Dragon Blood

11—WARDWICK

I watched Garranon closely as he looked at the packed camp, glanced through the faces, and drew in a shocked breath when he saw Jakoven's brother. "Kellen?"

As I dismounted I watched expressions run across Kellen's face too fast for me to interpret, but the one that stayed was sheer pleasure.

Garranon's eyebrows rose and he turned to me and said with mock awe, "And I thought Jakoven was going to come after me with branding irons and skinning knives. All I stole was his new play toy—you took his brother."

Kellen had taken a few steps forward, but stopped cautiously at Garranon's words.

Garranon shook his head and grinned. "I thought the king might have bitten off more than he could chew when he attacked the Hurogs—but I didn't dream this big." He dismounted without disturbing his burden and handed the boy to me. "What are your plans, Kellen? Are you going to run from Jakoven and hide in the wilds of the north?" There was nothing but curiosity in Garranon's voice.

I looked down into my half brother's sleeping face and wished I'd known about him sooner—and that the only reason to keep him at Hurog was that he was my brother. It would have made his absorption into the Hurog household easier on everyone. I noticed also that there was a bandage around his wrist, and I worried about how much blood Jakoven had already taken from him.

Kellen said, "I plan on dethroning Jakoven and becoming king in his stead."

Garranon stretched his neck, first one way, then the other. I was standing close enough to hear the cracking of his spine. Then he stepped forward and fell to his knees before Kellen in a graceful, humble gesture.

"I am your man," he said.

Kellen looked momentarily taken aback, glancing at Rosem, then Tisala before pulling a regal air out from somewhere and cloaking himself in it.

"Arise, I ask no one to humble himself so before me until I hold the throne."

Garranon stood and took a good look at Kellen. "You could use a few hundred meals, my friend. But you still look much better than the last time I saw you."

Kellen glanced about. "Garranon comes—came once a week to visit me, in spite of Jakoven's disapproval. We played chess."

I remembered that all-important chessboard Oreg had destroyed, and smiled as I laid the boy on the ground. I caught Oreg's eye and he came over to check on the sleeping child. I'd begun to worry about what Tychis had been given to make him sleep this deeply. Whatever they'd done to him, I hoped Oreg could rectify it.

"Allow me," said the Tamerlain, appearing on the other side of the boy. "I know what was laid upon him, so it'll be easier for me to break it."

I felt her power rise and cover the boy, but I couldn't tell exactly what she did. The results, however, were obvious. The boy rolled to his feet, the whites of his eyes showing as he looked around them. Then, sprouting appalling Tallvenish gutterspeak that effectively stopped Kellen and Garranon's conversation and directed the attention of most of the people in the vicinity toward him, he reached down and grabbed a chunk of rock in his hand.

"Impressive," I said dryly in Tallvenish—which we'd been speaking out of courtesy to Kellen anyway. As I remembered from before his imprisonment, he could get by in the Shavig tongue, but was more comfortable in Tallvenish. "What do you think happens after you've hit one of us with the rock—assuming you can throw it hard enough to matter?"

He stopped swearing and glanced fearfully from me to Oreg and on to the rest of the men (Tisala was some distance away saddling a horse) who were watching him. A couple of them stepped forward, hands on their swords.

I shooed them with a wave of my hand. "Finish packing camp. I need a little time to explain matters to my brother here." I said it first in Shavig, for the men, and then again in Tallvenish for the boy.

Turning back to Tychis, I nodded my head in greeting. "I am Ward of Hurog—your half brother. Next to me is my mage, Oreg—also a relative of sort. Your uncle Duraugh and Tosten—another of your half brothers—are over there. Tosten is the one over by that oak with his hand on his sword. Duraugh is that one," I said, pointing behind Kellen, "the one frowning at me."

"I'm not your brother," Tychis said fiercely in broken Shavig. Then he repeated it, with a few more filthy words, mostly adjectival, in Tallvenish.

I shook my head sadly and settled myself on the ground where I was on more of a level with him, not so threatening. "I'm sorry if it pains you—but your father was Fenwick of Hurog, as was mine. You've half a dozen other half siblings in Hurog. Some of them, I'm sure, won't be all that you could wish for, either."

The rock was getting heavier; I could see his hand droop. Neither Oreg nor I gave him reason to throw. I was safely distanced by being on the ground, Oreg leaned negligently against a trio of sapling aspens. Everyone else was farther away. The Tamerlain, I noticed, had disappeared somewhere.

"You might as well drop the rock," said Oreg. "He'll sit here all day until you do." He caught the boy's eyes. "If you don't believe in futility, you might as well give up the hostility, too. It's as easy to stay angry with a puppy as it is to be angry at Ward. Ask Tosten someday if you don't believe me."

The rock dropped at last, and the tough front cracked a bit as tears welled in the boy's eyes. "What do you want with me?

I sat up and pinned him with my eyes. "I want you to be safe. I want to bring you back with me to Hurog—as my father should have."

"I'm a bastard. The son of a whore and your father," he spat, then added the bit he certainly seemed to think damning. "And the whore was your father's cousin."

Oreg made tsking sounds with his tongue. "The Tallvens have certainly done a job on you, haven't they. In Shavig, cousins marry all the time." That was overstating matters, but for a good cause. "Duraugh's son is married to Ward's sister—your sister, too—and no one thought a thing about it."

Tychis begun to look faintly alarmed—which was better than the fearful defiance he'd displayed before.

"No one says you have to marry a cousin," I soothed. "But you do have to be polite around Beckram and Ciarra—that I will insist upon." Since politeness was the last thing he was worried about, it succeeded in distracting him.

"Do you know how to ride a horse?" I asked, changing the ground under him.

He shook his head. I stood up and held out a hand. "Well then, come and meet your mount and I'll get you started. By the end of this trip, no one will ever know you weren't born in the saddle."

The bait was too great. Soon he was sitting on a bay gelding, newly named Death-Bringer. I'd given Tychis several choices of names. From the size of the horse's barrel I'd have called him Hay-Mower. But Death-Bringer pleased the boy, and the height of the horse gave him the illusion of safety.

As I was coaching Tychis in the proper manner to sit (preferably on top of the horse), steer (mostly let him follow everyone else), and stop (pull back), my uncle, who'd been in an animated conversation with Kellen and Garranon, gestured to me. I handed Death-Bringer's reins to Oreg and joined the discussion.

"Garranon says it's possible that Jakoven will launch an attack on Hurog immediately," said Duraugh. "Is it really safe to bring Kellen there? The gate was off the curtain wall when we overnighted in Hurog on our way to rescue you."

"Right," I agreed. "I've two good men working on the ironwork for Hurog—I suspect that the gate and a gatehouse or at least a portcullis will have climbed to the top of their list of things to do. Stala was left expecting the worst. I trust she'll have something devised by the time we arrive. Were this summer we'd be in trouble, but by now the snow is knee deep there. With your men from Iftahar, we can hold off a besieging army for a week—and southern-bred men in tents won't survive a week at Hurog."

"I can help, too," murmured Oreg, who'd led the boy close enough to overhear.

I shot him a repressing look. "Mages are always useful in such situations."

Duraugh said, "If the weather's not bad enough at Hurog, you're going to have to see if your dwarves can transport Kellen away. They may not want to involve themselves in a human dispute."

"Dwarves?" said Kellen, startled.

Tosten grinned. "They owe Ward a favor or two."

My uncle guided us through a few harvested fields and onto a track I'd never taken to Hurog.

Stala's second, a Shavigman by the name of Ydelbrot, led the men and organized the march. At my uncle's request, I trotted Feather over to Ydelbrot and told him we needed to make as much speed as possible since the king might be "just a wee bit miffed that we took off with Kellen and Tychis."

He grinned and nodded. "Wouldn't want to be overrun by a Tallvenish army on Tallven soil."

I smiled, but in truth I was more worried about how much blood Jakoven had taken out of Tychis's wrist and just what he could get Farsonsbane to do with it.

The whole column broke into a trot. I held Feather as it passed me, swinging in to ride next to my brother—who happened to be behind Tisala. She was riding next to Tychis.

"He looks like Tosten at that age," said Oreg, coming up to us and pointing at Tychis—who bounced so much, I winced in sympathy. Tisala leaned over and talked to him and he stood up in his stirrups. I could almost hear his horse's sigh of relief.

"I was never so scrawny," disagreed Tosten stoutly, but with such good humor, I turned in my saddle to stare at him. He and Oreg seemed to be getting on much better since they'd organized my rescue.

It is difficult to talk while trotting, so for the next hour or so we were mostly quiet. I watched Tisala and savored the fresh air. At long last we walked the horses. They weren't too tired yet, but by the time we stumbled them into Hurog, they wouldn't be good for much for a month or more.

I dismounted when it was time to walk to save Feather as much as possible—I weighed half again what some of the other men did.

"Huh," said Tisala, still mounted—though a number of others were walking their horses. "If you had some Oranstonian horses, you'd have another league or more before you had to pull up."

"No." I shook my head solemnly. "If I had an Oranstonian mount I'd always be walking because my feet would drag off either side."

She laughed and we spoke of everyday things—gratitude for the recent frost that killed most of the flies, though it had made the past two nights of camping chilly; hope that the clouds over our heads would wait for a few days before raining—or snowing. Anything but what lay ahead of us. Such talk made the journey shorter.

"How's Kellen doing?" I asked. "I haven't talked with him much today."

"He's giving a good performance," she said, nodding her head toward a place a little distant where Kellen rode beside my uncle.

"Sometimes," I said, "if you can hold the role long enough, it becomes part of you. I'll give him my room at Hurog—not only is it the only room in the keep fit to put him in, but it's as far from a cell in the Asylum or even one of the royal rooms at Estian as a pack of dwarves can make it."

"It is rather cluttered," said Tisala.

I grinned at her in appreciation of her acerbic tongue. "There still aren't all that many places in the keep with doors that lock and roofs that don't leak," I said. "A lot of things get put in there for a bit and stay for a few years."

We set up camp just before dark. I stared at the stars from beneath my blanket to remind myself where I was before I closed my eyes—it didn't help my dreams.

I stood in the laboratory room of the Asylum once more, but this time I wasn't strapped to the stained leather table. Instead I stood before one of the other tables, the ones that held flasks of potions and implements of torture. I held a velvet bag in my hands, a bag I had to force myself to look at. Pulling back the velvet, I took out the staff head called Farsonsbane and set it in a stand on the table.

I think it was the way I saw the Bane that made me realize that I was looking at it through Jakoven's eyes. The cloud of darkness that I'd seen in it was not there, though my hand, Jakoven's hand, still vibrated with its power.

I took out a flask and dropped a very small drop of blood on the black gem. The stone flared red and when I touched the dragon's head lightly, I took the power and created a magelight from it—and I still had magic left over.

I took a clean boar bristle brush like those used by artists and painted the stone with blood. Momentarily power filled my body as it had the night I, Ward, destroyed Hurog keep. I reached out with a hand and the leather table, its iron manacles, and metal base disappeared, leaving behind only a bare spot on the stone floor.

"So the Hurogs are descended from dragons," murmured Arten's voice behind me. "Do you know what happened to the boy?"

My lips curled as I answered the archmage. "Garranon happened. Rode out of the stables and through the gates this morning with the boy and an extra mount, heading north."

"North?" Arten's question held no urgency.

"Where else would you take a Hurog brat and be certain they wouldn't let me pay them for his return? Garranon's not stupid."

"Really? He betrayed you."

"The spells don't hold him as well anymore," I said, staring at the power that bled through my hand, not noticeably diminished from the energy expended from the destruction of the table. "It was always so much fun seducing the body while the boy writhed in guilt."

"You'll not find Jade Eyes writhing in guilt," said Arten dryly.

I laughed. "More likely to find him writhing in blood. Jade Eyes has his own charms, don't get me wrong. But I always thought when the spell I kept to insure Garranon's loyalty faded, he'd break."

"Maybe he still will," suggested Arten. "I wonder how he feels betraying the man he's loved for so long."

I smiled at the thought. "I hope he weeps and hates himself for it as he did when he was a boy. I hope he thinks of me as he futters his wife. I … "

"Jakoven?"

"I have just had a marvelous idea," I said. "Tell my guardsmen to bring me the stable master who let Garranon ride through the gates."

"Ward!"

I sat up gasping and saw my breath gather in front of my face in the predawn light. Tosten crouched before me with a cup of something hot in his hands.

"Were you dreaming of the Asylum?" he asked.

I shuddered and took the cup of weak tea he offered, and sipped it to warm my body and soul. "Yes. True dreams, I think. I'll be glad to get far enough from Menogue that Aethervon leaves me alone."

I shared the dream later with Oreg, hoping he could tell me how much power Jakoven could glean from a half cup of Tychis's blood.

"I don't know," he said finally. "I never saw the Bane, you understand—only felt its creation and the disturbance it wrought. It's been such a long time. After so many years the memories fade, faster because I never wanted to look back and see how long I'd been enslaved. I can no longer remember what was history and what was story told over a cup of ale."

"It doesn't really matter," I said, rubbing Feather's nose as I walked beside her. "We need to get Kellen to Hurog, get Shavig to support him, and then get him out to a safer place. We can't risk sending someone to try and get rid of the Bane or the blood … " I hesitated. "I'd be able to find the Bane," I said—as I spoke I could almost hear it calling me. "If I could break it—or destroy Tychis's blood …"

"Don't be stupid," snapped Oreg. "I couldn't get into that part of the Asylum. All that would happen is that you would find yourself Jakoven's guest—and this time he would not underestimate you."

"Right," I said. "So we'll hope Jakoven doesn't have as much power as it appears."

I knew the stable master slightly. He'd seemed like a good man. I hoped he'd die quickly, but I didn't really expect that would be the case. I wouldn't tell Garranon. There was nothing he could do about the poor man except feel guilt. As I was. But I could not risk going back.

A hunting horn blew three crisp notes and I tightened Feather's cinch and swung back into the saddle. There was another part of the dream that bothered me. I wrestled with it as Feather trotted over the flat Tallvenish landscape.

When we walked again, I stayed in the saddle. My time in the Asylum had robbed me of endurance. I would just have to depend upon Feather.

By chance I found myself riding beside Garranon. He was walking beside his mount some distance from anyone else. We traveled in silence for a few miles, Feather as content to match her walk with Garranon's as I was to match his silence.

Apparently it was more restful on my part than his because he said, abruptly and angrily, "Aren't you afraid to catch it, too?"

Bewildered I wondered if I had dozed off and missed part of a conversation, or if my exhaustion had made me stupid.

"Catch what?" I inquired.

"The desire to sleep with men instead of women," he said with great bitterness.

Confounded I stared at the top of his head. I cleared my throat and ventured an answer. "No."

My reply seemed to stymie him and he walked on a little faster. Obligingly Feather increased her pace as well. Despite Garranon's obvious desire to get away from me, I didn't slow Feather because I realized what Garranon's problem was.

"My uncle doesn't dislike you because you sleep with the king," I said. "He dislikes you because you served the king's writ on me while I was under his protection—and he couldn't do anything about it. Tosten has a similar problem. The rest of them," I jerked my chin at the Blue Guard, "they might just not like you because you're an Oranstonian. But, more probably, they think homosexuality is catching."

Garranon turned his head away for a moment, then relaxed and laughed.

"Now as for me," I continued, "I have my eye on a woman and could really care less what bed you spend your time in."

He looked up at me to say something, but changed what he was going to say when he got a good look at me. "I've seen people look healthier than you on their funeral pyre."

"So I've been t-told." I'd been stuttering a lot since I left the Asylum. I took a small sip from the water bladder I carried on my saddle and tried not to think about the touch of Jade Eyes's hands.

My experiences in the Asylum had left me with a couple of questions and it occurred to me that Garranon might be able to answer them.

"In the Asylum," I said struggling both with the words and getting my stubborn tongue around them. "Jade Eyes … " My throat froze and I looked away.

Garranon's hand rested on my knee. "Rape is rape," he said, "whether your body responds or not."

I flushed scarlet and shook my head. "He didn't actually …"

Garranon waited for me to finish, but when I couldn't he said, "Rape is one person hurting another because he can. Sometimes a rapist hurts your body, sometimes your soul."

After a while he said, "Making love, to a man or a woman, is about caring, passion, and joy; not just physical pleasure." When I looked at him, he grinned and continued lightly, "But done right it feels good, too."

The signal for mount-up broke through the crisp air. Garranon got on his horse.

"Thank you," I said.

He smiled at me and bowed in the saddle, before we set our horses off at a trot.

By next afternoon I gave up any pretense of conversation, and that evening Oreg pried my fingers loose from the reins and led Feather himself. Mornings were better, but in the late afternoon I was barely staying in the saddle. Tosten gave the order to open the packs and distribute the woolen riding robes among us. Oreg made sure that I put mine on. Tisala rode next to me, talking quietly with Oreg.

I didn't see much of Kellen, probably because he couldn't be in much better shape than I was. I asked and Tisala told me Rosem was taking care of him.

When it snowed, I was too far gone to do much besides turning my face toward the sky, because I knew we were getting closer to home. I suspect I was the only one in the whole, cold mass of men (and Tisala) who took quiet satisfaction when the night's bitter temperatures made Feather's feet squeak on the snow in the morning. I told Tisala as much while she examined my hands for frostbite—I was too clumsy by then to get my gloves off and on by myself.

"It's true what they say about Shavigmen," she said, turning my hand over in hers.

"What? That we're tough?" asked Tosten with a grin as he checked Feather's cinch for me in preparation to hoisting my uncooperative self into the saddle.

Tisala shook her head sadly and finished with my hands. "Stupid. Only a stupid person would enjoy this weather."

The horses felt the nearness of home, too, and lifted their weary hooves faster. The snow was up to their hocks when, in the very late afternoon, we saw the walls of Hurog in the distance.

Feather whinnied and quickened from trot to canter, then when I didn't slow her, into a full-blown gallop. Power surged through me, swept away my tiredness, and welcomed me home.

As I neared the gates, I saw they were properly hung and reinforced so that they could keep out an army if need be. There were two guards on the gates and when they saw me, they started down the stairs to open them, but it was unnecessary.

Hurog opened to me all by itself.

I stopped Feather without entering, staring at the gates. It hadn't been me. Working magic is just that, work. I hadn't even thought about opening the gates, though I felt the surge of power that had accomplished it. Directed by Hurog.

Hurog wanted me home. It should have frightened me more, but how can a man be afraid of his own home?

Feather and I walked somberly through the gates. The guards on duty welcomed me formally—with a little touch of awe that told me they thought I'd been the one to fling the gates open with magic. I let them keep thinking it.

A few questions ascertained that my cousin and his wife had arrived from Iftahar only this morning. Ciarra was resting comfortably with her new daughter in one of the lower storage rooms where a temporary bed had been erected. I dismounted and began giving orders, the fatigue of the journey held at bay by the euphoria of being home. I sent a runner with orders for the keep. Kellen and his man would share my room. I gave Tisala the room next to it, the only other finished room on that floor. Garranon, Oreg, Tosten, and I would share the library. My uncle would join my aunt in their customary room.

I sent another man to gather grooms to take care of the spent horses that were just beginning to filter through the gates.

"So is it war?" asked Stala after threading her way through the confusion to my side.

I hugged her once, tightly. "Not immediately," I said. "But yes."

"With all of Shavig behind us, we will still lose," she said, teacher to student, not as if it bothered her. "But we can make him hurt."

I shook my head. "We might do better than that. I don't know if Beckram told you—I come bringing a royal guest to Hurog. We've rescued Kellen out of the Asylum so that Alizon can put him on the throne."

She drew in a breath, then laughed. "That does change things, doesn't it."

"Maybe not enough," I answered.

"We'll make it be enough," she said. "Now give me that horse; I'll see she's taken care of. You go in and get warm."

I spent the night on a pallet in the library with Oreg, Tosten, Garranon, and a wary street rat with Hurog eyes. I was going to have to find something for Tychis to do, something that would make him feel like one of us.

I was still thinking about it when I fell into a (thankfully) dreamless sleep. I awoke at first light, feeling like myself for the first time in a long while. I breathed in Hurog air and felt the familiar currents of magic that flowed through me, filling the terrible emptiness I'd felt away from Hurog and cleaning away the lingering effects of the potions Jakoven's mages had fed me.

I stepped around my sleeping comrades and snuck out of the library without awaking anyone.

There was a council to call and rooms that needed to be prepared. But first I needed to ride.

The big paddock had four horses in it. A moon-colored mare with gentle eyes, two chestnut matrons whose years of foaling showed in their widened rib cages and loose-jointed stance, and a mud-dark, big-boned stallion who bugled and charged when I whistled at him.

"Miss me, Pansy?" I asked, opening the gate and haltering him. He shoved me with his convex nose and ran his fluttering nostrils over me as if to check for damage.

"Nothing that shows, Pansy. Nothing that shows," I assured him as I led him to the stables where saddle and bridle awaited us. His scars were visible, white hairs on his ribs and flanks, and ripples in the soft skin on the corners of his mouth.

He lent me his enthusiasm as we charged the mountain trails. In the last few years these wild rides had grown less frequent; my need of them lessened by the satisfaction of turning Hurog into a prosperous land once more. But Pansy's memory was sharp and his feet didn't hesitate as he powered up the steep, snow-covered game trail. Hurog had real mountains.

Standing by the broken bronze doors on the mountainside, we stared down onto Hurog. It wasn't as impressive as it had once been. The stark black lines were softened by granite and the places where the stonework had not yet been replaced. But the air of decay that had clung to it was gone.

Pansy cocked an ear back, so I turned him around to see what he'd heard.

The dragon that stared at me was not Oreg. Its scales guttered green and black instead of purple, and it was less than half Oreg's size.

Pansy, conditioned by long rides with Oreg, didn't flinch when the dragon's head darted suddenly past us so its right eye was even with mine.

"Hurogmeten," he said in a voice that could have belonged to Tosten when he was ten.

"Dragon," I said. Oreg had told me that he wasn't the only dragon around here, but I'd never seen another one until now.

He tilted his head, butting my shoulder painfully with a bony ridge. Then he pulled his head back. "It sings in you," he said. "They said it did, but I didn't think magic could sing to a human."

"This is Hurog," I said. "And I am Hurogmeten."

"Hurog," he said after a moment, "means dragon."

"Yes," I agreed, smiling.

That seemed to satisfy him. After two running steps down the mountain he took awkwardly to flight.

"A fledgling," I said to Pansy, feeling lighthearted. I hadn't really believed Oreg when he told me that there were more dragons—no one had seen one in a very long time.

"Tosten is incensed," announced Ciarra's voice on the other side of my horse. "He said they almost put a rider up behind you in the saddle yesterday—and yet this morning one of the stablemen sees you taking flight up the mountain."

I set Pansy's brush on the rack and turned toward the open door of the stable. My sister, wrapped in winter clothes and backlit by the morning sun streaming behind her, looked like the spirit her new daughter was named after. Her pale hair looked the same as it had when she was a toddler.

I hugged her and lifted her gently off her feet for a spin. "How are you? I hear that you and your baby made the trip in better shape than Beckram."

She kissed my cheek and I set her down.

"Beckram fussed," she agreed, "but Leehan slept most of the way. Are you all right?" There was more concern in her eyes than a tiring ride from Estian would have called for. But she knew me as well as I knew her. She wouldn't pry unless I wanted to talk.

"I'm fine," I said. "Really. A bit stiff when I awoke. Tosten wasn't exaggerating—the last two days he and Oreg had to hoist me in the saddle—but I felt much better once I was in Hurog."

"I heard about your triumphant entry," she said. "Did the gates really open for you? And what's this about your newest stray? Tosten says he's our father's get."

I nodded, since it sufficed for most of her questions. For a woman who had been mute for most of her life, words often cascaded from her in an effervescent flow. Her words, though, reminded me that I needed to do something with Tychis—and looking at my sister, I suddenly knew exactly what that was.

"What?" she said, no doubt seeing the sudden satisfaction I felt on my face.

"A new mother needs help," I said. "I believe I'll give you someone to fetch and carry for you and Leehan."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh please, not you, too. You'd think that I just got off my deathbed. Not that birthing is easy, mind you, but I don't need any more coddling."

"Perhaps not," I said, smiling at her. "But we have a newly discovered brother who was raised on the streets of Estian, and he needs to coddle someone. I think I'm going to give you and your baby to him."