Echoes of Betrayal (42 page)

The king’s sigh was that of defeat. “No. She brought me a crown that her family had concealed. But I think that the crown seeks her. And if it is her fate to be crowned, I do not want it to be here, to bring division and war to my kingdom, to my people.”

“You would seek peace?”

“If it is possible, but it may not be. Pargun invaded Lyonya before Midwinter—that had not happened in living memory. I hear of trouble in Aarenis, over the mountains; I have been warned of a war-leader there who wants to rule all. If invasion comes, then I must meet it. But if I can prevent division
here
, civil war
here
, then that is what I want.”

“Indeed, you have more wisdom than I hoped. And your brother prince, I think, may have heart-wisdom, which the young often do before they develop adult judgment.”

“What do you want of me?” the king asked.

The dragon sighed. Stammel fished around on his plate with the
fork and found something; he stabbed it. A redroot in sticky sweet sauce. “You are in haste, I perceive. Well, then, I came to apologize that I must take some of your land for the safety of all, but mostly your realm. It is like to be perilous for the rest of your life and perhaps more, but I swear to return it to your heirs once that is possible.”

“You are a dragon … you have powers I cannot imagine … and you apologize?”

“Discourtesy is not wisdom. Come, king, I would have agreement with you.”

“Agreement that you can take what you have already taken? That I will not mount an army to take it back? Fine—I agree.”

“More than that. For your courtesy and wisdom, for your yielding of this land for a time, I will grant you a boon each hundred years—”

“Hundred years!” said the prince. “We’ll be dead in a hundred years!”

“But someone will be king. Or queen. I do not know how long the land must be forbidden you. I have seen mountains rise and fall, the sea withdraw and return; I will not forget what I owe.”

“Very well,” the king said. “Then I agree that I relinquish claim on that land as long as you say it must be. And my heirs shall collect what boon you grant. Shall I call scribes to write the agreement?”

“No,” the dragon said. “Dragons seal agreements differently. We must touch, life to life, essence to essence. Let us go down to your palace courtyard.”

The king said nothing more but rose and went with the dragon, the prince offering Stammel an arm as he followed. Once more there was silence.

In the palace courtyard, nothing stirred. “I must change,” said the dragon. “Stand there.” Stammel saw again the strange expansion of the flames as the man-shape vanished and the shape he thought of as dragon curled around them. “For our bargain to be sealed,” the dragon said, “you must touch your tongue to mine, king.” A line of red stretched out; Stammel could feel the heat along his right side; the king stood to his left.

“With my tongue,” the king said, as if bemused. He did not sound at all frightened. Stammel heard the rustle of the king’s clothes as he moved two steps forward and knelt, heard the prince’s indrawn
breath beside him. He could imagine how the waves of heat felt on the king’s face, remember his own terror. The dragon would speak in the king’s mind, he knew. Then the line of fire retracted; the king, he could hear, stood.

“Let me!” the prince said. “Please!”

“Camwyn!” the king said.

“You would go where Camwyn Dragonmaster went?” the dragon asked.

“I—yes, if I could. I know you said the stories aren’t right, but—but he did fly with dragons, didn’t he?”

In Stammel’s mind, the dragon’s fire-shape brightened almost to white. “In a way, but not in the way you think. What would you have, prince? Think well before you speak.”

For longer than Stammel expected from such a boy, the prince was silent; the king also said nothing. Then the prince said, “My brother needs me, or I would ask to go with you. I have wished dragons still lived since first I heard of them and saw pictures … I was named for the Camwyn in the stories and dreamed of being like him, a hero who drove away peril and rode a dragon. Now I see that you are not that kind of dragon—if that kind of dragon ever existed—and so I will not again dream of killing dragons or taming dragons, but I still—I still want to be where dragons are. To fly, if it is possible. Only Mikeli is my brother and my liege, and I am his heir. I cannot go. Only—if it is possible—could I ride on your back and maybe you could fly just a little way? As high as the palace wall?”

“Dragons are not birds, prince, and we do not fly as birds fly, but by powers given us at the world’s beginning. Feel my scales.”

Stammel heard the prince step forward.

“They’re—slippery—but not wet or greasy—it’s like glass over them—”

“What you touch is not really my scales but the space in which I fly, prince. If you would fly with me, it must be in my mouth.”

“You mean you will—? You’ll let me?”

“If you touch your tongue to mine, as your king did.”

“Cam!” the king said. “Don’t—”

“Please, Mikeli! Don’t forbid me! It didn’t burn you, did it? And Sergeant, isn’t this how you flew with him?”

“It is, lord prince,” Stammel said.

“Then
please
, Mikeli!”

“I need him back,” the king said to the dragon. “And he is my brother, whom I love.” And to Cam, “If the dragon agrees, you have my leave.”

“I have no time for a long flight,” the dragon said.

Stammel heard the boy’s clothes rustle as he knelt. “It didn’t burn!” the prince said a moment later. “Now how do I—”

“Sergeant,” the dragon said. “Come onto my tongue. When I have returned the prince, we must away at once.”

“I’ll help,” the prince said, grabbing Stammel’s arm. Unnecessary; Stammel could see the fiery shape of the tongue for himself, but he let the boy lead him; he stepped first onto the firm surface, and they were drawn inside. He heard the king gasp.

“Put your hand on his arm,” the dragon said in Stammel’s mind. “He is over-young and excited.” Stammel gripped the prince as if he himself were frightened. Sure enough, after a moment the prince tried to take a step forward, but Stammel held him back. Cool air blew in; Stammel guessed the dragon had kept its mouth open to let the prince see out. He did not feel them rise, but he felt the prince’s excitement.

“It’s beautiful!” the prince said. “I never imagined it would look like this—I can see almost to the—oh.” That last in disappointment; they must be descending again. With a little bump, they were on the ground; Stammel let go of the prince and patted him firmly on the back. “Thank you, sir dragon,” the prince said. “And you, Sergeant.” He moved away; Stammel had just time to hear him say to the king, “Mikeli, it was wonderful! I could see everything!” and then he was sliding once more into the soft nest where he’d been before.

Once more he had no sense of time passing and slept until the dragon woke him.

“If you cannot perceive my offspring,” the dragon said, “it is no shame—tell me and I will find another archer. You are now near the outside, but my mouth is closed. You must put your arrows point down in my tongue.”

Stammel realized then that he had a crossbow in one hand and a quiver in the other, yet he had no memory of them. He hooked the crossbow under his arm and knelt, sticking the bolts into the
dragon’s tongue; they stood upright, and when he regained his feet and reached down for one, it was at his fingertips.

Cool air rushed in. At once he saw, at some distance he could not estimate, small shapes of white flame. Suddenly a gust of air brought smoke—woodsmoke—and he coughed.

“What did you see?” the dragon asked.

“Small fiery shapes, white,” Stammel said between coughs.

“You did not see the mortal fire, the forest burning?”

“No. Was that the smoke?”

“Indeed. They are burning the forest—not in Lyonya but in Pargun. I cannot put you down close to them, for the mortal fire would burn you.”

“Can you tell me how far they are?” Stammel asked. “I need to know—the bolts do not fly as straight as sight.” Would a dragon understand that? He spanned the bow and set a bolt in the groove. The bolt did not feel hot when he took it from the dragon’s tongue, but he did not touch the point.

“Yes,” the dragon said. “That and the direction and strength of wind. I see one on the edge of the fire … That one I can get you near. But there is smoke.”

Stammel wrapped his woolen scarf around his head against the smoke and put the bolts into the quiver he felt hanging at his side. The dragon set him down on ground that felt cushioned; he scuffed a foot and felt forest duff.

“We are beside a stream,” the dragon said. “The spawn is coming upstream, turning the water to steam for amusement; there is no impediment to your arrow’s flight.” Stammel saw a white shape emerge from apparent nothing. But how far away was it? How fast was it coming? He could not tell.

“Distance!”

“Now,” the dragon said, rather than giving one.

Stammel aimed at the center of the white and closed his fingers on the trigger. A tiny speck of white flew through the space between—the point of his bolt that had been in the dragon’s tongue—and as it touched the white shape, a purple bruise-like shape formed, spread, and the white vanished.

“Well done,” the dragon said. “Come onto my tongue again and we will seek more.”

S
tammel had imagined, in that time within the dragon, that they would quickly clear the dragonspawn. After his first success, he was sure of it. But the next hunt proved him wrong. In the back of his mind—as he choked on bitter smoke and ash—he recognized this as another kind of war and, like all wars, longer and more difficult than expected by those who started them.

Despite the scarf, he often could not get his breath; heat from the mortal fires the dragonspawn started scorched his boots; the tangle of burning trees and the fierce winds of the fires ruined his aim. The dragon, he found, had no notion of calculating the movement of hot air and at first reported the bolts as being magically shifted aside from the dragonspawn. Stammel tried to explain, between hacking coughs.

“I do not understand,” the dragon said. “Your arrows are not like birds that indeed are shifted by the winds as we dragons are not—”

“All that flies in the air is moved,” Stammel said. “Light things more; the stones thrown by catapults will not shift for a gust that will move an arrow.” He coughed again, then went on. “A sighted archer will judge the wind and aim a little upwind, according to its strength, but an unexpected gust will still foil his aim.”

“Half-Song aimed straight into the wind,” the dragon said.

“And so the wind would not shift such an arrow aside,” Stammel said. “But in a wildfire, the wind twirls and shifts unpredictably.”

His bolts had struck only one other before he ran out of them. The dragon could not make bolts, nor could Stammel. By then he was exhausted and shaky, anyway. “I need to breathe clean air,” Stammel said. “And eat something—how long has it been?”

“Since we left your king’s palace? Or since you began shooting at the dragonspawn?”

“Either. Both.” Stammel sat down on the dragon’s tongue. “Since the king’s palace, in regard to food.”

“Two risings of the sun and two nights between. It is near sunrising again. We have been hunting all this past night.”

“Humans usually eat at least once between the rising and setting sun,” Stammel said. Knowing he’d fasted that long made him feel even weaker.

“My error,” the dragon said. “I did not realize my substance would not sustain you. I will find you food.”

Stammel felt movement under him and then the slight roll as he was deposited back in the cranny where he’d slept. He dozed off, ignoring his stomach’s demand for food, and woke only when an icy breeze brushed his face.

“We are near a town with a market open,” the dragon said. “Can you stand?”

Stammel rose, breathing in clean cold air. He felt light-headed from hunger but steadier than he’d expected. As soon as he stepped off the dragon’s tongue, the dragon changed into human shape; he could see it as clearly as the other. He tipped his head up; as before, he could just make out a dim light overhead, but nothing more.

“You need other clothes,” the dragon said. “We are summerwards of your lord’s domain, where more towns are, and you still wear that uniform.”

It was all he wanted to wear, but he knew appearing alone among civilians in that uniform would cause comment.

“And it is discolored by smoke,” the dragon said. “By your leave, I will go to buy clothes and food for you.”

“Thank you,” Stammel said. He felt shaky and would have been glad to sit down but did not want to show weakness to the dragon. “And a water bottle, if you could.” His feet crunched on snow; he could melt snow for water if he had a way to carry it.

“I will not be long,” the dragon said.

Stammel found a tree by walking into a snow-covered branch—by the smell, a fir. He licked off a little snow to ease his parched mouth, then felt his way into the center, acquiring an icy lump of snow down the back of his neck as well as snow on his face, some of which he ate to ease his thirst. At the center, as he’d expected, he found a clear area where his boots did not crunch on snow and he could stand upright. It was even dry enough to sit on the soft layer of needles with his back against the trunk. Here the breeze did not penetrate; he felt slightly warmer. He rubbed his hands in the duff to dry them—they still smelled of smoke.