[Hurog 01] - Dragon Bones (7 page)

 

THERE
WAS NO ONE
in the great hall except for Oreg when I came in. He stood splay-legged, hands clasped behind his back, and stared at the ancient message, the Hurog curse, carved into the wall.

There was such intentness in his expression that I stared at it, too, but it hadn't changed. The runes still looked as though they had been rough-carved with a hunting knife, but no knife I'd seen would dig into stone. In some places, the writing implement had dug in almost a finger's length, and at others, it was little more than a faded scratch. Each rune was nearly as tall as me.

“Oreg?” I said, after a quick glance to confirm that the room was empty. I was the only one who saw him whenever he was present. He used some sort of magic to keep other people from seeing him, though he usually showed himself to Ciarra, too. I'd learned to be very careful about talking to him in public places. I was supposed to be stupid, not crazy.

Magic began to gather in the room so strongly it brought a flush to my face. Much more magic than usually surrounded Oreg.

“Oreg?” I asked with a bit more urgency.

“I wrote this,” he said, waving a hand at the wall. “I did it after he killed the dragon. Her eyes shimmered with silver waves, and he killed her, so I presented Hurog's future to him.”

“It looks like a lot of work,” I observed, trying to draw his attention. I'd begun to recognize when Oreg was about to have one of his fits. Sometimes he talked to people who weren't there or just stared blindly through me. Usually, he left abruptly, and the next time I saw him, he was fine. But
once or twice, I'd been able to pull his attention to me and stop the fit.

“He couldn't read it—illiterate
bastard.”
His voice hit the last word with raw hatred.

“It's in old Shavig. Not many people can read it,” I commented.

“He had me beaten when I told him what it said.” As he spoke, the threads of his shirt parted in a short, straight line down his back from his right shoulder to his right hip. He flinched, and another line of broken threads appeared. Incredulously, I saw blood darken the edges of the material, but Oreg didn't turn his attention from the wall.

“Oreg,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, though this time I could hear the snap of a whip as a third invisible blow hit him.

My mother could work illusions. Sometimes I'd walk into a room in the castle, and it would be filled with vines and exotic flowers from her homeland in southern Tallven. This didn't feel like an illusion: Blood dripped from his back to the dusty floor.

“Oreg, that was a long time ago. He can't hurt you anymore,” I said.

“He could have killed me,” continued Oreg in that unnaturally calm voice.

I stepped between him and the wall to catch his eyes, but when I saw his face, I couldn't say another word. His face was swollen past recognition, and white bone showed through his cheek.

“But he didn't. He had someone else use the whip. Do you know why?”

“No,” I whispered. “Tell me.”

“Because he didn't want to lose Hurog. He knew how much I wanted to die. He wore the ring so only he could kill me, and he knew that's why I baited him. So he had someone else do it.”

“Oreg,” I said, touching the top of his head gently, for it was the only place unmarked by ancient pain.

“Ward?” said my uncle just behind me. “Who are you talking to?” His voice was soft; it sounded very much like the voice I was using on Oreg, whom he obviously couldn't see.

So much for my plan to explain to Duraugh that I was really normal.

“I was reading the words on the wall,” I said without looking around. “My brother Tosten tried to teach them to me once, but I only remember a little.”

“Ah,” said my uncle, sounding much relieved. “Garranon and his brother are here.”

I turned abruptly from Oreg, trying not to react when he began a high-pitched keening as I pulled the shield of stupidity firmly around me. The visitors had hung back while my uncle approached, but it only took me a few strides to reach them.

“Garranon!” I grabbed his hand hard and shook it vigorously, despite his decorous attempts to escape. Then I slapped him on the back, holding him in position with the hand I still held.

He gave a muffled yelp. My uncle threw his arm around my shoulder and pulled me off unobtrusively. “Lord Garranon and his brother Landislaw have ridden all the way from court this past week,” my uncle said.

Garranon was about average height with fine-boned features, curly brown hair, and thin lips that smiled too easily. He looked younger than he was, which I suppose was the attraction he still held for the king. His brother Landislaw looked very like him, but somehow Landislaw made the same features appear rugged rather than aristocratic. On Landislaw, Garranon's thin nose became strong and masculine. The narrow lips were firm, the smile charming. With the two of them together, one thought of
scholar and warrior or stag and blooded bull—or so the ladies of the court said.

After I made everyone sufficiently uncomfortable by staring at them, I nodded my head. “Court is boring. I would have come here, too.”

Landislaw laughed. “Truthfully said. I've enjoyed this past week more than any week at court. I'll be sorry to see it over.” Landislaw was a panderer and a bully whom I disliked intensely.

Garranon was still rubbing his shoulder unobtrusively, but he had court manners. “I wish to express my condolences.”

I looked at him inquiringly.

“For your father,” he said.

“Oh,” I said with sudden comprehension. “Yes, for my father. Died a few weeks ago.”

Disconcerted at my lack of filial mourning, Garranon's practiced speech left him. I liked Garranon more than I wanted to like the high king's favorite. I liked him even better now when his presence meant I had to wait to tell Duraugh the truth.

My uncle stepped in smoothly. “Now that Ward's here, perhaps you will tell us what brings you here, my lords.”

“Hunting?” I asked. Oreg had quit making any noise but soft grunts, but the sound of leather hitting flesh echoed in the hall, and the thick magic kept me from concentrating on our guests.

Garranon snorted sourly. “Yes, we're hunting—but not the kind you mean. Landislaw bought a slave from an acquaintance. Now he finds that the slave wasn't his friend's to sell.” A slave? Poor abject things, they were commonplace in Estian at the high king's Tallvenish court as well as other parts of the Five Kingdoms. Shavigmen didn't own slaves.

“It belonged to his father,” added Landislaw with a graceful grimace.

“His
father,” continued Garranon sourly, “is Black Ciernack.”

“The moneylender?” asked my uncle, clearly shocked. Maybe he hadn't heard the rumors about Garranon's brother.

Oh, Landislaw was not in debt, quite the contrary. He brought friends from court into friendly gambling dens, just seedy enough to appeal to the jaded young courtiers. The dens belonged to Ciernack. If Landislaw's friends lost money there, it surely wasn't his fault. Just ask him.

“The moneylender,” agreed Garranon. “Before Landislaw could return her, she ran away. So we've been chasing her ever since. Frankly, if Landislaw hadn't discovered that someone had been feeding her stories that Hurog is a refuge for slaves, we'd never have found her. From the tracks we've followed, she's in a tunnel down by the river. I don't know how she got in there:
We
couldn't move that grate. But her footprints continued beyond the grating.”

Garranon was speaking to me rather than my uncle. It was one of the things that made me like him. Most people at court tried very hard to forget I was there, even if I was standing beside them.

I frowned at the floor. “Sewers.”

Garranon snapped his fingers. “Of course. I was wondering what that tunnel was. I'd forgotten that this place—” He made a sweeping gesture around the room. “—was dwarven made.”

“No,” I corrected. “Just the sewers.”

“Ah.” Garranon nodded. “Even so. We have an escaped slave in your sewers, and we can't get beyond the grate that seems to be sealed to the tunnel mouth.”

Not when I'd been there last,
I thought. As far as I knew, the grate should still be off its hinges, because I'd forgotten about it. Oreg must have sealed it after the slave ran inside. He had more reason than most to care for a runaway slave. Perhaps that was what had set him off on his fit.

Behind me, the sound of the whip had become rhythmical, though Oreg had quit making any sound at all.

“We left the men and dogs there and came here to see if you had a way into the sewers,” said Garranon.

“No,” I said.

“You've been in the sewers, Ward,” reminded my uncle with a frown. “Certainly you know how to get into them.”

I nodded. I did indeed. “No slaves at Hurog.”

Garranon and his brother regarded me warily, but my uncle began frowning. He knew what I meant; I could see the apprehension in his eyes. I had no particular fondness for slavery or Landislaw. If Oreg wanted to save the poor thing, I felt no compunction about helping him.

“We followed her in,” said Landislaw slowly, perhaps thinking I'd understand it better that way. “She went in through the grate. We could track her that far. But she won't be able to get back out that way, since we left men guarding the grate. We need a way in.”

“Only way in is through the grates,” I said mildly.

“You can open them?” snapped Landislaw, dropping his pleasant act. He must be really worried. It didn't bother me to see him sweat. One of the boys Landislaw had led into Black Ciernack's nets had killed himself. He'd been a good lad, kind to his stupid friends.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Then let's go get the slave out,” snapped Landislaw, ignoring his brother's hand on his shoulder.

“There is no slave,” I said, smiling at him as if I thought he were hard of understanding.

My uncle bowed his head, shaking it slowly.

Perhaps forgetting that my stupidity was in my head and not my body, Landislaw grabbed my upper arms.

“Wrestling,” I said happily and tossed him a dozen feet into the pack of mastiffs that usually lolled about the fireplace when no one had them out hunting. “I like wrestling.”

“Not,”
said my uncle firmly, “in the keep, if you will, Ward.”

I looked hurt and pointed at Landislaw. “He started it.”

Garranon had turned away so that I was the only one who saw his grin.

“I don't think he intended to wrestle with you, Ward,” replied Duraugh in a long-suffering voice. He walked to the sputtering lordling who was fighting off the cheerful tongues of half a dozen dogs. “Here, now Courser, behave yourself. Down, Two-Spot. My lord, take my hand. You might remember that my nephew likes nothing more than a good wrestling bout. He's civilized enough if you keep your hands off him.” There was cool rebuke in his voice.

Landislaw gave me a cold look, but he'd gone beyond the bounds of guest manners, and he knew it. He took my uncle's hand and climbed to his feet.

“I believe I know what Ward was trying to tell you,” continued Duraugh, escorting Landislaw back where Garranon and I waited. “As someone must have told your runaway, by ancient law, there are no slaves at Hurog.”

“I knew that, my lord,” said Garranon, “but what does your choosing not to own slaves have to do with our slave?”

“You don't understand, my lords,” apologized my uncle. He repeated himself. “There are no slaves here. If your slave has made it onto Hurog land, then she is no longer a slave.”

Landislaw looked at him in disbelief. “You're jesting.”

Garranon turned to my uncle, though he kept a tight grip on his brother's arm. “Lord Duraugh, surely you could make an exception this time.”

“No,” I said firmly, though my uncle was nodding. “There are no slaves at Hurog. As I am Hurogmeten, caretaker of these lands, there are no slaves here. All who come to Hurog are free to stay here peacefully; Hurog is
sanctuary to all.” It took me a good long while to get it out, not being particularly swift of tongue.

My uncle recognized the song I quoted from, one of the more famous sagas about my hero, the Hurogmeten Seleg. (Seleg hadn't started the tradition of no slavery—it was an earlier Hurogmeten who needed people to help farm the land—but Seleg had revived it.) The other two men, not being Hurogs, stared at me as if I were a cow that suddenly began talking.

“Ward, that is only a story,” Duraugh said carefully. Testing, I think, to see how he could persuade me.

I smiled. “Mother told me I should be like Seleg.” I could see the dismay in my uncle's eyes.

Every man who lived on Hurog lands knew the stories, and there wasn't a man here (or woman for that matter) who didn't revere old Seleg. Reminded that Seleg had taken pride in Hurog's refuge status, they would all be on my side, whether my uncle agreed or not, and he knew it. Landislaw was not going to leave with his slave. Poor Landislaw.

Duraugh frowned heavily at me. “Gentlemen, give me some time to talk with Ward . . .”

“Should be locked up . . .” said Landislaw.

My uncle raised his voice. “I'm sure that you and your men are very tired. I'll station a few of the Blue Guard at the sewer tunnel and let you and your men rest. You'll feel better after a good meal and some sleep. Ward, you need to change out of your riding gear. I'll be up in a moment to discuss some business that has come up since you left this morning.”

Oreg screamed suddenly, and I couldn't help flinching.

Garronan stiffened, an odd, listening look on his face. “What was that?”

“What?” asked Duraugh.

“That sound. Like something dying. . .” his voice trailed off when he realized no one else was reacting.