Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [198]
Rhodry smiled.
“I think I’ll wear it a little longer, though, just for the habit of the thing.”
She glared and growled, but just softly under her breath.
“My friend and I are going out now. By your name, Arzosah, I command you to follow where I lead.”
“Ych, you’re a clever one! Follow I shall.”
As they walked back up through the tunnel, Rhodry could hear her, scrabbling and scraping behind, shoving her way through to the wider reaches, where she could pad along after, her feet slapping the rock. Enj seemed to have recovered himself, but even though he and Rhodry would look each other’s way every now and then, neither of them could speak in the dark and dreamlike tunnel. Once they reached the open air and stepped out onto the ledge, Enj turned to him and grinned.
“We did it. Against all odds and hope, we did it.”
Rhodry laughed just as the dragon stuck her enormous head out in the sun, blinking furiously at the glare. In the sun she shone black, as smooth and fine as a piece of obsidian.
“Do you mock me?” she snarled.
“I don’t, no, but my own fears, that never would I find you and fulfill the geas laid upon me.”
“A geas?”
“Just so, laid upon me to find you by the greatest master of dweomer in the kingdom of Deverry.”
“Ah.” She considered this. “Well, then, that pleases me. If there’s dweomer at work, no doubt there was naught I could do to turn aside my Wyrd. Shall I carry you down to the valley floor?”
“You shall carry us safely to the valley floor.”
“Clever and twice clever. So be it.”
Never had Rhodry felt as solemn as he did then, not even when he’d been invested as gwerbret of Aberwyn up in the king’s palace of Dun Deverry, not even when the High King himself had taken his hand to bid him rise. He set one foot on her bowed neck and sat between her wings, clutching the rigid scale of a raised crest. With tears in his eyes Enj found a spot behind him.
“If only my father could see this,” Enj whispered. “If only he were here.”
Arzosah inched forward onto the ledge, then leapt,spreading her wings with a clack like an enormous fan. Wind rushed round them like a slap. Down they glided, circling the caldera once, then landing near the trees and the stream. Rhodry slid down and helped a white-faced Enj to solid ground. He was willing to guess that he looked more than a little pale himself.
“That wasn’t the most sanguine ride I’ve ever taken,” Rhodry said in Deverrian, then switched to Elvish. “Arzosah, we’ll have to rig up some sort of riding harness with ropes.”
“A rope? A rope round my belly as if I were some smelly mule? No! I shan’t allow it!”
Rhodry held up his hand and made the ring glitter. Her head drooped, and she rolled her eyes, hissing under her breath.
“Rhodry, please, spare me that, oh, please, Dragon-master?”
“I can’t or I would. I can see what an indignity it is, and I might risk my own death, but I won’t have Enj falling to his.”
“Oh, very well then. You’re a harsh man, though.”
“So I’ve always been told, and so I’ve always needed to be.”
By piecing together the rope they’d brought with them, they managed to make a primitive harness, one loop round her belly, just behind the wings, stabilized with another round her chest, rather like a crude martingale. Rhodry used the ring to reinforce his command that she fly as smoothly as possible.
“And where, pray tell, O master of mine, are we going? I can’t fly night and day, you know. I shall have to hunt for a deer now and then as well.”
“Fair enough, as long as you promise upon your name to come back when you’ve made your first kill. You can finish it where we camp.”
“So harsh!” She stamped a clawed foot. “Oh, very well then.”
“Good. We fly east first, to a place called Haen Marn. Do you know it?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll guide you there. It’s a long journey, so fear not. Well all rest often, and you shall hunt. And then, after Enj is back home again in Haen Marn, you and I shall fly south, and this time well be hunting Meradan.”
She gaped her mouth and hissed in murderous joy.
With the rope to cling