Chapter 16

ALYS DIDN'T GET Gower back to Saint Toby's by the noonday meal after all, but the fault was his own: He insisted on traveling the rest of the way to the clearing where Alys had originally told him Selendrile would be.

While her common sense warned her he would find the Inquisitor's body where they'd left him, she'd been unable to bring herself to say anything. Just in case she'd told herself. Just in case, hope against hope, he wasn't really dead and had returned home to Griswold. That was downright stupid. Just in case animals had gotten to the body and carried it off. She couldn't bring herself to think they'd eat it then and there. Just in case Selendrile had had the foresight to remove the evidence. Almost as stupid as hoping Atherton wasn't really dead.

Of course the body was still there.

She hung back, unwilling to approach within clear sight, while Gower crouched beside it. He didn't have to look long to determine what had happened. "Your dragon friend do mis?"

Alys nodded. There were explanations, but none seemed adequate.

Gower didn't say any of the things he could have said, either. Instead he told her, "It's indecent to leave his body out like this." So, since they had no tools to dig a proper grave, they gathered stones and piled them atop him, like the old pagan burial cairns that dotted the countryside. It wasn't the Christian rite, but she hoped it was sufficient to set his soul—if he still had one—to rest.

By the time they returned to Saint Toby's—hungry, tired, hands and backs sore, fingernails torn and filthy—the villagers had obviously begun to worry about Gower's disappearance during the night and were setting out to search for him. She saw the look on the face of the first person who recognized her despite the dirt and the boy's clothing, and after that kept her face down. She had thought that it would be easier this time, that—having lived through the past four days—nothing could reach her and nothing could frighten her.

It wasn't easier.

Their hate still tore at her heart.

She was terrified all over again.

Members of the search party, fresh and eager to spread the news, hurried back to Saint Toby's so that when she and Gower reached the center of the village, everyone was there, waiting. Gower, pleased to be the center of attention, had refused to answer any questions along the way. Now, standing with thumbs hooked self-importantly around his belt, he waited for total silence before announcing, "She has something to say."

He had kept his part of the bargain, had proved to be more loyal than Selendrile. But she didn't have to give them any more than the least. "It was true," she said, never looking up, "everything everybody said about me. Then I came back with magic and lies against Gower and his family."

There was a moment of silence, Gower expecting more, the villagers taking in what she'd already said.

"The broken wheels...," Gower prompted.

"My doing."

"My wife and daughter..."

"Bewitched. I made an image of myself and put it with Etta's things so you'd blame her for what I did myself."

The crowd was beginning to murmur and stir.

Gower was getting annoyed with this lack of cooperation masking as cooperation. "Tell them about that Inquisitor from Griswold."

"Dead. My doing also. I bewitched the dragon, too, got him to take on human shape to help me hurt you. That's why I came back."

A voice from the crowd said, "That doesn't sound like you, Alys." Risa's mother.

Alys jerked her head up.

Too late.

Four days too late.

Alys pretended the movement had simply been the first part of a shrug. If she didn't let herself believe, they couldn't hurt her. She refused to look up again, answered their questions as briefly as possible, freely took the blame for every ill imagined or real which had befallen the village for the past fifteen years. There, she thought at Gower. There. She even let him take credit for ridding the village of the dragon. "I killed it," Gower claimed. "It won't be bothering us again," and she let even that pass.

For all that she agreed to everything they said, it took all the afternoon and into the evening for the villagers to decide, as Alys had known they would, that it was up to them to carry out the sentence the murdered Atherton had decreed. The only difference was that this time the method must be more certain.

Another stake was fashioned and set up in full view of the village. Wood was gathered, torches made. This is what I deserve, Alys told herself as she let them lead her to the stake, as she put her back to it before they could force her to. Maybe her death would be sufficient repayment for causing Atherton's death in her quest for revenge. But she couldn't bear to watch their faces as they set the kindling about her and called for rope. She set her gaze above their heads, beyond the people to the homes and buildings of the village itself.

And that was when she saw the old witch of the glen, lurking at the edge of the crowd.

It can't be her, Alys told herself. It had to be some other old woman, perhaps Hildy's grandmother, who rarely left the house and got stranger and stranger as the years went by. The old witch had no reason to leave Griswold, having finally acquired a soul to replace her own lost one.

But then the witch saw her looking, and gave a smile of such malicious glee that Alys couldn't fight the truth of it: This was the old witch, and the reason she had traveled to Saint Toby's was to watch Alys burn.

It didn't make sense, if it was the witch's soullessness that made her wicked. The only way Alys could work it out was that people couldn't really give up their souls. They only acted as though they didn't have one until, eventually, they forgot what it was like not to be soulless. Atherton had no more sold his soul to the old witch than the old witch had sold hers to Satan.

Alys watched the old witch come closer and closer, elbowing people aside to stand gloating next to Una in the circle of those closest to the stake. But then Gower came through the crowd also, with the rope to tie Alys, and she had to close her eyes so they couldn't see her panic. She held herself tight to control the shaking.

In her self-imposed darkness, she could smell the pitch as the torches were lit. Gower pulled her hands to the back of the stake. Someone screamed.

Alys tensed even more, assuming that the scream meant an overeager villager had set torch to kindling before Gower had had a chance to bind her.

But then there was another cry of fear.

Before Alys had a chance to open her eyes, she was knocked to the ground, falling into the still-unlit bundles of kindling. The stake, which had broken with a sharp crack, landed on top of her, knocking the breath out of her.

By the time she could see straight, the villagers were fleeing, screaming in terror, Una and the old witch both lost in the panic. Just as Alys got up onto her hands and knees, a blast of wind flattened her again. Her forearms were seized and she was lifted up, up into the air.

But then Selendrile swooped low, so that she could see Gower staggering groggily, too confused to look up. Selendrile dipped so low that Alys's dangling legs almost dragged on the ground. The rush of air from his wings caused Gower to lose his footing again. He fell, sitting, and Selendrile circled again, close enough that Alys could see in Gower's eyes the moment he realized what was happening, could see him brace himself for the death he was sure was coming.

Which didn't come.

Once again Selendrile took to the air, circling the village, demonstrating to the villagers that there was no hope of outrunning him, no matter which direction they chose. Then again he swooped in close, his wings pulled in tight so that he hurtled between their houses, Alys's feet just barely clearing the street.

He roared, sending flames shooting down the street, licking at the heels of the fleeing villagers. Closer. Closer. Then at the last moment, up and above their heads.

Again he returned to the stake, fallen and abandoned. This time he roared directly at it, and the brittle wood burst into flame whose heat Alys could feel on her legs as they passed over.

Gower had almost reached the edge of the village when Selendrile caught up. He breathed a crescent of flame to block the wheelwright's way, close enough that Gower's eyebrows were probably singed. Gower turned.

Then, with Gower watching, Selendrile breathed fire. Not at Gower, but at the tin shop Gower had fought so hard to possess. For a moment, Alys felt an overwhelming sense of loss for her childhood home.

But only for a moment.

She had seen last night that it was no longer hers. She felt nothing as Selendrile shot over Gower's head and carried her into the darkness of the surrounding night.

AFTER FLYING LONG enough that Alys's arms were beginning to ache, Selendrile let her drop.

She landed flat on her back on ground that was prickly but bouncy. A haystack, she realized, probably the same one he'd dropped her into that first night. She'd given up trying to keep track of how often she'd been knocked down or fallen over in the past day—she probably couldn't count that high anyway.

Selendrile skidded to a stop beside her, transforming to human shape even before the shower of hay settled. He grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to sit up, looking intently at her as though searching for something in her face. She saw that his right wrist was almost entirely healed; the left had no mark of the shackle at all. She remembered how he had referred to human bodies as being fragile, and considered, once again, that dragons lived for hundreds of years. It wasn't fair of her to wish he was human just because she was.

"Thank you for rescuing me," she said.

Eventually he let go of her shoulders. Eventually he said, "You're welcome."

The moonlight glinted on his golden hair, long and loose. "So," he said in a voice that gave no clue to his thoughts, "does this mean no more revenge?"

"No more revenge."

He continued to look at her without saying anything.

"I didn't like it," she said. "I felt worse after than before. And I'm very, very sorry Atherton died."

No reaction at all.

"I assume it works out better for you," she asked, "when you get revenge on those who hurt you?"

His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. But he was the one who looked away first. He sighed, shaking his head, probably more at her than in answer to her statement. "Do you want to go back?" he asked.

She thought about it. But then she said, "No. They'll never be able to forgive me."

He looked amused at the thought that she could be concerned with forgiveness. "Then," he said, "is there some other place you'd like me to take you?"

Now Alys sighed. "There were several kind people in Griswold who were willing to take me on. I may go back there." She sighed again. "Or, I could find a new place entirely. I don't think that's as impossible as I used to think it was."

"Ah," he said in that knowing way of his.

Alys rested her head against her knees.

"Or," Selendrile said, not quite looking at her, "you could stay with me."

Startled, she tried to gauge his sincerity from his bland expression. Aware of a hundred reasons why it wouldn't work, she asked, "Do you mean it?"

Selendrile paused to consider. "Perhaps," he said.

"I see," Alys answered.

The dragon-youth took a deep breath. "Yes." He said it quickly and decisively. "Yes, I mean it."

"Well, then," she said, "in that case, I will."