Song of the Beast Read online

  The years had not passed lightly over Devlin. His face was lined with too much sun and wind, and coarsened with too much wine. We had been of a size in our youth, but now he carried almost as much bulk as his father, who had been a bull of a man. A long scar gleamed white on one tanned cheek, and his eyes told me that he had seen a great deal of death.

  How do you greet someone who has stolen half your life, murdered your friends, and destroyed your heart? I could not speak—would not give him the satisfaction of hearing the donkey’s bray he had left me to replace the songs of a god. Instead I poured the remainder of my wine onto his polished wood floor and dropped the goblet beside the pool, splattering shards of glass and red droplets all over the room. Then I stood in silence, waiting for him to explain why he had chosen to offer me a day of comfort and healing after sending me to the netherworld for seventeen years.

  He gazed at me unblinking, unspeaking, and I thought it must be to see if I was afraid. But after a moment it came to me that he wasn’t sure how to begin. When he did, his voice was soft and intense. “I didn’t know.” His hands fidgeted with his sword belt, but he did not drop his gaze or stammer. “I want you to believe me, Aidan. I had no idea. Until three weeks ago this night, I did not know you were in ... that place ... or anything of what was done to you.”

  He must think I’ve gone mad, I thought, to try this tactic with me. His servants were still killing my friends, shackling my wrists, and laying on their whips.

  “Of course I am responsible. I won’t deny it. The gods have given me duties every bit as mystical as those you professed, no matter how distasteful you may find the work of kings. I wanted you silenced. It was necessary. Those around me who are accustomed to carrying out my orders ... they heard my wish and they saw to it and I was well content. But never ... never did I mean for it to happen the way it did. I should have asked. Should have made certain. But ... well, I won’t make excuses. It changes nothing. I should have asked, but I didn’t.”

  He moved to the table and poured himself a glass of wine. “Three weeks ago I told one of my aides to find you. You’ll appreciate this one,” he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “I needed to ask you a favor. By the Seven ...”

  When he faced me again, his ruddy color had deepened and his eyes glittered. “My aide was astonished at my request. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘he is disappeared. You know. We all assumed that you ... that he ... We understood that he was taken care of as you commanded.’ His smirking was insufferable. ‘He’s not been seen in all these years, so we presumed him dead or as good as.’ I couldn’t believe no one had told me. I looked into it, began asking questions I should have asked seventeen ... oh, gods, Aidan, seventeen years ...”

  His dark eyes searched deep. I suppose he saw what he had done, for he dropped his gaze abruptly. At least he didn’t say he was sorry or that he wished he hadn’t made his desire so clear. He had already told me that it had come out as he wanted. That was enough to condemn him.

  “I’ll not insult you by offering what you would rightly disdain coming from me, nor can I relax the restriction that you saw fit to disobey, but if there is anything else ... ask and it shall be done.”

  I would have preferred to remain silent, but the rage that had been building as he spoke could not find its outlet until I knew the most important thing. And so he heard what voice I could muster, his face burning scarlet as I croaked, “Why? No one ever bothered to tell me why I had to be silenced. You never told me.”

  Disbelief shot from his eyes directly into mine, shifting instantly to astonishment. He averted his face. A moment’s hesitation and he strode toward the door. By Keldar’s eyes, he wasn’t going to tell me!

  “Devlin!” I wanted to strangle him.

  Perhaps it was the sight of the harp lying useless on the table that made him give as much as he did, for he paused beside it for a moment, then spoke over his shoulder, a break in his voice making it sound as if he were truly sorry. “You were bad for my dragons, Aidan. You made them uneasy. I wish it could have been different.”

  The door swung shut behind him.

  Chapter 6

  I walked out of my cousin’s house that same night. He chose not to prevent me. By the time I found my way to the front doors through dark, deserted rooms full of shrouded furnishings, the old physician was waiting with a cloak, a heavy leather purse, and an expression of great distress. He opened his mouth several times, but he must have been commanded not to speak to me, for nothing ever came out.

  I wanted nothing from Devlin. If I’d had other clothes to wear, I would have stripped off the ones he’d given me, but necessity ruled, and I took the cloak as well. The leather bag of coins revolted me even more, but necessity ruled in that wise also. No one else would forfeit his or her life by helping me, so I would take Devlin’s blood money to use until I could fend for myself. I could not say I would rather starve. Only those who have never starved can say that.

  It was a long, slow walk into the nearest village, but the old physician’s remedies and two days of uninterrupted rest had done marvels. Or perhaps my anger sustained me until I could take a room at an inn, eat a bowl of the landlord’s porridge for a predawn breakfast, and collapse on a sagging bed.

  Even then I could not sleep. The consideration that my ruin had been a mistake, that the Adairs and Gwaithir and Callia had died for nothing, was infuriating to the point of madness. I made his dragons “uneasy.” Uneasy! By the Seven Gods, what did that mean?

  Hours of reviewing our conversation and reliving the occasion of our last meeting before my arrest took me nowhere. It was well onto noon by the time I gave it up and slept the clock around once again. My dreams were filled with questions, but even more with rage. I killed Devlin more than once that night, cruelly, viciously, without remorse, and so vividly that I woke up sick and shaken, expecting to find blood on my hands. I had planned to be on my way that day, to hunt for some backwater town where I could start over again, where I could become someone else and forget everything that had been. But the insistent, bloody resolution of my dreams showed me how futile it was to attempt such a thing before I had made some peace with myself and whatever gods might exist to hear me.

  So I used my cousin’s gold to buy a horse and a flask of wine, and I inquired where I might find a shrine dedicated to Keldar. I rode through the hot morning and turned off the road at the place I’d been told, winding slowly up a worn path to a grassy, rounded hilltop. In that place of unchecked winds and uninterrupted vistas stood an ancient stele graven with the closed-eye symbol of the blind god. At its base were laid faded bundles of wild thyme and rosemary, lovage and pennyroyal, herbs whose sweet fragrances would be carried on the back of the wind, finding their way to the god, bearing with them the prayers of those who left them.

  I had no herbs, but I uncorked the wine—red and sour, as Callia had relished it—and poured half of it on the ground beside the herb bundles. I begged Keldar for the wisdom to unravel the puzzle of my life and find a path that was not solely the way of vengeance. I was mortally afraid. As a man who has lost one leg sees an enemy’s sword poised above the other, so deep was the terror of my dreams. I had never killed a man. To follow the way of vengeance—the only way that seemed clear—would surely destroy whatever was left of me. Yet on any other path I would be as blind as Keldar and risk stumbling back into the horror I had just escaped. If the blind god could help me find my way, then I had to ask.

  The hot wind blew. The dry ground soaked up the wine. But my soul remained cold and silent, the familiar ritual providing no comfort. I sat leaning on the stele, drank the rest of the wine, and considered kings and dragons and prideful musicians who did not listen well enough when given warning. My imprisonment had been no mistake. Devlin had wanted me silenced, but not harmed, and he thought he’d gotten it—but how? To assert that mine had been the best-known name in Elyria and every neighboring kingdom was not false pride. How could I have disappeared so abruptly and m
y cousin not have known of it? What had been said on the day after I was dragged from my bed?

  If Devlin believed I was somehow a threat to his dragons ... that would explain a great deal. Only the dragons kept Elyria in control of her vassal kingdoms and prevented her from being upended by petty tyrants or overrun by the barbarian hordes from beyond the borderlands—the wild men with braided hair and a loathing for civilization. But why would he think it? “Uneasy”? What did that mean? He assumed I knew, and when I told him I didn’t ... whatever it was he thought I’d done, he was still afraid of it. His need to leave me in the dark had outweighed his purpose, the “favor” he was going to ask of me.

  I was at a loss. Neither answers nor vengeance would bring back the dead. Narim had urged me to go to an inn on the Vallior road and ask his friend Davyn to help me, but I could not imagine what help some Elhim clerk might offer. Besides, Narim might have been questioned and his friends compromised. I had no desire to cross paths with my cousin’s Dragon Riders again. And so, since I could think of nothing better, I threw the wine flask into the distance, returned the way I’d come, and reclaimed my room at the Whistling Pig. I would wait for Keldar’s guidance.

  The common room of the Whistling Pig was no different from those of a thousand poor hostelries along the roads of Elyria. A huge, soot-stained hearth with a friendly fire that filled the room with smoke and was never allowed to go out. A hodgepodge of tables, chairs, barrels, and crates, with a few splintered ones piled in a corner. Greasy, dark-wood walls hung with boars’ heads. Plain food, endless ale, and always a tall stool to welcome a wandering musician. I sat in the darkest corner, hiding behind a brimming tankard while I listened to the talk, trying to let myself be drawn back into a world I had almost forgotten.

  It didn’t take long to catch up with the news. Little had changed since I’d been hauled off to Mazadine. Elyria was still at war with everyone who did not swear fealty to her king, and no kingdom with dragons enough to face those of Devlin or his vassals would swear fealty to a king who had charred their fields and cities with dragon fire. Gondar was the current battleground, a wealthy kingdom far to the south that was jealous of Elyria’s control of the rich mining country on their common border. The locals said that Prince Donal, Devlin’s son, commanded the Elyrian troops on the Gondari border. The innocent child ... now nineteen or thereabouts ... facing the brutal horrors of dragon warfare ... I ordered another ale.

  A moment of general sensation was caused by a toothless tinker newly arrived from Lepan who told of the great uproar in the city four nights previous when two Dragon Riders had washed up on the riverbank with a number of quite fatal holes in them. According to the tinker, a manhunt, the likes of which he had never seen, had scoured the city. But the culprit was still on the loose, and the dragon legion commander had vowed to hang the villain on the walls of Lepan by his entrails.

  “They say one man did it?” asked one of the listeners.

  “I wouldn’t want to go against the man who could take out two Dragon Riders,” said a thick-necked farmer who could have tied a knot in an iron bar.

  “I’d shake his hand,” said another, who wore one withered arm and the savage evidence of dragon burns on half his face. “Ridemark clansmen think they own the world. Bring nothing but ruin. Good riddance to ’em.”

  “I’ve heard they mate with the beasts,” said one of the barmaids, leading the conversation into progressively wilder speculation on the nature and habits of the mysterious clan who wore the Ridemark on their wrists.

  I lost track of their talk, for it was only the tinker’s story that held my interest. Two Riders killed and thrown in the river ... the hunt through the streets of Lepan ... It was all backward and inside out. The Riders had been the hunters and had captured their prey and taken him to their king, only ... It came back to me then how they had begun to beat me, then stopped abruptly. And I had imagined someone throwing bodies into the river, only I’d thought I was dreaming because I’d been kicked in the head. If the dead Riders were the ones who had attacked me, then who had delivered me to Devlin? Why would Devlin’s men kill his own Dragon Riders?

  The evening grew late, and a serving maid stuck a pair of ducks on the spit, the grease hissing and spattering. The room was thick with smoke. More people arrived. Two Elhim quietly eating soup were shoved out of their chairs by a local herdsman who wanted their table. The landlord used a broom handle to force the Elhim to wipe up their spilled soup with their own clothes. Once the momentary sensation was over, the travelers, farmers, and shopkeepers grew mellow in their ale and dropped their conversation out of hearing. A few Udema began arguing loudly about whose turn it was to pay for the next round. All so familiar, yet I had no more part in it than if I were watching a puppet show at a midsummer fair.

  “A song,” said the landlord. “Anyone here to give us a song?”

  I gripped my tankard between my palms and took a long swallow while a stocky Udema youth stepped up to the stool and proceeded to sing “Morgave’s Lament” in a breathy, off-key tenor. I shut my ears and tried not to remember singing that particular song, a soldiers’ favorite, in the starlit field where King Ruarc’s troops lay waiting nervously for the steel-helmeted warriors of Florin to attack. The soldiers had besieged me when the song ended, loading me down with so many medallions and rings and clips of hair to be delivered to wives and lovers when I returned to Elyria that my manservant had torn pages out of a book to write each name and wrap each token so we could keep them straight. It had taken me two months, but I had delivered every one. The battle had been a bloody one. Few of the tokens would ever have been reclaimed.

  While the patrons stamped their feet in approval, and the stocky youth gaped at the acclaim and began another song, I rose, dropped one coin on the table and another in the musician’s cup, and started up the stairs. About the time I reached the first landing, three brawny ruffians burst through the door, bringing the room to silence. Two of them were wielding swords. Their leader had a broad, flat face with a deeply cleft chin and cold blue eyes that seemed to bulge outward from his brow ridge. He swept the room with his gaze, then motioned for his companions to search the room.

  “What’s all this?” demanded the landlord, a paunchy man with red hair. “You’ve no right—”

  “We’re hunting the bastard who murdered our brothers. The one who shelters him will be dragon fodder ... and his family ... and his village ... and his woman’s village.”

  My stomach shrank to a knot as they began circling the room, forcing everyone to show them their hands. The landlord would remember. And the pretty barmaid who had wrinkled her nose in disgust as I’d fumbled my cup and my coins with my grotesque fingers. I retreated into the shadows and ran lightly up to my room, grabbed my cloak, and peered out the window.

  Three lathered horses pranced nervously in the yard. No guard remained with them to see me shinny out the window and drop to the ground. A few awkward, fumbling, cursing moments in the stable as I tried to grip buckles and straps; then I abandoned the saddle that had come with my horse, settling for a bridle. Grateful again for my mother’s insistence that even a musician should ride as befitted a warrior’s son and a king’s nephew, I threw myself on the back of the horse. I took him slowly out of the stable to the road, then urged him into a gallop, hearing shouts behind me. I had chosen the horse carefully, and he was well rested, but I didn’t breathe easier until I was three leagues down the road with no more sign of pursuit.

  I was more than passably familiar with the roads of northern Elyria, having traveled there a good deal in my first years singing. For a week I stayed on the back roads, buying supplies at a village market, and spending the first few nights under the stars, trying to put distance between Lepan and any sighting of a Senai with crippled hands. Why would Devlin send his thugs after me not two days after allowing me to walk out of his house? Just like the bodies in the river, it made no sense ... unless Devlin hadn’t sent them. On that first night I spent
a long time beside my tiny fire wondering if Devlin had as firm control of his dragon legions as he thought. The thought was unsettling, like the tremors before an earthquake. The Chaos Years were only a few hundred years behind us; not much time at all.

  When my supplies ran low, I stopped at a pilgrim’s hostelry, a meager shelter for those visiting a local shrine to the twins Vellya and Vanir, goddess of earth and god of fire. In the holy cavern visitors could wander by torchlight among pits of boiling mud that reeked of brimstone, deep crevasses where spouts of fire shot up from glowing rocks, and rocky maws of simmering water that would periodically shoot towers of steam to the cavern roof ten stories above. I skipped the pilgrimage to the cavern and resumed my journey after sharing the common soup pot and sleeping on a hard mat in the shelter. I spoke to no one, asked no questions, and sought no news. My hands stayed inside my cloak.

  Fortunately the roads were mostly deserted, for I had begun talking to myself aloud. Anyone who heard me might have reported a madman on the loose. I needed to work the rust and hesitation from my speech. It was too noticeable. So I worked at the repetitive diction exercises my singing masters had drilled into me, and I searched out saxifrage and coltsfoot and candlewick and boiled them in water, inhaling the steam or drinking the tea to ease the irritation of my throat.

  Only once, as I stood on a rocky overlook and watched the sun set over the Carag Huim with the color of dragons’ fire, did I attempt to turn my speech into a song, that same “Morgave’s Lament” I had known since I was five. But the first three notes fell dead in the quiet air. I could not hear the next one in my head, could not feel the words blossom from the unfolding melody, could not summon the passion that would weave together the notes and the words and grow them into so much more together than they were apart. And so I faltered and broke off ... and cursed myself for a fool to think it even possible that I could make music where none lived any longer.