In the Time of Dragon Moon

by Janet Lee Carey

  Lady Olivia’s face went hard as ironwood. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Pock Face lost his grip a moment and stared at me bewildered.

  The queen stretched out her hand. “You may show your gratitude now, Uma.”

  I crept forward and kissed her ruby ring, keeping my head low. “Thank you, Your Majesty.” I would live a little longer. But her offer meant nothing if she didn’t mean to release my tribe once she got the child she wanted.

  Queen Adela withdrew her hand. “Take her out. I am finished with her until she’s properly dressed.”

  I saw my reflection in the queen’s vanity mirror as the guards led me to the door: a girl-boy in dirty tunic and breeches, with a dark, tear-stained face.

  “Oh, and Uma?” The men paused, holding my upper arms tight. “You have hidden yourself from us in many ways while you worked in the shadow of your father. Now I will bring you into the light. We will see if you bloom or burn.”

  • • •

  I HIKED UPHILL to my father’s grave.

  How could I live without him?

  I was his daughter—and the son he never had.

  He was my teacher and my solid earth.

  The queen had refused him the dignity of a gravestone. I sang to the Holy Ones as I set out the symbols of the four sacred elements at his gravesite, where I’d carved his name onto a driftwood plank: rich soil from Devil’s Boot, an osprey feather, a bowl of seawater, and my flint box to burn an oak branch. He deserved a large gathering, not the songs of a single soul, but I was the only one here to perform the rite.

  The Adan had already started his long walk home to heavenly Nushtuen. His Path Animal, owl, would guide him. I hoped my prayers would help.

  I was about to light the cleansing fire when a shadow overcame the hill. Vazan stormed in, her hot gust blowing me off my feet. I flung my hands back to catch my fall and landed with a thump as she settled noisily on the summer grass.

  One eye on the grave, the other on me, she lowered her great head. I brushed myself off and stood again, facing her. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the earthen mound. She gave a smoky huff when she caught my father’s scent.

  “Uma!” She blazed fire over Father’s grave. I leaped back. She’d nearly singed my feet. The raw flames lit the oak branch at the foot of Father’s grave. I didn’t need the tinder box now. She completed the fire rite.

  Her large silver eyes were iced with anger. “How did the queen kill your father?”

  “She didn’t . . . Father worked and wouldn’t stop to eat or rest. He hid his pain from me.”

  “But you saw it,” she said.

  “I saw it. He . . . wouldn’t let me treat him,” I said past the lump in my throat.

  Vazan dug a talon into the soft grave soil. She was all wind and fire, not bound to earth as humans are, though she loved her rich hunting grounds around our volcano. Her bond to my father showed in the great sacrifice she’d made leaving her cave in Devil’s Boot to follow us north. Smoke billowed from her nose. Her breaths were long sighs. Dragons do not cry.

  I breathed in her smoke, gray grief between us. At last she spoke.

  “There is no one to heal this infertile queen now. She will leave the king’s soldiers in Devil’s Boot. We’ll lose all our freedom to these English vermin!”

  “I have the herbs to cure infertility, and I have the Adan’s book.” The keys to Father’s trunk and his Herbal clinked as I pulled the necklace out to show her.

  Vazan flattened her ears against her head. “What good are the herbs and this book? Men have the power to heal. Women do not have that power.”

  “You are female, Vazan. You are powerful.”

  “Yessss,” she hissed, “but I am dragon. You are girl.”

  I crossed my arms. My chest ached. Bound in cloth, wrapped in sorrow, I had no heart to argue here at Father’s grave, but battle is dragon’s bread. “We both want the same thing. I have to treat the queen so she’ll keep her promise. What other choices do we have?” She blinked at me. I went on. “Back home, the elders say a woman cannot heal, but the English don’t live by our laws. The English have women healers. They have midwives. Mother was one.”

  Vazan flicked a clump of dirt off her talon. “There is no trusting these Pendragon royals. I have watched them. They don’t even display their dragon scales, as if they are ashamed of them.”

  It was true. Prince Desmond supposedly had a scale patch on his arm. I’d never seen it. Most men rolled up their sleeves to spar in the weapons yard. He never did.

  “So you plan to stay,” Vazan said.

  “I must stay. I promised the queen I’d keep treating her.”

  “With your father’s herbs.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are the Adan’s daughter,” she conceded.

  She curled her long tail around Father’s grave. The spikes along the end were like a row of black upright daggers near my feet. “Will you take the voyage to Dragon’s Keep?”

  “What voyage?”

  “Do you have eyessss and earssss?”

  I sighed. “Tell me.”

  “The king plans to visit his brother Duke Bion on Dragon’s Keep. Your father knew this. You’ll see more Pendragons there if you go. It’s where the Son of the Prophecy lives; the firstborn with dragon, human, and fairy blood combined.” I knew the fairy’s song about Duke Bion’s son, the Son of the Prophecy. I’d learned it at my mother’s knee.

  “When is King Arden leaving?”

  “A few weeks. The queen plans to go along. Your father was concerned about it.”

  My eyes fell to the mounded soil. “He had every reason to be. I need to talk the queen out of taking the journey. Egret Moon would be a dangerous time for her to travel by sea. She’d be at the mercy of the wind, even more than she already is.”

  “Any breeze can change her wind mind, Uma, but you won’t change it.”

  “I hope you are wrong.”

  Vazan flicked her tail, the spikes rising to my waist before the scaled flesh slapped the ground again.

  Was she going to leave me now that Father was dead? I felt a sharp jolt of fear. I pinched the red dragons on my belt, as if by squeezing hard enough, I could make her stay. Ask her. I glanced up at her noble head. The thin smoke coiling between us softened the shades of her red-orange scales. I need you, Vazan. Don’t go. Please don’t leave me alone.

  I couldn’t say the words out loud.

  “You are crying, Adan’s daughter.”

  She lowered her head and breathed a warm wind on my face, drying my tears.

  Chapter Five

  Voyage to Dragon’s Keep

  Egret Moon

  August 1210

  VAZAN WAS RIGHT. Queen Adela didn’t listen when I warned her that the journey would be perilous for her. I was told to bring my medicine trunk along and leave my opinions behind.

  Her Majesty was seasick on the voyage. She blamed me for her foul mood and putrid stomach, so I was relieved on the fourth day when the sailors spotted land at last, and thankful to be mixing her potion in the ship’s galley for the last time.

  I rolled up the ridiculous, bell-shaped sleeves of Bianca’s cast-off gown, then stirred the brew, chanting the plant names. My medicine will work, Father said. I am the healer who will cure her. Trust me. I did trust him and his medicine, but I wondered. Was I skilled enough?

  The bapeeta powder darkened the simmering potion. I’d added an extra dose to calm Her Majesty before we reached Dragon’s Keep.

  When fists pounded on the door, I slid the bolt aside to find Prince Desmond. His clothes reeked of sweat and spilled ale.

  I held the door firm. “The queen’s remedy is nearly ready, Your Royal Highness.”

  He forced his way in and kicked the door shut with his boot heel. The jolt rattled the pots hanging from th
eir hooks. He wrinkled his nose. “Stinks in here.”

  “It must be the whale oil lamp, Your Royal Highness.”

  I turned away. He stepped closer, wrapped his arms around me, and pressed himself up against my back, his wide hands gripping my waist. I tensed. I’d seen these same hands slit an old man’s throat back in Devil’s Boot. “What are you doing, Your Royal Highness?”

  “You know what I am doing.”

  Holy Ones help me. Offend the prince and I’d end up with my neck in a noose. I touched his arm to free myself and felt a scaly rough patch of skin under his sleeve. Dragon scales, I thought, withdrawing my hand.

  “You must let me go. I have to bring this remedy to Her Majesty now.”

  “Remedy? Mother thinks she has to have more children to please my father, but I don’t need any royal snot-nosed siblings crawling underfoot.” Desmond’s ale-breath was hot against my neck. In public he looked at me as if I oozed maggots. He had never touched me like this before, but his favorite, Bianca, had stayed behind on Wilde Island. I was here.

  His hands slid down my waist and lingered at my hips. My insides crawled. “I like this gown, Uma. So much better than the filthy boy’s clothes we found you in.” The night he learned I was female, he had had me whipped in front of him for my deceit. I gritted my teeth as my skin tore under the jailer’s whip while Desmond watched. I’m surprised you did not scream, the prince said later, sounding disappointed. That was a little over three weeks ago. The scars had healed. The painful memory hadn’t.

  “And you’ve done things to your hair.” He tugged the braid I’d carefully tied with a blue ribbon, jerking my neck back so hard my head hit his shoulder.

  Keep calm. Think what a castle maiden would say. “Such flattery, Your Royal Highness, but I have to take the infusion from the fire now.”

  “Are you saving your virtue? Who would stoop to marry you?” He nibbled my neck, then sucked my skin the way he ate swan meat off the bone. I felt his breath on my cheek as he began to slide his fingers up the front of my laced bodice.

  The door swung open with a bang. We flew apart, but not soon enough. Sir Geoffrey Crooked Nose had seen us in a backward embrace.

  “Her Majesty wants to know what has been keeping you so long.” His face was hard in the shadows.

  Desmond grunted, brushing past him. Sir Geoffrey turned and glowered at the door after he left before he faced me again. “You had better watch your step with him if you don’t want your head on the chopping block.”

  “I did not . . .” How could I say this? “I did not ask for His Highness to come inside, Sir Geoffrey. Please don’t think—”

  He looked at me a moment longer. Said nothing and left.

  I wiped Prince Desmond’s slimy kiss off my neck with three vicious swipes. Would he come to me again when we made landfall? Please, Holy Ones, I would have a door that locked.

  • • •

  WHEN I REACHED the deck, just barely managing not to spill the entire potion on the way up the rocking stairs, I heaved a breath. A few stars hung in the twilight sky. Prince Desmond stood at the prow with his mother, father, and Lady Olivia, taking in Dragon’s Keep, our first sight of land. Sir Geoffrey hovered near the royal family with the rest of King Arden’s private guards. I held back in the shadowy doorway, hoping the prince would leave his mother’s side.

  I couldn’t bear to go near him.

  The prince cracked a joke. His father laughed and pounded him on the back. He turned to his mother, and said something I couldn’t hear from my hiding place. Queen Adela looked past him as if he weren’t there. I caught his brief, hurt look before he faced forward again.

  The island’s black mountains lay like a sleeping bear atop the sea. Tiny specks of light winked near shore. We would arrive soon. Queen Adela needed to take her potion before we landed. Still I held back, sick at the thought of crossing Prince Desmond’s path.

  Sir Geoffrey pointed at the sky above the dark water. “Look, Your Majesties!”

  Two dragons sped toward us, the green and copper-scaled kind that can grow as large as warships. But as they flew closer, I saw they were no bigger than Vazan. Young dragons then, I thought. And then I saw the riders. A rare sight for me. In my village only a few chosen elders flew on reds. Vazan had never let me ride her.

  I watched them wing closer to our ship. Prince Desmond sometimes rode an old dragon who’d spent the last few months of his life dining on table scraps near the king’s stables—not what I considered to be much of a dragon. Not like the noble Vazan. Not like these.

  I watched transfixed. The dark-haired figure sitting proud on his dragon called down to us.

  “Welcome to Dragon’s Keep!” He caught sight of me by the door as his dragon skimmed down. The beast’s wing knocked against the mainsail. I gripped the doorframe to steady myself as the ship tilted to the right. The queen let out a wild scream.

  “Get away, dragon!” Desmond shouted, waving his arms overhead.

  The coppery green beast backwinged out of reach. “I’m your cousin Jackrun Pendragon,” called the rider over the queen’s piercing screams. “Here with my sister, Tabitha. Don’t you recognize us?” I looked from Jackrun to Tabitha, saw her neck scales shining in the ship’s torchlight.

  Desmond threw his head back. “Get away from my mother, clodpole!”

  I hurried toward Her Majesty, tripping over the coiled ropes on my way to the prow, spilling more precious remedy on the deck before finally passing the chalice to the king. “Your Majesty, please give her this,” I pleaded. “It will calm her.”

  He held it out to his frightened wife. “My dear,” he shouted over her wails, “it is my brother’s children flying out to greet us. They mean us no harm. Drink this. It will soothe you.” She reared back like a wild horse, her eyes darting from chalice to husband, her face contorted with confusion, but she seemed to understand at last. I heaved a sigh as she drank the warm brew and pressed the empty silver cup against her flushed cheek.

  “That’s better,” King Arden said, wrapping his arms around her. “You’re all right now.” He shot me a grateful look as he handed back the chalice. I lowered my eyes. The calming effect in the potion did not work that quickly. For now, the king’s arms supported Her Majesty while Lady Olivia patted her back, murmuring soft words like a mother soothing a frightened child.

  Jackrun Pendragon glared at his cousin before he cupped his hand to his mouth, calling down to his aunt and uncle. “Please forgive us for startling you, Your Majesties. We came to escort you across the bay.”

  He signaled his sister and flew ahead of the royal vessel. The dragons dove over and under each other as they moved toward the distant harbor, coiling a golden chain of fire for the ship to follow.

  Sir Geoffrey hummed the fairies’ song “Fey Maiden” under his breath as the shining fiery chain lit the dusky sky ahead of us, spilling gold reflections on the dark water below. Mother had taught me all the verses.

  In the enchanted woodland wild,

  The Prince shall wed a Fairy child.

  Dragon, Human, and Fairy,

  Their union will be bound by three.

  And when these lovers intertwine,

  Three races in one child combine.

  Dragon, Fey, and Humankind,

  Bound in one bloodline.

  O Bring this day unto us soon,

  And forfeit weapons forged in strife.

  Sheath sword, and talon, angry spell,

  And brethren be for life.

  Three races in one child combined. The “child” in the song was Jackrun, a young man now, leading us toward his island with chains of dragon fire.

  In that moment, on that ship, four months after leaving the only home I had ever known, I was watching my own fate. But at the time, I merely prayed he was not at all like his cousin.

  Chapter Six

/>   Pendragon Summer Castle, Dragon’s Keep

  Egret Moon

  August 1210

  THE CASTLE ON Dragon’s Keep was built like the castle back on Wilde Island, but smaller. It perched like an ornamental hat on the distant bluff with high towers and a crenellated guard wall. King Arden called it the summer castle, a place he’d visited with his family when he was a boy. His younger brother and his family lived here year-round now.

  “Carry the physician’s trunk,” Sir Geoffrey called to a cabin boy. I turned as the lad rushed toward me.

  “No, thank you. I have it.” No cabin boy would take my father’s precious medicines. I’d carried it onto the ship, I could carry it off.

  “It looks heavy,” Sir Geoffrey said. “You are sure?”

  “Yes.” He’d looked out for me from the start. I didn’t know why. Sir Kenneth passed us, his arms and neck muscles bulging as he hefted one of the queen’s trunks more than twice the size of mine. I glanced up at Sir Geoffrey. “I never thanked you for what you did for Father and me,” I said in a hushed tone so no one on the busy deck would overhear. “If there is anything I can do to repay—”

  “Think nothing of it. I chose to offer the food. They were starving you. A dead physician cannot heal anyone.”

  He saw me start and realized his words made me think of my father, but it was too late to take them back. I knew he hadn’t meant to hurt me.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, lowering his head a little to make his speech more private. “I am sure you miss your father.” He paused, adjusting his belt. “I have to go, but if you should need anything . . .”

  I looked down, feeling his kindness, unable to speak.

  He stood a moment longer before walking across the gently rolling deck.