Dragon Blood-Hurog 2 (7 page)

The general shook his head. "Our king desires your presence as soon as possible. We leave now." I raised my eyebrows. "It will take me a moment to pack and gather my retinue."

"My orders were that there was to be no retinue. We have a spare horse. You will come now and bring Lord Tosten. We were informed that your brother was in residence." They weren't even going to let me pack. So much for the polite fiction of a "discussion" before the king. I

couldn't see what Jakoven was gaining by this, other than the enmity of all of Shavig, but I would find out

eventually. Moving against the Hurogmeten was something entirely different than moving against Beckram, the half-Shavig son of Lord Duraugh of Iftahar. It had to be something bigger than simple vengeance—though with Jakoven it was hard to say for sure.

"Ah," I said. "Tosten has a lady friend whom he is visiting. He hasn't been completely forthcoming on where she lives—I believe it is somewhere within a day's ride of here. He's quite enamored of her. You know how young men are." Due to a beating my father had once given me, I speak very slowly. It was making the general restless, so I continued talking. "Still, he usually only spends a couple of weeks at a time with her, so he should be back next week some time. Would you like to wait?"

"No," snapped the man so quickly I heard his teeth click. "The king may send someone else for him if necessary." All polite fictions aside, I was a prisoner and he wasn't going to give me a chance to escape.
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He also was impatient enough that he wasn't going to search for Tosten. Something in me relaxed knowing my brother and Tisala were safe.

Garranon was still closer to me than the general, and no one but I could see his face. He gave me a wry smile. He knew me well enough to understand what I was doing to the general, but he made no attempt to interfere.

"Well then," I said with impatience, as if it had been the general who was keeping us waiting. "If you are

in such a hurry, what are you waiting for? Where is this horse you have for me?" The horse they brought forward was solid enough to bear my weight, but clearly wasn't going to outrun anything anytime soon. Maybe fifteen years ago it might have picked up a canter. Garranon clearly expected me to object, but I didn't. I didn't need to escape on the road, because Oreg, as fanatically loyal to me as if the ancient platinum ring I wore still bound him to my service, would find

me in Estian.

With a shrug, I checked the cinch, tightened it, and mounted. I rode out of the broken gates without waiting for them. I would have lost the pose of an uncaring, slightly silly lordling if I had looked back

—so

I didn't. The stupider they thought me, the easier it would be for Oreg to get me out of this mess. We rode until full dark. We didn't make it to Tyrfannig, which was the nearest town, so they drew up camp in a relatively flat field. I protested mildly when my wrists were tied, but allowed it without active

resistance. While the men cursed and stumbled about putting up tents, I sat by the fire and watched. The soldiers had dismissed me as a threat, so the ropes around my wrists were loose and comfortable. They all knew the reason that the writ had been issued in the first place was that I was stupid. Very stupid. If they'd heard rumors that I'd recovered, the information was more than countered by my size (which had initially alarmed them), my slow speech, and the pretense I kept up that I believed I was going to a genial discussion despite the ties on my wrists. Garranon could have warned them, and I found

it most interesting that he didn't.

I put my forehead against my knees and tried to get used to being off Hurog land again. My head ached,

my bones ached, and my muscles felt without strength. It would ease in a couple of days, but only being

back on Hurog land would make it leave entirely.

When I lay down to sleep, my arm was tied to the general's wrist and that rope was well-tied. He was taking my continued presence very seriously. That was all right—I didn't intend to escape tonight anyway.

As I closed my eyes, I could feel Jade Eyes watching me.

He hadn't yet uttered a word, but his eyes had followed me constantly. The surveillance bothered me, but it was the knowledge that he was a wizard that really gave me pause. Oreg was in a nearby copse of trees not a hundred yards away.

I knew where Oreg was because
finding
was my best talent. It was the only magic my father hadn't stolen from me the day he tried to beat me to death. I could work magic now, but
finding
was second nature.

I wish Oreg hadn't stopped so near us. In his dragon form he oozed magic. He covered it well, but I
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didn't know if he was aware how good Jade Eyes was. Dragons, I had learned, were arrogant creatures. When I awoke, the first thing I saw was the mage's ice-green gaze.

"What is it?" Jade Eyes asked in a voice like honey, "that you do when you dream?" It was an odd question and I couldn't see what he wanted from my answer. Without conscious decision, I fell back upon my old habit of sounding stupid when I was defensive. "I sleep when I dream," I said. Had I done something while I slept?

"I could feel your magic beside us in the woods all night long," he said. "It tastes of you as your home tasted of you. But when the sun began to rise this morning and you awoke, the magic went away. Why is

that?"

He had it backward, I thought. Oreg and I both tasted of my home, not the other way around. I realized that I'd been worried for naught. No one would believe in a dragon—Jade Eyes found it much easier to conjure up a new power from his imagination than to believe there were dragons at Hurog again. There was desire in his eyes that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the lust for power.

"I can't work magic anymore," I said. People who lusted after power were dangerous; one of them had destroyed Hurog.

"But that doesn't mean that the magic went away," he replied. "Magic doesn't do that. It came to us here and watched over you all night—I could feel it hover. You have given your magic an intelligence of its own. Did it happen when your father beat you?"

"If there is magic here, it is not mine," I said. I knew what must have happened: When Oreg had fallen asleep, he'd forgotten to mask his power. But Jade Eyes had certainly come up with an entertaining explanation.

He ignored me as if I hadn't spoken, rocking back on his heels and humming a bit to himself. When he stood up, he murmured, "I'll have to tell the king about this. How interesting." Garranon's eyes met mine, worried. I shrugged. It wasn't a good thing to draw Jade Eyes' s attention, but there was nothing I could do. Oreg was supposed to meet me in Estian, but he'd followed instead, and I had no way to tell him not to.

Ah, well, I thought, at least Jade Eyes thinks it is just me he is feeling. Nothing that would endanger Hurog.

Jade Eyes didn't speak to me again during the remainder of our journey, but he watched me all day, and when I awoke each morning, he was seated by my side staring at me again. The desire to cross my eyes and stick out my tongue at him grew almost overwhelming. But I was Hurogmeten and I had my dignity.

I was a model prisoner, joining in dicing games in the evening, and rowdy songs during the day. The general, whose name I finally discovered was Lawin, eventually only tied me at night. I didn't play stupid—as I once had—but I didn't go out of my way to discuss philosophy and battle strategies, either. Garranon kept to himself, like a man who'd betrayed a friend. I'd have told him not to fret, but it would have looked odd for me to search him out. I knew he'd had little choice. Jakoven liked to watch people
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writhe. Truth was, I wasn't precisely Garranon's friend; men in his position couldn't afford to have friends.

But I liked him, and always had.

On the evening of the third day of the journey, Garranon sat down beside me. He squinted his eyes and looked at two of the men who were putting up a tent with swift efficiency.

"Gods, I'm sorry, Ward," he murmured in a voice that wouldn't carry farther than my ears.

"No need," I said back. "I know whose decision this is." We sat for a while more in a surprisingly companionable silence.

"He can't decide what to do with me," said Garranon with bitter amusement. Someone else might have thought the comment came out of the blue.

"Jakoven?"

"Jade Eyes is his new favorite."

I nodded my head. "Does it bother you?"

Garranon laughed. "Not if he would let me go. I have a son, did you know?" He continued without waiting for my nod. "He's three and I've seen him twice. When I request leave to go to my estates, Jakoven says he can't do without me."

"Jakoven's still punishing you for joining Haverness to run the Vorsag out of Oranstone?" It wasn't really

a question.

He shrugged. "I don't know what he's doing." He buried his head in his knees. "I'm not entirely certain he

does, either."

I disagreed. I thought the king knew exactly what he was doing to Garranon, but I didn't say so. We stayed there in silence until it was time to sleep. I hope I helped him as much as he helped me keep my panic at bay. Oreg was nearby, but I couldn't see any way out of this without putting Hurog at war with the king. Maybe my uncle would do better.

It grew harder to keep up the "Hail, fellow, well met" image as we got closer to Estian. The last morning

of the journey, General Lawin put iron manacles on my wrists.

"Sorry," he said, half apologetically, and handed me a water skin. Feeling sympathy for him, I drank his peace offering. I gave it back to him and he took it gingerly. He met my eyes squarely and said, "I am very sorry, my lord. I must do my duty." Foreign magic, tainted and foul, burned through me, and I realized he hadn't just been talking about the manacles.

"The water," I said hoarsely. "Something in the water." Something more than the herbs my mother had favored.

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Two guards, eyes lowered and faces grim … I blinked my eyes and they were replaced by two fire demons that clutched my manacles in their clawed hands. I spun, and the demons fell away from me to lie

broken on the ground.

The pain of the magic elixir made my arms shake. Sweat ran into my eyes and distorted my vision until everything I saw was blurred in hues of red.

Someone called, "We need help!"

"I am helping," said a monster with glowing jade eyes. "If I don't keep this barrier up, his magic guardian

in the woods will destroy us all. That's why I had to wait until now, during the day, when it is at its weakest. You go fight him—that's what you do."

They came with clubs and swords, and I hurled them into the ocean that somehow yawned behind them.

After the first few, though, the demons were ready and their weapons began to find their mark.

"I thought the king wanted him alive," someone exclaimed harshly. For a moment I knew it was Garranon, but then that understanding left me.

It was hard to fight with the manacles on, so when I'd won myself some space, I pulled. The links bent, but not enough.

Someone swore, then said, "Look at what he did to that chain." Something hit me in the back of the knee and I stumbled. My vision exploded in a flash of light as I was

hit again.

I woke on a pile of straw in a small room dimly lit by a window high above. Garranon sat on his heels beside me.

"The demons didn't get you," I whispered, because I was certain I could hear the rustle of their feet just outside.

"I think they did," he said, sounding sad.

There was something I'd wanted to tell him, but I couldn't quite … "I have a secret," I said.

"Don't tell anyone," he replied, looking a little worried.

"It's for you—Ward wants you to know."

"Ah." He looked a little confused, but made no other sound.

"Isn't your fault," I said. It was harder to talk than usual, my tongue felt swollen. "Jakoven would have done it anyway."

"Would you have come if I hadn't been there?" he said bitterly. I nodded. "Hurog's not completed. Not prepared to take on the king. Ward had to come, he knew it was a trap."

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He knelt down. "Ward?"

But when he knelt, he turned into my father and I curled into a ball. Father was angry with me, and I knew that his anger always hurt.

After a while the door opened and shut, and I was alone.

If I burrowed under the straw that covered the floor, the demons couldn't find me. Terror was my closest friend; my room was rank with the smell of it The only hope I clung to was that if I could hide long

enough, I knew the dragon would come and save me.

4—TISALA

Some stereotypes are useful. Certainly I've never met a dishonorable Oranstonian, nor a Shavigman who

wasn't happy to fight.

Tisala paced the confines of Ward's room. Waiting here while someone else dealt with her problems was harder than the role she'd accepted in her father's little plot—which was just what Ward had thought

it to be.

It had been her father who proposed it Alizon had been none too happy about her knowing everything—
his
plans were more than Ward had guessed. Enough more, she hoped, for her father and others she cared about to triumph over Jakoven. But Ward had been brutal in his dismissal of Alizon' s rebellion, and his recital had had the ring of truth about it.

She'd been too long among men who grasped every straw as a great hope and built a house of it. Everything she knew of Ward told her that he saw the world as clearly as any. If he saw disaster, she was afraid he was right.

It was too quiet.

A keep always has noise: people going about their lives, the clash of weapons as the Guard trained, the creak of wagon wheels. With the king's troops here it should have been louder than ever. But there was no sound here at all, not since the tremendous booming cracks of wood on wood, and Tisala was growing even more nervous.