AutumnQuest (9 page)

When I awoke, Xyla lay along my back, which felt comfortably warm despite the chill in the air. I rose carefully, trying not to wake her. First thing, I took another long drink of water, then found a likely spot to relieve myself.

By the time I’d built a small fire and put some dried meat and water in the saucepan to simmer, Xyla had gotten up, had a good stretch, and disappeared to hunt for her own breakfast.

When she returned, she offered a hare to add to my stew.

“Thanks, but I don’t have any way to skin and dress it,” I said, so she ate it herself. “Speaking of which,” I muttered to myself, “I need to get my hands on a knife. I don’t ever want to be that defenseless again.”

“You have me now.”

I smiled and reached out to stroke her head. “I do, now, but not always.”

“You do not like me?” Her voice in my head sounded hurt.

“Oh, no, it’s not that. It’s just that we won’t always be together.”

Xyla made a noise that sounded for all the world like a hrumph, then flipped her wings back and curled up near the fire.

After last night’s mucking about on the ground, my clothes were a mess. I brushed off the earth and bits of leaves from my leggings as best I could. The shirt reeked of sweat and fear, so I peeled it off and washed it in the stream, then spread it out on some bushes to dry in whatever sunlight might make it through the treetops. I wrapped up in my cloak, content to sit by the fire drinking my fill of water, watching the sleeping dragon, and thinking.

Now that my head was clear, it occurred to me for the first time that I’d been
talking
to a dragon. As if she were a person; as if she were a friend. Maejic. What Papa had said was so wrong, but what Oleeda said was right.

I didn’t want anything to do with it.

But Xyla had saved my life. I couldn’t just stop communicating with her, could I? Should I? Perhaps I could just make an exception. She did deserve my friendship, after all. Besides, it wouldn’t be for long. Once I explained to her about finding the mages, she’d go her way and I’d go mine. I would continue my journey to find the evidence I needed to save Breyard. And I’d never talk to another animal again.

From what Nevis had told me, I felt I understood why the old carter had lied to the Royal Guardsmen about Breyard stealing the egg: simple fear. His lie certainly hadn’t done him any good, and there was no point now in searching for him. Chances were good he’d died, as did many people who had their tongues cut out. I didn’t have the time to waste to find out for sure.

Nevis had said that the egg had come to his father in a cloth shipment from the merchant Dallon in Hucklow. Obviously, that’s where I needed to go now.

But, I argued with myself, maybe I
should
take Xyla to Crowthorne. No, that would only delay me, and I’d never get to Penwick in time to save Breyard. I must stick to my original plan.

Tomorrow. My body was still too bruised and sore from yesterday’s ordeal. Surely one day’s delay couldn’t hurt.

I got the meditation candles out of my pack and went through the usual routine. It was more difficult than before, probably because fear and panic still swirled around the edges of my consciousness. I found my calm center, but seemed to lack the concentration to hold it for long. Yesterday’s pleasant noises of forest life—the wind, the birds, the trickling water—now conspired to be effective cover for sounds of danger.

I sighed as I blew out the candles.

“That was lovely.”

I looked at Xyla to find her watching me with half-lidded eyes, head propped up on her crossed forefeet. I smiled. “I usually do better than that. Too many distractions.”

“It generates beautiful vibrations. Soothing.”

“Well, I’m glad it felt soothing to someone. Didn’t seem to do me much good.”

I ate some dried meat and fruit for lunch, then checked my shirt, which was sufficiently dry. I shrugged out of my cloak and put the shirt on.

“We move on?” Xyla asked.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “I need to rest today. Tomorrow we’ll try to figure out how you’re going to get to Crowthorne and how I’ll get to Hucklow.”

“Not together?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” I sat next to the small dragon and stroked her while I told her the whole story. “So you see,” I finished, “we need to go our separate ways.”

“I do not see.”

I sighed. How does one go about arguing with a baby dragon? Then I heard a branch break in the distance.

I jumped to my feet in panic.

“Someone comes,” Xyla said, as if I hadn’t already figured that out. I scooped up all my things and stuffed them into the pack as I started to run. I needed to find a hiding place, but how could I do that when I didn’t know where I was or in what direction I was running? Xyla ran alongside me. The trees were too close together for her to fly, but she was as agile as a lizard and had no trouble keeping up. If anything, I probably slowed her down.

“Here,” she said, disappearing into some thick shrubbery off to the right. I followed her, to find a sunken hollow, almost a cave.

I lay there, trying to catch my breath quietly. I should have known the Guardsman would come back after me. It wouldn’t do for him to break his orders. No doubt he had enough woodcraft to follow my trail, too; I hadn’t exactly done anything to hide it.

The sound of footsteps grew closer. Well, if he found me, at least now I had Xyla to protect me. The footsteps stopped right in front of my hiding place. He must’ve known I was here—and I didn’t have anywhere to run.

A throat cleared, followed by, “Donavah?”

My father~

Patience but a little while longer. We have played the game too well to risk throwing all away on a hasty move. The Lyre draws off attention while the Dagger moves into place. A month or two, perhaps three at most, and we shall Secure the Queen’s Heart.

~Your dutiful son

I sucked in my breath. It had to be a trick! But then . . . “Donavah? Miss?”

I scrambled out of my hiding place. “Traz!”

The young kitchen boy turned around to face me with a grin, then yelped and jumped back. I turned around.

Xyla stood behind me, flapping her wings and flicking her tongue, and just as before, she was huge. As I looked at her in awed confusion, she shrank the same way she had after the Guardsman had run away. Then I’d thought it was just my fear that had made her seem so big, but now I could see it was more than that.

“That’s a handy trick,” I said to her, then turned back to Traz. “What are you doing here? How did you find me? And how did you know to look?”

Traz gave me a sheepish look. “Well, to tell the truth, it wasn’t you I was looking for, miss. I was looking for it . . . him . . . her.” He pointed over my shoulder.

“Xyla? Her?”

“Is that what you’ve named her? Pretty.”

“Why were you looking for her?”

He scratched behind his ear and looked at something several yards away, then looked back at me. “Hey, got anything in that pack to eat? I’m starving.”

“I know you’re changing the subject, you rascal. But c’mon and I’ll give you some lunch.”

We found a clearing nearby and sat down—or in Xyla’s case, sprawled—in the warm sun. I dug some dried meat out of my pack, and Traz practically snatched it from my hand.

“How long have you been out here?” I asked in surprise.

“Since this morning,” he said with his mouth full.

“You can’t be all that hungry, then.”

He swallowed before speaking again. “I left before breakfast, you know.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Well, all right then. I don’t suppose you do have much meat on your bones, at that.”

“Not enough to bother with,” Xyla said, making me laugh outright.

Traz looked at me in confusion. “What?”

“Didn’t you hear what she said?” I asked.

“Hear what who said?”

“Xyla, of course.”

He guffawed. “How can I hear her when she doesn’t make any noise? Hey, can I pet her, miss?”

I looked at the dragon as she sunned herself, the light sparkling in every color off her red scales.

“I won’t bite,” she said.

I relayed the message to Traz, and he went into raptures of delight stroking the dragon’s soft skin. Xyla liked it at least as much as he did, and I grinned when she rolled over onto her back so Traz could give her a good belly rub. I handed him a dried apricot, though he didn’t even seem to be aware that he was eating it.

“So, Traz,” I finally broke the companionable silence we’d fallen into. “Why were you looking for Xyla?”

He shook himself out of his reverie, although Xyla swatted his hand when he stopped stroking her. “Umm, because . . . because . . .” His voice trailed off, and he struggled with what to say.

“I’m not going to tell anyone. Just tell me.”

Another long pause, then it all came out in a rush. “Because I wanted to find her and keep her until she’s big enough to fly me away so I can be a bard instead of a kitchen boy and the soldiers are looking for her everywhere, too.”

I sat up straight. “They are? How do you know that?”

He gave me a disgusted look. “I work in the kitchen. We hear everything there. They came back to Roylinn looking for her.”

Why hadn’t I thought of that? Of course they’d want to find her.

Traz glanced at the dragon, who showed no sign of interest in the conversation at all. “They’re offering a reward and everything.”

I suddenly felt deflated and lost. Then it struck me—not
lost
but
found
. “Oh no!” I jumped to my feet and started packing in agitation. “They know she’s here.”

Traz scowled in doubt. “How could they?”

I stopped moving as a feeling of being dirty—filthy—washed over me. I couldn’t tell Traz what had happened. I didn’t even want to admit it to myself. “One of them saw her,” I said, my voice just above a whisper.

“Are you sure?” Traz demanded.

I closed my eyes, trying to gather my scattered thoughts. “Yes. I’m sure.”

“We-ell,” he said in a drawn-out way, “I suppose we could head north. When they questioned him, I guess old Foris told them you’d gone down to the retreat house. If we head north now, we’ll be ahead of them.”

Hope rose, then faded. “Besides, that Guardsman . . . he saw me, too. They must know by now that I’m here.”

“We’ve got to get moving right away, then! They have horses and everything.”

“We? You have to go back.”

“No, I don’t.” His shoulders straightened.

“Yes, you do. I’ll get Xyla away. Two are much more likely to escape than three. And you know what they’ll do if they find her, don’t you?”

He shook his head in denial. “No, they couldn’t. They couldn’t put her to fight in the pits.”

I shuddered at the thought, but my strategy seemed to be working. I needed to lose the boy. “They could, and they would. So you go back to Roylinn and I’ll get her away from here.”

“No.”

I clenched my teeth. “You have to go back. I have to take Xyla someplace safe. There’s no other choice.”

“Yes, there is. I’m going with you, miss.” He lifted his chin, reminding me of Breyard stubbornly resisting doing something Mama or Papa wanted him to do.

“I don’t even know where I’m going, much less how I’ll get there.”

“I know how you’ll get there.”

“You do? How?”

“Easy. With me. I’ll help you.”

“Yeah, right,” I snorted.

He looked indignant. “No, really, I will. Two heads are better than one. If things get dangerous I can help keep watch at night. You can’t go without sleep, you know.” I looked at him through narrowed eyes, and he went on quickly. “I can cook. I can clean. I’ll do anything you say.”

“Go home.”

“Except that.”

We looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“All right. You win.” I didn’t want to admit it to Traz, but the truth was that I instantly felt better for the companionship. “But we’d better start looking for a place to hide for the night. That Guardsman is probably still around somewhere.”

Traz sprang to his feet. “I know the perfect place. Mannat’s Grave.”

“What?” I asked in alarm as I rose, too. “He wasn’t buried around here, was he?” Surely a legendary bard like that would’ve been laid to rest in honour in the capital, not out here in an obscure part of the country. And if he was, I certainly didn’t want to spend a night near his grave.

“Not for real,” Traz said, in a tone that suggested I should’ve known. “That’s just what I call it. You’ll see. C’mon.”

Xyla had dozed off while we argued. I let Traz wake her up as I hoisted my pack. The dragon grumbled something about wasting perfectly good sunshine, but she came along.

Traz led the way. Xyla made a game of slithering in and out of view amongst the trees. After about twenty minutes of walking, Traz ducked between a thick shrub and a large grey boulder. He rummaged around and pulled out a huge pack, at least twice the size of mine.

“What in the world do you have in there?” I asked.

“A little of everything. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to prepare for a journey.”

“I guess so.” He grinned at my sarcastic tone.

He hoisted the pack to his shoulders and took a few stumbling steps. I stopped him mid-stride.

“You might know how to prepare, but you sure don’t know how much you can actually carry.”

“I can carry all this. Don’t you worry, miss.”

“First of all, don’t call me ‘miss.’ Donavah is fine. And secondly, you can’t carry that for long. Let’s split the load a little more evenly.”

He opened his mouth as if to argue, then seemed to change his mind. “All right, but Mannat’s Grave isn’t far from here. We can split the stuff up tonight.”

I agreed and let him lead once again, this time with him moving much more slowly. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before we reached a place that I had to agree was perfect.

A pile of granite boulders made a small hill poking out of the forest floor. Shrubs grew thick all around and even on it. Traz shoved himself and his pack behind an especially heavy clump, and then, almost with a “pop,” he disappeared.

“C’mon.” His voice rang in a muffled sort of way. There must be a cave of some kind, I thought, and I followed him.

Branches snagged at my clothes and pack as I pushed my way through. There was a tiny crack between two boulders, and I wondered how Traz could possibly have squeezed through.

“Down here.” Traz’s voice came up from about knee level.

I bent over and saw that the opening widened near the ground, letting me easily slip into the cave. Light filtered through the boulders overhead, and the ground was dry and springy.

“How did you ever find this spot?”

Traz shrugged his pack off. “I was sitting up top once when some of the other boys came looking for me.” He curled a lip in disdain. “They’re so loud you can hear them coming a mile off. So I hid in the bushes, and that’s where I discovered the entrance. No one else seems to know about it, ’cause they’ve never found me here.”

“Meaning you come here a lot when you’re supposed to be working?” I took off my pack and set it next to his.

He gave me a half-grin. “Well, there’s the poetry I have to make up if I’m going to be a bard.”

I looked at him a moment in curiosity. “How’d you end up in the kitchen at Roylinn, anyway?”

“Mama is a master at the school. She wants me to be a master too, but I’m too young to get into Roylinn yet. So she put me in the kitchen to keep me out of trouble ’til I’m old enough to study.”

I gave him a wry smile. “Doesn’t look like it did much good, does it?”

“Pretty hopeless, I guess, really. Look, I better go get some firewood before it gets dark.”

He left while I stayed behind to perform my afternoon meditation. Xyla was off somewhere, presumably hunting. I set up the candles, surprised by how little they’d burned down. They must have been made from some kind of slow-burning wax.

I cleared my mind and found my calm center. A picture of Traz and Xyla came into my mind. I took a deep breath and tried to expel the image along with the air. But instead, it grew more clear. Traz gave me an impudent grin and winked an eye. Then he stroked Xyla, who rubbed up against him in pleasure. My spirit smiled, and it came to me that I couldn’t abandon either of them now. Whatever was going to happen, it had caught up the three of us together. Accepting this fact made it feel less inevitable and more as if I were in control. When I finished meditating, the thought of traveling on with Traz and Xyla seemed to be the most natural thing in the world.

Later, after we’d eaten and curled up in our cloaks for the night, Traz lay humming to himself. I thought I recognized the melody of Jozzmin’s Lay, but I fell asleep before I could be sure.