Spine of the Dragon

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Now that she had returned to formal service, Elliel wanted to look like a true Brava. The king provided her with leather armor, boots, and finemail, as well as traditional weapons to supplement her exotic ramer. When Kollanan looked at her, he gave a nod of appreciation and respect. “Lasis would have approved of you.” She considered it a compliment.

  When his eight vassal lords arrived for the next urgent meeting, Elliel was beside Kollanan, confident and intimidating. This was the first time the other nobles had seen the king’s new Brava, and she did her best to make an impression. He introduced her to each of the lords, and she memorized the names, the faces: Alcock, Teo, Vitor, Bahlen, Cerus, Ogno, Iber, and Oren. Through keen observation, she learned their personalities, assessing which nobles were loyal and cooperative, which were isolated, and which might be resentful of their king’s commands. It was so much to drink in.

  During the meeting, Elliel stood behind Kollanan’s chair, like a guardian. He looked around the table at the eight lords. “I’ve made my decision. We will strike the frostwreths, make them sting. I hope that will be enough of a warning for them to leave us alone.”

  “I understand your anger, Sire,” Lord Alcock cautioned. Elliel decided that he served as a frequent voice of reason. “I feel the heat of revenge, too. What happened at Lake Bakal could have happened to any of our towns, and I grieve for your daughter, your grandsons, all those people. But we are mere humans with traditional weapons against such a terrible enemy.”

  Koll pounded his fist on the table. “I refuse to accept that we are mere humans. We are survivors! We rebuilt the world after the ancient race wrecked it, and we will not be considered irrelevant. We have to fight. We have to do something!”

  Lord Teo gestured to Elliel and the three other bonded Bravas who had accompanied their vassal lords. “They have their ramers, but even that magic must be insignificant compared to the wreths. You lost Lasis to them, did you not?”

  Kollanan’s brows drew together and he looked down at his hands. “That remains to be proven, but I assume so, alas.”

  Elliel’s hand strayed to the band at her side. The wounds on her wrist had healed, but she felt the tingle in her skin, the burning in her blood. She longed to use the weapon again, against an appropriate enemy. This was a pure weapon, a Brava weapon, and she knew now that she had never misused it, never actually killed children. What Utho had said was a lie.…

  Kollanan squared his shoulders and sighed. “I am not suggesting we launch an outright war against the frostwreths, though it may come to that. We just need to sting them like a wasp, make them realize there’ll be consequences if they don’t leave us in peace. We don’t want anything to do with their ancient vendetta, or their dragon, whether or not it exists.”

  “I would happily smash them all,” said Lord Ogno, a square-built man with a blocky face and hands as hard as rocks. “But if you do this, they will smash us back. Are you ready for that? Will our armies be enough?”

  Queen Tafira sat beside the king, intent on the war council. She drew two long daggers, one in each hand, and slammed them point-first into the table. “My husband has convinced me. If we can’t find a way to make the wreths respect us, then we might as well all just surrender ourselves to be their slaves. Is that what you want? If so, then we’ll assign more appropriate nobles to run your counties.”

  Elliel watched their expressions, listened to their muttered words. No one volunteered.

  “Even if it brings down retribution on us, we must assert our humanity,” Kollanan said in a lower voice. “Or we won’t have any left.”

  Thon quietly entered the chamber. His dark hair flowed down past his shoulders, his silver leggings shone, his chest armor was burnished. Seeing him, the eight lords muttered uneasily, although Elliel was glad of his presence. “Perhaps I can offer suggestions?”

  “Or perhaps you’re a spy,” snapped Lord Teo. “How would we know?”

  “There are many things we do not know,” Thon said in a level tone. “But rather than be afraid, I am trying to understand, as should you all.”

  Lord Cerus grumbled and reached for a knife at his side. Lord Bahlen, accompanied by his own bonded Brava, a young man named Urok, gripped the table in front of him. They had all heard about the wreth stranger, but most were seeing Thon for the first time.

  King Kollanan said, “I have accepted this man among us. I admit there’s a risk, but there is great potential benefit if he can truly use wreth magic. I’m willing to hear all ideas.”

  “I will share some possibilities.” Thon locked his gaze with Elliel’s, then with a placid expression scanned the others around the table. “But I may need your help to refine them.”

  * * *

  Once welcomed into Fellstaff Castle, Shadri immersed herself in the records in Kollanan’s private library and also absorbed the information in the city’s remembrance shrine. One of the legaciers even wrote a frustrated note to the king, complaining that the young woman asked too many questions. Kollanan wrote a brusque reply: “No one can ask too many questions. Answer them.”

  Pokle spent a lot of time with Shadri, though he seemed too shy to speak much. She took it upon herself to educate him, delighted to have an attentive audience, even if it was hard to tell whether the gawky young man was interested in the actual subject matter. She was happy to talk about whatever facts happened to tumble out of her head.

  Shadri followed him around in his duties about the castle, enlightening him on a variety of subjects. Pokle rarely made comments, and certainly offered no debate, but he made frequent enough acknowledgments that she knew she had his complete attention.

  Once, while she was describing different types of migratory birds and the formations they flew, a distracted Pokle burned his hand by picking up a hot rack from a fireplace. At his yelp of pain, she immediately stopped her monologue and stared at the angry red line across his hand. Blisters were already forming.

  Remembering what Dr. Severn had taught her in Thule’s Orchard, Shadri grabbed him by his wrist. “Come with me. I know just what to do. I can treat this.” Flushed with the pain, Pokle stumbled after her as she marched him down the stairs to the kitchen, where she demanded honey, lard, and specific spices that Tafira kept in the pantry. The kitchen staff stared at the girl, but got out of her way. “I studied with a battlefield surgeon,” she explained. “I know how to be a doctor—at least a little.”

  While pokle soaked his burn in cold water to ease the throbbing, Shadri mixed up a salve that she slathered on his palm, while one of the cooks boiled a strip of rags to be used as a bandage. Pokle looked greatly relieved as the salve eased the burning sensation. He looked at her with wide, appreciative eyes. “You must be a magic healer.” Her attentions seemed to be a better pain reliever than the salve itself.

  Shadri deftly wrapped the bandage around his hand. “Nothing magic about it. Just knowledge. I spent many hours dissecting the dead body of a hanged thief, so I could learn.” She didn’t notice how the boy’s expression turned squeamish. “Now, I’m applying my knowledge.”

  * * *

  Elliel held her long cinnamon hair in one hand, hesitating but knowing what she had to do. She had not cut the rich tresses since she’d awakened without a legacy, without memories, and with a letter full of lies in her pocket. Now she took a sharp knife and slashed the hair short around her head. It was a symbolic gesture, a change, but she felt she needed to do it. Now, when she looked in her reflection, Elliel saw a different woman from the one Cade had raped, and a different one from the woman who had wandered the land without a memory. This was who she was.

  Her muscles and reflexes had always remembered what she was, and now she began to train again with knives and swords, as well as in hand-to-hand combat. Thon was an excellent fighter, and the two sparred in the castle courtyard. They clashed, counterattacked, and threw each other to the ground in rough, exhilarating moves, until they both gasped with exhaustion.

  Elliel gradually recall
ed times in her past when she’d been called upon to fight. The details came back in clusters. One time in a dark alley—she couldn’t remember the name of the town—she had fought three would-be robbers who meant to kill the merchant to whom she was bound. Elliel had only been sixteen but fully skilled, trained throughout her childhood in a Brava settlement. One of the thugs carried a torch, the other two had knives. The whip-fast young woman yelled for the merchant to run for his life, and he scrambled away in panic, bleating like a shoat. Elliel threw herself upon the three attackers. She slashed one man’s throat with the first strike, kicked, punched, and stabbed the second thug. But the third man jammed his blazing torch into her arm, smearing some of the pitch on her sleeve. Her jerkin had caught fire, but she killed the third robber before she took the time to extinguish her own burning skin. That was where the waxy burn scar on her arm had come from. Now she remembered.

  Later, she returned to their quarters where Thon was waiting for her. These chambers had belonged to Lasis, and Elliel could feel the presence of the lost Brava here. Though Kollanan’s first bonded Brava had been at Fellstaff for many years, the chambers were austere. A banner of Norterra on one stone wall was the only decoration. The room had a washbasin, a wardrobe, and a bed big enough for a large man but pleasantly cozy for Elliel and Thon to hold each other.

  When she entered the room now, the wreth man smiled at her in wonder. Coming closer, he ran his fingers through her close-cropped hair. “This is a surprise. You still look beautiful, but it is another you. I so loved it when your hair would fall around me like a flood of fire.”

  “You’ll have to put up with me this way. I like it better for fighting.”

  “I believe I have already adapted.” He laughed and kissed her.

  She reached around the back of his head with both hands and stroked the long dark locks that felt like unraveled silk threads. “But please don’t cut your lovely hair.”

  “We should enjoy each other as we are.” He helped her undress.

  Joy and energy filled her as she responded to his touch. A jolt of sickening pain flashed through her mind as she remembered what Lord Cade had done to her, but she shoved the thought away. No, Thon was her first and only lover.

  He feathered kisses on her skin. Elliel groaned and ran her hands over him, trying not to remember Cade at all. That was one memory she wished she could erase. Thon touched the curved red welt on her stomach, evidence of the deep wound that had healed, but left its irrevocable scar.

  Elliel gasped as that memory surged to the front of her mind—Almeda lunging out of the shadows at her, howling in jealous rage, stabbing and slashing with her long knife … willing to murder someone just to keep a man she had never cared about anyway, a man who had drugged and raped Elliel and treated her as his property.

  She shuddered, and Thon held her now and loved her. She crushed him against her. They lay in warm silence, and he just watched her with his sapphire eyes. Gradually, Elliel focused not on her disgraced past but on the fact that she was a Brava bonded to King Kollanan. That was who she was now, and she was sworn to defend against the terrible wreths. She had to protect a kingdom now.

  “Fight for us, Thon,” she whispered in his ear. “King Kollanan and the people of Norterra need you for this. I need you.”

  “You already have me,” he said.

  “The others don’t trust you. They fear the frostwreths, and when they see you, they see only an enemy. But for this attack King Kollanan is determined to launch on Lake Bakal, you have magic more powerful than any weapon they can use.”

  “You have great faith in me. You saw me use my magic in the mine tunnels and to help Scrabbleton.” He smiled, showing his even teeth. “Though I cannot remember my life, I know in my bones that I will fight to do what is right. You helped me to believe it.” He held her close again. “Yes, I have something to offer the raid. I can use what I have within me.”

  When he traced a fingertip over the long, angry scar on her stomach, she no longer felt the burn of past pain.

  * * *

  The next morning a patchwork man dressed in tattered furs and rags arrived at the Fellstaff city gate from the north. Barely more than a walking skeleton, he was so emaciated, scabbed, and encrusted with dirt that no one recognized him. At first the sentries thought he was a beggar, but finally someone noticed by his features that he was a Brava.

  Lasis.

  King Kollanan rushed down to the lower city, because the Brava was so weak the guards were afraid to move him. Doctors got there first. They gave him water and washed away some of the dried blood and grime, trying to assess his injuries.

  When Koll finally arrived, he was both distraught and overjoyed to see his friend. “Lasis! We thought we would never see you again.” He knelt beside the Brava. “Can you speak? What happened?” He bent close to listen.

  Lasis opened his eyes, reached a hand toward Kollanan, and spoke in a raspy whisper through cracked lips. “The frostwreths … Birch, your grandson … is alive.”

  80

  FULCOR Island rose from the choppy water like a sharp gray tooth. As the Isharan warships approached, Iluris studied the rugged cliffs and remembered the long, unpleasant history that shrouded this place.

  Next to her, Cemi gazed ahead into the brisk, salty breezes, not impressed. “It’s ugly. Why would anyone fight over that?”

  Iluris had wondered the same thing herself. “Why indeed?”

  Per the terms in the konag’s invitation letter, three Isharan warships had departed from Serepol Harbor on the appropriate date, their distinctive red-and-white striped sails billowing in the wind. The empra had handpicked fifteen of her adopted hawk guards, led by Captani Vos, along with a full contingent of standard Isharan soldiers.

  Iluris had left Chamberlain Nerev behind to continue winnowing his lists of candidates as her successor, but Priestlord Klovus insisted on accompanying the mission. He urged her to let him secretly bring a minor godling in the cargo hold, in case the enemy meant to betray them, but she adamantly refused. “That would be tantamount to declaring war—a war you already provoked when you took a godling to their coast.”

  Klovus sniffed. “How else will they fear us, Excellency? The godless need to be reminded of the power we represent.”

  “I will remind them myself, with my own words. But first I agreed to hear what the konag has to say.”

  As they sailed across the water, Iluris taught Cemi about Fulcor Island, how possession of the rock had changed hands over the centuries. In one instance, the enemy garrison had surrendered quickly in a relatively bloodless transition, which then lulled the reigning emprir into complacency, and the Commonwealth had seized back the island within five years. Another time, the Commonwealth defenders refused to stand down after a long naval siege and were slaughtered to the last person.

  “We almost took the island back in the last war,” she mused. “Our navy blockaded Fulcor and cut off their supplies to starve them out. Our ships were anchored at a safe distance, but a lone man somehow made his way out on the water and got close enough to set our ships on fire. We lost that siege, and the Commonwealth has held the island ever since.”

  Cemi looked skeptical. “And you believe Konag Conndur will give it back just because he wants to be friends with us? That sounds like quite a desperate bargain to make.” Her lips tightened in a pinched expression. “I wouldn’t do it, if it were me.”

  Iluris had thought of that many times. “He must be serious. He wants our help in fighting the wreth armies. At the very least, he wants to ensure that hostilities cease between our two lands, so he can concentrate on his other war without worrying about an attack from us.” She shook her head, and the winds ruffled her loose head scarf. “I need to hear this for myself, to see if he can convince me. Personally, I would not be disappointed for an excuse to end the raids on both sides. I see no advantage to it.”

  As they approached the island, Priestlord Klovus emerged from his cabin and hurried acros
s the deck, casting a troubled glance at the stark island. “I advise you never to let your guard down, Excellency, even if you think you can trust the konag.”

  “I didn’t say I trusted him, Priestlord. I said I would listen to him.”

  He still grumbled. “It’s an obvious trap.”

  “It is so obvious, in fact, that I am dubious it will turn out to be a trap after all. I want to know what he’s really up to.”

  Cemi spoke up. “What if the konag and the Utauk trader are telling the truth? What if the wreths did return to start their war again? What if they really do intend to wake the dragon?”

  Klovus snorted. “Then let the wreths finish the job they started two thousand years ago and wipe out the dying old world. We’re perfectly safe in Ishara.”

  “We are all part of the human race, Priestlord, and we were all created and enslaved by the wreths,” Iluris said. “They did do our ancestors great harm, long ago. Is there no circumstance under which we should stand together?”

  “The godless are not the same sort of humans as we are. They have no magic, no protectors, but we have our godlings. We are superior.”

  “Hear us, save us,” Iluris said with only a hint of sarcasm. “Then we are honor bound to help those less fortunate than we. Isn’t that what the priests say?”

  Klovus grumbled. “If we regained control of Fulcor Island, we could at least claim a victory, but I don’t expect the konag to release it anytime soon, no matter what he promises.”

  The third Isharan ship anchored far out at the edge of the reefs, while the other two vessels continued to the island, as agreed. Guided on a careful course by the nervous captain, the flagship approached the sheltered cove that served as Fulcor’s defensible harbor. Staring up at the imposing stone cliffs, Iluris felt a chill. The place reeked of threat and danger. Priestlord Klovus had good reason to be suspicious.