A Dragon From the Desert, page 12
“I did not know that mistress. The only rest days we ever had was on the Holy Sun’s day, once per week when we went into the temple at Khorba.”
“I guessed that,” she said. “Well, today, we will rest. We may need to move in a hurry after this. So it will be as well to take the opportunity to relax. We may not get another for some time.”
“So what are we going to do, mistress?”
“You are going to get me some more food and then you can take the rest of the morning off.”
“What will I do, mistress?”
“Whatever you want as long as you keep out of my way. I must meditate and prepare myself for the journey and I would prefer not be interrupted by interminable questions while I am doing so.”
“As you wish, mistress,” I said. “I shall make myself scarce once I have brought you the food.”
I was at a loose end. I did not know anyone well and my mistress clearly did not want me around. I did not want to hang around the camp with the soldiers or too close to the knights for I was not keen to encounter either Vorster or Todd.
When I thought no one was watching I slunk over the ridge and away from the camp, picking my way over the rough ground, through the thorn bushes and out into the Bleak Lands.
It felt good to be on my own, to have time to think, to not be a servant or an apprentice, just myself. It reminded me of looking after the goats. I had spent long days with only the beasts for company. That thought made me homesick, so I tried to divert myself by studying my surroundings.
They were unprepossessing. Barren baked ground. Thorn bushes. Lizards. Insects. Desert flowers. Scrub. Circling buzzards and dragonlings. Bright sun. Not unlike a good deal of my father’s land.
I caught a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye and my hand went to my dagger. I was not sure what it might be– jackals, blight wolves. It was a girl in the long skirt, head-dress of one of the Lady Alysia’s house servants. There was something familiar about her. Her height. The way she carried herself. It was the pretty servant girl who had summoned Mistress Iliana to Lady Alysia’s side. She was carrying a bunch of flowers in her hands. I felt suddenly shy.
She walked straight towards me. “Good morning to you,” she said. I was struck by the clarity of her speech. She sounded more like Sir Vorster or Mistress Iliana than my family or the inhabitants of Khorba.
“Good morning to you,” I said. My tongue felt thick and my mind slow. An urge to study my feet overcame me.
“You are Mistress Iliana’s servant, aren’t you?”
“I am, mistress. And you are Lady Alysia’s.”
She laughed. It was a crystalline sound. Her eyes crinkled at the corners. They were already very nice eyes and that made them more so. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“You suppose?”
She controlled her mirth and her eyes were serious now. “Yes. I am. No suppose about it.” She still did not sound very sure.
“You don’t sound much like a servant,” I said. My words came out sullen for I suspected she was mocking me. I was starting to suspect that there might be a gulf between different types of servant as great as that between servants and their employers.
She stared at me and her face flushed although for the life of me I could not understand why. “Why do you say that?”
“Your accent. You sound more like one of the knights or the lady in waiting or Lady Alysia herself.”
She paused for about ten heartbeats as if she were considering her reply very carefully. “Oh. I do?”
“You do.”
“You don’t.”
“I know this.”
She seemed to recover herself. “You just entered Mistress Iliana’s service, didn’t you? You are the farm boy she hired to be her servant. The others are talking about it.”
The idea that the other servants were talking about me was at once disturbing and fascinating. It distracted me completely, as perhaps it was meant to. “The others are talking about me? Why?”
“Some of them are wondering why she did not just hire a servant back in Tarnheim, if she needed one. Others are wondering why she did not just ask Lady Rebeka to place one of them at her disposal. Mostly they seem to be pleased that she took you on. All of them fear her.”
“But you’re not afraid,” I said.
She looked flustered again.
“You said ‘all of them’,” I said to push the point home.
“I meant all of us, of course.”
“Of course.” She stared at me and I thought she was going to stamp her foot.
“You have a most provocative way of talking, for a servant,” she said.
“So do you.” We stared at each other for a long time as if we were about to fight then, much to my confusion, she laughed.
“I suppose I do,” she said. I did not see the joke, but I was willing to take any excuse to bury the hatchet. I liked those eyes.
“I am sorry if I gave offence,” I said.
“And I,” she said. She gave a gracious curtsey. I could not manage anything so elaborate so I just bowed as I had been taught was polite.
“There’s no need to do that,” she said. “Really.”
“Do what?”
“Bow so deeply. I am not your liege lord.”
“It is how I was taught by my father.”
“The deeper you bow, the more respect you show. For another servant, which I am, you should barely do more than incline your head.”
“It seems I have a lot to learn.”
“Apparently.”
“Will you teach me?” I just wanted an excuse to talk to her. I had never had much of a chance to talk to girl’s my age. She took a step back and I wondered if I had somehow offended her. She tilted her head to one side and then said, “If I have the time and our mistresses agree, I think I would like that.”
I wondered if there was something flirtatious in the way she said it. I tried to push the thought from my mind but found I could not. “What are you doing out here?” I asked. “Aren’t you afraid?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I have my father’s dagger,” I said. I produced it from inside my shirt. She did not look impressed. “It’s very sharp,” I said.
“I am sure it is.” I wondered if I had frightened her and then I thought about it for a second. We were on our own, out of sight of the camp and I was showing her a weapon. I put it away at once and she looked relieved.
“Your father was a farmer– what was he doing with a dagger like that?”
“He had been to war. He gave it to me for my own protection.”
“Are you going to war?”
“I don’t know. But I suppose so.”
“Your mistress is a war wizard,” she said. “And a very famous one.”
“I have never heard of her.”
That confused her. “People in Solsburg all know her. The way she dresses. The way she rides to battle. The way she defeated the Four Grey Shadows at Gallitha.”
“I never guessed I had entered the service of such a…hero,” I said.
“Hero is perhaps not the right word. She is feared and respected,” she said. Her hand went to her mouth. “And I talk too much, particularly to one in her service.”
“Are you scared she will turn you into a toad,” I said. For some reason the prospect filled her eyes with fear.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I did not mean to upset you. I seem to have a gift for it.”
She shook her head and looked into the distance. “What are those buzzards doing over there?”
The subject had very definitely been changed.
“I don’t know. Maybe they have found something to eat. Want to go and look?” I cursed myself at once. Whatever those scavengers had found would not look very pretty.
She considered this for a moment. “Yes. Why not?”
We walked out into the waste. Before we went, I turned to make sure I could relocate the camp if I needed to. Plumes of smoke rose reassuringly into the sky.
“What were you doing out here anyway?” I asked.
“I just wanted to get away on my own for a little bit. I’ve never really had the chance before.”
There was an aching note of sadness in her voice that I thought I could identify. She sounded homesick and lonely. Perhaps I was just projecting my own feelings onto her. It’s an easy thing to do.
“It might be dangerous – wandering away from the camp on your own.”
“You’re doing it.”
“I am a boy.”
“You think bad things don’t happen to boys?” There was a challenge in her voice that I did not quite understand. “Soldiers take young boys as easily as young girls.”
That flustered me. It had not been what I was thinking about at all. My mouth shut like a slamming door. She laughed then.
“No one will bother me,” she said. “I am the Lady Alysia’s maidservant.”
I was not quite as sure as she was that would protect her, but I did not say it. I was still thinking about what she had just said about soldiers and boys.
“I know,” I said eventually. “You came to my mistress to ask for her help this morning. I remembered you.”
I sensed amusement in those cool blue eyes. “You remembered me? I am flattered.”
My tongue refused to work. I felt like I had just confessed to fancying her or something. To my surprise my voice came out calm and level if a little quieter than usual. “I thought you were very brave helping my mistress with your mistress.”
“Thank you. What are you doing out here?”
“My mistress gave me the morning off and I felt like going for a walk,” I said. It sounded better than saying I was afraid to go into the camp and meet Vorster and Todd.
“I was doing something similar,” she said, as if she had only just thought of that. “I found some wildflowers here. My mother always used to bring me some of those when I was a little girl.”
She held up a small bunch of desert skiprose. They were tiny and lovely and blue. Their thorns were very sharp.
“I thought I would give them to…to Lady Alysia when I got back.”
“I am sure she will appreciate the thought.”
“I hope she is capable of it. She is not at all well.”
“My mistress will keep her alive,” I said. I was far from confident about that, but it seemed like the right thing to say.
“She is very powerful.”
“She is.” Again, I had no idea whether that was true or not. I had no experience of any others. But if it made me seem more important by association with this girl, I was all for it. “I can carry those for you. If you want to gather some more.”
“That’s very kind of you but I can do it myself. Do you like it here in these barrens?”
I considered that for what seemed like a long time. No one had ever asked me such a question before. “I grew up here on my father’s farm. I don’t know much about anything else except Khorba. I suppose I do though.”
“It is frightening,” she said. “So wide. So empty. The sky so blue and clear. The buzzards. The lizards. The dragonlings.”
Part of me wondered why if she found it so scary, she had come out here on her own but it did not seem exactly diplomatic to say so. “You are from a town?”
I was fishing for information. I freely admit it.
She nodded. “A big town. Where you are almost never alone. Constantly surrounded by people coming and going, wanting things.”
“I always wanted to see a city,” I said.
“You shall. Solsburg is the biggest city in Umbrea. You’ll be able to eat salt fish from the Dragon Sea.”
There was nostalgia in her voice now and she was looking off into the distance as if she could see the towers of Solsburg there already.
“You’ve been there before?”
“Yes. I grew up there.”
It seemed odd even to one so naive as I was at the time that a servant girl from Tarnheim should have grown up in Solsburg. Most people never travelled more than a day’s walk from their homes except when they went to war or on a pilgrimage.
“You are well travelled for a servant girl,” I said. The words came out tarter than I intended. She turned and looked at me sharply.
“I was not always a servant.” There was an under-current of anger and resentment in her voice.
“Nor was I until a few days ago.”
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment and then said, “My father was a distant cousin of the Duke’s. My family fell on hard times when he died of lung rot and I was forced to accept a position with Lady Alysia to keep body and soul together.”
It sounded like a rehearsed speech, as if she was hiding something or not telling the exact truth. I did not mind.
“I am sorry to hear that,” I said. “It explains why you look like Lady Alysia, I suppose.”
She looked at me sidelong as if trying to gauge the effects of her words. She let out a small sigh. “You think I do?”
“It struck me when I saw you together this morning.”
“I suppose I must.” She fell silent again, as if I had said something to offend her.
“When did your father die?” I asked as we picked our way through the rocks. The hem of her skirt had become tangled on a thorn and I kneeled to disentangle it.
Once again there was a pause, longer I thought than there should have been. Briefly I wondered if she was somehow slow of mind like Big Toby who had been kicked in the head by a horse. Her speech did not seem to indicate so.
“What happened to your nose?”
“Sir Vorster broke it.”
“He did what?” Her voice sounded outraged. “Why?”
“He did not like the way I spoke to him.”
“I could see how that could happen but still…breaking a servant’s nose, and not even his own servant. That’s very ill-bred.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I said.
She stopped, turned to face me, reached out and touched my arm. I felt the contact all the way up to my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to sound so callous. It must have been horrible for you, but you seem to have recovered from it very quickly.”
“My mistress healed me,” I said. “And I would not let Sir Vorster hear you talk in that tone of voice.” He might decide to teach you a lesson too."
“He would not hit a lady,” she said, and she sounded very sure of that. Even I realised it would be undiplomatic to point out that she was a servant and not a lady.
“Of course,” I said. There must have been something sardonic in my tone for she glanced at me sidelong and said, “Of course, I am not likely to give him any cause for offence.”
“Of that I am sure,” I said.
“You really don’t speak like a servant,” she said.
“Neither do you.”
She laughed at that. “Perhaps we should be friends.”
“Because we don’t sound like servants?”
“That and because we like each other.” She sounded oddly wistful when she said that. There was a questioning note in her voice.
“Then let us be friends,” I said.
Her eyes crinkled. “My name is Ruth.”
“Raif,” I bowed less respectfully this time.
Just then we reached the rocks and saw the body of a dead dragonling. It was quite an old one, large almost as a man. The buzzards took off when we got close and circled around waiting for us to go. They had already made quite a mess of it.
“It must have been a beautiful animal when it was alive,” Ruth said. Bits of its hide still looked quite beautiful, a mixture of metallic red and green scales.
“Yes.”
“What could have killed it?”
“Most likely another dragonling,” I said. “The big adults fight over territory sometimes. I used to see it sometimes on the boundaries of my father’s farm.”
“I suppose we should head back now.”
I looked at the sky. There was still some time before the sun reached noon. I wanted to keep walking out here with her for as long as I could.
“We could look for eggs,” I said.
“Eggs?”
“Sometimes they lay their eggs nearby, among the rocks. They taste good.”
“You’ve eaten dragonling eggs? I thought only nobles did that.”
“I sometimes found them when I was out watching the goats. You want to try and find them or not?”
“Where would we look?”
I glanced around. “Up there in that cluster of rocks would be a good place to start.”
I was not nearly as confident as I sounded but she started to walk in that direction. I found I was following her as we scrambled up into the rocks. She moved easily and well.
“Yes!” she shouted. I scrambled up beside her and looking down into a small basin in the rock saw a collection of dragonling eggs. Most of them were grey and dull and dead looking as the ones I had found in other nests, but one was mottled bright red and green. I reached out and picked it up. As I did so a tingle passed right up my arm.
“What’s happening?”
I looked at her and then back at the egg. It was perhaps twice the size of a hen’s egg but I could still hold it in my hand. It bulged in one corner and then it broke. A tiny head peeked out with huge liquid eyes. A long scaly neck, dripping with some sort of goo emerged. Small slimy wings stretched, and the egg broke further. The tingling in my hand grew stronger.
The creature opened its mouth and vomited on me. I resisted the urge to shake my hand. A thin mewling cry came from its mouth. It turned and licked the slime from its wings with a long serpentine tongue.
I looked at Ruth and then I looked back at the creature. I held a tiny baby dragonling in my hand. I felt strange and proud as I had done after assisting in the difficult birth of a kid back on the farm.
Then the bloody thing bit me.
The dragonling had no teeth but its beak had a sharp edge and it drew blood. At once it began to lick the red fluid away. I felt the rasp of its tiny tongue on my hand. I was in considerable pain and I felt the urge to toss it away, but I resisted. It looked up at me with its huge eyes and I felt an odd compulsion in them. Now that the slime was gone, I could see its scales were of the same colour and pattern as the dead beast we had seen down in the barrens.
