Fall of the Dragon Prince

by Dan Allen

  I am the daughter of Toran. It’s time I start acting like it.

  Reann wiped her face on her sleeve and shivered.

  “Listen Ranger, it’s up to me to stop him. But I can’t fight him. I can’t even try to turn him in. Nobody would believe me, first of all. Besides, betrayal is exactly what started this whole thing in the first place. You can’t win a war, Ranger. You can only win friends. I learned that much from my father. The point is, Verick isn’t all bad. He just risked his life to protect me. What does that tell you?”

  Ranger stared blankly and twitched an ear.

  “Well, maybe it isn’t so obvious to you. But all I need to do is get him in a situation where he realizes his best choice is to give up on his vendetta.”

  Ranger turned tail and trotted out of the vacant cell.

  “Thanks for all the support!” she said sarcastically.

  Reann mustered a few schemes, which on second thought all seemed ridiculously trite. Dealing with Verick wasn’t at all like getting Wretch in trouble with the head butler.

  And on top of that the Summer Gala, the annual celebration of Toran’s birthday, was coming up and she would hardly have time to—

  That’s it—the gala! Dozens of nobles, Toran’s strongest allies, would be arriving at the castle. She had one chance.

  The gala would be the turning point. She knew it, deep in her bones, she felt it, like the feeling she had when Verick had arrived. Something was happening. Something was rising—chance? Fate? She had to seize it, make it her own, or Verick would.

  Only one thing was certain. Only one of them would survive that night. Her best weapon was the one she was terrified to touch.

  Love.

  

  Sunlight blazed through the open windows. Dust danced among bright beams that lanced through the library.

  Reann paced the floor. Ranger listened dutifully from his seat next to the long table.

  “What if he accuses me of being an heir of Toran? How am I going to hide the fact that I saw his notes? How am I supposed to do my own research without telling him anything more about what I know? How can I—”

  The door creaked and Verick walked in with shadows under his eyes, hinting that he had a fight with his pillow and lost.

  Gauging his crestfallen expression, Reann guessed the merchant’s tale about his family’s bitter demise had haunted the Rubani during the night—or perhaps even the part about Toran showing mercy to his family.

  Or perhaps saving her life?

  Ranger swaggered out of the room without acknowledging Verick.

  “Are you quite all right, sir?” Reann asked, sympathy spreading through her body for the broken-looking man. “Shall I get you some tea?”

  “Yes, thank you,” he said, collapsing in the armchair.

  Reann left to get a pot and the tea service.

  It was strange to see Verick subdued as he was. Wasn’t anger the first reaction to disappointment? How could Verick discover that his life’s quest was in vain and then keep the heat of that emotional inferno inside?

  Was it a ruse to lull her into a false sense of security?

  Reann worked without noticing what her hands were doing. She tried to imagine the heart of a man twice broken. But the closest she had ever come to understanding a man was the Wretch. And he seemed about as familiar as a mysterious fungus most of the time. The one man she should have known, loved, cherished, and understood was Toran who was an endless mystery.

  Verick might be a volcano about to erupt.

  Dare she dance on the lip of a volcano?

  That thought was the first in a series. Reann’s pace quickened. Her posture straightened and, in moments, she returned to the library with swagger aplenty.

  She poured his tea and handed him a cup on a platter. “You didn’t sleep a wink last night.”

  Verick sighed deeply and gulped the tea.

  He waited several minutes before speaking. Reann put a hand on top of his, like Ranger did with his paw when she was feeling low.

  “You’re a kind spirit to have pity on me over lost sleep,” he spoke, almost in a whisper.

  “You went out of your way on my behalf. I hope nothing of the bad business last night has troubled you, sir.” Reann could no longer bring her mouth to use the name Verick. And she had to bite her tongue to keep it from calling him by his true name—Dorian.

  He said nothing.

  Reann waited. She squeezed his hand for comfort, like a daughter or a niece might. Verick was much too young to be a father of a teenager, but perhaps a toddler if he had married young, which Reann doubted. His spirit was so tormented he would find no solace in love until his inner wounds healed. It was all because he had believed Toran had killed his father and his co-conspirators on the ship.

  Toran had unwittingly let them go. Rather his cabin boy—her adopted brother—had killed them.

  Toran had no part in their gruesome deaths.

  Minutes passed by in silence. Reann waited as patiently as Ranger would.

  “Have you ever known something,” Verick asked suddenly, “have you ever believed something for so long, as long as you’ve had the wit to remember . . . felt it deep down and then found out it wasn’t true at all?”

  Reann’s heart began to beat anxiously. “Don’t we all?” she said mildly, wishing for a better phrase than the dull one that escaped her.

  “I mean, how is one to go on as he did before, after discovering such a thing?”

  “You can’t,” Reann said. “You can’t reason any of it into your heart. You can’t squeeze emotions out like lime juice when the only thing in your stomach is a peach pit.”

  Verick’s lips turned weakly upward for a moment in a chance smile that faded.

  “Isn’t that how you feel?” Reann asked.

  Verick shrugged. “Truthfully, I don’t feel quite up to doing more research today.” Without finishing his tea, he stood and walked back toward the library door, shoulders lowered, face fallen . . . like a man without a friend in the world.

  “Perhaps a bit of fresh air?” she said hesitantly as he disappeared into the corridor without reply.

  Reann went to do chores but returned to the library after lunch.

  Verick was there, facing an open window with his hands behind his back.

  “Are you here to finish your research?” Reann asked. She hoped beyond hope that his reason for being in the library was something else, something more desperate. Yet she couldn’t hold out any hope if the research continued. It would be her end.

  “I’m afraid events of late have rather put me out of the mood for reading,” Verick said quietly.

  Reann reached the table next to him and closed an open volume. She stood near him and held out her hand. “There is only one thing to do in times like this.”

  Verick held to her fingers limply as she led him into the open floor in the center of the library. “What do you mean?”

  Reann set his hand around her waist and put the fingers of her other hand between his.

  “Dance.”

  “Dance?” Verick sputtered. “I . . . you . . . me . . . now?”

  “The Summer Gala is only four days away. We all need practice.”

  “I don’t believe I intend to attend any festivals,” Verick said. “That was not my purpose in coming to—”

  “Yes, but anyway, I’ve seen the invitation list to the gala ball, and your name is on it already. You’re the only representative of note from the Serban. I’m afraid bowing out would put you in a very awkward place.”

  “You saw my name on the list?”

  “Yes, and I took the liberty of adding myself as your attendant. It’s a political strait, that gala. You wouldn’t want to have to traverse it without a guide. Besides, I dance well enough.”

  “Are you always this p
resumptuous?” he asked with a wary expression of pleasure.

  “Yes.”

  “You leave me little choice in the matter.”

  “By design. Do you waltz?” Reann turned in the three-beat step. Verick’s well-trained heels followed her around the long table, avoiding chairs deftly.

  “Or shall we do a peasant dance?”

  Reann started into a quick off-rhythm folk twirl.

  Verick laughed as the twirl lifted her up off her toes and then him.

  “You’re very good yourself. I should think you would take the lead,” Reann reminded.

  Verick did. He danced out his emotions in a slow minuet and then another waltz.

  “Would you wait here for a moment?” Reann asked. “If you mean to dance, we should do it properly.”

  Verick turned his hands up. “I am at your leisure.”

  Reann rushed out of the library and down to the servants’ quarters. She turned Ret out of his bunk, where he was plucking his mandolin and skipping duty. “Come on, Wretch,” she urged. “Our patron needs music.”

  “What . . . where?” he blustered. “But it’s my day off.”

  “Just follow me.”

  Ret, as curious as any boy of his age, kept pace. “What in the name of the great river do you need music for?”

  “Now look professional,” Reann urged as they neared the library. “Fix up those ties.”

  Impatient, Reann did them up for him while he blubbered about being perfectly capable of tying his own shirt.

  Reann followed him into the library.

  “Ah,” Verick said enthusiastically, “a mandolin.”

  “Would you like some music, my lord?” Ret asked, as anxious to show off his prodigious skill as Reann was to turn up her dancing heels.

  “The peasant dance again, I think,” Verick said.

  Ret nodded and set into a dizzying jig on the mandolin.

  Reann and Verick joined hands and turned about the library between and over chairs, dancing many tunes and styles.

  Onlookers gathered in the doorway as they danced, and then more, until they spilled one by one into the room. A chambermaid brought up her flute and joined the music making, and two old ladies led each other in an awkward waltz.

  “A moment, dear,” Verick said, stepping away to cut in between the elderly pair. “May it be my pleasure,” he said, taking one of the old women into a slow dance of turns about the long table and returning to trade for the other. The old women clapped and the young girls laughed. When a harpist and a drummer filed in, Ret took a turn dancing with Reann. It took all her skill to avoid his stomping feet.

  “Are you doing that on purpose?” she asked.

  Ret let go and stomped himself back to his mandolin. “Well, if you’re not going to be grateful . . .” He plucked up a classic tune and led the merrymakers into another round.

  The wine found its way up from the cellar after the gardeners came in for their lunch break and brought the menders and cooks in for a few turns.

  Reann led Verick out into the corridor while the rest of the castle kept on with the merrymaking, then onto the quiet balcony where the wind whistled over the plain and tossed her hair playfully.

  “Isn’t that better?” she asked.

  “Are you a witch,” he returned, “that you do such magic with people’s hearts?”

  “There is good in most places,” Reann said softly. “Where you least expect it, even, and always when you need it. Lose the bad in finding the good, and you will have your peace.”

  Verick’s face was puzzled.

  “But now I think you need some rest,” Reann said softly. “I expect you’ll be up and about tomorrow—a new man, I hope.”

  His expression darkened a shade. “But I never even told you about my trouble, and you seem to think it has gone away.”

  “It will never go until you let it,” Reann said. “And peace will never come until it goes.”

  “I am a tortured soul until then,” he said, staring into the distance, the wide expanse of the great Erdali plain with its golden fields stretched out before him.

  “But a happy one, I think,” Reann said, offering her hand like a lady requesting her leave.

  Verick took it and kissed the back of it almost without noticing he had just graced a servant. It was the way he put her hand down slowly that interested Reann most. Interested and terrified.

  She covered her breast modestly, where her heart sounded drumbeats. She curtsied deeply, face filling with red.

  But something about the way Verick had looked at her gave the feeling of ice creeping over her.

  He knows.

  Chapter 22

  Montazi Realm. Ferrin-tat.

  “No. I haven’t got anything,” Enala repeated. “Search the kitchen if you like. The last group took my kitchen utensils too—a lot of good a paring knife will do against an Outlander sword!”

  The lad turned away from the kitchen door and padded toward the armory.

  Enala felt sorry for a moment. It wasn’t the boy’s fault supplies were short. Ferrin’s foot soldiers and archers were told to bring a week’s rations. With no time to prepare, most had grabbed barely enough to last a day. Still, inquirers came to her kitchen, never seeming to believe that a rich man like Ferrin could run out of anything.

  Desperate for something useful to do, desperate to get out of the kitchen, and most desperate of all for some word about how the dragon riders fared, Enala stole across the courtyard toward the back road to the keep. The light of the setting sun set an orange fire in the sky.

  She passed Ferrin’s office in the ivy root and looked in at the porthole. Her father was gone to the armory, she supposed. There were maps scattered on the table. Her stepmother Tirisa opened the door to the office, followed by two of the soldiers. “Listen to me. You are to begin the evacuation the moment the alarm is raised—no.” She lowered her head in resignation. “We can’t risk the village if the horde reaches the crossroads. Just begin the evacuation now.”

  “But only the chief can order evacuation,” one of the soldiers said as he was handed a route map and shoved out of the room.

  Enala couldn’t help overhearing the other soldier’s reply as they jogged down the corridor toward the tap-root hub. “There may not be a chief tomorrow.”

  Enala’s mind froze at hearing the words, her decision made in a moment. “Yes, there will.”

  Enala sank down outside the window wondering just how she would go about it. There was a chance she could find Terith in battle. She could protect him.

  “Tirisa,” sounded Lilleth’s voice from the window hole, calling their stepmother.

  “For the thousandth time, just call me ‘Mother.’ What is it, dear?”

  Enala listened but Lilleth didn’t answer right away.

  “You’ve got a cloud on your heart,” Tirisa said. “You must let the rain out.”

  “I’ve run out of tears for one night,” Lilleth said quietly. Her voice was broken in a way that pained Enala, despite all her jealousy.

  “Come,” Tirisa said. “I’ll hug the tears out of you.”

  Enala turned and stood up to peer through the window.

  Lilleth was wrapped in a shawl, still wearing the breezy skirt from her ruined date with Terith.

  Enala had suggested Lilleth try to have a child before the wedding only because Enala couldn’t stand the waiting any more than she could bear Lilleth’s haunting descriptions of Terith’s imminent death. One way or another it had to end. For Enala, each day Terith was engaged to Lilleth was like seeing him die over and over.

  The worst of it was the fact that she couldn’t give up. She kept thinking of ways to get him alone, get him to change his mind, seduce him and void the engagement.

  The last idea seemed the best option. If Terith was going to die
anyway, what would it matter if he spent his last moments with her?

  It mattered to her. For eternity, it mattered.

  Enala’s soaring machinations ran aground as Lilleth spoke. Her older sister stared past the stepmom’s shoulder as if watching a scene playing out before eyes. “I know,” she said.

  Tirisa pulled back and looked Lilleth in the eye. Her voice became serious. “Lilleth, what do you know?”

  “I saw both,” she explained.

  “Both?”

  Lilleth nodded. “I asked Terith to see into his future, but I saw both: his future . . . and his past.”

  “Astonishing,” Tirisa said. “How did you manage that?”

  Lilleth shook her head. “I don’t know.” She smiled as the vision came into her mind. “He was born on a rainy day. It was the day of the victory. I saw his mother—beautiful—but I don’t think she was Montazi. I’ve never seen someone quite like her. Perhaps an Outlander, but different.”

  “Lilleth,” Tirisa said. “You saw Terith’s birth? Is that possible—seeing that far back?”

  Lilleth nodded. “The awakening chooses. The mother, she died after giving birth. She died just before . . .” Lilleth’s mouth opened as if to speak, but refused to form the words.

  Tirisa listened intently. “Lilleth? Just before what?”

  “Before the father arrived.”

  Enala’s heart skipped a beat waiting on Lilleth’s words.

  “I saw his face. Blue eyes like diamond. Battered armor—he was strong . . . I know who it was.”

  “Lilleth, you mustn’t—”

  “It was Toran.”

  A shock ran through Enala like a scorpion sting to her heart. She almost lost the strength in her legs.

  “Mother, I don’t know what to do. I can’t let him die.”

  Enala clutched her pounding heart. Neither can I.

  She ran through shaded paths, under roots and over ravines, around boulders and past heavy broad leaves that thrashed at her. The archery range was near the top of the megalith. She leapt the gate and opened a chest in the range master’s closet with a key from her satchel. Enala lifted a prize bow, worth more than most Montazi could ever dream of paying. It was ornately decorated with metal inlays that covered its stout, wooden curves.