Dragonwing Read online

  Looking at the impassive face with its high cheekbones, hawk nose, braided strands of black beard hanging from the cleft chin, the child shrank back amidst the straw.

  “Go away. I don’t like you! Where is Trian? I want Trian!”

  “I’m not pretty, like the wizard. But your father didn’t hire me for my looks. If you’re frightened of me, think how your enemies’ll feel.”

  Hugh said this glibly, just for something to say. He was prepared to pick up the kid—kicking and screaming—and carry him off bodily. He was therefore somewhat surprised to see the child consider this argument with an expression of grave and keen intelligence.

  “You make sense, Sir Hugh,” the boy said, rising to his feet. “I will accompany you. Bring my things.” He waved a small hand at a pack lying next to him on the straw.

  It was on Hugh’s tongue to tell the kid to bring his own things, but he recalled himself in time. “Yes, Your Highness,” he said humbly, bending down.

  He took a close look at the child. The prince was small for his age, with large pale blue eyes; a sweetly curved mouth; and the porcelain-white complexion of one who is kept protectively within doors. The light glistened off a hawk feather hanging from a silver chain around the child’s neck.

  “Since we are to be traveling companions, you may call me by my name,” said the boy shyly.

  “And what might that be, Your Highness?” Hugh asked, lifting the pack.

  The child stared at him. The Hand added hastily, “I’ve been out of the country many years, Your Highness.”

  “Bane,” said the child. “I am Prince Bane.”

  Hugh froze, motion arrested. Bane! The assassin wasn’t superstitious, but why would anyone give a child such an ill-omened name? Hugh felt the invisible filament of Fate’s web tighten around his neck. The image of the block came to him—cold, peaceful, serene. Angry at himself, he shook his head. The choking sensation vanished, the image of his own death disappeared. Hugh shouldered the prince’s pack and his own.

  “We must be going, Your Highness,” he said again, nodding toward the door.

  Bane lifted his cloak from the floor and threw it clumsily over his shoulders, fumbling at the strings that fastened it around his neck. Impatient to be gone, Hugh tossed the packs back to the ground, knelt, and tied the strings of the cloak.

  To his astonishment, the prince flung his arms around his neck.

  “I’m glad you’re my guardian,” he said, clinging to him, his soft cheek pressed against Hugh’s.

  The Hand held rigid, unmoving. Bane slipped away from him. “I’m ready,” he announced in eager excitement. “Are we going by dragon? Tonight was the first time I’d ever ridden one. I suppose you must ride them all the time.”

  “Yes,” Hugh managed to say. “There’s a dragon in the courtyard.” He lifted the two packs and the lamp. “If Your Highness will follow me—”

  “I know the way,” said the prince, skipping out of the room.

  Hugh followed after him, the touch of the boy’s hands soft and warm against his skin.

  1 Sterego is a fungus found on the isle of Tytan. Humans of that land have long used crushed sterego as a healing balm. Elven explorers during the First Expansion noticed that the slow-burning, pungent sterego was far superior to their own pipethorn plant, and was less expensive to grow. They transported it to their own plantations, but there is apparently something special about Tytan. No other variety can match the original in flavor and aroma.

  2 There is an abundance of water in the Low Realm—those isles in the heart of a perpetual storm known as the Maelstrom. But no dragon has yet been found who will fly into the Maelstrom. The elves, with their magical, mechanical dragonships, are able to sail the storm-tossed route and consequently hold a virtual monopoly on water. The prices the elves charge—when they’ll sell it to humans at all—are exorbitant. Therefore, the raiding of elven transport ships and of water storage ports is not only financially lucrative for humans, it is a matter of life or death.

  CHAPTER 7

  KIR MONASTERY, VOLKARAN ISLES,

  MID REALM

  THREE PEOPLE WERE GATHERED IN A ROOM LOCATED IN THE UPPER levels of the monastery. The room had been one of the monks’ cells and was, consequently, cold, austere, small, and windowless. The three—two men and one woman—stood in the very center of the room. One man had his arm around the woman; the woman had her arm around him, each supporting the other, or it seemed both might have fallen. The third stood near them.

  “They are preparing to leave.” The wizard had his head cocked, though it was not with his physical ear he heard the beating of the dragon’s wings through the thick walls of the monastery.

  “Leaving!” the woman cried, and took a step forward. “I want to see him again! My son! One more time!”

  “No, Anne!” Trian’s voice was stern; his hand clasped hold of the woman’s and held it firmly. “It took long months to break the enchantment. It is easier this way! You must be strong!”

  “I pray we have done right!” The woman sobbed and turned her face to her husband’s shoulder.

  “You should have gone along, Trian,” said Stephen. He spoke harshly, though the hand with which he stroked his wife’s hair was gentle and loving. “There is still time.”

  “No, Your Majesty. We gave this matter long and careful consideration. Our plans are sound. We must follow through on them and pray that our ancestors are with us and all goes as we hope.”

  “Did you warn this … Hugh?”

  “A hard man such as that assassin would not have believed me. It would have done no good and might have caused a great deal of harm. He is the best. He is cold, he is heartless. We must trust in his skill and his nature.”

  “And if he fails?”

  “Then, Your Majesty,” said Trian with a soft sigh, “we should prepare ourselves to face the end.”

  CHAPTER 8

  HET, DREVLIN,

  LOW REALM

  AT ALMOST PRECISELY THE SAME TIME HUGH LAID HIS HEAD ON the block in Ke’lith, another execution—that of the notorious Limbeck Bolttightner—was being carried out thousands of menka1 below on the isle of Drevlin. It would seem at first that these executions had nothing in common except the coincidence of their time. But the invisible threads cast by that immortal spider, Fate, had just wrapped around the soul of each of these oddly disparate people and would slowly and surely draw them together.

  On the night that Lord Rogar of Ke’lith was murdered, Limbeck Bolttightner was seated in his cozy, untidy dwelling in Het—the oldest city on Drevlin—composing a speech.

  Limbeck was, in his own language, a Geg. In any other language in Arianus, or in the ancient world before the Sundering, he would have been known as a dwarf. He stood a respectable four feet in height (without shoes). A full and luxuriant growth of beard adorned a cheerful, open face. He was developing a slight paunch, unusual in a hardworking young adult Geg, but that was due to the fact that he sat a great deal. Limbeck’s eyes were bright, inquisitive, and extremely nearsighted.

  He lived in a small cavern amid hundreds of other caverns that honeycombed a large mound of coralite located on the outskirts of Het. Limbeck’s cave was different in certain respects from those of his neighbors, which seemed fitting since Limbeck himself was certainly an unusual Geg. His cave was taller than the others, being almost two Gegs high. A special platform, built of knobwood planks, allowed Limbeck to climb up to the ceiling of his dwelling and enjoy another of the cavern’s oddities—windows.

  Most Gegs didn’t need windows; the storms that buffeted the isle made windows impractical, and in general, the Gegs were far more concerned with what was going on inside than outside. A few of the city’s original buildings—the ones that had been built long, long ago by the hallowed and revered Mangers—had windows, however. Small panes of thick, bubble-filled glass set into recessed holes in the sturdy walls, the windows were perfectly suited to a lifetime of battering wind, rain, and hail. It was window
s such as these that Limbeck had confiscated from an unused building in the center of town and transported to his cavern. A few turns of a borrowed bore-hoogus created the perfect-size openings for two windows on the ground floor and four more up above.

  In this, Limbeck established the major difference between himself and the majority of his people. They looked only within. Limbeck liked to look without—even if looking without only brought visions of slashing rain and hail and lightning or (during those brief periods when the storms subsided) the vat-things and hummer coils and blazing bluezuzts of the Kicksey-winsey.

  One other feature of Limbeck’s dwelling made it positively unique. On the front door, which faced the interior of the mound and its interconnecting streets, was a sign with the letters WUPP painted in red, marching along boldly at a definite uphill slant.

  In all other aspects, the dwelling was a typical Geg dwelling—the furniture was functional and made out of whatever material the Gegs could find, there were no frivolous decorations. None could be found that would stay put. The walls and floors and ceiling of the snug cavern shook and quivered with the thumping, throbbing, whumping, zizzt, crackle, and clanging of the Kicksey-winsey—the dominant feature, the dominant force on Drevlin.

  Limbeck, the august leader of WUPP, did not mind the noise. He took comfort in it, having listened to it, albeit somewhat muffled, in his mother’s womb. The Gegs revered the noise, just as they revered the Kicksey-winsey. They knew that if the noise ceased their world would come to an end. Death was known among the Gegs as the Endless Hear Nothing.

  Wrapped in the comforting banging and drumming, Limbeck struggled with his speech. Words came easily to him. Writing them down did not. What sounded fine and grand and noble when it came out of his mouth looked trite and pretentious when he saw it on paper. At least it did to Limbeck. Jarre always told him he was far too critical of himself, that his speeches read just as well as they sounded. But, as Limbeck always replied with a fond kiss on her cheek, Jarre was prejudiced.

  Limbeck talked aloud as he wrote, in order to hear his words spoken. Being extremely nearsighted and finding it difficult to focus properly when he wore his spectacles, Limbeck invariably took them off when writing. His face pressed close to the paper, his quill scratching away, he got nearly as much ink up his nose and down his beard as he did on his speech.

  “It is therefore our purpose, as Worshipers United for Progress and Prosperity, to bring to our people a time of good living now, not sometime in a future that may never come!” Limbeck, carried away, banged his fist on the table, sloshing ink out of the inkwell. A small river of blue crept toward the paper, threatening to inundate the speech. Limbeck stemmed the tide with his elbow; his frayed tunic soaked up the ink thirstily. Since the tunic had long ago lost any color it might have once possessed, the purple splotch on the sleeve was a cheerful improvement.

  “For centuries we have been told by our leaders that we were placed in this realm of Storm and Chaos because we were not deemed worthy to take our place with the Welves above. We who are flesh and blood and bone could not hope to live in the land of the immortals. When we are worthy, our leaders tell us, then the Welves will come from Above and pass judgment on us and we shall rise up into the heavens. In the meantime, it is our duty to serve the Kicksey-winsey and wait for that great day. I say”—here Limbeck raised a clenched and inky fist above his head—“I say that day will never come!”

  “I say that we have been lied to! Our leaders deluded! It is easy enough for the high froman and the people of his scrift to talk of waiting for change until Judgment comes. They do not need a better life. They receive the God’s payment. But do they disperse it equally among us? No, they make us pay, and pay dearly, for our share that we have already earned by the sweat of our brow!”

  (I must pause here for cheering, Limbeck decided, and put a blot that was supposed to be a star to mark the place.)

  “It is time to rise up and—” Limbeck hushed, thinking he heard a strange sound. Now, how anyone could hear anything in this land, other than the noise of the Kicksey-winsey and the buffeting and roaring of the storms that swept daily over Drevlin, was a mystery to the Welves who came monthly for their shipment of water. But the Gegs, accustomed to the deafening noises, minded them no more than the rush of air through the leaves of a tree would bother an elflord of Tribus. A Geg could sleep soundly through a ferocious thunderstorm and start bolt upright at the rustle of a mouse in his pantry.

  It was the sound of distant shouting that aroused Limbeck’s attention and, stricken by sudden consciousness, he peered up at a timekeeping device (his own invention) set in a hollow of the wall. A complex combination of whirly-wheels and spokey-spikes, the device dropped one bean every hour on the hour into a jar below. Each morning, Limbeck emptied the jar of beans into the funnel above, and the measuring of the day began again.

  Leaping to his feet, Limbeck peered nearsightedly into the jar, hastily counting up the beans. He groaned. He was late. Grabbing a coat, he was heading out the door when, at that moment, the next line in his speech occurred to him. The decided to take just a second to record it and sat back down. All thoughts of his appointment went clean out of his mind. Ink-bedaubed and happy, he once more lost himself in his rhetoric.

  “We, the Worshipers United for Progress and Prosperity, advocate three tenets: The first, all of the scrifts should come together and pool their knowledge of the Kicksey-winsey and learn how it operates so that we become its masters, not its slaves. [Blot for cheering.] The second, worshipers quit waiting for a day of Judgment and start to work now to better the quality of their own lives. [Another blot.] The third, worshipers should go to the froman and demand a fair share in the Welves’ payment. [Two blots and a scribble.]”

  At this juncture, Limbeck sighed. He knew, from past experience, that his third tenet would be the most popular with the young Gegs impatient over serving long hours for inadequate pay. But of the three, Limbeck himself knew it to be the least important.

  “If only they had seen what I saw!” Limbeck mourned. “If only they knew what I know. If only I could tell them!”

  The sound of shouting broke in on his thoughts again. Raising his head, Limbeck smiled with fond pride. Jarre’s speech was having its usual effect. She doesn’t need me, Limbeck reflected, not sadly but with the pleasure of a teacher who takes pride in seeing a promising student blossom. She’s doing fine without me. I’ll just go ahead and finish.

  During the next hour, Limbeck—smeared with ink and inspiration—was so absorbed in his project that he no longer heard the shouts and therefore did not notice that they changed in tone from cheers of approval to roars of anger. When a sound other than the monotonous whump and whuzzle of the Kicksey-winsey did finally attract his attention, it was only because it was the sound of a door banging. Occurring some three feet away from him, it startled him immensely.

  “Is that you, my dear?” he said, seeing a clark and shapeless blur that he assumed was Jarre.

  She was panting as if from an undue amount of exertion. Limbeck patted his pocket for his glasses, couldn’t find them, and groped with his hand over the table. “I heard the cheers. Your speech went well tonight, I gather. I’m sorry I wasn’t there as I promised, but I got involved …” He waved a vague and ink-splattered hand at his work.

  Jarre pounced on him. The Gegs are small in stature, but wide of girth, with large strong hands and a tendency to square jaws and square shoulders that give a general overall impression of squareness. Male and female Gegs are equally strong, since all serve the Kicksey-winsey until the marrying age of about forty years, when both are required to retire and stay home to bear and raise the next generation of Kicksey-winsey worshipers. Jarre was stronger even than most young women, having served the Kicksey-winsey since she was twelve. Limbeck, not having served it at all, was rather weak. Consequently, when Jarre pounced on him, she nearly carried him out of his chair.

  “My dear, what is the matter?” Limbe
ck said, gazing at her myopically, aware for the first time that something was the matter. “Didn’t your speech go well?”

  “Yes, it went well. Very well!” Jarre said, digging her hands into his tattered and ink-stained tunic and attempting to drag him to his feet. “Come on, we’ve got to get you out of here!”

  “Now?” Limbeck blinked at her. “But my speech—”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea. We shouldn’t leave it behind for evidence.” Letting loose of Limbeck, Jarre hastily caught up the sheets of paper that were a by-product (no one knew why) of the Kicksey-winsey and began stuffing them down the front of her gown. “Hurry, we haven’t much time!” She glanced around the dwelling hastily. “Is there anything else lying around that we should take?”

  “Evidence?” questioned Limbeck, bewildered, searching for his glasses. “Evidence of what?”

  “Of our Union,” said Jarre impatiently. Cocking an ear, she listened and ran over to peer fearfully out one of the windows.

  “But, my dear, this is Union Headquarters,” began Limbeck when she shushed him.

  “There! Hear that? They’re coming.” Reaching down, she picked up his glasses and stuck them hastily and at a precarious slant on his nose. “I can see their lanterns. The coppers. No, not the front. The back door, the way I came in.” She began to push and hustle Limbeck along.

  Limbeck stopped, and when a Geg stops dead in his tracks, it is almost impossible to shift or budge him. “I’m not going anywhere, my dear, until you tell me what’s happened.” He calmly adjusted his spectacles.

  Jarre wrung her hands, but she knew the Geg she loved. Limbeck had a stubborn streak in him that not even the Kicksey-winsey could have knocked out. She had learned to overcome this on former occasions by moving fast and not giving him time to think, but, seemingly, that wasn’t going to work tonight.