King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1)

King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1) Page 127

“I do my job. Now stand back.”

“We can’t watch?”

The keeper snorted. “Watch all you wish. You’ll regret it.”

Some tone in his voice made the other two back away. But Alain knew suddenly he could not stand by, not this time.

He jumped up. Sorrow nipped at his backside but missed, and Alain crashed out of the undergrowth.

“Stop!” he cried.

The two men grabbed him at once and wrenched his arms behind his back. He struggled briefly, but together they were much stronger than he was alone. A thud sounded, inside the cage, as if something had thrown itself against the slats.

“We could throw this one in,” said one of the men. “He’s fresher and younger.”

Sorrow bounded, growling, out of the trees. The two men instantly let go of Alain and backed off, drawing long knives.

“That’s one of Count Lavastine’s hounds,” said the keeper nervously. “Do naught to harm it.”

Sorrow sat himself down, leaning against Alain’s legs.

“Don’t do it,” pleaded Alain. “It isn’t merciful. It isn’t right”

This close, Alain saw the keeper had but a stump of one hand; his face was scored with old deep gashes on forehead and jaw, one of which had torn out his right eye, now healed as a mass of white scar tissue. A bronze Circle of Unity hung at his chest. “It must be fed, boy. Fed with fresh blood. Or do you volunteer to throw yourself in?”

Alain shuddered. But the memory of Lackling’s terrified mewling and sobbing was still strong in him. His fault. His to atone. He thought suddenly of Frater Agius and his dangerous, heretical words: that the blessed Daisan offered himself as a sacrifice in order to redeem us from our sins; that by sacrifice we make ourselves worthy. Driven by this memory, by the intensity which pervaded Agius’s speech and prayer, Alain took a step toward the cage.

Sorrow butted Alain so hard from behind he fell onto his knees. Sorrow got a good grip on his arm, tight enough that his teeth pressed painfully into flesh but not so hard that they drew blood. The two men sidled closer, knives up. Sorrow growled but did not let go.

“There’s one as disagrees with you,” said the keeper with rough amusement. He bent to the body that lay limp at his feet, hooked his elbows underneath the sleeping man’s armpits. Despite his lost hand, the keeper was a strong man; he dragged the body easily to the cage, fussed with some kind of attachment, and rolled up a small barred door not more than the breadth of a big man’s shoulders in both height and width.

“Let me go!” said Alain fiercely. Heedless of the pain, he wrenched his arm out of Sorrow’s grip and flung himself forward. He would stop this murder. He must.

The keeper jerked up his head and then, the movement an extension of his surprise, yanked the shroud half off the cage, revealing—

The two men behind Alain cried out in fear before their exclamations froze in their throats.

The great eye slewed round—for it had only one eye; the other was a mass of putrefaction, worms writhing in infected flesh, maggots crawling out from the pus to wriggle down its beaklike snout. Its gaze struck him like the sword of God.

He could not move.

But he could stare, throat choked with horror. With pity.

It was a sickly creature, however monstrous its appearance. Like a huge bird, it had two taloned feet and two wings, molting now. Feathers and waste littered the cage’s floor. Like a dragon, it had a sinuous tail and a featherless head, scaled to an iron gleam, but with a yellowish-green cast beneath, the sign of a creature that is no longer healthy. It heaved its great body awkwardly across the cage toward its meal.

The keeper began to shove the body in, but suddenly the body shuddered and a tiny gasp escaped the unconscious man, the gasp of a man coming awake out of—or into—a nightmare. The huge foot scraped at the body, sunk its talons into flesh, and yanked it inside the cage.

Mercifully, the keeper threw the shroud back over the bars. Alain heard a muffled moan and then the sounds of an animal feeding voraciously. The grip of the guivre’s eye let him go. He fell forward, shivering convulsively, and began to weep. But he still did not move, though now he could. What he had seen was too horrible.

The keeper closed the tiny door and chained it shut. He peered at Alain with his one good eye. “You’d best go with them, lad. Biscop will want to see you.”

Biscop Antonia. It was she, of course, who was behind all this. Frater Agius had refused to confront her in the ruins that night or in Lavas Holding on the following day. Now, it seemed, Alain would have no choice but to do so—or else, with Sorrow, fight a foolish skirmish he could not win.