Song of the Beast

Chapter 30

What is the shape of time? Humans speak as if time takes the form of those things that occupy it: pleasurable things gone too quickly or dull things that linger long past their welcome. Yet in my years of silence, when life was emptiness, the hours did not collapse upon themselves like empty grain sacks. Every moment had depth, breadth, and length; every hour had its immutable volume and built one upon the other until time’s edifice was tall enough that I could be free. Yet from the moment I gave myself to Roelan in Aberthain Lair, the shape of time was altered, so that I could not say what was a moment or an hour or a day.

Half a minute, Lara had told me. Half a minute from the time she would raise her left hand until the dragon would let loose its fire that could melt stone. And I would need half of that to ensure I stood directly in its path. Mad fool. How did I ever expect to deliver the message I had worked on so painstakingly in the past weeks, the words so carefully chosen from my memories of joy?

It was not that I was unwilling. My intent was clear. My resolution firm. Whatever were Narim’s secrets—and I had come to the conclusion that his secrets were monumental—I believed they were beyond my purpose. I had to reach for truth. But I had not counted on being half-crazed with Lara. Mazadine had presented no torment so refined as had these last two days with her, playing at the intimacy I desired above all things, forbidden by her spoken hatred from making it real, yet tantalized with words and deeds that lured me into thinking she cared what happened to me. And I had not counted on my rage at learning that Narim had sent me to the netherworld to keep me “safe,” because he believed no human capable of faith. Yet even from that horrific revelation had sprung a hope to feed my love-struck lunacy. Lara must have thought her revelation would make me despise her, but all I could see was that she refused to leave untruth between us. And even as I wrestled with all of this, the dragon threatened to crack my head with its trumpeting madness.

What rational words can form themselves from such chaos in a quarter of a minute? What instant’s communication can penetrate the awesome, terrifying, majestic horror of a dragon in wildest frenzy?

So when the time came and I ran to embrace the world’s worst nightmare, all I could come out with was “Roelan, remember!” And it was clearly not enough. The red-slimed nostrils flared and the monstrous head dipped toward me; then came the ear-shattering bellow and blinding holocaust that knocked me to my knees. One fleeting instant of grief for Lara, for music, for dragons, and for glorious, decadent, holy life, and I was consumed by pain so horrific it made everything I had ever experienced a mere pinprick.

Across my mind skittered the word hurry, which was odd in itself because I was expecting death to be quick at least. But time had begun to play its unsettling tricks, and the pain and the earth-splitting noise did not end. Somewhere amidst the cacophony of raging white flames and dragon’s madness, I heard my own screaming, and thought, “Why isn’t that miserable soul dead? Why doesn’t he shut up?”

Remember ...

Was it my own word echoing in my dying ears?

“Aidan, beloved!” From outside the fire came Lara’s cry ... so dear, so poignant, penetrating my agony with sweet revelation and piercing regret.

Then from somewhere so remote as to be beyond the moon and stars, drifted the same call, so faint that the flutter of a moth’s wing would mute it, or the whisper of a cloud’s passing, or the landing of a snowflake on a knee-high drift. Not words, for the speaker could no longer shape words, not even the subtle vocalizations Keldar had used. An image. A questioning image. Aidan . . . Aidan, beloved?

In the formless, shapeless moment that I heard it, I resolved to postpone death. I could not ignore the voice that had been the foundation of my life, but chaos, pain, and horror deafened me to his faint call. I had to seek some inner quiet where I could hear him and make answer. To find that place I made a journey beset with visions, pushed through all those things that crowded into my mind, demanding to stand as my last grief or my last pleasure. Beyond the fire and present anguish floated the image of Lara, not dancing with the grace and beauty she denied, but dressed in leather and pride, bending terror to her will. More images: a laughing Davyn slapping me on the shoulder, a wine-soaked kiss from Callia, a hurt and angry Alfrigg bleeding with my betrayal. I forced them all to give way: Goryx and Garn MacEachern and their whips and chains and despair, the charred bitterness of Iskendar, the enigma that was Narim. I delved deeper and grieved again for Gerald and Alys and Gwaithir, and I heard my father’s mindless wailing and my mother’s loving laughter. As I had learned in Mazadine, I left them all behind. And somehow in the midst of chaos, I reached the silent darkness, the cool and quiet ocean of my soul’s peace.

“Remember,” I said with blistering tongue and cracking lips. “It is thy servant ... thy brother ... Aidan come to set you free.” Then I settled myself to wait and listen for as long as time might let me live.

Aidan, beloved ... The image came so much clearer.

“I am here,” I answered.

My own. My lost one. I remember thee ... broken, sorrowing, alone.

“No longer sorrowing,” I said. “No longer alone. Thy voice is my comfort and my delight.”

He was with me. The voice I perceived—hearing is not at all an accurate description of what I did—was indeed the voice I had called a god. I’d had no other name for such a being. As in our first days together when I was a child, he was buried so deep in wildness that I could scarcely comprehend the images he poured into me—only their undying beauty, and the love and joy with which he created them.

I could have drunk in his wild visions forever, but the darkness began to waver before my eyes, and my lungs labored as if bands of molten steel were tightening around my chest. I was burning ... dying.... “Roelan, remember! Fly free and live with joy!” The strange interval of peace that time had granted me was past, and I opened my eyes to see my outstretched arms ablaze. My clothes charred to ash and fell away, yet to my wonder, my flesh did not. The hair on my arms and body flared into glowing cinders, and the blood in my veins surged boiling against my skin, but I knelt on blackened earth and did not die. And at some boundary just short of madness, pain was transformed into near-unbearable ecstasy.

Burn with all of my life, beloved. Make me remember.

For a moment or an hour or a day I was consumed by dragon’s fire. Like a youngling dragon my childish scales were burned away, and I was joined with my elder, each of us giving freely of the gifts the gods had left us. So simple an answer. The song set him free. The words Lara had spoken, perverted for so long by the will-destroying bloodstones, now returned to purity and grace. The music we made together. Roelan was my third wing, lifting me out of mortal existence for those few moments, teaching me of life and wonder, now I had reminded him of his soul.

The fire faded and was gone. The dragon straightened its neck and trumpeted in triumph and exhilaration, showering me with a fountain of cold blue sparks that fell with the blessedness of drought-relieving rain. Limp, spent, incapable of thought, I raised my arms and laughed mindlessly with him, for my every sense, every pore, every bone understood that Roelan was free. I could have been deaf—perhaps I was—yet I could have heard the joy in his cry. I could have been blind—that might yet come from the brilliance of his flames—yet through his eyes I could see the world changed, as if a charred gray curtain had been torn away. The stars shone like shattered diamonds on the velvet sky; the summer lightning sparked pink and orange over snow-tinged pinnacles to the south. As the sun unveils its splendor in the coming of the dawn, so did Roelan unfurl his wings of luminous red-gold and green and, in a hurricane of glory, soar into the night sky, splitting the heavens with a rainbow arc of flame as he disappeared beyond the horizon. Tears scalded my cheeks as I huddled, naked and alone, to the black, unyielding earth.

For the moment or hour that it took me to regain some semblance of reason, I was not yet able to consider my position or my future or even whether there was anyone to observe the oddity of my continued life. I could think only of Roelan. Was he gone to wreak vengeance on the Riders or King Renald and his soldiers? Was he already winging his way to the lake of fire? I craved knowledge of his purpose and what the result of our night’s mystery might be. While I had burned in his fire I had felt my heart reborn, sensing a stirring of words and harmonies long dead. But as time creaked slowly on its way and I gazed upon the empty sky, the darkness came creeping back, and my bones that had felt young and whole in his warmth began to ache again.

I glanced over my scarred shoulders uneasily. There was no one about. The Rider’s hut stood empty, the rocky slope devoid of life. The wilderness of the lair spread out before me was dark and silent. I supposed they all believed me dead, and I began to wonder about it myself. Perhaps I was rooted to the spot, a naked phantom to haunt the lair of Aberthain. Where did ghosts find their filmy draperies? I could use one, I thought, as the dawn wind blew cool on my raw bare skin.

I struggled to my feet, and while I tried to decide what in the name of the Seven to do with myself, the petty, prideful insignificance of Narim’s plans left me laughing weakly. The thought that any human or Elhim could foresee what a dragon would do when freed from five hundred years of torment was as ludicrous as a naked, hairless man wandering a dragon lair in the hour before sunrise. Somehow I had accomplished what I’d come to do, but the aftermath was not at all as predicted.

Narim had been sure I would control Roelan after it, that I would ride him across the sky to free the rest of the dragons and lead them all to the lake of fire to regain their minds and voices. But Roelan was no more my slave than I was his. Someday he might answer my need as I had chosen to answer his, but then again he might not. I had offered him my service, but could expect nothing in return. And I would never ride him. He was not a beast.

Lara was not going to like that. Lara ... Slowly I began to remember how all this had come about. There had been Riders ... grabbing Lara as she raised her hand to send me into the fire. Vanir’s fires! What would they do to her when they realized Roelan was free?

Throwing off my weakness, willing my shaking legs to hold me up, I climbed up the rocky slope to the place I’d last seen her. The angular boulders where she had stood so proudly were splashed with blood, as was her dagger that I found wedged in a crevice in the rocks. The blood was dark and dried and cold. Her dragon whip was tangled in the rocks. I had to find her.

Clothes. The Elhim had sent a change of clothes for me; I just hadn’t had time to get them on before Lara began the rite. If the Riders had not found the niche where we had made ready ...

They hadn’t. I crawled back over the boulders and found breeches, shirt, tunic, and boots spilled out of Lara’s bag. I pulled on my discarded cloak over all, trying to quiet my incessant shivering. Narim’s journal lay open in the dirt where I had thrown it, its pages fluttering idly in the breeze. I snatched it up and thrust it in the pocket of my cloak. I would learn more of Narim’s plot after I found Lara.

Behind me exploded a mighty bellowing from the far reaches of the lair. I flattened myself against the sheltering rocks. When I dared peer out again, I could not help smiling. A hot, white glow suffused the lower sky. For a moment it looked as though the sun were rising on the western boundary of the lair. But from the fire rose, not the sun, but one, then two, then three wing-spread dragons. Their massive bodies wheeled and reeled about each other like playful children, their cries rattled my bones like joyous thunder, and in my heart I felt the whispered torrent of their gratitude. The deluge of their speaking was so monumental that it was a struggle to keep breathing or maintain the beating of my heart. Only after they disappeared beyond the horizon could I summon wit enough to answer. “It was my pleasure,” I said.

They seemed to hear me, for I felt and heard them trumpet their delight. Roelan could free the others. Lara and I had given him the words. The music was their own.

Shouts of dismay, curses, and barking of orders from every side sent me diving back into my rocky niche. It seemed the clan had at last begun to glimpse their undoing.

“Gruesin? Is that you? I saw your—”

“Damn and blast, what’s happening here? Who dares command my kai? The beast was screeching over its kill half the night, but now someone’s sent it up. Where’s the captain?” The Rider bellowed at a pitch worthy of a dragon.

“Didn’t you hear? It’s the singer, the black-tongued bastard—”

“He’s dead. I saw it. I heard his death song and never have screams been so sweet.”

“Maybe he did something before he died. You know ... like he’s done ...”

“He never did nothing. Never! The turncoat female had a stolen kai’cet. She was trying to save the singer with it, but I watched the kai roast him. This is something else.”

“But then who’s sent it up, Gruesin? All three of them are flying. Are Dyker and Jag giving chase?”

“All three?” The Rider was near strangling on his words. “But that’s Dyker and Jag running this way.”

“Blast and thunder! All three! We’d best get to the commander!”

“I’ll flay the traitorous bitch myself!”

Boots pounded and harsh cries and curses echoed through the lair as the other two Riders joined Gruesin and his friend. As soon as they moved away and a cautious glance assured me that the way was clear, I hurried after them. Lara would be taken to MacEachern. Whatever these Riders said, the high commander would allow no one else to wreak the clan’s vengeance on her. I prayed he would try to learn what had happened before he did so, for I needed time to save her. Otherwise, she had done the unpardonable, and she would die for it ... slowly, painfully, as only the Ridemark could manage it.

After a close call that sent me headfirst into a herd pen full of sheep and another that flattened me into a far too shallow slot in the cliff wall, I reached the narrow road that led out of the lair. No one was left to guard it. As I followed the four clansmen into the city and merged into the sleepy streams of people heading out on their day’s business, time took up its familiar course again, and the dawn broke on a world forever changed.

Chapter 31

I could get nowhere near Lara. By the time I threaded my way through the busy streets of Aberswyl to the Ridemark encampment outside the city gates, the clan had closed in upon itself. Grim-faced, heavily armed Ridemark guards encircled the camp that was already being dismantled, turning away puzzled carters and laborers with no explanation. Men and older children were hauling down tents and loading mules and wagons. Women were stuffing smaller children in with the baggage or strapping them on their backs. There were no shouts, no disorder, only instant obedience to their commander’s orders. No dragons lived in Aberthain any longer, and the Riders would be gone before anyone else discovered it.

What would the people of Aberthain do when they realized that their pride, the bulwark of their kingdom’s defense, was no more? What would happen when the Maldovans, the traditional enemies of the Aberthani, discovered that Renald was bereft of dragons? As I hurried toward Mervil’s shop to retrieve a horse to follow the clan, I watched people going innocently about their business, oblivious of what was to come. The safety of one race could not be built upon the enslavement of another, yet the change was going to be dreadful. Civil war. Revenge. Chaos. Invasion. What had I done?

Lost in such uncomfortable musings, I entered a morning market just coming alive, noisy with fishmongers and farmers hawking their wares, with the bleating, grunting, and squawking of beasts, with strident voices of women and traders hunting bargains. A cloth merchant was hanging colorful lengths of silk and linen that flapped in the breeze. A tinker banged his pots to attract commerce. I was perhaps halfway across the marketplace when the glaring sunshine of the day winked out like a great eyelid had shut upon it. People, buildings, merchandise, noise—all vanished, and I was caught up in a blaze of white light and a flood of sensations akin to the relief of the first water after a desert march or the exaltation of a mountaintop after a day’s long climb.

To the morning lands where the fires of day take

flight,

where the cries of brothers tear.

Sisters, bound to torment, rage.

Lift them, unbind them, sing them upward.

Thy giving is ever, beloved. Glory to you ever.

Roelan. My perception of his towering anger and his indescribable joy and gratitude vanished almost as quickly as it had come, a hammer blow that left me a dizzy island in the sea of unknowing Aberthani. The daylight seemed pale and insubstantial after the dragon’s touch, the colors of the marketplace washed-out, the noises thin and meaningless. Passersby cast curious glances my way, and I realized how odd I must look standing stupidly in the middle of the marketplace with no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes. And I had no gloves to hide my hands. I pulled up the hood of my cloak and hid my hands in the pockets of the cloak alongside Narim’s journal and my mother’s pearls. I hurried through the square and into narrower streets.

The clamor of hammers and saws greeted me as I turned into Mervil’s lane. At least five Elhim were making repairs to the front of the tailor’s shop. The splintered wall looked as if it had been kicked in by a dragon. None of the Elhim seemed at all familiar—or rather all of them did, but in no particular way. Though there were only a few other people abroad in the lane, I was cautious, strolling past the shop, then slipping through the alleyway that would take me to the back of it. I considered simply riding off with one of the horses in Mervil’s stable. I knew the kindly tailor would not grudge it. Yet, in view of the heavy damage to the shop, I could not leave without inquiring after my friends.

An Elhim came out of the house and was picking over a stack of thin wood strips when he caught sight of me and straightened up again. “Who are you? What are you doing sneaking around?”

“Is Mervil here?” I said. “I’ve a job for him.”

The Elhim examined me carefully as he started gathering up a load of strips. “Mervil is dead. His cousin Finaldo has inherited the business, but he won’t be taking on work for a few days until these repairs are done.”

“Mervil dead? Vanir’s fires, no!”

“What do you care as long as there’s another tailor to serve you?”

Something about the Elhim’s tone held my dismay and anger at bay.

“I care a great deal. Mervil was my friend,” I said.

“A friend of yours?” The gray eyes looked skeptical as he took in my odd appearance. “How so? Finaldo would be interested to hear it.”

Interesting. He was not grieving. He was listening and watching ... for Finaldo, Mervil’s cousin and a tailor, too. The Elhim were very good at losing themselves when times grew difficult. I decided to test my theory before I shouldered a new guilt.

“A good friend. Would you tell Finaldo or whoever in the house might be taking an interest that I’d like to pay what I owe, then? It looks like he needs the income.” Into the astonished Elhim’s hand, I dropped my mother’s pearls. He dropped his wood strips and stared at the jewels and my hands. “I’ll wait here by the stable,” I said.

In no more than three heartbeats Davyn ran out of the door holding the pearls, only to stop short at the sight of me, the eager smile falling off his face. “Who are you?” he demanded harshly. “Where did you get these?” An Elhim who looked remarkably like Mervil, but probably answered to the name Finaldo, was at his shoulder, and a bandaged Tarwyl hobbled out slowly after.

I hadn’t imagined they wouldn’t recognize me. “Eskonia, the first time,” I said. “My mother’s jewel safe, the second. Then a lady’s feet. My pocket, this last.”

“Aidan?” Davyn’s face blossomed into delight tempered with wonder; then he laughed and hurried over to grab my hands. But to our mutual discomfiting, sparks crackled and flew upward from our touch. The Elhim cried out and fell back, his outstretched hands red and blistered, his face stunned. “By the One!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had no idea. ...” My hands tingled strangely, and thin, blue smoke drifted away on the morning air. “Are you all right?”

I stepped closer to see the damage, but the Elhim backed away from me, glancing upward nervously as if expecting a dragon to be perched on Mervil’s chimney like a pigeon. “Only singed,” he said. Then his voice dropped to a whisper. “What’s happened to you? Are you a Rider, then?”

It grieved me beyond all expectations to see Davyn step away. Awe and mystery can place an untenable burden on friendship. “I don’t know,” I said. “I ought to be dead.”

I tried to tell them everything at once, in the pitifully inadequate words that I could muster to describe such extraordinary events. Once I was inside the shop with a mug of wine in my hand, exhaustion muddled my telling, so that I wasn’t sure I made anything clear except that Roelan was free and Lara in danger. “They’ll be taking her to Garn MacEachern—they’ll not dare do otherwise—but I don’t know where he is. So I need to follow the clan as they move out.”

Davyn spoke softly, his eyes wide. “Will you call down the dragons to make them free her?” He really believed it might be so. After all of it even Davyn didn’t understand.

“No.” I tried to explain that I had no idea if I would ever hear Roelan again. What I did know was that the clan would not relinquish Lara while one Rider yet lived, and no matter what befell in our strange relationship, never could I ask Roelan to kill for me. Even for Lara I could not ask it. “... so I can’t.”

“Then there’s nothing to be done as yet,” he said. “The clan won’t exchange her for you—I see in your face that you intend it. They’d only kill you, too. From their point of view, you’ve done your worst, and unless you can undo it, vengeance will be their only satisfaction.”

I closed my eyes, wishing desperately that I could disagree with him.

“Come, my friend.” Davyn’s kindness transcended awe, and gingerly he laid a hand on my shoulder. No sparks flew. “It takes no holy gift to see that you need food and rest. I’ll send out word, and we’ll find out where the high commander lies. Until then, take this comfort: She believes you dead, so she’ll feel free to tell them everything they want to know. And when she hears that the dragons are free, she’ll know you won. That will sustain her.”

I was not eased. Not even a god could sustain one through Ridemark vengeance.

While the Elhim dispatched an unending stream of blond, gray-eyed messengers to track the movements of the clan, I sat by Mervil’s hearth and ate what food was put before me. I did not feel connected to any of it, no matter how much I tried to listen. I pulled out Narim’s journal, anxious to unravel his plotting, but my head ached and the fine scrawling blurred in front of my eyes. All I could see was Lara at the Udema wedding party, her hair unbound, laughing at my foolishness. All I could feel was the weight of her head on my chest.

Even as I held that image and cherished it, the world flicked out again. The talk and the incessant hammering, the shop and the gathering clouds of noonday outside its windows disappeared in the space of a heartbeat. My vision was filled with sky and brilliant sunlight and rolling clouds beneath me like a gray ocean. The voice of Roelan pounded in me like my own blood gone wild.

What sorrowing is there when Jodar flies?

When Rhyodan, Noth, Lypho, and Vanim soar through the dawning airs?

When Phellar, Nanda, Melliar tread the winds and sing their waking?

I would lift thee to the heights, Aidan, beloved, where the cold burning of the night meets the colors of the day fire.

Thy sorrowing lies heavy on my wings.

Of all beings in the universe, Roelan understood helplessness. He grieved with me as I shaped the words, of how the one I cared for most in the world, the one who had opened the way for me to wake him, was taken into captivity very like that he had known.

Cruel is the hand that harms the one who completes thy being.

Tell us how to unbind her.

If ought of my working might free her from this harm, but speak the word to set my course.

I was humbled and overwhelmed with his offer. But there was nothing to be done. The clan would be waiting with bloodstones, dragon whips, and poison-tipped spears for just such a move. I could not ask it. And even if they could not harm Roelan, they would kill Lara. I shared Roelan’s rejoicing that more of his brothers and sisters flew free, and soon afterward his vision faded into the light of Mervil’s hearth fire and the untidy mess of the tailor shop.

The Elhim were silent, staring at me and at Narim’s journal that had fallen from my hand, its pages intact, but its leather cover brown and curled, a wisp of stinking smoke rising from it. They were bursting with unspoken questions, but I could form no human words to tell what I had seen and heard, so I just shook my head. I was desperate for sleep. They led me to a pallet on the floor. My sleep was plagued with dreams of Goryx, licking his lips and blinking his bright eyes as he was given Lara.

The house was dark and silent. I was perishingly thirsty and sat up on the pallet rubbing my head until I could think where I was and where I might find something to drink. Waking and sense were accompanied by a dream-wrought conviction that I must be on my way with the daylight to find Devlin and warn him. Only he among all the kings and princes in Elyria and her neighboring kingdoms had the strength and resources to hold order once the dragons were free. And that would be the case only if he were ready. I had to make him listen and understand what was coming, lest the havoc I had wrought come down too hard on the people who had least to do with it—the very ones who had suffered most from the savage dragon wars. Once the news spread throughout the land, the wars of vengeance would begin. Once the word spread outside our borders, the wild men would come.

And another idea had emerged from my dreaming. If I gave Devlin warning, he might be grateful enough to help me. ...

Someone had kindly removed my boots, so I moved silently through the house. I could not stomach the thought of wine or ale, and thought to go out to the cider barrel Mervil kept cool in a shed near the stable. But the door to the stableyard was jammed or locked. I could find no way to get it open without creating a commotion. Too parched to be discouraged, I padded through the tailor’s workroom to the newly rebuilt front door, only to find Davyn sitting propped against it, reading Narim’s scorched journal in the light of a single candle.

“Learning anything interesting?” I said quietly. I had no idea where Mervil’s helpful friends might be sleeping.

Davyn started and whipped the book behind him, peering into the midnight to see who I was. “Aidan!” He dropped his voice immediately. “Are you all right? What are you doing awake?” I assumed it was his possession of the private journal that gave him such an aura of guilt ... or perhaps knowledge of the journal’s secrets.

“I was considering going out,” I said. “But the back door is jammed.”

“Go where? It’s the middle of the night.”

“Does it matter?”

“You shouldn’t—I wouldn’t—Of course it matters.” His voice limped off like a lame dog. “You can’t.”

“What do you mean I can’t?”

Davyn glanced about, then pressed his finger to his lips and motioned me to the floor beside him. Exquisitely nervous, I sat down. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Not at all.” His slender forefinger tapped rapidly on the journal.

I waited, thinking I’d get a clearer answer once Davyn had settled whatever argument he was waging with himself.

“Narim’s come. While you were asleep.”

“Ah.” I settled back against a mountain of rolls of cloth. “And Narim doesn’t want me out getting a drink of cider?”

“Cider? Oh.” Davyn rubbed his gray eyes and shook his head. “When Narim got word that you and Lara were making the attempt, he’d already been awake for more than a day. Then he rode fourteen hours straight to get here. He had to sleep, but he wanted to make sure you didn’t leave the house before he talked to you.” The Elhim ran his slender fingers through his blond curls, clearly troubled. “I thought nothing of it. But then he sent Mervil, Tarwyl, and Jaque to another house, and wanted me to go with them. I said I’d rather stay here in case you needed me. He agreed, but certainly wasn’t happy about it. Then I saw him remove the keys from the rear door and bar the windows. There’s no one here save him and you and me. But Rorick and Kells are watching the street. Watching for you ...”

“And these things bother you?” They certainly bothered me.

“Narim has been my dearest friend since I was young—two hundred years, Aidan. He is everything of goodness. Devotion. Friendship. Honor. Whatever of decency you see in me, he has nurtured. He—”

“I disagree.”

The lock of blond hair hung over gray eyes filled with distress, but not shock. “So you read this?” He turned the journal over in his hands and stared at it as if it were a poisonous spider.

“Only enough to know who murdered my friends and stole my life.”

“I didn’t know, Aidan. On the name of the One I’ll swear, neither Tarwyl nor Mervil nor I—”

“I never thought it. So what bothers Narim now? I’ve done what he wanted. The dragons fly free.”

“When Narim arrived, we told him everything you’d said and about the changes we saw in you. Though I knew he’d be heartsick about Lara, I thought he would take satisfaction in your accomplishment. But he was frantic when he heard that you weren’t in control of the dragons and sending them on to the lake. He’s afraid, Aidan. He believes they’re going to destroy the Elhim.”

“They won’t.”

“He says he can’t be sure until they go to the lake and drink the water, so he can talk to them himself.”

“They’ll go to the lake when it’s time, and they’ll speak when they’re ready, and maybe humans and Elhim will be able to understand their words and maybe we won’t, but killing intelligent beings is the last thing they want. They despise it. They don’t understand it. They never have.”

Davyn frowned and fluttered the pages of the journal nervously. “Maybe you can convince him.” He didn’t sound confident. “He wants you to go to the lake with him and make the dragons come there. That’s why he didn’t want you to leave. He’s crazed with it. I’ve never seen him like this.”

“He’s got to understand that I can’t force them to do anything. But he doesn’t need to worry. If Roelan speaks to me again, I’ll find out if they’re coming to the lake. And I’ll come myself. Willingly. Just not yet. I’ve some things to do first. Critical things ...”

The Elhim looked up curiously. “What things?”

I told him of my certainty that I had to warn Devlin, and of the fragile possibility that had emerged from the consideration. I hoped to persuade my cousin to save Lara.

The Ridemark produced powerful warriors, but without their dragons they would be no match for Devlin or any of his stronger allies. If the clansmen were to survive, they would have to seek an alliance, and from that need might come the leverage to pry Lara from their hands. MacEachern would never turn Lara over to the Elhim, and his hatred would allow no accommodation with me, but he might exchange her for Devlin’s protection.

“Holy fire, Aidan, to speak to the king is suicide! He’ll have your head for treason.”

“He may very well, but I don’t think so. Devlin takes his responsibilities very seriously. He’ll be furious and horrified, but he’ll come to see that I’ve given him a chance to control his own power ... and to prepare. It’s all I can do. If I can make everything happen as I want, I don’t think he’ll refuse. The first thing I have to do is convince him to meet with me.”

I had come up with the scheme in my sleep. Night-mares of prisons, of Devlin and Lara and all those who were going to die because the dragons flew free, had led my thoughts inevitably to the youth who lay captive in the dragon lair of Gondar. Devlin’s son. The moment the Gondari dragons were released, Donal would be dead, for the Gondari would think it Devlin’s doing. With Roelan’s help I was going to get Donal out. “Can I depend on you and Tarwyl to help?”

“We’ll do anything you ask. Count on it. But there’s something else going on. ...” His voice trailed away, and his fingers drummed insistently on Narim’s journal. He was wrestling with himself again, and only with difficulty did he come out with anything. “Aidan, you’ve got to convince Narim about the dragons. He’s been poking around in Nien’hak. I—”

Footsteps in the lane in front of the shop and a soft knocking interrupted Davyn, and he jumped up to answer. I stood behind him while he unlatched the door. As he pulled it open he stepped backward, bumping into me. I felt the journal being pressed into my hands. Once I had it, he guided my fingers to a place he had marked.

“Kells! I didn’t expect to see you before daylight,” he said to the Elhim who walked in. “Is everything all right?”

“Just came for my cloak,” said the new arrival, eyeing me with interest. “Summer never feels warm enough in Aberthain.”

The journal was stuffed in the waist of my breeches underneath my rumpled shirt. Davyn introduced me as the Dragon Speaker, then offered to get me cider from Mervil’s barrel.

“I think I just need to get a bit more sleep. I promise I’ll talk to Narim before I go.” I padded back into the living quarters of the house, sat on my blankets, and pulled out the journal. Davyn had marked a maplike drawing labeled Nien’hak and a number of lists: one of Elhim names, one of various equipment like barrows, shovels, and hammers, and another that looked to be a record of place names—Vallior, Aberswyl, Camarthan among them—each with a number beside it. None of it made sense. I needed better light to decipher the fine handwriting, so I slipped the journal under the tangle of blankets. I wanted to set my own plan in motion first.

For an hour I lay on my pallet collecting words. They had to be right for each of the three listeners. By the time I was satisfied, the house was still again, and I went prowling for pen and paper and light.

A frustrating half hour in Mervil’s larder with my finds and I had produced two barely readable notes. One was for Devlin, entreating him to meet me alone on the Gondari border at sundown two days hence. I called on his promise to do me any service in his power and did everything I could to assure him of my good intentions. I would ask Davyn to carry it to my cousin.

The second note was for Lara. I could not face death again without leaving some trace of what she had meant to me. I smoothed the paper folds and imagined her strong, capable hands opening it and her clear blue eyes reading it. The imagining eased the dull ache in my gut just a little. I would entrust that one to the dogged Tarwyl, who, through some cousin or friend, would find a way for Lara to read it if she yet breathed the air of the world. For the moment both letters went into my pocket.

The third message was going to be more difficult to deliver. But I sat in the earth-walled room off Mervil’s kitchen among his turnips and onions, his bags of flour and dangling sausages, closed my eyes, and banished the world. With every skill I could muster, with every sense at my command, I called Roelan. To my astonishment, his voice was with me faster than my mind could comprehend it, as if he had been sitting on a shelf above my head awaiting my call.

It is an interesting challenge to discuss geography with a dragon. Twenty years had passed since I’d visited Gondar. Translating everything I remembered into a flyer’s view twisted my mind into knots. After a great deal of image shifting and word exploration, I concluded that Roelan had not yet freed his brothers and sisters in Gondar—a relief, since it meant that Donal was likely still alive. Once we had settled on the place, the rest was easy. Roelan would find the human held captive with his kin and “bear him gently to the smooth-complected hill beside the roving water”—Za’Fidiel on the Gondari border, perhaps three leagues from where Devlin was encamped.

“I would not lead thee into harm, my brother,” I said, trying to express my fear and thanks and caution. “Never will I ask it.”

Through pain and crushing horror hast thou served my need.

Giving ever.

Thou art my heart, Aidan, beloved, and I will hear thy songs again.

“Would that I could sing for you. ...” Even as I spoke, our contact was broken, but I knelt on the earthen floor trembling with its lingering power.

“So it has come to pass,” said a voice much closer than the dragon’s. “You have found your heart again, and your dragon has found his. Did I not tell you it would be so?”

“Narim.”

“Do you realize that your body burns white as you speak to him? A longer conversation and Mervil’s turnips would be cooked. You must be quite a sight at night.” The Elhim stood in the doorway, leaning against the wooden frame, almost quivering with his edgy humor.

“The dragons will not harm the Elhim.”

“How do you know?”

“Think of how you know you need sleep, or how you know when a storm is coming, or how you know when Davyn is troubled. I wish I could explain all this better, show you how it is with them. The dragons have no concept of vengeance. They won’t touch any Elhim ... nor will I.”

Narim relaxed into a more thoughtful wariness, his eyes flicking to my face and away again. “Ah, I see.” He leaned against the doorframe, fidgeting idly with something he’d pulled from his pocket. “So perhaps the answer is not that you are incapable of commanding the dragons to the lake, but that you choose not ... because of things you have learned, deeds long past and terrible in their appearance.”

“No. I meant what I told Davyn and Tarwyl. This joining, this mystery that’s happened to me, I understand it no better than I understand why the moon hangs in the sky or what it is made of. I don’t know what I’ve become, but I know what I am not. I am not a living bloodstone. I cannot command him.”

“Not even to save Lara? You know what they’ll—”

“If dragons were guarding her, I would beg Roelan to set her free. But the clan won’t trust the dragons now. They’ll have ten Riders around her every moment, and Roelan would have to kill them all to get her away. I cannot ask him to kill, Narim. Even then, she’d likely be dead at the clan’s first glimpse of an uncontrolled dragon. In the best case, negotiation will get her back. If that fails, then it must be stealth and hand-to-hand fighting.”

He was only testing. He had known what I would answer. Nodding his head slightly and blowing a long, silent sigh through pursed lips, he stopped fidgeting with the object in his hand and folded his arms. “Then I suppose you must help me fill out the last pages of my journal. Tell me, in these times when you are ‘linked’ to Roelan ... he feels your joy and sorrows as you feel his. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And does he know where you are when he speaks to you—your physical location?”

It was an odd question. Intriguing. “I’m not sure. The visions show me where he is. But his voice is so strong, and mine ... I don’t know. Distance plays no part. It’s always very quick. ...” I thought back to the experiences of my youth, and smiled as I recalled the songs Roelan and I had created together, always reflecting the place where I was. “Yes. I think he does know. He sees where I am before I tell him.”

That was the wrong answer.

I was still on my knees on the dirt floor of the larder, and as Narim gazed down at me with sorrow, he flicked his hand behind him. Before I could comprehend the meaning of his gesture, Kells and two more Elhim I didn’t know grabbed my arms and head, holding me immobile while Narim emptied a vial of bitter, oily liquid down my throat. Sparks flew as I fought to spit it out, but Narim held my mouth and nose closed until I could do nothing but swallow it. It gave me some momentary satisfaction that all four of them nursed scorched fingers afterward. They left me in a heap on the floor.

“Was half my life not enough?” I said when I’d done with coughing and choking and gotten up again as far as my knees. “And don’t tell me how sorry you are.”

“Ah, Aidan, but I am. If there were any other way ... For Lara’s sake if naught else. But you’re too good at what you do, and too naive. You’ve one more service to perform, and then—”

“—you’ll finish what you started.” The room was starting to weave in and out of focus. The candlelight grew bright, then receded to a pinpoint so fast I fell over trying to keep it in view.

“Yes, I will. I started this long before you were born. I cannot risk history repeating itself for some simplistic, misguided notion of justice. There’s too much treachery in the world. Too much hatred. Too much vengeance. Did you see what the Riders did to Tarwyl? What is to stop them doing the same thing to the rest of us?” He crouched down in front of me and his pale aspect reflected such single-minded determination that his words disturbed me far beyond the matter of my own death. “No human will ever again control a dragon. And not one more Elhim will die for a five-hundred-year-old sin. We are on the verge of annihilation, Aidan. I’ll not permit it.”

My tongue was already thick. “You sent me to prison for seventeen years, and I never knew why. Now you say I have to die when I’ve done everything you want. This time you’ve got to give me a reason. You misjudged so many things then. You might be doing it again. I need”—a wave of nausea left my skin clammy, but with no strength to heave up whatever poison he’d given me—“I need to know.”

“I was not wrong. You would never have heard Keldar or Roelan or been able to speak with them if you had not lived the seven years of silence. And I’m not wrong now. You just wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me. For once. For the gods’ sake, try me.”

“I promise you’ll know before you die. Now, Aidan, show me what you’ve written while you were hiding in here. I can’t have you giving anyone a head start on us. Spreading chaos is our only protection right now.”

One of the Elhim started digging in my pockets, but I slapped his hand away—or rather slapped the air where his hand seemed to be—and clumsily scrambled backward through the dirt until I was slumped in the corner. “I’ll have no stranger’s eyes on it,” I mumbled. “Narim, at least you care ... for one human ...” Speaking was becoming difficult, especially when I had to concentrate on my pocket, trying to persuade my awkward fingers to detect which note was which. I prayed I’d chosen correctly, as I drew out the folded paper and threw it onto the dirt a hand’s breadth—or was it half a league?—from my foot.

Narim snatched up the note, read it, and folded it again with a great sigh. “By the One, Aidan, I do wish things could be different. We will save her. And I’ll see she gets this.”

I would have to be happy with his assurance, for my tongue would no longer function to ask him how he planned to rescue Lara. By the time the three Elhim carried my limp body to my bed—Narim was kind enough to have them roll me onto my stomach—my thoughts were as hard to catch as minnows in a stream. The poison burning in my belly demanded I sleep, but I dared not. Surely whatever sense I yet claimed would be lost if I succumbed.

“Saddle the horses,” Narim told his henchmen. “We need to get away before Davyn wakes.”

“Davyn can’t stop it, Narim,” said Kells. “Why don’t you just tell him?”

“No. Not until it’s done, and he can see the rightness of it.”

So Narim had enough of a conscience that he couldn’t explain himself to his dearest friend, his decent, honorable friend who would most certainly disapprove of killing me. But Davyn would never see the rightness in killing me, so they must be talking about something else. Curse all conspirators, what were they planning?

The minnows swam around in my head, a particularly large one reminding me that the annoying rectangular lump poking into my stomach most likely contained the very clues that might help me understand it. Why hadn’t I taken the time to read the damnable journal? Nien’hak ... what was it? Where had I heard the word before? And why did it bother Davyn so? I couldn’t concentrate. The minnows teased at the murky edges of my mind. One kept reminding me that I had to warn Devlin. Whatever happened to me was no matter. Davyn could tell Devlin our story, but the Elhim would need my letter to get a hearing from my cousin.

As the night slowly shifted into gray morning, I began the monumental task of moving my right hand—the one that lay somewhere in the same distant realm as my thigh—toward my pocket. It seemed to take two hours. I kept forgetting what I was doing, losing control of my hand so that it lay on the blanket like dead meat. When at last it reached my pocket, I had to convince it to extract the letter and ... do what? I was as tired as if I’d moved Amrhyn from the Carag Huim to an entirely different mountain range.

Wake up, Davyn! I wanted to scream it out. But my tongue was dead, and Kells and Narim returned before I saw any sign of my friend.

Narim crouched over me and put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve had word from one of Davyn’s runners. Lara is as yet untouched,” he said, somehow sure that I would hear him. “MacEachern is at Cor Neuill, so they’ve taken her to meet him. If we’re quick and you help me, we’ll have her back before they can harm her.”

I had no time to take comfort in his assurance. Desperately I crumpled the letter in my hand as they stood me up—my knees about as useful as soggy dumplings—and half walked, half dragged me into the stableyard. The motion got me all jumbled up again, and I wasn’t even sure who was who.

“By the gods, Narim, what’s going on? What’s happened to Aidan?” Someone was standing across the gulf of the stableyard.

A minnow swam by my eyes in the circling world. It mouthed words at me and insisted I repeat them, but I couldn’t do it. Just felt seasick.

“He’s been in contact with the dragon again, and it’s about done him in. He almost set fire to the house. Says he doesn’t dare speak with Roelan in that fashion again, but he’ll come to the lake and try it the easier way. So I didn’t have to do much convincing after all.”

“But what about—” The speaker stopped himself abruptly, and a face that was not a minnow appeared in front of my own. It had blond hair falling over one of its unfishy gray eyes. “Aidan, are you all right? Are you sure? What about the things you wanted to do before going to the lake?”

Narim urged Kells and me toward the horses. “I don’t think he can answer you. We’ll take—”

I lurched forward out of Kells’s hands and lunged for the worried face, mustering all the words I could find and willing them to my useless tongue, trying to make them loud enough that someone could hear. “Roelan ... understands. Elhim always do ... everything ... I ask. I count ... on it.”

Hands dragged me off of him.

“Don’t worry, Davyn. We’ll take good care of him.”

While Kells and his cohorts draped me on a horse, I caught a glimpse of a puzzled Davyn standing alone in the stableyard. I squinted to see if he held a crumpled paper in his hand, but he swam out of sight too quickly. But my hands were empty when they tied them around the horse’s neck so I wouldn’t fall off, and with only such precarious security did I set out on the journey to the lake of fire.