Sea Dragon Heir

by Storm Constantine

  THE WEDDING MORN DAWNED bright and clear; the storm clouds had blown away to other lands. Varencienne was roused early by a gang of eager women, who doused her in a scented bath, and brushed her long green-gold hair until her scalp burned. At eight o’clock, Carmia and Mavenna came tumbling into the room, already dressed in their wedding gowns. They seemed so happy, as if it was they who were to be wed. “Ren, you seem so glum,” said Mavenna as Varencienne stood before the long glass, her arms held out stiffly. Women fussed with her gown. It was heavy upon her body, and did not move the way she moved. “I shall miss you,” said Varencienne. Tears sprang immediately to Mavenna’s wide eyes. Her face puckered and she reached over the seamstresses to hug her friend at arm’s length. “Oh, my dear, my darling Ren, I shall miss you too. But I’m glad for you. I shall visit Caradore, and you will be lady of the castle, high up by the sky. I look forward to the day we shall meet again, and walk arm in arm along the turret wall.” Varencienne smiled. “You have thought of this a lot.” Mavenna nodded, her eyes still damp. “Yes.” She turned away, dabbed at her drenched lashes. “He is the dark angel of Madragore,” announced Carmia, who had clearly been immersed in private thoughts. Mavenna and Varencienne both looked at her. “Valraven,” Carmia said, somewhat embarrassed. “Your husband, Ren. I saw him last night as I went back to my room.” Mavenna laughed; a brittle sound. “A dream, my dear. Valraven Palindrake would not come near this wing.” Carmia frowned and flushed. “No. It was him. He stood out on a terrace, beyond a wall of colored windows. I have seen him before at court. I knew it was him. He was looking at the clouds.” Mavenna and Varencienne’s eyes met. Varencienne shook her head to silence any further remarks from her friend. “I do not feel quite real today. How quickly things can change.” “But you are happy, really,” said Mavenna firmly, then less confidently, “aren’t you?” Varencienne stepped away from the seamstresses, who had finished arranging the dress. She put her hands upon Mavenna’s shoulders. “Of course.” She did not want her friend to worry.

  AT TEN O’CLOCK, Varencienne was taken to her mother’s quarters. It seemed all the women of the court were there, dressed splendidly. A concoction of conflicting perfumes soaked the air. White flowers, big and fleshy, were strewn everywhere; some standing in vases, others discarded upon the floor. The empress was a dark flower herself, dressed not in red, as all the other women, but resplendent in a gold so muted, it seemed almost black. Varencienne wondered if any emotion struggled through Tatrini’s closed heart. Was she thinking of her own wedding day, all those years before, when her husband had been only a prince and the empire a smaller collection of lands? Had she been happy then, dizzy with girlish anticipation, or had she felt as Varencienne did now: resigned and cold? “My dear, you are beautiful,” said the empress, and Varencienne curtsied. After this judgment had been made, all the other women twittered flatteringly about Varencienne?s dress and hair, her figure and her face. Mother and daughter exchanged a single, poignant glance. She knows, thought Varencienne, but this did not comfort her, as she?d imagined it might. The cavalcade of women walked slowly through the palace, streaming fragrance and rustling. Voices were whispers. Along the high, vaulted corridors, past the stern statues of Varencienne’s ancestors, across perilous galleries, down cascades of basalt stairs. Varencienne walked behind her mother, her gown trailing out behind her, hissing over the rugs and the polished flag stones. She held an immensity of white flowers in her arms. They erupted about her, already dying. Servants, drawn to witness the procession, bowed as they passed, as if they were blades of grass and the sight of the royal women was a scythe passing over their field. Then finally, the procession descended the grand staircase, down into the hall of the palace, and here the men of the family were gathered; Varencienne’s father, who was so distant a presence in her life as to be almost mythical; her eleven brothers and numerous cousins and uncles. The men clapped politely as the women descended, and for the first time in her life, Varencienne touched her father. He was like a statue come to life; gilded and perfect. He smiled at her kindly and offered her his right elbow, through which she slipped her thin hand. The great doors to the palace were thrown wide. Beyond, the sunlight seared, and trees put forth a mist of green in her honor. The company walked down the steps to the waiting carriages, and the whole of the palace staff, who were gathered in the driveway, began cheering and clapping, throwing flowers and coins for good luck. Bells were being rung all over the city. It was a celebration. This is not wholly mine, Varencienne thought. This day is everyone’s day. White horses pranced madly before the glossy black and purple carriage of the emperor. He climbed into it with his daughter and his wife, and his eldest son, Prince Gastern, a dour man Varencienne did not like. Then, the whips were flying and the horses leapt forward with crazy eyes and foamy breakers of manes and tales. The cheers were a roar, faintly threatening. Varencienne felt her eyes water. Was that tears? “Be as your mother,” said the emperor, smiling down at his daughter as if they were close in spirit. “Be a good wife, and Madragore will shine upon you with blessings.” Perhaps that was a ritual phrase, part of it all. “I will, Your Mightiness,” murmured Varencienne. The carriages rumbled down through the palace gardens, the whole driveway lined with people. At the griffin gates, a multitude waited, merchants and doctors and teachers who lived in this area, the hill where the rich bred; it dominated the city. The further into the city they went, so the crowd changed. Now it was commoners, washerwomen and fishwives, potmen and farriers. Each face was delirious; Varencienne saw no one frowning or sad, not even in the shadowed corners. Her eyes moved rapidly beneath downcast lashes. The faces were a blur, but it was as if her mind froze certain images into pictures. She knew she would never forget them. Then the cathedral, as big as a small town itself, reared before them. The bells were so loud, Varencienne could feel their clamor reverberating in her chest. The army was here—some of it, the ceremonial part. The soldiers were gleaming and perfect like her father’s horses. They stared straight ahead in their purple livery. Inside, the cathedral was full of foreign dignitaries. Some were friends, others representatives from subjugated realms, and therefore not wholly participating in the celebratory mood. Varencienne felt weak. It would take so long to walk down that long, indigo-carpeted aisle. She was like a feather on her father’s arm. He might forget what she was and accidentally brush her away, or the wind would come and she’d be blown, high, high, up into the ancient arches, where a colony of gargoyles was frozen against the walls. She’d hang there, watching herself walk towards her fate, and then she’d just fly away, out into the endless sky, turning and turning. Was she going to faint? Her father’s fingers, unexpectedly, patted her own. She was moving, somehow, although the bells had filled her with sound and stolen her breath. Valraven Palindrake was a looming shadow at the end of the aisle. Priests were ranged about him like crows. The immense statue of the god Madragore dominated the space behind the altar. The god wore armor, for he was a warrior and the patron of the empire. Palindrake was the most blessed of His disciples. I am already his, Varencienne thought. Am I going to run away? I can see myself doing it, any moment now, but where would I run? Then she was delivered into his hands. She saw his face properly for the first time. It wasn’t cruel, but it wasn’t kind either. It was dark and terrible and beautiful. This can never happen, Varencienne thought, but it was. The words were being spoken over her head, the incense waved, the flowers scattered. Presently, there was a ring upon her finger, and she had sipped the holy wine, her lips touching the place on the goblet that Palindrake’s lips had touched. Her hand was a piece of white lace in his strong, long-fingered grip. He looked so stern, not smiling at all. He did not want to do this, and yet he knew he must, as she did. Does it always happen this way? Soon, I must call him Valraven to his face, or Val. Do people ever call him Val? It seemed unlikely. She could say, “my husband,” when she addressed him. That might be better. Now, they walked back down the aisle together and people were singing a hymn to M
adragore. The god had no wife; his sons had sprung from the blood of a wound he had received warring with some other god. There were goddesses in the empire, but they belonged to the women and had no churches of their own. If Varencienne felt frightened enough to pray to someone, it was Mivian; a minor, almost faceless deity, whose father was one of Madragore’s sons. If Madragore had had a daughter, she would have been given away to a dark god of war, spirited away to a distant land where no one knew her and she had no worshippers. The sunlight was harsh upon Varencienne’s eyes as she stepped out of the cathedral with her husband. So many bells, so many flowers. Flocks of black and white doves had been released into the sky and the voice of the city was a lamenting howl. In those moments, Varencienne looked forward to Caradore, where the voice of the wind would be the only sound, and the crack of flag cables against their poles. She would find her own happiness there in the loneliness of the world. She would be a mother, a lady, with her own tapestry to fashion. Her husband’s life. What dark threads she must use; so many battles. Were there scars upon his body?

  AFTER THE CELEBRATIONS, at which she could eat or drink nothing, the women took her to a different part of the palace, where guests were stowed. Here, she was dressed in a nightgown and put into a strange bed. They said things to her, advice and so on, but she could not remember it. She was still full of the clamor of bells; it deafened her. Finally, she was left alone, only half herself now. Some of her must have stayed in the cathedral, flown up into the vaults as she?d imagined. Perhaps that part of her was free forever. The door opened and he came into the room. She was glad he hadn’t made her wait too long, but then Bayard had told her he didn’t drink, so probably the party downstairs didn’t hold much interest for him. He looked like a demon, something that might be carved into the cathedral walls. Those hands that would touch her; they had taken lives. He undressed behind a screen and came out wearing a long, dark robe. When he looked at her, sitting there so small and white in the big dark bed, she could tell he felt pity for her. “Do you know what to expect?” he asked. He wasn’t nervous, but not altogether at ease either. She nodded. “Yes, my lord.” Would he tell her what to call him now? “It is the custom,” he said, seemingly to explain the need for this physical act they must endure. “I understand.” She arranged her hair about her shoulders. “They will come and check you afterwards.” She blinked at him for a moment. That, she had not hezrd. “I see.” He drew back the covers and, looking into her eyes, lifted her nightdress. She turned her head to the side. His hands were cool upon her, almost like a physician’s hands, probing expertly, seeing if all was right. He parted her legs and she closed her eyes. He did not lie upon her, but knelt between her thighs. He spat onto his hand to lubricate her shrinking, parched sex. Then, he lifted her hips towards him and entered her, like a surgeon excising a wound, carefully but quickly. It was too much for her mind to take in. She felt him moving in her, the hot scald of his alien presence stretching her virgin body. It was soon over. He made no sound. The only evidence she had that he’d found repletion was the wetness that oozed out of her once he’d risen from the bed. “Tomorrow we leave for Caradore,” he told her, standing beside her, looking down. She stared at him dazedly, and he reached down to rearrange her nightdress. “Are you well?” She could not speak. He paused and then said, “I will send one of the women to you.” Then he was gone. The door had closed behind him. Cold tears leaked out of Varencienne?s eyes. Her body shuddered and burned. She dared not move. It hurt too much and yet she knew he had been gentle with her. If there were scars upon his body, she did not know. He had simply come and stabbed her, sealed the contract of their marriage. She felt now that she knew less of him than before.

  2

  THE DOMAIN

  THERE WERE MOUNTAINS in Caradore, rearing into a purple haze, but the castle itself dominated a high, flat tongue of land that licked out into the crashing northern ocean. Varencienne leaned out of her carriage as her company made the final approach, up a wide, winding road of yellow gravel. The vehicles and horses emerged from a tunnel of ancient, gnarled trees whose leaves seemed almost silver, and ahead of them, Caradore, a fairy-tale edifice of turrets and battlements, rose pale against the white sky, coronetted with undulating flags. Varencienne shivered: she thought again of the crack of flag-cables in the wind. The wind here was so pungent and so fierce, like sea-soaked hands in her hair. “Be careful, Your Highness,” warned Oltefney, the woman who’d been appointed as her handmaid. “Don’t get dust in your throat, and watch out for those straggling branches.” Stout, opinionated and seeming older than her years—which were probably mid-thirties—Oltefney had grated upon Varencienne’s nerves for the entire, long journey: just the two of them in a carriage, surrounded by wagons and a clutch of cavalry as escort. Valraven Palindrake had ridden on ahead. Varencienne had not seen him since her wedding night: an experience upon which she did not dwell. Already, she missed her friends; the fiery presence of Mavenna and the more glacial calm of Carmia. They should be here now, sharing these new sights, this hidden future. Ignoring Oltefney’s warning, Varencienne leaned out further into the wind. The horses’ hooves threw up gravel; the road beneath was a blur of dust. Caradore, fine Caradore; the name itself—which belonged not just to the castle but the entire region—conjured images of mystery and magic. It stood upon a clifftop plateau of sandy stone and spiky dune grass. A cluster of buildings huddled around its walls: Caradore’s own townlet, where the hard mountain berries were conjured into tart heady liquor, and the dune grasses were woven into rope, and the sea harvested of its meat-filled shells. Skeins of smoke rose up from its chimneys into the blustery spring air. Varencienne could hear the sound of metal being hammered and smell the warm earthy-sweet aroma of animal dung and straw, the scent of sea which was both fresh and rank and the spiced-fruity scent from the liquor sheds. She wanted to leap from the jolting carriage and run the rest of the way; her limbs felt starved of movement. She imagined herself saying, “Stop the carriage!” and descending with dignity. She would arrive in the village and all would cease their labors to view the new wife of their master. “I am mistress here now,” she would say. Varencienne smiled to herself, her hair wriggling free of its jewelled net, but she did not call out to the carriage driver. People did stop their work as the carriage rolled past, but by that time, Varencienne had withdrawn behind the modesty curtains, through which she observed a watery view of the world. She knew much could be learned about her husband from the condition of his serfs, and was alert for signs of discontent, malnourishment or misery, but all seemed ordinary in the extreme. Oltefney grumbled about everything; she was a woman of the city and begrudged being exiled to this lonely spot with someone she no doubt considered to be a “strip of a girl,” for all her royal breeding. The woman would make enemies at the castle first, Varencienne decided, then a host of gossiping friends, over whom she’d hold sway, having once worked in the imperial palace itself. “Smells of fish and weed!” announced Oltefney. “Salt and wind,” said Varencienne dreamily. “Scavenging birds to keep us awake till all hours with horrible screams.” “The lament of mermaids in coral caves,” said Varencienne, aware of how her comments needled the older woman. “Tch!” said Oltefney, arranging her capacious carpet bag more firmly upon her wide knees. Varencienne was excited about her new environment, but nervous too. Oltefney had relished telling her that Lord Palindrake had two sisters at home, who would no doubt object to the arrival of a new female in their domain. “The Palindrakes were nothing more than barbarians until a few generations ago,” she’d said, in that confiding, greedy tone Varencienne loathed. “Perhaps they still are,” she’d answered coldly. “They’ll come running from the castle with bones in their hair, shrieking maledictions.” If Mavenna was with her now, she would not feel so nervous. Mavenna could outwit any other female, having the sharpest, quickest tongue Varencienne knew. She would also defend her close friends to the death. Oltefney, on the other hand, would no doubt enjoy any occasions of social
discomfort her young mistress might have to endure. The carriage rumbled beneath a great yellow arch, and halted in the courtyard of Caradore. Even before she climbed out, Varencienne was overwhelmed by the cold rushing voice of the wind and the irresistible heave of the sea. Was it ever warm here? The castle appeared neat and scoured, constructed of wind-sculpted creamy stone. Servants had gathered outside the steps to the main entrance in a sharply-defined semicircle. A tall, dour-faced man, dressed in livery of soft green cloth, stepped forward briskly to greet the new bride. “Good day to you, my lady,” he said, bowing stiffly from the waist. “I am Methlin Goldvane, steward of Caradore. May I welcome you to Lord Palindrake’s estate? The staff is ready for your inspection.” “Thank you,” Varencienne answered, covertly eyeing the curious faces around her. As far as she could gather, there were no Palindrake sisters in evidence. But for Goldvane, all the staff were dressed in the black and purple of the Palindrake crest. They were tidy and appeared contented; surely a good sign. Varencienne passed along the line, smiling in what she hoped was a dignified fashion. These people did not hide their interest in her; some were rosy-cheeked and dewy-eyed to behold the young bride, others more speculative. The men appeared scrubbed and awkward, bowing too low. None of them could know anything about her, other than her age and that she was the daughter of the emperor. Perhaps they?d thought she?d be haughty and cruel. What was their opinion now after this brief inspection? Varencienne felt small and young before them, a stranger in this high, gusting place. She accepted posies of sea-violets from a couple of the younger maids and made a mental note to request certain girls to be added to her personal staff. She did not want to feel so alone. The castle was not dark inside like the imperial palace, but neither was it very warm. The flagstones in the main hall were gritty with sand, and the great tapestries upon the walls were never still. The wind found its way in continually, snaking up corridors and passageways like a restless ghost. Goldvane clicked his fingers and a maid glided forward, carrying a silver tray upon which stood two stone goblets. These were offered to Varencienne and her woman: a blood-reviving aperitif that went immediately to Varencienne’s head. The castle did not feel lived in; no fire crackled in the cavernous hearth, but perhaps the family did not use the main hall much. Still, a fire would have been a sign of welcome. Varencienne felt like a guest whose stay was to be discouraged. Had the sisters made sure she would feel that way? “Lady Everna and Lady Pharinet will be home shortly,” announced Goldvane, apparently divining her thoughts. Where had they been? They must have known she was arriving that afternoon. Varencienne placed her goblet back on the tray and did not speak. “You will be taken to your chambers at once,” said Goldvane. He clapped his hands, and men scuttled in from other rooms, to see about the women’s hand luggage. “Is my husband here?” asked Varencienne. The steward’s face did not flinch. “Lord Palindrake is out inspecting the estate.” He paused, and then softened the information. “He has been absent from home for many months, and there was much for him to attend to.” “Of course.” Varencienne smiled weakly. She felt relieved. The Palindrake women, however, should have arranged a formal greeting party, such as was protocol in the city. Was this a slight against her, or just the alien ways of a family, who despite being Magravandian, lived in so remote a region as to be considered foreign? Perhaps the Palindrakes were not a tribe for formalities and niceties. She imagined the sisters: women like their brother, with purple-black hair, out among the crags, riding muscly stallions astride like men, using the whip.