The room itself was longer than our hut had been back in the village. It was mostly a bedroom, but there was another small door that, when I opened revealed a marble washing room, with even a hand cistern and an old terracotta jug with some very dried out and dead flowers in it.
And in the corner, a standing mirror.
We Souda had mirrors of course – the small pocket ones that some of the village had traded for from the passing caravans. But mirrors weren’t such an obsession for us as they seemed to be for the people of the Midmost Lands. If we wanted to look nice for a village festivity, then we would borrow those small hand mirrors or – much more likely, we would get ready in our little groups. The lakes would provide reflections, and our friends would help us braid and decorate our hair.
So, it was weird seeing myself in the mirror now – and seeing just how much I had changed.
I was taller, for a start. Taller than four years ago, anyway. And I looked, I had to confess, shabby. My mining slave uniform could barely be called clothes, my hair was tangled in knots and there was a layer of grime under my nails. I growled in frustration.
Mirrors only make you feel bad, I told myself, as I pulled some water and did my best to wash out some of the mine dust that still clung to me, despite the few days that I had spent away from it. When I was done, my feet returned unbidden to the mirror to look again, despite knowing that it was a bad idea.
I looked older; I guess that was the most startling change in me. It was strange to see a young woman looking back, and not the girl that I had been when I had been captured – just after my Testing. I congratulated myself on the athletic, lean and wiry strength that I had, but as I looked, I saw that there was something else that was new – a harder light in my eyes. Gone was the carefree expressions of my youth.
And of course, then there was my collection of brands, the four heavy brown marks that swept up one of my arms. Only room for one more– which would be my last, according to Dagan’s self-made law.
“Never be ashamed of scars,” Ymmen roared into my mind again, and for a moment I imagined seeing, in my mind’s eye at least, a small spar of orange flame behind my own eyes. It was good to feel the dragon there, so close. In that unconscious sense that we had together, I could feel that he wasn’t flying anymore – that he had landed somewhere nearby on the dark slopes, and that Tamin was with him as they waited.
“Scars are battles you fought and survived. And surviving is winning,” he said.
“You’re getting wiser and wiser.” I gave a wry smile at the mirror, and at the dragon within my mind. And, it was getting easier to understand him, I thought.
“Always like this. Friendship starts slow. Builds closer,” Ymmen said, and my mind could translate that when he said ‘friendship’ he also meant ‘bonds’.
“You know a lot about this bonding,” I said as I turned back from the mirror with a sigh, to tie my hair back in a simple knot and return to the main room. I’d had enough of preening in a mirror, thank you very much!
And then Ymmen did a curious thing in my mind. A wave of the normal impressions of heat and winds and soot and Frankincense – and then it pulled back, before returning. Almost like a dragon version of a stutter.
“Ymmen?” I prodded him.
Ymmen’s presence remained fluttering, before it returned to my mind in full force. “When are you leaving that evil place!” he demanded, and I could hear the growl in his voice.
I have been in here far longer than I intended, I agreed sadly. “I can’t,” I whisper-thought at him as I looked around my new rooms. There was a wide bed, more of those ridiculously low and flimsy tables, along with some more sturdy chests. On investigation, these were filled with blankets, and I took out the whole lot and threw them on the bed. It was going to be strange to be sleeping in comfort, as well!
But then I crossed to the singular window to open the shutters wide, revealing the glass archway behind. There was a pole sitting on the bottom sill with a strange brass-like hook attachment, and I realized that was for opening the top sections of these windows. I did so, letting the cool and fresh night breeze in immediately.
“Skreeeee!” I heard a high-pitched, thin whistling note of a sound from the dark, and knew it was Ymmen calling. I gave a long and high whistle back.
“You should return to the cave,” I murmured aloud, knowing that the dragon would be able to hear my words in his thoughts as well as with his super-sensitive hearing. “No sense in you and Uncle freezing out there tonight.” I thought about what Abioye said. It was too dangerous to continue with my plan now – but what about in the gloom of pre-dawn? Maybe I would try again, sneaking out to get the scepter?
“Not leaving,” Ymmen said strongly – even defiantly. “You are in danger,” he added with a mental hiss. Well, there was nothing new about that, I thought pragmatically. I tried to think of a way to convince him that everything was going to be quiet, at least until pre-morning.
“No. You are in danger. I can sense it,” Ymmen said, and in my mind there flickered the dragon’s sense-image of Dagan Mar, and it was knotted up with anger and outrage and pain. For a moment my mind stumbled – where was he getting this image from? Ymmen had never even met Dagan as far as I knew, had he?
“Dragons see the songs. We hear the songs,” Ymmen said quixotically. I wondered then, if he had plucked those impressions of Dagan out of my mind? “I am always with you, Narissea. As you challenged the little limping man,” the dragon explained. “Dragons know fire. We know anger. That human’s anger is vile and will not stop.”
I wondered then at the sharpness of a dragon’s senses – that somehow Ymmen could see different sorts of anger and emotion – and thoughts? – as I might be able to read different tracks of the animals that I had learned how to hunt? But whatever – Ymmen was absolutely right that Dagan was still abroad, and would always be a danger.
“We are not leaving. Not while that human is close,” Ymmen said, and the tone in his voice made me see that there really could be no arguing with him at all.
“Okay, wyrm,” I said in a softer voice. I didn’t know why I thought of that word, but it suddenly felt right – a fitting affectionate almost-insult.
“Hsssss!” He lashed his tail in my mind and withdrew, but I could feel that he wasn’t really angry.
And as for myself – I crept onto the large bed, surrounded myself with blankets, and had to admit that it felt good to know that there was an adult Bull dragon out there in the night, and that he would be watching over me from far away.
Chapter 23
Sacrifice
“Awaken, Narissea, awaken!” Ymmen’s words tore through my panicked dreams, which had been full of tight, underground places and ice.
“What is it?” I gasped, my hand already finding the handle of the Lady Artifex’s knife where I had kept it close under the blankets. I didn’t need to ask as I heard a rattle at the door, and the handle starting to turn. But I had locked the door!
I gasped, rolling from the bed to land, barefoot, on the cold paving slabs below, facing the door. I was certain I had locked it – and the key was there on the low table by the side of the bed. For an instant my knife hand lowered – it had to be Abioye, didn’t it? Something must have happened during the scant few hours that I had been asleep, and he had come to warn me.