Song of the Beast (34 page)

MacAllister's fiery red face was averted. “The Elhim ... Davyn took ... takes care of those things ... private things.” He was about to break into a sweat.

Carefully I set down my cup and pulled a pillow to my mouth, trying to smother the sounds that burst forth unbidden. I needed to hide, lest I reveal the truth about testy, vicious Lara the Dragon Rider, who chewed up men with her fangs and spit them at the world. MacAllister's embarrassment shifted to worry. Frowning, he dragged the pillow away. “What's the mat—”

But I was not in pain, only laughing as I had never laughed in my life. He turned red all over again, then exploded into hilarity of his own. Did he know there was music in his laughter?

“Where are the little twits?” I said when I could speak again, knowing full well whose hands it was that had bathed me and combed my hair and drained my festering wound ten times a day for uncountable days. “And how long have I been here?”

“Ten days.”

“Ten days! And no one's recognized you? In a place you're so well known?”

“No one's likely to know me anymore. Who would come looking for a singer presumed dead for seventeen years? Not much profit in that. But the Elhim bring supplies when they come back from a scout, so I've no need to go near the main house or the village.”

Back from a scout ... My laughter fell dead. “You're not still hunting this phantom dragon?”

His sobered expression was answer enough.

“You can't mean to go on. We'll not get ten steps into any dragon camp. The guards will be tripled. It's madness even to think of it.” I could not bear to hear his answer. I begged the roaring deafness to return before he spoke it.

“I've no choice. But you—”

“Of course you have a choice. There's always a choice. You had chains on your wrists in Fandine, and I had dragon poison in my veins. We could have died, or you could have ended up with your friend Goryx for the rest of your miserable life. And for what? For nothing. We learned nothing. Accomplished nothing.”

MacAllister looked stricken—as if I'd chained his hands again and left him naked for the wolves of winter. “Gods, Lara ... I thought you knew ... I thought you heard ...” He sat on the edge of the bed beside me. “The dragon in Fandine ... her name was Methys, which means ‘daughter of the summer wind.' She had almost forgotten it. There at the end she sang to me, and it waked ... a spark. I don't know. Just for a moment. And then you were hurt, and we brought you here. I thought you were going to die, and I ... I tried ... I can't seem to do it again, but I believed you heard and that it made a difference.” His face was like those of the starving villagers who came begging at Ridemark camps.

He was mad. There was no other answer. I'd heard the “song” of the injured dragon in Fandine, and it was not the glorious melody Aidan had sung to me in my dying. There could be no connection between such horror and such beauty. But if I told him I'd heard his singing and that it had taken away my fear and made me choose to live, it would lead him nowhere but to the dragons. So I couldn't tell him. I cursed Narim, then, and I cursed the Elhim and my own people and King Devlin, and I cursed the dragons and the universe that had created such monsters. They had robbed a good and innocent man of his life and his reason, and I could not tell him the truth he yearned to hear lest I be a party to their cruelty.

“I heard nothing. You're a fool. You can't go on with this, or you're going to be dead.”

The silence was long. I could not meet his gaze while he sat so close. To my relief he moved away to stand quietly by the hearth. “Ah, well. Foolish. I'm sorry,” he said at last. He picked up a polished oak stick that was standing next to the hearth and twirled it idly for a moment. “The Elhim say your ankle was only sprained, not broken, so you can get up whenever you feel like it.”

“Now would be none too soon,” I said.

He forced lightness into his words. “You hate being down. I can tell that. Even worse than being dragged around by mad Senai.” The mockery in his smile was not for me but for himself. “Tarwyl even brought you a cane to start. From another cousin.” He tossed me the stick and grinned. “I'll help if you need it, but I'm going to make you ask for it. I figure I can get myself comfortable for a long wait.” He flopped onto the yellow couch, stretched his long body, and closed his eyes.

Before I had made three circuits of the room leaning on Tarwyl's cane, two soggy Elhim burst through the door from the terrace, dropping an armload of parcels on the carpet. “Lara!” shouted Tarwyl. “You're awake!”

“I can hear very well, thank you,” I said. “Unless you keep up the yelling.”

“And ready to hike the Carag Huim, it seems,” said Davyn, smiling as he joined me on the far side of the room. “Healing well?”

“I'll be ready when I need to be,” I said, “for whatever stupidity comes next.”

Davyn laughed uproariously. “I expected no other answer.”

Foolish Elhim. He offered his arm to escort me back to my bed, for which I was sorely grateful. I would have crawled on the floor on my belly before asking the Senai.

“What did you find?” said MacAllister. He had popped up the moment the Elhim came in and sat poised on the edge of the yellow couch like a skittish cat.

Davyn's cheerfulness dropped away with his wet jacket. “Nothing likely. Precious few dragons about any of the camps in northern or central Elyria. We've covered them all. We did drag back something interesting, though he lags behind so pitifully he may never arrive to show himself.”

“Patience, you sprout of a nocre-weed,” said the Elhim just stepping through the doorway. “Ah, Lara, you must find a new way of making friends. Wrestling with dragons is the hard way.”

“Narim.” Not since the worst days of my burning had I so hated the sight of him.

He came to my bedside, took my hand, and smiled. “You are blooming, my lovely Lara. Aidan has done well by you.” Sympathy welled up behind his kind and cheerful face, as if he could read every thought in my head. “Did I not tell you that this one would change your opinion of Senai?”

“He has his uses,” I said, averting my eyes. I did not want to acknowledge the bond between Narim and me until I could avoid it no longer.

Davyn took up MacAllister's abandoned bacon fork and was soon busy melting cheese on hot bread and cooked barley. Tarwyl presented me with my own boot, the slit down its side skillfully repaired by yet another Elhim “cousin.” Narim and the Senai sat on either side of the bed making conversation across me about less than nothing: where the Elhim thought to make their new sanctuary, the futile attempts to convince Iskendar to leave Cor Talaith before the assault, our hunt for Roelan, and our adventure in Fandine. Nothing of importance. Nothing of the essence—the unyielding, unforgivable truth.

Davyn served up supper and gossip. “In Lepan we heard a rumor that the host of the Ridemark is gathered on the Gondari border. The Gondari king has been getting bolder with his raids into the southern kingdoms. Ten villages destroyed. Two thousand people burned out of their homes.”

“Burned half of Grenatte before the southern legion chased him back across the border,” said Tarwyl around a mouthful of bread. “The Riders grumble that King Devlin has lost his spine, as he's still not crushed these Gondari upstarts or even pursued them with a will.”

“They say MacEachern has started shifting the legions himself,” said Davyn. “Always closer to the border. Always in more vulnerable positions.”

MacAllister propped his chin on his hands. “He's trying to force Devlin into an assault.”

“I've heard that too,” said Davyn.

“He'll push and provoke the Gondari until there's no going back, never understanding why Devlin hasn't done it yet.”

“Why hasn't he?” asked Narim, his spoon poised in midair.

But MacAllister's mind was far away, and he didn't answer for a long while. And when his outburst came, it answered a different question altogether. “Aberthain!” MacAllister leaped up from the table, slamming the heel of his fist onto the table. “Stupid. Stupid. Why didn't I think of it before?”

Narim voiced our question. “Think of what?” Aberthain was a vassal kingdom in the southwestern mountains. Forever embroiled in local disputes. Unimportant.

The Senai was twitching with excitement. “Eighteen years ago I visited Aberthain. I couldn't sleep for the music pounding in my head, so I went out to the lair. I'd never felt Roelan so clearly, so close, and—prideful, insupportable stupidity—I thought it was something in me that made it so different that night. Within days the dragons in Aberthain Lair allowed hostages to go free, and within a week I was arrested. All this time we've spent hunting in Elyria, but Roelan is in Aberthain. I'm sure of it.”

Chapter 24

Davyn, Tarwyl, and Aidan left for Aberthain the next morning. Narim and I were to follow more slowly, allowing me time to regain strength and mobility before making any attempt to command a dragon. I dreaded the moment Narim and I would be left alone, so I leaned on the cane and trailed Aidan across the terrace into the lane where the horses were waiting. The damp terrace steamed in the morning sunlight.

“The lair at Aberthain is near impossible to get in,” I said, as he loaded his pack on his horse. “The surrounding cliffs are a sheer drop, and there's only one gate. The road to the lair leads right through the city.”

“I remember. I saw it.”

“You heard Davyn. They've got every lair heavily guarded. There will be signs, passwords, inspections. No Senai will be able to get into Aberthain Lair. None.”

Aidan cast a solemn glance over his shoulder. “I promise I won't go without you, if that's what you're afraid of.”

“I'm not afraid of—”

“You're not afraid of anything. I know.” Only after he'd turned away did I recognize the teasing glint in his eyes. He fumbled with his straps for an interminable time and faced me again only when he was finished with them. “The Elhim say that when you save someone's life, that life belongs in part to you. You're obligated to participate in its future course—delight in its pleasures, grieve at its sorrows. Davyn will tell you. So we are inextricably bound together, I think—you, me, and the others. No matter how much we dislike it.” Perhaps he thought his smile could soothe the sting of his words.

“And what do the Elhim say if you destroy someone's life?” I gave him no smile to ease my words. But as ever, I could not seem to make him angry—only melancholy.

“Ah ... that I don't know. Perhaps it doubles the requirement. Fitting punishment to know you can give them no comfort, to be unable to heal the wounds you've caused. I've given it a lot of thought these past days.”

I was ready to tell him that I was not referring to
his
crime, when Davyn and Tarwyl walked out of the house with Narim in tow. “Time to be off,” said Davyn. “We've got a plan. We'll meet seven days from this at the Red Crown, just outside of Aberswyl. Turns out the cook is—”

“Tarwyl's cousin.” MacAllister and I said it at the same time. The three Elhim chortled and embraced each other, and with no more than that, MacAllister, Davyn, and Tarwyl were off.

The hoofbeats had scarcely faded, and I'd not yet taken my eyes from the leafy lane where the three had disappeared, when Narim voiced the thought I would have died to keep my own. “You love him.”

I did not speak. Instead I returned to Aidan's house, stripped off the fine linen shift, and pulled on my own threadbare russet breeches and coarse brown shirt, my vest of cracked leather, and the repaired leather boots. Only as I twisted my hair into a braid that would keep it out of my face as we rode ... only then did I trust myself to speak to Narim. He had followed me. “I've sworn to do whatever you ask of me. I keep my oaths.”

The Elhim who had exhausted himself for two years to make me live stood in the doorway, his face left in shadow by the bright morning behind him. “It was never my plan to hurt you, Lara. And you must believe that I value Aidan MacAllister even as you do. I hope to give each of you the single thing you most desire, but this ... it cannot be. You know that.”

“I know far better than you. Have no fear. I'll do exactly as you've told me. But I'll never forgive you, and I'll never forgive myself, and don't tell me of dragon souls and the Elhim's sin and the changing of the world. You were wrong.”

“He could not have sustained his life as it was. The dragons were getting wilder. He was at the peak of his talent. He would have lost their voices and died inside, never knowing the truth. Would that have been better?”

“You never asked him, Narim. You thought you understood what was happening. You plotted and schemed and scribbled in your journal. But you were wrong. It was never the dragons. It was his own heart that made his music, and you ripped it out. And now he's going to die. He will either step into a dragon's fire unprotected or he'll be captured. I'll kill him myself before I allow him to be taken prisoner again.”

I did not give Narim the chance to answer. I had listened to him too often ... like the night he first told me that terrible deeds were sometimes necessary to save the world. I hadn't been interested in saving the world. I didn't believe in Narim's legends of Dragon Speakers. I had done as he asked because I was twisted with hate and craving vengeance, and now I was locked into his schemes by my honor as a warrior. To refuse him would complete my own corruption, violate my only remaining link to my clan. I could not do it. But I believed it was going to destroy my life as surely as it was going to destroy Aidan MacAllister's.