by Nora Roberts
“The carriage is here to take you to London,” Lord Falcon began.
“Miss Andrews won’t be leaving, Father.” Chandler never took his gaze from hers. “I’ve convinced her that one of life’s greatest adventures awaits her here at Falcon’s Lair.”
“I see.” A slow smile spread across the old man’s face. To Felicity he said, “I told you happy endings are the best, my dear.” Signaling to the others, he led the party indoors, where they continued to stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring at the couple on the terrace.
Chandler and Felicity never moved. Yet a shimmering light seemed to surround them. William explained to Diana that it was probably a trick of the sunlight.
Soaring above Felicity and Chandler was a magnificent falcon. It turned its head one time, as if studying the man and woman, then catching a wind current, opened its great wings and lifted high into the air.
There were many who swore it continued climbing until it reached the sun. The story was repeated until it became just another of the many legends that surrounded Falcon’s Lair.
But it couldn’t top the legend of the family’s boldest adventurer, Chandler, who returned from the Amazon to find Felicity, the woman of his dreams, awaiting him. Together they founded a dynasty destined for greatness.
It is said their love burned brighter than the sun and will continue to burn for all eternity.
DRAGONSPELL
Marianne Willman
To Friends and Friendship—especially to Nora, Ruth, and Jill, whose loyalty and love are valued “above rubies”
And to Linda and Tina Blaschke, “pearls beyond price,” whose friendship, love, and support eased us through a very trying time
1
Once upon a time, in the days of Magic and Wonder, there lived a princess in the Kingdom of Amelonia. Like all proper princesses, she was lovely as the dawn, with fiery hair and skin like petals of the rose. But she was not like any other princess, then or now, as you will soon discover. And such an unusual princess surely deserves to win the love of a most unusual man…
On a warm summer’s day, several noble ladies sat in the castle’s solar, heads bowed over their embroidery frames. In the courtyard outside, a market day was in progress, sounds of music and laughter drifting in through the open casement window.
The only sounds inside, except for the occasional snick of tiny golden scissors, were the frequent sighs of the youngest, whose jeweled coronet sat slightly askew on her shimmering auburn hair. The amethyst cabochons were the exact color of her thickly lashed eyes.
How tedious to be stuck away on such a beautiful afternoon. No, unbearable! thought the Princess Tressalara. If she had her way, she would be riding out over the meadows with her hair blowing free in the sun, instead of wasting her time in such drudgery.
She stabbed the golden needle into the taut cloth in the frame…and into her finger, as well.
“By Saint Ethelred’s beard!” she exclaimed in annoyance, sucking her injured finger. A small drop of blood splashed onto her white silk gown.
The court ladies gasped in shock at such language from their princess. Lady Grette, the chief among the others, rose and went to her mistress’s side, making soothing little noises. When the princess was annoyed, it was best to stay out of her way; but when her rosy pink mouth firmed to a hard line, an explosion was imminent.
“Now, now. Patience is a virtue to be cultivated by the wise seamstress. I know it is hard, Princess Tressalara, to remain indoors on a fine summer’s day. But you must finish your work before you ride out. You are King Varro’s daughter, and it is time and more that you learn all the duties and skills of a royal lady.” How else was the headstrong princess ever going to mend her ways and acquire a proper husband? Heaven knew she needed one.
Tressalara’s eyes darkened to violet as she eyed her handiwork ruefully. “What good is it being the king’s daughter when I am kept inside like a prisoner? Why, the lowliest peasant in Amelonia has more freedom than I! Give me one good reason why I should spend any more time at this hopeless task.”
The chief lady-in-waiting played her best card. “Because the king, your father, wishes it.”
Tressalara fell silent. Lady Grette knew her weaknesses all too well. She would do anything to make her father proud of her. Anything to make him acknowledge that she was as capable and fit to rule after him as any man. As capable and fit as the strong sons he had longed for and never had.
Could she not ride and fence and loose her arrows to the target’s heart with the best of them? Was she not clever at games of strategy? Wise in dispensing justice at the monthly assizes? And he would have her spend her days sewing posies and knotting fringes instead!
But she would do it. Because she loved him. And because she wanted him to love her in return. “Oh, very well.”
Lady Grette leaned over the embroidery frame and examined Tressalara’s handiwork with dismay. She certainly expected more from a princess of eighteen summers. Why, any of her youngest charges in the nursery could have done better. The stitches were all higgledy-piggledy, like the wavering progress of a rum-sotted sailor in a port town.
A shame that the king had not taken another gentle wife to raise his daughter, rather than locking himself away with his prayers and memories these past ten years. It was a wonder that the princess, motherless and raised like a boy since then, hadn’t clambered out a window and escaped to the stables long ago this morning, the way she used to as a wee, naughty lass.
Ah, well. Lady Grette steeled her heart. It was for Tressalara’s own good. She was a young woman now, ripe for marriage. Her father hoped to arrange a match between the princess and some foreign prince before the harvest was in. The royal scribe said that word of King Varro’s intentions had been sent to kings and dukes and princes far and wide, although his messengers had not yet returned from abroad. No doubt they would, with many splendid offers for Tressalara’s hand.
At least, she certainly hoped so: The lady-in-waiting did not like Lord Lector, the king’s chief advisor. Grette feared that the king was considering him as a son-in-law. Certainly he had let Lector take over the reins of government to a large extent. The man was lobbying hard for the position, if half of what she heard was true.
But handsome as he was, he would make a terrible husband for a headstrong girl like Tressalara. There were those rumors that he had been responsible for bloody raids against their neighbors that had been blamed on Cador of Kildore. But Grette was sure that Lector would not have stooped so low. This was a peaceable kingdom.
In an attempt to ignore her disquiet, she turned her attention to the task at hand. “These straggling stitches will not do, your highness! You must pick them all out and start over. It is long past the time when you should have learned the gentle womanly arts.”
Tressalara ground her teeth. It had taken her two hours to set those stitches. She had tried, truly tried, to do them properly. Now she tried, truly tried, to rein in her temper. As usual, it got the better of her. Instead of reaching for the tiny scissors, she rose and drew her jeweled dagger.
“This for the gentle womanly arts!” she exclaimed, slashing her blade through the faulty stitches—and through the taut linen beneath as well. It made a most satisfactory ripping sound. “There. They are all out, every one!”
While the ladies stared, aghast, their princess turned on her heel and left the room. No one followed. No one dared. She was still their royal mistress.
Tressalara’s anger spurred her on. She reached her chambers and took out the boy’s garb she’d hidden in one of her dower chests. The clothes had lain there for months, unused, since she had given a scrawny stable lad her best leather jerkin in exchange for the smocked shirt and trews of drab brown homespun. Rough garb indeed.
There was a time when she’d had as fine a set of hunting garb as any princeling and had ridden out in her father’s train with her bow and arrows on her back. But that was before nature had made her womanhood too evident, by
adding curves to what had been the figure of a spindle-shanked stripling. It was most unfair!
Worst of all was the knowledge that her changed appearance was the true reason behind her changed status. It had reminded her father that his only child was not the longed-for son. Her father felt that women were too weak to rule alone. Since he had no male heir, he had recently let slip that he intended to marry her off to some foreign prince. Fire flashed in Tressalara’s eyes.
She had never met a man that she could imagine taking for a husband. And she couldn’t bear to think of Amelonia being handed to some stranger like a honey cake on a platter, all because she’d had the misfortune to be born female. But the wedding ring was not yet on her hand, and there was no likely suitor in sight. Plenty of time for an enterprising young woman to prove herself worthy of guiding her people firmly and wisely.
Rebellion bloomed, and a wildness flared in Tressalara, borne with the scent of summer meadows on the warm air. She slipped out of her gown and into the stable lad’s clothes. She wished that she could cut her heavy hair short, but satisfied herself by twisting it into a thick braid.
The door to her inner chamber opened, and Elani, her youngest lady-in-waiting and closest friend, entered. Her blue eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, highness, you dare not…!
“Watch me and see!”
With a grin, Tressalara pinned her long braid atop her hair and covered it with a battered leather cap that pulled down to her ears. “Behold young Trev, a simple peasant lad of Amelonia, on his way to an adventure.”
Before Elani could even think what to do, the princess was gone.
She was halfway down the back staircase to the lower level, her mind on nothing but escape and freedom, when she heard a scream followed by a great commotion in the main courtyard. Without pausing, she clambered to the ledge of a window that overlooked the market area.
What she saw turned her heart to a ball of ice. The portcullis had dropped, the gates were barred, and the courtyard was filled with men-at-arms in black livery. Some of the visitors threw off their cloaks to reveal the same ominous uniforms. They were everywhere. At their leader’s signal they charged into the crowd.
Tables were overturned. Fruit and tools and pottery went flying as the king’s bugler blew a call to arms. Chickens and piglets scattered. Women and children screamed and ran; babies wailed as men fell before the attackers’ blades. Thank God—there was Jeday, her father’s loyal captain of the guard arriving with his men.
He raised his arm to lead a charge, and Tressalara’s relief turned to horror as Jeday was struck from behind by an assassin’s knife. As he fell, lifeless, the guard behind him threw off his king’s livery to show again the dread black uniform of the attackers. It had all happened in an instant.
Then Tressalara recognized their leader: the smooth-talking chief councillor, Lord Lector. No mistaking that mane of dark hair with its single silver streak, the jutting profile, and the silver scorpion emblem on his shield. A crafty and dangerous man. There was no time to lose.
As Tressalara ducked inside, the courtyard rang with fierce cries: “Death to the tyrant! Death to King Varro!”
Elani came to the head of the stairs and looked down, her usually pretty face pale as lard. “What is it?”
“Lector has turned traitor, and we are besieged. I must find my father.” Tressalara was halfway down the stairs. “The enemy are within the walls. Save yourself, Elani. Hide in my chambers. You know where.” She saw her friend hesitate. “That is an order from your princess! I command you!”
Then she was on the last step, plunging into the shadows along the corridor. She must reach her father in time. She must! Tressalara’s heart beat so hard it seemed about to jolt out of her chest. The invaders had timed their coup well, waiting until the king had retired to the isolated chapel for his daily meditations—alone and unarmed.
Oh, the cowards! she thought, sliding back the secret panel that led to a shortcut. The castle was riddled with many such passageways, a legacy of her great-grandfather’s madness. Trusting no one and fearing assassination, he had built a maze inside these walls. She knew every secret way and in the past had gotten her britches dusted a few times for hiding in them overlong and setting the castle on its ear.
But now the knowledge of these places, where she and Elani had played as children, would serve her well. If only she could get to her father in time to warn him, she could spirit him away to safety through the secret door in the chapel.
She slipped the catch that opened behind the altar. Before it had always amused her that the icon of Saint Ethelred the Dragonmaster hung upon the doorway to the heart of the secret maze. At the moment she had no thought for it.
Her father was on his knees at the altar, looking old and frail in his simple robe and without his emblems of kingship. As he humbled himself before God, his gray head bent almost to the floor, and his coronet caught the light of the tall candelabra.
At any other time Tressalara would have told herself that he was no doubt praying for a virile son-in-law to sire a male grandchild in the years to come. But now was no time to nurture old grievances.
“Father!”
“Tressalara! By all the saints!” Varro roared, taking in her boy’s garb and her unorthodox arrival in one heated glance. “Do you have no sense of what is fitting in this holy…”
“Father, we are under attack! Lector and his men have taken the courtyard and the great hall. Jeday—“She strengthened her faltering voice. “Jeday is dead by an assassin’s hand. Come this way. Hurry!”
Already they could hear the first sounds of tumult from just beyond the thick chapel walls. Voices raised in anger and fear. The clash of steel on steel. Cries of mortal agony.
“Father, come!”
He hesitated as the locked chapel door shuddered from the onslaught. The brass key fell to the stone flags with an ominous clang. The wood cracked and splintered. The king hurried to Tressalara’s side, and she turned down the secret passage, assuming that he meant to follow.
Instead, he wrested her drawn dagger from her hand, then shoved her forward into the darkness with what frail strength he could muster. She fell heavily, skinning her hands on the rough stone floor. The door to the passageway thudded shut behind her.
Jumping up, Tressalara threw herself at the latch, but it refused to give. She pressed her shoulder against the panel, tears of rage and fear for her father running down her cheeks. She knew why she couldn’t open it. Her father had his back firmly to the door, holding it shut so that she could not open it from the inside and reveal her hiding place. He had chosen her life over his.
Tears streaming, she could do nothing but stifle her own sobs and pray. The scuffle of feet and the shriek of metal against stone were plainly audible through the heavy wood, although the assassins’ voices were muffled.
An eternity passed while she waited, hoping in vain that her father would escape yet knowing that he had no chance at all. Vowing, through her anguish, that she would have revenge upon Lector and save the kingdom.
All was suddenly quiet. Tressalara’s blood chilled. She scrabbled at the edges of the wood, trying with all her might to open the panel. It wobbled slightly but did not give. Eons passed while she tried to work it free, and there was nothing but silence from the other side. Then the hidden catch gave, and the panel slowly rolled back.
The chapel was dim. The great candelabra lay on their sides, flames extinguished, among the holy icons broken on the floor. Only the ruby glow of the altar lamp illumined the chamber. “Father?”
Silence. She moved cautiously around the altar. Something skittered beneath her foot. She stooped and picked up a stone. No, a small green jewel winking at her in the half light, its center carved in the shape of an eye. She had seen it somewhere before.
Tucking it in the leather bag she wore inside her smock, she looked around. In the faint red glow, she spied the painted panel of Saint Ethelred propped against the altar. Blood dripped from the s
aint’s painted breast. It ran in a thin diagonal line toward a dark piece of cloth on the ground.
Tressalara’s breath caught. Not cloth, but a pool of blood, widening as she watched. She pushed the panel aside. “Ah, no! Father!”
How small he looked, how diminished in his bloodied robe. Cradling him in her arms, she felt for a pulse. His eyes, so like her own, flickered open.
“Foul…treachery,” he whispered faintly. “I had been warned but I thought…I could not believe the reports…thank God and Saint Ethelred…I had the foresight to hide…the Andun Crystal.”
She refused to see that he was dying before her eyes. “Save your strength. I’ll hide you in the passageway…seek out help from our loyal soldiers…. You can send a messenger to Morania, asking for the duke’s assistance…”
His voice came out in a harsh, choking whisper.
“Child, I waited too long to find you a husband. You must take the Andun Stone, daughter, and flee to Morania. The duke has…several sons. Even without a kingdom you are…beautiful. One of them will surely…take you to wife.”
“I will not flee! Nor will you. We will stay and fight for our people!”
Varro gave a liquid cough, and the blood seeped through the fingers that Tressalara held to his chest to cover his wound. She put her cheek against her father’s and was shocked to feel how icy it was. Her tears mingled with his.
“So…cold…” he whispered, as if talking to himself.
Tressalara could fool herself no longer. She rose slowly and found a cushion to put beneath his head, a piece of fallen tapestry to cover him and hold the last bit of warmth in his bones. Her grief and the enormous responsibility of what it meant to be truly royal fell upon her shoulders like a cloak of lead. She could scarcely bear the weight of it. Her knees buckled, and she grasped at the panel for support, lowering herself to his side once more.