Blind, stupid Senai fool! Who did he think I was? My “honor” had sent him to Mazadine ... mutilated him. My “courage” had gotten his friends killed. I jumped to my feet—trapped on this shore by the failing moonlight, unable to untangle the jumbled mess that was threatening to burst my head and rip me apart, unable to speak anything of sense. I had no gift of music or words. “No,” I blurted out. “You’re a crippled madman who plans to live with monsters. I have better things to do.”
He didn’t argue, didn’t ask why, didn’t display what hurt he might have felt from my ugly jibe. Only smiled sadly as he moved around and took my place, leaning against my rock. “Ah, Lara, what are you afraid of?”
For a while I paced up and down the strip of sand and the rocky berm, cursing the night and my muddled head, the touch of fire that lingered on my hand, and my inability to understand the panic that filled me every time I thought of Aidan. At last I went back to retrieve my pack, so I could wait somewhere else and bolt at the first glimmer of morning.
The Senai watched me. “This is not the end,” he said softly as I left him. “You heard Davyn; we own a part of each other’s life. I’ll not give up my share of yours that easily, even if I have to come back and ask you again in the language of dragons.”
While the silver stars wheeled overhead, I forced myself to go to sleep at the mouth of the caves beyond the great boulder.
I woke to the sound of Aidan singing. He sat atop his rock, his eyes closed, white flames dancing about his head and his hands, and as I stood behind Davyn and Donal and the gaping Elyrians, watching and listening, his voice rose in a song of such haunting beauty that my skin crept over my bones. His face was a portrait of bliss as he sang the music of his heart, while on the clifftops across the gaping emptiness of Cir Nakai, a dark shape, glinting copper in the sunrise, sat and listened.
The abyss yawned beside me. I shouldered my pack and walked away.
Chapter 36
The movement of the upper airs whispers coming storm.
Though the days grow longer, we yearn for winter sleep so long denied us.
My sister Methys flew this day in the morning lands, soaring dawnward, joyful.
Aidan’s song hath already loosed her melody.
Soon, Methys will shape her own song.
Yet my own, my beloved, doth grieve.
When his words fall silent, I hear it still.
I tell him, “Do not sorrow.
The dayfires burn and fade.
Comes the day soon when all my brothers and sisters will sing with thee.
My sisters weep for younglings lost, and so have wandered deep.
But, even so, thy giving brings them wholeness. Soon. Soon.
And Jodar and my brothers have tasted too much human blood.
But the passing season will sate their unholy hunger, and, truly, their being doth move already with your teaching.
Thy songs are true, Aidan, beloved.
With every turning of the light, thy power grows.”
He says his sorrowing is for his own kind, so lost, so weary, in the changing of the world.
But when enough seasons pass, they, too, will hear his songs and understand.
Never in all its turnings hath the world seen what my beloved will become.
Yet still there is more....
Ah, beloved, dost thou think I cannot see thy heart?
One alone art thou. So alone. Bound to earth. Bound to me by thy ever-giving.
Thy being incomplete ...
I will not see thee in such pain.
Fly, old Roelan. Set right this unbalancing. . . .
LARA
Chapter 37
Three days out from Cir Nakai—or what was left of it—and I was sitting beside a small fire melting snow to drink. My little blaze was scarcely a smudge in the vastness of the night—a clear and viciously cold night, considering it was almost summer. I needed to get down lower.
I poked at the sluggish fire. Not much to burn up here so high. The brush was soggy with the warmer days melting off the snow cover. It was good to be alone. To have time to clear my head of this confusion and uncertainty that had dogged me all spring. Sons and daughters of the Ridemark were not supposed to be confused.
Soon I’d have no time to wallow in maudlin regrets. War was coming, a different kind of war than those living in the world had ever known. Swords and spears and arrows only. Human against human. I knew a man in Camarthan who could remove the Ridemark from my wrist. Best get it done before people started looking.
After the first flurry of vengeance between our own people, the true onslaught would come. As summer cleared the passes in the mountains ringing Elyria and the civilized kingdoms, the news would travel to the wild men in the vast reaches of the world beyond the mountains: the dragons were gone back into the west. The men would come down the rivers in their flat-prowed boats, wearing fur robes and horned masks and tattooed faces. They would come over land on their horses, wearing curved swords and ivory earrings and shrilling throaty cries.
An experienced scout would be useful. One who knew her way around a sword and could predict the ways of dispossessed Dragon Riders even more so. I would find the prince and let him know I was available if he wanted. Donal was a prince worth serving. Davyn had seen it. I had seen it, too, but my pigheaded nature would not allow me to admit it in front of so many. Not in front of Aidan. Not with confusion and pride and guilt standing in my way. Now Aidan was gone off with his dragons, following the demands of duty, of his gift, of his heart....
Stop it! Think of something else. On every step these past three days, my thoughts kept flitting to Aidan, threatening to throw me back into confusion. Those things he’d said ... all nonsense. I couldn’t bear to be near the man. That’s what I’d not been able to tell him. The sight of his horrid hands made me shrivel inside and live in the imagination of his torment. Did he think a lifetime of guilt and deception could be wiped out instantly? How could I tell him that I had seen his face as he sang to Roelan and knew I had no place in such mystery? Seeing him like that, bathed in the fire of the gods ... Stop it.
Only one thing I’d not been able to resolve in these few days. Aidan’s question kept pricking at me. What was I afraid of?
The dull flames began to jump and flare hotter; my hair whipped loose and into my eyes. A wind rising ... a warm wind ... The smell ... Uneasy, I glanced over my shoulder. Daughters of fire! I jumped up, gawking at the dark shape that blotted out half the sky.
He swept over me so low the snow melted beneath my feet. As he circled and headed back my way, panic constricted my breast and sent my heart into my throat. Yet ... there was something ... the sensation came over me like the caress of sleep ... and, despite every warning of mind and instinct, I kept breathing.