“And lo! You’ve all heard rumor of the trouble at Tor Alte! Now let me tell you the truth of it! Your own, your very own valiant and pious lord cannot keep the Devil from his door! Consider that, oh my people! If the most high cannot protect themselves, woe be upon the lowly! Woe indeed!
“Your own baron’s immortal soul was in deepest peril when I arrived, and he never suspecting it! God help him, had I not found him in time to root out the Evil that dwelt in that stronghold, poised as it was to seize control!
“But all glory be to God and all his saints, who protected me from evil and put the strength of righteousness in my hand! The witch of Tor Alte is dead and her spells and demons could not harm me!” Fra Guill’s right arm shot up, fist clenched as if it held a flaming sword. The crowd roared again and shook their own raised fists. “She claimed innocence like this one here, and like this one here, she was put to the test by the holy office of the Church. Oh my people, that you’d been there to witness it! The fire of His Righteous Wrath shriveled her into cinders right as she stood there, spewing out her pernicious lies!”
You lie! Erde was grateful she had no voice to betray her now when she’d have been unable to keep from screaming her outrage. Alla took her own life to keep it from your hands!
“A sacred day!” the priest howled, “A holy day, oh my people! The witch is dead, and her warlock minion!” Again, another growling roar, and again Guillemo waited for quiet.
“But wait, oh my people, but wait . . .” He dropped his arms as if in defeat and hung his dark head as he paced back and forth in an eloquent posture of shame and torment. Then he turned to face the square, palms spread in entreaty. “It is not all good news I bring you this day. We had one holy victory at Tor Alte, and will have another here today. But, oh my people, here is the sad tiding I bring you: though your good baron was saved by God’s Will, working through His most humble servant, I did not come to Tor Alte in time to save the baron’s only daughter! The black evil that lodged in her grew desperate at my advance, supported by the strength of my good brothers, God’s holy champions. It stole away the innocent child’s voice to prevent her from speaking its name in exorcism! It corrupted her sweet obedient womanhood!”
The crowd moaned as one. This time Guillemo did not wait for quiet. He let the horrified murmur swell, then raised his own voice over theirs until the very air shrilled with it. Erde’s skin prickled with the eerie power he possessed. “That blackest Evil put the sword of Darkness in her hand and raised up her child’s arm against an innocent man so that she slew him and then another and another until no man was left to stand against her and she escaped! Escaped, oh my people! This demon incarnate walks abroad among us!”
Erde felt his eyes sweep the crowd, felt his searching glance, felt despair and terror close around her like a vise. She backed up blindly, bumping the spectators behind her. But they were too inflamed with the priest’s rhetoric to notice. What soul would believe her now, in the face of such convincing lies? She almost believed him herself, staring at him up there, seeing him as the crowd saw him: a militant saint or angel, larger than life, with the torch blazing behind him and the new dawn bleaching the shadowed tint of his robe to silver.
“And here is my revelation!” cried the man on the scaffold. “Another piece has been revealed to me of the mysterious dream-omen that stalks me every hour I lay down in sleep, my God-sent holy vision of the witch-child and the Devil’s Paladin! This is the child, oh my people! The witch-child is come among us and she is a child you all have known, become an agent of Satan who seeks the destruction of your immortal souls! We must call on our God to protect us! THE DAYS OF PLAGUE ARE AT HAND!”
The priest fell to his knees on the swaying scaffold. In the square below, four of the white-robes grabbed the torches that burned at the corners of the witch-cart and stood with them at the ready. Guillemo tore open his robe, spread his arms wide and bared his naked hairy chest to the heavens. “Rise up in flame against the powers of darkness, o my people! Set the holy and cleansing fire of righteousness! Burn this evil from the land . . . and . . . from . . . our . . . SOULS!!!”
The four white-robes flung their torches at the witch-cart. The grass bindings on the bundles caught in a rush, speeding their eager blaze to the tar-soaked twigs. On the church steps, the little boy began to wail and beat his fists against the priest who held him. The girl-child just stared ahead, seeing nothing. Flame and dark smoke exploded around the witch-woman faster than a gasp of breath. At first she coughed and tried to turn her head away. The useless poignant gesture tore at Erde’s heart. Then the woman’s brave composure deserted her. She struggled senselessly against her bindings until her wrists tore and bled. Erde’s hands worked at her own wrists. She feared the poor woman might tear her arms from their sockets, like a wild animal pinned in a snare. When at last the fire licked at the hem of her shift, the crowd sighed and leaned forward. The woman began to scream.
Erde spun away through the press of eager spectators, blind and nauseous, seeing herself burning, breathing that black acrid smoke, with those same soul-rending shrieks tearing the life from her own lungs. This would be her fate, if Fra Guill ever got his hands on her.
Around her, children sobbed and the women crossed themselves, weeping and fainting. Erde shoved through the confusion unheeding. When she broke free of the crowd, she found herself two steps from the baker’s tray, where the boy had left it to climb up one of the brazier carts for a better view. There, he danced up and down, his small fists clenched and his eyes riveted to the spectacle.
Erde learned then that hunger is a strong instinct. Like a rush of cold water, cunning cleared her head. She dropped the silver mark into the heel of her boot, then quickly doubled up the flap of her cloak to make a pocket. She darted a glance up and down the line of food stalls. No one watching. Like the baker’s boy, the entire throng was rapt by the witch-woman’s death throes.
Except Red-jerkin. He had spotted her from the far end near the church. Her movement counter to the crowd had drawn his attention. Erde froze like a wild animal, and their eyes met. He raised his arm a bit, as if to signal her covertly, then started to work his way through the throng in her direction. It seemed that he too was seeking to avoid notice, and this terrified her all the more. What unknown pursuers lay in wait for her in addition to the known?
Erde let instinct take hold. She stepped up to the baker’s tray, cleared the entire surface into her cloak with one sweep of her arm. Then for the second time in three days, she turned and ran for her life.
* * *
The streets of Tubin were deserted as the unwelcome dawn lightened the narrow band of sky between the rooftops to the color of pewter. The wet cobbles and stone walls shone dully as if the entire world had turned to metal, slick, cold, and gleaming with malice. Clutching her laden cloak against her breast as if it were her life and not mere bread that she carried, Erde ran with the last of her strength. She ran for the dragon. If she could only reach the dragon, she would be safe. Even when her breath threatened to fail her, she would not stop, could not even think of stopping, sure that the echo of her own footfall in the narrow wet streets was the clack of Red-jerkin’s booted heels on the paving behind her.
But she cleared the town gates safely and swerved off the main road into the maze of cottages and yards and kitchen gardens. There, she hid gasping behind a hayrick for long enough to assure herself that there was no pursuit, and long enough to gobble one of the meat pies she had stolen without inhaling the bulk of it into her lungs.
When her breathing had steadied, she chose a more concertedly circuitous retreat through the emptied farmsteads. There was no one about, but she was weak and shaking with exhaustion. She had no more flight in her. But the food did help. In one unguarded cottage yard, she found a small flock of goats penned in a muddy thornbrush corral. Erde halted, considering, while she wolfed down another pie. She spotted a coil of rope abandoned atop a barrel, and this somehow decided her. She dug the sil
ver mark out of her boot, then searched out two especially long curving thorns from the brush fence. At the cottage door, she stuck the thorns crosswise into the soft, worn planking to form a tiny cradle, into which she slid the silver coin. The side stamped with the King’s Arms was facing out, and she noticed that a horned and rampant dragon supported the shield. An omen of good favor, she decided, pressing at it to be sure it would rest there safely until discovered.
She ate another meat pie. Then she returned to the corral to collect her dragon’s dinner.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Erde’s dragon-lore suggested that once well fed, a dragon could go several weeks before eating again. She hoped this proved to be true. She’d had enough cause already to wonder if much of the lore in her grandmother’s stories was out of date.
The outlook was promising at the moment, with the dragon sated and drowsy beside her on the ledge and three goats out of ten remaining, currently grazing away with surprising equanimity in the gorge below. One was a sturdy black and white spotted milker, taller and sleeker than the rest, evidently due to sheer force of personality. If there was any food to be found, this ewe would claim it for her own. After all, she had stared the dragon down.
Erde had assumed that the violent devouring of the bear was the dragon’s only way of dealing with a meal. She’d anticipated the worst sort of bleating and mayhem when she drove the little flock into the gorge and informed the dragon they were his. But the goats seemed almost not to notice the dragon lumbering among them, except for the big spotted ewe. She stamped at it and presented her horns. The dragon regarded her a moment, then lowered its own great horns in imitation. Erde would have sworn that goat and dragon were bowing to one another. Then the dragon turned away and delicately picked up one of the other goats by the scruff of its neck, like a cat with a kitten. The goat hung there placidly while the dragon carried it off to a hidden corner of the gorge. It returned six times and each time, ewe and dragon matched their unequal horns, and the dragon took another. After the fifth, Erde shook her head in astonishment. At least I’ll have milk to drink, she told herself and promptly fell asleep.
When she awoke, the dragon was curled up beside her. Erde lay still, grateful to be warm and fed and dry, and glad of the chance to study her remarkable traveling companion, to look it over at leisure and in daylight, if the gray afternoon sinking through the dark pine boughs could be called daylight. She thought about the summer that had never really come, and wondered if she would ever see the sun again.
The dragon was muddy from its travels, and its long sleep inside the mountain had left a coating of earth so hard and caked even the constant rain had not managed to wash it off completely. But in the gray half-light, Erde saw that its dull, dust-colored “scales” were actually a richly tapestried hide of grays and browns, ranging from the warm russet deep in the joints between the big concentrically-textured plates on its back that resembled a flexible tortoiseshell, to the smooth and glowing sienna of its belly or the luminous ivory of its razor-tipped horns and claws. The richness was subtle, and brown was the overall impression, but the details were various and stunning. Erde was relieved. She’d been avoiding the conclusion that her dragon was ugly.
Her dragon. How could she call it hers? She didn’t even know its name. But it did seem to need her, or think it did, and this was both novel and flattering. It gave her purpose at a time when she could not have imagined one on her own. But now that the dragon was hopefully no longer so obsessed with its stomach, perhaps it was time to talk to it about something other than food. Erde settled herself squarely opposite its snoozing head and composed her interrogative in her mind.
—Dragon?
Very quickly, she saw in her mind’s eye a dragon yawning and settling into sleep.
—Dragon?
The dragon in her mind stretched, yawned more widely, and turned its back on her. Erde’s eyes narrowed in pique.
—DRAGON!
The dragon in front of her raised its enormous head with a low growl. Erde swallowed. It heard and understood her at least.
—Did I not find you a fine dinner, Dragon?
The dragon resettled its jaws comfortably and blinked.
—So will you talk to me a while?
She read assent in its mind but resignation in its eyes.
—If you please then, Dragon, may I know your name?
She did not ask if it had one. All dragons had names. Her grandmother had said they were extremely proud of them, and that you must be particularly polite when requesting an introduction. Usually their names were unpronounceable and had to be translated into some poetic but inadequate German equivalent.
The dragon did not answer immediately. Perhaps it did not trust her yet. Erde waited. She sensed a struggle and the beginnings of distress. A great blankness filled her mind. Sadness gripped her throat. Not reluctance at all, but a huge, heaving effort to . . . remember.
—What? You can’t remember your own name?
She had meant to ask more gently. Her own shock and surprise had gotten the better of her. A dragon that didn’t know its name? The poor creature’s sigh was like a great sob of shame, and Erde gathered every wit she possessed to try to soothe it.
—You’ll remember. Of course you’ll remember. You’ve been asleep too long, that’s all. Try this: when I’m trying to remember something, I concentrate on the very first thought I had when I woke up.
The dragon’s struggle felt like muscles toiling in her mind, like men rolling heavy stones uphill or dragging laden carts through the mud. It remembered waking slowly, being drawn as though to a voice . . . suddenly, the memory dam burst. A torrent of images surged through Erde faster than she could grasp: soft green hills, a buried vein of shining metal, farmer’s plow breaking the fresh sod, mountains shuddering with inner fire, bright young shoots pushing up through dark humus. Sand and hills and trees and rock and soil.
Earth.
—But that’s my name.
The dragon looked at her as if she had foolishly stated the obvious.
—We have the same name?
Again, assent.
Erde had never heard of a dragon having the same name as a person, but it did show an unorthodox kind of logic, if it—he, she now sensed—if he was to be her dragon.
—There! You see? I told you you could remember!
But she sensed continuing distress. He had remembered his name, but not who he was or why he was there. Abruptly, she was deluged with doubt. Nothing seemed certain and nothing made sense. The value of life itself was in question. But Erde knew she was not given to such imponderables. It must be the dragon who was desperate for such answers. She tried again to soothe him.
—Maybe we don’t all need to know our purpose right off.
Earth flooded her with images of stalwart, all-knowing dragonkind, proper dragons who knew their purpose. It was a terrible disaster that he’d forgotten his.
—You’ll remember. Just give yourself time.
But the dragon would not be consoled. Feeding upon itself, his distress increased until it filled Erde’s entire head and brought tears to her eyes and great racking sobs to her throat.
—Dragon! Earth! Please!
Surprise, a grasping at self-control, then a grumbling kind of apology. The dragon rose morosely and moved off down the ledge.
—Wait! Don’t go!
He sent back an image of goats.
—Oh. Um. Will you . . . ?
Cautiously, she pictured a question of him eating the spotted ewe.
Emphatic negative. Offense that she should think such a thing, when the she-goat had not yet given him permission.
Permission? Nonplussed, Erde sent back gratitude, which Earth did not seem to understand until she imaged herself milking the goat and drinking the milk. He responded with agreement, then slid down from the ledge to accept graciously the self-sacrifice of any goat except the spotted ewe.
* * *
Watching him lumber away in
to the gorge, Erde had a stark sense of having failed him. But how could he expect a mere human girl to provide answers to such deep questions? Even if you did think of a possible answer, it only led right into another question. Such as, if Earth, being a dragon, had a specific purpose in life, it followed that she also had a purpose in being with him, and what might that be? She doubted it was anything so simple as feeding him and offering him moral support.
But meanwhile, he did have to eat, and because of what Alla had said and because her grandmother would surely have wanted her to, Erde accepted feeding the dragon and keeping him safe as her responsibility. This gorge would not shelter them forever. It was nearing September and even if the weather suddenly became seasonable again, one could expect the fall snowstorms relatively soon. Her near disaster in Tubin told Erde she had to move on and quickly, away from the inhospitable weather, away from her father’s huntsmen, away from the murderous reach of Brother Guillemo Gotti, far from this perilous neighborhood where everyone knew her face and name and took her for a witch.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They traveled by nights and slept out the days in whatever deep thicket or rock shelter they could find. Each day, Erde was less tired when she lay down than she’d been the dawn before, and less painfully sore when she awoke. The burden of her pack and Rainer’s sword lightened as the long miles passed.
Earth learned to travel more quietly and with less interest in the countryside. Though the food-flock was soon reduced to the she-goat, he showed no interest in eating her. After a while, since the goat was agile, traveled well, and seemed content in their company, Erde did not even bother to tether her. She followed of her own accord.
As they put a safer distance between them and Tor Alte, Erde encouraged the dragon to hunt, especially as the time since his last meal lengthened and he continued to show little inclination to do so on his own. She began to wonder if he knew how. At dawn, their quiet time between travel and sleep, she conjured hunting images for him, graphic and colorful enough to inform an idiot, drawn from the days before she’d refused to ride with her father’s hunt. Earth responded with his unflinching golden stare and an aura of eager incomprehension. Eventually, Erde stopped their night’s travel early and banished him to the woods, insisting that he stay out there until dawn. For the first few days of this new regime, he slunk off reluctantly, only to return as soon as she’d let him. But one morning he was gone until the day was bright and Erde began to worry. Only a day ago, he’d come hurrying back to report that a hunting farmer had discovered him in the woods and run off shrieking. Earth did not understand the man’s terror. Erde thought it had even hurt his feelings. But this time, she sensed his satisfaction even before she heard him rustling back through the underbrush. He’d heard a doe calling, mortally wounded, and she had begged him to end her misery. Erde thought he was more pleased at having eased the doe’s pain than for the meal she’d afforded him.
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