The Forging of the Dragon (Wizard and Dragon Book 1) (28 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

HERO AND HUSBAND

As they shuffled forward along the icy road, Seagryn heard the noises of a celebration not far ahead. He heard clearly the babble of many private conversations, and the slogging of feet through mud that might have indicated preparations for battle, had that noise not been tempered by the laughter apparent in so many voices. He glanced worriedly at Berillitha and saw that she too had heard. But why should she be concerned, Seagryn reminded himself. The young female didn’t know enough about people to realize that such sounds were not to be expected on a wintry day near the northern boundary of Lamath. Seagryn turned his head to one side and peered into the distance with one huge eye. But tugolith eyes were made for short-range seeing, so he could really tell nothing. So, as he’d done several times already on their journey south, he took his human shape to verify with his better eyes what his better ears had already told him.

He knew then exactly what it was, and why it was happening. He stopped walking. Berillitha halted too, and looked at him expectantly. He changed back — it was just so much easier for him to address her when they stood shoulder to shoulder.

“That is a reviewing stand,” he explained carefully, and when she still frowned, he added, “Important people stand on top of it.”

Berillitha didn’t yet comprehend. All tugoliths were important. All pairs, at least. Seagryn sighed and looked back down the road. It appeared now that even his tugolith vision could make out the wooden scaffold, a dark silhouette against a dismal gray sky. It was cold here, but not as cold as his altershape would have liked; while there had obviously been snow on the ground, it had already thawed into brown mush. This was not the place he would have picked for his own homecoming celebration, but he realized that had never been his choice in any case. “Dark,” he murmured. “Dark’s there.”

“It is day. The dark comes later,” Berillitha said patiently. In their travels together she’d apparently not grown weary of stating what seemed to her obvious and then being corrected by him. Indeed, she seemed almost to enjoy it, as if his every comment was a wonderful new mystery and she was determined not to let a single one slip by unsolved.

“No, I mean Dark the prophet. It is his name.” Seagryn looked back at her, and saw her smiling serenely. She was, certainly, one of the sweetest persons he had ever known. “But what am I going to do with you here?” he murmured. He shook his immense head, then turned to shuffle forward again, Berillitha following faithfully.

He had tried his best to send her back. He had searched his mind for simple language to explain how unkindly men might treat her. But while she listened with unbroken attention to his every word, nothing he said to discourage her seemed to penetrate her armor-plated skull.

And so, Seagryn had brought a tugolith home, just as he’d promised. But he had no intention of turning her over to the magical mutations of the poisonous Sheth. What Seagryn would do with Berillitha, only time would tell — or rather, Dark would.

Someone ran toward them. Seagryn saw without surprise it was the prophet himself, running with a kind of blanket held before him. Seagryn took his human-form to meet him. “Why the blanket?” he asked.

“For you,” Dark grunted as he sprinted the last few steps to throw the coverlet around Seagryn’s shoulders. The lad clung to the wizard for support, breathing hard to catch his breath before explaining, “Your father-in-law, your lovely bride, Paumer, Uda, and a host of the faithful are waiting back there to welcome you,” he puffed. “You can’t very well greet them naked.”

“I dreamed this,” Seagryn murmured quietly, and the sense of humiliation and rejection recalled from that night was held over him as if he’d just dreamed it again. “I don’t want to see these people! Why did you bring them here?” he demanded savagely.

“Why do I do anything I do?” Dark shrugged and nodded past Seagryn to Berillitha, who watched this exchange with open-minded curiosity. “So this is she.”

“She who?” Seagryn snarled.

“The tugolith you brought back.”

“I didn’t bring Berillitha back with me; she followed me here against my wishes!”

“Of course.” Dark nodded.

“She’s not for Paumer and Sheth to play with, regardless of how things might appear! I’ve changed my mind, Dark. I’ve changed my spirit. I’m the Wiser to these creatures, and the Power has given me responsibility for them!”

Dark was nodding his head agreeably through all of this. When Seagryn slowed down, the boy waved his hand and smiled slightly. “Ah — you don’t have to tell me any of this, you realize ...”

“I do have to tell you — you and all of them down there waiting! I cannot in good conscience keep the agreement as stated! Berillitha will not be a part of any dragon!”

Still Dark nodded, smiling both at Seagryn and at Berillitha. “Of course. Of course,” he mumbled.

“You do understand me, don’t you Dark?” Seagryn said, and now a hint of pleading had crept into his emphatic self-defense. “Tell me you understand.”

Dark clenched his jaw, wrestling with his own internal dilemma. “I understand you perfectly, friend Seagryn, far better than you’ll ever understand me. I understand that you would like to disappear from this place right now and go to live someone else’s life in a different age. I’d like that, too. But I also understand that we’re soon going to have to turn around and walk down to that reviewing stand and continue on with what awaits us there. If it’s any help at all to know that someone else feels as you do, then know it. But you’re a hero, Seagryn — they’re waiting on you. And heroes are helpless to be anything else. The public won’t allow it.”

Dark stepped past Seagryn then and walked toward Berillitha, who regarded his approach calmly. “You are welcome here,” he told the tugolith. Then he waved at them both and walked back down the road toward the watching crowd.

When the distant figure of Seagryn and his huge companion began moving toward them again, the assembled host began to cheer. Seagryn wrapped the so-called cloak tightly around his shoulders and marched forward, eager now just to have it over. All his life he’d sought such acclaim. But in the last few months, he’d had enough — first from the Haranians for slaughtering their enemies, then from the tugoliths for leading them to food. Now his own people cheered him, but for what? For his participation in a despicable conspiracy.

Of course, they didn’t know that. And as he glanced up the line of shouting faces to either side of him, it occurred to Seagryn that they could know. He could reveal the duplicity of their leaders here and now and proclaim Lamath’s need for a new, honest Ruling Council. The closer he came to the reviewing stand, the more his conviction grew, and he had almost convinced himself he would do it when he saw Elaryl.

She was smiling ... at him. And he knew then what Dark had doubtless known back there on the road during his harangue. He would not expose anyone, nor accuse anyone, nor refuse anyone. This was his real life — here, with her — not the adventures of a dashing wizard, nor the noble acts of a Wiser. He was Seagryn, a cleric of Lamath. And he was about to be restored.

Ranoth and Talarath themselves met him at the bottom of the stairway, and they each took an elbow and led him up onto the grandstand to receive the ovation of the well-bundled host. Where they had managed to find such a throng, Seagryn couldn’t imagine, until he remembered that he’d chosen to come this direction because there was a logging community located not far away, as well as a rather hardy brotherhood of monastics.

But apart from that first glance, Seagryn didn’t look much at the crowd. Elaryl drew his gaze back to her and held it, her bright eyes sparkling with an implicit invitation. He saw no hint of that imperious priestess of the unnamed One who had scorned him in his dream and sent him cowering to the earth. This was Elaryl — of stolen conversations in the library stacks and pecks upon the cheek in the alcoves.

Ranoth made a speech explaining that a great injustice had been done and requesting all Lamath to give attention to the events of this day. Another of the Ruling Council, a teacher Seagryn had known and loved for years, gave a stirring account of Seagryn’s academic brilliance and honest spirituality. Then Elaryl stepped up to him, her eyes still locked into his. “I told you I could forgive you anything,” she whispered. “It took a while, but — I do.” Then she turned to face the crowd and, much to Seagryn’s surprise, began a speech of her own.

“This man — my hero and my husband! — has been falsely accused! I, myself, even doubted! But he has been engaged in a great act of self-sacrifice with far-reaching consequences, not only for Lamath but for all the fragments of the old One Land. The dreadful acts he appeared to commit were but illusions to entrap those who attack us! As his wife, I plead for his forgiveness before the One we do not name.” Her words were greeted with the most heartfelt cheers of the day, for Elaryl was truly beautiful and commanded the full attention of male and female alike. When she threw her arms around Seagryn’s neck and kissed him passionately there under the open sky, who could deny that she’d spoken the truth, or refuse to receive her message?

Who — except Seagryn! For it was a lie. He kissed her back, certainly, and when they broke away he managed to smile weakly down into the throng, who interpreted that faint grin as they chose and laughed lustily. There was that in it, Seagryn thought. But there was more. Somehow he saw his scruples being trampled under by a stampeding herd of compromises and he felt himself powerless to turn them away. His eyes drifted down to the ground just below the grandstand and met the gaze of a very confused tugolith. Berillitha looked more than just puzzled, however. The young female looked angry.

“Oh, dear,” he mumbled.

“What?” Elaryl asked out of the side of her mouth, while managing to maintain undimmed her radiant smile.

“You’ll see later on,” he answered, and she merely nodded, for Talarath had stepped to the front of the platform and the crowd was quieting to listen.

“This man,” he began hesitantly, “was in the midst of binding feet with my daughter when he was — called away.” Talarath cleared his throat before going on. “That sacrament has not been dissolved — that binding has not been revoked. By the Name we do not speak, I declare them bonded — and I also declare this ceremony at an end!”

The wind had picked up, bringing with it an increased chill, and no one would argue that the event should be extended any longer. Seagryn and Elaryl were hustled to the bottom of the steps. There they were met by a group of monks bearing a litter, completely enclosed in turquoise fish-satin. Elaryl jumped in quickly, but Seagryn paused. Berillitha had been given a wide berth as she’d made her way to the litter, and she now stood beside it, watching Seagryn somberly. He had no words to say.

Elaryl popped her head back out of the curtains and frowned, first at the beast, then back at Seagryn. “What does it want?” she asked.

“To be with me.” He spoke quietly, staring into one of the tugolith’s troubled eyes.

“Well I’m sorry,” Elaryl huffed, and she ducked back inside the litter.

“I’m very much afraid you will be,” he muttered under his breath, crawling in after her.

As the litter bearers hoisted them up and marched off through the mushy snow, Berillitha called out. “What is this?”

“Just a little trip, Berillitha. I am safe,” he shouted back. Elaryl frowned at him. “It’s — she’s very protective of me,” he explained.

“
She
is?” his wife asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Yes — it’s a she,” he replied firmly. “I assumed Dark had already told you that.” He recognized Elaryl’s mood. She was deciding whether or not to be displeased.

“This boy who claims to be Dark — he also says he’s now your best friend. Is that true?”

Seagryn reflected quickly over the crowded weeks since last he’d seen Elaryl. He longed to pull her directly into his mind and show her all his experiences without having to recount them one by one. He was different, he knew — and she would wonder why. He wanted to make her understand what all of it had meant to him. But this was no time to begin that tale, so he simply shrugged and said, “Yes.”

“He is. Well, I’m sorry to say I’ve found him difficult to appreciate. His — gift — can be most annoying.”

“Indeed it can, my lady. Most annoying.”

She smiled at that, appearing a bit relieved. “Although, I must say I prefer him as a friend to that beast out there!”

Seagryn smiled stiffly. “Please speak a little more quietly, my darling. Tugoliths have marvelous ears.”

Elaryl’s eyebrows pinched together in aggravation. “Afraid of hurting her feelings?” she asked, if anything raising her volume.

“Just ... cautious,” Seagryn answered softly, and he changed the subject. “You’ve told me what you think of Dark. What about Paumer and his daughter?”

“Oh!” Elaryl groaned. “I’ve never met a ruder child in my life! She and Dark deserve each other!”

“I rather think he deserves something better,” Seagryn mumbled, but Elaryl didn’t hear him.

“I don’t really know much about her father. He spends most of his time in secretive discussion with the Ruling Council, which seems — odd.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“Still, he’s a very charming man ...”