In the Time of Dragon Moon (14 page)

Ocean Voyage to Wil
d
e Island

Wolf Moon

September 1210

J
ACKRU
N
THREW
OUT
his hand and helped me over the wooden railing. “What are you doing up here, Uma?”

I climbed into the crow's nest high atop the ship's mast. “I could ask the same of you.”

“I needed the exercise and the view,” he said. “Did anyone spot you climbing up?”

“No.” I steadied my feet and held the rail as we rocked to and fro high above the ship's deck.

I said nothing as he watched the vanishing island. I knew what it felt like to leave the home you loved. I had been dragged from mine. “Your mother sent her apologies for not coming to see you off.”

“When did you talk to her?” he asked, surprised.

“Last night.”

He turned and faced his disappearing isle again. “Do you know where she went with Kip?”

“No. But I saw her go.”

A slow smile spread across his face as I told him how Lady Tess escaped with his little brother on Lord Kahlil.

“Of course the dragonlord would be in on it,” Jackrun said. “The two of them have hatched more than one plan together. I used to slide down the old dragon's tail when I was Kip's age. He'd flip me in the air and catch me. It used to terrify my mother, but he always caught me. I never fell.” He was smiling when he said it; we both looked over the edge, thinking of the one the dragon did not catch, the one who lay in the well-guarded coffin below deck. The silence drew out long between us. At last Jackrun said, “I knew why my mother stayed away. She was right to protect my little brother. I think my aunt would have tried to take Kip home with her.”

“Queen Adela has wanted another child for years, Jackrun. She's tried many remedies and none of them have worked.” My cloak felt too thin up here, where we clung and swayed like birds in a windy roost. I was glad we stood close enough for me to feel his warmth even if his scabbard pressed uncomfortably against my side.

“So you weren't the first to treat her with fertility potions?”

I shook my head.

“I hope no one offered her the cure Queen Gweneth used generations ago to have a child,” Jackrun said.

“What cure is that?”

“The one that changed our family history.” He looked at me. “You have heard of Queen Rosalind Pendragon?”

“The queen with a dragon's claw on her left hand.”

“Her mother was barren for years. She tried everything to have offspring. Nothing worked. Finally she resorted to witchcraft.” He leaned out a little farther. “A witch stole a fertile dragon's egg, put a spell upon it, made the queen drink the whole thing raw. After that she conceived her child, and later Rosalind was born.”

“I don't believe it,” I said with revulsion.

“It's true. It's how the dragon's bloodline entered our family.”

For a moment I could not swallow. Of course a dragon had not taken a human for a mate. Of course it must have happened the way he said, but the one time I had sucked a raw egg, the slimy texture disgusted me. And a dragon's egg must be enormous compared to a hen's egg.

“I've heard many tales about your Pendragon family, but never that one.”

“So the Euit tribe talks about us?”

“My mother did. She's English.”

“You never told me that.”

“You never asked.” How sick the queen must have felt after drinking an entire dragon's egg. How desperate she must have been to do such a thing. Queen Adela was desperate too, but . . . “No one would risk stealing a fertile dragon's egg now. No one would dare to use spells on a former witch hunter who would burn them if she even suspected witchcraft.”

“And so she takes your potions,” Jackrun said.

“My father's potions,” I corrected.

I caught the faint peppery scent of dragons, a smell I liked and was used to in him. I had always thought the hot tangy odor came from riding Babak so often. But they'd parted company after Desmond died.

The setting sun colored the sky and water, the billowing sails, Jackrun's face and chest. Crimson light filled my open hands as I leaned my elbows on the rail. Jackrun traced the long white scar on my left hand ending halfway up my middle finger.

“Cuts your lifeline in half,” he said, frowning with concentration. “When did this happen?”

“When I was small. I tried to shuck an oyster and missed . . .”

When I did not cry, the chieftain had said I was strong, called me mi tupelli—my lad. Everyone loved what the chieftain loved, admired what he admired. For the first time in my life I felt accepted by the tribe, acknowledged for my courage. I hadn't wanted to lose their admiration, so I adopted the name. I became mi tupelli, a lad, a boy, my father's apprentice.

Jackrun's face was still washed in scarlet light, the hue of Vazan's scales. The color fed his fiery eyes. I said, “The knife was too sharp. The cut was deep. People marveled at my courage when I did not cry. It was . . . an accident. It changed everything.”

We both peered down as if we could see the coffin below deck.

“Accidents can . . . change everything,” Jackrun said. “But I wonder.” He stopped and bit his lip, his teeth covering the tiny scar Prince Desmond made as he bit the words he'd nearly unleashed.

“Wonder what?” I asked. He released his lip, swallowed. The chill air between us felt thick the way it had when we'd talked in the stairwell. There was something he wasn't telling me, something he was holding back.

“Jackrun?”a knight called up from the deck far below.

Jackrun tugged my arm, making me duck down. “Yes?” he called. I crouched low with my cheek nearly touching his knee. The crow's nest smelled of men's boots and pitch down here.

“The king wants you,” the knight bellowed.

Jackrun pulled my hood back over my head. “Will you stay low until well after I am gone?” he whispered. “We shouldn't be seen alone together.”

I craned my neck at his silhouette framed in red-streaked sky. “Why not?”

He pressed his lips together, shaking his head.

“Come down,” the knight shouted. “The king will not be kept waiting.”

Jackrun swung his leg over the side and disappeared.

I hugged my knees in the rocking crow's nest as the sky dimmed from red to bruised purple to inky blue. There was no sign of Dragon's Keep by the time I stood again; only dark sea and darker sky. The waxing Wolf Moon hung sharp as a sliver of broken eggshell over the sea. I thought of queens desperate for children, of fertile dragon eggs, of the dead prince in his glass coffin, the fragmented Pendragon family, the last look Jackrun gave me before he'd climbed down the ropes taking his secrets with him, and the moon did not seem the only thing that was broken. Everything seemed broken. All of it.

Broken

Graveyard, Wil
d
e Island

Wolf Moon

September 1210

I
RARELY
HAD
the chance to speak more than a few hasty moments with Jackrun in those first two weeks back at Pendragon Castle. He was caught up in Desmond's funeral preparations, while I raced from the queen's rooms to the herbarium and back again. Summer was over. September rains drenched the land, pounded on the windows, great puddles filled the foreyard. And the wolves were in their time of power. Rain didn't stop them.

At the full Wolf Moon a feral pack attacked a shepherd's son and killed him as he tried to defend his sheep. They found his torn body amid the sheep's carcasses. Packs were flooding the byways, decimating livestock up and down the countryside. Fear spread through Pendragon Castle like disease. King Arden ordered me to sprinkle wolfsbane across the drawbridge. Father Nicodemus held special prayer services. “Are you all right?” Jackrun whispered on his knees beside me in the chapel.

I nodded. “When can we talk?”

“Where can we talk?” He looked about.

That was two days ago. I hadn't seen him since.

Our brief encounters only made me want more. It was hard to mix the queen's medicines with thoughts of Jackrun crowding in. Wait until the prince is buried, I thought. I began chewing my nails again. In the brief hours when the deluge stopped, I peered out windows hoping to glimpse Vazan. She never appeared.

She was my father's dragon. Why should I expect her to stay here in the north with me? Then one afternoon two and a half weeks after we'd returned, I spied her from an upstairs window. The sight of her winging down to Father's grave made me want to shout,
She's here! She stayed!
I didn't have much time. I crammed Father's Herbal in my basket, threw on my cloak, raced down the tower stairs and out a servant's side door.

It was drizzling outside. Clouds obscured the sun one moment, split open like rotting fruit spilling light through the next. I passed the Pendragon tomb and climbed the hill.

Vazan crouched by Father's grave. Tail curled around her clawed feet, she eyed me as I came along and shook the raindrops from her head, her scales making the soft crackling sounds of newborn fire. I bowed to her. “We are being in this place together,” I said in formal Euit greeting. I fought the urge to touch her claw as one reverenced an elder. She had never let me touch her.

“So you are come back, Uma.”

“I have, rivule.” I looked up and saw a flicker of approval at the word
rivule
—warrior. Wet wind blew back my cloak. I shivered.

Vazan narrowed her eyes. “Why are you wearing this frivolous English gown? It does not suit your station as a healer.” I was still in scribe's clothing the last time we'd met here at Father's grave.

“I cannot help it, Vazan. The queen makes me wear it. And I agree. It doesn't suit, it—”

“Humph!” she said smokily. She didn't like excuses. Neither did I.

I raised my hand; the bell-shaped sleeve slid down, revealing the knife strapped to my upper arm. “Think of it as my battle garb, rivule. I wear it to do my job.”

She gave a sharp appreciative nod.

I ran my palm across the tops of the thigh-high weeds on Father's grave, feeling a tugging in my heart. Hundreds upon hundreds of islanders had streamed past Prince Desmond's ornate glass coffin in St. John's Cathedral. Nobles, merchants, and peasants wept over him. Crowds marched behind the drummers, following the costly funeral procession through Dentsmore and up Kingsway Road to the Pendragon tomb. Meanwhile, the weeds had flourished on the Adan's grave as if he did not matter. As if he had been no one.

“Did the Pendragons across the water show their dragon scales?” Vazan asked testily.

I thought of Jackrun's arm scales, flashing in the sunlight when he sparred in the practice yard. Of the moment the dragon Nahal tugged the lace scarf from Tabitha's neck,
You do not need thissss
, and freed the lovely blue-green scale patch underneath. “Yes, they did, rivule.”

Her look of pleasure was so fleeting, I barely caught the roundness of her silver eyes, the easing of her jaw before it vanished again. I wanted to remember the look. It was so rare.

“And the prince is in a box,” she noted.

I cringed at her rough description. Dragons burn their dead and do not understand human burial. “A glass coffin the fey folk and the dragonlord made for him. Now he is laid to rest in a stone sarcophagus in the Pendragon family tomb.” I jerked my head toward the stone tomb down the hill, large as a church with its round stained-glass window over the thick double doors.

“Very English,” she hissed. “I do not understand the dragonlord's help in this,” she added.

“He . . .” I paused, wanting to describe Lord Kahlil, the elder dragon who had greeted me in Euit my first night on Dragon's Keep, who'd whisked Lady Tess and Kip from the tower. I knew he had helped make the glass coffin to appease King Arden's wrath so he wouldn't turn on Babak and blame him for his son's death. “He did it to protect his own.”

“And what have you done to protect your own?” Vazan asked.

“What?”

Vazan's narrowed eyes were thin as a line of light seeping under a door. “How is your work with the queen? Is her belly rounding yet? Will she keep her promise to us and remove the soldiers from our lands if she has her child?”

“I believe she means to keep her promise, but—”

“Yessss?”

“I don't know what she remembers anymore, Vazan. Her mind is worse now she's lost her son.”

Vazan licked her extended talons until they shone black as polished boots, then she looked up again. “Concentrate on the king and get close to him.”

“What do you mean by . . . close?” I asked, offended.

“I do not mean for you to spoil your virtue, Uma.” She flicked out her forked tongue. “You are the Adan's daughter.”

“Then what do you mean, Vazan?”

She clicked a talon on my handmade driftwood headstone. “You tell me the mad queen is worse. It is the king's army who keeps your people captive. If King Arden suffers any pain, use your skills to heal him. Earn his respect, remembering he is the one who holds the power.”

Vazan's wits were as sharp as her teeth. “It is good counsel you give me, rivule.”

She had grown too thin these last few months. The scales stretched tightly over her chest made her breastbone stand out like a ship's keel. “How long since you have eaten, Vazan?”

She held up five talons. Her last kill must have been small. A larger beast would hold her for a week, even two, but she didn't like the taste of the game she caught on Morgesh Mountain. “You could try hunting in Dragonswood.”

“I am a free red,” she huffed. “I will not fly over that prison.”

“It is not a prison. It is a sanctuary.”

“I will never land inside those wallssss!”

I cleared my throat and adjusted the heavy herb basket under my cloak. “I need your help, Vazan.”

“Who do you need killed?” she asked, lowering her head with renewed interest.

“No one killed, rivule. I wouldn't ask you to break the dragon treaty.”

“No red has killed or eaten men since the treaty was signed and Dragonswood walled in, but there are wayssss to do things secretly if you need them done, Uma. Bodies can be hidden.”

“No one killed,” I said again. “Something found. The plant called bapeeta. The one you brought back with the Adan to cure the queen's wind mind.” I was completely out.

Vazan fixed her eyes on a flock of geese, easy treats for her to catch midair, if small. She was bored with the way the conversation was going and did not like being out in the drizzle. I would have to hurry before I lost her to the sky.

“The Adan drew the plant in his Herbal.”

“I am no herbalist. That is man's business.”

“And woman's,” I corrected, pulling Father's book from my basket. I did not open it yet, fearing the ink would run in the soft rain. Vazan unfurled a wing, sheltering me so I could show her the page.

She huffed smoke as she peered down at Father's drawing; her gray breath ghosted over me as I held up the book.

“Do you remember where you took the Adan for this herb? Can you fly me there, Vazan?” I tried to sound calm as I asked her. Just saying the word
fly
sent tingling sensations across my tongue and sharpened my desire.

“You wish to pluck thissss?” she said, pointing to the ink drawing with her smallest talon.

“Yes, as much as we can as soon as we can. Everything depends upon my curing the queen.”

“Giving her an offspring, not curing her wind mind.”

“Both, Vazan. The king cannot go to his wife's bedchamber when she is raving.”

“Humans,” she said. “You fear emotions as if they had claws and teeth.”

“Nevertheless.”

She tipped her head and made a clicking sound with her tongue. “It is the king's duty more than ever to get an heir on her now his son is dead.” She shut Father's Herbal, pinching it between two talons. Then she withdrew her wing and gave a low growl. Ears flattened against her scaly head, she lifted her snout, sniffed the air, and took off, letting out a screech like a thousand angry cats.