Late on that same day Lord Faul flew off to hunt. While the pips were curled up tail to snout and snoring, I quit the cave and headed for the waterfall.
A light snow laced the ground. Dragging a fallen branch behind me, I managed to cover my tracks to the waterfall. The rocks were icy where I entered the hidden cave behind the falls, and once inside, the dark accosted me, but a little ray of sun cut through the water as a knife cuts through butter, and I let that slash of sun guide my way.
The cave was filled with all manner of things, and copper pots were the least of it. In the very middle was a pile of gold, which sank in at the top, as if it had been lain upon. And coming closer, I saw the shape of Lord Faul there. Marn had told me once that dragons loved to sleep upon their gold and I’d not believed her, but here was the impression of his leg, a curl where his tail had been, and the gold held his bitter smell.
Such a treasure trove! Queen Evaine’s scepter must be here. I looked about and dug into the mound, stopping once to hold a coin in my little slice of light. How it shone like a torn piece of sun in my dirty hand. Such riches I’d never seen before even in our castle strong room. Here was the gold of kingdoms upon kingdoms, and all of it hidden in a cave. I dropped the coin with a clink, and the pile shifted where I’d been digging. More coins tumbled down, covering my feet till I stood like a small tree that was rooted in riches. No scepter still. It must be in another hiding place. I stepped from the coins and built up the pile again, lest the dragon know I’d come.
Behind the gold was a smaller mound of jewels. Even in the dim light, the jewels glittered with their own brightness. Emeralds shone the green of dewy leaves. Rubies were tossed about like blood after a battle. Oh, and there were sapphires, too, and diamonds cast over all like shatter-glass.
I blinked against the jewels. Belts, bracelets, necklaces, and crowns lay about like so much fodder, but my little ray of light brought me to the ring. The gold ring was set with a single sapphire. It was more beautiful than all the jewels in all the room, yet it was too large for a woman’s hand. It would have slipped off my mother’s finger, and off any of mine but one.
Here I stole a moment, my heart pounding and my breath coming on like a runner’s as I did what I never should have done. Slow and with a single twist I slipped the ring over my claw and held it in the light. It shone like a caught river dancing over a gnarled branch. And the pity of its beauty encircling my claw sickened me. I tore it off, threw it aside, and ran.
I would have rushed from the cave, but a strange glint coming from a smaller chamber made me pull back. The glint was not from gold or jewels, but from a tumble of armor. I set my jaw. Here was the room made by my mother and the queens and kings before her. All hungry for revenge, for the dragon’s treasure, and the Pendragon scepter that would prove our royal lineage, they’d sent their knights and slayers out year on year to die on Dragon’s Keep. And the dragon knew it, for as I stepped into the alcove I saw the scepter hanging high above the stone arch at the entry.
I’d read the description of the scepter in Evaine’s annals and Mother had used her words to weave a likeness of it on her tapestry, so I knew this was the very scepter Evaine had taken from her father, King Uther Pendragon, six hundred years ago. The golden staff was the length of a man’s forearm, and atop was a carved dragon with diamond teeth and ruby eyes.
The dragon had hung it like a teasing poppet just out of reach of the dead knights’ armor, which was piled nearly to the ceiling. The armor was tossed one upon the other in an easy manner, as if each were no more than a clamshell with all the meat sucked out. All were empty even of their bones. So the armor was just the metal leavings of the dragon’s feast.
The names of the knights I’d known washed over me then. Sir Robert, who more than once bounced me on his knee as he sang a sour-noted tune. Sir Broadon, blond as a woman, long as a poker, and seeming brittle, but always one to laugh at his own jokes. And Sir Kimball, whose voice was dry as summer wind. But it was the sight of Lord Broderick’s herb pouch lying at my feet that hurt the most. I fell to the floor and ran my hand along the letter B his lady had embroidered there in green. My throat ached. Tears warmed my cheeks. I hated Mother for sending Niles’s father here, the best of all our knights. The pouch smelled of sweat and vervain as I pressed my blistered hand against the simple lettering. How proud he’d been marching off to meet the dragon, and how full of love his eyes were when he looked on his lady the last time.
Tugging the dusty drawstring, I spilled vervain onto my lap, the small blue flowers dried now and the leaves curled. Wolf’s bane seeds tumbled after, along with an ink bottle. I shoved the herbs back in the pouch along with the bottle and slid the pouch into the inner pocket of my cloak, where it kept company with my round mirror.
Lord Broderick was a fine poet and had no doubt brought this ink to write a verse to his lady, but the poem went down with him, and the waxen seal atop the bottle had never been broken.
Water roared outside the cave entrance. Already I’d taken too long behind the falls. I must away before Lord Faul returned. Soon I was clinging to the slick wall behind the falls, then seeing no one about, I rushed outside, took up the branch I’d left, and walking backward, sweeping all trace of footprints from the snow until I reached the pips’ cave.
At twilight and under a half-moon I hid the ink bottle in the hollow of an ancient willow tree and made three quills from herring gull feathers. After so many months alone I’d grown sick with longing to speak to another human soul. This I could not do so I panged to write as a beggar pangs for bread.
It took some weeks before I found a place to pen my words, though the answer was scattered all about the dragons’ den. The pips were growing, and thus they were molting as lizards and other creatures of their kind do. With the exception of Ore each pip was already twice my length in body, and longer than that if tails should be included in the measure. From morn to eventide the pips were scratching and stripping off their scales, and since I was nurse, housekeeper, and scullery maid, it was my duty to take the sloughed skins from the cave.
I took them. Ah, did I! They were like gold to me. Translucent, they shimmered blue-green like a strip of sky. The scales were the size of my two hands open and placed together, and though they had a bitter stink about them, they were strong and supple as vellum. Arms full, I raced to my hollow tree before Lord Faul returned from his hunt, and stuffed the skins inside.
I stood upright and smiled to myself, the sun on my back and the sound of the woodlark chirping above the roar of the waterfall. Then all about the stately tree, I gathered a posy of crocuses from the snowy ground to celebrate my victory. Who would have thought a princess would stoop to hoard dragon skin? And wouldn’t all the kingdom wonder at a girl who was glad to write her thoughts on a dragon’s back?
Between my serving chores and stolen hours working on the boat, I could spend but little time writing on the skins I’d stitched together, but the book that grew from my days of silence and lonesomeness was as strange as the scales it was written on.
In the secret hollow of the tree I penned in the story of Kye. How I met him at the pier. The strange soft words between us, that came even from the first. The dragon’s egg he showed me hidden in the beach cave. I lettered my love for him, but I could not write about what happened when he saved me from the wolves, not even on the dragon’s skin. Instead I wrote of my abduction, the birthing of the pips, the coming of the dragonslayers, my vow of silence to Lord Faul.
After that the scaly pages turned back to my early life. I wrote about my swan shadow, Kit; told tales of my nursemaid, Marn; and scratched stories of my father on the dragon skin. How Father had let me ride upon his back when I was small. How he always believed I would grow up to marry for love, and how he’d bid me make a wish before I tossed my stone in Lake Ailleann. I told of Sir Magnus, who served the stars and locked himself in the crow’s nest boiling strange brews and meddling with books. I even wrote about the pigboy, who swelled
up with bee stings and who thanked me for curing him with a dried chicken’s foot—“which be for luck,” Bram had said, though I tossed his withered treasure in the mews and the birds were flustered by it.
It was nearly a month before I could bear to scrawl the rest of my story. By then the ink was gone so I fashioned my own with strained blackberry juice and soot. I’d avoided till then all mention of my mother. I knew writing her part of my twisted tale would be simple as spilling blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Flight
SNOW MELTED AND THE MARCH RAINS kept us in the cave. The pips were restless. Chawl was the worst, frolic being in his blood. An hour wouldn’t pass before he’d be slapping Kadmi’s tail or biting little Ore in the rump.
“Stop that!” I’d shout. Chawl would stop for two breaths mayhap three then roll himself into a ball and tumble into Eetha; more shouting from Eetha and roaring from Chawl. How the pips tested me!
In the middle of March the sky cleared and we left the cave for the sunlight. Lord Faul led us through the woods, the pips running circles round me in their joy.
At first I thought Faul was taking us out hunting, but he had another purpose. We climbed the hills and rounded back toward the Ashath River. Our path ended at the top of the waterfall. There the dragon spread his wings and quit the cliff. Skimming over the river, he sped above pines, oaks, and rowans. Then he seemed to disappear over the very edge of the world.
Indeed, standing on the rocks beside Eetha and Ore, I wondered why he’d brought us thither only to leave us high and lonely at the falls. But from behind he came again, his shadow swooping over us like a dark angel. I felt the cold of it on my shoulders, and the wind he stirred tousled my hair.
Landing nearby, Faul folded his wings neat as a lady folds a fan, then he motioned to his strongest pip. “Chawl. The sky is yours to conquer.”
“Sire?” said Chawl, backing away from the edge.
“Do you think those things upon your back are for wiping your snout?” Faul growled.
“No.”
“Then find the use of them!”
“Lord Faul,” I said meekly. “It’s a high place to learn the skill.” The pips lined up behind me as I spoke, and I took courage from it. “If we were to venture lower down, the pips could—”
“Stay clear of this!” shouted Faul, pulling Chawl from behind me. Chawl fluttered his wings. A poor sight they were, flimsy as bed sheets, and my stomach turned.
We were as high as the castle tower. I looked down at the churning water and my breath caught in my throat.
“The day is lengthening,” said Faul, his eyes never leaving Chawl.
“It’s deadly far,” I said. “He could be crushed and killed.”
“Climb down if you haven’t the bowels to meet the day,” ordered Faul.
I stepped back, unsure if he was speaking to Chawl or me.
“I hunger,” said Chawl, and I did hear his belly growling.
“No supper till the lot of you have leaped.”
“Unfair,” I argued. Lord Faul knocked me on my backside. I banged my head against a stone and lay there, arms outstretched. My head throbbed; my shoulder ached. Somewhere beyond my feet was the tumbling water. Rubbing my sore head, I came slowly to a stand and watched Faul pick up a stone.
“When I toss this over, jump,” he said.
“Eeeach!” cried Chawl, fear or anger stirring such a flame inside his belly that he poured fire from his mouth.
Lord Faul drew back his arm and tossed. Chawl didn’t move, but with a whack from Lord Faul’s claw, he was over the cliff and falling.
“Spread your wings!” shouted Faul. Out Chawl’s wings went, slowing him to a spinning spiral. Still he was going down to his death in the crashing water.
Lord Faul dove and caught him in his talons, and brought him screeching to the cliff.
“Again!” shouted Faul. Out flew the stone; out came the claw to knock Chawl over. Off fell the pip, down and spiraling again. And just before his wet death Chawl’s wings caught the air. Over the pool he sped, then crashed into a willow, where, stunned, he fell onto his back and lay feet upward.
“Leave him to his dreams,” mumbled Faul. “Eetha! Step up! The edge awaits!”
So the lessons went as one after another, Eetha and Kadmi fell close to death, were rescued, fell again, and took flight.
Day fled and the sun began to sink into the sea. Hungry and stinking with the drench of my own sweat, I watched Ore, last and smallest of the pips, spill downward a third time. This time her wings unfurled, and she managed a bloodless landing in a brawl of blackberry bushes below.
“Done!” snorted Lord Faul, his sides heaving from his day of hurling and retrieving pips. Below us Chawl, Kadmi, and Eetha were by the pool fishing for trout while Ore tried to disentangle her tail from the blackberry bush.
Lord Faul picked up a stone and turned to me.
“What? You would throw me over now?” I said this in English.
He blinked and answered in kind. “Much as a caterpillar flies.”
I gripped my gown. “Aye, after the growing of her wings.”
“Who’s to say there aren’t wings in her all along?” said Faul. “And what if one who has the blood, with pretty claw and fire in her belly—”
“I have no fire,” I corrected.
“You have! I’ve seen it, Briar!” Anger drove the words through his sharp teeth. I shook. Too late to tell him the little flames he’d seen were the work of Mother’s mirror.
The dragon closed his eyes then opened them slowly like curtains parting to a fiery chamber. “Who is to say you don’t have hidden wings?”
I huffed, but it made me wonder how grand it would have been to have a curse like that. Wings instead of my old claw. Then my mother would have said I had the blood of a kestrel or perhaps a fairy. None would have died for me, but there would have been great pride in my gift.
The sunset sky was poppy colored, and a cool wind chilled my damp back. Faul tossed the stone in the air and caught it much the way I’d seen the gamblers do with their coins at the fair.
“I’d have to be a simpkin to hurl myself from here,” I said. “You dove for the pips and just in time. But you may not—” I bit my lip considering the pips’ new skill. With the mastery of their wings, their hunting skills would be fool simple. And hadn’t the pips nearly outgrown the need for bitter milk now?
I tried to run back from the edge, but Lord Faul blocked me with his tail. His eyes turned poppy colored and were all-devouring.
“We should go back to . . . to the cave,” I sputtered. “I’ve got bitter drink to boil.”
Lord Faul kept me in his gaze. I saw my own reflection standing in his slit pupils: hair matted as a crow’s nest, face pale, slender as a boy.
“The milkweed’s all in a pile and I haven’t sorted through it yet,” I said. I was trying not to tremble but my body shook like a baby’s rattle.
Lord Faul did not move nor answer, and it seemed he smiled. At last he said, “Do you value your life, Briar?”
“I want to live!”
He knocked me from the cliff.
I fell screaming, thrashing in the air. The pips below howled along with me. Just before I hit the water, Faul’s claw caught me, crushed my ribs, and plunged me in the churning pool. He pulled me to the surface. I sucked in air, the shore spinning like a top. Then he dunked me again. Biting cold water swirled round my flesh. He held me under and I thrashed. Faul’s golden belly above me, rocks below where my feet kicked. My breath left me in bubbles. No air to suck, my chest nearly burst. I tore at his claw like a prisoner would the dungeon bars.
Then up! I hung sputtering until Faul tossed me on the shore, saying, “You’ve had your bath!”
Kadmi ambled over and sniffed my hair. “She smells no better for it.”
My “bath” transformed my gown. Held together so long by the grime, it tore in fourteen places as I dried myself by the fire that night. A maid with any
pride does not show her nakedness to others, thus after our meal, as the pips talked on about their first brave flight, I broke a bone from the fish, pulled a pink thread from my cloak, and tied it to the little rib.
Wrapped naked in my cloak, I laid my threadbare gown across my knees. The blue cloth, stained orange from pip piss, would be all a patchwork of pips’ molting. Patch on patch, I covered the tears with dragon scales.
Across from the mellow fire the dragon picked fish flesh from his teeth with the tip of his talon. “See how Briar steals from others to ease her life,” said Faul. He scratched a tooth and spat. The fire hissed. “Humans are born stripped. No pelt nor scales to cover them, they must steal another’s skin to make their own.”
I said nothing but stitched and stitched, hoping Faul would not start another history lesson. He’d schooled the pips well when he thought I was away, but I’d gleaned bits of his teaching now and again. I’d not known until this year how many times human kings and queens had signed treaties protecting the dragons’ ancient hunting lands, only to turn about, take up arms, and drive them from their valleys and high mountain dwellings, so now the dragons hid in but a few small scattered islands.
Lord Faul’s anger rose every time he spoke of men’s betrayal, and in truth, I didn’t blame him. I’d found small comfort knowing a few humans were trusted: mages like Merlin and his followers who’d worked to keep the treaties binding but not won out.
Pink thread to blue scale, I mended my gown as the dragons talked, wishing I were invisible. The tears were many so I covered all the cloth with scales. I was sure there was nothing in the world like it.
“Tell us again how humans misused our gift of fire to forge weapons,” grumbled Kadmi.
“No,” called Chawl. “Tell us about the time people enslaved the DragonLord, pulled out all his teeth, and cut off every talon!”
Ore jumped up. “And then how brave Kazrol burned all the castle guards to rescue him.”
“And ate the jailers!” added Eetha.