They cleared a path for her as she passed, a few offering wishes of good luck, most shaking their heads in disbelief at the foolishness of her endeavor. Irena stayed close beside her, vigilant and narrow-eyed, daring anyone toscoff.
Elsbeth strode to her waiting cart and pony, pausing when Malcolm stepped forward and blocked her path. His blunt features were shiny in the morning heat, as if he’d bathed from an oil jar. Remnants of breakfast hung in his beard and decorated his teeth when he smiled at her. She shuddered but held herground.
“I trust you’ll charm the beast, Elsbeth, and when you come back, I’ll bewaiting.”
She skirted around him, ramming an elbow into his side for good measure as she passed. “Then you best be waiting with your sword buckled on, Malcolm.” He laughed at her warning and returned to thecrowd.
Elsbeth didn’t look back. She’d deal with him later. Malcolm Miller had been a nuisance since she’d known him. Even when his wife lived, he had always watched Elsbeth, made known his lust for her. Irena was right. She’d have to step carefully around him. Since his wife’s death, that lust had turned to a strange, malevolent obsession, spurred on by her cold rejection to his numerous advances. A dragon waited for her at the cliffs of Maldoza, and a wolf in a man’s skin waited here in the village. She wasn’t sure which of the two was morefrightening.
When she clambered up to the cart seat, Irena was there to hand her two water flasks and a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about Angus, girl. Ewan and his friends will bring him here. We’ll take good care of him. Even Malcolm won’t cross my threshold without an invitation, and I’ll be cold in my grave for a decade before that everhappens.”
Elsbeth took the other woman’s hand and squeezed. “Thank you, Irena. I still think this is a fool’s errand, but I’ll do whatever needs doing to keep Angus here andsafe.”
Irena gripped her fingers in return. “The gods shelter you,Elsbeth.”
The villagers edged back when the elder turned and shooed them away with sharp words and flapping hands, looking like a goose girl herding a flock of stubborn geese from herdoor.
Elsbeth clucked to the pony, and the cart rattled onto the road with a creak of wheels and jangle of harness, leaving behind the relative safety ofByderside.
The smoother road soon gave way to rutted drover paths that set her bouncing on the cart seat and her teeth clacking together. She ignored the rolling pasture lands and fields of wheat and barley that stretched for leagues on either side of the path. Instead, she focused on the towering rise of pock-marked rock in the distance. It would take her most of the day to reach the cliffs of Maldoza, and truth be told, she wasn’t in any great rush to getthere.
Rising in steep ascent from the flat ground, the cliffs jutted into the morning blue in sharp, stygian spires. Elsbeth had always admired them most at late afternoon, when they sparkled in the slanted rays of the sun, giving the illusion of a jeweled veil on a grieving queen’s crown. The face of the cliffs was scarred with holes, lidless eyes that surveyed the fields with an unblinkingstare.
Many a tale had been told to scare children about those dark caverns—how haints and banshees roamed their shadows, screeching and howling with the fury of the early spring storms. Too practical to believe every story told around a campfire, Elsbeth still suffered a flutter of unease at the sight of the peaks rising like obsidian teeth filed topoints.
Ghosts didn’t scare her; dragons did, and somewhere in that honeycomb of caves one waited and possibly watched her approach. She shivered, despite the thick padding of dragon armor and the hot morning sun beating down onher.
She finally stopped to rest just after midday, coaxing the pony to a grassy hillock overlooking Donal Grayson’s southern pasture. Below them, a small pond reflected rolling clouds and swathes of sky on its mirror surface. After watering the little mare at the pond, she unpacked and ate herlunch.
It would likely be her only meal. Camping out alone on the winding paths that cut through the haunted cliffs guaranteed another sleepless night and little appetite. A faint inner voice urged her to abandon such a foolish journey, return to the village and pack their things. If she were careful and slow in the going, Angus might survive the trip to Durnsdale. They had enough money saved to afford a decent inn for a few days until she found more permanentquarters.
Another voice however, the one indignant at being forced out of their home because of a false charge leveled against Angus, insisted she make the trip, see the plan through. Not only to help her grandfather, but to show the Byderside villagers just how stupid they wereacting.
Contrary to her earlier protestations, Elsbeth thought Irena’s unusual idea might work. The gods knew that knights on horseback, with their spears and gleaming swords, had failed to rid the countryside of of the dragon. They had done nothing more than anger the beast and get themselves killed and eaten in the process. Or so everyone assumed. None of the men who rode off for Maldoza in search of glory and treasure ever returned. Whole or inpieces.
Irena’s advice echoed in her mind.“Why not try somethingdifferent?”
Why not indeed? Elsbeth smiled and tipped back her water flask for a drink. A woman dressed in old dragon armor carrying nothing more than a crossbow and a fiddle was certainlydifferent.
The elder had sworn dragons liked music.“Trust me. I know a little about dragons,”she’dsaid.
Her enigmatic statement puzzled Elsbeth as she finished her lunch. How the fragile elder of a rural village knew about dragons begged many questions, but in the frantic events and preparations of the past day, she hadn’t thought to ask. Fighting off drunken men wanting to kill Angus, plotting with Irena over how to save him and wondering how she might survive this mad scheme had left her head spinning. She sighed. It would be good to have Alaric at her side rightnow.
As soon as the thought occurred, she squelched it. This was no time to indulge in such daydreaming. The fact was she hadn’t seen or heard from her erstwhile lover in eight long years, and he wasn’t here now. She could thank Irena for inciting such thoughts. Her question as to why Elsbeth wasn’t married had awakened a long-buried yearning for a man she had once loved andrefused.
The clear image of laughing gray eyes glittering with desire rose in her mind’s eye. Alaric had charmed every man, woman and child when he entered the village of Ney-by-the-Water. Elsbeth, mistrustful of the bard suddenly in their midst, had been no more immune than the others, though she tried her best to hide it. He had brought with him an amazing cache of stories, and the villagers fought with each other for the honor of having him sup with them and hear his tales told in a voice as rich and luxurious as priceless silk. He had taken her heart and left her with nothing more thanmemories.
Her reticence toaccept him amused him. “You’re a suspicious one, Elsbeth Weaver. What evil do you think I plan for your friends and neighbors?” His smile teased her, a gentle mockery of herwariness.
He confronted her one day outside her home while she sat in the afternoon sun and wove a new rug on her loom. Elsbeth had almost run into the house when she spotted him approaching but refused to let him see how much he disturbedher.
She answered his question with one of her own. “How long will you stay in Ney-by-the-Water, Master Alaric?” She raised an eyebrow when the storyteller folded his long legs and sat down next to her,uninvited.
“Another fortnight, maybe. Why do youask?”
Her fingers paused on the loom’s shuttle. She didn’t want him this close. He’d surely notice her blush, the way her breathing sped up when he drew near—just like the other silly maids in the village who flirted and batted their eyelashes each time he got within spittingdistance.
His knowing smile made her bristle. A bard’s words were his trade, and more than a few village maidens had succumbed to such treacherous skill only to be left behind with a fatherless babe in their belly as a reminder of their folly. Elsbeth had no intention of falling into such atrap.
