[Hurog 01] - Dragon Bones (24 page)

“I'll come back and get Penrod after I'm through with Oreg. Penrod and I've been comrades for too long to leave him to other hands.” Axiel picked up the young mage without visible effort, though Tisala doubted there was a stone of weight between them.

“I'll find Ciarra and let her know what's going on.” She held Axiel's gelding while he dealt with the difficulty of getting Oreg on his tall horse. She bit her lip and didn't say anything disparaging about the Northern horses. Some people you could tease, and others you didn't. Despite her father's comments, she did actually know which were which, and sometimes she even cared.

 

AXIEL
COVERED
O
REG WITH
the blankets from both of their bedrolls, but it didn't stop the shaking.

“I've got to go get Penrod's body.”

Oreg didn't appear to hear him. After a moment, Axiel stepped into his saddle. His horse let out an almost human sigh, but made no other protests.

“That's it Foxy Lad,” he told his horse. “I don't know why the aftermath of battles are always more a trial of endurance than the battles themselves, but that's how it is.”

Axiel was tired, too. There was some basis for human rumors of dwarven endurance, but he was half human, and his arms told him that he'd been in a fight. A dull ache in his ribs let him know that he hadn't come out unscathed, but it would have to wait until after Penrod was taken care of.

You'd think after all these years, Penrod would have learned to watch his back. Axiel stopped himself. Much easier to just accept death rather than rail at it, and he should have learned that by now.

Penrod's body lay undisturbed. The growing shadow gave the glen an unsettling feel, though it might just be that he was here alone. Axiel bent down to pick him up.

“Sleep well, old friend,” murmured Axiel. He hefted the body as carefully as if Penrod had been wounded.

 

CIARRA
CRIED SILENTLY AS
the flames consumed Penrod. Axiel rested his hands on her shoulders, but his eyes were dry. Penrod was neither the first nor the last comrade he'd fed to the fire. He watched the bodies of the fallen blacken, dwarven eyesight letting him see what the flames concealed from the humans around him. When Ciarra turned away and buried her face in his chest, he wrapped his arms around the child.

“Come, lass,” he said. “Let's get cleaned up and set up the tent. If we don't hurry, we'll be doing it in the dark. Your brothers will be back soon and ready for sleep.”

 

IT
WAS NEARING DARKFALL
when Beckram and Kirkovenal came upon the camp. The dying embers of the funeral pyre told them that there had been a battle long before they arrived, so Beckram was careful to hail the camp before riding in. No one he asked knew where Ward was. But a delicate hand caught his sleeve while he was talking to yet another Oranstonian.

“Ciarra?” he said. Then, when he got a closer look at her, “What's wrong? Did something happen to Ward?”

She started to shake her head, then shrugged instead. Tightening her grip on his arm, she dragged him behind her. Kirkovenal dismounted, too, and followed them.

Ciarra took them to the center of the camp, where Beckram saw Axiel at the cooking pot.

“Beckram,” Axiel said. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for my cousin. Do you know where Ward is?”

Axiel handed off his ladle with a “Mind you keep stirring, or it'll burn on the bottom.”

“We're not sure where Ward's gotten himself off to,” said Axiel. “As far as we could determine, he, Tosten, and Bastilla went off chasing Vorsag. We had a minor skirmish with the Vorsag earlier today. Afterward, we found Penrod dead in a small clearing on the far side of the battlefield. From the tracks, the three of them took off south. What do you want him for?”

Beckram had the whole ride from Callis to put Kirkovenal's information together with Ward's storytelling and had come up with a few theories.

“Ciernack in Estian has been selling information to King Kariarn and probably his father,” he began. “At first, it was military information, but the new king of Vorsag wanted more; he wanted magic. So the people working at the tavern bought artifacts and probably stole a few, too. A couple of years ago, about the time Kariarn's father became ill, Ciernack got several new workers, including a slave girl, Bastilla. Except she wasn't really a slave at all; she was working for Kariarn.”

“Bastilla was working for Kariarn?” asked Axiel.

“It's the only reason we could come up with for her to run to Hurog,” explained Beckram. “Bastilla was no slave running for her freedom. Kirkovenal knows of at least one man she had killed and another she tortured. Ciernack didn't give her orders, she gave them to him. We think that Bastilla heard the stories about Hurog's treasure and went to check them out for herself—with her lover, Landislaw, in pursuit to make sure she made it back.”

Axiel shook his head. “I saw her feet after she ran to Hurog. I saw the scars on her back.”

Kirkovenal spoke. “I have seen her slice the skin off a man's back for the sheer pleasure she took in it. I've seen Black Ciernack, who the king himself is careful with,
flinch from her anger. And I've seen her pretend to be an innocent maid or a whore, as it suits her.”

Beckram broke the silence that followed. “Before Bastilla ‘escaped' to Hurog, Landislaw cornered me and asked me about the treasure of gold and magic the dwarves are said to have left at the old keep. It's nonsense, and I told him so—but Bastilla could have been sent to check it out. The only thing I don't know is why she stayed with Ward.” Even as he spoke, a possible answer came to him. “Unless she found something. Something that she couldn't get right away. Ward rescues her and tells her he's headed to Oranstone, and she decides it might be the easiest way to get her information back to Kariarn.”

“Haverness thinks that the Vorsag have an enclave in Oranstone,” said Kirkovenal abruptly. “You said Ward, his brother, and Bastilla left here headed south. Buril isn't too far from here.”

“Garranon's keep?” asked Beckram.

Kirkovenal nodded. “Where Landislaw has been holding court. Bastilla's lover, Landislaw.”

“Who hates the king much more than he hates Vorsag,” said Beckram.

“You're speculating,” said Axiel. “What proof do you have?”

“When did Ward leave?” asked Beckram.

“Right after the battle was over,” Axiel replied.

“I ask you, would any commander trained by Stala desert his men after a battle to go chasing after a few enemy soldiers?” asked Beckram. When Axiel made no answer, Beckram said. “No. He wouldn't. I think Bastilla believes there's some treasure at Hurog, but she can't get to it without Ward, and she intends to use Tosten to make Ward help her get it.”

Obsession is a strange thing. It can be the fire that forges a true blade, but more often it is the flaw that causes the sword to break.

I
DREAMED OF
H
UROG
. It was so real I could smell the musty books in the library where I stood.
Dusty tomes in languages no one could read anymore lined the shelves. Somewhere there was a map of the secret ways, but the long, shallow drawer that held all the maps was gone. If I couldn't find the map, they would kill my brother.

Tosten cried out, his voice muffled and distant, but it still hurt me.

“You take care of Tosten and Ciarra,” my mother said. “I have to tend my garden.”

“All right, Mother,” I said. Tosten's hand was warm in mine. Ciarra was a heavy bundle in my free arm. The sun was warm and bathed the flowers of the garden in a rich orange hue. . . .

“Where are the dragon's bones?”

Tosten screamed. His voice echoed in my head until the garden disappeared, and I found myself in the dragon cave, deep in the heart of Hurog. I had to get out, but without Oreg, I was trapped. I'd come in through the sewers.
Through the small tunnel that clamped down on me like a vise.

“Hurog's magic's been poisoned, child,” whispered Oreg's voice in my head. “It seeks out weakness in the blood of the dragon. Dreamers lose their way. Anger becomes berserker rage. Ambition becomes obsession. Hatred eats your soul.”

Hurog,
I thought.
Hurog means dragon.

 

HUROG
WAS GONE WHEN
I woke up. Gone so far that all I could feel was the empty place that was left, and I could have cried at the agony of the loss. My right hand was so cold it hurt; icy waves traveled up my body from the battered platinum ring. I tried to pull my hand to tuck it in my armpit to warm it as I did in the winter months, but all I did was rattle some chains.

I was in a small, dark cell with a high ceiling. A tiny window two bodylengths up the wall let in a little light, but didn't do much to cut the fumes rising from floor rushes, which should have been changed a decade ago.

At first I thought I was alone, but when I lowered my gaze to the floor, I saw a broken form lying in the moldering rushes.

I forgot my discomfort.

“Tosten?” The hand I could see was swollen and misshapen. I thought of hearing his screams in my dream and realized it hadn't been a dream at all.

“Tosten!” I shouted it. I needed him to move, because I couldn't tell if his ribs were rising at all. I couldn't bear it if he were dead.

As if in answer to my cries, the cell door opened, and Kariarn stepped through. He looked very like the boy I remembered, a year or so older than I was. His fine brown hair was trimmed neatly at shoulder length. His clothing
was expensive without being ostentatious. But it was his companion I stared at.

I almost didn't recognize Bastilla in the self-effacing woman who stood just behind the Vorsagian king, her eyes lowered and her head bowed submissively. Gone was the ragged warrior, and in her place was an immaculately groomed slave wearing a wisp of ivory silk that did little to hide her body. What had Kariarn done to her?

“Ah, the guard told me you were awake, Ward,” said Kariarn.

I looked at him.

“Sorry about your brother.” Kariarn nudged Tosten with his boot. If I hadn't been chained, I'd have killed him. “The magic wasn't working against you. My archmage swore there was no one who could stand against it, but Bastilla said you were a stubborn Northman, and it might not work.” He reached back and patted her on the top of her head like a huntsman patting his hound after a kill. I kept waiting for her to turn on him and almost didn't follow his next words. “Which is why she brought both of you. She was right; you couldn't talk fast enough, once he started screaming. It's too bad you didn't know what we needed. Who'd have thought that the lord of Hurog wouldn't know how to reach his treasure without a wizard to guide him?” Kariarn gave me a chiding look. “No matter. Bastilla left a bit of hair in the chamber so my archmage can use that to locate it. A waste of power—but with the dragon's bones, that will hardly matter.” The lust in his voice when he said “dragon's bones” reminded me of the way my father sometimes stared at a new chambermaid.

I swallowed to wet my dry throat.
Bastilla?
Behind his back, she smiled at me. It was a smile I'd never seen on her face before, sly and triumphant.

I said, “You're telling me all of this because . . .”

He smiled. “I'm tired of all the old men who think they know better than I. I need young men, men who
understand youth doesn't mean stupid or weak. Bastilla tells me that your wizard will follow you, no matter which ruler you choose.”

He stopped speaking, perhaps waiting for me to confirm or deny what he said. But I was distracted by the cold that numbed my arm. It didn't hurt anymore, and that worried me. Had they done something to me? Why just that arm? Had they tried to steal the ring?

“I can take Hurog, Ward.” The mention of my obsession turned my attention back to Kariarn. “I have magic at my fingertips that will knock down her dark walls and leave her in ruins, to get my dragon bones. Or I can take you there and give you Hurog instead. You could swear fealty to me instead of the boy-lover Jakoven. What do you owe him? He killed your cousin and took Hurog from you. Look what he's done to Oranstone. A man like that does not deserve the throne. Look beyond what is, Ward. Five Kingdoms dwindling into slow death in the hands of Tallven blood could be six flourishing lands under me. I could make you king of Shavig, Ward—as you should have been.”

I could hear my aunt patiently explaining how a war could be lost before the first blood was shed. The worst of it was that Kariarn was right: Jakoven wasn't fit to manage an estate, let alone the Five Kingdoms.
Kariarn
wouldn't stand by while another country ravaged his lands; he would protect what was his. I even understood his obsession with magic far better than I would ever understand Jakoven, for I was obsessed, too—with Hurog.

At my feet, Tosten moved his hand briefly.

Kariarn must have seen the direction of my gaze. “Bastilla can heal his wounds; that's another of her talents. I see she didn't tell you of it. I'm sorry I let her play with him a little too long, but she'd earned her reward. She likes hurting things, and I indulge her when I can. As I said, she can heal the damage done to my allies.”

I bowed my head, staring at Tosten's hand that might never again touch a harp string. I thought numbly,
Bastilla did this? Bastilla enjoyed my brother's pain?

“Show him your pet, master,” said Bastilla suddenly.

He jerked on her chain, roughly pulling her to her knees, coughing and choking. “Speak when I ask, slave. Have you been gone so long I must train you over again?”

She shook her head quickly, and it seemed to satisfy him. He rocked back upon his heels. “The timing is not right. Let him think a while.”

She recovered control of her breathing, but she didn't get to her feet. Instead, she knelt in the molding rushes and kissed his boot. He raised her up with a finger under her chin, and she kissed his hand as she stood. I could see her face for a moment, and the blind adoration in it made me feel ill. I didn't understand. She could have stayed free of him. She was strong—a wizard, even.

I may not have loved her, but I had liked her. I stared at her for a long moment and wondered if she might be faking this.

But Kariarn said that she'd been the one who hurt my brother, that she'd enjoyed it. I couldn't imagine the Bastilla I knew hurting anyone except in battle.

She was a better actor than I was.

I looked away and met Kariarn's amused eyes. “She is my chameleon,” he said, reading my mind. “She is whoever suits me best—a gift from my archmage. A human succubus. She belongs to me, body and soul. Don't you, Bastilla?”

“Only to you,” she answered.

Kariarn held my gaze. “Haven't you met a Cholyte before? When they enter the order, they give up their will to Chole's prophetess, the Cholynn, or whomever she bestows them upon. The Cholynn gave Bastilla to me as a present when I turned thirteen.”

He left, leading Bastilla behind him. I heard a bar slide into place on the other side of the closed door.

After a moment, Tosten groaned again and sat up. “Did he mean that magic turned her into that?”

“I don't know,” I said.”

“Pox rot you,” he snapped weakly. “Don't look at me like that. You didn't have a thing to do with it.”

“I should have spoken sooner.”

“Most of this happened after you talked.” He looked away from me and into the shadows. “Gods, Ward. I thought she was my friend. She broke my finger, then kissed me as if my pain were one of Mother's aphrodisiacs. She licked the blood from my back.” He shuddered. “Kariarn had to drag her off of me.” Tosten bowed his head and spoke as if the words were dragged from his throat. “Tell me that it was magic that made her that way. Tell me that she's possessed by demons.”

“I don't think that even the gods can change someone completely. Some people just like others' pain,” I whispered. “Father was like that.” I remembered a dark night when I held my lover while she cried and told me that my father had raped her. I said, “After he beat me, he used to go straightaway to his bed with whatever maidservant happened to be closest.”

Tosten buried his face in his knee and laughed. “Aren't you supposed to be reassuring me at this point? You know, taking care of the helpless?”

“I can't protect you from knowledge,” I said at last. “You have to acknowledge evil, or you give it too much power over you. Look at Mother. She's spent most of her life running from what our father was, so she left her children unprotected against him.” I hadn't realized how angry I was with her, with the passive way she'd watched Father cut Tosten with a tongue that bruised as well as his fists, until Tosten had tried to kill himself to get away from it. In my dreams, Oreg had excused her by telling me that
Hurog's magic twisted her—but she should have fought for her children.

“She had you to protect her children,” said Tosten unexpectedly. “Me, I'm like Mother, clinging to my troubles. All the way here . . . all the way from Tyrfannig, I've been hurting you because you like Oreg better than you like me.”

“A wise man told me once that horses kick and bite because they are afraid or hurt more often than because they are angry.” It hurt to use Penrod's arguments.

“I am not a horse,” he huffed.

“But are you afraid and hurt?” I asked. He did not reply. “You can't blame a horse that strikes out in pain or fear. You just see what you can do to relieve the cause.”

Tosten laughed, a real laugh this time. “Or you slit the poor animal's throat.”

“I have to admit there have been times . . .”

If someone had been listening, they'd have thought we were idiots, laughing ourselves to jelly in a filthy cell, me chained to the wall and Tosten so badly injured he yelped now and again as he laughed.

“So how are you going to rescue us?” He asked finally. “Are you going to switch allegiance from the bastard who killed poor old Erdrick?”

“To Kariarn?” I snorted. “Now, that's a good choice. Like the chicken who went to live with the foxes because she was afraid of the farmer's dog. No.”

“So we'll sit here and rot?”

I looked at the silver ring on my numb hand. “I think I have a better plan.”

I called Oreg to me, as I'd summoned him often in Hurog, though I'd never tried calling him outside of Hurog's walls. Since the pyre where I'd burned the village dead, I hadn't tried any more magic, because untrained magic can be deadly. Even so, I hadn't really expected the power that flooded my call. The ring vibrated with magic
and sent warmth burning through the numbness of my hand and arm and made them mine again.

I could all but smell the magic that coalesced slowly into Oreg's huddled form, which looked very much like Tosten's huddled form had, except Oreg was shaking. He twisted awkwardly until he was clinging to my leg.

“Don't leave again. Please, please. . . don't leave again. It was too far.” His toneless, despairing whisper set the hairs on my neck on edge, and I wanted to kill whomever had done this—but Oreg's father was long dead. Oreg was the only person I knew whose father had been worse than mine. Perhaps that, rather than the ring was the true heart of our bond.

Tosten stared at Oreg.

“No. I won't leave,” I promised. “I didn't do it on purpose, Oreg. Are you all right?”

He buried his face in my leg and shook like a dog who'd been in cold water too long.

“What did you do to him?” There was abhorrence on Tosten's face.

Oreg's actions reminded me uncomfortably of Bastilla and Kariarn, too. “I did nothing to him. Give him a moment, and I'll explain.”

Tosten glanced from Oreg to me and then turned painfully away, muttering something that sounded like, “It had better be good.”

“Where are we?” asked Oreg after a moment. He didn't loosen his grip on me, but his voice sounded almost normal, if a bit muffled.

“Buril,” answered Tosten when he saw that I didn't know. “Garranon's estate.”

Garranon was dealing with the Vorsag? It didn't fit what I knew of him, but neither did Bastilla's new persona.

“How did you get here?” Oreg asked. “Where's Bastilla?”

“Bastilla brought us,” I said as conversationally as
possible when chained up with a man clinging to my leg. “She's responsible for the damage to Tosten. And she's not Ciernack's slave, she's Kariarn's. He seemed to indicate that she'd been altered somehow by the Cholynn—to turn her into his loyal creature. Can that be done?”