He made me ask the question, enjoying it. ‘Where?’
‘Do you remember the broken plaza, like an ancient market circle? The one where the forest was trying to encroach? I stood on top of a stone pillar there, and for a moment, in a dream, I wore the Rooster Crown. You saw me. You remember it.’
I nodded slowly. ‘It was on our road to the Stone Garden. Where the stone dragons slept, before we roused them and sent them to fight the Red Ships. Where they sleep again now, Verity as Dragon amongst them.’
‘Exactly. Again, I went down that forest path, and I saw him there. But he was not the one I sought. I found Girl on a Dragon there, sleeping, her arms clasping the neck of her dragon, just as you had told me. And I woke her and made her understand that I must come here, and once again I mounted behind her and she flew here with me. And left me. So, you see, old friend, I did not lie to you. I flew here.’
I sat bolt upright, suddenly wide awake. A hundred questions swelled in me but I asked the most important one. ‘How did you wake her? It takes the Wit, the Skill and blood to wake a stone dragon. Well do I know that!’
‘It did. And it does. The Skill I had on my fingertips, and blood was easy enough to come by.’ He rubbed his wrist, possibly remembering an old cut. ‘I did not and do not have the Wit. But you may remember that, foolishly, I had already put some of myself into Girl on a Dragon, when I was attempting to complete the carving of her and wake her.’
‘As did I,’ I recalled guiltily.
‘Yes. I know,’ he said softly. ‘It is still in her. You put in the memories you could not stand to recall and the emotions you would not let yourself feel. You gave her your mother abandoning you, and never knowing your father. You gave her Regal’s torment of you in his dungeons. You gave her, most of all, the pain of losing Molly and your child, to Burrich, of all people. You put into her your fury and your hurt and your sense of being betrayed.’ He gave a little sigh. ‘It is all in her still. The things you could not allow yourself to feel.’
‘I left all that behind me long ago,’ I said slowly.
‘You cut out a part of yourself and went on, less than you had been.’
‘I do not see it that way.’ My reply was stiff.
‘You cannot see it that way,’ he informed me calmly. ‘Because you cannot truly remember how awful any of it was. Because you put all of it into Girl on a Dragon.’
‘Can we leave this?’ I asked, almost frightened, almost angry, but confused over what would scare or anger me.
‘We must. Because you already left it, long years ago. And only I will ever know the full depth of what you felt about those things. Only I fully remember who and what you were before you did it. For we are bound together, not only by Skill and fate, and but also because both of us live on, inside Girl on a Dragon. Because I knew what went into her, I could reach her and rouse her. I could convey to her my desperate purpose. And so she brought me to Aslevjal.
‘It was a strange journey, wild and wonderful. You know I have ridden with her before. I was with her when she and the other dragons attacked not just the Red Ships that assailed the Six Duchies, but the White Ships that were the cruel tools of the Pale Woman. It was strange for me to be caught up in true battle. I did not like it.’
‘No one does,’ I assured him. I put my brow back down on my knees and closed my eyes.
‘I suppose not. But this time, flying with her, it was different. There was no killing to witness, no other dragons flying beside us. Instead, it was just she and I. I sat behind her and put my arms around her slender waist. She is a part of the dragon, you know, not a separate creature at all. Rather like a girl-shaped limb more than anything else. So she did not speak to me, yet, strangely enough, she did smile and from time to time, she would turn to look into my face or gesture to something on the world below us that she wished me to see.
‘She flew tirelessly. From the time I climbed up behind her and the powerful beat of her dragon’s wings lifted us through the canopy of tree limbs until the moment that we landed on the black sand beaches of Aslevjal, she took no rest. Nor did I. At first, we flew through blue summer skies of the lands beyond the Mountain Kingdom. Then higher we flew, until my heart pounded and I was giddy, over the snowy peaks and trodden passes of the Mountains, and then back into summer. We flew over the villages of the Mountain Kingdom. They nestle into the crooks and flanks of the mountains, and their flocks are scattered over the steep pastures like white apple blossoms litter the orchard meadow after a spring windstorm.’
I saw it, in my mind, and smiled faintly when he spoke of flying over a Six Duchies hamlet early in the morning, and the one lad who looked up and saw them and ran whooping into his cottage. And on he spoke, of rivers like silver seams in the land and planted fields like patchwork when seen from above, and of the ocean, wrinkling like paper tipped with silver. In my mind, I flew with him.
I must have fallen asleep, lulled by his strange story. When I awoke, night was deep all around us. The camp outside our tent was still, and his pot-fire held only a single flickering flame on a wick in the oil. I was huddled beneath one of his blankets, fallen over sideways on his bed. He slept, curled like a kitten, his brow nearly touching mine, on the other end of his pallet. His breathing was deep and even, and one long hand was palm up on the blankets between us, as if in offering, or beseeching something of me. Sleepily I reached over and set my hand in his. He did not seem to wake. Strangely, I felt at peace. I closed my eyes and sank down into a deep and dreamless slumber.
NINETEEN
Below the Ice
The Outislanders have always been raiders. In the years before the Red Ship Wars, there were raiding incidents, as it seemed there had always been. Individual ships led by the kaempra of a clan would make a quick strike, carrying off stock, harvested crops and occasionally captives. Bearns took the brunt of these clashes, and seemed to relish them much as Shoaks enjoyed its border disputes with Chalced. The Duke of Bearns seemed content that they were his concern, and made little complaint of dealing with them.
But with the appearance of the red-hulled ships of Kebal Rawbread, the rules of engagement changed. Suddenly, the ships appeared in groups, and seemed more intent on rape and ruin than on a quick acquisition of goods. They burned or spoiled what they could not carry off, slaughtering herds and flocks, torching grain in the fields and storehouses. They killed even those who did not resist them. A new malice had appeared in these raids, one that delighted not just in theft, but also in destruction and devastation.
At that time, we did not even know of the Pale Woman and her influence over Rawbread.
Scribe Fedwren, A History of the Red Ship War