Dragon Blood h-2

by Patricia Briggs

  One chamber was coated in crystal gems. Backlit by dwarvenstone, emerald columns rose from the ground to cross over our heads. It was difficult to judge distances in caves, but the columns looked colossal, the base of the nearest one longer than our raft.

  Another chamber held gray stone carved in countless shapes. Small statues crowded the water's edge and climbed over the tunnel. I could have stayed there a whole day, but we were off again with a rush of water magic.

  As we waited in a place that smelled of mint and glittered with gold, something large bumped our boat twice. Yoleg looked concerned, and Axiel held up a hand for silence. We all crouched motionless until whatever it was gave up and swam off in waves of midnight fins.

  The raft came to rest gently against one of a series of docks in a cave I hadn't seen before—although I had been to Dwarvenhame several times. Our raft was alone in a port obviously built for a hundred, and the dock we tied to was the only one I'd have trusted with my weight.

  "This is the formal dock," said Axiel, answering my unasked question. "Before we took you as a visitor to my family. But you come tonight as Hurogmeten to petition the king, and that requires we tie up here."

  Axiel organized us so that Yoleg led, followed a half-step later by me on his right. Axiel and Oreg flanked me on either side.

  Yoleg brought us into a large chamber, irregular in shape but flat floored and walled. Gold and gemstones were conspicuously absent because dwarves don't mix pleasure and business. That this hall in the Dwarvenhame was barren except for mounds of stone to serve as seats told me that this was very serious business indeed.

  Plain-clothed dwarves packed the room in a way that reminded me forcefully of my own great hall yesterday. But there was a stillness that lay over this room that would never be a part of a gathering of wild Northmen. It felt as if the dwarves had internalized some part of the stone of the room into themselves.

  On the far side of the room, Axiel's father, Lorekoth the dwarven king, rose from his seat and looked at me as if he'd never laughed at my table or dug through the broken stones of Hurog to pull books tenderly out of harm's way.

  He was young to be king, only four hundred years old, but his father had been one of the first to die of the series of plagues that had nearly destroyed the dwarves. His mane of red hair swept the ground. It was loose because a dwarf only braided his hair to go to war. In his neatly trimmed beard there was a bare hint of gray. King Lorekoth wore plain gray robes trimmed in black. Only the fabrics, silk and linen, reflected his rank.

  "Who comes?" he asked slowly, the only person I'd ever heard with a voice deeper than mine. Axiel said that he could use the deeper tones to conjure fear in anyone listening to him, a useful trick on the battlefield.

  I bowed, one ruler to another. "I am Wardwick, Hurogmeten of Hurog Keep, where dragons once more fly."

  "Why do you come before me, Hero of Hurog?"

  I didn't flinch in embarrassment at the title, but it was a near thing. "I ask repayment of the debt your people owe me. We fight a war above. A great evil has been unearthed to work its magic among mankind. Jakoven, High King of the Five Kingdoms, holds Farsonsbane in his hands."

  "Does any person here deny him his debt?" the king asked.

  Silence answered him.

  "What do you wish of us?"

  "I need an army," I said. "What human army could stand against the dark men, the stone men?"

  And so the negotiations began. Dwarves, perhaps because they are a long-lived race, do nothing in haste unless dire need forces them. My tired bones told me that the sun had risen again high in the sky before someone mentioned the dwarvenways casually. Another hour passed before I brought them up again.

  Stories were told of dwarven bravery, and Oreg and Axiel told tales of my life to match them that were so blown up that several times they bore no resemblance to any memory I had of past deeds. Not that the stories were false … just exaggerated. I had carried a horse two miles in a blizzard—but it was a newborn foal. Blood and severed body parts played a role in most of the stories, each storyteller becoming more and more graphic as the hours trailed by.

  In the end I had an agreement that I could transport no more than ten people at a time through the dwarvenways. The list of people who could use them was not long—no one wanted the ways to be common knowledge—but Kellen and his man, all those of direct Hurog descent whom I deemed trustworthy, Alizon, Haverness, Tisala, Stala, and Garranon were among them. Axiel was to come with me because he knew how to use the ways.

  "Most gracious king," I said with a bow that was more jerky than I would have wished, but at least my stiff muscles allowed me to rise. "I have a small gift for you, in thanks for this audience."

  A gift, the king's note had said, would make it impossible for his courtiers to complain about human manners. An exotic animal, he'd suggested, as his menagerie was famous among his people. It had taken me about five minutes to come up with the perfect animal.

  "I have in my lands," I said, "a basilisk, sometimes called a stone lizard. Oreg, my wizard, has enchanted it truly to stone in order to keep it safe. If you have a sanctuary for it, I will have it brought to you. Oreg can dispel the enchantment when and where you wish it."

  Silence fell upon the dwarves. Shock rather than contemplation, I thought. The basilisk was the dwarven royal family's animal, a totem second only to the dragon who belonged to no one family, but to all of dwarven kind. Axiel had told me that during our trip here when I explained what I intended to do—I was not such a fool as to give the king a gift that might be an embarrassment, so I checked it out with his son. The king even had the perfect place to release the basilisk, a huge island without a harbor that was reachable only by the dwarvenways.

  A slow smile spread across the king's face. "A generous gift, Lord Wardwick. I am honored to accept."

  I bowed once more and left before I did anything to undo what we had accomplished today.

  "I didn't think that even my father could get them to agree to allow humans to travel freely in the dwarvenways," commented Axiel as we waited for the waters to calm in one of the crossroad chambers. His younger brother wasn't with us because the raft was to await passengers at Hurog.

  "He didn't think he would, either," said Oreg with a pleased smile. "I suggested to your father that if Ward started with a big enough demand—one that really would cancel the debt owed to him—then the rest of the dwarves would be more than ready to give him this small concession."

  "The best part," I said, "is that your father will be taking the basilisk off my hands and Oreg will quit asking me where we can release it."

  Tychis was waiting for us at the bottom of the first flight of the stairs to the dwarvenways where Oreg's wards to keep out casual visitors held him at bay. Even fleshed out a bit he looked like a half-starved wolf—a cold, half-starved wolf. I don't know how long he'd been there, but he was pale and shivering.

  "What'd Ciarra do?" I asked, briskly wrapping him in my cloak. "Tell you to find me and then let you fend for yourself?"

  He bridled at my criticism of Ciarra, though he pulled my cloak around him. "She said it was necessary for you to come as quickly as you could."

  "Tychis?" My sister's voice preceded her. "Are you down here?" She turned the corner and saw the four of us. Ciarra looked more respectable than she had as a young girl, wearing dresses now instead of torn-up hunting leathers—but I suspected that when she was eighty-five she would still light up a room with her energy. "Ah, there you are, Ward. Nice of you to tell people where you're going. If it hadn't been for Tosten and me, Uncle Duraugh would have been sending out search parties."

  I scowled at her a bit. It had been a long time since I had to tell anyone where I was going. Seeing my expression, Tychis shuffled over until he was between Ciarra and me.

  Ciarra bounced down the stairs and hugged him. "Don't worry about that one," she said to Tychis as she pointed at me rudely. "He hasn't raised a hand to me since I lost his favorite
hunting knife when I was about your age."

  I huffed with indignation. "What she doesn't tell you was that she lost my knife climbing up a tree to see if the eagle in the nest had any hatchlings. Stupid bird almost knocked me out of the tree when I went up to get her—I still have scars from the talons on my back. If she'd bothered to ask, I'd have told her that eagles don't have hatchlings in the winter."

  I'd done the right thing by giving her Tychis. He had a place here—and someone to take care of.

  "Tychis, go tell Beckram that we found Ward and he'll be up shortly." Ciarra pulled off the wrap she was wearing and tugged my cloak off of him. "Here, take this. It's not as warm, but it won't make you fall down the stairs, either. After you've found Beckram, go sit by a fire until you're toasty."

  Tychis bowed correctly and then barreled up the stairs, clutching Ciarra's wrap so it didn't fall on the floor.

  "I have to watch him," she said when he was gone. "He's so anxious to please, he won't tell me when he's had enough."

  I kissed her forehead. "Thank you. I knew you'd handle him if anyone could."

  She smiled and shook her head. "I'll be happy when I convince him that we have every intention of keeping him fed, and all that the hoard of food he's hidden does is attract rats. Oh, that poor boy, Ward. He doesn't talk much, but you can see the life he led 'til now."

  Ciarra turned to Axiel and stretched out her hands and caught his. "How lovely to see you again, Axiel."

  After the greetings were done, Ciarra turned to me. "Alizon arrived last night on a boat from Cranstone with a small cadre of Oranstonians." She laughed when I groaned. "Serves you right, you old hermit."

  Oreg took himself off to sleep. Axiel accompanied Ciarra to check in on the new baby, while I trudged up the stairs toward one of the newly finished rooms next to the library where Alizon was holding court. When I got there, the door was shut and my cousin Beckram was leaning casually against the wall facing Tychis.

  I stopped and stood quietly where I was, recognizing the relaxed pose Beckram used to defuse tense situations. One glance at Tychis's defensive stance told me who the tension was coming from.

  Beckram saw me, but gave no outward sign; instead he explained obliquely what the trouble was. "So you think I should have let that Oranstonian lord in there yell at you for doing as you were told?"

  "I'm a bastard," Tychis said.

  "You aren't the only bastard here," replied my cousin. "That's no reason to let a man cut down a boy."

  "There are other bastard Hurogs here," Tychis agreed. "I seen 'em. They work in the stables, or fight in the Guard. They don't live in the keep—except maybe for Oreg, and he's a wizard. So what do you want from me?"

  "You and I have fourteen brothers and sisters who were not children of my mother," I said.

  Tychis didn't start, just moved until he could keep an eye on Beckram and me. I half expected to see tears, but he was just pale. I suppose children who survived the streets learned not to cry.

  "I was unable to do much for my family until my father died," I continued. "By then most of them were adults." One by one, I named them off to him and told him what Hurog was doing to help them. Most I'd given money to, several I'd given land. I'd paid for schooling and dowries, for a fishing boat, for arms and a good horse.

  "Of them all," I said, "you are the only one I know of who was not born on Hurog. You were abandoned to fight for yourself on the streets for the king to pick up on a whim. My father owed you more than that. Later we'll talk of what you want out of life. But know this, Tychis. As long as I hold Hurog, no blood of my blood will ever stand alone. When you are a man, I expect you to stand up for your family as Beckram has. Now, Ciarra is in her room with Axiel, who is a half-dwarven prince. As a matter of fact, I think he might be a bastard, too. If you are quiet, Ciarra'll get him telling stories for you."

  When I waved my hand at him, he dodged past me and escaped down the stairs—Ciarra and Beckram were sharing a room in the lower levels of Hurog that was half full of this season's grain. If I were married, I would have a good reason to find some nook or closet away from everyone, too—instead of being crammed in with a host of other men.

  "He doesn't believe you," said Beckram, watching Tychis run down the stairs. "He waited until we were out of the room before he informed me that I shouldn't have defended him in there when old Farrawell snapped at him for interrupting the meeting. He didn't want me to get into trouble."

  "He will understand," I said. "Give Ciarra a little time and he'll be strutting around here arrogant as an Avinhellish lord."

  The polite social expression Beckram wore gave way to a grin. "She does have that effect on men, doesn't she?"

  14—WARDWICK

  My father said that if the Oranstonians had liked fighting against the high king half as much as they liked fighting each other, they would have won their rebellion.

  Six Oranstonian lords had accompanied Alizon. Farrawell, the one who'd yelled at Tychis, I knew by reputation though not by sight. He was the only one of the Oranstonians I hadn't met, so I had no trouble fitting the name to the man.

  Farrawell had accounted himself well in the wake of the Oranstonian Rebellion, surviving not by diplomacy, as with many of the older Oranstonian lords—like, say, Haverness—but because he'd been imprisoned when the Oranstonians broke. I'd heard he was a man of hot temper and little insight. He'd been one of Haverness's Hundred and, like Haverness, had taken the defeat of the Vorsag as a signal that he could stay at his estates—which were vast by any standards.

  Beckram's friend Kirkovenal was there, a generation younger than the other Oranstonians. He sat next to Garranon, who wore his usual bland court-face. Only the shadows under his eyes showed the strain of Jakoven's attack.

  Danerra, Levenstar, Revenell, and Willettem had all fought in the Rebellion and the Hundred—which was all I knew of them. There was an empty seat between Willettem and Kirkovenal, and Beckram slid into it. I leaned against the wall. If I sat down now, I'd be asleep in five minutes unless someone did something more interesting than talk.

  Alizon, when I'd known him at court, had been famed for his outlandish clothes and dyed hair. Today his hair was streaked with gray and cut short in no particular fashion. If I'd walked by him in a market, I wouldn't have recognized him.

  Kellen and Rosem were noticeably absent, but my uncle sat on Alizon's right, watching the faces around him intently. Tosten wasn't there, either.

  My uncle greeted me with a glance and then launched off into speech with the air of a man repeating something for the twentieth time.

  "You say that you want to attack Estian," he said, looking from one Oranstonian face to another. "Which at this point is utterly foolish."

  "Fighting in the streets of Estian, where every hand might be against you, will only lose men," agreed Alizon. "We have to pick our target."

  "If not Estian, then where?" asked Kirkovenal. "Would the Shavig lords attack Avinhelle? Then we could attack Tallven while Jakoven was concentrating his efforts in the north."

  Garranon shook his head. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt you'd get more than a tenth of the Oranstonian lords who would be willing to send armies to fight in Tallven. It leaves us too vulnerable to attack from the Vorsag on our southern border."

  Revenell shifted forward on his seat and said, "If we split our forces and left half the army to defend our homes …"

  Beckram shook his head. "Jakoven's men already outnumber us. If we spread out our troops like that, he'll cut a swath right through the Oranstonian armies while the Shavig are busy fighting the Avinhelle armies—which will be defending their homes, not just obeying orders to fight. Then when Oranstone is cowed, he'll come back and support Avinhelle, and they'll sweep back over Shavig before spring. The Avinhelle have their mountain folk who know how to wage war in winter as well as we." Duraugh nodded. "He's right."

  "Tallven is all grasslands," said Farrawell. He was strangely hairless except for the salt-and-gin
ger moustache that covered his upper lip. "There are only two or three cities of any size. The keeps can't protect the land, just the people. Easy to run over that with an army. That's why the Tallvenish worked so hard to take over the other four kingdoms, so they'd have barriers to protect their grain fields."

  "But we're not fighting a war to break away from Tallven, gentlemen," said Danerra, who would have looked more at home in a library than in a meeting of war—during the Rebellion his men called him the Badger. He said mildly, "We're trying to replace Jakoven with Kellen, not destroy the main food supply for the Kingdoms."

  "I wasn't talking about burning the fields," said Farrawell. "That would be stupid—at least until spring."

  "It would be just as stupid in the spring," said Levenstar hotly. "Kellen will want to feed his people after we're through."

  The meeting began to dissolve into chaos, with stools shoved aside as men bellowed while Alizon and my uncle tried to bring it to order. Only Garranon seemed immune. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back to rest against the stone wall.

  I moved around the fight (which so far was only vocal) until the wall I propped myself up on was next to Garranon. "Where's Kellen?" I asked.

  "He gave up and told them to let him know when they had a plan."

  "What did he want to do?

  Garranon shook his head. "He wanted to wait and meet with all the Oranstonian lords like we just did with your people. But Oranstone doesn't have anything equivalent to your Council, and hasn't had since the Rebellion. Alizon has a good idea who is against Jakoven, but the problem is most of them won't be interested in replacing Jakoven with Kellen: To them, one Tallven is as bad as the other." He paused as someone hit Farrawell—I couldn't be sure who because I'd been looking at Garranon.

  Garranon raised his voice and said pointedly, "Some of them don't know whom to fight." But none of the combatants paid him any attention.

  "Does Haverness still have enough power to get the most important people together at Callis?" I asked, keeping a weather eye on the escalating battle.