Fall of the Dragon Prince

by Dan Allen

  Love is blind.

  Reann tied the notebook closed and moved quickly to the library door, inventing a plan as she went.

  I’ll wake him early for breakfast, gather his clothes for washing and slip the notes inside his vest. He’ll reach for the waistcoat, find the notes there, and think himself clever for keeping them from me.

  What she had read of Verick’s dream made the trip upstairs all the more terrible. Reann faced the bedroom door. If he knew, and she knocked, she was dead.

  Could she run away?

  Concealing the notebook behind her back with a shaking hand, she raised her other hand to knock.

  If I am a daughter of Toran, I can face any enemy.

  Reann took a deep breath as a feeling like steel and ice moved over her, pulling her hand back.

  Taking another calming breath, she knocked.

  The door swung smartly open.

  Verick was in his trousers, his white shirt unbuttoned. He stared at her with a look she couldn’t understand. She ducked past him quickly. “Good morning, sir. I’ll just get your wash.”

  She considered telling Verick to hand over the shirt as well. Staying up all night had her in a strange mood.

  Shrugging away the confusing thought, Reann spouted off a long list of reminders as she collected his clothes. “Tea and breakfast are at seven in the dining hall—the staff is too busy getting ready for the gala to serve breakfast in rooms this week. The post goes out this afternoon at three. Oh, did I mention the stables are closed for cleaning—goodness, your clothing is immaculate for a week’s wear.” She bent and scooped up a shirt and some stockings, palming the notebook with one hand and lifting his vest with her other hand. “And what about this?” she asked. “Shall I wash it?” The notebook slid into the long pocket on the inside and she breathed a breath sigh of salvation.

  Verick pushed the door closed.

  Reann’s stomach clenched. She pretended not to notice. “Your candle has burnt down. I’ll fetch another.” Reann moved about the room tidying things.

  Verick turned, keeping her in view, still watching.

  Reann stopped, feeling his eyes on her back. Live or die, she could no longer pretend to be a servant in the presence of someone who would betray the heirs of Toran. She looked over her shoulder, waiting for whatever threat Verick was going to unleash.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said softly. “The other night, when I was robbed . . . I was wrong. I acted rashly.”

  “The man you killed . . .” Reann said softly.

  Verick cracked his knuckles and breathed out. “I could have wounded him.”

  Reann nodded, unsure of what to make of Verick’s apology. That event was the most horrible thing she had ever experienced. Now he was asking her forgiveness for it? How could she?

  A man was dead. Her dreams were tormented by thoughts of hunting hawks pecking at the dead youth’s pale flesh.

  “I treated you poorly as well,” Verick said. “Your kindness to me was undeserved on my part. I took it for granted and repaid it with rudeness. It is a shame to my honor.”

  “It does you honor to apologize,” Reann managed.

  His hand touched her shoulder lightly and she flinched, unsure of what exactly she was feeling. Strange murmurings struggled within her.

  “I do not wish for you to fear me,” he said.

  Reann blinked back tears, turning to hide her weakness from him. I fear what you will do.

  Verick withdrew his hand.

  “I don’t . . . want . . . to be afraid of you,” Reann managed, as she choked back tears.

  “Please,” Verick said. When she turned, she saw his offer of a handkerchief.

  How could she take it? He wasn’t the seeker of Toran’s heirs. He was their sworn enemy. He would kill her the moment he found out that she knew his true intentions.

  Still, she could just reach for it, take it, pretend it was a token of true friendship, or maybe something more. What was the harm in that?

  Reann sobbed again and grasped the handkerchief. A moment later, she was gathered into Verick’s strong arms. He held her for a moment until all her fears swirled in the storm within her, until nothing she knew matched anything she felt, until only the pounding of her heart and the solid thump of Verick’s own beat out the worries and the pain.

  “Please, forgive me, if you can,” he said.

  “I shall try,” Reann said, drawing a shaky breath. “For both our sakes.” She looked up into his eyes and summoned every ounce of strength she had. She pulled back and poked her finger against his chest. “You used me—you threatened me. Do not ever do that to me again.”

  Verick, stunned, said nothing.

  “Can you promise it?” she demanded. “Promise it, or I’ll never trust you.”

  “I . . .” Verick’s expression was one of pure agony.

  Reann hurried out of the room before another sob escaped her.

  She ran the length of the hall and down three flights of stairs.

  “Reann?” Ret said as she hurtled out of the castle and through the citadel’s open front gate. “What’s wrong?” he called after her.

  She turned away from the market and ran north into the hills, with no thought other than her own life.

  A mile past, three miles past, Reann trudged along the river, along a path she had never set foot upon.

  It was the road to Fordal, her mother’s birthplace, where she had an inheritance—perhaps only a cellar or a collapsed ruin.

  She could beg for food. She could work the fields.

  Tears streaked Reann’s face as she stepped barefoot over rocks and weeds. She climbed out of a ravine and onto a low hill, unsure of how far she had come and certain that she was as likely to die alone as not.

  Her suspicions were confirmed immediately.

  She was being stalked. The animal was only twenty feet away when she spotted it, a shape that conjured primal fear.

  Wolf.

  Reann’s muscles froze.

  It gave a hollow, greedy-eyed stare—hungry and wild—straight into her heart where fear burned out the halls of sanity.

  “Everhart!” snapped a sharp voice.

  Reann gasped. “Trinah!” She raced forward.

  Trinah, wrapped in a brown leather cloak, stomped out of the cover of the trees on the northern side of the hill. “Oh—it’s you,” she said, lowering a spear.

  “Trinah!” Reann cried. She ran right into the tall, strong woman, wrapped her arms around Trinah’s waist and buried her head against her chest.

  Trinah’s arm shielded her. “Don’t take it personal, Everhart. Obviously she prefers humans.”

  Everhart barked his disapproval.

  Trinah lifted Reann’s chin with her finger. “Reann, what are you doing here?”

  She shook her head. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “That doesn’t sound very much like you. Aren’t you supposed to be an insufferable know-it-all?”

  “Yes,” Reann admitted as she choked on a sob.

  “Out with it.”

  “Well—wait a minute,” Reann said. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the Furendal?”

  “I came back,” Trinah said. “Obviously.”

  “Why?”

  “I just dropped someone off at the river ferry.”

  “Who?”

  “My mother.”

  “Your—who?”

  “Effel,” Trinah said.

  “The washwoman?” Reann wondered at why she hadn’t seen the similarity before. “The old bother who gives me chores?”

  Trinah took Reann by her shoulders and pulled her away. “But that was not the only reason I came.”

  “Let me guess,” Reann said. Her tone dropped a level and she stepped back, staring up at Trinah and folding her
arms. “Verick?”

  “Oh you’re such a jealous tot,” Trinah said with a twinkle in her eye. “I only gave him attention to bother you.”

  “You what?” Reann said. “You mean you were . . . teasing me?”

  Trinah smirked. “It’s what sisters do. Or—half sisters.”

  Reann’s jaw dropped. She tried to scream or shout for joy, but all that came out were two giant streams of tears. “It’s true?!”

  She turned about and looked back at the white-walled Citadel of Toran gleaming in the distance. “Hallowed halls of the sacred place beyond . . . I am a princess!”

  “Yes,” Trinah said.

  “And you knew!” Reann gasped, smiling as wide as Everhart, “The whole time.”

  Trinah sighed. “Emra was a few years ahead of me in school—yes, I went to school in Erdal and I hated every moment of it. After Toran died, my mother told me Emra’s child was also of Toran.”

  “But when did you find out I was Emra’s daughter?” Reann asked, her head swimming at the certainty that she really was the heiress of Erdal.

  “The moment I saw you in the castle window,” Trinah said dismissively. “I recognize an insufferable know-it-all when I see one—you are about the same age Emra was when I knew her.”

  “Tell me something about my mother,” Reann begged. “Tell me everything. What happened? How did she meet Toran? Tell me, sister.”

  Trinah turned and walked away.

  “Wait!” Reann cried following after her, looking back to make sure the wolf wasn’t going to gnaw on her heels.

  Trinah stopped at a nearby tree and lifted a large pack off a broken branch. She unrolled a snow bear fur and set it on the ground. “Sit.”

  Reann dropped onto the white fur blanket, pressing questions as fast as they rushed into her mind as Trinah took a seat next to her. “But how did she become my mother? I mean you don’t just wake up one day and the king of the five realms wants to marry you.”

  A sober look came over Trinah’s face. She sat on the fur near Reann. Everhart circled them slowly and then disappeared into the forest. “Near the end of the last crusade against the Raffani in the west,” Trinah began, “Toran led a scout party that fell into an ambush. Your grandfather Rembra and both his sons died defending Toran. The war was only weeks from ending.”

  “How terrible,” Reann said.

  “Yes,” Trinah said. “And if the war had gone on any longer, your mother might have died, too. She was ill, with no one to care for her.”

  Reann’s heart burned with curiosity.

  “Toran found her at Rembra’s cottage near Fordal, lying helpless on her bed. But she didn’t know who he was. The fever had left her blind.”

  Reann’s eyes widened. She had always assumed that her mother had never been able to see. “She didn’t know it was him,” Reann whispered in a reverie.

  Trinah nodded. “He said that he was a poor soldier saved at a great price and that he had a debt to repay. He cared for her for months, cleaning and washing, making meals for her, until the spark of life shone in her again.”

  Reann’s eyes gleamed.

  “Do you know what he told her?” Trinah said. “No one gave speeches like Toran. He could light a fire in your chest with a single word.”

  “What did he say?” Reann said expectantly.

  “‘My heart beats eternally with the last throb of agony,’” Trinah recited, “‘when the best men fell, buried in swords. I cannot give back what they paid in loyal love, nor can I hold it back. I must share it, or that love itself must die in grief and shame.’”

  “You memorized it?” Reann said, surprised.

  “Every word,” Trinah said, smiling at the recollection. “Emra told me herself. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.” She looked at Reann. “There wasn’t much else worth remembering. Furendali men belch their poetry.”

  Reann put her hands in her lap and let her gaze drift out of focus. “He was in love with her.”

  “He must have been,” Trinah agreed. “He certainly wasn’t in a hurry to leave.”

  “What happened next?” Reann pressed eagerly. “Did he propose? Did he tell her who he was?”

  “When it was time for him to return—” Trinah said.

  “—to attend the Council of Nobles, of course,” Reann interjected. “He could skip court for a few months, but not the—oh, sorry. Go on.”

  Trinah pretended she hadn’t been interrupted. “Emra begged him to ask anything of her in repayment for saving her life. So he asked her, ‘Will you bear me a child?’”

  “I can only imagine how she must have felt,” Reann sighed. “He would have been—let’s see—forty-five. He was her father’s friend after all. But she consented.”

  Trinah’s hard-edged expression softened. “I think she was his true love. The way she spoke of him . . . the look in her eyes—my mother never pined over his memory like that. It was clan law—I don’t think my mother had a choice.”

  Reann blushed slightly. “I always dreamed my mother and father were romantics, bound in a fated love and torn apart by circumstance. That is the way it always is in the books.”

  Trinah laughed and gave Reann an appraising look. “Emra asked my mother Effel to watch over you, before she vanished.”

  Reann’s jaw dropped. “A great load of chores—that’s ‘watching over me?’”

  “There was more,” Trinah said. “Should anything happen to Effel, the duty of looking after you would fall to me. Of course, I never would have come to Erdal to babysit you.”

  “You wouldn’t have?” Reann said, disappointment ringing in her voice.

  “A child of Toran can take care of herself,” Trinah said. She looked up at the sky. “It is time for me to go. I will camp many miles from here. I have to be back in Evernas when the frost breaks.”

  Reann grabbed Trinah’s arm. “But we’re just getting to know each other. We’re sisters. This is wonderful.”

  “Another time,” Trinah said.

  “We should talk for hours and stay up all night telling stories,” Reann said.

  “There’s a Furendali holiday just for that,” Trinah said. “You’re welcome to join me for the winter solstice.”

  “Go to Furendal, in the middle of winter? It’s freezing up there. There’s a thousand feet of ice in the pass. I couldn’t—”

  Trinah gave a sharp laugh as she pried Reann’s fingers off her arm and mumbled something about a puppy, adding, “Then I’ll just give you your present now and save my pack the weight.”

  Reann couldn’t even remember the last time she had been given a gift. Speechless, she watched as Trinah lifted from under her collar a thin chain that held a small leather pouch.

  “It was entrusted to your mother by Toran,” Trinah said. “She gave it to me to keep for you until you were of age. You’re probably not of age yet, but being a know-it-all is worth a few months. I don’t suppose it will hurt anything to give you this now.”

  She passed it to Reann, who opened the drawstring with fingers trembling with excitement and poured out the solitary content into her hand.

  It was a faceted crystal as long and wide as her finger. It shifted from transparent to deep purple and back again as she turned it in her palm.

  “What is it?”

  “A crystal from the king’s cave in the western desert. The walls of the cavern are covered in gems and it is forbidden to remove any. From ancient times, robbers who tried to steal from it were cursed and became stony men who could not bear the sun.”

  “But—”

  “But the king may do as he pleases,” Trinah said with a twinkle in her eye. “He took only this small crystal. It is very special. Do not wear it where it could be seen and stolen.”

  Reann gazed at the stone and clasped it her hand, holding it as tightly as anything
she ever held. It was her mother’s; it was her father’s. They had both touched this stone, shared it. Reann embraced Trinah again. “I can keep it?”

  “Forever. Now look. You have touched the treasure but haven’t turned to stone, so you must be a princess after all.”

  “I am,” Reann said with glee, forgetting that she wasn’t superstitious.

  “Let it remind you who you are, and never forget.”

  “I never forget anything—well almost,” Reann said. “And I’m sure I can find the other heirs. I am excellent at finding clues and putting them together. We can all—”

  “When they are ready, they will come to Erdal,” Trinah said. She added in a severe tone. “Do not go looking for them. Your place is in Erdal.”

  Reann gazed at the scenery lit by long evening shadows, thinking rebellious thoughts.

  “You must become all that your people need you to be. Only then will you command the allegiance of your people.”

  “Is that what you are doing in the north, gathering followers?” Reann asked.

  “No,” Trinah said sharply, as if offended. “I am simply serving my people.”

  “But you have their respect already. You would be their leader in an instant if they knew who you were. You’ve saved so many of them.”

  Trinah smiled again with her lips closed, in the Furendali fashion. “That’s nice of you to say. But here I must leave you.”

  Reann looked back toward the castle and gripped Trinah’s shoulders anxiously. “Oh please don’t leave me here.”

  “Why not?” Trinah said.

  Reann paused, trying to think up an excuse. “Wolves.”

  Trinah laughed shallowly. “Off with you. I have business waiting for me in the Furendal.”

  Reann gripped Trinah’s hands one last time. Her heart throbbed with joy and sadness. Then she let them go, clinging instead to the pouch that hung around her neck.

  “Everhart will see you back to the castle. He does not abandon pups like you.”

  Reann looked nervously at the wolf that stared back at her with those black eyes and long jaws. She looked back at Trinah, who had already packed up her snow bear rug and started the hike north.

  “So I’m a princess,” she said. “And I’m about to be kicked out of my own castle.”