Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [76]
“And what was your question?” he said. “If it skirts the edge of impious things, as this other talk’s done, then I shan’t answer it.”
“Well, then, I’ll hope it’s not impious. Do you know any lore pertaining to dragons?”
“A fair bit, truly.” Meer relaxed, baring his fangs in a smile. “It’s one of the fifty-two required topics for a bard who would be more than a singer at feasts and funerals.”
“My grandfather did see one once,” Jahdo piped up. “Flying north of our town. And the day after a farmer did tell how two of his cows did get taken, both at once, like, by the beast.”
Jill started to make some jesting remark, then realized that the boy was dead-serious. Something about his almost offhand sincerity convinced her that he was speaking simple truth, repeating not some tall tale but an actual incident. Her blood ran cold. This thing is real, she told herself. Only then did she see her own disbelief, that in spite of all her searching for lore, in spite of all the long hours she’d scried and pondered, she’d honestly thought, somewhere deep in her mind and until this very moment, that the creature and its name were merely some peculiar prank or jest of Evandar’s.
Somewhere round the middle of the afternoon, Rhodry was walking across the ward when he saw Jill hurrying to meet him. He paused, smiling as he waited, but the grim look in her eyes soon wiped the smile away.
“What’s so wrong?” he said.
“Naught. Well, except for everything, of course. Rhodry, I need to talk with you, somewhere we can’t possibly be overheard. I think we’d best try the rooftop.”
They climbed the spiral staircase to the top chamber of the main broch, a squat and narrow space stuffed with bundled arrows. In the ceiling a trapdoor and wooden ladder led out to the flat roof. Cengarn fell away from them, their view tumbling down the city’s hills and spreading out into a pool of green farmland, striped with forest, stretching farther and farther until the mists swallowed their sight at the horizon. Jill walked over to the rim’s wall, barely three feet high, and sat, looking down so far and so casually that Rhodry could barely stand to watch her.
“Do you enjoy it when you fly?” he remarked.
“I do, at that. It’s a glorious feeling.”
“I rather thought you would, knowing you as I do. If ever there was a soul born to fly free, it would be you.”
“You can still charm a lass’s heart, can’t you, Rhoddo? Or an old woman’s. Come sit down.”
“Shan’t, if it’s all the same to you. Not there, anyway.”
She laughed with a toss of her silver hair.
“Well, mock me all you like, but I’ve never fancied being up this high. Climbing the Cannobaen light used to turn my guts, not that I would ever have admitted it then, back when I was young. Besides, if I should fall, I couldn’t sprout wings to catch myself like you can.”
“Well, then, we’ll have to get you the loan of a pair. That’s why I wanted to talk with you, in fact.”
“Oh, ye gods! What now?”
“How gracious you sound.”
“It’s enough to drive a man daft, having sorcerers jest with him.”
“Why do you think I’m jesting?”
“Well, all this talk of wings, of course.” He stopped, suddenly wondering if he should be afraid.
“Not a jest at all. It has to do with that word graved inside your ring.”
Reflexively he held up his right hand, and the silver band flashed on the third finger.
“Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz.” Jill formed each word carefully. “As far as I’ve been able to figure out, that’s how you should pronounce those written characters, and the pronouncing of them is truly important. Your life’s going to depend upon it.”
“What? What is it, some kind of spell?”
“It is and it isn’t. It’s a name, but a name that’s a spell by its very nature. The name gives you control over the owner of the name, you see.”
“I don’t see anything of the sort, my thanks. Who owns it?”
“A dragon, as a matter of fact.”
Rhodry started to laugh, but she looked at him so mildly, so blandly, that his mirth spilled and ran.
“There’s no such thing as dragons,” he snarled. “Except the kind they have