Song of the Beast

Chapter 3

In the matter of a week, Callia and Narim had me in some semblance of order. I could take a deep breath without passing out, though my constant coughing was a matter of extreme gravity, and a sneeze out of the question. Their modest fare of soup and bread, with cheese added when I could stomach it, was finer than the delicacies of a hundred noble houses where I’d eaten in my youth. I gained a little weight, and Callia said my color was improved a thousandfold—surely her casual habits in matters of undress kept the blood flowing in my face. She brought me a shirt of coarse brown wool and a pair of tan breeches that were immensely cleaner than the rags I’d worn, even a shabby pair of farmer’s boots only slightly too tight, “gifts,” she said, from one of her admirers. I had not yet convinced myself to speak, a failure which made me feel stupid and weak, just as when I would stand up too long and get shaky at the knees.

Callia left me with far too much time to think about what I was to do with myself. For seven years I had worked to erase every remnant of my identity, every memory of my past life, every thought, desire, and instinct. Absolute emptiness had been the only way I could fulfill the terms of my sentence, the only way I could be silent, the only way I could survive. I’d had to be unborn. In the last years of my captivity, I could sit for days and have no image impose itself on the darkness of my mind, no trace of thought or memory. Now I could not fathom what I was to do next.

By the middle of the second week, the bump on the back of my head no longer throbbed a warning every time I moved, and I could stand up for moments at a time without falling over, so I picked a night when Callia and the Elhim were both out and started down the stairs. I had depended on the girl’s meager livelihood for far too long, yet I didn’t have the courage to face her as I took my leave. Halfway to the first landing, the steps dropped out of my vision as if they’d tumbled down a well. My foot could not find purchase, and I tumbled headfirst down the stairs. When my cracked ribs hit the splintered wood, I lost track of at least an hour.

Fumbling hands ... a knife in my side ... “Come on, then, arm over my shoulder.”

I tried to stay still. Every movement, every breath, sent a lance through my middle. But the hands were insistent and my feet found the steps. Fortunately Callia was the first to discover me, and she hauled me back to her room with many protests of dire offense at my attempt to leave without telling her. “A life for a life,” she said. As I could not yet muster words, she made me raise my hand in an oath to stay until she and Narim had judged my condition sound. As she was in the middle of binding up my ribs again, I had no choice but to acquiesce. The swearing was not so difficult as I made it out to be. In truth I was terrified at the thought of leaving the haven of Callia’s room, and I blessed the injuries that kept me from having to face the world now that I was so irrevocably changed.

Outside of Callia’s window was a goodly section of roof, and I’d made it a habit to crawl out onto it whenever anyone came up the stairs. Once Callia went back to work in earnest, she began bringing men back to her room, which sent me out for most of every night. I would lie wedged in a crevice behind a chimney, trying not to listen to what pleasure five coppers could buy. At first the open sky left me sweating with unnameable, unreasoning panic, but after a few nights I didn’t want to go inside anymore. As I watched the stars pass over me in their eternal pavane, I began, ever so slightly, to believe that I was free.

One hot, still night as I was sitting on the roof, watching the wedged moon wander in and out among the wispy clouds, Callia climbed out of the window to sit beside me. She carried a linen kerchief, with which she was blotting off the sweat of her most recent encounter, and a flask of wine, which she offered to me. I gave her my customary gesture of thanks and drank deep of the sour vintage.

“What do you do out here all night?” she said. “You never seem to be asleep no matter what time it is. You’re always just sitting and staring.”

I pointed to the dancing moon and the stars, shining dimly in its light, and to my eyes while I held them wide open. Then I pointed to the dark heights where Mazadine lurked, and I passed my hand over my eyes, closing them tight. She had learned to understand my awkward signing very well.

“You weren’t allowed to see the sky while you were in prison?”

I waved my hand at the dark, squat houses crowded together in the lane, at the few stragglers abroad, at the shadowed trees of the local baron’s parkland across the sleeping city, and the ghostly mountain peaks of the Carag Huim looming on the distant horizon. Then I passed my hand across my eyes again, leaving them closed.

“Nothing. You weren’t allowed to see nothing?”

I nodded.

“Damn! I can’t imagine it. So I guess you’re making up for it out here.”

I smiled and returned her flask.

She drank, then peeked over at me sideways with the usual lively sparkle in her eyes. “I’ve no right to ask it, but I’m devilish curious and not used to minding my own business. Whatever was a Senai doing in Mazadine? I told Narim you must be a murderer at least, for the only thing worse is a traitor, and traitors are hanged right off, but you saved my life, and your ways ... well, maybe it’s only they’re such gentle ways because you’ve been in such a wicked state, but I won’t believe you a murderer. Are you?”

I shook my head and wished she would stop.

“Then what?” She picked up my knotted and scarred hand and held it in her warm, plump one. “What made them do this?”

I shook my head again, retrieved my hand, and was glad she accepted my inability to speak. Even if I could have convinced myself to say the words aloud, I could only have told her it was to silence my music and thus destroy me. But in a thousand years of trying, I could not have told her why.

Perhaps she thought I was too ashamed to tell her. She didn’t press. “You don’t mind my asking? I’ve not offended you?”

I smiled and opened my palms to her, and she passed the wine to me again.

She changed the subject to herself and chattered for half an hour about the peculiarities of men, beginning with her father, who began using her when she was eight and selling her when she was nine. Then she branched into detailed comparisons of Senai and Udema and all the others who had the money to pay for their pleasuring. “I think it’s why I’m such great friends with Narim,” she said. “My other friends ask how I can go about with a gelding child, but I tell them he’s the only one I know who’s got nothing to gain from using me.”

I was listening with only half my attention, happy I was not expected to comment, when there came a low rumbling from the west. As it swelled into an unrelenting thunder, from the western horizon rose a cloud of midnight that quickly spread to blot out the stars in half the sky. Streaks of red fire ripped across the arch of the heavens. The moonlight that flickered behind the looming darkness was carved into angled shapes by ribbed wings that spanned half the city, then was transformed into intricate patterns of green and gold swirls and spirals by translucent membranes. Red fire glinted on coppery-scaled chests so massive they could smother twenty men and horses, and on long tails rippling with muscles so powerful they could knock holes in a granite wall.

“Vanir guard us! Dragons!” Callia dived through the window as the flight passed over Lepan—five or six dragons, soaring on the winds of night. A hot gust lifted my hair, and it was heavy with musk and brimstone, the unmistakable scent of dragon. Soon, from above the blast of flame and the thunderous wind of those mighty wings, would come their cries—long, wailing, haunted cries that chilled the soul, cries that spoke an anger too powerful to bear, deep, bone-shaking roars of fury that caused the enemies of Elyria to cower in their fortresses and bow before the power of our king. Unheard from below would be the harsh commands of the Riders, each man a tiny knot of leather and steel behind the long, graceful neck of his mount.

I did not move from my place on the roof, only craned my neck to watch their passing, telling myself every moment to look away—that only danger and grief could be the result of my gaze. Not allowing myself to think—I was well practiced at that—I clamped my arms over my ears. I dared not listen to their cries, but by every god of the Seven, I would not fail to look.

“You’re a madman!” said Callia, poking her head out of the window once the sky had regained its midnight peace. “You’ve been put away too long.” She climbed out and plopped herself on the roof beside me. “You never know when one of the cursed beasts is going to glance down and decide you’re ugly or insolent or breathing ... whatever it is sets them burning. You could have ended up as crisp as Gemma’s solstice goose!”

I scarcely heard her. My arms still blocked my ears lest I be undone by the sounds of their passing, and my eyes strained to see the last flickers of their fires as they disappeared in the eastern darkness.

“Are you all right?” The girl pulled my chin around to face her, and her eyes grew wide as she gently touched my cheek. “What in the name of sense ...? Why ever didn’t you go inside? If you’re so fearful of them as to make you weep, then you oughtn’t even look.”

But of course I had no words as yet, so I could not tell her that my tears had nothing to do with fear.

A few days later, Callia presented me with perhaps the finest gift of thanks I have ever received for any mortal service rendered. In response to her insistence that I let her know something that would please me—my being not yet ready for the favors she was most willing to dispense—I induced her to indulge me with a bath.

“Hot water poured on you in one of those tin tubs?” She looked from the drawing I had made in the dust on the floor to my absurd mime of washing. “Can’t possibly be healthy. You’ve still got that beastly cough. And what if it makes your ribs loosen up again just when they’re getting stuck back together?”

Impossible not to smile at her. I shook my head and tried more inept playacting to demonstrate that such activity would do no harm, but rather a world of good for my spirits.

“Well, Dilsey owes me a favor. I gave her a bit of lace to wear in her hair when she steps out with Jaston the pot boy. She’ll haul the water up. Are you sure there’s nothing else but that?”

I smiled and shrugged.

“You’ll have to hide on the roof while she brings it. I’ll tell her it’s for one of my gentlemen.” This consideration seemed to intrigue her. That evening, when the battered tin tub was in place and filled, it took some convincing to get her to leave the room. “Are you sure you don’t need help? Perhaps I ought to stay. See how it’s done in case you fall ill again.”

I made a silly, eye-swirling face to show her it was just one of my peculiarities.

“Are all Senai so modest? The only ones I ever get are so drunk they’ve wandered into the wrong district. They don’t realize I’m not quite their usual thing ... and of course in that state they have no sensibilities at all!”

I apologized as best I could without words and pushed her gently through the ragged curtain that served her as a door. Once alone, I breathed easier. It was perhaps a strange thing after so long believing I would go mad if I did not hear another human voice, but I prized the hours when Callia was gone and the Elhim did not see fit to visit.

Rarely have I felt anything so sensually magnificent as that bath. I lowered myself gingerly into the steaming water, ignoring the protest of my aching ribs and the damaged muscles in my back as I curled up in the small tub and let the water cover my head. If I could have stayed under for an hour I would have done it. But I soon breached the surface, and over me came a joyous madness to get the remnants of Mazadine off me. With the scrap of cloth I’d found in Callia’s bits and pieces and the sliver of soap Dilsey had supplied, I scrubbed away layer after layer of filth until my skin was gloriously raw and the water was black. With a knife borrowed from the Elhim, I set out to trim my mat of hair to a civilized length and scrape off the seventeen years’ growth of unhealthy beard. The task took far longer than it should, for I’d not counted on the difficulties of trying to manage a knife with fingers that could scarcely bend. The tenth time the knife dropped into the water, my delight had given way to howling frustration. But I forced myself to pick it up again, using one hand to wrap the fingers of the other around the hilt and willing them to hold on. If I was to live, I had to begin somewhere.

Dilsey had left one last pitcher of clean water standing by the tub, and when I finished with the knife without cutting my throat, I stood up and poured the now cold water over myself, glorying in the feeling of being clean. I stepped out, using my shirt to dry off, and was standing in the middle of the room completely unclothed when I heard light running footsteps on the stair. I bent over to tug on my breeches, but in far too much of a hurry, so that I was left dizzy and had to lean my head against the wall to keep from falling over.

“Callia, I’ve come to get the bath. We’ve a guest who—Oh!”

I looked around to see a short, dumpy Udema girl, staring with crossed eyes and open mouth at my bare back. I didn’t like to think what it might look like. As I straightened, the girl’s eyes traveled upward, registering my height and, no doubt, the dark hair, straight nose, and lean features that confirmed my heritage. She backed toward the doorway, a trace of fear in her eyes, the wariness of the Udema servant who interrupts a Senai at his business. “Pardon, my lord.”

I tried to calm her, holding out a hand to stay her nervous flight, but she had already run down the stairs, no doubt spreading the gossip that Callia’s latest customer was a Senai whose back was ridged with layer upon layer of red and purple scars. On my first night at the lodging house the Elhim had reported rumors of a prisoner escaped from Mazadine. I’d given it no thought—mostly because I was incapable of thought, but also because I had not escaped. I had been released. The terms of judgment had been fulfilled. But now, faced with exposure, I wondered. What if Goryx had miscounted the days? What if he had released me one hour early ... or one day ... or one year ... and they said the time had not been completed and I would have to start again? What if they came to take me back?

I heaved up all the contents of my stomach into Dilsey’s earthenware pitcher, then leaned heavily on the windowsill and tried to get my damp shirt on, cursing my infernal weakness and my clumsy hands, praying for the wave of terror to pass. I had to leave.

When I heard running feet on the stairs, I grabbed the Elhim’s knife in both my hands and backed into a corner. But it was only Narim himself who charged into the room like an owl diving for its prey. “At least three souls are on their way to the Royal Horse Guards, each in hopes of collecting a silver penny for information regarding a Senai prisoner escaped from Mazadine. If you’ve no wish to be mistaken for such a one, I’d say the time has come for you to quit this house for a span. Callia remains below and will attempt to distract any who come looking, but she bids you hurry.”

I nodded and stuck one leg through the window, but the tin tub sitting in the middle of the room glared at me accusingly. I stopped, calling myself every name ever invented for a fool. Anyone coming to Callia’s room would know immediately what she’d done. Only Senai saw any virtue in bathing, so a Senai had clearly been here. No way to hide the evidence. If Callia could not produce a likely candidate, she would be arrested. And if my cousin had decided he was not done with me ... if it was indeed me that these guards were hunting ... Stupid, stupid. What had I done ... letting these good people step into the dragon’s mouth for me?

“Come on, man! It won’t take them long to get here. Off with you.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Gathering every scrap of will I possessed, I bade my tongue obey me. “Danger”—I could scarcely hear so low and hoarse a whisper as I could produce—“you ... the girl ... must get away.”

“Nonsense. Climb across the roofs. They’ll search here and find nothing. We’ll light a lamp in the window when it’s safe to come back.”

In my bones I knew it was not so. They had been hunting someone for two weeks or more, yet not announced who it was. For anyone else, for any ordinary prisoner who had escaped, they could have made up a story, but I ... I was to be forgotten. No one was ever to know who I was or what I had been. Something had gone wrong. Either the time was mistaken or ... who knew what else it could be? But if they took me, then they would kill anyone who had seen me or talked to me. And if they connected me to the dead Rider, it would be a long and wicked death.

“Please,” I croaked desperately, shaking my head. “Believe. You’ll die for helping.” I was trembling with the effort of the words, feeling the darkness close in on me again ... and the unending guilt.

“Even if they just suspect it?” His eyes were narrow and his voice angry.

I nodded, wishing I could tell him how deeply I regretted the blind cowardice that had made me stay with Callia.

“And you never told us the risk? What kind of person are you?”

It would have taken far too many words to explain it. “Go quickly” was all I could manage.

“I’ll get Callia and meet you on the roof.”

“No.”

He looked at me sharply. “You mean to stay—to wait for them?”

“Please go.”

“And so you will let some illiterate Horse Guard take your life, which Callia and I so carefully preserved, while we are forced to abandon our home for that very act of preservation? You might have saved us all the trouble and died in that stable.”

“They will not kill me.”

He released a monumental sigh. Then, wrapping his soft, pale eyes around my face and his hands about my own that still clutched his knife, he quieted my shaking with his slender fingers. Very softly he said, “Tell me why not.”

Though everything within me demanded silence, I could not refuse him. “They are forbidden it.”

A smile touched his lips. “So it is you, then, Aidan MacAllister, beloved of gods and men, the most famous musician in fifty generations, he who could transform the souls of men with his voice and his harp. The cousin of King Devlin himself, vanished like the wind when you were but one and twenty.”

I shook my head feebly.

He drew me toward the window, and I forced more words to stay him. “Save the girl. Leave.”

“Foolish boy. I’ll not leave you. I’m here to take you where you need to go. You are the Dragon Speaker.”

I didn’t know what he meant by such a title. No one knew about the dragons.