Dragonheart (14 page)

He pushed back the robe with his blade, exposing his scar. It had thickened and hardened—a fat, ugly knot.

“I owe you,” he whispered with a smile. He caressed her cheek with the dagger blade, sliding it gently down her throat, between breasts, over her jerking heart. “I remember now . . . everything . . .”

Fifteen

LOVE AND HATE

“Those others I killed because I wanted to kill him.”

The heat had finally broken. But Kara did not feel the night air’s chill, even though she wore only a thin linen shift. Lying among the rumpled coverlets of the bed, she felt nothing . . . only a numb emptiness. The unspilled tears in her eyes glistened in the brazier glow.

“You weep?” Einon drunkenly asked, throwing his jerkin over his pale torso. It did not quite cover the scar on his chest. He lurched up off the bed and weaved to the night table to refill his wine cup. “You could be on the battlements as buzzard bait rather than in the royal bed. Rebels must learn to love their king.”

As her first tear fell he sneered in amused contempt and downed his wine. Through the blur of the tears that followed, Kara spied Einon’s discarded belt on the floor.

And her dagger tucked into it.

The dagger plunged down. But it struck no sparks against the flint. The dragon watched in amusement as Bowen scraped the knife rapidly up and down the flint. But the tinder stubbornly refused to ignite. The head of the plucked bird skewered on a spit hung limply down, its beak half-open, as though it were laughing at the knight’s efforts. The dragon’s sudden snort of flame sent Bowen leaping back . . . and the campfire was suddenly ablaze. So was the bird.

“Hope you like it well-done,” said the dragon, wiping the black rings from his nostrils with a sniff. Bowen nodded a doubtful thanks and jerked the spit from the fire. He beat the flames off the bird and began to eat in silence. He had maintained a brooding silence ever since their conversation after the lake business. The dragon wondered if he had pricked the knight’s latent conscience too soon. Perhaps he was reconsidering this alliance. The dragon cast a worried glance at the talon-adorned shield, its grim trophies glinting in the fireglow. He noticed that the knight was watching him.

“Did you hate us so much?” the dragon asked.

“I hated one of you.” Bowen tapped the broken talon in the center. “This one here. These others I killed because I wanted to kill
him.
But I never found him. Never shall. If you are the last, he must be dead.”

“Yes . . . What was he like? This dragon you hated.”

“He had a hide that shimmered like yours. Only all over.”

“It fades with time—and cares—”

“And he had only half a heart. But even one half held enough evil to pollute an innocent.”

The dragon forgot himself and rose up hotly. “Einon was no innocent. He polluted the heart!”

Now Bowen rose and stared wildly at the dragon. “So you know the story, dragon?”

“All dragons know it!” retorted the dragon defensively, hoping he had not revealed too much. “What was to be their hope became their doom. A spoiled, ungrateful child was given a great gift and destroyed it.”

He watched his words cut through Bowen, prodding into life a suspicion he had never wanted to confront.

“No!” Bowen vied, shivering, as though trying to shake off the doubts that had seized him. “I knew that boy. Taught him. Taught him the ways of honor and right. The Old Code.”

“Then he betrayed you, even as he betrayed the dragon whose heart he broke!”

“That’s a lie, dragon!” Bowen shouted, refusing to listen.

“Stop calling me dragon! I have a name!” the dragon shouted back.

“What is it, then, dragon?” Bowen shouted even louder.

This time the dragon didn’t shout back. Awkward silence deflated the tension. The dragon shrugged sheepishly. “Well . . . uh . . . you couldn’t possibly pronounce it in your tongue.”

Bowen turned away in exasperated disgust, flinging the rest of his bird into the fire. As he did so the dragon suddenly felt the searing pain slash through his shoulder and the red glow pulsate from under the skin.

“Arr . . . er . . . awrrr . . . owshh,” howled the dragon, clutching his throbbing, glowing shoulder.

“You’re right. I couldn’t possibly pronounce that,” Bowen said. The dragon saw the knight turn around with the sudden realization that he wasn’t receiving a language lesson. This language was universal—pain! The dragon fell, grimacing to the ground.

Sixteen

EINON’S HEART

“And you do not realize you are the only one.”

Einon’s wine cup rolled across the floor, the wine seeping over the stones like blood. It had fallen from his hand as he slumped against the wall, the dagger buried hilt-deep in his left shoulder.

“A love dart from Cupid, Einon!” Kara glared tauntingly at him from the bed, waiting for him to follow the wine cup to the floor.

But Einon didn’t fall. He shook the startled glaze from his eyes and steadied himself, wrenching the blade from his jerkin sleeve. He flung the jerkin off and examined the wound. Kara gasped. A thin line of blood trickled from his shoulder, but the wound was surprisingly slight.

“No . . .” she whispered in disbelieving despair. How many chances would she get to kill this man and how many times would she fail? Even when she struck a blow, he seemed impervious to it. Her father had taught her how to handle a blade; this thrust had gone deep, she had felt it sink into his flesh, just as she had that night on the battlefield years ago. Einon laughed at her bewilderment, wiping at the blood and sucking it from his finger.

“Not as deep nor as deadly as you thought?” he mocked, lurching toward her. “Next time stab more flesh, less cloth.”

“Next time I’ll pierce your heart!” She raised a fist to strike him, but he grabbed her arm and threw her back on the bed, straddling her.

“You already pierced my heart, sweet”—Einon leered, hovering over her heaving body—“in more ways than one. A very special heart. Like no other.”

He pressed her hand against the knotted scar on his chest.

She yanked it back with a shudder, spitting, “A black withered thing devoid of pity!”

At Kara’s insult Einon brought the bloody knife to her throat. But as he gazed at the lovely face, twisted with hatred for him, he suddenly grew calm and gently wiped the knife along her cheek. Kara felt the smear of the warm, sticky blood from the blade upon her flesh. But it was not that which made her shudder. It was the pathetic, perverse look of pain in Einon’s eyes.

“Then teach me pity,” he almost whispered. “Pity me. Everything . . . I would give you everything. Even power. You are so . . . beautiful.”

Still pressing the knife against her cheek, he kissed her reluctant lips in awkward tenderness. Kara squirmed at the taste of him and bit his lip. He yanked her back by her red hair and, laughing, kissed her again, this time with crude rough passion, then shoved her to the bed and staggered up.

“Everything . . .” He smiled, breathing heavily, eyes flashing. “Even power . . . even a throne . . .”

But Kara did not hear his wooing promises. She was staring at the wound in his shoulder.
It was almost entirely healed!
As though she had only scratched him! Einon stuck the knife into the bedpost and reeled drunkenly from the room.

Kara twisted the dagger from the post and turned the blade on herself. But unable to plunge it upward, she flung it away. It slid across the floor with a whining screech that matched her own. Fighting back fresh tears, Kara clawed at her own flesh, scraping down the curves of her body as though trying to tear Einon’s foul touch from her. In thwarted fury, she ripped the covers from the bed of her despair, then collapsed upon it, the tears coming in a torrent.

“It is a poor kind of love . . . but more than he has ever shown before.”

Kara jerked up at the strange, melancholy voice, searching for the intruder on her private grief. Aislinn, the queen, emerged from the shadows.

“Am I to seek solace in that?” Kara hotly asked the melancholy-eyed woman.

“No . . .” Aislinn stooped down and picked the bloody dagger off the floor, inspecting it curiously.

“How did you come here?” Kara demanded.

“I have my ways.”

“Why did you come?”

“To help.”

Kara laughed bitterly. “I need no help from her who bore the beast.”

A slight flinch penetrated, but did not betray, the woman’s eerie calm. Though worn and pale, her face was still beautiful and bespoke an even greater beauty once upon a time.

“I bore a child . . .” Aislinn spoke softly. “An innocent child. Was it his fault that he was the bitter fruit of a seed sown without love?”

Kara was unmoved. “I would have smothered such a child in his crib!”

“You say so now,” Aislinn told her. “I thought so once. But when you hold it in your arms, you do not see the monster it can become . . . Only a small something that is a part of you, crying for your nourishment, frail and helpless. And you do not realize you are the helpless one.” Sudden bitterness shattered the queen’s serenity. “How could I mother him when I was less than human? Merely a bit of plunder. A creature of submission. Allowed no pleasure. No feelings. No voice. How could he hear me? What was left for him but his father’s taint?”

Trembling with emotion, Aislinn tried to regain her regal composure.

“Is this the help you offer?” Kara sneered. “To foretell my future in your past? Give me the dagger again. Let me kill myself before I am accomplice to this vile legacy.”

“Why wish for death, when there is freedom?” The queen’s voice was steady and calm once more.

“How?” came Kara’s hushed question.

Going to the fireplace, Aislinn pressed a carved gargoyle decorating the mantel stone. The hearth slid back with a rumbling groan, revealing a secret staircase.

“I told you. I have my ways.”

The staircase led down to an old Roman cistern. Aislinn ushered Kara over the stone path that ran along the circumference of the walls. Kara saw the door on the other side and started to open it, but the queen stopped her. Sliding open the small hatch in the door, she gestured for Kara to peek through. It led to the courtyard beyond, where two of Einon’s guards patrolled.

Aislinn pointed to a set of stairs that led down to an iron gate, just above the water’s surface. Kara nodded and headed down them. At the gate, she stopped.

“Thank you . . .” Kara turned back, but Aislinn had already disappeared into the shadows.

Seventeen

DRACO

“An old complaint that acts up now and again.”

“Dogs! Fools!” Einon’s insults drowned out the cry of the dying guard who clutched at his chest, reeling unevenly as he tried to kneel before the enraged king. Einon put a boot to him and kicked him down atop his comrade, who had preceded him in death and lay on the stone floor in a puddle of oozing blood.

“If you can’t guard a simple girl, then go guard shades in hell!” Einon screeched, jabbing his crimson-stained sword at the guard. But the guard did not hear him. He was dead.

Aislinn watched in stony silence as Brok nervously tried to calm her son’s wrath. “They were good men, milord.”

Wild with fury, spittle flecking his lips, Einon spun on Brok, his blood-tipped blade at the startled knight’s throat. “You dare to question your king?”

“No, sire . . .” Brok answered cautiously, and pointed to the secret stairs beneath the open hearthstone. “But how could they have known of that?”

“More importantly, how could the wench know about it?” Einon’s dark gaze shifted to his mother. He slowly withdrew the blade off Brok’s neck and issued a command. “Get my best men.”

Brok bowed and left the room. Aislinn heard his grunt of relief as he passed her. But her eyes never left Einon. She coolly returned his suspicious stare.

“I’ll send someone to clean up this mess.” The queen turned and exited, sidestepping the corpses on her way out.

The dragon woke to find the pain gone and the knight dozing in the curve of his curled-up body, huddled against his scaly haunch. He must be cold, thought the dragon. Bowen had taken the horse blanket he usually wrapped himself in at night, wet it in the cool creek, and placed it on the dragon’s shoulder. The wound was still glowing hot when Bowen had first put the blanket on, and steam had puffed off it with a sizzling hiss. But the cool cloth had been comforting and soothed the pain.

Later Bowen had brought him water to drink in his shield and resoaked the blanket several times when the heat of the wound had dried it out. He had stayed by the dragon, guarding him while he rested, asking what he could do to help. There was, of course, nothing else to be done. But he had asked nonetheless.

He watched the knight’s head slump forward on his chest and his eyes pop open as he jerked it back upright. So tired he seemed as he rose to inspect the wound, gently pulling off the blanket and placing a hand on the shoulder, where the red glow had faded to nothingness.

“Go back to sleep. It’s passed now,” the dragon reassured him. Bowen turned, surprised to see him awake.

“I wasn’t asleep. I was just resting my eyes for a moment.” Bowen self-consciously folded up his blanket. “What happened? What was it?” he asked, and the dragon thought he detected genuine concern in his tone. Of course, there was no way to tell the knight what had happened. Not yet. Not now.

“A . . . an old complaint that acts up now and again,” the dragon vaguely hedged.

“Forgive me if I upset you . . . if anything I said . . .”

“Oh, let’s not stir all that up again.”

“No . . . best not.”

“It wasn’t that . . .” The dragon would not have the knight think himself responsible for the attack. “It wasn’t you . . . not you . . .”

He wasn’t sure Bowen believed him.

“You’ll be all right?” the knight asked solicitously.

The dragon nodded. “Have you been watching over me all night?”

“I’ve . . . I’ve . . . been up thinking . . .” Bowen stammered, too embarrassed to admit that he had, indeed, been watching over his companion.