Master of Dragons (6 page)

He considered what
to do with the child. He could take her to the healers in the Abbey, but the
Abbey was a long way off and he was too tired to walk such a distance. Besides,
the Houses of the Healers would be filled to overflowing. His own home was
nearby. He would take the child there first, make her comfortable, and let his
wife examine her injuries. Then together, he and Rosa could decide what to do
with her.

Anton’s home was
larger than the single-room dwellings generally found in Dragonkeep. This was
not because he was wealthier than the rest of the people. There were no such
distinctions in the city of the dragon. Dwelling places were doled out by the
Blessed based on certain considerations—number of inhabitants in the home, the
type of work done by the inhabitants, etc. Rosa had her loom at home and Anton’s
smithy shop was attached to the dwelling, so the dwelling had to be large
enough to accommodate tools and equipment for both of them.

Anton opened the
door, which was never locked, with his shoulder and backed inside the house,
taking care not to hit the girl’s head on the door frame. Rosa was slumped over
the dinner table, having her cry.

“Give me a hand
here, Wife,” he said, closing the door with his foot as he indicated the child
in his arms. “She’s hurt bad, I think, but she’s alive.”

Rosa lifted her
tear-stained face. She was in her mid-fifties, with the deft, callused hands of
one who has been sitting at the loom most of her life. Slender and small-boned,
she barely came to her husband’s chest. Anton was not very tall, but he was
big-shouldered and massive, with powerful arms and legs. Rosa had a way of
tilting her head to one side whenever she was considering anything, and Anton
had a lumbering good nature about him, so that their friends nicknamed them affectionately
Bird and Bear. Her amazed stare gave way to motherly compassion.

“Lay her on our
Magda’s bed,” Rosa told her husband. “Then go fetch more water.”

She had questions,
Anton could see that, but she would not ask them until the child was warm and made
comfortable. When he returned from the well, he found the girl tucked in bed,
her face washed clean of blood and dirt, and a wet cloth on her forehead.

“How is she?” he
asked anxiously, pouring the water into the kettle and then stirring up the
fire beneath it.

“She’ll do for the
time being,” Rosa answered cautiously. “Once I cleaned the wound, I found that
it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. She’s lost a lot of blood, though.”

“Will she come
around?”

“One never knows
with a head wound, but I think she should be fine. Her sleep seems to be a
healing one, not the bad sort from which you never wake.”

Anton went to look
at the girl. He regarded her thoughtfully, as Rosa waited for the water to heat
so she could continue cleaning and dressing the wound. The girl had long black
hair that straggled, unkempt and uncombed, over her shoulders. She lay quite
still, did not groan or toss or twitch. She did, indeed, appear to be
slumbering peacefully. Anton shook his head and his frown deepened.

“Where did you
find her, Husband? Where are her parents? Not . . . dead?” Rosa asked, suddenly
fearful.

“She was alone in
an abandoned building,” said Anton, seating himself with a sigh at the table.
He rubbed his shoulders and stretched his aching back muscles. “No sign that anyone
else lived there. The building was close to what must have been the heart of
the blast.”

“Truly?” Rosa was
amazed. She glanced back the child. “She is lucky to have escaped with such
minor wounds.”

“Lucky,” Anton
repeated with meaningful emphasis. “I think it was more than luck.”

“What do you mean?”

“She lay in the
middle of a heap of debris. Heavy beams fell around her. None fell on top of
her.”

“You think she is
one of the Blessed, then?” Rosa asked gravely.

“That would
explain it. She used her magic to shield herself. She must be quite powerful.”

“One of the
Blessed.” Rose reached down to caress the child’s hand. “In an abandoned house
all by herself . . .” She sighed deeply. “A runaway.”

“I think so. So
what do we do? By law, we’re supposed to turn her over to the monks.”

“Not until she is
well,” said Rosa firmly. “And not until we’ve had a chance to hear her story
and talk to her. We’ll tell her about our Magda, how happy she is. We’ll show
her some of Magda’s letters from the palace.”

“But do you think
you can talk her into going back to the sisterhood?”

“Of course,” Rosa
said briskly. “The child’s just confused, that’s all. Girls at that age don’t
know their own minds. Our Magda wanted to be a blacksmith, like you, when she
was twelve. Remember? What a time we had convincing her that such was not her
calling!”

Anton smiled at
the memory. Ten years had passed since his dearly loved daughter had left home
at age twenty. She was one of the Blessed, unusually strong in the
dragon-magic, and chosen by the dragon to live in the palace beneath the
mountain. They had not seen Magda in all that time, but they still heard from
her. Twice a year, she sent them a letter telling them that she was well and
happy in her service to the dragon and describing the riches and wonders of
palace life.

Being a servant of
the dragon was a great honor, to be sure, but Anton often envied the men his
age who had ordinary daughters, who bore ordinary grandchildren.

“If we can
convince this girl to go back on her own, the holy sisters won’t be hard on
her,” Rosa was saying. “Not like the monks.”

“Keep your voice
down.” Anton rose stiffly to his feet and went over to peer out the window.

Although night had
fallen, a few of their neighbors were still standing in the street, discussing
the explosion in animated tones. No one else was around. Satisfied that they
had not been overheard speaking in disparaging terms about the Blessed, Anton
returned to the table.

Rosa poured hot
water from the kettle to a bowl and carried it over to the child. She cleaned
out the wound and then combed the long dark hair and plaited it in two tight,
neat braids. The child continued to sleep.

Anton cut up bread
and meat for their supper and washed it down with ale.

“You look worn
out,” he said to his wife. “Why don’t you go to your bed? I’ll sit up with the
girl.”

“I was tired, but
I’ve got my second wind.” Rosa smiled at him. “You’re the one who looks dead on
his feet.”

Anton glanced at
the open window, lowered his voice. “What have you heard about how it happened?”

“ ‘Magic gone
awry,’ the Blessed are saying. If so, that’s not all that went awry,” Rosa said
softly. “Dimitri the Butcher was helping me with the wounded.” She paled. “Some
of them . . . some of the limbs were crushed and could not be saved. He brought
his big knife—” She swallowed and put her hand to her mouth.

Anton fetched her
a mug of ale and, after a gulp, she was able to go on. “Dimitri has a shop on
Gate Street and before he left, he saw a battle between the monks and one of
their own. This monk was crazed, seemingly. He used his magic to topple a
building near the wall. This all happened right after the explosion. What is
even stranger is that this monk had a young woman with him, apparently helping
him! The Blessed are not talking about
that,
mind you.”

“Do they think
this lunatic caused the explosion that brought down the other buildings?”

“That’s what
everyone is saying, and the Blessed are not denying it.”

“I trust they
caught him.”

“That is the truly
strange part.” Rosa dropped her voice to little more than a whisper. “The
crazed monk was not so crazed but that he found the Hidden Gate and escaped!
And the girl with him! Dimitri saw it with his own two eyes.”

Anton frowned and
shook his head. “That’s impossible. The dragon would never permit it.”

“I thought so,
too. But then something else happened. While Dimitri was talking to me, the
monks came for him.”

Anton glanced at
her sharply.

Rosa gave a nod
and emphasized the nod with a jab of her finger. “I saw that with
my
own
two eyes, Husband. The Blessed told Dimitri they had work for him to do, but
what work could have been more important than what we were already
doing—helping the injured? I think they took him away because they didn’t like
what he was saying—”

“Where am I?” came
a voice.

Rosa and Anton
both jumped. Rising from the table, they hastened to the back part of the
house. The girl was sitting up in the bed.

“You are in our
home, child,” said Rosa, her voice softening. “I am Rosa and this is Anton.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and rested her hand on the girl’s forehead.
“How do you feel?”

“My head hurts,”
the girl replied. She had a grave and solemn face; large, dark eyes that were
clear and bright and bold. She was not shy around strangers, seemingly.

“What is your name,
child?”

“Dracon—” the girl
began, then stopped.

“Drake?” Rosa
questioned, not certain she’d heard right.

“Draca,” the girl
corrected. “With an ‘a.’ I was named for my father. His name was ‘Drake.’ My
parents were devoted to the dragon,” she added, seeming to feel the need for
explanation.

Anton and Rosa
exchanged glances.

“Where are your
parents, Draca?” Rosa asked. “They must be worried about you. Anton will run
fetch them and bring them here.”

“My parents are
both dead,” Draca said in matter-of-fact tones. “They died when I was little.”

“The Abbey
orphanage then. The holy sisters—”

At this, the girl
threw off the blanket and started to climb out of bed. “You’ve been very kind.
I don’t want to be any trouble. I’ll be going—”

She went very pale
and her eyelids fluttered. Swaying on her feet, she put her hand to her head. “I
feel sick.”

“Lie down, Draca,”
Rosa insisted, alarmed. She rested her hands on the girl’s shoulders and eased
her, unresisting, back on to the bed. “I know you’re afraid, but we won’t tell
anyone you are here. We promise. Don’t we, Anton?”

He nodded, to
assure her.

“We understand,
you see,” Rosa added, smoothing back the hair from the girl’s face.

The girl regarded
them both with a suspicious, wary expression, her eyes darting from one to the
other. “What do you understand?”

“We know—or
guess—what you are.”

“You do?” Draca
was astonished.

“That you are a
runaway,” said Rosa gently. “We won’t make you go back. Not until you’re ready.”

“Runaway,” Draca
repeated. She sighed and sank down into the pillow. “My head hurts . . . Can
you tell me what happened? I don’t remember.”

“Memory loss is
not unusual with a head wound,” Rosa said softly, to her husband. “Tell her
what you found.”

“There was an
explosion. You were lying in the wreckage of an abandoned house,” Anton
explained. “The whole building had collapsed—the roof, the walls, everything.
You should have been killed. But you weren’t. You just got a bump on the head.
When the beams fell down, they fell around you. Not on top of you.”

Draca stared at
him, unblinking. “That was lucky.”

“More than luck.”
Anton smiled. “You used your magic to shield yourself from death. The ‘blood
bane.’ “

“We know about the
‘blood bane,’ “ Rosa added. “Our daughter was one of the Blessed. She was quite
strong in it.” Her voice softened. “And we know that sometimes it can be hard
for young girls to deal with such power. We know that sometimes they run away—”

Draca lowered her
gaze in confusion. Her hands plucked nervously at the blanket. “Please! Don’t
tell the monks—”

“We won’t, dear,
we won’t. Now lie back and rest.”

Draca nestled down
among the blankets. She closed her eyes, and was soon breathing deeply and
evenly.

The two stood
gazing down on her.

“It’s good to have
a young one to care for again,” said Rosa with a tremulous smile. She reached
out to take hold of her husband’s hand.

“We can’t keep her
indefinitely,” Anton said, drawing his wife near. “Someone will be sure to find
out, and then the monks will be coming for us.”

“I know,” Rosa
said with a sigh. “Just a day or two. That’s all. No one will miss her in the
confusion.”

“Now you should go
to bed,” said her husband.

“Not yet.” Rosa
pulled the stool on which she sat when she was weaving over to the side of the
bed. “I’ll stay up with her a bit. She might wake again and be frightened.”

Her husband kissed
her on the top of her head. “You’re a good woman, Wife.”

Rosa smiled,
pleased. She drew the blanket around the girl’s thin shoulders and tucked it
in. Taking up some mending, she rested her back against the wall and began to
hum a lullaby she had sung for their daughter.

Lulla, lulla,
lulla, lullaby.

My sweet little
baby, what meanest thou to cry?

Lying in their bed,
Anton realized he had not heard his wife sing in a long, long time. His eyes
filled with tears.

WHEN GRALD ARRIVED
AT THE ABBEY, VEN WAS CONSCIOUS AND alert, though he pretended not to be. He
lay in bed with his eyes closed, stirring only when he heard his father’s rough
voice.

“How are you
feeling, Dragon’s Son?” Grald asked.

Ven did not answer
immediately. Opening his eyes, he stared around the room, as though disoriented
and confused. At last, he shifted his gaze to Grald, to the dragon, his father.

“Well enough.” Ven
made an effort to pull himself to a sitting position.

“Do not move,
Dragon’s Son,” one of the monks warned, and laid a restraining hand on Ven’s
shoulder.

Ven flashed the
monk a look, and the man hastily drew back his hand.