In the Time of Dragon Moon (10 page)

“A . . . lover? No, Your Majesty.”

She raised a brow. “Pity. You are young. It's good to find love in your youth.” My cheeks grew hot, thinking of Jackrun. “I met King Arden when I was just fifteen. It was high summer, the most beautiful season. The days lasted forever. He taught me how to ride.”

“You are a fine horsewoman, Your Majesty.”

“Yes,” she said. “I am.” We stopped to admire the fountain. A butterfly landed on the queen's sleeve, its patterned monarch wings a tiny version of Kaprecha's costume at the fairy ball. We both stood very still, watching the tiny bit of life resting on her arm.

Pendragon Summer Castle, Dragon's Keep

Egret Moon

August 1210

T
HE
QUEEN
WAS
in good spirits again the next day when I brought in her morning tonic. She drank it to the dregs, gazing out the window at the bright summer morning alongside Lady Olivia. I saw how Her Majesty's storms had settled, how her mood matched the weather. The bapeeta was working, but that wasn't all. King Arden had visited her bed two nights in a row. The soft glow coming off her skin made her seem years younger.

“That will be all, Uma,” she said, indicating the door.

Lady Olivia eyed me critically as I curtsied in the fashion she'd taught me and backed out of the room.

Late in the day I heard Jackrun was back from his journey south. I searched the halls, hoping to run into him, and spied him at last in the weapons yard. He fought a bow-legged soldier twice his age, though not as muscled. Both men swung maces, fending off spiked blows with battered shields. Soldiers shouted, hurling cheers and insults in the sweaty, dusty side yard.

The man nearest to me said, “What is it you want, miss?” I was the only woman there. I left.

• • •

T
HAT
EVENING
I
opened the trapdoor that led to the tower roof above my room. The wide round space with crenellated walls gave me the privacy I needed. I should perform the Moon Dance on Egret Moon's death night, but I would be too busy helping the queen pack tomorrow. I would have to do it now.

Turning slowly in my bare feet, arms raised, I greeted the four directions beginning with the sea in the east, the rolling hills along the coastline north and south, and ending with the forested mountain where the dying Egret Moon had fallen in the west. We danced to honor the moon and, some believed, to appease it. There were more deaths at the end of a moon's cycle than at any other time. Father had never told me why that was, but I had seen it myself in my village. Urette, the youth who worked with Father for a short time, died on the last night of Egret Moon when necks are the most vulnerable; a viper sank its fangs in his neck. And even here among the English it held true. Someone killed the lute player on Murderous Moon, the night Snake Moon died.

When I turned again, facing the sea, the duke's sentries had come out to light the torches along the distant curtain wall surrounding the castle grounds. I was jealous of their fire. Up here I couldn't build the customary bonfire for my dance. Even lighting a torch would draw the watchmen's eyes, so I had to make do with a candle for the element of fire. I unpacked the pouch of earth from Devil's Boot, the water bowl I used now that my mother's bowl was broken. Last, I raised the feather Jackrun brought me for the element of wind, and moved my feet to dance the death of Egret Moon, singing softly in the tongue I missed so much.

I longed to hear the men and women of my Euit family singing with me. Most of all I wanted to hear Father's deep voice and Mother's lilting one. But only the wind sang with me as I moved. The distant sea roared. Later the wolves joined in, howling hungrily for their Moon Month to begin.

I was still chanting softly, pressing the egret feather against my neck as Father used to do while I orbited the candle, when I heard a door shut and voices after that. I ducked behind a crenellation in the tower wall. Jackrun and Tabitha had come out of the eastern tower, taking the high walkway that linked the towers ten feet below me. I blew out my candle and was about to gather the rest of my sacred objects before Jackrun and Tabitha wandered up and caught me doing things I would rather not explain to any English, when I checked again and saw they were leaning against the wall looking beyond the torchlit curtain wall and out to sea. I stayed where I was, breathing hard, pressing myself against the cold stone and peering down through the open space between the crenellations.

Torch light pooled around Tabitha and Jackrun, she in her cloak, and he in a mud-streaked leather jerkin, his rolled-up sleeves exposing the dragon scales on his right arm. He had freed his hair from its usual leather strap. The side breeze blew it across his face as he looked out.

Tabitha said, “Juliana left earlier than planned. What happened?”

“Not sure,” Jackrun said.

“You don't know why?”

“I can't pretend to understand women, Tabby.”

“I think she didn't like the attention you were giving Uma at the ball.”

“I can dance with whomever I please.”

I gripped my elbows, liking the sound of that.

“Is that what you said to Juliana?”

Jackrun drummed the top of the wall. “I'm not a complete clod, little sister.”

Tabitha laughed aloud. Her laughter carried far enough to alert one of the sentries on the outer curtain wall, who turned and waved at her. She waved back and was quiet for a while, then said, “I thought Juliana would be with us on tomorrow's picnic. Now I'll be the only female there.”

“Does that bother you?”

“It wouldn't if
he
weren't coming.”

“He's the point. It's all diplomacy. Mother and Father want the family to get along.”

Tabitha reached up and covered her scales, rubbing them a little as if her neck were sore.

“Don't let what Desmond said shame you, Tabby. You're stronger than that. He has two scale patches himself; one on his arm, the other on his ass.”

She laughed again, a sadder sound this time, and slowly lowered her hand.

“Point to his buttocks if he mentions your scales tomorrow,” Jackrun said. “That will shut him up.” I smiled from my hiding place.

“How do you know about Desmond's scale patch there?” Tabitha asked. I wondered that myself.

“Saw it when we dropped our breeches for a pissing contest.”

She glanced up, surprised. “When was that?”

“On his last visit when he was eight and I was nine.”

“Oh.” She sounded relieved. “I was too young to remember much of that visit.”

“He hasn't changed.”

“He's been here less than a week, but it's long enough to see what he's like,” Tabitha said, turning her back to the wall. I saw her profile and Jackrun's as she faced him. “He's a monster, Jack. He'll be a tyrant when he's king. It should be you on the Pendragon throne, like the prophecy said. You're the one the fairies wanted. You're the one with fairy blood.”

Jackrun put his hand out, covering her mouth. “Stop it, Tabby. The prophecy never said I would be king, only the firstborn of three bloodlines. Besides, this is treasonous talk. Things are the way they are. He may be no worse than I would be if I were king.”

She pulled his hand away and spoke so softly I could barely hear her. “He
will
be worse, a hundred times worse, and you know it.”

“How can you say that, knowing what I've done,” he snapped. My ears pricked. What? What had he done?

Tabitha gazed up at her brother. “Tell me you hate him as much as I do, Jack. No one's listening. Tell me.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't want to be so alone with how I feel,” she said, her voice breaking.

“You are not alone,” he admitted.

I saw her shoulders fall as she let out a sigh. “The fey think he's horrid too, spoiled and dangerous. I overheard some of them talking at the ball. They're worried about what will happen to Wilde Island when he's king. I agree with them. That's why you should be the—”

“Tabby, enough.”

“I saw you talking to Uma after Desmond kicked one of their little boys. What did she think about it?”

I strained my ears, wondering what he would say, but Jackrun didn't talk about the ball.

“Uma has more reason than most to hate Desmond.”

“Why? What did he do to her?”

Jackrun's shadow lengthened along the wall in the torchlight as if his dark thoughts bled into it, made it grow, as if it could swallow him if he let it. But it was just Tabitha he faced, his younger sister looking up at him, wanting to know what their cousin did to me, would have done to me if Jackrun hadn't stopped him.

“Did he hurt her, Jack?” Tabitha persisted.

Jackrun gripped his scabbard. “I've done my best to keep clear of him so I wouldn't . . .” He paused. “We'll have him to ourselves tomorrow.”

“What will you do?”

“Give him a farewell he will remember,” he said, smoke slipping from his mouth, coiling up around his angry face, crowning his head before it drifted away. Jackrun swung around and started back across the walkway. He made another sharp remark when he reached the door, but he was too far off for me to hear it. A moment later they were gone.

When I looked down, I saw I'd bent the beautiful feather in two and broken it. It was essential to release the ceremonial feather from a high place when the Egret Moon Dance was over so the wind could carry it far away. That was why I'd come to the roof to begin with, to dance, to let it go. Releasing it from on high ensured a safe transition from death moon to birth moon. I shivered, staring at the broken thing in my hand, wondering what I'd done, if any of my dancing and sacred songs mattered now that the feather was broken.

I was not sure what I feared as I cupped the wounded feather; I only knew I should not stay behind wondering what might happen tomorrow. I should follow.

Faul's Leap, Dragon's Keep

Death of Egret Moon

August 1210

I
WAS
IN
the kitchen right after breakfast when Cook finished preparing a picnic for the outing, so I offered to bring it out to Tabitha in the foreyard.

Tabitha took it from me.“Thank you, Uma.”

Jackrun turned, startled. “Uma?”

“Uma brought us our basket,” Tabitha explained. She looked about. “Where's Griffin?”

“He'll meet us on the way to Faul's Leap,” Jackrun said.

Prince Desmond glared at me as he crossed the cobbles. “She's not coming with us, is she?”

“No, Your Royal Highness,” I said with a curtsy, “I have work to do.”

I left the three of them. Around the corner, I pressed myself up against the wall as the hostler led the horses from the stables. They rode past the gatehouse and through the portcullis gate.

The foreboding I'd felt last night hadn't left me. Following them wouldn't be easy on foot. The riders would reach the cliff they called Faul's Leap long before I got there at a run.

I breathed slowly in and out to put myself in balance, silently chanting
havuela
—become—then slipped past the gatehouse and took off, heading south toward the hills that ran parallel above the beach.

My slippers slid in the grass as I raced along. I pulled them off, wishing I could do the same with my heavy velvet skirts that blew sail-like and slowed my progress. Down on the beach, Griffin met the party on his white mare. They stayed a while talking, giving me more time to catch up as I ran in the hills above before they rode past the harbor toward the darker cliffs in the south.

Stopping at last, they tied their horses up and begin climbing the cliffside to Faul's Leap.

I couldn't scale the cliff in the same spot they were using without detection, but maybe I could find another place to climb. Thorny branches caught my skirts as I raced along the hillside.

I was out of breath by the time I reached the top and found a good hiding place where I could crouch and watch them all through the crosshatched brambles. The four of them stood catching their breaths and looking out to sea. No one spoke yet.

There was fresh yarrow growing beside me. A true find. I picked some while I watched and waited. Mixed with lavender oil and other herbs, yarrow made a superior ointment.

Four ancient standing stones dominated Faul's Leap. A short altar less than four feet high and carved with runes crowned the apex of the stone circle.

The power of this place coursed through my body; ancient rhythms here were as deep as the Earth's heartbeat. I am fox and of the earth; my body and bones knew I was on holy ground.

“I'm starving,” Prince Desmond said. He grabbed the picnic basket, placed it on the altar, and dug inside for food.

Jackrun took the basket down.

“What did you do that for?”

“Can't you see what it is? It's not a table, Desmond.”

The prince shrugged. “We have ruins like this on Wilde Island too. They're not sacred. Just stones people erected a long time ago. They serve no purpose now.”

Just stones people erected a long time ago
. Likely the Euit people. My people.

The picnickers sat twelve paces from the altar. Tabitha sliced the bread, passed around the cheese and meat. They talked little as they ate, avoiding one another's eyes.

The cool breeze that sang around the standing stones set my skin tingling. I felt a presence up here, as if invisible ancient beings were gathering all around us on the high cliff now that we had come to their place.

Desmond downed some ale and peered up at the sky. “We should have some dragons come pick us up and take us home.”

“We don't fly dragons just to travel from one place to another like you do on horseback,” said Tabitha. “You would know that if you ever rode one.”

“I've flown many times, cousin. We have plenty of dragons in Dragonswood. And I've ridden one of the rare red breed who followed the Euits north.”

Liar! He's never ridden Vazan.

“I thought reds were feral,” Tabitha said. “I was told no one rides the reds, not even the fey folk.”
She's never seen my father
.

“Well, you heard wrong.” He pulled plums from the basket, throwing one at Jackrun, who swiftly caught it with his left hand.

Prince Desmond sucked plum after plum, spitting the pits on the ground. “Be back soon,” he said, leaping up and bounding past the altar. I think he meant to piss behind the bushes. Before I could run, his boot was on the corner of my long velvet skirt, catching me in place.

The prince grabbed my hair. “What are you doing here, you little spy?” He yanked me up and dragged me toward the others.

Jackrun jumped up. “Let go of her.”

“I won't. She was spying.”

“I was not spying, Your Royal Highness. I came outside to gather herbs.” My back was bent, my head held down in the prince's tight grip.

“I said let go, Desmond.”

“She will run off like a rat if I do. You weren't picking herbs, little liar.”

“I can prove it,” I said. “Only let me go.”

Prince Desmond jerked his hand, giving my hair a final painful tug before letting go. The stinging along my scalp made my eyes prick. I stood and pulled the yarrow from the basket on my back.

“There, you see,” said Tabitha.

“You should apologize to Uma, cousin,” Jackrun said.

“For what?”

Griffin stood with Jackrun. “He means about the other day.”

Desmond's lip curled. “You're joking.”

Jackrun stepped behind Prince Desmond and clamped his hands on his shoulders. “Get down on your knees to the queen's physician, cousin.”

“Wait,” I said, afraid. But already Griffin had stepped in to help. They both pushed down on Prince Desmond's shoulders until his knees buckled and hit the ground amid plum pits and crumbs.

“What do you think you're doing?” Prince Desmond snarled.

“Please,” I said. “He doesn't have to—”

“Apologize for the way you attacked Uma Quarteney the other day,” Jackrun ordered.

“I won't.”

“That's enough,” I said, trembling. I wanted Prince Desmond punished for everything he'd done to me and to my father. I had hungered for it, but this was wrong. We weren't alone here. Ancient presences surrounded us, the wind carrying their whispers in soft swirls. I could sense that, even if Jackrun, Griffin, and Tabitha could not.

“Look.” Tabitha pointed up. Three dragons flew toward us. I saw Babak's colorful scales; the dragons flying on either side of him gleamed in the morning sun like polished brass.

Prince Desmond glared up at me with burning hatred. “Let go of me now, Jackrun!”

His shout seemed to bring the dragons down. They landed in a perfect triangle, holding their wings out as wide as sails. The animal scent was heavy with the smell of scorched meat. I stood rigid, all of us walled in by their wings.

Griffin released the prince and took a step back, but Jackrun persisted. Standing behind Desmond, he leaned his weight into his hands, pushing firmly down. “Say you are sorry, Desmond.” He said each word slowly.

Grunting, Prince Desmond bent low as if he was ready to submit. Then, using the quick maneuver to trick Jackrun, he slid from Jackrun's grasp, rolled free, then leaped up, red and fuming, balling his fists, ready to fight. Desmond might have landed a punch if the dragons hadn't fixed their bright, menacing eyes on him. He met their eyes a moment, breathing hard, his fisted hands shaking at his sides.

No one moved, returning glare for glare. Then the dragons folded their wings, a sound like sails rippling in wind. Whether they agreed with Jackrun or not, Desmond was still the royal family's only son and future Wilde Island king. Their tall forms mirrored the standing stones behind them: sentries of flesh, sentries of stone. Now the wings were down; a cool breeze began to dry my sweaty face.

“Uma,” Jackrun said, “you have already met Babak and also his sister Nahal, who made the golden chain the night you arrived. This,” he said, gesturing to the other copper-scaled dragon on his right, “is their sister Sitara.”

“We are in this place together, warriors,” I said, giving all three a formal Euit greeting, though I spoke in English. I bent down to them in turn, touching the top of each one's claw as one reveres an elder. They were young dragons, but still deserving of respect. Behind me I heard Jackrun catch his breath.

“We are together in this place,” said Nahal, Babak, and Sitara in turn before I stepped away again. Tabitha had started repacking the picnic basket. I crouched down to help her, and wrapped up the remains of the barley bread. For a brief moment Prince Desmond had been on his knees before me in front of his cousins, their fey friend, Griff, and three powerful dragons. There was some consolation in that. I only wished Father had lived to see it.

I slipped the plum pits, future trees, into the herb basket still slung over my back. Nahal came closer, flicking her tail against the rocky ground.

“You do not need thissss,” Nahal hissed, pinching Tabitha's lace scarf with her talons and pulling it off to unveil the blue-green scale patch on Tabitha's neck.

The dragons made an approving clicking sound with their tongues as Nahal held it up like a flag, the long lace fluttering in her hot breath. She blew it overhead, where it caught the breeze and twirled skyward. Tabitha put her arms around Nahal's lowered neck and rested her head against her.

“Sorry,” Tabitha whispered. “I shouldn't have covered them.” Nahal licked Tabby's neck scales with the tip of her forked tongue.

I looked away, feeling the private moment between them, and stood with Jackrun watching the white lace swirl over the choppy water, catching wind after wind until it vanished from sight.

“Jackrun,” Babak said in a gruff voice behind us. “Will you leap now?”

Jackrun nodded, and Babak took off, flying south. I watched him make a swift, even turn, heading back toward Faul's Leap as Jackrun stepped to the edge of the precipice jutting out over the water.

“What is he doing?” Desmond asked.

“Hush,” Tabitha warned. But I wondered myself. Was Jackrun truly about to leap on Babak from so high up? Babak vanished under the overhang. Knees bent, Jackrun swung back his arms. My heart caught in my mouth as he jumped.

“Hurrah!” Tabitha shouted as Babak soared upward with Jackrun on his back. I didn't feel like cheering. I wanted to scream at him for taking such a foolish risk. But now the other two dragons took off, their flapping wings sending dust swirling in my face.

“I'm next on Nahal,” Tabitha said.

“Tabitha!” I called, but she was already running for the edge. Nahal had turned about in the sky flying for the rocky overhang. Tabitha waited on the edge, then leaped, arms out. Griffin came right behind her, giving a shout as he threw himself outward, landing on Sitara.

I went to the place where they had all jumped and peered down at the white roaring waves some fifty feet below. If any of them had fallen, they would have hit the water, and while it looked deep enough, it also looked rough where the tide crashed against the cliff rock.

Jackrun's dragon turned for the cliff again. The air filled with the sound of Babak's pumping wings as he sped back. Babak made a noisy landing near a standing stone. The others crossed the water and alighted near him.

“My turn to fly,” Desmond announced. “One of you get off.”

“These are our dragons,” said Griffin. “We were all bonded from birth.”

“Bonded? You're not a Pendragon.”

“Fey also bond. My father is one of the fey folk and my mother is half fey.”

“And I am the prince of Wilde Island, your future king, you wretch. You will obey me.”

Griffin leaned down, the sunlight catching in his thick red hair. “We fey have our own laws. We don't live under your authority.”

Prince Desmond started. “The fairy folk would have died out years ago if it weren't for my family. Maybe we should have let your kind die, and given Dragonswood sanctuary on Wilde Island and the greenwood here on Dragon's Keep solely to the dragons.” He adjusted his belt. “Now dismount. I'm ready to go and I'm not climbing back down this bloody cliff.”

Griffin hesitated.

“I will take you,” Babak said, head tipped, eyes gleaming.

“No, Babak,” Jackrun said.

“You heard Babak. Get off,” Desmond demanded.

Jackrun peered down at me. “Have you seen him ride, Uma?”

“Once.” Just the old dragon that often slept in the castle stables, a lazy creature nothing like the dragons here.

“Leave my mother's servant out of this, Jackrun. I can ride any dragon here.”

Jackrun said, “You don't mean to jump from the edge, do you? I don't think—”

“What? You don't think I can do it? How hard is it to miss a dragon's back when he's just three feet below you?” His jaw was set with sudden determination.

Babak lowered his head and shook it. Jackrun's feet hit the ground.

He shouldn't do this
, I thought. I was about to try and talk Desmond out of it when I heard rustling sounds. The brambles behind the altar stone moved. A moment later I caught a flash of the king's red livery before Sir Geoffrey stepped out into the open. “Your Royal Highness,” he said with a quick bow.

The prince spun around. “What are you doing here?”

Sir Geoffrey cleared his throat. “Your father the king wished me to follow you and your cousins on your outing today. It's my duty to watch out for your safety.”

“I'm no child,” snarled the prince. “And why Father would send you to spy on me is beyond me.”

“You are the heir, Your Royal Highness. Please let me accompany you safely back down the cliff the way you came. You should not take such a risk. You do not have the skills or training to do it
.
”