I can do anything with this crown, my heart surged. Didn’t the old legends say that the queen used dragons to build her oldest castles. I raised a hand and pointed at one of the paving slabs, and it cracked as if struck by a sledgehammer.
This was what they meant, it had to be. I felt strong and powerful as I pointed upwards above my head, to the roof where my dragon was. Stone after stone shattered and at the same time, I rose through the widening hole, until, like a hunting peregrine, I burst into the white light of the sky-
“Ach!” I coughed, falling out of my bed. “Ow.” I rubbed my elbows where I had landed, looking around my room. I had spent most of the day asleep, if the light from the shuttered windows was anything to go by.
The windows! I thought, rushing to them to see that yes, they weren’t locked. I opened them with a creak and a bang to see the cold and high vistas beyond. The map of the town beneath us just as it always had been, and the distant high mountains off my right, and the rolling greener fields, roads, meadows, and wildwoods of the left. I had used to love looking out at all of this, so long ago. I had imagined what might lie just over the horizon to the south down there, and I had hunted the sky for signs of dragons – torn clouds, black specks on the wind, sudden flames.
I had, of course, only rarely seen them, but even that wasn’t important really. What was important was imagining where they were, and what they might be doing, as well as what towns, magics, and stories lay out there. I had the classical training expected of the daughter of a prince, and so I could name the stars and all of the major cities, and knew just where places sat according to the maps. But that was nothing compared to actually traveling, and seeing for myself. I had yearned for adventure in the same way that my stepmother Odette yearned for power. It was in my lifeblood, either I was hopelessly addicted to it, or else I would starve without it.
“Well, Char Nefrette?” I had gone out and seen some of those places, but it seemed to me as if the rest of the world was just as petty and scandalous as the one in this keep. The only place that I had come close to falling in love with was the narrow lake and the cave under the waterfall, and the stony beach where I had kept Paxala hidden for the best part of a year.
That was the most like the mountain wilds, I nodded to myself as I took a deep sigh. I felt a little better after my rest, but my muscles still felt achy.
“Paxala?” I reached out to her in my mind, unsure if I might create a solid connection to her just with thought alone (it seemed a natural skill for the dragons, whereas I had to teach myself, or unlock some memory of how to do it). “Pax?” I tried again. “Are you there?”
“Char,” a glimmer of a thought brushed against mine, and with it came the dragon’s presence in my imagination. She was weak, and she was weary, but it was the sort of weariness that I knew that she could recover from. What hurt worse, was that her thinking felt muzzled and confused. She didn’t know what was going on around her.
“Paxala. You have to listen to me,” I murmured as I concentrated on the words. “You can’t eat the food they leave out for you. It’s bad. Bad food, bad fish.” I tried to say the words as steadily and as clearly as I could, but I still didn’t know if she could understand me well or not.
“Bad food? But I am so hungry, Char…” I sensed it through her mind too: her belly was empty and she hadn’t eaten as much as she should have over the last few days. And that was my fault, I cursed myself savagely. She had traveled north with Neill to rescue me, but she must have decided that flying was more important than eating, or else she still couldn’t hunt well for herself.
“Hunt? Too weak for hunt. But there is hot fish, here?” she thought at me once more, and I had to steady my breathing as I thought I was going to faint with the echo of her dizziness.
“No, please don’t eat that Paxala, it’s bad. It will make you feel bad, I promise it will! It’s… It’s my father,” I said, feeling ashamed. “He’s put something into your food that will make you sleepy.” I felt a sluggish annoyance from the dragon. She would listen to me for now, but in a few watches or by the end of the day when she was ravenously hungry, it might be a different situation entirely.
But I couldn’t leave her up there to starve, either. How was I going to get food to her? How was I going to get her healthy, without getting her drugged again? If Wurgan hadn’t looked at me like I was a freak when he found out that I shared my mind with Paxala then I would have asked him – but no, I knew that I couldn’t do that now. I would have to find another way to sneak out of the chamber, and get to her. But that would leave Neill down below in the cells. I bit my lip in frustration.
“Don’t you dare make me choose,” I whispered at the air, at Wurgan, at my father behind it all. I refused to choose which friend that I might help.
“Char is upset,” Paxala was finally catching onto my emotions as well. This really was bad, as usually the Crimson Red would be able to sense what was happening to me, and what I was feeling much faster.
“Yes, I am, Paxala. But you don’t have to worry about that right now. I want you to concentrate on getting stronger. Stretch your legs and tail and wings, and then rest again. Get this poison out of your body, but don’t eat. Just rest!” I advised.
“Char is clever. Char looks after me.” Paxala was thinking dopily, as she rested her aching head on her claws only managing to do half of what I had suggested.
“How my father, the Abbot, or anyone thinks that they can get away with ordering a dragon to do anything is beyond me,” I muttered to the empty room. “I can’t even get one dragon to look after itself!” The idea would have been laughable if it also wasn’t so tragic, I turned back to my room, trying to work out what resources I had, and what use that I could turn them to.
As it turned out, I was only halfway through making a knotted-blanket rope by the time there was a knock on the door. I hurriedly stuffed it under the bed and hoped that whomever it was hadn’t been counting blankets and covers whenever they were last in here!
Fortunately for me it was my brother Wurgan, so no need to worry about him paying too much attention to my well-being or comfort. But Wurgan was looking even more sheepish and awkward than he had before. What now? I thought. I bet he’s come to tell me precisely how much I’ve messed everything up.
“Sister…” Wurgan closed the door gently after him, before hurriedly crossing into the room and looking out of the window. Don’t see the rope, brother! I thought with a brief spike of alarm. He nodded to himself, turning back to me with a heavy sigh that was almost comical. “It’s morning…”
“I can see that,” I said. It must have been past midnight last night when I’d gotten ill – as worried as I was about Paxala on the roof. Now, the sun had risen over the mountains to the West and the early morning fogs that sat in the countless valleys around Queen’s Keep were just starting to burn off. It took a long while for the sun to clear the distant peaks and allow ‘morning’ to happen out here in the foothills– so already I knew that the guards would be changing shifts, the kitchens would be clattering somewhere far below us, and the markets already starting to fill. My people in the Northern Kingdom were used to starting their day in the dark.
Wurgan flinched at the sharp tone in my voice. What did he expect – that I had forgiven him already? If ever?
“Yes, of course you do. Then you’ll also know that this is one of the busiest times for the keep.”
I nodded. “I haven’t been away for that long, brother,” I said tartly.
“Mother has called a great hunt, and is amassing the clan warriors and scouts who will want to go right now at the mountain gate,” Wurgan said.
“Okaaay…” I gritted my teeth. My mother, the clanswoman, who hadn’t even come to see Paxala when I had brought her here to the keep. That stung. I didn’t want to admit it, but it did. It was what me and Wurgan had talked about just last night – I really was closer to our mother Galetta Nefrette than I was to father, or Wurgan was to her. Does she even
know what is happening to me? I thought in dismay, before biting down and ignoring the bundle of hurt feelings. I have to rescue Neill. When was Wurgan going to get going out of here, so I could get back to my escape attempt?
“I thought you said that mother was retiring from court life?” I said, thinking that I had probably at least try to make some small talk with him, if only to allay any suspicions he might have.
“She is, and this morning she announced to the clan chiefs that she was about to retire to the mountain clans for the rest of the summer, and this great hunt is the last of her duties here at court,” Wurgan explained in a not-so patient, pacing sort of way.
I knew that the great hunts were really a clans’ tradition, but one that the staid Northlanders had taken to just as enthusiastically (what difference was there really between a clansman and a kingdomer, as the old saying goes). More than celebrations, the ad-hoc processions led by chosen clan chiefs and well-respected scouts, were a chance not just to take to the foothills and woods, beating out any prominent game, but also create an excuse for bonding-- and the sorts of negotiations between the clans and the court that happened because of it. I used to look forward to them, on the few times that father let me attend. I remembered with a sigh. Although I never liked all the talking at the feasts.
“And?” I shrugged. Currently, as wonderful as my mother was and as exciting as a great hunt could be – my friend was imprisoned downstairs!
“And so, the Lady Odette is beside herself. She is annoyed that Mother is calling half of the clans’ chiefs away – Tobin Tar with them, I might add – at a time of national crisis.”
“National crisis?” I asked, feeling vaguely offended. Was it my dragon which was the crisis?
“The bandits, Char!” Wurgan said, his voice almost rising to a shout. But although he was clearly frustrated with me, I wasn’t the only source for his anger. “If only Father had brought you to the council meeting we’ve been having all night. But I suppose that you couldn’t, as you were ill…”
I was still ill, to be honest. My head felt groggy and that made me tetchy; at least now I could feel the presence of Paxala in my head again. Even if it was just a dim shadow of what it usually was.
“Anyway. Father has decreed that, with the Prince Vincent’s soldiers dressed as bandits harrying our borders, and now with a dragon living on our roof, and you back here safe--”
“Back here imprisoned, you mean?”
Wurgan had the decency to look uncomfortable at my interruption, but he didn’t stop talking.
“--and the Torvald boy in the cells, that we are to stand prepared for any attack. There are scouts being sent to summon the levies, and the clans have been called to send their warriors to the keep.”
“I see.” I groaned. More politics. “So, Mother calling a great hunt now is not to celebrate my return, or even the dragon’s arrival, it’s really an excuse to mess with Father and Odette.” I was sick of it. How had relations between Father and his two wives – one kingdomer, and one unofficial mountain woman – become so strained, and so politically fraught? There used to exist a good alliance between them. Stronger together, as the clan and kingdomer slogan always said. As it was, I wouldn’t be surprised if Father chose to cast off our mother if she got more troublesome, and that would mean that we--Wurgan and I--would be nothing but noble bastards in the line of succession, and my father and Odette might even have call to seek for a new child, or find some other answer to the problem.
“But Father has his hands tied, you see.” Wurgan had apparently been following my line of thinking. “Even though our mother is doing everything to throw a halt to our fathers’ war, he won’t label her a traitor, because of us.” Wurgan looked even more awkward, as he mumbled through his mustaches. He didn’t have to explain the details to me. Wurgan was the eldest and only male heir. He would be the successor, as Lady Odette hadn’t produced any children for our father.
“So…?” I shrugged. As far as I was concerned, although it might be great to hear of Mother taking her stand, it meant very little compared to the fates of my human and my dragon friend. If Wurgan thought he was going to lure me into keep politics with all of this talk – he had another thing coming!
“Char, you’re very slow-witted when you want to be!” Wurgan hissed. “Do I have to spell it out to you?”
“Apparently,” I said.
“I told Mother about your illness, with the dragon. You were right, last night. She deserved to know. She was mad – and this is what she is doing to help you. To help you, Char.”
“How does this help me?” I asked, making Wurgan roll his eyes and give an exasperated groan.
“It means that the keep and the town are in uproar. Mother gave no notice, of course – as she only found out about what was happening to you in the early hours of this morning. Half of the clans who are staying here are sending their best trackers or attending themselves, readying their mounts and asking the keep kitchens for food, our father’s guard has had to draft more people in to help escort Mother to the great hunt. Market people are even now taking their goods to the mountain gate to sell food and equipment and what have you to the hunters. And the scribes, clerks, and counsellors are running around like a bear with a beesting trying to sort the mess out,” Wurgan said in a rush. “The keep has never been in such disarray as it is, right now.”
“Oh…” I started to get an inkling of what my brother was intimating, and what present my mother had given me. Oh, Mother… I thought, my heart wrenching.
“So,” Wurgan took another of his deep breaths “So, I will be over here, looking very studiously out of your window for perhaps the next quarter of a watch, keeping an eye on the chaos below. Nothing will distract me from my watch, do you understand?”
I did.
“And if that pile of clothes that I left inside the door doesn’t fit you, and looks more like a servant’s cloak and hood then I am sure that is just because I was taking them to the laundry,” Wurgan said. “And if I left the cell keys to the keep’s dungeons in the cloak then it is because I am an idiot, just as my little sister has always told me so.”
“Oh, Wurgan…” I said in a rush, my rage disappearing like water out of a hole in a bucket, leaving me feeling empty and nervous. I crossed the space between us and folded him into my arms in a fierce hug.
“Huh,” Wurgan growled, tapping my back a little awkwardly. “Don’t thank me, thank Mother. She’s doing what she can.”
“But you went and talked to her, brother,” I said. “Thank you.” A tear rolling down my cheek, but I couldn’t think of what I was sad for. My brother was letting me go free, and providing me with the keys to get an influential hostage out of my father’s keep. Ah, I thought, as I found the reason for the sadness. Nothing might ever be the same again after this. When Father found out what had happened, he would be furious, and our stepmother would be even angrier. They might disown us for this, or I might never be allowed to return home again.
“Char already has a home…” a faint, reptilian voice whispered in my heart. “Char has a home with Paxala.”
Yes, I did. I sniffed, and stepped back from my brother. “Wurgan, tell Mother…” I started, but found that I couldn’t find the words to express my love.
“She’s your mother, Char. She already knows. As do I.” Wurgan nodded, gruff and final. “Now go. I have a lot of very important watching to do, and then I might just have to have a loud and very public argument with one of father’s guards that I never liked anyway,” he said with a slight quiver of mustache-grin as he turned and strode to lean against the window.
I didn’t waste any time, slipping on the oversized dirty tunic and the heavy, voluminous grey cloak that marked me as a scribe’s errand-boy, pulling the hood over my head and feeling the reassuring jangle of the dungeon keys in my pocket. At my side was the pouch, with the Great Crown of my grandmother secretly stashed inside. I wondered idly if my brother Wurgan would be so eager to aid in my esca
pe if he knew the importance of what I was taking with me.
But I have to take this, I reminded myself. Zaxx told me that if I did not bring the crown then he will take it out on either my human friends, or the young dragons. Their lives depended on this. With a final look at my taller, statuesque brother standing in the window, I nodded silently at his back.
“You’re still a good brother, and a good man, Wurgan Nefrette-Lander,” I said, but true to his word, he did not turn from his watch, only lifted a hand as if to wave goodbye, and I thought, but did not say how I wished I could get a better chance to know him again.
But time makes fools of us all, or so my mother once told me, and with the knowledge that she was busy stirring up a hornet’s nest at the mountain gates and masking our escape, I stepped out of my old room, and stole away.
CHAPTER 21
THE ESCAPE
“Neill?” I whispered into the darkness.
The dungeon was dark, cramped, and without any light whatsoever. How could they do this to my friend? I thought dismally, before correcting it to how could my father do this to the boy whom he knew was my friend? ‘You might as well learn that a prince, just as a princess will one day do, has to know how to control their enemies, traitors, and spies,’ Father had said, adding in the cold and strategic way he had that, ‘it’s not all pretty ballgowns and dancing, Char.’
But Father had never showed me these cells down here, I thought. He had shown me the larger banks of rooms that were nearly half the size of my bedroom, with a barred window, and even a pallet bed and a spray of straw. The prisoners there had been petty thieves from the town markets, all bowing and scraping and terrified of Father, but none of them nasty or aggressive (unsurprisingly, considering the man who stood before them, perhaps).
Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2) Page 19
