Song of the Beast Page 8

  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.

  Chapter 8

  An exceptionally tall and broad-shouldered Elhim met us at the southern watchpost of Cor Neuill and led us down the ribbon of trampled mud and snow to the headquarters of the dragon legion. The weather had deteriorated all day, and pregnant clouds hung low over the snowy peaks. Alfrigg grumbled continuously as he hunched in his fur-lined wool cloak against the fine stinging sleet. “What use is the world’s richest contract if I’m but another scrap in the An’Huim glacier?”

  The Elhim, shivering in his thin, shabby cloak, cocked a pale, frosted eyebrow at the massive leather merchant on his tall horse, as if trying to imagine the anvil-jawed Udema frozen in a river of ice. But his only comment was, “Not far to go, your honor.” Then he bent his head forward again, a damp lock of fair hair falling over his left eye. He slogged down the gently sloping road, leading us toward a squat, stone building that might be perched on the edge of the clouds, for all we could see beyond it.

  I was shivering, too, though my cloak was quite adequate. Terror and cowardice are far more potent than any winter storm. Now that the day had come, I could scarcely keep from turning tail and riding as fast as I could go, as far from any dragon as I could get. On my lips was an unending prayer to Keldar to show me what I needed to see on this visit, as I could never attempt such brazen stupidity again.

  Smoke drifted lazily from the chimney of the headquarters building and from the campfires scattered among the hundreds of tents, only to be swirled away by the gusting wind. Having sung at Cor Neuill several times, I was familiar with the layout of the encampment. The commander and his adjutants slept in the permanent quarters, while the foot and horse soldiers and aides, the cooks, grooms, herdsmen, and other functionaries that hovered about a clan encampment were relegated to the tents. Not the Riders, though.

  The Riders lived with the dragons down in the vast bowl of Cor Neuill that lay hidden in the storm beyond the headquarters building. Each man ate and slept, lived and fought with the dragon to which he had been bound in a rite so secret that no one outside the Twelve Families of the Ridemark had ever witnessed it. In that rite the Rider was attuned to his dragon’s bloodstone, a thumb-sized jewel of dark red that the man would wear for every moment of his life from that day forward, slaying his own mother if she but laid a finger on it. The jewel allowed the Rider to impose his will upon his bound dragon, controlling its rage and directing it wherever he chose. With the stone he could also control other dragons in a limited fashion and protect himself from their assault. And the jewel infused him with fire that made his skin spark when touched, a matter of mortal consequence to anyone the Rider touched when drunk or angry.

  As far as anyone knew, no one outside the clan had ever possessed a bloodstone or ridden a dragon. Even within the Twelve Families the privilege to ride was reserved only to a select few. Legend said you could tell at birth which child of the clan would ride the dragons, for his mother’s birth passage would be scorched as he came into the world, and his eyes would burn with golden fire. Perhaps it was true. In all my observations, however, it was only cruelty and arrogance that flamed in a Rider’s eyes, and the knowledge that no man was truly his master. They cared only for the honor and traditions of the clan, nothing for territory or power beyond their own. They lived only to destroy, leaving to kings and princes the business of whom to burn.

  A hundred hard eyes glanced our way as we rode through the encampment. Interest waned just as quickly, and they turned back to their business of mending harness, darning socks, sharpening weapons, and cooking supper over the fires that struggled bravely against the gusty wind—the usual activities of a military camp. Accompanying them were the usual smells of woodsmoke and bacon, horse dung and leather, and, as in all Ridemark camps, the faint odor of brimstone. There were women about, not the whores and gap-toothed washing women found everywhere that soldiers lived, but sturdy, capable, cold-eyed women dressed in the same black and red capes as the men. The women of the Twelve Families rode to war with the men, performing most duties equally with their clan brothers, except for riding the dragons.

  A sullen young woman took our horses and led them toward a lean-to on the side of a substantial stable, while the Elhim directed us through a leather-curtained door into the blast of heat from an open hearth. Some thirty black-caped men and a few women occupied the wide, shallow single room of the headquarters. Many of them were clustered around a large map table. At the far right end of the room three warriors conferred with an officer seated at a folding field desk. Chests and trunks were stacked about the room, and two Elhim clerks stood over them, ticking off items on lists. Even in a Ridemark camp, Elhim’s skills with numbers were useful. Several young aides darted about filling drinking cups from steaming pots.

  The curtained-off areas in the corners of the room would be sleeping quarters, and just across the stone floor, opposite the door we’d entered, was a wooden door that led outside again. Few who were not of the Twelve Families were ever allowed to pass that door, so I had been told on the visits in my youth. Few would have any desire to do so, of course, for the doorway led out to the rim of Cor Neuill and the horror that lived there.

  The Elhim took us to the man at the field desk, a giant of a man, well past middle age from the evidence of the scant, grizzled hair on his boulder of a head, but with the muscled chest and tight girth of a man half his years. His nose had been broken at some time, for it resembled a hawk’s bill, and as he turned his cold, light eyes away from his subordinates to look at us, I shriveled inside. Of all the ill luck ... of all the commanders who could have been assigned to Cor Neuill, it had to be the high commander himself, Garn MacEachern, the very man who had stood in my cousin’s garden the day I was warned away from his dragons, the very man who had watched from the shadows as I was arrested and condemned.

  Panic throttled my tongue. Fear must have been written all over my face, for Alfrigg raised a frost-rimed eyebrow at me as he waited for me to speak. What half-crazed rat had ever walked so boldly into the fere-cat’s lair?

  “The leather merchant and his man,” said the Elhim haltingly in the tongue of the Ridemark clan. “Come to present the proposed contract for supply of Riders’ armor to the commander and quartermaster.”

  Alfrigg bowed respectfully, yet kept his jaw lifted and his broad back straight. “Your excellency,” he said. “Greetings of Jodar and his six brethren to you.”

  I bowed, too, quickly turning sideways between Alfrigg and the commander as Alfrigg had instructed me. Not looking at either party, I translated the merchant’s words. Alfrigg was a masterful businessman, dealing as much in his uncompromising honesty and self-confidence as in leather goods. He knew his bargaining would go better if he kept the attention focused on his own open face and imposing presence rather than on any intermediary, no matter how necessary. It suited me well to have MacEachern’s gaze drawn to Alfrigg and not to the rivulets of sweat dripping down the sides of my face or to the gloved hands that I clasped behind my back to keep them from shaking. Astonishingly enough, my words came out clear and calm, absolutely at odds with the chaos inside me. Perhaps Keldar was guiding my performance, as Roelan had done so often when I was young.

  With me to translate and his Elhim scribe to write, Alfrigg had corresponded at length with the quartermaster, a thin, squinting man with a tic in one eye, so that much of what was to be discussed that afternoon was mere formality for the benefit of t
he commander. The Riders were impressed that the merchant had brought his own interpreter. I made sure to stumble and grasp for words just enough that they had no need to ask how I had grown so facile in their tongue. A great many songs were composed in the language of ancient Elyria. And, too, Goryx my jailer had spoken nothing else.

  After the brief formalities of agreement, the two scurrying aides brought a tray of tall pewter goblets steaming with pungent spiced wine. My throat was parched. But even the blazing hearthfire had not yet warmed the blocks of ice in my boots or the throbbing lumps in my gloves, and I dared not fumble a cup right under MacEachern’s nose, so I shook my head at the pockmarked young man who held the tray. Alfrigg glared at me furiously. Because I was Senai, my refusal could be viewed as an affront to my Udema employer, or, even worse, as an affront to the Ridemark clan. Most Senai, even impoverished younger sons who were forced to seek employment, scorned those of the Twelve Families as “mongrel”—neither Senai nor Udema nor of any other identifiable heritage. Those who had climbed to so high a rank as MacEachern and had reached the inevitable conclusion that they could never be accepted into Senai society were very sensitive to Senai insults. I needed to smooth things over quickly.