Heart of the Dragon's Realm

by Karalynn Lee

  She couldn’t help glancing behind her to check for potential witnesses, even though she already knew all the Kenasgate soldiers were amassed along the bank. Apparently made nervous by the proximity of the Anagard army, many had their helms on, obscuring their faces. It was easy to imagine they were all looking at her.

  Then her vision narrowed. Among all the men she saw one face that was staring directly at her, all too familiar. She felt faint for a moment before she dug her nails into her palms and focused on that pain. Her horse shied nervously and Herrol said, “Kimri? What is it?”

  “It’s Leden.” She shook with an anger she thought she’d set aside. Of all people, I should know how easy it is to pretend to be a common soldier. “He secretly came with us here.”

  She spoke too loudly and all talk ceased. Dereth turned back to her. “The younger prince? What of him?” He took a closer look at Kimri’s expression. “What did he do to you?”

  Herrol’s gaze shifted away. “He imprisoned her in an oubliette.”

  Dereth’s face drained of color. “You let him do that?”

  “I didn’t even know—”

  “She can’t stand small spaces.”

  “What?”

  Realizing what she had unleashed, she tried to wave her brother quiet, but he ignored her, riding over to her and reaching out to cup her face in his hands. “How long were you in there?”

  “I’m fine now. It was nothing. Please don’t worry about it.” But he was looking her in the eye, and she knew he could read the lie in her face.

  “Call him forth,” Dereth said to the king of Kenasgate, who hemmed.

  “This surely isn’t the place, King Dereth…”

  His soothing tones were wasted. “Leden of Kenasgate!” Dereth roared.

  Everyone turned to look at a single soldier in the front lines who slowly removed his helmet to reveal his royal features. The men on either side of him hastily saluted. Leden walked toward the bridge, his chin at such a proud angle that Kimri knew he must be hiding his nervousness.

  “We can take care of this later,” the king of Kenasgate said, but the way his gaze flickered to his younger son betrayed his anxiety.

  Peramin also murmured something to Dereth, but her brother shook him off and said fiercely, “We take care of this now.”

  Leden stepped onto the bridge and approached. “King Dereth of Anagard.” His voice only rasped a little.

  Dereth didn’t bother with niceties. “Do you acknowledge what you did to my sister?”

  Leden looked over at her. She had to turn away, but before she did she saw guilt suffuse his face. He suddenly seemed like just a boy, and she remembered that he was younger than she. “Yes.” His voice was faint. “I’m sorry, Princess.”

  Her brother clenched his fists. “You think that pathetic apology’s sufficient?”

  “Dereth, no,” she said, recognizing the signs of impending fury. He lost his temper seldom, but it was always a storm when he did. She caught at his sleeve the way she had when she was twelve and wanted to beg a favor from him. She hated feeling so ineffectual and wished she could physically force some sense into him. This wasn’t the time or place for this confrontation, and if he shouted out her shameful weakness once more and made her think about what she’d been through, she might heave her guts out. Right now she wanted Leden out of her sight more than she wanted him punished. “I’m over it. And we’ve dragged enough people into war and ruin.”

  He considered for a moment. “You’re right. We’ll settle this between ourselves. Peramin, your gauntlet.” Their cousin pulled it off and handed it over. Without pause, Dereth hurled it at Leden’s feet with such force that it skittered along the bridge and over the edge. His lips curled in a snarl. “I challenge you.”

  Kimri gasped. A duel was no better. “Don’t—”

  Her protest was lost. When the gauntlet hit the water, it was like a single beat on the heaviest drum, so deep it was felt instead of heard, the reverberations reaching to the marrow of her bones.

  They say there’s a dragon sleeping in the river between Anagard and Kenasgate.

  The dragon awoke.

  She knew it first when the river started rushing faster, rising in a violent wave that almost carried off the nearest soldiers. The horses all bolted, ignoring their riders’ voices and hands on the reins. She caught a glimpse of her brother clinging helplessly to his steed’s neck before her own gelding threw her. She cried out as she hit the bridge hard, then rolled onto her hands and knees, shaking her head to clear it.

  When her vision steadied, she saw that in those seconds the water had risen so high it covered the ends of the bridge. Her horse was nowhere to be seen. It must have either reached land and kept running, or been carried away by that fierce current when it tried to flee.

  Dimly, she was aware of people on both sides of the river running and screaming, the soldiers erupting into chaos as they fought to get away from the river, but right now her world was bordered by water. Everything seemed to be moving slowly through the haze of spray.

  Over the sound of creaking wood and thundering water, she heard Beatris shouting, and Kimri confusedly recognized the words of the sword-dancing challenge. Beatris’s horse must have fled without her as well, and now she stood at the rail, legs braced against the shaking of the bridge as the river pounded against it.

  An eel leaped up out of the water, hanging in the air for a moment as a shimmering ribbon in the sunlight. Then it turned into the river-dragon surging out of the water, its endless coils of iridescent scales as bright and changing as water. It reared up high with a hiss. Kimri, her muscles locked, could only feel wonder at having seen such a creature before dying. Then the dragon’s shape blurred as it plunged toward her.

  Despite her paralysis she must have blinked, for in the next moment the dragon was gone and a woman with a proud nose and blue eyes stood on the bridge, the two swords on her back mirroring Beatris’s. Although nothing about her face or form was other than human, Kimri could not look at her without thinking dragon.

  “But you are human,” the dragon-woman said to Beatris. “You still challenge me?”

  “No.” Beatris turned and walked over to Kimri. She held out her swords, offering them hilt-first. “She does.”

  She stared at Beatris, too astonished for words.

  Beatris didn’t move. “Take them.”

  Her hands crept out and took hold of the swords. She had never known the other woman to act other than sane. Perhaps Beatris had been injured in some way that wasn’t visible and left her unable to fight.

  “Do my father proud,” Beatris said, her voice rough. Kimri knew then she was serious, to have invoked Jakkis.

  She rose from her crouch and raised the blades as she turned to face the dragon-woman, who was smiling.

  She summoned Jakkis’s voice to guide her and settled into the proper stance. She forced her breathing to slow, measuring each inhale and exhale until the rhythm of air moving through her lungs was no longer so hurried. Then she spoke the challenge. She might have stumbled over the words, might have spoken them a little too quickly. But the dragon-woman responded with her acceptance readily enough.

  Kimri fell into a defensive posture immediately. She had little chance of hitting a skilled sword-dancer. Although she managed to evade the first blow, she had to block the second with her blade, and the force of it nearly made her drop her sword. She gritted her teeth, wishing she’d spent her time in Kenasgate practicing her arm-strengthening exercises.

  The dragon-woman came at her again, and this time Kimri evaded her entirely, stepping back and leaning to one side while steel whistled past her face. Jakkis had come similarly close to her many times, but there had never been such a deadly sense of purpose behind the arc of his sword. Her palms grew sweaty and she forced herself not to clutch the hilts in a death grip.

  The dragon-woman forced her back a few more steps. The bridge’s rail limited her movement and her feet threatened to slip u
pon the planks, worn smooth with age and wet with spray from the river, which still raged on. The need to keep the top of the bridge dry for this sword-dance might be the only thing keeping the river-dragon from completely flooding both Kenasgate and Anagard.

  The distraction cost her: a nick near her elbow, thankfully shallow, but she still felt it as a line of fire along her forearm. She forced herself to ignore the blood that flowed from the cut and threatened to slicken her grip further. But encouraged by her success, the dragon-woman pressed even harder. Kimri threw herself into a series of deflections that left her arms and shoulders aching, her footwork forgotten in a frenzy of blows she had to defend against. She wondered desperately whether she could hand off the swords to Beatris, and risked a glance toward the other woman.

  Beatris wasn’t watching her, but gazing northward instead. No one will even see me die. But as she despaired, Beatris suddenly called out, lifting her hand as though to hail someone.

  The dragon-woman’s head snapped upward. Then she screamed and whipped into her dragon shape. Kimri threw herself down so hard she lost her breath, knowing there was no way she could survive an attack now.

  The sky went dark.

  An eclipse? She instinctively looked toward where the sun had once been, and saw instead a vast shadow overhead, limned with the golden light it was blocking, so she could make out its shape.

  “Dragon,” she breathed. Another one. This one had come from the direction of Helsmont.

  They say that Helsmont is guarded by the dragon who lives in the mountains. Had Tathan sent it here, as he had the eagle?

  The mountain-dragon spoke. She couldn’t understand its speech, but the deep, rumbling sounds it made clearly had meaning. The river-dragon replied.

  Kimri recognized the rhythm of the words. They were the same as the opening exchange to initiate a sword-dance. This was the original tongue in which it was spoken. Dragon-speech.

  And so she learned where the sword-dance had come from. With the challenge issued and accepted, the dragons lunged at each other. Before they collided, they vanished, and in their places were a tiger and a bear. They parted after a brief struggle and circled each other, fur bristling. When they clashed again, the bear’s bulk looked to be overwhelming even the tiger’s lithe strength.

  The tiger became a hawk, wings beating furiously as it gained altitude. Then it dived toward the bear’s eyes.

  The bear reared and struck the hawk down to the ground with a swipe of its paw. Then it leaped forward as a fox to pounce upon the bird, which just as quickly turned wolf and slipped aside.

  They changed into different animals in turn as they fought, seeking advantage in new shapes. She didn’t even recognize some of the creatures who emerged on each end of the battle—all differently scaled, feathered or furred, but each one single-mindedly attacking the other. She had long since lost track of which one was which dragon.

  The dragons turned into river creatures and vanished beneath the roiling surface of the water. She strained to make out their shapes under the foam but saw nothing. She knew the fight hadn’t ended, though.

  She remembered the symbol on the pommel of Beatris’s swords, the dragon-knot so tightly bound together that neither dragon could escape. There was a reason dragons remained in their own territories.

  A strip of cloth tightened around her arm and she blinked to discover Beatris kneeling next to her, tying a makeshift bandage over her wound. She’d almost forgotten the other woman in the spectacle of the fighting dragons, but the bridge remained surrounded by the torrential river, so of course she was still here.

  “Your swords,” Kimri said, pleased that she still had them. Jakkis’s training had held true. “Thank you for letting me use them, I think.”

  Beatris took them and sheathed them. “You fought well.”

  Incredulous laughter escaped her. “I survived until the other dragon came.”

  “That’s all you needed to do.”

  She stared at Beatris. She opened her mouth to demand an explanation when a silvery pike exploded from the waters, aiming toward the bank. It turned human as it landed, and her heart dropped. The mountain-king stood at the ready, swords in his hands.

  They say he tamed a dragon and set it to guarding the mountain.

  He is the dragon.

  The river-dragon matched his form and weapons. “Human-shape?” she said scornfully.

  “I’ve grown a liking for it,” he said, and those were the only words they exchanged before they began trading strikes instead.

  They moved so quickly that Kimri had trouble tracking their movements. She only heard the ring of steel again and again, of blows countered and deflected. Each one was too close for her comfort. They both already had numerous bruises and wounds from their earlier struggles, and even as she watched, the dragon-woman lunged forward and nearly buried both blades in his shoulder before he spun away.

  He can’t die. He was away from his beloved mountains, there was no successor to rule his people, and she hadn’t yet had the chance to tell him she was sorry for leaving him.

  She was standing now, clutching the rail of the bridge in a white-knuckled grip and scarcely breathing as she watched the duel. There were a hundred words trapped in her throat, all trying to escape at once. You came and win this and don’t leave me and why didn’t you tell me and I love you and do you still love me?

  Then the mountain-king locked one of the dragon-woman’s blades with his and feinted with the other. Her sword whipped down toward his leg, but before it could strike, his steel lay along the curve of the dragon-woman’s neck.

  Her expression was blank as she spoke the words of surrender, and stayed so even after the mountain-king pulled his swords back.

  Kimri had stuffed a knuckle into her mouth to stay quiet, and now she relaxed. She could not imagine the death of a dragon would bode well for any realm, even at the hands of another dragon.

  “You may keep the riverlands,” the mountain-king said. “I want no more than my mountains, as I’ve had for all this time. I only ask that you do what you can to keep peace between the two human realms that your river borders.”

  “This is not the way of dragons,” the dragon-woman said. Kimri didn’t know if she meant the refusal of her territory or the mandate for peace.

  The mountain-king’s mouth crooked. “Perhaps I have spent too long a time as a man.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “If this is my realm, then leave it.” She changed back into eel-form and slipped into the river, whose waters suddenly subsided.

  Her path clear, Kimri immediately began running toward the mountain-king. “Tathan!”

  He looked toward her. Some emotion flared on his face, and she hoped it was joy. But he shook his head. “I must go.”

  She had almost reached him, but she slowed as she saw his mouth shape those words. She took one last hesitant step toward him and stopped. “What of me?” Her voice came out small.

  “Come to me,” he said, and then he flung himself into his dragon-form and into the air.

  She watched him ride the winds away toward the mountains, her heart strangely brimming. She lifted her chin so that her eyes, full as well, would not shed their tears.

  “Kimri…”

  She turned and Dereth enfolded her in his arms. Both of them were soaked from their time on the bridge, but the embrace comforted her despite its dampness. She released two quick sobs into his tunic, then pushed him away.

  “I said we’d make it through,” she said with forced cheer.

  He kissed her cheek. “I’ll never doubt you again.”

  “Liar.”

  “Kimri, you summoned a dragon.”

  “That wasn’t me. That was—” She turned and saw Beatris’s back, crossed with two swords, riding away. “Beatris! Hold on,” she told her brother, and then ran after her. “Beatris, wait.”

  The horse stopped and Beatris let her catch up.

  “Where are you going?” she asked. “I owe you thanks.
And Helsmont is that way.”

  “I’m not a commandant of Helsmont any longer.”

  “I was hoping you said that to put Herrol at ease.” But she’d known Beatris would never lie about such a matter.

  “The king commanded that we let you be. So I deserted.”

  “To try to catch me?”

  “Yes. I was the one who didn’t tell him about the state you were in after your mare died, after all.”

  That loss still hurt. “Would that have changed anything?”

  “He would have gone to see you. You would have seen that he did care.” Beatris shook her head, dismissing the scenario. “But that’s not what happened. You left with the prince. I thought you’d take him to Anagard and use him as a pawn from there, so that’s where I went.”

  “Tathan wouldn’t let you go? He didn’t want you to find me?”

  “He said that you’d made your choice. He didn’t want to pressure you to come back.”

  “But you were ready to do it anyway.”

  “There are times when I serve my king’s heart, not his words.” Beatris hesitated. “I’m sorry for the sword-dance, though. You had to be the one facing death, or he might not have come.”

  She absorbed this. “You gave me the swords so I’d be the one endangered by the river-dragon.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you knew he would come?”

  “I saw the eagle. I knew he was watching. I knew he had never entered the riverlands before. But I also knew how he felt about you.”

  Those last words silenced her. She couldn’t quite muster any convincing anger. “So it all turned out as you wished.”

  “Not quite,” Beatris said, and Kimri remembered that she’d lost her position.

  “You can go back to Helsmont with me—” She stopped when Beatris shook her head again.