Keeper of the Flame

First and always, my work is dedicated to my Mom, who I miss every single day. And to Dad, who I’ve gotten to know so much better in these past three years since losing the center of our mutual universe. It’s been tough finding my way, but I think (hope) I’m on the right track now.

And to the readers who make this all possible. I’ve gotten to know many of you through the various conferences and events I go to and you are the real reason I keep going and keep trying to tell my stories as best I can. You are my motivation and my dear, good friends. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

“You are no child of mine!” Her sire’s voice made her cringe toward the opening of the cave.

“Papa,” she pleaded, but he would not listen. He never listened. Not to her.

He only listened to his warriors and those with whom he plotted the downfall of some woman she didn’t know. She was too young to really understand, but she learned more each day, hiding her deformed body in the background.

“I should have put you down when I first saw your ugly face. Get out! Die in the snow for all I care. You should never have been born!”

He swiped at her, and in her fear, she scrambled too close to the cave’s edge. Tumbling downward in the cold night air, she cried out in terror, but no help came. She had a long way to fall.

She twisted, hoping to find something to grab onto. She tried everything she knew or had seen—unfurling wings that were too weak to support her. But they did slow her down.

The ground rushed up to meet her and she landed on four paws. Safe.

And scared. In a place she’d never seen. Walking on the ground.

She’d never been outside the cave before and everything down here was different. Dark, scary and cold… So cold.

She curled up in a corner out of the rain and cried herself to sleep.

What the hell was he doing there? Hugh had done a lot of crazy things in his life, in service to his family, country and kind, but this had to be one of the craziest. Creeping around in a land not his own was nothing new to him, but he’d never been spying in a land where he stood out so badly from the rest of the population.

A land where he couldn’t even shift to his dragon form if things got tough. Not even to stretch his wings. The thrice-damned gryphons saw to that. Everywhere he looked over the city of Alagarithia in the Doge of Helios’s domain, gryphons flew. In formation or in pairs, singly or in groups, they were everywhere.

He hadn’t been able to fly in over a month now, as he got the lay of this foreign land where gryphons dominated the sky. His brother had sent him here undercover as a result of a prophetic vision. The seer, Shanya, had had a vision and his brothers had sent him winging off to places dragon folk had never visited before. At least none of the dragons of Draconia.

To Nico’s credit, the Prince of Spies had checked with Drake and his Jinn network before sending Hugh on this mission. The famous musician known as Drake of the Five Lands had counted Helios as one of
his
lands when he’d been a travelling bard.

Jinn traded in Helios too. Not the few dragon shifters of the Black Dragon Clan, but other, extended clansmen. If Hugh ran into trouble, he’d look for help among the Jinn. Being a black dragon meant something among those people.

Among the natives, it could only mean trouble. At least until Hugh figured out if the gryphon army that ruled the skies was there to fend off dragons. One lone dragon against so many gryphons was terrible odds, and Hugh preferred not to try his luck with all those hawk-headed flying lions on patrol. So he remained firmly on two feet for the foreseeable future while in this strange land.

He would have preferred the straightforward approach, but Nico had convinced their older brother, Roland, the King of Draconia, to approach the Doge of Helios with caution. Nico had married into that den of spies, the Jinn Brotherhood, and become their de facto king, since his wife was their hereditary queen. Nico and Arikia—Riki for short—were more a ceremonial couple than actual rulers, but they held the respect of the elusive, canny and altogether too crafty Jinn.

Hugh had always felt like he was the odd man out. There was a long line of male heirs to the throne of Draconia, and Hugh was neither heir nor spare. He was just one of many. Third in line should the worst happen to Roland and Nico.

He’d never coveted his brother’s throne. Roland had risen to power early, after the brutal murder of their parents. Barely able to cope after the loss, Roland had been forced into leadership of both humans and dragons alike in their homeland of Draconia. Hugh knew it hadn’t been easy for him, but Roland had proven himself a good king, willing to put aside his own desires time and again for the benefit of his subjects, be they two-footed or winged.

Draconia prospered, even while her enemies plotted against the peace and stability of the land. Draconia had wealth in both people and resources. Few went hungry in such a rich land, and the freedom both people and dragons enjoyed was anathema to some of her neighbors. Neighbors who kept probing for weak spots along the borders and seeking ways to destroy her most fearsome protectors, the dragons and knights who defended the land.

Which was part of the reason Roland had sent Hugh here, to Helios, in secret. Shanya’s vision only provided the excuse. For too long, conflicting rumors had come to the royal court about Helios. Some claimed they were colluding in the plots against Draconia. But Drake himself had brought news from the Doge about possible threats against the royal family. Drake vouched for the Doge, but he wasn’t so sure about the advisors or those in other positions of power.

King Roland and his advisors didn’t know what to think. Helios had always seemed a very far-off place with which they had little contact except through diplomatic channels. Such contacts were always of the most benign variety—assurances of neutrality and overall peaceful intentions. But had such words hidden a snake in the grass? Was Helios secretly involved in the plots to destroy Draconia?

And most importantly, had the Doge of Helios orchestrated the deaths of the former king and queen of Draconia and aided in the kidnapping of the daughters of the House of Kent, only newly returned? If so, such treachery could not be ignored. It might well mean war.

At the very least, Hugh needed to discover if Helios was truly a friend or the worst of foes.

Winter rains in Alagarithia were truly awful. Hugh had been told they didn’t last long, but they persisted while the wind blew from the north, bringing bone-chilling rain and snow off the water. Lucia had remembered a great deal about the city in which she’d been born, even though she hadn’t lived there long. Hugh had spent an enjoyable dinner back in the Castle Lair in Draconia with Lucia and her husbands, the knights Kaden and Marcus and their dragon partners, Reynor and Linea. Lucia had told him all she knew about Alagarithia, though she’d been smuggled out of the city as a young girl when her family was slaughtered.

She remembered the rains, though. Hugh now understood why. Even gryphons stayed in their nests during the winter rains and the city hunkered down to endure the cold. Hugh wasn’t so lucky. He would have loved to build up the fire in his rented room and hide for the duration, but he had work to do. Shanya’s vision had been of cold rain from the north, so whatever was going to happen, it would be while the north wind blew and the weather of this normally temperate city was at its worst.

Hugh was as wet and miserable about it as anyone in Alagarithia, though he wasn’t quite as cold. Even in his human form, Hugh was a dragon. He carried that fire within, no matter what he looked like on the outside. It was something to be grateful for as he watched people huddling under doorways in tattered oilskins in the poorer parts of the city. He wore an oilskin coat as well, though his was in slightly better repair. His guise was that of a traveler and Hugh tried to look as plain as possible, neither prosperous nor poor. He adopted the guise of someone who was not an easy or fat mark for those who populated the less scrupulous parts of the city.

Drake, the famous bard and newly made knight, had given him pointers on blending in, though little could be done about Hugh’s larger-than-normal stature. Of all his brothers, Hugh was the tallest and broadest across the shoulders. In dragon form, he was the largest as well, though only by a foot or two when measured from tail to snout and wingtip to wingtip.

Hugh tried to slouch, but it was hard for someone as tall as he was to appear a more normal height. Still, he did his best, adopting the loose gait Drake had taught him and casting his shoulders downward. He did his best to look unremarkable, though truth to tell, most of the inhabitants of this lower-class part of Alagarithia were too caught up in their own semi-frozen misery to be looking at another fellow sufferer too closely.

Few walked on the slushy streets and even fewer in the back alleys that bordered the cliff face. Similar to Castleton—the city that had grown up around the base of the castle in which Hugh had been born—this city was built with a rock face on one side, the sea on the other. The cliff and the sea met, leaving only one front on which a potential enemy could mount a land-based attack.

The waterfront was well protected by Alagarithia’s famous fleet of ships and the gryphons took care of the cliffs. For it was in the caves that pockmarked the cliff face that most of the gryphons had built their nests. They flew from their lofty perches almost constantly. A trail of workers who cleaned their few belongings and did tasks their talons were not suited to walked up and down the small paths and stairs cut into the rock during daylight hours.

This wasn’t the safest place for Hugh to be hiding, but it was the most unexpected. The taverns in this part of the city catered to the working class and shady deals of all kinds were transacted in the back alleys every day. If there was information to be had, this was the place to learn it. Or so the Jinn had claimed.

The biting wind and icy rain pelted everything in almost horizontal slices, making most sensible folk stay indoors. It was the perfect opportunity for Hugh to scope out the Jinn trader Nico had arranged as an emergency contact. Hugh would not speak to the man this day, but he would learn the various approaches to his trading post and commit them to memory should it become necessary to seek his aid.

That task firmly in mind, Hugh used his slouched gait to cross the area around the Jinn trader’s colorful wagon a few times. He never got close enough to be seen by the occupant of the red and yellow conveyance that doubled as his shop wherever he put down stakes. Nobody stirred in the rain as it worsened and turned to true ice.

Sleet lashed him, but Hugh wasn’t cold. Not really. He wasn’t even really wet, except for the places the wind had whipped his coat away from his body from time to time.

He was about to head back to the inn, having learned all the pathways to and from the trader’s wagon when he became aware of eyes trained on him. Hugh didn’t flinch. He didn’t stop or deviate from his path. The eyes followed. The sensation of being watched increased as he walked along a darkened alley—the closest one to the cliff face he had yet traversed.

Hugh let his senses expand, opening his mouth slightly to taste the wind, but the eyes stayed cautiously upwind of him. He got the fleeting impression of an inhuman growl and then he heard the telltale pad of four feet. Not two.

Little feet. Taking little steps.

Someone’s pet? Hugh didn’t think so, though the size sounded about right—the intelligence behind the pattern of the little paws stalking him was unmistakable. Curiosity flavored its movements. Hugh’s dragon senses told him all this just from the sound of its paws hitting slushy ground.

A dainty sneeze sounded from around the corner just ahead of Hugh. The creature was running parallel to his path, watching him from the side alleys between the clustered buildings in this part of town.

Hugh made a decision and slowed his steps. Sure enough, a small furry head peeked around the corner to look at him. It drew back sharply when it saw him and he got the impression of wet fur and a forlorn look on a small cat’s face. At least, it looked like a cat from what he could see of it.

It had mottled gray fur and sad gray eyes. It looked like a cat, but the quick glimpse he’d gotten had not looked like any housecat he had ever seen. Hugh was familiar with domestic cats since every Lair had a few that hunted mice and kept the places free of vermin. It wasn’t uncommon for dragonettes to have a pet if they had no peers their own age to play with. Cats never seemed to be afraid or antagonistic to dragons. The same could not be said for most canines, unfortunately.