Carol Berg - Song of the Beast

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SONG OF THE BEAST

CAROL BERG

ISBN 0-451-45923-7

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of Fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s

imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This one is, as always, for the Word Weavers past and present and all they bring to their reading.

And it’s well past time to raise a glass to my editor, Laura Anne Gilman, and her nose for nuance

—no spackle!—and my agent, Lucienne Diver, for her encouragement, enthusiasm, and expertise.

But mostly and entirely for the one who completes my being.

Chapter 1

The light had almost undone me. I had not been prepared for any of it, dead man that I was, but never

could I have been ready for the shattering explosion of sunlight after so many years in the dark. They had

threatened so often to burn out my eyes, the thought crossed my mind that it had finally come to pass.

Perhaps my memory of being dragged from my cell through the bowels of Mazadine and kicked through

the iron door that would take me back to the world was only another cruel nightmare.

Wrapping my arms about my head, I sank to the ground, huddling to the faceless prison wall like a pup

to its dam, and there I remained until the sun slipped below the rim of the world. Only when blessed

darkness eased the agony—never had I thought to bless the dark again— could I consider other pressing

matters, such as getting as far away as possible before someone decided to put me back behind that

wall.

Rocks and gravel cut into my bare feet as I stumbled down the rutted road and found a crossroads

shrine, a mossy spring dedicated to Keldar. Just off the road sat a well-stuffed wool cart, while from the

nearby shrubbery came the unmistakable sounds of a drover who had drunk too many tankards of ale at

supper. I fell to my knees beside the spring, but no sooner had I taken a first desperate sip than five

Royal Horse Guards, torches blazing in the night, raced past at full gallop, turning up the road to

Mazadine as if the cruelest of the world’s monsters were at their backs. Breathing a prayer of heartfelt

thanksgiving, I scrambled into the wagon and buried myself in the wool.

Eyeless Keldar had never been my god. The cold lord of wisdom had never appealed to one born into

the service of his brother Roelan, the joyous, hunchbacked god of music. But Roelan had abandoned me

in the darkness. The loving voice that had guided me through my growing had fallen silent. The hand that

embraced me at my dedication when I was fourteen, accepted my service for seven years of glory, and

sustained me through the first years of my captivity had been withdrawn. So, as the beggar who refuses

no penny dropped in his cup, I accepted Keldar’s gift and pledged him service as I rode through the

night, cradled in a wagonload of wool.

Hunger quickly became my encompassing reality. Though half out of my head, I dared not risk a charge

of thieving or any other crime that might fix a guardsman’s eye on me, so I roamed the pigsties and refuse

heaps of Lepan, the market town where the drover left off his wool and his passenger. Too weak and

sick to fight the other beggars for the best scraps, I would take whatever was left and find a dark hole in

which to hide, trying to block out the noise and the light that drove me to madness.

I took my first step back toward life on the night of a monstrous storm. Thunder echoed from the distant

peaks like giant’s laughter, and if lightning was, as old wives said, the fire of dying heroes’ hearts, then

there were a great many heroes dying that night. A merciless rain drove me to shelter in a stable. I

huddled in a corner, drenched to the soul, shivering with the chill of death and the late spring wind.

Somewhere amid murky cravings and failing senses passed a fleeting sorrow that my brief freedom had

had no more value than my captivity. A final victory for those who had sent me to Mazadine, never

bothering to tell me why.

While I was thus occupied with dying and regrets, the stable door crashed open to a heavy boot,

followed quickly by the grunts and whimpers of a backstreet mating. The smell of wine and vomit and lust

soon overpowered the aura of unclean stable and even my own filth. Only when the woman began to

struggle did I realize that the coupling was not voluntary.

I did not—could not—move. I had no strength left to right the ills of the world. But then I heard crackling

sparks and frantic pleading. “Have mercy! You wear the Ridemark. I’ll die from your pleasuring! Oh, sir,

I’m just sixteen!”

A Dragon Rider! From the ashes of my life flared one last ember, fanned by brutish laughter and

wine-sotted grunting… and the memory of a red dragon scribed on the wrist of the faceless judge who

stole my life. If I was going to die, then I would take at least one Dragon Rider with me. Hopeless fool. I

could not even think how I would be able to do it.

I eased myself up the wall and edged to my right, lifting a length of rusty chain from a nail. The stable

floor yielded a long spike, thin enough to pass all but its head through two links of the chain. Faster than

I’d have believed possible, I stepped toward the groveling shapes. When the Rider lifted his head to

bellow in his lust, I dropped the loop over it, twisting the spike so the chain bit deep into the man’s flesh.

His cry was cut short, and I hoped I could keep the iron noose tight for long enough that he would fall

insensible before throwing me off. But those who mount the dragons of Yr and ride them to war are no

striplings. He raised his shoulders and leaped to his feet, carrying me with him until he slammed me

against the stable wall. Sparks shot high, spitting and hissing in a scalding rain of fire as the wind went out

of me, my vision grew blurry, and I lost my grip on the spike.

Better this way, I thought, as my ribs cracked and the roaring warrior yanked off the noose, turning to

finish me. But even as he raised his fist, his red-rimmed eyes bulged and died, and blood trickled out of

his silent mouth. It would be a race to the last crossing, but at least no girl of sixteen, charred to ash by a

Dragon Rider’s mating, would accompany us. It was a satisfactory ending as I slumped to the filthy floor

and the warrior’s heavy body fell on top of me.

It was not in the afterlife that I next opened my eyes, nor in the rain-lashed stable, but in a shabby room

that was achingly familiar. No one who has traveled the roads of the world would fail to recognize the

attic room of an ill-prospered inn, the cheapest lodging to be found under a roof. A dirty sheet and a

mouse-chewed blanket on a pallet that was half moldy straw, half mouse droppings and beetle husks. A

flyspecked window that could not be opened in summer or could not be shut in winter, and that would

always overlook the midden. A broken table for eating or writing or playing cards. I’d spent a sizable

portion of the happiest years of my life in such lodgings.

“… never saw such marks upon a living man. What think you, Narim? Is he a runaway slave? I’d not

have brought him here if I’d thought it.”

Fingers drifted lightly over my bare back. Where was darkness when you needed it? Would that I could

pull its mantle over me to hide what I could not bear to remember.

“Not a slave. Look at the shape of his eyes, his dark hair, his height. He is clearly Senai.”

The first voice was a young woman. The second unmistakably an Elhim. I could imagine the pale gray

eyes examining my wreckage and the slender fingers rubbing his colorless face.

“Senai!” said the girl. “You jest! He may have the height and the coloring, but what Senai was ever

brought so low as this? Smells like pigsties, he does. To have scars like these, and… blessed Tjasse…

look at his hands.”

Why could I not move? I was not ready to face these things myself, much less have them exposed to

public view. I lay on my stomach on the straw pallet, a spider busying herself with her spinning not a

hand’s breadth from my nose. I felt like the carcass of a holiday pig, stripped bare and possessed of no

will, no dignity, and too many memories of mortal horrors to get up on my bones and walk. And, too,

rags had been wrapped so tightly about my middle that I could scarcely breathe.

“Someone has broken his fingers repeatedly. Hundreds of times, I would say.”

“Hundreds… Fires of heaven!”

“I’ve heard rumors of a prisoner escaped from Mazadine.”

“Bollocks! No one leaves Mazadine alive.”

Foolish girl. She couldn’t see that I was really dead. The Elhim was wiser. “Who can say what is life,

Callia? I think perhaps this one has known that which makes death a sweet companion. He may not

thank you for bringing him here. Yet… he came to your rescue.”

“Aye. I put the knife in the pig, but it was this one took him off me.”

Time to move. I drew my knees under my aching ribs and paused to take a shallow breath. Then I

pushed myself up to kneeling, wrapped my arms tightly about my middle, and anxiously waited for the

room to stop spinning. The girl knelt on the floor beside me and the Elhim stood next to her, slimmer than

a young boy and scarcely taller, his skin fair and smooth, his hair white blond. It was almost impossible to

tell one Elhim from another, all of them so fair and pale and sexless. Though we called them “he,” crude

bullies of every race regularly found unseemly pleasure in confirming that Elhim were neither male nor

female.

The girl looked old, even at sixteen. She might once have been called pretty, but her hair was dull, her

skin blotched with disease, and her light blue eyes knew too much of unnatural pleasure. Her shabby,

low-cut gown of stained and singed green silk was overfull with her blowsy charms. As I sat up, she

clamped one hand over her mouth, as if I were indeed a dead man waked. Her other hand gripped a

flask of wine.

The Elhim cocked his head to the side and widened his pale eyes. “So your valiant rescuer wakes, Callia!

Hand him your flask. A dram of wine might do the fellow good.” His curly head would have come no

higher than my shoulder if I’d not found it expedient to remain seated, leaning against the wall. “You are a

great mystery, Senai, that begs for explanation. But for now we’ll settle for a name to thank you by.”

I should have said something, but I had forgotten how to form words. For the final seven years of my

captivity I had uttered no sound, and it would take more than a moment to convince my tongue that the

metal jaws and the lash were not waiting for me, and that the tally of seven years would not have to start

all over again with my first utterance. I struggled for a moment, then shook my head, pointed to the bed

and my bandaged ribs, and cupped my grotesque hands to my chest as one does when acknowledging a

service.

‘They’ve not taken out his tongue, have they?“ asked the girl in horror. She soothed the thought with a

swig from her flask, leaving red droplets of wine running down her chin when she pulled it away too

quickly.

Shaking my head, I tried to indicate that my incapacity was a passing problem of no importance.

Callia yielded me the wine flask, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “That’s good, then.

Couldn’t stomach that.” She grabbed a cracked pitcher and the remainder of the ragged petticoat they

had torn to bind my ribs and carried them to a peeling dresser next to the window, setting them beside a

dented plate polished to a high sheen. With no conscious immodesty she removed her bodice and

dabbed at her blood-streaked breasts with the rag she’d dipped in the water pitcher. “Still three hours till

dawn,” she said. “Don’t do to scare off the customers with the blood of the last one.”

I dropped my eyes, and my cheeks grew hot.

“You may be half a madman to throw yourself on a Rider in your condition, but at some time you’ve had

some wit about you…” The Elhim cast his eyes to my left wrist, where the silver mark of the Musicians’

Guild lay unrecognizable beneath the scars of manacles worn for too many years. Elhim were known to

be clever at numbers and puzzles and games, always poking about in mysteries and scraps from the table

of life, drifting on the edges of society. They were welcomed by neither the Senai nobility nor the Udema,

who filled the trades and armies and freeholds, nor even the foreigners like Florins and Eskonians, who

still languished for the most part in slavery or indenture decades after their kingdoms’ defeats. “Did

anyone see you with the Rider, Callia?” he called over his shoulder while his gray eyes picked at my

secrets.

“Nah. I was in Smith’s Alley, catching my breath from a fine, strapping fisherman, when the villain takes a

wrong turn from the Alewife. Drank up half their stock from the smell of him. It was dark so’s I didn’t

see the Ridemark on him until he had me to the stable.” She threw down her rag and buttoned up her

dress, then came to retrieve her wine. After a long pull at it, she dropped it back in my lap and bent over

me, permitting an unavoidable glimpse of what her bodice couldn’t hold, while planting a kiss on the top

of my head. “When you’ve mended yourself a bit, I’ll thank you proper. Till then you can claim anything

else I’ve got for as long as you need. I do dearly love being alive.” Her eyes sparkled with more than the

wine, and she skipped through the door, her footsteps dancing down the stairs out of hearing.

The Elhim watched her go, smiling a crooked smile. “Callia has charged me to coddle you until she’s

back. She’s a kindhearted girl.”

I nodded and tried to remember how to smile, even as my eyelids sagged.

“Here, here, good fellow. I dare not let you sleep just yet. See what Callia’s brought you.”

With effort I dragged my eyes open again and identified the smell wafting through my bordering dreams.

Soup. A steaming pail of it. Narim filled a dented tin mug and held it out. “Can you manage it?” His eyes

studied my hands as I carefully cradled the hot, dripping cup between my palms. I could not yet make

myself look at my hands, so I concentrated on the soup, inhaling the glorious aroma—a touch of onion, a

sprig of parsley, and mayhap somewhere in its past a knucklebone had touched the broth. I could hardly

bear to take the first taste, for the reality could be nowhere near the glorious delight of anticipation.

I was wrong. The broth was watery, but rich with barley, and imminently, delectably satisfying. I took

only a small sip at a time. Held it. Savored it. Felt it go down and outline the hollow places.

Strengthening. Saving my life.

Narim was kind and let me enjoy an entire cup without interruption. But as he refilled it, he served up the

question that had been quivering on the edge of his tongue. “How long were you there?”

I saw no reason to alter the dismal truth, so I held up five crooked fingers once, then twice, then again,

and two fingers more after all.

“Seventeen… seventeen years? Hearts of fire. Is it possible?” His voice was soft, filled with wonder and

a thousand unspoken questions. But he said nothing more, only stared at me as if to map my bones.

When I finished the second cup of soup, he offered me another, and it was all I could do to refuse it.

Starvation knows nothing of reason. But I had once traveled the poorest places of the world, and I’d

often witnessed what happened to those who gorged themselves after too long without. Narim must have

read the panic in my eyes as he hung the cup on the rim of the bucket, for he smiled and said, “It will

keep. When you wake again, the ovens down below will be primed and roaring, and I’ll whisper

compliments to my friend the cook, who’ll heat it up for you. Will that do?”

This time I managed the smile, and I cupped my hands to my breast and bowed my head to him as if he

were the king’s own chamberlain.

“You will return the service someday, I think,” he said, putting a strong arm behind my shoulders so that I

could lie down on my stomach again without too much pain. “You have returned from the netherworld

with the flame of life still lit within you. The gods do not ignore such a heart.”

It was kindly meant, but I did not believe him. I had no heart left.

Chapter 2

His name was Goryx. My jailer. The one sworn to bring me to heel. The only face I saw for seventeen

years. He was a burly, round-faced fellow with iron biceps, a cheerful disposition, and shining little eyes

that crinkled into slits when he was pleased. He lived outside my cell and brought me enough pasty gruel

and stale water that I would not die. His own rations were little better, and his room, though larger than

my fetid, airless hole, was windowless and dim. He was a prisoner as much as I in many ways, only he

had nowhere else he would rather be.

When my god would call me, there in the darkness of Mazadine, Goryx would listen while I made my

answer, and when I was done, the exaltation of the holy mystery still nourishing my soul, the iron grating

of my cell would open, and his smiling face would appear. With a long-suffering sigh he would hook a

chain to my neck collar and haul me out, then drop the black canvas bag over my head. Once I was

secured to a chair, he would spread my hands on his worktable, clucking over them like a mother hen,

stroking my fingers and commenting on the efficacy of his last work. If the bones had begun to knit back

together, I would hear the rasp of the metal jaws as they were laid out on the table, and I would feel the

cold steel clamped onto the finger he’d decided would be first; then one by one he would break them all

again. Only when he’d poked and prodded me enough that I was awake would he chain me to the wall

and begin with the lash. He was an artist who took great pride in his work, able to make it last all day,

able to take me to the edge of death, yet not quite beyond. That was forbidden. I was not to die. I would

not be on my cousin’s conscience as long as I lived. And when he was satisfied, Goryx would put me

back in the tiny cell where I could not stand up or stretch out, and he would leave me in the dark until

Roelan called me to sing for him again and, like a fool, I would answer.

For ten years I endured. Roelan comforted me, whispering in my heart that my service was valued,

though I could not understand why, since no one could hear me but my god and my jailer. But I clung to

his voice, reveled in his glory, let his music soar in my soul while I willed the pain to pass by. Somewhere

in that time, though, after so many years of faithfulness, the whispered call grew fainter, and the darkness

grew deeper, and I sang the music of my heart but heard no answering refrain. Soon all that was left to

me was the pain and the darkness and the shreds of my defiance, and it was not enough.

Goryx saw it. He nodded and smiled his gap-toothed smile when he peered through the grate, and said,

even as he pulled me out to do it all again, “Not long now.”

He felt me tremble as he laid out his tools and stroked my knotted fingers, and he heard me whisper, “No

more. Please, no more. Not again.”

“Yield. Obey. And there will come a day seven years from this one when you will see me no more,” he

said, as he laid my bones bare yet again. “Nothing more is required of you. Seven years of obedience

and you will be free to go on your way.”

As he expected, the day came when I broke. I’ve heard that there have lived those extraordinary men

and women who cannot be defeated by such means, but I was not such a one. Goryx had broken all the

fingers on my left hand and had clamped the jaws on my right thumb, ready to begin. “No more,” I

begged. “By the Seven Gods, no more.”

“Do you yield?”

“Please…”

“You will obey and be silent?”

Head fogged with pain, I did not answer quickly enough. So he finished my right hand, and when I

begged for mercy and swore I would be silent until the end of time, he said he could not believe me. So

he laid my back open again, and I thought I would go mad from it, for I had not even my pride to sustain

me any longer. But his work was done. When next I heard the god’s faint call, I could not answer. I

huddled in the darkness and clutched my ruined hands to my breast and begged Roelan’s mercy, but I

could not sing for him again. The music in my heart had bled away, and I was left with only darkness and

silence. And in the formless years that followed, there came a time when I no longer heard the call, and I

knew that I was truly dead.

Chapter 3

In the matter of a week, Callia and Narim had me in some semblance of order. I could take a deep

breath without passing out, though my constant coughing was a matter of extreme gravity, and a sneeze

out of the question. Their modest fare of soup and bread, with cheese added when I could stomach it,

was finer than the delicacies of a hundred noble houses where I’d eaten in my youth. I gained a little

weight, and Callia said my color was improved a thousandfold—surely her casual habits in matters of

undress kept the blood flowing in my face. She brought me a shirt of coarse brown wool and a pair of

tan breeches that were immensely cleaner than the rags I’d worn, even a shabby pair of farmer’s boots

only slightly too tight, “gifts,” she said, from one of her admirers. I had not yet convinced myself to speak,

a failure which made me feel stupid and weak, just as when I would stand up too long and get shaky at

the knees.

Callia left me with far too much time to think about what I was to do with myself. For seven years I had

worked to erase every remnant of my identity, every memory of my past life, every thought, desire, and

instinct. Absolute emptiness had been the only way I could fulfill the terms of my sentence, the only way I

could be silent, the only way I could survive. I’d had to be unborn. In the last years of my captivity, I

could sit for days and have no image impose itself on the darkness of my mind, no trace of thought or

memory. Now I could not fathom what I was to do next.

By the middle of the second week, the bump on the back of my head no longer throbbed a warning

every time I moved, and I could stand up for moments at a time without falling over, so I picked a night

when Callia and the Elhim were both out and started down the stairs. I had depended on the girl’s

meager livelihood for far too long, yet I didn’t have the courage to face her as I took my leave. Halfway

to the first landing, the steps dropped out of my vision as if they’d tumbled down a well. My foot could

not find purchase, and I tumbled headfirst down the stairs. When my cracked ribs hit the splintered

wood, I lost track of at least an hour.

Fumbling hands… a knife in my side… “Come on, then, arm over my shoulder.”

I tried to stay still. Every movement, every breath, sent a lance through my middle. But the hands were

insistent and my feet found the steps. Fortunately Callia was the first to discover me, and she hauled me

back to her room with many protests of dire offense at my attempt to leave without telling her. “A life for

a life,” she said. As I could not yet muster words, she made me raise my hand in an oath to stay until she

and Narim had judged my condition sound. As she was in the middle of binding up my ribs again, I had

no choice but to acquiesce. The swearing was not so difficult as I made it out to be. In truth I was

terrified at the thought of leaving the haven of Callia’s room, and I blessed the injuries that kept me from

having to face the world now that I was so irrevocably changed.

Outside of Callia’s window was a goodly section of roof, and I’d made it a habit to crawl out onto it

whenever anyone came up the stairs. Once Callia went back to work in earnest, she began bringing men

back to her room, which sent me out for most of every night. I would lie wedged in a crevice behind a

chimney, trying not to listen to what pleasure five coppers could buy. At first the open sky left me

sweating with unnameable, unreasoning panic, but after a few nights I didn’t want to go inside anymore.

As I watched the stars pass over me in their eternal pavane, I began, ever so slightly, to believe that I

was free.

One hot, still night as I was sitting on the roof, watching the wedged moon wander in and out among the

wispy clouds, Callia climbed out of the window to sit beside me. She carried a linen kerchief, with which

she was blotting off the sweat of her most recent encounter, and a flask of wine, which she offered to me.

I gave her my customary gesture of thanks and drank deep of the sour vintage.

“What do you do out here all night?” she said. “You never seem to be asleep no matter what time it is.

You’re always just sitting and staring.”

I pointed to the dancing moon and the stars, shining dimly in its light, and to my eyes while I held them

wide open. Then I pointed to the dark heights where Mazadine lurked, and I passed my hand over my

eyes, closing them tight. She had learned to understand my awkward signing very well.

“You weren’t allowed to see the sky while you were in prison?”

I waved my hand at the dark, squat houses crowded together in the lane, at the few stragglers abroad, at

the shadowed trees of the local baron’s parkland across the sleeping city, and the ghostly mountain

peaks of the Carag Huim looming on the distant horizon. Then I passed my hand across my eyes again,

leaving them closed.

“Nothing. You weren’t allowed to see nothing?”

I nodded.

“Damn! I can’t imagine it. So I guess you’re making up for it out here.”

I smiled and returned her flask.

She drank, then peeked over at me sideways with the usual lively sparkle in her eyes. “I’ve no right to

ask it, but I’m devilish curious and not used to minding my own business. Whatever was a Senai doing in

Mazadine? I told Narim you must be a murderer at least, for the only thing worse is a traitor, and traitors

are hanged right off, but you saved my life, and your ways… well, maybe it’s only they’re such gentle

ways because you’ve been in such a wicked state, but I won’t believe you a murderer. Are you?”

I shook my head and wished she would stop.

“Then what?” She picked up my knotted and scarred hand and held it in her warm, plump one. “What

made them do this?”

I shook my head again, retrieved my hand, and was glad she accepted my inability to speak. Even if I

could have convinced myself to say the words aloud, I could only have told her it was to silence my

music and thus destroy me. But in a thousand years of trying, I could not have told her why.

Perhaps she thought I was too ashamed to tell her. She didn’t press. “You don’t mind my asking? I’ve

not offended you?”

I smiled and opened my palms to her, and she passed the wine to me again.

She changed the subject to herself and chattered for half an hour about the peculiarities of men, beginning

with her father, who began using her when she was eight and selling her when she was nine. Then she

branched into detailed comparisons of Senai and Udema and all the others who had the money to pay for

their pleasuring. “I think it’s why I’m such great friends with Narim,” she said. “My other friends ask how

I can go about with a gelding child, but I tell them he’s the only one I know who’s got nothing to gain

from using me.”

I was listening with only half my attention, happy I was not expected to comment, when there came a low

rumbling from the west. As it swelled into an unrelenting thunder, from the western horizon rose a cloud

of midnight that quickly spread to blot out the stars in half the sky. Streaks of red fire ripped across the

arch of the heavens. The moonlight that flickered behind the looming darkness was carved into angled

shapes by ribbed wings that spanned half the city, then was transformed into intricate patterns of green

and gold swirls and spirals by translucent membranes. Red fire glinted on coppery-scaled chests so

massive they could smother twenty men and horses, and on long tails rippling with muscles so powerful

they could knock holes in a granite wall.

“Vanir guard us! Dragons!” Callia dived through the window as the flight passed over Lepan—five or six

dragons, soaring on the winds of night. A hot gust lifted my hair, and it was heavy with musk and

brimstone, the unmistakable scent of dragon. Soon, from above the blast of flame and the thunderous

wind of those mighty wings, would come their cries—long, wailing, haunted cries that chilled the soul,

cries that spoke an anger too powerful to bear, deep, bone-shaking roars of fury that caused the enemies

of Elyria to cower in their fortresses and bow before the power of our king. Unheard from below would

be the harsh commands of the Riders, each man a tiny knot of leather and steel behind the long, graceful

neck of his mount.

I did not move from my place on the roof, only craned my neck to watch their passing, telling myself

every moment to look away—that only danger and grief could be the result of my gaze. Not allowing

myself to think—I was well practiced at that—I clamped my arms over my ears. I dared not listen to

their cries, but by every god of the Seven, I would not fail to look.

“You’re a madman!” said Callia, poking her head out of the window once the sky had regained its

midnight peace. “You’ve been put away too long.” She climbed out and plopped herself on the roof

beside me. “You never know when one of the cursed beasts is going to glance down and decide you’re

ugly or insolent or breathing… whatever it is sets them burning. You could have ended up as crisp as

Gemma’s solstice goose!”

I scarcely heard her. My arms still blocked my ears lest I be undone by the sounds of their passing, and

my eyes strained to see the last flickers of their fires as they disappeared in the eastern darkness.

“Are you all right?” The girl pulled my chin around to face her, and her eyes grew wide as she gently

touched my cheek. “What in the name of sense… ? Why ever didn’t you go inside? If you’re so fearful

of them as to make you weep, then you oughtn’t even look.”

But of course I had no words as yet, so I could not tell her that my tears had nothing to do with fear.

A few days later, Callia presented me with perhaps the finest gift of thanks I have ever received for any

mortal service rendered. In response to her insistence that I let her know something that would please

me—my being not yet ready for the favors she was most willing to dispense—I induced her to indulge

me with a bath.

“Hot water poured on you in one of those tin tubs?” She looked from the drawing I had made in the dust

on the floor to my absurd mime of washing. “Can’t possibly be healthy. You’ve still got that beastly

cough. And what if it makes your ribs loosen up again just when they’re getting stuck back together?”

Impossible not to smile at her. I shook my head and tried more inept playacting to demonstrate that such

activity would do no harm, but rather a world of good for my spirits.

“Well, Dilsey owes me a favor. I gave her a bit of lace to wear in her hair when she steps out with Jaston

the pot boy. She’ll haul the water up. Are you sure there’s nothing else but that?”

I smiled and shrugged.

“You’ll have to hide on the roof while she brings it. I’ll tell her it’s for one of my gentlemen.” This

consideration seemed to intrigue her. That evening, when the battered tin tub was in place and filled, it

took some convincing to get her to leave the room. “Are you sure you don’t need help? Perhaps I ought

to stay. See how it’s done in case you fall ill again.”

I made a silly, eye-swirling face to show her it was just one of my peculiarities.

“Are all Senai so modest? The only ones I ever get are so drunk they’ve wandered into the wrong

district. They don’t realize I’m not quite their usual thing… and of course in that state they have no

sensibilities at all!”

I apologized as best I could without words and pushed her gently through the ragged curtain that served

her as a door. Once alone, I breathed easier. It was perhaps a strange thing after so long believing I

would go mad if I did not hear another human voice, but I prized the hours when Callia was gone and the

Elhim did not see fit to visit.

Rarely have I felt anything so sensually magnificent as that bath. I lowered myself gingerly into the

steaming water, ignoring the protest of my aching ribs and the damaged muscles in my back as I curled

up in the small tub and let the water cover my head. If I could have stayed under for an hour I would

have done it. But I soon breached the surface, and over me came a joyous madness to get the remnants

of Mazadine off me. With the scrap of cloth I’d found in Callia’s bits and pieces and the sliver of soap

Dilsey had supplied, I scrubbed away layer after layer of filth until my skin was gloriously raw and the

water was black. With a knife borrowed from the Elhim, I set out to trim my mat of hair to a civilized

length and scrape off the seventeen years’ growth of unhealthy beard. The task took far longer than it

should, for I’d not counted on the difficulties of trying to manage a knife with fingers that could scarcely

bend. The tenth time the knife dropped into the water, my delight had given way to howling frustration.

But I forced myself to pick it up again, using one hand to wrap the fingers of the other around the hilt and

willing them to hold on. If I was to live, I had to begin somewhere.

Dilsey had left one last pitcher of clean water standing by the tub, and when I finished with the knife

without cutting my throat, I stood up and poured the now cold water over myself, glorying in the feeling

of being clean. I stepped out, using my shirt to dry off, and was standing in the middle of the room

completely unclothed when I heard light running footsteps on the stair. I bent over to tug on my breeches,

but in far too much of a hurry, so that I was left dizzy and had to lean my head against the wall to keep

from falling over.

“Callia, I’ve come to get the bath. We’ve a guest who— Oh!”

I looked around to see a short, dumpy Udema girl, staring with crossed eyes and open mouth at my bare

back. I didn’t like to think what it might look like. As I straightened, the girl’s eyes traveled upward,

registering my height and, no doubt, the dark hair, straight nose, and lean features that confirmed my

heritage. She backed toward the doorway, a trace of fear in her eyes, the wariness of the Udema servant

who interrupts a Senai at his business. “Pardon, my lord.”

I tried to calm her, holding out a hand to stay her nervous flight, but she had already run down the stairs,

no doubt spreading the gossip that Callia’s latest customer was a Senai whose back was ridged with

layer upon layer of red and purple scars. On my first night at the lodging house the Elhim had reported

rumors of a prisoner escaped from Mazadine. I’d given it no thought—mostly because I was incapable

of thought, but also because I had not escaped. I had been released. The terms of judgment had been

fulfilled. But now, faced with exposure, I wondered. What if Goryx had miscounted the days? What if he

had released me one hour early… or one day… or one year… and they said the time had not been

completed and I would have to start again? What if they came to take me back?

I heaved up all the contents of my stomach into Dilsey’s earthenware pitcher, then leaned heavily on the

windowsill and tried to get my damp shirt on, cursing my infernal weakness and my clumsy hands,

praying for the wave of terror to pass. I had to leave.

When I heard running feet on the stairs, I grabbed the Elhim’s knife in both my hands and backed into a

corner. But it was only Narim himself who charged into the room like an owl diving for its prey. “At least

three souls are on their way to the Royal Horse Guards, each in hopes of collecting a silver penny for

information regarding a Senai prisoner escaped from Mazadine. If you’ve no wish to be mistaken for

such a one, I’d say the time has come for you to quit this house for a span. Callia remains below and will

attempt to distract any who come looking, but she bids you hurry.”

I nodded and stuck one leg through the window, but the tin tub sitting in the middle of the room glared at

me accusingly. I stopped, calling myself every name ever invented for a fool. Anyone coming to Callia’s

room would know immediately what she’d done. Only Senai saw any virtue in bathing, so a Senai had

clearly been here. No way to hide the evidence. If Callia could not produce a likely candidate, she would

be arrested. And if my cousin had decided he was not done with me… if it was indeed me that these

guards were hunting… Stupid, stupid. What had I done… letting these good people step into the

dragon’s mouth for me?

“Come on, man! It won’t take them long to get here. Off with you.”

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SONGOFTHEBEASTCAROLBERGISBN0-451-45923-7Copyright©CarolBerg,2003AllrightsreservedPUBLISHER’SNOTEThisisaworkofFiction.Names,characters,places,andincidentseitheraretheproductoftheauthor’simaginationorareusedfictitiously,andanyresemblancetoactualpersons,livingordead,businessestablishments,events,orloca...

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Carol Berg - Song of the Beast

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