Song of the Beast

Chapter 37

Three days out from Cir Nakai—or what was left of it—and I was sitting beside a small fire melting snow to drink. My little blaze was scarcely a smudge in the vastness of the night—a clear and viciously cold night, considering it was almost summer. I needed to get down lower.

I poked at the sluggish fire. Not much to burn up here so high. The brush was soggy with the warmer days melting off the snow cover. It was good to be alone. To have time to clear my head of this confusion and uncertainty that had dogged me all spring. Sons and daughters of the Ridemark were not supposed to be confused.

Soon I’d have no time to wallow in maudlin regrets. War was coming, a different kind of war than those living in the world had ever known. Swords and spears and arrows only. Human against human. I knew a man in Camarthan who could remove the Ridemark from my wrist. Best get it done before people started looking.

After the first flurry of vengeance between our own people, the true onslaught would come. As summer cleared the passes in the mountains ringing Elyria and the civilized kingdoms, the news would travel to the wild men in the vast reaches of the world beyond the mountains: the dragons were gone back into the west. The men would come down the rivers in their flat-prowed boats, wearing fur robes and horned masks and tattooed faces. They would come over land on their horses, wearing curved swords and ivory earrings and shrilling throaty cries.

An experienced scout would be useful. One who knew her way around a sword and could predict the ways of dispossessed Dragon Riders even more so. I would find the prince and let him know I was available if he wanted. Donal was a prince worth serving. Davyn had seen it. I had seen it, too, but my pigheaded nature would not allow me to admit it in front of so many. Not in front of Aidan. Not with confusion and pride and guilt standing in my way. Now Aidan was gone off with his dragons, following the demands of duty, of his gift, of his heart....

Stop it! Think of something else. On every step these past three days, my thoughts kept flitting to Aidan, threatening to throw me back into confusion. Those things he’d said ... all nonsense. I couldn’t bear to be near the man. That’s what I’d not been able to tell him. The sight of his horrid hands made me shrivel inside and live in the imagination of his torment. Did he think a lifetime of guilt and deception could be wiped out instantly? How could I tell him that I had seen his face as he sang to Roelan and knew I had no place in such mystery? Seeing him like that, bathed in the fire of the gods ... Stop it.

Only one thing I’d not been able to resolve in these few days. Aidan’s question kept pricking at me. What was I afraid of?

The dull flames began to jump and flare hotter; my hair whipped loose and into my eyes. A wind rising ... a warm wind ... The smell ... Uneasy, I glanced over my shoulder. Daughters of fire! I jumped up, gawking at the dark shape that blotted out half the sky.

He swept over me so low the snow melted beneath my feet. As he circled and headed back my way, panic constricted my breast and sent my heart into my throat. Yet ... there was something ... the sensation came over me like the caress of sleep ... and, despite every warning of mind and instinct, I kept breathing.

He settled on the muddy wasteland, his head not twenty paces from me, warmth enveloping me like the precursor of summer. Turning his snout upward, he bellowed—an earsplitting, rising trumpet that spewed blue and gold fire, showering me with blue sparks that teased my skin before winking out. Then he knelt and lowered his head to rest it on the thawing ground. Soft transparent lids blinked over the scarlet eyes that looked straight at me. Waiting.

“Did Aidan send you?” I wasn’t so much speaking to the dragon, as to myself. To remind myself that I was not afraid. Because the rumble of the dragon’s bated fire in the empty night was too huge to leave unanswered. Because if this was to be my last breath, I would hold Aidan’s name on my tongue and his image in my heart as I burned.

My beloved grieves for thee.

Thou art the completion of his heart.

His yearning bade me come.

How did I know what the beast spoke? Not from the unintelligible river of noise and smoke from his mouth. Not from words. But his meaning was as clear as if I’d spoken the words myself. “I’ve things to do,” I said. “The war ...” But I could not lie to those scarlet eyes. “I betrayed him.”

The seasons pass.

The world—this upheaving chaos—will wait for thee.

Come and learn what beauty thy deeds have wrought.

Be alone and broken no more.

The beast extended one massive leg and foot alongside its snout in a position I had never seen. With care, one could walk up the leg to the haunch, where a curled wingtip waited ... to lift me up? Oh, holy gods . . .

And then, as the sharp winds of winter banish the smokes of autumn, leaving the sunlit world bright and hard-edged and new, so did the beast’s offer untangle my last confusion. Clarity. Understanding. I had been changed—altered by these past weeks as surely as Aidan MacAllister had been transformed by dragon fire. And I was afraid to believe what I had learned ... afraid to be forgiven ... for it meant leaving behind all my certainties about who and what I was. I, too, was becoming something new. Something unknown.

“Tell him”—I closed my eyes and began to draw the broken fragments together—“tell him not yet. I’ve things to do. People who need my help. And I need some time. But when winter comes ... the solstice ... when the night is longest and the rivers freeze ... the war will have to pause. And then for a little while ... a few days ... till spring perhaps ... I’ll come. But on that day, oh, child of fire and wind, I’ll walk”—I gestured toward the mountains, the way he’d come, and to the place where I stood—“if you’ll come back here and show me the way.”

Roelan bellowed again, snuffing out my fire while starting three more in its place, scattering rocks and branches and light as he swept his green and copper wings. He circled above me, blue sparks raining from the sky. And I watched and wept and laughed until he disappeared beyond the mountains.