Song of the Beast Read online

Thou art my own, my beloved, and I will cherish thee until the dayfires burn no more.

  Sing for me, beloved.

  The god of music himself had claimed me for his own.

  Gwaithir told me that on the night I first sang for Roelan, sitting on the ruined walls of Ellesmere at moonrise, he’d felt the breath of the god raise the hair on his arms and his neck. As for me, on that same night when I was thirteen, I first heard the god’s answering song—quiet, distant music that raised me out of my body so that I believed that I was standing on a mountaintop, gazing down upon a lake of fire.

  I did not perform in public for three full years—until I turned fourteen and Gwaithir presented me for membership in the Musicians’ Guild. The guild had been formed after the Chaos Years, a promise to Roelan that never again would the world’s songs and music be lost. Although every musician supported and honored the guild, few were accepted as members, for the applicant’s talent, memory, and mastery of the art had to be exceptional. Those of the guild were exempt from service in the king’s armies, and every household, whether noble or peasant, was open to them. Unlike lesser performers, they received no pay, but they never wanted for food or drink or a roof or company. Membership in the guild would be freedom to travel as I wished, giving myself wholly to the god. But first I had to prove myself worthy. Talented though he was, Gwaithir was not a member, and no one of my age had ever been admitted.

  As we entered the Guild Hall in Vallior, a splendid performance space of wood floors and walls, polished to a golden glow, and a domed ceiling painted with scenes of the hunchbacked god playing his harp, Gwaithir fidgeted nervously. He was terrified that I would fail, terrified that I would die in battle before the world could hear the music I could make. But before he left me, I laid my hand on his shoulder and said, “If he does not want me, he will be silent, and I’ll know he has some other path in mind. If he wishes me to serve him in this way, I will not fail.”

  And so it was. I sat on a stool in the center of the cavernous room, a room alive with echoes, and I faced ten of the finest musicians in the realm—names of legend. They had heard nothing of me since my childhood triumph at the victory feast, and likely assumed that the onset of manhood had ruined my voice. The steward at the door had told Gwaithir that the guild committee had agreed to hear me only out of respect for him and a nagging remembrance that I was related to the king.

  For my part, I could not have told anyone how many were there or who, for I was making my heart quiet so as to listen for Roelan. “Master,” I whispered in my deepest silence. “It is thy servant, Aidan, who awaits thy call.”

  In moments, it came—a torrent of sensation, sweeping through me like a summer hurricane, pounding fire coursing through my veins, stripping my lungs of breath until I could draw myself together and sort out his words. No longer did I hear an echoing emptiness, but the loving voice in my heart.

  Beloved, soothe my uttermost sorrows.

  Transform me.

  Make me remember.

  My teacher. My master. My god.

  I sang that day of homecoming, of searching a frozen earth for a place remembered, though lost for uncounted ages of the world. I sang of adventures along the way, of constant leaving and forgetting, of the weight of years and the passing of time so that the searcher feared his cause was lost. Gwaithir said I had the judges in tears by the end, but all I knew was that Roelan answered me. In his song that only I could hear, the searcher found his heart’s desire—a lake of fire in the heart of winter snows. There he met his brothers and sisters long estranged, and the joy that flowed within me held me riveted, mesmerized until the last echoes of the god’s refrain were gone.

  “Where have you learned it, boy?” said one of the judges, as I shook off my daze. “Whose hand has guided yours on the strings? It is the sound of the wind your fingers pluck. Your voice sings the glory of moonlight on the snow, the music of birds, the whisper of winter mist.”

  “The god of music guides my hand and voice,” I said, as will every musician who respects the gods. I did not tell them that Roelan schooled me by speaking in my heart or that he sang in answer to my music or that he had disciplined me to find beauty even in the harsh bellowing of dragons. It seemed pretentious to say I knew how my god did what he did. It was mystery and took no honor from him to remain so. They did not need to know.

  And so it was that my wrist was marked with silver on that day, and I was proclaimed a guild singer dedicated to Roelan.

  For seven years I traveled the length and breadth of all known lands, my life an unending celebration of beauty and mystery and joy. I refused no invitation, shunned no venue as too remote or too dangerous or unworthy, and I took no payment save food and shelter, for there was nothing that could match the gift of my life. I was the voice of a god, and I carried his joy into noble houses and into lepers’ dens, into palaces and the poorest quarters of great cities. I sang before the king, and I sang for his soldiers in the field of battle, and I sang for the stunned and starving victims of war in their squalid tenements. When King Ruarc died, I sang his funeral dirge, and when my mother lay consumed by her last illness, I sang her through the crossing with words of those people and things she had cherished. And when my eighteen-year-old cousin, Devlin, was crowned king of Elyria, I made my obeisance with my harp in my hand. But always I returned to the dragons, watching from afar as their Riders screamed the commands that would force them to obey, listening to their pain and wild fury and grief, and making it my own.

  I had always gotten along with my cousin Devlin. Until the days of my rebirth at eleven, we met on every family and state occasion, always shuffled off to eat and drink together and amuse ourselves while our elders carried on adult business. The rivalries that one might have expected for two highborn youths so close in age and family—I was six months his junior—were made moot by the difference in our passions. He claimed to have no ear for music, and I made no secret of my disdain for the arts of warfare and statecraft, which were all that interested him. I complained bitterly to my mother that I had to waste time with fencing and riding, while Devlin did not have to spend equal time with my strict flute master. But we found things to do and had some good times, and we did not dread our rare meetings.

  I saw my cousin very little in my three years of madness or my years in the guild. If he felt any jealousy that I was already at the pinnacle of my profession while he was still “the boy” riding in his father’s massive shadow, it was surely blunted by the certainty of his ascension to the most powerful throne in the world. Devlin was his father’s only son, his four sisters long married off to distant nobles who were strong allies but no threat to his inheritance, and in five hundred years no king of Elyria had lived beyond the age of fifty. The high price of using dragons to wage war was that there was no end to it. The devastation they wrought on land and cities and people was so terrible that there was no shifting of loyalties or blending of peoples or softening of borders, no forgiveness and no respite from vengeance.

  A year after his coronation, when I was eighteen, I sang at Devlin’s wedding to a beautiful girl of impeccable Senai breeding, and a year after that I sang at his infant son’s anointing as Prince of Thessin, heir to the throne of Elyria. I did not speak to my cousin on either occasion, but I did spend an hour with his son as we waited in the gardens for the anointing ceremonies to begin. The child, draped in heavy finery and held at arm’s length by an exasperated waiting woman, was wailing endlessly, threatening to sour the harmony I’d brought to honor him.

  I had no experience with infants, but when the waiting woman began to curse at the child, I offered to make an attempt to quiet him. I picked for a moment at the sound of his lament, and then began to sing in counterpoint to his cry. Where he would raise it up a tone, I would go down, and when he would pulse in demanding rhythm, I would smooth it with a gliding arpeggio. When he pierced the sky, I sang quietly of the earth, and before long he hushed and opened his eyes wide. I smiled as I sang, and
he made some earnest cooing. I sang another round, and he followed every inflection with his own chirping until he was laughing and waving his tiny hands.

  The child’s wide-eyed delight at the lullaby I created for him on that sun-drenched summer afternoon opened a new world to me. He laughed and gurgled and held tight to my finger as it plucked the strings, giving me a thread of purity and innocence and unfettered delight to weave into the tapestry of music. Over the next two years I sent him a little flute from Florin and a silver llama bell from the high mountains of Godai, a music box with tiny soldiers that marched about in circles, and a drum from the wild men of the eastern wastes. I wrote him letters every month, telling of where I’d been and what I’d seen, delighting in thinking of him as my family. I hoped to get a chance to meet the child again someday to thank him properly for his gift to me.

  It was in the fourth year of Devlin’s reign that I received an urgent summons to his palace in Vallior. I had just returned from two months’ journeying in Eskonia, and I was staying with a prosperous merchant family, the Adairs, who had befriended me when first I began traveling and sought a place in one of their caravans. They had a son named Gerald who was close to my age and, once he got over his awe at my fame and position, became my closest friend. He was sturdy and sensible, but took very well to adventuring and made it a habit to show up whenever I booked passage in one of his family’s caravans. We saw a great deal of the world together, he pursuing his family’s business looking for interesting merchandise and healthy markets, and I pursuing the work of my heart. The Adairs also had a daughter a few years younger than I, sixteen at the time I was summoned to see Devlin. Alys was fair and intelligent, good at poking fun at Gerald and me, who tended to take ourselves far too seriously where women were concerned. Yet I had begun to think that if Roelan ever left me room for other passions, I might well find myself hopelessly attached to her perfect green eyes. I’d had no thought of roots in the seven years of my journeying, but it was the fourth return to Vallior in a row that I’d found myself at the Adairs.

  When the royal summons came, I excused myself regretfully from a fine and lively dinner, spruced up my attire, and debated whether to take my harp. I finally did so. It would be awkward to have to send for it if music was wanted. Why else would Devlin call for me?

  The small private garden was elegantly manicured with mounds of perfect flowers, squared-off shrubbery, and a copper fountain in the shape of a rearing dragon that spewed water instead of fire. The evening was cool, the lingering light soft on the green, and, as always, I kept an eye upward to see if there was any trace of red fire in the sky. I didn’t have to wait very long. My cousin swept into the garden from a brilliantly lit wing of the palace, and he was as elegantly attired as his garden, green satin shirt and tight black breeches, and a black silk cape, its clasp a golden dragon with ruby eyes. He’d grown a beard since his coronation, so he looked more than six months older than me. Perhaps the weight of the golden circlet on the dark hair so like to mine had also done its part. I dipped my knee, and he gestured me up. We were still exactly the same height.

  “You’re a hard man to catch,” he said, motioning me to walk beside him down the flagstone pathways. He had always been restless.

  “I’ve not spent three nights running in the same bed for seven years,” I said.

  “The price of your calling, I suppose.”

  “True enough.”

  “I’ll confess I never thought your name would be better known than mine.” I listened carefully, but heard no more than wry observation. “I’ve had people tell me you are touched by the gods, and I tell them that when you were eight years old you set your hair on fire as we were scaring bats out of Wenlock Cavern, and I had to throw you in the lake to put it out.”

  I laughed. “Perhaps it was the god who sent the storm as we rode home that day to make sure the fire was out.”

  “Indeed. I never thought of that.”

  We walked awhile in silence. It seemed best to wait for him. At last he stopped alongside the dragon fountain, and he was not thinking at all about the childish adventures we had shared. His eyes were like obsidian as they bored into mine. “You’ve just returned from Eskonia.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  Easy to say something frivolous. Everyone in the world knew what I did. But he was not asking the question lightly, so I responded with the same seriousness.

  “I sang in fifteen cities and uncounted villages, at more than a hundred weddings and coming-of-age feasts, and possibly that many funerals. I explored the ruined temples at Horem, and I spent the night alone in an ice cave at the top of Mount Pelgra, though I can’t tell you why, except that I heard the howls of the Denazi wolves and the song of the snow lark that I had never before heard. I refused no call and no invitation and no opportunity to learn, as is my duty and my habit ... and my pleasure.”

  I would have guessed he could repeat my words exactly, so intently did he listen, and he was listening to far more than words. Perhaps we had more in common than I’d thought.

  “You went to Cor Marag.”

  The slightest twinge of ... it was not guilt, but something else—pride, shame, rebellion?—touched me. Cor Marag was where the northern dragon legion camped when they were quartered in Eskonia ... as they had been when I was there.

  “I still love to watch them. Never outgrew it.” I smiled as I said it, but my words fell like lead between us. Lies are heavier than other words. Of course, I did not enjoy watching dragons and thinking of what they did. Listening was something else, but I still could not explain why. It was just easier to lie and let it pass.

  “So I hear. You follow them. Wherever you travel you find where they are, and wherever they are, that’s where you travel.”

  I said nothing. I certainly couldn’t deny it, but to discuss something so intimate, so holy, with a man I scarcely knew ... I’d not told anyone why I did what I did, not since the night when I was eleven and my music masters insisted that Roelan had used the dragons to punish my pride. It was mystery. It was between Roelan and me and could not be explained in words. But Devlin seemed to want words.

  “Aidan, tell me why.” In that moment he was speaking to me as a cousin, not a king, and if I’d understood it, perhaps I would have made some attempt to explain, and my life would have been very different. But I was too much used to living in my own world, and I could not see into his.

  “I go where my god commands me.” How stupidly prideful it must have sounded.

  He shook his head in exasperation. “Stay away from them.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just stay away. Don’t be seen anywhere near them. Anywhere. Do you understand me? I won’t have it. I have no ill will toward you, but this ... whatever it is you’re doing ... it will stop now. You are forbidden to be within a league of any dragon legion. Forbidden.”

  I stood stunned at this pronouncement, and by the time I sputtered out the words “Devlin, listen,” he was gone. At the doorway into the lighted palace he was met by a huge broad-faced man in the uniform of a Dragon Rider. The fellow’s imposing stature, as well as his bald head, hawk’s bill of a nose, and full curling lip, announced him as Garn MacEachern, the high commander of the Ridemark and the Elyrian dragon legions. They conferred for a moment, but by the time I recovered my wits and ran to the steps, they had disappeared inside. Two guards barred my way. The chamberlain who had shown me to the garden appeared silently at my elbow and pointed me discreetly to the side gate that led out of the palace.

  Devlin left Vallior the next day to lead his warriors against the rebellious state of Kythar far to the east, so I was unable to get an audience. His chamberlains said it was to be at least three months until he returned.

  A few weeks later I journeyed into Aberthain, a small country in the southwestern hill country whose king was Devlin’s vassal. King Germond had three dragons in his service. Unl
ike most rulers, he kept them close to his palace, and with them the noble hostages he had captured from his enemies. His capital city was quite vulnerable, and to have the symbols of their strength so near gave his people heart. Though Devlin’s warning echoed in my mind, I could not refuse when Germond asked me to sing at his son’s coming-of-age feast.

  King Germond’s dragons were bellowing ferociously as I lay in the fine bed in his palace. I could not sleep for their cries. So I made my way to the barren wasteland where they were kept and sat upon a high, rocky promontory overlooking their encampment. They roamed restlessly across the desolation, vomiting fire that blazed red and went out quickly because there was nothing left to burn, and their voices thundered with anger and sorrow. Some time in the deeps of that night I began to sing, and it was as if the whole chorus of the Seven Gods sang in me. My heart came near bursting with the glory of the music.

  Three days after my return to Vallior I was arrested in the middle of the night and charged with treason. Aiding the enemies of Elyria, the two officers said, though no specific accusation was ever made. Naively, foolishly, I demanded audience with the king. I insisted on knowing what were the charges, and I claimed that I was so well known that people would hunt for me and find out what injustice was being committed. But the only information I received was when an officer who remained in the shadows raised his hand to have the burly, hard-faced men drag me away. On his wrist was the red outline of a dragon—the Ridemark. I kicked at a lamp, rolling it toward the tall man, and as the oil pooled and flared into brilliance, it showed me the hawk-nosed high commander of the Ridemark clan.

  In a spiraling nightmare of horror and despair, I was forced to watch as the Adairs and old Gwaithir and my manservant Liam and every person who had any personal dealing with me was slaughtered in a secret execution, and a faceless, hooded judge with a red dragon on his wrist pronounced the sentence that would send me to Mazadine. My voice was to be silent for seven years, and only then could I be free to go ... as long as I did not go anywhere near a dragon.