by Anne Leonard
Their lovemaking was fierce and hard. “Oh,” she said, “oh,” and then she bit his finger to suppress her cries.
Afterward they lay silently on the grass. Corin watched a creamy yellow butterfly flit about among the wildflowers. Then Tam sat up, pushed her hair back, and said thoughtfully, “It’s an opportune time for the dragons, with Tyrekh on the one hand and the chaos in the Empire on the other. Could they have pushed it? Twisted his mind?”
It took Corin an instant to realize she was back in the conversation about Hadon. Fear pricked at his spine. He had the uneasy feeling that she was right. “I don’t know what power they have,” he said. “You told me so that night at the ball, but I haven’t learned anything more. I think they could do it, though. You’ve ridden one now, what do you think of them?”
“I was too tired and frightened and sick to think of anything.”
“You’ve been thinking plenty about politics.”
“There wasn’t much else to do when walking across fields or hiding behind trees. And it is my affair now.”
“It certainly is.” He sat up. “Perhaps the dragons gave you a push too. I need you, Tam.”
She briefly gripped his hand and did not make light of it. After a pause, she said, “If I have Sight, it makes sense that they would push me. But why you?”
He found words for the thought that had only begun to surface in his mind in the past few days of solitude. “I think the dragons chose me because I would have access to Hadon’s court, because I would have a reason to want to overthrow him. Because I could turn to the wizards for help. A farmer’s son would not know the things I know.”
“They chose you because it was politically expedient?”
“Yes. It’s an ordinary struggle for power among princes, only the tools are different. The dragons are using me. I am using wizards. Hadon is using whatever he can.”
“But it could have been your father or grandfather they chose, for the same reasons. It was you.”
That had not occurred to him. He was too close to the problem. “I don’t know,” he said. “Tam, they don’t live in time as we do. They may see already that I freed them. That I love you, that you are a Seer. They chose their time, and I was the one who fit into it. And it was because I fit into it that they chose it. It’s all paradox.” He was thinking aloud, words falling into place before he knew it. It felt right. He glanced down at his hands and noticed the clawlike curve of his fingers. They had given him their powers, but perhaps it was not a gift. Perhaps it was a transformation.
I will not, he thought fiercely.
“Have you ever asked them?” she said.
“No. Why don’t you? You have no fear of prying into the secrets of those more powerful than you.”
“I beg your pardon, my lord,” she said, grinning. Then she turned serious. “They can’t just want you to kill Hadon. That’s too easy.”
“Yes. And too human a solution. Whatever works, it will be something we can’t think of.”
“You can still decide to abandon them,” she said. “Leave them to their own devices and do your duty as a prince.”
“No,” he said. He would not have sent for her if he still had that opportunity. “I’ve committed. If I try to withdraw now it will probably drive me mad. But I don’t expect a happy ending. There will be a sacrifice of some sort, there always is.”
To his relief she did not ask him which of them it would be. Her face was still. She raised his hand to her lips. They were a little rough, sunburned and wind-chapped. His body started to stir again.
Then Tam stood up. She said, “Must I bathe in the river?”
“Not at all.” He picked up the basket. “There’s a tub of water that’s been sitting in the sun for hours. I’ll stand guard.”
“That’s all you’ll do,” she said warningly.
But when she was clean, and her hair was combed and braided, and she was dressed in soft clothing he had cadged for her from the villagers, she took his hand and led him wordlessly into his room. Their room.
Kelvan and the dragon returned several hours later. Corin felt the approach and brought Tam outside to watch. She held his hand very tightly. The dragon landed without much grace and put its head down. Its folded wings shimmered in the sunlight. The front talons still had blood on them. Its tail extended into the shadow of the trees and twitched a little. He yearned for it, as he always did. For a moment he saw it new, as Tam must see it, all weapons and armor and cruel hardness.
Tam said, sounding startled, “It’s basking.” Her nose was wrinkled a little, and he realized how accustomed he had grown to the smell of sulfur.
Kelvan joined them. “Aye, my lady.”
Corin half hoped Tam would not disclaim the title. Not because she should become practiced in being a princess—that was silly, here—but because he wanted to keep her name to himself. Kelvan was seeing her for the first time in daylight, and Corin watched the rider straighten, as men always did for her.
She did disclaim it, of course. “Tam,” she said. “I’m sorry I called you a liar this morning.”
“What? You mean about the wind? That’s what people always say, I’m used to it.”
She looked at Corin. “Did you?”
“Not the first time. Later, though.”
“Could you take me up?”
He had only had a few flights by himself. He said, “Perhaps. Not very high. If Kelvan lets me.”
“We’ll see,” said Kelvan neutrally.
The dragon’s eyes were closed. Tam said, to Kelvan this time, “Does it have a name? And why is it an ‘it’?”
“Its own name is something humans can’t pronounce, my lady. There’s no need for me to give it a name to speak with it. Dragons are neuter except when they are breeding, when they can be either sex.”
“How often do they breed?”
“Once a year in the spring. Less often as they age. This one hasn’t gone blue for several years now.”
Tam’s lips opened as though to speak, then went shut. She slipped her arm about Corin’s waist and said nothing else. There was a tautness to her body that he attributed to fear of the dragon. “Let’s get out of the sun,” he said, placing his own arm across her shoulders. They never could have been this intimate with another person present in Caithenor.
Kelvan said, “Prince, there’s news.”
“What?” he asked, anticipation building sharply in him. He should have been angry that Kelvan had not said this immediately, but he was not. He was too foolishly pleased that Kelvan had given Tam preference.
“Your sister’s been rescued.”
He could hardly take it in. Tam’s arm tightened. “How?”
“I don’t know the details. But there was at least one rider involved, and several soldiers. Hadon’s furious. He tried to send other riders after her, and the dragons wouldn’t budge.”
“Where are they taking her?”
“I don’t know,” Kelvan said. He took his gloves off and tossed them on the ground beside the dragon. “This only happened a few hours ago, my lord, and the rider isn’t saying a word. What I know is from the riders still in Mycene.”
“Do you trust him?” Corin asked. Hadon might have arranged the whole thing himself, to get Tai some place more secure. Or his sons, to gain an advantage against their father. Her husband was dead, she could be made to marry.
“Aye,” Kelvan said.
Corin could not quite allow himself to hope yet. “My father can’t have had another dragonrider spy.”
“No. The man turned. I think others are ready. The dragons may be pushing them harder.”
They had tried to free her once. Perhaps they had tried again, nudging the things Aram had laid in place.
Tam said, “Joce said the Mycenean soldiers won’t like what Hadon’s done.”
“Th
ey don’t,” said Kelvan. “He broke allegiance, and that’s a cowardly thing to do. They have their honor.”
Corin kissed Tam’s hair and stepped out of her touch. Tai’s freedom was about the last thing he had expected, and he had not worked it into his considerations at all. Hadon losing command of the dragons was crucial too. With Tai free, Hadon had no hold on him. There was no reason to delay his own actions further. This was another fulcrum, a place where the decision he made could not be smoothed out or reversed. He realized with shame that a very small part of him wished Tai were still captive, because now he had to move.
He looked at Tam and saw the same quiet strength that had been on her face when he first told her about the dragons. I’m still here, she had said. He had sent the dragon for her and she had come back on it, trusting in him. If he weakened she was ready.
He caught hold of her hand and gripped it hard. “I need to think,” he said. “Give me some time alone.”
They nodded. Resolutely, he turned his back on them and walked to the river. Once he looked over his shoulder and saw that both of them had gone elsewhere. He was glad Tam was not watching, waiting. The dragon was obscured by the trees. The cottage looked bucolic in the afternoon light, a charming spot for a wedding tour.
He found a rock where he could sit and watch the waves break at the river mouth. The tide was coming in, and the river was rising. For a little while he stared mindlessly at the water. The sea was a different shade of blue where the sediment from the river was swept out to it.
Then he began to draw his thoughts together. If riders and soldiers both were ready to turn on the Emperor, the war would not last much longer. Hadon could not withdraw his soldiers and his dragons and leave Caithen in Tyrekh’s hands, because that would only bring his men into open rebellion against him. He had to sit tight, or send reinforcements against the Sarians as he should have a month ago.
If he didn’t, the soldiers might drive out the Sarians of their own accord. His sons would likely mass the Myceneans too. The princes would not want Hadon to be able to turn to Tyrekh for help, so they would do their best to smash the Sarian army, which would have the added benefit to them of reducing their father’s troops in the process. If Joce succeeded in killing Tyrekh, the Sarians would turn tail and run. Caithen and Argondy would be the bloody battleground where two empires clashed, but in the end the Sarians would be gone.
But as long as Hadon held the dragons, he held the Empire. And Caithen.
Slowly Corin realized that was what mattered. Five hundred years ago Mycene had been a young Empire. Its history was full of tumult. There had been the revolts, the betrayals, the daughters, all the things that shifted the possession of the crown from one line to another. But when the dragons came, it changed. The throne had been held father to son unbroken ever since. The Empire began its ascendancy. The dragons’ power fed the emperors and was passed along with the crown. It gave them no power of magic or prophecy, no power like that of a wizard; it was the simple and unassailable power of might.
He had been approaching the question from the wrong direction. Instead of trying to find a way to free the dragons, he should try to find out how they had been taken in the first place. And he should not divorce the problem from the war. The dragons wanted to be freed, and they wanted the Empire to fall. He had said as much to Tam. If all it took to free them was magic, they could have picked a wizard centuries ago.
Perhaps they had, and that had failed. He might only be the latest in a series of would-be liberators as the dragons tried new routes. He did not think so, though. They had bided their time until a weakness in the Empire emerged. But he needed to go backward, to their taking.
He thought of the north, the Dragon Valleys. They made this valley look like a paradise. He had been there once, a dozen years ago now, a counterweight to luxury and ease. It had been late summer. He and his companions had walked on narrow twisting paths that vanished entirely at times among slabs of granite, loose scree, and chimney-like crags of jagged black rock. The only trees were conifers. Small grasses and mosses and tiny flowers snuggled into nooks on the stones. Here and there sulfurous steam came out of cracks on the mountainside, staining the grey rocks yellow. Dirty patches of old and crusty snow that had melted and refrozen several times lay in the shadiest parts.
He labored along with the others, breathing thin air and watching carefully where his feet landed. The paths dipped sometimes, or skirted small clear mountain ponds, but it was always an ascent after that. There was life—birds and rabbits and ground squirrels, even foxes. Meadows with bright purple and white flowers surprised them. As they went higher the plants and animals became sparser, the ground stonier and greyer. At night the stars were close and sharp. He slept fitfully, shivering.
Finally, after five or six days—he had lost count—they came to a large looming rough black crag. The mountain rose steeply to one side of it and dropped sharply on the other. The only way past the outcropping was over it. The last feet were more a climb than a walk. The stone was painfully sharp-edged and rough. By the time Corin reached the top his hands were chafed and sore. Lungs aching, he pulled himself up to a stand on the broad flat surface and sucked at a scrape on the heel of his hand, then looked out.
Below were the Dragon Valleys. The earth looked as though some vast dragon had raked its talons through it for miles, slashing across ridges and mountainsides with no regard for stone. In the distance were the white-capped peaks of higher mountains, impossibly close in the clear air. The wind was strong and smelled cold. The Valleys were black glass, shiny and sharp and straight. Even this high he could not see into the bottom of the nearest one. The topland looked barren and lifeless.
They pulled him. The descent from the crag seemed manageable. He traced a path out and, when it was fixed well in his mind, took a step down. Almost immediately he was grabbed and hauled most unroyally back up. He endured a tongue-lashing that made him turn red weeks later. He had done his very best to forget about it entirely.
At the time he had wondered what the soldiers thought would happen. The steepness of the descent was no greater than the one back down the way he had come. They could not really think he was going to run off into such desolation. It unfolded clearly to him now: Aram had feared if he went into those Valleys, the dragons would somehow seize him. He must have commanded an extraordinarily strict watch. But he had permitted the sight. Perhaps even intended it.
Corin knew he could not go there, at least not dragonback. Kelvan had said and the dragons had shown that the Valleys were outside the bounds of their prison. Tam, though, Tam had seen them in trance.
I can’t use her so, he thought. You must, she would say.
He watched a line of pelicans glide low over the water, dipping occasionally to scoop up a fish. She would say it because she was brave, because she loved him. And because she was his subject. He had told her enough times that he used people, she would not want him to make an exception out of love. They had managed to avoid the conversation, to play at equality, but at the very deepest part she would obey him, just as he obeyed his father.
Tam, he thought, Tam. This was why he had never wanted to be in love. But he could not forsake it. And if he loved her, he had to set the choice before her.
He walked grimly back toward the hut. When he came to the sleeping dragon, he stopped. Then he leaned against it.
Its mind was asleep, and he traveled through strange dragon dreams before it roused enough to speak to him. It was cold, alien, inhuman. There was sound, thunder or breaking ice and bells and gongs. Wind. The crackle of fire. Everything was black. Then opal light. Vertigo. He was pulled, tossed. He plummeted downward into darkness while wind rushed over him and cold air stung his skin. Red light. The flickering shadow of a dragon writhed on Hadon’s throne. Hadon stood before him, hands outstretched, and his eyes were the blackness of the void.
Go, the dragon was tellin
g him. Go. You know what to do.
He broke the contact with his mind and simply felt the dragon. Its bulk, its heat, its scales. He ran the tips of his fingers along a scale over and over. So smooth. Water would bead on it and fall, a blade would crack, an arrow would bounce. He ventured the briefest of touches to the edge of the scale and pulled his finger back at once, bleeding.
There, he thought. Now you have my blood.
Then he hit it with his fist. Over and over, until his shoulder ached.
He leaned against it again, panting. It slept on. His rage died out of him. He hoped Tam had not witnessed the tantrum. When this is over, he thought as he sometimes did. He had no words to complete it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tam could tell that Corin wanted to talk privately with her, but he waited until after the evening meal. It had been a simple supper of fish and beans and nuts. Corin made it, and did a far better job than she could have. She decided not to tease him about cooking again. Then, feeling that it was her turn to do a little work, she washed the dishes while Corin made the fire. Kelvan left the hut.
“He won’t be back for hours,” Corin said. “He has his own lover to see.” He spread a blanket in front of the fire. “Sit here and pretend we’re in the palace. The guards will keep everyone out.”
She did not understand how he had been able to maintain his sense of irony through everything that had happened. Perhaps that was what kept him from brooding. Her back and legs still ached from riding the dragon, and the floor looked hard and far away. Carefully, wincing a little, she lowered herself down onto the blanket. She was glad to have clean hair again.
Corin sat, moved her foot into his lap, and began to massage it. His hands were warm. “It will ease,” he said. “Walking is the best thing for it, you won’t stiffen so much. Unfortunately good wine is hard to come by in the village. You have very nice feet.”