“The lake water,” I said dumbly. “You think you’ll be able to speak to him.”
“No. We think that you will be able to speak to him.”
Speak to a dragon. Not in the way I had thought of as speaking to my god, but as one natural creature to another. As in the tale from Elhim legend. I could not imagine it.
“The one who attempts it cannot be an Elhim,” Narim said, a forced patience in his voice. “We are anathema to the dragons and likely would not live past his first glimpse of us. Nor can it be Lara. She carries a bloodstone, and besides, she—”
“She doesn’t believe,” I said.
“Exactly. How could she possibly reach him? You are the only person in the world who can get us the answer.”
“The answer for what?” I was numb. Uncomprehending.
“You must make Keldar tell you how we can release his brothers and sisters from their binding to the bloodstones. Then we can bring the dragons back to the lake so they can take their rightful place in the world once again.”
Davyn had been watching and listening, letting Narim’s intensity carry the burden of revelation, but as I struggled to comprehend what they wanted of me, he broke in, the stray lock of hair falling inevitably over his soft gray eyes. “You must understand the risks, Aidan. We don’t understand how you were able to reach them before or if it’s possible for you to do it again after all that’s happened. We don’t know if it’s even possible to speak to a dragon. It’s been so long—five hundred years since the dragons have tasted the water of the lake of fire. There may be nothing left in them to be awakened by it. They are so wild, lost in their blood frenzy and hatred.”
Slowly I shook my head. My experience of the night told me that there was a mind and a soul in the being that was Keldar—buried impossibly deep—but I had touched it and I knew.
But Davyn would not let go. “You will have to walk into that cavern, stand helpless before a creature who has slain ten thousand humans without regret. If he does not wake with the change of season, then he will have been roused with the very device that drives him into madness. The chance of success is so small as to make me begin writing your epitaph the moment you agree.”
What choice was there to be made? Beloved. The echo of the word made me tremble with awe and wonder and the last hope of life.
“So where is it you want to put me?” I said.
A corona of satisfaction illuminated the pale Narim, while a tired Davyn rubbed his forehead, smiled wryly, and answered. “He wants to send you into a dragon’s mouth even before your confrontation with Keldar. He thinks to have you live with Lara.”
Chapter 16
“Have the Senai harp plucker stay here? You’re out of your mind!” A red-faced Lara stood in front of a low, thick-walled stone hut half-buried in the sparkling snow-drifts of a mountain meadow. From the position of her hands on her slender hips, Narim had made a singularly grave error in his carefully wrought calculations. The sharp-edged breeze that so belied the brilliant sunshine of the morning pulled curling wisps of brown hair from her taut braid and flicked them at the scarred left side of her face. But the chill of the wind was as nothing to the frost of Lara’s tongue. “I’ll not have it. I’ve few enough supplies laid in, not a single feather bed, no silk draperies or cushions, and no food fit for refined tastes. When I said I’d help you in this madness, I never, ever agreed to nursemaid any Senai popinjay.”
“Ah, Lara, was ever a woman so passionate in her loyalties as you?” said the slender Elhim, pale as snow next to Lara’s angry flush. “Davyn laid me a wager that Aidan and I would be creeping into the back caverns of Cor Talaith this night with your boot print on our backsides ...”
Lara nodded as if Davyn were the only intelligent creature she’d known in a lifetime.
“... but I told him that, being the sensible person you are, you would agree that there is no rational alternative.”
“Not on—” Lara tried to interject, but Narim had a way of pouring out his words in a tide that swept all other conversation out of the way.
“If we send Aidan back to civilized lands, either your people or his own will take his head or his freedom, and if he stays in Cor Talaith, the Elhim will do the deed. For a man beloved of the gods, he is sorely in need of protection from those of us of lesser state, and nowhere is he less likely to be set upon than behind the security of your sword.”
Lara rolled her eyes. “Why do you believe anything he says? Thousands can witness to his lies. Ask those who’ve fled before the Gondari dragon fires. He once sang to them of peace and beauty, but have they ever witnessed anything like that? He gets only what he deserves.”
But Narim did not relent. “And, of course, my friend is not exactly accustomed of late to the privileges and comforts of his noble relations. Lest you’ve forgotten, your own clan has hosted him for seventeen years. And for the past two months he’s had to put up with the poor hospitality of Cor Talaith. I think he’ll be less of a burden than you believe.”
Narim’s gray eyes were the portrait of ingenuous innocence, but his words had me squirming. I wanted nothing more than to stuff my cloak in his mouth. I hoped Lara would send us away so that I could deal with him as I so sincerely desired, but instead she turned her rigid back to us and slammed her palm into the heavy pine door of the hut. It swung inward, and she disappeared inside. The door remained open.
“I do believe I heard a welcome,” said Narim, tugging on my arm. “Best get inside before she changes her mind.”
“Perhaps we’d better rethink this,” I said, standing my ground. “I can hide in Camarthan. It’s a big place and I know it well. Or Cor Talaith. You’ve said it’s only a few who want things to remain as they are. I’ll just stay out of their way.”
“You and Lara must come to an accommodation. Your lives will depend on one another. It’s only five weeks until the time of the dragon’s waking, and we must be as prepared as we can be. The dragons should be flying over the lake of fire, not enslaved to the Twelve Families of the Ridemark. If you and Lara cannot do what is required, we might have to wait another whole year, a year in which thousands may die, in which your life and our enterprise will be at risk every moment. ...”
A year in which Donal, my cousin’s child, would remain captive in the dragon camps of Gondar. Donal was the only human being yet walking the earth to whom I could claim any tie of affection—a fragile wisp of a connection that would most likely be dissolved in an instant if we were ever to meet in person. But if anything in the realm of possibility could prevent it, I would not let him suffer the fate to which his father and the wretched state of the world had condemned him. I took a deep breath and followed Narim into Lara’s hut.
If I’d not been wary of the woman already, I would have burst out laughing when I stepped inside. Everything I had expected of a Rider’s lair and had not found in Zengal’s den in Cor Neuill was laid out before me in Lara’s domain: greasy food bags and empty wineskins, worn-out sharpening stones, woolen leggings, battered pots, and old boots strewn from one end of the straw-covered stone floor to the other. The hearth was streaked with fifty years’ soot, and a month’s worth of ashes was packed into its corners, scarcely leaving any space for the yellow, gasping fire. A trail of dropped kindling and dried mud clots led from the door to the half-filled wood box, and the battered trestle table that served with three rickety stools as the only furnishing was littered with dirty cups, inkpots, wood shavings, half a loaf of bread so dry it had developed cracks, and ten shriveled apple cores. A jumble of leather scraps and the bag of Rider’s armor were tossed in a corner beside an untidy pile of blankets.