If Devlin believed I was somehow a threat to his dragons ... that would explain a great deal. Only the dragons kept Elyria in control of her vassal kingdoms and prevented her from being upended by petty tyrants or overrun by the barbarian hordes from beyond the borderlands—the wild men with braided hair and a loathing for civilization. But why would he think it? “Uneasy”? What did that mean? He assumed I knew, and when I told him I didn’t ... whatever it was he thought I’d done, he was still afraid of it. His need to leave me in the dark had outweighed his purpose, the “favor” he was going to ask of me.
I was at a loss. Neither answers nor vengeance would bring back the dead. Narim had urged me to go to an inn on the Vallior road and ask his friend Davyn to help me, but I could not imagine what help some Elhim clerk might offer. Besides, Narim might have been questioned and his friends compromised. I had no desire to cross paths with my cousin’s Dragon Riders again. And so, since I could think of nothing better, I threw the wine flask into the distance, returned the way I’d come, and reclaimed my room at the Whistling Pig. I would wait for Keldar’s guidance.
The common room of the Whistling Pig was no different from those of a thousand poor hostelries along the roads of Elyria. A huge, soot-stained hearth with a friendly fire that filled the room with smoke and was never allowed to go out. A hodgepodge of tables, chairs, barrels, and crates, with a few splintered ones piled in a corner. Greasy, dark-wood walls hung with boars’ heads. Plain food, endless ale, and always a tall stool to welcome a wandering musician. I sat in the darkest corner, hiding behind a brimming tankard while I listened to the talk, trying to let myself be drawn back into a world I had almost forgotten.
It didn’t take long to catch up with the news. Little had changed since I’d been hauled off to Mazadine. Elyria was still at war with everyone who did not swear fealty to her king, and no kingdom with dragons enough to face those of Devlin or his vassals would swear fealty to a king who had charred their fields and cities with dragon fire. Gondar was the current battleground, a wealthy kingdom far to the south that was jealous of Elyria’s control of the rich mining country on their common border. The locals said that Prince Donal, Devlin’s son, commanded the Elyrian troops on the Gondari border. The innocent child ... now nineteen or thereabouts ... facing the brutal horrors of dragon warfare ... I ordered another ale.
A moment of general sensation was caused by a toothless tinker newly arrived from Lepan who told of the great uproar in the city four nights previous when two Dragon Riders had washed up on the riverbank with a number of quite fatal holes in them. According to the tinker, a manhunt, the likes of which he had never seen, had scoured the city. But the culprit was still on the loose, and the dragon legion commander had vowed to hang the villain on the walls of Lepan by his entrails.
“They say one man did it?” asked one of the listeners.
“I wouldn’t want to go against the man who could take out two Dragon Riders,” said a thick-necked farmer who could have tied a knot in an iron bar.
“I’d shake his hand,” said another, who wore one withered arm and the savage evidence of dragon burns on half his face. “Ridemark clansmen think they own the world. Bring nothing but ruin. Good riddance to ’em.”
“I’ve heard they mate with the beasts,” said one of the barmaids, leading the conversation into progressively wilder speculation on the nature and habits of the mysterious clan who wore the Ridemark on their wrists.
I lost track of their talk, for it was only the tinker’s story that held my interest. Two Riders killed and thrown in the river ... the hunt through the streets of Lepan ... It was all backward and inside out. The Riders had been the hunters and had captured their prey and taken him to their king, only ... It came back to me then how they had begun to beat me, then stopped abruptly. And I had imagined someone throwing bodies into the river, only I’d thought I was dreaming because I’d been kicked in the head. If the dead Riders were the ones who had attacked me, then who had delivered me to Devlin? Why would Devlin’s men kill his own Dragon Riders?
The evening grew late, and a serving maid stuck a pair of ducks on the spit, the grease hissing and spattering. The room was thick with smoke. More people arrived. Two Elhim quietly eating soup were shoved out of their chairs by a local herdsman who wanted their table. The landlord used a broom handle to force the Elhim to wipe up their spilled soup with their own clothes. Once the momentary sensation was over, the travelers, farmers, and shopkeepers grew mellow in their ale and dropped their conversation out of hearing. A few Udema began arguing loudly about whose turn it was to pay for the next round. All so familiar, yet I had no more part in it than if I were watching a puppet show at a midsummer fair.
“A song,” said the landlord. “Anyone here to give us a song?”
I gripped my tankard between my palms and took a long swallow while a stocky Udema youth stepped up to the stool and proceeded to sing “Morgave’s Lament” in a breathy, off-key tenor. I shut my ears and tried not to remember singing that particular song, a soldiers’ favorite, in the starlit field where King Ruarc’s troops lay waiting nervously for the steel-helmeted warriors of Florin to attack. The soldiers had besieged me when the song ended, loading me down with so many medallions and rings and clips of hair to be delivered to wives and lovers when I returned to Elyria that my manservant had torn pages out of a book to write each name and wrap each token so we could keep them straight. It had taken me two months, but I had delivered every one. The battle had been a bloody one. Few of the tokens would ever have been reclaimed.
While the patrons stamped their feet in approval, and the stocky youth gaped at the acclaim and began another song, I rose, dropped one coin on the table and another in the musician’s cup, and started up the stairs. About the time I reached the first landing, three brawny ruffians burst through the door, bringing the room to silence. Two of them were wielding swords. Their leader had a broad, flat face with a deeply cleft chin and cold blue eyes that seemed to bulge outward from his brow ridge. He swept the room with his gaze, then motioned for his companions to search the room.
“What’s all this?” demanded the landlord, a paunchy man with red hair. “You’ve no right—”
“We’re hunting the bastard who murdered our brothers. The one who shelters him will be dragon fodder ... and his family ... and his village ... and his woman’s village.”
My stomach shrank to a knot as they began circling the room, forcing everyone to show them their hands. The landlord would remember. And the pretty barmaid who had wrinkled her nose in disgust as I’d fumbled my cup and my coins with my grotesque fingers. I retreated into the shadows and ran lightly up to my room, grabbed my cloak, and peered out the window.
Three lathered horses pranced nervously in the yard. No guard remained with them to see me shinny out the window and drop to the ground. A few awkward, fumbling, cursing moments in the stable as I tried to grip buckles and straps; then I abandoned the saddle that had come with my horse, settling for a bridle. Grateful again for my mother’s insistence that even a musician should ride as befitted a warrior’s son and a king’s nephew, I threw myself on the back of the horse. I took him slowly out of the stable to the road, then urged him into a gallop, hearing shouts behind me. I had chosen the horse carefully, and he was well rested, but I didn’t breathe easier until I was three leagues down the road with no more sign of pursuit.
I was more than passably familiar with the roads of northern Elyria, having traveled there a good deal in my first years singing. For a week I stayed on the back roads, buying supplies at a village market, and spending the first few nights under the stars, trying to put distance between Lepan and any sighting of a Senai with crippled hands. Why would Devlin send his thugs after me not two days after allowing me to walk out of his house? Just like the bodies in the river, it made no sense ... unless Devlin hadn’t sent them. On that first night I spent a long time beside my tiny fire wondering if Devlin had as firm control of his dragon legions as he thought. The thought was unsettling, like the tremors before an earthquake. The Chaos Years were only a few hundred years behind us; not much time at all.