Harrowing the Dragon

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  The men slid off their horses then; the ring of horses melted away. The hawks stirred, crying harshly as the men grappled with Sere. Their arms locked around him so tightly he could not struggle. One of the men gripped his hair, jerked his head back. His mouth opened; hands full of corn-husks pushed down over his face.

  Cresce, frozen on her horse, saw his body begin to convulse. She snatched air and her trihorne at the same time. The note she blasted down at the men loosened their hold of both Sere and the corn husks. They looked up at her, pained, incredulous, while Sere, half-conscious, dragged at the wind. She said to the red-haired man, whose eyes were as furious as the hawks’ eyes at the sound,

  “If you kill him, I will play the winter Songs of Fortune at your spring rituals. Every note backwards.”

  He straightened, gripped her reins lightly. His head gave a little, frightened shake. But there was no fear either in his face or his voice when he spoke. “No.” Behind him, the men shifted, easing their grip on Sere. “You are the Bard of Daghian?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re part Jazi.”

  She nodded, her throat dry. She realized he was younger than Sere, even younger than she, and Sere’s own hair held the same touch of burnished copper. Her eyes widened. “You’re part Daghian.”

  The muscles in his face knotted. “True. Bard. In ancient hill language, the words were interchangeable.” He turned, bent over Sere. Cresce could not see what he did, but Sere’s body jerked, then sagged in the hill-men’s hands. The men lifted him, threw him facedown across Cresce’s saddlebow. She put her hand beneath his throat, but she could not tell, with her own racing pulse, if he were still alive. She stared at the empty hills, the silent men with their eyes of mist, and suddenly she began to cry.

  “All he came to do was find his wife!”

  Their faces changed. They surrounded her, speaking quickly, worriedly, all at the same time so that she could hardly understand them. She gathered, wiping the tears angrily off her face, that nothing but respect was ever shown to a bard in Jazi, that she should not be afraid, that the people of Jazi showed peace and courtesy toward all strangers except those of Daghian, who were scarcely human anyway, and that a bard’s tears would salt the cornfields, and they would be grateful if she would stop crying. At that point Sere’s head lifted; he muttered something thickly. The hilt of a knife caught him behind the ear, silencing him again. The red-haired man took Cresce’s reins in his hand, flicked the pipes at his wrist to his mouth, and called his horse with three quick notes. The other men were gathering their horses. For a moment the air flurried with light, tangled music. Someone caught Sere’s horse, which was headed back toward the marshes. Then, in a long single file, they escorted Cresce into Jazi.

  The hills parted on the other side, to join other hills ringing a plain where the people of Jazi farmed. A river, slow and green, wandered through it, sending a veinwork of streams through rougher pastureland where flocks of sheep grazed. Out of the center of the plain something shaped like an enormous black arch rose over a circle of barren ground. Scattered around the arch, among the threads of streams, were houses of oak and stone, sheds, barns, and walled fields, at the edge of the fallow field, in front of the arch, stood gigantic oak. Its boughs seemed to have stretched out to gather years and centuries. In the oval of earth its vast shadow swept, nothing stood except a great dwelling of black stone.

  Its outer walls were open to all light, wind, and weather. The harsh, twisted shadow of the oak probed through the dark archways in its walls. Light from the setting sun rimmed one wall of arches with fire. Cresce remembered something that her father had told her, long ago, about the black house at the edge of Forever where the Bards of Jazi lived.

  She broke her long silence, asked the young, red-haired man beside her, who rode his horse and wore the hawk on his shoulder as if they were extensions of him, “Who played the cothone to welcome me?”

  He was silent so long she thought he had not heard. But finally he said, “The Bard of Jazi.”

  “The Bard played a Daghian salute? But how did she know I was from Daghian? How—” The question snagged suddenly in her throat. “Who—What is your name?”

  He looked at her with the odd mixture of bitterness and courtesy in his eyes. “Hroi Tuel. And yours, Bard?”

  “Cresce Dami. Who is the Bard of Jazi?”

  He held her eyes a moment longer. Then he lifted Sere’s head by the hair, let it drop again. “His wife.”

  They reached the black house under the ancient oak at twilight. Someone had sounded a salute at the edge of the village. Women with torches, trays of food and wine, met Cresce as she dismounted, welcomed her, smiling. They wore her face. Some of them had grown up with her mother. They asked questions about her mother’s life in Onon, if she had been happy, how she had died. They were oblivious to Sere, as if he were a saddle pack slung across Cresce’s horse. But he saw a couple of men bring him into the house. The women took her inside, into one of the inner rooms. A brazier warmed it; oil lamps lit the rough, colorful tapestries on the black walls, the oak chairs and chests covered with sheepskins. The men had left Sere lying among Cresce’s possessions on the rugs. The women, assured by Cresce repeatedly that they could do nothing more for her, left finally.

  She knelt beside Sere, turned his head gently. Blood had dried in his hair, crusted on the side of his face. She washed it away as well as she could and covered him with sheepskins. Then she sat watching him, her arms tight around her knees. She heard steps in another part of the house, the voices of the women again. Then something that sounded like a horn moaned the salute to the Bard of Hekar across the village, and she closed her eyes, hid her face against her knees.

  A quarter of an hour later, the Bard of Hekar himself appeared at her door.

  He was twice her age, a richly dressed, fair-haired man with a thin, lined face and a sour expression in his eyes. He said nothing to Cresce; his lean, sensitive musician’s hands searched the crusted wound in Sere’s hair and the dark bruise on his jaw. Then he sat back on his heels, and demanded, “Why? Why did you bring him into Jazi?”

  She slid her wrists over her ears. “Don’t shout at me.”

  “Do you realize what will happen if he dies here? I don’t know how you managed to keep him alive this long.”

  “I cried. They said it would ruin their crops.”

  He was silent, gazing at her. A corner of his mouth twisted unwillingly “Cresce Dami. You played the cothone for men of the king’s court while they hunted at Daghian last autumn. What would your father have said?”

  “Did you know my father?”

  “I was a musician at Hekar the five years he was Bard there. I have been at Hekar since I was born.” He ran his hands through his hair, jerked his head at Sere. “Why did he come? If he dies here, Daghian will go to war against Jazi, and Hekar will be forced to war against Daghian. You and I will play battle charges on opposite fields.”

  She said his name softly. “Ytir Agora. The Bard with the throat of gold.”

  “There is not much chance to sing on a battlefield,” he said bitterly. He stood up. “Daghian fool,” he muttered to Sere’s unresponsive face. Then he whirled at her. “Why?”

  “I don’t know why! Ask the Bard of Jazi—she sent for him! She’s his wife.” She stood up under his amazed stare. “Where is she, anyway?”

  “In the hills, sounding salutes. There are other bards coming. That makes no sense! Does she want him dead?”

  She stared numbly down at Sere. “I don’t know.”

  She met the Bard of Jazi at midnight. Sere had wakened finally; he seemed surprised at being alive. He drank a little wine, then drifted to sleep again. Bards from other courts and cities introduced themselves to Cresce. They seemed, like the people of Jazi, to regard Sere as an embarrassment, of possible concern only if he were dead. When they left, Cresce sat playing the cothone softly, droning slow dark notes out of the eighth pipe. Finally, she heard someone ride to th
e doors of the house and dismount. There were voices, murmuring, indistinct, and then quick footsteps through the quiet house. Cresce let her cothone rest. A woman entered breathlessly, sending the still lamp flames flickering all over the room.

  She was as beautiful as Sere had said. Her black hair hung in thick braids to her waist, gold thread woven through them. Her eyes were wide-set, a deep, tempestuous, autumn gray. She was taller than Cresce, almost as tall as Sere, which betrayed her mixed heritage, but gave her a grace and suppleness even in the shapeless bulky skirts and tunics the Jazi women wore. Her eyes went to Sere and then to Cresce, sitting mute with the cothone in her hands. She said nothing; she only knelt beside Cresce, held her tightly a moment. Then she turned to Sere, stroked his face until he woke.

  He whispered, “Lelia.”

  Her throat suddenly swollen, as with deep, unsounded cothone notes, Cresce got up quickly then and left them.

  She went outside, into the night. The spring winds had blown stars like seed through the sky above the plain. The moon sat like a white bird on the black gate into Forever. The enormous oak tree murmured like a muted cyrillaya under the wind’s touch. Cresce walked in its black moon-shadow toward the edge of the barren field.

  She stood looking at the hard, silvery earth, the immense archway the winds were blowing through. Something her father had said teased her mind. Something about a great circle of cothone players around that field, trying to coax an answer from the silence within that arch. In the distance, the river burned a path through the dark plain. She turned away from the field, followed the edge of a tiny stream that made a half-circle, tracing the shadow of the oak.

  Outside the great wings of the oak, she saw Hroi Tuel, restless in the moonlight, flicking pebbles into the stream with a great hawk asleep on his shoulder.

  She sat down beside him. He said nothing; she watched rings form and flow into one another as the pebbles dropped. She asked him the simplest question first, her voice stilling his hand.

  “Would you have killed Sere?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why did she call him to Jazi?”

  He shrugged. “No one questions the Bard of Jazi. She changes fortune.”

  “What if she leaves with him, goes back to Daghian?”

  “She is not free.” He swept his arm in an arch across the stars. “She is not free. So they say. I think the Bards of Jazi bind themselves. And I don’t believe in fortune.”

  She bowed her face against her knees, blocking the stars from her vision. Her hands clenched, a rare, untrained movement. She said carefully, “When the army of Daghian passed through Jazi seventy years ago, they did more than abduct one woman. True?”

  “Nine men of Daghian,” he said harshly, “survived the battle of Hekar Pass. They knew the truth, but that truth was never spoken in Daghian. Even today, seventy years later, there are children born in Jazi with hair pale as cornsilk. Or red, like mine. Hekar Pass was a matter of justice.”

  She lifted her head again. “I have her cothone—the woman taken by the Lord of Daghian. Was she a bard?”

  “They say so. For seven years after she left, the river was burned dry by the sun, and what sheep the army left in Jazi starved because the pastures dried. She wasn’t there to change fortune.” He was silent. Then he sent a fistful of pebbles spattering into the water, and faced her. “Is it because I’m part Daghian that I don’t believe that? When you said today that you would play the winter rituals if we killed the Daghian, the other men were frightened. Maybe they are old enough and wise enough to be afraid.”

  “I don’t know. How would I know?”

  “You are half-Jazi and a bard. You should know.”

  “I know the Songs of Changing Fortune. I don’t know anything about fortune.” She picked up one of his pebbles suddenly, sent it skimming down the stream. “This much is true: the Bard of Jazi controls Sere’s fortune.”

  “She brought you. She brought you both.”

  “Are the Bards of Jazi always women?”

  “No. The Bards of Jazi are chosen by the dead.”

  She felt something shiver through her bones. “How?”

  He shrugged again, the hawk clinging in its sleep to his shoulder as to a swaying tree. “I don’t know.” For the first time, his voice seemed free of bitterness, dragged into wonder. “In Jazi, the dead are burned, and their ashes blow through the gates of Forever into that bare ground. You tell me how the dead can play the cothone.”

  “You’ve heard it,” she whispered.

  “Once. When Lelia Daghian played the cothone at the spring rituals. No one even knew her name…” His shadowed, eyeless face turned again to Cresce as she shuddered. He reached out, gripped her shoulder with a steady hawk’s grip. “She was from Daghian. Chosen by the dead.”

  She stared at the mask the moon made of his face. “It’s a matter of music. No more.”

  “I try to believe that.” His hand loosened until it lay very gently on her shoulder. “Men and women of Jazi killed by that Daghian army were burned and scattered through those gates… I don’t know what to believe. My father is Overlord of Jazi, and I am his red-haired son. And the part of me born to hate Daghian is also drawn to the world beyond Jazi. I can’t sleep at nights; my dreams are torn in two, from not knowing… You are half-Jazi, Bard of Daghian, and the dead will listen to you play. What will you do?”

  She rose, splashed across the shallow stream. Facing him again, she could see his eyes, bitter, haunted, the huge hawk awake on his broad shoulder.

  He said, “Where will you go, Bard? Back to Daghian? You are not free. Neither of us is free.”

  In the black house again, curled under sheepskin in the darkness, she heard the words again and again, hounding her into sleeplessness.

  She woke with a start at midmorning. Sere was up, washing the dried blood out of his hair in a basin of water. He turned at her question.

  “She went up into the hills again to welcome the visitors.” His face was white, drawn; he looked oddly peaceless.

  She said anxiously, “I thought you would be happier.”

  He frowned down at her, not seeing her. “There are women here with hair as fair as Hulme’s.” He turned back to the basin, stared at his reflection in the bloody water. “Something stinks in Daghian history, and the smell is blowing out of Hekar Pass. No wonder they hate us.”

  “She doesn’t.” Cresce sat up, pushing hair out of her eyes, trying to see. “She doesn’t hate you. Why did she put you in so much danger?”

  “She wanted me to come to her. She can’t go back to Daghian. She is Bard of Jazi—the fortune of Jazi.”

  Her lips parted on a sudden breath. “You can’t. You can’t stay here. You are a Lord of Daghian. There’s nothing here but sheep. They’ll kill you, and your brothers will come—”

  “You stop them.” He knelt at her side suddenly, raised her cold fingers and kissed them. “Bard of Daghian, sing the truth of Hekar Pass to Daghian.”

  She stared at his bent head, the strokes of copper in his wet, tangled hair. She said, her voice shaking, “How do I know what the truth is?”

  She rode out of the village an hour later to speak to the Bard of Jazi. The music of the Bard’s salutes guided Cresce through the plain, then high up into the hills. A horn call rolled through the valleys, bidding welcome to a group of bards traveling down a road cut between the hills. The Bard herself stood on the crest of a hill overlooking them. As Cresce drew nearer, she recognized the twisted, bone-white horn, made of pieces of ram’s horn bound together with gold. Its tone was strong, bright; only the fading cadences frayed to a hollowness, like the wind’s voice.

  The Bard did not seem surprised to see Cresce. She stilled the horn and watched Cresce dismount. Facing her, Cresce saw then what she had seen in Hroi Tuel, and later, in Sere: a confusion, a peacelessness.

  She said huskily, “When I came to Daghian, the first ballad I sang was of Sere, and his hunting of the stag that was not a stag. Or ma
ybe it was a stag after all. I never wondered before this. What was Sere really following through the mists? A stag? A woman? A bird? Or something else? When I look at you, I don’t understand what I’m seeing. What are you doing? Are you trying to kill Sere?”

  “I don’t think so.” She stood for a moment under Cresce’s incredulous gaze, her hands tight on the ram’s horn. Then she took Cresce’s arm, led her to a sheepskin rug laid on the bare ground. “Sit down, Cresce Dami. Never, never could I have been Bard of Daghian. But I played my great-grandmother’s cothone since I was a child, and in Jazi, that one instrument is enough.”

  “Why did you leave Daghian?”

  “Look at me. Old, old men of Jazi say that I am the bard that the army of Daghian stole, returned at last to Jazi. I am their fortune.”

  “Are you?”

  “Perhaps.” She was silent, her thoughts indrawn. “Perhaps. Maybe their only fortune is hope, which I give them. I don’t know. I am my own misfortune.”

  “Why?” she pleaded. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand you.”

  “I am half of Jazi, half of Daghian. If Sere had died yesterday, I would have been free of Daghian.” She shook her head again, her face twisting a little at Cresce’s expression. “All I can give you is what you asked for. Truth. That was one thought in my mind. But also, I gave Jazi the truth: I didn’t want to lie to them about Sere. So I told them what he was. They nearly killed him, and you saved him, as I hoped you could.”

  “Do you love him?” Cresce whispered. “Or don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if I love the people of Jazi, who demand everything of me—even my freedom. All I know is that I won’t ever leave them without a bard.”

  Cresce was silent. The winds sifted dryly through the oak leaves. She said abruptly, as if the word were surprised out of her, “No.”

  “In Daghian, I have a son. I have a place in the Lords’ house. I have horses, birds, great music. Here, I listen on a windy day to sheep bells. And I wonder what is happening in the great cities of the kingdom. But in Daghian, my face is the face of a woman of Jazi. And the men of Daghian are the sons and grandsons of the army that swept through Jazi seventy years ago, stealing, burning, raping, murdering. Tell me. Where do I belong?”