Bard's Oath (Dragonlord)

by Joanne Bertin

  “But he’s only a commoner!” “How long must Lord Tirael wait for vengeance?” “Oh, dear! Oh, dear—it wouldn’t be wise to anger the Lady.” “Why did the damned horse breeder have to have Dragonlord friends, anyway?” “He was caught red-handed—literally! I say we hang him and have done with it!” “Bloody idiot—do you want an angry truedragon sitting on your manor house and rampaging through your fields because we didn’t delay a few days? I don’t! I say we wait—he’ll be just as dead in a tenday as he would be tomorrow morning.”

  The last was courtesy of the irascible Lord Corvy, and everyone had heard it. Corvy’s idea of a “discreet whisper” was a muted bellow. He sat back in his chair, whuffling in annoyance through his bristly grey mustache, glaring at the other members of the Judges’ Council.

  Shima watched as the mental image Corvy had evoked spread among the old lord’s fellow nobles. Its path was easy to follow; first, eyes went wide, then face after face blanched and lips moved in soundless prayers—or curses. He was never certain afterward how he kept a straight face. Indeed, had it not been life or death, he would have laughed aloud.

  Lord Oriss, one of the judges, stood up. He coughed delicately and said, “The Lady of Dragonskeep and Lord Truedragon Morlen might not appreciate such a request. Would you truly risk annoying them for the sake of a mere commoner?”

  This was an attitude Shima had never faced among his own people, the Tah’nehsieh, though he’d heard of it among the Jehangli. He hadn’t liked the thought of it then, and he despised the reality of it now. Shima stared at the Cassorin noble until the man squirmed. “Did you forget that I was also born a ‘mere commoner,’ my lord?” he said coldly.

  Before the man could answer, Maurynna stood up and faced Lord Oriss. She said, “As was I, my lord.” Her voice was quiet and controlled, but all the more dangerous for that. Even Shima flinched from the steely edge in it.

  Lord Oriss looked as frightened as if he’d suddenly found a naked blade at his throat. “I—I m-meant no…” He trailed off.

  A deep voice said pleasantly—too pleasantly, Shima thought; there was as much danger in that mild tone as in Maurynna’s barely contained fury—“Until she reached First Change, the Lady of Dragonskeep was a weaver’s apprentice. I don’t think there will be a problem there.”

  Everyone looked to the door in surprise. Linden stood, leaning against the jamb. He looked, thought Shima, very tired.

  Linden pushed off from the jamb and walked into the room. He went on, still in that deceptively mild voice, “And the greatest of the truedragons, Morlen the Seer, doesn’t give a damn for what he sees as truehuman pretensions, my lords and ladies. He also holds Raven in high regard, for it was Raven’s idea of using Llysanyins as performing horses that gave us the key to enter Jehanglan. Because of him, we were able to end the truedragon Pirakos’s horrible suffering.”

  “I … see,” Lord Oriss managed to say.

  “But getting word to them and then returning would take days, wouldn’t it, Your Graces?” someone asked.

  The voice came from the back of the room. It was one Shima hadn’t heard before, nor could he even tell whether it was male or female. What he did know was that he didn’t like the sly note under the apparent concern. He suspected he knew just what plans the owner of that voice contemplated.

  It was lovely to foil them. “Not at all,” Shima replied. “All of us are strong fliers.” Though this one would be on Maurynna or me.

  From the looks on the faces before him, it was plain they’d forgotten for the moment that Dragonlords weren’t bound to the earth as they were. Shima guessed they’d agreed with the unknown voice: Hang the bastard while they’re riding north. Not a damn thing they can do then. Shima smiled sweetly at them.

  “Nor do we even need as much time as flying would take, my lords and ladies,” said Linden. “It’s possible that even from this distance, I could mindspeak the Lady of Dragonskeep on my own. If Maurynna or Shima let me draw upon their strength, I know I can reach the Lady. Then a message out of Dragonskeep to Morlen the Seer and his kinswyrms as the Lady wings south…” He shrugged. “I understand many of the truedragons hold Raven in very high regard. Likely they’d come as well.”

  Dismay, consternation, fear; even a few devout prayers. It was plain this was not a thing the nobles of Cassori wished to see.

  Folding his arms across his chest, Linden looked from side to side. “And all for the thing we ask you now. My lords and ladies—do we have our extra time?”

  Lord Corvy said, “By all the gods, give it to ’em. We don’t want a bunch of angry truedragons hanging about, now do we? So we wait a tenday or even two.”

  * * *

  They had a tenday; the Judges’ Council had recessed and then sent word of their decision. Now the question was, how could they prove a man caught red-handed was innocent? Linden hadn’t the faintest idea. Neither, he suspected, did either of the others. By unspoken agreement, they headed for the tranquil seclusion of the castle gardens after the closing of the Judges’ meeting.

  “Otter?” Maurynna asked.

  “Here,” Linden said. “I asked Lord Asiah that he be allowed to visit Raven. As soon as he realized that it was that Otter Heronson, he agreed. The rest of the Judges’ Council is still balking at letting Yarrow visit, however. I’ll talk to Beren about it.”

  Walking aimlessly, they came upon a small grove of cherry trees. Centered in the grove was a little pool lined with white marble; benches made of the same stone faced each other across the water. Maurynna and Shima wandered off to see if any of the cherries were ripe. Linden stayed behind. He knelt on one of the marble slabs around the pool’s rim and looked into the water.

  It was so clear that he could see to the bottom where the center stone had a hole carved into it where the spring below entered. The excess water flowed over a channel carved in one of the rim stones and ran down a channel lined with more of the glossy white stone. After a few feet, the channel disappeared underground. Linden wondered halfheartedly where it went to before looking back into the water once more.

  If only our course was as clear as this, he thought, dipping a hand into the water. It was icy cold. He scooped up a double handful and splashed it over his face, then took a seat on a bench. He watched as the other two came to join him, their hands empty.

  They sat down, Maurynna next to him and Shima across from them. Linden couldn’t help observing, “So, your search was … fruitless?”

  Shima groaned. Maurynna smiled sweetly—much too sweetly—and said, “I ought to shove you in the pool for that. Headfirst.”

  “And I wouldn’t blame you a bit. Thank Otter for that one. He used it on me once.”

  “Otter … Oh dear gods, Linden—how did he take it?” Maurynna asked. “If Raven is hanged it will break his heart.”

  “It was bad, Maurynna-love. Very bad.”

  “Do you think Otter can help us?”

  “If there’s a way Raven can be helped,” Shima said, gazing morosely into the water.

  “Aye,” Linden muttered. “If there is a way.”

  A depressed silence fell over them. Time crawled past; Linden racked his brains trying to find a place to start. He saw none. Discouraged, he watched the water bubbling gently over the lip of the pool and listened to the breeze rustle the leaves around them.

  “Linden—could you truly reach Dragonskeep from here?” Shima asked at last.

  Linden answered, “If, as I said, you or Maurynna helped me, the answer is, yes, I can. Some of the older and more powerful Dragonlords wouldn’t need help, but I often do. I once reached even further with the unknowing help of a band of merlings.”

  “When was that?” Maurynna asked, turning on the bench to face him. “I thought you’d rarely been to sea before we met, and you certainly never mentioned seeing merlings. They’re not that common.”

  Linden smiled. “I wasn’t at sea, but at Dragonskeep. It was the night I mindspoke Otter when you and he were sailing to
Cassori.”

  She gazed past him for a moment, lost in thought. “That’s right—I remember now! I’d had the oddest dreams one night, and came out of my cabin the next morning trying to remember them. Then Otter began teasing me—he knew all kinds of things that he couldn’t have found out before we sailed. Said he’d heard it all from a friend. The wretch wouldn’t tell me who; all I guessed was that it wasn’t one of my crew. Nearly drove me to distraction, trying to puzzle out who else he could have been talking to in the middle of the sea.

  “Once I found out more about mindspeech, I’d wondered how you were able to reach so far. I know I couldn’t. Then I decided it was because you’d been a Dragonlord so much longer than I. So you did it by tapping the magic of a pod of mer—?” She stopped short, staring at him in puzzlement.

  “What’s wrong, love?”

  “Linden—where were those merlings?”

  Now it was his turn to be puzzled. “They must have been right by your ship, else I couldn’t have made use of their magic.”

  “But there weren’t any merlings on that voyage. You don’t see them very often; most of my kin have never seen any. I did, on one voyage, but that was when I was second mate on my aunt’s ship. When they do come around, they’ll follow a ship for days. They like ship’s biscuits—the gods only know why, no one else does—and know that sailors will usually toss them some for luck. I would have seen them if they’d been there, Linden.”

  “There must have been some,” Linden argued. “I remember straining to hold the link after finding Otter. Then, just as I thought it would snap, there was a surge of power. I realized there must have been merlings nearby. What else could it have been—”

  The answer hit him with the force of mule’s kick. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said softly.

  There had never been any merlings. He’d simply assumed there were because Otter was on a ship, and what other magic would be nearby? What else could have been the wellspring of the power he’d felt, used—

  And woke before its proper time. Linden felt ill. It was on his head that the dragon half of Maurynna’s soul, Kyrissaean, had been woken too early and faced dark magic before she was ready. All the problems Maurynna had faced were his fault. Thank the gods that Miune Kihn, the young Jehangli waterdragon, had been able to soothe Maurynna’s dragonsoul during the journey to Jehanglan; would she have ever been able to Change at will if not for that? He decided he never wanted to know the answer.

  “Linden?”

  She’d put all the pieces together as well; he could see it in her eyes. “Oh gods, love—I’m sorry,” he whispered. “If I’d known…”

  They stared at each other without speaking. Finally Shima cleared his throat and said, “Would someone like to tell me what’s going on?”

  “No,” they both snapped, still watching each other.

  Shima threw his hands up in surrender.

  Finally Maurynna said, “It’s all right, Linden—you didn’t know. No one knew.”

  “I should have.…”

  She sighed in exasperation. “How? I asked you once before: Are you one of the gods to know everything? Or just a Dragonlord? Stop heaping ashes upon your head, or I’ll, I’ll—” She crossed her arms. “Let’s just say you won’t like whatever I think of when I do think of it.”

  But she was fighting a smile as she said it, and Linden knew he was forgiven—if she’d even truly blamed him. Perhaps she’d guessed—rightly—that he’d blame himself enough for the both of them, and would for a very long time.

  “So,” he said, “what do we know?”

  “We know that Conor heard music and did something that you—and I will bow to your knowledge of the man—think was not in character,” Shima said.

  “Now what?” Maurynna asked.

  “I can’t help feeling we’re missing something,” Linden muttered, rubbing his chin. “Some little thing we’ve overlooked.…”

  “But what?” Maurynna whispered. “And can we find it in time?”

  Forty-eight

  “The food’s running low,” Kaeliss said as she peered into her pack. “Even with Fiarin’s share, we’ve only a bit of the dried meat left and not much more dried fruit.” She looked up, fear writ large in her eyes. “What are we to do? I’ve not seen any berry bushes or anything else, have you?”

  “No.” Pod frowned; worse yet, Kiga hadn’t been able to find any prey lately. She suspected the woods dog was keeping himself from starving by eating grubs from under logs, but she was a good way from being hungry enough to share that meal. Odd, though, that he hadn’t found anything. Come to think of it, it had been some time since she’d seen even a squirrel in these woods. She was just about to mention it when Kaeliss stood up.

  “We’d better push on,” the Wort Hunter said, driving the thought from Pod’s mind.

  They walked on, pausing throughout the day to search for whatever edible berries or mushrooms they might find. It was late morning when they made a couple of welcome discoveries.

  The first was a small stream. Pod silently thanked the gods; there were only a few mouthfuls left in her waterskin. They hurried to ease their parched mouths and fill their waterskins once more. As they knelt, wiping their faces, both became aware of a sweet scent in the air.

  Pod sniffed and sniffed; she’d smelled this before. It brought back a welter of emotions, some good, some bad. What was—

  She toddled after Old Simmy as the grunting matriarch of the pigsty pushed through the bushes. Something smelled nice. With a squeal of rapturous pleasure, the black-and-white sow began rooting at the base of some vines. Many of the tubers she unearthed disappeared down her gullet like magic; others she pushed to Pod, who gathered them up in her tunic. She didn’t dare eat them; if they found out, they’d beat her. But maybe they would give her some.…

  Pod scrambled to her feet and sniffed the air like a hound, tracing the delicious scent back to its source: a tangle of vines with purple-brown flowers. She followed the nearest to where it sprang up from the ground and began digging. A few moments later she held a string of small tubers in her hand. “Groundnuts!” she cried in delight.

  Soon they had enough to fill their small pot. As the tubers cooked, they discussed what to do next. In the end, they decided to gather as many groundnuts as they could and press on as long as the light held, then make camp and send Kiga to hunt. If the gods were willing, perhaps he’d find a nice fat rabbit. After stuffing themselves with groundnuts, they crossed the stream and forged on, Pod in the lead.

  After a time, Pod noticed that Kiga seemed uneasy. The woods dog kept stopping, looking this way and that. Now and again, he’d snarl, a soft, puzzled, uneasy snarl that prickled the hair on the back of Pod’s neck. Each time she stopped and peered around as well, her heart pounding. What was out there? Surely no animal in its right mind would confront a woods dog. Hellfire—she’d seen a bear back down before Kiga!

  But there was never anything that she could see, or even hear. Still, her uneasiness grew throughout the day. She kept telling herself it was just because she was still tired from the failed Healing, yet it didn’t help when Kaeliss cursed behind her. She jumped “halfway to the moon,” as Conor would say.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously, spinning around.

  Kaeliss was on the ground, tugging at her boot. “I think I’ve got a blister,” came the terse—and annoyed—reply. “Damn it all—just what we didn’t need!”

  Pod watched as Kaeliss examined her heel. “I had to be right, curse it,” the other young woman muttered. She dabbed some ointment from a small jar on the blister. Pod recognized the jar as one they’d taken from Fiarin’s pack. With another curse, Kaeliss pulled her linen stocking and boot back on and rose.

  “You’d best lead now to set the pace,” Pod said. Kaeliss nodded; they set off once more, Kaeliss limping slightly.

  In the late afternoon they came upon another long pile of rocks like the one they had robbed to build Fiarin’s cairn. As they c
lambered over, Kaeliss paused, then pointed.

  “Those are apple trees!” she cried.

  It took Pod a moment to recognize them; unlike the trees in the chapterhouse’s orchard, these were wildly overgrown. But as her eye grew used to the tangle, she saw that Kaeliss was right.

  She could also see that despite their wildness, they were arranged in neat rows. “This was an orchard,” she said slowly.

  And with that she realized what the stone piles were: the remains of old stone walls. “There must have been a village around here once,” she told Kaeliss as they hopped down. “No one would plant an orchard in the middle of the woods.”

  Which explained why the woods had seemed so odd: unlike the other forests she’d been in, these were young trees, trees that had sprung up in abandoned fields and pastures.

  And with that realization, her uneasiness grew. Why had this place been abandoned? She kicked at the grass, scuffing up a clod of crumbly black soil teeming with earthworms. Rich dirt, this; the people of this village hadn’t left because the soil was worn out.

  She narrowed her eyes and looked around. So why …

  Kiga’s whine made her turn. He stood on the old wall, scrabbling at the rocks with his powerful claws, head turning this way and that, now whining, now snarling.

  “Kiga! Kiga come!”

  But the woods dog ignored her. Pod whistled sharply and called, “Kiga! Come here now!”

  At last Kiga clambered down from his rocky perch and trotted to her side. Pod scratched behind his ears. “All’s well, boy, don’t worry,” she told him—and herself.

  A call from Kaeliss made her look up again. The other young woman had gotten well ahead of her. She was alternately waving and pointing to something at her feet. As the skin between her shoulder blades prickled, Pod trotted to join her.

  “Look!” Kaeliss said when Pod joined her in a small clearing. “Another spring!” She pivoted and pointed to a huge clump of tall orange flowers shaped like trumpets. “And those are daylilies—fancy their surviving all this time since the village was abandoned. You can eat the buds, the flowers themselves, and the tubers beneath. I think we should rest here a day or two. I don’t want that blister to break open and get infected—and you haven’t fully recovered from trying to Heal Fiarin, have you? You still look pale.”