Legacy of the Curse

by Deborah Grace White

  “Your Highness?”

  The tentative voice of the guard startled her, and she wiped a surreptitious hand across her eyes before turning.

  “Yes, I am here.”

  “Should—should we return to the surface, Your Highness?”

  The guard sounded nervous, and Sarai felt a small prick of remorse. This place was eerie, there was no question, and none of her companions were enjoying the visit. The stirring of power that reminded her so strongly of the mountains—and that gave her a sense of comfort to undercut the dark and mysterious nature of the cave—was no benefit to anyone else. Even the Valorian royals wouldn’t have felt it. They had no connection to the dragons like the Kyonan royals, and the Kyonan mountain folk, did.

  “Yes,” she said softly, running her hand one last time over the curious runes carved into the stone. She had no idea what they meant, and she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at her own folly. What was the point of coming here, of confirming that there really had been dragons in Valoria? What good did it do her, when she had no way of knowing where they were now? They were clearly long gone from this place.

  And it was time for her to be gone, too. Germain had wanted her back within five days. Even if they started the ride back to Bryford immediately, they would still be cutting it close.

  She turned away, taking in a deep breath, as if to fill her lungs one last time with that tingling power that made her heart ache with familiarity and longing. She would try to carry it with her as she returned to the solid, unimaginative life of the court at Bryford, where no one believed dragons were real, and there was no connection with the beasts’ power.

  Yes there is. The thought popped into Sarai’s mind as she climbed, as though spoken by the cave itself.

  She realized with a start that it was true. The court at Bryford did have a connection to dragons now—her. She supposed that from this time forward, the blood of Kyona’s royal house would be mixed with that of Valoria’s royal house, just as through her mother the blood of the mountain people had a place in Kyona’s royal line.

  It was a strange thought, but somehow it gave her comfort, like a tiny flicker of flame, which ever so slightly lightened the darkness of her loneliness.

  “Jocelyn! Jocelyn!”

  Jocelyn came back to reality with a gasp. The first thing she took in was the small tongue of fire sitting atop Kincaid’s oil lamp, looking like the embodiment of Princess Sarai’s thought. This irrelevant observation was quickly followed by the sensation of Kincaid’s hand gripping her shoulder, as she recognized the alarm in his voice.

  “Jocelyn!”

  She pulled her hand from the wall, a shudder running through her. For a moment she stared unseeingly into Kincaid’s face, still overwhelmed by the maelstrom of emotions she had just vicariously experienced. The all-consuming grief Princess Sarai had felt at the fate that had befallen her family, and her own powerlessness in the crisis, was almost more than she could take.

  And Princess Sarai’s loneliness and discomfort regarding her arranged marriage touched Jocelyn’s own fears much too intimately. She didn’t want to lose her identity as a Kyonan princess any more than Princess Sarai had wanted it, and for a moment she couldn’t tear her mind from the icy thought of being married to a stranger. The idea had seemed unpleasant enough a week ago, but for some reason it now felt unbearable.

  Without thinking about it, almost without realizing she was doing it, she buried her face in Kincaid’s chest, her whole body shaking in the aftermath of the strange vision.

  “Jocelyn!” Kincaid sounded almost as shaken as she felt. He still held the oil lamp aloft in one hand, but his free arm went around her immediately. “Are you all right? What happened? Did it hurt you somehow?”

  “No,” Jocelyn said, fully grasping for the first time that she was all but in Kincaid’s arms. She stepped back quickly, taking deep breaths as she tried to calm her mind. “No, I’m not hurt. I just—I don’t know exactly what happened. I think I just saw into Princess Sarai’s memories somehow.”

  “What?” Kincaid sounded unnerved. “Are you…are you making a joke? Because of all that talk about the cave holding her stories?”

  Jocelyn shook her head, another shiver running through her. “No, it’s not a joke. Something just happened. Something unnatural. I’ve heard of such things, but I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

  “Neither have I,” said Kincaid shakily. “You went all stiff and rigid, and you were unresponsive for ages. I thought you were having some kind of seizure.”

  “It was…indescribable,” said Jocelyn. “It was like I was in her head.” She stepped away from the wall. “You try.”

  Kincaid looked uncertain, but he stepped forward and laid his hand against the smooth rock of the cave wall.

  “Well?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Jocelyn frowned. “But you have mountain blood in you. Elddreki said you do. Try again.”

  “Try what? What do I do?”

  “Just…concentrate on Princess Sarai, on the story we heard.” Jocelyn shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  He turned back to the wall, his forehead creased in concentration. He closed his eyes and leaned in, and for a long moment Jocelyn held her breath.

  “Did you feel anything?” she asked when he pulled away.

  Kincaid nodded slowly, thoughtfully, his eyes on her rather than the wall. “I think I did, actually.”

  “Was it like you were in her head?” Jocelyn asked eagerly. “Like you were sharing her thoughts?”

  Kincaid shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t say that,” he answered carefully. “It wasn’t so much thoughts as…emotions. Just an impression. Grief, and loneliness, and a desperation to find something. It—”

  “What?” prompted Jocelyn when he cut himself off.

  “Well, it…” He looked apologetic. “It felt like you, actually.”

  Jocelyn looked away quickly, feeling uncomfortably exposed all of a sudden.

  “But you heard her thoughts?” asked Kincaid, his tone more normal.

  She nodded. “Strange that it was so much clearer for me. My mountain blood is also generations back.”

  “Not so strange,” contradicted Kincaid. “The mountain folk aren’t the only ones with a connection to dragon magic. You’re also a Kyonan royal. Plus—”

  “For now,” muttered Jocelyn to herself, another shudder running through her as she remembered Princess Sarai’s isolation and uncertainty.

  “What?” Kincaid was frowning at her.

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. “What were you saying?”

  He hesitated for a moment, still frowning, then continued. “I was saying that there’s another fairly obvious reason why you might be more sensitive to the power in this cave.”

  “Which is…?”

  He shrugged. “Well, you are magic, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, that.” Jocelyn considered the point. The power swirling gently through the cave did feel familiar in signature, another indication that Elddreki’s assessment of her power as dragon magic must be accurate. “You might be right.”

  “So what thoughts did you…overhear?” Kincaid asked.

  She looked up. “I know now why she was looking for dragons, for one thing. It was after the Kyonan coup. Her father had been killed, and she was desperate to find out what happened to her siblings, and to help her brother reclaim the throne if he was still alive. She was convinced the dragons would help if she asked them. But she wasn’t allowed to return to Kyona to try to make contact with the dragons in the mountains. So she was following any leads, any legends that suggested there might be dragons hidden in Valoria somewhere.”

  “Did she find any?” Kincaid asked eagerly.

  Jocelyn shook her head, deflating. “I don’t think so. She realized that dragons had been here, in this cave, once. But I don’t think she left here with any clues about where they went next.”

  “Hm,” said Kincaid, frowning
. “Which means we probably won’t either. Elddreki will be disappointed.” He gave a weak chuckle, his normal good humor not quite fully restored after Jocelyn’s strange vision. “Or at least, as disappointed as a creature who doesn’t really understand emotion can be.”

  “Elddreki!” said Jocelyn suddenly, her face lighting up. “We have something Princess Sarai didn’t have—an actual dragon with us!”

  “How does that help?” asked Kincaid.

  “The runes!” Jocelyn’s excitement was starting to drive away the lingering feeling of eeriness from her vision. “There really are dragon runes here. Princess Sarai found them. But she had no way to know what they mean.”

  “And we do.” Kincaid smiled at her. “Now we just have to find them.”

  “They’re over here,” said Jocelyn confidently, moving away from the wall, back toward the open space. Against the far wall.”

  “How do you know?”

  She shrugged. “I just do.”

  She led the way across the space, Kincaid following behind. She walked with a spring in her step, enjoying being the one with the answers for a change.

  “I think I’m getting used to this cave,” she said brightly. “It’s not so bad once you adjust to the—urrghh!”

  “What happened?” asked Kincaid, clearly trying not laugh at Jocelyn’s look of horrified disgust. She was shining her lamp frantically around her feet, looking for any sign of movement in the darkness. But whatever she had felt had disappeared into the gloom outside the small circle of her lamplight.

  “Something slithered over my foot,” she said with a shudder. “Are there—do you think there are snakes in this cave?”

  “Quite likely,” said Kincaid, not quite managing to keep the amusement out of his voice. “But don’t worry. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”

  “No they’re not,” said Jocelyn emphatically.

  “Really, they are,” said Kincaid earnestly, seeing the look on Jocelyn’s face as she scoured the darkness. “They—”

  “It might be true that they’re more afraid of us than you are of them,” Jocelyn cut him off dryly, and he chuckled.

  “Don’t worry, Joss,” he said, and a curiously pleasant rush passed over Jocelyn at his use of her nickname. “There are no poisonous snakes in this part of the country. I know they’re not the most appealing creatures, but they won’t hurt you.”

  “If you say so,” she said dubiously, casting one last uneasy glance around the cavern floor before continuing on her way. It took several minutes to cross the cave to the spot where Princess Sarai had been standing in the vision Jocelyn had seen. But once there, they had no difficulty finding what they were looking for.

  “It’s amazing,” Jocelyn breathed, running her fingers along the elegant runes. She could feel magic pulsing out of them, as if responsive to her touch. “I’ve never seen figures like these before.”

  “Me neither,” said Kincaid, leaning close to look. “They’re nothing like our letters, are they?”

  “Not at all,” Jocelyn agreed. “They look more like pictures than words. But not any pictures I can recognize.” But even as she said it, she gave a small jump. She had been tracing the shape of one of the runes, a curved, fluid arc, with her thumb. Although she could make no sense of the scratches, she formed a distinct impression of water. Kincaid looked at her questioningly, but she just shrugged, not sure if her assessment was correct.

  “They’re beautiful,” she breathed. She leaned back to look up the wall. “But there are so many of them, and they go so high. We’ll never be able to recreate them all for Elddreki.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Kincaid, his forehead creased in concentration as he also ran a hand over the runes. “I think it might be the same few repeated over and over.”

  Jocelyn stepped back from the wall, trying to get a sense of the big picture. “I think you’re right. Well, that makes things considerably easier. Hold still.”

  She stepped toward Kincaid and began to rummage in his pack, which was slung over his shoulder. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach into it, and she felt around for a while before she found what she was looking for.

  “Here.”

  She held out the roll of parchment he had bought at such an exorbitant price, and Kincaid took it automatically, his eyes still on the wall. After another forage, Jocelyn located the charcoal. She took the parchment back from Kincaid and stretched it out on the floor of the cave, her lamp placed carefully next to it. She looked at the charcoal dubiously. It didn’t seem a very effective tool for the job, but she supposed it would have to do. She set one rounded edge against the parchment, and looked up expectantly.

  “Can you hold your lamp closer to the runes?”

  “Huh?” asked Kincaid, coming out of his abstraction and turning to look at her, crouched on the cave floor. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to copy the runes,” said Jocelyn impatiently. “If we want to get out of here before it’s completely dark, we need to get moving.”

  “I think it’s probably already dark, to be honest,” said Kincaid. “And that’s not how you use the charcoal.” Once again he was trying not to smile, and once again he was failing. “Let me show you.”

  Jocelyn handed over the parchment and charcoal with the slightest of pouts. “Has anyone ever told you how maddening it is that you know everything?”

  Kincaid grinned. “Frequently.”

  “Let me guess.” Jocelyn smiled back in spite of herself. “Your little sister?”

  “Guessed it in one.”

  Jocelyn had followed Kincaid to the wall, and held her lamp high for illumination. She watched in fascination as Kincaid laid the parchment flat against the stone, right on top of the runes. He held it in place with one hand and began to rub the charcoal onto the parchment with the other, pressing it down only gently. When he pulled it away and held it up for her inspection, he was grinning again, looking a little too pleased with himself.

  “That’s a very neat trick,” said Jocelyn, impressed in spite of herself by the imprint of the runes now visible on the parchment. They showed white in a background of charcoal black.

  “Thank you,” said Kincaid, his modest tone unconvincing. He glanced up at the wall and back down at his parchment. “Do you think I got all the runes on this page?”

  Jocelyn studied the wall critically. “Yes, I think you did.”

  “Excellent,” he said briskly, rolling up the parchment with a businesslike air and stowing it safely back in his pack. “Do you want to explore further before we go back out to Elddreki?”

  “No,” said Jocelyn promptly, thinking of the snake. “I think we’ve done what we came to do.”

  “Then let’s get going.”

  They took up their lamps again and began to make their way back across the cavern floor, in what Jocelyn hoped was the right direction. They had only walked for a couple of minutes, however, when Kincaid’s lamp began to flicker.

  “Oh,” he said, his tone unconcerned as he looked down at it. “I thought the oil would last longer.”

  Jocelyn had kept walking, and she was some distance ahead, but she paused, glancing back at him. The erratic leaping of the light made her slightly dizzy, and she suddenly realized her lamp was also flickering.

  “Kincaid,” she said quickly, staring down at it. Kincaid looked up and followed her gaze.

  “Yes, we lit them at the same time.” He seemed to realize she was anxious, because he added reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Jocelyn, there’s plenty more oil. I have the jar here in my pack. We’ll just refill the lamps.”

  Jocelyn nodded, starting back toward him. But she had only taken a step when the lamps, which had both been flickering more and more wildly, suddenly died. They were plunged into total blackness, and Jocelyn stopped mid-stride, uncertain of her footing on the uneven ground.

  “Kincaid?” she said, her hand groping pointlessly out into the darkness, even though she knew he was well out of rea
ch. She knew she sounded breathless, but she couldn’t help herself. The darkness was sudden and absolute, and she found it extremely unnerving.

  “I’m here,” said Kincaid reassuringly. He didn’t sound in the least alarmed, and Jocelyn’s breathing slowed slightly. “It’s all right. I’ll refill the lamps, then I can light them again with my flint, like I did the first time.”

  Jocelyn nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “All right.”

  She could hear Kincaid rummaging in his pack. “Here we go—uh oh!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Uh oh?” repeated Jocelyn, foreboding creeping over her. “What does ‘uh oh’ mean?” Although from the smash which had accompanied his words, she was pretty sure she knew.

  There was a moment of silence. “That was the jar of oil,” said Kincaid apologetically.

  “What does that mean?” Jocelyn’s voice rose alarmingly in pitch with the question.

  “Well, that…you know. That we have no more oil.”

  There was another moment of silence.

  “So we can’t make any more light?”

  “That’s right.”

  More silence, longer this time.

  “Kincaid?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “What are we going to do?” Jocelyn looked around, willing her eyes to see something, anything, through the gloom. But the darkness was so solid it felt like she had a blindfold pressed over her eyes.

  Kincaid sighed. “Well, like I said, I think it would be dark outside by now. Even if we could find our way back across the cave safely without our lamps, I don’t think we’d find the opening without the sunlight coming through it.”

  “So…what? You’re saying we have to spend the night in here?” Jocelyn made no attempt to hide the horror in her voice.