Sword-Maker(31)

A mythical monstrous beast.

“There’s the mouth,” she mused, “and the nostrils—see the smoke? It’s coming out of both.”

Well, sort of. There was smoke, yes, and it kind of appeared to be coming out of odd rock formations that did, in a vague sort of way, slightly resemble mouth and nostrils—if you looked real hard.

“Dragon,” I said in disgust.

“Ysaa-den,” she repeated.

I grunted.

Del glanced at me. Tendrils of hair lifted from her face. “Don’t you hear it, Tiger?”

“I hear wind in the trees.”

She smiled. “Have you no imagination? It’s the dragon, Tiger—the dragon in his lair, hissing down the wind.”

It was wind, nothing more, sweeping through the trees. It keened softly, stripping hair out of our faces, rippling woolen folds, blowing smoke across the sky. And the smell of something—something—just a little more than woodsmoke.

The back of my neck tingled. “Magic,” I muttered.

Del made a noise in her throat that sounded very much like doubt and derision all rolled into one. And then she turned and walked past me, heading back toward the circle she had drawn in the damp, hard soil of a land I could not trust.

No more than my own sword.





Eleven




With a name as dramatic as Dragon’s Lair, you might expect Ysaa-den to be an impressive place to live. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t much more than a ramshackle little village spilling halfway down the mountainside. There were clustered lodges like those on Staal-Ysta, but smaller, poorer. Not as well-tended. There was an aura of disrepair about the whole place; but then the villager who’d come to the island had said something about the inhabitants losing heart because of the trouble with the hounds.

I sniffed carefully as Del and I rode into the little mountain village. There was plenty to smell, all right, and not all of it good, but the stench had less to do with hounds than with sickness, despair, desperation. Also the odd tang I’d noticed back by the circle Del had drawn. Smoke—and something more.

It was midday. Warm enough to shed our cloaks, even this high in the mountains. And so we had shed them earlier, tying them onto our saddles, which left harnesses and hilts in plain sight. And that is what brought so many people out to watch us ride into the village: Northern swords in Northern harness. It meant maybe, just maybe, we were the sword-dancers sent from Staal-Ysta. The saviors Ysaa-den awaited.

I am accustomed to being stared at. Down south, people do it because, generally, they know who I am. Maybe they want to hire me, buy me aqivi, hear my stories. Maybe they want to challenge me, to prove they are better. Or maybe they don’t know me at all, but want to meet me; it happens, sometimes, with women. Or maybe they’d stare at any man who is taller than everyone else, with sandtiger scars on his face. All I know is, they stare.

Here in the North, my size is not so unusual, because Northern men are very nearly always as tall, or taller. But here in the North I am many shades darker in hair and skin. And still scarred. So they stare.

In Ysaa-den also, they stared. But I doubt they noticed size, color, nationality. Here they stared because someone had loosed magic on the land, and it was killing them. And maybe, just maybe, we could do something to stop it.

By the time we reached the center of the village, the lodges had emptied themselves, disgorging men, women, children, dogs, chickens, cats, pigs, sheep, goats, and assorted other livestock. Del and I were awash in Ysaa-den’s inhabitants. The human ones formed a sea of blue eyes and blond hair; the others—the four-legged kind—serenaded us with various songs, all of which formed a dreadful racket. Maybe Del could have found something attractive in the music, since she was so big on singing, but to me all it was was noise. Just as it always is.

We stopped, because we could ride no farther. The people pressed close, trampling slushy snow into mud and muck; then, as if sensing the stud’s uneasiness and their lack of courtesy, they fell back, shooing animals away, giving us room. But only a little room. Clearly they were afraid that if given the opportunity to leave, we’d take it.

Del reined in the roan to keep him from jostling a child. The mother caught the little girl and jerked her back, murmuring something to her. Del told the woman quietly it was all right, the girl was only curious; no harm was done.

I looked at her sharply as she spoke, hearing nuances in her tone. She was thinking, I knew, of Kalle, of her daughter on Staal-Ysta. And would, probably, for a long time. Maybe even every time she looked at a blonde, blue-eyed girl of about five years.

But Del would learn to live with this just as she’d learned with everything else. It is one of her particular strengths.