Murtagh

Her eyes grew very wide, and then Murtagh did see pity in her gaze, and he couldn’t bear it, so he turned away and busied himself retrieving his linen shirt. Alín was silent the whole while.

Thorn gave Murtagh a comforting nudge on the shoulder, and Murtagh patted him without looking. Then Thorn started to lick the scales along his forelegs, and the claws too, cleaning them of the dirt and boar’s blood that darkened them. His barbed tongue rasped with each stroke.

“Ah! Wait, please! I can help,” said Alín. She gave a quick bow and scurried back into the temple.

Thorn paused and watched with curiosity.

“What do you think—” Murtagh stopped as he saw her returning with another basin, this one full of water, and several more cloths draped over the crooks of her arms.

Alín placed the basin on the stones in front of Thorn’s forefeet and bowed again. “Please, Dragon, will you let me wash you?”

Murtagh felt Thorn consider, and then Thorn opened his mind to her and said, You may.

The reverberation of his words caused Alín to blink and step back, but then she bobbed her head and wet a cloth and—with as much care as if she were cleaning the jewels on a king’s crown, fragile with age—began to wipe the blood and dirt from Thorn’s scales.

Murtagh watched, unsure of what to make of it, but touched by her consideration. In all his time with Thorn, he had never bothered to help clean the dragon. Thorn was fastidious with his grooming, and Murtagh had seen no reason to offer aid.

He said, “So your vows allow you to touch Thorn but not me? He is as much a he as I am.”

Alín pursed her lips as she worked the cloth under the tip of a scale. “You know better than that, my Lord. Thorn is neither human nor elf nor dwarf nor Urgal. It is different with him. Besides, my faith would never forbid me the touch of a dragon. That would be…Why, that would be like locking a person underground and refusing to let them feel the touch of the sun upon their face.”

“Are dragons really so essential to you and the rest of the Draumar?”

“They are. More than I can explain to an outlander.”

“Mmh.” Murtagh looked toward the side valley. Bachel and her retinue had yet to arrive back at Nal Gorgoth. “I had a vision during the hunt.”

Startlement flitted across Alín’s face, but she hid it quickly. “We have many visions in Nal Gorgoth, my Lord.”

“Yes, but this one was different, I think.”

Murtagh described it to her as she continued to work on Thorn’s feet and legs. The acolyte appeared increasingly uncomfortable, until—as he mentioned the dragon—she said, “Stop! No more, my Lord. This is for the Speaker to hear and interpret, not I.”

“And yet I would hear your thoughts,” Murtagh said, and forged onward with his account.

Alín let out a cry, dropped the cloth, and clapped her hands over her ears. “This…No, no! I cannot hear any more!” And with her hands still about her head, she fled the courtyard.

Murtagh watched her go, frustrated. No matter how else he tried to gather information about the Draumar, all paths seemed to lead back to Bachel.

Beside him, Thorn lifted a foot and inspected his now-glittering scales. He licked at a remaining smear of grime. Alín is not a bad person.

“No, but her loyalty is firmly fixed on Bachel.”

Then Murtagh took the last two dried apples from Thorn’s saddlebags, sat upon Thorn’s right foreleg, and set to eating while they waited. His mind was a muddle of indecision. He kept seeing flashes of the boar trampling him, and also Bachel shoving the dagger into Rauden, and the black sun hanging in a dead sky…. And he kept asking himself: What could be so important that the people of Nal Gorgoth were willing to die without hesitation?

He had to talk with Bachel again. Had to try to find out why she had acted the way she did. If there was a reasonable explanation, perhaps then…But no. How could there be?

What do you make of all this? he asked Thorn.

Before the dragon could answer, Bachel and what remained of the hunting party clattered into the courtyard. The shaggy mountain horses were lathered and steaming. They dragged behind them makeshift litters of branches lashed together, upon which rested the corpses of the slain boars and fallen warriors.

Murtagh stood and started toward Bachel, determined to push past her evasions.

He hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps when a heartrending wail filled the courtyard as a barefooted woman ran forth from among the houses. Her hair was undone and flew free behind her like a pennant of flame. She went straight to the litters and fell upon Rauden’s body, wailing all the while, deep, agonizing cries that hurt to hear.

Murtagh stopped in his tracks. A crowd of villagers gathered about the edge of the courtyard, watching.

Bachel went to the woman and placed a hand upon her head. “My daughter,” she said in a sorrowful tone. And then she spoke to the woman in a voice intended only for her.