Moons' Dreaming (Children of the Rock) Read online

  He nodded.

  “They’re going to kill her?”

  He nodded again. She tried to pull her arm from his grasp, but he held her easily, looking around in case there were servants or guards about to see them. She was fourteen, gangling and thin, and he was captain of the king’s guard, no giant but big and strong enough to hold one stubborn girl. She knew that it embarrassed him when their arguments escalated into public shouting matches, or when he had to physically restrain her from doing something he didn’t consider wise. He would not let her rush off to confront her brother; not unless she could convince him that she knew what she was doing. Dael worried more about her impetuous behavior than she did.

  “King Hion has decided to take firm action in the matter.”

  “King Hion decides nothing!” she snapped back.

  “Hush,” he warned, shaking her. “Think—and keep still, Kitten.” He’d given her the pet name during the years he’d helped raise her. He hardly ever used it now, not since she’d discovered the sport that was possible between men and women and decided that he would be an ideal partner. The fact that he used the name now showed how distracted he was. He would never admit it in so many words, but she was dear to him, and he didn’t want to see her do anything foolish.

  “How can I keep still?” she demanded. “Someone has to speak up against this. You know it all comes back to my brother’s pure, blind ambition!”

  “Your father doesn’t see Damon the way you do.”

  “Then I have to show him!”

  “There’s a glint of battle in those eyes of yours.” He shook his head, fluffing out the hair surrounding his face. “No. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Am I not even permitted to try?”

  He thought for a moment before answering carefully. “You’re a princess. Hion’s daughter. Damon’s opposite. Perhaps you can be of some influence on the king. More likely not, but who am I to keep you from trying?” He released her and stepped aside. “Go to your father,” he told her. “He was still in the audience chamber when I left. Go, if you must. I have work.”

  She let him by and watched him hurry out of sight, through the door to the guard barracks. He had a great deal to organize if the execution was to take place without any difficulties. An execution that he would have to oversee.

  Vray’s heart tightened with anguish.

  “No,” she whispered hoarsely. She ran for the audience chamber.

  * * *

  I’ve been dying for years now, Hion of Rhenlan thought as he slumped in his seat, letting the pain have its way with him for a few minutes, using it to take his mind off his latest decision. He was alone, as he liked to be, his son and counselors gone about the business of concluding the matter. A long time dying for any man, he complained to the silence. He would have to make it swift and painless for that poor lamb Dea sent him. Foolish, stubborn woman. He hunched forward, resting his head in his hands. The pain was very bad today. He had barely been able to make it through the meeting without showing his weakness.

  He had been a heroic king once, a proud and conscientious Shaper, responsible for freeing his country from the ravages of the last of the fire bears. Fire-bear wounds were poisonous, a cumulative poison. Hion had been wounded more than once in his combats with the creatures. The last time had been fatal, a slow fatality that even Greenmother Jenil could not prevent. She could only slow his dying, coming to Edian every year or so to perform what healing magic she could. Her talent kept the pain damped down to something he could live with. She always apologized because there was no cure for him, and wondered, solicitous in her silly Dreamer way, that he lived at all.

  Jenil couldn’t cure him, but at least the Greenmother’s magic kept his heavily muscled body from turning into barrel-chested fat. She masked the ravages of the pain, keeping his blond hair from going white too quickly, his blue eyes alert instead of dulled from pain-numbing herbs.

  “I’m a stubborn man,” he had told Jenil more than once, and repeated the words into his hands now. Have to be stubborn, have to live until Damon learns enough to take my place.

  “Father?”

  Hion jerked upright, and found Vray on her knees before his chair. Her cat-eyed face was full of worry.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked gruffly, more annoyed than usual at the girl’s resemblance to her mother, whose slender grace and feline features he’d once found so attractive.

  Vray sat back on her heels, looking up at him anxiously. “Are you ill?”

  Gathering his strength about him, Hion sat up straight, squaring his shoulders and masking his face with a scowl. “Silly child.”

  Odd how neither of his children resembled him. Damon looked more like Hion’s sister, pale-skinned and raven-haired. Vray was the image of Gallia and her whole red-maned family. The guardsman Dael, blond and blue-eyed, looked more like him than his own flesh.

  Thinking of Dael and looking at Vray reminded Hion of something. “What’s this I hear about you at the Golden Owl?”

  Vray blushed. “It’s a perfectly respectable inn.”

  “Where my guard captain spends much of his off-duty time. Leave the man alone, child. If I hear of him dragging you home once more—”

  “That’s not important now,” she cut him off, and got to her feet. Before he could gather enough air into his lungs to thunder at her disrespect she hurried on. “I have to talk to you about Emlie. You can’t kill her, Father.”

  Vray was a stubborn, difficult child, and he had neither strength nor inclination to fight with her now. Nothing held her attention for long; he would answer her questions, and she would go away and forget the whole unpleasant incident. “It’s the law, girl. The dispute’s not been settled within any of the precepts the law allows. Dea delegated her authority to her daughter, and now the girl must pay. I’m only trying to prevent more deaths.”

  She stared at him. “Prevent death by killing? How, Father?”

  “It’s no affair of yours, Vray. Go to your studies.” She stubbornly remained where she was, her expression pleading, and let the silence build between them. Hion finally grew uncomfortable enough to growl, “Well?”

  She cupped her elbows in her hands, pressing her arms close to her body. “Father, there is no honor in this.”

  “And what do you know about it?” Hion demanded.. Before the fire bears came, the world had been full of honor, and laughter and security and magic and all the other frivolities of those prosperous, untroubled times. By the time Hion became king, honor and tradition were luxuries that took time and energy away from the immediate fight for survival. Damon understood the sacrifices demanded by necessity, but his daughter never would.

  “You’re training me to be a Redmother,” she reminded him angrily. “Damon’s Redmother… not that he’ll ever listen to anything I have to say. Not that you listen to me.”

  “Your childish arguments have no place in the council chamber.”

  “I’m fourteen. Emlie’s just sixteen, unmarried. Doesn’t that make her a child, too? Will you kill a child?”

  “She plotted treachery against me! Against our people!”

  “I don’t believe that.” She walked away into the shadows near the hearth, then paced back to confront him once more, chin up, eyes glaring. “I don’t think Damon believes it, either. The girl is a poor negotiator, that’s all, and Damon’s pride was hurt when she refused to marry him. That’s the real reason he wants her dead!”

  “Your brother’s only concern is the welfare of our people. You would do well to learn from his example.”

  “What about Emlie’s welfare? What about Queen Dea?”

  “Enough! I’ve made my decision.” He could no longer concentrate on her naive, jealous accusations. The pain was consuming him. He wanted to go to his chambers where he could be alone to scream the agony away. He wanted even more to be rid of this hornet and her stinging words.

  “Be gone, Vray. Now.”

  “You’ve made a mistake
.” Her words held the tone of a Dreamer’s prophecy. Light fell on her from the room’s high windows, turning her hair to flames, hurting his eyes. “You can stop it, or we can all suffer for it.”

  Hion clutched the chair arms and heaved himself to his feet. Tottering unsteadily he lunged at his daughter, open palm striking her across the face.

  “I said, be gone!” he roared.

  She whimpered and collapsed into a blue heap before him, silenced. For now. Hion gazed down at her. Her huddled figure roused a dim, guilty memory of the laughing three-year-old daughter who had enticed him into games of hide-and-seek, and clambered into his lap in search of affection. He remembered the first time her innocent exuberance pained one of his old wounds, and her tears at his anger when he sent her away.

  He shook his head to banish the memory. An explanation or excuse would have been useless then, and would be useless now. Dear Gallia had taught him that.

  The girl raised her head and touched a cut one of his rings had made in her fine-skinned cheek.

  “Be gone,” he repeated once more, and slumped back into his chair.

  Shame and sadness mingled in her whispered, “Yes, Sire.” Without looking at him, she pulled herself to her feet and fled from the room.

  Chapter 2

  “Look out behind you!”

  Pirse, prince of Dherrica, didn’t waste time looking. He swung his sword wildly over his head, threw himself to the left, and half ran, half slipped between the sturdy trunks of two towering trees.

  The dragon tried to follow. Its frustrated roar mixed with the creaking and groaning of splitting wood as it struggled to thrust its huge body after its prey. Leaves, insects, and pieces of shaggy bark showered down on Pirse. The jungle shook with the sounds of the monster’s fury and the alarmed screams of birds and animals.

  Flipping hair and sweat out of his eyes, Pirse ducked away from the splintering trees and charged uphill, right under the belly of the rearing dragon. He sucked in great gasps of air, driving his tired body forward, legs quivering with the strain of keeping in constant motion on uneven terrain. The dry, acrid smell of sun-drenched dragon skin was everywhere.

  He brushed past the tip of the monster’s tail and was clear. “Chelam!” he yelled, whirling to face back toward the dragon. “By the Rock, where are you?”

  For answer an arrow whizzed past his shoulder and bounced off the dragon’s rump. Pirse back-pedaled up the hill, sword held ready in both hands. The dragon, its heavy head, sinuous neck, and powerful forelegs still entangled in the upper branches of the trees, bellowed again and began a ponderous turn to its right. Another arrow arched over Pirse’s head and caught the dragon below the curve of its double-hinged jaw. Outraged, it flung its head back and almost lost its balance.

  “Gods, you’re a slow one,” Pirse panted, gazing up and up and up at the creature. Monster. Dragon. Whatever name it wore, this particular beast was three times the size of a horse. Not particularly large for a land dragon, which was fine with Pirse.

  Arching its neck to peer down at the jungle, the dragon took a deliberate step forward. The ravaged trees which had collapsed against it tottered and fell. Turning his head, Pirse spotted the cottage-sized boulder he’d chosen at the beginning of the battle, and began easing toward it. The slower this monster moved, the better.

  “Chelam, what are you waiting for?”

  With a wild neigh of terror, a packhorse burst out of the brush a dozen yards above Pirse and careened across the slope, nostrils flaring. Despite the wide blindfold carefully secured to his halter, the gelding was well aware of the nearby dragon, and his frantic, plunging strides proved he had no intention of believing a single word of the reassurances Chelam had bestowed on the decoy before sending him on his way.

  The dragon forgot about the fight and swung its huge head in the direction of a good meal. Pirse clambered to the top of the boulder. The dragon got its feet straightened out and flipped its tail behind it, cracking branches off yet another tree. The horse pushed desperately through a thicket of low vegetation, angling back up the hill as fast as his legs would carry him. The dragon collected itself, muscles bunching under the mottled hide, head questing forward on long neck, huge, pleated ears fluttering in the hot afternoon air. Pirse waited.

  In deadly silence the dragon launched itself forward, jaws gaping wide, the abrupt burst of perfectly controlled speed all the more terrifying in comparison to its usual clumsiness. Pirse, having seen the same phenomenon more times than he could remember, was ready for the dragon’s move. More, he was counting on it. He timed his leap to the dragon’s smooth rush, throwing one leg over the wide neck as it shot past the boulder. With one gloved hand he grasped the rough scales, and with the other thrust his sword high and true into the base of the dragon’s throat.

  Gray-white fluid geysered out around the blade, soaking Pirse’s hand and arm and splashing in a shining arc across the hillside as the dragon twisted and writhed. Pirse hung on grimly, swinging halfway under the flailing neck to push his sword even deeper into the monster’s flesh. The result was another gush of the unnatural lifeblood. The dragon’s roar became a choking gurgle. Still moving uphill with the force of its initial lunge, it staggered, its legs crumpling.

  Pirse jerked his sword free and flung himself clear just before the dead dragon crashed into the ground.

  For a few heartbeats the jungle was very quiet. Pirse rolled onto his back and drew in a long, shuddery breath, then let it out with a relieved whoosh. As if in answer the packhorse, somewhere in the brush on the slope above him, snorted loudly. From the direction of the smashed trees several birds called, tentatively at first, then with enough confidence that others joined in.

  A shadow fell across Pirse. Shading his eyes with his clean hand, he gave Chelam a quick visual inspection. “You all right?”

  “Fine now, Highness.”

  Pirse accepted his corporal’s offered hand and pulled himself to his feet. The dragon was a mound of motionless carrion a few yards to his left, steam already rising from its glistening back. “Was I imagining things, or did that dragon step on you?”

  “Not on me, exactly, Highness. On the rocks next to me.”

  “It was not a reassuring sight, Chelam.”

  “No, Highness.”

  Pirse walked toward the dragon, the corporal at his side. “What happened?”

  “My foot slipped.”

  They reached the almost rectangular head, stepping over the glistening trail of ooze that was all that remained of its lolling tongue. Clouds of insects swarmed uncertainly on and over the glistening body, attracted by the unmistakable odor of ripe decay, repulsed by a process of decomposition that could advance with such mind-numbing speed. Chelam took careful hold of the skull and tilted it at just the right angle.

  Pirse raised his sword. Even in direct sunlight he could make out the blue flicker of magic that glinted along its eternally sharp edge. He picked up one flaccid dragon ear, feeling it still dry and cool between his fingers. He carefully slipped his blade beneath the fragile membrane and with a swift, smooth motion detached the ear from the head.

  The ear stiffened in his hand, changing color from mottled gray to dull brown in the blink of an eye. Pirse dropped it behind him and shifted his position as Chelam twisted the dragon’s head to bring the other ear into view.

  “Not many people can do what you do,” Pirse observed. “Follow orders, however unpleasant, improvise when things go wrong, and face rampaging nightmares like this one with unruffled calm.” He snicked off the second ear and thoughtfully watched it harden.

  Chelam let the head fall. It squelched when it hit the ground. The corporal grinned with deep satisfaction.

  “Nothing better than watching a nightmare die, Highness.”

  “This one almost watched you die, Corporal.”

  Immediately contrite, Chelam dropped his gaze and muttered, “Yes, Highness.”

  “I don’t want to have to train a new assistant, Chelam.”


  “No, Highness.”

  “You have to be more careful.”

  “Yes, Highness.”

  Relenting, Pirse clapped the man affectionately on the shoulder. Pirse was hot, sticky with sweat and tree sap and dragon blood, and overwhelmingly grateful to have survived another fight. Even the horses had survived!

  “Come on, Chelam. Let’s find a campsite. I need a bath. And you don’t have to say, ‘Yes, Highness.’”

  Chelam picked up the dragon ear that Pirse had dropped, a smile curling the corner of his mouth. “Wasn’t even thinking it.” He held out the ear, now leather hard. “I’ll fetch the horses.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Because if you try to get near ‘em, your stink will scare them away.”

  Sword in one hand and dried ears in other, Pirse could only growl under his breath as Chelam made a quick, strategic withdrawal.

  * * *

  Palle of Dherrica was often annoyed he had not been born before his sister Dea. Since he had not had that good fortune, he tried to content himself with the role of advisor to the queen of Dherrica. Although he had to admit that Dea was generally rather good about taking his advice, today she was being difficult.

  “They can’t be serious. I sent them Emlie in good faith that we would engage in reasoned negotiation. The next step is supposed to be compromise. An equitable solution for both parties. All Hion has done is repeat his original demands!”

  Dea paced back and forth across the raised dais of her throne room, fists clenched angrily at her sides. The long, stone-flagged great hall had been diplomatically deserted by the court for several days now. There were servants about, and guards at the tall double doors at the end farthest from the throne, but they were just Keepers. Only the queen’s loyal, dependable, selfless younger brother remained by her side. Palle stood by the throne, one hand resting on the back of the tall chair, his gaze following Dea.

  She’s gotten a few more gray strands in her curls in the last several days, he noted. And her so vain of the family’s black hair. He touched his own waist-length mane with satisfaction, trying to keep his smirk at his own vanity to himself. Concentrate, Palle. This is supposed to be a solemn conversation, and you pride yourself on being the stable member of the family.