The Dragon's Path

  The broad forehead alone was as long as his horse. He could have crouched inside the empty eye sockets. The muzzle disappeared into the earth, as if the fallen dragon were drinking from the land itself, and five blade-long teeth still clung to the jaw. Centuries of fierce sunlight had bleached the bone, but wind, sand, and rain hadn’t worn it down. Geder pulled his mount to a halt, gaping. The villagers kept hauling their cart, talking to each other, trading a skin of water among them. Geder dismounted and walked to the skull. He hesitated, reached out a hand, and touched the sun-warmed dragon bone. The corpse had lain here for thousands of years. Since before humanity had begun its history.

  “Prince?” the young man from the village called. “Come! Come!”

  Trembling, Geder lifted himself back into the saddle and trotted along.

  The sun hadn’t shifted more than a hand’s span when the group made a final turn around a high stand of scattered boulders each as large as a sailing ship, and the temple came into view. Carved into the stone of the mountain, the dark holes of doorways and windows stared out into the landscape. Geder had the brief sensation of being stared at by a single, huge insectile eye. A wall as tall as the defenses of Camnipol marked the end of the trail. Huge, towering statues of what had once been human figures were set into the stone along the wall like sentries, their features eroded into knobs and stumps, and a huge spread-winged dragon towered above them all. Great banners shifted in the breeze, one at each of the thirteen statues. Each was a field of a different color—blue, green, yellow, orange, red, brown, black, through thirteen distinct shades—with a pale circle in the center cut by four lines into eight sections.

  Its sigil was of cardinal and intercardinal showing the eight directions of the world in which no falsehood could hide. The sign of the Righteous Servant. Tears leapt to Geder’s eyes, and something like relief flooded him. Triumph, perhaps. This was the place. He’d found it.

  They drew nearer, and the longer it took, the more Geder understood the breathtaking scale of the place. A huge iron gate hung at the front of the wall, imposing and forbidding. Above it, in a brutal script, were the words Khinir Kicgnam Bat, each letter as tall as a man. Geder squinted up at them, struggling to make his translation while still half drunk with wonder.

  Bound is not broken.

  The villagers brought their cart to a stop still fifty yards from the great iron doors. Geder saw now that a section within the door itself was set with a complex of swirling gears. The interlocked teeth clanked once, shifted, and the section of iron parted like a curtain. Six men walked out toward them. They had the same general features as the villagers, though with more roundness to their cheeks and oil sleeking their hair. They wore black robes tied with lengths of chain at the waist and sandals that wrapped their ankles. The men of the village knelt. Geder bowed, but didn’t dismount. His horse shifted uneasily beneath him.

  The priests looked at one another, then turned to the young man who had led the group.

  “Who is this?” the eldest of the priests asked.

  “A stranger,” the young man said. “He came asking after the Sinir. We brought him to you, the way the Kleron told us.”

  Geder urged his horse closer. The grandness of the place had made the beast skittish, but he held the reins tightly. The eldest priest stepped toward him.

  “Who are you?” the monk asked.

  “Geder Palliako, son of the Viscount Palliako of Rivenhalm.”

  “I don’t know this place.”

  “I’m a subject of King Simeon of Antea,” Geder said. And then when the priest stayed silent, “Antea’s a very important kingdom. Empire, really. Center of Firstblood culture and power.”

  “Why have you come here?”

  “Well,” Geder said, “that’s a long story. I was in Vanai. That’s one of the Free Cities, or, really it was. It’s gone now. But I found some books, and they were talking about this… Ah… They called it the Righteous Servant or the Sinir Kushku, and it was supposed to have been designed by the dragon Morade during the fall of the empire, and I thought that if I could use the different descriptions of where it was compared with the times when the accounts were made I might be able to… find it.”

  The priest frowned up at him.

  “Have you heard of the Righteous Servant?” Geder asked. “By any chance?”

  He wondered what he would do if the man said no. He couldn’t bring himself to ride back out. Not after seeing this.

  “We are the servants of the Servant,” the man said. His voice was rich with pride and certainty.

  “That’s excellent. That’s just what I’d hoped! May I…” Geder’s words tumbled over themselves, and he had to stop, cough, and collect himself. “I was hoping, if you have archives… Or if I could speak with you. Find out more.”

  “You will wait here,” the priest said.

  Geder nodded, but the man had already turned away. The priests were pulling the cart in through the gap in the iron gate, the village men retrieving another much like it. As Geder watched, the priests vanished into their temple, and the other men, waving at him and smiling, went away down the trail, returning to their homes. Geder stayed where he was, caught between the desire to see the temple behind the wall and the fear of being left alone and unable to find his way back through the mountains. The gears in the gate ground themselves closed. The rope-drawn cart vanished around the stones. Geder sat on his horse, trying not to look at the five servants he’d dragged across the known world and into this emptiness. In the distance, a hawk shrieked.

  “Should we set up camp, my lord?” his squire asked.

  Night fell. Geder sat in his tent, the walls murmuring to themselves in the breeze. At his little desk, by the light of a single candle, he read the books he’d already read ten times over, his eyes taking in the words without the meanings.

  The sense of disappointment, of rejection, of rage were slowly building in his belly with the growing certainty that they weren’t going to come out. He’d been left to sit on the doorstep like a beggar until he took the hint and limped away. Back to Camnipol, back to Antea, back to all of the things he’d come from.

  He was at his journey’s end. He couldn’t even pretend a reason to push onward. He had crossed two nations, mountains, deserts, only to be snubbed at the end. He turned a page, not knowing what had been on it, and not particularly caring. He imagined himself at home, telling the tale. The Jasuru seer, the dragon bones, the mysterious hidden temple. And then, they would say. What then, Lord Palliako?

  And he would lie. He would tell about the degenerate priests and their pathetic, empty cult. He’d write essays detailing whatever perversions came to mind, and ascribe all of them to the temple. If it hadn’t been for him, for Geder Palliako, the place would have been utterly lost to history. If they saw fit to treat him this way, he could see that they were remembered any way he saw fit.

  And the priests would neither know nor care, so where was the pleasure in that? The morning would come, he would have the tent loaded, and he’d begin the trip back. Perhaps he could find a merchant in one of the cities of the Keshet who would accept a letter of credit and buy some decent provisions. Or stop at the village and tell them the priests had instructed them to give him their goats. That would be almost worth doing.

  “My lord! My lord Palliako!”

  Geder was out of the tent almost before he heard the words. This squire was pointing at the dark iron gate. The small side door was still closed, but a deeper shadow had formed between the two massive panels, a line of darkness.

  A man came out, walking toward them. Then two more, with blades strapped to their backs. Geder waved his and his servants hurried to light the torches. The first man was huge, broad across hips and shoulders. His hair was gone, and the expanse of his scalp glowed in the moonlight. In the torchlight, his robe looked black, though in truth it could have been any dark color. The guards behind him wore the same robes as the priests had before, but of finer cloth, and undra
wn swords with hilts and scabbards of iridescent green.

  “Are you Prince Palliako who has come to learn of Sinir Kushku?” the large man asked. Though he spoke softly, his voice had the weight of thunder behind it. Geder felt his blood shift in his veins at the sound.

  “I am.”

  “What do you offer in return?”

  I don’t have anything, Geder thought. A cart, some servants. Most of my silver was spent on the way here, and what do you have to buy with it anyway? It isn’t as if any of you were going to the market fair…

  “News?” Geder said. “I can give you reports about the world. Since you’re so… remote.”

  “And do you mean the goddess harm?”

  “Not at all,” Geder said, surprised by the question. None of the books he’d read had mentioned a goddess.

  The big man paused, his attention turning inward for a moment. He nodded.

  “Come with me, then, Prince, and let us speak of your world.”

  Dawson

  Summer in Osterling Fells. Dawson rose with the sun and spent his days riding through his lands, tending to the work that his winter business and the intrigues of the spring had left undone. The canals that fed the southern fields needed to be remade. One of the villages in the west had burned late in the spring, and Dawson saw to the rebuilding. Two men had been found trapping deer in his forest, and he attended the hanging. Where he went, his landbound subjects offered him honor, and he accepted it as his due.

  Along the roads, the grass grew higher. The trees spread their broad leaves, shimmering green and silver in the breezes and sunlight. Two days from east to west, four from north to south, with mountain tracks to hunt, his own bed to sleep in, and a bowl of perfect blue skies above him. Dawson Kalliam could hardly imagine a more luxurious prison to waste his weeks in while the kingdom crumbled.

  The holding itself buzzed with activity. The men and women of the holding were no more accustomed to the presence of the lord during the long days of summer than they were to his absence during the winter months not taken up by the King’s Hunt. Dawson felt the weight of their consideration. Everyone knew that he had been exiled for the season, and no doubt the servants’ quarters and the stables were alive with stories, speculation, and gossip.

  Resenting that made as much sense as being angry at crickets for singing. They were low, small people. They understood nothing that wasn’t put on the table before them. Dawson had no reason to treat their opinions of the greater world with more regard than he would a raindrop or a twig on a tree.

  Canl Daskellin, on the other hand, he had expected better of.

  “Another letter, dear?” Clara asked as he paced the length of the long gallery.

  “He’s telling me nothing. Listen to this,” Dawson said, shaking the pages. He found the passage. “His majesty remains in poor health. His physicians suspect the weight of the mercenary riot is weighing on him, but expect he will be much improved by the winter. Or this. Lord Maas has been most aggressive in his defense of Lord Issandrian’s good character, and is making the most of having escaped censure. It’s all like this. Provocations and hints.”

  Clara put down her needlework. The heat of the afternoon left a beading of sweat across her brow and upper lip, and a lock of her hair had come free of its dressing. Her dress was thin summer cloth that did little to hide the shape of her body, softer than a young woman’s and more at ease with itself. In the golden light spilling through the windows, she looked beautiful.

  “What did you expect, love?” she asked. “Direct talk, plainly stated?”

  “He might as well not have written,” Dawson said.

  “You know that isn’t true, love,” Clara said. “Even if Canl isn’t giving you all the details of the court, the fact that he’s corresponding means something. You can always judge a person by who they write to. Have you heard from Jorey?”

  Dawson sat on the divan across from her. At the far end of the gallery, a servant girl stepped through the doorway, saw the lord and lady in the room, and backed out again.

  “I had a letter from him ten days ago,” Dawson said. “He says everyone in court is walking quietly and speaking low. Nobody thinks this is over. Simeon was due to name Prince Aster’s ward at his naming day, but he’s postponed it three times now.”

  “Why would he do that?” Clara asked.

  “The same reason he exiled me for Issandrian’s treasons,” Dawson said. “If he favors us, he’s afraid they will take up arms. If he favors them, then we’ll do it. And with Canl calling the tunes, I can’t say he’s wrong to think it.”

  “I could go and ask Phelia,” Clara said. “Her husband’s been put in roughly the same position as Canl, hasn’t he? And Phelia and I haven’t seen each other in ages. It would be good to talk with her again.”

  “Absolutely not. Send you into Camnipol alone? To Feldin Maas? It wouldn’t be safe. I forbid it.”

  “I wouldn’t be alone. Jorey would be there, and I’d take Vincen Coe to keep me safe.”

  “No.”

  “Dawson. Love,” Clara said, and her voice had taken on a hardness he rarely heard from her. “I let you stop me when there were foreign mercenaries in the streets, but that’s passed. And if someone doesn’t reach out, the breach will never be healed. Simeon can’t do it, poor bear, because it isn’t something that can be commanded. You and Feldin can’t because you’re men and you don’t know how. The way this happens is you draw your swords, and we talk about who wore the most fetching dress at the ball until you put them back in their scabbards. Just because you don’t feel comfortable with it doesn’t mean it’s difficult.”

  “We’ve gone past that now,” Dawson said.

  Clara lifted an eyebrow. The silence lasted three heartbeats. Four.

  “You need to raise your army, then, don’t you?” she said.

  “It’s forbidden. Part of my season of exile.”

  “Well, then,” Clara said, picking her needlework back up. “I’ll write to Phelia this evening and let her know I’d be open to an invitation.”

  “Clara—”

  “You’re quite right. I wouldn’t dream of going without escort. Would you like to speak with Vincen Coe, or shall I?”

  The anger that leapt up in Dawson surprised him. He rose to his feet, throwing the pages of Canl Daskellin’s letter to the floor. He badly wanted to take some book or bauble or chair and throw it out the gallery window and into the courtyard. Clara’s eyes were on her work, the thin glimmer of the needle piercing the cloth and drawing through, piercing and drawing. Her mouth was set.

  “Simeon is my king too,” she said. “Yours isn’t the only noble blood in this house.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Dawson muttered, forcing the words out through a narrowed throat.

  “I’m sorry, dear. What did you say?”

  “Coe. I’ll talk to Coe. But if he doesn’t go with you, you aren’t going.”

  Clara smiled.

  “Send my maid to me when you go, dear. I’ll have her fetch my pen.”

  The huntsman’s quarters were outside the great granite-and-jade walls of the holding. A long, low building, the roof’s thatching laced down by long ropes of woven leather and weighted by the skulls and bones of fallen prey. The courtyard had weeds growing at the sides where the boots of men didn’t trample them down and baled hay targets for the archers to practice against. The air stank of dog shit from the adjoining kennels, and a huge shade tree arched above the building’s side, snowy with midsummer blooms.

  Voices led Dawson to the back of the building. Five of his huntsmen stood or sat around the table of an ancient stump, raw cheese and fresh bread on the wood. They were young men, stripped to their hose in the heat. Dawson felt a moment’s deep nostalgia. Once he’d been much like them. Strong, sure of his body, and able to lose himself in the joys of a warm day. And when he had been, Simeon had been at his side. The years had robbed them both.

  One caught sight of him and leapt to his fee
t in salute. The others quickly followed. Vincen Coe was in the back, his left eye swollen and dark. Dawson strode over to them, ignoring all but the wounded man.

  “Coe,” he said. “With me.”

  “My lord,” the huntsman said, and hurried to Dawson’s side. Dawson walked fast down the wide track that led from the holding down toward the pond to the north. The shadows of the spiraling towers striped the land.

  “What happened to you?” Dawson said. “You look like you tried to catch a rock with your eyelids.”

  “Nothing of importance, lord.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We drank a bit too much last night, lord. One of the new boys got a bit merry and… made a suggestion I found offensive. He repeated it, and I found myself moved to correct him.”

  “He called you a catamite?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “What, then?”

  In spring, before the start of the court season, the pond was clear as water from a stream. In autumn, after Dawson’s return from court, it could be as dark as tea. He’d rarely seen it in the height of summer, the green of the water building on the reflections of the trees to make something almost emerald. Half a dozen ducks made their way across the water, their wakes spreading out behind them. Dawson stood at the edge where the grass had the dampness of mud beneath it. Vincen Coe’s uncomfortable silence became more interesting with every passing breath.

  “I could ask the others,” Dawson said. “They’ll tell me if you won’t.”

  Vincen looked out over water to the distant mountains.

  “He impugned the honor of Lady Kalliam, my lord. And made some speculations that…”

  “Ah,” Dawson said. Sour rage haunted the back of his mouth. “Is he still here?”

  “No, my lord. His brothers carried him back to his village last night.”

  “Carried him?”

  “I didn’t leave him in fit state to walk, sir.”

  Dawson chuckled. Flies danced across the water before him.

  “She’s going back to Camnipol,” Dawson said. “She has the idea that she can make peace with Maas.”