I was shivering, too, though my cloak was quite adequate. Terror and cowardice are far more potent than any winter storm. Now that the day had come, I could scarcely keep from turning tail and riding as fast as I could go, as far from any dragon as I could get. On my lips was an unending prayer to Keldar to show me what I needed to see on this visit, as I could never attempt such brazen stupidity again.
Smoke drifted lazily from the chimney of the headquarters building and from the campfires scattered among the hundreds of tents, only to be swirled away by the gusting wind. Having sung at Cor Neuill several times, I was familiar with the layout of the encampment. The commander and his adjutants slept in the permanent quarters, while the foot and horse soldiers and aides, the cooks, grooms, herdsmen, and other functionaries that hovered about a clan encampment were relegated to the tents. Not the Riders, though.
The Riders lived with the dragons down in the vast bowl of Cor Neuill that lay hidden in the storm beyond the headquarters building. Each man ate and slept, lived and fought with the dragon to which he had been bound in a rite so secret that no one outside the Twelve Families of the Ridemark had ever witnessed it. In that rite the Rider was attuned to his dragon’s bloodstone, a thumb-sized jewel of dark red that the man would wear for every moment of his life from that day forward, slaying his own mother if she but laid a finger on it. The jewel allowed the Rider to impose his will upon his bound dragon, controlling its rage and directing it wherever he chose. With the stone he could also control other dragons in a limited fashion and protect himself from their assault. And the jewel infused him with fire that made his skin spark when touched, a matter of mortal consequence to anyone the Rider touched when drunk or angry.
As far as anyone knew, no one outside the clan had ever possessed a bloodstone or ridden a dragon. Even within the Twelve Families the privilege to ride was reserved only to a select few. Legend said you could tell at birth which child of the clan would ride the dragons, for his mother’s birth passage would be scorched as he came into the world, and his eyes would burn with golden fire. Perhaps it was true. In all my observations, however, it was only cruelty and arrogance that flamed in a Rider’s eyes, and the knowledge that no man was truly his master. They cared only for the honor and traditions of the clan, nothing for territory or power beyond their own. They lived only to destroy, leaving to kings and princes the business of whom to burn.
A hundred hard eyes glanced our way as we rode through the encampment. Interest waned just as quickly, and they turned back to their business of mending harness, darning socks, sharpening weapons, and cooking supper over the fires that struggled bravely against the gusty wind—the usual activities of a military camp. Accompanying them were the usual smells of woodsmoke and bacon, horse dung and leather, and, as in all Ridemark camps, the faint odor of brimstone. There were women about, not the whores and gap-toothed washing women found everywhere that soldiers lived, but sturdy, capable, cold-eyed women dressed in the same black and red capes as the men. The women of the Twelve Families rode to war with the men, performing most duties equally with their clan brothers, except for riding the dragons.
A sullen young woman took our horses and led them toward a lean-to on the side of a substantial stable, while the Elhim directed us through a leather-curtained door into the blast of heat from an open hearth. Some thirty black-caped men and a few women occupied the wide, shallow single room of the headquarters. Many of them were clustered around a large map table. At the far right end of the room three warriors conferred with an officer seated at a folding field desk. Chests and trunks were stacked about the room, and two Elhim clerks stood over them, ticking off items on lists. Even in a Ridemark camp, Elhim’s skills with numbers were useful. Several young aides darted about filling drinking cups from steaming pots.
The curtained-off areas in the corners of the room would be sleeping quarters, and just across the stone floor, opposite the door we’d entered, was a wooden door that led outside again. Few who were not of the Twelve Families were ever allowed to pass that door, so I had been told on the visits in my youth. Few would have any desire to do so, of course, for the doorway led out to the rim of Cor Neuill and the horror that lived there.
The Elhim took us to the man at the field desk, a giant of a man, well past middle age from the evidence of the scant, grizzled hair on his boulder of a head, but with the muscled chest and tight girth of a man half his years. His nose had been broken at some time, for it resembled a hawk’s bill, and as he turned his cold, light eyes away from his subordinates to look at us, I shriveled inside. Of all the ill luck ... of all the commanders who could have been assigned to Cor Neuill, it had to be the high commander himself, Garn MacEachern, the very man who had stood in my cousin’s garden the day I was warned away from his dragons, the very man who had watched from the shadows as I was arrested and condemned.
Panic throttled my tongue. Fear must have been written all over my face, for Alfrigg raised a frost-rimed eyebrow at me as he waited for me to speak. What half-crazed rat had ever walked so boldly into the fere-cat’s lair?
“The leather merchant and his man,” said the Elhim haltingly in the tongue of the Ridemark clan. “Come to present the proposed contract for supply of Riders’ armor to the commander and quartermaster.”
Alfrigg bowed respectfully, yet kept his jaw lifted and his broad back straight. “Your excellency,” he said. “Greetings of Jodar and his six brethren to you.”
I bowed, too, quickly turning sideways between Alfrigg and the commander as Alfrigg had instructed me. Not looking at either party, I translated the merchant’s words. Alfrigg was a masterful businessman, dealing as much in his uncompromising honesty and self-confidence as in leather goods. He knew his bargaining would go better if he kept the attention focused on his own open face and imposing presence rather than on any intermediary, no matter how necessary. It suited me well to have MacEachern’s gaze drawn to Alfrigg and not to the rivulets of sweat dripping down the sides of my face or to the gloved hands that I clasped behind my back to keep them from shaking. Astonishingly enough, my words came out clear and calm, absolutely at odds with the chaos inside me. Perhaps Keldar was guiding my performance, as Roelan had done so often when I was young.
With me to translate and his Elhim scribe to write, Alfrigg had corresponded at length with the quartermaster, a thin, squinting man with a tic in one eye, so that much of what was to be discussed that afternoon was mere formality for the benefit of the commander. The Riders were impressed that the merchant had brought his own interpreter. I made sure to stumble and grasp for words just enough that they had no need to ask how I had grown so facile in their tongue. A great many songs were composed in the language of ancient Elyria. And, too, Goryx my jailer had spoken nothing else.
After the brief formalities of agreement, the two scurrying aides brought a tray of tall pewter goblets steaming with pungent spiced wine. My throat was parched. But even the blazing hearthfire had not yet warmed the blocks of ice in my boots or the throbbing lumps in my gloves, and I dared not fumble a cup right under MacEachern’s nose, so I shook my head at the pockmarked young man who held the tray. Alfrigg glared at me furiously. Because I was Senai, my refusal could be viewed as an affront to my Udema employer, or, even worse, as an affront to the Ridemark clan. Most Senai, even impoverished younger sons who were forced to seek employment, scorned those of the Twelve Families as “mongrel”—neither Senai nor Udema nor of any other identifiable heritage. Those who had climbed to so high a rank as MacEachern and had reached the inevitable conclusion that they could never be accepted into Senai society were very sensitive to Senai insults. I needed to smooth things over quickly.