cavern roof, then roared until the earth shook. But I did not close my eyes.

MacAllister, his face still turned upward, held his hands over his ears and, when the cry subsided, spoke again, his clear voice strained, but unwavering. “My hearing bursts with thy call, mighty Keldar, until I am drowned with it. Softly, wind treader. A youngling am I in my weakness. As the whispered air of the burning season enter my heart, lest I be crushed by the power of thy voice.”

The kai dipped its head sharply toward the man; the red slits in the snout gaped, pouring out yellow smoke. But instead of belching fire, the beast lowered its massive chest and its barrel-shaped neck until they rested on the rocks and bones. It might have been returning to sleep, but its blind, wild eyes remained open, and its head was angled away from the man, as if turning an ear his way or ensuring that no escaping thread of fire singed the one to whom it listened.
Impossible.

After a pause, the soft, deep voice began again. “I am the human servant of thy brother Roelan, graced in my youth with the gentle breath of his spirit. ...”

MacAllister's voice dropped out of hearing as the dragon grew quiet and still. I dared not creep closer and risk distracting the beast, for even the tiniest spurts of flame could sear the singer's flesh from his bones if the dragon moved its head. A hiss of steaming breath spewed from the beast, and in the midst of it a low, wavering noise, a grating sound that made my teeth hurt and my gorge rise. Never had I heard such sounds from a dragon, but they were not speech—not even the “pleasant variety of sounds” Narim had described in his journal. How long would MacAllister remain in such danger before he could admit that he had failed?

It was over very quickly. The kai's three sets of eyelids—the transparent ones, the soft green ones, and the hard copper-colored ones—slid over its diseased eyes, and the hissing breath took on the low rumble of dragon sleep. The grating noise was gone, and so, I supposed, were the hopes of the Elhim. The success of the day was survival. Yet moments passed, and then more. MacAllister did not move. He needed to get away. Oftimes the beast would shift in its sleep, and if he was in its path ...

I scrambled out of my hiding place and slipped cautiously between a rotting carcass of a herd beast and a slime-filled pit toward the singer and the dragon and the pool. “MacAllister!” I called softly. Not a twitch or a shiver.

Soon I was running, jumping across jagged cracks in the stone, yet keeping my footsteps light. “Aidan. Are you all right?” Only when I dropped to my knees beside him and felt the beat of blood in his scarred wrist did I know he was alive. Though I wanted to scream at him, I forced my voice low. “Get up, fool. Do you want to die here? It shifts its head while it sleeps.” I gripped his arm and shook him until his head came up. His dark eyes that knew so much of horror and despair were pools of grief.

“Move your sorry bones away or the kai will fry you like bacon,” I said. Imaginary flames crawled up my back.

The singer shook his head and whispered, “He won't.”

Damned stubborn, cursed man. “Just because you were lucky while it was awake doesn't mean—”

“He's dying. He won't move anymore.”

“Of course it's not dying. Not any time soon, at least. Narim told you. The kai go to ground after an injury to die or heal. We think—”

“He can't heal. He's broken inside, diseased beyond help. That's what I felt from him the first time when Narim brought me through the tunnel. I wasn't dying;
he
was. The only thing that's kept him alive is yearning for his brothers and sisters to sing him on his way. If only I could do it.” MacAllister stood up slowly, rubbing his hands along his upper arms as if he were cold and gazing on the sleeping dragon like a drunkard gazes on his wine-skin. “I tried to comfort him.”

“Are you saying the kai told you this?” Without thought I moved away from him, and his eyes shifted from the dragon to me.

“You think I'm mad.”

“I heard no speech from the kai.”

MacAllister shook his head. “Hearing? No, I suppose not. I've never ...” He rubbed his brow with the back of one hand. “It was very ... subtle. I got only part of it. But I'm not mad. Or at least no more so than I've been since I was eleven.” He smiled then, a sweet, sad smile that wiped away the lines pain had written on his handsome face. “I'm just a bit more tired.”

The kai lay still, but the bursts of fire and smoke from its nostrils told me it was no nearer death than in any hour in the past three years.

“I'm leaving,” I said. “If you can bear to part from your charming friend, you can come, too. Then you can tell me what else it said.” And I would weigh it well, for it would either be lies or lunacy. But I would not look into Aidan MacAllister's eyes while I judged him.

It had been early morning when we entered the lair, and I was sure that no more than two hours had passed, but the sky was dark when we stepped out of the cave. Though the rain was only a dismal drizzle, the clouds boiled purple and black, and from the direction of Cor Talaith orange lightning flickered unceasingly. Deafening thunder pealed through the mountains, caught by the jagged ridges and bounced from one to the other. The stench of burning set us both to coughing.

“We'd best find a cave of our own, or we'll have to take shelter with Keldar,” said MacAllister. “The storm will be on us in moments.”

But as he hoisted the pack he'd dropped just inside the cavern, I watched the sky to the east. I listened to the thunder and the roar of the wind beyond the ridge, the wind that moved no tree limb within our sight. “It's no storm,” I said, the truth hammering home with the power of a dragon's tail. “It's Desmond.” The clan had come.

Chapter 21

The sun hung between the lower edge of the clouds and the dark horizon, casting long, angular shadows as MacAllister and I walked down into the hellish ruin that had been the Elhim's sanctuary for more than eight hundred years. Heavy rain had left the valley floor a sea of hot, black mud, and the air was clogged with choking steam from charred rocks quickly cooled. Nothing within our sight lived—no blade of grass, no tree, no bird or insect. Not the least sign remained that any creature had ever lived in Cor Talaith. The end of the vale, where the granaries, the smithy, and the woodshop had stood, was barren. We slogged through the ankle-deep mud, thinking only to get to the warrens to see if any Elhim yet lived.

During the assault we had sheltered in a rocky cleft half a league from the kai's lair, not daring to stay too close to the lair, lest the attacking dragons discover their kin and draw the Riders to him. The Senai had spent the next four hours with his head buried in his arms. We could not escape the constant screaming of the kai wheeling overhead, and if a single dragon's cry opened him to madness, then the sounds of a dragon legion in full assault must surely drive him there. But no sooner had the skies fallen silent than Aidan jumped to his feet, ready to search for survivors.

“Not yet,” I told him. “If there's to be a third wave, it will begin in less than half an hour. And even if they're done, we can't go in until it cools down. The rock would melt our boots right now.”

“They don't understand it,” he said, leaning his head against the split cliff wall that formed our haven. “All these years we've used them to kill our own kind, and they don't understand why we don't eat each other, too.”

“Did the kai tell you that today?” Sometimes he had me fooled into thinking him sane; then he would start talking about dragons.

“No. Roelan told me long ago. I just didn't have the words to understand.” He pulled his cloak tight around himself. “The battle's over; I can't hear them anymore. The rain will have the ground passable by the time we get there.”

In truth I had no desire to wait.

 

The Riders had found the Elhim's cavern. The cliffs around its mouth were black and scarred, monstrous boulders, burned and shattered by dragons' tails, blocking three-quarters of the entrance. As MacAllister had surmised, by the time we hiked into the valley the rain had cooled the rocks enough to touch. We scrambled over the rubble, our boots slipping on rain-slick soot, until we could wriggle through the narrow opening and drop from the boulder pile into the cave.

We had no need for a torch. Fires still raged in several tunnels. Careful to avoid the smoldering ash piles, we covered our faces with our wet cloaks and picked our way across the charred hollow that had been the refectory and gathering hall. No use to look for anyone there. On the far side of the great room we saw the first blackened bones. At the same moment we both yelled out, “Hello! Is anyone here?” No answer.

We took separate routes through the warren, turning back only when heat or flames blocked our way. I found five or six more corpses, all burned in varying amounts. I had no great affection for most Elhim, but they had sheltered me and allowed Narim to care for me. They did not deserve this. Neither Narim nor Davyn were recognizable among the dead. I straightened the charred bodies, crossing their hands upon their breasts as was the Elhim custom and left them where they lay.

Returning from one blocked corridor, I heard voices and hurried down the passage that led to the lake of fire. The Senai was kneeling by two corpses ... no, only one was a corpse. The other gripped the singer's cloak with a blackened hand, croaking out the last words of his hateful life.

“... told him ... told him ... best to leave it be. They'll never remember. They'll kill us all. But he won't let it rest. He's mad, and all of us are servants of his scheme. His plan is not what you think. He calls you Dragon Speaker”—Iskendar spewed his bile in death even as he had in life—“but he makes you Death Bringer. You trust him, but he will betray you again, as he betrayed us all. The girl knows his schemes ... his plans ... You will destroy us all.” The old man wheezed and struggled for breath. “Ask him why there is an Elhim named for every dragon. Ask him what he found in Nien'hak. Ask him how the Twelve knew ...”

“What betrayal?” said MacAllister when Iskendar stopped. “How the Twelve knew what? Iskendar, tell me. ...”

The old crow, ignoring the Senai's pleading, gave his death shudder and lay still. The second corpse would be Nyura. The two bitter old fools had rarely been more than two steps apart.

The Senai loosened the blackened claw from his cloak and laid it and its fellow gently across Iskendar's breast. He began to speak, so softly I could scarcely hear him. “Across the ages walks the race of One, the Single, the Children of the Whole, never alone, but joined since the dawning. ...” The words of the Elhim death hymn. He probably knew the death hymns of every race. The words should be sung, of course, and on the second discourse he tried. “Across the valley of time walks the race of One. ...” Ten, fifteen tones of unmatched purity, such beauty in his voice that I could almost glimpse the welcoming vale for myself. But he faltered. His voice cracked and the music fell sour in the hot, stinking air. Bowing his head, he cupped his terrible hands at his shoulders in apology. “I'm sorry ... so sorry.”