Roelan. My “god.” A dragon. Unbelievable. “But you said that I ... affected ... more than one.”
“That’s true. Never all of them. Perhaps only Roelan and the other six eldest were changed by your music. We don’t know. For a few years after you disappeared, certain dragons still showed the changes you had wrought, and so we had hopes that you were with them in some way, but over time ...”
“Ten years,” I said. “Roelan’s voice grew fainter from the first day, and after a while there came a time when I couldn’t—After ten years he didn’t answer anymore.” I was only an instant’s separation from that desolation; only the single word shimmering in my memory kept it away. Davyn gazed on me with sympathy, while Narim walked away, sat himself on the weedy hillside, and stared expressionlessly into the morning.
“We came to believe you were dead,” said Davyn softly. “We had no idea where they’d taken you. The One who guides us surely led Narim to Lepan.”
I needed answers. Clarity. “What of this dragon ... Keldar?” Even as I spoke the name, my intellect tried to convince me it was impossible. Denial would put me back in the prison of my despair, yet acceptance was surely the madness I’d fought so hard to hold at bay.
Davyn glanced at the woman who had shed her reeking leather armor and was packing it carefully in her bag, studiously ignoring us. “Ah, yes. Well, some eighteen years ago, not long before you were arrested, this dragon flew out of Cor Neuill, ridden by a brave and enterprising young girl of thirteen. She’d been determined to ride for many years, even following the legion into battle, where she managed to get herself a bloodstone from a fallen Rider. It was not this dragon’s—Keldar’s—stone, its dekai’cet, as they call it. The dragon linked to her stone had been wounded when its Rider fell. The clan had destroyed the beast, of course; they’ve never learned to link a new stone to a dragon. But Lara was convinced that with a bloodstone of her own, she could ride any dragon—as indeed she proved. Her courage and skill were indisputable. But the mistake she made was assuming that only the bloodstone enabled her to get the dragon out of the lair. In truth we believe that you made it possible. You’d been to Cor Neuill only two nights before. The lair was in chaos: dragons disobeying their Riders, threatening them, breaking through the Riders’ Ring, when she decided to make her attempt.”
Lara stuffed the gauntlets into her pack quite savagely, and it struck me that she didn’t particularly like this part of Davyn’s story.
“She planned to take the dragon back to the camp to prove to her clan that she could control the beast, but the dragon refused her command to turn. To command a dragon with a bloodstone that is not the one bound to it from the beginning—the dekai’cet that its own Rider carries—is extremely difficult, which is why dragons without linked stones must be destroyed. And this dragon had another destination.”
“The lake?”
“We don’t know. But he brought her into the Carag Huim, and she tried very hard to get control. The beast flew straight into a cliff. ...”
I could envision the drama played out before me: the child goading the dragon to madness with the hated jewel ... the struggle ... the disaster ... and the agonizing fire.
“Well,” said Davyn, seeing in my expression that I understood enough. “They both survived. Narim found Lara and brought her to Cor Talaith. Until about five years ago we didn’t know what had become of the dragon. Lara searched through the mountains and eventually found him in this cavern, where he had gone to heal or to die. Since then she’s—”
“Enough,” said Lara, hefting the heavy pack onto her slender shoulder. “I won’t be talked of as if I were an ignorant beast like the one down below us. Hear this, Senai.” Her blue eyes flamed, and the terrible scars on her left cheek quivered red as she tossed her long braid over her shoulder. “I am a daughter of the Ridemark, and no matter what my people say of me, I’ve not betrayed them, only taken a kai’cet, as is my right. I do not believe dragons have minds. I do not believe they can speak. I do not believe that some cowardly Senai harp player ever has or ever will make them something they are not. All I want to do is ride one of them without burning, and since my own people won’t allow it, this is the only hope I’ve got. Now, Davyn, I’ll thank you to stop talking about me.”
Lara marched furiously past Davyn and me without so much as another glance, but to my surprise, when she strode past the bemused Narim sitting on the hillside, the Elhim reached out a hand to her, and she clasped it firmly before continuing on her way. Narim put his chin back on his knees and went back to his meditation.
“He nursed her for over a year,” said Davyn softly. “Made her move her limbs so they would not be left unusable, every hour of every day, when she could not do it without screaming. He scoured the hills and the cities for remedies to ease her and heal her, and prevent as much scarring and deformity as he could. She cursed him for it, but now there is no bond deeper than theirs. She is torn apart by her longing to be accepted again by her clan, and her love for Narim, and her fear that he is right about the dragons and she is wrong. And she does dearly want to fly.”
The sun baked away the dew on the gray-green scrub, and we watched Lara’s straight, slim figure dwindle as she descended into the valley. Then I saw no alternative but to get back to the truth of what had happened in the night. I had to accept it, and the Elhim had to know.
“I thank you for this,” I said. “What happened here was something marvelous, something unexpected. I’ll never forget it. But now”—my conclusion had been reaffirmed as I had listened to Davyn and Lara, feeling Narim’s expectant gaze on my back—“if you believe that I can speak to him again or regain ... anything else ... Davyn, I was dying. When I heard him and spoke his name and heard ... what I heard ... I was already leaving my body behind. If it had been more than a single word, even a heartbeat longer, I’d never have gotten back. I’m sorry. I still can’t help you.” A crippling irony. They had given me something to live for, and I couldn’t claim it without dying. Not a satisfactory conclusion, but perhaps enough to keep me going awhile longer.
Davyn sighed and gazed ruefully at Narim. “We should have warned you.”
“Narim was right,” I said, trying to ease his distress. “I wouldn’t go back. I’m sorry—you’ll never know how sorry—that I can do no more.”
“But that’s the whole point,” said Narim, popping up from his reverie at last and standing over me. His gray eyes drilled into my soul. “You’ve shown us you can survive this kind of raw contact, however difficult it might be. The connection—your gift—is still there. And so we can try the next step. You see, I have a plan. All we have to do is keep you alive.”
My head was beginning to hurt. “Keep me alive?”
“I had hoped you could stay in Cor Talaith while you were made ready, but that’s impossible. And we can’t send you out where the Riders or your cousin might find you. Everyone seems to want you dead or captive.”
“I’m sure he’s noticed,” said Davyn.
“So there’s only one place I can send you. It won’t be easy, but I’ll convince her.”
Davyn rolled back onto the ground and groaned dramatically. “You can’t be thinking it. She hates him more than Garn MacEachern does, and her temper is worse!”
“Wait,” I said, their words running together in a muddle. “Tell me what you’re talking about. What plan?”
Narim crouched down in front of me. “This dragon you’ve named Keldar is injured. Fortunately an injured dragon keeps himself in winter sleep until his injuries can heal or he dies. But Lara has learned to rouse him, as you saw, and command him with her stone. She has driven beasts into the cave to feed and strengthen him, so we hope that when spring comes he might awaken on his own. Now that we’ve found you, we can give him the next gift we’ve prepared. We’ve built a sluiceway to his cave to send in water from Cir Nakai.”