The Dragonslayer Series: Books 1-4: The Dragonslayer Series Box Set

by Resa Nelson

  The Scaldings owned Guell.

  CHAPTER 25

  “How can Guell be Scalding territory?” Astrid sat on the bench next to Vinchi, watching every shift in the expression on his face and hoping to discern the truth from it.

  “I know they manipulated you,” Vinchi said quietly. “I’m sorry they did that to you.”

  Astrid became aware of her heart racing. For a moment, she felt like a child again, terrified by the world and everything in it. “What do you know?”

  “They put you in a cage with a young dragon that chewed you up and spit you out. No one knows why it didn’t—why it couldn’t—kill you. The Scaldings gave you to a child seller, who sold you to a blacksmith in Guell. But it was all a ploy. Nothing but trickery. Last year, the Scalding leader captured you after destroying Guell and everyone in it. They say there was magic involved, and that you’re at the heart of it.”

  “There’s no such thing as magic,” Astrid said. Although she’d believed this all her life, she silently questioned her own belief.

  “They’re a strange lot, the Scaldings,” Vinchi said. “Every woman I’ve ever met from Scalding territory told me she had the freedom to live however she pleased because the Scaldings made it possible. I know some of the Northern lands outside of Scalding territory try to put women in their place, but I’ve never heard of one laying a harmful hand on his wife or daughter. It’s just not done in the north.”

  Suddenly dizzy, Astrid rubbed her face with both hands. None of this made any sense. She’d known DiStephan since they’d met in childhood, and he’d never told her such stories. Astrid had always assumed that the rest of the world was like Guell.

  She jumped at the sensation of something crawling between her face and hands. Crying out, she sat up sharply, staring at the palms of her hands. Her scars crawled across them like worms.

  This had happened weeks ago when she saw Taddeo. He’d noticed the scars that had loosened themselves from the pattern they’d formed down her spine and chest, observing that Astrid appeared to be coming apart at the seams. He’d advised her to take the winter route and drink from the Dragon’s Well to lock her scars into place and restore the arm she’d lost to Norah.

  For the first time, Astrid considered taking his advice.

  “Is something wrong?” Vinchi sounded genuinely concerned.

  He looked squarely at her face, unable to see the scars crawling across her hands. Because he’d obviously eaten no lizard meat recently. That meant he saw the true Astrid, not the one she wanted others to see.

  “No,” Astrid said, rubbing her palms together. She concentrated to force the scars to migrate back where they belonged. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  If she were to drink from the Dragon’s Well, that would change. No one would be able to see her scars any more, except where they’d welded together like the pattern on a dragonslayer’s sword—and they’d hold in place instead of wandering across her skin. The rest of her skin would be smooth and perfect. And her phantom arm would become real and solid.

  At least, that’s what Taddeo claimed.

  Astrid thought about everyone she’d left at home in Guell: Lenore and Randim, Donel and Trep, and all the others. Guilt still nagged at her for failing to let them know that she’d left Guell, even though she hadn’t expected to be gone for longer than several hours. Even worse, she had no way to inform them she’d be taking the winter route after all. What must they be thinking? That a lizard had killed her?

  Resting her elbows on her thighs, Astrid leaned forward and covered her face with her hands, closing her eyes to shut out the world. A new thought occurred to her. If Scalding territory provided the best and safest place for women to live, that must have been her brother Drageen’s doing. The brother she’d fought. The brother she’d watched die at the moment he became encased in the rocky folds of Dragon’s Head.

  What if that’s why he manipulated me? What if he protected women but doing so required him to harm me? What if I’ve endangered all the women in Scalding territory for the sake of protecting myself?

  For the first time, Astrid regretted fighting her brother. She wondered if she should have allowed him to use and torture her so that he could continue keeping other women safe.

  She remembered arguing with him on Tower Island. He’d mentioned an attack on Limru, a sacred place in the Midlands. Drageen had also claimed he needed to scare bloodstones out of Astrid to make himself invincible in case the same marauders who attacked Limru came to the Northlands.

  And now she realized Drageen had wanted to defend Scalding territory not just for the sake of its men, but equally for its women. She’d destroyed a man who might have been a champion if he’d only had the chance to live and fight.

  A sudden shriek pierced the silence between them, and Astrid and Vinchi jumped. Startled, they stared at each other for a brief moment before racing up the stairs.

  CHAPTER 26

  When their feet hit the wooden deck, the ship rolled slightly. Astrid and Vinchi paused, gaining their footing. They faced a bracing ocean wind that pushed the air back into their mouths if they tried to speak.

  The cool sea spray stung Vinchi’s face, and he shivered. The air smelled clean and tangy with salt. Wispy clouds threaded the bright blue sky, and the ship’s enormous square sail snapped loud as thunder in the wind. Vinchi saw nothing but the horizon of the ocean meeting the sky surrounding them.

  Margreet stood at the railing. She jumped and waved her arms wildly, shrieking at the open water. The wind had tousled her carefully coiffed hair into a fine mess: tendrils had flown free of the bun at the back of her neck and were now plastered across her face, wet with sea spray.

  “What is she doing?” Astrid asked.

  Anxious to answer that question himself, Vinchi wove his way between the handful of seamen now struggling to control the ship in the high winds. “Margreet!” he called out. “What’s wrong?”

  She spun to face him, her eyes blazing with anger. She jammed her fists onto her waist.

  Vinchi sensed his heart skip a beat. Even though angry, Margreet radiated beauty. “Please,” he said. “How can I help?”

  Margreet spit her response at him. “Get me back to my husband. Now!”

  Vinchi’s jaw dropped open in astonishment. “The man who might have killed you?”

  The wind loosened some of the tendrils plastered against her forehead, and Margreet impatiently pushed them out of her eyes. “He loves me.”

  Vinchi stared at her in disbelief.

  The Iron Maiden sidled up next to him. “What did she say?”

  To Margreet, Vinchi said, “Any man who truly loved you would never harm you.” His voice rising in anger, he added, “He wouldn’t strike you. Not ever!”

  Vinchi trembled when Margreet’s gaze traveled slowly up and down his body. She had never looked at him like this before. At least, not in any place beyond his dreams.

  “A man…like you?” Margreet said.

  Vinchi felt as if he’d been bound by ropes squeezing the air from his chest. He wanted to run and escape this embarrassment, to jump over the ship’s railing and swim to the horizon, but his feet would not move. He’d always known he had no right to long for another man’s wife, but his heart could understand the language of his mind no better than the Iron Maiden could understand Margreet’s words. And he’d never dreamed Margreet would speak to him so directly, even though she spoke that way to everyone else. Vinchi thought she didn’t notice him.

  Of course, stealing her away had made it much easier.

  Vinchi’s throat grew dry.

  Margreet took a step forward and repeated her question. “A man—like you—would never lay a harmful hand upon me?”

  “That’s right,” Vinchi said, mustering his courage.

  “Then you must be inexperienced in the ways of love,” Margreet said, crossing her arms.

  The Iron Maiden nudged her elbow into his ribs. “What’s she saying?”

  Switching
to the language of the Northlands, Vinchi said, “She wants to go back to her husband.”

  “What?” the Iron Maiden said. Turning to Margreet, she said, “What is wrong with you?”

  Margreet gave the Iron Maiden a fleeting glance, raising her eyebrows at Astrid’s tone, even though she didn’t understand her words.

  “The boy,” Vinchi said, referring to Astrid, “wants to know what is wrong with you.” Maybe he could reason with Margreet by proving he wasn’t the only one who questioned her demand.

  Margreet waved one hand toward the Iron Maiden as if brushing a fly away from her face. “Why should I care what a one-armed boy thinks?” Margreet then stared pointedly at Vinchi. “Why should I care what two boys think?”

  “I am your elder,” Vinchi said, standing straighter. “I’m a good merchant. I make a good living.”

  “And my husband is a strong, powerful man who protects me from the likes of you.”

  Vinchi doubled over, feeling like he’d been punched in the stomach. “How can you say that? What makes you think I could ever hurt you, while that beast nearly beat you to a bloody pulp?”

  The Iron Maiden took a cautious step toward Margreet. “Translate!” Astrid said to Vinchi.

  “Margreet is stubborn,” Vinchi said, keeping his gaze on both women. “She thinks her husband protects her from other men.”

  The Iron Maiden mirrored Margreet’s earlier stance, planting her feet firmly on deck and her fists on her waist while shaking her head in disbelief. To Margreet, the Iron Maiden said, “Has your mind fallen out of your ears and into the sea? Are you empty headed?”

  Before Vinchi could open his mouth, Margreet held up a cautionary hand, and then brushed it toward Astrid. “I do not need to know what the boy says,” Margreet said.

  Vinchi looked at the Iron Maiden and repeated Margreet’s words.

  Astrid looked at him blankly.

  Margreet cleared her throat. “The boy expects you to speak his language, not mine.”

  Confused for a moment, Vinchi realized he’d been translating so quickly that he forgot which language he spoke.

  The Iron Maiden held up her own hand. “Don’t bother translating. Tell Margreet that this dragonslayer will not let her commit suicide by returning to a man so quick to kill her. Tell her we will now tie her up and keep her below deck—and gag her, if need be.”

  Vinchi hesitated. He then spoke in a firm tone that the Iron Maiden would expect from him. But instead of repeating her words, he spoke for himself. “Margreet,” he said. “We will honor your wishes and return you to the man you love.”

  CHAPTER 27

  At first, Gershon believed he was floating up from the bottom of a murky lake, the air in his lungs making his body buoyant enough to drift to the sun-speckled surface high above. His body went limp and relaxed, and his thoughts became muddled and distant. He couldn’t recognize his location or if he even cared. Drifting up through the lake was a pleasant experience.

  The sudden memory of a small dragon head emerging from the chest of a boy startled Gershon into consciousness. “Dragon!” he shrieked, bolting upright, eyes wide with terror.

  “There, there,” a soft but familiar female voice murmured in his ear. The voice turned away and called out, “He’s awake!”

  Gershon winced. He became aware of the throbbing reverberating through his head like a beating drum. Someone must have punched him from behind. Gershon rarely lost a fight and even more rarely lost consciousness. “What happened?” he said, squinting at the harsh light surrounding him. “Who hit me?”

  “Nobody,” the familiar voice said sweetly. “You fainted.”

  Gershon decided he must have misheard her. He squinted harder until the fuzzy shape came into focus. A young woman with long blond hair sat next to him, holding a ladle of some concoction or another. After a few moments, he recognized her as Frieda, a Northlander whose farmer father had tried to broker a marriage deal with Gershon years ago, before he’d met Margreet.

  “Here,” Frieda said. “I spent the morning making soup. It will clear your head.”

  Gershon grunted his appreciation and took a mouthful of soup, thick with chopped potatoes and purple carrots, a Northern delicacy. He always forgot Frieda’s talent as a cook until he took a bite of one of her meals. As promised, the aroma, fragrant with herbs, cleared his head quickly. The taste was satisfying and welcome.

  He ran an inquisitive hand through his scalp and paused, discovering a raised, tender bump on the back of his head. Frowning, he growled at Frieda, “Who hit me?”

  Gershon sat on the wooden planks covering the market street, and Frieda knelt by his side. The rest of the marketplace bustled around them. Speaking so softly that only he could hear, Frieda said, “You truly fainted, dear sir. You hit your head when you fell, because everyone felt such surprise that no one could move quickly enough to break your fall.” She slipped her hand through the crook of his arm. “It happens to everyone from time to time.”

  Had it not been for his throbbing head, Gershon would have struck the woman down to put her in her place. But the pain in his head made the simple act of lifting a hand an impossible task. Instead, he simply yelled at her. “Wretched woman! How dare you question me?”

  Frieda raised an eyebrow and whispered, “My brothers are here in the marketplace with me. Unlike the rest of the world, Northlanders protect their women.”

  Her brothers. Gershon remembered them from the fight that broke out because he refused the marriage deal. Frieda’s tall, strong brothers threatened him if he didn’t accept Frieda and expand her family’s trading reach into the territories through which Gershon traveled. Frieda had been the one to calm troubled waters by suggesting they strike a trading agreement that required no marriage. Ever since, Gershon had bought sacks filled with their purple carrots to sell across the seas.

  But accusing Gershon of fainting! How dare anyone go so far? “I did not faint. Never have fainted. Never will.”

  Frieda’s smile laced her voice. “Of course. My mistake.”

  A cloth merchant from a Midland country rushed toward them, his shoes clattering along the wooden planks. The cloth merchant wore a simple linen gown belted at the waist, and his wispy gray hair stood up in tufts like feathers on an owl’s head. His large dark eyes watered with fear. “Gershon!” the cloth merchant said while he extended a hand. Leaning forward, the cloth merchant whispered, “I saw the magic that boy cast upon you!”

  Normally, Gershon would have scowled at the offered hand and popped to his feet without accepting assistance from anyone. But his head still throbbed, and Gershon now wondered if the boy had done something to knock him out without having to throw a punch. Some kind of trickery, perhaps.

  Gershon took the cloth merchant’s hand and let him pull Gershon to his feet. “What did you see?”

  The cloth merchant’s face had gone red from the strain of helping the larger man stand up. He dabbed at the sweat beading between his eyebrows with his sleeve. “One minute the boy pulled a dragon out of his chest, and the next minute that same dragon vanished into nothingness!” The cloth merchant’s eyes remained wide. He raised one hand to illustrate, fingers spread wide and taut. “And the dragon did something to you. Fire came out of its mouth and a strange light shined out of its eyes—straight at you!” He paused and his eyes lost focus as he rethought his words. He shook his hand at Gershon. “That light—it could have been a poison!”

  Frieda giggled, standing up next to the men. “That’s impossible. How can poison take the form of light?”

  The cloth merchant inhaled sharply like a man so insulted that it took his breath away. “Heathen!”

  “I’m a Northlander,” Frieda said coolly, correcting him.

  The cloth merchant shook a trembling finger at her, his face flushing scarlet as sweat popped up along his hairline. “The one true Krystr says your gods are false! And you will suffer for worshipping the wrong gods.”

  “The White Krystr,” Fr
ieda hissed.

  Gershon stepped between them when the cloth merchant’s color faded in response to Frieda’s insult. Even Midlanders knew that here in the north, the color white identified cowards and women. “Go back to your brothers,” Gershon said to Frieda. “Feed them the fine soup you gave to me.”

  That should be enough to placate the woman.

  Ignoring the heathen woman, the cloth merchant led Gershon down the street. “There is someone here you should meet,” the cloth merchant said. “Someone who can help.”

  Gershon frowned. “Help with what?”

  “Finding your wife. Vinchi and the boy sailed off with her.”

  Stunned, Gershon stopped, oblivious to the crowd brushing past him. The throbbing in his head intensified. His vision blacked out for a moment and made him sway where he stood.

  Impossible! How could his most prized possession have been stolen?

  CHAPTER 28

  “This is peculiar,” Wendill said, kneeling in a patch of grass and staring keenly at it.

  Norah sat on a rock, clutching her stomach. After eating the few berries that Wendill had given to her, she felt nauseated and light-headed.

  What if Wendill had poisoned her?

  Norah struggled to think and instead opted to sink into her feelings, a dark and comfortable place. She’d spent all her life in a cage on top of Tower Island. She’d never imagined a world existed beyond that place of stone and steel surrounded by a vast expanse of sky.

  She’d stayed alive by chewing into the Scalding girl for the first several years of her life, inhaling the girl’s blood to ease Norah’s own savage hunger while sickened at the thought of devouring the girl. Whenever Norah had looked into the Scalding girl’s eyes, she’d seen herself and couldn’t help but think how she’d feel if she were the weak one and the Scalding girl had the power to consume Norah.

  No matter how much she hated the wicked, wicked Scaldings, Norah never could bear to kill the girl, even if it meant Norah’s own starvation.