Dragonheart (4 page)

“An old wound from the boy’s father,” the dragon said wryly. At that moment the glow in his eyes seemed to dim and he turned them balefully on the boy’s bloody breast . . . on the beheaded dragon emblem.

“The wound is deep . . .” The dragon turned to Aislinn as he spoke. She nodded and a look of understanding passed between them. A long silence ensued as the dragon considered her plea. “You know what you ask?”

“I know.” With this, Aislinn slowly knelt before the dragon as Bowen and her retainers stood by, shocked. “I swear. He will grow in your grace. Grow just and good.”

The dragon’s shadowy head inclined toward Einon.

“He
must swear. Your sword, Knight.”

Startled and suspicious of the request, Bowen looked to Aislinn for guidance. The queen calmly nodded for him to comply. Still uncertain, he reluctantly unsheathed the sword to hand it to her, but the dragon’s scaly claw emerged once more from the darkness and gripped the blade between his talons. Bowen instinctively let go.

The dragon swung the sword over the still form of Einon. The shadow of its hilt and blade framed the boy in a silhouetted cross. Einon stirred and, seeing the shadowy creature above him, gasped. Aislinn moved to his side, with a calming whisper.

“Fear not, child, he will save you.”

“But first, boy, by the cross of the sword, you swear.” The dragon’s breath throbbed through the cave. “Swear your father’s bloodlust and tyranny die with him. If you live and rule, live and rule in mercy. Swear this. And that you will come to me and learn. The Once-ways. That my kind may leave the gloomy dark and spread their wings in sunlight once more. That man and dragon may be brethren as of old. Swear!”

Swear, swear, swear . . .
The word echoed through the darkness, and the dragon extended the hilt of the sword to Einon, who clutched it.

“I . . . swear . . .” the young king gasped, and leaned up to kiss the pommel. But before his lips could touch it, his fingers slipped off the hilt and he slumped back. Bowen caught him in his arms.

“Einon?” Bowen shook him. “Einon!”

He laid the limp form of the boy on the stone and staggered back in dazed grief.

“All this jabbering and empty mummery! You are too late! He’s dead!” The words jerked out of Bowen in halting gulps, their echoing bounding back on him as if to remind him that Einon was dead. As if he could forget. He glared at the queen in searing rebuke. “Why have you brought us to this devil creature to dabble in his dark witchery?”

“Hush!” Aislinn coolly commanded. “Curse not what you know not!”

“I know evil! I know my charge, your son, is dead!”

Bowen wheeled in wild despair and violently grabbed his sword by the hilt to wrest it from the dragon. But as he yanked, the dragon’s talons scraped down the length of the blade with a whining screech, scoring a groove in it from guard to tip.

“Peace!” The dragon’s powerful breath held the knight at bay with a shuddering blast that blew the torches out. The cavern was immersed in utter darkness, save for the occasional glint of the dragon’s shimmering scales and his glowing eyes. They blazed into Bowen—not in anger, but with a strange, fierce serenity.

“Peace, Knight of the Old Code,” the dragon urged quietly, “and witness the wonders of an even more ancient glory.”

The dragon released the sword and placed his ragged talon against his breast, impaling it in the scales of his hide. As he sliced down his chest a red glow issued from the wound. Not blood. But light. The dragon reached into the cut. Sighed. Groaned. And captured a pulsating scarlet brilliance in his claw as the wound closed over.

He held the glowing orb over the boy. Einon’s eyelids fluttered open. He smiled as the beast gently reached down and the glowing redness seeped into the boy’s wound.

“Half my heart to make you whole,” the dragon intoned. “Its strength to purify your weakness. Live and remember your oath.”

The dragon pulled his claw back and a thin sliver of fire shot from his mouth along Einon’s wound. Bowen lunged forward to protect the boy, only to be halted by Einon’s calm smile. The young king felt no pain. The flame was cauterizing his wound.

When it ceased, the gash was sealed by a crusty smoke-blackened scab. Aislinn gasped a sob and hugged her resurrected child. Einon struggled to rise, but the dragon gently restrained him.

“Rest. Sleep and renew,” the dragon enjoined, and covered the boy’s face with his scaly claw. When he withdrew it, Einon’s eyes were closed in peaceful slumber. Bowen was startled from his state of dazed disbelief when the dragon shot forth another burst of flame.

It relit the torches in the startled attendants’ hands. The queen motioned Brok to bring forth the stretcher. The bearers came forward and lifted the sleeping king onto the pallet. Aislinn turned and, in deep reverence, bowed once more to the dragon. The dragon’s shimmering head nodded in acknowledgement, then Aislinn rose, leading her entourage toward the entrance of the cave. Bowen hesitated, glancing at the deep groove the dragon’s talon had scratched in his blade. Turning, he followed Aislinn’s example and knelt before the mysterious creature on the ledge.

“I’ve served the father only for the sake of the son,” Bowen said, surprised by the sudden rush of emotion in his throat. “In him go all the hopes of my heart. Forgive a doubting fool. Call when you’ve need of me, ask what you will of me. My sword and service are yours.”

The dragon had already faded back into the darkness. Only an occasional shiny scale flickered from the gloom. But the dragon still had one message to deliver. “Only remind him always of his vow, Knight of the Old Code,” he said.

Brok scratched his thick beard as he watched Bowen and the queen riding ahead of him, the torchbearers lighting their way. Bowen leaned over in his saddle and pointed out a crumbling arch that stood amidst the ruins of the old Roman castle. Aislinn nodded as she listened, smiled appreciatively, and spoke animatedly with the knight. Brok frowned as he brought up the rear with the stretcher bearers and the sleeping king.

To his untrained mind, Aislinn seemed a disturbingly learned woman. She knew all about architecture and art and letters. Not at all like the women Brok was used to. Good healthy bawds who liked a joke and a romp and a raucous feast. He could never understand why Freyne had made this white dainty his queen. Oh, her beauty would inflame any man; but toss her in your bed, not on your throne.

Brok snorted and spat. He didn’t like thinking like this. He wasn’t an introspective man. And certainly not a scholarly one. He knew nothing of architecture and art and letters, knew nothing and cared less. So as he sourly watched the swishing tails of the horses, he neither knew nor cared that he had been inspired to fashion a figure of speech: My sudden shift at court, he thought, is like the back ends of those horses ahead—full of dung.

Bowen was the king’s mentor and had the queen’s ear. To Brok, this meant that things were soon going to be dull around the court. No more bawds and brawling banquets. Now would come the interminable invocation of codes and courtly niceties . . . and, perhaps even more strange, dark rituals with dragons. Freyne would moan in hell if he knew the blood of his ancestors’ ancient enemies now flowed in his son and heir. Of course, it hadn’t looked like blood. Just a dazzling glow of light; and back in the cave, Brok had been dazzled like the rest. But now, out in the good night air and among familiar things, he shivered with distaste and distrust. He now knew why Freyne had annihilated Aislinn’s witch clan.

Brok remembered this dragon. Indeed he had been a member of the hunting party several years ago when Freyne had wounded it. The king had been furious at its escape. He had wanted that trophy . . . to be a recognized dragonslayer like the rest of his blood. Brok mused how he might gather some of the others and go a-dragoning soon. They would get Freyne his trophy. What a funeral gift that would make! What a monument on his grave!

Of course, such behavior might not sit well with the new monarch and his mother. Or with their right hand—Bowen. And Brok had felt Bowen’s right hand himself. He spat again. It had been a long night. He was worn to the bone. He didn’t like thinking on all this. It made his head hurt.

Fate kindly relieved him of his weighty ruminations by providing a distracting clank. Brok turned around. The crown had slipped from Einon’s hand and fallen against a rock. It caused Einon to jerk awake, sitting bolt upright. There was a strange, fierce light in the boy’s eyes. He was tense with coiled energy. Brok signaled the bearers to halt and knelt beside the pallet.

“Your Majesty?” he asked. “Is all well?”

Einon unconsciously slipped a hand through the tear in his clothing, feeling the scar on his chest. He gazed at it and remembered . . . and smiled at the memory. “All is very well. The crown.”

He gestured for the fallen chaplet. Brok picked it up and offered it to him. Eyes afire, the boy snatched it and plopped it on his head. It was too big, but Einon seemed to like the fit nonetheless. Or perhaps, thought Brok, he just liked possessing the crown, period. “Anything more, Your Majesty?”

“Much more.” Einon turned from his regal regard to smile grimly at Brok. It warmed the cockles of Brok’s heart. It was Freyne’s smile.

Brok looked down the trail. Bowen and Aislinn were some distance ahead, unaware that the others had stopped. He turned back to the king to find him hesitantly rising off the stretcher. Brok leaned in to support him, but Einon pushed him away. The boy was shaky on his feet, but he stood.

“The Romans built a great castle here,” Einon said, looking out on the moon-clad ruins. “Mine will be greater.”

Brok heard the conviction in the boy’s voice and found it intriguing, even encouraging. “It will take many men, milord, to rebuild this ruin.”

“Yes . . .” Einon smiled his father’s smile again. Brok smiled back. Perhaps his new place in the court wasn’t the horse’s rump after all.

Four

THE KING RESURRECTED

“Burn the insolence out of his eyes!”

Firelight licked the gray edges of dawn. Brushing aside a lock of her red hair, Kara shifted in the branches of the tree and peeked through its concealing leaves to watch her village burn. Women wailed and children shivered in the cold morning, staring fearfully at the corpses littering the muddy paths between the huts. Kara stared at them too—friends, neighbors, people she had known all her life. So far Riagon, her father, was not among them. Nor was he among the menfolk being rounded up and shackled in wooden neck stocks.

But she wondered how long he would be safe. He had been the first to see the riders coming and, against her protests, had insisted she run. She had obeyed, as she always obeyed him, but had run only as far as the giant oak, hiding in its heavy green boughs. She had lost sight of her father when the king’s men swarmed in, putting everything to the torch. Resistance had been brief, futile, and quickly disintegrated into panicked chaos. Riagon had disappeared into the smoke and flame and crush of fleeing bodies.

A towering brute, who seemed to command the foray, steered his horse through the trampled shambles of a hut and scraped away debris with his sword, ferreting out a trapdoor beneath the charred clutter. He motioned to a pair of soldiers, who jerked the door open, exposing a disheveled-looking red-bearded giant, huddled in a root cellar full of cheese.

Kara gasped as the brute jabbed his sword downward. But he was aiming for the cheese, not Riagon. Impaling a round, he brought it to his mouth and took a hearty bite right off his sword as the two minions herded the redbeard out of the hole.

Kara wanted to run to him. But as they shackled him in a neck stock with two other captives, he raised his head and looked directly up at the tree. She saw the almost imperceptible shake of his head from side to side. To any observer, it would merely have seemed a look of dazed disbelief at his fate, or maybe trembling fear. But Kara knew it for what it was. A signal to stay put.

Her fingers flicked nervously through her thick red locks. As she debated defying Riagon just this once someone rode out of the smoky haze and approached the brute and his new prisoner. Kara recognized him.

It was the prince—the one her father had called piglet—the one she had stabbed. How had he survived? How could he sit a horse? She would never forget that startled thrust of hers. The slithering, liquid squish it made as it sank deep into his chest. Yet here the piglet was, the crown of Freyne perched awkwardly on his head, glaring at her father in malevolent satisfaction. But the young king could not match the cold contempt of her father’s gaze. Piglet rubbed the cut on his hand. Riagon the Red saw the movement and smiled. “You remember me, boy? Pity I didn’t make a deeper impression.”

The brute yanked Redbeard’s head back by the leather band that bound his wild mane, exposing the rebel’s neck to his blade. “Your grave will make a very deep impression.”

“No!” the piglet ordered the brute, then asked: “The girl?”

“Must have run off with the rest.” The brute scowled.

“Or was slain in the battle by your butchers,” Riagon suggested with a snarl. Kara knew he wanted them to accept this suggestion as the truth. Better that they should think she was dead. “Search the slaughter field, Piglet.”

Again, the brute’s sword was at Riagon’s throat.

“We’ll send you there to search.”

Again, the young king called off his dog.

“Enough, Brok!”

Brok the Brute withdrew his blade reluctantly. The king glared at the redbeard. “I want no martyrs. And death is a release, not punishment.”

The boy smiled evilly at Riagon. But the rebel’s steady gaze did not waver as Piglet wheeled his horse to snatch a torch from one of his men. The blaze of the torch washed Einon’s pale skin even whiter. In its harsh light, he looked like a dead soul come from hell as he sneered down at Kara’s father.

“It’s an insolent gaze. Look good, dog. And remember. I am your king. The man who crushed you. And the last thing you will ever see.”

“Pity,” spat Riagon the Red, defiant to the last. “Your crown is cockeyed, Piglet!”