The Dragon of Summer
Page 1
THE DRAGON OF SUMMER
Fantasy by Patricia White
Kindle: 978-1-58124-794-7
ePub: 978-1-58124-790-9
©2012 by Patricia White
Published 2012 by The Fiction Works
http://www.fictionworks.com
fictionworks@me.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
“At the end of a long, hot, winding tunnel lies the fate of the Princess Royal of the Outer Isles. Betrayed by her brother’s love of the game of chance, Tessa faces her death as a sacrifice to The Dragon of Summer with grace and strength, maintaining her dignity where the eighteen princesses sacrificed before her could not. Nevertheless, it will take more than strength of character to survive the dangers inflicted by magic. However, Tessa has a special gift, not of magic, but the ability to perceive it, and refuse its call. And her fate, the fate of Dragon’s gatekeeper, the eighteen princesses, and even the dragon itself depends on her gift.
“Patricia White’s voice reveals power and magic with a stately and majestic flair seldom matched, and must not be missed. Very highly recommended.”
– Cindy Penn, www.wordweaving.com
Table of Contents
Foreword
The Dragon of Summer
About the Author
Foreword
A magic dwells as near as your imagination and as far as it will lift you into the vast, uncharted realms of fantasy. Magic is a quest, a journey, one that carries the reader into distant lands, lands of wonder, might, wizards, witches, dragons, heroes, and enchantments. But, in the land where magic dwells, things are not always exactly as they seem, some are spells to deceive, glamours to ensnare, beguilements for the unwary.
Enter in and accept the flagon of guest welcome, explore this small bit of the fabulous land of magic and mystery. Travel with the Princess Tessa in her time of trouble as she meets that terrible princess-eating creature, The Dragon of Summer. Enjoy the quest as the magic unfolds, bespells you with a tale of fantasy, adventure, and beasts arcane.
Be warned. This is but the first of the many tales that await the brave and fearless reader in the land of fantasy, the land of imagination where magic dwells, and all things are possible.
The Dragon of Summer
A single drum beat slowly.
Shackled hand and foot, Tessa stepped off the battered ship that had conveyed her from her homeland. Heavily swathed in black veils, walking proudly, as befitted a Princess Royal of the Outer Isles, she walked alone.
Sweating, frightened, barely able to breathe, she lifted her uncrowned head a little higher, forced her unwilling feet to march in time to the drum.
The Dragon Drum of Summer.
Behind her the sea was glass, not a ripple marred its emerald surface. The very wind held its breath. Birds wheeled silently across the hot blue of the sky. Even the small group of men standing at the base of the cliff were oddly quiet, ominously unmoving.
The beat of the drum, the musical clink of her chains, and the rasp of her sandals across the black sand were the only sounds she heard for the long moments it took her to trudge across the beach. She was almost to the cliff when male voices added their chant to the drum.
The doleful chorus had hardly begun when one of the waiting men stepped away from the others. He was a beardless youth with hair as brightly gold as the crown he wore. He stumbled toward Tessa, stopped squarely in her path, and began to speak.
“I’m sorry. I never meant . ”
Harl was her brother, King of the Outer Isles, but that meant nothing to her now.
“Tessa,” he said, a decided whine in his voice, “please forgive me. I swear I will never . ”
After what had gone before, Tessa saw no reason to ease his guilt or take away his pain. With out uttering a word. Without slowing her march. She moved around him, but not before she saw the tears of anguish in his eyes. Tears that no longer had the power to move her.
“Sister, please, don’t be like this. Please, there’s not much time left. You know I did it for you. If you love me, you’ll forgive me.”
Love? It was too late for that. She had no time for love now; she was already dead. Killed by his utter lack of regard. He could speak of love and forgiveness, but at that moment, all she had left was numbness. Her own tears had all been shed; there was no love, no forgiveness left within her.
King Harl was her brother, and she had loved him dearly. He in turn had valued her not at all. Saw her as nothing more than chattel. A thing to be wagered in one of his many games of chance.
Loser’s games that had emptied his treasure house, beggared his people, and made his only sister another kingdom’s Midsummer sacrifice to their dragon.
“Sister, I . ”
The chanting grew louder, drowning out whatever Harl intended to say, whatever new plea he was making.
She had been taught well. Tessa knew the chanting, too, was part of the ritual. It announced her coming to the waiting dragon. But not yet. Not before all propriety had been observed. Not before she presented herself to the High Priest of Summer and bent her head in submission.
Black-robed, dignified, the priest waited, his minions standing in ordered rows at his back. The chanting continued to grow louder until she stood before him, and then, with a small gesture of his hand, he commanded complete silence. And was instantly obeyed.
Halting a scant three feet from his august presence, she bowed, pulled three scrolls from beneath her smothering veils, and clutched them with a trembling hand. “I give you greeting, sir. Here is the documentation your king ordered.”
The sun was hot, so hot that she was almost blinded by her own sweat, could barely draw air into her lungs. By a supreme effort of will, she forced her shackled hands into steadiness, proffered the scrolls, with their red-wax seals and dangling cloth-of- gold ribbons, to the long-jawed, sober-faced priest.
Her voice was clear, without inflection, when she said, “They are as requested.
“Authentication, signed by the Seers of Mer, that I am, indeed, Tessa, Princess Royal, Daughter of the Outer Isles.”
She took a quick, unsatisfying breath of heated air and continued, “Certification of my virgin state, attested to and sworn by the Royal Physician of your king’s court. And, King Harl’s royal decree that I am here as promised.”
She lifted her head a little higher, held the scrolls out to deliver them into his hands. Her voice shook just a little when she said, “It needs only your signature to attest that King Harl’s debt of honor to your king is paid in full by my person.”
The High Priest took the scrolls from her, passed them to an underling without so much as a glance at the documents. But he looked at her, and he frowned mightily.
His voice was harsh when he said, “What means this blasphemy? Unchain her at once. She must go unbound and on willing feet. I will not have Our Lady, the Dragon of Summer, made wroth by sending the Year’s Offering trussed like a chicken for the spit.”
Two of the black-robed under-priests leaped forward, opened the locks that held the chains, and let the chains fall at her feet. That done, they gave their superior a bow that had their head touching the sand and then they scrambled back to their original positions at his back.
Free of the chains, but still a captive, Tessa ignored them, but she listened to the High Priest when he held up his right hand, palm to the sky, and spoke.
“You Highness, you are not of Summer and worship other gods than the ones I ser
ve, but would you accept my blessing before you go to your doom?”
That, too, was a part of the ritual, and she made the answer she had been taught. If she hadn’t been so numb, so empty of feeling, she might have even meant what she said. “If it pleases Your Grace to give it, your blessing will be accepted with my heartfelt gratitude.”
He didn’t exactly smile, but his tone grew even more benign, perhaps even a bit patronizing, when he asked the next question in the Midsummer Rite. “And, Princess Tessa, will you, as all the princesses who have gone before you, drink deep from the Chalice of Forgetfulness? Will you walk the dark way in sweet unknowing?”
Straightening her back, assuming her most imperial stance, Tessa chose to answer as she would. “No, Your Grace,” she said, her voice soft but very sure, “I came in full knowing. I would go the same way. I need nothing more than your blessing.”
After the faintest of hesitations, a slight frown of indecision touched his stern features and was as quickly gone. Then, he nodded, accepting her words as given. He did not, as was the custom, ask her to kneel before him, instead he took a single step forward, put his hand on her veiled head, and stood in silence for several heartbeats.
“You are truly blessed, Princess Tessa. Go forth from this place wrapped in the knowledge that your deed of high courage and unsullied honor has put the Kingdom of Summer eternally in your debt.
“Know, too, that your song will be sung by minstrels down through the ages. Indeed, Princess Tessa and her noble act will not soon be forgotten.”
It was naught but standard cant, rote words that sealed the sacrifice, but Tessa thought the High Priest sighed heavily before he went on.
“Go, Tessa, Daughter of the Outer Isles, but, to your sorrow, you must know this: Your path leads only in. Never out. There is no returning. Your way lies through the tunnel.” He left his hand from her head and pointed toward the opening in the cliff, a yawning mouth that waited just for her.
“Go now,” he said. “Luther, Fearsome Guardian of the Dragon Gate, awaits your coming. He will lead you to your fate.”
His hand pushed down on top of her veiled head and his voice was only a harsh whisper when he said, “May the Dragon’s hunger be great, her mercy swift and sure.”
When he lifted his hand, the chanting began anew.
It followed her as she walked, without a single backward glance or a word of final parting, toward her doom. The mournful chant was her only companion as she crossed the stretch of hot sand that separated her from the tunnel. All sound died when she stepped through the gaping mouth and into the tunnel proper.
~
Lit by some unseen source, the greenish light showed the dark maws of many branches, but main tunnel, and what she could see of the rest, appeared to be man-made. The chisel marks were plainly visible and the walls were rough, not smoothed by some sort of magic. The path twisted and turned as if the builders had been following the track laid down by a snake with an itch it couldn’t scratch. But Tessa had no difficulty following it.
What did give her trouble was the oppressive heat. It was terrible inside the tunnel; far hotter than it had been in the outside world. Sweating profusely, an unseemly act for a princess, even one destined to be a dragon’s dinner, Tessa stopped.
She snorted. “Seemly be hanged. The dragons going to eat me. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t give a fig whether I’m properly garbed for the occasion.”
Suiting action to her words, she ripped off the heavy veils, dropped them where she stood. Taking a deep breath, she walked on, bare of face, brown hair hanging in a single braid down her back. She wore only her tunic and thick wool skirt—both black, as was deemed right and proper for the Midsummer sacrifice.
Moments later Tessa stopped again. Swiping at the sweat that was trickling down her face. “Even a sacrifice deserves a few moments of comfort.” She knew no one could hear, but talking gave her a sense that she was still alive. If only until she reached the other end of the tunnel.
She loosened the drawstring that held up her skirt, released it, felt the hot material slither down to form a pool of shadow around her ankles. She stepped over it. Clad only in her knee-length tunic, which was dripping wet with sweat, had a rank smell, and was decidedly uncomfortable, she walked on. And she was accompanied only by the sound of her own lagging footsteps.
Her feet, burning like coals in the castle firepit, rebelled against every forward step she forced them to perform. The labyrinthine tunnel echoed and magnified every footfall until she wanted to turn around and run, if only to escape the sounds of her own passage. But she didn’t.
Instead, she gave herself a good scolding. “No matter if you are scared witless, you are still a princess. So, act like one until you’re sliding down the dragon’s gullet.”
Perhaps the stern injunction helped keep her moving onward, or perhaps she was just too tired to do otherwise. The tunnel curved back on itself, curled back the other way, seemed without end. Staggering with weariness, Tessa went on. Between one ragged, gasping breath and the next, she reached the end of the tunnel.
It came long before she was ready—if anyone can really be ready be ready to face a hungry dragon as the evening’s repast.
The bright sunlight slanted into the tunnel, but Tessa found it a far from welcomed sight. Swallowing hard, knowing there was no other path for her, she whispered, “Please, dragon, I beg you. Make it quick.”
Pausing for the most fleeting of seconds, Tessa took a deep breath and stepped out of the tunnel and into a narrow valley. Black and shining, obsidian cliffs rose high on both sides. The glittering black path ran, straight and true as a hard-thrown spear’s flight, between them.
She had taken no more than three steps into the valley when a man appeared—seemingly out of empty space. He frightened her, even though she knew he wasn’t real, only an illusion, nearly transparent to her seeing. “Oh,” she said, “I . uh . oh.”
Huge, ugly, looking like a mountain that had been broken in some cataclysmic upheaval and put back together all wrong, he stood before her. Bare to the waist, hairless as an egg, a terrible scar disfiguring the left side of his face, puckering around his eye, he blocked her way, stared down at her with seeming intensity.
After a silence that lasted too long for her liking, he asked, some real emotion coloring his deep voice, “Who are you, lass? Why have you trod the way?”
Weary and frightened, but a princess still, Tessa was in no mood to take being made sport of lightly. She lifted her chin, tried to look the illusion in the eye, and said, “I don’t know you or why you ask my business. I do know it’s bad luck for all concerned to keep a hungry dragon waiting for her dinner. Please, get out of my way and let me do what I have been sent to do.”
He said, “So, the ignorant fools continue their folly, do they?”
The sun had long since passed its zenith and the shadows at the canyon bottom held a hint of night chill—or death. Tessa shivered, but she had no answer to give the stranger. In all truth, she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Well, speak up,” he said, his deep voice taking on more than a hint of impatience.
Tessa wasn’t a Princess Royal for nothing. She drew herself up, assumed her most princess-like demeanor, and said, “Sir, I command you. Let me by so I can get this over.”
He smiled. It did nothing to soften the ruin that was his face or to mellow the bitterness in his voice. “Well, my lady, ‘tis true you sound like one, but you bare scant resemblance to the lot they’ve sent these Midsummers back.”
She wanted nothing more than to do what she had come to do—while she still had courage enough to do it. “I know nothing of what has passed before. Stand aside.”
He didn’t move. He just stood there and looked her up and down. “If in truth, a princess you be, where are you veils?”
Tessa saw no reason to answer.
“Where is your jeweled crown?”
That, too, she let pass unanswered.”
Almost as if in answer to his spate of questions, a slithering, rasping sound issued from dark cave mouth situated far up the sheer cliff. A gout of flame licked out, flickered, and died. As a reminder of what it was, it left a twist of smoke to wing its way upward toward the scrap of sky that was visible at the top of the ravine.
Gulping, knowing her greatest fear was soon to be met, Tessa saw what she hadn’t noticed before. A narrow stone stair zigzagged up the glassy wall of the cliff. A stair that ended at the huge ledge jutting out from the dragon’s cave. A stair closed at the bottom by a massive iron gate.
Desperately wanting to run as far and as fast as she could, Tessa took a deep breath, drew on all the dignity and training she had left. It wasn’t enough to keep her voice from shaking when she said, “I am Tessa, Princess of the Outer Isles. I have come, as the wager stated to serve as . ”
“Ah, so that’s the truth of it.” He bent forward, looked at her even more closely before he nodded sagely. “Well, well. News comes to us here, but it is slow. Still and all, there’s harsh things said of the lackwit that’s your king.”
It was more than she could bear. It wasn’t the time to look back, not when she was weary unto death. “I have traveled far and I . Please, sir, I beg you, allow me to do what I have come to do.”
He ignored her plea, continued with his words that tore at her, demanded she examine old pain.
“‘Tis said the foolish king gambled away all that poor, benighted land, castle, servants, and his own sister. ‘Tis also said the winner holds the deed to the kingdom but cannot claim his winnings. ‘Tis said the castle lies empty now, haunted by a woman’s tears.”
His voice dropped lower and sounded almost kind when he asked, “Be that the truth of it, lass?”