by Janine Cross
Shadowed By Wings
Dragon Temple [3]
Janine Cross
Roc (2006)
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Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: Fantasy, Epic, General, Fiction, Fantasy Fiction, Dragons
Fantasyttt Epicttt Generalttt Fictionttt Fantasy Fictionttt Dragonsttt
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From Publishers Weekly
In unflinching detail, the horrific second installment in Cross's controversial Dragon Temple trilogy (after Touched by Venom) chronicles 17-year-old Zarq's struggles to attain her destiny as the Skykeeper's Daughter. Zarq faces the oppression of a brutal Taliban-like theocratic dictatorship and her own addiction to dragon venom as she undergoes a brutal apprenticeship to the Dragonmaster of Clutch Re. Zarq hopes to change her oppressive patriarchal society by becoming a dragonmaster herself, despite the violent opposition she faces—and the demands of her dead mother's dragon "haunt" to search for her long-lost sister, Waivia, instead of completing the apprenticeship.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
Teaser chapter
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Praise for Touched by Venom, One of Library Journal’s Five Best SF & Fantasy Books of 2005
“Touched by Venom, the first volume in Janine Cross’s Dragon Temple Saga, is a compelling and harrowing journey, set in a vividly rendered world alive with detail.”
—Jacqueline Carey, bestselling author of the Kushiel’s Legacy Trilogy
“Cross’s bold debut introduces headstrong nine-year-old Zarq Darquel… . Turning the fantasy cliché of the underdog girl who dreams of dragon mastery into a grim but fascinating coming-of-age tale, Cross scratches only the surface of this richly detailed, well-imagined world.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Headstrong and independent in a society where women are silent breeders of sons and where both men and women are ruled by the whims of the dragonmasters of the Dragon Temple, Zarq Darquel angers the authorities and brings disaster upon her clan and her family. With her now insane mother, she embarks on a dangerous journey to find and rescue her sister, sold into slavery, and in doing so plants her feet on the road to revolution. Set in a jungle world reminiscent of tribal Africa and South America, Canadian author Cross’s debut novel tells a fascinating story of love and vengeance. Offering a different approach to dragons and dragon lore, the author combines skillful storytelling with sensually evocative details. With particular appeal to fans of the works of Jacqueline Carey and Terry Goodkind, this opening volume of a planned trilogy is highly recommended for most libraries.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“[A] terrific coming-of-age tale … should lead to profound, fascinating future adventures.”
—Midwest Book Review
ROC
Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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Published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Roc trade paperback edition.
First Roc Mass Market Printing, April 2007
Copyright © Janine Cross, 2006
Excerpt from Forged by Fire copyright © Janine Cross, 2006
All rights reserved
eISBN : 978-1-429-56735-0
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
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To mothers and children everywhere.
ONE
The massive carrion bird plummeted groundward, casting a cool shadow that rapidly engulfed the entire Lashing Lane.
The spectators who had intended on stoning me moments before paused a half moment as the reality of what they were seeing sank in: A legendary creature with a fifty-foot wingspan was descending upon them, its razor-lined beak gaping, its scimitar claws grasping, its elliptical body shimmering with blue light.
They were staring at a Skykeeper, a creature who, as a guardian of the Celestial Realm, held dominion over life and death for mortal humans and divine dragons alike.
A creature who was, unbeknownst to them, my mother’s haunt.
She would not allow them to stone me to death for the crime of daring to join the dragonmaster’s apprenticeship. No. The haunt wanted me alive, to serve its own mad purpose.
The Skykeeper screeched, rattling hearts within rib cages and the timbers of the nearby stables with its reverberating skirl. As one, the spectators broke for cover, screaming.
I was seated upon a dragon on the lane, held there by Waikar Re Kratt, First Son of the warrior-lord of Clutch Re. For reasons as yet unknown to me, Kratt had galloped into my stoning and hoisted me atop his destrier. As the Skykeeper screeched, the dragon we rode reared, trumpeting; I was unsaddled and landed heavily on the ground. The dragon’s wicked talons slashed the air above me. I scrambled away, back, the rocks that littered the ground biting into my bare buttocks and legs.
The Skykeeper rushed earthward with terrifying speed. Twenty feet above ground, it pulled up sharply and skimmed over the lane, dust and the stench of carrion whirling in its wake, the air preternaturally chill.
The dragons harnessed to the parade of satin-and-silver-decked carriag
es that lined the lane trumpeted and tried to bolt. Talons the color of newly minted steel and dewlaps glittering with milky opalescence flashed in the sunlight as dragons reared and bucked against their harnesses. Carriages overturned or became entangled with one another, spilling screaming bayen women and children onto the dusty lane.
Great wingspan shuddering, the luminous Skykeeper banked away from the lane and rose into the sky. It skirled again—a harrowing, earsplitting shriek—and flapped ponderously toward the lone cloud high in the hard blue sky.
My mother was leaving me yet again.
Grief overwhelmed me as I watched the Skykeeper shrink into a zircon marble and disappear into the cloud far above.
The dragon I’d been seated upon bucked and clawed the ground, snorting, eyes rolling, foam falling in venom-scented clouds from her muzzle. Waikar Re Kratt fought to rein her in, struggling to stay in his saddle. His blue satin cape flashed behind him like the wings of a giant, livid raven.
I scrambled farther back from his panicked beast and looked about me, disbelieving.
The crowd was gone. Dragonmaster apprentices, monks, spectators, and attending eminent Holy Wardens alike had all run for cover. Mother—the Skykeeper—had saved my life.
“Get up, girl.”
My eyes jerked toward the flushed face of the dragonmaster of Clutch Re. Unlike everyone else, he had not run for cover from the Skykeeper. No. He’d remained on the lane. And as he walked toward me, his green-whorled brown skin gleaming in the sunlight and the glass bead at the end of his chin braid swinging to and fro, he grinned dementedly, as if the appearance of the creature had pleased him immensely. He glanced at Waikar Re Kratt, still struggling with his beast, then looked back at me.
“Get up!”
I scrambled to my feet, legs unsteady, breath thready and cold. I looked about the ground, seeking the tunic the dragonmaster had demanded I shuck, so I could be inducted into his apprenticeship through ritual whipping. It was that which had spurred the crowd into murderous indignation, see: my nakedness, and my female gender.
The garment was nowhere in sight.
“Walk over to the bar,” the dragonmaster barked.
I gaped at him.
He meant to whip me, to continue with the annual ritual of Mombe Taro whether or not he had spectators and apprentices, with or without the pageantry and ritual. He still meant to induct me into his apprenticeship.
Fear and triumph shot through me in equal measures.
It wasn’t too late to back out, to flee. After all, women did not enter the apprenticeship of a dragonmaster, and as a woman of seventeen years, I would be defying centuries of tradition by allowing myself to be inducted into dragonmaster Re’s apprenticeship.
But if I fled, I would never again experience the heady splendor of dragon venom, would never again taste its licorice-and-lime effervescence. Would never get another chance to share myself with a dragon and hear divine dragonsong.
So, of course, I wouldn’t flee.
Trembling, mouth so dry I couldn’t swallow, I walked over to the whipping bar. I was intensely aware of my nakedness and felt exposed and highly vulnerable. As I walked, my bare feet raised clouds of the red dust unique to my birth Clutch. It was warm, that dust, and powdery. A caress, almost. I pictured myself clothed in it.
Behind me, I heard Waikar Re Kratt exchange words with the dragonmaster.
An epiphany struck me: Custom dictated that a dragonmaster’s apprentice could not be inducted or reinstated into his apprenticeship by the dragonmaster himself, and that the ritual whipping had to be done by other hands. It would therefore be Kratt who would lay leather against my back.
Nausea rushed over me, and I stumbled and would have fallen if not for the whipping bar that ran, hip high, down the median of the Lashing Lane. I gripped the smooth wood of the bar tightly and forced myself to breathe in, breathe out.
The whipping bar was the color of wild honey, and it was slick with consecrated oil yet furred here and there with red dust. It had been carved to resemble a sinuous, impossibly long dragon, and amongst the bar’s labyrinthine wooden scales, contorted human shapes leered at me. From the corner of one eye, I saw Kratt ride over to a section farther along the whipping bar and tether his lathered, exhausted beast.
I was going to get what I wanted most now.
Venom.
Yet that venom would be imparted by a whip, a whip wielded by someone I had vowed to kill, someone I feared and hated, someone who had murdered my father, sent my mother down the spiraling path of insanity, and destroyed my childhood.
“Mo Fa Cinai, wabaten ris balu,” I murmured. Purest Dragon, become my strength.
I closed my eyes.
The dragons entangled in the smashed carriages farther down the lane lowed in fear and pain. I heard wood splinter and chain clank, smelled the burning-oil stench of agitated dragon. Women and children were crying. Some distance away, a pack of feral dogs howled, their syncopated yelps and yowls eerie.
I heard footsteps approaching me from behind. Steady. Soft. They moved without hurry.
My pulse sped up.
The footsteps stopped.
I heard a slithering, raspy sound: a whip uncoiling.
My fingers tightened on the bar. I could not breathe properly. I started panting. My bare back and buttocks crawled with dread anticipation; I could feel every muscle clenching tighter, tighter.
The waiting stretched on. And on.
Mo Fa Cinai, wabaten ris balu, I repeated in my mind. Mo Fa Cinai, wabaten ris balu.
Then a near-silent whisper flicked over the air, and leather cracked near my ear. I jumped, eyes flying open, and a scream escaped me.
Another long pause. I grew giddy.
Crack!
Leather snapped near my other ear, without touching, though my hair wafted a little in the breeze the whip made. Again I jumped and screamed, couldn’t help it, and suddenly I was filled with fury, for I was being toyed with by a sadist who’d once smashed my mother’s jaw, over and over, beneath his boot heel, and I would not play his vicious game; I would not.
As always, I didn’t hold my tongue when I should have.
“You dragon-sucking screw!” I shrieked as I whirled about. “Don’t you feel man enough to whip me properly? Don’t you feel strong enough, brave enough, unless I’ve pissed myself in fear first?”
For one volcanic moment, we stared at each other, Kratt and I, his cold blue eyes boring into my brown ones. Then his whip moved, and a breathtaking pain sliced the skin below my left breast, and then another gashed me between the legs, reaching up under my sex and cracking against my tailbone so hard that I swore bone fractured. I screamed and spun away from the whip, lurched into the whipping bar, which I’d forgotten about, almost fell over it.
And still that whip fell.
It stung, it burned, and my breath came ragged and fast as my chest rose and fell, rose and fell, beneath my head, which I instinctively covered with my arms. Eight times only a dragonmaster’s apprentice should be whipped during induction. Eight times. But Kratt’s whip fell far, far more often than that upon my naked body.
With each whip fall, my screams intensified, till they burst from my mouth like shrieking birds, and the whip no longer stung or thudded but landed like a shard of ice, the sensation like that of being splashed with boiling oil: that moment when it feels not hot, but intensely cold, and then not cold or hot but another sensation entirely, one that can be described only as keen agony.
The whip falls smashed against me like fists, bit as deep as hurled knives. Each strike jerked my entire body and burned iced flame into the marrow of my bones.
Suddenly, the world tipped. Hardpan slammed against my knees. My forehead thudded slowly, slowly against dirt, and I was confused and felt poised on the lip of complete vertigo. Grit coated my tongue. A salty, metallic fluid filled my mouth.
“Stop, please stop.”
Not me, choking the words out from a throat so raw that eac
h word tasted of blood. Surely not me. I was stronger than that, would never beg for mercy from this man, of all men.
For an answer: silence.
Stillness.
Then.
Black boots coated in fine red dust floated before my face. Fading. Oscillating. Beneath my cheek hot earth pulsed. A thready whine filled my ears. A hand caught my hair, jerked my face off the ground.
Blue glistened before me: the sky. No. An eye. Two eyes. His eyes. The eyes of Kratt. Above those eyes, hair the color of sun-blanched almonds, dusted with golden cane sugar.
The hand released me. My head plunged groundward, downward, tumbling and spinning, falling forever.
Thud! My cheek struck earth.
Darkness, with a pinpoint of blinding light at its center.
The point of light grew, pulsing. The darkness receded. From the center of the light grew a face. Not Kratt’s face, no. This one was deeply lined, was the piebald color of dried herbs and bark. Gray eyebrows as thin as desiccated millipedes furrowed at me beneath a bald, scarred head. I stared into the eyes of that face; they were marbled with blood.
The face slewed sideways. Blinding light again, and sensation returned in excruciating swiftness to my body.
Agony across my flayed back, across my calves and rump. Agony as I lay belly down in the dust, one cheek pressed against hot ground, the sun’s angry eye glaring directly into mine as I continued the agonizing process of returning to consciousness.
That blood-eyed face loomed again into the light; it grinned at me. It was a knowing grin, a grin possessing the wisdom of the insane. The drawn lips exposed listing and rotted teeth, gums speckled with bruises. Below that leer dangled a chin braid garnished with a green toggle.
“Bite,” said the face.
Sunlight shone on something wet and black: a whip. The whip’s handle was shoved crosswise into my mouth. And then …