Steal the Dragon Page 3

  Taking advantage of her momentary distraction, the red-bay stallion threw himself sideways in a move that had tossed more than one of his former owners. Rialla sat it easily. With a disgusted snort the big horse flipped his tail and settled back into his canter, insulted that she hadn't even noticed what he'd done.

  Rialla put the horse through his paces until he quit playing and she was tired enough that she forgot about what she had agreed to do to herself. The memory lapse didn't last long. When she took the horse in to give it a much-deserved rubdown, Laeth was waiting for her in the stables.

  "Are you ready to go?"

  Rialla nodded and handed the horse off to one of the grooms. "Let me change my clothes and grab my stuff and I'll meet you back here."

  In her room she slid over her head the simple gray slave's tunic that she would wear for the journey. She looked at herself in the flat piece of polished copper that she kept on her wall as a mirror, and she couldn't see the person that she'd worked so hard to become.

  She saw instead a white-faced slave with a slave's tattoo on her left cheek; an unfamiliar plain gold earring dangled from her left ear, projecting the illusion—though she could feel the scar with her fingertips. A faint whip scar marred the deep tan on one of her arms: the slave trainer had beaten the servant responsible for marring so valuable a property. Swallowing, she raised a hand in a grave salute. "Good luck, slave."

  She picked up the small bag that held her dancing costumes, stepped out of the room and closed the door.

  Chapter Two

  Like a plague of locusts, the ravenous tide of war had fed upon the small Darranian village of Tallonwood, leaving destruction in its wake. Several once-fertile fields lay barren, the salt from the mines that were the region's greatest source of wealth turning the rich earth into sterile soil that drifted in the winds, a silent testament to the centuries-old feud between Darran and its neighbor Reth.

  As the closest village to Westhold (so named because it lay to the west of the salt mine), one of the principal holds in east Darran and Lord Karsten's family estate, Tallonwood had been overrun on numerous occasions. The once-prosperous village was poor now, even by Darranian standards. After Darran had lost its most recent war with Reth, even the richest of the villagers had trouble putting food on the table. Last winter, which was mild by all accounts, two of the elders and three infants had died from lack of food.

  Lord Karsten, who ruled Westhold and several surrounding villages, including Tallonwood, was one of the few Darranian lords who had not revoked the ancient laws that made it punishable by death for peasants to hunt in the forests. He worried that the animal populations might be decimated as they were elsewhere in Darran; peasants were less valuable to his recreational pursuits. His overseer saw that his wishes were followed.

  One of the few buildings in decent repair in the village belonged to Tris, a healer of rare talent. His reputation had spread beyond the village, and the nobles from the hold sought him out for the healing of their gout, indigestion and boils, for which services he charged them royally.

  Without Tris, Tallonwood would have suffered far worse than it had this past winter. Using the gold and jewels he charged the nobles, he bought grain from the hold's stores and cattle to slaughter.

  When the hold's reserves were too lean to allow the hold castellan to sell any more, Tris risked the wrath of Lord Karsten and hunted the forest animals himself. He maintained that years of sneaking around catching herbs unaware lent him stealth that served him well against both the forest animals and the two-legged beasts that the overseer hired to keep the peasants from helping themselves.

  In the front room of his two-room cottage, Tris wiped down the counter that kept his customers' children out of the various pots and jars that he stored on the shelves. The rag that he used was not as stained as his powerful hands, which were presently an interesting shade of lilac. He'd found a patch of avendar on his walk this morning, an herb useful for making burn salve and dark purple dye.

  To his immense surprise, the healer had found contentment in the little village. He was even fond of the neat little cottage that stood on the other side of a small hill from Tallonwood. The location allowed him the illusion of privacy and the convenience of being upstream from the village waste.

  Tris looked up, rubbing his beard, as the door chimes announced the entrance of the headman's mother, Trenna.

  Old and crippled as she was, she carried herself with an air that made even the lord treat her with respect. If she'd been born in another place, she would have been trained as a mage. In Darran she was the village wisewoman, advising the elders on such things as which goat would give more milk and which should be butchered, or when the first snow would fall.

  If Tris knew that her accuracy was due to something other than observation and experience, then she knew that there was more than herbs in Tris's recipes. The magic that they used was different, but it was magic just the same.

  It had been Trenna, searching for an elusive plant, who found Tris where his own people had left him: bound and waiting to die. Her magic sometimes expressed itself in the rare ability to see into future possibilities. That gift allowed her to discern his nature and see hope for her village. She offered him a bargain.

  If she freed him, he would serve her village for a year as healer. The conditions would be difficult. Her people were hostile to magic, so he would have to hide his nature—at the same time helping them to the best of his abilities.

  Tris had been waiting patiently for death. Even if he could have escaped, his rash act of kindness would have exiled him from his people forever. Dying did not seem so harsh—until he'd been offered a chance at a life. He agreed to her terms.

  The bonds that held him were designed to resist magic, but not the simple steel knife that Trenna used when hunting plants for her potions. After she healed his wounds with her crude herb lore (Tris had difficulty working the healing magic on himself), Trenna told the village elders that he was a relative, a healer who had grown tired of his travels and had come to stay there.

  The elders accepted her story. Trenna was getting too frail to carry out the duties of healer, and there was no one skilled enough to take her place. They accepted Tris gratefully; in their desperation they were willing to overlook his foreignness.

  Tris wasn't sure Trenna understood what he was, but she knew that he would cause no harm to the people of Tallonwood, and that was all that mattered to her. His year was long over, but he remained in Tallonwood. He had nowhere else to go.

  "Lady." He greeted Trenna in his peculiarly accented Darranian. He took the swollen hand that she extended over the counter and kissed it gently in true courtier style.

  "Sir," she smiled up at his gentle flirting; he was taller than any man in the village, and she was a small woman. "How are you this fine spring morning?"

  "Remarkably well. I just got back from wandering in the woods and I discovered another patch of thyme; the old one was getting picked over. Can I mix a powder for your rheumatism? I found some tharmud root last week that should make this batch more potent."

  "If you please," she answered. When he turned to his work, she flexed her hands carefully. They were noticeably less swollen than they had been before he'd touched her.

  Tris was usually careful that the villagers saw nothing that they wouldn't expect to see. For Trenna, though, he could be as theatrical as he liked—she enjoyed it almost as much as he did. So his ingredients were mixed with flashes of light and strange noises, and the end result had an eerie green glow when he put it into the leather bag.

  "Now," he said handing it to her, "remember to take this in the morning and at night. You can take one other dose during the day if you must. If you need it more often than that, come back and see me. Steep the powder in hot water for as long as you can hold your breath before you drink it."

  She smiled at him, giving him a glimpse of the beauty she had once been, and started to take the bag. When their hands touched,
she let the pouch fall unheeded to the floor and clutched him with a strength that belied her swollen joints. He felt the pulse of her magic under his fingers.

  Her body hummed with tension as she spoke in a strained voice. "Two come from Sianim… a man and… the dancer. You must aid them stem the tide of the cat god… Beware the creatures he calls from the Swamp." She swallowed and gasped for air, like a fish on land. Sweat glistened on her forehead and she shifted her urgent grip to his forearms, her tongue twisting around a few phrases of his native language.

  The magic released her, and she shook as if she'd been out in a blizzard. Before she could fall, Tris rolled across the counter, heedless of the small planter he sent tumbling to the floor, caught her and gently lowered her to the padded oak bench that spanned the far wall. He sat next to her and kept his arm around her until she quit shaking.

  "Sorry," she said when she could.

  He shook his head in exasperation. "Lady, I thank you for your advice—you have nothing to apologize for. Do you remember what you said?"

  She shook her head. "No. Sometimes I can remember—or at least see pictures, but… I saw a flash of red and green gems… No, I think they were eyes." She shook her head again. "That's all. I hope that it will do you some good."

  Again he took her hand and kissed it, "That, Lady, is best left for time to tell us. May I see you home?''

  She smiled and stood up slowly, but steadily enough. "No. For some reason I am feeling much better now. If you could retrieve my powder for me, I will pay you and go"

  Tris gave her the powder but shook his head when she offered him a bit of copper. "No. Send your grandson over if you'd like. There's a corner of the roof that needs rethatching before the next rain. He's grown to be quite a craftsman under Edgar's tutelage." She and he both knew that he'd pay her grandson when he came, but after a moment she nodded and left.

  Tris watched her leave, and with a soft voice he repeated the phrases that Trenna had spoken in his own language: the first lines of the bonding ceremony. He had been alone for so long… Was there to be an end to it?

  After a moment of stillness, he found a broom and began to remove the remnants of the planter from his floor, gently picking up the plants and setting them aside for repotting.

  The dining hall in Lord Karsten's hold was large enough to seat six hundred people, but only one of the six ancient, rough-hewn tables was being used. This room showed the improvements that Lord Karsten was making throughout Westhold.

  Several of the heavy timbers that supported the ceiling were obviously new. A circular fireplace complete with chimney dominated the center of the room, replacing the more common fire pit. The crude openings high in the outer wall, necessary with a fire pit, had been filled with colored glass visible from outside the keep.

  Rialla stood quietly behind and just slightly to the left of where Laeth sat, her eyes focused on the floor, like any proper slave. She'd had surprisingly little difficulty adjusting to being a slave again; it helped tremendously to know that she was just pretending. Once she took on the role, her nervousness faded until she almost enjoyed herself. She was comfortable enough that she was beginning to suffer from the most chronic condition of slavery— boredom.

  Darran was as she remembered it, though she'd never dealt with nobility in their own element before. The place she'd spent most of her time as a slave was a private club where all the young, rich men went to sow their wild oats, away from proper company.

  Rialla snorted softly to herself. Darranians did even that in a very civilized manner; they had a customary procedure for breaking society's edicts.

  She and Laeth had been at Westhold for over a week, and Rialla had learned nothing about the political situation here that Ren probably didn't already know. If it weren't for the entertainment she found in watching the properly trained Darranian nobles deal with Laeth, she would have been really bored.

  He was well connected, and no one wanted to offend him; on the other hand, his complete disregard for propriety could not be ignored. Noblemen just did not become mercenaries; and if they did, they should have the good sense to be defensive about it.

  Laeth was more than happy to scandalize his listeners with stories that Rialla suspected he made up on the spot. Second Division General Tyborn had carried the head of a fallen enemy to Sianim, but he didn't hang it over his dining table—at least Rialla had never seen it there.

  Laeth took care to insure Rialla knew who was who— greeting people by their full names. She in turn made a great effort to remember people's identities and what faction they were with. The latter had been simple up to this point, since most of the people who were invited for the full week of festivities were staunch supporters of Lord Karsten.

  At the thought of Laeth's brother, Rialla suppressed a smile. Who would have conceived a wildman like Laeth could have a brother like Lord Karsten?

  They looked alike enough, though to Rialla most Darranians had that tendency. They even had a few of the same characteristics. Lord Karsten was eloquent and intelligent, if even more bound by the rules of society than most Darranians—something that Rialla would have sworn was impossible. He was so charming it would have been difficult not to like him, if one weren't a slave or peasant. He was unfailingly courteous to even the most menial of servants, but Karsten was unconcerned, not unaware, that his overseer was an animal who abused servants, peasants and slaves alike.

  He talked of change and the importance of reforms, working for them with the dedication of a zealot. The revisions that Lord Karsten had made in Darran law would do a tremendous amount of good for the peasants and middle-class citizens of Darran; but his own serfs were starving.

  All in all, Rialla preferred his younger brother, who saw with clearer vision, and was much less bound by society's strictures.

  Laeth had slipped back into his role as prodigal son, and rubbed shoulders with Darranian nobility as comfortably as he did with the mercenaries of Sianim. Even seated beside his brother's wife, Marri, he didn't lose the easy charm. Only Rialla knew from the whispered conversations she had with Laeth at night that his feelings for Marri hadn't changed.

  There were over a hundred people in the dining hall. Laeth had told Rialla that by the next evening that number would triple, and over five hundred people would attend the ball two nights hence. The day after that, she and Laeth would return to Sianim. For all the drama and high emotion that had started this trip, it was beginning to look as though they might return to Sianim without incident— or information.

  When Laeth finished his meal and waved Rialla back from the table, she assumed a position near a window where the wind would give her a little fresh air.

  She was the only slave in the room. It was unusual and vulgar to bring one's slave to a public function, but Laeth shrugged it off and said that he had only recently purchased her and wanted to keep an eye on her for a while. Since it was obvious that she was expensive (the tattoo proclaimed her a highly trained dancer as well as indicating who trained her), no one made a fuss.

  Laeth was talking with a small group of people consisting of Lord Karsten, the sharp-eyed, fox-faced Lord Jarroh, who was Karsten's constant companion, and Lady Marri, who clutched her husband's arm tightly and stood with her gaze fixed determinedly on the floor. Rialla wondered absently about the topic of conversation. Laeth's face held the sardonic smile he adopted to hide his feelings. Karsten appeared to be pale under his deeply tanned skin.

  As Rialla watched with growing speculation, sweat gathered on Karsten's forehead and trickled down his temple. He said something and bowed to excuse himself. He gave his wife's shoulder a dismissing pat, and put her clinging hand on Lord Jarroh's arm.

  As Karsten turned to go, he collapsed suddenly—falling to his knees. Laeth was there only a moment before Lord Jarroh, who was hampered by Marri's grip. Laeth managed to get a shoulder under his brother's arm and half carried him to a heavily stuffed sofa.

  Her erratic empathy chose that moment to fl
are briefly to life, and Rialla cringed at the pain Karsten was suffering, though the sofa was close enough that she could tell not a sound crossed his lips. He merely gripped Laeth's hand and closed his eyes.

  With Laeth kneeling at the head of the sofa, Marri had little choice but to pull up a padded bench and sit near the foot.

  With an imperious gesture, Lord Jarroh summoned a waiter carrying a tray full of empty glasses. His cool voice was decisive enough to carry over the growing chaos in the room.

  "Send a groom and an extra horse to the healer in the village. Tell him it's urgent, Lord Karsten is ill." His voice had a bite that sent the waiter running out, heedless of the few glasses that fell from his tray to the floor and shattered.

  Lord Jarroh's eye fell on Rialla and he summoned her to him as well. "Go to the kitchens and have one of the maids bring up clean cloths, hot and cold water. Find a house servant and tell him to bring blankets." If she hadn't seen the muscle jump in the side of his face, Rialla would have thought Lord Jarroh as unaffected as he looked.

  Rialla ran off to follow Lord Jarroh's orders with as much speed as the waiter had shown. Lord Jarroh's name had the same magic as his voice: all Rialla did was mention who sent her and the house and kitchen servants scrambled to obey. She was on her way back to the dining hall when she noticed a stranger in servant's garb slip out of the room.

  It wouldn't have caught her attention, since Lord Jarroh had been in the process of emptying the room of unnecessary onlookers when she left, except she didn't recognize the man's face. Rialla thought she knew all the indoor servants in Westhold, at least by sight. This was one she'd never seen, but he strolled down the hall as if he'd been born here.

  Rialla glanced casually around to make sure that no one was in the hall, and then started after him. In the broad corridors of the main floor of the keep it was difficult to follow without being seen, but the servant didn't seem to notice her. He sauntered casually to an omate brass-and-wood door that led outside and left the keep.