The Dragon's Son

MELISANDE CLOSED HER EYES. SHE DREW IN A LABORED
breath, breathed
it out in a sigh. The twisted grimace of pain relaxed, smoothed. Her head
lolled on the pillow. Her eyes opened, stared at Bel-lona, but they did not see
her. Their gaze was fixed and empty.

Bellona gave an anguished cry.

Beneath the bed, the two babies lay in a pool of their mother’s blood and
wailed as if they knew.

Melisande’s sons.

One of them human, born of love and magic.

One of them half-human and half-dragon, born of evil.

Both of them hidden away. One in plain view for all the world to see. One in
the tangled forest of a grieving and embittered heart.

None of this had turned out as any of the dragons
had planned.

“Killing the mother was folly,” raved Grald, the dragon father of the
half-human son. “Your women were supposed to capture her, bring her to me. She
was unusually strong in the dragon magic, as proven by the fact that she bore
my son and both she and the babe survived. I could have continued to make use
of her, to breed more like her.”

“You have found others who are serving the same purpose. As for Melisande,
she
was
unusually strong,” Maristara stated coldly. “The threat she
posed far outweighed her usefulness. She was the sole human on this earth who
knew the truth about the Mistress of Dragons.”

“A threat she posed to you,” Grald grumbled.

“A threat to me is a threat to us both,” Maristara returned. “Without the
children of Seth, you would have no city, no subjects, no army.”

“We do not yet have an army.”

“We will. Our plans can go forward now that Melisande has been removed,”
said Maristara, with a dig and a twist of a mental claw.

“What about the Parliament?”

“The Parliament of Dragons will do what it has done for a thousand years.
Talk and debate. Decide not to decide. Then fly back to their safe and secret
lairs and go to sleep.”

“And the walker. Draconas.” Grald growled the name and mumbled over it, as
if it were a bone the dragon would like very much to chew. “You must concede
that he is—or could be—a threat.”

“That is true and we will deal with him, but all in good time. As he so
cleverly arranged it, he is our only link to the children— the sons of
Melisande. Your son in particular. Kill him and we kill any chance of finding
them. Besides, if he were to suddenly turn up dead, think of the uproar. The
Parliament might actually be inclined to do something. Best to lull them into
complacency. Let the Parliament slumber and let Draconas walk the world on his
two human legs.”

“So long as we keep track of where those human legs of his take him,” said
Grald.

“That is a given,” agreed Maristara.

Draconas heard two babies crying. Not an unusual sound for human ears to
hear, for every second that passed on earth was heralded by a baby’s cry, as
some woman somewhere brought forth new life. The cries of babies might be said
to be the song of the stars.

What was unusual was that Draconas—the walker, the dragon who had taken
human form—heard the cries of these two babies in his mind. The babes
themselves were far away, but the dragon blood in both linked them, all three,
together.

He stood beside the cairn he had raised over the body of their mother and
listened to the wails and spoke to her, who would never hear the cries of those
she had brought into the world.

“There are some of my kind who believe it would have been better if your
children were now lying dead in your arms, Melisande. Better for us. Better for
them. In that instance, we dragons could yawn and roll over and go back to
sleep and wake again in a thousand years. But, the children lived and so does
the danger from those who brought all this about. We dragons must remain awake
and vigilant. Your children were born of blood and death, Melisande, and I
believe that is a portent.”

He placed his hand upon the cold stone and wrote in
flames of magic the words:

Melisande

Mistress of Dragons

Picking up his walking staff, Draconas left the
tomb. The cries of the babies sounded loud in his mind until each fell asleep,
and the wails died away.

BELLONA SENT THE BOY OUT TO CHECK HIS RABBIT SNARES. THIS was one chore he
never minded, for he was always hungry. When he found that he’d caught nothing,
he was only mildly disappointed. He did not have to worry about his next meal
this day. Bellona had brought down a fat doe the week before and there would be
fresh meat in the house for some time to come. His mind was not on food. Today
was the boy’s birthday and he was preoccupied with the memory of what had
happened this morning.

He’d experienced five birthdays up to now. Today made the sixth. He
remembered clearly his last three birthdays and he might have been able to remember
the birthday before that, but he could not be certain if he was actually
remembering the birthday or if he had formed the memory out of those birthdays
that had come since.

The boy dreaded his birthday and looked forward to it, all at the same time.
He dreaded the day for the awful solemnity that attended it. He looked forward
to the day, too, for on his birthday, Bellona would sit him down and speak with
him directly, an unusual occurrence. There were just the two of them—the boy
and the woman—but there was little communication between them. The two would
sometimes go for days without saying more than a few words to each other.

At night, especially in the winter, when darkness came so early that neither
of them was ready for sleep, Bellona would tell stories of ancient days,
ancient warriors, ancient battles, ancient honor and death. The boy never felt
as though she was talking to him when she told these stories, however. It was
more as if she was talking to them, those who had died. Either that, or talking
to herself, as if she was the same audience.

On his birthday, however, Bellona talked to him, to the boy, and although
the words were terrible to hear, he valued them and held them close to him all
the rest of the year, because on his day they were his words and belonged to no
one else.

The boy had an imperfect sense of time. He had no need to count the days or
months and he remembered the years only because of this one day. He and Bellona
lived deep within the forest, isolated and alone, just the two of them. The
passage of time for the boy was marked by gentle rain and the return of
birdsong, the hot sun of summer, falling leaves, and, after that, snow and
bitter cold. Bellona counted the days, however, and he always knew when his
birthday was coming, for she would begin to make ready their dwelling in order
to receive the special guest.

Bellona always kept the dwelling neat, for she could not abide disorder. She
kept their dwelling in repair, working to make it dry during the spring rains
and the summer thunder and warm during the harsh winter. Beyond that, she paid
scant attention to it, for she was rarely inside it. Four walls stifled her,
she said. She could not breathe inside them. She would often sleep outside,
wrapped in her blanket, lying across the door.

The boy slept inside. He had a liking for walls and a roof and snug
darkness. His favorite place in the world, apart from their dwelling, was a
cave he had discovered located about a half mile from the dwelling. He visited
the cave often, whenever he could escape from his chores. He felt safe in the
cave, secure, and he would come there to hide away. He had come to the cave
now, to think about his birthday.

Yesterday, the day before his birthday, Bellona swept the floor of their
one-room hut, then laid down the fresh green rushes he’d gathered from the
marsh. She cleaned the ashes from the fireplace and sent him to the stream to
wash up the two wooden bowls and two horn spoons, the two eating knives and the
two pewter mugs. She shook the dried grass out of the pallet on which he slept
and burned it and stuffed it with fresh. She cleared away her tools and the
arrows she had been tying from the table, which was one of only three pieces of
handmade furniture in the hut. The furniture was not very well made. She was a
warrior, she said, not a carpenter. The table wobbled on uneven legs. There was
a tipsy chair for her and a low stool for him, a stool that he was fast
outgrowing.

Her cleaning done, Bellona stood inside the small hut, her hands on her
hips, and looked around with satisfaction.

“All is ready for you, Melisande,” Bellona said. “We are here.”

That night, the night before his birthday, Bellona remained inside the hut,
keeping watch. Whenever he woke, which was often, for he was too nervous to
sleep, he saw her lying on her side, her dark eyes fixed on the dying embers,
the embers glowing in her eyes.

That morning, first thing, she sent him out to gather flowers. He knew how
important the flowers were to her and they had become important for him, too,
as being part of the ritual of this day, and he had taken to searching out
places where grew the spring wildflowers, in order that he would be prepared.

He brought back two fistfuls of the bright blue flowers known by the
peculiar name of squill, some dogtooth violets and bleeding heart. He gave them
to Bellona, who dunked them in one of the two bowls that she had filled with
water. She then set the flowers on the table, and sat in the chair. He squatted
on his stool. His claws scraped the floor nervously, bruising the rushes and
filling the air with a sweet smell of green and growing things. Bellona looked
at him, also something special. On other days, she cast him a glance now and
then and only when necessary. The sight of him pained her. He had once assumed
he knew why she couldn’t stand to look at him, but he had found out on his last
birthday that he’d been wrong.

She would look at him today. She would also touch him. Her look and her
touch made this day doubly special, doubly awful. He waited, tensely, for the
moment.

“Enter, Melisande. You are welcome,” Bellona called. The first rays of the
morning sun slid in through the chinks in the wooden logs and stole in through
the open door. “You have come to see your son and here he is, waiting to do you
honor.

“Ven.” Bellona turned her gaze full upon him. “Come to me. Let your mother
see how you have grown.”

Yen’s mother, Melisande, was dead. She had died on the day of his birth. Her
death and his birth were tangled together, though Ven did not understand how.
He knew better than to ask. He had learned, long ago, that Bellona had little
patience for questions.

Ven stood up. His claws made scraping noises as he walked across the dirt
floor and he was conscious of the sounds his claws made in the silence that was
fragrant, smelled of the flowers and the bruised rushes. He was conscious of
the sound because he knew Bellona was conscious of it. On this day she heard
it, when on other days she could ignore it.

Ven saw himself reflected in her dark eyes, the only time in the year he
would ever see himself there. He saw a face that was much like the face of
other children, except that his face had forgotten how to smile. He saw blue
eyes that were fearless, for Bellona had taught him that fear was something he
must master. He saw fair hair that his mother cut short, hacking savagely at it
with her knife, as if it hurt her. He saw the arms of a child, stronger than
most, for he was expected to earn his way in the world. He saw the body of a
child, slender now that he had lost his baby fat, his ribs visible beneath
sun-browned skin.

And he saw, in her eyes, his legs. His legs were not the legs of any human
child ever born upon this earth. His legs, from the groin down, were the legs
of a beast—hunched at the knee, covered all over in glittering blue scales; his
long toes ending in sharp claws.

Ven walked up to Bellona. She rested her hands on his shoulders, and pinched
them hard, to make him stand as straight as he could, given his hunched legs.
She reached out a hand that was callused and rough to brush the fair hair out
of his eyes. She looked at him, looked at him long, and he saw pain twist her
stern mouth and deepen the darkness of her eyes.

“Here is your boy, Melisande. Here is Ven. Bid your mother greeting, Ven.”

“Greeting, Mother,” said Ven, low and solemn.

“This day six years ago you were born, Ven,” said Bellona. “For you, this
day began in blood and ended in fire. For your mother, this day began in pain
and ended in death. I promised her, as she lay dying on this day, six years
ago, that I would take her son and raise him and keep him safe. You see,
Melisande, that I have kept my vow.”