Dragon's Egg
Page 14
“No need for that,” the king said, and he took Mella by the hand to lift her to her feet. “So you and my son have been gallivanting all over the wilderness, I hear?”
“Father, we—” Roger broke in.
“Your Majesty—” Wiltain interrupted at the same moment.
The king held up a hand to quiet them both. “Well?” he said to Mella.
And Mella knew just what to answer.
“We had to,” she said, looking up into the king’s face. “I promised. It was a matter of honor.”
The king looked as if he might be about to reply, but Wiltain spoke again. “Your Majesty, I—” This time it was Damien who interrupted.
“Honor?” The king’s head turned. So did everyone else’s. Damien’s dark eyes looked past Mella and glared as though he would set fire to Roger with the force of his gaze alone. “To take sides with our enemy? To aid a dragon? To forget the vows you swore? This is honor?”
Yes, Damien was definitely angry.
Roger seemed to shrivel by Mella’s side. She looked over at him in alarm. He’d spoken up so bravely to the dragon queen, and now he wilted before a mere knight? She drew in a breath to defend Roger, hardly knowing what she was going to say, but the king got there first.
“I believe the prince took an oath to keep the kingdom safe from dragons,” he said. “He appears to have done that most effectively—he and his friend.”
Roger looked startled.
“Your Majesty,” Wiltain insisted. He was the kind of person who would always get heard, Mella realized, just because he wouldn’t stop talking until it happened.
“Yes, Wiltain?” the king said patiently.
“We could send out word to stop the army’s retreat! Sire, we must defend the kingdom. We cannot simply leave now that we know what these—these beasts—are capable of!” He flapped a hand vaguely at Damien.
A shout of protest leaped up in Mella’s throat. This couldn’t happen. Not after Roger had promised. Not after the dragons had trusted them. Humans have no honor, Kieron had said. Were they going to prove him right?
“Father,” Roger insisted, his voice shrill with alarm. “Father!”
But the king’s look silenced Wiltain, stopped Roger, and made Mella swallow her objections.
“I believe my son negotiated a treaty,” the king said, his eyes nearly as fierce as Damien’s. “Are you suggesting that we break it?”
Wiltain’s face turned nearly as red as his wine-colored coat.
“I—that is—no, of course not, Your Majesty. I merely—”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” King Astor said sharply. “Since the other side of the bargain has been kept, we must do our part. Captain!” Owen looked up. “We will join the retreat. We wish to demonstrate goodwill, so as promptly as possible, please.”
Mella could hardly believe how efficiently the king’s orders were carried out. The tent disappeared from around them, the carpets were rolled up practically under their feet, carts were filled, and horses were saddled with startling speed. Wiltain was fussing over the girth on his horse, and the king was settling an argument over whether Damien would ride or be carried in a litter, and Roger and Mella stood still in the center of the storm of activity.
“Here.” Mella remembered the queen’s gift to her and pulled one of the dragontooth necklaces over her head. “This is yours. From the queen. She said—she said it would mark you as a dragonfriend. Forever.”
Roger stared at the pendant in his hand as if he were hypnotized by its sway. “But it’s—but that’s—”
A shadow fell over the necklace, and Mella looked up to see Gwyn standing against the light. Slowly, without asking, he leaned over to gather up the swinging piece of ivory in one hand. The movement loosened something around his own neck, and it swung forward into the light—a much older piece of ivory, worn thin and yellow, its once-sharp point blunted by time.
But Roger was looking past the shepherd, toward Damien, as, under the king’s stern gaze, he climbed reluctantly into a litter slung between two horses. And Mella remembered that the Defender had worn something similar around his neck, a long, thin tooth on a fine gold chain. And he was certainly no dragonfriend.
Gwyn’s eyes lifted up to the mountain towering over them. “Saw them, did you?” he asked, his voice low. “Talked to them? Like my father said—the true dragons?”
Mella nodded, and a slow smile spread across the shepherd’s face.
The king was on horseback now, and a shout came from Owen. “Mount up! All mounted to ride!”
Dragons were full of mysteries, Mella decided. And so were rulers and knights and even shepherds, and her brain was worn out trying to decipher it all. Right now she simply wanted to be back home, caring for her herd, enduring the scolding she was sure she’d get for worrying her parents, safe away from kings and queens and puzzles and quests and things an innkeeper’s daughter was probably not meant to understand.
A soldier at Gwyn’s side handed him the reins of a nervous roan mare, who tugged at his arm, pulling him a step or two away from the children. The shepherd swung into the saddle with a glance down at Roger and Mella that might almost have been of envy. As Roger pulled the leather thong over his head and tucked the tooth safely inside his shirt, two more soldiers hurried up, holding the reins of a black mare for Roger and a gentle gray one for Mella.
But Roger hesitated, even as Owen called again, “All mount!” He was looking up at the mountain just as Gwyn had done.
“I wish Alyas had stayed,” he murmured. “It wouldn’t have been safe, I know. But I wanted to say good-bye.”
Looking at the wistful expression on Roger’s face, Mella thought of something to make him feel better.
“He’s going to write a song about us,” she said. “He’s a bard. It’ll be about the rescue of the Egg. He said, with two such heroes, it should be remembered for a thousand years.”
Roger blinked. “Heroes? He said that?”
“Heroes who might learn to be a trifle less impetuous, next time,” King Astor said, riding up alongside them. The saddle skirts on his gray stallion were red velvet and golden silk, and they nearly swept the ground. “Bards do tend to exaggerate. Mount up. They’re waiting.”
One of the soldiers gave Mella a quick boost into the saddle. Roger swung on unaided, while the king took his place at the head of their small party.
Mella eyed Roger’s bent head, the slump of his shoulders. He had only heard the king’s reproof, she realized, not the compliment behind it.
“He just called you a hero,” she whispered loudly. “You’re being stupid again!”
Roger’s head came up, and she saw a startled smile cross his face as they followed the king in the path of the retreating army, heading for Dragonsford and home.
About the Author
Sarah L. Thomson is the author of three previous novels for young readers. Her most recent book is The Secret of the Rose, a thrilling historical mystery that the Maine Sunday Telegram called “a tour de force of 16th century London life.” The Dragon’s Son, a retelling of the King Arthur story, was a Junior Library Guild selection and a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year. The Washington Post described The Manny, a comedy about a boy nanny, as having “a plot worthy of Jane Austen.” A former editor with a major children’s book publisher, she lives in Portland, Maine.
www.sarahlthomson.com
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Credits
Jacket art © 2007 by John Rocco
Jacket design by Victoria Jamieson
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
&nb
sp; DRAGON’S EGG. Copyright © 2007 by Sarah L. Thomson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thomson, Sarah L.
Dragon’s egg / by Sarah L. Thomson.
p. cm.
“Greenwillow Books.”
Summary: Mella, a young girl trained as a dragon keeper, learns that the legends of old are true when she is entrusted with carrying a dragon’s egg to the fabled Hatching Grounds, a dangerous journey on which she is assisted by a knight’s squire.
ISBN 978-0-06-128848-7 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-128847-0 (lib. bdg.)
[1. Dragons—Fiction. 2. Eggs—Fiction. 3. Voyages and
travels—Fiction. 4. Knights and knighthood—Fiction.
5. Fantasy.] I. Title.
PZ7.T378Dqt 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2007009145
EPub Edition © January 2010 ISBN: 978-0-061-99588-0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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