Every shelf had been torn from the walls. Water had puddled and soaked the floorboards. Worse of all, whoever had done this had smashed the walls to uncover the secret room. I put a shaking hand on the wall and stared at the destruction.
Words written more than five hundred years ago lay in scattered scraps, strewn across the floor. Some of the books had been torn apart and trampled underfoot. The books I’d left now looked like a pile of debris. Whoever had done this had taken great delight in this destruction of knowledge. It wasn’t just accidental or even the work of petty vandals.
This was a deliberate act of savage ignorance and hatred.
Gernigan had done this. I was willing to wager on such a thing. My heart thudded hard against my ribs and I clenched my jaw. How could he have? But he had given me up to the Iron Guard. He had decided that I had caused the fall of the House Daris. He had hated my interest in books and the past.
I could have spat I was so angry. I turned away, unable to even look at Saffron.
“Someone doesn’t like you much,” she said. “Why would anyone ever do this? All these books…” She reached out to touch the spine of one book, hidden within the pile of damp pages. “Where I grew up, only the old hermit had books—and he only had a few and he treasured them.” She glanced at me. “We’ll show them they were wrong. That this knowledge meant something.”
Hands clenched, I nodded. “Thank you. But we still must find out about your family.”
Saffron shook her head and rubbed her arms with her hands. “How do you know you will have anything in here about them? It’s all lost to us anyway.”
Pushing my shoulders back, I glanced around. I also pulled off the turban I’d been wearing and tossed it aside. “Unlike much of living in the wilds, or even handling a sword—which I know little of—there is one thing I do know. And that is books. There has to be some scraps or pages I can salvage. A book buried or overlooked. There will be something to save. Go explore the rest of the house. Give me a shout if you see anyone.”
A smile curved Saffron’s lips. “Are you sure of that?”
“Why not? The guard thinks the house empty. If we are quiet, he will go on thinking that. Take any room that still has a bed to sleep in tonight—there was always a nice room at the southern end, up in the tower. My parents always saved that room for guests, and you surely count as a guest of the House Daris. Go on, and I’ll see what I can find in here.”
She hesitated a moment more and then said, “I’ll see if I can find the kitchen and any food, too.” She slipped away.
I turned back to the wreckage and let out a long breath.
An abandoned girl. Born eighteen or twenty years ago? Frizzy, red hair…the family had to flee to the Western Isles. And a wreck of a library.
It was going to be a puzzle, but if I could find it, I knew exactly the book might hold a few answers.
I had never seen any building as big as this one. No village in the Western Isle used stone for construction and nothing was ever bigger than a good-sized lodge, which couldn’t even hold a dragon. The dragon caves, of course, were big, but those had been carved by nature. And the dragons always liked to find small alcoves for sleeping, because they were the warmest. I couldn’t understand why anyone would even want to live in a place like this.
I followed a narrow room that had doors that opened into more rooms, and then went down a wide stairway to a space with a black and white floor and really tall ceilings very much like a cave. A faint smell of dust and rotting wood clung to every room. More doorways led into what looked to be feasting halls and at last I found a stairway that led down to the kitchens. From here, the windows looked onto the gardens, but they were all smashed. The garden looked as if I had gone wild, but I thought I might find something for us to eat there, so I went outside.
Den-sister? Jaydra’s thoughts brushed against mine. Through our connection, I could sense she stood in the garden, which looked to be even bigger than the park behind the house.
Jaydra! Why are you hiding out here?” I asked her with my thoughts. I didn’t want the guard to hear us. Weren’t you going to hide in the stables?
She sent me an image of jumping over the wall—with just a little use of her wings to glide over the top.
Frowning, I glanced around. Jaydra sent me her senses—how the guard slowly walked around the house once every hour, but for now he was leaning against the front door, tucked in tight to stay warm against the cooling night. Pulling of the dress Bower had bought for me, I left it in the house and headed into the garden at the back of the house. I smoothed my own skin tunic and breeches, glad to just have them on again and not have the skirts over the top of my clothes. Jaydra tires of being a horse—and now, behind walls, why should there be a need to hide? Jaydra’s horse form shimmered and for a moment I could see her wings and her long neck.
I patted her nose. If you wish to leave me, you can fly high over the rooftops and go see the mountain, or even go back to the Western Isle. But, den-sister, my quest is not finished. I must stay a little longer. Leaning against her, my heart seemed to be heavy in my chest. These are strange people with strange, closed-minded ways, but I still must know what Zenema sent me to learn.
Jaydra butted me with her head and thought, Jaydra came with Saffron and goes where Saffron goes.
Then we have to put up with this just a little bit longer. Think of it as enemy territory—we need to be watchful until we know where all the dangers lay.
Jaydra fight any enemy! She snorted and I saw the hair on her black horsehide ripple as she almost broke the illusion of being a horse.
Jaydra, when this is done, we will fly far away and you will never have to be a horse again. For this night will you stay in the stables?
She swished her tail, but nodded. I didn’t want her flying again, so we walked to the back walk in the garden and found a wooden gate still barred with a heavy iron latch. Once it was open, Jaydra led me to the House Daris stables, which stood behind the main house. The place smelled of straw—a dry odor—but the stalls all stood empty and silent.
Jaydra sniffed and glanced at me with her wise, ancient eyes. Saffron and Jaydra should leave soon. This is a bad place.
I patted her neck. “Soon,” I whispered. “Zenema said I have to find my blood kin. The answer to all of my questions lies in my blood.”
Jaydra shook her head and blew her nose at the hay that she did not want to eat. What if Saffron never finds them? Never learns to control her magic?’
I took a step back. Never had Jaydra spoken to me so directly. This was an idea I could not even consider. “I will find out. I will. But for tonight…tonight I am going to have one night in a house with a bed just like a human girl.”
The words spilled out of me. Face hot, I bit down on my lower lip. Jaydra looked at me as if I had refused an offer of fish. Gulping down a breath, I stammered, “I—I didn’t mean that I don’t also want to still live with dragons.”
Jaydra snorted in annoyance, but thought to me, Saffron is a human girl, not dragon. Den-sister…but not clutch-sister.
She pulled her thoughts away from me and then turned away as well. I tried to reach out with my mind to her only to find she had closed herself off to me.
Chest tight, I headed out of the stables and walked back to the garden. I barred the gate again and leaned my forehead against the polished wood.
Now I’ve hurt my closest friend in all the world. She must think that all I want to do is to run off to live a human life. That’s not true!
But would it end up being true? Would my quest lead me to a place I didn’t want to be? It had led me to this city, and I had no idea where it might lead me next. I almost wanted to fly away with Jaydra—but Zenema had said I must find my answers. And the truth was my magic was still a danger to Jaydra and anyone else around me. What if I lost my temper? What if I tried to make fire and instead set a forest ablaze? I had to find my answers.
Turning, I trudged back to the house,
no longer quite as excited as I had been about exploring it. How could I explain to Jaydra that she and Zenema and the others were all the family I had ever wanted, but they were not what I needed? Zenema seemed to know this, but Jaydra was so young in so many ways. How could I explain to Jaydra that the magic inside me scared me sometimes? She seemed to think she could take on anything—but I could still remember how I had almost killed her back at the cliffs.
I knew then that if I could not learn to control my magic, I would have to become like the old hermit. I would have to leave everyone and everything behind and live alone. I would have to make certain I kept those I loved safe.
But I was not yet ready to face that future.
Inside, the house seemed almost too quiet. It still smelled musty and tired—I felt that way, too. I had meant to find some food in the garden or the kitchen, but I was no longer hungry. I didn’t even want to hunt up some water.
Wandering from room to room, I found most of them empty. Moonlight streamed in through broken windows. I kept my steps light and made no sound. Mice skittered out of my path, surprised by me walking around like a ghost. I was starting to wonder if even a bed had been left behind. It seemed like anything that could be taken away had been. Turning, I headed back up the stairs again.
Maybe I am doomed to be an outsider?
I wandered down yet another long, narrow room, this one with cracked windows on one side and one huge painting on the other wall. That wall showed pale marks where other things had once been—I began to see that only the heaviest things had not been swept away.
At the other end of the long room, more doorways opened into other rooms. I found a bed at last, or at least a mattress. The bed was so big it had not been able to fit through the door, but all the bedding had been taken away. I was starting to think a night in the stables with Jaydra would be more comfortable.
Going back to the long, narrow room, I stopped in front of the painting again, wondering who this was.
The man had been painted riding a white horse. He held a sword up as if ready to strike down an enemy. It wasn’t the best painting I had ever seen—but then I had seen so few. The hermit had had one painting of a mountain that I had thought beautiful for it looked just like a snow-covered peak. And I had seen several paintings up for sale in one village I’d traveled through—most of them of flowers or animals, and I’d almost wished someone would paint Jaydra and Zenema for me. I wasn’t certain I liked the man that had been painted here. He looked to me to have a narrow face and hard eyes. His mouth turned up a little at the corners as if he knew a secret and did not ever intend to tell anyone what that might be. He wasn’t a handsome man—the lines on his face were too strong for that. But there was something about him that seemed familiar to me. Stepping closer, I brushed a hand over the dust on the painting.
I could see why no one had taken the painting with them. When I brushed at it, my fingers tingled. Magic held this here—I was certain of it. But what kind of magic? Leaning even closer just made the painting become slashes of paint in dark and light colors, so I stepped back. And saw something odd.
It seemed to me that the man had a black mark on the side of his neck. It was in an odd shape, almost like a cloud—like a storm.
And it was a mark I had seen before.
Lifting a hand to my shoulder and pulled down my shirt and glanced at the mark on my collarbone. It, too, was like a black cloud. I’d had this my entire life, but no one had ever been able to tell me what it was.
Behind me, I heard a gasp. I turned to see Bower staring at me, eyes wide. Quickly, I pulled my shirt back in place and turned to face him. He just stood where he was, a half-crumbling book in his arms and his mouth hanging open.
Crossing my arms and careful to keep my voice low so the guard outside would not hear, I muttered, “What? Did you find something?”
Bower shook his head slowly and pointed with one hand to the painting. “No. You did. Your coloring—your eyes. I should have seen it before. That…that is a painting of the most famous Maddox—Hacon Maddox. It’s hung in this house since Hacon gave it to my family and made them promise never to remove it from House Daris. “I think…” He cut off his words and swallowed hard. “I think that man in the painting is your ancestor. He was a king. The king, in fact, of Torvald. Which means you are related to King Enric, which is why you have the mark of the storms on you—the mark of the Maddox line.”
Now my mouth fell open and I stared at Bower. My throat seemed too tight for me to swallow and my breath was coming in short, shallow gulps. Was he mad? I could not be related to a king…and certainly not to one who hated dragons. I blinked and could think of nothing to say. No, this could not be. I pulled my shirt color closed even tighter, but my glance slid back to the man in the painting, the one with the hard eyes and the secret curving his mouth. The man who had become king of the Middle Kingdom.
And to the mark that looked like a storm cloud that stood out on his neck.
If I was not related to him, then why did I have the same mark?
I gave a soft groan and faced Bower again. This was worse than not finding the right answers—I had found an answer I didn’t want to hear.
12
Scions
Saffron was staring at me, her face pale and her words seemingly stuck in her throat.
I clutched the copy of The Peerage of Torvald, which I’d been able to salvage from the ruins of the other books. It was the sort of book that was difficult to burn or destroy, thick and heavy with hundreds of pages and thousands of entries. The book had been handed down through my family, and my mother had said this copy dated right back to the times when the abandoned ruin on Mount Hammal was in use as a monastery.
Glancing at the painting of Hacon Maddox, I could almost wish it had been taken away or destroyed. But I knew that Hacon Maddox had given it to the House Daris as both a gift and a reminder that House Daris owed their fortunes to him. He had said it must hang here forever, and so it still hung. As a child, I had feared the face staring down from that painting—he had looked cruel and bad-tempered to me. Even now, I did not want to stand in front of him any longer than I must.
Walking over to Saffron, I took her hand and pulled her with me. Just the fact that she came with me told me she was in more shock than I had imagined.
I led her up to my room on the top floor—the upper floors were always the warmest, and the heavy furniture in my room had been left intact. Or at least a chair and the bed still stood in the room. I had no idea where my clothing had all gone. I had Saffron sit and I put the book on the bed and face her.
She was rubbing her collar bone, but she pulled her hand down as if it had been burned and said, “It can’t be true.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “It could be a coincidence that you share…well, the same mark. But…there are other indications as well.”
Sitting on her fingertips as if to warm them, Saffron glared at me.
I held up a hand. “Hear me out.” Walking over to the bed, I took up the book and carefully paged through it. I’d been thankful to find it—and three others—still intact. I would have to see if I could get these to Jakson for safekeeping along with my other books.
The pages listed each family with drawings of their flags, their coat of arms, and some held listings included illustrated family trees, the portraits done as very clever colored sketches.
Wetting my lips, I told Saffron, “Torvald has had many noble families over the centuries. As well as a lot of kings and wars. Some family lines ended when the name died out, or changed due to marriage or other intention, such as…”
“Get on with it, Bower,” Saffron growled.
Swallowing hard, I turned the next page. There it was—the Maddox line. It was to be found toward the end of the book, and after that only a few listings were present. No one had been keeping track of the current nobles. I glanced at the names and dates, so carefully inscribed.
“Every family works hard to tra
ck our ancestors—or the families used to, at least. The birth of every noble child was once cause for a huge celebration, but it all changed with Hacon Maddox.”
Saffron shook her head. “Why should I believe that I am a princess or something? It makes no sense. Why did my parents leave me in the wilds if my family is so powerful?”
I winced. “The House Maddox hasn’t been the most beloved of all of the monarchs of the Middle Kingdom. They also, by all the stories, haven’t gotten along with each other all that well. There is a reason only King Enric came to the throne, and why no other Maddox is here to challenge him, or even to be named his successor. I don’t know for sure why you came to be in the Western Isles, but I do know some of the story of the Maddox line. Every noble in the city probably knows a little bit. We have to know it, you see. That is all that is left of our history.”
Coming over to Saffron, I settled the book in her lap. “Here is the line of House Maddox. The founder Hacon Maddox is listed, but he thought so little of his wife that he did not include her, nor does he include his father”
Saffron peered at the book and pointed at the illustrations inked onto the page. “Are those drawings of the Iron Guard?”
“They are. They came to Torvald with Hacon Maddox and they fought for him to liberate the city from the terrible dragon-kings. Or so the history goes. Much of the history from that time is…dubious. It was said that Hacon Maddox viewed himself as a hero, but that he also killed half the population of the city. Those who supported the old ways died and those who bowed to King Hacon lived.
Saffron glanced at me, her eyes narrowed. “And your family lived—what does that say of them.”
I took the book back from her. “You don’t have to be so hot headed.”
She stood. “Why not? If this king is so bad, why don’t you fight instead of all cowering? And if he’s good, then fight for him.”
Dragons of Wild (Upon Dragon's Breath Trilogy Book 1) Page 15
