Dragon's Egg (12 page)

Gran had known so much, Mella thought. More than Mella would ever learn. But Gran had never known what it was like to talk to a true dragon face-to-face. She'd never flown on dragonback. She'd never heard a dragon sing.

Maybe Mella would never be the keeper Gran
had been. But that did not mean she could not learn to be the keeper she was meant to be herself.

“Not too close to the army,” the queen told Alyas. “Keep your distance. And quickly now. We want to show the humans our goodwill.”

O
n Alyas's back as he perched on the edge of the valley, Mella tucked the two dragontooth pendants carefully inside the neck of her dress. Then she threw herself forward, hugging Alyas's neck as the dragon toppled forward, squeezing her eyes shut so that she didn't have to watch the cliff face hurtling by.

But when their flight steadied, she settled back and sat up once more. She could feel the muscles of the dragon's back working beneath her legs and hands. The rush of cold air stung her eyes, but she kept them open as she leaned over to see the spread of the land below.

There was the army of Roger's father, rows of horses and wagons and columns of marching men, the
light catching on their spears and helmets, banners and pennants flashing red and yellow as they marched away from the mountain. Only one tent was left in the grassy plain beside the waterfall—the biggest, with its colorful stripes glowing bright in the sun.

Mella spotted Gwyn's village, the stone crofts and pens blending into the mountainside. She even thought she could glimpse Dragonsford, a dark smudge on the horizon, and a faint gray, wavering line across the distant sky she imagined might be the smoke from the Inn's chimneys.

Then Alyas angled toward a high hill near the plain where the army had camped. It had a bare, rocky outcropping on top where he could land, tucking his wings in neatly to keep from snagging them on the tree branches. Stiff and chilled from the wind, Mella slid awkwardly down.

“I cannot linger,” Alyas said, bringing his face close to Mella's. He breathed out a steamy, sulfur-smelling breath and touched Mella's cheek briefly with his hot tongue.

Mella's throat hurt as she put her hands for a
moment to either side of Alyas's face. Her last true dragon. Oh, there was her own herd, waiting at home for her. But for the first time—and she felt a guilty flicker at the disloyal thought—the common farm dragons did not seem quite enough.

“Good-bye,” she whispered to Alyas. “I hope your song is famous.”

“It should be.” Alyas gave a low chuckle that blew Mella's hair back from her face. “With two such heroes, indeed, it should be sung for thousands of years.”

Alyas's leap carried him as high as the treetops, and his pale wings beat furiously. Clearly launching from the ground was not as easy as diving from a height. Mella held her breath until the white dragon began to gain altitude. The frantic wing beats slowed to a steady pace, and he swooped up into the sky just as Roger burst through the trees.

“You're all right?” he panted. “I mean, I knew you would be. I saw Alyas flying. I'm sorry it took so long. I had to explain and explain. He couldn't even decide if he was angry—”

A furious bellow came rising up behind him. “My prince!”

Somebody
was certainly angry, Mella thought, as a small crowd of people clambered out of the trees and after Roger.

“My prince!” the foremost of these repeated. “You must
not
run ahead like that, and near a
dragon,
of all things! Are you mad?”

“Wiltain,” Roger said patiently, “I only wanted to see if Mella was all right. There was no danger.”

“There was a
dragon
!” Wiltain wheezed. A portly man, dressed in a long wine-colored velvet coat over his linen shirt, he didn't look as if scrambling through a rocky wood was something he was accustomed to.

There were other people around now, some as finely dressed as Wiltain, others in the plain leather and linen of soldiers, and all of them talking at once.

“My prince, you really must—”

“Impossible to guard you if—”

“Reckless and foolish—”

“They're from my father's court,” Roger said in Mella's ear. “Wiltain's the minister of taxation, he really shouldn't have come along on a military campaign at all, but you can't keep him out of anything. That's Owen, he's the captain of my father's guard, and the rest of them, well, they just came along. People do. You
are
all right, aren't you, Mella? I wanted—”

“My prince,” the man named Owen interrupted. The soldiers around him, Mella noticed, had bolts readied on their crossbows and were looking nervously at the sky, where Alyas was now a creamy dot against the blue.

“You must not leave your guards,” Owen continued reproachfully. “And you must come back with us now. Your father is waiting.”

Roger had his chin up and was looking dignified again. “I told you, Owen, there is no danger.”

“Nevertheless.” Owen stood firm. “You'll return with us now.”

The soldiers made a ring around Mella and Roger and Wiltain and the few others whose clothes
marked them as nobles, and hurried them back down through the trees and toward the plain. As they climbed over rocks and ducked under branches, Roger kept up a quick stream of commentary, low enough that only Mella could hear.

“He'd arrested Alain
and
Gwyn, can you believe it? Alain because Gwyn said he'd tried to kidnap us, and Gwyn because he wouldn't say where we'd gone, or what he knew, or anything. He's let him go now, of course. I think he might make him a knight. Damien's there too. The healer said he shouldn't ride, but he wouldn't stay behind. I think he's angry, I'm not sure, it's hard to tell sometimes. And now—”

They were at the bottom of the hill, pushing between the last trees and out into the plain beside the waterfall. The flattened grass and trampled mud showed where the army had been. Now there was nothing left of them but what had been dropped or abandoned in the hasty retreat—a tent peg, a scrap of frayed rope, half a loaf of bread ground into the mud, a thrown horseshoe, a stray
glove. The soldiers hurried them toward the red and yellow tent, its stripes bright and brave in the sun.

All the other tents Mella had seen from her perch on the mountainside had been plain and white. This one was special. It must belong to someone important.

“Your father is waiting,” Owen had said.

“Is that—” she whispered to Roger. “Is that your—I mean—is the
king
in there?”

Roger gave her a look that said,
Of course
.

Mella's hands reached up to pat at her hair, wild and wildblown from her flight on dragonback. Couldn't Roger have said something earlier? Couldn't they have given her two minutes to herself, so she didn't have to face the king—the
king
!—with her hair practically standing on end? There wasn't much she could have done about the dress she'd worn waking and sleeping for days together. Mella even had a fleeting, foolish moment of feeling glad she'd fallen in that murderous pool below the waterfall; at least it had been something like a wash….

Then she was ducking inside the king's tent.

It wasn't really like a tent, she thought. More like a room with walls of red and yellow silk. There was even a carpet underfoot, and a bed in one corner, and chairs gathered around a table, with two men sitting in them. A number of other people were in the room as well, some soldiers, some nobles, and one who was neither. Gwyn was standing so still in a corner that Mella thought most people had probably forgotten he was there. The shepherd had one arm in a linen sling and he met Mella's eyes with a quiet smile and dipped his head to her, as if he were acknowledging a job well done.

One of the men sitting at the table rose; the other started to do so and was waved back into his chair by the first. She knew the sitting man; it was Damien. He looked worn and tired, a white bandage standing out sharply against his black hair; one leg, stretched out before him, was splinted and heavily bandaged.

She knew the standing man, too. He'd grown a
beard since she had seen him pass by the Inn years ago, and his short brown hair was touched with threads of gray. It was so curly it almost hid the simple gold circlet on his head.

Mella glanced around nervously. Should she kneel? But everyone else, including Roger, simply bowed slightly, so Mella just bent her knee and ducked her head.

“So this is the young dragonkeeper?”

Mella changed her mind as the king's voice, not loud but strong, silenced everyone else in the tent. She dropped to her knees and stared fixedly at the king's boots, polished leather laced up over his knees, and bit her lip. Was he angry? At Roger, at her? She'd already faced one angry ruler this day. It didn't seem fair that she should have to deal with a second.

The feet came a little closer, and then a hand came into Mella's view. It touched her chin gently and tipped her head back so that she looked into the king's face.

He's kind, she thought in amazement as he
smiled. There was gentleness in his face, though it was stern about the mouth and worn by worry around the eyes.

“No need for that,” the king said, and he took Mella by the hand to lift her to her feet. “So you and my son have been gallivanting all over the wilderness, I hear?”

“Father, we—” Roger broke in.

“Your Majesty—” Wiltain interrupted at the same moment.

The king held up a hand to quiet them both. “Well?” he said to Mella.

And Mella knew just what to answer.

“We had to,” she said, looking up into the king's face. “I promised. It was a matter of honor.”

The king looked as if he might be about to reply, but Wiltain spoke again. “Your Majesty, I—” This time it was Damien who interrupted.

“Honor?” The king's head turned. So did everyone else's. Damien's dark eyes looked past Mella and glared as though he would set fire to Roger with the force of his gaze alone. “To take sides
with our enemy? To aid a
dragon
? To forget the vows you swore? This is
honor
?”

Yes, Damien was definitely angry.

Roger seemed to shrivel by Mella's side. She looked over at him in alarm. He'd spoken up so bravely to the dragon queen, and now he wilted before a mere knight? She drew in a breath to defend Roger, hardly knowing what she was going to say, but the king got there first.

“I believe the prince took an oath to keep the kingdom safe from dragons,” he said. “He appears to have done that most effectively—he and his friend.”

Roger looked startled.

“Your Majesty,” Wiltain insisted. He was the kind of person who would always get heard, Mella realized, just because he wouldn't stop talking until it happened.

“Yes, Wiltain?” the king said patiently.

“We could send out word to stop the army's retreat! Sire, we must defend the kingdom. We cannot simply
leave
now that we know what these—
these beasts—are capable of!” He flapped a hand vaguely at Damien.

A shout of protest leaped up in Mella's throat. This couldn't happen. Not after Roger had promised. Not after the dragons had trusted them.
Humans have no honor,
Kieron had said. Were they going to prove him right?

“Father,” Roger insisted, his voice shrill with alarm. “Father!”

But the king's look silenced Wiltain, stopped Roger, and made Mella swallow her objections.

“I believe my son negotiated a treaty,” the king said, his eyes nearly as fierce as Damien's. “Are you suggesting that we break it?”

Wiltain's face turned nearly as red as his wine-colored coat.

“I—that is—no, of course not, Your Majesty. I merely—”

“I'm relieved to hear it,” King Astor said sharply. “Since the other side of the bargain has been kept, we must do our part. Captain!” Owen looked up. “We will join the retreat. We wish to
demonstrate goodwill, so as promptly as possible, please.”

Mella could hardly believe how efficiently the king's orders were carried out. The tent disappeared from around them, the carpets were rolled up practically under their feet, carts were filled, and horses were saddled with startling speed. Wiltain was fussing over the girth on his horse, and the king was settling an argument over whether Damien would ride or be carried in a litter, and Roger and Mella stood still in the center of the storm of activity.

“Here.” Mella remembered the queen's gift to her and pulled one of the dragontooth necklaces over her head. “This is yours. From the queen. She said—she said it would mark you as a dragonfriend. Forever.”

Roger stared at the pendant in his hand as if he were hypnotized by its sway. “But it's—but that's—”

A shadow fell over the necklace, and Mella looked up to see Gwyn standing against the light.
Slowly, without asking, he leaned over to gather up the swinging piece of ivory in one hand. The movement loosened something around his own neck, and it swung forward into the light—a much older piece of ivory, worn thin and yellow, its once-sharp point blunted by time.

But Roger was looking past the shepherd, toward Damien, as, under the king's stern gaze, he climbed reluctantly into a litter slung between two horses. And Mella remembered that the Defender had worn something similar around his neck, a long, thin tooth on a fine gold chain. And
he
was certainly no dragonfriend.

Gwyn's eyes lifted up to the mountain towering over them. “Saw them, did you?” he asked, his voice low. “
Talked
to them? Like my father said—the true dragons?”

Mella nodded, and a slow smile spread across the shepherd's face.

The king was on horseback now, and a shout came from Owen. “Mount up! All mounted to ride!”

Dragons were full of mysteries, Mella decided. And so were rulers and knights and even shepherds, and her brain was worn out trying to decipher it all. Right now she simply wanted to be back home, caring for her herd, enduring the scolding she was sure she'd get for worrying her parents, safe away from kings and queens and puzzles and quests and things an innkeeper's daughter was probably not meant to understand.

A soldier at Gwyn's side handed him the reins of a nervous roan mare, who tugged at his arm, pulling him a step or two away from the children. The shepherd swung into the saddle with a glance down at Roger and Mella that might almost have been of envy. As Roger pulled the leather thong over his head and tucked the tooth safely inside his shirt, two more soldiers hurried up, holding the reins of a black mare for Roger and a gentle gray one for Mella.