Page 7 of Dragon Lord
“Is it evil because it’s a beast?”The question escaped Einin before she could stop it.She best explain herself.“We keep beasts in the village and don’t call them evil.”
“Sheep, goats, swine, and cows.God put them under our dominion, for man’s benefit.”
“Only the wild beasts are evil, then?”Stop talking!She bit her lip.
The priest shook his head.“Even a wolf pup can be tamed.Even a bear.You’ve seen them at the traveling carnival.”His tone turned frigid, as if to let her know his pronouncement was final.“But that dragon is evil.”
Because it cannot be tamed?Because it is truly wild and free?Because it is not under the priest’s dominion and could not be trained to bend the knee?Einin dared ask no more.She was grateful that the man hadn’t struck her down already for all her impertinence.
Yet with all that she was, she wished for freedom.Did that mean that she too was evil?
“I’m told you are to embark on a journey,” the priest said, every word laden with suspicion.
Einin stole a glance.
He watched her as closely as before, but something in his gaze had changed.He no longer watched her as if examining her.His gaze had hardened, as if he’d come to a decision.
A cold shiver ran up Einin’s spine.In that very moment, she understood that shemustleave, that indeed her very life might depend on a speedy departure.
“I am to go to Morganton, Father, leaving on the morrow,” she said in a voice as meek as she was capable of uttering.“My Aunt Rose had her babe, her seventh, and she’s sick with the fever.Her husband came home maimed from the war.I go to help.”
She had resolved to stay in her village as many times as she had resolved to keep her word and return to the dragon’s cave.She’d made up the tale of her aunt at one such point, since she could not tell anyone that she was returning to the dragon of her own free will.Making a pact with the great devil would mark her in the priest’s eyes as the servant of the devil.She would be burned on the spot.
Were she to go to the dragon, her ruse would likely hold.She did have family in Morganton, and the place was far enough to the north that nobody in Downwood would ever know whether Einin arrived at her aunt’s house or not.
The priest watched her as if he intended to see right into her heart.Silence blanketed the street.
Robet, the miller, broke it, limping around a corner, a wide grin on his wrinkled face as he called out to the small gathering.“I’m come from the woods.We’ll have timber enough to rebuild the mill!Must have been a mudslide.All the trees on the ridge felled by last night’s storm have been brought down to the valley.The timber is all right here, close enough now.”
When his good news wasn’t received with cheers and pats on the back, he stopped, his jubilant expression turning puzzled.Then he caught the undercurrents, and the smile slid off his face.
Einin glanced up at the priest from under her lashes.The zealous fires that burned in his eyes did naught to reassure her.If she’d thought her departure from the village would be viewed with relief, she’d been mistaken.The priest clearly saw her wish to leave as an attempt to escape his judgment.
Einin’s throat tightened as she waited for him to order her to stay.
He didn’t.
He turned without a word and strode away, casting a meaningful glance to this man and that as he went.
Chapter3
Dawn had not yet risen from its featherbed the following morn when Einin stopped at the edge of the woods to look back at her village.In her brother Hamm’s brown shirt and britches, she blended into the darkness.She watched her hut, the front door, through which the village elders were even now entering, led by the priest.
“Caw.”The raven on the low branch just above her gave its opinion.
Einin’s stomach clenched.If premonition hadn’t awoken her in the middle of the night, she would be waking now to hard hands grabbing her.
“The priest said I was unnatural,” she told Midnight, the black bird she’d befriended in the woods when she was a child.“He’s probably right.”
She should want to give herself over to Wilm’s godly correction instead of running from it.Something about her had been wrong as far back as she could remember.Maybe because she’d been raised by her father and her brothers instead of a mother.
“I don’t want to spend my life standing by the kitchen fire, bowing and scraping to a husband who beats me.”She wanted to run wild and free.Be her decisions right or wrong, she wanted to be the one to make them.
Weeks ago, when the men in the village had begun talking about a sacrifice to appease the great devil in the hills, Einin knew they were likely to pick her.She had no family to protest on her behalf, nobody left.So she’d volunteered before the priest could have put forth her name.Her choice.At least, it’d been that.
Now, having made yet another choice, Einin watched her hut with tears burning her eyes.The light of the men’s torches flickered in the windows, but not for long.Soon they came pouring out, their expressions even angrier than when they’d entered.
’Twas the rope in the blacksmith’s hand that scared her the most—a length of rope long enough to tie a witch to the stake so she could be burned.
