King's Dragon

  “Come, Liath.” Hugh grabbed her by the arm, his fingers as sharp as talons, and dragged her forward. She shook his arm off and kept up on her own. He said nothing more, the whole walk back. Nothing more the entire day, but he dogged her movements everywhere, and he hit her any time he thought she might be getting the least rest or respite from the cold.

  She slept fitfully that night. The next day, and the day after, passed the same. And the next, and the next, until the days blended together into one seamless blur of cold misery and she lost track of time passing. The weather remained cold, but it was not yet bitterly cold. She settled her dirty heap of straw well in among the pigs. Trotter liked her best and allowed her to sleep huddled up against his rough back.

  Once, brushing down the horses, she heard Hanna’s voice outside. She ran to the door. There stood Hugh surveying Hanna with coldest contempt.

  “Your young brother is to deliver goods, no one else,” he said. “So I arranged it with your mother.”

  “I beg you, Frater, if you would only let me speak with—”

  “I told you to go.”

  Hanna turned and saw Liath.

  “Do you intend to challenge me, girl?” Hugh demanded.

  There was nothing Hanna could do but leave.

  “Get back to your work,” Hugh snapped to Liath.

  She slunk back inside the stable, denied even the solace of watching Hanna walk away.

  One early morning Ivar appeared on his mare. He was bundled in a bulky fur-lined cape, his face white with cold and distress.

  She was chopping wood. She stopped, staring; she had not seen a familiar face for so long that at first she thought she was dreaming.

  “Liath.” He spoke low and fast. “Come with me. I’ve got a plan. Gero will help to hide you, and then we’ll—” He flung up his head, listening. From inside, Hugh called out to her.

  She ran to Ivar, clutched his hand, jumped to get her belly awkwardly on the horse’s back and swung her leg all the way over. Ivar turned the mare and kicked it forward. It was a sturdy creature, broad of beam, and it seemed able to carry both of them though it could not manage any gait except a jarring trot.

  They made it most of the way to his father’s holding before Hugh caught up to them on his bay gelding. He rode past the struggling mare and pulled around in front before drawing his sword.

  “Are you armed, boy, or are you smarter than I thought?”

  Ivar was alarmed only with a dagger. He stopped.

  “Liath, dismount,” said Hugh.

  Liath dismounted.

  “Liath,” protested Ivar, “you can’t just—”

  “I have not done with you yet,” said Hugh to Ivar. “You can come with me and present your case to Count Harl or I can simply present your folly to him by myself. I don’t care. Liath. Walk beside my horse.”

  She walked, head down. At least walking had the benefit of keeping her almost warm. She stumbled once, not from fatigue but from sheer despair.

  She could not look up as they crossed over the ditch and through the palisade and into the great open yard of Count Harl’s castle. She stared at her feet, at Hugh’s feet, which she followed up the broad path that led to the lord’s hall, up a stone stairway, into the count’s chambers. She heard voices, speaking her name, speaking Ivar’s name. She could not bear to see their staring faces.

  A chatelaine ushered them into Harl’s private chamber. The old count was still in bed, covers heaped around him. A tonsured and clean-shaven cleric wrote to his dictation onto parchment. Ai, the room was so very warm. Liath inched toward the hearth. Hugh grabbed her and jerked her back to stand beside him in a cold eddy of air.

  “Count Harl,” he said curtly. He offered Harl only a stiff nod. It was a remarkable piece of arrogance, and if Liath hadn’t hated him so much she would have admired his astounding vanity: that he, a mere bastard, considered a legitimate count his social inferior. But his mother was a margrave, a prince of the realm, and his family far more powerful than Harl’s. “This stripling of yours has just attempted to steal my slave.”

  Liath risked a glance toward Ivar, who stood by the door. His face was bright red, and a few tears streaked his face. It wasn’t fair that he be humbled so for trying to help her. Yet she dared not speak.

  Harl rubbed at his grizzled beard and considered Hugh with obvious dislike. In the silence, a man marked on the cheek with the brand of the unfree came in to pour fresh coals into the brazier. Liath’s gaze flinched away from him. Harl ignored the slave and turned his gaze to his son. “Is it true, Ivar?”

  “I’ve some silver saved, not enough yet, but … but others have offered to help me make the price. To buy out her debt price.”

  “She is not for sale,” said Hugh smoothly. “Nor will there be any manumission but the one written by my own hand.”

  “You have not answered my question, Ivar.”

  Ivar glanced, searingly, toward Liath, then bowed his head. “Yes, my lord.”

  Harl sighed and looked back at Hugh. “What do you want?”

  “I want nothing except your promise it will not happen again.”

  Hope flared. Could it be possible that Hugh actually feared that Ivar might find a way to free her? Everyone knew Count Harl disliked the frater.

  “Very well,” said Harl. He looked as if he were contemplating maggots in his meat. “It will not happen again.”

  “How can you assure me?” demanded Hugh.

  Count Harl had much the same coloring as his son: Liath watched a flush spread across his lined skin. “Are you doubting my word?” he asked softly. The tone in his voice made her shiver. To gain this man’s dislike was one thing; to gain his enmity, something else.

  Hugh smiled, his ugliest, most insincere smile, made the worse because it affected his beauty not at all. “Certainly not, Count Harl. I would never question your honor. But your son is young and impulsive. And my property is quite valuable to me.”

  For the first time, Harl looked straight at Liath, so hard a gaze that she had no choice but to meet his eyes. He was appraising her—teeth, face, build, youth, strength—and whether he thought her worth unlikely or obvious she could not tell from his expression. At last he looked back at Hugh.

  “You may rest easy, Frater. Your property will remain safe from my son. There is a monastery in Quedlinhame where my first wife gave birth safely in a storm, many years ago now. I have wished for these many years to endow them with some manner of thanksgiving. I intend to send Ivar south to be invested as a monk there. He will trouble you no longer.”

  Liath gasped. Ivar went white. Hugh’s lips moved, not into a smile but into an expression so deeply satisfied it was almost obscene.

  “Now get out,” said Harl brusquely. “If you please. I’ve work to do. Ivar! You will remain with me.”

  Ivar cast her a last, despairing glance as Hugh shepherded her out in front of him. A man-at-arms escorted them down the hill to the palisade wall, where Hugh’s gelding waited, tended by a stableboy.

  “You’ll ride with me,” said Hugh.

  “I’d rather walk.”

  He struck her, hard, and only by instinct did she duck away quickly enough that the blow glanced off the side of her head.

  “You will ride.” He mounted and waited there, the reins of his gelding tight in his hands, until she at last lifted a hand and he pulled her up behind him.

  The ride back was long, and it was silent.

  But he was warm.

  That night winter blew in in earnest. It was cold, bitter cold. She could not sleep. She shuddered, there with the pigs, and rose in the middle of the night and stamped her feet, up and down, up and down, until daylight. She was so tired while she did her work that day that once he came upon her dozing on her feet. Or perhaps twice. Her shoulders and head were so bruised from his beatings that one more made no difference.

  Clouds came the next night and with them snow. That eased things a little, for though it was damper it was slightly war
mer. But all the next week, with snow still blanketing the ground, it was clear. So cold it was, all day. With every scrap of clothing she possessed, still she shivered all day. By evening she was numb with cold. She ached with it. She tried to move constantly, though she was exhausted, even when she was in the kitchen, shifting, stamping, trying to get warmth past the surface and down into her bones. She would never be warm again. It was a constant pain consuming her, the coldness.

  He ordered her out of the warm kitchen at dusk. She shuffled out to the shed—she no longer had the energy to lift her feet—and sat next to Trotter. Even with the pigs it was still cold. She rocked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until the rhythm of her rocking lulled her into stupefaction. It was so cold.

  She realized that she was going to die if she stayed out here. Not this night, but another one, tomorrow perhaps, or the next night, or the one after that. She wondered if she cared. Ai, Lady, and at once she knew, was horrified to know, that she did care. It was like a tiny, hated fire burning deep inside, that will to live.

  “I don’t want to die,” she whispered. Her lips were too dry, too cracked with cold, too stiff, to form the words. She shuddered convulsively. Ai, Lady, she had not even the energy for that; there were not even tears left her. She was going to die, and she did not want to.

  At first, seeing the light, she could not imagine what it might be. The athar, the spectacle, come down from the heavens? It staggered, swayed, bobbing up and down until she thought she was dreaming, seeing visions. But the light brought a breath of warmth, halting before her clouded gaze. It was the lamp.

  “Liath.” His voice was soft. “Come in now, Liath.” He might have been coaxing a hurt child, or a wounded dog. “Come in now.”

  She shuddered, rocking. He placed a hand on her shoulder, gently, to stop her. “Liath,” he said in the same quiet, soothing voice, “come in now.” Then he removed his hand. And waited.

  For the space of ten breaths, fought in, fought out, she just sat there. She was numb with cold. She ached with it, down to her heart. Anything was better than this.

  She struggled, trying to get to her feet, and once he saw that she was trying to get up, he helped her. Only helped her, never pushed her, just guided, once her feet set off of her own choice for the kitchen.

  It was gloriously, marvelously warm. Steam rose, or so it seemed to her, until she saw that he had made a bath, hauled the water and heated the water by himself. The tub sat in front of the roaring fire in the hearth. She just stood there while he unwrapped her filthy blanket, while he helped her out of her filthy clothing, carefully removing each piece. He handled these things fastidiously, with his gloves on, but once she was naked he stripped the gloves from his hands and rolled up his sleeves and helped her into the warm water.

  The warmth hurt, like a hundred prickling tiny needles, elf-shot, stabbing her all at once. She wept dry tears. He scrubbed her with a stiff brush, chafing her skin, and that hurt even more, but she did not have the energy to protest.

  With the pain came warmth, flooding down through her skin. Heat streaked off the fire. The hot water seeped into her flesh, into her bones. Periodically he would rise and fetch more hot water from the kettle for the bath; twice he disappeared outside with the buckets and filled up the huge kettle with water so cold it hissed as he poured it in.

  He took a clean, soft cloth and washed her, her hair, her face, her hands and chest and abdomen, her hips and her thighs, her calves and her feet. While he washed her he sang, low, in his beautiful voice, a sinuous line of chant, only notes, no words. She was sinking with lassitude, with warmth. But she was still numb.

  He took her by the hands and lifted her from the water. With a soft cloth he dried her. He wrapped her in a blanket of a fine plush weave and stood back from her.

  He said nothing. He simply watched her. He did not smile, or frown. He had almost no expression, or at least no expression she could understand, on his face. But she had long since passed the point where she might have gone back out with the pigs. Da always said, “There’s no use swearing vows if you don’t mean to keep them.”

  She turned and walked down the narrow corridor to his cell. Two lamps burned, their light twin fires. The brazier glowed red with heat. The Dariyan lesson book of magic lay open on the table. She did not even glance at it but went to the bed and sat on its edge.

  He followed her. Now he closed the door behind him and stood, leaning against it, to stare at her. His sleeves were still rolled up, revealing his pale, muscled forearms and their fine down of light hair.

  “Will you teach me Jinna?” he asked. His voice was still soft, and his words sounded more like a question asked out of curiosity than like a charge driven to win the battle. Indeed, he almost sounded surprised.

  She nodded. That was all. That was everything.

  “Ah,” he said. Then he was silent.

  She finally looked up, because his silence was so odd. He was studying her. His expression was disturbing the more because he looked nakedly hungry.

  “You don’t even know what you are, do you?” he asked. “A treasure-house, as it says in the holy book. ‘My bride is a garden locked, a treasure-house barred. I have come to the garden, my bride, and I have eaten my honey. I have drunk my wine. Eat, friends, and drink until you are drunk with love.’”

  Unbidden, the next stanza rose in her mind as clearly as if she heard the words spoken aloud: I sleep, but my heart is awake. Come, beloved, I will open the door.

  But she sat, as still as the bitter cold air outside, and watched while he undressed in front of her. Her flesh might be warm, now, might even be awake, but her heart had frozen straight through. She simply watched, unable to feel anything, until at last he was naked. Then she blushed and looked modestly away. That made him laugh.

  In an instant he was beside her. He held her with one hand supporting her back and lowered her onto the luxurious softness of the featherbed. Stripping the blanket from her, he covered them both with the feather quilt.

  “You’re still cold,” he whispered, running his hands down her arms and up her abdomen to her breasts.

  “Liath, say something to me.”

  This close, he was overpowering. She gathered up enough courage to meet his gaze. What she saw there cracked some of the ice off her numbness. Tears stung at her eyes. She turned her head away and shut her eyes and lay rigid in his arms. But she did not otherwise move or try to escape.

  “I know what you want,” she said softly. “But it’s locked away. It’s locked away, and you’ll never get it.”

  “We aren’t speaking of the book anymore, are we, my beauty?” He was a little amused, a little angry, but he shifted, embracing her, and he sighed, and suddenly his skin, against hers, went from cool to warm to hot. He said, under his breath, so quiet she barely heard him, “‘You who sit in my garden, my bride, let me also hear your voice.’”

  His voice trembled, he was so overwhelmed by feeling, not just passion, what others called lust, but something stronger, something more frightening. He wanted not just her body, not just the book. He wanted her. There were deeper things still, things she only now realized might exist, the child of two sorcerers, deaf to magic but hiding something so far inside herself that even she could not see it.

  But he could. If Liath had feared him before, it was nothing to the fear she felt now. He had enough training, enough knowledge, to see. He had sight, that allowed him to see past the seeming. For now, right now, as Hugh shifted against her, caressing her, she saw what the truth must be.

  Da had been running all those years to protect her. To hide her. Whoever—or whatever—had killed her mother now wanted her. She was the prize, the treasure. Only she did not know why.

  Hugh sighed, his breath warm and sweet against her cheek. She kept her eyes clenched shut.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said softly. “I’ll not be rough with you, not here. Not ever, here.”

  He knew what he was doing.

/>   She found the city, standing fast in her memory. She set foot on the white shore against which lake water lapped in slow ripples as even as her heartbeat, and she ascended the spiraling avenue paved with marble, its seams so perfectly joined that it appeared as one smooth flat endless surface, twisting ever tighter as it approached the height. And as she climbed, as she passed through each higher gate, seven in all, she locked them each one behind her until she came to the summit.

  She found the frozen tower of her heart and barred it with vines and thorns and spears of iron. Inside she went by the single door and up a ladder to the highest room, to the chamber of doors that Da had given her; this chamber only he had envisioned for her, four doors, north, south, east, and west, and a fifth door, set impossibly in the center of the room, which was locked even to her. Each door she locked with a brass key, locking herself in. Only in the door that opened to the north did she limn the shade of a door, a secret door that led into wilderness. There she laid a little path through trials great and small, through forests trackless and ways mysterious, to obscure it from view, so that only one who truly knew her heart might find this way in. Into that wilderness, into the trackless, tangled wild lands, she threw the key. If any man sought that key, let him look at his own peril.

  She clung to that, to that vision, to save herself.

  Hugh was gentle. He was warm. He spoke sweet words to her. At last, he slept.

  She lay awake, sealing the city of memory shut, each wall seamless and strong, until she was safe within it. Until she was alone and unreachable but for the little path where Hanna might enter, undisturbed. At last she allowed herself to relax, although Hugh still circled her with a heavy arm. At last, in the marvelously soft, the gloriously warm bed, she slept.