The Dragon's Son (27 page)

“Bah! He’s never said anything—”

“Not to us. He fears upsetting you and hurting me. I’ve seen it in him,
though, many times. Whenever he stops his reading and lifts his head and stares
out the window, into those distant mountains where the kingdom of Seth lies
hidden in the clouds, he’s thinking of her. He’s wondering who she was and why
she abandoned him and if she loved him or hated him. She has reached out from
the grave to take her rightful hold of him and if we try to break that hold, he
will be the one who suffers.”

“He will suffer.” Edward turned around again, his eyes alight with his fury
and he was not listening because he did not want to hear. “He will suffer and
die, perhaps, at the hands of that savage female!”

He flung wide the shutters, leaned out the window.

“Saddle my horse!” he shouted at the startled faces, who, with craned necks,
peered up at him. “I leave in ten minutes. A flogging for all of you if the
horse is not ready in time!”

“Edward—”

“I know where she will take him,” he said thickly. “I’m going to bring him
back.”

Ermintrude started to intervene, but changed her mind. The ride would do him
good, clear his head, give him a chance to think. He slammed out the door and
she could hear him racing up the stairs to his room. She went to the window and
waited and eventually he came, booted and cloaked and armed, into the
courtyard, where Gunderson stood with the horse. She saw Gun-derson say
something to the king, probably also trying to dissuade him, for Edward shook
his head and mounted. He looked up at the window, where he knew she would be
standing. He made no sign, however, but looked away.

Gunderson stepped hurriedly back to avoid being
ridden down, and Edward rode off with a clashing of hooves on the cobblestones.

ALL THIS WHILE, VEN AND THE MONKS WERE TRAVELING east toward an unknown
destination. Ven asked several times where they were going, but the monks made
no reply—they rarely spoke to him or among themselves. The holy sister did
talk, but only if talk was absolutely necessary, and then their conversations
were brief.

“All in good time, Dragon’s Son,” she would say. “All in good time.”

Since Ven was not given to idle conversation himself, he found the silence
of the party suited him. As to their destination, he came to realize that it
didn’t matter. He was bound to go there, as a babe in the womb is bound to be
born.

Evelina was going there, too, whether she wanted to or not. She was no
longer being hauled about in the pushcart. The holy sister had found her a nun’s
habit, which she donned without protest. Ven had no idea what the nun had said
or done to Evelina, but she walked along quietly enough, never speaking a word,
keeping her head cast down. Perhaps her compliance lay in the fact that one of
the monks was always at her side. When she needed to make her ablutions, the
monk accompanied her. She was never alone, either by day or by night, when the
monks posted guard over their campsite.

Once, early on in their journey, Evelina tested the monk’s resolve. Ven woke
to a commotion in the night. He started to rise, but the holy sister told him
sharply to go back to sleep, all was in hand. The next morning, he caught a
glimpse of Evelina’s face, hidden in the shadows of the wimple. Her lip was
cut, her nose bloodied. The left side of her face was badly bruised, the left
eye swollen shut. There were no further incidents in the night.

Ven stayed away from Evelina. He did not speak to her or acknowledge her
existence. If she walked at the head of the line, he walked at the rear. If she
was in the rear, he walked up at the front with the holy sister. The nun gave
Ven to understand that in preventing Evelina’s death, he had exhibited a
weakness that had displeased his dragon father. Ven had the impression that
Evelina had been brought along as some sort of test for him. Testing his
willpower perhaps.

Ven’s weakness displeased him, as well. He reminded himself over and over
how Evelina had deceived him, sold him, caged him, mocked him. He went to sleep
every night telling himself how much he loathed her, only to wake in the
darkness, sweating and aching from dreams of her. Whenever he stole a glance at
her, saw her trudging along the dusty road, her head bowed, reliving, perhaps,
the gruesome death of her father, Ven knew intense guilt. When he saw her
beaten and brutalized, he felt responsible.

“If I had not come into her life, she would be dancing somewhere in the
sunlight,” he said to torment himself.

His feelings were irrational, of course. If her father had not robbed him
and then conspired with his daughter to ensnare him, Ven would have never come
into her life. Love and desire are at constant war -with the rational and Ven
very quickly vanquished logic. He was not foolish enough to think that one day
she would come to love him. He was a monster, after all. But he did nurse the
feeble hope that she might come to care for him, if only just a little.

And so the days passed. The journey continued, until one day they reached a
wide river that the holy sister told Ven was named the Aston. The nun pointed
out a mountain range to the north. She told him that there was a city hidden in
those mountains, a city named Seth, and that the river flowed down from those
mountains. The party took to rowboats when they came to the river, paddling
upstream toward the mountains, only to veer off to the east when they reached a
fork in the river.

They paddled the boats into a slot canyon, rowing beneath towering cliffs
until they came to a cave that was partially submerged under the water. Oars
shipped, the boats let the current carry them into the cave, into darkness that
was cool and refreshing to Ven, after the hot glare of the sunlight off the
water.

His dragon eyes were still compensating for the darkness when a tall man
walked out from the shadows and came to stand at the water’s edge. The man was
massively built, with hunched shoulders, a thick neck, and heavily muscled
legs. Ven recognized him immediately. The leader of the “thieves” who had
attacked Bellona.

“Sister, you and the Dragon’s Son remain here with me. The rest of you, go,”
the man ordered, waving his hand. “I will meet you downstream.”

The boats containing the monks and Evelina continued on through the cavern.
Ven could not help but cast a glance at her, still in her disguise, as the
boats pulled away. She did not look at him, but kept her head lowered.

The monk rowing the boat that held Ven and the holy sister steered toward
the shore. The man eyed Ven, who boldly returned the scrutiny.

“My name is Grald,” said the man. “I serve the dragon, your father.”

You are the dragon, my father,
Ven thought, but did not say. Bel-lona’s
story of his mother’s rape and her description of the human male who had been
the conduit for the dragon’s seed was a portrait Ven hung in his mind’s lair.
Ven had no idea how the dragon could take over a human body; that was something
Dra-conas might have told him, if Ven had cared to listen. Ven didn’t care. He
caught himself scratching the scales of his legs and stopped.

“My name is Ven,” said Ven, “and I serve no one.”

“We all serve the dragon—” the holy sister began in a tone of rebuke.

Grald motioned her to silence. “Ven,” the man repeated with a half grin,
half leer. “That’s a strange name.”

Ven shrugged. “Strange or not, it is my name.” He saw no need to explain the
derivation.

“And what is your brother’s name?” asked Grald, conversationally.

“Brother?” Ven stared, startled. “I have no—”

The denial hit a wall.

A little room. A small chair. His mother, holding a child by the hand. The
child reaching out that hand to Ven, inviting him into the little room, to come
play with the rainbows. . . .

“No one told you,” said Grald.

“No,” said Ven.

“But you’ve been in contact with him.”

“No.”

The dragon came sniffing and snuffling around the cavern of Ven’s mind.
Anger darkened Ven’s colors, for he resented this interrogation. He did not
lash out, for that was what the dragon wanted him to do. Lash out. Come out.
Come out of his lair. Ven held still, kept silent. The dragon probed with his
claws, jiggling every rock Ven had piled up in front of the entrance, testing
them all to find the slightest chink or crack. The dragon would find none.

Dragons spend years on the construction and design of their lairs, laying
out the labyrinthine corridors meant to confuse an intruder, placing the traps
intended to dissuade him from going on. So Ven had worked for years on
protecting himself in his own cavern, the one deep inside him. He had not used
the dragon magic since that day he’d killed the man. He had remained hidden
deep in the center of his lair, where no one could find him. Ven shut out
everyone. Bellona. Draconas. His mother. The dragon.

The brother he had never and always known.

Ven stood alone in the center of his lair, imbued with white, the absence of
all color.

“Don’t you want to meet your brother?” Grald asked.

“Not particularly,” said Ven.

Grald accompanied them to their destination, which was not far, he assured
Ven, who had not asked. Both Grald and the holy sister appeared put out by Ven’s
rectitude, for he saw them exchange glances; Grald frowning, the holy sister
shrugging.

The submerged cavern had an opening at the back, through which the river
flowed funneled through the cave to become a narrow stream that wandered into a
thick and tangled forest. Trees lined the banks, their roots crawling into the
water, their intertwined branches reaching out over the water, clasping hold of
each other, so that it seemed to Ven that they had left a cavern of stone and
entered a cavern of leaves. The leafy walls were dark and quiet as stone. The
air beneath the canopy of branches was still and humid. The only sound was the
splashing of the oars dropping into the water, lifting out, dropping in.

Grald led the way, rowing his boat with swift and powerful strokes so that
the monk rowing the boat holding Ven and the holy sister was hard pressed to
keep up. The distance they traveled was short. Rounding a bend in the stream,
they came upon the other monks and Evelina, standing on the shore, waiting for
them. The monks had pulled their boats out of the water and lined them up neatly
on the north side of the bank. Evelina stood among the boats, one of the monks
at her side. Ven hoped she might lift her eyes to meet his gaze, but she kept
her face averted. He noted that Grald looked at her, as well. Looked at her
intently.

Ven climbed out of the boat and helped the monk haul it to shore. He saw no
signs of a camp, as he had expected, yet the nun had indicated to him that this
was where they all lived. She had not spoken of this place much and the monks
had not spoken of it at all. Still Ven was left with the impression that they
had built some sort of fortress or stockade in the wilderness. He concluded
that it must be located deeper in the woods, which meant that they had a trek
through the forest ahead of them. He searched, but saw no signs of a trail.

The monks looked expectantly at Grald, as did the holy sister. The dragon’s
hulking human body walked over to the stump of a felled tree, the remnants of
which lay sprawled across the bank, the tree’s dead leaves half submerged in
the water. Grald climbed onto the tree stump. He pushed outward with his arms,
as if he were thrusting open a heavy door. Stepping down off the tree stump,
Grald walked forward into the forest. The monks filed along behind him. Evelina’s
guard seized hold of her arm and brought her with them.

Ven looked at the holy sister.

“This way, Dragon’s Son,” she said, with a half smile, and motioned for him
to follow.

Ven had no idea what the dragon’s gyrations on the tree stump had been
about, but apparently Grald had found a trail. They walked some distance
through the forest and then . . .

Once, while walking in his forest home, Ven had placed his foot onto what he
thought was solid ground, only to have the earth give way beneath him, plunging
him into a sinkhole. He had felt then as he felt now.

He stepped into deep shadows cast of an enormous willow and found himself
emerging onto a city street in glaring sunlight. He stared around in disbelief.

Behind him rose an immense stone wall. Twice his height, the wall was
constructed of huge chunks of rock that appeared to have been scooped out of
the earth, then brought here to be stacked one atop the other. The wall had a
glassy sheen to it in the sunlight. No grout held the individual stones in
place. The rocks had been fused together by fire. Fire so hot it could melt
stone. And he had just walked right through it.

Around him was the clatter and rattle of carts, the clamor of voices
punctuated by a shout or loud laughter, someone hawking wares. People bumping
into him, staring at him.

One moment a river and silence beneath thick trees. The next moment a wall
and the hubbub of life. A city in the forest. A city that had not existed until
Grald summoned it forth—or so it appeared.

“Welcome, Dragon’s Son,” said the holy sister, smiling
at his discomfiture. “Welcome to Dragonkeep.”

Unlike humans, who construct buildings as works of art, made to honor God,
king, or country, the dragon viewed construction in terms of its functionality.
Creating dwellings in which to house his humans bored the dragon, who raised
the buildings as swiftly as he could to be done with it. Dragons are not
accustomed to constructing. Dragons form their lairs by deconstructing—delving
and digging into mountains, gouging out the rock, shaping it. Generally, the
only construction dragons do on their lairs is building the nest meant to house
their eggs and, later, the young dragons.