Secret of the Dragon

by Margaret Weis

  Skylan frowned. “This isn’t another of your stories, is it? Like claiming you can talk to satyrs and dryads.”

  “I do talk to satyrs and dryads,” said Wulfe. “And I did see Raegar and Treia.”

  Skylan was dubious. He believed the boy lied, but his lies had the value of being entertaining. “Tell me what they said. And keep your voice down.”

  An armed guard, looking hot and bored, paced about the sandy shoreline.

  Wulfe leaned a little nearer, keeping a wary eye on the iron clamped around Skylan’s wrists and ankles, as though he expected it to leap up and bite him.

  “You remember when the dragon goddess came to you?” Wulfe asked. “Right before you fought the giants?”

  Skylan remembered that encounter only too well. He gave a brief nod; his lips tightened. “I remember. Go on.”

  Wulfe continued. “The dragon goddess scared me and I ran away. I found Garn, but he was holding a sword and there were more men with him holding swords, and that scared me more than the dragon, and I ran away from them, too. That’s when I saw Treia. She was tearing her hair and wringing her hands and talking crazy to herself, all about how Raegar was dead and no man would ever love her.”

  Skylan nodded. Wulfe’s story fit with what Garn had told him, about how the distraught Treia, grieving over the supposedly drowned Raegar, had gone off by herself. No one knew where. The Torgun had been going to search for her, but then the giants had attacked them and they were fighting for their lives.

  “I didn’t know where you were or how to get back to camp,” Wulfe said. “I thought Treia would know the way so I followed her. But she didn’t go back to camp. She went into the temple with the dragon. And there was Raegar, alive, lying on the floor. His clothes were all wet.”

  “Of course they were,” said Skylan. “He didn’t fall off the ship. He jumped overboard and swam ashore.”

  “Maybe.” Wulfe shrugged. “Raegar told Treia a god had punished him. Treia was so glad to see him she began to rut with him then and there. Afterward she asked why he was being punished. He said it was because he was keeping your secret. And then he told her your secret, about how you and Draya murdered someone named Horg. Did you murder someone named Horg?”

  Skylan sighed and was silent for long moments, gazing out over the clear, waveless sea. At length, he shook his head.

  “But someone named Horg was murdered?” Wulfe asked.

  “Yes,” said Skylan.

  “But you didn’t murder him?”

  “No. I fought cleanly. As Torval is my witness!” Skylan said vehemently. “I did what I believed to be right. Why is it,” he asked in frustration, “that every time I think I am doing right, it turns out to be wrong?”

  “Maybe you should do something wrong and then it will turn out right,” Wulfe suggested.

  Skylan smiled bleakly. “Maybe I should. Garn knew. Garn always knew what was right. He tried to tell me and I wouldn’t listen. And now Garn is dead and I am a slave and my people are slaves.”

  “All because of Treia.” Wulfe growled, sounding so much like a dog that the soldier whistled and looked around in search of an animal.

  “I can’t blame her,” said Skylan. “She trusted Raegar. We all did.”

  Wulfe snorted. “She likes rutting with him.”

  “How do you know Raegar was lying? Maybe it was a miracle. Maybe Vindrash did save him.”

  Wulfe snorted. “Vindrash wears boots then. The floor was dusty and I saw the footprints. I saw Raegar’s footprints. His feet were bare and wet. I saw two pairs of prints of men who had been wearing boots and they were dry. They stood and talked to Raegar. The dry boots left and Raegar stayed.”

  Skylan frowned. “If that’s true, Raegar knew Treia would go to the temple. She is our Bone Priestess. She would go there first to pray. Raegar was waiting for her!”

  “I tried to warn you about her,” said Wulfe. He gave Skylan’s arm a sympathetic pat, though he was still careful to keep his distance from the iron manacles. “I hate her. And I hate Raegar. He hit me!”

  “Why? What did you do?”

  Wulfe muttered something.

  “What?” Skylan nudged him. “Speak up.”

  “He caught me spying on them,” said Wulfe sullenly. “And he hit me. Someday I’ll kill him.”

  “Get in line,” said Skylan.

  He was silent, then he asked the question he’d been afraid to ask. “How is Aylean? I heard she had the sickness, but that she survived. I also heard that she tried to fight the soldiers. They didn’t hurt her, did they?”

  “I don’t know. She’s in the Big Ship out there.”

  Wulfe pointed to the trireme, which floated at anchor some distance away, near the sandbar on which the Venjekar had disastrously run aground. Compared to the sleek, graceful, dragon-prowed Venjekar, the trireme with its large hull and oars and beaked snout looked like some sort of gigantic seagoing turtle.

  “Don’t worry,” said Wulfe. “They won’t hurt Aylean or Treia. Raegar told the soldiers both women were Bone Priestesses and his god wanted them safe.”

  “I wonder why his god wants Bone Priestesses,” Skylan muttered. He shifted in the sand, trying to find a more comfortable position, causing the chains to clank. The guard cast him a sharp glance.

  “You two—shut up! No talking!” the soldier shouted.

  Skylan glared at him and started to say something else. The soldier walked toward them. Wulfe jumped to his feet and scrambled off.

  The soldier paid no attention to the boy. He kicked Skylan in the ribs. “What were you two talking about?”

  “Go diddle yourself,” said Skylan.

  The soldier started to kick Skylan again. Skylan had been spoiling for a fight and this seemed as good a time as any. He jumped to his feet and swung the chain that hung from the shackles at the soldier’s head. The heavy leg irons hampered Skylan’s movement; his swing was slow and clumsy. The soldier ducked, then drew his sword and struck Skylan on the side of his head with the flat of his blade.

  Skylan fell sprawling in the sand. He could taste blood in his mouth. His ears rang.

  “Better hope you didn’t kill him,” said another soldier. “The Legate will be furious if you did. He expects this one to fight in the Para Dix.”

  “Bah! I didn’t hurt him. These savages are like mules. You have to hit them to get their attention.”

  The soldier started to kick Skylan again. Skylan twisted around, grabbed hold of the man’s foot, and yanked him off balance. The soldier landed on his butt in the sand.

  His comrades chortled and jeered. The soldier, his face red with fury and embarassment, scrambled to his feet. He would have probably killed Skylan if the Tribune had not come up at that moment.

  “Harm him, Manetas, and the Legate will have his price out of your pay,” said the Tribune. “You men, chain him more securely.”

  The Tribune’s name was Zahakis. Skylan had taken particular notice of him. The man was tall for a Southlander; his body was all muscle. His nose was misshapen. He was dark-skinned, darker than most of the swarthy Southlanders. An old scar sliced across his face from cheek to chin. He was, perhaps, in his early thirties. He was a man of few words, quick decision.

  The main reason Skylan found Zahakis interesting was that there was no love lost between the Tribune and Raegar. Skylan had observed the animosity between the two the first time he saw them together.

  Raegar had given the soldiers orders regarding the Venjekar. The soldiers had listened to Raegar, their faces expressionless. After Raegar had gone, the men had looked to Zahakis.

  “Carry on with what you were doing,” was his order.

  The soldiers, grinning, had obeyed Zahakis.

  Skylan was not certain what use he would make of this animosity between them, other than he was glad to find someone else—even an enemy—who despised Raegar as much as he did.

  Zahakis was watching in silence as the soldiers wrenched Skylan’s arms behind his bac
k and bound him by the wrists, then thrust a wooden pole through the bend in his elbows, between his arms and his back, forcing his arms into an awkward and painful position.

  This done, Zahakis said, “We have new orders. Some of you, come with me.”

  The soldiers walked off after their commander.

  Skylan sat hunched over, spitting blood and sand. He glanced at the other Torgun. The grim and dour Sigurd, friend of his father’s and now nominal Chief of the Torgun. Bjorn, prone to gossip and laughter, his best friend next to Garn. Erdmun, Bjorn’s younger brother, gloomy, never happier than when he was expecting trouble. Grimuir, friend and ally of Sigurd’s, he had never liked Skylan. Farinn, the youngest, quiet and withdrawn, mostly kept to himself. Aki the Dark; he had only recently come to the Torgun from another clan and Skylan did not know much about him. The warriors looked at Skylan, and then they looked away.

  Skylan sighed. He didn’t know what he’d hoped for. Not love or friendship. But maybe admiration? Nothing. They despised him. They didn’t care if he lived or died. Perhaps they were wishing him dead. All he had to show for his trouble was a bloody gash on his head, throbbing pain in his ribs, and despair in his heart.

  Skylan shifted his gaze to the charred and blackened spot on the sand that had been Garn’s funeral pyre. Tears filled Skylan’s eyes. He was ashamed of them and, fearing his men would see him weep, he lowered his head, letting his long, blond, lank hair fall forward to hide his face.

  The tears mingled with the blood that dribbled into his blond stubbly beard. Skylan tasted salt and iron in his mouth. He would have prayed to Torval, but Skylan feared that Torval, like the Torgun, would look at him and then look away.

  CHAPTER

  2

  * * *

  BOOK ONE

  The sisters, Treia and Aylaen, had been captured in the ambush. Treia had been presiding over the funeral pyres of the Vindrasi dead and had been horror-stricken at the sight of the black-haired, brown-skinned soldiers in their strange-looking armor. Treia was near sighted and in her bleary vision, the soldiers in their shining armor were gleaming retribution emerging from the smoke of death, coming to drag her off to the Nethervarld, where the God of the Talley, Freilis, would cast her to her daemons.

  The soldiers had grasped Treia roughly by the arms, bound her hands behind her, and threw her into a tent they had erected with disciplined swiftness on the shore. Feeling their rough hands on her and smelling the stink of sweat and leather and listening to the crude talk, Treia had realized these men were flesh-and-blood and that she was their captive.

  She had known fear, then, cold and sickening in the pit of her stomach, fear over what men did to captive women. She sat in the tent, trembling with terror, but all the men had done was drag Aylaen to the tent and toss her inside.

  “The savage bitch bit me!” one had muttered, exhibiting a bloody bite mark on his forearm.

  “You’ll soon be foaming at the mouth,” his comrade had predicted jokingly.

  “It’s not funny,” his friend had grumbled.

  Aylaen had a bruised face and swollen knuckles and a sprained wrist, but considering that she had fought her captors with the fury of a catamount, she was probably fortunate the soldiers hadn’t beaten her senseless.

  Treia had done what she could to treat her sister’s injuries, which wasn’t much, for they wouldn’t let her back on the ship to fetch her healing salves and potions. And so, Aylaen and many of the other Torgun had contracted the terrible sickness.

  The Legate’s soldiers had said it was an illness common among city dwellers, known as the “bloody flux.” The Legate had sent a man they termed a “physician” to help and, finding that Treia was a healer, this man had permitted her to treat her suffering people.

  Having never before seen such an illness, Treia had not been able to do much for her patients except bathe their fevered bodies and close their eyes when they died. Those few, like Aylaen, who had survived had done it on their own. Others, like Treia and Skylan, had not been affected at all.

  Once Treia had presided over the funerals of her dead, the bodies had been burned, along with all their clothing and anything they had touched.

  Free of the grip of the sickness, Aylaen recovered rapidly, a fact she seemed to resent. She had watched the dead being consumed by flames with a look of envy. After that, she had gone into the tent and thrown herself down onto her blanket and stared into the darkness, tears flowing unchecked down her cheeks.

  Treia had at last grown exasperated. “Garn is dead,” she had told her sister. “You must accept that and go on. You will make yourself ill again if you don’t.”

  Aylaen had been so lost in her grief she had not even seemed to hear her.

  This morning, Treia sat in the sand outside her tent, watching the soldiers shackle the Torgun prisoners together and dump them onto the sand while the carpenters made repairs to the ship. Out to sea, the strange-looking war galley rocked gently at anchor near the sandbar on which the Venjekar had run aground.

  Treia was not shackled or bound in any way. No one considered her a threat, nor were they concerned that she might escape. The soldiers sometimes stared at her and sometimes they seemed to talk about her, laughing in a way that made her cheeks burn, but none had molested her or Aylaen. She might have worried about that if she had not been in such inner turmoil, wondering what had become of Raegar, wondering why he had abandoned her, wondering if he was dead.

  She saw Skylan get into a fight with the soldiers and her mouth curled in a contemptuous smile to see him knocked to the ground. He had not even been sick, the others had told her. He should have died! He was the one responsible for their suffering. Some god must love him, Treia thought resentfully.

  She sat watching the soldiers and their commander, Zahakis, walking across the sand and felt a flutter of alarm. They were coming toward her tent. Treia hoped that they were going off into the underbrush to hunt, as they had done in the past.

  But their heads in their helms with the flaps that covered their cheeks were turned toward her, as were their steps. Treia crawled back into the tent and shook Aylaen by the shoulder.

  “What is it?” Aylaen said, rolling over with a groan. “Why did you wake me?”

  “The soldiers are coming for us,” said Treia, her voice tight.

  Aylaen sat up. Her face was pale and thin from her illness. Her red hair, which she had cut short as a dedication to the goddess, had grown back in a cluster of curls that straggled over her forehead and down her neck. Her green eyes were sunken and smudged by dark circles. She was only seventeen, but illness and sorrow had aged her. Treia, in her late twenties, seemed the younger by comparison. Aylaen’s eyes had been clouded and dull before this. When Treia mentioned the soldiers, she was pleased to see a spark of fire in the green depths.

  “I will die before I let those sons of whores touch me,” Aylaen said, clasping Treia’s hand tightly. “You and I—we’ll fight them.”

  Aylaen tried to stand. Her weak legs would not support her and she ended up falling on her hands and knees. Treia had to help her sister out of the tent. “If you would not lie in your bed all day, you would be stronger,” Treia scolded.

  Aylaen stood blinking in the sunlight that hurt her eyes, holding on to her sister’s arm to help her walk. The women stared, white-faced, at the approaching soldiers and their commander, who seemed to know what they feared.

  Zahakis came to a stop in front of them and said in formal and dispassionate tones, speaking slowly so that they would understand, “I have orders to remove both of you to the galley. You will not be harmed, I give you my word as a Tribune of the Third Legion. Be so good as to accompany my men in a peaceful manner and you will not be bound.”

  “Go to hell,” said Aylaen.

  “Sister, you can hardly walk,” Treia said in a low voice. Aloud she said, “Why are you taking us to your ship?”

  “Because those are my orders, Madame,” said Zahakis.

  Treia bi
t her lip. If Raegar was alive, he might be on the galley. “We will come with you,” she said, and she pinched Aylaen when her sister started to argue. “For once in your life, don’t cause trouble!”

  Aylaen would have probably fought her captors if she had been strong enough to resist. As it was, she was already feeling faint and dizzy in the hot sun. Rather than appear weak, she suffered the soldier to grasp her by the arm and lead her across the beach and into the water.

  Treia followed, accompanied by another soldier. At the sight of their womenfolk being taken away, the Torgun warriors raised a shout and jumped to their feet.

  Zahakis ordered his men to keep going. “I’ll go deal with them.”

  The water from the shoreline to the sandbar was only about hip-deep. The soldiers waded into the sea, hauling the women with them. Treia floundered through the waves, her movements hampered by the skirts of her long linen smock. She had taken off the woolen apron dress she usually wore over it. The summer days were hot, too hot to wear the overdress or her priestess robes.

  The water splashed over her, soaking the linen chemise that clung revealingly to her body. One of the soldiers glanced at her and made a comment to another.

  His friend gave a grunt. “I would not let Raegar hear you say that. He gave orders to treat these women with respect.”

  “So he can enjoy them all for himself,” the soldier said with a leer.

  “Raegar says this woman and her savage bitch of a sister are Bone Priestesses or something.”

  “A boney priestess is nearer the mark,” returned the other soldier, and both men laughed.

  Treia stared at them in astonishment. She had difficulty understanding the language of the men, for though many of the words of their language were the same as hers, the Southlanders spoke rapidly, the words seeming to slide off their lips as if coated with oil. Yet she had heard the name, Raegar, clearly. They had spoken of him as though they knew him. Something about giving orders regarding her and Aylaen. But how was that possible? These men were Southlanders. Raegar, though he had lived for many years in the Southland, which he called by their name, Oran, was Vindrasi.