by K. C. Julius
Something metallic clanged behind her, and Halla whirled around to find a sword, tarnished with age, lying on the slats at her feet. She hefted it, then tested its balance with a vigorous swing.
As if summoned by this action, a blazing bull-like monster crashed onto the bridge directly in her path. It stood upright like a man, its body glowing deep scarlet, as though the embers of a fire smoldered under its horny skin, but Halla was riveted by its huge, clawed paws. Heat poured from the beast like a blacksmith’s forge, and she leapt back as blue flames shot from its eyes. With a bellow, it swiped at her with its treacherous talons.
She stumbled back, and when the creature crouched and gathered itself to spring, she lifted the sword. The hilt had begun to grow warm, and she had to blink away the sweat dripping from her brow.
The beast leapt. Halla dropped down and rolled under its exposed belly, thrusting her blade upward. She gave a crow of triumph when she felt the satisfying jolt of contact, but she was forced to drop the sword, as the metal was now burning her hands.
The creature came tumbling down, but Halla didn’t wait; she was already sprinting across the bridge. When she cast a wild glance over her shoulder, the entire bridge was alight and the fiery beast was barreling after her on all fours, closing the distance between them with terrifying speed. With her heart in her throat, Halla levered herself up onto the bridge railing, and kept running from the fireball of a beast hurtling after her.
“Come on, then!” she shouted over her shoulder.
It was all in the timing now. She felt the bridge sway violently, signaling that the creature had leapt onto the railing behind her. The heat emanating from it was nearly unbearable now; it was almost upon her.
Just as she sensed it lunging at her, she spun around to face it and threw herself into a backward flip that dropped her off the railing and back onto the bridge. The firebeast roared after her, but she pivoted out of its path, and it shot past her and plunged over the far railing. It hit the water in a hiss of steam, and the lake closed over its head, leaving barely a ripple.
Halla looked down to see that one of its talons had ripped through her tunic. The gash it had left was not deep, but it burned as if she’d been raked by a hot poker. She gritted her teeth against the pain and continued onward.
The rocky island ahead appeared much smaller than it had from the lakeshore; indeed, the ruined castle took up most of its surface. Halla stepped onto the island, then edged around the towering structure until she’d made a complete circuit. There were no apertures in the closely aligned columns, and no stairs.
The eerie silence deepened. Halla leaned against the castle wall, waiting for what seemed an eternity for something to happen. When nothing did, she started around the ruin a second time to see if there was something she’d missed. She was only a quarter of the way around when she stepped into water lapping at the base of the castle. Behind her, the path she’d just traversed was now underwater.
And below the lake’s dark surface, things—unidentifiable things—were milling.
She knew instinctively that she didn’t want to discover what they were. Which meant her only option was to climb.
She found a narrow handhold within a seam in the castle wall, then kicked off the ground, gasping at the jabbing pain in her side. As she hauled herself upward, she tried not to think about what awaited her above, or what she would do if the water continued to rise before she could complete whatever she must for this part of her trial. She’d made her choice. Now she would have to live—or die—with it.
She concentrated on the task at hand, pacing herself and patiently seeking out crevices in the stone wall. As a young girl, she’d often raced Florian and Bria to the top of Gothor’s Chimney, a stony scarp in Lords Wood. But in those days, she hadn’t been climbing for her life, and that of her unborn child’s.
Trust in your dragon, to your peril. A person could interpret that in opposing ways. Perhaps she’d misunderstood the old wizard’s caution completely. Too late for doubts now, she told herself. Climb.
She knew enough not to look down, but her fingers were beginning to cramp, and she seemed to be making little progress up the wall. The stabbing pain in her side forced her to frequently pause to ease it with measured breaths. From the corner of her eye she could see the lake, burnished with pale, silver light. The charred remains of the bridge were now half-submerged and overhung by lowering dark clouds.
Halla set her jaw and pushed off with her right foot, only to have a piece of the wall give way beneath it with a sharp crack. She scrabbled for another purchase, which she mercifully found, then pressed close against the stone, her legs trembling from strain.
The rubble plunked into the water below. That could have been her plummeting into the lake—unless Emlyn caught her, as Rhiandra and Ilyria had caught Leif and Maura. Was this what she was supposed to do?
She shivered in the rising wind, aware she was reaching the end of her strength, and felt the first tendrils of a creeping despair.
Something slapped the wall over her head. A rope, snaking in the air just beyond her reach. Above it, the wall disappeared into a recess, suggesting there might be a ledge on which she could rest.
Halla inched up toward the twisting cord, then braced herself as best she could and made a grab for it.
On her first attempt, her hand came up empty, and for a heart-stopping moment she nearly lost her grip on the wall.
“For you, Emlyn,” she growled, and lunged again for the pirouetting rope.
A gust of wind slammed into her as her fingers closed around the line, blowing her off the wall to dangle in the air. With an effort of sheer will, she grabbed hold of the rope with her other hand and hauled herself upward.
There was indeed a ledge, and with the last of her strength, Halla pulled herself onto it, then fell flat on her back, her chest heaving. Spears of lightning pierced the iron sky as the wind howled and whined around her. She saw that she had climbed as high as was possible, for from this point upward, the elements had burnished the spires of the castle to a surface as smooth as eggshell.
Halla crawled across the ledge and peered into the dark crevice on its far side. Iron rungs led into the bowels of the narrow castle. She lowered herself onto them just as the first drops of rain pelted down, feeling her way in the gloom and praying a loose rung wouldn’t send her tumbling to her death.
In for a cent, in for a sovereign, she thought wryly, as she continued doggedly down.
Her foot struck stone sooner than she’d anticipated. She’d made it to the base of the castle.
“Now what?” she said aloud to the pitch black.
As her words echoed around her, a subtle shifting of the musty air preceded a jolt that knocked Halla off her feet. The floor beneath her had buckled, and stones began to rain down from above. Halla raised one arm to shield her head as she scrambled blindly over the broken stone, reaching out with her free hand to find some shelter from the hailing rocks. Her fingers struck a wall, which she groped along until she felt a hinge beneath her fingers. A door.
She felt around until she found an iron ring set in the stone, then pulled on it with all her might.
It didn’t budge. With a cry of frustration, she banged the ring hard against the stone.
“Open, damn you!”
The words were barely out of her mouth before the floor dropped away completely, plunging her into shockingly cold water. When she broke the surface, it was to the sound of thunder crashing overhead. She hoped it was thunder, anyway, and not the tower about to collapse around her. Feeling a faint waft of air on her face, she quickly stroked toward it, trying not to think about the pale things she’d seen floating below the lake’s surface.
Her hand struck stone, and she felt a stirring of panic. Was there to be no end to these obstacles? She thought of Master Torrin, the reeve at Lorendale, and how he used to say nothing worth anything i
n life ever comes easily. Remembering the kindly man gave her courage to push on, following the wall until, at last, she felt the bars of a narrow sluice. She peered down it, and her heart leapt when she saw daylight at its far end.
The little gate opened with a tug, and she slipped down the chute to emerge into the silver lake. The water had receded once more to expose the rocky base on which the castle stood, and the towering thunderheads had blown past, leaving a faint mist hanging over the lake.
Halla hauled herself onto the island, bruised and bone-weary. But there was no dragon in sight. It seemed her trial was not yet at an end.
She felt a glimmer of hope when ripples broke the smooth surface of the lake, and she saw a narrow wooden boat poking out from a clump of low bushes to glide toward her. The small dinghy had seen better days; its wood was grey with age, but the ribs were intact, it was dry, and there were battered oars stowed in its belly.
Halla stepped into the boat, and it began to drift of its accord back the way she’d originally come.
Lovely, she thought. I won’t have to row. But as soon as this thought crossed her mind, the dinghy came to a halt and the small wake of their passage disappeared, leaving the surface smooth as silk once more. Halla gave a wry laugh, then fitted the oars into the oarlocks and set to rowing.
It took only three strokes to make clear she wasn’t making any headway. She glanced over her shoulder to see if they’d snagged on something, then screamed and scrambled to the stern.
A corpse occupied the bow seat.
Halla was halfway over the gunnel before she saw the swirling creatures just below the lake’s surface. At first glance, they appeared to be pale, dead fish—until their jaws opened to reveal their spiked fangs. Halla snatched back the leg she’d thrust over the side just before one of the little monsters snapped off her foot.
“Bring the boat about, Halla.”
Halla slowly turned to face the corpse. His eye sockets were hollow, and only remnants of decaying muscle clung to the bones of his face, but Halla recognized the laurel tree with red berries stitched onto his moldy shroud.
“Take us back to the castle,” the dead man intoned in her father’s voice.
Halla felt certain that she should not obey this request. She began to row toward the far shore, hoping the path that had led her to this horrid place would still be there. Swinging the oars over the water, she dimly noted that the water droplets falling from their blades made no imprint on the lake’s surface.
“Papa?” she whispered, when she could take the ominous silence no more. “Is it really you?”
“I’m sorry, Halla. I came to tell you. I’m sorry.”
Halla wanted to say there was nothing he need apologize for, but it wasn’t true. All the hurt she’d held bottled up over the years welled up to close her throat.
“I never stopped loving you, Halla,” her father’s corpse said. “Before Nolan was born, I planned to flout our tradition and make you my heir. The papers were drawn up in preparation to announce my decision to my vassals. But then your mother fell pregnant with your brother, and she begged me not to.
“I never stopped loving you,” her father repeated, his voice barely more than a sigh. “It was all your mother’s fault.”
Halla had always known her mother was accountable for the loss of her close connection with her father. It was Lady Inis’s decrees that kept Halla inside, spending tedious hours learning the art of genteel conversation and the strictures to which a young lady of noble birth was expected to adhere.
She pulled harder on the oars, her pent-up anger flaring anew.
“It’s not too late to claim your rights,” her father urged. “I kept the papers in my tower. You have only to find them, then Lorendale will be yours.”
Halla slowly lowered the oars. “Truly, Papa? Is this what you truly wanted for me all along?”
His reply was music to her ears. “Always, Halla. Just turn the boat back.”
Lorendale. It was hers for the taking.
“You murdered me.”
Halla spun around, the oars slipping from her grasp. Nicu, or rather what was left of him, now slumped in her father’s place. Moldering tissue hung from his exposed bones, an inky fluid seeping from it. One of his eyes was missing, but the remaining one glared at her.
“Turn the boat around and row,” he said.
Halla swallowed the bile that rose to her mouth, then dragged on the oars, her sobbing breath ragged in her ears. “I couldn’t watch you suffer… for the love of the gods, Nicu—they were torturing you, and would have murdered you anyway!”
“And now you will murder our child,” he growled.
“No, I won’t!”
Halla rowed harder, propelling them closer to the shore. Tears streamed down her face, and all she wanted was for Nicu’s corpse to disappear, taking his judgment with him.
“If you become dragonfast, it will be at the cost of our child’s life!” Nicu cried. “To bind with your dragon is to forsake our baby.”
“That’s not true!” she cried, sobbing, straining at the oars with all the strength she had left.
“You know it. Once your binding is complete, you must still honor your vow. War is coming and you will have no choice but to fight. You will either carry our child with you into the fray, or risk leaving it orphaned, a half-caste bastard adrift in the world!” Her dead lover’s voice took on a tenor of pleading. “Åthinoi,” he whispered. A knife of pain twisted in Halla’s heart at hearing the endearment on his cold lips. “Åthinoi… if ever you loved me, turn back. Turn back, for the sake of our child.”
As if in a trance, she pulled on the right oar and pushed the left forward. She would go back to the castle. She would do what both her father and Nicu asked of her.
And then what?
With a lurch, the boat listed, and someone—or something—ponderous settled in the bow. Steeling herself, Halla turned once more.
Three corpses were now pressed together on the narrow plank. Ilie held his severed head in his lap, his one remaining hand resting on its crown. Bria was as Halla had last seen her, her torso torn open from the violence of the drakdaemon who had grown in her womb. Only Bria’s old baba, seated between them, appeared unmarred, until Halla saw the dried blood crusting the corners of her mouth and staining her white shawl.
Ilie stared accusingly at Halla. “You witnessed my wife’s death, yet did nothing to save her.”
Halla had to force herself not to look away. “I tried to, truly I did—but the vaar, he… he held me back!”
“You were her åthinoi. You forsook her!”
Halla lifted her hands in supplication to Bria, whose silence was somehow worse than Ilie’s condemnation. “Bria, if there had been any way, I swear…”
Baba Veta leaned across Bria and spat a stream of something dark over the side of the dinghy, then raised a trembling hand and pointed at Halla. “You lie, gajo! I foresaw your betrayal in the lines of your palm.”
The memory of the old woman dropping her hand as if it had burned her flashed through Halla’s mind. “Whatever you saw is beyond my control,” Halla protested. “You can’t condemn—”
“Turn back!” the old baba shrieked in fury, her toothless mouth a gaping maw. “Turn back, ucigaş, before you destroy more of us than you already have!” Then she began to wail so mournfully that Halla had to cover her ears. What had any of this horror to do with her becoming dragonfast?
Everything.
Halla wasn’t sure if she’d thought the word or it had been whispered to her… or even if she’s said it aloud. But she thought she knew now where these apparitions had sprung from.
She had always wanted to believe that her father would have changed the laws of Lorendale’s succession if it hadn’t been for her mother… and she’d done nothing to deal with her jealousy of her brothers. She had taken
Nicu’s life and watched Bria die an agonizing death… and she’d done nothing to deal with her guilt.
It was clear that both dark emotions would taint everything she ever attempted if she did not deal with them now.
There was no longer anyone with her in the boat. The dinghy had reached the middle of the lake, and was making a lazy circle. The shore lay on its port side, the castle to starboard, where all those she had loved and lost awaited her.
She lowered the oars and rowed into the thickening mist, with strong steady strokes, until a grinding shudder told her she’d run onto rocks. As she scrambled out of the boat into the white murk, a knife of pain in her womb drove her through the dense fog toward the song of the sea.
Too soon. The words echoed over and over in her head. She had only just felt the baby move within her. Another stab of pain, this one sharper, stopped her in her tracks. Looking down, she gave a cry of disbelief.
“No! It can’t… I can’t…”
Her belly had blown up like a balloon. She wrapped her arms around it with a moan, and tried to run, but all she could manage was a lumbering shuffle.
When at last she burst through the fog, the Vast Sea spread like a shimmering jewel to the horizon. And between her and the long, white arms of surf, Emlyn awaited.
Trust in your dragon, to your peril.
With a sob, Halla stumbled onto the beach.
Chapter 23
Fynn
“The ol’ wizard said we was t’ go to Cardenstowe Castle.”
Fynn urged his horse onto the road east, ignoring his friend’s scowl. “I know that was the plan, Grinner, but our horses are dead tired and hungry, and so are we. Trillyon’s so close—it makes sense to stop there, if only for a few hours.” When his friend’s dour expression didn’t change, he added, “If we’re lucky, it was a baking day, and there’ll be hot apple tarts.”
Grinner made a grumbling sound, but offered no further argument.
They began to see crows gathered high in the trees, so many that the branches looked as if they were feathered with black leaves ruffling in the breeze. The eerie feeling they gave Fynn grew stronger the closer they got to the hunting lodge.
