There was a hushed moment. Then Babak’s claws scratched the ground before he ascended into the air.
“Your Highness, step away from the edge,” Sir Geoffrey warned. “You are not—”
“I said piss off!”
Heart pounding, I watched Jackrun’s dragon make a knife-wing turn in the soft blue sky and fly toward us. A heavy wind hit my back and filled my nose with a potent leafy smell a second before Babak dipped below the overhang.
“Prince Desmond!” I called out, fearing the sudden forceful gust would knock him off balance. The prince tipped forward in the brisk wind. Arms swinging wildly, he toppled over the side.
Chapter Sixteen
Faul’s Leap, Dragon’s Keep
Death of Egret Moon
August 1210
WE ALL RUSHED to the edge and flung ourselves down on the rocky overhang. By the Holy Ones, Babak had missed, or Desmond had missed Babak!
I threw my arms out as if to catch the falling prince, but he was tumbling, screaming. Babak dove straight down, his wings pinned to his sides. The other two dragons plummeted after him, but Desmond hit the water and was sucked under the whitecaps. Babak plunged into the waves, surfaced, looked about frantically, and dove under again. The other two dragons landed on the rocks a few yards away, snouts down, watching the water.
“God help us!” cried Jackrun. “Desmond can swim, can’t he?”
Griffin said, “We didn’t ask him.”
“Hurry!” Sir Geoffrey shouted. We all leaped up, and scrambled down the cliff.
• • •
BY THE TIME we reached the beach, Babak had fished Prince Desmond from the churning water, and laid him on the wet sand. I had seen death before, but this gruesome corpse with the broken bleeding neck was beyond me.
“Do something, Uma!” Tabitha screamed. “Fix him! Help him!”
I crouched in the sand. Blood spilled from his gaping mouth. The beach spun. The world went white. I’d called to him up on the cliff because I’d thought the forceful wind might throw him off balance. Holy Ones, what have I done?
“It’s too late, Tabitha,” Jackrun said, kneeling beside me. “We cannot bring him back.”
“I hated him!” Tabitha cried, burying her tear-stained face in Griffin’s shoulder.
We all hated him, I thought. But this . . .
I rocked on my knees by the prince’s water-soaked body.
“Holy God. Jesus help us.” Jackrun put his face in his hands.
“What do we do?” Griffin asked in a hoarse voice, hugging Tabitha tighter. Another wave washed up, the foam turned pink with blood before drawing back.
I made a feeble attempt to straighten the body, pulling tangled seaweed out from under Desmond’s shoulder. We had tried to talk him out of jumping, hadn’t we?
The queen’s only son. No. I couldn’t let myself think of the nightmare that was coming, of what his death would mean, not yet.
“Help me, Jackrun, will you?” Together we pulled the prince’s body back from the water to a place where the waves would not reach him.
Sir Geoffrey stood firm, unable or unwilling to give us a hand. The dragons huddled in a group. Flies landed on Prince Desmond’s face. I shooed them away. Tabitha still wept. Griffin bowed his head, resting it on hers.
Jackrun was praying over the body. I got to my feet, unsteady; still, I took twelve paces to the sea, brought water in my cupped hands, touched the prince’s forehead with a wet finger, touched his eyelids, his mouth, his throat, with drops of seawater. Wind swirled around us; I took up a gull feather and placed it by his feet, blessing his spirit as it left his body.
The dragons had been clustering around Babak, who was soaking, shivering. Jackrun stood slowly and went to him. “Babak?” he croaked. “Are you all right?”
The dragon opened his golden eyes. “Why did you call out his name, Uma?” he snapped. “You threw him off balance. I could have caught him if you hadn’t!” The words cut like thrown knives.
“I meant to warn him, I—”
Nahal growled. “We dragons will be blamed for killing the prince. The king will want our blood.”
“Enough,” Sir Geoffrey said, putting up his hand. “No one made him fall. You felt the gust come across the cliff.” He looked at all of us. “A strong blast that pushed against my back, it must have pushed him too and thrown him off balance.”
“I felt it,” Tabitha said, wiping her eyes with a shaking hand.
“Desmond walked to the edge on his own,” Griffin reminded us. “No one made him go. He saw what we could do and wanted to prove he could do the same. He chose to jump.”
I left the argument and walked a few feet from the body to rinse the hem of my bloodstained skirt off in the sea. What story would we tell the king and queen? The prince was dead. If any of us were blamed for it, our lives would be at stake.
My chest felt leaden as I lowered myself and washed away the blood. He died of a broken neck. Egret Moon had taken him on her death day.
“Someone has to go back and tell the king and queen what happened,” Sir Geoffrey said. “Who will go?”
Chapter Seventeen
Pendragon Summer Castle, Dragon’s Keep
Death of Egret Moon
August 1210
IN THE END it was decided that Griffin would stay with Tabitha, and Jackrun and Sir Geoffrey would go tell Lady Tess and Duke Bion. I would accompany them, because the queen would need a strong potion the moment she heard the news.
At the castle stables, Jackrun swung down from his mount. “We should speak to my parents privately first.”
He helped me from my saddle. “I’ll go to the queen,” I said.
Sir Geoffrey shook his head. “You had better come with us before you go to her.”
“Let me speak first,” said Jackrun. “I will tell them.” He set his jaw, looking through the open stable doors into the sunny courtyard, preparing himself for the worst.
“What happened was not your fault,” I said. I wasn’t sure he heard me before he marched outside.
The sentries stationed outside the duke’s presence chamber lifted their brows at the three of us in our wet clothing, uncrossed their pikes, and let us through. I stared at the blanket hanging behind Duke Bion’s desk as we walked in: an intricate Euit pattern in red-orange, green, and brown, an owl in each corner. Seeing a blanket that could have been woven by my own grandmother on Duke Bion’s wall left me deeply confused.
Jackrun’s father looked up from his desk, and came to a stand. “What is it? What has happened?”
“An accident, Father.”
“A terrible accident, my lord,” Sir Geoffrey added. “You had better fetch Lady Tess.”
“Who is hurt?” He belted on his dagger. “Not Tabitha?” he asked, his face dark with fear.
“Tabby is fine,” Jackrun said. “Please, Father, wait a moment.”
Jackrun’s mother came in through the side door from her private chamber. When she saw us gathered in the room, she drew back and uttered the same words as her husband. “What’s happened?”
Jackrun drew in a breath. “The prince has had an accident.” How small and hollow the word accident seemed. Was there any word horrible enough to express what had happened? “He . . . fell from a great height. He’s . . . he’s—”
“Dead,” Sir Geoffrey said.
Lady Tess screamed into her hand and fell back against the wall.
“God in heaven!” The duke eased his wife into a chair by the hearth, then gripped the back of her chair to support himself. Both were ashen faced. “You are sure he is dead?”
Sir Geoffrey nodded. “Would God it was not so, but we are sure, my lord.”
“Where is he now?” the duke snapped. “Tell us exactly what happened. We will bring the body back to the castle before we tell my brother an
d his wife. In God’s name, this is beyond belief!”
In fits and starts we three told them.
“You taught Tabitha to jump from Faul’s Leap?” Lady Tess asked Jackrun. “How long,” she asked, shaking, “has this been going on?”
“I’ve been doing it since I was thirteen,” he admitted.
“And Tabitha only ten?” She was standing now, her face hard, her hands bunching her skirts as if to strangle them.
“No, Mother,” he murmured, “Tabby was not allowed to try it until she too was thirteen. I take the blame for it,” he added. “It is all my fault.”
“No it isn’t!” I said. “You tried to warn him.”
Duke Bion turned to Sir Geoffrey. “And where were you when this was happening, man?”
“With them, my lord. I tried to talk the prince out of the feat, but he had seen the others jump and would not be persuaded to turn about.”
Lady Tess strode to Jackrun, took him by the shoulders, and shook him. “Do you know what you have done, Jackrun? Do you know the danger we’re all in?” He was taller than she, yet she shook him wildly as one would shake an orchard tree that withholds its fruit.
The duke stepped over to her and put a hand on hers as Jackrun looked down at his soaked boots. “Tess, they would not behead a member of the family.”
“Won’t they? You know the violence Queen Adela is capable of!”
The duke’s face changed, some dark memory flashing before his eyes. “God help us,” he said, squeezing his wife’s hand on Jackrun’s shoulder. “My brother is out riding now. Where is she, Tess? Where is the queen?”
“She is upstairs supervising the packing of her trunks for the journey home tomorrow.”
He dropped his hand and spoke to Jackrun. “Look at me.” Jackrun raised his chin, his face gaunt and darkly traced as death, but his eyes still burned. “We must do this right and do it quickly, Jackrun. You and Sir Geoffrey will show me where the body is and help me bear him home before the king and queen hear anything of this!” He glared at me. “Uma, the king and queen will need you, so gather your supplies from your chamber. An accidental death,” he reminded us, “we are all agreed on this.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“We will bring him to my chamber through that door.” He nodded to his right. “Uma, as soon as you have finished, hurry back here and help us clean the body up before the king and queen see him.”
I curtsied and ran out.
I had the tonics ready by the time they brought the prince home wrapped in a blanket. Lady Tess and I went to work in the duke’s chamber, removing the sand from his torn clothes and washing the body. I tied a scarf around his broken neck to hide the bulging bone before we draped him head to toe with a clean linen sheet.
Lady Tess straightened up. “God have mercy on him, and on us all, by Christ.” She closed her eyes and crossed herself, then opened the door to the fireside room. “He is ready, husband.”
The duke nodded and continued his instructions to Jackrun. “You will tell them exactly what you told me and no more. He saw you mount your dragons from the cliff. He admired the sport. He insisted on trying it himself. You warned him. Sir Geoffrey tried to talk him out of it. The prince would not be dissuaded. He misjudged the timing when he jumped, and he fell.”
“That’s right. Babak tried to catch him and plummeted down after him, diving into the sea to rescue him, but it was too late.”
Duke Bion studied Jackrun’s face. “Do the dragons think they will be blamed?”
Jackrun nodded. Duke Bion heaved a breath and ran his fingers through his hair.
No one had mentioned how Jackrun and Griffin had made Prince Desmond kneel and apologize to me. Was Sir Geoffrey already hiding on the cliff watching us when that happened, or had he come later?
I looked sidewise at the broad-shouldered man who was straightening his windblown hair, wondering what he’d seen. What he would tell the king.
“Sir Geoffrey, the king will have returned now. Go and fetch him to this room.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I will go and get the queen,” Lady Tess said. “I’ll tell her there was an accident today to prepare her as she comes, but no more than that.”
“Tess,” Duke Bion said heavily. “I know you’ll do it rightly.”
Tears brimmed in her eyes as she went to her husband and kissed him, not on the cheek, but on the mouth, and it was like a farewell kiss. She gave Jackrun a brief, strong hug and stepped back, looking at both of them with such love that I turned my eyes away. Nothing would be the same for them or for their family after this moment. Nothing would be the same for any of us.
Not long after, I heard Queen Adela’s voice crying, “Let me see him!” The wailing could be heard down the hallway, the clip-clip of her shoes as she ran toward the room. I braced myself as she burst in flying toward the door to the duke’s private chamber. Lady Tess rushed up behind trying to stop her.
Duke Bion stepped in her path, putting himself between her and the door. “Don’t enter yet, Your Majesty, wait for your husband.” She pushed him aside, and hurried in. We all followed. None of us could stop Queen Adela from rushing to the bed where her dead son lay. She threw back the sheet and let out a pitiful knife-sharp scream that cut deep into my chest.
Sir Geoffrey rushed in with the king, who was still disheveled from his ride. He saw his son’s body, his wife collapsed on her knees, sobs wrenching up her throat. One word came out between each sob: “No. No.”
King Arden shook head to foot, like a quaking mountain. Growling with rage, he whipped out his sword. “Where is the murderer who killed my son? I’ll slit the bastard’s throat!”
Duke Bion stepped toward him. “There is no murderer, brother. It was a terrible accident. Prince Desmond fell off the cliff.”
“Fell? Where? What cliff?” The king’s face was scarlet, spittle formed at the edges of his mouth as he shouted at Jackrun. “You took him there. I saw you and your sister leaving with him this morning.”
“Murderer,” Queen Adela wailed.
“No!” Jackrun said. “A terrible accident. Desmond wanted to jump onto a dragon’s back and fly just as we did. He wanted to prove he could do it too, only he . . . only he—”
The king rounded on Sir Geoffrey. “I sent you to watch over my son. You let him die!” He flew at him and thrust the sword in Sir Geoffrey’s gut, attacking with such speed, even Sir Geoffrey looked surprised as he groaned in agony, crumpled over, and crashed sideways to the floor.
“My God!” Duke Bion leaped between them to prevent a second stab even as Jackrun and I fell to the floor at Sir Geoffrey’s side.
“Uma,” he whispered. I pressed his belly trying to staunch the bleeding with my hand. He had never called me by my first name before. It shook me deeply to hear it now, as if he might be taking his last breath.
Jackrun gripped Sir Geoffrey’s hand and squeezed as the man groaned.
“You will be all right,” I said, panting with rising terror. I couldn’t stop the flow of blood seeping through my fingers onto the floor. Over the queen’s sobs, I heard Lady Tess ordering, “Take this wounded man to the soldier’s infirmary. Now!”
Duke Bion still wrestled with the king, trying to hold him back. “An accident,” he was saying. “Please, brother, release your sword.”
When the men lifted Sir Geoffrey up to carry him out, I drew in behind to follow them to the infirmary. The wound must be stitched before he bled to death. Lady Tess grabbed my arm as I was about to reach the door.
“Father Ezra will look to him, Uma,” she said with quiet urgency. “The queen needs you.”
I looked behind me. The king was at the bedside now, kneeling by his weeping wife. He had laid his bloody sword beside his son’s body. Cold dread filled me seeing the two of them. I knew the medicines Sir Geoffrey needed, but the quee
n’s grief was beyond my skills. How could I possibly help her?
Chapter Eighteen
Pendragon Summer Castle, Dragon’s Keep
Death of Egret Moon
August 1210
THE PASSAGE ECHOED with Queen Adela’s sobs. Her body felt heavy and boneless as I guided her down the hall toward her rooms with Lady Tess. We found Lady Olivia turning down Her Majesty’s bed. I hadn’t seen her that morning when I’d brought the queen her potion. She’d retired to her room with a headache. No headache, no matter how painful, would keep her from her duty now.
The three of us eased Queen Adela onto her canopy bed. Lady Olivia and Lady Tess sat on either side of her, propping her up, coaxing her to drink my sleeping potion. Lady Olivia sang to her until she finally drifted off to sleep. Lady Tess drew the curtains. We exchanged haunted looks in the semidarkness. No one said “she will be all right” or “she will be better soon.” A pitiful raw silence filled the room.
“May I leave her a while?” I asked Lady Tess.
“Do you need to mix more medicines?”
“Yes, my lady.” For the queen, and for Sir Geoffrey if I am not too late.
“First tell me how it happened,” Lady Olivia said.
“I don’t want to speak of it, I—”
“I was told that you were there. You saw the accident. As the queen’s companion, I must know the truth.”
“She is right,” said Lady Tess. “I wasn’t there when the accident happened. Whatever I tell Lady Olivia would only be what I heard from you and Geoffrey and Jackrun. Take a breath, Uma. You will only have to do this once.”
I gripped the bedpost, and I told the story as quickly as I could in a shivering voice, my words choppy. Lady Olivia’s eyes were closed when I finished. She moaned softly, rubbing her temples.
“Do you want Uma to mix you a potion for your headache?” Lady Tess asked.
“No, my lady,” said Lady Olivia, easing herself onto a chair by the bed, preparing for a long day and even longer night. “I will send word to you when she begins to stir, Uma. Be sure to have something ready.”