The Dragons' Chosen (5 page)

“It’s not a tarot card. At least not any that I know.” She frowned, re-examining the card. “But I think it must represent you in some way.”

I looked at the card closely. A narrow interlace border marked its edges, rubbed so by hands over the years, so the design was now barely raised. The center was clear—a girl wearing a crown sat erect on a throne high in the sky, pillowed by clouds. A border of five stylized birds, or maybe they were swords suspended in midair, encircled her. I shuddered.

Underneath three couplets were written:

Across the seas of land and life
Across the sands of mind and strife;

Beyond the mountains of my fears
Beyond the valleys, white with tears;

Back and fro between these stand
The journey to a distant land.

When I could again speak, I asked, “You are not a seer, then?”

She shrugged again. “Like I said, I’m a Berkeley student.” She looked around and bit her lip. “In California. You know, America.” At my increasingly confused look, she added with a nervous glance around, “In nineteen-seventy-four.” She chewed on a tattered fingernail. In the intervening silence, I tried to think of any principality with the unlikely name of Berkeley.

“What is your king’s name?”

“There are no kings in America. We’re a democracy.”

I looked at her in disbelief, but then I reflected on her clothes, her posture, everything about her. Truly, there was no place in my world where such a woman could exist.

“I’m a freshman, first year. I’m majoring in Anthro and Women’s Studies.”

We stared at each other for a span. I attempted a translation. “A finishing school for women with deportment and tatting?” It didn’t make sense. A peasant like her wouldn’t need that.

She frowned. “No, of course not. Berkeley’s a university—you must have those. I’m studying the history of women. Their contributions to our world, the cultural manifestations of being the second sex.” She looked at me to see if I was following, which I wasn’t. “And not just women there; Berkeley is co-ed. My dorm is even co-ed, both men and women.” She added this as if clarifying.

Neither of us spoke.

I think each of us was trying to decipher the other. I knew I was. She couldn’t have meant what I heard her say. Surely men and women of her age didn’t study together.

When next she spoke, it was so low I almost didn’t hear.

“How much time is left?”

“Time?”

“Before you leave.” She stared directly at me.

I looked down at my lace sleeves, making a conscious effort not to fiddle with them. “Less than a fortnight before I set forth, just under twelve days, and then one month’s time to arrive at the place designated by the dragons. I have to be there by my birthday on the sixteenth of October. Time seems to move with increasing speed since this has happened,” I admitted in a shaky voice.

“You’re truly planning on going, aren’t you?” Her voice was incredulous.

“Yes,” I answered, proud that my voice didn’t quaver.

Chris’s voice rose. “This is beyond stupid. It’s medieval.” She shook her head as if something she said caught her attention. “You don’t need to go. There are lots of other options: you can petition your rulers, your religious leaders, your people. Anything but serve yourself up as a before dinner canapé to a dragon.”

“This is my kingdom. I have no choice.”

She raised her arms over her head and let them fall into her lap. “You always have a choice,” she shouted.

I cocked my head at that. It was true in an absolute sense, but for me there was no honorable alternative. I tried to smile but I don’t think I expressed it fully. “Yes, and this is mine.”

Chapter 6

The week before I was to leave, I sat for my portrait in a gown of royal blue with my hair pulled up into a high tower of braids. Around my neck hung the gold token, lest there be doubt that I was our kingdom’s sacrifice. Eight copies of the portrait were destined for other castles’ remote galleries.

My mother sat across from me as the painter did his task, her face frozen into a mask of pain. Nothing I could say would ease her. She offered to go in my place, to refuse the dragons, or to hide me in exile. So many solutions that couldn’t be. I could not betray my honor and, in her heart, my mother knew that.

---

Too soon, much too soon, my last day arrived. The clatter of activity swirled about me. Father stared steely-eyed just above the heads of his men, barking instructions to a thick-mustachioed man on a roan horse. My siblings were dressed in their royal best, manners polished and shined for the sending off. Danielle’s face, splotched from tears, made her freckles stand out. I, personally, had checked Harold and Bartholomew for hidden creatures—mice, frogs or crickets—before we left the palace. My final undertaking as their elder sister. Harold was still insisting that I call him Sir Harold, the Dragon Slayer. So much so that he begged to dress in armor for my going, but Father spoke to him so harshly that he left off, disappearing in the keep of the castle before I could say goodbye. Bartholomew clung to my side, not truly understanding what was to happen, but knowledgeable in the way small children are of unstated distress.

In the midst of all this chaos, I kept my emotions tightly bound, allowing none of my inner turbulence to cross my countenance. Every piece of me was groomed as if for a coronation. My hair was tightly bound and coiled; my riding dress, a cream velvet with pale green insets in the sleeves. There were no tear streaks on my face. I would not have it said that I left distraught and broken.

Mother refused to come, saying she could not watch me ride off to my death. She had held me tightly before I left her rooms, repeating that she would help me escape. Pleading with me that even now at the eleventh hour, it was not too late.

But it was. The play was written and sealed with the message that had arrived the month before. Though resigned to this journey, I had not spent the last two weeks exclusively in self-pity. Every waking moment was spent planning and analyzing any possible preparation that I could set in action to survive this.

Chris had disappeared once again in the Goddess’s maze, when a large calico cat, yowling at the top of her lungs, skittered across our path. The cat was probably just in heat but Chris had blinked out of sight. She hadn’t returned, not that I expected her to. Still, she had given me hope. Some of the theories Chris suggested that day sounded plausible. Unlikely perhaps, but plausible. Did I truly know what awaited me at the end? Not really; or at least I was willing to fool myself into that self-deception.

Three of the men loaded the chair I had requested onto a cart. I swore that I would meet my end sitting regally as befitted a princess, not tethered and helpless as I imagined my predecessors. Perhaps, for all my plans, I would find the same fate waiting for me, but bringing a seat of power did give me a sense of control and kept me from throwing myself from the castle walls.

To add to the spectacle, a squealing and unhappy pig was tied behind, though I rued the image it might carry to passersby.

The pig—well, that was based on one of Chris’s outlandish theories. While she was gone, perhaps never to return, I found myself clinging to her suggestions as if to a lifeline.

A small hunting knife I also brought, eight inches long, hilt to point, the bone handle cunningly carved. The bard, Trill, handed it to me as he and his musicians departed late one night. He bowed before me, pressing the gift into my hand, saying cryptically, “Despair not, Your Highness. Sometimes it’s dark because it’s night, and sometimes because your eyes are closed.”

Then he left, with a hastily muttered goodbye and a kiss to my hand that lingered a touch long. Another time I might have blushed, but now I could hardly rouse myself to express my thanks for yet another platitude. After he passed, only a faint scent of spice remained.

The last look in his eyes was one of guilt; the same emotion I saw in the eyes of my ladies, my parents and everyone around me. How could they not feel guilt, sending their princess off as a sacrifice? I understood and knew it had to be.

Lastly, I packed the book—the one that spoke of the fourteen princesses—as a talisman, a connection to them, however remote.

Father assembled ten men-at-arms for the journey, four weeks of riding through some of the kingdom’s most impenetrable country. Places with names I had only heard spoken in fables and songs: the great river Daine that spilt out across the Lorne Valley, the hills of Perpinan, the fens, the Fandrite Mountains and there, the Crystal Caverns where the dragons waited.

I brushed my hands down my riding habit, feeling the bumps of the green braid under my fingers. An adventure, that’s how I must see this, until it was either proved true, or it was no longer possible to hope.

I winced as Lucinda, the scullery maid, lumbered forth. My newest chaperone. For my part, I didn’t see that a chaperone was essential for me traveling to my likely end. It seemed unlikely that my continued maidenhood had any value to the goddess or anyone else where I was going, but Mother Morigan insisted.

Lucinda curtsied to my father, an awkward, feeble gesture, lacking any grace. “Your Majesty, the supplies are loaded. All is readied.”

I turned my head to the side to spare her my look of discomfort. I’d known birds with a wider vocabulary—and better configured. But, as Father had said to me, she was a tough woman, made of strong peasant stock—someone who could endure a ride to and from the Fandrite Mountains and beyond. I stood up straighter, painfully aware that next to Lucinda, with her massive arms and thick waist, I must appear small and vulnerable.

My father nodded, looking over at me; extended speech was too great a burden for either of us right now. Father pressed a small chess piece into my hand, curling my fingers around it, “Genevieve, if a pawn can fell a king, surely a princess can outmaneuver a mere passel of dragons.” A fierce light shone in his eyes. “Don’t concede the game.”

There was so much to say, but one more word and I would dissolve into tears. I refused to show my people a face splotched and despairing.

I cradled the pawn in my hand. All my memories spilled forth of our evenings playing chess, two strongly focused wills bearing down on the game board. I remembered his patience teaching me to play when I was four and still letting me win when I was seven. My pride was unbounded when I beat him fair and square at ten.

I curtsied low and turned to leave.

Captain Markus led over two horses, a rangy gray gelding with long legs, a ewe-neck and a roached mane, and a sturdy brown with wide hoofs and a broad back, both some mixture of draft and mountain stock. It appeared someone had hastily run a currycomb across the brown’s coarse coat, as I could see traces of harness marks across his shoulders.

I stood there for some time before I realized the captain intended those horses for my journey, one for me and one for Lucinda. I felt as if I’d been splashed with cold water. My gaze roamed across the broad backs and stiff bristled manes. I almost laughed bitterly. Not even out of my kingdom and already my status reduced.

I had said my goodbyes to Flight this morning. She was fifteen and a half hands high, burnished copper with a white blaze and four matching white socks. Many mornings I would lean against the fence, watching her trot around the pasture, her dainty feet lifting high over the grass. Astride her I was every inch the pampered and spirited princess.

She obviously wouldn’t be bearing me on this journey. “Thank you, Markus. I’m sure they will do wonderfully. Do they have names?” I asked.

He patted the gray. “Winter. He’s a good horse, one of the best for covering ground quickly and smoothly, a trifle skittish but solid.”

“And the other?” I looked up at the huge placid beast.

He lowered his eyes, unable to meet mine. “Dumpling. Perhaps you might wish to rename him. He’s very reliable, tough and sound.”
Much like Lucinda,
I thought. “Nothing short of a dragon will cause him to bolt.” At my sharp intake of breath, he did look at me. “Your pardon, Your Highness. It’s a saying. I meant no harm.”