Dragon Blood

The man looked blank for a moment. "I don't know, sire. He was ten, maybe, when I saw him last."

A boy, I thought, excellent I liked boys.

The thoughts that accompanied my words woke me and sent me dry-heaving into the chamber pot next to the bed. I sat on the cool floor and sweat ran down my back.

Jakoven. I'd been in Jakoven's mind. Though the scent was dissipating, I could still smell the magic that had overlaid my room when I awoke. Whose magic, I could not tell, but I decided it meant that I had dreamed true. Those thoughts could not have come out of my head, not from me.

"They did not," said the Tamerlain from the corner of my room. "You dream true dreams sent by Aethervon. They are meant to aid you."

Gods, I thought, Jakoven is after a child.

"I owe you thanks for your help," I said, wiping my mouth with a cloth lying on a small table next to a basin of water. "And for the dreams, if I can get to the boy before Jakoven does."

She purred and rolled over like a playful kitten. "No thanks are necessary. It is we who are the debtors."

She left before I could say anything in reply, and I stared at the place where she had been. I wanted nothing more than to slink back to Hurog and hide in the snow-shielded hills until the gods called me to my rest—but I would not leave a boy to Jakoven's clutches, nor would Jakoven leave me in peace.

It was a long time before I crawled back under the covers and tried to get more sleep.

I was troubled again with dreams, but these were more normal nightmares born of the Asylum. I dreamed of terrifying monsters that attacked me over and over while I tried to hide in straw that fell away from my fingers. But a soft voice that reminded me of green apples and clean rain drove the beasts away and guarded me while I hid in safety.

I dreamed of a gem that hovered in the air above me and dripped red blood on my chest. I tried to roll away, but I was restrained on the leather-covered table. The blood became a flood drowning me, and I awoke with a gasp.

"It's safe, Ward," said Tisala's voice from the darkness of the room where I slept. She shifted uncomfortably and I made out the outline of a wooden chair set against the wall opposite my bed. "Go to sleep."

Somehow, knowing that she was there allowed me to do just that.

9—WARDWICK

Survival is not a pretty business.

I awoke in a black mood. Yesterday it had all seemed so unreal, but this morning I remembered bleakly all of the humiliations of my captivity. I didn't remember everything clearly, mostly bits and pieces, but that was enough. I remembered losing control of my body in every possible way, remembered pleading with Jade Eyes both to stop and not to stop. I felt filthy and used.

Tisala slept backward on the chair, her arms folded over the back with her chin resting upon her forearms. I didn't want her to see me, somehow certain that what I'd done under Jade Eyes's hands would be written upon my flesh.

Quietly I pulled on the covers until they cloaked my miserable self. If I'd had a knife at hand, I'd have slit my own throat.

The door opened and Oreg, whose light footsteps were unmistakable, came in.

"All right, Tisala," he said. "Time for a changing of the guard. There's a bed with your name on it on the other side of the wall."

"Ouch," she said, and I heard the legs of the chair shift on the wooden floor. "Though mind you, anyone who falls asleep on guard-duty deserves to be stiff."

"Go sleep," Oreg said, and I heard from his tone that he was fond of her. "I told you I slept just across the hall, you didn't need to stay here."

"Yes, I did," she said, yawning. "He watched over me under similar circumstances."

He waited where he was until she'd shuffled out and the door shut behind her.

"All right, Ward," he said. "Time to wake up and face the day."

I took a deep breath and pulled the covers down. "Good morning," I said, trying to sound normal.

Oreg sat on the foot of the bed. "How did you sleep?"

I opened my mouth to lie and tell him I was well-rested when I remembered that at least one of the nightmares I'd had was important. "The Tamerlain was here—I don't know if I told you her part in all of this. Yesterday is a bit of a blur."

Oreg nodded. "You told all of us that she cleared your head so you could think and throw Jakoven's plans to the wolves. It was a near thing, though. I talked to the guardsman who was watching so he could summon your uncle's men if they were needed. Even as it was, he said that but for your uncle's hold on Tosten, he'd have gone for the king right there and then."

"Well," I said, not wanting to think how close I had come to getting my entire family beheaded for treason. "She visited me last night and told me that Aethervon had a gift of true dreaming for me—out of gratitude for cleansing the land, I think she said. I dreamt the king was looking for a boy, my father's son out of a Hurog-bred whore. The boy's mother is dead, but the boy would be Hurog-born from both parents."

"Can you find him?" Oreg asked.

I shook my head. "I just saw the king's part in this. I need to see the boy before I can find him with magic." An increasingly familiar feeling of weakness crept over me. "Ah, gods," I whispered before my body began to try to shake itself apart.

An extremely unpleasant interval followed. Oreg held me until it was over, then efficiently removed me to the chair, burned my clothes and the sheets, and cleaned the room. He stepped out and returned—in clean clothes, as I had managed to dirty him, too—with sheets and clothes for me. He made the bed as I dressed.

"Efficient," I said, sitting stiffly on the bed.

"You think you are the only Hurog whose body rebelled from the poisons pumped through it?" he said. "If I weren't efficient after all these years, it would be a shame. Most of them even chose to indulge in vice. Go to sleep, Ward. Duraugh has to write orders for Beckram to take to Iftahar's seneschal, so we're not leaving until later this morning. I'll have a talk with Tisala about your newest foundling. As it happens, she has a lot of contacts in Estian. If there's a young Hurog out in the streets, she'll find him."

He left and I lay back in the bed, feeling even worse than I had when I awoke. As I stared at the ceiling, Tosten opened the door, his battered lap harp in one hand.

He gave me a measuring glance. "You look worse than you did yesterday. Oreg told me you needed cheering up—and I was to come and make myself useful."

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.

"I see he was right." Tosten nodded. "You need to hear The Ballad of Hurog's Dragon, which is even now making itself popular in the taverns of Estian."

He pulled up Tisala's chair, settled himself in it, and began to play a song that purported itself to be a story a Shavig armsman was telling to a Tallvenish audience at an i

About halfway through I surged to my feet in disbelief. "He did what?"

Tosten stopped playing. "Oreg was really worried about you, Ward. It wasn't his fault. None of the horses got hurt, and he did that thing that makes people look away from him. I bet there weren't half a dozen of the men who really got a good look at him."

"And you're singing about this in the taverns? No one is supposed to know about our dragon."

"Oh," he said. "We've done something about that. It was Tisala's suggestion, actually, and I've refined upon it a bit. Listen to the rest."

The pair of Shavigmen used their tale to lure a Tallvenish nobleman (who sounded a lot like several of Jakoven's cronies) away from his fellows and out into the woods. Whereupon the Shavigmen stripped and bound him. They gathered his possessions and clothing and took them back to the i