Dragonheart (26 page)

Gilbert jolted up at the sound along with his companions and they all three watched the dragon recoil in midair and claw at his chest, which was glowing a throbbing red! Then he spiraled and fluttered down inside the castle walls.

“Draco!” Bowen wailed, and Kara restrained him as he instinctively started forward. She pointed across the way. Gilbert looked too. Einon still sat his saddle. He had not fallen. He did not even seem to be in pain. He too had watched Draco fall into the castle. He looked down at the arrow in his breast and, his pale cold eyes glinting with understanding, calmly pulled it from his chest.

“Einon!” Bowen screamed, and breaking loose of Kara, charged for him, sword aloft. Einon, alerted by the cry, smiled when he saw the knight and spurred his horse toward him.

But a wailing trill from behind the castle walls stopped both men. Sudden panic swept over Einon’s gloating face and a savage, startled cry tore from his lips. “Nooo!”

He wheeled his horse and rode madly back to the castle, leaving Bowen choking in his dust. Bowen screeched after him in hysterical fury. “Come back and fight, coward!”

But Gilbert thought Bowen was well out of this fight. He looked to Kara. Her eyes mirrored his own dark thoughts. She had seen what he had seen. She knew what he knew. “It was a true shot, Gilbert, straight to the heart.”

Gilbert nodded and crossed himself. “Devil’s work.”

Draco had fallen into the rubble of his earlier devastation. Through the mist of smoke and dust and his own dazed pain, he saw the three remaining dragonslayers swarming in to finish him off. So, the end would come in a pile of broken scaffolding and smoldering stone, lying limp and helpless, awaiting the deathblow . . . and the eternal nothingness that would follow. A stout spear plunged out of the smoke above his head. Then a sword flashed in the sun-streaked haze and knocked the spear back. Draco heard hooves clatter on the courtyard stones and a voice shouting.

“No! I want it alive!”

A wild Einon beat the confused dragonslayers back. “Alive! I want it chained and bound!”

“Why?” a dragonslayer gruffly demanded as Einon dismounted.

“To keep it safe . . .” Einon replied, kneeling by Draco’s head. Through half-closed lids, Draco saw the young king’s demon leer. He knew. He knew the secret of the heart.

“No . . .” Draco gasped.

“Yes . . . Safe for all eternity.” Einon gently stroked the dragon’s neck.

Draco shuddered at his touch.

Part IX

THE HEART

The right can never die,
If one man still recalls.
The words are not forgot,
If one voice speaks them clear.
The Code forever shines,
If one heart holds it bright.

—The Old Code

Thirty-Three

THE RESCUE

“I go to save the dragon.”

Draco’s melancholy trill echoed from the castle, through the night, and deep into the forest where the rebels camped. Bowen could not bear to hear it.

“Why does he keep him alive?” he railed helplessly at Kara and Gilbert. “He must be torturing him!”

“No,” Kara said flatly. “Einon will not torture him. He will not harm him in any way.”

Bowen turned to her, not understanding, and caught her furtive glance at Gilbert. The priest nodded solemnly to her. Gently, she took Bowen’s hand and suddenly he felt like a small child about to receive bad news from his mother.

“ ‘Einon will not fall in my lifetime,’ ” Kara quoted.

The words were familiar. Bowen had heard them . . . somewhere.

“Do you remember?” Kara asked of him. “Draco’s words to me once . . .”

Yes—Bowen did remember. Outside the swamp village, when Kara had first tried to incite their dormant anger. Draco had mumbled it as an apologetic excuse. “I saw Draco go down. No one, nothing touched him. It was when Gilbert shot Einon.”

“What are you saying?” Bowen’s question came slowly, his voice harsh and tight.

Gilbert patiently tried to penetrate the knight’s incomprehension. “When my arrow pierced Einon’s heart, that was when Draco screamed and fell.”

But Bowen could only stare at them in dim disbelief. He refused to consider what they were suggesting.

“Don’t you see?” Kara implored, tears in her eyes. “It’s the heart! The dragon’s heart. For Einon to die, Draco must die!”

“No, no . . .” Bowen fiercely denied them. “Gilbert must have missed. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except that Draco is still alive!”

Turning toward his men, the knight leapt upon a stump and shouted, “I go to save the dragon. Who goes with me?”

There was no rush to volunteer—just muttered oaths and sullen faces.

“You were winning this battle!” Bowen reminded them angrily. A few short hours ago these same men had stood in the forest surveying the carnage they had wrought with grim satisfaction. Savoring the first taste of victory in their lives. Now none dared look him in the eye.

“The battle’s over, Knight,” the diminutive Trev said bleakly, and pointed toward the castle. “Does that sound like victory?”

Hewe stood up. “We cannot defeat the invincible. Bowen.” He was blood-spattered and wounded. He must have fought hard and well. “What do you expect of us?”

“Not to desert a friend . . .” Bowen answered him. “Or yourselves.”

He turned from them in disgust to find Kara holding out his sword. “You do not go alone,” she said.

“No . . . not alone . . .” Gilbert picked up his bow. “This ballad is yet unfinished, and be it heroic or tragic, at least let it end in honor.”

Thirty-Four

AN ASSASSIN DIES

“A sorry end . . .”

His whole body throbbed from the impact of his plummeting fall. From the barbed nets and piercing spear points of the dragonslayers. From the tight manacles and biting chains used to stake him out in the courtyard.

The dragonslayers had been efficient but hardly delicate in performing that task. Draco sighed and winced. Splintered wood from a broken piece of scaffolding was still lodged under his right flank, intermittently piercing his thigh.

Yes, they had been good, these Celtic brutes. Artists in their own bloodthirsty way. Oh, they were initially stymied by Einon’s order to keep him alive. But once they realized that subtle torture could be as entertaining as outright slaughter, they took to their work with real relish. With a savage enthusiasm and equally savage taunts, they used their lances to prod and shift him this way or the other. Ragged metal raked across his sore flesh. They had had their sport with him while obeying the king’s command.

And what mattered it to Einon? These superficial tears and bruises to the flesh he felt not. Though he held half the heart, only the great pains linked them . . . only the deep wounds . . . the ones that were felt all the way to the heart. But the heart bore other burdens that only its original possessor could feel. Draco felt the weight of one of those burdens now. Pain that taunted him more vilely than the dragonslayers’ insults. Each aching pulse beat was like the jabs of their lances, mocking him with the memory of his mistake. And with that memory, all the other throbs of his battered body merged into a single racking throb of his battered heart.

The broken scaffolding poked his thigh every time he shifted. Which, mercifully, was not often. The shackles they had used to bind him allowed almost no movement. All four feet as well as his tail were fixed tightly to the ground, and a thick-linked chain around his neck and head prevented him from blowing fire on his restraints.

His chin upon the rough stone, he could only stare at the wall straight ahead of him . . . or out of the corner of his eye, where he saw Uhlric, on guard, leaning on his spear shaft, glaring at him in surly appraisal.

“Finally, a dragon worth slaying,” the dragonslayer muttered through rotten teeth, “and this madman wants to keep it alive.”

He shook his matted mane and spat in distaste. So, pig, thought Draco, now that the torture’s done, you want to finish doing what you do best. Yes, must have been a long drought for you and your fellow thugs these last few years . . . Oh! . . . Oh, what a marvelous idea! Why not? Yes, this fool would be easy to provoke. A few well-laced epithets about his obviously dubious heritage . . . or better, a slur on his skill. Yes, that’s it. A gibe and a dare and this muck-brained mountain will lick his filmy tongue over those ugly teeth and come running with an upraised spear and a laugh on his pustuled lips. Then he and Einon would no longer trade heart pains back and forth, but share one final agony. Draco was ready for it. He had to be. The time had come.

A footstep interrupted Draco’s musings. Uhlric heard it too. Challenging with his spear, the dragonslayer edged forward toward a shadowy archway just behind the dragon. Draco caught Uhlric’s lopsided grin of recognition as he passed out of view. And though he could not see the intruder lurking in the arch, Draco knew who it was.

Uhlric’s gruff voice growled out a greeting. “Oh, it’s you. Come for a peek at the royal pet?”

A surprised, strangled gasp made Draco think that Uhlric got a peek at something he had not expected. More than a peek. Draco heard the staggering scuffle of feet. Then the dragonslayer weaved into view, holding his throat. Blood spilled through his fingers. Blood spilled through his clenched ugly teeth. He collapsed to the ground, his armor clattering against the stone. His heavy spear dropped from his lifeless fingers, rolling almost to Draco’s snout.

Out of the corner of his eye, Draco saw a dim figure creep slowly along the wall, shrouded against the dark stone. He heard the short, uneven breaths.

“Come from the shadows, Aislinn,” Draco bade. “Stand where I can see you.”

Aislinn came forth. Sheathing her bloodstained dagger, she gazed down on the man she had killed . . . then up at Draco.

“You know why I’ve come?” Her voice was calm. Even. Almost wistful.

“I know.”

“A sorry end . . .”

“The only end,” Draco assured her with flat resignation. “In the giving of my heart, I have taken on every pain and poison stirring in his black breast. Even the pain of his death must be mine. Too long I’ve waited.”

“No one would blame you . . .” She sat beside him, gentle fingers lightly stroking the line of a cut along his snout. “Death without immortality—”

“That was not the only reason . . . To rid the world of Einon would not rid it of evil. I
had
to wait. Wait for a time when mankind would not repeat my sin and let tyranny thrive. When there would be those who remembered the Once-ways. Remembered that even in the darkness there is still light and those who watch over them . . .”

Draco’s gaze wandered up, but his shackled head would not allow it to travel beyond the towering stone of the castle.

His voice came in a hollow, desperate whisper. “I cannot see. Are the stars shining tonight?”

“Brightly, my lord, brightly.” Moonlight spilled on Aislinn’s pale upturned face, mingling with her spilling tears, glistening in its glow.

“Then there is light enough. My soul need not flicker above.”

“It is
my
sin, Dragon Lord.” Aislinn wept as she spoke. “For me, for a mother’s misguided heart, you gambled eternity and lost . . .”

“It was my choice. Quickly now.”

Aislinn obeyed. As her people had always obeyed the dragon. She rose, picking up Uhlric’s spear. It was heavy, but she managed.

She turned to Draco. “Forgive me.”

“Strike deep . . . clear to the heart.”

Draco shifted, exposing as much of his chest as his chains would allow. But even as Aislinn raised the spear to strike, Draco saw the hand reach from the shadows and wrench it from her grasp.

Einon emerged from the shadows like a demon emerging from hell. His hands clutched the spear shaft like a pair of claws. His eyes glowed with cold heat. Aislinn met the gaze unflinchingly.

“I know why you brought me the dragonslayers, Mother.” He spoke with none of his usual smirking veneer of pleasantness. Just harsh chilling hate. “You wanted them to kill him. You wanted me dead.”

He spat out the last word with all the hurt disappointment of a spoiled child, as though stunned by such an inconceivable thought.

Aislinn stared wearily into the contorted face. “I wanted to correct a mistake made years ago when I saved a creature not worth saving.”

“How unmotherly of you.”

His voice was ice. Aislinn backed away, more out of instinct than fear. Her son stalked her steps, sending her back farther, an eerie dance of death taking them into darkness, behind the dragon, beyond his sight.

But their silhouettes wavered on the wall before him. His shackled head held him a captive spectator to the horrifying shadow play, as one black shape raised a shadow spear to strike.

Draco closed his eyes against the hideous image. But he could not shut out the sounds of Aislinn’s gasping sigh of death. Nor the throbbing. The throbbing agony of another’s treachery that ripped through his heart. Agony that could not even be unleashed in his howl of despair.

Thirty-Five

A LADY’S FAVOR

“This was my father’s.”

The dark water shivered in the torchlight as Draco’s shattering lament chased itself around the walls of the Roman cistern in a whirling, hollow echo.

“Draco!” Bowen’s own echo repeated his tortured cry as he pushed through the iron gate and up the stone steps to a wooden door.

“No! Not there!” Kara’s whispered shout halted him and she ran up the stairs, Gilbert following her. Kara slid the hatch in the door. Bowen peeked through it to see an inner courtyard. He could not make out the form of Draco, but he heard him moaning.

“Too dangerous that way,” explained Kara.

“Then that’s our way.”

The three turned to see the iron gate creak and Hewe step into the cistern. Trev was behind him and a half-dozen others.

“We’re got to open the gates for the rest of us waiting outside,” Hewe continued as he mounted the steps.