Dragonshade

by Aderyn Wood

  The other leaders all nodded. “It will be a sacrifice,” Khanassa Gorjna said. “I agree. But this isn’t only Uthalia Isht’s problem. It’s every Drakian’s problem. Better a little hunger now than all of us a prisoner and serving as Halkan hus-thralls by next leaf-fall.”

  A medley of ‘ayes’ responded.

  Danael’s mother lifted her chin. Danael felt the weight of her crown. “Are we all agreed then? We are going to war?”

  The clan leaders nodded.

  Danael glanced at his father. The seer was whispering in the khanax’s ear, his black lips moving silently, and a shiver embraced Danael’s spine.

  “Very well,” his mother said. “War it is.”

  Danael had oiled his leather warring vest in the longhus courtyard and stood to put it on. He hunched his shoulders. The vest was tight. Perhaps he was due for a new one.

  “Danael.”

  Hiljda stood by a pig-pen. “So you’re really going?”

  He reached over and cupped her chin with his hand. “Of course. It’s my duty. Here tie me up would you?”

  He turned, and Hiljda tightened the laces at his back. “Your parents want to see you. They’re in the hall.”

  “Right.” Danael leaned down and gave Hiljda a kiss. “Until tonight, my pretty. It will be our last for a while.”

  She gave him a sad smile.

  Danael walked into the dim hall. His parents were talking quietly by the fire. Both seated. A sense of solemnity lay heavy in the otherwise empty space.

  His father spotted him first. “You’re wearing your armour.”

  “Aye. Thought I better try it before we leave tomorrow.”

  His mother shifted in her seat, her eyes firmly on the fire. “I understand your eagerness to return to the battle so soon, son, but perhaps it's best if you stay behind.”

  “What?”

  “There is much work to be done here. The harvest is far from complete, and Fegarj needs a strong arm to help finish the boat-building. You also need to assist your father rule the village in my absence. Harvest is no time to abandon our clan.”

  Danael’s blood simmered. He bit down hard on his lip to prevent his mouth from expelling curses.

  His mother looked him in the eye. “This battle will be dangerous, I have no wish to put my only child in danger so readily.”

  “Mother,” Danael said, his throat constrained. “You must reconsider. You will need every warrior you have. And few can best my skill with the sword. Petar talks of—”

  “Petar.” His father spat the name. “The man is mad.”

  “Petar is a fine warrior,” the khanassa said calmly. “But he’s no understanding of what it takes to rule a clan. You must trust me on this, son.”

  Danael balled his hands into fists. “I need to be in the field if I’m to gain the war-wisdom you have. How will I protect the clan when I am khanax if I don’t learn how?”

  “You’ve been going with me to the summer warring since you could walk. There’s plenty you’ve learned.”

  Danael shook his head. “It’s not the same as being in the battle, Mother, and you know it.”

  His mother glanced between him and his father, her eyes blinking, her brow a crinkle of consternation. “Let me think on it.”

  “No!” Father said. “He is to stay here with me.”

  “Why, Father?” Danael said, his anger rising.

  The khanax stood and stepped close, his broad shoulders as unmoving as the mountains. “You will stay here. You will do as your father says.”

  “Krasto—”

  The khanax spun on his wife. “I am the ruler in our house. Our son is to stay here and that is final.” His father gave Danael a look of fire, before turning his back and stalking from the hall.

  The khanassa’s eyes were wide as she turned to her son, but Danael had no wish to hear her apologies. He left through a side door and headed for his chamber. His anger thrumming a beat in his head. His father grew more stubborn and irritating the older he got, and now it seemed he would have his way. Danael would stay in the village like the pampered and pretty khanal he was while the others went off to be heroes.

  Yana

  Yana led her ducks down the familiar trail to the stream. The goats also wandered close by as they often did when Yana was herding. Leaf-fall held the world firmly in its grip and all the leaves had changed their colours. Some trees were nearly bare.

  As the ducks took to the water, splashing and quacking, Yana tilted her head to the forest canopy. Rusty oranges, reds and gold stood in stark contrast to the evergreen of the pines that blanketed the mountains beyond. Yana filled her lungs with the cool air. It was a beautiful time of year. The colours brought a freshness to her heart, like a crisp breeze, and her heart had been clouded indeed. Her father was still at battle, and the image of him in pain, and dying had not gone away. Rather, it had grown more frequent, and she would wake more nights than not in a sweat, the vision of her father with a bloody wound to his back frozen in her mind.

  It had come to her in a flash when she’d hugged him goodbye. She’d known straight away it was a visioning, as her grandmother called them. But would he live to return to Yana and her mother? The image didn’t reveal that much.

  Yana made herself comfortable on a dry log upon the stream bank. The goats grazed close and one of the nannies kept nudging her nose into Yana’s open palm. Yana smiled and pushed her off before her gaze returned to the sky and swept along the clouds, looking for the raven. Any day now, her grandmother would arrive. Yana’s dreams had told her that much. The first thing Yana would tell her grandmother would be the visioning. The second thing would be about the khanax, and how he’d murdered her ducks.

  She’d tell Grama she was a woman now too. Her first moon’s blood had been and gone. She felt older she supposed, but she was still herself. Though, strangely, her Drakian had improved. As though becoming a woman had bolstered her tongue. She still preferred her own language, and despite being a woman, she was still called Simple Yana by the village boys.

  One of the hens got out of the water to begin her preening. She’d made a nest of eggs very late in the season and her ducklings would hatch in a few days.

  Yana got to her feet and called out in her own language. “Duck, duck! Time to go.”

  She would not allow the hen to return alone to the nest. She would never put her feathered friends in danger again. Not while Krasto was khanax.

  Yana spent more time supervising her ducks now, a fact that didn’t please her mother as she was not available to help around the rondhus as much, or in the forest. But Krasto was to blame for that.

  “Duck duck, come now, everyone out.”

  A squawk echoed in the valley and Yana froze. Her heart pounded and she paused her step to look up. A blur of black streamed through the canopy and her shoulders relaxed. “Grama,” she whispered with a smile.

  Yana turned to face north and witnessed an old woman with long black-silver hair wearing a cloak made of raven feathers emerge from the forest.

  “Gram!” Yana threw her herding staff and ran.

  “Yana.” Her grandmother embraced her and Yana breathed in the familiar scent of pine and rosemary.

  Yana’s vision blurred. “I missed you.”

  “And I you, lass.”

  “Just like that? He took them?” Grama asked.

  Yana nodded, relief enfolding her like a comfortable old smock. It felt good to talk so freely in her own language and Yana’s grandmother was horrified to hear about Krasto and the ducks.

  Grama had waited with the flock, still enjoying themselves on the stream, while Yana led the mother hen to her nest. She’d shut the yard gates and wrapped a long thread of twine around the latch to stop unwelcome visitors from entering.

  The ducks had all returned to the stream as Yana and her grandmother sat on the bank to watch their play.

  “Has the khanassa compensated you?” Grama asked.

  Yana shook her head. “She did pro
mise, but she’s been busy with other things. And now they’re all off warring.”

  Grandmother frowned. “Warring. At this time of t’season.”

  “Ma and I tried to tell Da not to go.” Yana looked down at her hands in her lap. “That visioning. Is something going to happen to him? I tried to tell them not to go, but no one ever listens to Simple Yana.” She said the last part in Drakian, and her tongue felt heavy with the words.

  “And you’ve been dreaming it, child?”

  Yana turned to face her grandmother. Grama’s dark eyes reflected the clouds in the sky and a sense of hopelessness seemed to radiate from her. Yana’s mouth turned down as she nodded.

  “Let us hope your dreams represent something else. We must think on that. It is quite possible some other grievance will come t’light.”

  Her grandmother's raven squawked from the branch and he took flight toward the mountains. Grama watched him for a time before she said, “Have you been practicing your Drakian, lass?”

  Yana shrugged. “I don’t like it, but I’ve improved lately.”

  “You must keep practicing. People need to understand you, Yana.”

  Yana frowned. She couldn’t see why.

  “Come let us find your mother. I am anxious to see her.”

  Yana's mother ran to Grama with tears falling freely on her cheeks.

  “Mother,” she breathed, and clutched Grama in a tight embrace.

  In truth, Rayna was grandmother to Ana and great-grandmother to Yana, but Ana’s true mother, had died in childbirth, and Rayna had returned from the mountains to admonish the midwife and rear Ana as her own daughter. Ana had called her ‘Mother’ all her life and as a child she’d travelled throughout the forests and over many lands with the strange old woman she called ‘Ma’, learning the forest and herb lore, and only returning to Estr Varg when it suited them. But as Ana grew older, she remained in Estr Varg more often than not. “She grew more interested in boys than herbs,” Grama had told her.

  Then, Ana had met Petar. Yana loved the story of how her parents met. Da had grown up in Westr Varg, and was gravely injured in his maiden battle. The khanassa had sent for Rayna to heal him, but Grama was in the forest and Ma attended him in her stead. “They fell in love the instant they clapped eyes on each other,” Grama liked to say.

  Less than a year later, Da moved to Estr Varg, as was tradition, to wed his lover, and that’s when he built their rondhus by the mountain forest.

  Yana's mother stepped back from Grama’s embrace and took a kerchief from her sleeve to pat her eyes. “It’s been too long, Ma, more than two summers,” she said. “I've been worried.”

  “Ana, my dear, you should know better than to worry about this old bag o’bones. You would know if I were dead. Yana would know, certainly.”

  Ma shook her head again as she picked up her basket of herbs. “You shouldn’t spend so long away.”

  Grama looked to Yana and pulled a face.

  Yana smiled.

  “Can an old woman get a cup of broth ’round here, or have we forgotten hospitality as well as t’season?”

  Ma frowned. “The season?”

  Grama narrowed her eyes. “Yana here tells me Petar’s gone warring. In leaf-fall?”

  “Aye.” Ma sighed. “The world is on its head. Come, let’s get inside.”

  They all partook in a warm bowl of broth, and Ma explained the warring in Uthalia Isht. Yana ventured outside to check on the ducks, who remained safe within the walls of the duckyard, not a murdering khanax in sight. Her mother had asked her to harvest some onions from her garden, and she filled a basket before returning to the rondhus. Standing by the door, the soft voices of her mother and grandmother wafted through the window shutters. Above, the clouds had darkened, and now and then a spot of rain touched Yana’s skin, but she drew her cloak and leaned close to the shutters to listen.

  Her mother was speaking. “—I’m not happy about it either, but what could I say? He doesn't listen to me when it comes to battle. Battle glory is his mistress.”

  “I don’t like the sound of it. Those Halkans are doing things that can’t be done. Lighting the beacons. Building defences on such steep terrain. It makes me wonder…”

  “You think they…”

  Their voices quietened and Yana missed a few lines of their conversation. She leaned in closer.

  “And what about the khanax?” Grama’s voice grew audible once more. “He seems to have shifted his dislike of Petar to our Yana. That man is no good. I told you that summers ago when you were a young thing and he—”

  “Mother! Please, do not bring that up again.”

  Yana stepped back with a frown, but their voices had stopped. She moved to the door and opened it.

  Ma was at the cook fire feeding the flames from the wood basket.

  Grama sat at the table and smiled at her when she entered. “What other news have I missed?”

  Yana placed the basket of onions by the fire and sat opposite her grandmother at the table.

  Ma sighed as she also took a seat. “There’s naught but the war to speak of. The never-ending war with the northerners.”

  “Yes,” Grama’s shoulders slouched. “I have been, for my part, trying to find answers to that particular conundrum. But so far, I’ve no light to shed.” She straightened her shoulders glancing between Yana and her daughter. “But I came here now at this time, because—”

  Yana held her breath, waiting on every word her grandmother said.

  “There is something coming. A foreign threat.”

  “Foreign.” Yana said the word slowly. It was a Drakian term and difficult to say properly without turning the ‘r’ into a ‘w’.

  “There’s always a foreign threat, Ma,” Yana’s mother said. “They’re called the Halkans.”

  “Aye,” Grama responded, tapping a finger to her pointed chin. “Perhaps that is it.” But her eyes remained distant and unconvinced.

  “You’d better report to the khanax,” Ma said, standing again and lifting the basket of onions. “He will demand you present yourself to the longhus hall.”

  Rayna sniffed. “He can wait till I'm good ’n ready,” she said, leaning back in her chair and glancing about the rondhus. “Now, where does Petar hide his ale?”

  Rayna

  Rayna arose before the sun. She’d shared Ana’s bed in the rondhus loft, and now stepped quietly away and down the steps, careful not to wake her granddaughter.

  In the kitchen, Rayna tore a strip of rabbit meat from last night’s stew. She sneaked past young Yana’s nook, and held her breath till she reached the door. After donning her fur-lined boots and throwing her feathered cloak around her, she stepped outside.

  The predawn air was frosty, but not nearly as cold as her mountain home, which would have had its first dusting of snow by now.

  Ice crunched underfoot in places as Rayna stepped past the duck-yard and down to the stream behind the rondhus to relieve her bladder.

  She walked along the stream a ways. Beyond, the forest was a huddle of shadows, but the sky had lightened. Dawn was nigh. Rayna looked up into the trees, scanning their gloomy silhouettes for her Rhast. Soon enough she spotted the bird flying toward her. Rayna held an arm out and Rhast landed softly.

  “Good morrow, Rhast.” She fed the raven the morsel of rabbit meat. “I fear this will be a short stay. Much danger lurks, can you sense it, my friend?”

  The raven quorked.

  “Indeed. Don’t come in to the village. Stay here by the forest. But don’t linger too far either and keep those sharp eyes open for danger. In this realm and t’other.”

  After breakfast, Rayna helped her granddaughter collect items for trading. The village market traded every few days. It had done so for as long as Rayna could remember, and that was at least four lifetimes. Or was it five? She’d lived so long it was becoming more difficult to keep count.

  Yana carefully distributed duck eggs into a basket.

  “Is that all the eggs?
” Rayna asked.

  “They’re starting to go off the lay. It’s getting close to wynter. Soon there’ll be no more eggs.”

  “Of course.” Rayna nodded as her granddaughter examined each egg as though inspecting a nugget of silver for its purity.

  In the rondhus, they readied another basket with an array of dried herbs, healing potions and salves, as well as pots of honey collected before Petar had left for the warring.

  “Trading won't take so long this morning,” Yana said. “They’ll be eager to get mother’s herbs and potions for the Dark Wynter.”

  “We’ll have most of t’day to ourselves then. Shall we study forest-lore?”

  Yana grinned. “That would be wonderful.”

  “After practicing Drakian first, I think.”

  Yana frowned. “Hate Drakian,” she said in awkward Drakian.

  “Shouldn’t you make yourself known at the longhus first, Ma?” Ana stepped down from the loft.

  “Bah,” Rayna pronounced with a wave of her hand. “That can wait till t’morrow. Aye, it’ll be raining then. Today is clear and I’d rather enjoy the sunshine with my granddaughter in the forest than with a self-important oaf like t’khanax.”

  Yana's eyes widened. “Will you teach me to read the mushrooms?”

  “Of course,” Rayna said. “After we practice our Drakian.”

  Yana rolled her eyes.

  Rayna glanced at Ana who nodded. Ana wanted her daughter to start speaking properly too. The problem was, Ana didn’t understand fully what Yana was. Not since Rayna herself was born had a child been gift-born. As always, the gift brought odd idiosyncrasies. With Yana, it had touched her speech. She’d been born with an innate knowledge of an ancient language, but it somehow made learning her own language challenging. Rayna could understand Yana well enough in the old tongue, though she made a point to talk to Yana in Drakian, which the girl had no problems understanding. Yana was a woman now. It was past time she learned her native tongue and spoke it fluently.