Maldoza, rising ahead of her in its tapering majesty of sparkling rock, no longer held a strange beauty for Elsbeth. It was merely a haven for a monster. Her stomach soured at the thought. Only the memory of the mob at her door and her helpless grandfather wasting away in his sickbed kept her from leaping onto the cart seat and turning Tater homeward. Angus would have gone apoplectic if he knew of this mad plan she and Irena had hatched. Elsbeth adored her grandfather. He was worth any risk she’d take in order to protect and ultimately savehim.
She patted the pony’s sweaty neck. “Come on, lass. Just a little farther and you’ll be safe and sheltered with MasterGrayson.”
The rest of the journey to the cliffs’ base remained uneventful. Elsbeth kept the crossbow in her lap and watched the skies. She found Donal Grayson, flanked by a pair of sharp-eyed sheepdogs, waiting for her as she guided the cart to hisdoor.
Short and bent by age and years of laboring in his fields, Donal was the last of the border farmers remaining on their homesteads. He’d resisted moving to Byderside once the dragon attacks started. “I’ll not give up my farm over some lizard planting his fat ass in the cliffs and eating a stray cow or sheep. This is my land, and I’m staying onit.”
The village elders had finally given up, calling him stubborn and stupid for not listening to reason. Donal paid them no mind, defying their dire predictions of becoming a dragon’s next meal. He worked his farm, planted his fields, and kept a close watch on hisherds.
He helped Elsbeth from the cart and smiled at her from a lined face sun-cured to the patina of saddle leather. “Well, if it isn’t Angus’s granddaughter. What are you doing here at the ass-end of Byder County, Elsbeth?” He eyed her armorcuriously.
Elsbeth hugged him. She liked Donal and always invited him to their house for a meal when he made a rare visit into Byderside. “Help me unhitch my pony, Master Donal, and I’ll tell you mynews.”
She stayed only long enough to put Tater in one of Donal’s paddocks, unload her supplies from the cart and recount the events of the morning and previousnight.
Donal scowled when she finished her tale. “Never could abide Malcolm Miller, or his da for that matter. I’d lay down a harvest’s worth of profit that Malcolm killed his wife.” He pointed a finger at her. “You be careful around him, Elsbeth. He’s a nasty piece ofwork.”
Elsbeth nodded and stayed silent when Donal continued. “I’d think Irena gone daft, but her idea has merit. I’ve seen a parade of knights and their horses riding to the cliffs and never returning. Sometimes the beastie leaves their swords in my field as payment for a sheep or two. You should see the ruby I pried out of onehilt.”
Her eyes rounded. “Wait. Are you saying you twobargain?”
The old farmer flashed her a black-toothed smile. “In our way. You’ll notice my fields aren’t scorched, my barn not burned. I’ll put a ewe or two out in my south pasture for him. The beastie takes ‘em, no trouble. And sometimes he drops a shiny stone at mydoor.”
Donal’s revelation stunned her. Even though she had agreed to Irena’s plan, it had been more out of desperation than faith. “Irena was rightthen.”
“Of course she’s right. The old girl knows a thing or two aboutdragons.”
She eyed Donal. “That’s what she said. How is it a Byderside elder knows so much aboutdragons?”
He gave her the same knowing look Irena had. “That’s her story to tell, lass. Now, let’s get you back on the road. I’ll show you a shortcut to the cliffs that’s also easier to climb, especially with you being on foot andall.”
Donal’s shortcutwas a quicker way to the cliffs’ upper levels, but also up a path choked with a low-growing web of plains scrub vine sporting thorns the length of a man’s finger. Elsbeth crushed the vine under her boots, grateful for the armor and its protective scale. Without it, she’d be stripped bloody by the clawingplants.
Another hour of walking, and she cleared the last of the thorny flora. The path continued its spiral up the cliffs, steeper now but blessedly free of vines. The sun beat down on her, plastering the garb she wore under the armor to her skin. She stopped, panting from the heat. Too bad she didn’t bring a horse. Going by horseback might have been easier. She smiled and pulled a long swallow from one of her water flasks. Unless she rode a warhorse, they wouldn’t get far. The typical farm mount would bolt at the first scent of dragon and throw Elsbeth off the cliffs in theprocess.
A hawk glided in hunting flight through the endless blue above her. Elsbeth wondered if the field mice and shrews hid in their burrows, away from the raptor’s sharp eyes. Gods knew they had more sense than she if they did. She was like those mice: small and weak against a much larger, deadlier predator. “Nice, Elsbeth,” she muttered. “You haven’t the wits of a fieldmouse.”
She climbed higher, accompanied by suffocating heat and the droning chorus of cicadas. By the time the sun set, she was sticky with sweat and exhausted by the long trek. She had, however, made it to the middle face of the cliffs where the largest caves punched dark holes into sheerrock.
A stony outcropping split into a wedge shape jutted up from the parched ground, creating a shelter from the wind and a place to rest her back. The cicada song faded to silence as Elsbeth shrugged off her pack and gusted out a relieved sigh at the sudden lightness on her back and shoulders. If only she could shed the armor, but that would have towait.
Dry brush and scrub vine had found its way to this patch of ground, and she gathered an armful to use as kindling. The small fire she built gave off comforting light and offered protection against nocturnal hunters smaller than dragons. She settled against the rock’s niche and reached for a flask. Her water was tepid and stale but felt good on her parched throat as shedrank.
The fields below transformed from oceans of gold and green to seas of pewter as the moon rose higher and replaced the sun’s light with its own gentler rays. The cliffs cast a pointed crown of shadows against the backdrop of roads and the far candle-lit villages and towns. Haunted it might be, but Maldoza offered the most breathtaking and encompassing views of the countryside Elsbeth had ever seen. No wonder a dragon had chosen the cliffs as itseyrie.
Despite a night sky festooned in stars and clear of clouds, the air hung heavy and still, like the last breath before a storm’s onslaught. Elsbeth didn’t like the quiet. Even at night, things rustled and whispered in the fields and forests. But here, on the bleak paths cut into the cliffs, nothing moved. Even the fabled haints didn’t howl—a small mercy for which she wasglad.
Irena had filled her ears with advice before she left Byderside. “There’s no sneaking up on the beast, Elsbeth. Walk as if you’re off to visit a friend, not steal from him. Sing, speak loudly, even play your fiddle. Dragons are great lovers of music, and it will see you long before you see it. Give it cause to wonder instead ofattack.”
Elsbeth hoped she was right. Her nerves stretched taut beneath the unending silence. She’d take Irena’s words to heart. A little music would calm her and maybe draw the dragon out. She was here to bargain, not pilfer or kill. She prayed the creature would be more curious than hungry when it finally showeditself.
She pulled the fiddle case from her pack. Inside the case nestled her most treasured possession. Her father’s before it was hers, the fiddle was the only connection she had to her parents, dead these many years. Angus had taught her to play, just as he’d taught her to weave. Ever patient, ever encouraging, he’d smiled and hid his flinches when, as a novice of both skills, she snarled the threads on her loom and sawed her bow against the anguishedstrings.
The hush around her thickened, as if the cliffs themselves waited to hear her play. Elsbeth stood against the rock, tucked the fiddle under her chin, and ran the bow hairs once across the strings. They answered her summons with a plaintive call, the sweet notes drifting into the silence. The nightsighed.
She paused. What to play? There were the old songs, tunes every fiddler learned at their teacher’s knee. They played them at weddings, funerals, solstices, and child blessings. She knew them by heart, could play them in her sleep, and had set villagers to dancing into the wee hours in spinning kaleidoscopes of colorful skirts and garlanded hair. Still, such lively music seemed out of place here, beneath Maldoza’s glimmering shadow and the wheel of stars aboveher.
She thought of Angus, slowly dying in a sickbed in Irena’s house. Her throat ached with unshed tears. No matter how much she might wish otherwise, her grandfather didn’t have long to live. Memories of his teaching her to play rose in her mind, the summers when he was the fiddler at the solstice celebrations in the barley fields, and she danced with the other village children in the bright sunlight. Elsbeth again set the bow to thestrings.
