The Dragon's Egg

by Pauline M. Ross

  “They’re all right,” he said. “There’s one or two I keep well away from, but most of them are fine.”

  “You haven’t regretted your decision, then?”

  “No, not at all.” He grinned boyishly. “There’s a girl…”

  “Ah! Things are always better when there’s a girl. I suppose you haven’t had any word from your mother?”

  “She comes by sometimes. She’s with the slaver – but you probably knew that. He treats her well, she says. What about the others – Zarin, the Lath, Dru? Are they all right?”

  “Zarin’s got himself a job at the Academia in Mesanthia. The Lath…” Gods, I hadn’t thought about him for an age. “He found a temple more to his liking in Drakk’alona.”

  “Oh. And Dru?”

  A pause, while I tried to catch my breath, to make my voice work. “Dead. Long story.”

  A long story that I could never tell in full. I would have to send some tale or other – to the Guardian, still watching her tower at the Western Keep; to Zarin, perhaps; to Xando and the Keeper, waiting and wondering at Mesanthia. But it would have to be a lie. We’d found the eggs, I would write, but there was no help there, and then as we left… an accident, a fall down the mountain. So tragic, such a sad death.

  I could never, ever mention the Pool of Transformation. I shivered at the very thought. What if some eager Mesanthian or Tre’annatha decided to hatch more egg people? Hatching and raising – well, that wouldn’t be so dangerous, perhaps, but knowing about the pool, they could turn them into an army of mages, and then we’d all be destroyed, sooner or later. I just couldn’t take the risk. I’d murdered my lovely girl to ensure there were no more mages.

  But that secret would stay in my heart. She was dead – that was all Mikah needed to know.

  His eyes widened. “Oh. I’m sorry. She was a bit odd, but harmless.”

  Harmless. Not so harmless with all the power of the old mages at her disposal.

  “I wondered…” Mikah looked anxious again. “You didn’t come back because of me, did you?”

  “No, you can take care of yourself. I came back to be with Ruell.”

  “Ah, yes, I heard that he’s your son,” he said, with another grin. “Some of the others talked about it. You have an interesting history, Garrett. I thought I was your son, once. I wish I were. Ruell’s lucky.”

  “Oh, are you getting this strange idea that I’m a good person again? You really should rid your mind of it.”

  He grinned again. “You pretend to be so hard and selfish and don’t care about anyone but yourself, but that’s not really you. You took care of everyone on the journey, and my mother told me how you got the others off the slaver’s boat. And now, here you are, back to take care of Ruell.”

  “More for my own benefit than his, I assure you. Really, he’d be better off not knowing anything about me, but I can’t bear the thought of Kestimar influencing him. I want to make sure my son understands what a total shit Kestimar is. And… I’ve never had a son before, not that I know of, anyway. I’d like to watch him grow up, to see what he does with his life and what sort of man he becomes. I can almost live my life again, through him. Selfish reasons, Mikah.”

  “Even if you do a good thing for the wrong reasons, it’s still a good thing, isn’t it?”

  I smiled and said nothing and moved on with my broom, but I wondered about that. What if you do a bad thing for the right reasons? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? When I lay restless in my bed at night, or woke sweating and crying from the evil dreams, I could never decide.

  ~~~~~

  Ruell was in the same room I’d seen him in before, with the dragon’s eggs on a long shelf. In the year since, he’d grown quite a bit, losing the soft baby look to his cheeks, and growing taller and thinner, as if he’d been stretched. He was playing on the floor with his toy dragons, a nurse watching him as she sewed, but he leapt up when his mother entered the room and ran to her eagerly. He looked at me with interest.

  “Ruell, this is Garrett,” she said.

  “I remember,” the boy said.

  “Really?”

  “Mmm. He was here with the dragon girl, the one who told me what was inside all my eggs. Where is she?”

  Oh, the innocence of the child! “She died.” Such simple words, yet how much effort it took for me to say them.

  “She was nice,” Ruell said. “How did she die?”

  I closed my eyes, grief washing over me again.

  I killed her, Ruell. I loved her and gloried in her, and then I killed her.

  A crossbow bolt through the heart will kill even a powerful mage, because the blood flows out faster than the injury can be healed. The black-bark wood of the quarrel added its own dark magic, so she couldn’t fight it. Even so, it took an age for her to die. I held her in my arms, her blood silently spreading across the floor, as her eyes reproached me for my betrayal.

  “Take it out,” she whispered, over and over, one hand clawing uselessly at the bolt in her chest. Then, when she knew I wasn’t going to help her, just the one word: “Why?”

  “Because you’ve become a monster,” I said, stroking her hair. “The mages brought us to the brink of disaster once before, and you would finish their work. You and your kind would destroy everything. I couldn’t let you do it.”

  “I thought you loved me.” Her voice was a mere thread.

  “I do – my dearest girl, I love you with all my heart and soul. But I can’t let you live.”

  When, eventually, her lovely eyes darkened and died, I wept and wept, clutching her still body, until I had no tears left in me.

  But I couldn’t leave her there. I climbed up the morodaim’s cleaning platform, removed the egg, and gently placed her body in the wood-filled basket. Then I lit the tinder, and burned my darling girl to ashes.

  The morodaim had watched in silence. More and more of them had emerged from various tunnels, and they stood in a semicircle, a respectful distance away, staring at me. As the flames took hold, they suddenly scattered, and began rushing about with serious faces, fetching mops and brooms. I hardly noticed what they were about, but when I eventually turned away from the brazier, I found the blood cleaned away, the egg gone and all my things neatly stowed in my pack. All except my crossbow; they didn’t care for the black-bark wood either.

  They stood motionless again, their strange almost-human faces gazing at me, heads bobbing. One face in particular caught my eye, a familiar face, the eyes the same blue but slightly more elongated than the others.

  “Hanni? Is that you?”

  The creature twittered a little, and was silent again, head bowed. Was it possible? The Pool of Transformation… Poor Hanni. I’d never much liked her, but that seemed like a terrible fate, far worse than she deserved. And yet, perhaps she would be happier so, who could tell.

  But none of this was fit hearing for a seven-year-old boy. I looked at Ruell’s eager face, waiting, and scrabbled round for words.

  “She sent you a present,” I said, and it was almost the truth. I’d found it at the bottom of my pack days and days after I left the mine, tucked in there by the morodaim, presumably, for some incomprehensible reason of their own. I’d had it put into a velvet bag, and now I handed it over to him.

  Eagerly he pulled at the strings, and emptied the bag onto the floor. The pale green marble glimmered in the morning light.

  “An egg for my collection!” he said happily. “Where shall I put it? Mother, where will it fit in best?”

  He ran up and down the line of eggs, but eventually he realised it wasn’t quite like any of them. He placed it at the furthest end of the shelf. The egg was slightly flattened at the wider end, so it sat upright by itself.

  “There! That looks good,” he said. “But what’s inside it? What kind of dragon? Did she tell you?”

  “It’s not a baby dragon,” I said. “There’s a monster inside, an evil monster.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Garrett, why w
ould you tell him a story like that?” Tella said. “Take no notice, Ruell.”

  And yet it was no more than the truth.

  One day, perhaps, I would tell him the whole story of what became of the girl from the dragon’s egg. One day, when I could speak of it without breaking down, when the dreams of blood and death had faded. One day, when the grief had receded a little and become almost bearable. But not yet.

  THE END

  Want to hear about new releases? Sign up for my newsletter.

  Like to sample another book? You can read chapter 1 of The Fire Mages after the acknowledgements.

  Thanks for reading!

  If you have enjoyed reading this book, please consider writing a review on Amazon, Goodreads or wherever you hang out online, to help others decide if they would like it. You can find out the latest news, find bonus scenes and background information, and sign up for the Brightmoon newsletter at my website.

  About the Brightmoon Annals

  The Brightmoon Annals is a series of books all set in the same world, some five thousand years after it was reshaped by a magical catastrophe. The disaster almost destroyed magic – but not quite. The many different ways in which the pre-catastrophe mages tried to keep magic alive forms the theme of the series.

  There is one trilogy set in the Brightmoon world, and several stand-alone stories which can be read independently of all the others. However, some characters and artifacts from earlier books make an appearance in later books, so there are fun references to enjoy for those who read the series in order.

  See all the books and buy.

  Here is the sequence so far:

  1: The Plains of Kallanash, published September 2014

  2: The Fire Mages (The Fire Mages Trilogy Book 1), published January 2015

  3: The Mages of Bennamore, published May 2015

  4: The Magic Mines of Asharim, published September 2015

  5: The Fire Mages’ Daughter (The Fire Mages Trilogy Book 2), published January 2016

  6: The Dragon’s Egg, published May 2016

  7: The Second God (The Fire Mages Trilogy Book 3), projected publication late-2016

  Any questions about the Brightmoon World? Email me – I’d love to hear from you!

  See all the books and buy.

  About the author

  I live in the beautiful Highlands of Scotland with my husband, my grown up daughter and a mad cat. I like chocolate, whisky, my Kindle, massed pipe bands, long leisurely lunches, watching TV with my daughter, chocolate, going places in my campervan, eating pizza in Italy, summer nights that never get dark, wood fires in winter, chocolate, the view from the study window looking out over the Moray Firth and the Black Isle to the mountains beyond. And chocolate. I dislike driving on motorways, cooking, shopping, hospitals. The Dragon’s Egg is my fifth published work.

  I also write Regency romances under the name Mary Kingswood. The first of The Daughters of Allamont Hall will be published late in 2016.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks go to:

  Lin White of Coinlea Services for beta reading and proofreading.

  Glendon Haddix of Streetlight Graphics for the cover design.

  Additional beta readers: Axel Blackwell; Marina Finlayson; Michael Omer; Kira Tregoning of Fantastical Reads.

  Last, but definitely not least, my first reader: Amy Ross.

  The Fire Mages Sample Chapter 1: Refusal

  I was fourteen when the Kellon’s Steward first came for me.

  Well, blow that. I had my life all planned out, and the Kellon had no part in it, I was sure of that. Still, the Steward was waiting for me, and the question had to be asked before it could be refused. Head high, I crossed the tiny hallway of the cottage, my boots clumping on the wooden floor, and strode into the parlour.

  “Ah!” he said, smiling and looking me up and down before settling his gaze on my chest. “Yes, excellent! Do come in – er...?”

  “Kyra,” Father said.

  “Kyra, yes, yes. Do sit down. Need a little chat with you, my dear.”

  They were sitting around the hearth, the fire not yet lit despite the chill that heralded autumn. Three pairs of eyes turned towards me: my father smiling, the Steward appraising, Mother trying not to notice the tear in my trousers. She had one foot awkwardly placed to hide the black-edged hole where a log had spat at the rug.

  My parents sat on the battered settle to one side, Father round-faced and placid, Mother’s pinched features watching me dourly. The parlour was supposed to be our best room, kept for entertaining, but we never had the money to furnish it properly. We so seldom had visitors that it had become Mother’s sanctuary, the only valuable contents the books piled on every available surface.

  The Steward perched on the best chair next to the hearth, Mother’s reading chair, the only good chair in the room. Even without the bulk of his cloak, he was a big man, the Steward, out of place in such a small room. Ours was one of the largest cottages in the village, but it must have seemed tiny to him, accustomed as he was to the spaciousness of the Kellon’s hall. Or perhaps this task made him uncomfortable. He was good at his job, people agreed, managing the Kellon’s business affairs, dealing with farmers and merchants and inn managers and the like. This sun’s work was a little different.

  “The answer’s no,” I said. If I could get my answer out quickly, perhaps I could escape without an interminable discussion.

  His eyebrows shot up. “You know what this is about then?”

  “I can guess.” I looked him straight in the face, and after a few moments he dragged his eyes upwards to meet mine.

  “Hmm.” A quick glance across to my parents, then back to me. “Won’t you sit down?”

  He patted the chair next to him, but I chose one nearer the door, as if I could be away sooner that way.

  “Kyla, I...”

  “Kyra. My name’s Kyra.”

  “Kyra... I’m not sure... You’re fourteen, is that right?” I nodded. “And you don’t have... a sweetheart?” A shake this time. “Well, then, good, good.” He shuffled uncomfortably, and his eyes slid to the door. My heart leapt. Perhaps he would go? Then he clearly made up his mind to plough onward. “Kyra, you’re a sensible girl, I’m sure. You understand that the Kellon is a very kind man. He wouldn’t hurt you...”

  “Oh, it’s not that,” I said. “Everyone speaks well of him, the Kellon. He’s a good man, I know that. But I have plans for my life, and being a drusse isn’t part of it.”

  “It’s not for long,” he said, mildly reproachful. “A ten-sun, no more than that. Not even half a moon. You can spare that, surely?”

  “But if there’s a child, it would be a great deal more than a ten-sun.”

  “True, but think what a service you would be doing. The entire realm would benefit from your generosity.”

  That almost made me laugh! Our local Kellon had little influence on the rest of Bennamore.

  Perhaps he realised he was overstating the case, for he changed direction. “You would be well looked after. The Kellon is always most generous, most generous indeed. You would want for nothing.”

  Except my freedom. Except the chance to live my own life, to chase my own dreams.

  “And think of your status!” he went on. “Even if there were no child, the increase is considerable. Well worth it to any woman, I should think. It would reflect well on your parents, your whole family.” He looked at my determined face and sighed, shifting in the chair so that it creaked alarmingly. “But you have set yourself against the idea, I can see.”

  “If I could take the herbs against pregnancy...” I began.

  “Ah, but no. It may be that you don’t fully appreciate the Kellon’s position. Your village is a long way from the town, practically on the border, you know, and buried out here in the forest, you likely don’t know much about the problems of nobility.”

  Oh, yes, such terrible problems they have. How to spend the tax money they collect from hardworking folk. How to fill their
idle hours. How to eat all the food we send them. I’d like to have their problems.

  But I sat in silence and let him have his say; the restrictions of the Kellon’s marriage contract, his sick wife, the delicate only child of the marriage, the drusse-born second heir, the not very promising children by former drusse, the possibilities for a drusse who produced an heir with greater potential. He droned on, and I nodded politely, barely listening. I got the point, he needed heirs, but I didn’t want my life defined by my ability to breed children.

  “So you can see what an opportunity this is, and you would suit him very well,” the Steward rushed on. “Admirably, in fact...” His eyes drifted down to my chest again, and then back upwards. “And he doesn’t mind red hair, you know. He likes his drusse a little different. I’m sure you would enjoy being a lady for a ten-sun. So I can’t see...”

  “I have a plan,” I said loudly, looking him in the eye. “I intend to be a law scribe.”

  He almost laughed, but a glance at the grave faces of my parents convinced him not to, and he coughed instead. “That will be expensive for your family,” he said solemnly. Meaning: how can a village rat like you possibly afford that?

  “I’m saving up,” I said. “Mother pays me to help with her pupils in the teaching room, and soon I’ll be starting work at the inn, too. I can get enough to pay for the first two years, and then I’ll get a patron for the rest.”

  He looked at me doubtfully. “Well. You have it all worked out, I see.” He hoisted himself to his feet, and we rose in unison. “Pity. But there’s no more to be said. Surprising, though,” he said, half to himself. “Don’t often get an outright refusal. But there will be plenty of others more willing.” Gallantly he added, “I wish you luck with your endeavours, my dear.”