The Black Beast (18 page)

“Let me alone,” I whispered into the beast's mane, hugging it close for protection. Abas gasped and snapped away, gone—for the time. He could not long abide the beast.

“I will find you,” he told me hours later as I rode. “That thing cannot keep me away. I can feel you. I will find you and bring you back and slay the monster.…” He gurgled to a stop as I sent with my mind an arrow to his heart.

“You've done quite enough killing already!” I hissed. Then I beheaded him, held that picture in my mind for him to see. I had found not only a shield but a weapon in my madness. Let Abas pester! I answered him with thoughts of vengeance, hardened myself into a knot of hatred so that whenever he surprised me he would find no cause for hope, never! I wanted him to fear his doom. That is the better part of vengeance. I wedded myself to anger. I wince to think of it now, but then I fed on anger as the beast fed on bitter twigs.

“Vengeance!” Shamarra had said to me in a voice that echoed down the runnels of my hatred.

She offered me bitter food from the day I first ventured to her mountain hut. Raw rowanberries, forsooth! And hazelnuts, and a sort of seedcake fit only for birds. I had to eat the stuff or starve. Even then I felt small liking for her or her tittering old women of trees or her brooding, waiting death's face of a lake. To be sure, I felt her power—especially at first, when I was weak—and it caused me to like her the less. I could not see why she followed me. I thought it was only to torment me, but I realize now that she could not have known how she tormented me. Men say she was uncommonly beautiful, so perhaps she did not understand how her cold, carved face distressed me. Whenever I saw her thin lips I thought of Mylitta's that were full and soft and warm, her warm brown eyes, the heady comfort of her breasts—I have said I would not speak of her. But Shamarra was a mockery of her womanly form and grace, a pale, thin-nosed parody of my lost love, and I hated her for it.

I could not hate Frain, though all the demons of air know I tried. He followed me as faithfully as the beast, but he wanted me to speak to him, touch him, and I could not. Love is poor food for rage and revenge! I pushed it far from my mind, but the stubborn stuff remained somehow, and the beast found me out about it. We were of one mind, the beast and I. It would nuzzle Frain and curl up next to him in the night. It liked Shamarra as a playmate, though I myself would not even look at her, and the time also came when the beast showed love for Daymon Cein and even Fabron by the end of my travels—while I could barely look at them without a snarl. Well, those were dark days.

There is no need to relate all the twistings and turnings of my journey. All of Vale has heard the tale of those times, and truth to tell I remember them strangely. Frain and Fabron speak of Aftalun as a sort of shining giant in a vast, splendid palace, but I remember a crippled, withered old fool sitting on the floor of a cold cave and croaking, “Bow, you churl! I am the king of all that I survey!” Those horrid Luoni sat with him, and we all ate more rowanberries—how I loathed them by that time! But Frain and Fabron loved the place, and Shamarra chose to stay there for the time, and who is to say which of us saw truly?

I will say one thing for Aftalun's cave: Abas could not find me there. But I heard him questing as soon as I emerged. “Tirell!” he cried. “Tir-ell! You cannot flee me forever!”

“Flee, O meat of sweet revenge?” I retorted in arrogant high spirits. “This is a pleasure outing!” I could not help feeling better since we had left Shamarra. But Fabron was as morose as a whipped hound.

“Where did summer go?” he grumbled.

The season seemed to have gotten the jump on us. We must have stayed longer in that miserable cave than I thought. Leaves were already turning on the mountain trees, and not just from drought, either. There was a chill in the air. I had hoped to have my bid ready within the summer, but there seemed no chance of that. Still, once away from Shamarra I behaved more pleasantly than I had in a long time—until the Boda found us.

My own folly was to blame for letting Abas focus on us. He had his ways of communicating with his doomsters in the field—trained birds, for one—and he was not long in setting them on our track. Fabron saw them coming across the plains of Tiela; I was not paying attention.

“Ruddy bloody bastards yonder,” he announced in gloomy tones.

We took to high ground. But they had spotted us, and we spent grueling days—weeks—trying to shake them. They trailed us along the gently rolling terrain at the base of the mountains while we struggled along the steep upper slopes. We were never able to gain much on them, in spite of days much too long, even nights sometimes, spent traveling. Still, we managed to loop around them to the northward and get out on the Perin Spur, a ragged line of peaks extending toward Nisroch. Then we made a run for it with the Boda on our heels.

We made Nisroch barely an hour ahead of them. That accursed place! Raz's city be damned. May I never again feel such helpless, venom-spitting, hair-bristling fury as I did before those high, unyielding gates. The castle stands all alone on a muddy plain along the river Pol. Raz must have seen us coming in the distance and ordered all his people inside, for not a human face awaited us and not a sound of welcome. We could get no answer at the gates except the long, soft hiss of a huge snake that poked its head over the pikes to peer at us. A sweet reception! But I was not so easily to be frightened away. I pounded on the timbers with my sword hilt and shouted for admittance until I was hoarse. By the ancient Five, I had not come all the way from Acheron just to be ignored!

Not a soul stirred in answer to all my curses. And soon we were obliged to flee back to the Perin Spur with the Boda on our heels. The cowards, they would not follow us there. And Raz, king of Tiela, had been too cowardly to let us in while they threatened! At least Frain, with his customary and maddening generosity, gave him that excuse.

“If he knew they were there,” I argued.

“He has the reputation of being clever, so I expect he knew.”

I snorted. “He is a coward all the same. Sethym let us in with the Boda at his very door.”

“You have said yourself, Sethym is a mad fool,” Frain retorted. “Because he aids us, do you therefore expect Raz to?”

I was beginning to dislike the argument. People had to help us, for any reason and no reason. “Is Fabron a mad fool to aid us then?” I snapped.

Sitting by Frain's side, Fabron rolled his eyes. In fact, his actions were rash, and he knew it, and he knew I knew why.

“I used to be as clever as Raz,” he remarked, “but I am not any longer.”

“Adalis be praised,” I said sourly.

So we had not gained even a glimpse of Raz or a word with him after all our strivings to reach his domain. And, by any name of the goddess, I would not pound on his gates again, not though we were out of provisions, beset by winter, and had no place to shelter. We would just have to go on toward Eidden. So we traveled northward for weeks, clear out of the Perin Tyr and into the Lore Dahak, keeping to the flanks of the mountains and ignoring the Boda in the valleys below, foraging for food and looking for a likely cave to take refuge in when the snow fell. Which is how we came to find Grandfather.

There were plenty of caves, but most of them were too shallow or too small. So when we spied a truly gloomy-looking hole one freezing day we all three turned aside to investigate it. The entrance was high enough for horses. We walked in to a good depth, to a point where it became too black for us to see.

“Light a torch, somebody,” Fabron said peevishly. He was afraid of the dark, though I would not say so to his face.

Lighting a torch is a weary business, but there really seemed to be no alternative. So we were all busy with rags and oil and a clay pot of embers when we heard a sound that made us spring to attention—a long, low, sighing sound, not too far away.

“Snake!” Fabron whispered in frank terror. “Let's get out of here!” He had been jumpy about snakes ever since Nisroch.

“No!” I shouted. I hate taking direction from anyone, but I believe I have never been so utterly unreasonable as then. I strode blindly deeper into the cave. A sudden, inexplicable tug had taken hold on me, not from Abas, but—who, or what? Frain and Fabron scrambled after me, forced to leave the horses, hissing at me to stop. I paid no attention. I couldn't. The call was strong, close at hand, urgent.

“Come on,” I mumbled at Frain. “No time to lose.”

I realized in vague surprise that I could see where I was going. A dim light glowed from somewhere ahead. In a few more strides I rounded a turn of the cave and came in sight of a dragon.

I stopped, the ache and the call still strong on me, but I couldn't answer. I couldn't help myself. I was stunned, held thrall, by the unblinking gaze of the dragon's yellow eyes. Nothing could have shielded me from those eyes. A question shot from them, an ancient, ancient riddle that sent me floundering into floodwaters of confusion, snatching at splinters of self, fragments scattered by the many facets of those mirroring eyes. White reflections and black, black … How would I live? What horse would bear me? I thrashed in a directionless deep—

“Tirell,” a tight voice called me, not even loudly, but the summons snapped through me. Frain needed me.

It does not sound like much, but it is probably the hardest thing I have ever done: somehow I embraced my scattered selfhood, found form, and shifted my hypnotized gaze. Frain was kneeling by a kind of lumpy bundle on the cave floor at the very feet of the dragon. I had just sense enough to realize that the huge, shimmering creature had not harmed him—not yet. Towering above him, it continued to puff slow, steady breaths of gently luminous warmth. The whole cave felt warm as a womb. It was the dragon's breathing we had heard.

I could not draw my sword for fear of enraging it. I moved cautiously to my brother's side, glanced down, and swayed in shock. What looked like a crumpled cloak blown to the floor was Daymon Cein, withered as a winter leaf.

“Is he alive?” I exclaimed.

“I can't tell,” Frain whispered numbly. “He is warm, but the dragon warms him.”

I lifted a frail hand. It lay limply in mine. “Frain, help him!” I cried. I could not imagine what he was waiting for.

“Watch the dragon for me.”

He drew his dagger, and then I understood. The race of Dahak cannot easily withstand the touch or even the sight of iron, and Frain had to use iron for healing. If the dragon attacked—but instead it narrowed its topaz eyes in discomfort and scraped its great claws along the cave floor, drawing back a bit. It held its ground a few paces away, still warming us with its quiet, even breathing. Why should it concern itself with us at all? I sensed quite surely that the beast was dangerous, very dangerous, perhaps as dangerous as I. And at the same time I grew quite certain that it would not destroy us. It regarded mankind with a fatelike indifference. Why, then, did it come to our aid?

I heard a moan and looked down to see Frain shaking with strain and beaded with sweat. “Vieyra,” he panted, “old hag, let go!”

I knew then that it was no use; Grandfather was gone. Once that mighty crone places her chalky grip on a man she never loosens it. But Frain would not give up. He would not. He knelt there with one hand on Grandfather's forehead, the other on the old man's bony chest, and though he did not move I could see that he expended every dram of his strength and will for the sake of Daymon Cein. He struggled until I could have shrieked just from watching him. I don't know how long I stood watching, waiting for a moment of defeat that never came. Finally, without any giving in at all, Frain simply toppled, unconscious, taut and drenched with sweat. I caught him before he hit the hard stone, wrapped him in my cloak, and laid him down. What inexplicably good fate had sent this marvel to Melior to be my brother?

There had been no sense of victory, but a movement caught my eye. Grandfather lay breathing deeply, easily, and he stirred in his sleep.

I turned away. I had to turn away from joy. I had forgotten about the dragon even in that short time, regarding it as only a useful piece of furniture that made light and heat. But it woofed at me sternly, a warning rumble, and I stopped, almost laughing. I had forgotten about Frain's dagger, still clutched in his hand. I sheathed it and started to smooth the stiffened fingers that had held it, but I found I could not bear to touch my brother so tenderly. What a coward I was then! I dropped Frain's hand and stumped off to find Fabron.

Poor Fabron! He had fled the cave sometime; I am not sure when. I found him with the horses just outside the entrance. He stood weeping into the mane of his roan. “What ails you?” I grumped. “Everything is all right.”

He wouldn't answer me.

“Get in there,” I told him. “Frain is going to need you, and I must find us something to eat.”

“Frain needs you far worse than he will ever need me,” he retorted in a muffled voice.

“That's not my fault,” I shot back. Truth, but I was sorry as soon as I saw him wince. We tethered the horses, and he went in without another word, dragon or no dragon. I realized later what an ordeal that must have been for him. I roamed the mountain for hours, glad to be by myself, but I am afraid I made a sorry hunt of it. I returned near dark with nothing to offer except a few wrinkled crab apples. But near the cave entrance I found a fire, and roasting over it the carcass of a stag.

“Glory be to Eala, you're back!” Fabron exclaimed when I found him. “I've been running back and forth all afternoon tending the meat and trying to keep an eye on these two.” The invalids in question were still sleeping. Fabron disappeared within an instant, off to look after his dinner. He had not been able to build the fire any closer without filling the cave up with smoke. I flopped down, and the black beast came and lay by my side. While I had been off wandering, it—he—had stayed by Frain. Odd—the creature had no gender that I could see, but in those days I thought of it as male. An extension of myself. I know now that it was far more, but then my mind was taken up by other things. In particular, that night, by my empty belly.