Dragon Heart

by Cecelia Holland

  The corridor did not turn. Under his feet it began to go downward. A sudden gust of damp, salty air blew into his face. He stopped. As if the rock closed around him he suddenly could not breathe.

  Under his hand, the solid rock was warm, like flesh. It does not know me, he thought. I am inside and it does not know me.

  He struggled not to scream. His legs were watery. He turned, and felt his way back along the wall. He began holding his breath, to keep the darkness out. He thought he felt the rock move, drawing closer, closing in around him.

  Help me, he thought. Please help me. Not knowing who he called on.

  He realized he had shut his eyes; he opened them again, and saw the rock wall before him, faintly lit.

  He whirled around, sobbing with relief. The corridor rose up away from him, turning to the left, and a light bobbed steadily toward him. As he stood there, shaking, the tall girl, the Princess Casea, came around the corner toward him, a lamp in her hand.

  She said, “What are you doing here? Come with me.”

  She stretched out her hand to him, and he took it; the strength in her fingers surprised him. She led him back around the corner, and there was the stair landing, ahead of him.

  “Oh,” he said. “I should have just kept on.”

  She gave him a long, strange look. She said, “I have saved you. You must come when I call you.” She blew out the lamp and went away across the hall. Dawd stood in the hall, panting, wondering what had just happened to him.

  * * *

  Oto stood still, letting his man put on his doublet and arrange the pleats over the puffed breast. He said, “I’ve had a proclamation written up. Nothing particularly difficult. I’ll send the herald down to read it in the marketplace. Then the day after tomorrow, we shall have the coronation.” He admired his embroidered sleeve, gold and green.

  Broga made a sound in his chest. Oto said, “Do you object?”

  “I think we should find the Princes first,” Broga said.

  “Oh, we’ll have them by then.” Oto watched the man arrange the ruffles of his sleeves. “Once they see what’s happening, these people will give us no trouble.” At the moment, the main trouble they were giving was that all the native servants had disappeared. He was having to allot the work of the castle to his own men. He thought of sending for some of the men stationed down at the new fort to help out.

  Broga said, “The Princes did not go out by the gate. But nobody can find them anywhere. How do you explain this?”

  Oto frowned, and turned his eyes at the sergeant, standing by the door. This particular sergeant, whose name Oto could not remember, had served his father. Erdhart had trusted him, and he did seem more competent and intelligent than the rest. Oto said, “Why haven’t you turned them up? Can’t you search the place?”

  The sergeant’s square, fair-skinned face turned ruddy over the cheekbones. “I’ve searched, my lord. But they live here.”

  “What does that mean? Are they still in the castle?”

  The sergeant shook his head. “My lord.” His whole face was red now. Maybe after all he was just as stupid as the ordinary run of soldiers. Oto shrugged off the annoying memory of the men he had sent to map the place who had never found the end of it.

  Broga said, “Catch them. Keep watch on the kitchen, especially; they must eat.”

  Oto glared at him. “I give the orders.” He nodded to the sergeant. “Do your job. Find them. Go make sure of the Princesses.”

  The sergeant blinked at him. “Yes, my lord.” He saluted. “Glory to the Empire.”

  “Glory,” Broga and Oto said in unison.

  Oto faced his brother again. It came to Oto that Broga was showing a selfish interest in all this; certainly he was plotting. Another reason Oto should proclaim himself King as soon as possible. He would send a copy of the proclamation to the Holy City. He nodded. “You have something to do, I’m sure?”

  His brother stared at Oto a moment. “Yes, in fact,” he said. “The funeral of our father.” He turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

  * * *

  The long, steep passageway led Tirza out to the stair between the two rows of dwellings dug into the cliff. Below her was the beach, with its shops and stalls, and just to the south the broad common with the cypress tree. Only the local fishing ships floated on the blue water of the bay. She saw this with a little start of disappointment. Jeon had told her a ship had come from the south while she was gone; there had been strangers, new gewgaws, music, clothes.

  The marketplace was full of people, moving like busy fish along the edges of the market, the shops and stalls. She knew them all. A red hat went by below her: that was Trollo, the piper boy, in the sack over his shoulder the balls and boxes he used in his juggles. She remembered the bright metal hats the Imperial men had worn, when she had seen them up the coast. She went down the steps; in the cliff houses as she passed, the women looked up from their soups and their brooms and smiled.

  They liked her here. She was not ugly here. Nobody stared, or threw stones at her. The children who ran in a flood along the beach, screaming, who struggled along after their parents with buckets and baskets, did not come to harass her. She went by a makeshift stall rigged up on the beach, its slab of a counter stacked up with cheeses wrapped in cloth: a shepherd from inland, likely. Then Leanara’s bakery, the oven door wide, the old woman bent over with her shovel to take out her round loaves. Her apprentice Suan leaned idle on the counter. They would give bread to Tirza if she only held out her hand. The aroma of the fresh baking made her stomach rumble. In the sail shop next door, cut into the wall of the cliff, the two sailmakers were arguing in ascending voices.

  Before the men all died in the mountains the great porch of the brewery had been their place alone, but now among the few men left the women filled the benches and tables, so it was just as crowded. They made her shy; she had seen too much of packs of people. Wary, she went up the side of the steps, and people fell still to watch her. She felt all their eyes on her. Their silence. But they were moving, also, even bowing a little, and she went through their midst to the door.

  The cave room beyond was also full of people, eating at the long tables, and they too quieted when they saw her, and bowed. She crossed to the steps and went up to Luka’s room.

  She came in behind a row of backs, one of them Jeon’s, but beyond them Luka sat on a chair, facing her, and he saw her at once. “There’s my sister. I knew you would come.” He put out his arm and she went to him through the others and he hugged her against him. “Mervaly, Casea—they’re safe?”

  She nodded, looking into his eyes; she put her hands together in a ring, and set them on top of his head.

  The room erupted in a jubilant roar. Jeon stood up, thrusting his arms over his head. Huge Aken, the butcher, leaned toward her and pounded her heartily on the back, and beside him Lumilla and her daughter and the three other townspeople began to call out, “King Luka! King!”

  He looked down at her, smiling.

  “You’re a good girl, Tirza.” He stood up.

  They all quieted at once. Luka said, “We won’t get through this by yelling. We need weapons. Jeon, you have a bow.”

  “Yes.”

  “The rest of us need blades. Spears. Whatever we can make or find, and quickly.” He turned to Tirza. “Go on, now; leave this to us. You’re a good girl.”

  She backed up, startled. He was sending her away. They bent together, all of them, shutting her out. He was appointing this one to go there and that one to go somewhere else. He was giving no work to her. She went to the door and left again.

  The sun was high and hot, but the marketplace was still crowded. On the brewery porch Trollo was playing his pipe, and two little barefoot girls had come to dance. Tirza stood nearby, to listen, the music like speech without words. A dozen women waited around Leanara’s stall for the oven to open again, their hands full of dishes to be baked. Tirza wandered back toward the common. At the weavery the long counter
was stacked high with cloth and wool. The sheep fair would not be long past. Maybe that was why the ship from the south had come up. She put her hand on a skein of dark wool. One of the weaver sisters came over, blinking, eager, and Tirza went away; she had no use for that. She thought of her mother, who had cursed her to be always separate. But then where the row of stalls turned toward the beach the boy Timmon with his water cask offered her a cup and she drank. At another stall a woman handed Tirza mutton on a bit of old bread. She went to the cypress tree and sat on the bench to eat.

  She watched the brewery, back on the north beach, wondering what Luka would do. People went up constantly onto the porch, came back, went down. As they passed each other their heads turned and they spoke to each other. Whenever these proper people met, this was what they did first: build this little common porch of words. This was what she lacked, this connection. The way to make it. She turned away from the brewery, looking toward the bay, the water blue in the sunlight, the curl of foam at its lip. Trollo’s music reached her faintly on the wind.

  At the high corner of her vision something fluttered; she raised her gaze to the cliff top, at the head of the path to the town. Up there a man in a striped tunic held a long bright ribbon of cloth. After a moment he started down the path and behind him came another, very gaudy man, with a long staff, and then more striped tunics, all stepping at the same time. No one in the town seemed to notice them. They came zigzagging down the path, two by two, walked out onto the sand, and lined themselves up in two rows. The man with the banner went out in front of them, and beside him a man with a horn blew a blast.

  Tirza stood up and trotted closer. Around the marketplace everybody was turning around.

  Between the horn blower and the banner man, the gaudy herald strode forward. Tirza had seen him before, in the castle, attending Erdhart; he walked with a strut, and carried a staff. He had a short cape with heavy, glinting trim, high-topped black boots, a hat with an enormous feather secured on the crown through a jewel. Behind him the twelve Imperial soldiers with their pikes stood like a striped wall and the banner fluttered on the breeze in from the sea. In front of all of them, the herald banged his staff on the ground, and nodded at the soldier with the horn.

  The horn blared again, a cold screech like a rip through the air. The herald began to shout. He had a huge, carrying voice, and his words pitched into the silence like weights.

  “After what has happened to our master the Archduke Erdhart we can but grieve, and yet the demands of polity require us to take measures. And so tomorrow the High Lord and Archduke Oto will take the crown of Castle Ocean on his head.”

  Tirza twitched all over and her jaw dropped open. She cast a quick look around her for her brothers, nowhere in sight. All the people in the marketplace were drifting up closer, looking at one another, and murmuring. She went forward toward the front of the crowd.

  The horn shrieked again. Again everybody else stood still, silent. The hard, evil voice went on, “After the coronation, the King will come down to receive the homage of his people. At this time he will accept gifts of you, and be assured the manner and the value of the gift will recommend you to him for your advancement.”

  Tirza stooped, her fingers scrabbling at the ground, and tore a rock out of the hard surface. Running forward a few steps, she flung it at the herald.

  “Here is a gift!”

  She heard her own voice rising, a tuneless bird-like shriek, just before the roar of the crowd drowned everything. The herald shrank back under a barrage of stones and dirt and food. The first volley splattered Imperials behind him, but then they lowered their pikes point forward and charged.

  Tirza ran for the shelter of the cypress tree. The butcher’s boy Mika was already there, picking up rocks. Panting, she wheeled to look back.

  In the common the crowd swirled and screamed around the orderly row of the pikemen, pelting them with showers of stones and dirt and shit. The pikemen strode straight ahead in their tight double rank while the town dogs barked and charged and nipped at their heels. Before this charge the crowd broke and scrambled away to either side, and from the shops, the houses, more people were rushing out to see what was happening. The crowd swelled, three times as many now as the pikemen.

  Back there in the abandoned dust at the head of the common, a pile of gaudy rags lay half-buried in stones and dirt.

  The rank of Imperial soldiers, their striped tunics filthy, had reached almost to the far end of the common. The crowd had wheeled around out of their way, and once they passed closed again behind them. Tirza saw Luka out in front of everybody, a fish gaff in one hand, shouting. She could not pick his voice from the general roar. The soldiers turned and marched back, toward the crowd, still in their double row.

  A horn blew, and the pikemen stopped. At a shout from one of them, three pikemen in the front row moved two steps forward and in the row behind three moved two steps back. The remaining men wheeled neatly around, all together, into the spaces, so that they formed a square of bodies.

  The horn blew again, and the square moved quickly forward. The mob of townspeople swirled around before them, and the Imperials all at once lowered their pikes down flat and charged into the midst of the mob.

  Tirza ran toward the fighting, looking for her brothers. Screaming like gulls, the townspeople were reeling back out of the way of the pikes. They fell back to either side of the common and kept throwing anything they could put their hands on. Mika with his shirttail full of rocks ran by her, going toward his father. Out there in the open, away from the fighting, somebody was thrashing on the ground—Leanara, the baker. Tirza ran to her and knelt down. The old woman clutched her belly, where the red blood was gushing through her floury apron. Tirza laid a hand on her face, and felt the life go out of Leanara.

  She sat back on her heels, her heart pounding. Blood all over her dress now. An unbearable heat rose up through her, for this death, for all the deaths. Keep faith, she thought. Keep faith. Bounding up, she chased after the crowd, looking for stones as she ran.

  * * *

  Broga stood at the side of the grave, staring down at his father’s body; he could not bear to lift the shovel in his hands. The priest had finished reading the holy words and was watching Broga expectantly. He signed himself and prayed again, asking, once again, for the greatness to be Erdhart’s son, and behind him somebody screamed.

  He lifted his head, annoyed. This graveyard was on the top of the cliff, well back from the edge, almost to the high road, but, still, someone was running toward him from the direction of the beach. He had seen the herald and some soldiers go down there; in fact, he had made a point of bringing Erdhart here to his grave just as Oto sent his proclamation down. But Broga could not be drawn away now. He gripped the shovel, composing himself, and drew it back to stab into the pile of dirt.

  “They’re fighting!” the oncoming runner screamed. “On the beach. Somebody’s dead!”

  The shovel stopped in Broga’s hands, halfway through the motion. Abruptly he tossed it down and said, “Send for my brother.” The groom brought Broga’s horse at a trot, and he swung into the saddle.

  “My lord,” the priest said.

  “Bury him,” Broga said, and galloped toward the cliff.

  * * *

  Oto watched from the top of the cliff. The twelve soldiers were crushed in the center of the great mob of people; there was no hope for them. He said, “We have forty-eight men left, and our own guards. I knew we shouldn’t have sent all those men down to the new fort.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. Broga was watching the mob surge along the beach, the square of Imperials trapped in their midst.

  “God have mercy on them.” Broga signed himself. “Give me the order to rescue them.”

  “You couldn’t get there in time. They’re dead men. What we need now is to restore calm. Heed me. Down south, there’s a good way onto the beach from the cliff. Isn’t there? Summon up the army. Take half of them down there, come around on
to the beach, and attack the town from the south. I’ll start down from here, with my guard. We’ll get them between us.”

  “We can’t leave those men down there—”

  “We can’t waste more men,” Oto said. “Obey orders. Go down and circle them; we’ll crush them between us. In fact, you take all the army; just leave me my guard. You need the weight of numbers.” Down there, the Imperial square had disappeared under a wave of people.

  Broga said, “Very well. For once, I think I agree with you. This is a good plan.” He gave him a crisp salute. “Glory to the Empire. God be with us.”

  “Oh,” Oto said, “most certainly.”

  Broga was already reining his horse around. He loved to fight. He had already brought the soldiers out of camp and assembled them in their ranks in the meadow behind them, just short of the graveyard. Broga’s voice sounded, and the horn blew, and with precision the men marched forward toward the high road. As they reached it the horn blew again and they moved flawlessly from their ranks of eight into two files. The horsemen of Broga’s guard ranged up on the inland side of the road, their banner floating above them. At another toot from the horn they all marched away down the path along the edge of the terrace.

  Under his breath Oto said, “Maybe you’ll find the good end down there, too.” Then he turned to look down at the beach again, where, to his astonishment, the little knot of Imperial soldiers was escaping from the mob.

  5

  A stone’s throw from Tirza, the pikemen had stopped, holding their tight square, all facing out, their pikes leveled before them. In the hollow center of the formation lay two men who could not stand. The crowd was jeering and howling and raining down filth on them, but nobody wanted to charge the pikes. Trollo over there was holding a gashed arm, and several of the women were sitting down. Tirza could see big Aken, the butcher, going around the crowd, talking to people.

  The leader of the pikemen, the tall one with the horn, called out something lost in the din; his men began to edge along, still in their square, dragging the wounded with them. Tirza stood up, rocks in each hand.