[Hurog 01] - Dragon Bones

by Patricia Briggs

I could have hit him with the whip and driven him off, but he already knew that whips hurt. It wouldn’t have taught him anything. Instead, I shook the bag of cooking pots hard, yelling and stepping toward him aggressively, banging on the bag with the hard end of the whip. It sounded like the kitchen after someone vexed the cook.

  The noise was too much for Stygian. He spun on his hindquarters and darted in the other direction as if a pack of wolves were on his tail, crow-hopping around the circles his size wouldn’t let him negotiate smoothly. By the fourth time I turned him, his chest and flanks were covered in foam. At last he dropped his head and looked at me, not challenging, but asking for permission to stop.

  I pulled the whip up and said, “Whoa.”

  He stopped as he’d been trained, but his hindquarters angled toward me, so I shook the whip and sent him running again. I waited until he carried his head low once more. This time when he stopped, he faced me. We’d both had enough.

  “Good lad,” I said, setting the whip and the bag down. I walked up to him and patted his wet shoulder gently. “We’ll turn you into a Pansy, yet, eh?”

  His whole body heaved with the effort of breathing; he was too tired and disheartened to care who I was. Dull-eyed, he watched me, not expecting much, I thought. It was fear, not anger, that made him dangerous. I doubted he’d ever be a fit mount for anyone else, but he’d trust me, eventually.

  I put a normal halter on him, not his usual one. It had taken a long time to wear him down to this point, but I doubted anyone would have to worry about his aggressiveness for a few hours yet. Tomorrow would be a better gauge of the progress we’d made. I hadn’t hurt him once. He’d remember that long after the effects of his running were gone.

  His ears twitched. I turned and found the Brat standing right next to me. She knew better than to approach a horse like Stygian without a good reason, so I wasn’t surprised to see my uncle standing by the fence. He scared her, mostly, as far as I knew, because he was the twins’ father and our father’s brother.

  It took a heavy tug on the lead rope to get the stallion to move—something I’d work on later. First things first. Penrod took him from me as soon as we’d cleared the gate while another groom ran into the ring to gather pots and whip.

  “We’ve set the funeral for late tomorrow afternoon,” said my uncle, approaching me. “It’s too warm to wait longer, though it means your aunt cannot make it here in time.”

  I looked at him, then allowed my face to clear with comprehension. Ah, he would think (I hoped), the moron remembers his father died today. I nodded.

  He waited, clearly hoping for some further response. “I see you’re not taking Penrod’s advice. I talked to him after the Hurogmeten died. That beast needs to be put down.”

  Fat lot you know, I thought.

  “He’s pretty,” I said. “Hot blood and small spaces. Big things like him and me need space.” I thought about the tunnel leading to the dragon bone cave and the raw places on my shoulders ached in response. “Lots of space.”

  “He killed your father, Ward. He’s dangerous.”

  I looked at him. “If he couldn’t control him, he shouldn’t have ridden him.” It was father’s favorite axiom with variants like, “If he couldn’t beat him, he shouldn’t have started the fight.”

  Duraugh turned as if to go but twisted abruptly and closed in until we were face-to-face.

  “Ward,” he said intently, “your mother may be Tallvenish, but you are born and bred Shavigman. You know that our land is ruled by magic. I’ve fought skellet in the high reaches—”

  Ciarra darted behind me at the mention of the unquiet dead.

  “—and I’ve seen a village the Nightwalkers destroyed.” Duraugh waved a hand vaguely southward. “The Tallvenish laugh at our fear of curses, but you aren’t a flatlander, are you?”

  I didn’t know what he was getting at, but I played along. Ducking my head awkwardly so I could meet his eyes, I whispered, “We have a curse.”

  And an embarrassingly poor curse it was, too. No verse, no obscure references, just something that looked as though a group of adolescent boys had scratched it into a stone wall. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the wall hadn’t been in the great hall. The only reason visitors didn’t laugh when they saw it was that it was written in old-style runes that few people could decipher.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  I blinked at my uncle a moment before I decided it was something an idiot could know. “The house of Hurog will fall to the underground beast.”

  “The stygian beast, Ward. Stygian is the underworld beast. Fen thought it a good name for a warhorse. He picked better than he knew. That stallion is an underworld creature,” he said intently. “He should have been killed long ago. Do you see?”

  I’d known Stygian had been named for the beast who came from the underworld to gobble the souls of the dead who hadn’t lived well enough to go dwell in the houses of the gods. Who’d have thought Uncle would take it so seriously? It occurred to me that the curse had already come to pass. Because the bones of the underground beast lay chained in a hidden cave under the keep, Hurog’s riches were gone, and there were no dragons in the world.

  Hurog didn’t need the Stygian beast to destroy itself the rest of the way. My father was . . . had been a madman. My mother ate dreamroot and took little note of what went on about her. My sister was mute, though not a healer or magician could tell why. My brother had tried to take his own life.

  “You do see?” Duraugh asked, obviously forgetting in his obsession that he was talking to the family idiot.

  “I see very well,” I replied to remind him. “But what does that have to do with the horse?”

  My uncle was a good-looking man, better-looking than my father if not so handsome as his own sons. But anger took away from his looks; maybe that’s why I enjoyed his reaction so much. The Brat buried her face against my back as he controlled himself with an effort.

  “Stygian was your father’s doom. If you don’t see that, he’ll be yours as well.”

  “He is a horse,” I said doggedly. “And I changed his name. Stygian takes too long to say. Pansy. His name is Pansy.” I liked the name better every time I said it.

  OREG, THE BOY FROM the dragon bone cave, came to me as I got ready for bed that night. I didn’t see him come in the room, but when I dried my face after washing, he was sitting on the corner of my bed. I acknowledged him with a nod, sat on a stool placed near my bed, and began trimming my toenails over the empty chamber pot with my knife.

  He watched me for a while. But watching someone trim their toenails is dull work, so finally he spoke.

  “Do you know what the ring is for?”

  I shook my head. There was a long silence during which I switched to my fingernails.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  I nodded my head this time. He stood up and began to pace, muttering to himself. Finally, he stopped in front of me and put his hand over my knife to still it. His hand was warm and solid, though in the bard’s stories, ghosts always have icy, ephemeral touches.

  “Who am I, then?” he said, frustrated anger in his voice. I wondered if he’d watched me when I wasn’t pretending. Did he know my game?

  “Don’t you know who you are?” I asked, widening my eyes.

  He dropped to the floor in a depressed sort of flop and buried his face in his hands. The back of his neck looked vulnerable. He reminded me of my brother Tosten.

  I stared at him for a long moment. There was no one I trusted with my secret. Not even Ciarra really, though she might suspect.

  “Who are you?” I asked crisply. “I don’t know much more than a few ghost stories. And I don’t believe you are a ghost.”

  His head jerked up at the difference in my voice. I put my knife away, kicked the chamber pot under the bed, and prepared to listen.

  “It’s true isn’t it?” He whispered, more hope than certainty in his voice. “You’ve been pretending all these years. I thought
it might be so. I couldn’t tell earlier.”

  He watched me for a while, but I didn’t know how to explain it so it didn’t sound stupid and melodramatic.

  “Do you know who built Hurog keep?” he asked finally.

  His tone was wary. He’d already learned that asking questions was a risky business. But I’d decided he wasn’t a player in the game. He was mine as Hurog was mine. I touched the platinum ring lightly with my thumb.

  “No. I know he was given charge of the dragons here at the behest of the high king.”

  Oreg snorted bitterly. “Then you know nothing at all. The Hurog title came hundreds of years later. Hurog keep is old, built early in the age of the Empire by a true mage—not like that idiot of your father’s. When the mage retired from court, he built his fortress here, where no one would bother him, because they were afraid of dragons.”

  He looked down and traced a pattern on the floor. “He wanted a house that would take care of itself, so he wouldn’t be bothered by servants pottering about or soldiers practicing in the courtyard. He had two sons by his wife, a mundane woman who had the good sense to die when she was young. One son became a field commander and died in some war or other; the second was a wizard in his own right. I was born of a slave woman and sold to a nobleman’s family, but when he gave them money, they sent me back to him here.”

  He stopped. I wasn’t certain I wanted him to continue. I’d heard enough bards’ tales to know where the story was going, or maybe I’d just had too much experience with my father to expect much of his.

  “When I got here, he was alone; there were no servants. He gave me a bowl of soup from a pot he had brewing in the fireplace. I fell asleep. When I awoke, I was the keep.”

  I stared at him while I examined his last words. He was the keep, he said. I remembered the oddity of stepping through the hidden door into my room, though I knew we had been somewhere deep in the mound the keep sat upon. I weighed the possible responses I might make and in the end chose to make none at all.

  “Thank you for taking care of the Brat today, Oreg.” If you said something unexpected, I’d learned that you often got more answers than if you asked questions.

  His head snapped up, and he looked at me, frowning. Whatever he thought to read in my face, I don’t think he found it. “I try to watch out for her,” he said. “It isn’t much. A door that lets her escape to a quiet place where her father can’t find her but her brothers can.”

  We sat for a bit in a companionable silence, while I thought about what he’d meant when he told me that he was the keep. I played idly with the unaccustomed ring on my finger.

  “You can’t take the ring off,” Oreg said with a start, as if he’d just remembered what he’d come here to do. “It gives you control of the keep. Only if you are dying will it come off. Then you must give it to your heir.”

  “If I give it to someone else?” I asked, after trying to get the ring off and failing. I wished I’d known about that before I put it on. Rings weren’t good to wear when you fight; they change your sword grip and catch on things. At the very least, I’d have put it on my left hand.

  “Whomever you give it to becomes your heir.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Tell me more about the spell, the ring, the keep, and yourself.”

  His face went curiously blank. I recognized the look. After all, I’d practiced it in the polished shield on my wall until it was the expression I usually wore. I wondered if he’d watched me. If he’d had cow eyes like mine, he might have looked stupid, too. As it was, he just looked secretive.

  “I am a slave,” he said. “Your slave, Master, bound to your ring. Soul slave to you. Whatever you ask of me, I will do if I am able—and I have much power.”

  I thought of what that would have meant to some of the more disreputable of my ancestors. He was a pretty boy, like my brother. Poor slave.

  “If I were to ask you to sit where you are without moving, what would happen?” I asked.

  “I sit here without moving,” he said with bleak truthfulness, “until you die or tell me differently. I must do whatever you tell me.” There was tension in his body, though if he’d been here all this time, he should know that I didn’t torment people in my power. But, I supposed, that like Stygian . . . Pansy, it would take him time to learn.

  “When you said that you were the keep, did you mean that literally? Or that you are tied to it by magic?”

  “I don’t think there is much of a difference,” he said, examining his hands.

  “Do you know what’s going on in the keep?”

  The boy tilted his head, his eyes looking at something other than what was before them. “In the great hall, the fire is banked for the night. There’s a rat sniffing in the corner for food. Your uncle is standing before the fireplace, hands behind his back, rocking a little on his heels—”

  “Enough,” I said. “Can you look more than one place at a time?”

  “No more than you can look at the far wall and behind you at the same time.”

  “Can you hear as well?”

  “Yes.”

  I rubbed my pant legs. I could work with Pansy’s fears because I understood him. I won over Penrod by the same means. I needed to understand Oreg as well as I understood the mistreated horse. “Does it hurt you when the keep is damaged?”

  “No,” he said, then continued almost reluctantly, “I can feel it, but it doesn’t hurt.”

  “Do you occupy the whole of the keep, or just the older parts?”

  “The whole keep, and that which belongs to it. The curtain walls, the stables, the smithy—the sewers, even.”

  “If you are the keep, how is it that you still have a body?” I asked, tipping my head at his human body.

  “It amused my father.”

  I thought about what he’d said for a while. “If the keep is damaged, it does not hurt you. Does it hurt you when your body is hurt?”

  “Yes,” he whispered, tensing.

  Well, if I’d spent the last fifteen years as my father’s slave, I’d have whispered an answer, too. From all accounts, my grandfather had been worse. Deliberately, I yawned. It was late, I needed to sleep.

  “My father never mentioned you at all.”

  “Strategically speaking, it is better if I am secret from your enemies—a harmless ghost that wanders the halls.” He hesitated, then ventured, “I prefer to keep my presence quiet. I don’t like people very much.”

  Nor would I, I thought, after so many years of serving Hurogs.

  “Right.” I said. “Here are my orders for now. Continue your protection of my sister. I’d like to meet you here each night when I am alone. Other than that, do as you will.”

  “Do you want me to protect you, too?”

  I grinned. Powerful he might be, I was willing to accept his word on that, but he was half my weight. “I’ve had years to learn to do that. If I can’t, well, then I’m not fit to be Hurogmeten, am I?”

  “There are those who say you aren’t fit anyway,” he said, a challenge in his voice.

  I couldn’t decide if he was testing my temper or if he still half believed my act. Maybe he knew the truth better than I did. Abruptly, I felt tired.

  “Yes. Well, now. I’d be sad if they thought me competent after all the effort I put into shoving my stupidity down my father’s throat. I can hardly hold that against them, can I?”

  He laughed, though I thought it was because he believed it necessary rather than because my words actually amused him. He was silent for a while then asked, “Why are you pretending to be stupid?” He hesitated and said tentatively, “I always wondered about that. It seemed so odd that you would spend all those hours in the library. But then you would read and read but never seemed to understand what it was you were reading.” As he spoke, he bounced off the bed and strode oh so casually out of my reach.

  “Thought I might be looking at the pictures or the pretty inks?” I asked, amused.

  “What happened when your father hit
you that time? If it wasn’t brain damage? And even an idiot listening to you now could see that your brain is fine.” He grinned shyly, a boy venturing an opinion or a slave flattering the master, but he’d put furniture between his body and me.

  Like Pansy, I thought, he’d learn that I wouldn’t harm him. Besides, I’d pried into his private pain; it was only fair to give him the same opportunity. “It damaged something,” I said. “I couldn’t speak at all.” I remembered how terrifying it had been to have thoughts that wouldn’t turn into words.

  “You weren’t just frightened?” asked Oreg.

  Looking at him, I could see he knew what it was to be so frightened he couldn’t speak. Pity choked my reply. “No.”

  “You couldn’t walk, either,” he said speculatively.

  I nodded. “Or stand or anything else.” It had taken Stala and me years to strengthen my left side until I was as fast with my left hand as I was with my right. Sometimes I dreamt that the strange, overpowering numbness had over-taken my left arm again.

  “You used to do magic—make flowers bloom for your mother.” Oreg was relaxing a bit. He’d settled on the bench near the door.

  “I can still find things. Ciarra nearly scared me out of a winter’s growth today when I discovered she was suddenly so far below me. I take it she didn’t fall out of the tunnel like I did? You led her by another path?” He nodded. “But otherwise, I can’t work magic anymore. I can feel it but not work it.”

  “But you aren’t stupid. Why did you pretend?”

  “So my father wouldn’t kill me.” I tried to put instinctive knowledge into terms someone else might understand. “My father is—was the Hurogmeten. Perhaps you know what that means better than anyone else. To him it was the most important thing a human could be, better than high king, but the title was only temporary, to be given away like this ring when he died.”

  “But all men must do that,” commented Oreg reasonably. “His father entrusted Hurog to Fenwick. He would live on through his children.”

  “He killed my grandfather,” I said. It was the first time I’d ever said it out loud.

  Everything about Oreg went still. Then he whispered, “Your grandfather was killed by bandits. Your father brought him here to die.”