by K. C. Julius
Yasiha brought her lips close to Borne’s ear so as to be heard above the drumming. “In Olquaria, every dance tells a story. This is one is called hormel sey. It means ‘the maiden’s dream,’ and the dancers are enacting the legend of Umayana, the goddess who has dominion over affairs of the heart. In Olquaria, we believe that if a young woman makes an offering to Umayana, she will win the affection of the one she desires.”
Unbidden, a poem sprang to Borne’s lips:
To reside in the sphere of your fair gaze,
I would cast a gossamer net
o’er the moon reclining on the pool.
For the brush of your lips against mine,
I would harvest the clouds
to pillow your dreams.
For one, tender night in your perfumed bower
I would gather the brightest stars
And so light our way
to sweet desire,
in the bosom
of love’s eternal fire.
Yasiha’s face lit up. “You have read Al-Mubtanni? Where did you find a translation of his work?”
Borne cursed himself inwardly for a fool. “A friend in Gral… translated the poem for me.”
“A very learned friend.” Yasiha tilted her elegant neck, studying him with her dark, luminous eyes. “You are a most interesting man, ser, for a foreigner.”
Borne shook his head. “I’m just a soldier, Your Highness, here to serve the Basileus.”
“Which you appear to be doing rather well.” She inclined her head in recognition of his favored placement on the dais. “You’ve clearly won my uncle’s trust and admiration.”
They both looked toward the emperor, but it was his empress who caught Borne’s eye. She graced him with another smile.
“And not only my uncle’s, it would seem,” Yasiha observed. “You are indeed favored, Ser Borne. There are some who say my aunt is the true power behind the throne.”
Borne raised an amused eyebrow. “But surely not in the Basileus’s hearing.”
The whirling dance had drawn to a close, and now nimble youths bearing bright torches leapt onto the floor. They formed a circle and spun to a single drum’s beat, pirouetting and landing lightly only to spring again in a slow spiral. As more drums joined the first, the pace of the dance accelerated, until the dancers were revolving so swiftly that their torches formed rings of fire around them, encompassing them in the flames.
At the conclusion of the breathtaking display, Borne joined the other guests in waving a square of white linen, the accepted token of appreciation. When he turned to Yasiha, he was surprised to see she’d gone quite pale. She lowered her sweeping lashes, but not before Borne saw the fear in her eyes.
From his place beside the emperor, Kurash was staring openly at the princess. And there was no mistaking the hunger in the hazar’s gaze.
Borne shifted in his seat so that his shoulder blocked the man’s view. “What is it, Your Highness?” he said softly to the princess. “Has the hazar offended you in some way?”
Yasiha flicked her liquid eyes toward him with a little smile, but her hands remained tightly clenched in her lap. “No, not at all. But if you will excuse me, I’m afraid I’m feeling unwell. I beg your pardon, ser.”
Borne rose as she left. His were not the only eyes that followed her as she slipped from the hall. And when Borne looked back at Kurash, he read a clear message in the hazar’s stormy gaze: This woman is off limits to you.
Chapter 16
Halla
The day after Halla witnessed Bria’s death, Lash didn’t come to escort her on her daily outing. As the hours dragged by, she realized how much she’d come to depend on leaving her room to maintain her sense of balance. That night she lay awake, tossing and turning as she confronted the truth: that unless she took action to prevent it, she and her unborn child would soon meet their doom.
So the next morning when she opened her chamber door to find the drakdaemon awaiting her as usual, she had already decided she must attempt an escape at the first opportunity that presented itself.
At her request, she and Lash went down to the port. Halla regretted this choice when they drew near the docks, for the wails of terrified women carried over the water from the fleet of shoreboats wending its way toward the docks. A ship had come in from the north with a fresh cargo of breeders. Her stomach twisted at the thought of the drakdaemons implanting death in these women’s wombs. She averted her eyes from the boats, but she couldn’t shut out the women’s screams, or the roars of the monsters hauling them off.
Lash paid the arrivals no mind, until fierce snarls rent the air. Then he raised his head, his nostrils flaring. It seemed that a rare squabble had broken out over one of the newly arrived women. Lash signaled one of the å Livåri overseers over, then turned to Halla and pointed to a bale of hay awaiting transport to the stables.
“Sit.”
Halla dropped obediently onto the hay and closed her eyes, feigning weariness. Her pulse quickened as she heard Lash and the overseer stride away down the pier. Through the slits of her eyelids, she observed that all work had ceased on the docks, men and monsters alike intent on the fracas.
It was now or never.
Without taking time to weigh her slender odds of success, Halla slid off the bale and lowered herself into the turbid sea.
Scarcely breathing, she ducked under the pier and swam beneath its wooden slats toward the end of the dock, fearing with every stroke that Lash would scent her out. At the end of the pier a scattering of dinghies had been made fast to the pilings, but she knew they would be the first place her keeper would think to look. As soon as he saw she was missing, he and the other drakdaemons would scour every inch of the port and the sea surrounding the docks in search of her. In fact, she was counting on it, for if he went straight to Lazdac instead, she had no chance—not if the wizard employed his magic to ferret her out.
If she could get to one of the small shoreboats tied up at the ships farther out in the harbor, she might use the cover of the carracks to drift unnoticed beyond the great vessels. Then, once night fell, she could row away down the coast. Beyond that, she had no plan.
In any event, she had to make it out to the ships first, and with every moment she delayed she courted discovery.
She reminded herself that she’d grown up swimming in the river that cut through her father’s vast estate, often challenging her brothers to see which of them could hold their breath the longest. None of them had ever beaten her, although the last time they’d had such a contest, Gray had come close, and Halla had seen stars just before she’d pushed after him toward the surface.
Now she had something far more urgent than sibling rivalry driving her—the tiny heart beating under her own.
Drawing a deep breath, Halla dove deep, then plowed through the water beneath the undulating waves. She imagined Nicu and Bria swimming alongside her, urging her on, and despite her fear, she savored being once again the mistress of her own fate. Whatever awaited her when she surfaced, she would not go gently back to confinement.
Ignoring the building pressure in her lungs, she pulled herself steadily forward with sure, even strokes. Three more. Then three more. And then three more still.
At last, the instinct to survive drove her to the surface, where she gulped hungrily at the air. She furiously blinking the salty water from her eyes to discover she was nearly halfway to the nearest of the ships.
But the surge of hope vanished when she cast a look over her shoulder. Four dinghies were cutting through the water and heading straight for her. Lash leaned over the prow of the leading boat, as if willing it to close the distance separating them.
Halla flung herself onward, her heart in her throat. She was chilled to the bone, her muscles aching from the cold and strain of her long swim. She hadn’t a hope of outrunning her pursuers, but she stubbornly knifed thr
ough the water nonetheless, her long legs kicking powerfully in rhythm with her sweeping strokes.
When she looked again, Lash’s dinghy was only three boat lengths away. She plunged down into the murky depths, ignoring the throb of her tiring muscles as she pressed on, prolonging the inevitable moment when Lash dragged her out of the sea and into his boat like a piece of flotsam salvaged from the waves. She knew she must soon surface again or die. Indeed, she suspected she’d waited too long to make it back up to the world of air and light. The shifting sky of pale-blue water wavering above was all that separated her from the Abyss. The roaring in her ears was deafening, and her vision clouded into black spots. In another few heartbeats, she would have no choice but to open her mouth and let the sea take her.
A sharp kick in her stomach forced a bubble of air from her lungs; her baby had moved in her womb for the first time. This life inside her was suddenly more precious than ever, and it spurred Halla upward as her last breath leaked through her lips.
Blindly, she broke the surface, gasping in one shuddering breath of sweet air—just one—before a knife of pain stabbed into her chest.
* * *
The sound of lapping water brought Halla out of the dark, silent fog. Lash’s blade had not killed her, at least not yet. She held herself in waiting for something, something she could not name, but whatever it was, she needed it even more than the salt-sweet air filling her aching lungs.
“Open your eyes.”
The resonant voice struck a chord deep within Halla’s chest, but it was not what she was awaiting.
Then it came—a gentle kick within her womb. The child within her still lived, and that was all that mattered.
Her eyes flew open. Two glowing orbs were looking down at her. They were not those of a drakdaemon. They were emerald, not blood-red, and they held untold wisdom in their depths.
“You’re—”
“I am Emlyn,” the jade dragon replied. “I have come a long way to find you.”
In a daze, Halla pushed herself up on her elbows. She felt bruised and battered, but otherwise whole. She tore her gaze from the dragon’s mesmerizing eyes and scanned the barren rock surrounding them, an island void of vegetation, jutting like a stone table out of the sea. To the north lay another, smaller isle, and beyond it, more pebbled the water off into the hazy distance.
She looked down at herself and saw, through her torn shift, the three concentric circles spiraling her heart. A dazed smile spread over her face.
“Did you… am I really to become dragonfast?” She was seized with a sudden dread. “What… what of my child?”
The dragoness released a long hiss. “That explains the recoil I sensed when I pierced your heart. There is another beating within you. I did not know.”
“Well, now that you do… can you tell me how this piercing will affect it?”
“In truth, I cannot.”
Halla felt the baby turn, as if listening from the womb. The dragon’s strike had not killed it, and what was done, was done—there was no undoing it. She would just have to trust that something as wondrous as a dragonfast binding would not harm her baby.
The spark of excitement within her flared to a warm glow. Since the moment she was introduced to Rhiandra and Ilyria, she’d longed to become dragonfast. “May I ask what determined me as your choice?”
“I went to Mithralyn in search of my sisters, and there learned of you from Elvinor. He told me you are intelligent and fearless, and that Konigur blood runs through your veins. But he mentioned nothing about a pregnancy.”
Halla hugged her knees to her chest. “Did you meet Leif and Maura in the elven realm? And your sisters?”
The smoke from the dragon’s nostrils darkened. “Ilyria and Rhiandra are no longer in Mithralyn. Nor are their bindlings.”
Halla sensed there was more to the story, but she was too exhausted to pursue it at the moment. She contented herself with feasting her eyes on Emlyn’s jade scales. They glittered like shards of precious stone, as did the long black ridge running the length of the dragon’s spine. Emlyn’s head was crowned with three small spikes flanked by two longer outer horns, and in size, she was between the blue and the bronze dragonesses.
She was magnificent.
Emlyn, sensing she was being admired, extended her tail with a flourish to afford Halla an unhindered view of its sinuous elegance.
Halla suppressed a smile. Maura and Leif had often laughed, although out of Ilyria and Rhiandra’s hearing, over their dragons’ vanities, which were so at odds with their solemn wisdom and noble bearing, but she remembered the formality with which her friends had taught her to approach their dragons, and what Maura had said about the power of touch in her bonding with Ilyria.
Slowly, Halla got to her feet, and after taking a moment to steady herself, she made a bow.
After Emlyn returned her salute, Halla straightened. “May I… may I touch you?”
“You may.”
Halla laid her hands over the dragon’s heart and felt heat flow up her arms, bathing her in pure pleasure.
“You weep?” the dragon asked. She blew a soft breath in Halla’s face.
“It’s just that… I feel so honored to be chosen. My happiness would know no bounds if only I knew for sure…”
“You have concern for the child. It is understandable.”
“But it’s not like a binding is something harmful, is it?”
“Not directly. But it is, in its essence, a magical transformation.” Pale-green smoke drifted from Emlyn’s nostrils. “Only time will tell what it means for your young.” The dragon ruffled her delicate wings. “I must take your condition into consideration when deciding your trial. For your own protection, I would prefer to complete your binding at once.”
Halla swallowed hard as she recalled how Maura had plummeted toward the ground, Leif falling in her wake. But they both survived their trials, she reminded herself. And so will I.
She straightened her shoulders. “I’m ready when you are.”
The dragoness gave a low rumble. “It is well, as there is no time to waste. On my way south, I saw the damning evidence of my brothers’ passing over the Isle. They have left havoc in their wake. Ever since they fled Belestar, Rhiandra and Ilyria have been in grave danger.” The smoke from Emlyn’s nostrils darkened to black. “Zal has already killed one of our brothers over this unbridgeable rift between us. He will not now turn away from the course he has chosen. And Aed and Gryffyn are with him. Dragons killing dragons spells grave danger for mankind and elves alike. Such a violation of our law has never happened before. So you must be dragonfast before we return to Drinnglennin. Are you willing and able to fly before the binding is complete?”
As far as Halla was concerned, the sooner they put more distance between them and the Lost Lands, the better. “I have no fear of flying. I’ve already ridden on Ilyria with Maura.”
Emlyn’s eyes widened. “My sister bore you, an unbound mortal, on her back? Very well then—you know what to expect.”
The dragoness dipped her wing, and Halla climbed onto her back.
“After I am dragonfast, can we seek Master Morgan? He must be told of the vaar’s vile work.”
Emlyn swiveled her neck to look at her. “The vaar?”
“His name is Lazdac. He’s—”
Emlyn’s hiss cut her off. “I know who Lazdac Strigori is! He has sworn to destroy our kind. Is it he who is responsible for the abominable beasts I drove off?”
Halla nodded. “Lazdac uses å Livåri women to incubate their eggs. He intends to send these drakdaemons to war—a war to conquer all the Known World. He wants my baby too. It’s somehow important to him that the child’s father was å Livåri and that I have Konigur blood.”
Emlyn growled from deep in her throat, inky smoke leaking from her nostrils. “Lazdac wants to fulfill the old prophe
cy! There is no time to lose—we must see you dragonfast with all speed, Halla. Then we must find your wizard. Do you have any idea where Master Morgan might be?”
Halla hadn’t seen the wizard since he’d departed Mithralyn, a lifetime ago, to escort Maura and Leif to the capital. “My cousin told me he’d gone to seek information about the missing å Livåri somewhere in the southern realms.”
Emlyn snorted. “That doesn’t narrow our search very much, child.”
“We should go to Glornadoor,” said Halla decisively. “It’s where Bria’s family always wintered. The western shore of the realm has long been a gathering place for her people.”
“Very well. It’s as good a place to start as any.” The dragon trundled over the barren rock and unfurled her sea-green wings. “But first, we must attend to your trial. Hold fast!”
Chapter 17
Fynn
At the mouth of the River Tildd, Master Morgan announced it was time to “test the waters,” and begin introducing Fynn to the most prominent nobles along their way.
“We’re passing by some of the most influential fiefs of the southwest,” the wizard pointed out, “and their lords are already up in arms over the Nelvor’s preferential appointments, which have upset the balance of power between the realms.”
Fynn didn’t protest, although he felt far from prepared to be presented to these great lords as their rightful king. But it had been made clear to him that, as Urlion’s heir, he might be the only hope to preserve the Isle as a nation, and that this was essential if they were going to meet the oncoming storms with all the combined force they could muster. And if he could do something to stop the persecution of Grinner’s people, he had to try.
But he couldn’t deny that he wished this birthright hadn’t been so suddenly thrust upon him. He was still coming to terms with the loss of his old life, even though the most important people in it no longer walked among the living. Now he was expected to embrace one that still seemed foreign in so many ways. It was all… just too much. And the stakes were too high. What if he should fail to sway these men of power to their cause?
