In the Time of Dragon Moon

by Janet Lee Carey

She sighed and took a chair, a deep sadness on her face.

  “What did he do that was so terrible, my lady?”

  “Fire is dangerous,” was all she said. “It can kill.”

  “It also gives us warmth and light,” I said.

  Her hands were folded in her lap. I noticed her misshapen thumbnails again. Had they been crushed at some point? “Your thumbs, my lady—what happened? Forgive my asking.”

  “It happened when I was about your age. I didn’t have a gifted healer like yourself to help me back then.” She looked up. “The witch hunter used thumbscrews on me. Queen Adela wasn’t always a queen, I’m afraid.”

  I leaned forward, heart pounding. “You were accused of witchcraft?”

  Lady Tess gave the slightest of nods. “You must take care around the queen, Uma,” she said at last, tucking her thumbs inside her folded hands.

  “Do they still give you pain?”

  “No. My injuries are light compared to some. Once, I met a half-fey girl who’d nearly burned to death in a witch pyre. Tanya was her name. A dragon flew in and rescued her before the fire killed her, but her flesh was so badly burned it’s a wonder she survived.”

  “Tanya?” I thought of the dreadful night Queen Adela ranted about Tanya and the dragon who stole her. Tanya has to burn! she’d shouted. Riders, bring the witch back to me! “You said Tanya was half fey. Wasn’t she also a witch?”

  “Tanya was no witch, Uma, she was half fey like myself,” Lady Tess said. “Adela had heard the fey song predicting that Prince Arden would wed a fairy’s child, and she . . . well, she loved Arden and wanted to marry him herself, so she went about the countryside seeking half-fey girls out and . . .” Lady Tess glanced up and held me in her green eyes. She did not have to say You know the violence of which Queen Adela is capable.

  The queen wouldn’t hesitate to burn me if I failed her.

  “There’s a reason I asked you to come to me,” Lady Tess said. “You cannot imagine my relief when Queen Adela agreed to leave my younger son with us here, but I’ve seen how fond she is of Kip, and I know her too well. I’m not sure she means to keep her word. If she should change her mind and send her husband’s guards after Kip, we could not refuse her command. We would have no choice but to . . .” She took an uneasy breath. “I’ve watched you while you’ve been here, Uma. And we’ve worked side by side with the grieving queen. We are friends, I hope, even if we came together in the saddest of circumstances.”

  “Yes,” I said, meaning it. Never trust the English, Father said. But I’d made some friends here on Dragon’s Keep. I felt a flush of pride that this fine, independent lady considered me one.

  “I need your help. I think you are the only one who can aid me tonight, but it is dangerous. I know you have the ability to creep through the castle unseen.”

  “My lady?”

  “Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me. I understand the need to go out and breathe fresh air, the need to be alone. I broke the law and crept away to Dragonswood many a night when I was a girl. I met Prince Bion in Dragonswood while I was on the run from the witch hunter,” she said. “There is something I need for you to do for me and my family.” At that she leaned closer and told me what I had to do.

  • • •

  KIP WAS HEAVY with sleep when I took him from his cot, but he woke and whimpered as I headed down the passageway. “Hush now,” I whispered, slipping into a dark alcove. “I bring you to your mother.”

  Kip’s plump, sleepy weight made me awkward on my feet. My bulging shape with the blanket wrapped around us both made me appear round as a pregnant woman. I turned a corner and peered down the hall. Outside the queen’s door, a sentry cleared his throat. The sudden noise made me jump. I wasn’t sure now I could blend in carrying the heavy child past the queen’s guards unseen. I turned back to find another way and was soon lost in an unfamiliar passage.

  “Mommy?”

  “Hush, Kip.” I wrapped my arms tighter about him. “We’re nearly there,” I whispered, knowing it was a lie. Lady Tess trusted me with her little boy. Turning another corner, I stumbled on the base of a stairwell and gave quick thanks before climbing up. Lady Tess was tearing a sheet in long strips when I came in.

  “Thank God,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder.” She took her child from me.

  “Play game?” he said, bursting into a smile.

  “Yes, we are going to play,” she assured him, tousling his curly hair. Half asleep, he settled in again, sucking his thumb and laying his head on her shoulder. “You’ve done well, Uma. We haven’t much time. Bind us together. I will only have one hand to hold him with.”

  I wrapped the long strip around them, tucked it between Kip’s legs, and brought it around her back, crisscrossing the thick strips again and again, reminded of the years I’d bound my breasts.

  Lady Tess tested my work, throwing out her hands and jumping up and down. Kip woke and laughed. “Again, Mommy.” She jumped more until she satisfied herself that her son was securely tied.

  “For you,” she said, taking a package from her painting table. It looked too thick to be a painting.

  “What is it, my lady?”

  “Open it, Uma.”

  I undid the parchment and stared at the gift. She’d taken the Euit blanket down from the wall, folded it neatly, wrapped it.

  “I saw you looking at it and knew it belonged to you.”

  I was near tears. “My lady, I don’t know what to say.”

  She turned, her eyes soft. “I see the trouble you’re in, though you don’t speak of it. You are leaving with my older son tomorrow, facing dangers I cannot imagine, but you are strong, Uma. I see that much.”

  She pulled the iron grille inward, secured it to the wall, and opened the tower window.

  Wolf Moon hung thin as a brush mark over the sea. We waited for the sound of heavy wings. When they came, a great black shadow came with them and a warm wind that smelled of spice. Lord Kahlil flew at us like a piece of the night sky, deep and starless and heavy with life. He clipped his talons to the high ledge with a click-click, and folded his wings around the tower. We had saved two strips of sheeting tied together for this part.

  I placed my Euit blanket on the table. “Do not be afraid, my lady,” I said, tying the sheeting around her and securing the other end to the metal grill hook on the wall.

  “This is one adventure of many.” Lady Tess climbed up on the sill and paused. “Uma, thank you. Tell Jackrun—” She bit her lip. “Tell him good-bye for me. I could not risk going to the pier tomorrow. I hope he will understand what I had to do and why.”

  She climbed out onto the ledge and grabbed Lord Kahlil’s leg. I held the sheet, letting it out slowly as she mounted the dragon, moving awkwardly with the weight of her son, then untied it and tossed the end to her once she was safely up. Lady Tess sat firm at the base of Lord Kahlil’s long neck, one hand on his upturned scale, the other arm around her small son, whom she must steal to keep.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Ocean Voyage to Wilde Island

  Wolf Moon

  September 1210

  JACKRUN THREW OUT his hand and helped me over the wooden railing. “What are you doing up here, Uma?”

  I climbed into the crow’s nest high atop the ship’s mast. “I could ask the same of you.”

  “I needed the exercise and the view,” he said. “Did anyone spot you climbing up?”

  “No.” I steadied my feet and held the rail as we rocked to and fro high above the ship’s deck.

  I said nothing as he watched the vanishing island. I knew what it felt like to leave the home you loved. I had been dragged from mine. “Your mother sent her apologies for not coming to see you off.”

  “When did you talk to her?” he asked, surprised.

  “Last night.”

  He turned and faced
his disappearing isle again. “Do you know where she went with Kip?”

  “No. But I saw her go.”

  A slow smile spread across his face as I told him how Lady Tess escaped with his little brother on Lord Kahlil.

  “Of course the dragonlord would be in on it,” Jackrun said. “The two of them have hatched more than one plan together. I used to slide down the old dragon’s tail when I was Kip’s age. He’d flip me in the air and catch me. It used to terrify my mother, but he always caught me. I never fell.” He was smiling when he said it; we both looked over the edge, thinking of the one the dragon did not catch, the one who lay in the well-guarded coffin below deck. The silence drew out long between us. At last Jackrun said, “I knew why my mother stayed away. She was right to protect my little brother. I think my aunt would have tried to take Kip home with her.”

  “Queen Adela has wanted another child for years, Jackrun. She’s tried many remedies and none of them have worked.” My cloak felt too thin up here, where we clung and swayed like birds in a windy roost. I was glad we stood close enough for me to feel his warmth even if his scabbard pressed uncomfortably against my side.

  “So you weren’t the first to treat her with fertility potions?”

  I shook my head.

  “I hope no one offered her the cure Queen Gweneth used generations ago to have a child,” Jackrun said.

  “What cure is that?”

  “The one that changed our family history.” He looked at me. “You have heard of Queen Rosalind Pendragon?”

  “The queen with a dragon’s claw on her left hand.”

  “Her mother was barren for years. She tried everything to have offspring. Nothing worked. Finally she resorted to witchcraft.” He leaned out a little farther. “A witch stole a fertile dragon’s egg, put a spell upon it, made the queen drink the whole thing raw. After that she conceived her child, and later Rosalind was born.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said with revulsion.

  “It’s true. It’s how the dragon’s bloodline entered our family.”

  For a moment I could not swallow. Of course a dragon had not taken a human for a mate. Of course it must have happened the way he said, but the one time I had sucked a raw egg, the slimy texture disgusted me. And a dragon’s egg must be enormous compared to a hen’s egg.

  “I’ve heard many tales about your Pendragon family, but never that one.”

  “So the Euit tribe talks about us?”

  “My mother did. She’s English.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “You never asked.” How sick the queen must have felt after drinking an entire dragon’s egg. How desperate she must have been to do such a thing. Queen Adela was desperate too, but . . . “No one would risk stealing a fertile dragon’s egg now. No one would dare to use spells on a former witch hunter who would burn them if she even suspected witchcraft.”

  “And so she takes your potions,” Jackrun said.

  “My father’s potions,” I corrected.

  I caught the faint peppery scent of dragons, a smell I liked and was used to in him. I had always thought the hot tangy odor came from riding Babak so often. But they’d parted company after Desmond died.

  The setting sun colored the sky and water, the billowing sails, Jackrun’s face and chest. Crimson light filled my open hands as I leaned my elbows on the rail. Jackrun traced the long white scar on my left hand ending halfway up my middle finger.

  “Cuts your lifeline in half,” he said, frowning with concentration. “When did this happen?”

  “When I was small. I tried to shuck an oyster and missed . . .”

  When I did not cry, the chieftain had said I was strong, called me mi tupelli—my lad. Everyone loved what the chieftain loved, admired what he admired. For the first time in my life I felt accepted by the tribe, acknowledged for my courage. I hadn’t wanted to lose their admiration, so I adopted the name. I became mi tupelli, a lad, a boy, my father’s apprentice.

  Jackrun’s face was still washed in scarlet light, the hue of Vazan’s scales. The color fed his fiery eyes. I said, “The knife was too sharp. The cut was deep. People marveled at my courage when I did not cry. It was . . . an accident. It changed everything.”

  We both peered down as if we could see the coffin below deck.

  “Accidents can . . . change everything,” Jackrun said. “But I wonder.” He stopped and bit his lip, his teeth covering the tiny scar Prince Desmond made as he bit the words he’d nearly unleashed.

  “Wonder what?” I asked. He released his lip, swallowed. The chill air between us felt thick the way it had when we’d talked in the stairwell. There was something he wasn’t telling me, something he was holding back.

  “Jackrun?”a knight called up from the deck far below.

  Jackrun tugged my arm, making me duck down. “Yes?” he called. I crouched low with my cheek nearly touching his knee. The crow’s nest smelled of men’s boots and pitch down here.

  “The king wants you,” the knight bellowed.

  Jackrun pulled my hood back over my head. “Will you stay low until well after I am gone?” he whispered. “We shouldn’t be seen alone together.”

  I craned my neck at his silhouette framed in red-streaked sky. “Why not?”

  He pressed his lips together, shaking his head.

  “Come down,” the knight shouted. “The king will not be kept waiting.”

  Jackrun swung his leg over the side and disappeared.

  I hugged my knees in the rocking crow’s nest as the sky dimmed from red to bruised purple to inky blue. There was no sign of Dragon’s Keep by the time I stood again; only dark sea and darker sky. The waxing Wolf Moon hung sharp as a sliver of broken eggshell over the sea. I thought of queens desperate for children, of fertile dragon eggs, of the dead prince in his glass coffin, the fragmented Pendragon family, the last look Jackrun gave me before he’d climbed down the ropes taking his secrets with him, and the moon did not seem the only thing that was broken. Everything seemed broken. All of it.

  PART TWO

  Broken

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Graveyard, Wilde Island

  Wolf Moon

  September 1210

  I RARELY HAD the chance to speak more than a few hasty moments with Jackrun in those first two weeks back at Pendragon Castle. He was caught up in Desmond’s funeral preparations, while I raced from the queen’s rooms to the herbarium and back again. Summer was over. September rains drenched the land, pounded on the windows, great puddles filled the foreyard. And the wolves were in their time of power. Rain didn’t stop them.

  At the full Wolf Moon a feral pack attacked a shepherd’s son and killed him as he tried to defend his sheep. They found his torn body amid the sheep’s carcasses. Packs were flooding the byways, decimating livestock up and down the countryside. Fear spread through Pendragon Castle like disease. King Arden ordered me to sprinkle wolfsbane across the drawbridge. Father Nicodemus held special prayer services. “Are you all right?” Jackrun whispered on his knees beside me in the chapel.

  I nodded. “When can we talk?”

  “Where can we talk?” He looked about.

  That was two days ago. I hadn’t seen him since.

  Our brief encounters only made me want more. It was hard to mix the queen’s medicines with thoughts of Jackrun crowding in. Wait until the prince is buried, I thought. I began chewing my nails again. In the brief hours when the deluge stopped, I peered out windows hoping to glimpse Vazan. She never appeared.

  She was my father’s dragon. Why should I expect her to stay here in the north with me? Then one afternoon two and a half weeks after we’d returned, I spied her from an upstairs window. The sight of her winging down to Father’s grave made me want to shout, She’s here! She stayed! I didn’t have much time. I crammed Father’s Herbal in my basket, threw on my
cloak, raced down the tower stairs and out a servant’s side door.

  It was drizzling outside. Clouds obscured the sun one moment, split open like rotting fruit spilling light through the next. I passed the Pendragon tomb and climbed the hill.

  Vazan crouched by Father’s grave. Tail curled around her clawed feet, she eyed me as I came along and shook the raindrops from her head, her scales making the soft crackling sounds of newborn fire. I bowed to her. “We are being in this place together,” I said in formal Euit greeting. I fought the urge to touch her claw as one reverenced an elder. She had never let me touch her.

  “So you are come back, Uma.”

  “I have, rivule.” I looked up and saw a flicker of approval at the word rivule—warrior. Wet wind blew back my cloak. I shivered.

  Vazan narrowed her eyes. “Why are you wearing this frivolous English gown? It does not suit your station as a healer.” I was still in scribe’s clothing the last time we’d met here at Father’s grave.

  “I cannot help it, Vazan. The queen makes me wear it. And I agree. It doesn’t suit, it—”

  “Humph!” she said smokily. She didn’t like excuses. Neither did I.

  I raised my hand; the bell-shaped sleeve slid down, revealing the knife strapped to my upper arm. “Think of it as my battle garb, rivule. I wear it to do my job.”

  She gave a sharp appreciative nod.

  I ran my palm across the tops of the thigh-high weeds on Father’s grave, feeling a tugging in my heart. Hundreds upon hundreds of islanders had streamed past Prince Desmond’s ornate glass coffin in St. John’s Cathedral. Nobles, merchants, and peasants wept over him. Crowds marched behind the drummers, following the costly funeral procession through Dentsmore and up Kingsway Road to the Pendragon tomb. Meanwhile, the weeds had flourished on the Adan’s grave as if he did not matter. As if he had been no one.

  “Did the Pendragons across the water show their dragon scales?” Vazan asked testily.

  I thought of Jackrun’s arm scales, flashing in the sunlight when he sparred in the practice yard. Of the moment the dragon Nahal tugged the lace scarf from Tabitha’s neck, You do not need thissss, and freed the lovely blue-green scale patch underneath. “Yes, they did, rivule.”