WYVERN (6 page)

Donal saw her and waved, disappearing over the side of the roof and remerging around the corner. "Welcome back, lass," he said with a smile. "How's Angus?"

"Well enough to annoy Ireni." She eyed the roof. "What happened to your thatch?"

He shrugged. "Bit of a mishap with me hearth. Nothing a little more long straw can't fix." He laughed at her sigh of relief. "Worried about the lizard, eh? You needn't. He's been behaving himself."

As before, they stabled Tater and stored the cart. Donal pointed to her clothing, an ensemble of long tunic and trousers in homespun brown. "You'll have a hard time getting up the cliffs by way of the shortcut. That scrub vine will tear you to ribbons without your armor."

Elsbeth adjusted the pack on her shoulders. The dragon armor had been useful, but it was hot, and she didn't miss wearing it. "I'll take the long way this time. The climb is steeper but clear, and the wyvern gave no set time for my arrival."

She promised Donal she'd be careful and set out for the cliffs well before noon. A light breeze, smelling of hay and wildflowers, blew off the stretch of fields before her, swirling dust clouds on the road in its wake. In the distance, the low chorus of cattle lowing accompanied the buzz of insects. Maldoza, sparkling in the sun, cast its pointed shadow over pastureland, a reminder of things darker and more mysterious than Byder county's peaceful countryside. Elsbeth wondered if the wyvern watched her from the sanctuary of one of the caves. She hoped so. It would know she honored her part of the bargain.

While it might take her longer to reach her destination, the low path winding up the cliffs was clear of the vicious scrub vine. Elsbeth had only taken a few steps before a rush of air buffeted her back, and the sun cooled. She turned and nearly jumped out of her skin at the wyvern looming over her, folding giant wings against its back.

In full sun, the beast was even more imposing. Scales that had shown black beneath the moon's luminescence were crimson in daylight. They flexed over massive, rippling muscle like a tapestry of rubies. Its underbelly and neck were mottled gray, streaked with blues, pale yellows and pinks. The colors deepened or faded with the changing light. Elsbeth's curiosity overrode her surprise. Camouflage. Like a lizard, the wyvern's skin changed, adjusting with the play of light so that it blended with sky and clouds as it flew. Anyone looking up might see it only as a fast-moving drift of clouds or a trick of the eye.

"Mistress Weaver," it said, and a murder of crows burst from a nearby withered tree, startled to flight by the resounding voice. "You've kept your end of the bargain. Does this mean you trust me not to devour you?"

Prior to her first meeting with the wyvern, Elsbeth didn't think such a creature capable of amusement, but humor laced its question, and she responded in kind.

"I trust that you want a fiddler to play for you more than a meal to eat. I can't play if you're chewing on me."

The armored skin around the wyvern's muzzled tightened, stretched back. Silver eyes, rimmed in black, grew darker, and streams of smoke swirled out its nostrils on a deep huff of what sounded like laughter.

"Well said. I shall enjoy your company, mistress, and your conversation." It lowered its head, drawing close enough so that Elsbeth could see her reflection in the elliptical pupils. "If you could touch the sun, would you?"

She stared at the wyvern, baffled by the question. "Forgive me. I don't understand you."

"You can walk up the cliff paths. By the time you reach our meeting place, the sun will have set, and you'll be thirsty and tired. I can fly you there in a matter of minutes."

Elsbeth's eyes widened. Fly? On the back of a wyvern?

"It would be a very short trip, and I'll fly slowly. You can use the down scales on my neck to hold on." The wyvern blinked once, twice, pinning her in place with a silver-coin stare. "Or, if you're afraid, you can go the hard way." She stiffened at the faint challenge in his words. "Your choice."

What a tale fantastic to tell--one among many she was quickly gathering to her. Elsbeth, the rug weaver who flew with a wyvern and played it a tune or two on her father's fiddle. She might plunge to her death on the way to the cliffs, but oh what a way to die. To do something no living man or woman of her acquaintance had ever done--fly like a bird--it was too amazing to refuse. Exhilaration and no little fear surged through her veins in a heady mix.

"You won't drop me?"

The wyvern's stance changed, straightening. It looked down at her from its impressive height with an equal measure of affront and approval. "No, I won't drop you."

Elsbeth inhaled, belted the pack more tightly around her waist and swallowed to fight down the butterflies fluttering madly in her belly. "Never let it be said I'm a coward."

Again that reverberating huff of laughter. The wyvern lowered its head and stretched out its neck, an invitation for her to mount. "I think only a fool would say such a thing about you, Elsbeth Weaver."

She had never been so deliciously frightened in her life. The wyvern was true to its word, flying slow, if not low, over the fields ringing Maldoza. Elsbeth sat in front of the wyvern's wings and clutched the softer down scales for purchase. Wind whistled past her ears, lifting her braid so that it whipped behind her. The tip snapped against one of the great wings that beat the air in powerful rhythm. The wyvern's neck flexed beneath her legs as they veered away from the cliffs, soaring higher into the sky. Below them, Byder county, mundane, bound by the seasons of planting and harvest, took on a magical appearance. Fields and pastureland spread out in a patchwork quilt of green and gold. Small herds of cattle and sheep grazed peacefully, undisturbed by the great predator flying past them in the summer haze.

They finally landed on a plateau crowning one of the escarpments jutting from the cliffs. Elsbeth slid off the wyvern's neck to stand on shaking legs. She grinned when it swiveled its enormous head and regarded her with an unblinking stare.

"That was the most frightening and wonderful thing I've ever done," she said, and laughed.

"Is it?" The wyvern folded its wings. "I'd think walking the paths of Maldoza at night to confront me would be your most frightening moment."

"My second most frightening experience then, and one I'm glad I had." Elsbeth smiled at the wyvern. "Thank you..."

What was its name? During their negotiations, she'd never thought to ask its name. She didn't even know if it was male or female. Elsbeth blushed, feeling unaccountably rude. The wyvern might be helping itself to valuable livestock and angering towns and villages for miles, but it had been courteous to her in every way.

She raised her palms in a supplicant gesture. "Forgive me, I don't know your..."

A certain tension rose between them. Elsbeth held her breath, waiting for something she couldn't name but knew would once again alter her view of this fascinating creature.

"Names," it said in a gruff voice, "have great power. They pin a spirit to earth, give it form and weight. Make it beloved or hated, remembered or reviled." The silver eyes turned nearly black. "My given name means 'kingly' and is too difficult for the human tongue to pronounce. You may call me Alaric."

The bottom dropped out of her stomach, and she gasped. The memory of storm-cloud eyes soft with laughter filled her mind. Her Alaric had been a bard not a king, but there had always been something noble in his bearing, something powerful in the way he moved and how he measured a person with a penetrating gaze. Elsbeth smiled, despite the ache in her chest, a longing never lessened over the years. It was fitting somehow that he and this extraordinary creature bore the same name.

The wyvern watched her in silence for a moment. Thin streamers of smoke drifted from its nostrils. "A name not unknown to you, I see." The crimson scales along his back rose in a spiky ridge, much like a cat bristling its fur in warning. "Beloved or reviled?"

His reaction puzzled her. Elsbeth knew nothing of wyvern behavior save what she'd learned in the few hours spent in this one's company, but her instincts warned her answer to his question was crucial, even pivotal to how they might deal with each other over the next three weeks. The stiff scales rose higher at her hesitation, spreading to the ones behind his ears until they created a flared mane.

Alaric repeated the question, his words making the ground tremble beneath her. "Beloved or reviled?"

"Beloved," she said, "and never forgotten." Her smile was rueful. "I sometimes play for him, though he does not hear."

Alaric's raised scales smoothed down, and his eyes were again silver. "Are you sure? Mayhap he hears your music in dreams."

Elsbeth shrugged. "Mayhap, if he's still alive." This strange conversation made her uncomfortable, though she couldn't explain why. She changed the subject.

"Is this where we'll stay?" She waved an arm over the plateau and the patchwork fields below them.

"No. Only dragons are vain enough to make themselves open targets by basking on an upland perch. Not a few have found themselves made into suits of armor because of it."

The bony ridge above one of Alaric's eyes rose, and Elsbeth blushed.

"I've a lair deep in the cliffs. Difficult to find if you don't know the way, but you'll find every comfort there for your stay with me."

Elsbeth had her doubts. She'd explored a few caves in her lifetime. Some were dry, most were damp and covered in fungus. All were dark and usually decorated in bat guano. She prayed Alaric's idea of comfort matched her own, and she didn't have to spend three weeks in some dank, foul-smelling pit.

The hiss of scales rubbing together whispered in her ears as Alaric coiled his long tail around her. It slid against her calf, almost a caress in its slow glide.

"Trust me, Elsbeth. You'll be pleasantly surprised."

If anyone asked her why, she couldn't have given them a satisfactory answer, but Elsbeth did trust the wyvern. Alaric was a menacing combination of belching fire, monstrous black claws and teeth like sword blades. Until her meeting with him, he'd terrorized Byderside and Durnsdale, stealing cattle, killing knights and burning down barns. Still, she no longer found it difficult to reconcile the image with that of the courteous, often humorous creature before her. Maybe he was right. Names had power. His had certainly affected her view of him. Alaric, the wyvern, reminded her of Alaric, the man and erstwhile lover. And with that comparison came a measure of reassurance.

She laid a tentative hand against the wyvern's glossy neck, fascinated by the heated smoothness beneath her palm and the paleness of her skin against the burnished scales. A great shiver rippled from Alaric's neck to his tail.

"I trust you, though you'll have to watch that I don't wander off and lose my way."

"Don't worry, Elsbeth. I'll not lose you." Alaric's silver eyes went black. "Never again."

His answer confused her, made her wonder.

Elsbeth sat cross-legged in front of the wyvern with her fiddle resting on her lap. The glow of warm light from an unseen source surrounded them in the large cave where her host made his home. "Tell me more of these beasts you hunt in your homeland, the ones who wander in herds and have noses that swing and curl and can pick up trees." She tuned the strings on her fret board and gave Alaric a doubtful look. "Though I think you tease me with such tales, Master Alaric."

Alaric lay on his belly, tail wrapped tightly around him so that his head rested on the coils. A treasure, beyond anything in a king's treasure house surrounded him. Gold coins were heaped in mounds and spilled across the cave floor in glittering streams. Rubies, sapphires, and emeralds--jewels of every type--reflected colored fire that danced across the walls. Wyverns weren't dragons, he'd told her, but they shared an obsession for treasure and keeping it close.

"I, a wyvern, tell tales of fantastical beasts?" He watched her tune the fiddle. Smoke streamed from his nose.

"Good point. Why one such as you might make up stories about fabled creatures makes little sense." She smiled. "You could just as easily talk about yourself."

After two weeks in her host's company, she'd learned to read a few of his expressions. In some ways they were almost human. The bony ridge above his eyes rose, much as a person's eyebrows, when he was doubtful or surprised. When he smiled, his silver eyes narrowed at the corners, and his scaled cheeks tightened. Elsbeth liked it best when he laughed. It came from deep in his chest, a low vibration like a giant cat's purr. Never loud or grating, his laughter thrummed the ground beneath her, and she often found herself laughing with him. Only the glimmer of razor teeth sometimes made her uneasy.

He was intelligent, humorous and appreciative of her music. Elsbeth never grew tired of stories involving his travels. Nomadic by nature, Alaric had traveled the world and seen things Elsbeth could only begin to imagine. Listening to him tell of far, exotic lands with their great temples and ancient rituals made her sigh with longing. What would it be like, she wondered, to see the whole world and experience its riches? Were it not for Angus's failing health and her fear she might not return to him before he died, Elsbeth would greatly enjoy her time with the wyvern.

"Were I a dragon, I'd fill your ears with every vanity imaginable. From my esteemed bloodlines, to the mates I've taken, the offspring I've sired, the knights I've killed and the treasure I've hoarded." Alaric shrugged, causing his wings to lift. "Wyverns boast enough, but for dragons, it is high art."

One of his statements pricked her curiosity. "When I first met you, I assumed you were a dragon. We all did. What makes a wyvern different?"

"Many things." He flexed his wings. "For one, we are much larger and faster flyers." His tail uncoiled. "Dragons have four legs. We have two, but our tails are longer, more useful." He sniffed in disdain. "And we are far more intelligent."

He scraped the floor with one curved claw. "That armor you wore came off an adolescent dragon. Most that die in confrontations with men are. Older dragons, and wyverns for that matter, know how to hide, use their magic for defense or are formidable fighters. A feeble human male is no match."