Dragon’s Fate and Other Stories

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  But now the town danced.

  He pressed his toes to the wood floor. No one had told him where in the town they’d put him and his brothers, but he suspected an out-of-the-way building, a storehouse or the rooms over an empty shop. Not a lot of activity happened, and mostly he’d spent the last week in silence.

  And now revelry raged outside.

  He’d climbed out of his bed long enough to go down to the river with his brothers and light their parents’ pyre. The flames had licked the sky and told the world of the Dracae’s new triad as much as they freed his parents’ souls.

  Timothy had not cried. He’d punched a Shifter instead. The Dracas-Human had intervened.

  Marcus had stayed with the flames until they cooled enough he could gather ashes.

  Daniel had sat on a rock and watched the beacon of his Parcae-dom scream into the sky. The Great Sir had joined him for a longer time than he’d expected, and made soothing patterns on his hide, which helped. But Daniel returned to his bed at dawn anyway.

  And now the town celebrated.

  He shambled toward the door.

  Cool night air slapped him hard in the face. The door opened onto a porch that circled the top floor of the building and faced the wide, open alley between the building and the lower-to-the-ground shops across the way.

  From the porch, he could see the Dracae’s manor.

  Dragontown was large—large enough that the fortifications encircled many more buildings than were in the village—but the manor was clearly visible from several places in the town. Tonight, the stone building was well-lit, with fires blazing in both the windows and around the main entrance.

  The beat of pounding drums rolled through the entire town. At the manor, both dragons pulsed and flashed, and wove around the horde of naked, dancing humans.

  Ladon carried a woman up to a dais and set her on her feet in front of the crowd. She, like him and all the other humans, was mostly naked. The people cheered.

  Daniel recognized his sister-in-law’s hips and her sways. Ingund, the dragons’ “virgin,” was about to officially become part of the Dracae’s community.

  The Dracas-Human led an also almost-naked Timothy up to the dais. More cheering followed.

  “It’s Beltane,” a woman’s voice said to Daniel’s right.

  He yipped and jumped. He hadn’t seen anyone when he opened the door.

  Livia Sisto leaned against the railing right next to him, her elbows on the wood and her back to the party. “You can go down, Daniel. Join in.” She nodded over her shoulder.

  “Is Ladon going to fuck Ingund?” Such a stupid question to ask, but like so many other times in his life, his questioning mind had taken control.

  Livia laughed. “Only if she wants to.” She shook her head. “The Dracos and the Dracas are godlings, Daniel,” she said. “As godlings, they stand in for the gods—old and new, good and bad, warm and cold.”

  Livia Sisto pushed off the railing. “All parts of the ceremony rest on the decisions of the new addition to the Legion. Part of what’s going on down there is the bringing in and the acceptance of the new. Ingund represents the future, and she has been instructed to lead the event, and to show her strength, convictions, and desires so that the Legion can chart its way into the changing what-will-be.”

  “Legion?” Ingund was not a warrior.

  Though she had asked if she could learn to fight.

  Livia turned around to watch the celebration. “Any large fighting force needs support personnel. Everyone who lives here, in the Draconis Moenia, is Legion support one way or another.” She waved her hand at the party. “This is tradition. It builds community. But it also reinforces for the people that the chosen are not chattel.”

  On the dais, Ladon scooped Ingund close, dipped her low, and kissed her with a dramatic flair. The crowd burst into wild cheer. When he set her on her feet, he held her hand high as if declaring her the winner of a glorious battle.

  The crowd erupted again.

  Ingund jumped into Timothy’s arms. Literally jumped across the dais and kissed him with as much passion as she had at the watering hole by the river. Ladon laughed, as did his sister. Then they pushed the couple toward the manor’s door.

  “Welcome to the world of the Legio Draconis, future-seer,” Livia Sisto said.

  Daniel turned his back to the crowd. Why hadn’t his brother roused him for the ceremony?

  Livia Sisto flicked his shoulder. “Not everything is about you, young man.”

  “But if we are to be part of the community, we should be part of the community,” he said.

  Livia laughed. “Yes.”

  Daniel did not like head games. No one should play head games with a Fate, anyway.

  Livia leaned closer. “I told them I believed you needed rest more than excitement.” She stood straight again. “I understand a broken heart. Not all broken hearts are mended by watching the theatrics of your brother taking his wife for Beltane sex.”

  “Perhaps not,” Daniel said. The moment was past, anyway, so it wasn’t as if he could look and see.

  Livia shook her head. “You would have been fine tonight. It’s tomorrow I worried about.”

  He looked her up and down. “Why do you care?” She had made her distaste for Fates known.

  She didn’t answer, only straightened her bracers. “We have other business, you and I.”

  Business? “I don’t have my talisman,” he said. He was pretty sure Timothy carried it, for the ceremony.

  She nodded. “I know.” She nodded toward the steps. “It’s not a future-seeing question.”

  He didn’t want to deal with others’ questions. He had too many of his own. “Then what is it?”

  Livia Sisto watched his eyes. “I think you should speak to him yourself, brother,” she said.

  There was another person with them. A man. Someone he had not noticed until now, and not just because of Livia’s calling scents.

  No, this man blended into the shadows.

  He perched like a bird of prey on the rail at the end of the porch, next to the steps down to the alley. A quiver rested on his back and he’d drawn his hood over his head to hide his face.

  All his clothes—his tunic and leg leathers, his quiver, bracers, and leather breastplate, even his gloves and boots—were the same deep indigo of Papa’s assassin’s garb.

  For a split second, for a moment that was not—could not—be real, Daniel thought Papa had survived. That his spy training had somehow kept him alive.

  But no, this man was taller than Papa, and wider at the shoulders. He was not Daniel’s parent. His parents were forever gone.

  The man landed silently on the porch’s wooden slats. No creaks. No thumps. He planted his hand on the rail and lowered his legs in a way that, somehow, kept him completely in the shadows.

  “He’s come for Corbus’s wares,” she said. “He’s here to take the tools of the assassin’s son to the assassin’s daughter.”

  The man walked toward Daniel, again in complete silence—which was not possible. Nor could Daniel see his face, even though they were now within touching range of each other. “You’re an enthraller, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Livia smiled. “The Guard honors your papa, Daniel,” she said.

  This was why Livia kept him from the Beltane festivities. Not because of his heartbreak. Because this spy needed to sneak into Dragontown.

  “Does your father know you cavort with the assassins?” he asked Livia.

  The man’s hand appeared on Daniel’s shoulder as if his movement of lifting it off his belt and placing it on Daniel’s person had been edited out of time.

  “You are an enthraller,” Daniel breathed. Not just any enthraller, either. One with exceptional concealment capabilities.

  But Dragontown was full of Shifters with similar abilities, and something told Daniel that the two Dracae were not as susceptible to enthrallings as everyone else, hence the sneaking.

  “Will you allow him to
take your father’s wares back to your aunt?” Livia asked.

  Bargain, his seer whispered. “I want a boon,” he said.

  The man lifted his hand off Daniel’s shoulder.

  “Speak,” Livia said, “though know that asking for Faustus’s head will not be heeded.”

  Daniel nodded. The fate of that particular Prime Fate was not his to determine. It never was, and he knew that no matter how long either of them lived, it never would be. Faustus’s story—his story and the stories of the Dracae—was just beginning.

  “Faustus took someone dear to me,” he said. “My triad cannot see his fate.”

  The man nodded. His hand returned to Daniel’s shoulder. He squeezed.

  “He will return one day, with news,” Livia said.

  Daniel turned away. He looked out over the festival of renewal happening right now in front of the heart of Dragontown. “Thank you,” he said.

  Livia said something to the man in a language Daniel did not understand, and then he was gone, missing from Daniel’s perception. He knew his papa’s weapons would also vanish, and he knew that he would need to instruct his brothers never to speak of it. Never to reveal.

  And that maybe, one day, the spy would return with what Daniel needed to stitch back together a shattered heart.

  Maybe. He had until then to learn how to be a Fate who could see through shadows.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Three years later…

  The dreams began the night following the meeting with the spy.

  Not far from the old Roman ruins, near the quiet eddies of the bubbling pool, under the shelter of a gentle overhang, the rock along the river flattened into a tableau. In Daniel’s dream, the rock grew upward as if on a mountain and not low in a valley. Its flatness spread farther and wider than it did in real life, as if he were much smaller than his now-nineteen-year-old body’s tall and sinewy-strong frame. And in the sky, hanging above it all, the red, red sun hung too large and roared too loud.

  Daniel stood on the tableau, his face turned up to what he knew was not a correct sun, as the waters of the river slithered around his ankles. The sun bit and stung, again too large and too loud, and Daniel did not understand why.

  Then a cold ocean beach, horses, and the center of the blood-jewel around the neck of someone he could not see.

  The bed jolted, swaying a good hand-span away from the wall before slamming back against the rough boards.

  Daniel jolted as well, the dream popping like a surfacing frog’s fart, leaving behind only a pungent ethereal hint before vanishing into the dim early morning light.

  He rubbed his face. The massive, handsome morpher to his left twitched his nose and continued his snoring. On his right, the morpher’s sweet-faced companion moaned, but also continued with his sleepy bliss.

  If left to their own devices, Shifters would sleep through the end of the world.

  Something metal hit the other side of the wall behind the head of Daniel’s bed. It bounced off with a loud, ringing twang, and Daniel suspected that his brilliant and lovely sister-in-law had once again found fault with his brother Timothy’s behavior.

  “Get out!” echoed through the wall. Another bang quickly followed—one that, thankfully, did not move Daniel’s bed.

  Timothy yelled a response Daniel did not care to understand. Ingund screeched. Their baby cried.

  Daniel rubbed his face again.

  His two companions rolled and rustled their naked bodies as they began to stir. Daniel’s family’s noise seemed enough to overtake the Shifters’ efficient abilities to ignore the obvious, and they tugged crosswise at the blanket. They’d been a fun evening. Morphers were… entertaining. Too bad Daniel didn’t remember their names.

  He quickly asked his seer but got no whispers or images indicating that he’d remember any time in the near future. His brother Marcus wouldn’t be much help either, and would refuse to use his past-seer to supply Daniel with the information he sought.

  Someone slammed the door to Timothy and Ingund’s rooms and stomped out onto the porch that ran the full length of the upper level of their house. After their activation—and after Daniel came out of his fever funk—they’d supposedly “earned” the building by proving their worth to the Legion. Daniel, though, knew the giant named Andreas Sisto had decided that he’d rather have three Fates living in one place instead of scattered throughout his domain. So Daniel lived in the rooms on the north side of the upper level, and Timothy, Ingund, and little Brunhild on the south side. The porch extended from the external staircase across the entire front of the building, allowing access to both apartments. Marcus lived in the rooms behind their “shop,” in the house’s lower level.

  The day after he’d made the deal with the spy, the man named Faustus changed his mind about attacking the Dracae. Daniel knew before it happened, and Timothy knew the moment the man announced it to his troops. The brothers informed Andreas. He asked many questions, nodded once or twice, and began the process of fully integrating them into the community.

  Then Faustus completely, utterly disappeared from Daniel’s seer. Andreas scowled about this as much as the Dracae scowled about the presence of Fates in their home, and announced that he would “train you three” because “you obviously need it.”

  The four members of the Dracae kept their distance. The brothers rarely spoke to either human or saw the dragons, though Ladon and his beast came down almost daily from the manor at the head of the town to work in the blacksmith’s shop. He and his beast had taken the brothers’ talisman, the Great Sir holding it out on the tip of one of his six enormous talons, and declared that they would split and reshape the metal, so that the brothers could each wear his own.

  Ladon dismantled their Legion insignia, and a silver and gold six-taloned dragon now hung on a chain around Daniel’s neck. Whether Ladon had deliberately refashioned their talismans to be insignia-like but not true insignias, Daniel didn’t know. His seer didn’t work that way.

  Marcus’s did, but Daniel’s brother refused to “spy” into the workings of Ladon’s mind. “Gaining the trust of the Dracae is more important than your slighted feelings, brother,” Marcus had said.

  Not that it mattered. Daniel did not foresee either of the Dracae trusting their Prime Fates anytime soon, though since Brunhild’s birth, Ladon had seemed less annoyed by their presence.

  The man and his dragon appeared to have a soft spot for children, even the children of Fates.

  The bigger of Daniel’s two companions sneezed. He flopped onto his back, his broad, muscular chest rising and falling and his significant endowment bobbing as he inhaled deeply.

  Daniel had yet to meet a morpher with a small cock. The Shifters, at least, had their priorities straight.

  Neither Timothy nor Marcus approved of Daniel’s “befriending” of the local Shifter community, Marcus often making a point of referring to Daniel’s activities with words best left unspoken in front of ladies and small children.

  Then he’d follow up his comments about “friends” with a question: “How do you think Antonius would feel about your behavior, Daniel?”

  He’d never hit Marcus before. Timothy, yes. Several times while they were children. But never Marcus. Never his brother who carried identical features to his own. But that question pulled to the surface thoughts Daniel wished left drowned in the muddy depths of his soul.

  They’d been stupid kids, he and Antonius. Nothing more and nothing less. If Timothy’s near-constant fights with his wife taught Daniel anything, it was that the intensity of love one feels at sixteen cannot stand against the complexity of the life one must lead when one must act as an adult.

  That was all. It could not have been more. Not after three years. Not without word from the spy.

  Yet even now, when Daniel glanced at the smaller and sweeter of the two men in his bed, he couldn’t help but remember the depth of Antonius’s brown eyes, or his warm scent, or his wonderful touch. Nor could he forget his Papa�
�s words: “When you know what-will-be, the what-is is already pregnant. You lose the option—the journey and the joy—of finding your way to that child.”

  He hadn’t understood at the time. He did now. Knowing the outcome stripped away much of the joy of the journey.

  When Antonius saved them from Faustus—when he fell into the river—Daniel lost his chance with the person and a journey he knew would have been good. Good for Daniel. Good for Antonius. Hell, good for Daniel’s brothers and his sister-in-law. Antonius would have brought goodness to the entire Draconis Moenia.

  But he was gone, vanished from all their seers, much like Faustus. Gone for everything but good.

  “Get out of my bed,” Daniel growled. “Go back to your wives.”

  More stomping echoed from outside, along the patio.

  Timothy is about to pound on the door, whispered from Daniel’s seer.

  His larger companion slapped his hand onto Daniel’s upper thigh and squeezed. “The wife wants you to come to our home next time. She’s upset that I get all the fun. Though she says your brothers are better looking and have better attitudes.” He snorted once as his fingers worked upward. “I told her the future-seeing made up for it.”

  Daniel pulled away. “Get out.” He gave the smaller of the two a shove.

  “Hey!” The man fell out of the bed. “What troubles the Fate this morning?”

  Timothy pounded on Daniel’s door. “Brother!” he yelled. “Stop your pathetic whoring and do something useful for once!”

  The skin of the larger of his companions heated. His face hardened—literally hardened, being that he was a morphing Shifter and all—and he sat up. “Fucking Fates,” he muttered as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. “No wonder the Dracas wish to gut every last one of you.”

  Daniel rubbed his face again. No, the Dracas did not wish to gut every last one of them. No doubt his larger companion correctly assessed the Dracas’ opinions of Parcae in general. But Daniel? Neither the human nor the dragon halves of the Dracas paid him much heed. Marcus? They didn’t seem to care. Timothy?