Song of the Beast (7 page)

“Well, well. Senai nobles are keeping low company these days. Don't you know you can get crabs from bitches like this?” said the one holding Callia. I didn't have to see the red mark on his wrist to know he was a Dragon Rider, and a very angry or very drunk one, unable to control his inner fire. Orange sparks spit and hissed wherever he held the girl close to him. She whimpered softly. “We'll protect you, Senai. Our sovereign will appreciate that his family's seed is not being dispensed in such unworthy vessels.” Then, with no more thought than plucking a fowl for his supper, the Rider whipped his knife across Callia's throat and shoved her to the ground. Mud spattered her cheek, the eyes that had sparkled with so much life fixed in terrified surprise.

“Bastards!” I cried in my useless, croaking whisper. But outrage produced no magical surge of strength to prevent my ending ignominiously with my own face in the mud. While they wrenched my arms behind me and locked manacles on my wrists, black despair descended into my soul. If it had been in my power to will my heart to stop beating, I would have done it ... especially if I could have taken every villainous Ridemark warrior with me.

“Didn't teach you well enough, did we?” said the murderer, wiping his bloody knife on my cheek. “We'll tell Goryx not to be so dainty with you this time.” With heavy boots and the dragon whips they carried at their belts, he and his companion proceeded to give me a taste of what they had in mind. But they had no more than gotten started when they abruptly stopped again.

Shouts and heavy blows continued, but they had little to do with me, for which I was immensely grateful. My bonds made movement impossible, even if I'd had the strength to try or the fortitude to ignore the fresh indignities that had been laid over my already battered self. I was barely lucid enough to keep myself from drowning in the mud. But the proceedings were very odd. The Elhim could not be putting up such a fight as I heard. Somehow in my groggy confusion I envisioned an irritated Callia standing up in her green satin, the blood trickling down the front of it from her gaping throat, and throwing the heavy bodies into the river with a resounding splash. Or perhaps the splash was my face falling into the mud as I slipped into insensibility.

 

I didn't want to open my eyes. The terror that I would see nothing but darkness was so absolute as to allow no other thought to pass through my mind. In the same way I dared not move lest I feel the damp straw, or the manacles about my wrists and ankles, or the iron walls so close about me that I could touch all four plus ceiling and floor at once. I dared not breathe lest I smell the stink of my fear and the foulness of my den of living death. Desperately I fought to stay on the far side of the boundary between sleep and waking. Better not ever to wake up. Better not to know.

“... not yet ready for visitors. But I thought you ought to see ...” The whisper came from the waking side, but learning who it was meant opening my eyes.

“By the Seven!” Vaguely familiar, that shocked, angry voice. “They'll pay for this. Do what you can. As soon as he's fit to talk, send for me.”

Clothing rustled and footsteps receded—furious footsteps on wood floors—then water dribbled close by my ear. Warm wetness on my naked back, stinging at first ... then soothing ... and on my face and my arms. Mumbled cursing as the gentle ministrations touched my hands. Sometime in between I was rolled onto my back, a position I could not bear after seventeen years of constant lashings. When I heard a dismal moan and concluded it was my own, the invisible spirit crooned comfort—a spirit that, from the sound of it, was surely embodied in an elderly gentleman.

“Only a moment, laddie; then we'll have you over again. I can see it would pain you. Let me get you cleaned up and make sure we've left nothing untended; then we'll send you off to sleep away your hurts.”

My eyelids were still too heavy to open and became more so once a spoonful of something sticky-sweet slid down my throat. So I let myself continue the dream that rather than fouled straw, I lay on cool, clean linen sheets, and not on a stone floor, but on pillows as soft and embracing as a new bride. And I dreamed that it was not Goryx, but a gentleman minister of Tjasse, the goddess of love, who tended my wretched body.

 

Moonlight teased at my eyelids, peeking through a tall window beside the bed. By the way my limbs were tangled in the pillows and the way my stomach rumbled in hollow annoyance, I surmised that this night was not the same as the one on which I'd been brought to this delightful place. A candle gleamed softly from a silver holder sitting on a carved wood mantelpiece. The light revealed a large bedchamber furnished with comfort and elegance to match the delicious bed. Across an expanse of shining wood floor, a white-haired gentleman sat in a cushioned chair, snoring softly, his head resting on his hand.

I shifted my position carefully in preparation for sitting up, pleased to feel a noticeable improvement in my overall well-being. I was attired in a fine linen nightshirt, loose at the neck, no sign anywhere of the torn and muddy clothing I'd been wearing by the riverside.

About the time my legs dangled off the edge of the bed, the gentleman woke with a jerk and promptly knocked off his spectacles. “Bother,” he mumbled as he picked them out of his lap, gave them a wipe with a handkerchief clutched in his left hand as if left there for exactly such a purpose, jammed them back on his nose, and looked up to find me watching him. “Oh! I say ... good. Good, good, good. How are you then?”

“Better,” I said, managing to get the word out without my stupid stammering, though my voice was still hoarse and harsh, scarcely more than a whisper. The sound clearly bothered him, for he jumped up, grabbed a flat wooden stick from a tray of physician's implements, and stuck it down my throat to take a look, setting off my lingering cough. Then he felt around my neck with his fingers and peered at me closely.

“They didn't ... cut you ... damage your throat on purpose when they did these other things?” His lip curled as he said it.

I shook my head, a cold sweat rippling over my skin. Such mutilation had been a looming horror in the darkness, and, practically speaking, if someone wanted me silent, it would have been far simpler than what they'd done. But Goryx always said that if he damaged my throat, I could not demonstrate my obedience sufficiently. Of course, by the end it didn't matter.

“There's some redness, a little swelling. This cough most likely. I've given you something for that. But this other ... the sound of it ...” Without knowing more, I wasn't going to help him. He peered over the top of his spectacles. “Lack of use. That's it, isn't it? They've had you locked up and forced you silent. He said something about that.”

I acknowledged his guess, though it seemed based on real information and not just insight, like the Elhim. The Elhim ... The physician was certainly not one of the strange pale race, but I wondered. “Narim?” I said.

“What's that?” The old man poured red wine from a crystal decanter and handed me the glass.

“Do you know Narim?”

“I know no one by that name. Was it the girl? A girl was found dead beside you.”

I ignored his question and gazed at the wineglass, envisioning Callia's face as she relished her wine, just like she relished everything her impoverished life had brought her.

“You knew the poor dead girl?” He spoke respectfully. Didn't call her a whore, though it had been written all over her for anyone to see.

“She was my kind rescuer. As are you. Thank you.” I raised the glass to him ... and to Callia ... and drank deep, promising myself that her short life would not be forgotten.

“It's my pleasure. You—Well, clothes are laid out for you when you're feeling up to it. Washing things on the dresser. I'll arrange for dinner to be sent. My master is most anxious to speak with you, but I'm insisting you take things slowly, so we'll hold him off awhile yet.”

I cupped my hands to my chest and bowed my head in appreciation, noting how when his eyes flicked to my hands, his mouth hardened into a grim line. “Gentle Roelan, preserve us,” he mumbled as he left the room. He knew who I was.

I was tempted to follow him out the door and discover who was his master, my benefactor. But the bed was far too comfortable. I drained the wineglass, set it on the physician's tray, and sprawled out on my stomach once again.

 

Fine smells ... roasting fowl ... hot bread ...
My eyes blinked open. A covered silver tray sat beside the bed exuding fragrances that made my stomach do back flips. The candle on the mantelpiece had burned down a third of its length. An hour had passed. Though my physician friend was gone, I didn't think I needed to wait for him. With a glutton's delight, I plunged into the tender roast fowl, stewed apples, delicate cheeses and pastries.

The decanter of wine had been refilled, and I required a good measure of it as I awkwardly coaxed a silver razor to scrape two days' growth from my face. When I'd last looked in a glass, I had been twenty-one, impossibly healthy, and filled with the unutterable joy of spending my life doing what I loved most. I had been immeasurably graced by the gods, and everyone had always said they could see it in my face. Now I was thirty-eight or thereabouts and had touches of gray in my hair and the reflection of Mazadine in my eyes. It was a dead man who looked back at me.

Lacking a dead man's luxury of immobility, I donned the simple full-sleeved shirt of dark blue, the black breeches and hose, and the good boots that had been left on a chair. All were exactly my size except for the breeches, which had to be belted in considerably to accommodate the lack of meat on my frame. I'd probably lost a third of my weight in prison.

Only after I'd poured another glass of wine and sat in the physician's chair by the cold hearth did I notice the harp that lay on a round table next to the door—a small harp, just the size I had carried when I traveled, its polished rosewood frame glowing richly in the candlelight. I moved over to stand beside the moonlit window—as far from the harp as I could get—and tried to ignore the resounding silence that was in the place where my heart used to be. It was perhaps not a good time for my cousin, the king of Elyria, to walk into the room.

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.”