In the Time of Dragon Moon

by Janet Lee Carey

  Someone grabbed me from behind. Jackrun rounded on the head groom the moment I screamed. Already the groom had thrown a harness over me and held a hammer to my head. I tried to wriggle free, used my knife to slice the leather. He knocked the knife from my hand and threw a muscled arm around my throat.

  “Now then,” he said, “let’s do this rightly.”

  “Let her go, Horace,” Jackrun said, putting his sword to the man’s throat. “You’re a good fellow, but bring that hammer down and I’ll have to cut your throat. Uma’s riding out with me. Boy!” he added, calling to a stable lad watching the action from one of the mounting blocks. “Saddle my horse. There’s half a crown in it for you.” The boy hopped down and grabbed a saddle.

  “Ready that horse and you’re out on your ear,” Horace the master groom shouted.

  Outside, I heard someone calling “Raise the drawbridge.” Jackrun heard it too and urged the stable boy to hurry.

  More men had flooded in, swords all drawn at Jackrun. One sliced Jackrun’s left shoulder, drawing blood. Jackrun didn’t move from his spot, his eyes moving between me and Horace and the stable boy. He kept his sword point at Horace’s throat. “You’ll let her go and she will mount my horse now.”

  I felt the master groom shifting on his feet, smelled his fearful sweat under Jackrun’s blade. With a grunt he let me go and slowly backed away, his hammer still in the air. I threw the halter off my head and mounted the black charger. Jackrun tried to climb on after me, fighting the men off at the same time. He was halfway up. I was reaching for him when the king’s men dragged him off. He slapped the charger’s rear, sending him bolting out of the crowded stable, shouting “Ride Uma!” He’d made it out of the stable, clashing swords with the men as I looked back. I circled around for him, but the charger reared at the battling crowd. “Go, Uma!” Jackrun screamed as he fought. The charger understood even if I refused to leave him. He turned, galloping for the drawbridge and had to pull away again before smashing against the solid wood. The drawbridge was up.

  • • •

  WE WERE MARCHED back inside to the king’s throne room. His Majesty’s face was still white from shock. His hands shook on his armrests. A few favored councilmen stood near the throne along with the castle priest. None stepped near Queen Adela’s empty throne. I swallowed another wash of sickness down as Jackrun and I were forced onto our knees on the square of red carpet at the base of the dais.

  “The murderess, sire,” the chief guard announced. “Your nephew fought us out in the yard and tried to help the Euit woman escape.”

  “Rise,” the king said. “And face me.”

  King Arden did not look at me. “You dared cross my men, Jackrun? Didn’t they tell you that this . . . this devil killed my wife?”

  “They told me, sire. I didn’t believe them. Someone else committed this terrible crime. Uma would never—”

  “No one else went in or out of my wife’s bedchamber this morning, Jackrun,” roared the king. He wiped his brow with a shaking hand. The throne room was hushed.

  I looked at the many faces turned on me with anger, terrified to speak, terrified not to. “Your Majesty,” I said, curtsying, head bowed. “I did not poison her. Someone must have—”

  “So you know she was poisoned! How would you know that? Did anyone in my guard say she died of poison?” he barked.

  “We said the queen was dead, sire, that’s all.”

  “I . . . saw!” I cried out. “I came up the stairs and saw you kneeling by her bed. I saw what had happened. Then I ran. I didn’t—”

  The king snapped his fingers and a guard clamped his hand over my mouth.

  “Jackrun, if you continue to side with this murderess, you are no nephew of mine. Step away from her.”

  “You’re wrong about her, sire. I won’t step away.”

  A shiver of anger passed through the king’s body. The councilmen and priest leaned forward, ready to help him as he stood slowly to his feet, pointing a finger at Jackrun. “Lock him in the tower.” Three men dragged Jackrun from my side.

  “And that . . . that,” King Arden said to the guard whose hand was planted on my mouth. “Throw that devil in the dungeon.”

  • • •

  I WAS LEFT alone in my small stinking cell for hours. At nightfall they hauled me to the torture chamber. The large cell smelled of sweat and blood and fear. Would they burn me with the pokers leaning by a lit brazier, hang me from one of the many ceiling hooks, stretch me on the rack, force me into the chair with hundreds of three-inch nails poking from the seat and from the back?

  The jailer stepped in rubbing his hands together. “King said to rack her, men.”

  “Please, I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill her!” The innocent spit boy confessed when they stretched him on the rack. I was terrified I’d do the same.

  I struggled, but of course they were too strong for me. The jailer gave me a brown-toothed smile as the men manacled my wrists and ankles. “We’ll stretch a confession out of you soon enough, Euit devil.” His eyes shone with excitement. I hadn’t screamed or cried when he’d whipped me in front of Prince Desmond. The man seemed to be looking forward to some real entertainment now.

  “Crank her,” he said, stepping back and resting his hand atop the nailed chair. Men at the top turned the handles of the roller bars. The first few cranks didn’t hurt too much, but the pain increased as the rope attached to the manacles pulled my arms and legs tighter and tighter.

  Another crank tore a moan from my mouth. I broke into a sweat. “Holy Ones, help me!”

  “Holy Ones,” said the jailer. “Who are they?”

  I focused on the ceiling, trying to see beyond the heavy hooks. I knew just outside Pendragon Castle, Dragon Moon looked down on us, surrounded by sparkling stars, but I could not feel the light as the intense ripping pain shot down my arms and up my legs. “Stop! Please!”

  “Are you ready to confess?” asked the jailer.

  Yes. Anything to stop the pain. “No! I didn’t harm the queen!”

  “Again,” he said.

  The cuffs bit into my ankles and wrists. Wrenching pain stabbed my shoulders, the sleeves ripped under my arms. Cracking sounds came from my spine. I clenched my mouth. Screamed into my teeth.

  “Ah! That’s it now,” said the jailer, pleased.

  Sobs came up my throat. They would wrench my arms from my sockets. “Have mercy!”

  “Confess?”

  I screamed, felt myself breaking till there was an explosion of light behind my eyes. Sunburst. Agony.

  “Stop before you kill her. The king wants her kept in one piece so he can watch her burn.”

  White-hot fire. Searing pain. Darkness.

  • • •

  I AWOKE CURLED up on the floor in my cell, every joint in my body throbbing with excruciating pain. I buried my face in the rushes, moaning. The rushes smelled like my herbing basket. The memory of Mother singing as she wove it came to me. For a moment she was in the cell. Poppies and roses in her hair. I could almost see her, almost hear her song. I tried to breathe, sobbed. My wrists throbbed, my shoulders, my ankles, my hips. The stabbing pains were as deep as if someone were attacking me with icy knives.

  Move your arms.

  I can’t. Poppies and roses in her hair. She is queen of the May. Oh sing to her gladly and never sing sadly, she is the light of our day. The song faded and I was lost in dark again.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Dungeon, Pendragon Castle, Wilde Island

  Dragon Moon

  October 1210

  THE NEXT DAY the guards dragged me to His Majesty’s chamber before the king’s council. They gave me a swift trial that consisted of the queen’s guard claiming that no one but I had entered the queen’s bedchamber before the murder, and of me pleading my innocence. Shaking in my manacles, joints aching, chains clinkin
g, I relayed what I’d seen from the landing, told them the scent I’d caught coming from the room. “Whoever stole my medicines used the utzo oil to poison Her Majesty.”

  “You did not report your medicines stolen.”

  He was right. I’d kept that hidden.“I was afraid to, Your Majesty. I feared the queen would turn me away. It was why I was forced to go after more herbs.”

  The council conferred with one another all too briefly. The sheriff said, “The fact remains, the physician was the only one seen going up and down the queen’s stairs.”

  My heart hammered. “The fey,” I barked, remembering what Jackrun said. “They can guise themselves to look like someone else. Please believe me. I didn’t—”

  “Now she blames the fairy folk,” the sheriff said with a huff.

  The king squeezed his eyes shut. “Take the Euit woman out of here. Now.”

  Rain drummed outside my underground cell. By nightfall a stream of muddy rainwater flowed down the wall from the courtyard outside, forming a black puddle near my cheek where I lay in the straw. I stayed awake for what might be my last night on earth, trying to understand my life, the sacrifices I had made to learn the healing craft, throwing away my girlhood, shedding the company of others to serve the Adan.

  What had it brought me? Jackrun was in the tower because of me. My mother and my people were still surrounded by soldiers. I was afraid to walk into the afterworld carrying all my failures with me. I had washed my father’s feet for his spirit walk to Nushtuen. No one would wash mine.

  The puddle grew larger, slick and still as a black mirror. I slapped the surface, shattering the image there. The water drew together again, healing itself. The sight of the queen’s dead face reflected in her mirror came back to me with sickening clarity. Jackrun had warned me that mirrors told the truth, but I never thought I would see such horror and misery in one.

  I rubbed my sore wrists. I wanted to black out that last horrible image of Adela’s contorted face, the agony she must have felt. Who poisoned her so cleverly? So heartlessly? How had they gotten away with it?

  Someone passed by with a torch outside. Yellow light glanced across the dark puddle. I sat up blinking.

  I’d seen something else in the queen’s mirror.

  The torchlight was gone. The puddle went dark again. But the memory of what I’d seen in the mirror remained. The questions swarming through my head settled.

  I knew who had killed the queen. I just didn’t know why.

  • • •

  I CALLED OUT and banged against the door, anxious to tell someone what I knew. No one came all that night.

  “I’m innocent,” I cried the next day when the cell door opened. “I know who murdered her. Bring me up to see the king.”

  “Shut up with your babbling.” The muscled guard tied my hands behind my back.

  “You’ll see the king all right,” the second man said with a chuckle.

  I blinked in the harsh sunlight on the crowded castle green. They dragged me forward.

  “No, wait. I demand a trial.”

  “You got yours already. It’s the fire for ye.” People threw dirt clods. The ones loaded with rocks stung my chest and thighs.

  “Best pray to your Holy Ones, whoever they are. See if they’ll hear ye.”

  King Arden waited on the viewing stage, the sheriff and the bishop to one side of him, Bianca and Lady Olivia to the other. My whole body shook as they led me up the stage steps. It did not help to see Bianca crying as if I were already dead. The king linked his arm through hers and glared at me with cold hatred.

  People on the lawn below us crowded closer to the edge of the stage, hungry to hear my confession before I was taken to the pyre.

  By the Holy Ones I didn’t want to die this way, executed by the English. I didn’t want to die so far from home.

  Two guards ushered Jackrun outside and made him stand to the left of the stage. His hands were tied behind his back like mine. Men on either side held him by his upper arms. I looked down at the face of the one I wanted to remember most as I left this life. His cheek was bruised. He’d fought his captors and paid for it. His eyes burned, looking up at me. We’d kissed by the escape tunnel, in the Crow’s Nest, in Dragonswood. Three times. I’d hoped for more.

  Jackrun started pushing and shoving like a young bull. “Let me speak!” he shouted. “I have something to say that must be heard! Uma did not—”

  At the king’s signal, the guard to Jackrun’s left clamped a hand over his mouth. The man didn’t drag him away for his disturbance. King Arden wanted Jackrun to see. Watching me die was part of his punishment.

  My stomach stormed as the sheriff read out my crime.

  “Uma Quarteney, for the heinous murder of Queen Adela, you are sentenced to be burned at the stake by order of our sovereign, King Arden Pendragon, on this fourteenth day of October in the year of our Lord 1210.”

  Ravens circled overhead, landing noisily on the wall edging the castle green. Where was Vazan? A bitter taste came to my tongue. I should not blame her for keeping to her cave with her hurt wing when I’d been the one who told her to rest, but I did.

  The bishop stepped up. “Kneel, Uma Quarteney.”

  Just before the guards pressed me down to my knees, I saw her. Fox had come out to the lawn to sit by the wall. My Path Animal was here to lead me from one life to another. My eyes teared up as the bishop sprinkled my head with holy water, praying over me.

  “Do you have any last words to say before us and before God?” he asked as I was helped back up to my feet.

  I turned to the king. “Your Majesty. I did not do this crime. The woman who used magic to guise herself to look like me is—”

  “Sorcery and magic?” King Arden shouted over me. “Is that your confession?”

  The crowd booed, yelling, “Burn the murderess!”

  Jackrun broke free from his guards below and raced for the pyre, shouting, flames roaring from his mouth in radiant reds, oranges, yellows. The sound was almost deafening; the brilliance stung my eyes. People screamed, leaping back in terror.

  I gave a secret shout of joy seeing his fire again when I’d feared it might be gone. The pyre burst into flames, devouring the stacked wood at the bottom, crackling and licking up the sides. Jackrun ran to the far side, he screamed fire: spoke with fire, a speech every human soul on the castle green feared but me. I was alive with it, alive because of it. No one could get near enough to tie me to the stake now. The ladder leaning up against the pyre blazed along with the platform, the stake they were about to bind me to.

  King Arden shouted furious orders behind me. I couldn’t make out the words over the inferno. A few men rushed toward Jackrun with their weapons drawn, but they all stopped short, afraid to go any nearer.

  In the bedlam I did not notice the black shadows sweeping across the lawn, did not look up until I caught the familiar spicy scent.

  Craning my neck I saw two dragons winging in with Vazan. My Vazan. She hadn’t stayed in her cave at all, hadn’t abandoned me. Filalda and Babak flew in behind her with riders on their backs.

  Jackrun went silent now, looking up, surrounded in coils of smoke.

  The crowd drew back even farther than they had for Jackrun as Babak and Filalda winged in, landed on the grass before the royal stage, and lowered their heads. King Onadon and Princess Augusta dismounted gracefully onto the stage a few feet from me. The dragons took off again, joining Vazan, who’d alighted on the high crenellated wall just behind the stage. Six dragon eyes peered down at us, four golden, two silver. I caught Vazan’s silver ones. Loyal dragon. Did she see the gratitude in mine?

  The king was staring openmouthed at his younger sister, whom he hadn’t seen in years.

  King Onadon bowed. “We came as quickly as we could, Your Majesty. We hoped we would not be too late.”

  “You a
re still in time to see the execution,” King Arden said, recovering his dignity.

  “Then we are not too late to see justice served, Brother King,” said Princess Augusta.

  Jackrun climbed the steps onto the stage, his wrists still tied behind his back.

  “You are not welcome up here,” King Arden cautioned, putting up his hand. “You’re still under arrest.”

  King Onadon moved his smallest finger. The ropes slipped off Jackrun’s wrists and coiled like a dead snake by his boots.

  “More magic,” King Arden growled. “You cannot stop justice through sorcery. Guards, grab Jackrun. See that you hold on to him.”

  “I didn’t use sorcery, Your Majesty,” Jackrun said as the men surrounded him, swords and daggers drawn. “I only used the fire I was born with as part of our Pendragon heritage.”

  “To save a murderess.”

  “To save an innocent woman. Uma Quarteney couldn’t have committed the murder.”

  “Let him go, please, Your Majesty,” I said. “And I will tell you who poisoned your wife. You didn’t let me finish before.”

  “Don’t move,” King Arden warned the men around Jackrun. “Speak, woman,” he said bluntly. “And give me no more prattle about fairies and magic, I warn you.”

  The courtiers closed in on the stage, faces upturned. The guards held me firm. I swallowed, looking down as if to find courage by my feet. The delicately embroidered toes of the slippers Bianca had given me poked out from under the hem of my gown. I hated accusing the woman who’d watched out for me since I’d come to Pendragon Castle, but everyone was waiting and the king was impatient. I sensed I did not have long to tell my story. When I raised my eyes, I took heart from Jackrun’s encouraging look. The king’s guards still pointed their daggers at him, yet his face was intent. He believed in me.

  “The sentry at my trial told the truth, Your Highness,” I began. “He saw no one else but me climb the stairs to go in and out of the queen’s bedchamber that morning.” I searched the armed men in the crowd until I found the one I was looking for, and nodded at him before going on. “I don’t blame the man for saying what he said. A woman guised to look like me took the poisoned sweetmeat to the queen. A fey glamour can fool anyone. But it cannot fool a mirror. I went upstairs later that morning with the queen’s potion. Four people were already there in her bedchamber. I could not see them straight on from the spot where I stood in the stairwell, but all four were reflected in the queen’s mirror. There were two castle guards and two others at Her Majesty’s bedside. I saw you kneeling, Your Highness, and the woman praying at your side who tucked a dark strand of hair under her veil.”