“What about Prince Griffith?” I said. “I’m sure that he would have something to say about that, wouldn’t he? He is one of the heirs to the old queen as well...” Although I didn’t claim to know all of the ins and outs of the royal family politics, as far as I knew Lander here was the eldest child, with Prince Griffith being the youngest, and Vincent being the middle. That meant, although in normal succession the Northlander Prince here should be High King, his own mother had decreed that the realm should be split into three, each with their own prince. If Lander was to claim himself High King, then I was sure that his brothers Griffith and Vincent would both rise against him.
But Prince Lander gave a flick of his hand as if shooing away a pesky insect and ignored me, as if such a statement was so ludicrous it did not bear response
“Char, you have to understand that history is made by great deeds. Great deeds by great men. It cannot be squandered on the dreams of young girls,” Prince Lander lectured, not even bothering to look at his daughter as he surveyed the drugged-up dragon in front of him. This was a speech that he had been thinking about, I see. “If you will not use the dragon for the north, then I will find a way to train it for myself. I will start with the Amorant’s Helper, and then, your brother here will start to teach it to take to harnesses. It may take a long time, but we will get there in the end…. That is why the archers are here, of course. We will have to keep a close eye on the dragon for a while, until she understands that escape is unwise, and impossible.”
“No, no, no!” Char suddenly spat, facing her father. I had never seen her so angry, and for a moment I thought that she was going to strike him. On the other side of the roof the archers stiffened at the outburst, looking to Wurgan for direction. Surely each one was wondering what they should be doing to protect their lord from the dragon, a Son of Torvald, and even their own princess. Wurgan shook his head before frowning at his own boots.
Yeah, I thought with an internal snarl. You should be ashamed. You’re supposed to look after your little sister, not endanger her!
“It won’t work. Dragon’s don’t work like that,” Char was saying, her words a fast torrent. “I know. I know,” she thumped her heart (swaying as she did so). “Dragons have to be free. They have to. They won’t take harnesses or leads or saddles for you – no matter how much you drug them or offer them. The Draconis Order have tried! Stars protect me, but they are trying to do that even now-- I was there. The dragons just reacted angrily, jealously, viciously. You’ll have to drug poor Paxala so much that she won’t be able to fly or fight or walk for you anyway! How could you!” Char started to run out of steam, and I could see that she was on the verge of tears. “How could you be like them?”
Her father was silent for a moment, this time truly regarding his daughter. “Because I have to be, Char. One day you will realize that. And if I have to drug the dragon to keep her at my keep then I will do it.”
“I won’t let you,” Char said hotly, still swaying on her feet from the mental bleed-over from the dragon’s pain. “I’ll stop you, you know.”
“Oh, Char.” Her father shook his head sadly. “You will do no such thing. But, if you will not marry Tobin Tar, then I suppose that I could send you back to that Dragon Monastery if you prefer. I am not an unreasonable man. Perhaps you could fetch me back another dragon?”
Char screamed in rage and moved towards her father, raising a hand to strike him. I didn’t know what to do. Should I intervene? Wouldn’t they just shoot me for it?
Before I could come to a decision, however – I was surprised by the sudden movement as Char’s raised hand was caught by another. It was Wurgan, moving quickly to step in the way, and to hold his struggling sister to him. “Easy, little sister,” he said in a deep growl. “That won’t help matters.”
“It would make me feel a whole lot better,” Char spluttered, as the prince nodded to the archers once more.
“Yes, I see what has to happen now, Char. You will be sent back to that monastery of yours, and bring us back as many eggs as you can carry.”
“Char…” I had an idea as the prince’s eyes flickered at me, as if just considering me for the first time. If we couldn’t stop Prince Lander, and we couldn’t convince him, then my fathers’ wisdom in me said that we had to negotiate. Negotiate until you can control the situation, my father had said many a time. Would it be better to try and bring the dragons up here to the North, free from the Order’s influence and threat of being killed? “There is no Order here, no Abbot, and none of his medicines,” I said, hoping that she would take my hint.
Char must’ve caught my drift, as her eyes widened, then narrowed, and then looked worried. Did she think that I was betraying her? “There is poison here instead,” she muttered darkly, as her father cleared his throat loudly.
“Interesting. You are a Son of Torvald, aren’t you?” he asked, tapping his chin.
“I am,” I said, hoping that I might be able to sway the prince in some way. “We are the elected Wardens of the Western Marches, protectors of the western lands of the Middle Kingdom. Fierce in battle, our exploits are known far and wide…”
Prince Lander coughed once again. “I have armies, boy. And you are just another warlord’s son, but I suppose that you may be a valuable one. Archers? Take him to the cells.”
“Neill!” Char cried out. “No – I need him!” But her outburst did no good.
I shook my head. I had half been expecting something like this to happen since I even set foot in the Old Queen’s Keep. I was a Middle Kingdomer, after all, and the son of a warlord as well. The prince would either view me as a dangerous spy, or as a valuable hostage.
Even so, none of that meant I had to accept it. If they wanted to tie up a Torvald and a friend of dragons, then they would have to work for it!
I struggled against their seizing hands, shoving, and writhing until one of the three of them managed to get a knee onto my back and stamp me down onto the cold floor of the keep.
CHAPTER 20
THE TRIALS OF WURGAN NEFRETTE
“Wurgan, you know this is wrong,” I said as he dragged me through the shadowed corridors. At my hip sat the heavy collection of rags I had folded into my pouch, containing the Great Crown of the Queen. I had given up struggling after the first five floors, fearful that my brother would discover the crown on me, and also as every move that I had made had only increased my brother’s grasp. Now, instead of clamping my arms to my sides, he had settled for holding my hand in a vice-like grip until I thought my hand was likely to fall off. Still, despite this pain, it was hard see my brother as my enemy.
Of course he was my enemy, he was effectively imprisoning me, dragging me through the castle with archers ahead and behind of us lest I try to run. Not only that, but he was helping my father to imprison both of my friends.
But some stubborn memory of our childhood together clung on, and I couldn’t hate him. I could only pity him. He was my brother, so therefore he was being stupid. All I had to do was to make him see his stupidity for what it was and then he would surely come to his senses.
“This will go easier on you if you just keep your thoughts to yourself,” he grumbled, but I had (of course) no intention of doing any such thing.
“How could you, Wurgan? How could you agree with Father like that?” I turned on him. “The pair of you, scheming and plotting your conquests in that audience chamber. It’s a disgrace. You can’t imprison Neill, either – he hasn’t done anything wrong! He’s saved my life, which is more than you can say, Wurgan. And Paxala? Father will kill her. He doesn’t know anything about dragons, and I do. Paxala would never agree to anyone’s commands.”
“She agrees to yours,” Wurgan grunted.
I almost kicked him in the shins (as I would have done a few years ago) but instead I chose to argue with him. “No, she doesn’t. I don’t give her orders and commands, I ask her to help me, just as I am asking you to help me right now,” I said tartly as we turned a corner and s
tarted down another flight of stairs.
Wurgan remained stubbornly quiet the whole way down.
I had a thought it would be a low blow, but I wasn’t above that at the moment. “Does Mother know you’re doing this?” I asked.
Wurgan tensed beside me, before he grumbled. “It’s not up to me to inform the prince’s mistress of everything that he decides to do…”
“The prince’s mistress?” I said, astounded. “Just who do you think you’re talking about? That’s our mother, Wurgan – or has Odette poisoned your head so much that even you have forgotten that?”
“Char!” he jolted to a stop, causing the archers to stumble and bunch into each other as his large, bearded face suddenly turned to hiss into mine. “You have to be more careful when you are talking about Princess Odette. She’s the rightful wife of our father, and our mother is what she is. Another lady in waiting.”
His eyes sparked with fury, but there was something else that was going on here, his forehead prickled with beads of sweat as he scolded me. He’s worried? I thought. He’s scared of speaking ill of Odette?
When had my brother ever been scared of anything? He wasn’t one of those insane people who knew no fear, but he was big, and he was good at soldiering, and even when I had seen him look concerned over some riding challenge or upcoming skirmish – he had never let that fear stop him from speaking his mind before.
But even so, I thought. All of this ‘rightful princess’ and ‘lady in waiting’ nonsense made him sound more like a Middle Kingdomer than a true Northlander. Always before, the Northern Kingdom had a different, wilder attitude to the ways of the court than the Middle Kingdom. Not that I hadn’t grown up surrounded by ballgowns and royal visits and what have you – but the prince would share his table with clansmen and warlords as much as he did courtiers and advisors.
“What is this?” I pointed it out to him. “You sound like Prince Vincent and his preening cronies. Since when has clanswoman Galetta Nefrette, daughter of a chief and mountain-wife of a prince, ever been a lady in waiting?”
“Since you went away, Char,” Wurgan said, his tone turning sour, his mustaches downturned as he scowled. “Things have been changing for a long time up here, and when you went off to that accursed monastery…”
“It wasn’t my choice, brother – father made me, remember?” I pointed out, before feeling a spike of shame alongside the surge of dizziness that Paxala’s mind was spreading through me. Another wave of nausea rolled through my stomach.
“Well, whatever the reason, sister. When you left, our mother went to stay with her parent’s people in the mountains for a season, and when she returned she never took the same high place in the keep as she once had.” Wurgan coughed into his beard, embarrassed at his own strength of feelings. He’s upset, I saw, but my empathy for him only made me angrier. Angry at my father, at my brother for not doing anything, and angry at myself for being such a bad sister – and now it seems, a terrible daughter to our mother as well.
“It was her own fault,” Wurgan said harshly, as if reading my mind. My brother was never a very good one for emotions and empathy. “Our mother withdrew from the life of the court, preferring to spend more time with the mountain clans. In her place, Princess Odette rose to greater power. All of our father’s clan advisors and allies, the sorts of people that our mother brought with her to the feasts and to live here, started to drift away or actively spurn the court. That is why father wanted you to marry Tar. It’ll cement the relations again.” Wurgan shook his head, grunting in frustration. “Mother always cared more for you anyway,” he said thickly.
Ah. Is that it? I thought. He thinks that mother doesn’t care for him?
But it was true, in a sense. I didn’t think that our mother loved me more, but she understood me better. It was she who taught me many of the old clan ways, and who had fed my imagination stories of the terrifying wild dragons. As for Wurgan, he took much better to swords and riding and warfare and the camaraderie of the army life – and so our father understood him more.
As another wave of nausea made my head spin and I stumbled, my anger suddenly vanishing, leaving me gasping and defenseless like a fish on the shore. This was all so screwed up, I thought, reaching out a hand to lean against the wall.
“Char?” my brother’s strong grip kept me standing upright, at least, as he steadied me and crouched a little so that he could look me in the face. “You’re ill,” he muttered, his eyes suddenly looking into mine. “Hm. If you were a horse, I’d confine you to stables and put you on the syrup.”
Gee, thanks. I shook my head (gently). “I’m fine. I bet you would prefer it if I were a horse, right? Much easier to tell what to do,” I snapped. It was nasty of me, but then again, he had just helped drug Paxala and drag my friend off to the dungeon. I made to push his steadying hand off of me, but I missed and stumbled.
“No, Char. You are ill. I don’t say that lightly. What is wrong with you? Is it the dragon? Does it have diseases?” Wurgan said.
“It is the dragon, but not what you think,” I was past caring right now. All I wanted to do was to sleep, and preferably curled up with my dragon. “Thanks to father, the drug seeping through Paxala’s system is affecting me as well. It’s the connection that I share with her…” I started to mumble, feeling very sleepy indeed.
“Char, this is – wrong.” Wurgan was searching for the words, eventually settling on the one that would allow him to scold me some more.
“It’s not wrong. It’s natural. It is what friends do for each other. We share each other’s pains and troubles.” It is what families are also supposed to do for each other as well… I was too ill to say.
“But we have to keep the dragon dosed if we are to work with it – she damn near bit my arm off when I went to check on her!” Wurgan said, more to himself than to me.
“Well, maybe next time she’ll bite your head off, you’re not using it anyway…” I mumbled, rubbing my own free hand over my eyebrows.
“But if you get ill every time that the dragon gets its medicine...” My brother was thinking (not his best attribute).
“Poison…” I corrected. “And it’s she, not it.” Now that I knew what was happening above me, I wasn’t as traumatized as before. I could sense the shape of the Crimson Red in my heart and head, just not the edges of her thoughts. That was still terrifying, but I knew that she was alive, at least. I could make out a faint feeling of nausea, dizziness, and aching bones – but it was something.
I’ll get you better, I thought at the shape of Paxala in my head, although I had no idea how.
“Here.” Wurgan led me into my room and set my down on my bed. “Guards? Bring fresh water and food. I want my sister to be the looked after, damn it!” he snapped as I collapsed into the soft furs and blankets.
“Sister?” Wurgan said a little softer to me, but I ignored him. It wasn’t just the illness – I was mad as hell at him. With an awkward sigh, he turned back and left me in my room, his boots dragging on the heels. Click-thunk came the sound of my door being locked. From the outside.
I was running through the corridors of the Old Queen’s Keep, my home. Only it didn’t look like my home at all. The corridors were tighter and narrower, and a lot darker than the ones that my father kept – and yet I knew it was the keep. I knew it was home.
But a home that was also different, alien-like, and strange.
“Pax?” I called out, but she didn’t answer. Oh yes, I remembered. She couldn’t answer because she was asleep at the moment.
“Neill?” I tried – but once again I got no answer. My father had him put in the dungeon – didn’t that mean that he would be below me? I turned in my scramble and ran back the way that I had come, only to find that the stairs weren’t there anymore. In fact, the entire section of corridor that I had just passed wasn’t there, and instead there was a blank wall.
I was lost inside my own home, and I didn’t know how to get to the people that I cared about.
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br /> Left, I’ll try left, I thought, turning down an exactly similar narrow corridor, only to have my feet crunch over rough ground. Why was the ground so gritty? I thought, seeing that the entire passageway had seemingly been covered in fine, yellow-white grit.
“What is that, sand?” I murmured, crouching down to run my finger through the inch or so depth of crunching material. The granular pebbles poured through my hand, and, as I took out another handful, my hand brushed against something larger and solid buried in the sand. Curiously, my hand tried to feel around it, wondering what it could be. It was heavy, and stiff with the compacted gravel but it came easily when I tugged at it.
A metal circle. A gold and steel double-circle, joined together by elaborate jewels…
“The Great Crown!” I gasped, tugging it out of the pebbles, but it was stuck. There was something stuck in it, I saw, and I brushed away the top layer of the pebbles to reveal the dark shadow of the eye socket, staring back at me.
It was a skull. A skull of a young dragon, wearing the Great Crown like it was the true queen of all of these lands. That was when I realized that the gritty, sandy pebbles weren’t sand at all. They were the crushed and pulverized fragments of bone. Dragon bone. The whole keep--where I had played through its corridors and laughed and danced and sung-- was littered with bone fragments from murdered dragons.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” I was saying, over and over again as I held the skull and crown in my hands. There was the sudden thunk as the dragon’s skull dropped to the floor, leaving just the crown in my hands. But the crown was glowing. Not only the blue earthstar rocks, but also the ruby as well. Without knowing quite what I was doing, I lifted the crown to set it on my head.
The sand around me shifted and swirled, as if pulled by a mighty wind faster and faster into a whirlpool. But I felt perfectly calm, and no air even disturbed a hair on my head. The dragon-sand flew away from me in ripples, leaving me in a perfect, calm circle.
Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2) Page 18