"To harm such a creature at all is a wizard's task," Nyal said, handing the bow back. "Perhaps someday you will tell me of it, but I believe I owe you a tale today. A long ride is a good time for a story, no?"
"A very good time," Alec replied.
"Beka tells me you did not know your mother or her people, so I'll begin at the beginning. Long ago, before the Tir came to the northern lands, a woman named Hazadriel claimed to have been given a vision journey by Aura, the god you call Illior in the north."
Alec smiled as he listened. Nyal sounded just like Seregil, launching into one of his long tales.
"In this vision a sacred dragon showed to her a distant land and told her she would make a new clan there. For many years Hazadriel traveled Aurenen, telling of her vision and calling for followers. Many dismissed her as mad, or chased her off as a troublemaker. But others welcomed her until eventually she and a great army of people sailed from Bry'kha; they were never heard from again and given up as lost until many generations later when Tir traders brought tales of 'faie living in a land of ice far north of their own. It was only then that we learned they had taken the name of their leader, Hazadriel, as their own. Until then, they were simply referred to as the Kalosi, the Lost Ones. You, Alec, are the first to ever come to Aurenen claiming kinship with them."
"Then I can't trace my family to any one Aurenen clan?" Alec said, disappointed.
"What a pity not to have known your own people."
Alec shook his head. "I'm not so sure. According to Seregil, they didn't take much of Aurenfaie hospitality with them."
"It's true," Seregil told him. "The Hazadrielfaie have a reputation for enforcing their own isolation. I had a brush with them once, and almost didn't live to tell about it."
"You never told me that!" Beka exclaimed indignantly.
Nor me, Alec thought in surprise, but held his tongue.
"Well, it was a very brief brush," he admitted, "and not a pleasant one. The first time I traveled to the northlands, before I met Beka's father, I heard an old bard telling tales of what he called the Elder Folk. Alec here grew up hearing those same stories, never suspecting it was his own people they were talking about.
"I hounded the poor fellow for all he knew, along with every other storyteller I met for the next year or so. I suppose that was the beginning of my education as a bard. At any rate, I finally got enough out of the tales to trace them to a place in the Ironheart Mountains called Ravensfell Pass. Hungry for the sight of another 'faie face, I struck off in search of them."
"That's understandable," Nyal threw in, then gave Beka an embarrassed look. "I mean no insult."
Beka gave him a wry look. "None taken."
"I'd been in Skala for over ten years and was terribly homesick," Seregil continued. "To find other 'faie, no matter who they were, became an obsession. Everyone I talked to warned that the Hazadriel-faie killed strangers, but I figured that only applied to Tirfaie.
"It was a long, cold journey and I'd decided to go alone. I started through the pass in late spring, and a week or so later finally came out in a huge valley and saw what looked like a settled fai'thast in the distance. Certain of a warm welcome, I headed for the closest village. Before I'd gotten a mile down the valley, though, I ran into a group of armed horsemen. All I saw at first was that they were wearing sen'gai. I greeted them in Aurenfaie, but they attacked and took me prisoner."
"What happened then?" Beka demanded as soon as he paused.
"They held me in a cellar for two days before I managed to escape."
"That must have been a bitter disappointment," Nyal remarked kindly.
Seregil looked away and sighed. "It was a long time ago."
The column had slowed steadily as they talked, and now came to a complete halt.
"This is the first hidden stretch," Nyal explained. "Captain, will you trust me as your guide?"
Beka agreed just a tad too readily, Alec noted with amusement.
Skalan riders paired off with Aurenfaie, handing over their reins and tying white cloth blindfolds over their eyes.
A pair of Gedre riders approached Alec and Seregil.
"What's this?" asked Seregil as one of the men sidled his horse up next to Seregil's and held out a blindfold.
"All Skalans must ride blind," the man replied.
Alec choked down a hard knot of resentment, almost grateful when his own blindfold hid the scene. How many more little ways would the 'faie find to underline the fact that Seregil was returning as an outsider?
"Ready, Alec i Amasa?" his own guide asked, clasping his shoulder.
"Ready." Alec gripped the saddlebow, feeling off balance already. Renewed grumbling among the Skalans came from all sides, then a brief chorus of surprise as a peculiar sensation came over them, a tingle on the skin. Unable to resist, Alec lifted a corner of the blindfold just enough to peek out from under it, then pulled it hastily back into place as his eye was assaulted by a stinging burst of swirling color that sent a bolt of pain through his head.
"I wouldn't do that, my friend," his guide chuckled. "The magic will hurt your eyes, without the covering."
To make amends to their guests, or perhaps to drown out the complaining, someone began to sing and others quickly joined in, voices echoing among the rocks.
Once I loved a girl so fair, with ten charms woven in her hair. Slim as the tip of the newborn moon, Eyes the color of a mountain sky. For a year I wooed her with my eyes And a year with all my heart. A year with tears unshed, A year with wandering feet, A year with silent songs unsung, A year with sighs replete.
A year until she was the wife of another and my safety was complete.
The play of sun and shadow across Alec's skin told him that the trail twisted sharply and it wasn't long before he dug in his pouch for the root Seregil had given him. It smelled of moist earth, and the pungent juice made his eyes water, but it did settle his stomach.
"I didn't think I'd be sick," he said, spitting out the stringy pith. "It feels like we're riding around in circles."
"That's the magic," said Seregil. "Whole miles of the pass are like this."
"How are you doing?" Alec asked softly, thinking of Seregil's frequent difficulties with magic.
Warm, ginger-scented breath bathed his cheek as Seregil leaned close and confessed, "I'm managing."
The blind ride went on for what seemed like a dark, lurching eternity. They traveled beside rushing water for a time, and at others Alec sensed walls closing in around them. Riagil finally called a halt, and the blindfolds were removed. Alec
rubbed his eyes, blinking in the afternoon brightness. They were in a small meadow bounded on all sides by steep cliffs. Looking back, he saw nothing but the usual terrain.
Seregil was bathing his face at a spring that bubbled up among the rocks a few yards away. Joining him, Alec drank as he studied the stunted bushes and clumps of tiny flowers and grasses clinging in clefts of rock. A few wild mountain sheep clattered among the rocks overhead.
"Would fresh meat be welcome tonight?" Alec asked Riagil, who was standing nearby.
The khirnari shook his head. "We have food enough with us for now. Leave these creatures for someone who needs them. Besides, I think you'd have a hard time making such a shot. They are a good distance off."
"I'd bet a Skalan sester he can shoot that far," Seregil told him.
"An Akhendi mark says he can't," Riagil countered, producing a thick, square coin seemingly out of thin air.
Seregil gave Alec a mischievous wink. "Looks like it's up to you to defend our honor."
"Thanks," Alec muttered. Shading his eyes, he looked up at the sheep again. They were still on the move, at least fifty yards away now, and the breeze was uncertain. Unfortunately, a number of people had heard the challenge and were watching him expectantly. With an inward sigh, he went back to his horse and pulled an arrow from the quiver slung behind his saddle.
Ignoring his audience, he took aim in the general direction of the hin
dmost sheep and released purposefully high. The shaft glanced off the rocks just over the large ram's head. The creature let out a bleat and sprang away.
"By the Light!" someone gasped.
"You'll make a living for yourself with that bow in Aurenen," Nyal laughed. "Archery's a betting sport here."
Objects of some sort were changing hands around the circle of onlookers.
Several men showed Alec their quivers, where masses of small ornaments strung on thongs hung from bosses set into the sides. Some were carved from stone or wood, others cast in metal or fashioned from animal teeth and bright feathers.
"These are shatta, betting trophies, used only by archers," Nyal explained, plucking one made of bear claws from his own considerable collection and tying it onto Alec's quiver strap. "There, that shot of yours should earn you something. This marks you as a challenger."
"You may not be able to lift that quiver of yours before we head home again, Sir Alec," said Nikides. "If they let us bet for drinks, I'll be laying my luck on you every time."
Alec accepted the praise with a shy grin. His shooting was one of the few things he'd been proud of growing up, though more for the success it had brought him as a hunter.
As he returned to the spring to drink, he felt glad of those skills again. In patches of soft ground around the spring he saw the marks of panther and wolves, together with several larger tracks he didn't recognize.
"Just as well we missed him," Seregil remarked.
Looking where his friend pointed, Alec saw a splayed, three-toed print twice the length of his foot.
"A dragon?"
"Yes, and of the dangerous size."
Alec placed his hand in the track, noting the deep imprint of talons at the end of each toe. "What happens if we meet one of these while we're blindfolded?" he asked, frowning.
Seregil's impassive shrug was less than reassuring.
The trail grew narrower still from here, barely wide enough in places for a horse to pass. Alec was pondering what it must be like to venture through here in the winter when something landed on the turned-back hood of his cloak. He reached back, expecting to find a clump of dirt. Instead, something slithered elusively beneath his fingertips.
"There's something on me," he hissed, praying to Dalna that whatever it was wasn't poisonous.
"Hold still," Seregil cautioned, dismounting.
Easier said than done, Alec thought as whatever it was scrambled up through his hair. The tickle of tiny claws assured him that it wasn't a serpent. He kicked a foot free of the stirrup, and Seregil stepped in and pulled himself up for a closer view.
"By the Light!" he called out in Aurenfaie, clearly delighted by what he'd found. "First dragon!"
The cry was taken up by the Aurenfaie, and those that could crowded around to see.
"A dragon?" Alec turned his head to see.
"A fingerling. Careful now." Seregil gently disentangled it and placed it in Alec's cupped hands.
The little creature looked like a manuscript illustration come to life. Perfectly proportioned in every respect, it was scarcely five inches long, with batlike wings so delicate he could see the shadow of his fingers through the stretched membranes. Its golden eyes had slitted pupils. Spiky whiskers fringed its narrow jaws'. The only disappointment was the color; from snout to tail, it was mottled brown like a toad.
"You're the luckbringer today," Riagil told him, emerging from the crowd of soldiers with Amali, Klia, and Thero.
"It is a custom we have, going over the pass," Amali told him, smiling. "The first traveler to be touched so by a dragon is the luckbringer, and anyone who touches you before it flies away shares the luck."
Alec felt a bit self-conscious as the others crowded around to touch his leg. The fingerling seemed in no hurry to go. Wrapping its whip-end of tail around his thumb, it poked its bristly head under the edge of his sleeve as if investigating a potential cave. Its soft belly was fever-hot against his palm.
Klia reached up to stroke the dragon's back. "I thought they'd be more colorful."
"The laws don't extend to hawks and foxes," said Seregil. "These little ones take on the color of their surroundings to hide. Even so, only a few survive, which is probably a good thing. Otherwise we'd be hip deep in dragons."
Alec's little passenger rode with him for over an hour, exploring the folds of his cloak, burrowing through his long hair, and resisting all efforts to be passed to anyone else. Suddenly, however, it scrambled around to his left shoulder and bit him on the earlobe.
Alec let out a yelp of pain and it fluttered away, clutching a few strands of his hair in its claws.
Their Aurenfaie escorts found this highly amusing.
"It's off to make itself a golden nest," Vanos declared.
"A kiss to welcome you home, Kalosi!" said another, thumping him on the shoulder.
"It stings like snakebite!" Touching his ear, Alec felt the first signs of swelling and swore.
Vanos produced a glazed vial from a pouch slung from his belt and tapped out a few drops of viscous blue liquid.
"Don't worry, the venom's not much worse than a hornet's at that size," he said, holding out his finger. "This is lissik. It takes away the pain and heals the wound faster."
"It's also pigmented to permanently color the teeth marks, like a tattoo," Seregil said behind him. "Such marks are highly prized."
Alec hesitated, thinking of the ramifications of such an unusual distinguishing mark for someone in his profession.
"Should I?" he asked Seregil in Skalan.
"It would be an insult not to."
Alec gave a slight nod.
"There you are," Vanos said, dabbing lissik on the wound. It was oily and smelled bitter, but it cooled the burning instantly. "That'll be a real beauty mark once it heals."
"Not that he needs one," said another 'faie, giving Alec a friendly wink as he showed him a similar mark at the base of his right thumb.
"Your earlobe looks like a grape," Thero observed. "Odd that the creature took such a dislike to you."
"Actually, a fingerling's bite is considered a sign of Aura's favor," said Nyal. "If that little one survives, it will know Alec and all his descendants."
Other riders showed off their own marks of honor on hands and necks. One named Syli laughed as he proudly displayed three on each hand. "Either I am greatly loved by Aura, or I taste good."
"Known to a dragon, eh?" Beka let out a whistle of admiration. "That could be useful."
"To the dragon, perhaps," Seregil remarked.
They made camp at a way station that stood at the meeting of two trails. It was unlike any structure Alec had seen in Aurenen so far. The squat, round tower was at least eighty feet in diameter and had been built into the uneven rocks that rose around it like a mud swallow's nest. It was topped with a conical roof of thick, dirty felt and entered by a sturdy wooden ramp leading up to a door halfway up the tower. A few dark-eyed children watched their approach from the top of a low stone wall that fronted it. Others could be seen behind them, laughing as they chased black goats and each other up the tower ramp. A woman appeared at the door, then came out accompanied by two men.
"Dravnians?" asked Thero.
"They are, aren't they?" said Alec, who'd recognized them from Seregil's stories. Shorter than the 'faie, and more heavily built, they had black, almond-shaped eyes, bowlegs, and coarse black hair slicked back with grease. Their sheepskin clothing was richly decorated with colorful beading, animal teeth of various types, and painted designs. "I didn't expect to see them this far east."
"They wander the whole Ashek range," Seregil told him. "These mountains are their home; no one knows more about how to survive the snows. This traveler's lodge has stood here for centuries and probably will forever, with the occasional new roof. The 'faie share the use of it with the local tribes."
Though Alec couldn't understand their language, there was no mistaking the welcoming smiles the Dravnians gave Riagil and the others. Tethering
their horses in the stone enclosure, they all trooped up the ramp.
The upper floor was a single large room with a smoke hole in the center of the floor. Stone stairs followed the curve of the wall down to the lower room, which doubled as hearth room and byre. More Dravnians were at work down there, mucking out from the winter. One of the younger woman waved up at them, flashing a shy smile.
"That custom you told us about, of having to sleep with their daughters—?" Thero asked nervously, wrinkling his nose at the pungent odors wafting up from below. Seregil grinned. "Only at a home hearth. It's not expected here, though I'm sure they'd be flattered if you offered."
The girl waved again, and Thero retreated quickly, his wizard's celibacy evidently safe for the moment.
The evening passed in relative comfort, though the frequent howls that drifted to them on the night wind made Alec and the others doubly grateful for the tower's thick walls and stout door. The Dravnians, he learned, called this time of year the end of the hungry season.
Though stark by Aurenfaie standards, the tower was warm and the company good. They traded some of their bread for Dravnian cheese and ended up making a communal meal of it. The evening was passed trading tales and news, with Nyal and Seregil interpreting for the Skalans.
After several hours, the Ra'basi excused himself and went outside for a breath of air. A few moments later Seregil did the same, giving Alec the surreptitious signal to follow in a moment. Assuming he was offering a brief moment of privacy, Alec counted to twenty, then slipped out after him.
But Seregil had something else in mind. Just outside the door he
touched Alec's arm and motioned toward two dark figures barely visible up the trail. "Nyal and Amali," he whispered. "She went out a few minutes ago and he followed."
Alec watched the pair disappear around a bend in the trail. "Should we follow them?"
"Too risky; no cover and these rocks echo every sound. We'll just sit here and see how long they're gone."
Walking down the ramp, they sat down on a large flat rock by the enclosure wall. Above them, sudden laughter rang out from the doorway.
They must have found themselves another interpreter, thought Alec. A moment later he heard Urien strike up a soldier's ballad.