Dragon Blood h-2 Read online

  Pansy cocked an ear back, so I turned him around to see what he'd heard.

  The dragon that stared at me was not Oreg. Its scales guttered green and black instead of purple, and it was less than half Oreg's size.

  Pansy, conditioned by long rides with Oreg, didn't flinch when the dragon's head darted suddenly past us so its right eye was even with mine.

  "Hurogmeten," he said in a voice that could have belonged to Tosten when he was ten.

  "Dragon," I said. Oreg had told me that he wasn't the only dragon around here, but I'd never seen another one until now.

  He tilted his head, butting my shoulder painfully with a bony ridge. Then he pulled his head back. "It sings in you," he said. "They said it did, but I didn't think magic could sing to a human."

  "This is Hurog," I said. "And I am Hurogmeten."

  "Hurog," he said after a moment, "means dragon."

  "Yes," I agreed, smiling.

  That seemed to satisfy him. After two running steps down the mountain he took awkwardly to flight.

  "A fledgling," I said to Pansy, feeling lighthearted. I hadn't really believed Oreg when he told me that there were more dragons—no one had seen one in a very long time.

  "Tosten is incensed," announced Ciarra's voice on the other side of my horse. "He said they almost put a rider up behind you in the saddle yesterday—and yet this morning one of the stablemen sees you taking flight up the mountain."

  I set Pansy's brush on the rack and turned toward the open door of the stable. My sister, wrapped in winter clothes and backlit by the morning sun streaming behind her, looked like the spirit her new daughter was named after. Her pale hair looked the same as it had when she was a toddler.

  I hugged her and lifted her gently off her feet for a spin. "How are you? I hear that you and your baby made the trip in better shape than Beckram."

  She kissed my cheek and I set her down.

  "Beckram fussed," she agreed, "but Leehan slept most of the way. Are you all right?" There was more concern in her eyes than a tiring ride from Estian would have called for. But she knew me as well as I knew her. She wouldn't pry unless I wanted to talk.

  "I'm fine," I said. "Really. A bit stiff when I awoke. Tosten wasn't exaggerating—the last two days he and Oreg had to hoist me in the saddle—but I felt much better once I was in Hurog."

  "I heard about your triumphant entry," she said. "Did the gates really open for you? And what's this about your newest stray? Tosten says he's our father's get."

  I nodded, since it sufficed for most of her questions. For a woman who had been mute for most of her life, words often cascaded from her in an effervescent flow. Her words, though, reminded me that I needed to do something with Tychis—and looking at my sister, I suddenly knew exactly what that was.

  "What?" she said, no doubt seeing the sudden satisfaction I felt on my face.

  "A new mother needs help," I said. "I believe I'll give you someone to fetch and carry for you and Leehan."

  She rolled her eyes. "Oh please, not you, too. You'd think that I just got off my deathbed. Not that birthing is easy, mind you, but I don't need any more coddling."

  "Perhaps not," I said, smiling at her. "But we have a newly discovered brother who was raised on the streets of Estian, and he needs to coddle someone. I think I'm going to give you and your baby to him."

  12—WARDWICK

  I'd have thought that persuading people to do what they wanted to do would have been easier.

  It took us two weeks to organize a meeting of most of the Shavig Council. Two weeks of lightening my purse to hire every laborer and idle farmer in the area to work on Hurog had given us three more usable rooms and seen the great hall finished to the extent that our meeting was unlikely to be interrupted by wandering horses.

  My uncle's people worked hard as well. Some of them stayed in the keep, but most sheltered in the holding's farms so there would be room for the Council when they came, which they did, despite the snowstorm that preceded them. Shavigmen knew how to travel in winter.

  The councilmen, mostly nobles with an odd wealthy farmer or guild master thrown in, all came bearing gifts for my new niece, but the carefully worded invitations had been carried by messengers instructed to tell the recipient of Kellen's escape and Jakoven's seizure of Iftahar—Beckram told me that they'd left only hours ahead of Jakoven's troops.

  Though they knew that even to be at Hurog was likely to invite Jakoven's wrath, almost everyone came, and the few who didn't were ill or snowed in. We feasted and hunted and listened while Tosten provided bardic entertainment, and no one mentioned Kellen's escape or Jakoven's attempt to imprison me in the Asylum. Kellen and Rosem stayed secreted in my rooms, waiting for the most politic moment to present them to the Council.

  On the evening of the second day, when the night's meal had been taken away, I stood on the dais (newly built along with most of the tables and benches in the hall) and waited for the after-dinner talk to quiet down. Everything—down to the clothing I wore—had been carefully orchestrated by my uncle.

  I wore formal Shavig dress as had been out of fashion for a number of decades. Close-fit breeches, loose-sleeved shirt covered with a knee-length tunic split down the sides—all of several shades of brown. Over my left shoulder a Hurog-blue dragon crawled.

  "My lords, tradesmen, farmers all, we've welcomed you to Hurog, and given thanks for the gifts you brought. It is time now to speak on more serious matters." I took a deep breath.

  I'd protested that the speech Duraugh and Rosem had put together was too wordy. The original one would have taken me an hour to get through. Duraugh cut it down, but it was still long. I hoped they'd all stay awake through my speech to hear Kellen's.

  "You all know the reasons why I have stayed here at Hurog these years past. You probably all know that Jakoven recently called me to Estian. He claimed I was incapable of ruling Hurog and intended that I should prove him right and open a way for him to claim Hurog for the Tallvenish crown."

  I paused to let the growl of several of the nobles be heard. Hurog was Shavig, and belonged in Shavig hands, never should it be held by Flatlanders—things like that. I continued before the tide of indignation had a chance to fall.

  "It didn't work out as he had planned," I said, and my voice carried over the other men talking in the room.

  Colwick, one of the eastern Shavig holders and the only Shavig lord younger than I, laughed, jumped up from his seat, and said, "I was there. Jakoven sat waiting complacently for his men to bring a stupid lunatic in to display before the court. Ward came in dripping guards off him, leaving them lying about like plucked flowers. He bowed like a courtier and thanked the king for his hospitality." Colwick had something of a case of hero-worship for me; I think he listened to too many hero-songs as a young man.

  The smile left his face. He looked around the room, then at me and said, "It was obvious that the king thought he was presenting an idiot before the court. Why was that? What did he do to you?"

  The anger in his voice was hot. I pictured in my head what would have happened to Colwick if matters had proceeded as Jakoven had planned. I wondered how many other Shavig lords had been in that crowd, slated to become traitors and die.

  I smiled sunnily and said, "Oh, the king has his methods, I'm sure. But I was trained by my father and I've had a lot of years of making people believe I'm something I'm not." Telling them the details would have made them pity me. Let them fill in what they would.

  "So you decided to get a little of your own back, Pup?" suggested Orvidin from the back of the room. His voice was a soft thrum that penetrated the shadows of the hall, and everyone turned to him. The aging warrior leaned heavily on a cane. His snow white hair fell unbraided to his waist, a sharp contrast to the iron gray of his short beard. Orvidin was a contemporary of my grandfather's.

  "So you took the king's brother home with you to worry Jakoven and lost Iftahar for your uncle," he said.

  I nodded my head slowly. "I suppose you
could say that Kellen's rescue had something to do with my uncle's loss—yes," I agreed. The tension in the room was taut enough to sing. "Or perhaps after several people had risked everything to help me, the only repayment they asked was to spirit Kellen out of the Asylum where he never should have been in the first place. When they asked this of me, I felt ashamed because I had never thought to demand his release before, even though I knew as well as you that he did not belong there."

  Silence echoed in the room. How many of them had given thought to Kellen over the years? Kellen, who had been a quiet, good-natured boy, sentenced to life in a small, dark cell. Had they lied to convince themselves that the fit of illness that Jakoven used to justify his imprisonment of Kellen had been real?

  When I felt they'd had time to feel such guilt as they would, I continued. "Both reasons for rescuing Kellen are true. But it is also true that I know Jakoven will not let me or mine hide in peace again. I no longer have the luxury of hiding here in Hurog and hoping the king will forget me again."

  "Alizon's rebellion is doomed," I said. I let my gaze sweep across the room and saw agreement in some faces and repressed anger in others. "Or so I thought. But as it turns out, it has never been Alizon's rebellion—it is Kellen's."

  I let the murmur of conversation swell for a beat or two, then continued. "So by helping Kellen out of that hellish place—" Someone smiled and I stopped.

  "Don't any of you believe the fictions that Jakoven spouts about luxury and good treatment in the Asylum," I said. "I've been there and I wouldn't leave a dog I cared about in the 'gentle' keeping of the men who run the King's Asylum for Noble Embarrassments and Inconveniences."

  I'd put too much feeling in it. I would rather have left them believing that all that Jakoven's wizards had done was question me while I played stupid.

  I swallowed and continued on in deadly seriousness, my carefully memorized speech forgotten. "So as Orvidin has already speculated, it was entirely self-interest that led me to help Kellen and join in his rebellion. But I believe that it is a self-interest that all Shavigmen share."

  I took my tankard off the table and let the sweet water pour down my throat. My uncle gave me a small smile of encouragement that would have been invisible to anyone farther away. I set the empty tankard down, and turned back, trying not to notice the way the sound of the metal tankard hitting the table echoed in the silence of the room.

  They want to be convinced, my uncle had said. They'll listen as long as it takes you to do it.

  "Let me tell you why it is imperative to your survival that you help us here," I said. "It is the reason that Jakoven will not let my family alone."

  I took a deep breath and plunged on. "While I was in the Asylum, I saw Jakoven produce an artifact he found while renovating his castle at Estian: a staff head bearing a dragon with a black gem."

  "Are you telling us you think Jakoven found Farsonsbane, Pup?" asked Orvidin.

  "I'm telling what I saw," I said. "And I'll tell you that Jakoven told me he found Farsonsbane and I, a wizard, believed him."

  "Even so," said someone else. He sat near the eastern Shavig group, but the room was shadowed and I couldn't tell for sure who it was that spoke. "There are no dragons left to activate it."

  "Jakoven managed to get the Bane to do something with my blood while he held me," I said. "As soon as I left, he went after one of my half brothers—whom Garranon spirited here."

  "You're claiming to be a dragon?" asked Orvidin incredulously, standing up again with such force that the bench he'd sat upon rocked back. "You don't expect us to believe that. I tell you, Pup, I came here ready to throw my support behind Kellen—but I will not abide following a man stupid enough to try to make me swallow a story about a mythological artifact and then compound it by seriously declaring that he bears the blood of dragons." He turned on his heel and gestured to his supporters, who rose noisily to follow him.

  I'd hoped no one would draw attention to the reason my blood awakened the Bane. I had planned on spinning some connection between the Hurog name and the legend that the Bane drew its power from dragon's blood. But Orvidin was too quick. He gave me a choice of lying outright or spinning them a truth that was unbelievable—and I would not lie to the Shavig Council.

  The role I'd been assigned this night had been a deliberate attempt to remind those here of our Shavig heritage. I'd come before them as Hurogmeten and not wizard. Duraugh's speech did not mention the Bane at all. As I talked, I'd come to believe that the Council had to know what it was they were facing. Too late I realized that the Hurog warrior I'd shown them was so prosaic it made it impossible for them to accept the Bane and dragons. Myths belong in the darkness, in wild woods, in mages dressed in fantastic garb—not to a too-large man dressed in plain clothes.

  "I never claimed to be a dragon," I said, my voice still audible even over the clatter. "Only a Hurog."

  But it wasn't my voice that stopped Orvidin. Out of the flickering shadows left by the torchlights, a dragon coalesced in the large walkway that ran from the lord's dais where I sat to the outside doors on the far side of the great hallway.

  I glanced at the table where Oreg had been, and sure enough, he was gone.

  The lavender scales looked purple in the dim light and the dark violet on his muzzle matched the black on his wings. He lifted onto his hind legs until his head rose to the braced vaulting in the ceiling: I winced a little, hoping he didn't knock any of the stonework loose. His wings spread, knocking tables and their occupants carelessly aside. Slowly, he set his forefeet onto the ground. He sat motionless for a moment, then stretched his head forward until his muzzle was only inches from Orvidin's face.

  "Don't you know your own language?" asked Oreg softly. He'd let an ancient accent fill his voice so no one but I, who'd heard him speak like that before, would know it was he. "Hurog means dragon—did you think that was chance?"

  Some of the people in the room began moving closer to Oreg. I watched their faces carefully, but no one made a move to draw sword or knife. Before Oreg drew my attention back to him, I caught a glimpse of the narrow face of Charva, who had the distinction of holding the northernmost keep in Shavig. That he was a very capable wizard might have had something to do with his ability to hold lands where no one else had. The northern reaches of Shavig were infested with a number of interesting creatures who dined on humans when they could. On his face I saw an expression of awe that reminded me of how I felt the first time I saw Oreg take on his dragon shape.

  "I am an ancient of my kind," said Oreg. I don't know if he was telling the truth or not. I'm not certain how long dragons live—or if Oreg even considered himself more dragon than human. But it sounded impressive. "I was here when the family Hurog was born of the unhappy marriage of dragon and human blood, before the fall of the Empire," he said.

  He let the quiet build and raised his head, sweeping his gaze over the Shavigmen who occupied my hall. When he spoke, his voice was even softer than it had been, but there wasn't a person there who could not hear him. "I was here when the Empire of Man covered the land from western sea to eastern, from the northern mountains to southern glaciers, while wizards wielded powers that you consider legend. I was here when Farson brought his Bane to humankind and the Empire was destroyed. I witnessed the few humans who remained living in scattered, hidden populations that had lost the trappings of civilization and were little more than animals fighting to survive."

  In the fire-lit darkness of the hall, some of the beauty of his coloring was muted, but nothing lessened the impact of what he was, of what he said. His body had to coil upon itself to fit in the space between Orvidin and the doorway. Abruptly he folded his wings in, hiding their lighter, reflective undersides and leaving the impression that darkness had descended upon the hall in the darker scales of his body.

  "Once again I smell the foul magic emanating from the Farsonsbane. And I tell you to beware." While he spoke, his scales had darkened gradually until it was hard to see him. When he
uttered the last words, the shadow that was the dragon dissipated slowly into the scintillating light of the torches.

  "How do we know that this is not just an illusion?" asked Orvidin—but there was a reluctance in his voice as he turned back toward me that told me he wished with all his heart to believe there had been a dragon here. His voice firmed as he said to the room at large, "Ward's a mage."

  "Does it matter?" said Kellen, stepping out of the passageway where he'd been waiting for his cue—which I hadn't managed to get to yet. "You all know what my brother is. In your hearts you know that he must be stopped. It is only that the need is more urgent than you know."

  "May I present to you, Shavigmen all, Kellen Tallven, late of the King's Asylum," I said.

  He bowed shallowly to me and after he had straightened, I stepped off the dais and dropped to my knees before him. This was important, my uncle explained to me in private. The biggest problem was not to get the Shavigmen to rebel, but to get them to support Kellen instead of me. Yet another reason for my plain clothes—I had the sinking feeling that Oreg hadn't helped in that area at all.

  Kellen was fitted in the richest fabrics we could scavenge, mostly velvet and fine wool. The green and gray of his house colors looked good on him, and the past few weeks, spent largely outdoors, had lessened the pallor of prison. He looked just as a king should, and he carried himself the same way.

  "Gentlemen," he said, touching my shoulder and signaling me to rise. "You have before you a story of which legends will be made. But as with all such legends, there is a core that is as basic as right and wrong."

  I stood up and stepped behind him, noticing that Orvidin had bent down to pick something up from the floor. I saw it glint in the uncertain light and thought it was his knife, dropped when Oreg had made his sudden appearance.