Dragons and Destiny (3 page)

Keeping as
quiet as a vuz, he probed his finger deeper and encountered the
unexpected; there were letters carved into the stone, regular
indentations, man-made.

Game forgotten,
he began to scrape away more of the weed and moss and feel for the
indentations. Why, there was the letter W and an H right next to
it.

He could hear
the others calling his name, searching for him, they were getting
closer. If he didn’t want them to find his hiding place and the
secret it contained he’d better get out fast.

He raised his
head, there was no one in sight and he scrambled out, flinching as
rough bits of the stone and stickleweed scraped at his arms and
legs. He would come back later, on his own. Niaill didn’t want to
share this discovery with anybody.

It took Niaill
a whole two days free-time to clear away the stickleweed and moss
from the letters and he gathered not a few scratches and bruises in
the process. What he did to his clothes brought his mother’s anger
down on him again, not that he cared. At last it was done and he
was able to trace out the letters with his fingers. He couldn’t see
them, there was barely room enough between the stone and the rock
face and the light wasn’t too good.

With eager
fingers he traced out each letter, spelling them out in his mind
and committing them to memory.

‘
If danger
dire dost thrive.

And north and
south fight to survive,

Look ye to the
west,

Where at our
behest,

As Mariya was
solemnly bidden,

Gtrathlin
evermore keep hidden,

Deep inside the
ground,

Answers may be
found.”

“
TS and
K’

Greatly
mystified, he pulled the stickleweed back over the letters. This
was his secret. He hugged himself with glee.

Over the next
few years Niaill thought over the riddle he had discovered and
tried to make sense of it. Who was Mariya? Who were TS and K? He
grew older and taller, too big to squeeze in behind the stone. At
fifteen he life-bonded with his Lind, Taraya, and became a Vada
Cadet. He thought back to the riddle on occasion and discussed it
with her but these occasions became ever more infrequent as he grew
into adulthood. By the time he was eighteen, he and Taraya had
become a vadeln-pair within a fighting Ryzck and he began to look
back at the great secret of his boyhood with nostalgic
indulgence.

Months, years
and decades passed.

He forgot about
the riddle. Taraya did not.

* * * * *

AL582 - The
Ammokko

It was dark; it
was black, it was space. It was large; it was huge; it was
gigantic. It carried with it an aura of threat and menace.

The colossal
ship turned and began the slow, ponderous journey towards its
destination.

* * * * *

AL590 -
Elliot

Paul,
Prince-Heir of the Kingdom of Murdoch ran on light feet towards the
Conclave Chamber at the Royal Palace at Fort.

He had a
son.

The Kingdom had
an Heir of the Bloodline.

Not that the
kingdom was in any crisis of inheritance. Only once before had the
direct bloodline failed and that had been over four hundred years
ago but there was safety in numbers and this baby was the eldest
legitimate, royal great-grandson of the King, through his eldest
son and his son after that.

The baby prince
would put to an end any ambitious ideas about future kingship from
the various ducal houses.

The Kingdom of
Murdoch had always been fraught with strife and discord. In Queen
Petra the First’s time her sons and relations had fought each other
for the crown and that fratricide had lasted over sixty years until
King Robert the First had ended it with his ascension in AL417,
deposing and executing his great-nephew in the process. Before this
there had been other civil wars, just as bloody.

The problem was
the junior princes. What to do with royal younger sons was a
perennial problem.

Paul’s brother
Xavier was betrothed to the Daughter-Heir of the Duke of South
Baker and on his marriage would become the Prince-Duke-Heir of that
Duchy and Prince-Duke in his own right on the death of his
father-in-law. With the marriage he would abdicate any succession
rights as had all the Prince-Dukes before him.

The King’s
second son was the present Prince-Duke of Brentwood with a seat on
Conclave and was technically no longer a Prince of the Bloodline.
He was a powerful man in his own right but that was not to say that
he would stay loyal to the bloodline, especially if the King was a
weak one, or if, horror of horrors, the heir was a female.

There had been
four Queens Regnant in Murdoch and all had experienced difficult
reigns. Three had married and their husbands had performed the real
governance of the country. Only one had ruled in her own right and
she had never married, in fact, tradition told that Queen Petra the
Second was more man than woman which probably explained a lot.

Royal and noble
marriages were what tied the Kingdom together, that and the threat
of the Larg on their borders, but the Larg had not attacked for
decades, since King Robert the Fourth had defeated them at the
Battle of the Ford in AL503.

Prince-Heir
Paul was not pondering these grave issues as he made his way down
the corridor to inform his father, grandfather and the rest of the
Conclave the wonderful news, he was a father. His heir was born and
he was sure that he would father many more. He was young and his
wife, Queen Susan, young and healthy.

He burst into
the Chamber and proclaimed the news in a loud and exultant
voice.

* * * * *

AL591 - Hilla,
Rilla and Zilla

It was with a
painful sense of accomplishment that an exhausted Zanda, wife of
Innkeeper Talan of the Little Rover Inn at Dunetown pushed her
fourth daughter into the world. As expected, twins again.

“Small, but
healthy,” smiled the midwife as she cleaned up the second infant
and placed her beside her sister in the big double cradle.

“I hope Talan
won’t be too disappointed.”

“Why should he
be?” asked the midwife with a fair touch of asperity, “I suppose
you’re going to tell me that he wanted another son.”

Zanda nodded
weakly and the midwife wondered again about the male desire for
sons. She had never understood it. In Argyll, daughters could
inherit as well as sons. She herself had produced no less than nine
children, all girls and her husband had been delighted with each
and every one. “Don’t you worry about it my dear,” she said as she
bent over her patient. “The afterbirth now and then we can get you
tidied up.” She wiped Zanda’s forehead with a blessedly cold
cloth.

But the pains
that began to rack Zanda’s exhausted body didn’t feel like the
pains that heralded the afterbirth. Zanda cried out with their
intensity.

“Not
afterbirth,” she managed to gasp through clenched teeth and the
midwife frowned as she bent closer. This was not Zanda’s first
labour. Ten years ago the twins Zak and Zala had arrived and two
years after that the singleton, Tala.

What the
midwife saw made her call out in a voice tinged with excited
disbelief for more cloths and towels. A third moist crown was
emerging into the dim light of the chamber.

“What is it?
What is happening?” demanded Zanda with a shrill scream of
anguished protest as her lower abdomen exploded with another great
rack of pain.

“Push,” ordered
the midwife, “number
three
is on its way. I know you’re
tired my dear but that’s the only way I know to end the pain.”

Zanda, with
supreme effort managed to obey and a third wailing infant skittered
out on to the birthing cloths.

“What is
it?”

“Another little
girl. Triplets my dear.”

Zanda sighed.
After all this, three little girls and it was unlikely that she
would quicken again. Zanda’s fortieth birthday was looming on the
horizon and the doctors had informed her that this pregnancy should
be her last. The midwife however looked triumphant. She had never
birthed triplets before.

“Your man
will
be pleased. First triplets born in the village within
living memory, maybe the first ever,” she exclaimed and was
rewarded with a wan smile. “You’ll see. It’ll be the talk of the
village and beyond for years to come.”

The midwife had
the right of it. Talan was delighted, at least at first. Not only
did he break open his best champagne to ‘wet the babies heads’, he
splashed out a small fortune to send the surprising news via the
Express to all their relatives, even those living as far away as
Vadath.

The three elder
children were even more excited than their father and fell over
themselves, their feet, their mother and their mother’s feet
helping her care for the babies.

The triplets
were not identical although at birth they had been almost so, each
with a shock of dusky blond hair and a smudge of a nose.

As the months
passed, Hilla, the eldest, grew the fastest and her hair darkened
to a deep red like that of her doting father. She was most like him
in character. Rilla, the middle triplet was as tall as Hilla though
slimmer in build and her hair darkened as to be almost black like
the twins Zak and Zala. Zilla, the youngest remained the smaller
and slightest of the three. Her hair remained blond. She was the
most like her mother.

* * * * *

AL595 -
Robain

Pirates had
been rampaging throughout the Great Eastern Sea for centuries and
despite the attempts of the Argyllian Navy the privateers and
slavers had thrived, enforcing tributes from a multitude of islands
in the Great Eastern Sea. Those unwilling to send tribute they
punished with death and slavery.

The
Relentless
was a privateer. She was the biggest, darkest,
most feared pirate slave-galley of them all.

The boy was
called Robain. He was fourteen years old. He had three sisters,
three brothers and was a part of a close and loving family headed
by an invalid father and the teachings of the Temple to the
contrary, run by his more than capable mother.

This was the
Island of Hallam, an island governed by the Priests of the Holy
Temple, an island of religious observance and compliance, similar
but stricter in observance than the religious areas in north
eastern Argyll.

With Robain,
hidden behind the large dugo bush was his youngest brother Liam,
the third son of the family and the one most at risk during the
dangerous day ahead. This was tribute day when the slavers were
coming to collect their dues.

Robain’s family
might be one of the wealthiest on Hallam but that would not excuse
them from the tribute.

The pirates had
been coming to Hallam every second summer for generations. In the
early years their visits had been violent and they had taken every
able bodied person they could get their hands on to sell in the
slave markets of the Kingdom of Murdoch. One year they had been met
by the High Priest with a proposition, that the islanders would
levy tribute in return for peace.

The cost of
this tribute was a heavy one but the High Priest had ordered that
it must be so, had written it down into the Book of Laws and thus
it had become a holy obligation. To disobey could mean
excommunication.

As well as
tribute of gold and coin, the pirate chief had demanded a certain
number of young people to be part of the tribute and the High
Priest had bowed his head in sorrow and acquiesced.

Robain’s
brother Liam had reached tribute age last winter.

It was not
unheard of for the pirates to demand more than their due either.
When Robain had been eight, they had taken four of his female
cousins in one fell swoop and this despite the feeble and muted
protests of the clergy.

It was Liam who
was to go this year and Robain’s father had decided that he would
not go.

His father,
realising the time was soon had ordered a night-watch be kept for
the incoming galley. Robain’s little brother Ansell had come
running back to the family farmhouse not a bell ago screaming that
the pirates had arrived, hence the flight of Robain and Liam to the
hollow inside the dugo bush.

Robain and Liam
were too frightened to say a word. The bush was not far from the
family farmhouse and was covered in the vicious thorny bushes. The
two boys sat deep within the hideout and listened with trepidation
for the sounds that would tell them that their hiding place had
been discovered.

At dawn next
day little Ansell arrived at the bushes to tell them that the
pirates were gone. He was crying.

Robain and
Liam’s father had not been the only one who had tried to stop his
children from being taken as tribute. No one on Hallam or any other
island would attempt to save their children again.

As usual the
Priests had handed over to the leader of the pirates the list of
the children who were of age. Of the seventeen on the list only
eight had appeared.

Through his
tears, Ansel told them that the Captain had been angry. He had
demanded that all the inhabitants of the island should be gathered
in the village square at noon bell and his men had made sure that
every last one of the islanders did, even old Granny Beaton who
could not walk and had been carried by her two nephews. When the
group of pirates had approached their farmhouse their mother had
told Ansell to flee and the little boy had done so, hiding in the
big water vat at the end of the stable-yard.