An Heir to Thorns and Steel

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “This place,” I said into Kelu’s ear. “It must have gates.”

  “It does.”

  “With guards.”

  “Just don’t fall off,” she said, ducking low against the drake’s neck.

  I shrugged and bent toward her, the creature’s mane slapping my shoulder.

  Soon we were flowing past the largest part of the estate, so large that we seemed to run forever before it receded. And then the gates hove into view, and Kelu sent the drake veering off the path. I lifted my eyes just enough to know there was no earthly way a horse could have leapt those gates and then the drake was airborne.

  We touched down on the other side as lightly as the wind brushing grass. The high sky above us, the hot skin of the drake against the insides of my legs, and the twin genets before and behind me... my world had no beginning, nor end, and I had never felt such elation. I hid my face in Kelu’s hair and wept for glory. I thought there could be no improving this feeling...

  ...and then I heard the splash of water and a cold spray wet my calves, and we were loping along a moon-silvered beach, black waves frothed with silky gray. The ocean’s susurrus calmed the storm in my head, gentled the ache in my over-sensitive skin, filled me until I could hear nothing else.

  “Master?” Almond whispered from a far, far distance. “Are you well?”

  I drew in a long breath and said, “Yes.” For the first time, it was the truth.

  “It’s going to be a long ride,” Kelu said. “All night and into the day. Tell me if you need to stop.”

  “What about the drake?” I asked. “Doesn’t he need rest?”

  “The drake’ll run forever, as far as I know,” Kelu said. “It doesn’t seem to tire the way horses do.”

  I felt the fluid glide of the muscles beneath us and the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of its barrel as it breathed, and I could almost believe her. But something in me insisted, “We’ll have to stop at some point for him as well.”

  She shrugged. “Just as long as we’re far, far away from Amoret by that time.”

  “At this pace, I can’t imagine that taking long,” I said as the great claws bit into the sand and sent it flying in lacy fans. “It was so easy,” I added in wonder. “Escaping.”

  “We’re not safe yet,” Kelu said.

  I nodded and leaned into the drake’s next stride, and we paced the ocean. The sand gave way to pebbles and then rocky slopes that the drake bounded up with the agility of a pouncing cat. Even when the rocks beneath its feet trembled and slid it never slipped, only dug those claws deep past the scree and launched us up again. If this was a mount for royalty, then it was only because it was itself a king among mounts.

  We surmounted a cliff and ran its length, the drake’s mane streaming in the starlight as far below the distant ocean boomed and rolled. On my other side the grassy field stretched on into the purple dark. The warm wind coursing over us tasted like the sea, and like exotic flowers I had no names for, like the sweat of the drake and the lilac-and-musk fur of the genets. It was so beautiful it pierced my heart.

  “Let’s stop,” Almond said. “He needs to stretch.”

  Did I? Kelu was pulling the drake to a halt. We’d been moving so long that the cessation of the wind was a shock. I got my leg around the back of the saddle and slid onto my feet in the grass; though I wobbled, I did not fall. The drake twisted around to nuzzle me and I hugged its long head, setting my brow against its smooth cheek.

  It made a sound I couldn’t describe. Not a purr... but a low rumble in its chest.

  Almond wrapped her small arms around me from behind. “Thank you, Master,” she said.

  I looked over my shoulder at her. “What for?”

  “For sending for me,” she said.

  “I can’t believe she came,” Kelu added, standing apart from us with her arms folded over her chest. “Talk about disobedience. Running away from your masters?”

  “The royal blood-flag is my master,” Almond said. “And yours too, Kelu.”

  Kelu snorted.

  “So,” I said, stroking the drake’s forelock and then releasing its head, “where exactly are we? And where are we going?”

  “We’re on the island of Aravalís, the largest one in Serala,” Kelu said. “And we’re heading away from Amoret’s estate.”

  “That’s your plan?” I asked. “Just ‘away’?”

  “Yes,” she said, ears flattening.

  “Kelu,” I said, “the island is full of elves. Elves who probably want to kill me or do whatever it was they were doing to me that was going to kill me... and re-capture the two of you. And who knows how much the drake is worth. And your plan is... to avoid the search parties forever?”

  Kelu looked away from me.

  I sighed and rubbed my forehead. Such a beautiful night to be so lost and in so much peril.

  “Master,” Almond whispered, “You’re standing.”

  I looked down at her hands clasped at my waist, then at the horizon. Then at my feet. I was indeed standing. Not pain-free—never that—but I could stand on my own. “Small miracles,” I muttered.

  Nearby the drake had splayed its forelegs and stretched its back with all the sinuous elegance of a cat. The saddle shifted forward as it exhaled. Kelu sighed and went to tighten the belly-band while I watched and mused.

  “The mark on Captain Gant,” I said. “He was traveling under some elf’s blood-flag. He seemed to think highly of him.”

  “Kemses e Sadar, Master,” Almond said. “The Sadar blood-flag is powerful, though not popular.”

  “I would have thought the elves would worship power,” I said. “Why is he not popular?”

  “There are rumors,” Kelu said from the drake’s side.

  “What kind of rumors?”

  Kelu’s tail swished once in agitation. “That he consorts with humans.”

  “Sounds like my kind of elf,” I said.

  “Carnally,” Kelu said, eyeing me.

  I snorted. “Well, I’m not the right shape for that. Is he on this island?”

  “Yes,” Kelu said. “At the opposite end, at the mouth of the river Susulís in the southwest. He owns Erevar.”

  “Well, let’s go,” I said, carefully approaching the drake.

  “That’s... a very long way,” Kelu said.

  “And you have a better plan?” I asked as the drake knelt in front of me.

  Kelu’s ears flicked outward.

  “Then to Erevar we go,” I said, clambering into the saddle. Almond hopped up behind me, and Kelu came last, reluctant. This time the drake waited for my knees to press against its barrel before it began walking.

  “You should still give me the reins,” Kelu said. “You have no idea where you’re going.”

  “True,” I said, and passed them to her. She rubbed her thumbs against the leather, then turned the drake’s head and we resumed our flight.

  Dawn from the back of a drake, fleeing for my life across a tufted plain bordering the sea, was indescribable, except that again I wept, wept as the long pink shadows swelled from our bodies, fluttering across the passing grasses like a gossamer flag. I was tired of crying, and tired of the Archipelago with its way of breaking me open. I had learned hatred; now I knew beauty. That I had learned them both within a day of one another seemed obscene. How could the world hold such extremes? How could my heart?

  The drake ran on, tireless and faithful, and we clung to its back. I waited for the sounds of pursuit, shoulders hunched against the blows I imagined would come soon enough.

  We stopped at a stream cut into the rocky soil so the drake could drink. Almond passed me a canteen as I leaned against the saddle.

  “Can you hear them?” Kelu asked the smaller genet.

  Almond’s ears flicked outward, inward. “Something,” she said.

  Kelu nodded. “We have to keep going.”

  The drake turned its head to me, nuzzled my jaw. That its chin dripped water didn’t seem important. I cupped its face and
brushed my thumbs against its cheek, below the round red eyes.

  “Master,” Almond said, voice soft, “can you ride?”

  “Yes,” I said, unable to drag my gaze from its. “Are they really following us?”

  “I think so,” Almond said.

  I closed my eyes and rested my brow against the drake’s. It rumbled.

  “We can’t run forever,” I said, voice tired.

  “No, but we’re going to try,” Kelu said.

  That was when the ride became torment. The first night and into the morning had been a wonder, but as the hours passed and Kelu spurred the creature on I longed to stretch, to rest, to stop moving. My legs ached save where they touched the drake’s sides. My spine trembled with weariness. I realized I had not slept, or what sleep I’d had I’d caught between strides, jerking awake when my head nodded forward. I worried about falling off, about losing my glasses, about eating, about being caught. I worried that my wrists were beginning to lock around Kelu’s waist, that my knees wouldn’t bend when I finally dismounted for the day, that the pain would be more sadistic than the elves when it caught up with me again. I had had no poppy, but while both drake and genets could bolster my sense of well-being I could sense their effect on me attenuating; soon I would be again at the nonexistent mercy of my sickness.

  I longed for an ending, and there was only more of the same.

  “They’re coming,” Almond hissed into my back. I looked over my shoulder and glimpsed a purple shadow growing against the plain’s grass-felted edge.

  “I thought this was the fastest mount in the stable,” I said.

  “Yes, well, they don’t care if they run their horses to foundering and trade them for fresh ones,” Kelu growled. “Everything’s disposable to an elf.” Lower then. “This is probably fine sport for them. I bet there are banners. And hunting cats.”

  Hunted like a fox... what an obscenity. I crouched lower into the drake’s stride and prayed to lose them.

  With the implacability of the tide rising, our hunters closed the distance, until even I could hear the bells on their harnesses and the heavy drumming of their host’s hooves. They had sent dozens of elves to chase me down.

  I gathered the drake’s mane in my aching fingers. “Come on,” I whispered. “Just a little more.”

  The thick muscles knotted beneath us and the drake surged forward, racing away from our pursuers. Its skin had gone fever-hot, and its sinews no longer glided wet beneath it... I could feel the effort as a friction in its body. But oh, how it gave that effort! I leaned into every stride, pressing Kelu against the pommel of the saddle. I did not want to be captured. I didn’t want to be parted from it or the genets. I didn’t want to go back to that cell. And as if sharing my desperation, the drake sprinted out of reach.

  “We might make it,” Kelu whispered, shocked.

  “Run, great heart,” I said, “Run!”

  The drake coughed an answer, rolled the bit into its mouth and plunged on, and somehow, somehow we opened the distance... until the host fell away, taking their bells and their drums with them.

  “God,” I whispered, looking past my shoulder. Clinging to me, Almond followed my gaze and said, “I think we out-ran them!”

  And then Kelu cursed and the drake pulled up so short I tumbled half out of the saddle, my leg tangled in one of the stirrups and my arms scrabbling at the pommel and the reins. The drake wove, almost fell onto me—God! But pitched forward at the last, spilling the genets from its back.

  Before us a second elven raiding party was waiting, shining brighter than the ascendant afternoon sun. Their blue shadows stretched over us and I felt eclipsed by their power and brilliance. I hated them. Not just for being so much more beautiful, so much more real than I was, not just for catching me so effortlessly, but for how they’d caught me... sprawled on the ground, half trussed in my own mount’s tack, as graceless and awkward as a new foal.

  The lead hunter set his spear across his saddle. “You can fight us, if you wish,” he said in a mellifluous voice.

  “And this would accomplish what?” I asked, breathing heavily.

  “Very little,” the hunter said. He looked past me at the horizon. “Save, perhaps, to delay us until Amoret’s party arrives, and result in a tiresome—.”

  “A what?” I asked, unfamiliar with the word that had ended his comment.

  “A jurisdictional squabble,” Kelu said in Lit. Her mien was some combination of sulk and anger.

  “Ah,” I said. To the elf, “Apologies. Your tongue is still new to me.”

  “I imagine it is.”

  I realized then that he was talking to me, instead of past me. “Who would win?” I asked.

  “We would,” he said. “But it might require my master’s presence, and that would discommode him.”

  “And your master is?” I asked.

  “Sedetnet,” he said.

  Almond squeaked next to me. Kelu said nothing. “Just Sedetnet?” I asked. “No blood-flag?”

  “My master needs no blood-flag,” he said. “Will you come, then? Or will we have to drag you?”

  Amoret was a known quantity, and not a good one; this new person—at very least his servants acknowledged that I was a sentient being. Surely that boded well. I said, “I will go with you. But... I am not sure the drake can carry us.”

  “You can ride with me.” The hunter’s horse carried him forward, parting him from the company of his comrades. I squinted up at his face and could barely see it for the glimmer of light beneath his skin. This elf was all sunlight, hair that shone like gold leaf, complexion touched with cinnamon and honey. His eyes were the green of peridots, pale, clear and light.

  He held out one of those shining hands, and I stared at it. This then, was my fate. With a sigh, I slipped my fingers in his and let him haul me upright, stumbling on the stirrup still wrapped around one of my ankles. Once I freed myself I turned to the still recumbent drake.

  “Come now,” I said softly. “No more running.”

  It lifted its weary head.

  “I won’t let them mistreat you,” I said, knowing it for a ridiculous promise and making it anyway. “Come on. On your feet, great heart.”

  Like an old man it heaved itself from the ground, then stretched its neck to rest its face in my hands. I pulled it closer, hugging it. When I opened my eyes I found the hunter watching me.

  “He deserves the best you have,” I said.

  He nodded. “It will have it.”

  One of the other elves caught the drake’s reins and tied them to the back of his saddle. The genets were mounted behind two others, leaving me to the hunter-leader, who pulled me up in front of him. Like the drake, his body was warm, and everywhere we touched I felt ripples of pleasure and heat.

  “Lean back,” the hunter said.

  “I would rather not.”

  “It’s a long ride.”

  When I didn’t move, the hunter shrugged and racked his spear in the saddle, gathered the reins and turned the horse toward the south. I rode with a sun at my back and the sun in my eyes, and I couldn’t tell which one burned brighter.

  I began that ride downtrodden in spirit and sore in body; by the time we stopped that first evening I was pain-raddled and desperate. When the hunter let me off his steed I tried to pace and crumpled. The two genets rushed to me while the elves watched, distant and stoic.

  “There’s no more of the drug,” Kelu said, grasping my arm.

  “I know,” I said, panting. My limbs kept trying to twitch out of their grasp, which is when I thought to say, “You should let go as I am about to have a seizure.”

  Kelu released me at once; Almond a little too late, and I flung her away before the convulsions took me. Against grass dyed copper and blood-red by the sunset, I writhed and gasped and lost my sense of time and not long after of place, until all I knew was a distant pain and somewhere, somewhere, the rush of the sea.

  When my spirit settled again in my body I found the hunter c
rouched near me, a blur of iridescence and gold. His hand drew near enough for me to see my glasses on his palm, and the revulsion I fought at the sight of them in a stranger’s hand was almost overwhelming. But I refused to let them know how much it bothered me, that they had witnessed my episode. With a trembling arm I reached for my spectacles and set them again on my nose.

  His spear rested across his lap; he was balanced with one hand on a knee and the other lightly braced against the ground.

  “Almond,” I managed past my dry throat. “Did I...?”

  “She has been healed,” the hunter said. “Are you done?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I never know anymore. I never understand.”

  He nodded and withdrew. I supposed he asked only to know how much room to set aside for me, or to decide whether I needed a special watch. They covered me with a blanket, but I didn’t grow warm beneath it. I tried to sleep but no position was comfortable. The need for the drug itched beneath my skin. I had returned to the hell I’d been trying so hard to escape, and the flame-bright presence of the elves taxed my oversensitive skin past endurance. I lived because I did not know how to die... and in the morning, I let their beautiful, too-hot hands drag me from my hollow and load me back into the saddle.

  How long we traveled thus, I cannot say. I was accustomed to spending my misery in a bed, hiding in my flat. To be forced into constant motion made the pain impossible, so vast I could only slump in the arms of my captors and let them carry me where they would. The days and nights bled into one another, sweat-and-darkness, hallucinations and fever.

  And then the voice came from behind my body, caressing my back.

  “We are here.”

  I grappled for a sense of truth and sight and when I thought I had it, knew I had gone insane. “Yon tower is missing its base.”

  To my surprise, the hunter said, “Yes.”

  I re-evaluated. “Then that really is the top of a tower floating in mid-air.”

  “Yes,” he said.