In the Time of Dragon Moon

by Janet Lee Carey

  “And he wasn’t hurt beyond that first cut on his arm?”

  “You are a healer. You could have gone to him if he was.”

  I thought a moment about that. “Her Majesty would not want me, a woman, to enter the soldier’s infirmary.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, Jackrun seemed fit enough just now at the feast. Pricilla boasted that he was staring at her all through the meal, but I think his eyes were on me.”

  I pretended to ignore her as I capped the honey jar, though of course I spilled honey down the sides instead. No doubt Lady Olivia thought it wise for Bianca to catch Jackrun’s eye, since he had a chance of becoming the next Pendragon king.

  I was about to ask her to leave when she leaned against my worktable, the edge of a fine bracelet poking out from under her lace sleeve. Blue sapphires winked in the candlelight. A new bracelet. A gift?

  “It’s lovely,” I said.

  She drew back, covering the bracelet again.

  “A beautiful piece. Who gave it to you?” Someone as wealthy as the king.

  Bianca bit her lip and shook her head.

  “A gift from some lord,” I guessed. “Lord Godfrey?” A widower. “Lord Hastings? The king himself?”

  She blushed bright red. “His Majesty gave it to me to cheer my heart when I was troubled,” she said defensively.

  I added the honey I’d measured to my brew to disguise the bitter herbs. “What were you upset about?”

  “You know perfectly well. The wolves howl and I can’t sleep. I lie awake and think of Prince Desmond lying cold and dead in his coffin. I remember when we used to ride together and it is just too horrible. I start crying and I can’t stop. The king found me pacing the halls outside my room one night and he gave me the bracelet to comfort me.”

  King Arden knew he had to sire another heir. Was that the only reason he had wanted my virility powder? I hoped he wasn’t thinking of inviting Bianca to his bed. She held the stones closer to the candlelight. Now that I had seen her prize, she could not resist displaying it. “He told me the sapphires match my eyes. Do you think so?”

  “Have you shown it to anyone else, to your friend Pricilla?”

  “Oh, it’s a secret. I do not wear it in front of anyone, especially her. She is not as easy to talk to as you are.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well . . . because.” She looked at me. “Pricilla is jealous of me. We both like to flirt. But you are not like that because you are . . . different.”

  Because I am an Euit girl? Did she think I did not notice men? That my heart was a lifeless clump of bog? “I think you should leave now, Bianca.”

  “What? What did I say?” She grabbed my arm. “Don’t cast me out, Uma,” she pleaded. She had no idea how she’d just hurt me. “Please, don’t be angry. It makes my head hurt all the more.”

  I glanced down at her hands. She let go of my arm, and pleaded again, this time with her luminous blue eyes. It was a look I had given in to before. “Does your mother know about the king’s bracelet?”

  “No.” Bianca took a step back. “And you must not tell her. Promise me you won’t.” She seemed afraid now.

  “I will mix you a small amount of evicta for tonight if you will you do something for me.”

  She brightened. “Yes, whatever you ask.”

  She paced as I wiped the drips from the sides of the honey jar. “All I ask is that you let me know the next time His Majesty gives you any more of his gifts, or treats you with other favors.”

  She frowned.

  I stopped grinding the small black evicta seeds.

  “All right, I will do it,” she said anxiously. “Thank you,” she added.

  A moment later, Bianca licked the honeyed spoon laced with evicta, sighed, and rubbed her temples.

  “The evicta will dull your pain soon,” I said.

  “I know it will. Thank you, Uma.” She took my hand and squeezed it before going out the door.

  Alone again, I strained the queen’s early evening dose through the muslin cloth and left for her private rooms. Downstairs, Jackrun rounded a corner, nearly running into me. We stopped inches apart. He was in his courtly clothes. A hunk of hair had come free from its leather tie; his face was flushed.

  “The queen’s dose?” he asked, glaring at the chalice.

  “Yes.”

  “Whatever you’re using to treat her mind isn’t working!”

  “What?”

  “She . . .” Jackrun paused, hissed out a breath, and looked about. “I can’t talk about it here,” he added before rushing off. I stood a moment feeling the heat he’d left in the passageway. We hadn’t spoken since we’d met in the elms and this is all he had to say to me?

  Chapter Thirty

  Pendragon Castle Cliffs, Wilde Island

  Wolf Moon

  September 1210

  UPSTAIRS, HER MAJESTY turned from the letter she was writing at her vanity table when I entered and beamed at me. “Uma, isn’t it wonderful? I feel life in me this time. I am sure it is another son.”

  I tried to return her smile. Had the queen noticed her late courses herself or had Lady Olivia said something in an effort to cheer her? I thought we had agreed not to bring it up so soon. “You are just five days late, Your Majesty,” I said softly. “It is early yet.”

  She placed her hand on her red velvet gown, stroking her stomach. “I tell you I can feel it!”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” I wished Mother were here. She had a midwife’s knowledge, though she hadn’t been allowed to practice it in our village, where the Adan presided over births. Would Mother have known the signs of early pregnancy? Would she be able to see something I could not? I did some quick calculations. If the king lay with her one of our first few nights on Dragon’s Keep, she might have conceived. I felt a small flutter of hope, like a moth breaking from its cocoon. If I kept her and her child healthy, she might free my village and send me home at last.

  “Give me my brew,” Queen Adela said. “You are quite the healer, Uma Quarteney. I knew you would do for me what the other physicians could not.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” I warmed with pride watching her drink the chalice in five long gulps. “I have brought the utzo oil.”

  She turned to her mirror. “Good, apply it now.” She was becalmed, her mind and heart in balance and at rest for once. Believing a child grew in her had done that.

  I chanted silently as I uncorked the oil. For the queen, I sang the verse in English.

  Utzo

  Round seeds white as moon

  Sweet poison

  Plucked nightfall from sky

  I watched her reflection in the glass as I rubbed the oil into her scalp. The utzo that made her dark hair shine would kill the lice and keep them away a good many days. Lice troubled courtiers and servants alike here at the castle. But my small store of utzo was reserved for the queen. Her fine-boned face in the mirror showed strength, even a kind of radiance. Her eyes were the same sapphire blue as Bianca’s. I swallowed. Had the king meant the bracelet for his wife? How dare he. It would kill her if she knew.

  The queen hummed to herself as I tugged the comb through her hair, removing the dead lice and their tiny eggs.

  “I love the sweet perfume of this oil,” she said, picking up the jar and bringing it to her nose. “Where did you find it?”

  “The Adan found utzo growing in a secluded place in our valley. He understood its uses. No one else did. It should not go near your lips, Your Majesty,” I added. “Sweet as it smells, it is a poison.”

  She was silent a long while and I watched her expression changing in the glass, already her happiness dulled, and I read a change of mood, sweet to sour. “There was another,” she said, turning to me.

  “Another what, Your Majesty?”

  “Infant,” she whispered, lo
oking up with a solemn face. “A miscarriage when Prince Desmond was two. I don’t talk about it because. . .” She shook her head with her eyes closed. “Do you think I’m cursed?”

  “No, Your Majesty,” I answered, my throat constricting.

  “She came early. I was only in my fourth month, and she . . .” The queen dropped her voice. “Her foot was deformed, shaped like a dragon’s claw. My husband said it was better that she did not live.”

  I felt a flash of anger that he would say such a cruel thing to his wife after such a loss, that he would be glad, actually glad of his own child’s death.

  She held her hands up to me and I took them in mine. “You have known a lot of sorrow, Your Majesty,” I said, looking down at her. “But it does not mean you are cursed.” Please Holy Ones let that be true. “It does not mean you won’t know happiness now. I am sure you and the king can have a healthy child.”

  “You know this? You have the Sight?” she asked, her eyes shining.

  Jackrun had asked the same, thinking me a seer. I shook my head. And she drew her hands away, making me wish, this once, I could lie to her and give her the hope she was so desperate for.

  She turned on the stool facing her mirror again. “Braid my hair with a velvet ribbon, Uma. I will look my best in case the king visits me tonight.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  • • •

  WHEN I RETURNED to the herbarium I was too restless to stay inside. Unpacking the vayonaze leaves that red dragons love, and putting a small handful in my waist pouch, I left. The queen must have more bapeeta, especially if she was with child. There were caves in the cliffs by the sea. Father told me Vazan had chosen one of them to shelter in. I had never been there, never seen her den, but I would find her.

  • • •

  CLOUDS SCUDDED ACROSS the twilight sky as I passed the amphitheater walking south along the sea cliffs. The damp autumn wind blew my hood back before I reached the zigzag stairs leading down to the beach. When I stopped to tug it over my head, I heard a roar below, a sound not made by waves.

  I peered down. Jackrun ran naked into the shallows, screaming fire; light flashed over the surface of the sea before he dove and vanished in the tumbling surf. I held my breath until he appeared again a little farther out, swimming alongside the shore. How could he stand the frigid water? Even dragons, with the exception of Babak, couldn’t bear to swim. Dragon, human, and fairy—did all three bloodlines work together somehow to give him such strength, or was it the workings of the dragon fire in him?

  In the dusky early evening light, I could just make out his curving arm moving in long, easy strokes beyond the breakers. He swam far down the beach almost out of my view before turning and heading back again to ride a cresting wave into the shallows. Leave now, Uma, before he looks up and sees you. My blood roared in my ears. I did not move as he came ashore cloaked in deep blue twilight, dressed in seawater. He didn’t bother to dry off before throwing on his clothing and strapping on his short sword. When he started for the cliff, I drew back, heart pounding, thinking to leave, choosing not to. I’d come out to find Vazan, but Jackrun was here and I needed to see him alone, far from courtly eyes and ears.

  A hand appeared at the edge of the cliff and up came Jackrun’s head. The wooden stairs were less than a hundred feet to the south, but this was Jackrun. He chose to climb.

  “Uma?” he said, grunting as he pulled himself the rest of the way up and stood across from me, hands on hips, catching his breath.

  “What were you doing? Swimming in the sea?” I asked.

  “You . . . watched?”

  “Of course not! Your hair is wet and you smell of seaweed. Anyone would guess what you’d been doing.”

  He gave a wry smile. “And you came out here—”

  “Looking for someone.”

  “Not looking for me?”

  “For Vazan. You said the queen’s medicine wasn’t working. What did you mean by that?”

  “I was going to tell you. I had to come here and cool off first.”

  “Cool off over what?”

  Jackrun adjusted his sword belt. “My aunt ordered me to sit beside her at the feast. She called me Desmond, Uma.” His brows were suddenly sharp, his eyes intense. “She made me stand up and give a speech as if I were her son.”

  “I’m sorry. It must have been . . . Her delusions have gotten much worse since he died.”

  “Aren’t you dosing her for that?” Jackrun barked.

  “I am trying to help her, Jackrun. She sees you and thinks of him. Your presence makes it harder!”

  An enormous scaly head popped up in answer to my shout. Vazan clipped her claws around Jackrun, shaking him.

  “No, Vazan,” I warned in Euit. “Let him go. We were just arguing.” She blinked and reluctantly drew in her claws. Jackrun was breathing hard, looking squarely into her fierce face as he brushed himself off.

  “Thank you,” Jackrun said.

  Vazan scrambled noisily the rest of the way up, causing a small landslide as she came. Once on top, she towered over us, her head swaying, her eyes narrowing as she fixed her intimidating silver stare on Jackrun.

  Jackrun stood perfectly still. “Does she understand me?” he asked me out of the corner of his mouth.

  “I know English!” Vazan snapped.

  Jackrun bowed. “Of course, warrior Vazan. Dragons speak many languages. I want to tell you we were merely arguing. I would never harm Uma Quarteney. She is safe with me.”

  Vazan flicked her tail, uncertain.

  “I am all right, rivule,” I said. “But it’s good you’ve come. I would have tried to find you if you hadn’t. Were you able to harvest the plant I showed you in Father’s Herbal?”

  She dug her talons in the grassy ground. “I’m no herber!”

  I felt myself flush. “I need it for the queen, rivule. I have to have it.” I opened my waist pouch, letting the fragrant vayonaze speak. Vazan’s nostrils flared. “I have more vayonaze if you bring me the plant. Will you promise to try?”

  The red leaves drifted slowly from my hand to the ground.

  “Promise?” Vazan said, weighing the word in her enormous, sharp-toothed mouth before she lowered her head and sniffed the leaves excitedly.

  “Come,” I said to Jackrun. We turned, walking north toward the distant castle. A moment later there was a loud thump followed by a snorting sound, and a groan of pleasure.

  “Don’t look back,” I whispered. “She would not like you to see. Reds love vayonaze. She is rolling in it.”

  Jackrun laughed.

  “Shh,” I warned. It was good to be outside with him, walking under clouds and the early stars, the waning Wolf Moon barely visible, hanging like a broken lantern over the sea. Now that we were free to talk, I wasn’t sure how to begin, but we’d reach the castle soon. If I didn’t speak now, it would be too late. I told him the new thing I’d remembered about that day on the cliff. “I felt a presence there. Someone was watching.”

  “Sir Geoffrey hiding in the underbrush. He must have been there watching us a while before he stepped out.”

  “I don’t think it was him. It felt . . . different.”

  “The murderer who killed the lute player?”

  “I thought you ruled him out earlier,” I said.

  “That was before you mentioned sensing someone else up on the cliff with us. Someone hidden.”

  “Whoever watched us, they felt magical.”

  “We already know whoever did it had the power to stir the wind,” Jackrun said. I kept pace with his long loping stride as we approached the enormous stone amphitheater on the hill. “The presence watched with a kind of expectation,” I said, “like something was about to happen. The feeling grew stronger when the dragons came.”

  I thought of what the fey woman Kaprecha said the day we’d ridden w
ith Lady Tess and the queen; The Son of the Prophecy was born to rule. She’d flashed me a conspiratorial look, expecting me to agree. “What if some fairies from Dragon’s Keep were hiding there, watching us that day?”

  We reached the amphitheater and stopped with our backs to the high stone wall. “I grew up with the fey folk on Dragon’s Keep, Uma. I know them almost as well as I know my family. I don’t think it would have been one of them. If what you suspect is true, it was more likely someone from Wilde Island. Some fey sent by my grandfather Onadon. Or . . .” He leaned against the wall, looking up.

  “Or what?”

  “Or some rogue element that split apart from the rest in Dragonswood, a secretive group who wanted the Son of the Prophecy on the throne and was willing to commit murder to make it happen. They could have worked alongside Sir Geoffrey, or worked alone.”

  In my mind’s eye, I saw Sir Geoffrey scowling at Prince Desmond after he kicked the fey child. A tall fey man leaned down to talk with him. What passed between them? Were they planning something? I suppose some of the Dragonswood fey could have slipped into the summer castle the night of the fey ball. Everyone there was in some sort of disguise. But . . . “I don’t think any Wilde Island fey folk sailed with us. How would they have come to Dragon’s Keep?”

  “Easily enough on dragonback, Uma.”

  I opened my hands to the wind coming up off the sea. It stirred my skirts, the grasses at my feet, and whistled around the amphitheater walls behind us. “Can the will-o’-the-wisps go dark?” I asked.

  “A strange question,” Jackrun said.

  “I just thought if they were able to hide their light, they would make perfect little messengers.”

  “Or spies,” Jackrun said, trailing my thoughts. “I don’t know the answer, though I’ve seen them all my life.”

  I watched Vazan flying out over the bay to hunt bats or birds, tiny snacks for one so large, but she enjoyed them. We set out again toward the castle.

  Neither of us talked again until we reached the Pendragon tomb, when Jackrun stopped and drew me under a massive oak. “I will have to go away soon.”