Dragon Blood

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 ru

"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," a

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."

12—WARDWICK

I'd have thought that persuading people to do what they wanted to do would have been easier.

It took us two weeks to organize a meeting of most of the Shavig Council. Two weeks of lightening my purse to hire every laborer and idle farmer in the area to work on Hurog had given us three more usable rooms and seen the great hall finished to the extent that our meeting was unlikely to be interrupted by wandering horses.

My uncle's people worked hard as well. Some of them stayed in the keep, but most sheltered in the holding's farms so there would be room for the Council when they came, which they did, despite the snowstorm that preceded them. Shavigmen knew how to travel in winter.

The councilmen, mostly nobles with an odd wealthy farmer or guild master thrown in, all came bearing gifts for my new niece, but the carefully worded invitations had been carried by messengers instructed to tell the recipient of Kellen's escape and Jakoven's seizure of Iftahar—Beckram told me that they'd left only hours ahead of Jakoven's troops.

Though they knew that even to be at Hurog was likely to invite Jakoven's wrath, almost everyone came, and the few who didn't were ill or snowed in. We feasted and hunted and listened while Tosten provided bardic entertainment, and no one mentioned Kellen's escape or Jakoven's attempt to imprison me in the Asylum. Kellen and Rosem stayed secreted in my rooms, waiting for the most politic moment to present them to the Council.

On the evening of the second day, when the night's meal had been taken away, I stood on the dais (newly built along with most of the tables and benches in the hall) and waited for the after-di

I wore formal Shavig dress as had been out of fashion for a number of decades. Close-fit breeches, loose-sleeved shirt covered with a knee-length tunic split down the sides—all of several shades of brown. Over my left shoulder a Hurog-blue dragon crawled.

"My lords, tradesmen, farmers all, we've welcomed you to Hurog, and given thanks for the gifts you brought. It is time now to speak on more serious matters." I took a deep breath.

I'd protested that the speech Duraugh and Rosem had put together was too wordy. The original one would have taken me an hour to get through. Duraugh cut it down, but it was still long. I hoped they'd all stay awake through my speech to hear Kellen's.