Song of the Beast

by Carol Berg

  When I awoke, sweating as usual with my night terrors, Davyn’s mat was rolled up again, though the two other Elhim who had been sleeping when I arrived were still snoring quietly. I put away my mat, then sat beside the hot spring that welled up in a basin at one end of the room and went through my daily ritual of shaving. It always took me a number of tries, dropping the knife or fumbling it enough to nick the skin, but I refused to let my beard grow. I hated wearing a beard. It was a measure of my life’s condition that getting my face scraped every morning without slitting my throat had been for so long the highlight of my days. Though it was too small a change to be called progress, the activity had become a little easier—on that morning only three fumbles and no blood.

  I padded quietly between the sleeping Elhim toward the refectory, stopping short at the doorway. Davyn was sitting at the far end of a long refectory table, drinking tea with Narim, the two of them talking with a woman. She sat cross-legged on the floor next to the hearth, her chin propped on one hand. Her long brown hair was caught in a braid that fell over one shoulder, leaving a few unruly wisps to obscure the features of her narrow face. She wore a dark green tunic belted with flat metal links, brown breeches and vest, and tall boots that covered her slender legs up to her knees. She was arguing in low, intense tones with the two Elhim while with her right hand she absentmindedly poked a chunk of sausage skewered on a fork into the flames.

  “... don’t know why you insist you need him. I can do everything you want. I know the ritual, and—”

  “Hush, girl. Others will be about soon,” said Narim. “You can’t do it alone.”

  “I don’t need any bloody weakling Senai to share what is mine by right.”

  “Live through what he’s endured before you call him weakling,” said Davyn. “Your skills and knowledge are indisputable, but his heart must guide our enterprise.”

  I cursed myself for a fool. They had not believed me. They still thought that by wheedling and plotting they could get me to do what they wanted. Davyn was no different from the rest. It was time to leave Cor Talaith. My own griefs were hard enough to deal with; I didn’t need those of an entire race. As facing hypocrisy so early was unpalatable, I turned to walk away, but was too clumsy to escape unnoticed. Returning to the narrow passage, I bumped into the hanging bell used to call the Elhim to supper. I wasn’t able to muffle it fast enough, and Davyn called out to me cheerfully. “MacAllister! Good morrow. Sorry our passages aren’t designed for Senai height. Come join us.”

  “Not today,” I said. “I really need to be on my way.”

  “It’s scarcely light enough to see your own feet,” said Davyn, smiling in his friendly way. “Surely your labors can wait a half hour more. We’d like to have a word with you while the place is quiet. We have someone—”

  “I mean I need to leave Cor Talaith. I’ve taken up space here for too long.”

  Narim said nothing, and the woman concentrated on her sizzling sausage, though she was either pretending or she liked it well charred on the outside. It was a frowning Davyn who tried to dissuade me. “The hunt was still furious when I left, even after more than a month. They’re patrolling every road in Catania, examining every traveler. You’ll never get through.”

  “Are there no other ways out of here?”

  “Only north into the wastelands or a very long trek down to Raggai—and neither one until the snows melt.”

  “Then I’ll have to risk Catania. I need to get on with my life and let your people get on with theirs.”

  “You must do as you think best. But Tarwyl is due in next week. He can tell us how things go in Catania. If there’s a chance—and you still want to go—I’ll take you out myself.”

  A startled Narim cast him a sharp look, and Davyn answered it without ever taking his eyes from my face. “It is your choice to go or stay. That will not change. But no matter what hopes we’ve had or given up, we’d not want you taken again by the Ridemark. Will you wait for Tarwyl’s word?”

  I had no grounds to argue. My discomfort at their plotting was no reason to be a fool. “It seems reasonable. Thank you—again. If I’m to stay awhile longer, then I’ll feel better if I get back to work and pull a bit of my weight at least.” I nodded to the three of them. Davyn did not smile, but only relaxed his concern. Narim sat expressionless, tapping his thumb on the scrubbed table. The woman glanced up as I took my leave, brushing the wisps of hair from hostile blue eyes with the back of her hand. I carried the image of her—a disturbing image—as I left the refectory and made my way to the stables, where I hitched the mule to the wagon in the dawn light.

  The left side of the woman’s face had been severely burned at some time in the past. Her light brown skin, so smooth over her fine bones on the right side of her face, was crumpled into a scaly pink disaster on the left. The intrusive ugliness halfway across her cheek and brow distorted the outer edge of her eyelid to give a permanent droop to the left of her blue eyes. But more disturbing than the remnants of painful injury to features otherwise pleasing was the flash of red from her left wrist—not a burn, but a red dragon scribed on her skin. A woman of the Ridemark. Her presence made no sense at all. The Elhim had rescued me from the Riders. Their goal was the ruin of the Ridemark, to free the dragons that made the clan powerful enough to manipulate kings.

  A creeping unease prickled my skin as I drove the sluggish mule across the dewy fields. If I could not trust the Elhim and their account of events, then I was once again left with no idea of what had happened to me. I reviewed every event of the weeks since I had gone to Cor Neuill, but by the time I began to lift the stones from the towering rockfall into the wagon, I had come no nearer a conclusion. Only one thing kept intruding on my thinking: If they had lied about their relationship with the Riders, then perhaps they had lied about other things, more fundamental things.

  “Good Keldar, show me the way.” For the first time in six weeks the familiar plea came to my lips without a surge of disgust following it. But as I crammed my fingers under a skull-sized knob of granite and bent my elbows, scooping the stone onto my wrists and forearms and hefting it high enough to dump it in the wagon, I called myself every name for a fool. There were no gods.

  Furiously I crouched and lifted another, and another. Then a larger one than I had before. It was getting easier. My shoulders protested but I managed it, distracted as I was by thoughts and memories, making no more sense of them than at any other time.

  Work. Forget. I hammered at myself in the rhythm of the stones. I knew truth when I heard it. The story Tarwyl had told on the night of my arrival was truth. It just wasn’t everything.

  When I had loaded all the mule could haul, I drove across the valley floor to the bridge site by the gaping fissure. Steams and smokes hung over the fissure as always, but the breeze cleared them enough to see that the Elhim builders were not yet working. Only one figure sat atop a stack of lumber in the angled sun, watching me pull up.

  “Good morrow, Senai.” Nyura, old Iskendar’s constant companion, was a nervous, fidgety sort of person who looked as though someone had shoved all his features into the center of his face, neglecting the broad expanse of pale blandness around the edges. Iskendar and Nyura had spoken to me fairly often in my first days in Cor Talaith. Iskendar, the leader of the Elhim community, would ask if I needed anything, and would I not consider sharing their table. I could feel his unspoken hope: Perhaps if I took part in friendly society, learned more of the Elhim and their sin, felt enough compassion for their five hundred years of penitence, perhaps then I could find it in myself to sing again. Would it were so easy. I thought I’d made it clear that there was no substance to his hopes, considering it a measure of their acceptance that they sought me out so rarely anymore. But of course the morning’s events had proven me wrong. And here was the fluttery Elhim hovering about again.

  “How fare you, Aidan MacAllister? Iskendar sends his greetings and asks how we may serve you.”

  “Nothing has changed.
Thanks to the kindness of the Elhim, I’m well. But I’ve trespassed on your hospitality too long. I need to be on my way.”

  He didn’t seem too surprised. “We’ll regret losing your company.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be all you wish me to be.”

  “Rest easy. We’ll find another way.”

  As I began to unload the cart, the Elhim watched, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, as if deciding how to proceed with a conversation doomed to go nowhere.

  “Tell me,” I said, “if it is not too private a question ... I understood there were no women among the Elhim.”

  I don’t know what he expected from me, but it clearly wasn’t that. He gaped for a moment, but he soon gathered his wits and answered smoothly, dismissing the topic as if to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. “No. We do not possess the duality of your species. We are of only one kind, neither male nor female. If you have other questions about such matters ... well, we do consider these things private, but not secret, if you understand me. If you were to develop a close friendship with one of us—of longer study than a passing acquaintance such as I am privileged to have with you—I’m sure that friend would be happy to discuss it further. You understand. ...”

  “Of course. I was just curious because I heard a woman’s voice in the great cavern this morning. Talking with Narim.”

  “Ah. Now I understand. It was surely Lara you heard. A sad story that. You saw her scars? She was brought to Cor Talaith as a young girl—some eighteen or twenty years ago now. Frightfully burned. The fool of a child sneaked into the lair at Cor Neuill and tried to ride a dragon. An astonishing feat to get the beast away at all, but it turned on her. We allowed her to stay here. Did our best to heal her injuries.”

  “So she is of the Ridemark?”

  “Well, yes. But her own people wouldn’t have her back after she trespassed their laws.”

  “And she still lives here?”

  “No. No. She lives on her own. Wanders the mountains and the northlands. Narim says she hires out to guide caravans through the northern passes. It was Narim who found her and cared for her. She comes back here from time to time to see him. You could say we’re the only family she has.”

  “Ah. I see.” I let the matter drop while I finished unloading the cart. It didn’t explain what she had to do with me, but I didn’t think Nyura was going to tell me that anyway. No wonder she sounded so bitter. Family and clan, tradition and honor were the very sum of existence to those of the Ridemark.

  The Elhim kept watching from his perch, only a persistent tapping of his foot on the ground indicating he was not yet finished with our conversation. Though the air was pleasantly cool, the breeze had died away, so nothing mitigated the rays of the sun as I worked. I was almost done with the load. When I stopped to wipe the sweat from my face, Nyura took the opportunity to speak again, glancing at me with his close-together eyes. “I’ve a bit of news I thought might interest you, though I’ve wondered ... after hearing of your terrible imprisonment ... Well, perhaps you have no concern, as you have every right to despise the lot of them.”

  His speech was hesitating, yet in every pause he would watch me, casting his pale eyes on me and then away again. I kept working and let him spin it out. “Your cousin, King Devlin, has a son ...”

  In that pause he did indeed see my interest sparked. I could never forget Donal, the infant who had shown me the truths of innocence, purity, and undemanding love to weave into my music.

  “... nineteen now. A fine youth by all accounts. Leading troops in the Gondari war.”

  No surprise. I’d heard as much in Camarthan.

  “... but no one understood why the king and the prince did not smite the Gondari, as their forces are superior. We’ve learned that the Gondari have taken the young prince hostage.”

  Hostage! Donal ... my cousin’s child and so my cousin, too ... the infant grown to fair youth, held in squalor and bitter cold, murderous heat and unending terror, surrounded by savage bellowing and the vomit of fire, day and night. Absolutely without hope. If his father attacked the Gondari, the youth would be chained to a post and seared with dragon’s fire—not charred to ash in an instant, but left to die slowly in agony as long as they could make it last. And if Devlin held back, his son would languish in his prison forever until he died coughing up blood, or shivering with untended fever, or banging his head in madness against the stone walls while the dragons screamed their triumph. Stalemate. Forever.

  In that instant I understood what was the “favor” that Devlin was going to ask of me on the night of Callia’s murder. He believed I could free his son. He thought I could sing and make the dragons let Donal go, as had been done in Aberthain. No wonder he claimed he didn’t know what had been done to me. No wonder. He had been so agitated, so tentative. He was going to go ahead and ask ... until I said I didn’t know what I’d done. At that point he couldn’t ask without revealing what he’d been determined to destroy. To keep his dangerous secret, he’d had to sacrifice his son. Fires of heaven, Devlin ...

  Until that moment I had not actually believed what the Elhim told me I had done, that my music had somehow made the dragons grow restless and disobey the commands of the bloodstones. I had been sure it was all a mistake, a devastating, life-destroying misunderstanding. But now ...

  I looked upon Nyura’s pale face, not thinking of him at all, but of my cousin’s child in a prison more hopeless than Mazadine. I could not hate Devlin enough to rejoice in such devastation. I closed my eyes and envisioned the trusting, helpless infant I had known in an hour of purest joy. “Would that I could sing for you,” I whispered. “If there were a god to hear me, I would beg his grace to sing you free.”

  The sound of horses brought me back to the present. Nyura was riding away toward the caverns, no doubt insulted by my long distraction. The bridge builders were arriving with a team of horses dragging a load of huge timbers down the road. I greeted them, and then drove slowly back to the rockfall to get another load. After working until sunset, I moved to the woodshop and smoothed rough timbers into usable planks until I could not lift the drawknife one more stroke.

  Though the work drove me to exhaustion as I wished, never could I rid myself of the image of Donal trapped in horror. Uninterested in Elhim society, I did not return to the cavern, but bedded down in the woodshop, as had been my custom for the past weeks. Deep in my dreams that night I heard the bellowing dragons, no music in their cries, only wild and savage murder to the ears of a youth standing at the threshold of manhood without hope. The dragons screamed, haunting and dreadful, until I woke shaking in the dark corner of the woodshop and glimpsed a slender figure outlined against the dim glow of the banked fire. The figure had an arm upraised, and glittering in the light of a flaring ember was the deadly blade of a knife on a course for my back.

  Chapter 14

  I launched myself at the lower half of the slender silhouette, shooting up one hand to hold the dagger-wielding arm at bay. We toppled onto the sawdust-covered floor, but my assailant writhed and struggled and squirmed out from under me. I hadn’t enough hands to hold him still, yet keep the knife a safe distance from my vital parts. Fortunately my legs were longer than my attacker’s arms, and I was able to plant a foot firmly in his gut. A pained grunt followed and a massive expulsion of air, debilitating enough to relax the hand holding the knife and allow me to back away crabwise from the cloaked and hooded figure. My arms felt like water.

  Not sanguine about any further combat, I pulled myself up to get away. But I was desperately curious and reached out to flip the hood from my opponent’s face. At the same moment he raised the knife again with a furious growl. The better part of wisdom commanded me to depart, even in ignorance, so I ran.

  My morning excursions in Camarthan served me well as I streaked through the moonlit meadows and wood-land. By the time I reached the great cavern, I had left pursuit behind and given a bit of thought as to what I was going to do next. On consideration, wak
ing my hosts to say one of their number was trying to murder me seemed unproductive and unwise. Instead I sank to the ground in the shadows, flattening myself to the cliff wall just beside the mouth of the cavern, thinking I might see who would come slinking through the doorway while honest people slept. With surprise on my side, I could drag the villain before his own people and have evidence of my accusation.

  But as the hard, brittle stone dug uncomfortably into my back, the damp grass soaked my breeches, and my blood lost the heat generated by midnight attacks, I began to laugh. I rolled onto all fours, a position that stretched and eased my wretched back, and I laughed until tears dripped from my face onto the soggy ground. Anyone who came on me in that time would have thought me mad.

  You can’t let go, can you? I said to myself. Was there ever such a cowardly fool as you, Aidan MacAllister? To run away from a shadow who offered you nothing but what you have already? What dead man fears a knife? And what idiot thinks a villain will come walking through this door when there are undoubtedly fifty other entrances hidden in these cliffs? Why do you hold on? Let it go, fool.

  If my midnight visitor had renewed his assault at that moment, I would have bared my breast and guided his blade with my grotesque fingers. But no one came, and at some time I collapsed into a sodden heap and slept until first light, when fingers began poking at me.

  “MacAllister! Aidan! Dear god, are you all right?” A hand clamped my wrist and probed about my head—seeking a pulse or an injury, no doubt—then rolled me onto my back before I was awake enough to prevent it. My inadvertent groan at that painful posture only intensified his efforts to locate a wound, so he pulled open my shirt and would have ripped it right off of me if I’d not gathered my foggy wits.