Moth and Spark

by Anne Leonard

  He looked at her for a very long time. If he refused there was nothing she could do about it; it would be both stupid and useless to run away from him.

  “Why?” he asked.

  She told him the only truth she had. “In Caithenor I am stronger.”

  He was silent again. She could not read the expression on his face. Finally he said, “God help me if anything happens to you and I live to tell about it, but we’ll go back. And on our way and when we are there you will do exactly as I say.”

  “Agreed,” she said. It was a fair bargain.

  He held the horse for her to mount. When she looked down at him he said, “His Highness could not have chosen better.”

  She flushed. He pretended not to notice.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  An eerie blue light flickered along the ridgetops. Sometimes it flashed brightly, bleaching exposed granite into something as stark and lifeless as a full moon. The ribbon of waterfall cascading down the cliffs at the eastern end of the valley caught the light and threw it back so that the mountain seemed to be splitting. The sky was black and starry in the east, but the wind was blowing hard and cold. Clouds were piling rapidly over the sea.

  “What is it?” Corin asked. He had been in the wizards’ valley before, but he had never seen such a light.

  “Something is trying to get in,” said Kelvan.

  “Soldiers?”

  “Perhaps. Would you have me check?”

  Corin shook his head. “No.” He trusted the valley’s defenses to hold. But if he had in fact been traced there somehow—it seemed impossible—he had to leave. Flee once more. He had a brief image of being pushed farther and farther north until he was alone on a plain of ice at the top of the world. Dragon cold come to meet him. He rubbed his right hand and arm reflexively.

  Tai had made it back alive and was now locked in lavish but well-guarded apartments. Kelvan said there was no longer any pretense that she was a guest. It was the attempt to rescue her that had unleashed the attack on Caithenor. In his bitterest moments Corin blamed himself for that too. He had precipitated battle before they were ready. Aram had had things in hand, he never should have interfered. Even if he had brought her through, Hadon would have sent forth his dragons. Corin had no idea if anyone in Mycene could have seen what happened, but Hadon had known, and that was enough.

  By speaking through the dragons to a rider he trusted, Kelvan had learned that Tyrekh himself had come in to Caithenor on dragonback the day after they fled; there had been an agreement of some sort after all. Sarians had come in rapidly on horse. The foot soldiers, who must have been slipping in for months, were mostly Mycenean, but there were some Sarians among them. Mycenean or Sarian, many had fire weapons, as did the riders. Kelvan himself had a war-light. Hadon had equipped his men well. Corin knew his father was not dead or captured, but nothing more about Aram. Kelvan had obtained the names of some of the dead. Too many of them were men and women Corin would miss, including Ellid and the marshal, Coll. He had received the news of the discovery of Arnet’s body floating in the river, a knife in its back, with a most unprincely satisfaction. He tried not to think about Tam.

  “Is it possible Hadon knows about this valley?” he asked.

  “Not unless someone managed to find out from my dragon,” Kelvan said. “I haven’t come back that often, and I’ve never been followed. No one has any reason to come this far north, and Hadon wouldn’t want to send anyone. It’s too close.”

  “To the Dragon Valleys.” They lay eastward, on the other side of several ridges of higher mountains. “I thought the dragons couldn’t go back.”

  “They can’t. I tried once and the dragon nearly lost its mind. I was sicker than I’ve ever been. I thought it would throw me. But he’s not going to take chances.”

  So they should be safe from any of Hadon’s riders. Corin did not find that as reassuring as it should have been, since something was trying to get in. The valley was part of a huge swath of Crown lands, wild and lordless, and it was not unlikely that someone would consider the lands a place to search. But it was twelve difficult days from Caithenor by horse. He could not possibly have been tracked by Mycenean soldiers yet.

  Wind whipped his cloak against him. The slow dark river was whitecapped with the force of the wind pushing against the current. At its mouth, where it met the tide, the water foamed and bubbled. “We’d better get back inside,” he said. “It’s going to be hell when this breaks.”

  “I think we need to go see Rois. She may know what it is.”

  “This late?” It was past midnight. Kelvan had roused him when the lights started, and they went to the riverside, away from the trees that sheltered the cottage, so that they could see. It had been a peaceful place until then. Corin could have stood there in the daytime and watched the reeds and small waterfowl and sunlight for far too long. Even with learning to ride the dragon and losing repeatedly to Kelvan at swordplay, he had too much empty time. No papers to read, no soldiers to train with, no courtiers to placate. He felt inexcusably idle. He still had no idea how to set the dragons free. Not that he dared to do anything yet, while Hadon held Tai. He was learning rider skills fast—everything from understanding dragonspeech to staying strapped in while the dragon turned sideways to checking for scalemites—but such speed was of little use until his sister was freed.

  “No one sleeps when that happens,” Kelvan said. He gestured broadly at the blue light. “We won’t be the first ones there.”

  “So it’s happened before? It might not have anything to do with us?”

  “Aye.”

  There was no more conviction in Kelvan’s tone than Corin felt himself. Things were moving, and he was at the fulcrum. He glanced over his shoulder, up the hill. There were no lights on in any of the houses. Huts, really. But Kelvan would know. “Let’s go, then,” he said. The track was rough and would be difficult in the dark, even worse if it rained. Kelvan refused to use the Sarian light in the valley, and Corin understood him. It would have been a kind of desecration.

  They walked past the bulk of the resting dragon. It was dark and still, as undisturbed by the wind as a rock. Corin had to restrain himself from extending his mind to it. The temptation was constant. But it would be too easy to lose himself entirely in dragonthought. He was not supposed to be able to speak to the dragon without touching it, but he could. It was one of the powers they had given him. It would be the hardest to let go of. His senses had sharpened, hearing and sight both, and he was gaining a rider’s quickness. He did not care much about those things; it was the speech that seduced him, the images and the words and hums, the dragon presence that extended across time and space beyond the tiny bit of dragon he could see.

  That should have extended, he corrected himself. They were tethered to the Empire now.

  The path was uneven and gullied, switching back and forth along the hill. Above it the forest was thick and impenetrable, until it gave way to the towering cliffs. Branches were creaking in the wind. It was almost frightening in its wildness. He had given up wearing his sword—there was no need here—but not his knife. He touched the handle for reassurance. The ordinary world was only an outer layer in this valley. Beneath it seeped the old powers and magics of the wizards, quiet and noiseless but ready to leak through into what he so foolishly called real. The huts changed their appearance sometimes. It would not have surprised him if the forest moved or the trees spoke.

  It was only the dragon power that allowed him to see such things. Six months ago it would have been an ordinary village to his eyes. Poor and powerless.

  Rois’s hut was about halfway up the hill. As they drew closer he could see the dance of firelight through the cracks in the shutters. He heard low voices before they opened the door.

  It was crowded. There was a momentary silence when they entered, a quick assessment of danger. It did not offend him. Caution ran deep in the
se people. That was why they were still alive. They all knew who he was—it was the only way Kelvan could have brought him at all—but that did not make them less wary of outsiders. Four days was not nearly long enough to earn their trust.

  The cottage floor was well-worn wood covered with faded and stained woven rugs. Pots and braids of garlic hung from the rafters. There was something familiar and even soothing about the orderly twists of the garlic stems, and he realized he had seen them before in dragonspeech. It was reassuring to think that the dragons had expected him to come here. The sleeping area was only a loft above the lower room. It could have been any peasant’s hut in Caithen, except that the wood was too well planed and joined, the wall above the fireplace too clean of smoke, the hinges on the door too well made. He had a sudden sharp memory of standing in this room with his father. It had seemed as stately as Aram’s receiving room, and the king had not looked out of place. Corin had felt out of place himself, somehow smaller and rather stupid. He straightened. He could not afford to feel that way now.

  Rois was standing by the fire. She was an old woman, slight, with white hair that hung in a dark-tipped braid nearly to her ankles. He had spoken to her once before, briefly, insubstantially. It had been sufficient for him to know she was at least his match in wits and far surpassed him in wisdom. Her eyes met his and he sensed she had been waiting for him. He suspected Kelvan had known as much. He walked forward alone to join her.

  Despite the noise and closeness of the people, there was a quiet space for them. He was as sure as he had ever been of anything that they could not be overheard. A plain wooden stool was to one side of the hearth; as he approached, Rois sank down onto it. He stood in front of her, feeling as though he were about to undergo an examination from a tutor.

  She spoke. “Sit down so I can see your face, lad.”

  Lad! There was nothing but the floor. It was stone here by the hearth. He sat and crossed his legs. She leaned forward and put her thin dry hands on his cheeks. Power seared through him. He jerked back. His breath was coming fast.

  She dropped her hands and looked at him. He could not see the silver of her eyes, but he knew it was there. She said, “You are very like your father, Corin.”

  It was the first time anyone in the village had used his name. It startled him. “Not so much as you think.” He wondered how well she knew Aram, to be able to say such a thing.

  “More than you know.” She straightened. “What is she like, your wife?”

  Wife. He was not used to that either. He had told Kelvan only the barest details but was not surprised they had been passed on. It mattered to the villagers who would be queen. Who had his heart in her hand.

  “Strong,” he said. “Fierce and just and gentle all at once.” He paused, made himself meet her eyes. “She is a Seer. Neither of us understands it.” Though they had had no time to speak of it.

  “It happens,” Rois said. “Usually nothing wakes it. We were the same race in the beginning, you know.”

  He had not known that. But of course they must have been. He nodded. “I fear for her,” he said. Kelvan had said that the garrison in Dalrinia had surrendered without bloodshed, which reassured him a little. Of Tam herself he had heard nothing. If she had been captured it would have been trumpeted. But he could not keep from imagining her lying dead in a pasture somewhere. He knew what happened to refugee women.

  “Joce will keep her safe.”

  “Is that a prophecy?”

  “We have helped protect you all your life. The shield extends to those you love.”

  “The Basilisks.”

  “And others. I was there at your birth. Your mother’s maid, a stablehand, a gardener. The people no one ever sees.”

  “Tam sees them,” he said, missing her for that as well.

  “You are a fortunate man,” she said.

  He did not feel fortunate. But there was no point in self-pity. He shifted and looked at the fire. Watching the light, he said, “Am I pursued here?”

  “Perhaps. You won’t be found. The barrier won’t fall.”

  He felt dwarfed by the power behind her words. He said, “You don’t need the king to keep you hidden. Safe. You are far stronger here than an army of ten thousand. Why do you give up your children as servants?”

  “Do you ask that question of your other subjects?”

  Neatly turned, and that meant he would not get an answer. The wood was fragrant. He forced himself to breathe deeply and loosen his shoulders. The fire’s roar and crackle would drown out his thoughts if he let it. It would be so easy to just give up. A bit of wood fell off the end of one of the logs in a shower of golden sparks the color of dragon eyes.

  Still watching the flame, he said, “How much has Kelvan told you about the dragons?”

  “He said that they have set you the task of freeing them.”

  “Yes. And I don’t know how.”

  “You know more than you think you do. They’ve given you the answer,” she said. “You simply have to remember it.”

  That sounded impossible. He clenched his teeth. “What do you know about them?” he asked, a touch of accusation in his voice.

  She looked evenly at him. “There is a story that it was wizards who led the Myceneans into the Dragon Valleys. They thought they would be the dragonriders. The wizards took the dragons’ fire, but instead the fire killed the wizards, and the Myceneans murdered the ones who were left. It may not be true. It is true that our power began to wane at that time. But I have no special knowledge of dragons.”

  It only increased his frustration. He could hardly shake a better answer from her, though. He scuffed at the stone with his boot.

  His skin tingled sharply, stopped. The room had gone quiet and tense. He was not the only one who had felt something, then. A man near the south window opened the shutters. The blue light flared blindingly. Something dark, wind-tossed, was flung through the window and landed hard on the floor. A bird. Stone-dead, with a broken neck. Its feathers had already lost their luster. The people closest backed away.

  Corin stood. He felt sick with fear for Rois, for the villagers. “I can’t let this go on,” he said. “I’ll leave the valley now. Whatever’s trying to get in, it’s me it’s after. I think it’s more than soldiers.”

  “What?” she asked sharply.

  “I don’t know. It’s there in the dark place, the cold place. It stinks of death. Perhaps it guards whatever holds the dragons, perhaps Hadon means to turn it loose on me. It’s terrible. And it’s desperate. If that’s what’s out there, if it’s free, it may be powerful enough to get through the barrier.”

  “No,” Rois said. “If it were that powerful it already would have. But if it is waiting for you, you must not leave the valley, you will draw it down upon you. I do not need to know what it is to know that anything from the dark place is cruel and in love with pain.”

  “I’ll have to leave the valley to free the dragons.”

  “Yes. But don’t go until you are ready. It is not worth the risk.”

  He looked at the other people in the cottage. The power of all these wizards in one place must shine like a beacon to any creature that had the eyes to see it. Kelvan had his arm around a pretty, dark-haired woman whose face was laid against his shoulder. It made Corin feel lonely.

  Rois said his name. It brought his attention back to her. He said, “The risk to me, or some other risk?”

  “The risk to you. You are needed, and not just by dragons.”

  He had nothing to say. He was the prince. For all he knew he might be the king now. His life was not his to risk casually, dragons notwithstanding. Hadon probably knew that, knew he would be paralyzed by duty. Once Seana had told him he had too much conscience to be king, and he had laughed and told her she was the proof he had no conscience at all, but he knew that he did. Hadon was not hindered by such things.

&nb
sp; He watched the light on Rois’s cheek. She put her hands in her lap and he saw that they were smooth and straight, not the hands of an old woman. When she was young she must have been beautiful. Then she shifted, and it was gone. Her skin was thin over sharp knuckles. Her face was wrinkled. She looked at him and he guessed that she knew what he had been thinking.

  A blast of cold air tore through the room, extinguishing the fire. Rois leaned forward and passed her hand over the wood. Flame sprang up. He had that power too. But he would not use it here in the wizards’ valley.

  She drew her hand back from the flames and pulled them with her like thread off a spinning wheel. One strand, another, and another. They lay on the air, fluttering, color shifting like opals. She began to weave them together around her fingers, cat’s cradle of fire. He watched, fascinated, caught. Without looking at him, she said, “I do not know if dragons are political creatures. I do not know if they care what you are. But you have to remember it.”

  “I’m not in danger of forgetting,” he said bitterly.

  She stopped the weaving and turned, offered him the net of flame. Tai had done this with yarns when she was young. He had never learned the moves. It was something more than idle entertainment for Rois, of that he was certain. A spell, a warding, a prophecy.

  She brought her hands together and the flames winked out. “Your lady wife, does she know what’s roused?”

  His lady wife. He imagined Tam’s response to that. “No,” he said, stopped. He had run to the roof before he knew everything she saw in trance. They had not spoken of it further in the scant time they had had. That last night, they had tried to shut the world out entirely. “I don’t know. She might. She would have told me, but there was no time.”

  “Does she know how dangerous it is?”

  “She knows,” he said, remembering how she had tried to tell him the afternoon before the ball. “That may not stop her. She is brave. And very stubborn.” If something led her into that place, she would go, heedless of risk, determined.