Dragon's Keep (22 page)

lake
. Tears stung my cheeks in the
sharp wind, remembering how we'd watched the yarrow moths fly upward and how
he'd picked
up a stone, calling,
"Come closer by the water and make a wish, my girl."

We flew all day until the sun was lost. In
twilight the water had
a way of mocking the
heavens, and both sea and sky seemed tossed
with stars. The moon rose full, which seemed fitting. Hadn't Marn
said
long ago that a vow made at the time of the full moon was three times binding?
I'd sworn and so had the dragon. Now we were three times bound to our vows and
all for the good. I'd won Niles Broderick's life. More, I'd won the lives of my
people. As long as I kept my promise to Lord Faul, guarded the pips, and kept
silence with my fellow men, all the folk of Wilde Island would be safe from
dragons.

What did it matter that my own life was over?
The vow would be my amends for the lives lost over me.
For
Mother's murders, Sir Kimball, and the slayers.

As we flew over Pendragon Castle, I begged Lord Faul to land
first near the tomb so I could pay my respects to Father.
I was sur
prised
when he granted me this, but I'd seen him sorrow over the
body of his lady, and death of a loved one was still
within his memory. There was a speck of kindness in him to let me go.

Torches burned about the Pendragon tomb to
light my father's way to Heaven. As we landed I spied lavender and wild roses
scattered on the ground. All who'd come to honor the king
had left their blossoms. I crossed myself and
took the stairs to the
lower vault.

Standing near the tunnel door, I wavered. I
could follow it to
the castle and leave
Faul in the graveyard. But I'd made a solemn
vow and what would happen
to Niles if I did escape?

I knelt to pray.

Candle glow lit the rubies on my cross and
spilled across my
father's raised stone casket, whereon his effigy was carved. In
such light his stone face seemed only to be dreaming. I'd seen
that look many times as a child when I'd worn out my father in
the walled garden. After playing my horse and trotting along the
narrow paths, he'd lie back in the shade to
sleep. His face looked
just so, as if he'd just jostled me from his back.
My
throat tight
ened.
Tears darkened the gray stone and the words of
Saint
Columba whispered in my mind.

Day of the king most
righteous,
The
day is nigh at hand,
The day of wrath and vengeance,
And darkness on the land.

Had I understood these lines when first I'd
read them with Kit? They sounded a knell through my hollow soul now, the echoes
still resounding till I heard the dragon's growl above.

Voices outside.
And one of them my mother's.
What would
Faul do to her if I escaped down
the tunnel?
Veritas Dei!
I had to
keep the vow!

I hobbled up the stairs. Just down the hill,
Mother passed the
lilac bushes, a line of
knights raising torches to light her way. She
was coming to pray for her
husband's soul. Seeing the dragon lying in wait beside the tomb, she stopped
and stepped back.

"Stand away!"
ordered Lord Faul. "Dismiss your knights. We
have business here with your daughter."

"Go!" ordered Mother. Her knights
obeyed and withdrew farther down the hill. They could see us but would not hear
oui speech. Niles was still unconscious. His head rolled about in the dragon's
claws. Mother saw me as I stepped out of the tomb.

"Rosalind!" she cried, rushing up
to hold me. I caught the
rose oil in her
hair that was always a part of her scent. At last she
pulled away, saw
my wet face, and took displeased acquaintance with my stinking gown and tousled
hair.

"Send no more knights to Dragon's
Keep," said Lord Faul. "Your daughter is mine, as you know from the
sign on her hand. I'll not kill the girl, but you must swear to keep all men
away."

"Do you think I'd
swear to that?" said Mother, brushing back
my tangled hair. "The princess is mine. I bore her."

"And you stole an
egg from my nest to quicken your womb!"

"That was Demetra. I didn't know when
she took it that it was—"

"Still you drank!" roared the
dragon.

Mother started. A strange silence fell around
the tomb until she found her strength again. Raising her chin, she said,
"Rosalind is going to marry Prince Henry. Nothing can stop the purpose
of a Pendragon queen.'"

Fire spilled over the
dragon's teeth like molten metal. "You
should
have thought of that before your people killed my mate.
The girl is mine by blood. This ransom is fair. It cannot be undone
any
more than the sun can be stopped from circling the earth."

"What do you say, Rosalind?" asked
Mother, touching my cheek. "I'll call my knights back, and we'll have this
creature's head!"

Lord Faul snatched me in his talons and
roared at Mother.

"Let my daughter speak," she
demanded. "Or have you put her under a spell?"

I was under a promise, not a spell, and the
wish to speak was great. But speech would endanger all. Only one thing could be
done. Peeling off my gloves, I tossed them at my mother's feet and held my hand
out, talon forward.

Mother screamed—a wail
full of such rage and power, it was
like
the sound Lord Faul had made when he saw the body of his lady on the sand.

How I wanted to tell her the gloves were a
flag of peace, that there would be no more deaths from the dragon's jaws. She
looked at me with condemnation and moaned, her eyes twisting the truth of what
I'd done to an evil purpose.

In that moment Mother's dreams of a Pendragon
queen sitting on the English throne were lost. The murders she'd committed,
useless; Father's death for Empress Matilda's cause, a waste.

She sobbed and fell on her knees. It seemed to
me then it would have been a kinder thing to plunge a knife into her heart
than to have tossed her my golden gloves.
This her
eyes told me,
even as her cries awoke Niles.

Faul dropped the knight on the grass with a
clatter, placed
me on his scaly back, and
took flight above the graveyard. I held
his neck as the knights below
rushed uphill to Mother.

We soared over field and orchard then above Pendragon Castle, wherein my childhood hid. The moat seemed nothing more than a strip of
dark ribbon as we flew over, and the walled garden looked no more than a broken
bowl. To the dark sky and my new life the dragon sped, his great wings pounding
the sky.

_Briar
Rose

_{A La
nguage Lesson}

IF
a girl were asked
which part of a plant she would be, would any choose
the root? Blindly clutching the dark earth,
never
seeing sun nor feeling wind? Toiling there to feed the stem
and flower
with never a thank-you from them? And who ^vould choose to be the thorn? Thorns
protect the plant from pluckers, but who gives honor to them? Nay, any girl
would choose to be the bud, opening to the sun, fragrant and beautiful, tickled
by bees and butterflies, and looked upon with love.

So like a rose, in my
first years, I'd been sought out and loved.
I
was the flower of Wilde Island: fair as the day, honored, cherished, admired,
and protected as any rose. But here on Dragon's Keep, I'd gone from Rose to
Briar, and since I could not speak my bitterness, I wept it into the bitter
milk each night as I stirred the pot. And each morning as the pips lapped up
the brew, they drank my salty tears.

It's well known that dragons cannot cry.
Tears put out their inner fire, and death follows soon after. So Lord Faul
tipped his head and watched me cry with some curiosity.

Spring gave way to summer, and I was at work
each dawn, pulling milkweed and thistle. I was glad enough Lord Faul was
molting, though he scratched himself endlessly. Hadn't his shed scales saved my
ankle? I used strips of hide to spare my hands
while in the field. Thistles still stabbed my fingers, but my palms
were
freed from blood blisters. The only part of my hands that did not suffer was my
talon. I wondered as I plucked the thorny stems if the she-dragon would have
been so enslaved to the thistle? Or did dragons have teats to suckle their
young as other creatures had? I could not ask Lord Faul this. I knew better
than to mention his lady. It had been three months since her death, yet I still
saw him leave the cave some nights when he thought all were asleep. Outside
he'd roar her name into the rushing
waterfall,
the fire from his jaws reflecting in the water like a giant
torch.

My body grew leaner as I toiled. My hips once
hinting to
ward the round were straight now
as barley stalks, and my breasts
small as crab apples. Indeed, no man
would have me now, and I
would have hid in
shame if my lover had come across the grassy
hill to see me in the
milkweed. It gave me some comfort to know that Kye had chosen war. He would not
come to rescue a sweet princess only to find a girl who looked the part of a
scarecrow whose maker had been stingy with the straw.

In the heat of the day I worked to please
Lord Faul but he
was never contented. If I
harvested too little he'd spew fire at me.
Once he set a fallen pine
alight. He had to stomp it out before it set the woods ablaze.

I feared his anger and piled the thistle
higher, learning to

work
with such speed that I managed to pick enough to give
myself a free hour before Faul returned. I used this secret hour to begin
carving a boat from the log he'd scorched. I'd once seen a boat carved from a
burnt log floating in Kaydon River, an odd ship, but water worthy. I'd use one
like it for my escape.

Day on day when my harvesting was done, I
used a sharp stone and hacked away at the charred wood, overturning the log
when done to hide the gouged side from Faul. The dragon would not harm me while
his pips were small, but I knew the time would come when my usefulness would be
over. I must have a way to leave the isle or die.

I was stirring the bitter milk late one
afternoon when Faul entered the lair and tossed six wriggling trout on the
sandy floor.

"This night the pips will feast on
fish," he said.

I was glad to hear it. Already at just four
months old all the
pips, except for little Ore, were the size of full-grown oxen. There
were
six trout on the floor. I had hopes I'd sup on one myself. But
I waited
by my cauldron. Lord Faul was not to be rushed.

"And for this prize," he said,
"they'll say the word in DragonTongue."

When he called the pips from their pit they
stumbled sleepily toward the fish. The dragon held out his claw and made them
sit. They knew many words already for Lord Faul spoke to them primarily in
DragonTongue, naming things in their everyday world and telling tales at night,
so that even I'd begun to under
stand it a
little. Still, some words were difficult even for the pips,
so Faul
would reward their efforts.

He held up a trout and made a strange noise,
"Auruggullittht!" The noise he made was like a strangled trumpet, a
goose with a knotted neck, a man shouting underwater.

"Auruggullitthhh," said Eetha, and
she was tossed her trout. Cooking the fish in her small fire, she tore the
flesh with her
talons, sniffed, then
tasted. Chawl snuffed over to his sister. Lord
Faul batted his rump and
he rolled across the floor. The lesson continued. Each pip, on saying the word,
was tossed a fish. Ore, the youngest and none too bright, was the last to sup.

The pips finished their feast, lapped tepid
bitter milk, fought halfheartedly, and tumbled into sleep.

Two fish still lay in
the sand. Their scales sparkled in the fire
light
as if they were swimming in the sun.

"Am I to eat?" I asked, hunger
having driven me to words.

"Speak and you shall sup," said
Lord Faul.

"Please may I have my meal?" I said
as sweetly as I could.

"Say the word," said Faul.

"Word?"

"In
DragonTongue."

"Surely
not!"

"You will be using our language with the
pips, so you must learn it, Briar."

"Aurug . . . ," I growled. My
stomach pitched. The only time I'd ever made a sister sound to this was when
Marn had my head over a bowl for me to retch. I tried again. "
Ruggullit. . ."
Spittle dribbled down my chin.

Hopeless.
My teeth and tongue were not made for such sounds and
I told Faul so. He pierced a trout with his talon and