Dragon's Keep

by Janet Lee Carey

  Out of the fog, gray on gray, they padded closer; ghostly things that made hardly a sound. Their scouting could have been a rustling in the leaves, their coats a thicker fog. But their eyes shone like flecks of moon on a dark sea and I saw they were not ghosts, but things of flesh, fur, tongue, and teeth. And I sensed their hunger.

  I scarcely breathed as the wolves circled me. I counted eight close by though the mist could have hidden more.

  Clinging to the stump, I tried to rise, but my ankle gave way and I tumbled sideways just as the great wolf pounced, his jaws tearing into my arm. I howled, punched, kicked, groveled, and bit his foreleg. More wolves circled, snarling and snapping. Blood filled my mouth and nose. Then suddenly my attacker yelped. He stiffened and tumbled onto his side in the mud.

  I turned and retched. Sucking in my breath, I saw what seemed to be a bird hovering above the wolf. Wiping dirt and blood from my eyes, I looked again and beheld a feathered arrow deep in the wolf’s chest.

  Kye came crashing down the ravine and slid to a halt above the dead wolf. He lifted his head and howled wild as an animal.

  The wolves scattered, but an elder wolf with great shoulders raced up to my savior and attacked. Kye grunted as he wrestled with the beast. The gray wolf had Kye’s shoulder in his jowls, but Kye drew his knife. He stabbed and stabbed as I tried with all my strength to pull toward the fight. And when the blood-soaked knife slipped from Kye’s hand, he battled raw, blood flowing down his face.

  I was downed and bleeding, pulling hard toward Kye’s knife and weeping from the wanting of it. The knife was wedged beneath a fern, still a body’s length away. Then with a shout, Kye pushed the wolf from him and was atop his kill. Smelling their brother’s blood, the wolves fled into the forest. Twigs cracked beneath their paws, green bracken rustled in their wake as they ran, until the woods all about grew silent.

  Kye rolled the wolf’s body over with his boot. Sure the beast was dead, he turned and came to me. “Here, dearest,” he said. “We must stop the bleeding.” He stooped, bloody-cheeked and breathless. When he took off his shirt I saw the red gash across his shoulder, the blood weeping from the wound.

  “Your face,” I said. “Your shoulder.”

  “It’s not deep,” he said, tearing his shirt in strips. “Show me your arm.”

  I held out my blood-soaked arm. My ankle pained me more, but my skirts hid the broken bone from him.

  As Kye touched my wound his face hovered so near to mine, I could smell his skin. My lips trembled. Even in my pain I wanted him to lift my chin and kiss me. But Kye saw my wounds more than my wish. He squinted as he ripped my sleeve. Seeing the teeth marks and deep gashes down my arm, he pulled off my left glove to view my wounds further.

  The glove dropped with the soft sound of a dead leaf.

  The woods went still all around us as Kye looked at my bloody hand and my naked claw.

  I wanted to hide my curse behind my back, but Kye had seen it, and his face hardened.

  I’d have rather been the wolves’ supper than have seen that sickened look upon my beloved’s face. Still, he clenched his jaw, bound my wounds, and wrapped me with his torn shirt.

  At last Kye stood and limped about, gathering his bow and arrows, and wiping wolf’s blood from his knife. I could not speak. Like a harlot shamed by love and gathering her coin, I slipped the golden glove back on to hide the hideous thing, though the gold cloth shrouded nothing now. Kye had seen I was a monster.

  While I covered myself, Kye gazed into the mist. Then seeing I was covered, he stooped and took me in his arms. He gathered me like kindling, with no more love than a man would have for branches.

  Through the parting mist, I saw Mother on the ridge above. And she saw it all. The dead wolves. Kye shirtless, bleeding. Me crumpled in his arms. And her scream was like the cry of a kestrel before it swoops to kill.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Twine Unraveled

  KYE CARRIED ME wrapped in my cloak up the ravine, and as we reached the trail Father rode up on his steed. “Rosie!” he called, and Kye lifted me to him.

  “Take her to the castle,” said Mother. Father cradled me, holding tight my bleeding wounds, and as we turned toward home the hunters searched for Rollo. He was halfway down the ravine, lying with his foreleg broken, and as we rode away Father ordered Rollo slain.

  “No!” I screamed, but Father kept riding, saying, “Hush, Rosie. It’s for the best.”

  Nothing would change my father’s mind as we wended home, and though I tugged on his cloak, begging for my horse’s life, the huntsmen gathered round Rollo and skulled him with a stone.

  In the coming days I was bedded in my solar, my wounds wrapped and my ankle strapped to a splint. The ankle had swollen broad as a pig’s jowl and the flesh was plum colored where it was not green. My body ached. Whenever I was awake I felt as if I’d been dragged over sharp stones.

  Sir Magnus gave me boneset and bid me chew elder twigs. Mother came twice a day to lay boiled serpent’s tongue on my bruises, which eased the pain but little. Leaning over my bed and petting my brow, she dripped her prized poppy tincture on my tongue. The potion tasted mild and sweet and brought on sleep. In my drugged dream I saw Kye kill the wolves again—saw him tear his shirt and kneel, saying, “Here, dearest.” But then I’d watch Kye’s expression sicken when he saw my hideous claw.

  Once I awoke sweat-drenched to find my mother laying serpent’s tongue across my arm. Noting the kindness in her countenance just then, I asked a question. “Kye’s wounds,” I murmured. “Do they heal?”

  Mother nodded. “Lord Godrick’s son will heal. You must not think of him.”

  “But the wolves . . .” I said. “I would have died if he—”

  “Hush, Rosalind, and rest.”

  Leaning over my leaf-wrapped shoulder, Mother said, “Tell me, dear. When Kye tore his shirt to wrap your wounds . . . did he strip away . . .” She took a heavy breath. “Did he remove your glove?”

  A sudden heat rose up my throat as if I’d swallowed coals.

  “No,” I choked.

  “Good, then,” said Mother, bending to kiss my forehead. “No one could love you as I do, Rosie.” She brushed my hair from my damp cheek. “Why do you weep?”

  “The pain,” I said, and it was true, but it was not of my wounds I spoke. Mother dosed me a second time with honeyed poppy. I sucked down the sweetness of it, grateful for the shroud of sleep.

  The next day I awoke to the coolness of a man’s hand against my head and, turning, murmured, “Kye.”

  I opened my eyes to find my father sitting on my bed. “Rosie? Poppet?” he said, leaning over me. “Are you feeling better?”

  Before I could answer he held out a small bouquet of bluebells and bleeding hearts. I sat up slowly and took the little posy.

  “I leave for France tomorrow,” said Father. “Let me take you to the walled garden and see you in the blossoms before I go.”

  I was still weak, but tired of the stale air in my solar. “Would you carry me down?”

  Father stamped his foot, playing like a horse. “I would, milady.”

  I laughed. I’d not made the king prance about since I was six. “I have a wish,” I said, pulling back my hair.

  “Granted.”

  “I’ve not yet thanked my savior, Kye. If you would ask him to come to the garden—”

  “Ask another wish, poppet.”

  “Why? Is it wrong that I should—”

  “Lord Godrick’s ship has sailed. Kye is gone.”

  My heart was already cracked, but this one word, gone, was the stone that broke it. I dropped the flowers on the coverlet.

  “When?” I choked.

  “This morning.” Father went to my window. “I can see his vessel yet.”

  “Lift me.” My head spun as I swung my legs over the bed. Father carried me to my window seat and slid a second chair closer to prop my splinted foot. I laid my flowers on the sill.

  “I cannot go as far as the gar
den.” I gulped.

  “Shall I call Sir Magnus?”

  “No!”

  Father flinched.

  “Just . . . leave me by the window here.”

  “The sun will heal you.” Father kissed me on the head and called, “I’ll order you some broth,” as he went out the door.

  The sails of Lord Godrick’s ship were white as winter geese against the blue sea. It was too far out to spy any folk on deck, but at the prow I knew Kye stood, his black hair blowing back. With every gust of wind my love was sailing farther from me.

  Kye had turned his back on me. His eyes were forward now to France, to England, and to war. He would wash away all memory of me, and never tell another soul he’d fallen for a twisted girl.

  That I’d heard him call me dearest was but a teasing light in a world meant for the dark. I’d never know the taste of his lips on mine or hold his children to my breast.

  In that moment as I watched through my glassy window, it was not death I wished for, but more and greater still, that Rosalind Evaine Pendragon was but a dream that never woke to flesh, never found face or form. That I had never been born.

  The next morn I was taken by carriage to the harbor. Sir Kimball carried my chair down to the dock, where I awaited Father’s farewell. In the sea mist I sat splinted, my wolf-wounds swathed in bandages, the sea around all whispering. Mother came ghostlike up the dock, stood beside my chair, and bid me smile. I could not forge one. All the pageantry with which we were sending my father to war did not mask the sorrow of his going.

  The water lapping on the posts and the gulls circling over brought back the day the dragon died. I remembered how Kye had stood beside me on this dock and watched the she-dragon’s body dragged to shore.

  “Sad,” he’d said. Before he even knew me he’d let me in his mind’s chamber, for no other person on Wilde Island would have understood his sadness for the slain creature. Kye and I had been bound together in the dragon’s death.

  After the last barrel of cider was loaded onto Father’s ship, trumpets sounded and the farewells began. Father came up the dock and handed me a silver box.

  “Open it,” he said.

  A golden cross lay inside, nearly the size of my palm. It bore five rubies: one on each point and one large stone in the middle, all shining like droplets of bright blood.

  “Put it on, Rosie,” he said, and I hung it round my neck. Then sweetly he bent to kiss my cheek.

  “Don’t go,” I said, taking his sleeve. “I don’t have to marry Henry.”

  “Ha!” laughed Father. “You think saying this will stop me from this war? Don’t worry, Rosie. We’ll win out for Empress Matilda. I’ll see you married soon.”

  “No,” I pleaded, but Father gently pulled my hand away and stepped aside to grace Mother with a gift. Another cross, though more jeweled than mine. Mother’s was covered in emeralds and boasted three sapphires the color of her eyes. She wept silently as Father slipped it round her neck. Then the king went down on one knee and Mother scattered salt over his head.

  The women on shore tossed salt on their good men as well, praying for their safe return, for many fighting men were set to sail with their king that day and join Empress Matilda in her war. Father gave a grand speech that promised victorious return, then under the flurrying flags he boarded his vessel.

  Trumpets playing, drums pounding, the ship set sail for France where the empress waited to gather her armies against King Stephen. More than one good woman wept as the white sails caught the wind, so my tears and Mother’s were among the many.

  Mother and I went to Saint John’s chapel more often in the days after Father’s departure. We spoke little, preferring silence and prayer. So ardent were our pleas to Heaven, nine and twenty candles in the chapel burned down to their stubs.

  How my knees ached from praying and my ankle throbbed. But Mother was with me all the while, and she never complained, though I saw her strain and wobble when she stood after hours of prayer.

  “Go back to your tapestry,” I said one day as we left the chapel.

  Mother didn’t speak. She’d never in her life been weak. Iron-willed, Father said of her. Now that he was gone the iron seemed to have seeped from her core. She still performed her duties and Sir Magnus stayed close by. The mage took full advantage of her fears, drawing up daily astrology charts predicting Father’s fortune in battle and quizzing the heavens to determine the best date for our own future journey. When the stars displeased Mother, he treated her with more honeyed poppy and soused her forehead with rue and vinegar to becalm her headaches.

  Mother grew thinner and more brittle. More days than not her eyes shone and her motions quickened as if she suffered fever. Long into the night I heard her pacing in her chamber, which was just above my own.

  “She’s ill,” I told Sir Magnus.

  “Her moon is influenced by Saturn,” he mumbled, rubbing the mole on his neck. Then he went back to his crow’s nest to consult his charts. Great help he was.

  Cook tempted us with roast peacock, with jellies, and sweets.

  “Eat,” urged Mother across the table, her platter as untouched as mine. “You should be a plump and healthy bride.”

  Bride. A sour word. I had no heart for Henry now. My heart had sailed away. Still, I was grateful at first when Mother found new occupation readying the gowns for my wedding. She seemed to take some solace in the work. But soon she was stitching day and night. So what I’d hoped to be a cure only seemed to worsen her condition.

  “Mother, slow your pace,” I said. She would not. As soon as the stars aligned we’d sail for Wales and meet the holy man who’d healed the girl with the severed arm. Once cured, we’d set out for Empress Matilda’s court. She would have me wed by summer, and her plan was all-consuming.

  April ended, a fool’s month for those foolish enough to love. On the first of May the Maypoles were raised on the wide field atop Twister’s Hill, as they were every year. Mother laid a new blue gown across my bed.

  “Look what I have for you,” she said proudly. “It’s blue as a spring sky. Now all the islanders need to see how well you look before your wedding day.”

  I kept my cheek to the pillow. “My ankle aches.”

  Mother slipped a glass vial in a pouch. “Tuck this in your cloak,” she said. “Sir Magnus made you your own honeyed poppy for the pain.”

  “I’ll stay here.”

  “It’s May Day, Rosalind!”

  “You’re ill, Mother,” I said as calmly as I could. “Stay with me.”

  “A queen performs her duties,” she insisted breathlessly, then fled into the hall.

  I felt like a spent bloom in the heat of her wind. I went, and not because she ordered me but because she was becoming more and more frayed each day. I would keep her in my sight.

  In the high meadow atop Twister’s Hill I watched the villagers gobbling their May Day feast. Mother and a small group of elderly knights presided at the high table with Sir Magnus and Father Hugh, but I’d refused to join them, having no stomach for it. From my place on the hill I thought Mother seemed to be her old self, but she was always proper in public.

  The maidens came round the Maypole. All bedecked in flowers, they clung to their ribbons, their hair a-tousle with the wind as they wove in and out to the piper’s song “Here We Go A-Maying.” Each girl whispered her lover’s name into the other’s ear as she passed by, weaving her ribbon in and out. I held my chair whispering the name I’d say if I grasped the ribbon in my glove. I’d call my lover’s name with such a force the Maypole would crash down and set all the maids to weeping.

  Cook brought me wine. I poured in some poppy potion and drank to ease my throbbing foot and aching head. I’d had my chair set where the wind was stirring and the grass was twisting round, knowing it was in this very place long ago Lady Aster was whisked away to Heaven.

  “The lady flew upward like a leaf in a whirlwind,” Marn once said. “And didn’t the people hear angels singing as she spu
n up to the clouds? Ah,” she said. “And still today if ye stand in that blessed spot, ye can feel a waft from Heaven.”

  Indeed, there was a soft breeze blowing on the hill. As the merry piper’s tunes wrapped chains about my heart I longed for a wheeling wind to come to Twister’s Hill and sweep me up to Heaven, but the wind was too weak to lift me.

  I did not know then how strangely my wish would be answered. That I would be swept into the sky before the twilight fires on the hill were lit.

  But it was not God’s hand that lifted me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Taken

  NONE SEEMED TO NOTE the sudden warmth in the air, nor think the redness in the sky above was any more than the tracings of the setting sun. But swift the dragon came and from behind, the terrible stench of him and the pounding of his wings too late a warning for us. Soon all were howling, “Dragon!” and running in his forewind.

  I stumbled from my chair as the beast spat a line of fire before the scattering villagers. A group of dragonslayers, bellies full of beer, reeled for their stack of weapons, but the dragon hurled the pile of swords and shields over the cliff, where they clattered to the rocks. The castle guard and a handful of elderly knights stood then and drew their swords, but their weapons seemed little more than prick-pins to the beast, and before the knights could rush up the hill, the dragon swooped down, grabbed me in his talons, and lifted me above the crowd.

  I tried to scream but the dragon’s talons encircled me like prison bars. I sucked in a sickened breath and yelped, “Mother!” kicking the air like a mouse in a cat’s claw.

  Below, Mother stood fast with her paltry escort of castle guards, hobbling knights, and drunken slayers, our best fighters having gone off to war.

  “Release her!” she shouted and the knights about her held their swords higher.

  “I’ve come for what is mine!” growled the dragon, pounding the rocks with his great tail. He wheeled about, took a step, and swung me over the cliff. Far below waves crashed on the rocks. Pain tore my chest. My ankle throbbed. Piss ran down my legs.