“Holy fire, Aidan, to speak to the king is suicide! He’ll have your head for treason.”
“He may very well, but I don’t think so. Devlin takes his responsibilities very seriously. He’ll be furious and horrified, but he’ll come to see that I’ve given him a chance to control his own power ... and to prepare. It’s all I can do. If I can make everything happen as I want, I don’t think he’ll refuse. The first thing I have to do is convince him to meet with me.”
I had come up with the scheme in my sleep. Night-mares of prisons, of Devlin and Lara and all those who were going to die because the dragons flew free, had led my thoughts inevitably to the youth who lay captive in the dragon lair of Gondar. Devlin’s son. The moment the Gondari dragons were released, Donal would be dead, for the Gondari would think it Devlin’s doing. With Roelan’s help I was going to get Donal out. “Can I depend on you and Tarwyl to help?”
“We’ll do anything you ask. Count on it. But there’s something else going on. ...” His voice trailed away, and his fingers drummed insistently on Narim’s journal. He was wrestling with himself again, and only with difficulty did he come out with anything. “Aidan, you’ve got to convince Narim about the dragons. He’s been poking around in Nien’hak. I—”
Footsteps in the lane in front of the shop and a soft knocking interrupted Davyn, and he jumped up to answer. I stood behind him while he unlatched the door. As he pulled it open he stepped backward, bumping into me. I felt the journal being pressed into my hands. Once I had it, he guided my fingers to a place he had marked.
“Kells! I didn’t expect to see you before daylight,” he said to the Elhim who walked in. “Is everything all right?”
“Just came for my cloak,” said the new arrival, eyeing me with interest. “Summer never feels warm enough in Aberthain.”
The journal was stuffed in the waist of my breeches underneath my rumpled shirt. Davyn introduced me as the Dragon Speaker, then offered to get me cider from Mervil’s barrel.
“I think I just need to get a bit more sleep. I promise I’ll talk to Narim before I go.” I padded back into the living quarters of the house, sat on my blankets, and pulled out the journal. Davyn had marked a maplike drawing labeled Nien’hak and a number of lists: one of Elhim names, one of various equipment like barrows, shovels, and hammers, and another that looked to be a record of place names—Vallior, Aberswyl, Camarthan among them—each with a number beside it. None of it made sense. I needed better light to decipher the fine handwriting, so I slipped the journal under the tangle of blankets. I wanted to set my own plan in motion first.
For an hour I lay on my pallet collecting words. They had to be right for each of the three listeners. By the time I was satisfied, the house was still again, and I went prowling for pen and paper and light.
A frustrating half hour in Mervil’s larder with my finds and I had produced two barely readable notes. One was for Devlin, entreating him to meet me alone on the Gondari border at sundown two days hence. I called on his promise to do me any service in his power and did everything I could to assure him of my good intentions. I would ask Davyn to carry it to my cousin.
The second note was for Lara. I could not face death again without leaving some trace of what she had meant to me. I smoothed the paper folds and imagined her strong, capable hands opening it and her clear blue eyes reading it. The imagining eased the dull ache in my gut just a little. I would entrust that one to the dogged Tarwyl, who, through some cousin or friend, would find a way for Lara to read it if she yet breathed the air of the world. For the moment both letters went into my pocket.
The third message was going to be more difficult to deliver. But I sat in the earth-walled room off Mervil’s kitchen among his turnips and onions, his bags of flour and dangling sausages, closed my eyes, and banished the world. With every skill I could muster, with every sense at my command, I called Roelan. To my astonishment, his voice was with me faster than my mind could comprehend it, as if he had been sitting on a shelf above my head awaiting my call.
It is an interesting challenge to discuss geography with a dragon. Twenty years had passed since I’d visited Gondar. Translating everything I remembered into a flyer’s view twisted my mind into knots. After a great deal of image shifting and word exploration, I concluded that Roelan had not yet freed his brothers and sisters in Gondar—a relief, since it meant that Donal was likely still alive. Once we had settled on the place, the rest was easy. Roelan would find the human held captive with his kin and “bear him gently to the smooth-complected hill beside the roving water”—Za’Fidiel on the Gondari border, perhaps three leagues from where Devlin was encamped.
“I would not lead thee into harm, my brother,” I said, trying to express my fear and thanks and caution. “Never will I ask it.”
Through pain and crushing horror hast thou served my need.
Giving ever.
Thou art my heart, Aidan, beloved, and I will hear thy songs again.
“Would that I could sing for you. ...” Even as I spoke, our contact was broken, but I knelt on the earthen floor trembling with its lingering power.
“So it has come to pass,” said a voice much closer than the dragon’s. “You have found your heart again, and your dragon has found his. Did I not tell you it would be so?”
“Narim.”
“Do you realize that your body burns white as you speak to him? A longer conversation and Mervil’s turnips would be cooked. You must be quite a sight at night.” The Elhim stood in the doorway, leaning against the wooden frame, almost quivering with his edgy humor.
“The dragons will not harm the Elhim.”
“How do you know?”
“Think of how you know you need sleep, or how you know when a storm is coming, or how you know when Davyn is troubled. I wish I could explain all this better, show you how it is with them. The dragons have no concept of vengeance. They won’t touch any Elhim ... nor will I.”
Narim relaxed into a more thoughtful wariness, his eyes flicking to my face and away again. “Ah, I see.” He leaned against the doorframe, fidgeting idly with something he’d pulled from his pocket. “So perhaps the answer is not that you are incapable of commanding the dragons to the lake, but that you choose not ... because of things you have learned, deeds long past and terrible in their appearance.”
“No. I meant what I told Davyn and Tarwyl. This joining, this mystery that’s happened to me, I understand it no better than I understand why the moon hangs in the sky or what it is made of. I don’t know what I’ve become, but I know what I am not. I am not a living bloodstone. I cannot command him.”
“Not even to save Lara? You know what they’ll—”
“If dragons were guarding her, I would beg Roelan to set her free. But the clan won’t trust the dragons now. They’ll have ten Riders around her every moment, and Roelan would have to kill them all to get her away. I cannot ask him to kill, Narim. Even then, she’d likely be dead at the clan’s first glimpse of an uncontrolled dragon. In the best case, negotiation will get her back. If that fails, then it must be stealth and hand-to-hand fighting.”
He was only testing. He had known what I would answer. Nodding his head slightly and blowing a long, silent sigh through pursed lips, he stopped fidgeting with the object in his hand and folded his arms. “Then I suppose you must help me fill out the last pages of my journal. Tell me, in these times when you are ‘linked’ to Roelan ... he feels your joy and sorrows as you feel his. Is that right?”