by A. J. Lake
She was slender and brown-haired, her skin almost as pale as Edmund’s. She gave a cry, and ran to embrace Edmund. ‘I had word from Aagard,’ she said. ‘I’ve longed so much to have you back – but oh, Edmund, your eyes . . .’ She gave a sob, then drew back, controlling her face as Elspeth had seen Edmund do in the past.
‘Welcome,’ she said to Trymman and Elspeth. ‘I am Branwen of Sussex. I owe you both more than I can say for your friendship to my son, and for bringing him back to me.’
Queen Branwen made less ceremony of them than Beotrich had, but her hospitality was as generous. The three travellers were given baths and fresh clothes, and a feast was thrown to celebrate Edmund’s return. Only when they were fed and rested did she sit down with them and demand their story. Aagard had told her of her brother Aelfred and his fate, she said – his transformation to the sorcerer Orgrim, his treachery, and his madness. Edmund passed lightly over that part of the tale, while his mother looked down to hide her tears at the news of her brother’s death. But she gasped to hear of the dragons, and clutched Edmund’s hand tightly as they described Jokul-dreki rising from the glacier, and the fire bursting from the mountain. It was already beginning to sound unreal to Elspeth. Cluaran could have told the tale much better, she thought with a pang.
Branwen listened without questions until Edmund spoke of his meeting with his father in the land of the Danes. ‘Teobald told me some of what happened,’ she said softly. ‘But you were there, the whole time?’
Both mother and son wept as he told her of Heored’s murder. ‘He told me to come straight back here, to be with you,’ Edmund said. ‘But I had to help to stop Loki. He’d killed so many, not just my father . . . I swore on that night that I’d pay any price if I could kill him.’
‘And was it worth it?’ Branwen asked softly. ‘The loss of your sight, for vengeance?’
Edmund was silent for a moment. ‘No,’ he said at last, ‘not for vengeance. But maybe for peace.’
‘My mother will rule with me, for a time at least,’ he said to Elspeth the next day, as they sat in the meadow outside the king’s hall. ‘She’s reigned here as queen ever since my father went away, and the people love her. There’s no one who can teach me more.’
Edmund seemed more content than she had ever known him, Elspeth thought, despite his blindness – or not-quite blindness. A hound-puppy, a gift from his mother, lay at his feet looking up alertly, and she knew he was watching her through its eyes.
She turned away: just for the moment she did not want to show her expression. Soon, now, she and her father must leave, to seek their fortune in the docks at Dubris. She did not know how to raise the subject. But Edmund turned to her as if reading her mind.
‘I’d like you to stay here with us, you and your father,’ he said. ‘What do you think, Elspeth? Could you make this place your home?’
Elspeth looked around her at the peaceful scene: bushes in blossom, the white geese on the lake; the spacious hall behind them. For a moment she longed to say yes. But she shook her head.
‘We can’t. I’m sorry – I’ll miss you sorely, Edmund. But my father belongs at sea. He can’t be happy for long between four walls. And nor can I.’
Edmund nodded sadly. ‘I thought you’d say so. But in that case I have something else to ask you.’ He had turned to face her, and there was a new quality in his stillness, a suppressed excitement. ‘Would you and your father serve me on your first voyage?’
‘Of course,’ she said, puzzled. ‘But how?’
‘Then I’ll summon the shipwrights today!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’ll need your own boat for this – a new Spearwa. And there’ll be some land-journeys as well as the voyage.’
A new Spearwa. The words had taken Elspeth’s voice away, and all she could do was stare. The dog looked at her with its limpid brown eyes.
‘I’ll be sending you back to Francia, and to the Danes – and to the Snowlands,’ Edmund told her, and now the enthusiasm was clear in his voice. ‘I want to send letters of friendship to the Frankish emperor and the Danish king, to start to build alliances. And you’ll take supplies and gold to the Ice people, and to Fritha and her father. To help them rebuild after Loki, and to thank them.’
She was still speechless, gazing from him to the dog. A note of anxiety crept into Edmund’s voice. ‘What do you say, Elspeth? Will you be my messenger?’
‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Can you doubt it? We’ll sail for you, as far as ever you want, and as often. Edmund – I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘No one could do this better than you,’ he told her. ‘And you’ll come back afterwards, and tell me of all your travels?’
‘Always,’ she promised.
Tomorrow there would be work to be done. But for now they sat together in companionship, beneath the quiet sunshine. Edmund took her hand, and Elspeth smiled as they talked, gazing across the fields to the harbour, and the open sea.
And far to the north, off the rocky coast of Hibernia, something fell from the sky.
Torment had strained his ragged wings until he could fly no more. His enemy was destroyed, and the maddening voices had gone from his head. But his belly still burned with the creature’s fire, and he was tired as he had never been.
There were cliffs ahead, grey and inviting, and he dived towards them, crashing into the water below. It cooled him, lapping over his scorched sides, and he folded his wings. He would rest here for a while, in the healing wetness. When he was whole again, he would fly...
The great rock seemed to have appeared from nowhere, the sailors said. It loomed out of the water, jagged and blue-grey, and its top, like a monstrous head, was visible even at high tide. The more superstitious of them shuddered and gave it a wide berth. But the children came to gaze at it from the cliff-top, and some of their parents told them stories of battles far away, between monsters and heroes. It would become a landmark: a monument of the times when such things flew, and changed the world around them.
The Sleeping Dragon.
Also available in the DARKEST AGE series
BOOK ONE:
THE COMING OF DRAGONS
BOOK TWO:
THE BOOK OF THE SWORD
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Copyright © Working Partners 2008
First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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This electronic edition published in December 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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eISBN: 978-1-4088-2996-7
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
> Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Imprint
