The Dragon of Despair (55 page)

“Now,” she said, her posture indicating that she, at least, was willing to sit up all night until the matter was resolved to her satisfaction, “was this a thief or a bandit?”

Elise considered.

“Neither,” she replied, remembering how literal Firekeeper could be. “Prime Nstasius was a spy—and perhaps a future ally.”

Firekeeper frowned.

“I don’t understand ‘spy,’” she admitted.

Derian cut in, shoving Firekeeper toward the kitchen.

“We can worry about fine tuning later,” he said, winning Elise’s gratitude. “Not all of us slept throughout the afternoon while others worked.”

Firekeeper had the grace to look shamefaced, for honestly she had done little of the unpacking, considering such beneath her.

“But I must know,” she protested with a touch of a whine.

Grateful Peace turned from where he had been tending the kitchen fire.

“A spy,” he said, “is like a scout—but a scout for another pack and one who may steal your game from you.”

Firekeeper nodded.

“I understand that,” she said. “Are spies for killing?”

Peace—once spy-master for a kingdom—smiled, a touch sadly, Elise thought.

“Often,” he said, “but never without talking to them first.”

The answer might have satisfied the wolf-woman, for Firekeeper gave a brief bow of thanks and slipped out into the night, but Elise found that it unsettled her, chasing through her dreams and tainting her rest so that sleep offered no refreshment.

XXI

T
ORIOVICO WAS DANCING
. Toriovico was.

Toriovico was dancing. Dancing. He was.

Toriovico was the Healed One.

Was? Is! Was.

Toriovico was Dancing. Only when dancing was he—

Toriovico.

Toriovico, the healed one, ruler of New Kelvin, struggled to hold on to a single, elusive thought. His feet were still moving, arms still pumping, working their way almost independently through the series of choreographed motions that made up his part in the Harvest Joy dance.

It was a dance he had first performed as a small boy. He’d been a minor vegetable then, a yellow squash. Now, of course, he danced the Harvest Lord’s part. It was only right. He was the Healed One. He was also a fine dancer in his own right.

Flautist and drummer noticed a faltering in Toriovico’s steps, faltered themselves, anticipating a command to begin the section over again. Toriovico shook his head at them, the gesture so fiercely contained it was terrifying.

Toriovico was dancing. Toriovico was…

Dancing? Was he? Dancing? Who was he?

He felt himself losing the familiar sequence of steps, fumbling, losing with the dance the momentary clarity of thought that had nearly led to revelation. Toriovico sank himself in the simple repetition of the dance, forced himself not to think, and in not thinking Found.

What had he been doing? What had he been thinking? Had he been thinking? Had he?

Maybe just a little. Feet still moving, arms tracking their way through his interpretation of the traditional gestures, Toriovico recalled his recent visit to Columi, this time without the surge of guilt that had accompanied such thoughts before. He had been thinking then.

Dancing. That was the key. It was while he had been immersed in dancing he had first felt angry about Melina’s recent disappearances. He had not been actively dancing, but he had gone to find her directly from a practice, the steps he wanted her opinion on still occupying most of his attention.

His anger had carried him through his encounter with Tipi and through his meetings with Columi, though in that latter case guilt had nearly made him abandon his purpose. He had hardly comprehended the old Lapidary’s warnings, his hints that Melina had become the force behind much of the court’s actions.

Anger was not something Toriovico could hold on to, not for long, but dancing…Dancing might just be enough to…

Toriovico struggled again, working his way toward a thought that was there, but so walled behind barriers that he felt as if his thoughts were within the dense threads of a silkworm’s cocoon. He grasped the image, worked it into his dance, transforming the rhythmic motions of the Harvest Lord’s labors among symbolic fields into the unraveling of silk.

Silk is spun in a single thread. Toriovico made a spindle of one hand, held the cocoon in his other. Unwrapped, unbound, removing the bonds, finding within…Clarity.

The barriers tumbled down. He saw a pair of oddly crystalline blue-grey eyes, heard lips admonishing him to trust, to love, to obey, to forget, to adore, to forget, to obey, and above all to forget.

Toriovico stopped dancing, aware for the first time of the awed murmurs from his musicians, of the expression of mingled astonishment and annoyance on his Choreographer’s face.

“What do you think you were doing?” the Choreographer asked, his astonishment robbing him of the usual ritual courtesies. “That wasn’t part of the dance!”

The flautist, revered for her art by two sodalities, and therefore intimidated by neither the Choreographer nor the Healed One, interjected:

“But it was magnificent!”

“I was dancing,” Toriovico replied woodenly, his tongue numbed by revelation. “Dancing.”

“
WHERE DOES THE HEALED ONE LIVE
?” Citrine asked Firekeeper as they wandered the streets of Dragon’s Breath.

Ostensibly, the “boy” was serving as Firekeeper’s guide and translator, but Firekeeper was the more knowledgeable about the city and with occasional whispered commands she kept Citrine on course.

“You not ask that so loud,” Firekeeper chided her, “and not in so good Pellish. You should call Healed One by New Kelvinese name, I think. They do this with many places and people to make us feel small.”

Citrine accepted the reprimand gracefully enough, but she didn’t forget her question.

“Where is Thendulla Lypella?” she asked. “That’s the name of his castle, isn’t it?”

In a softer voice Citrine added, “I think I can ask that, Firekeeper. After all, I might be a country boy, right?”

“Not if you guide,” Firekeeper reminded her.

“My father is the guide,” Citrine answered. “Our story is that this is my first time to this city. I’m just with you to translate, right?”

Firekeeper sighed and shrugged. She had trouble keeping these layers upon layers of deceptions straight. She was also edgy because there were so many strangers around. Had Blind Seer not been at her side, she would have been quite tempted to go hide in Hasamemorri’s stable.

Unlike in Eagle’s Nest, here in Dragon’s Breath the Royal Wolf could walk the streets openly. Indeed sometimes he was not even noticed by the humans amid the panorama of odd costumes and odder vehicles that filled the New Kelvinese city. The animals, however, had no doubt what he was. Beasts of burden sometimes panicked. Dogs barked. Cats snarled.

That didn’t bother Firekeeper a bit. The dogs and cats knew to keep their distance. If the occasional horse or ox grew nervous, that wasn’t her problem.

Knotting her fingers in Blind Seer’s fur, Firekeeper considered Citrine’s question.

“Thendulla Lypella,” she said, “is over there.”

The wolf-woman gestured roughly north with a toss of her head.

“Where those towers is,” Firekeeper continued.

“Are,” Citrine murmured, but her correction was automatic and she stared at the towers with raw hunger in her eyes. “It’s a really big castle, isn’t it?”

“Is not so much castle,” Firekeeper replied. “Is a city in a city. Is very big and confusing.”

Citrine didn’t seem convinced. She fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot, and tugging at the long skirt of her New Kelvinese robe.

“Can we take a closer look?”

Firekeeper shrugged. She wasn’t quite certain what it was the others expected her to do out here in any case, and humoring Citrine had become habit. The girl had fewer fits these days, but when her eyes shone with that particular feverish light it was not a good time to defy her.

“We go,” Firekeeper said.

She led the way to where a large main street dead-ended against a huge wrought-iron gate that they had learned during their previous visit was opened only when some elaborate ceremony demanded it.

Wordlessly, the friends stopped across the street from the gate. For a moment, Firekeeper thought that Citrine might run over and press her face against the cunningly crafted vines and flowers that intertwined into a deceptively solid iron barrier, perhaps try to worm her way inside. The girl held her ground, however, her stillness a marked contrast to the intensity of a few minutes before.

“You’re right,” Citrine said after a long pause. “It’s a city, not a castle.”

Then, to Firekeeper’s utter confusion, she began to sob uncontrollably.

EWEN BROOKS
didn’t need the notched stick on which he’d marked the days since Lord Polr had read that thrice-cursed proclamation to know that time was up for New Bardenville.

He’d have known it from the phase of the moon if nothing else, for chance had ordained that the first day of Hummingbird Moon was the day they must decide whether to resist the king’s will or to move on.

Some of Ewen’s people took the moon as a bad omen. The dog, whose moon had just passed, was a creature who lived side by side with humans, who guarded and protected them, who made one family with them. When Dog Moon shone it had seemed only right to resist the forces that would move them from the settlement. Now, though…

The hummingbird was a fierce creature, one who could never be tamed, who might sup on the nectar of a human garden, but who never offered anything but a flash of brilliant color in return. Some saw the fact that King Tedric’s proclamation took effect at the very start of Hummingbird Moon as an omen that they, too, were expected to move on. Others, Ewen foremost among them, saw it as an omen that they were meant to fight.

He told the doubters so on their last meeting come dawn of the dreaded day.

“The hummingbird is small,” he said, “possesses neither talons nor cruelly curved beak, yet when it comes to fighting spirit it would combat eagles. So we are called to fight this House of the Eagle and its predator herald. The ancestors will it and have shown their will by the day on which we must decide our fate.”

That speech swayed them, though a few, like Garrik Carpenter, murmured that it was wrong to resist the king’s will. Not many wanted to listen to him. They’d held their ground when their crops had been eaten, when they’d been made prisoners in their own hard-built fortification. It was almost a relief to have something visible and tangible to fight.

The majority of the settlers also thought—and Ewen was foremost among those who held this opinion—that in the end Lord Polr wouldn’t order his men to attack those who honored the same ancestors. Hadn’t King Tedric only disowned Prince Barden, not brought any harm to him or to his followers?

Surely the new settlers would be left to struggle as they might rather than risk the spilling of familial blood. Being disowned would be hard, but they would adjust.

New Bardenville’s struggle for survival might be very difficult indeed without the promise of fresh supplies from the east and the very land seeming to fight the residents, but Ewen was confident that the settlers would win.