Song of the Beast

Chapter 7

My first ventures out in search of a new start were into Camarthan’s marketplace. The tree-shaded market was crowded and busy, with a good number of escape routes should I draw unwanted notice. The first day I forced myself out for an hour, the next for two. I drifted from one display to the next, never speaking to anyone until I chided myself that all the work I’d done while on the road was gone for naught if I let my voice rust away again. So I asked a few questions about the origins of the exotic art-works, fabrics, and furnishings one could see in the market, satisfied when the words came out without the harshness of my first days of speech. For a week I would fly trembling back to my hiding place as soon as my allotted time was done. But as the days passed uneventfully, I gained confidence. After two weeks I would spend the whole day in the market, listening to the babble of commerce, watching the ebb and flow of sellers and buyers, and actually beginning to see some of the things at which I looked.

Inevitably, I was drawn to a harpmaker’s stall. I had passed by it ten times before without stopping, but on one beautiful summer afternoon, an elegantly dressed young woman sat tuning a small rosewood harp with ivory keys under the hovering eye of the old craftsman. Her shining dark ringlets shook with her frustration.

“It won’t tune,” she said. “Why would I buy it? It doesn’t matter that it’s lovely to look at.”

The white-haired man crinkled his brow and answered her, but in the language of Florin, not Elyria.

“I don’t understand your gibberish,” she said when he was done. “I won’t buy the harp if it won’t tune properly.”

The man tried to explain again, but the frowning young woman shook her head in annoyance.

“He’s telling you to tighten the nut three times, then let it back to the right tuning, rather than coming up from under,” I said. “It’s often better that way with a fine instrument.” Precision and loving care had gone into making the three beautiful harps displayed in the old man’s stall.

“You understand this nonsense he speaks?” asked the woman.

“Well enough.”

She did what I told her and was soon playing the richly toned instrument and singing in a sweet but thin voice. “Ask him if his price is firm,” she said after a few moments.

“What did he tell you?”

She told me, and I had no need to query the man. The price was eminently fair. But I did as she bade me, though at the same time I complimented the harpmaker on creating such a fine piece.

“Do you play?” he asked, smiling with relief.

“Not anymore. But anyone would be proud to play an instrument so well crafted.” Then I told the woman, “He says his price is firm. And I’ll advise you it’s a bargain.”

“Well, then. It does sound nice.”

With slender, agile fingers she counted out her gold and silver coins. As she walked away, I also turned to go, but the old Florin called to me. “Sir!” And when I looked back, he bowed politely as Florins do. “Vando zi. Estendu zi na.”

I returned the politeness. “Thank you, and may your gods walk with you also.”

The stall next to the harpmaker was occupied by a leather merchant who displayed a wide variety of wares, from bags and wallets to lightweight leather armor and saddlery. The florid, balding merchant had watched the interchange with the harpmaker intently. As I hurried past, he called out, “Senai! A word with you, if I might.”

Very tempting to pretend I hadn’t heard; I wanted desperately to run away. But I paused and clasped my gloved hands behind my back as if I had all day to answer.

He was a prosperous man by the look of his beige silk shirt and well-cut leather breeches and vest. A Udema—short, stocky, sturdy, and fair-haired like all his people. Jaw like an anvil. “You speak the language of the Florins?”

“Yes.”

“And know their customs? When to bow and all?”

“Yes.” I had absorbed languages and customs just as I had devoured the sounds of cities and countryside and wild lands. All of it was music.

“And for others besides Florins. Is it possible you know them too—like the tongue of the Breen?”

“Why do you ask?”

“There’s a beltmaker, a Breen, who sits on the far side of the market. She does fine work, but her designs are too odd for Elyrians. Looks as if she’s not had a fair meal in a twelvemonth. I’d hire her to do some of my tooling, but she doesn’t understand when I ask her. I was going to propose—if it wouldn’t be taken as an insult to so worthy a gentleman as yourself—to offer you a consideration if you would speak to her on my behalf. It would be to her benefit as well as mine.”

The perfect answer to my dilemma. For days I had scoured my head for ideas of how I might earn a living. I had examined every stall in the market, tried to judge every passerby as to what he did and whether I could do it too. Though involvement in music would be risky and painful, I had resigned myself to hiring out as a singing master or as a harp or flute teacher—cheaply, of course, as I could not demonstrate the lessons. But everything else I knew, every skill I might possess or learn in a reasonable time, seemed to require hands that worked. I could write only with difficulty and none too legibly. My stiff fingers could not build instruments or transcribe music or keep accounts. My ruined back muscles were so weak that I could not do anything that required strength, even if I could get past the inevitable questions asked of a Senai hiring out to do ordinary labor. But I had not even considered my experience with languages.

“I could speak to the beltmaker,” I said, trying not to sound too eager. “No consideration necessary. But perhaps you have further needs in the area of translation and interpretation ...?”

He narrowed his eyes, drawing his broad brow into a knot. “You wouldn’t know how to approach a Raggai chieftain about selling some of his goldwork, now, would you?”

“I once lived for a month in a Raggai village. Raggai are very protective of their goldwork, unless the buyer becomes a member of their family—a matter of a few pigs and a cask of brandy. And, of course, a family member can do as he likes with his brothers’ or sisters’ work, as long as it brings honor or profit to the family.”

A beneficent smile blossomed on the Udema merchant’s face. “My name is Alfrigg. ...”

After a bit more dancing about, Alfrigg agreed that he could well use a permanent translator, especially since he was on the verge of expanding his business. “And your name, sir?”

“Aidan ... MacTarsuin.”

“Ah, I see.”

I had named myself “no man’s son.” Alfrigg would assume that I was a younger son, dispossessed by some family dispute. Such was often the case among Senai families. The situation produced a class of well-educated but impoverished clerks and priests, artists and actors who never quite fit into any society. I did not contradict his belief. Dispossessed was quite accurate.

Further discussion revealed that Alfrigg hailed from the town of Dungarven in eastern Elyria. He had apprenticed to a butcher, but discovered he had more luck with hides than meat. He had bought out his apprenticeship early, and now ruled a flourishing business and a family of seven children with a despotic hand. He liked Camarthan for its location and friendly atmosphere, but as he saw the caravans pass through, visions of a leathery empire floated behind his blue eyes.

When I suggested that I could perhaps give him a preview of what customers in other regions might look for—that Eskonians wore small leather pouches with the dust of their ancestors in them, for example, or that the Breen felt it important to have the name of their household gods on everything they used—he slapped me on the back and crowed in delight. “Vanir bless me, but I always thought Senai the most useless of all Earth’s creatures. All their reading and writing and dabbling, politics and playacting ... pshaw! Even Elhim and donkeys have better purpose. But you, good sir, will make me a rich man, a very useful endeavor indeed.” After a quarter of an hour of negotiation, Alfrigg brought out a red enameled flask of uziat—the fiery brandy Udema used to seal every contract—and two tiny cups. “May our association be long and profitable, Aidan MacTarsuin!”

I worked mostly as an interpreter at first, helping Alfrigg negotiate with traders whose caravans passed through Camarthan. Occasionally I advised him on the cultural aspects of his stock. In addition, I translated letters and documents, though I hinted that I had always hired scribes to write for me and was thus uncomfortable penning documents for myself. Fortunately, Alfrigg’s Elhim clerk was quite capable.

Though merchant trading was nothing I had ever felt an interest in pursuing, the days were busy and interesting, leaving me little time for fear or regret. Nights were more than sufficient for that. Someday I would have to take up the search for the truth of my life. But first I needed to get a few things in order with myself. If I flinched at every sound, I could not hear the subtleties I needed to hear. If I shied away from people, I could not ask questions unremarked. My employment seemed a good first remedy.

My body presented a challenge equal to that of my cowardly spirit. I could not walk five steps without panting in exhaustion. How could I ever get close enough to the dragons to discover why my cousin said I made them uneasy? More to the point, how could I have any hope of getting away again to do something with the knowledge? And so, on every morning I was in Camarthan, I rose early to go walking in the rugged hills. At first I could scarcely cover half a league in two hours, spending most of my time collapsed against a tree or a boulder wondering if I would ever again be able to move or to breathe. But after a month or so it became a little easier, and after three months I was able to run all the way to the top of Mount Camar itself, where I could see all of Camarthan and all of western Elyria spread out before me in the dawn light. It was a distance of more than two leagues each way. The beauty and peace of the Carag Huim and the dry, clear air were healing for my lungs if not my spirit, and they enabled me to face Alfrigg and his cohorts with equanimity.

“Aidan, lad, I’ve a proposition to put you.” Alfrigg settled back in his “business chair,” an ample creation of padded leather, studded with brass. He was in an expansive mood, having just concluded an excellent deal with a saddlery in Vallior. “I’ve not done right by you. We’ve set our agreement for your pay, and I can’t have it said that I renegotiate contracts before their term, but you’ve done good work these few months. My clerk tells me you’ve been moving from lodging house to lodging house as if you’d trouble paying. I don’t like that. Looks bad to the customers ...”

“No need to concern—”

“... and so I’ve talked to the wife, and we’ve decided you will move in with us. We’ve plenty of room, better food than you’ll get anywhere in the district, and, as you take on more responsibility, it makes good business for you to be here. It will give us time to get to know each other better.” He waved me toward the straight wooden chair on the other side of his desk, as if expecting to negotiate the details right then and there.

Alfrigg’s house was large and lively, his wife a wise, witty, and skilled housematron. Udema custom encouraged a prosperous businessman to shelter his most valued and trusted employees. As these were almost exclusively other Udema, it was a great compliment he paid me. Indeed, the prospect of a homely house, offering comfort and company, out of the public way was very attractive. Though I no longer cowered in my room for days at a time, I ate my meals alone and kept my gloves on and did indeed move from one poor lodging to another every few weeks. No man with half a mind would refuse his offer. But the last generous family who had given me a home had all of them been murdered.

I remained standing, pretending I didn’t see Alfrigg’s gesture toward the chair. “Though I thank you immensely, sir, and your wife, too, for such a kind offer, I cannot.”

“Why ever not?”

“I just ...” I fumbled frantically, but no logical reason came to mind. “Please understand, my family ...” I couldn’t even finish it.

“Ah, yes, your family.” His fair complexion scarlet, he burst from his chair, shoving aside the flask of uziat that sat waiting to celebrate our closer relationship. “What would they think? How could I be so stupid as to believe a Senai might prefer a Udema house to a rathole?” Before I could stammer out a denial, the door had slammed behind him.

Alfrigg did not forgive me the slight. We worked well together, but never again with the ease of our first days. He made unending references to “those with refined sensibilities who cannot even remove their gloves lest they be contaminated with a Udema’s touch.” It grieved me to have wounded him so sorely, as he was a kind and generous man, but I could not recant without opening up more questions than I was willing to answer.

Soon after this debacle, Alfrigg’s Elhim clerk found a new position with the duke’s court, and another Elhim was hired to replace him. His name was Tarwyl, and he looked very much like Narim—as all Elhim looked very much like Narim. He was quite competent and seemed gentlemanly and good-humored. After the first week of his employment, he asked if I knew of a good place to take lodgings, as he was new in the city. And perhaps I could show him about?

I gave him the name of a few decent houses I had used in the past months that would accept Elhim as residents, but at the same time I made it clear that I did not keep company with others who worked for Alfrigg. Tarwyl did not seem offended and made no further attempts at familiarity. Elhim likely got accustomed to such slights. I despised myself.

And so the days passed. I did not speak to the old harpmaker again, though occasionally I would sit under a tree in the marketplace and listen as customers came to try out his instruments. Sometimes the old Florin himself would play, and I would listen, longing for the sounds to come alive inside me. But there was only emptiness. Only silence.

For the rest of that year I worked for Alfrigg. I began accompanying him on journeys into Eskonia, and Aberthain, Kyre, and Maldova, helping him hire agents to receive his merchandise from the caravans, sell it, and send him back the money. He tried to get me to cross the Sea of Arron to set up a new agency in Ys’Tarre, a remote kingdom reputed to be exceptionally wealthy and accessible only by sea, but, with profound apologies, I declined. I’d always had a weak stomach on the water. I told him I would go anywhere in his service, as long as I didn’t have to travel in a boat. He gave me a generous bonus when the first caravan returned from Eskonia with a healthy profit. When he presented it, he did not offer me uziat, though the red enamel flask sat ready as always on his desk.

On one of our trading journeys, I at last learned what the world believed had happened to Aidan MacAllister, beloved of the gods, the most famous musician in Elyria and beyond. The caravan stretched out as far as the eye could see in a gray and dismal downpour, wagon after wagon flanked by armed riders. I was hunched over in the saddle in aching misery, my cloak pulled snug against the rain, and the reins wrapped tightly about my hands because the pain in my fingers prevented my grasping them properly, when one of the guards pulled up to ride next to me.

“Say, MacTarsuin, I’ve been meaning to ask ... have I met you before?” He was a wiry, middle-aged man with a tangle of gray-streaked brown hair.

“I don’t think so,” I said, pulling the hood of my cloak lower.

“Name’s Sinclair. Been riding caravans since I was a lad. Thought maybe I’d seen you riding with us back when Master Gerald ran things. There was a leather merchant often sent his man with us in those days.”

My pulse raced ahead of me ever so slightly. “Master Gerald?”

“Master Gerald Adair. It’s the Adairs what used to own this lot, back fifteen, twenty year ago. Fine gentleman he was, and his father before him.”

“But he doesn’t own it now?”

“Gor, no! It was a wicked happening. The whole family of ’em gone: Master Gerald, the old man, his good lady, the daughter what was just come womanly, a fair and sprightly girl. Burned to death. All of ’em. Their house caught fire in the night. A servant what escaped said a lamp got spilled and caught the wall hangings. You probably heard about it. It was the same time as Aidan MacAllister disappeared—you know, the singer. Some say he died in the fire with them.”

“I’d heard he disappeared. Just not how or when.”

“Well, he was great friends with Master Gerald, and there was talk in the caravans as how he had an eye for Mistress Alys. After the fire he was never seen nor heard no more. A pity. Never heard the like of him and his harp. Would take you away from what ailed or what troubled, show you things you never thought to see, and when he was done, he’d set you back down wherever you’d come from, only better. Eased, you know, so things weren’t so hard. A loss to the world it was when he went away. I’ve wondered ...”

It was as well he needed no prompting for his rambling conversation. I remained mute, cold rain dripping from my hood.

“As I said, a number say he died in the fire or was grieved so by it as he couldn’t sing no more. But I’ve heard another story. Dragons flew over Vallior that night. A few months later a Dragon Rider was going around the taverns and alehouses, saying he saw Aidan MacAllister come to the dragon camps at dawn the next morning, talking wild about how the dragons had torched his friends. Said MacAllister took up a sword against the dragons and got himself burned dead. That’s the story I believe. Somebody like that—friendly with the gods and all—don’t just die in his sleep or give it up when his woman gets roasted.”

In the autumn of that year I hired an Elhim scribe and had him write a letter addressed to the curator of the royal archives at Vallior. The letter stated that I was compiling a list of unsolved cases of treason as a service to the Temple of Jodar. The god of war bore a virulent hatred for traitors, I said, and the temple could use a list of missions to prescribe for penitents wishing to expiate their own failings by taking Jodar’s vengeance. I was looking for incidents between fifteen and twenty years in the past. The scribe looked at me strangely, but I said only that we all did service to the gods in our own private ways. And I paid him very well and promised him more work if he was discreet.

If the crime of which I had been convicted—the incident in which I had “aided the enemies of Elyria”—had been recorded at all, then I had to assume the case had never been publicly closed. From Sinclair’s testimony and other references I’d heard, no hint of scandal was attached to my name. I wouldn’t have expected it. As my name was linked to his own, my cousin would have seen to that.

But my case must never have been filed. When I received an answer to my query, nothing in the two pages of missing battle plans, stolen horses turned up in enemy cavalry, and other such occurrences could possibly have been related to me. Only three cases had anything to do with dragons.

In one incident in the dragon camp at Cor Damar, three Dragon Riders had been slain as suspected spies. The three had been causing havoc in the camp with their dragons. Another Rider had turned his own dragon on the three, slaying both Riders and dragons to prevent further trouble. The investigation had uncovered no cause for the three Riders’ defection. I had visited many towns and villages near Cor Damar that year, a satisfying time when I felt that I had moved up a whole level in my skills, but as far as I could remember I had spoken to no Dragon Rider and done nothing that could be remotely connected to the incident.

The second case occurred at Cor Neuill, the winter lair just north of Camarthan. A Dragon Rider had been found knifed to death after a midwinter’s feast, and a Ridemark child had disappeared. The dragon lair had been in chaos that night and the murderer/abductor had never been found. In truth I had sung in the camp only two days previous and had been scheduled to perform at that very feast, but my mother had been taken ill, and I had canceled the remainder of my performances in Cor Neuill.

The third incident involved the escape of two Kasmari hostages being held in the dragon camp at Aberthain. I well remembered my visit to Aberthain and the night of glory when I sat on the ridge above King Germond’s dragons and sang with the gods. The coincidence was sobering. But the hostages had escaped days after I had left the kingdom, and ample witnesses could have testified as to my whereabouts. In truth I had traveled so widely, there was likely no crime in the kingdom that had not occurred before, during, or after my presence. So it seemed I had dredged up nothing of any use.

Winter came and my bones ached so that I could not sleep. I could not hold a cup without clamping both my palms around it like an infant. When I refused Alfrigg’s offer of hot, spiced wine to celebrate his oldest daughter’s betrothal, he threw down his cup and stormed from the room. His wife, Marika, frowned at me in puzzled exasperation, then followed after him silently as I stuffed my useless fingers in my pockets.

The Gondari war had worsened. Elyria had warred with Gondar for as long as I could remember. Gondari assassins had killed my uncle King Ruarc’s father-in-law and were suspected in a hundred other deaths. These occurrences had always been resolved in Elyria’s favor, in a rain of dragon fire. But now the Gondari had come by dragons of their own and were raiding unhindered into Elyrian lands. They had evidently slaughtered every inhabitant of three Elyrian border villages and delivered their heads to Devlin in a gold casket. No one in Camarthan could understand why Devlin and his son didn’t blast the Gondari and their dragons into oblivion. The disputed gold wouldn’t melt, they said.

On a bitter evening in the last month of the year, when the snows lay deep on the roads into Camarthan, I sat huddled before the roaring hearth in the common room of my latest lodging house, wishing I dared stir up the coals or move even closer without setting myself afire, when a young serving girl set down a tray of ale mugs and announced, “Dragons in Cor Neuill.”

Some patrons grumbled a curse, saying how they’d hoped this year might be different and the fiery devils not come. Others argued that the dragons were the only reason a man could sit and drink a mug of ale in peace without some ax-wielding barbarian splitting his skull and ravishing his wife. One laborer moaned that now the legion was returned, he’d have to go to the Ridemark camp for work. He said he’d rather stick with lower pay working for local folk, but his wife wouldn’t let him.

I sat staring into the flames, wishing my creaking joints would be eased and my terrifying thoughts vanish up the chimney with the smoke. The dragons always came to Cor Neuill at year’s end. To take the beasts into the snows they hated, to practice battle maneuvers in the ice-laden wind, to reaffirm who was master and who was servant ... these were profound symbols of the Riders’ control. Deep in my innermost self I had known that when the dragons came, I could no longer put off my search for the truth.

And so my time of waiting came to an end. On the next morning I went to Alfrigg and proposed a new enterprise—that he should supply the Dragon Riders their leather armor. It was true, I said, that the commanders of the Riders refused to speak the common tongue of Senai and Udema, using only the ancient tongue of the Ridemark clan. But he, Alfrigg, was fortunate, for I knew the clan speech, so that when he ventured into the dragon legion’s camp, he could take his interpreter with him.