Blueford—a village like any other. Looking off the stage, Tanin saw a collection of clay huts topped with straw roofs, a few gardens, fields of rye and wheat, a smithy, and corrals of cattle.
It looks like the village Maev and I were born in, he thought. The village that banished us. This place would banish us too if they knew our secret . . . our curse.
At the thought of his shame, Tanin stumbled upon the stage, falling again with a cascade of clattering skulls. The crowd jeered.
“Get off the stage!” someone shouted. “Let the dancer on, you lout!”
Sitting on the stage, his legs splayed out before him, Tanin turned his head to see a dancer standing in the grass, awaiting her turn to perform. She met his eyes and gave him a shrug and sympathetic smile. Seeing her only amplified Tanin’s humiliation.
By the stars, she’s beautiful, he thought. The young woman—she seemed about twenty, five years younger than him—wore only thin bits of cotton over her tall, curvy figure, and tresses of red hair cascaded across her shoulders. Her eyes were green, her nose freckled, and Tanin felt his face redden.
Just the type of woman I’d want to impress, he thought. And I’m sitting here like a—
“Clumsy sack of shite!” someone shouted from the crowd. “Off the stage!”
A gob of brown, gooey mud sailed from the crowd to slam against Tanin’s face. At least he hoped it was mud and not one of the many cow pies dotting the village. Wishing he could vanish in a puff of smoke like the magician who had performed before him, Tanin all but fled the stage, slipping over a bronzed skull and crashing down into the dirt.
He moved through the crowd, any trace of lingering dignity gone, and wiped the mud off his face. The crowd cheered behind him, and Tanin turned to see the red-haired woman step onto the stage and begin her dance. She swayed like reeds in the wind, jingling bells in her hands. Tanin gulped to see the seductive movements of her near-naked body. It had been so long since he’d held a woman, even talked to one—aside from talking to his sister, that is, but Tanin often thought her more an enraged warthog than a woman. Watching the dance, he imagined holding this dancer, kissing her lips, and seeking in her arms some respite from loneliness. As she swayed, she met his eyes across the crowd and gave him a knowing, crooked smile. Tanin felt his face flush.
I’m a fool, he thought. She knew what he was thinking, yet after his travesty of a performance, surely she only mocked him. Besides, if she knew my secret, knew who I really am, knew why I was banished from my own town . . .
The shame grew too great to bear. Tanin turned and walked away.
Leaving the stage behind, he walked through the village. The harvest festival was in full swing. Farmers displayed their largest gourds, turnips, and cabbages upon tables for judges to measure. Shepherds haggled over prize bulls. Gardeners swapped wreaths of wheat and flowers for meat pies and mugs of ale. Several dogs ran underfoot, tails wagging furiously as they begged for treats.
Grunts, curses, and the thud of fists on flesh rose from within a ring of cheering men. Tanin approached, peered through the crowd, and a saw a pit of mud. In the dirt, his sister was pinning down a hairy man twice her size, pounding his face with her fists. All around, the crowd raised their own fists, cheering for her. A brusque woman, her powerful arms tattooed with coiling dragons, Maev could have been beautiful if not for the black eyes, fat lips, and cuts that always marred her face. Blood dripped down her face today, and more blood matted her long blond hair, but she smiled as she pummeled her victim.
“The Hammer!” cried the crowd, chanting the name Maev had chosen for her fights. “The Hammer!”
Tanin sighed and turned away. He hated seeing his sister fight like this in every village they passed through. Whenever he tried to sway her away from another battle, her rage turned on him.
I juggle, fall on stage, and sell my dignity to survive, Tanin thought. She sells blood.
Grimacing, he walked away. That evening he would nurse his sister’s wounds. For now, he sought distraction in the festival. Leaving the wrestling pit behind, he approached a dirt square where a puppeteer hid inside a wooden booth, putting on a show. A group of parents and children were watching the puppets, and Tanin paused among them.
One puppet, a wooden girl with long hair of golden wool, walked across the little stage, picking fabric flowers. A second puppet lurked behind her—this one was stooped, hook-nosed, and pale, its eyes beady and red, its warts hairy. Children squealed to see the ugly man, crying out to the golden-haired doll, warning her of the danger lurking behind.
The wooden girl seemed to hear the shouts from the audience. She froze, then spun around to face the lurking man behind her. With a flurry of ribbons and a puff of smoke, the twisted puppet vanished. Where it had stood now roared a wooden dragon, painted black, its eyes red.
“A weredragon!” shouted the wooden girl.
The crowd gasped and cried out. “A weredragon! Be careful!”
Tanin’s heart sank. He hadn’t thought the day could get worse, but seeing this play soured his belly more than his failed performance.
We are monsters to them, he thought, balling his fists at his sides. He shut his eyes, remembering that night—that night his old home, a village like this, had discovered his family’s secret.
His father, Jeid Blacksmith, a beefy man with a shaggy beard. His sisters, headstrong Maev and little Requiem. His grandfather, the wise druid Eranor. And him—Tanin, only a youth in those days. A family cursed. Diseased.
“Weredragons!” the people had cried to them, firing arrows, tossing stones. His own uncle, the cruel Zerra, had stood among them. “Weredragons!”
Today, ten years later, as Tanin stood here in this new village, the voices calling toward the puppet mingled with the voices in his memory.
“Weredragon, weredragon!”
He opened his eyes and took a shuddering breath. In the puppet booth, a new doll—a noble warrior clad in armor, bearing a little spear—raced across the stage and slew the carved dragon. The crowd cheered. The wooden girl rose to her little feet and kissed the hero—a happy ending, a monster vanquished.
“But we’re not monsters,” Tanin whispered. “We’re not.”
A voice rose in the crowd. “Oi! Juggle boy!”
Tanin blinked, banishing his memories, and looked to his side. He lost his breath, his heart burst into a gallop, and he felt his cheeks flush. The dancer was walking toward him, her red hair cascading like a fiery waterfall. She swayed as she moved through the crowd, her scanty outfit doing little to hide her form, and gave him that crooked smile of hers.
He cleared his throat. “Hello, dancing boy! I mean, girl. I mean—obviously you’re a girl.” He glanced down at her body, then froze and quickly raised his eyes. “I mean—not obviously. Not that I care. I mean, whether you’re a boy or a girl, or—“
She reached him and placed a finger against his lips. “Shush, juggling boy. You’re only digging yourself a deeper hole.”
Tanin sighed. “I’m as clumsy with words as I am with juggling.”
She laughed. “But I think you’re cute. I’m Feyna.” She gave a little curtsy.
“My name is Tanin.” His heart leaped. Cute indeed!
For years now, wandering from town to town, Tanin had tried to forget the girl he had loved in his youth—the girl who had broken his heart, who had turned against him after learning his secret.
She called me diseased, he remembered, wincing. She shouted for her father to kill me—the dirty weredragon, the monster she had kissed.
Tanin looked at Feyna’s green eyes, her bright smile, and her tresses of red hair, and his heart rose again. Maybe this day, this new life, wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe there was some hope for him—for acceptance, for love.
Music was playing at a stage nearby. Ask her to dance, Tanin told himself. Ask her to drink some ale. He gulped. Ask to walk together in the fields or—
As he was stumbling with his tongue, Feyna pointed at the p
uppet show and gasped.
“Oh, look, Tanin!” she said. “A weredragon.” Upon the stage, the heroic doll was now battling two wooden dragons, slashing them with its sword.
At once, Tanin’s heart sank again. “Anyway, how about a dance or—“
But she seemed not to hear him. Her face changed—turned bitter, disgusted. She shuddered. “Foul creatures, weredragons. Even as dolls they chill me. They say they drink the blood of babies. Thank goodness our town has arrows to shoot down those monsters.”
“They’re not monsters!” Tanin said before he could stop himself. He instantly regretted those words.
Stupid! he told himself. Do you want another village to shoot arrows at you, chase you into banishment?
Feyna turned toward him, narrowed her eyes, and tilted her head. “Not . . . monsters? Have you met one? My father saw a weredragon only this moon—a great beast in the village of Oldforge. The creature burned ten men.” She sneered. “One of those men was my uncle. I hate weredragons and would slay them all myself if I could.”
That creature was my father, Tanin thought. He burned them after they tried to kill him, after they pierced him with ten arrows.
But he could say nothing. How could he? He turned away, feeling ill.
“I have to go.” He began to walk away, eyes stinging.
I have to leave this village, he thought. I have to keep going, to keep traveling, to keep looking for others like me.
His throat felt too tight and his eyes burned.
Her voice rose behind him. “The juggler! He loves weredragons!” She laughed bitterly. “A weredragon lover among us!”
Men began to grumble around Tanin. One cursed and spat at his feet. Tanin kept walking through the crowd.
“Weredragon lover!” cried one woman, pointing at him.
“Maybe he’s a weredragon himself!” shouted another man, an old farmer with white whiskers.
Tanin increased his pace, but more people began to mob him, and one man grabbed his shoulders. At his side, Feyna was pointing at him, shouting that a weredragon had killed her uncle, that the juggler knew of weredragons and was protecting them, was maybe even a weredragon himself. The faces danced around Tanin, and he tried to worm his way through the crowd, but they grabbed him, and a woman shoved him, and—
“What is the meaning of this?”
The authoritative voice pierced the air. A man yowled and fell, clutching a bloodied nose. Another man grunted as a boot flew into his belly. Shoving her way through the crowd, sneering, came Tanin’s little sister.
“Maev!” he said.
Her one eye was swollen shut, and a bruise covered her opposite cheek. Blood stained her knuckles, and mud caked her body and long, golden hair. As she balled her fists, her dragon tattoos twitched upon her arms. She was a couple of years younger than Tanin, almost as tall, and ten times as fierce.
When she reached him, Maev grabbed him and stared at the crowd, daring anyone to approach. The people stepped back, blanching. Tales of the Hammer, the traveling wrestler with the dragon tattoos, had spread to most towns across the Ranin River. Most of these folk had just seen Maev pummel her latest opponent—a burly wrestler with arms like tree trunks—in the mud pit.
“Was my dolt of a brother blabbering about weredragons again?” Maev snorted and rolled her eyes. “The fool keeps going on about them. He’s got a doll of one at home—like a little girl—and doesn’t realize the damn creatures are monsters. Soft in the head, he is.” She tugged Tanin’s collar and sneered into his ear. “Isn’t that right, brother?”
Tanin tried to shake himself free, but she wouldn’t release him. Abandoning any hope of saving his dignity today, Tanin nodded.
“Uhm, yes. Sorry about that.” He nodded. “Damn weredragons. Horrible creatures.” The words tasted like ash in his mouth.
The crowd dispersed slowly. Feyna gave him a disgusted glare before walking off to flirt with a tall baker’s boy.
“You almost got us killed,” Maev said. She released Tanin’s collar and shoved him several paces back.
“She . . .” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She saw Grizzly. She called him a monster.”
Maev groaned. “I call our big lummox of a father a monster too. So what?” She punched his chest. “You can’t go around getting us into trouble like this all the time. All right? What happened in Oldforge was bad enough. You and girls. Always you and girls . . . almost getting us killed.”
Her words stabbed him.
You are diseased! his old beloved had shouted.
Father, kill him!
Still those old voices echoed, that old pain.
Tanin sighed. “Let’s leave this place. I want to go home.”
His sister sighed and mussed his hair. “Oh, you stupid clump of a brother.” She showed him the purse of seashells she had earned—the prize from her fight. “We’ll barter these in the next village over. Just keep your mouth shut there, all right? Once we get the herbs Grandpapa wants, a new belt for me, and some new fur pelts for Grizzly, we’ll go home.”
They left the village. They walked through fields of wild grass, geese honking above, until the sun began to set and the village disappeared in the distance. The stars stone above and distant mountains rose, deep black under the indigo sky.
In darkness, Tanin and Maev—outcasts and wanderers—summoned their magic.
Wings grew from their backs. Fire filled their bellies. With clanking scales, they rose into the sky, creatures, cursed ones, monsters . . . dragons. They flew in silence. They flew in darkness. Rain began to fall, and Tanin closed his eyes.
“Someday,” he whispered into the wind, “I’ll find others. Someday I’ll know that we’re not alone. Someday the world will know that we’re not beasts to hunt.”
At his side, his sister—a green dragon, her scales gleaming in the moonlight—looked at him, her eyes sad. She gave him a playful tap of her tail and blasted a little fire his way, just enough to singe his scales. He groaned and they flew onward into the shadows.
ISSARI
ISSARI SERAN, PRINCESS OF ETEER, tightened her ragged cloak around her shoulders and entered the seediest, smelliest part of her city.
Back in the palace, Issari had gazed from balconies upon the port of Eteer, the great city-state, center of her family’s civilization. From there, in safety and luxury, it had seemed a magical place. The canal thrust in from the sea, ending with a ring of water like the handle of a key. Ships sailed here every day, bringing in wares from distant lands: furs from the northern barbarians, spices from the desert tribes in the west, and even silk from the east. Issari had always imagined that walking along the port would reveal a landscape of wonder: merchants in priceless purple fabrics, jesters and buskers, and many tales and songs from distant lands.
Now, walking for the first time along this port she had seen so often from her balcony, she found a realm of grime, sweat, and stench.
Issari saw no merchants bedecked in plenty, only sailors with craggy bare chests, scowling faces, and hard eyes that seemed to undress her. She saw no jesters and musicians like those in the palace, only ratty men offering games of chance played with cups and peas, a chained bear battling rabid dogs, and topless women selling their bodies for copper coins.
My own face is engraved on some of those coins, Issari thought, shivering as she watched a sailor toss a few coppers toward a plump prostitute whose three children clutched her legs.
“How much for a trick?” one sailor called out, trundling toward Issari. He stank of cheap spirits, and yellow stains coated his breeches. He grabbed his groin. “I got me two coppers. I say you ain’t worth one.”
His smell—a miasma of urine, vomit, and fish—assailed Issari. Her head spun and she took a step back. “I . . . I’m not . . .”
. . . a prostitute, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t bring the word to her lips. She had heard of such loose women, but she had thought them only tales to stop rebellious daughters from running away.
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“Come on!” The drunken sailor stumbled toward her, reaching out talon-like fingers. “Let’s see what’s under your robes.”
“Stand back, sir!” Issari said, trying to keep her voice steady, but she heard it tremble.
She took another step back, and she hit somebody. Something clattered and curses rose behind her.
Issari spun around to see a stout woman standing over a fallen tin dish. Live crabs were fleeing the vessel to run along the boardwalk.
“I’m sorry!” Issari said, kneeling to lift the animals. “Let me help—“
The woman scowled, spat out a curse so vile Issari blushed to hear it, and smacked Issari on the head.
“Watch where you’re going, princess!” the woman said and slapped her again.
Princess? Issari gulped and trembled. Was her cover blown? She had disguised herself, donning a ragged old robe, hiding her raven braid under a shawl, and even caking her face with dirt. How did this woman—
“Go on, get lost, you whore!” the woman shouted and tried to smack her again.
Some relief filled Issari to realize that “princess” here was an insult, much like the others the stocky woman was now hurling her way. Issari fled, racing away from the woman, the scurrying crabs, and the drunken sailor who was busy tugging his groin while ogling the two women.
Tears budded in Issari’s eyes as she moved through the crowd. She had never imagined any place like this could exist in her kingdom, let alone so close to her home. When she craned her neck and stood on tiptoes, she could even see that home—the blue and gold palace with its rooftop gardens—rising upon a distant hill. Issari had been away for only a couple of hours, but already she missed that home so badly she wanted to weep.
Making her way closer to the water, she steeled herself, rubbing her eyes and tightening her jaw.
I must be strong, she told herself. My brother needs me. I came here to save him, and I can’t do that by crying or whimpering at a few smacks or taunts.
She stepped toward the edge of the canal. Many boats moored here at piers, and others sailed back and forth, entering and leaving the port. Some were the simple reed boats of fishermen, their single sails barely larger than her cloak. Others were proud, oared merchant vessels, built of sturdy wood, their hulls bedecked with paintings of the winged bull—Kur-Paz, the god of plenty. Slaves sat in them, chained to the oars, their skin bronzed in the sun. Not all were Eteerian ships; Issari saw vessels of foreign lands too. The northern barbarians sailed wide, oared cogs engraved with animal totems. Issari shivered to see these foreigners—they were gruff folk, clad in fur and leather, their beards bushy.
FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy Page 124
