The Dragonprince's Heir (29 page)

"I wanted to see him! To speak with him! What did you expect?"

"Have you never learned to hide your face? To speak as what you're not? Oh, you are indeed your father's son."

"You don't know my father!" I shouted.

She smiled. "I do. Seven years we've shared a life. Seven years I've helped him live within a dream that keeps him sane."

"It isn't him! You've done more than trap him here. You've stolen years out of his mind!"

"Daven remembers almost everythin—"

"He does not remember
me
!" I hadn't meant to scream, but the words echoed off the wall of trees and skittered out across the inky waves.

"Would it please you if he did?"

"If my father knew my name?"

The lady showed her teeth. "If he remembered you and yet remained here with me?"

I swallowed hard. "Isn't...isn't that what has happened? For seven years?"

"Oh. Poor child. You believed he'd chosen me over you?"

"No. I've seen your power. You tricked him. But still...."

"In all my power I could not fashion a memory of you that he would leave behind. He always chose to go back home. I tried a thousand times."

"You had to stop him?"

She nodded.

"So when...when does he believe
this
is?"

"He remembers his fight with the Elder Legend. He remembers swearing fealty to the king. Your father remembers one bright year of glorious battle, as he built his stronghold and trained his first dragonriders. And loved his wife. He brought her here, one year after they were wed, because she'd never seen the gardens."

I said, "Oh. That's why...."

She nodded. "For seven years we've shared that afternoon."

"But he has not seen through your lies? He did just now—"

"Only by your provocation, and it was easily enough restored. I've seen a thousand summers die, and I have never met a man who could see outside my dreams."

"None but me." The words tasted bitter on my tongue. "Now let him go."

"I cannot. Not just like that. You do not comprehend how vast his power, how deep his madness runs."

"My uncle thinks he will restrain it for my sake."

"The Elsewhere Wizard will not let himself conceive how deep the darkness runs."

I idly tapped the eldritch blade against the heel of my boot while I considered this. "Is it so bad as that?"

"If the Dragonprince saw the truth of everything at once, he would go mad. He might sink half this continent beneath the seas before he paused for breath."

"Haven's name! But what has become of his bonded dragons? Are they not a threat? Or do you touch their minds as well?"

She frowned. "They are gone. The Wildfire dead across the Northlands, and the Night Wind long since settled to his slumber."

"The Wildfire? That must be the red. Old Pazyarev. Vechernyvetr can't be dead."

She frowned at me. "You have almost as much concern as Daven. It's strange how much he misses them, even as I block them from his memory. He misses the Wildfire like a swordsman might miss his fighting hand. He misses the Night Wind like a decent man might miss a boon companion."

"This isn't just a daydream you have made. You are hiding more than years from him. It can't be safe—"

"Safer than him knowing. Perhaps with care, in time, with Isabelle herself to hold his hand, he could be brought back to reason. But if the Dragonprince were known to be alive, your king would force the issue. The king would move in strength against the Dragonprince. No matter who survived, your father would be shattered by that clash."

Before I'd met the elf, I might not have credited that claim. But now I knew enough to consider what would come after the war. Who would take up the crown? Who would fight for it? How many men would have to die before we found new peace?

And was it worth that price to have my father back?

The question blazed in my heart, bright and brief, and then it faded. The answer didn't matter. It couldn't happen. My father had sworn fealty to the king rather than break the nation. If he killed the king now, even in his madness, I would not get my father back.

I would not have hated my father for taking a clean cut at the man who had so persecuted us, but Father would have hated himself. Without ever knowing him, I could guess that much from the stories. Even if he found his sanity once the king was dead, he would not forgive himself that violence. He would never more be the man my mother missed so much.

Kinder far to kill him by your hand
, Laelia had said, and now I understood what she had meant. Kinder to spare him the long years of torture he'd endure. Kinder to spare Mother the painfully familiar face hiding a shattered spirit.

I could never make that strike. I knew it to my core. But I recognized the truth in what she'd said, the risk in my uncle's brazen plan. If I stole my father from her care and let his madness take control, the sin would be my own. I couldn't follow through on Themmichus's plan, not with the whole world in the balance.

But I couldn't leave him like this, either. I turned to Laelia again, and my voice rasped in my throat. "I would almost forgive you what you've done if you had not pretended to be my mother."

She held my gaze, but her lip trembled.

"You said there is a chance of saving him, with Mother at his side. Without the king's peril hanging over them. If I can find some way to bring her back—"

"I will not defy you. If you can answer for the king and bring your mother to this place, I...." Her voice caught and she looked away, but after a heavy heartbeat she said solemnly, "I will yield the Dragonprince to Isabelle and bid them both farewell."

"Only because you must? Only because you cannot touch my mind. Only because I bring a sword."

She did not try to deny it.

I nodded. "I despise what you have done. I condemn how you have done it. But I see reason in your fears as well." I waited until she met my eyes. Hers showed hope.

I said, "You and I are in accord. I will find a way to satisfy the king, and I will send Mother to retrieve my father."

She sighed and shook her head. "I cannot see a destiny that shape."

"It matters not. I'll bend the world, just like he did. I'll make it happen. I will send her to you. And you?"

"You have my word, son of dragon's blood. And my mother's word. And all my people's."

"And one thing more?"

Laelia raised one eyebrow but did not object.

I nodded to him. "I want a moment with him. You said you'd tried before. I want to stand before him as I am. Who I am. And I want him to know."

She frowned. "But this is no small favor."

"And no small sin I'm overlooking," I shot back. "You said that even if he slips your spell, you can catch him up again."

"Easily enough. You've seen it."

"Good. Then be prepared for that, but give me this one moment."

The elf ducked her head and turned to him. She smiled soft and sad, apologetic, and Father turned his head to face her, animate again. She spoke his name like a caress. "Daven. You are waking from a dream. The Chaos has a mighty grip upon your soul, but for your love of me, restrain it."

Muscles in his jaw stood out like sailors' knots, and sweat stood on his brows. Noisy as a straining plowhorse, he sucked down calming breaths and forced them out. She watched him, holding his gaze, and after some short time, she nodded over to me.

His eyes went wide. I was no stranger now. I had no need to explain. She had given back enough of memory that he could make the leap. Perhaps he even recognized the boy he'd left ten years ago. Recognition flared behind his eyes, and with it pain and regret and fear. He took a step away, eyes brimming with tears, and then he gave a ragged sigh and raised a hand.

"Taryn."

He made it an apology, an explanation, and a statement. The word came wrapped in love, regret, and pride. It spread out over me like a shroud spun out of sunlight. It settled in my breast like a warming stone. In one moment, I had everything I'd asked of her from him.

I smiled through my tears. "I'm here, Father. And I will help you."

He glanced down at the bare blade in my hand and grimaced. "I threw fire at you."

I gestured to the sword with my empty hand. "And you saved me from it."

He raised his eyes to Laelia then, and perhaps she still wore a mask of Mother's face. But in his full power, in his right mind, my father saw the elf as she was. I knew by the flash of flame and shadow in his eyes. But it lasted just an instant before he turned back to me.

"You are everything I knew you could be," he said. "All these years...." He cleared his throat and forced a smile that showed his teeth. "All these years, as much as I could think at all, I thought of you. Even buried in the dark, I thought of you."

Emotions blazed in answer, hot as embers, stoked by years of grief. And they burned too hot to trap with words. I could only stare, could only stammer, but it seemed to be enough.

He smiled down at me. He cast one more glance at Laelia, then spread his arms and caught me in a wide embrace. He crushed me against his warmth, and his body might have been carved of stone. There was no softness to it.

I gasped in the embrace, and he squeezed harder. He wrapped one hand around the back of my neck, protective, and his voice hissed beside my ear. "My son. You're...everything I hoped."

That was not my father's voice. It sounded like a serpent's. I tried to push away, to break the contact, but he was too strong. I tried to cry for help, but before I could catch breath, shadows billowed in my mind, blotting out the moonlit garden. A pain like liquid fire seared along my veins. I tried to scream, but there was nothing left of me to scream. I felt a sense of rushing, gut-twisting motion, and a weight like a mountain on my soul.

Then a moment later it was gone. Gath was gone—not destroyed, but left behind. And Laelia and my uncle with it. We had traveled by violent magics to a place dark and cramped and musty. My father let me go, and I collapsed to a rough dirt floor, barely catching myself on hands and knees. I gasped for breath while every part of me cried in agony.

Father spoke above me, emotionless. "Oh good. The sword came, too. I wasn't sure it would."

15. The New Lord of Terrailles

I lurched to my feet and stood swaying in a tiny storage cellar. The walls and floor were bare dirt, the ceiling rough-hewn timbers. My father stood near the back wall, staring down at a small pile of loose straw and a discarded scrap of cloth.

The room was barely wide enough to stretch my arms and perhaps three paces deep. There were no windows and no candles, but fire danced in little captive flames around my father's head and lit the room with eerie shadows.

Rubbish littered the floor—ancient worn-out boots and tattered rags and some short bit of wood that might have been a staff. Otherwise, the room was empty. It was no place I'd ever been before, and certainly not in Laelia's verdant garden.

I trembled where I stood. The sword lay at my feet and Father made no move to touch it. He had brought me here and brought it, too. He'd left the lady's trap.

He'd touched me.
You're everything I'd hoped
. He'd let me break her hold on him, then traveled far away. How far? Where?

Frantic panic clawed its way up my ribcage and scrabbled at my collarbone. I swallowed hard against it, fought for breath, and tried to think. I was alone with him. She'd warned me what would happen if her spell collapsed all at once, and it had happened when he touched me. I could not control him, and I would not kill him. What did that leave? I had to get him back to Gath before he wrought cataclysm. He was a madman.

But he only stood there, barely breathing, his eyes fixed desperately on a worthless pile of straw. He was paying me no mind at all. I stooped on shaking knees and took the sword. I saw him nod. I backed away.

He wasn't violent. He wasn't moving. But I had seen how quickly he could change. I had to keep him calm and do my best to keep him from burning down the world. Most of all, she'd said, I had to prevent him seeing Mother in the king's power.

But I knew almost nothing about him. And I had no idea where we were. I backed away, stumbled off a wall, and then fell against the other at the foot of a short, steep stairway with a heavy oak door shut at the top. Three steps up, I braced a hand against the door and heaved, but it stuck fast.

I turned in place and found my father watching me, a cruel smile twisting on his lips.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"You...you brought me here," I said. "What is this place? Where are we?"

He glanced away and smiled. "Home. A kind of home. It called to me."

"But where?" I asked. "This is not the Tower."

Something shuddered across his expression and he shrank away for a moment, but then he shook it off. "There is nothing in the Tower I can burn."

"But...but here?"

"He
is here," my father said. "And perhaps his hound, too. And all the sniveling magicians he brought against me."

"The king? We're at the capitol?"

Father shrugged. "Nearby. It's difficult to cross the water, but I found a way."

"We're on the Isle, then?"

He smiled for an answer.

"Did...did you sink half the Ardain under the sea before we left?"

His smile grew into a grin, then he threw back his head and laughed. It swelled into a roar. Unconsciously I raised the sword, protective, but he saw the motion. He shook his head.

"I made that weapon as a gift."

"For me," I said.

"No. You cannot be my son."

"You embraced me as your son. That's how...how we left the garden."

"Oh." Shadows danced behind his eyes, and he shuddered again. "Forgive me. That was fifteen years ago."

I frowned. "It was...just now."

"Time moves on." A grin twisted his expression. "And you have skin like dragonhide. That's a fine legacy. The monster hoped you would."

"What monster?"

"Never mind. It doesn't matter. There's a darkness deep inside."