by Anne Leonard
“No need, Corin,” Aram said, notwithstanding the dragonrider standing beside him.
Corin’s usual wariness at dragonriders was even stronger now, and he looked closely at the man. The rider returned an equally careful, inspecting look. Then he dropped formally to one knee and said, “My Lord Prince.”
Well, I will never be surprised by anything again, Corin thought, staring. Dragonriders did not kneel for anyone, not even the Emperor.
The man cupped his hands, the sign of a Basilisk. I obey him unchangingly. Return to your master. There had been a code in that, and he should have seen it. Mark that one up as a loss. He gestured the man to rise and said to Aram, “I think I will stop playing cards against you.”
“I’m sure you hold some cards to your chest equally well,” Aram said calmly. Which was another one of his damnably effective tricks, to make you think he knew your secrets already. But Corin had experienced that enough times not to rise to it.
“Did the Emperor send you,” he asked the rider, “or did you steal a dragon?”
“I volunteered,” the rider said. “No one else wanted to bring that news. I’m a real dragonrider, my lord, that’s not something one can pretend.” He sounded Mycenean. Aram had to have placed him there years ago, when the man was fifteen or sixteen, all to have this opportunity now. It was a brilliant move, and one that would cost Aram his throne if Hadon ever found out. He could not have risked it with any man other than a Basilisk.
The king said, “I can tell you more later. Your sister is unhurt and well treated. We haven’t much time. How would you like to ride a dragon?”
The leather clothes, which had been uncomfortably hot in the palace, were barely warm enough at this height, and even in gloves his fingertips were numb. He understood with his body now why it was that the highest peaks were snow-capped all year. But the chill was an inconvenience, nothing more, not when he was here, looking down at the tiny roads and houses, the curving rivers, the distant roundness of the horizon. He could see the wrinkles and folds of the land and the growing things in a hundred shades of green. The rainclouds lay behind them, slowly moving dark piles of wool. Ice crystals sparkled where rain on his jacket had frozen. The pleasure of this flying was more intense and stimulating than anything he had ever experienced. No wonder dragonriders were arrogant. How could they not pity and scorn the earthbound?
He could not speak to the rider; their helmets muffled their ears from the cold, and the noise of the wind would have torn away their words. It had all been planned before they set out, and he had nothing to do but trust in the dragon and the rider and look. Everything was a marvel: the amazing silky hardness of the dragon’s scales, the iridescence of its wing membranes, the swift steady flaps with which it flew. Its back was smooth and curved, no impediment to moving air. Strapped into a complicated harness behind the rider, Corin could not move much, but he was able to look down on either side. He had a spyglass, but it was queasy-making to look through when they were flying this fast, and what he saw with his naked eye was quite wondrous enough.
The only other time he had been close to a dragon had been at least ten years before, so he had been nervous while waiting to mount. The creature was so very big, and so very inhuman. Its sulfurous odor was not as terrible as he had expected. There was another acrid, musky scent with it. He could not see its muscles through its hide, but he felt them, flexing and contracting in a steady rhythm as it flew. Its body was hot, not unbearably so but evident. His legs were warm where they lay against it.
Kelvan, the rider, had warned Corin that four hours was long for a first flight, no matter how accustomed he was to days on horse. He did not believe it, but when Kelvan landed on a forested bluff overlooking a river after only two hours, he slipped off and discovered he could barely move. His entire back ached, his shoulders were stiff, and his thighs felt as though someone were pushing them apart with a ten-foot-long board. Looking at the dragon’s back, he thought that was a good comparison. And now that they were on the ground, it was hot again. He loosened the laces of his vest, wincing.
“You’ll take my word for it next time, won’t you,” said Kelvan with a grin. He was stocky, with short dark hair. Corin put him at thirty-five or so. “Stretch them out, or it will get worse. And have a hot bath and some wine tonight.”
Worse? With a hand against the smooth bole of a silvery-grey tree while stretching his hamstrings, he realized he was about as isolated as he had ever been. They were in a clearing but with no roads for miles. The river below was white from water rushing over rocks, too distant to hear. The air smelled of forest and was tremendously, wonderfully quiet, disturbed only by the rustlings of small animals and the calls of a few birds. He could say or do anything here and no one would know.
Was that what Aram had wanted? There was a reason beyond pure pleasure that he had been taken away dragonback. For a quick, horrible instant he thought this was the beginning of exile; then he rejected that idea. His father would not send him off with no farewells and no preparations unless enemies were burning down the doors.
He had wanted to go west to Tai’s home, to see her husband, but Aram had been firm against it. If all else is well, there is nothing you need to do. If it is not we cannot risk Hadon knowing you were dragonback. If he finds out about Kelvan, we will never get her out. Corin admitted the truth of that. Even so, he felt he was abandoning her.
The quiet was almost as blissful as the flight, and he did not want to break it. He would have been happy sitting a safe distance away and watching the play of light on the dragon’s scales. But he thought he had to, and when he looked at Kelvan he was sure. The man’s face had gone hard, determined about something, and he was watching Corin with an almost fierce intensity that had nothing of either humor or subservience about it.
He said, “My sister, have you spoken with her?”
Kelvan nodded. “I’ve seen her. I haven’t spoken with her. She’s treated as a guest, and she acts it. I think she’s charming people more than Hadon wants.”
“Good,” Corin said savagely. “What’s he up to? Why did he take her?”
Kelvan did not answer at once. A jay chattered at them. “I don’t see Hadon often,” he said slowly. “But when I did yesterday he did not look good. Healthy enough in the body, but I think there is something weighing down his self, eating it. I don’t think he’s desperate yet, but I would say for sure that he’s afraid of something.”
“Is he sane?”
“He’s rational.” Kelvan shrugged. “If he’s mad, there’s no sign yet.”
“Is he weak?”
The rider did not answer. Corin did not push; the man knew Hadon much better than he did, and the question was unlikely to have a simple answer.
Finally Kelvan said, “I believe so, aye. If I may be frank, my lord?”
“Please.”
“A bully on a throne is still a bully.”
Four years ago Corin had gone to the Mycenean court to do homage for Caithen with his father. It was not his first time at the Emperor’s court; he had been there almost every year since he could talk until he went to university. But this had been the first time that he too was required to do the rite rather than to watch it. He had walked the long path between assembled nobles and courtiers from the entrance of the ornate throne room to the throne itself, where he had knelt to swear the ritual oath, his hands between Hadon’s. Afterward he had kissed the Imperial ring. Had it been only ceremony and tradition he would have thought nothing of it; but Hadon had given him a look that made him feel slavish and abased, and pointedly kept him on his knees longer than was necessary. The dragons carved on the arms of the throne looked down at him, mocking. The subsequent times had been no different. Bully was an apt word.
“What about Tyrekh?” he asked. “Is the Emperor going to leave us on our own?”
“I don’t know. It’s an ugly thing to do. If
he does he’ll lose the trust of many of his troops. And his vassals. And he can’t afford that. But his sons are a real threat.”
Corin did not bother to ask why Hadon had not executed or imprisoned them. That would only make the fractures greater.
He said, “Has he communicated with Tyrekh at all? Sent any dragons?”
“None. He’s not selling you out, he’s just pretending Tyrekh doesn’t exist.”
“Why is he watching the north?” he asked. “It is him, isn’t it?”
“Aye. No one else controls the riders, I can assure you of that. I don’t know why he’s sent them there. It’s not a desirable assignment, more a punishment duty, but with no reasons given and no man knowing what will put him in the next rotation. It’s been months now that he’s done it.”
“When did they first go?”
“Nine weeks past.”
Ten weeks ago Aram had decided to send Corin north. It had been another month before he left, but the plan had been well-known. “Are they still there?” If they had departed when he did, he would know they had been watching him.
But Kelvan said, “Aye, my lord, with no end in sight.”
It meant something important, he was certain of that. But if Kelvan did not know, the answer was locked in Hadon’s mind and might never come out. “Will the riders obey him even if he loses power?”
Kelvan spread his hands wide. “They’re loyal the way most people are loyal. It’s an easy thing to do. Show them something better and some of them will drift. But the dragons won’t leave, and no rider will leave his dragon.”
He wondered why the dragons would stay, but when he tried to frame a question the words evaporated in his mind and his tongue was stiff. Something did not want him to speak of the dragons, not even now with a dragonrider. He thought of the Dragon Valleys, which he had seen once from a distance, and cold crept through him. He had forgotten what mattered. It almost thrust him into panic.
He took a deep breath and shook it off. “And the soldiers, whom do they support? Does he have their loyalty in the same fashion?”
“I can’t speak of the men, but most of the generals are jackasses with an overweening sense of pride.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that they don’t want to be embarrassed,” said Kelvan. “And Hadon is on the verge of doing that. Shall I tell you what I told the king?”
“Yes,” he said, thinking even as he spoke that it made no sense for Kelvan to tell the story twice. Aram should have waited until Corin could be present.
Which delay the king himself had created, setting the time for Corin to appear. That had to mean he wanted to talk to the rider about something he did not want his son to hear. What was going on?
He let none of this show and listened quietly to the news from Mycene. By the time Kelvan was finished, Corin had a sharpened sense of the plotting and counterplotting, of where the Emperor might fail, above all of how fast things were moving to a point where Hadon would have to deal with his sons directly.
Yet none of it explained why Hadon had felt it necessary to take Tai, to watch the north.
Or why Aram had sent Corin a hundred miles away to hear it.
He listened. And when he had slotted everything away into the appropriate mental spaces, he looked directly at the rider and said, “Why did my father want me to come with you?”
Kelvan looked at him with a steady judging gaze. It was not the paralyzing stare of a Basilisk, only a man’s assessment, but it was enough to keep Corin still. He had not been so appraised for years. He was certain that if he either flinched or defied it, the gate would slam down and he would never learn what the king intended.
Whatever Kelvan was looking for, apparently he found it. He said, “He wanted you to ride the dragon. That could not be done in Caithenor, since Hadon might learn of it.”
He frowned. Kelvan wasn’t making sense. “I mounted right there in front of the sentries.”
“To ride it, not to be carried by it.”
Coldness again, a touch of ice. Why? But that was to ask Aram. Then excitement pulsed through him as he understood what it meant. He was being offered something so impossible he had never even considered it. “What must I do?”
“Now? Come greet the dragon.”
He caught his breath. Now suddenly seemed far too soon. But he went forward, stopping about ten feet from the dragon’s head. It was so huge. Its eyes were closed. Kelvan squatted beside the dragon and stroked the scaly head.
The dragon opened its eyes. Kelvan beckoned. Corin forced himself forward. He went to one knee slightly less than an arm’s length from the dragon’s wide nostrils and held out his hand. He was afraid, he would not deny it, but he would ignore it. He would not let it close around him. His hand was steady even though his heart was rapid. The dragon’s eyes were like a cat’s, yellow with a narrow pupil and flecked with green. He would not look into them. Its scales were bronze, with a red band around its neck, and its wings were red at the base, shading to bronze at the tips, glowing and iridescent. The sharpness of its claws was visible. It opened its mouth.
He knew without being told that this was the defining moment. He stayed kneeling, looking directly into that great red mouth with rows of white razor-edged teeth the length of his forefinger. The dragon’s breath was hot and smelled of sulfur and molten iron and smoke and coal. Its tongue was forked like a snake’s. His eyes watered from the heat and smell of the breath. But he kept himself still.
Slowly, lazily, the dragon closed its mouth again. It stared at him with one eye. Steam puffed briefly out of its nostrils, which almost made Corin lose his nerve. He kept his body taut, balancing with all the skill he had. The dragon closed its eye.
“Well done, my lord,” said Kelvan, sounding pleased. “It takes most new riders weeks to do that.”
“I don’t have weeks,” Corin said, standing. He backed away a few paces and felt the fear go out of him in a release that left him shaking a little. He took several deep breaths. “What next?”
“Next,” Kelvan said thoughtfully. He took a step toward Corin. Corin blinked. The rider held Corin’s knife in his hand, hilt extended to the prince.
He started, surprised, even alarmed. “How the hell did you do that?” It was not a power Corin had ever learned the wizards had. He took the knife back, a bit gingerly, and sheathed it.
“It’s a dragon skill. Dragons do not live in time as we do, or in space. They extend through it. And when we ride them, they give us just a trace of that power.”
He pondered it. Understanding lay on the very edges of his mind. The dragon seemed solid, animal, complete. It did not flicker or blur. Then, for just an instant, he had a sense of a vast and icy darkness lying beyond the dragon. He shivered.
Enough. He had to be practical. “And all riders can do that?”
“I’m better than most,” Kelvan said. “For other reasons. But we can all do it some. That’s why we make good swordsmen. You aren’t supposed to know that, by the way. I’m breaking faith.”
“Does my father know?”
“Of course.”
Corin was not sure how to take that. “Who says I’m not to know?” he asked, and heard a bit of truculence to his tone.
“The riders. No one is to know who is not a rider. If I were training you as an ordinary rider, I would leave it for you to discover on your own.”
He was glad it had not been his father who made it a secret. “What about Hadon?”
“I would be very surprised if no one had told him. But we don’t discuss it even among ourselves.”
“He’d better hope his sons don’t know.”
“They may. But none of the three of them will ever ride a dragon, so it doesn’t matter much. When you treat a dragon as a beast of burden, it gives you nothing.”
Corin looked at the dragon. He wa
nted to touch it again, that incredible silkiness of scale and smooth muscle moving underneath. “How do you control it, then?”
“You have to learn to talk to it.”
“Talk to it?” he echoed, feeling young and inexperienced.
Kelvan grinned. “You don’t think you direct a dragon with knees and heels like a horse, do you? You make an agreement with a dragon.”
“But how can a dragon hear commands with all the wind of flying?”
“The dragons speak with you mind to mind. That’s how they speak with each other. And rider can speak to rider through them.”
Corin briefly stared down at his feet. He did not know why that thought had never occurred to him. Well, perhaps he did know. He was not in the habit of thinking about dragons and their riders because they were the Emperor’s servants, not his. It made him aware of how much he was transgressing.
“Come speak to it. Put your hand here; you have to be in contact.”
The scales on the dragon’s head were smaller and rounder than the scales on its body. When he put his hand on one it was as smooth as glass, with edges like a freshly sharpened sword, and warm to the touch.
Corin closed his eyes. For a while there was just the usual clamor of his mind. He stilled it, focused his thoughts on the dragon. It was images that came slowly to him then, not words: a darkness with a distant fire raging in it, a teapot lying in smoke-stained rubble, a black moth circling a candle. Colors, pulsing slowly. Brown, which was warmth, and green, which was pleasure. Grey for calm, blue for exultation, red for stubbornness. A bloodstained sword lying beside a crack in granite. A mountain, snow on its peak and sides, wind roaring around it, sending the snow into white sprays that glittered in the close-by sun. A man with eyes glittering like black stone who turned to ash. Braided garlic hanging from a rafter. A woman’s hand with an apple in the palm, green and small and round. A small bronze pendulum swinging back and forth.
It stopped. He did not know what any of it meant, though it felt familiar. His breath was coming in short pants. He felt faint, dizzy, and bent over to keep the blood in his head. Kelvan had a hand on his arm, supporting him. Most men would have been afraid to touch him at all because he was the prince, let alone keep him from falling lest it injure his pride. Slowly the blackness cleared and he straightened.
