In the Time of Dragon Moon (3 page)

“I . . . dreamed she burned us.”

“She won't, Uma.” His brown eyes were soft above his sunken cheeks. “My medicine will work. I am the healer who will cure her. Trust me. You do trust me?”

“Yes, Father.” He looked so tired. “Why don't you rest, Adan.”

“I have to work,” he said. “A child cannot grow in the queen when her mind is so troubled.” He pulled the bapeeta plants he'd gathered from his herbing basket. I recognized the five-point leaves that looked like an infant's hands. “This herb will calm Her Majesty's wind mind,” he said.

We turned the leaves over. The undersides had more tiny pollen dots than ferns do. I helped him scrape the pollen dust into packets. It was the dust he wanted.

• • •

I
WAS
AFRAID
Her Majesty would detect the bapeeta in her curative brew. But Father was a master, adding just enough honey to hide any telltale bitterness. She took her morning and evening doses without comment that day. Father was pleased, but I saw his exhaustion the moment we left Her Majesty's room that evening. Halfway up the stairs to the Crow's Nest, he hunched over and clutched his arm, his brown face gray as if he'd bathed it in dust.

“You're ill, Father.”

He waved my words away, went up and unlocked his Herbal. I took out his ink and quill and watched him draw the bapeeta. This plant differed from the ones that grew down south; the leaves here a smaller, brighter green. The Adan was careful to note such differences. He traced the shape of the leaves top and bottom, the pollen dotting the undersides, and wrote the Euit words beside it, noting the variations of color. He stopped a few times to grip his upper arm and draw in breath.

“Please take some medicine, Adan.”

“Uma. Let me work!”

I backed away, hurt. I could see he was in pain. Why would he never admit it even to me? Why would he never take any of his own medicine when he needed it?

Father worked another hour, finished the page, got slowly to his feet, and went to his bed. He usually prayed before he lay down, but I saw how little strength he had tonight.

“Eat a little first, Adan.”

“Not now, Uma.” Father turned and faced the wall. I covered him with the moth-eaten wool blanket.
He needs his rest,
I thought.
He'll feel better tomorrow.
I was wrong.

• • •

H
E
NEVER
WOKE
the next morning. When I went to check on him, he was cold. He'd been dead for hours. My legs went out from under me. I fell with my head on his chest. I had not let him see me weep since I was a small child. Now the flood came rising up, roaring, breaking the banks inside me.

Pendragon Castle, Wil
d
e Island

Whale Moon

July 1210

P
ALACE
GUARDS
POUNDED
on the door. Sobbing, I swayed on my feet. Pock Face barged in with a second guard, saw my father's body, then grabbed me and muscled me through the castle.

In Queen Adela's bedchamber, I dove to the floor, prostrating myself.

“Your Majesty,” Pock Face said, “we could not bring your physician with your morning tonic. The man is dead.”

“Dead?” she asked, her voice cracking with the word.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Was he murdered in his bed?”

“Doesn't look like murder, Your Majesty.” Pock Face sounded disappointed. “What shall we do with the leftovers?” he added, stepping closer to where I lay on the floor to jab my ribs with his boot.

“Wait outside in the landing, both of you, until I call for you again.”

They shuffled out, leaving me alone with Queen Adela and Lady Olivia.

“Look at me,” said the queen. I raised my head off the floor. Her Majesty selected a sweetmeat from a tray on the small table at her side. The glint coming off her golden fingerbowl stung my eyes that were still raw from crying.

“Tell me how he died. Did he take his own life?”

“No, Your Majesty,” I said, shocked. “The Adan would never do that.”

“Disease, then.” She leaned out from her chair narrowing her eyes. “A physician who cannot cure himself.”

I swallowed. “He would not take his own medicine, Your Majesty,” I said hoarsely. “He believed in using it only on his patients.”
On you!

She huffed. “What a ridiculous way to die.”

She'd burn me now. I'd welcome it. It hurt too much to breathe with Father gone. I felt part dead already. But I heard my father's voice:
Never trust the English. You are the fox. They are the hounds. You must learn to survive.
Promise me
.

I was still on the floor. “Your Majesty, let me try and help you.”

Her lip twitched. “How can you help me?”

“I worked beside the Adan for years, Your Majesty.”

She flung the fingerbowl. It struck my temple before it hit the floor and rolled under her vanity. “He lied to me. Stop groveling,” she added. “And stand up. I said leave the room!” She spoke these last words to the vacant place by the door. By now I'd grown used to her addressing the air.

On my feet, I brushed away the rushes clinging to my breeches. Queen Adela studied me and smiled. “I see you.” She touched her cheek with her forefinger, pointing to her fey eye.

See me? What does she mean?

“You think you have fooled
me
in those scribe's clothes, young woman?”

My knees began to wobble.

Lady Olivia blanched, blinking rapidly as if seeing me for the first time.

I gripped my dragon belt. “Your Majesty, I can explain. In our Euit tradition . . .”
No, don't tell her that
. “I chose to dress this way in service to the Adan because—”

“I don't want to hear anything about your quaint tribal customs. I am the queen of Wilde Island, and I have waited sixteen years to have a healthy second child. Your father promised me a marvelous cure. If this was not a lie, tell me why I am not already pregnant.”

Because you are going mad and the king fears visiting your bed. Because you are too old.

“The remedy does not always work right away, Your Majesty. One woman took Kuyawan for six months before she conceived. In time she birthed a healthy boy.” Ashune and little Melo.

The queen's mouth curved down. I wasn't convincing her.

“I have studied beside the Adan all my life. I know his remedies. Please give me the chance to help you have the child you want, Your Majesty. I promise I can do it.”

“Come here, Pippin.” The queen picked up her lapdog and stroked his head, her face now strangely serene. I'd seen her quick mood changes before. They did not mean anything.

“You beg me for a chance,” she said. “What do you have to offer that your father did not?”

Sweat dripped down my back.
Nothing. He was a great healer.
“Time, Your Majesty.”

“Time?” The queen squeezed Pippin's neck. He yelped before he struggled free and jumped down to hide under the table. “I have given your father too much time already.

“Guards!”

Pock Face rushed in with a second man, they grabbed my arms and started dragging me from the solar.

“Wait, please. You haven't taken the cure a full six months, Your Majesty. What if just a few more doses—”

“Stop a moment,” Queen Adela said, raising her hand. The men held me firmly, pinning my arms against my sides as if I might fly away.

“Three months more,” she mused. “That would be October's end,” she said, tapping her armrest with her long nails, a sound like hungry woodpeckers searching for food.

October's end. By the death of Dragon Moon. I wasn't sure it gave me enough time, but it was too late to retract my words.

She fixed her eyes on me. “If I give you this chance, Uma, the first thing you will do is to destroy those foolish clothes.” She turned to her companion. “Lady Olivia, your daughter is about Uma's height, if a little rounder, is she not? Have Bianca give my new physician two of her prettiest gowns. I'm remembering a blue velvet one with pearls along the neckline.”

Lady Olivia's face went hard as ironwood. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

Pock Face lost his grip a moment and stared at me bewildered.

The queen stretched out her hand. “You may show your gratitude now, Uma.”

I crept forward and kissed her ruby ring, keeping my head low. “Thank you, Your Majesty.” I would live a little longer. But her offer meant nothing if she didn't mean to release my tribe once she got the child she wanted.

Queen Adela withdrew her hand. “Take her out. I am finished with her until she's properly dressed.”

I saw my reflection in the queen's vanity mirror as the guards led me to the door: a girl-boy in dirty tunic and breeches, with a dark, tear-stained face.

“Oh, and Uma?” The men paused, holding my upper arms tight. “You have hidden yourself from us in many ways while you worked in the shadow of your father. Now I will bring you into the light. We will see if you bloom
or burn
.”

• • •

I
HIKED
UPHILL
to my father's grave.

How could I live without him?

I was his daughter—and the son he never had.

He was my teacher and my solid earth.

The queen had refused him the dignity of a gravestone. I sang to the Holy Ones as I set out the symbols of the four sacred elements at his gravesite, where I'd carved his name onto a driftwood plank: rich soil from Devil's Boot, an osprey feather, a bowl of seawater, and my flint box to burn an oak branch. He deserved a large gathering, not the songs of a single soul, but I was the only one here to perform the rite.

The Adan had already started his long walk home to heavenly Nushtuen. His Path Animal, owl, would guide him. I hoped my prayers would help.

I was about to light the cleansing fire when a shadow overcame the hill. Vazan stormed in, her hot gust blowing me off my feet. I flung my hands back to catch my fall and landed with a thump as she settled noisily on the summer grass.

One eye on the grave, the other on me, she lowered her great head. I brushed myself off and stood again, facing her. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the earthen mound. She gave a smoky huff when she caught my father's scent.

“Uma!” She blazed fire over Father's grave. I leaped back. She'd nearly singed my feet. The raw flames lit the oak branch at the foot of Father's grave. I didn't need the tinder box now. She completed the fire rite.

Her large silver eyes were iced with anger. “How did the queen kill your father?”

“She didn't . . . Father worked and wouldn't stop to eat or rest. He hid his pain from me.”

“But you saw it,” she said.

“I saw it. He . . . wouldn't let me treat him,” I said past the lump in my throat.

Vazan dug a talon into the soft grave soil. She was all wind and fire, not bound to earth as humans are, though she loved her rich hunting grounds around our volcano. Her bond to my father showed in the great sacrifice she'd made leaving her cave in Devil's Boot to follow us north. Smoke billowed from her nose. Her breaths were long sighs. Dragons do not cry.

I breathed in her smoke, gray grief between us. At last she spoke.

“There is no one to heal this infertile queen now. She will leave the king's soldiers in Devil's Boot. We'll lose all our freedom to these English vermin!”

“I have the herbs to cure infertility, and I have the Adan's book.” The keys to Father's trunk and his Herbal clinked as I pulled the necklace out to show her.

Vazan flattened her ears against her head. “What good are the herbs and this book? Men have the power to heal. Women do not have that power.”

“You are female, Vazan. You are powerful.”

“Yessss,” she hissed, “but I am dragon. You are girl.”

I crossed my arms. My chest ached. Bound in cloth, wrapped in sorrow, I had no heart to argue here at Father's grave, but battle is dragon's bread. “We both want the same thing. I have to treat the queen so she'll keep her promise. What other choices do we have?” She blinked at me. I went on. “Back home, the elders say a woman cannot heal, but the English don't live by our laws. The English have women healers. They have midwives. Mother was one.”

Vazan flicked a clump of dirt off her talon. “There is no trusting these Pendragon royals. I have watched them. They don't even display their dragon scales, as if they are ashamed of them.”

It was true. Prince Desmond supposedly had a scale patch on his arm. I'd never seen it. Most men rolled up their sleeves to spar in the weapons yard. He never did.

“So you plan to stay,” Vazan said.

“I must stay. I promised the queen I'd keep treating her.”

“With your father's herbs.”

“Yes.”

“You are the Adan's daughter,” she conceded.

She curled her long tail around Father's grave. The spikes along the end were like a row of black upright daggers near my feet. “Will you take the voyage to Dragon's Keep?”

“What voyage?”

“Do you have eyessss and earssss?”

I sighed. “Tell me.”

“The king plans to visit his brother Duke Bion on Dragon's Keep. Your father knew this. You'll see more Pendragons there if you go. It's where the Son of the Prophecy lives; the firstborn with dragon, human, and fairy blood combined.” I knew the fairy's song about Duke Bion's son, the Son of the Prophecy. I'd learned it at my mother's knee.

“When is King Arden leaving?”

“A few weeks. The queen plans to go along. Your father was concerned about it.”

My eyes fell to the mounded soil. “He had every reason to be. I need to talk the queen out of taking the journey. Egret Moon would be a dangerous time for her to travel by sea. She'd be at the mercy of the wind, even more than she already is.”

“Any breeze can change her wind mind, Uma, but you won't change it.”

“I hope you are wrong.”

Vazan flicked her tail, the spikes rising to my waist before the scaled flesh slapped the ground again.

Was she going to leave me now that Father was dead? I felt a sharp jolt of fear. I pinched the red dragons on my belt, as if by squeezing hard enough, I could make her stay.
Ask her
. I glanced up at her noble head. The thin smoke coiling between us softened the shades of her red-orange scales.
I need you, Vazan. Don't go
.
Please don't leave me alone
.

I couldn't say the words out loud.

“You are crying, Adan's daughter.”

She lowered her head and breathed a warm wind on my face, drying my tears.