Bones of the Dragon (63 page)

Raegar gazed at her intently, and he said solemnly, “Death was my punishment, Treia.”

“Punishment for what? I don’t understand.” Treia’s voice hardened. She drew back from him, wary and suspicious. “What do you mean?”

Raegar took hold of her hands and held them in reassurance. “Vindrash did not save me.” He cast a meaningful glance at what was left of the statue. “Vindrash has lost the power to save herself, let alone anyone else. You know that, Treia. You know in your heart I am right.”

Treia eyed him skeptically, her face cold, expressionless.

Raegar opened her palms, kissed them. “I am being punished for keeping Skylan’s guilty secret. For not revealing what I know to be the truth. We were going to wait, but I must purge my soul.”

Treia smiled and relaxed in his arms. She nestled close to Raegar, twining her legs around his, and felt him grow hard against her.

“Tell me the truth,” Treia said with fierce joy. “Tell me all you know about Skylan.”

Raegar clasped her to him as they lay tangled at the feet of Vindrash, and making love to her again, he told Treia exactly what she wanted to hear.

Raegar didn’t know it, but he was also telling Wulfe.

Frightened half out of his wits by the sudden appearance of the dragon and the giants, Wulfe had dropped to all fours and run as fast as he could. He felt bad about leaving Skylan to face his foes alone, but he had not felt bad enough to stay.

“The gods hate the fae,” Wulfe’s mother had always told him. “The gods are always looking for ways to harm us. Gods are never to be trusted.”

Faced with an angry goddess, Wulfe ran.

Unfortunately, his next encounter proved even more terrifying. Fleeing the Dragon Goddess, he ran headlong into menacing Ugly Ones. Never mind that he knew these Ugly Ones, who were Skylan’s friends. Garn spoke
gently to Wulfe, trying to calm him down. The horrible stench of iron—always equated in Wulfe’s nostrils with the smell of death—was sickening. Caught between gods and iron, he ran from both.

He eventually grew tired. His run slowed to a lope. His hands were cut and blistered; his feet hurt. He panted for breath, his flanks heaving, and his tongue lolling. He was thirsty and lonely and utterly lost and now the ground was shaking. He had no idea how to find his way back to Skylan. He was in despair, and he came upon Treia.

Wulfe did not trust Treia, but at least she was not a vengeful goddess. She carried no iron, and she would be able to lead him back to Skylan. Wulfe did not make himself known to Treia, because she was acting strangely—talking to herself, wringing her hands, moaning, and clutching at her head. He followed her at a safe distance, trotting along silently behind.

She led him to an immense building, very beautiful in Wulfe’s eyes. He watched Treia enter. Wulfe settled down to wait for her to return. Hearing her give a startled cry, and wondering what had happened, Wulfe went in after her. He slipped inside the door, which she had left ajar, and there he saw Treia and, to his astonishment, he saw Raegar.

Wulfe was alarmed at first, fearing he’d come upon yet another draugr, but then he reflected that even Treia wouldn’t be likely to rut with a corpse. The more Wulfe watched the two, the more he was convinced that Raegar was very much alive.

Wulfe did not like Raegar any more than he liked Treia. Having spied on both of them, Wulfe knew that they both hated Skylan, and Wulfe hated the two of them for that reason.

The boy settled himself behind one of the many wooden posts that supported the vaulted ceiling and watched without much interest the man and woman in the throes of their passion. Growing bored, he glanced about the Hall. He saw bloodstains. He shivered, wondering what terrible thing had happened here, and then he saw what Treia had failed to see: tracks of wet boots clearly visible on the dust-covered floor of the Hall.

The tracks were recent. Wulfe touched a print with his fingers and could still feel the dampness. The water on the boots had turned the dust to mud, leaving a clear imprint behind. The foot that made that print was very large, as large as Raegar’s. The boots had walked all over the floor, to and fro, back and forth. Pacing, waiting.

And there were other footprints, different footprints, dry footprints, these made by two sets of boots, one slightly larger than the second, though neither so large as Raegar’s. The two Dry Boots had come in and gone out again. They had not walked around the hall. At one point, Wulfe noticed, Wet Boots had stood facing Dry Boots.

Wulfe had heard Raegar claim to Treia that his coming to the Hall was a miracle. The fact was, he’d walked into the Hall on his own two wet feet. And while he was in the Hall, he’d met two pairs of dry feet. Nothing miraculous about that. So why make up the story? And why let everyone think he’d drowned when he hadn’t? And to whom did the dry feet belong?

Treia and Raegar finally ended their lovemaking, for which Wulfe was grateful. The two began talking and Wulfe pricked his ears, hoping to hear the answers to his questions. But the two were only plotting against Skylan again, which was nothing new.

The two talked, and then they began to rut again. Wulfe rolled his eyes in frustration. He’d known nymphs and satyrs whose appetites were not so voracious. Wulfe yawned and scratched himself. He was thirsty, his belly hurt from being empty, and he wondered what had become of Skylan.

Seeing Treia and Raegar completely occupied with each other, Wulfe left the Hall, going off in search of water first and then to find Skylan to see if he could answer his questions about Raegar.

A
ylaen held the spiritbone of the Dragon Kahg in her hands. She kept her gaze fixed on the bone, concentrating on the ritual, visualizing the dragonbone game in her mind and trying to blot out the terror that was thundering through her. She gathered up a handful of sand and let it trickle down over the dragon bone.

In the game, the gods make the first move.

“Vindrash, hear my prayer,” Aylaen said softly.

Mortals make the second move.

“Tell the Dragon Kahg of our desperate need.”

Fate has the third move. Gods and mortals, each bound by their own wyrd, each bound to the other.

Aylaen drew the rune that represented the wyrd in the sand. She remembered the rune because it was on the game piece, a piece important in play, for its movement is random and can disrupt the strategies of both men and gods.

Aylaen laid the dragonbone down on the rune and took up more sand. She let it fall over the bone.

So far, so good. This was all part of the ritual. But what came next? In the game, the pieces moved along winding trails, leading to birth, death, victory, loss, journey, status, marriage, home, children, crossing paths, meeting, parting, meeting again, parting forever.

“The ritual is ever changing,” Alyaen remembered Treia telling her. “The ritual involves my wyrd, the gods’ wryd, the dragon’s wryd, and what we are now, what we were then, where we have been, where we are going.”

There was something about moving and turning the bone, pushing and taking and holding and forcing.

“This part is very complicated,” Treia had said. “It takes years to learn.”

“Vindrash, I don’t have years!” Aylaen cried in despair. “I have only now and the people I love and they are depending on me and I lied to you. I am sorry. Forgive me!”

Aylaen let more sand fall over the spiritbone. “I love Garn, Vindrash, as you love Torval. I seek your blessing, though I do not deserve it. I ask that you send your dragon to fight for us this day!”

Aylaen picked up the spiritbone, and with all her strength and all her might and all her love and desperation and fear, she cast it high into the air. The spiritbone rose, then, twisting and turning, it began to fall. Aylaen’s heart fell with it, for she knew she had failed.

The spiritbone spun round and round, faster and faster, and first it was one bone and then it was twelve bones and then it was a hundred bones bursting from the spiritbone.

As fast as forked lightning, the Dragon Kahg came into being. Formed of sand, he was whitish in color, his scales hard as rock, hard as the mountain that had stood for countless eons, before time and the elements reduced the mountain to a grain.

The Dragon Kahg materialized in front of the five giants, who came to an uncertain halt. They glowered at the dragon. The stone weapons swung from their hands.

Aylaen sent up a prayer of heartfelt gratitude. She did not have time to be proud of her accomplishment or to wonder that she, who had lied about becoming a Bone Priestess, had been able to summon the dragon.

“Good work,” Skylan said. He thrust a spear into her hand. “Now be ready to fight.”

The Dragon Kahg was confused. He had been overwhelmed with relief to have found his goddess, Vindrash. She had explained to the dragon that she was in fear of her life and that she had needed her enemies to believe she was dead. Not even the dragons who worshipped her could know the truth. She
had asked the Dragon Kahg to keep her secret, and he had been proud to do so.

He had obeyed her commands. He had carried Skylan from Apensia back to Luda. He had watched with considerable amusement to see Vindrash disguise herself as the draugr of Skylan’s dead wife, Draya. Kahg knew why Vindrash played at dragonbones with Skylan. The dragon knew the game was serious, the stakes were life and death. Kahg understood and sympathized with the goddess, who was bound by Torval’s edict regarding the Five Bones. Ever since Hevis had basely sought to use the Five to attack another god, all the gods had been forbidden to speak of them to a mortal. Vindrash had to find a way to tell Skylan about the Five, without actually coming out and telling him.

Thus far, all had been going as planned. And then disaster.

Vindrash had felt the growing fury of the Sea Goddess, Akaria, and she had warned Kahg that sailing was dangerous. The hothead Skylan had paid no heed to the warning. The Dragon Kahg might have taken it upon himself to refuse to sail, but Vindrash was determined to teach Skylan a lesson, and she had ordered him to sea.

He had lost contact with the other two dragons, an alarming situation, for dragons are able to commune mentally. Kahg could find no trace of them, and Vindrash claimed she could not locate them either. Dragons were mortal beings and it was possible they could have been killed, but she did not think so. Kahg had the feeling she knew the truth of what had happened to the dragons and their ships. If so, the goddess was keeping her knowledge to herself.

When the Sea Goddess had finally exhausted her fury, the Dragon Kahg discovered that the winds of her rage had blown them close to the Dragon Isles. Vindrash ordered him to take the half-starved, weary Torgun to what he believed would be safe refuge on the isle, only to run aground on a hidden sandbar. And now he discovered that the Torgun were about to be attacked by their own guardians.

The Dragon Kahg was further troubled by the fact that although he had repeatedly alerted the goddess to the presence of a strange ship shadowing them, Vindrash had not seemed to care. The ship had dogged them all the way from Luda, keeping below the horizon line, staying out of their sight. Even when the Sea Goddess caught the ship in her tempest, the ship had survived. The winds of divine fury that had blown the
Venjekar
off course blew the strange ship to the Dragon Isles, as well.

The Dragon Kahg had tried to persuade Vindrash to take an interest in the ship, but she persisted in ignoring it. And now, the Dragon Kahg knew why.

He had been hovering about his spiritbone, eager to be summoned, when he heard Garn’s words.

The gods are afraid
.

Kahg had known Vindrash was afraid for her life, but Kahg had not really understood the depth of her fear. He had not truly understood the danger, not even after the attack on the Hall of Vektia, not even with the death of Desiria. Now, at last, Kahg could visualize the might of the foes arrayed against them. The dragon was appalled.

The gods were falling victim to fear. They were a family, these gods. A clan of immortals, not much different, neither better nor worse than the humans who revered them. The Gods of the Vindrasi quarreled and bickered, lusted and loved. They were either preoccupied with their own pleasure or were embroiled in plots to disrupt the pleasure of the others. The world to them was a shining ball they had come across while at play and they had amused themselves down through the centuries by tossing it back and forth between them.

But now came gods who wanted to take away the ball.

And not only that, these gods planned to destroy their foes in the process.

Kahg was starting to think the gods had lost their minds to panic. How else could the dragon explain the fact that Torval had ordered the guardians of the Dragon Isles to attack the very people they should have been guarding?

And so the Dragon Kahg did not attack the giants. He sought to reason with them.

S
kylan gave an exultant shout when he saw the Dragon Kahg appear, large and menacing. The gaunt and spiderlike giants had been bounding across the sandy grassland, twisting and twirling their strange weapons, occasionally slamming the round stone heads into the ground as they came leaping to attack.

The Torgun warriors were shocked and shaken at the sight of these strange creatures. Jaws sagged, faces paled, eyes bulged. Some cried out to Torval to save them. They were ready to attack when Aylaen shouted for them to halt.

“Stop the men! Don’t let them harm the giants!” she cried. “The Dragon Kahg says that there has been some mistake. The giants are the Hall’s guardians. Kahg’s going to talk to them—”

“Talk?” Skylan couldn’t believe he’d heard right. “They’re trying to kill us—”

One of the giants let loose his strange weapon, flinging it at the dragon. The rope with the two large stones attached at either end flew through the air and wrapped around the dragon’s neck. The stones whipped about, striking the Dragon Kahg in the head, the two blows so hard that Skylan could clearly hear the cracking of bone.