“Then let me tell you what a fighting man can tell from this stranger’s weapon.” He spread his wiping cloth on the pine needles and laid out his too-hot dinner, then extended his hand. Reluctantly, she placed the hilt in his palm. Freeing it from its linen wrappings, he stood, groaning and complaining of stiffness though he settled into his fighting stance with the grace of long experience. Erde gathered up the wrappings possessively, resisting the urge to snatch back the sword and cover its nakedness. Hal held it level, first balanced on one palm, then gripped and held out in front of him. His eyes narrowed in concentration. He swung it a few times, a long sideways arc, then overhand. Satisfied, he resettled himself in a dappled fall of early sunlight to study the hilt and shaft in detail.
“A well-made blade but plainly presented. A skilled armorer, a day-to-day purpose. A working blade, not a courtier’s, definitely not your father’s, I see that now. Iron Joe would never stoop to such an honest blade.” He turned it in the light like a chirurgeon with an old bone. “A newish blade, not too heavy but on the long side. A tall man, lightly built, probably young. A blade not often bloodied but scrupulously maintained. A responsible young man, a little insecure yet but proud enough of his ability to spend several months’ salary on a better than average weapon, and unpretentious enough to avoid needless decoration.” Hal lowered the tip of the sword until it just touched the ground. “I hope this wasn’t the man they say you struck dead with a witch’s spell at the castle gate. I could use the man who carried this blade. I’d make a fine soldier out of him. Don’t go killing them off, milady—there are few enough around as it is.”
He glanced over at her, grinning, and found her face twisted with grief. He had described Rainer so accurately that it left her breathless. She could almost see him just beyond the fire, sword in hand, fresh from the practice yard, his favorite place, smiling in welcome. For a moment, she hated the elder knight. It should be Rainer sitting across from her now. Why couldn’t he have kept himself alive? At last, the tears came freely. She could no longer hold them back.
Hal knelt quickly and set the sword aside. “Ah, child, you can’t mind the self-serving inventions of a power-mad cleric. I know you have killed no one.”
Erde shook her head frantically, then both her hands, then buried her face in them and wept as she had not been able to since she’d been told of Rainer’s death. Brother or lover, whatever he was, it didn’t matter, she wept for him anyway, and for Alla, her only other friend, and for her grandmother, whose counsel and company and strength she did not feel whole without. And she even wept for Georg, whose life she’d been forced to take, so that her own might continue.
Hal reached across the fire and patted her shoulder once, then let her cry.
She wept long after the knight had banked the fire and gone to sleep. She was unable to stop herself. She crawled over to the dragon’s side, curling up next to him for warmth, but could not keep the sobs from coming. Wave after wave until her brain was dulled with it. Only when the afternoon gloom deepened under the thick pines and the dragon stirred and woke, filling her mind with his curiosity, needing her attention, demanding her response, did she get hold of herself and dry her eyes. Her grief remained as sharp as ever but having finally given in to it, she could put it in its place. She had to. She could not be dragging about like a stone, weighed down by painful memory. She had to be fit and alert. She was the Dragon Guide, and she knew where her duty lay.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Erde had thought it was just the usual man-talk, but Hal really did mean her to learn to use the weapon she had carried into exile. He rushed her through their meager breakfast and, while there was still light enough to see clearly, he found an opening among the tree trunks and began shoving the pine mat aside with the edge of his boot.
He waved Erde into action. “Help me with this! Good footing is crucial!” When he was sure she’d keep at it, he trotted away into the woods and came back with two stout sticks that he’d cut, each the length of one of their swords. She was almost disappointed. Now that the mule was packing Rainer’s sword, she missed it, as if the time she spent with it was what kept the memory of him alive in her mind. But the stick that Hal handed her was plenty heavy enough.
The dragon watched Erde swing the stick about for a while, then wandered off to hunt. Hal inspected the circle of cleared ground.
“Good enough. Let’s get to work.”
As he raised his own stick and took up his stance, Erde felt a sudden panic. What if he attacked? What if he humiliated her? But the knight drew her over beside him, a few paces apart, both facing a shared audience of one very jaded mule and a puzzled she-goat.
“Now. Watch my movements and repeat them exactly. No, I said exactly!”
The movements seemed neither difficult nor complicated. Erde’s confidence soared with her relief. But Hal made her repeat each one until she had managed ten perfect repetitions in a row with no rest in between, and after the fourth simple ready, step, and swing exercise, she was heated up and breathing hard. Her right arm ached in places she hadn’t even known she had a muscle.
As soon as he saw her growing clumsy, Hal stopped the lesson.
“Enough for today.” He took her stick and tied both of them to the mule’s saddle. “Now. Here’s how you stretch that arm out so it won’t tighten up on you.”
And so it went, for many nights’ travel through the unbroken forest. They were spared rain for a while, and the temperature warmed slightly as they descended from rock ledges and tall pines through dense stands of birch and golden-leaved aspen, down into maple and wide-spreading oak touched with a blush of early fall color. For a while, the shared nightmares ceased, perhaps because both Erde and the dragon felt safer in Hal’s company, perhaps because they were eating more regularly, or simply because he pushed them hard and they were too tired. They would stop at dawn, exercise, eat, and sleep, then wake at dusk, exercise and move on, night after night.
They kept to the cover of forest, staying clear of the towns, skirting the occasional farmstead cut out of the wilderness, avoiding a woodcutter’s cottage or two. Finally, when Hal was confident that he could detect no pursuit, he left Erde to sleep one day while the dragon hunted, and rode the mule into a charcoal burners’ camp to trade news for bread and cheese.
He found his news was already stale, but being able to offer an eye-witness account of the Tubin burning gave him his choice of supper tables and a full pack to speed him on his journey.
“Came in from the north, like I was headed from Tubin the long way,” he explained to Erde later. “Left to the south and cut back east soon as I could. You know what the latest story is?”
She shook her head, her mouth gloriously full of fresh bread and cheese.
“That the Baron’s Hunt cornered you where two rivers crossed, and were just about to bind you when you called up a demon in a blinding flash of light to carry you away to safety.” He cocked his head at her. “There’s just no end to your powers, milady.”
Erde smiled back at him, trying to take the witch tales as casually as he did. But they weighed on her increasingly, because she was sure that someday she was going to be made accountable for them.
During the first nights of travel, Hal talked to her as they walked, about the countryside, the route he was taking, where they might camp for the day. But after the first few, he ceased trying to keep up both ends of this one-way conversation. Soon they were traveling in silence, but it was a companionable silence.
“I’ve traveled alone for two years now.” They were setting up camp by a streambed. “There’s many out in the countryside that don’t know or understand the details of the king’s troubles with his barons. Some’ll still show a King’s Knight some respect, and there are things I can do to help out here and there, so I get along.” Hal brushed bread crumbs from his jerkin. “I still wear the Red as you can see, out of respect for His Majesty—only took it off once or twice sneaking into Erfurt to check up on the sit
uation at court. I’m best off staying unobtrusive, so some baron doesn’t get a notion to try me for invented treasons. So I’m used to silence. I talk to the Mule sometimes, but I never let myself talk to myself. That way madness lies. . . .”
Erde was not sure of that. She’d talked to herself quite a bit when she’d had her voice. She’d never thought she was going mad until she could no longer speak her mind out loud. Besides, Alla had talked to herself nonstop, sometimes even when you were there in the room with her, and Alla was the sanest person Erde had ever known. Except for her grandmother, although, to Erde’s mind, the baroness’ dedication to duty and power did occasionally put her sanity at risk. Suddenly the purpose of this line of reasoning became clear: if she dedicated herself to the dragon as it seemed she had been born to do, what would she become? Would she give up love for the sake of duty, as her grandmother had apparently done? Would she give up her lands for the sake of an obsession, as Hal had done? She brooded over this until she remembered she had neither lands nor lover anymore, so what did it matter?
Even so, she woke the knight out of an after-dinner doze by the fire to discuss the issue.
DID MY GRANDMOTHER LOVE POWER TOO MUCH? She formed the letters very carefully in the soft ash layer, as if to render her question more comprehensible.
Hal blinked, yawning. “Hmmm. Well. Yes. Now that’s a hell of a question to come out of a young girl.”
Erde frowned at him sharply.
“Yes, yes, just let me think. That was a sound sleep you woke me out of. Let’s see . . . it depends on who you ask, you know?” He sat up, rubbing at his beard as if it might help him to think more clearly. “If you ask me, which you did, I’d say yes, of course, since she loved power more than she loved me. But ask the crofter whose survival depended on her honesty and diligence in running the estates, and he’d like as not say no. At least your grandmother, unlike your father, was capable of wielding power’s responsibilities and thinking of someone other than herself. Does that answer your question?”
Erde nodded pensively. She’d thought of power as a license to take what you needed and push other people around. That was what her father did. But not her grandmother? Power as a responsibility was a new concept, yet it made sense in the pragmatic context Hal had offered. She understood she’d been frivolous all those times she’d vexed her grandmother with airy insistences that she didn’t care about power. She was troubled by his suggestion that the baroness had considered her to be Tor Alte’s proper heir. Had she failed her grandmother without knowing it? Would events have fallen out differently if she’d been a more diligent student in the baroness’ unofficial course of study?
At least her grandmother had never spoken of power with personal relish, the way her father did. Yet in following the priest’s lead, the baron had given up power to him. Why give it up so readily, if he loved it so much?
Hal was dozing again. She nudged him with her foot.
WHY DID PAPA GIVE OVER TO FRA GUILL?
“What has gotten into you, girl? Was it the fish for supper?” Hal struggled up again, groaning as if the effort were enormous. “I know you won’t rest till I answer.”
Erde nodded, offering an eager placating smile.
“You want the long or the short version?”
SHORT.
“Good, that’s easy, assuming your father to have no greater fear for his immortal soul man the next man. So—what does your father want more than anything else?”
TO BE IMPORTANT.
“And what will make him important?”
POWER?
Hal nodded approvingly. “He to whom power is important is vulnerable to anyone who wields it more cleverly than he does. The hell-priest is damnably rich in power just now. I assume he promised your father a share of it.”
Erde’s mouth worked in instinctive protest. Nothing came out but a puff of frustrated breath.
“But how could he trade his only daughter for the promised share? Well now, that’s either a true measure of his obsession or something a bit more complicated. I suspect it’s a bit of both. But that’s the long answer.”
Erde did not want complications. Her mind was drawing long loops, seeking simple connections. Complications could come later.
WHAT ABOUT THE KING?
“How’s that?”
THE BARONS LOVED POWER MORE?
“No, he . . .” Hal paused, sucking his teeth morosely. “Well, maybe so. What the king values most is peace. He had power enough to establish it in good times, but not enough to maintain it through times like these. So for now, he sits in Erfurt at their convenience, ruling in name only.”
FOR NOW?
“Of course, for now,” he replied indignantly, “You think I wear the Red for sentiment? His Majesty is still king by the grace of God, and what other duty could a King’s Knight claim but to see his monarch securely on his throne once again?”
For that, Erde had no answer. She sat back, pulling the folds of her cloak up around her shoulders. She had enough to chew on for one day, and finally she let the knight sleep. She hoped it was not too late to become her grandmother’s faithful student.
Meanwhile, the dragon practiced becoming invisible.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Of course, Earth could only be invisible while he was standing still. This meant he must practice while his companions rested, or be left behind. Or so he thought. The dragon had not yet understood that he was the glue that held this oddling band together.
“Don’t ever tell him we’d each die before leaving him behind,” Hal warned quietly. “He’s slow enough as it is.”
How quickly men become impatient, Erde marveled, even with the things they claim to worship.
“I hope you’ll pardon my presumption, milady, but . . . can’t you get him to move along a little faster?”
Erde shrugged, shook her head. Being unable to speak did offer relief from having to explain herself—or the dragon. The truth was, she hated hurrying him unless he was in danger. Hal was fairly sure that they’d eluded their pursuers for the time being, and she thought what Earth was learning was too important to rush. He seemed so encouraged by having discovered he had at least one skill. Let him practice at his own pace.
“He’s getting the idea, at least,” Hal conceded. “And I suppose if you’re as old as he is, an hour or two of human time seems like the blink of an eye. What can ‘hurry up’ possibly mean to a dragon?”
Erde steered him toward a bare patch of ground. She now carried a short pointed stick in her vest to use as a stylus.
HOW OLD?
Hal chuckled. “Oh, old, you can be sure. Older than me, even. Can you believe that?” Then he grew grave and drew himself up out of his stoop as he did whenever he talked of dragon-lore. “There are conflicting opinions as to the exact day and hour of the creation of dragonkind. I myself favor those who place it on the First Day. Others are of the mind that dragons were created first among the creatures of the air, which would make it, of course, the Fifth Day. The hell-priest would place them with the fall of Lucifer and the birth of heresy in the world. Now, this particular dragon . . .”
The peevish look he turned on Earth, who was once again struggling to catch up, made Erde laugh. The sound was all breath but so unaccustomed that they stared at each other in surprise. Hal’s mouth tightened against a grin. “Well, look at him! Does he look like something you’d expect the Good Lord to come up with on the First and Holiest Day? He’s ignorant, he’s clumsy, he’s . . . ah!” His grin bloomed ingenuously. “Is it a disguise?”
Erde shook her head.
“Well, it was just an idea. It’s just hard to accept that he’s so . . . so like a child.”
Erde nodded emphatically.
“Oh, you think that’s good, do you? Surely, it takes one to know one.” Hal made a sour face, then slowed, chewing on a thumbnail. She imagined him stalking the aisles of his library in just that posture, that is, when he’d had a library. He scratched his beard
thoughtfully. “Now, you know, there are a few truly renegade minds who consider dragons to be creatures of nature that are born, grow old, and die like the rest of us. It’s a radical notion, very eccentric, but their idea is that dragons mate and reproduce by the laying of great leathery eggs. Of course, I’d never given this theory much credence but . . .” He glanced back at Earth, but the dragon had again pulled to a halt and vanished. “Confounded beast!”
Erde clapped her hands in breathy voiceless mirth.
“Always happy to provide comic relief,” the elder knight growled, but his eyes smiled. “Ah, well. Laughter is a healing thing, milady, and you deserve a little, after all you’ve been through. Maybe we both do.”
* * *
A week’s nights of travel brought them to the edge of a big lake. Erde had never seen a lake so broad. She ran down to the slim, graveled beach to stare out across the dark water, wondering if this was the ocean that the minstrel tales so often sang of, where great sea monsters devoured ships and all the men on them in a single gulp. The waning moon shimmered on ranks of white-capped wavelets driven toward shore in the brisk chill wind.
The dragon snorted at the nearness of all that deep moving water. He refused to share Erde’s wonder. He rocked from side to side and would not follow. He pelted her with water terror until his fear overwhelmed her wonder, and she could not help but draw back nervously into the shelter of the trees with him, even though a moment before she had hoped that Hal meant to take them out on this marvelous ocean to dance with the waves.
Fortunately for the dragon, the lake itself was not Hal’s destination. He led them along the shore to the lee-side of a sheltered cove where the trees hung low and close over still water, and the moonlight did not penetrate. He chose a weedy bluff back from the edge and called the mule over to unload.
The Book of Earth Page 17
