The Tower at Stony Wood

Twenty-seven

The dragon drew her eyes then, its luminous scales glowing in the fading light as with inner fires, its head reared on the immense stalk of its neck, staring down at Sel out of cauldrons of molten gold. It was absolutely still. So was she, stunned still, for she had never seen anything so beautiful or so menacing in her life. Its jaws opened slightly, revealing teeth like wedges of crystal, as if, she thought incredulously, it smiled.

It was more than dragon. That she recognized, though she could not have said where its boundaries of dragon ended, and the unknown force that knew her name began. Somewhere in its fiery, nebulous thoughts a familiar eye had opened, looked at her. The smoldering confusion of emotion from the humans in the yard pulled at her attention before she could pursue the question. She studied the men, remembering what Melanthos had told her.

The brown, burly man with the sword in his hand and the hectic blood in his face, standing alone on the steps defending his house, must be the King of Yves, the North Islands, and Skye. The gold-haired man whose powers had rebounded back at him would certainly be Thayne Ysse, who had brought the dragon to war with the king. The young man beside him, as dark as Thayne was fair, Melanthos hadn’t mentioned. He wore the same fearless, intractable expression as Thayne, and stood so close, his hand gripping Thayne’s arm, that Sel guessed he must be family.

She saw the sudden glint in the bole of the staff Thayne carried, a flash of wicked, warning fire. He held it loosely, without intent, but she didn’t like the look of it. She sent a jolt of thought into the skull-smooth bole, avoiding the power in the eye. The staff jumped out of Thayne’s hand. He staggered, loosing a cry that was part curse, and hunched over his hand. She looked past him to the man on the steps.

“Regis Aurum?”

The king nodded, searching for a word. He brought it out finally. “Baker?”

The dragon swiveled its head suddenly, its jaws opening wide, and hissed at a parapet wall. The archer hiding there, crouched and aiming at Thayne, shouted and dropped his bow into the yard.

“My daughter persuaded me to come here,” Sel told the king. “She said that Cyan Dag was afraid that he wouldn’t get here to warn you about Thayne Ysse and the dragon. I came as fast as I could. Faster sometimes than others. I’m still learning things.”

“Cyan Dag?” The king took a step, remembered the dragon. “Have you seen him?”

“Yes. He passed through Stony Wood.” She paused, remembering the knight who had found her in the tower and followed her into the sea. “He helped me when I was in need. When Melanthos told me he was in distress, I thought I’d return the favor.” She sensed a turmoil of conflicting thought on the dragon’s back, and added curiously, “You’d think that if Thayne Ysse were truly going to burn down Gloinmere, he would have done it before the dragon landed in the yard. What’s he waiting for? The dragon could do it easily.”

The king stepped back warily. Thayne Ysse only threw her a grim, harassed glance. Something, she thought. Something not as it seems.

Behind the king, the doors began to open. Thayne Ysse whirled abruptly, slamming them shut with a gesture. Fists battered furiously at them; they refused to budge. Sel raised her voice.

“Shall I go up and talk to him?”

“Talk!” Regis Aurum answered furiously. “He talks too much. I should have dragged him to Gloinmere seven years ago, put an end to that flea-ridden, gadfly family. But I mistook his pledges for truth—”

The dragon’s head fell so quickly toward him that the king barely had time to upend his blade with both hands, aim it at the lowering throat. It stopped as suddenly, just out of reach. The king quelled a visible impulse to throw his sword at it.

“I never pledged you anything,” Thayne retorted passionately. “Kneeling to you in the rain was hard enough; a word would have choked me.”

“Your father pledged fealty.”

“He was wounded; he barely knew—”

“He knew,” Regis Aurum said levelly, “that the North Islands have belonged to Yves for centuries. The only thing that you can claim there is your name. You asked for war when you refused to offer fealty to me in Gloinmere when I was crowned. I gave you what you wanted.”

“You nearly destroyed us.” Thayne’s back was to Sel, but she saw the power gathering in him again, as clearly as she could see the shining bones of transparent fish deep in the sea. The air shimmered around him, roiling, pulsing.

Regis, oblivious, snapped, “I will.”

Sel moved then, the way she had crossed vast distances through Yves. She focused her attention on a gleaming scallop of the dragon’s folded wing, and took a step toward it. She was there, suddenly, on the dragon’s back, feeling the blaze of Thayne’s fury like an open oven in the bakery.

He loosed it at her instead of Regis when he found her unexpectedly beside him. She hid herself within the lightning shock and flare of air, moving with it like a selkie within a wave, safe from any storm. She reappeared. He stared at her, the air fading around him to the color of twilight.

“What are you?”

“Thayne,” the young man murmured edgily, leaning on a sword for balance. “Use the dragon before she stops you. You’re not fighting, you’re just talking, and they’ll find a way to kill you.”

“He has a point,” Sel said. “What are you doing here if you didn’t come to destroy Gloinmere?”

He answered tautly, “I thought the dragon might persuade the king to listen to me.”

“Listen!” the young man repeated in horror. “I thought we came to fight!”

Thayne’s fists clenched. “I promised—”

“What? What did you promise?” He reached out to grip Thayne with both hands. The sword slid away from him; he clung to Thayne for balance. “Who made you promise? Thayne, she could kill you, if you don’t fight!”

Thayne shook his head wordlessly. Sel saw the young man’s withered leg, dragging next to the one muscled with labor. She picked up the staff, pushed the bole under his arm.

“Who are you?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, didn’t look at her; all his bewildered attention was on Thayne, who breathed, “She’ll kill you if I do.”

“Who?” Sel demanded abruptly. “Who will?”

Their faces swung toward her, one confused, the other desperate. The young man loosed Thayne slowly, swallowing. He echoed Sel’s question.

“Who?”

“Just be quiet and let me think. This is my brother Craiche,” he added to Sel. “He was wounded in the battle the North Islands fought against Yves seven years ago.”

Sel grunted. “You lost more than the battle, then. Your father and your brother wounded. Is your father still alive?”

Thayne started to answer, then raised his head, listening. Sel heard the faint, ragged thrum of many running feet spiraling up the stone steps within the towers. “He recovered,” Thayne said tersely. “But his mind wanders. He can’t remember my name, but he knew enough to send me to Skye to find the dragon. Are you really a baker?”

Sel nodded. “I’m used to it. I’m not used to this.” As she spoke, Thayne’s eyes changed. She felt the dragon stir, one eye turned down to meet his gaze. It drew its wings together over their heads. Arrows shot from archers’ windows in the towers pattered like rain against the dragon’s scales. “It seems your brother is right,” she added. “You can burn down Gloinmere or leave with the dragon. You should do one or the other before they kill you.”

He looked at her, his eyes like the dragon’s, fuming with light. “I thought you were fighting for Regis Aurum.”

“I don’t know either one of you. You’re not afraid of the king. You could feed him to the dragon if that’s what you want—”

“I don’t! What good would that king’s heart do to anything alive? He’d go to his death with the same arrogance in his eyes, the same oblivion worse than contempt with which he views us even while he demands our hope, our loyalty, our lives. I don’t want war. The cost will be too great. I want freedom for the North Islands from Yves.”

Sel was silent, weighing certain things in her mind: Craiche’s leg, the look in the king’s eyes, Thayne’s mysterious restraint, her own unlikely power. She drew breath, barked like the selkie she might have been, “Regis Aurum!”

The dragon’s wing dropped down between them; its other curved more closely over them. The king gripped his sword more tightly and stared at her. “What?”

“Come here.”

He balked; she pulled him when he did not move fast enough, hauling him in like a fish in a net. Thayne, breathing something inaudible, moved to stand in front of Craiche. But he left the sword in the king’s hand, for it was worth nothing, there on the dragon’s back, except to help Regis Aurum think.

“You’ve brought this on yourself,” Sel said to him. “You’ve driven Thayne Ysse to this. Look at his brother. You made war on boys not old enough to grow beards—”

“I didn’t war on children!” Regis snapped. “And I nearly died myself in that battle.”

“You’ve fought a war without weapons since then,” Thayne said bitterly, “against even our children.”

“You started the war!”

“You drained everything but the breath out of the North Islands to punish us for it!”

“I’ll concede the air you breathe to you. But the ground you walk on is mine.”

“What of Skye?” Sel asked.

“Skye is also mine. By heritage, by marriage—”

“Even the magic in it? This dragon came out of the heart of Skye. If we ever offend you, and you bring your knights to fight us, beware what you might face.”

Regis Aurum stared at her. So did Thayne Ysse and the dragon. Sel would have stared at herself if she had an extra eye, for the words had come out of nowhere, solid as stone piled on stone, making an unshakable argument for peace.

The king asked incredulously, “Are you threatening me?”

Sel thought about it and nodded. “I am. If you go to war with Thayne Ysse and the North Islands over this, then Skye will go to war with you. And you’d better learn some magic, Regis Aurum, because your weapons will be useless there.”

The king opened his mouth; for a moment nothing came out. The blood raged into his face and faded. “The Lord of Skye would never war against his own daughter—you can’t speak for Skye—”

“It’s not the Lord of Skye you would face,” Sel said grimly. “It’s all the folk whose faces you have never seen. Like the folk in the North Islands, they have names, and lives they think important. Unlike the North Islands, Skye has not forgotten its magic.”

The king blinked. He glanced up at the dragon, whose head had curved back above them, as if it were listening. One eye loomed over them like a bright, swollen moon. He said heavily to Sel, “I thought you came here as a favor to one of my knights, to defend Gloinmere.”

“That knight,” Thayne Ysse said tautly, “of all your knights, had some pity for the islanders. He left your side while you were wounded, to save my brother’s life.”

“How do you know that?” Regis Aurum asked sharply. “He never told me that.”

“I know because I nearly killed him myself, battling over this dragon in Skye. But he knew my brother’s name. So I let him live.”

The king’s eyes narrowed; in the torchlight, his face lost color. “You are a very dangerous man, Thayne Ysse. That knight, of all my knights, I value most.”

“So do I,” Thayne said simply. “We will tear three lands apart if we war with one another. And war it will be, nothing less than that, unless you yield the North Islands to me.”

The king was silent, motionless, his eyes on Thayne, seeing him, Sel guessed, for the first time. He swallowed something, said softly, “Now I know what you tasted in the back of your throat when you knelt in defeat to me in north Yves.”

Thayne shook his head. “You don’t know even now. You haven’t lost anything you loved.”

Regis lowered his sword finally. “I can’t fight dragons. Or my wife’s land. Not over a handful of islands with nothing on them but sheep. I claimed the North Islands when I was crowned, with no more thought than my father gave the matter, or his father before him. I spared them a thought once a year at most. Still, I would go to war with you over barnacles and sand, if you gave me any choice.” He looked at Sel dourly. “I don’t see that I have a choice. I have never lost a battle on the back of a dragon before.”

Thayne drew breath soundlessly, loosed it. He shifted, brought Craiche forward, one arm tight around his shoulders. His eyes turned briefly as gold as coins. “As you said, it’s only sand.”

The king sheathed his sword slowly, studying them both. “You look like your father,” he said abruptly to Craiche. “I saw him once or twice, when my father was alive. Come into the hall, before someone plots another attack. I need to make this very clear to my knights: that the North Islands belong to Ysse, and that you owe nothing more to me.” He added, seeing the reluctance in Thayne’s eyes, “Arm yourself if you want, but come in peace. Which you have already done, very effectively. You could have taken Gloinmere from me. Perhaps Yves itself. You have no reason to trust me, but perhaps I have some reason to trust you.”

Sel found herself silently consulted by the Lord of Ysse. She said, “Cyan Dag seems to love him. That must mean something.”

The dragon flattened a wing like a bridge to the steps. The king offered his arm to the baker in a gesture that melted her heart. “It’s time he came home,” Regis murmured as they made their way across a carpet of bone and glittering scale. “My wife sent him on some errand, two days after we were married. I haven’t seen him since.”

“I thought he came to Skye looking for the dragon,” Thayne said after a moment. “Why else would he have entered the dragon’s tower?”

“He told us in Stony Wood that he was looking for a woman…”

The king pulled futilely at the doors, then stood aside to let Thayne unseal them. The doors flew open as if the entire household were pushing at them. Men stumbled out. Swords flashed, seeking hither and yon, but the Lord of Ysse and his brother were suddenly nowhere to be found.

The king raised his voice for calm. A woman followed in the wake of the chaos, stood at the doorway looking at the dragon. The shouting and turmoil dwindled in Sel’s head into something heard within the chambers of a shell.

It was the woman in the mirror: her lovely face with its grace and luminous eyes, her hair, though in this world she wore it so smoothly coiled and braided, it might have been carved of ivory. She felt Sel’s stare and smiled at her, a private smile, as if they shared a secret. The king, restoring order finally and coaxing Thayne Ysse back from nowhere, led him to the woman in the doorway.

“This is the Lord of the North Islands, Thayne Ysse, and his brother, Craiche,” he said. “And this is Sel, who came from Skye to tell us all what to do. Make them welcome in my house.”

“From Skye!” the Queen of Yves said, taking Sel’s hands, as the astonished and vociferous knights and guards followed the king into the hall. “Tell me where you live; perhaps I know it.”

“Stony Wood,” Sel answered, her voice grown small with wonder.

“Yes,” the Lady from Skye said with delight. “I rode down the coast once from my father’s house, to see the strange stone wood.” She put her hand on Thayne’s arm as he waited behind the crowd so that Craiche would not get unbalanced in it. Some impulse from the dragon made him turn as the last guard drifted after the king. Sel felt it, too, as she lingered in the queen’s gentle grasp: the glance of a dark eye out of the dragon’s mind. The four of them stood alone outside the noisy hall, watching the dragon change.

A tall old woman with hair as white as bone and eyes as black as the eye in the bole stood in the yard where the dragon had been. Sel heard Thayne loose a sharp, incoherent word. I know you, she thought with wonder. You watched me in the mirror…

She smiled at Sel as if she heard her thinking, her heartbeat, the next thought still finding words in her head.

“You won’t need this now,” she said to Thayne, and picked her staff out of the clutter fallen off the dragon’s back.

He whispered as the old woman turned her back to them and faded into fire and night on her way to the gate, “I should have known.”