Spine of the Dragon

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Conn gave a quiet sigh. His son would present the portrait to the girl’s parents with great pomp and ceremony, and they would feel obligated to hang it prominently, as a gift from the prince, even though the depiction was a quiet insult. Just like all the others.

  Conn had to hope the prince would eventually accept one of the candidates, though he had never seen his son show any interest in romance or physical pleasures, preferring his art and music to carousing. Sooner or later, though, the prince’s marriage—and heirs—would become a political necessity.

  Conn smiled as he remembered his own youth. He and Koll had certainly taken advantage of the willing young women who wished to spend time with the sons of the konag. While Bolam was groomed to take the throne, Koll and Conn became well known around Convera for their exploits. That was before the war.

  Now he tried a different approach. “You’ve seen how happy your brother is, how suited he is to marriage. Adan and Penda are already expecting their first child. But you’re my firstborn, not Adan, and I expect you to give me grandchildren. Suderra is much too far away for me to adequately spoil the new baby once Penda gives birth.”

  “Yes, marriage suits Adan well,” the prince agreed, but his voice was noncommittal.

  Knowing he wouldn’t get a better answer, Conn turned to the business at hand. “I’ve dispatched troops and supplies to Mirrabay. The town has much rebuilding to do after the raid. That’s one of the things a ruler does.”

  Mandan nodded solemnly. “A konag should always take care of the people when tragedy strikes.” The prince said the proper words, but without emotion, as if reciting a meaningless phrase he had been taught. Suddenly, his voice hardened. “Especially when it’s the result of an Isharan attack. They are animals.”

  Conn blinked in surprise as he realized that the prince must have been talking to Utho; the Brava’s hatred of the Isharans bordered on obsession, though with good reason. He continued, “I’m also sending wagonloads of food, since we won’t finish rebuilding the town before winter, and the cold storms can be harsh.”

  Mandan walked over to a map of Osterra on the wall. The prince had always enjoyed maps, more for the art than the geography. He drew his fingernail along the small harbor that marked Mirrabay. “I know where it is. A konag needs to know the entire land he rules. He must also know the history and the culture of his people.” When he frowned, the young man’s face took on an unexpectedly sincere expression. “I know I’m not like you, Father. You don’t approve that I spend more time with art than with military training, but that cultural knowledge makes me stronger and deeper as a man. Isn’t that also important for a konag?” He seemed to be trying hard to please him.

  Conn considered. “Yes, I recognize that. My brother Bolam was an accomplished musician, and he could play several instruments. Our music library still holds some of his remarkable compositions. I never faulted him for his artistic interests—and I don’t fault you. But you cannot neglect statecraft and physical combat. If war comes again, you must be prepared to do more than paint. That’s why I asked Utho to train you harder.”

  The young man paled. “I … I understand that. I don’t look forward to war, no matter what Utho says.”

  “One can’t always anticipate the reasons for war. Sometimes there’s no choice. You remember the story of Queen Kresca.”

  The devastation after the wreth wars had led to centuries of squalor and violence among the human survivors, the strife and desperation as they survived on scraps, without their creators and without gods. Some tried to kill anyone they saw, while others attempted to rebuild civilization, a human civilization. The people wanted a leader to manage and guide them, to bring help where it was needed.

  That person was a great queen named Kresca. She had built a kingdom in Osterra and erected the first fortress at the confluence of the two rivers. She had a well-fed and healthy population, which was unusual after so many centuries of austerity. Kresca’s farmers irrigated large areas of reclaimed land, so that instead of tending small plots to feed a family or two, they planted vast fields and harvested enough grain to carry an entire city through lean times. She was able to gather a large army of defenders.

  Naturally, the rival kings from the north and south wanted what Kresca’s people had. They joined together to invade, but Queen Kresca’s people fiercely defended what they had built. She announced to the invading rulers that if they conquered her lands and took over the fields, they would have supplies for now, yes, but they would destroy the very reason the supplies existed at all. Did they not understand why her people were well fed and strong?

  As the three armies prepared for a terrible battle, Kresca went to face the two rival leaders. Standing before them, she asked if they were afraid. They laughed and said that they were not afraid of her. She said, “Not afraid of me—afraid of the truth. I want peace, because with peace we can all prosper. We can show you how to reclaim the old battlefields, how to irrigate the land, how to feed your people. Then you won’t need what we have, because you will have great kingdoms of your own.”

  After much powerful advice from their councilors, the kings agreed. Kresca became the very first konag, with the new kingdoms of Norterra and Suderra independent but part of the Commonwealth “so long as our lands shall prosper.” As centuries passed, the prosperity continued, and humans reclaimed the world that the ancient race had abandoned.

  “Are the reasons for war always valid?” Mandan asked now. “What about the war thirty years ago? No one seems to know exactly why it started.”

  “I’m sure there were reasons,” Conn muttered, though he couldn’t name them. “My father considered the reasons sufficient when he sent Koll and me across the sea to fight.”

  “Prince Bolam was the firstborn, and he didn’t go to fight,” Mandan pointed out. “If we go to war again, can’t I just send Adan and Uncle Kollanan? Why do I need to learn how to fight?”

  Conndur frowned. “That wouldn’t be the way of a true konag. And sometimes the fight comes to you.”

  “But Bolam didn’t go to war.” Mandan kept pressing. “Konag Cronin sent the two of you instead, and you told me Bolam would have made a great leader.”

  Conn sighed. “Sometimes you ask too many questions, Mandan, and they aren’t the right questions.” He gave the prince a quick hug, which startled them both. “I’ll help you where I can, my son. We will lead, and we will do our best for the Commonwealth. Together.”

  Surprised, Mandan trembled as he hugged his father back, then they awkwardly broke apart. Conndur left the room quickly as the prince resumed his stance in front of the portrait, nodding slowly to himself.

  27

  AS the konag’s bonded Brava, Utho often left Convera to conduct business with other counties, meet with noble lords, or inspect the secret saltpearl operations in the far northeast. Sometimes, though, he had to make a journey home to fulfill his other duty as a Brava.

  Over the centuries, the half-breed race had established unmarked settlements, which would be impossible for bloodthirsty Isharans to find if the enemy ever invaded the Commonwealth. The Bravas had vowed that their people would never again reside all in one place, like their hopeful colony of Valaera long ago. That left them far too open for slaughter,.

  As Utho rode through the forest on his sorrel horse, he felt the ever-present vengeance swirling inside him, like a fire in an oven, but he damped it, controlled it. He smelled oaks and evergreens, and then woodsmoke as he came upon the first of the dwellings. This Brava settlement had only twenty buildings, comfortable log homes with small vegetable gardens. A wooden aqueduct diverted water from mountain streams to the houses and animal pens. At the center of the settlement, children practiced with blunted swords in an open ring.

  An old teacher stood at the edge shouting encouragement and criticism to his wards. Four Brava children, three boys and one girl, fought in a melee that was a combination of deadly serious and play. Their instructor was shirtless, his cheeks and head
clean-shaven, his lean body such a mass of muscles that he looked carved from driftwood.

  The girl struck one boy in the shoulder with the flat of her blade. “Dead!” she cried.

  “Not dead! I can still fight, even with one arm!”

  “Yes, you could,” said the old teacher. “And you might have to.” Hearing the approaching horse, he turned to look at the rider and immediately brightened. “Utho!”

  “I heard that these children need a better trainer, Onzu.”

  The old man scoffed. “I was good enough for you.”

  Dismounting, Utho tied his horse to a tree. “In the coming days, they may need to be better than me.” His expression darkened. “The Isharans raided Mirrabay again. If Konag Conndur listens to reason, we may at last have war with our enemies.”

  Onzu beamed. “Ah, then you bring good news.”

  “Nothing about Mirrabay is good news,” Utho said, growing grim again. “Not this time, and not last time.”

  “Pain is the goad that drives us forward, because we Bravas cannot bear to look at the past.”

  Utho shook his head. “We have to remember the past. What the Isharans did to Valaera must never happen again, must never be forgotten.”

  “It won’t be. That is why we keep the Brava bloodline pure so our magic is strong. That is why we remain ready.” Letting the children continue their sparring, old Onzu came to clasp Utho’s hand. They walked together toward his small log home. “Are you here to visit me? Or have you come to do your duty?”

  “I always do my duty,” Utho said.

  “Cheth will be pleased. She arrived yesterday for the same purpose. She is fertile for the next few days.” The old man grinned. “I think she was concerned that I’d be the one who had to share her bed.”

  “You often take on that duty,” Utho teased. “Too many Brava children have your eyes and your nose.”

  Onzu clucked his tongue. “I serve where I am called.”

  “As do I.” Utho followed him. In the old teacher’s garden stood the carved wooden figure of a Brava man in ancient clothing: Olan, the optimistic leader of Valaera, the ill-fated colony he had established in Ishara. Utho reached out to stroke the carved face, thinking of the ancient man’s dreams. If only Olan had succeeded there, the Brava race would be thriving on a continent of their own.…

  Onzu saw his interest. “The Isharans still attack us, and we still vow to kill them. Should later generations pay for the crimes of their ancestors?” He shook his head. “There has to be an end to it.”

  Utho was not convinced. “Maybe after a thousand generations they will have paid enough for what they did to us. But not yet.”

  Centuries ago, a group of Bravas decided to leave the old world and seek their promised land, where they would establish a colony. Led by the visionary Olan, they constructed a fleet of ships to carry them across the sea to the new continent, far to the east. Explorers had described the shores of Ishara in glowing terms—lush forests, fertile plains, and a handful of settlements built by the first humans who had gone there at the end of the wreth wars. Crowded aboard their ships, a thousand Brava colonists sailed away from the old, bruised land.

  Arriving at their new shores, intending never to look back, they dragged their ships high on the beach. Then the pioneers cut down trees, quarried stone, and constructed a perfect colony, which they named Valaera. They planted crops, hunted, and enlarged their settlement.

  Before long they were discovered by the Isharan people, who treated them with suspicion, uncomfortable with these strangers, these invaders—especially since the new arrivals looked similar to the terrifying wreths from their past. The optimistic pioneers underestimated the hatred and fear of the Isharans. The Bravas believed they could defend themselves.

  But not against a godling.

  One night, two years after the founding of the colony, Isharans rode in, surrounded Valaera, and unleashed one of their abominations to destroy the colony. Of the thousand initial Brava pioneers, over seven hundred were slain in that attack. The rest, led by a badly wounded Olan, were driven to the sea, where they salvaged some of the original vessels they had hauled high on the shore.

  As they limped back home to the Commonwealth, only hatred kept them alive. By the time they arrived, the Bravas were hardened and they made up their minds to forge themselves into a new kind of fighting force. Olan spread the word about the unprovoked violence of the Isharans, and the returned Bravas swore their loyalty to defend the Commonwealth. Among themselves, the half-breed race kept alive the burning need for an eventual vengewar.

  Some Bravas did form families with humans. Utho certainly had. His love came as a surprise to him when he met Mareka, who had only a drop of wreth blood within her, but she was special to him, and so were their daughters. More than thirty years ago, when he was asked to help guard Fulcor Island against an Isharan incursion, he could not refuse because of his vow to the konag. Utho had said goodbye to his family in Mirrabay and sailed off to the island garrison, leaving his wife and daughters undefended.…

  History already demanded that the Isharans never be forgiven for slaughtering the Valaera colony. After the Isharans also killed his family at Mirrabay, Utho could never forgive them in his heart either.

  While the wreth bloodline dwindled as the mixed-breed descendants had more children, the pure Bravas swore never to grow weaker, never to let their magic fade. To maintain their race, each Brava had the solemn duty to conceive one or more children by another pure Brava so that their children maintained the same amount of wreth blood from generation to generation. For Utho there was no romance in it. He had loved Mareka, and there was no more love left in him. But he could still breed.

  Throughout the afternoon, he and Onzu talked inside the old man’s home, sharing news and reminiscing. When Utho stepped out the front door, he found a Brava woman waiting with her arms crossed over her chest. Cheth was tall, well proportioned, in her midthirties with a long face and close-cropped ash-brown hair. She regarded him as he paused in the doorway. “You’ll do. The next three days will be my best time to conceive.”

  The Brava children born of such unions were left in the settlements to be raised and trained. The teachers were seasoned warriors, sometimes patient, sometimes ruthless. Onzu was a little of both. Utho had been raised here, trained here, formed bonds with other Brava children here, before setting off to establish his long legacy.

  He would spend the next three days with Cheth, and then he would return to Convera and his work for the konag. As the afternoon sun slanted through the trees and the children continued their rigorous training, Utho followed Cheth into the guesthouse and closed the door, so that they could both do their Brava duty.

  28

  LATE at night, Captani Vos came to the empra’s tower chambers, a private place for a private and personal ceremony. His eyes twinkled. With his cleft chin and high cheekbones, the leader of her hawk guards looked rugged and dangerous, enhanced by a crooked nose that had been broken in a training exercise in his youth.

  Empra Iluris rose from her settee when the captani entered. She had been waiting for his arrival. Unlike many of her frustrating obligations, this part of her duties warmed her heart. Of all the achievements in her reign, creating the hawk guards might be the best thing she had done.

  Vos stood in his full formal armor, a gold breastplate, red cape, golden bracers on his arms, sturdy boots, greaves, a sword at his side. Every element of his outfit was neat and polished, presentable for his empra, but Iluris was much less formal when she received people in her own rooms. She had removed her jewels and relaxed in a comfortable robe with a sweet herbal tea and a bowl of tart berries. Her hawk guards understood that she was also a woman, a person, a mother—their mother. Her elite troops, her adopted sons, were allowed to see her in ways that no one else did, and they loved her for it. They could know who Iluris really was, and they would give their lives for her.

  Captani Vos held out his left hand to display th
ree golden rings cupped in his palm, each one fashioned with the head of a hawk. He wore a similar ring on his own finger. “You will be happy with the three new candidates, Mother. I tested them myself, and I want to install them into service before you begin your pilgrimage to search for a successor. I’m confident they will be among your best.”

  “You are my best, Vos,” she said. “But I love you all equally.”

  He had been brought to Iluris in the tenth year of her reign, when her hawk guards were just coming into their own. The elite guards were developing their ranks and traditions, understanding their paramount role of defending the empra. She did not trust the insidious politics, the backstabbing and treachery her father had actively encouraged. The young empra had needed her own protection, a special force that was loyal to her above all.

  Vos was a young man from a large family that had too many mouths to feed, so his parents had signed him over to the Isharan army. He felt as if his family had discarded him. Six months later, the coughing flu had swept through Serepol and killed his entire family. Only Vos was left, an orphan with no one but the Isharan army. Iluris had adopted him herself. She had no children of her own, and all of the hawk guards became her surrogate children. Each one was special to her.

  Now Vos signaled back into the torchlit corridor. Three young men entered her chamber garbed in uniforms similar to the captani’s, though their capes were darker maroon, less likely to show blood if the recruits were injured during hard practice fights.

  As Iluris stepped up to welcome them, the three nervous young men averted their eyes. She teasingly scolded them. “Look at me! You should not be overwhelmed in my presence or you’ll never be able to protect me.”