The Dragon of Despair (90 page)

Elise frowned.

“What accusations could she make against you?”

“Insanity,” the Healed One replied with pained simplicity. “It is not unknown in my family. Once I was under Melina’s control again, she would claim me cured.”

“That’s horrible!” Derian exclaimed. “Can’t you just divorce her?”

“Nothing is so simple,” the Healed One said, “not even, I suspect, in your own land, where the king is truly king. Here, where I share my rulership with the Primes and the Dragon Speaker, it is more complicated.”

“No wonder,” Elise said, “you wanted us to find out where Melina was going at night.”

She hadn’t meant to say the words aloud and clapped her fingers over her mouth, but she had spoken—and the Healed One had understood her. The angry reprimand she feared did not follow; instead he nodded.

“Precisely. If I can prove that she is the true conspirator then I will have no difficulty putting her from me. Indeed, the shock of her workings may be enough to break her hold on several of my ministers. They move to the call of power as I do to music.”

“Music?” Firekeeper said, this being one of the New Kelvinese words she had learned. “What?”

The Healed One looked puzzled, then nodded.

“I forgot for a moment that custom keeps those outside the walls in distant awe of those within. Before I became the Healed One, I trained as a dancer. Dancing is still near to my heart, an art I practice daily. Dance, it seems, has an even stronger hold on my mind than those things Melina used to bind me.”

He might have expected Firekeeper to ask more questions, but the wolf-woman thought dancing and music were among the few things that made humans interesting and worthy of emulating. Elise knew that the Healed One’s explanation would only have raised him in Firekeeper’s estimation.

Elise didn’t bother to explain this, though. Such personal details weren’t important in comparison with the question that loomed unanswered in the forefront of her thoughts.

“Do you still wish us to find where Melina goes?”

“Yes,” the Healed One replied, “but there are other things you must know, things I did not have Xarxius confide in you because I thought them unnecessary. Now, Melina’s willingness to move so openly makes me believe she may feel she needs none of us much longer—that she is near her goal.”

“Goal?”

“Last winter Melina came to New Kelvin bearing three artifacts of proven provenance,” the Healed One said. “I believe she is seeking something here in New Kelvin that will make those artifacts as nothing, an old power bound in the days of the Founders. Our legends call it the Dragon of Despair.”

XXXIV

FIREKEEPER WAS FAR LESS BOTHERED
by her inability to follow the conversation than the others might have imagined. Although she understood a great deal more Pellish than she had a year before, much of what was said in more complicated discussions was still lost to her.

She had learned to compensate by watching expressions, coming to the decision that though humans lacked proper ears and tails, they really did give a great deal away—even when they did not intend to do so. This watchfulness, combined with Wendee’s whispered translation, gave Firekeeper more than enough information to keep her interested.

After a few minutes, she decided that she liked the Healed One. His robes might hide his body, but nothing could hide the muscular power of his movements from eyes trained to look for signs of a healthy—and therefore dangerous—beast. She wondered how someone who stayed locked within this walled city could so remind her of a stag in his prime. When she learned the Healed One was a dancer, Firekeeper was content.

The tale of the Dragon of Despair—which Toriovico began by telling how the dragon came to be—reminded the wolf-woman of the stories Queen Elexa had told her when her winter cold had kept her in bed. Firekeeper wondered how much of this tale was true and how much fancy, but the sincerity of the Healed One’s tone as he related the tale—even to a tight, strained note barely detectable beneath his words—gave credence. Clearly, the Healed One believed the tale and equally clearly he did not expect them to do so.

Firekeeper decided to keep an open mind as to its truth. After all, not much over a year before she wouldn’t have believed in human cities. She’d hardly believed in humans, come to that, and humans had not believed in Beasts.

The wolf-woman felt a momentary twinge of fear that humans might now believe, and what that belief could mean to her people, but she put the fear from her, though she did tighten her hand in Blind Seer’s fur.

When the story of the Dragon of Despair, its binding, and the Healed One’s belief that Melina was seeking it to turn its terrible power to her own uses had ended, Firekeeper listened a trace impatiently as the others asked the Healed One various clarifying questions—none of the answers to which seemed to make them very happy.

After some time had passed, Derian glanced around the room uneasily and said, “Isn’t this dangerous, our meeting with you like this and for so long?”

The Healed One’s lips twisted in that odd expression that seemed like a smile but held no warmth.

“Usually, it would be dangerous,” he agreed. “Indeed, I fully expect word of this meeting to get to Melina, but that was something I had to risk. I sincerely hope to convince her that we were simply discussing the customs of your country.”

“But,” Derian pressed, “it sounds like Melina has a lot of influence here in Thendulla Lypella. Won’t she just come walking in when she gets wind of this?”

The Healed One shook his head so vigorously that his long green braid whipped over his shoulder.

“Not this time. Melina is in a trap of her own making. Since she brought the accusation against Xarxius to Apheros she is required to be a witness at the hearing. As Healed One I could insist I had duties that require me to be elsewhere. My Consolor does not have that excuse.

“Moreover, I do not believe Melina will be willing to leave Apheros. She knows—for Xarxius nearly freed Apheros from her power by appealing to his pride of office—that this hearing is the greatest danger to her hold over the Dragon Speaker there could be. Therefore, even if someone brings her word that I am meeting with you—and I do not think her agents could get a message into the sealed judicial chamber—she will be reluctant to leave.”

“Why,” asked Doc through Wendee, “is your civil ruler called the Dragon Speaker? I’d expect him to be called something like Number One Prime. It better fits your nomenclature.”

The Healed One looked momentarily annoyed, then suddenly he turned serious.

“Actually, the title is tied in with that same legend I was relating a moment ago. Although the Founders’ government was different from our modern one—for one thing, the Founders didn’t have a Healed One—they did govern via a council. After the binding of the Dragon of Despair, the Star Wizard was given the position of head of the council in recognition of his heroic deeds. Since the Star Wizard had spoken to the dragon—some said he continued to hear its laments for the rest of his life—he was given the title Dragon Speaker. When my ancestor the First Healed One created the Primes he retained the title for its ancient honor and tradition.”

Firekeeper felt unaccountably uncomfortable at this snippet of information. To distract herself, she asked a question of her own.

“What about Peace and Edlin?”

Now it was the Healed One’s turn to look uncomfortable.

“Xarxius said something about the two of them being missing,” he replied. “He mentioned it after he was arrested. I had the impression he was trying to let me know that Melina had them. However, I must admit I have no idea where they are—or how she acquired them in the first place.”

As Elise explained how Peace and Edlin had been captured, being far kinder to Firekeeper in the telling than the wolf-woman would have been to herself, Firekeeper considered the task the Healed One had set for them with a sense of dread that intertwined with her own weariness and the continued pain of her injuries.

Not only did they need to find where Melina went at night, they needed to learn what they could about her investigations into this dragon. The Healed One had admitted that he believed the story, but that he had no idea whether the dragon might be a symbol for something else.

Firekeeper understood about symbols, but in her gut she thought that Melina would not be looking so hard and taking so many risks if she wasn’t fairly certain that there was a real dragon to be had at the end of the chase—or at least an artifact so powerful that it had raised a mountain and caused vast destruction.

So Firekeeper had to find the truth of this dragon story. From what the Healed One was now telling Elise, it looked as if Firekeeper would need to find Edlin and Peace as well. Rather than simplifying matters, she thought that their visit to the Healed One had complicated their tasks greatly.

Firekeeper said as much to Blind Seer and the wolf replied,
“The spider’s web is tightest at the center, dear heart. Trails cross most when you near the deer yard.”

“Proverbs,”
she said, punching him.

“Truth.”

MOTHER DIDN’T
come. Citrine waited, crouched for hours on the cold stone floor of the storeroom, waited until she worried she would fall asleep, sleep there until morning, and give away Mother’s secret.

Citrine wanted to go to look for Mother, to make certain she hadn’t left without her, but she was afraid that Mother would come and leave without her.

Then Citrine remembered a trick Grateful Peace had shown her, a trick for telling if someone had opened a letter or drawer. She reasoned that the trick would work as well for a trapdoor. Peace’s trick called for something small to be laid across the fold or opening, something so small and unremarkable that it would be moved or broken when the letter was unfolded or the drawer opened—but the person who had left it there would know the marker had been moved.

So Citrine moved a bit of cobweb from where the spider had left it behind a barrel and carefully stuck it over the edges of the trapdoor. The storeroom wasn’t swept very often and certainly wouldn’t be this night. She could trust the cobweb to tell her if Mother had come through in her absence. Thus reassured, Citrine went looking for her mother.

The first thing Citrine was aware of was that the Cloud Touching Spire was a great deal busier than it usually was at this hour of the night. The second was Tipi sweeping down on her.

“There you are you bad girl!” Tipi exclaimed, all fury and relief. “Where have you been?”

Citrine stayed close to the truth.

“I was looking for my mother.”

“Your mother isn’t here,” Tipi scolded. “Consolor Melina sent me a message saying that she would be in meetings through much of the night. She told me to bring you her good-night wishes.”

Citrine doubted this last. Melina never had indulged in such sentimental overtures. Tipi must have had some other reason for prowling around Citrine’s chambers. Thinking of the handsome guard she had snuck past on her way out, Citrine thought she knew why Tipi had wanted an excuse to be in that part of the tower.

She giggled to herself when she thought of how surprised Tipi must have been to find the bed empty but for a bundle of cloth.

“And why are you dressed like that?” Tipi demanded, indignant that the girl was not afraid and noticing Citrine’s tunnel-prowling robes for the first time.

“It’s my costume for one of the dances,” Citrine lied. “I’m an evening shadow.”

Tipi snorted to show what she thought of such ridiculous nonsense. Despite having lived in New Kelvin for many years, the slave paid little attention to the local religion and Citrine had counted on her not knowing that there were no shadows in the Harvest Joy dance. Tipi’s private cult was one of profit and survival with Melina as her personal goddess.

Citrine decided to invoke that goddess now.

“I wonder if Mother will be angry with you when she learns you were out tonight?” she asked with mild curiosity.

The fashion in which Tipi stiffened made Citrine think that Melina would indeed be angry. The restriction on wandering the Cloud Touching Spire at night didn’t apply as strictly to Tipi as it did to the lesser servants, but apparently it did apply.