Dragon Blood h-2 Read online

  As I was coaching Tychis in the proper manner to sit (preferably on top of the horse), steer (mostly let him follow everyone else), and stop (pull back), my uncle, who'd been in an animated conversation with Kellen and Garranon, gestured to me. I handed Death-Bringer's reins to Oreg and joined the discussion.

  "Garranon says it's possible that Jakoven will launch an attack on Hurog immediately," said Duraugh. "Is it really safe to bring Kellen there? The gate was off the curtain wall when we overnighted in Hurog on our way to rescue you."

  "Right," I agreed. "I've two good men working on the ironwork for Hurog—I suspect that the gate and a gatehouse or at least a portcullis will have climbed to the top of their list of things to do. Stala was left expecting the worst. I trust she'll have something devised by the time we arrive. Were this summer we'd be in trouble, but by now the snow is knee deep there. With your men from Iftahar, we can hold off a besieging army for a week—and southern-bred men in tents won't survive a week at Hurog."

  "I can help, too," murmured Oreg, who'd led the boy close enough to overhear.

  I shot him a repressing look. "Mages are always useful in such situations."

  Duraugh said, "If the weather's not bad enough at Hurog, you're going to have to see if your dwarves can transport Kellen away. They may not want to involve themselves in a human dispute."

  "Dwarves?" said Kellen, startled.

  Tosten grinned. "They owe Ward a favor or two."

  My uncle guided us through a few harvested fields and onto a track I'd never taken to Hurog.

  Stala's second, a Shavigman by the name of Ydelbrot, led the men and organized the march. At my uncle's request, I trotted Feather over to Ydelbrot and told him we needed to make as much speed as possible since the king might be "just a wee bit miffed that we took off with Kellen and Tychis."

  He grinned and nodded. "Wouldn't want to be overrun by a Tallvenish army on Tallven soil."

  I smiled, but in truth I was more worried about how much blood Jakoven had taken out of Tychis's wrist and just what he could get Farsonsbane to do with it.

  The whole column broke into a trot. I held Feather as it passed me, swinging in to ride next to my brother—who happened to be behind Tisala. She was riding next to Tychis.

  "He looks like Tosten at that age," said Oreg, coming up to us and pointing at Tychis—who bounced so much, I winced in sympathy. Tisala leaned over and talked to him and he stood up in his stirrups. I could almost hear his horse's sigh of relief.

  "I was never so scrawny," disagreed Tosten stoutly, but with such good humor, I turned in my saddle to stare at him. He and Oreg seemed to be getting on much better since they'd organized my rescue.

  It is difficult to talk while trotting, so for the next hour or so we were mostly quiet. I watched Tisala and savored the fresh air. At long last we walked the horses. They weren't too tired yet, but by the time we stumbled them into Hurog, they wouldn't be good for much for a month or more.

  I dismounted when it was time to walk to save Feather as much as possible—I weighed half again what some of the other men did.

  "Huh," said Tisala, still mounted—though a number of others were walking their horses. "If you had some Oranstonian horses, you'd have another league or more before you had to pull up."

  "No." I shook my head solemnly. "If I had an Oranstonian mount I'd always be walking because my feet would drag off either side."

  She laughed and we spoke of everyday things—gratitude for the recent frost that killed most of the flies, though it had made the past two nights of camping chilly; hope that the clouds over our heads would wait for a few days before raining—or snowing. Anything but what lay ahead of us. Such talk made the journey shorter.

  "How's Kellen doing?" I asked. "I haven't talked with him much today."

  "He's giving a good performance," she said, nodding her head toward a place a little distant where Kellen rode beside my uncle.

  "Sometimes," I said, "if you can hold the role long enough, it becomes part of you. I'll give him my room at Hurog—not only is it the only room in the keep fit to put him in, but it's as far from a cell in the Asylum or even one of the royal rooms at Estian as a pack of dwarves can make it."

  "It is rather cluttered," said Tisala.

  I grinned at her in appreciation of her acerbic tongue. "There still aren't all that many places in the keep with doors that lock and roofs that don't leak," I said. "A lot of things get put in there for a bit and stay for a few years."

  We set up camp just before dark. I stared at the stars from beneath my blanket to remind myself where I was before I closed my eyes—it didn't help my dreams.

  I stood in the laboratory room of the Asylum once more, but this time I wasn't strapped to the stained leather table. Instead I stood before one of the other tables, the ones that held flasks of potions and implements of torture. I held a velvet bag in my hands, a bag I had to force myself to look at. Pulling back the velvet, I took out the staff head called Farsonsbane and set it in a stand on the table.

  I think it was the way I saw the Bane that made me realize that I was looking at it through Jakoven's eyes. The cloud of darkness that I'd seen in it was not there, though my hand, Jakoven's hand, still vibrated with its power.

  I took out a flask and dropped a very small drop of blood on the black gem. The stone flared red and when I touched the dragon's head lightly, I took the power and created a magelight from it—and I still had magic left over.

  I took a clean boar bristle brush like those used by artists and painted the stone with blood. Momentarily power filled my body as it had the night I, Ward, destroyed Hurog keep. I reached out with a hand and the leather table, its iron manacles, and metal base disappeared, leaving behind only a bare spot on the stone floor.

  "So the Hurogs are descended from dragons," murmured Arten's voice behind me. "Do you know what happened to the boy?"

  My lips curled as I answered the archmage. "Garranon happened. Rode out of the stables and through the gates this morning with the boy and an extra mount, heading north."

  "North?" Arten's question held no urgency.

  "Where else would you take a Hurog brat and be certain they wouldn't let me pay them for his return? Garranon's not stupid."

  "Really? He betrayed you."

  "The spells don't hold him as well anymore," I said, staring at the power that bled through my hand, not noticeably diminished from the energy expended from the destruction of the table. "It was always so much fun seducing the body while the boy writhed in guilt."

  "You'll not find Jade Eyes writhing in guilt," said Arten dryly.

  I laughed. "More likely to find him writhing in blood. Jade Eyes has his own charms, don't get me wrong. But I always thought when the spell I kept to insure Garranon's loyalty faded, he'd break."

  "Maybe he still will," suggested Arten. "I wonder how he feels betraying the man he's loved for so long."

  I smiled at the thought. "I hope he weeps and hates himself for it as he did when he was a boy. I hope he thinks of me as he futters his wife. I … "

  "Jakoven?"

  "I have just had a marvelous idea," I said. "Tell my guardsmen to bring me the stable master who let Garranon ride through the gates."

  "Ward!"

  I sat up gasping and saw my breath gather in front of my face in the predawn light. Tosten crouched before me with a cup of something hot in his hands.

  "Were you dreaming of the Asylum?" he asked.

  I shuddered and took the cup of weak tea he offered, and sipped it to warm my body and soul. "Yes. True dreams, I think. I'll be glad to get far enough from Menogue that Aethervon leaves me alone."

  I shared the dream later with Oreg, hoping he could tell me how much power Jakoven could glean from a half cup of Tychis's blood.

  "I don't know," he said finally. "I never saw the Bane, you understand—only felt its creation and the disturbance it wrought. It's been such a long time. After so many years the memories fade, faster because I nev
er wanted to look back and see how long I'd been enslaved. I can no longer remember what was history and what was story told over a cup of ale."

  "It doesn't really matter," I said, rubbing Feather's nose as I walked beside her. "We need to get Kellen to Hurog, get Shavig to support him, and then get him out to a safer place. We can't risk sending someone to try and get rid of the Bane or the blood … " I hesitated. "I'd be able to find the Bane," I said—as I spoke I could almost hear it calling me. "If I could break it—or destroy Tychis's blood …"

  "Don't be stupid," snapped Oreg. "I couldn't get into that part of the Asylum. All that would happen is that you would find yourself Jakoven's guest—and this time he would not underestimate you."

  "Right," I said. "So we'll hope Jakoven doesn't have as much power as it appears."

  I knew the stable master slightly. He'd seemed like a good man. I hoped he'd die quickly, but I didn't really expect that would be the case. I wouldn't tell Garranon. There was nothing he could do about the poor man except feel guilt. As I was. But I could not risk going back.

  A hunting horn blew three crisp notes and I tightened Feather's cinch and swung back into the saddle. There was another part of the dream that bothered me. I wrestled with it as Feather trotted over the flat Tallvenish landscape.

  When we walked again, I stayed in the saddle. My time in the Asylum had robbed me of endurance. I would just have to depend upon Feather.

  By chance I found myself riding beside Garranon. He was walking beside his mount some distance from anyone else. We traveled in silence for a few miles, Feather as content to match her walk with Garranon's as I was to match his silence.

  Apparently it was more restful on my part than his because he said, abruptly and angrily, "Aren't you afraid to catch it, too?"

  Bewildered I wondered if I had dozed off and missed part of a conversation, or if my exhaustion had made me stupid.

  "Catch what?" I inquired.

  "The desire to sleep with men instead of women," he said with great bitterness.

  Confounded I stared at the top of his head. I cleared my throat and ventured an answer. "No."

  My reply seemed to stymie him and he walked on a little faster. Obligingly Feather increased her pace as well. Despite Garranon's obvious desire to get away from me, I didn't slow Feather because I realized what Garranon's problem was.

  "My uncle doesn't dislike you because you sleep with the king," I said. "He dislikes you because you served the king's writ on me while I was under his protection—and he couldn't do anything about it. Tosten has a similar problem. The rest of them," I jerked my chin at the Blue Guard, "they might just not like you because you're an Oranstonian. But, more probably, they think homosexuality is catching."

  Garranon turned his head away for a moment, then relaxed and laughed.

  "Now as for me," I continued, "I have my eye on a woman and could really care less what bed you spend your time in."

  He looked up at me to say something, but changed what he was going to say when he got a good look at me. "I've seen people look healthier than you on their funeral pyre."

  "So I've been t-told." I'd been stuttering a lot since I left the Asylum. I took a small sip from the water bladder I carried on my saddle and tried not to think about the touch of Jade Eyes's hands.

  My experiences in the Asylum had left me with a couple of questions and it occurred to me that Garranon might be able to answer them.

  "In the Asylum," I said struggling both with the words and getting my stubborn tongue around them. "Jade Eyes … " My throat froze and I looked away.

  Garranon's hand rested on my knee. "Rape is rape," he said, "whether your body responds or not."

  I flushed scarlet and shook my head. "He didn't actually …"

  Garranon waited for me to finish, but when I couldn't he said, "Rape is one person hurting another because he can. Sometimes a rapist hurts your body, sometimes your soul."

  After a while he said, "Making love, to a man or a woman, is about caring, passion, and joy; not just physical pleasure." When I looked at him, he grinned and continued lightly, "But done right it feels good, too."

  The signal for mount-up broke through the crisp air. Garranon got on his horse.

  "Thank you," I said.

  He smiled at me and bowed in the saddle, before we set our horses off at a trot.

  By next afternoon I gave up any pretense of conversation, and that evening Oreg pried my fingers loose from the reins and led Feather himself. Mornings were better, but in the late afternoon I was barely staying in the saddle. Tosten gave the order to open the packs and distribute the woolen riding robes among us. Oreg made sure that I put mine on. Tisala rode next to me, talking quietly with Oreg.

  I didn't see much of Kellen, probably because he couldn't be in much better shape than I was. I asked and Tisala told me Rosem was taking care of him.

  When it snowed, I was too far gone to do much besides turning my face toward the sky, because I knew we were getting closer to home. I suspect I was the only one in the whole, cold mass of men (and Tisala) who took quiet satisfaction when the night's bitter temperatures made Feather's feet squeak on the snow in the morning. I told Tisala as much while she examined my hands for frostbite—I was too clumsy by then to get my gloves off and on by myself.

  "It's true what they say about Shavigmen," she said, turning my hand over in hers.

  "What? That we're tough?" asked Tosten with a grin as he checked Feather's cinch for me in preparation to hoisting my uncooperative self into the saddle.

  Tisala shook her head sadly and finished with my hands. "Stupid. Only a stupid person would enjoy this weather."

  The horses felt the nearness of home, too, and lifted their weary hooves faster. The snow was up to their hocks when, in the very late afternoon, we saw the walls of Hurog in the distance.

  Feather whinnied and quickened from trot to canter, then when I didn't slow her, into a full-blown gallop. Power surged through me, swept away my tiredness, and welcomed me home.

  As I neared the gates, I saw they were properly hung and reinforced so that they could keep out an army if need be. There were two guards on the gates and when they saw me, they started down the stairs to open them, but it was unnecessary.

  Hurog opened to me all by itself.

  I stopped Feather without entering, staring at the gates. It hadn't been me. Working magic is just that, work. I hadn't even thought about opening the gates, though I felt the surge of power that had accomplished it. Directed by Hurog.

  Hurog wanted me home. It should have frightened me more, but how can a man be afraid of his own home?

  Feather and I walked somberly through the gates. The guards on duty welcomed me formally—with a little touch of awe that told me they thought I'd been the one to fling the gates open with magic. I let them keep thinking it.

  A few questions ascertained that my cousin and his wife had arrived from Iftahar only this morning. Ciarra was resting comfortably with her new daughter in one of the lower storage rooms where a temporary bed had been erected. I dismounted and began giving orders, the fatigue of the journey held at bay by the euphoria of being home. I sent a runner with orders for the keep. Kellen and his man would share my room. I gave Tisala the room next to it, the only other finished room on that floor. Garranon, Oreg, Tosten, and I would share the library. My uncle would join my aunt in their customary room.

  I sent another man to gather grooms to take care of the spent horses that were just beginning to filter through the gates.

  "So is it war?" asked Stala after threading her way through the confusion to my side.

  I hugged her once, tightly. "Not immediately," I said. "But yes."

  "With all of Shavig behind us, we will still lose," she said, teacher to student, not as if it bothered her. "But we can make him hurt."

  I shook my head. "We might do better than that. I don't know if Beckram told you—I come bringing a royal guest to Hurog. We've rescued Kellen out of the Asylu
m so that Alizon can put him on the throne."

  She drew in a breath, then laughed. "That does change things, doesn't it."

  "Maybe not enough," I answered.

  "We'll make it be enough," she said. "Now give me that horse; I'll see she's taken care of. You go in and get warm."

  I spent the night on a pallet in the library with Oreg, Tosten, Garranon, and a wary street rat with Hurog eyes. I was going to have to find something for Tychis to do, something that would make him feel like one of us.

  I was still thinking about it when I fell into a (thankfully) dreamless sleep. I awoke at first light, feeling like myself for the first time in a long while. I breathed in Hurog air and felt the familiar currents of magic that flowed through me, filling the terrible emptiness I'd felt away from Hurog and cleaning away the lingering effects of the potions Jakoven's mages had fed me.

  I stepped around my sleeping comrades and snuck out of the library without awaking anyone.

  There was a council to call and rooms that needed to be prepared. But first I needed to ride.

  The big paddock had four horses in it. A moon-colored mare with gentle eyes, two chestnut matrons whose years of foaling showed in their widened rib cages and loose-jointed stance, and a mud-dark, big-boned stallion who bugled and charged when I whistled at him.

  "Miss me, Pansy?" I asked, opening the gate and haltering him. He shoved me with his convex nose and ran his fluttering nostrils over me as if to check for damage.

  "Nothing that shows, Pansy. Nothing that shows," I assured him as I led him to the stables where saddle and bridle awaited us. His scars were visible, white hairs on his ribs and flanks, and ripples in the soft skin on the corners of his mouth.

  He lent me his enthusiasm as we charged the mountain trails. In the last few years these wild rides had grown less frequent; my need of them lessened by the satisfaction of turning Hurog into a prosperous land once more. But Pansy's memory was sharp and his feet didn't hesitate as he powered up the steep, snow-covered game trail. Hurog had real mountains.

  Standing by the broken bronze doors on the mountainside, we stared down onto Hurog. It wasn't as impressive as it had once been. The stark black lines were softened by granite and the places where the stonework had not yet been replaced. But the air of decay that had clung to it was gone.