Kiri thought these plans seemed very complete, as if Quazelzeg had engineered this attack more carefully than previous ones. Earlier battles for which King Sardira had furnished troops and supplies had seemed almost haphazard. “As if,” Kiri said thoughtfully, “as if now, Quazelzeg is almost uncertain of what he is about. Or uncertain of the outcome.”
Elmmira switched her tail and rumbled deep in her throat. “Why should he be uncertain? He will use magic to confuse the peasants of Bukla and Edain. Already he has weakened them, for his disciples have been at work there a long time.” She began to lick blood from her paws.
Kiri sighed. “All the same, the planning seems very careful. Could Quazelzeg fear some new threat?”
“What new thing would the dark be afraid of?”
Kiri shook her head. “I don’t know.” Yet a formless sense of hope touched her. Still, maybe she was only imagining the nervousness and caution that seemed to pervade the dark’s messages to King Sardira. “Sometimes,” she said, stroking Elmmira’s ears, “sometimes I wish I’d been born in ages past, before the dark was so strong. When . . . when there were still dragons.”
“Yes,” Elmmira said, licking her. “Yes. My poor Kiri.”
“Papa . . .” Kiri began, then stopped and pushed the thought away. Papa must wish the same.
“I will take the news of the attack tonight,” Elmmira said. She pressed her head against Kiri and placed a heavy, soft paw on her arm. “We do what we can, Kiri wren.” She glanced toward the door, her tufted cheeks silhouetted against the starlight. “But you bring more news than Quazelzeg’s plans. What is it that excites you so?” She rolled onto her back in one liquid motion and laid her head in Kiri’s lap, shaking with purrs as Kiri tickled under her chin.
“There is a prince come to the palace, Elmmira, to sell horses to the king. He brought four by barge from Thedria. And what horses! Think of the difference between a farmer’s stumpy plow horse and the king’s finest charger.”
“Not hard to do.”
“Now imagine another horse so much more beautiful than the charger, that the charger appears as ugly as a plow pony.”
Elmmira’s purr thundered louder as she imagined. She squeezed her eyes closed in concentration, then flashed them open. “Horses like that I would like to see.”
“Oh, you would be impressed. Fast, strong horses— two black stallions and two white mares. So beautiful. The price is two hundred gold pieces for each. And there are fifty more like them, the prince says, if King Sardira desires.”
Elmmira’s purring stopped. She licked her shoulder reflectively.
“Prince Tebmund has agreed to remain here,” Kiri said, “to train Sardira’s troops in the special ways of war the horses have been taught.”
“If they are skilled in war, they will help to defeat Bukla and Edain. Does this prince know that? Does he side with the dark?” Elmmira growled softly. “And why, then, has he not taken his offer of such fine horses directly to Quazelzeg?” She rose and began to pace, her tail lashing.
“I don’t know why. There’s something about him I can’t sort out, a feeling. . . . He is wonderful with horses, Elmmira. These horses will strike an enemy mount and even attack enemy soldiers.”
“The question is,” Elmmira rumbled, “who is the enemy to this young prince of Thedria?” The great cat rasped her tongue across Kiri’s cheek. “Be careful, Kiri wren. This young prince upsets you.”
Kiri shrugged. Elmmira saw her feelings too clearly, just as Gram did. This evening Gram had turned her thin, wrinkled face to Kiri, frowning with the puzzled twist of her mouth and that shrewd look in her eyes. Unlike Elmmira, Gram had said nothing. Gram would bide her time until Kiri felt like talking about it, until Kiri could sort it out in her own mind, whatever the trouble was.
It was late when Kiri made her way back up the twisting, noisy streets carrying the two dead rabbits. Gram was waiting by the hearthfire, worrying as usual. Kiri bolted the door, hugged her, then poked up the fire to warm the cold evening tea. They sat cozily, Gram rocking gently, not talking. Gram’s long, bony hands were busy carding wool from a hank she had traded honey for—Kiri had collected the honey south of the city in the loft of an abandoned barn. The veins of Gram’s hands were even darker in the shadowing candlelight. She watched Kiri crumble her seedcake, and when she spoke her voice was gravelly with the night’s chill. Kiri handed her her scarf to wrap around her throat.
“You’re all atangle. Flighty.” She said it without criticism. “Is Elmmira all right?”
“Oh, yes. Well, maybe she was edgy. She didn’t say anything.” She looked up at Gram. “What is it? What have you heard?” For Gram was edgy, too, her bright blue eyes filled with unease.
“There are more traps out. Along the alleys, in the fields. Sardira wants speaking animals for the stadium games. A rag woman told of it; she saw them setting the traps.”
“If I could have warned her . . .” Kiri said. “You must have heard it after I left.”
Gram nodded. “You’d gone. I was filling the water jugs.” Gram often heard useful bits of information among their neighbors. She talked little and listened carefully, and people told her a good deal.
Kiri made a silent prayer for Elmmira. But Elmmira was wary. She could smell a trap—she said it smelled like Sardira’s soldiers. Kiri shivered all the same. Maybe she could learn where the traps were set, in which alleys, if she soft-talked one of the stable grooms.
Maybe she could spring those hidden snares with a stick. That was what Papa would do.
Where was Papa tonight?
Perhaps in some secret cellar meeting with others of the underground. Or maybe he was in a street tavern, pretending to be drunk, listening to the loose talk of drunken soldiers. Kiri closed her eyes and tried to see in the special way she and her father had. She could imagine his face, his high, angled cheekbones and square jaw, the laugh lines that made deep curves to frame his mouth . . . that silent mouth bereft of speech. She could see his face, but she could bring no real presence of him this night.
Sometimes if their powers were very strong, and the powers of the dark relaxed, she could sense his thoughts and give him of her own. That was next best to really being with him, to riding together or practicing with bow and sword in the privacy of the ruing as they used to do. That was before Sardira branded her father a traitor and imprisoned and tortured him. Sardira set her father free but mute, thinking he would serve as example to others who fought for freedom. Thinking that Colewolf would be useless, with the voice of the bard taken from him.
They had tied him to a table—it had taken seven men to do that—and cut the tongue from his mouth. He had come home to lie white and shaken on his cot, spitting blood into a basin. There was little Gram could do for him; make him broth, grind salves. His mouth had healed eventually, but his spirit had not. It was after this that he told Kiri, with messages he wrote on a slate and with Gram’s help, the truth of her inheritance, that they bore the blood of the dragonbards. He told her with a touching sadness that there were no more dragons and perhaps no more bards than the tiny handful in Dacia. He wrote with great care the meaning that this inheritance had once held, when the dragons lived. With the coming of the dark, then the disappearance of dragons, man’s memory had been nearly destroyed, his experience wiped away. Without memory and experience, one had no free choice, for what was there to choose?