Dragonheart (8 page)

She came to visit her imprisoned father one afternoon a week, as permitted by the edict of the king. Not that Einon had issued it out of any magnanimity or pity. But rather because the sight of shackled loved ones put to slave labor proved an effective deterrent to any burgeoning treasonous impulses. The guards tolerated her with the same indifference they showed their charges. Nor did she invite notice . . . she merely shambled among the prisoners, head down in stooped subservience, her strong, lean figure shrouded in a formless frock. Both her beauty and her wild, red mane she buried within the shadows of her hood.

She doled out drinks to the thirsty quarry slaves as she made her way to an emaciated giant chipping at stone with a chisel and hammer. An unruly shock of white hair streaked with stray strands of red hung in matted clumps to his shoulders and was bound by a leather headband. He stopped work as he heard Kara behind him scoop a ladleful of water.

“Drink, Father,” she said, proffering him the water. Riagon turned to his daughter. As Kara looked at his scarred, sightless eyes she thought of the knight . . . the knight who had defied his king to save them. All for naught.

It had not taken Einon long to recapture Riagon and carry out his threat. Riagon had known that it was inevitable. So he had deserted his daughter one night and used himself as decoy to save her. Condemned himself to this dark purgatory. Four years had wasted his once-virile body, had choked his proud voice with dust, had buried his haughty defiance under a ton of rock. Kara was grateful he could not see her tears.

“I told you not to come here anymore, Kara,” Riagon the Redbeard rasped.

“I am a disobedient child, Father. Drink.”

“No longer a child. A woman. And even a blind man can tell a beautiful one.”

Riagon’s gnarled hand groped for his daughter’s face. She gently took it and led it to her cheek. His callused, dusty fingers caressed it.

“One day one of these dogs will notice too. Go home, Kara!” he sternly pleaded.

“You are my home, Father.” Kara kissed his blistered palm, then taking some meat from the folds of her frock, stuffed it inside his shirt. “Here, for later. Now quickly, drink. The guard is watching.”

She placed the ladle in his hand. As he lifted it to his lips, an arrow suddenly tore it from his grasp. The water splashed upon him and Riagon jumped back in startled confusion. Kara spun to the raucous laughter behind them.

“I don’t believe—I mean, magnificent shot. Your Highness!”

A fatuous-looking nobleman in a hideous-looking hat was floundering his way through some flattering remarks. The object of his praise lowered his bow. Though it had been four years, Kara recognized the piglet instantly. His white, sallow features stood out clear across the quarry. Apparently, he and his men had been out hunting. They were laden with game. Pheasants, boars, even a stag.

“Magnificent! Truly . . . uh . . . magnificent!” The fop was still flattering.

“And profitable,” Einon cut him off. “Unless you care to double the wager, Felton.”

Felton took the bet. “Through his legs!”

Einon took the dare, notching another arrow and letting fly. Kara had no time to warn Riagon before the shaft whizzed through his legs and clinked on the rock behind him.

“Kara!” The redbeard whirled frantically.

“Stand still, Father!” she ordered him.

“The bucket!” Felton shouted out another target, hoping to recoup his losses. Kara saw the arrow slice the air and strike the bucket next to Riagon, sending it clattering off the stone, its contents splashing at his feet.

“Kara!” Riagon jumped back.

“Don’t move!” Kara stepped in front of him and . . .

. . . headed for the piglet.

She saw him scowl, surprised and indignant that someone should interfere with his sport, He notched another arrow and loosed it. It struck before she had time to react—or even think—in the dirt before her feet. She hoped her shuddering sigh of relief had not shown and kept moving forward. Einon fired another arrow. Only inches from her left big toe. She kept moving forward. Another arrow. This time aimed at her. She still moved forward. Not a flinch. After all, the die was cast. He either was or wasn’t going to kill her. And if he was, better this way, neat and quick, than some other. But he didn’t kill her. He lowered his bow. His chalky brows knitted in intrigued confusion.

“You’ve got nerve for a spoilsport,” Einon muttered with grudging admiration.

“There’s no sport in tormenting a blind man,” Kara admonished him, amazed at her own fearlessness. “I beg Your Majesty. Let him go. He can do you no harm. Nor will he raise your castle any faster. He is sick and tired and his hands suffer from the crippling disease. Let him go.”

Einon’s eyes intently penetrated the shadows of her cloak as he listened to her plea with curious attention. He absently stroked the fingers of his right hand along his chest . . . where she had stabbed him four years ago. She worried that he was thinking of that wound . . . and that he knew who she was.

True, she was not the child he remembered. Time had transformed her more than it had transformed him. The ensuing years had merely molded Piglet into a bigger version of himself. But out of her gangly awkwardness they had fashioned a lush supple femininity and sculpted the childish curves of her face into the graceful angles of youthful maidenhood.

And in that blossoming maturity, her fierce boyish habits and rough-and-tumble manner had slowly yielded to the force of beauty. At first she saw it mirrored only in the glances of others—admiring glances, jealous glances, awed glances. But then she began to notice it herself. The fullness of her lips, the fullness of her breasts, the sweep of her brow, and the thick lashes of her eyes. It was never anything she consciously aspired to, or thought about, or even made an effort to enhance. It was just indelibly there one day. She found it frightening and strangely wonderful, but she was still uncomfortable and did not know what to do with it. No, she was not the child the piglet remembered. She had greatly changed. In many ways. And not all were physical.

Searching the pale intensity of Einon’s gaze, she wondered if he could strip away the altering years and unmask the truth. And if not, would he connect her to Riagon and, in so doing, prompt his memory of that day on the battlefield?

“Who is that dog, Brok?” Einon shifted his gaze from Kara to Riagon, poised in blind uncertainty, confused by what was happening around him.

Brok shrugged, “One of those rebels you crushed, isn’t he?”

Kara smiled. No, there would be no connection made between her and Riagon the Red. Nor even a connection between the white-haired, sightless skeleton and the red-maned giant who had slain Freyne. Piglet didn’t remember him at all. His vendetta had been merely a moment of mindless violence, forgotten once the toll had been exacted. Now Riagon was just another rebel he had blinded, another peasant he had maimed, or whipped, or slain. Just another faceless body among a heap of faceless bodies in his charnel house of tyranny. They meant nothing to him; she meant nothing. There was no savoring of Riagon’s fate, only indifference to it. And in that indifference, Kara saw hope.

“He is of no further use to you, milord.” Kara pleaded her suit carefully. “And he will remember your punishment always as he gropes through your kingdom in darkness.”

“True,” Einon mused amiably, staring at her.

Put a crown on a pig, he’s still a pig, thought Kara. “For pity’s sake, Your Highness, release him.”

“Release him?” Those pale eyes stared at her curiously, then sparkled. “Granted, wench!”

In one flashy blur of motion, Einon notched another arrow and sent it flying . . . straight into Riagon’s heart, pitching him back over the very stone he was shaping. Kara stood dumbstuck.

“I always said death was a release, not a punishment,” the king philosophized.

The laughter of his sycophants could not shut out Kara’s scream.

“Father!” She ran toward the fallen man, her hood flying back, unleashing her wild red tumble of hair.

“Father . . .” Kara knelt beside Riagon, cradling him to her.

“K-K-Kara . . .” The redbeard’s gnarled hand clutched for his daughter, then flopped back, unrewarded. His head sagged against her breast. Kara rocked his lifeless body, weeping. His headband fell off and his hair spilled down over his blind eyes.

Hoofbeats intruded upon her grief. She looked up to see the piglet and his flunkies riding out of the quarry. Einon spurred his horse around for one last look, then sped off to overtake the others. Leaving her to her mourning. The crackling of the smithy’s fire sounded the dirge. Kara picked her father’s headband out of the dust. Pressing it to her face, she washed it with her tears.

Eight

AVALON

“Avalon is a fable, priest.”

“In Avalon, lost Avalon, so the legends say
In mystery and mist, there valiant Arthur lay.
And resting with him, the vanquished heroes of his day.”

The grease on Gilbert’s pink, plump cheeks glistened in the firelight as he stuffed more meat into them. Without swallowing, he swung back into his florid recitation of the scribbled parchment in his hand, spraying bits of half-chewed food along with his poetry as he waved his mutton joint in time to his suspect meter.

“Oh, Avalon, fair Avalon, this poor world’s astray.
So in honor of your dead, I bend my knees to pray
To seek your shining wisdom, to find your secret way!”

Gilbert rose and paced, still flailing out the dubious rhythm with his wagging mutton bone. He began his third stanza with a piercing, declamatory wail that caused Bowen, eating Roman style, to jolt up from his reclining position.

“Ohhhh, Avalon! Bright Avalon! End my soul’s dismay.
Return forgotten glories that once held noble sway.
And sweep the world’s dank darkness away, away, away!”

Gilbert looked at his audience expectantly. Bowen settled back on his elbow and gnawed at his meat joint. Gilbert gobbled greedily on his own, squatting by the fire and still waiting for a reaction. Only the crackling of the flame and the stream rushing over the pebbled shore where they camped held back the silence of the night . . . the fire, the stream, and the smacking of their lips as they chewed their mutton. Finally, Gilbert could stand it no longer.

“Well, what do you think?”

“Your mutton is very good . . .” Bowen threw his bone in the fire and picked up his shield. Laying it in his lap. he resumed sewing on his latest dragon talon with a piece of thick leather cord. “Avalon is a fable, priest.”

This ruffled Gilbert’s ego. One could dispute the merits of his poetry, but not of his research.

“A fable? That’s uneducated piffle, Bowen,” Gilbert snorted haughtily, and went to his saddle packs, scrounging through a plethora of parchment. “I can prove it. I have it right here . . . somewhere here . . . Never mind, I quote from memory: ‘Arthur unto the vale of Avalon was swept, to lie among his brother knights in a grove of stone upon a tor.’ From the venerable history of Gildas the Scribe. Facts, my friend, facts! Avalon is a holy place. And my pilgrimage a sacred duty. I will find it.”

“And when you do?” Bowen cocked an eyebrow, intrigued. It was the first time in two days’ travel together that the knight had actually shown more than polite interest in anything. Gilbert realized that his plans to draw the fellow out had somehow gone awry. It wasn’t that Bowen was an unpleasant or even a reticent companion. It was just that he had a disarming knack for deflecting the conversation away from himself and inquiring about Gilbert’s opinions. And the problem with that was that Gilbert had opinions. And he was never reluctant to express them. After all, he was a man of letters and learning. It’s what he did. And while it was flattering to be listened to—and Bowen was a very good listener, which made expounding on things all the easier—he had learned nothing of the knight’s history.

But now they were getting to it. He’d finally hit upon a subject the lad seemed inclined to open up on, providing Gilbert led him into it properly.

“What will I do?” The answer struck Gilbert as obvious. “I will pray to the souls of all the sainted men buried there—Arthur and all the knights of the Round Table!”

“It is said not only Arthur lies at Avalon, but also Anwnn—Gateway to the Underworld.” Bowen tossed his shield aside and stretched out on the ground, pillowing his head on his saddle. “So be careful, priest. The spirits you call may come.”

“Would they might and with them bring back the days of chivalry and the Old Code.”

“No prayers can resurrect that pale ghost.” Bowen’s voice was laced with wistful melancholy. He pulled a blanket over him and stared into the fire. “Good night, priest.”

Gilbert sighed. He had lost him. “Good night, priest” definitely signaled the end of the conversation. But Gilbert had caught the regret in Bowen’s tone. The reflected flame had exposed the desolation in the knight’s eyes.

“Ride with me, my son,” Gilbert gently implored, scooting closer. “All knights need a quest. I think ours is the same.”

“Men of faith may follow a fable, priest,” came the hollow reply. “But my only faith is my sword arm . . . And besides, I already have a quest.”

“What quest?”

“To slay all dragons . . . And one, in particular . . .”

The soft sorrow in Bowen’s face had fled. Firelight flickered across his hardened visage.

Einon gulped his wine and glowered into the fire. The flashing daggers of flame brought to mind the smithy’s fire at the quarry and the red-haired girl framed in its blaze, cradling a dead man. Red hair melting into red fire. So striking. So familiar . . .

. . . As familiar as the savory smells and rowdy sounds that drifted up from the banquet hall. He had left his knights there, gorging on the table-bending bounty of their hunt. He heard their belching laughter. He heard the screeching titters of their bawds. He heard the lutes of the minstrels. He heard the wail of the red-haired girl as he slew her father . . .