Dragon Heart (7 page)

They both spoke at once, “No, not that, but—” and Broga fell still and Oto went on.

“Nothing so momentous, sir, but a good thing. We have found the place for the new fortress you spoke of—on the coast, east of here. It controls the coast road and there's a lot of rock around to build with. There's a fine little harbor with a good approach, and it's only five days away.”

“Excellent. You've kept this secret.”

“Oh, yes,” Broga said. “When we came in, we told everybody we had been off to hunt in the mountains.”

Erdhart folded his hands together, smiling. “We shall need to send most of the men down there. But now she must marry me, and the need to keep them all here is over, I think. Take three squadrons. They can build the fortress.” His hands stroked and fondled each other, his habit when he was pleased. Oto spent a moment enjoying his contempt for anybody so easily read. At the same time Oto kept his face perfectly smooth, respectful, filial.

Broga said, “My lord, who shall command this?”

“Well,” Erdhart said, and for a moment his voice hung there, between them both, ripe with possibility. Then he faced Oto. “You shall oversee this. Do it properly. It will not be an easy task.”

Oto bowed. “My lord, I am gratified.”

“Of course if I need you, you must come at once.”

“My lord,” Oto said.

Broga said, “Papa, give me a task to do. Test me, also.”

Erdhart smiled on him, clapped him on the back. “You shall always find your challenges, my boy. I waste no worry over you.” He slapped Broga's back again and nodded to Oto. “You must leave at once. Keep me constantly advised.”

“Of course,” said Oto, hating him.

“Very well, then. You've done well; I am pleased with you.” Erdhart went to the door and Oto moved swiftly to hold it open for him, but it was Broga who got Erdhart's damned smile. The old man left.

Oto said, “Three squadrons.” Sixty men. That was more than the cohort Erdhart would have under him here. And a castle of his own, if he could build it properly. The ground was unstable there, but the fort did not have to be large. Once they could bring ships here from the east it would be vital.

Broga said, “I will plan my chapel.” He picked up his hat from the table. “Good day, Brother.” Going out, he left the door open, and Oto followed him, hoping he remembered the way back to the hall.

 

3

All through the storm, Jeon followed the high road east, going all the way to Santomalo, but did not find his sister. He heard about her; even with the rain pounding and the wind blowing he met a traveler, a lone tinker, who carried rumors with his pots and pans and even claimed he had seen her, shrieking and howling from the trees. All the while looking eagerly at Jeon's purse. When he asked the tinker what she looked like he could not remember. Jeon paid him nothing.

Santomalo was busy, smelly, crowded, and Tirza was not there. Jeon rode west again, this time taking the way along the beach until the impassible sea cliffs forced him up onto the marine terrace above. Out here, with the mountains rising just inland and the high road well beyond that, the land was empty of people. The rain ended and the sun shone on a brilliant green world. The road he followed was hardly more than a goat track, pounded deep into the ground, rushing with the runoff of the storm, and on all the brush around him the flowers were opening. He saw no travelers, no goats or cattle, only wild things, the bees in the flowers, the birds in the sky.

After a hundred miles following along the foot of the mountains the road dropped down again to the coast and he went west along the shelving beach. Sea cattle flopped and barked on the offshore rocks, and the surf broke over long black reefs like rows of teeth, gashing the constant white slosh of the waves. Above the high-tide line the wind had blown the sand up into billowing dunes. Grey bones of driftwood poked up out of the matted seaweed and shells that covered the wave slope. A flock of seagulls clamored into the air as he came, rising away from a half-eaten seal carcass. The tide was coming in. Out to sea, another storm blurred the western horizon.

Where a stream ran down into the sea and its banks made a wide, sheltered place, he came on a fishing village too small to have a name. He stopped to water his horse at the well.

He wondered what he should do next—where else he could look for her. He was running out of food and he was tired of sleeping on the ground. He might never find her. He might never go home again but wander, always, looking for her. The four little huts of the village were quiet, everybody gone, only a few old people sleeping in the sun. He had to ask someone, and he was thinking of waking one of these elders when two boys ran into the common around the well, shouting.

“They've caught the witch. Come on!”

He reached his horse in a single step, bounded into the saddle, and galloped inland, back the way the boys had come, up the stream; he heard screaming and shouts ahead. Thickets of willow and brambles closed down around him, but the path was deep and wide and he followed the racket ahead of him. People were running after him from the village—the two boys, the elders.

“Burn the witch!”

Up ahead the trail came out on a clearing. At the stream bank an enormous old tree rose, something dark huddled in its branches. Beneath the leafy crown several people stood, shouting up, and one cocked his arm back and threw a rock. Another was poking a rake into the branches and two women in aprons were heaping brush against the trunk of the tree. On the path right in front of Jeon, another man knelt in the dust, lighting a torch with his tinderbox.

Jeon charged his horse straight over the man with the tinderbox, knocking him flat, and rushed the mob under the tree. There were six or seven of them, all on foot. Jeon had no time to draw his sword and anyway he was no good with a sword, but he was good with a horse. He ran down one woman, wheeled the horse around on its hocks, and chased another, who ran shrieking out toward the path. Now he managed to get his sword out of the sheath. Under the tree the man with the rake was set, ready to fight, and beside him another man flung a rock, but when Jeon launched the horse at them, the sword high, they whirled and fled. All the others were already running. The horse was enjoying this and fought against stopping, and when Jeon wrestled it down by the tree it reared and neighed and clashed the air with its hooves.

“Tirza!” Jeon shouted. He backed the snorting horse underneath the branches.

She slid down out of the tree to the ground. She was filthy, her hair matted and full of burrs and leaves, her face black with dirt, out of which her blue eyes shone startlingly clear and bright. He ran his sword back into its sheath. The villagers stood around them at a good distance, wary. A surge of power filled him. He had saved his sister. He glared around him at the crowd, suddenly longing for them to jump forward and take him on. None of them moved. He reached down his arm for her, drew her up behind him on the horse, and rode away.

*   *   *

They went far down the beach until Jeon found a little overhang of rock where they could sit out of the wind. He built them a fire and divided the last of his food between them. She sat in the firelight with her back to the rock cliff, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms crossed on top, and her chin on her wrist. She was thinner than he had ever seen her. Above her hollow cheeks her eyes seemed to float in her face, haunted. But when he turned to her, she burst into the broadest smile he had ever seen.

He put one hand on her arm, and she came to him and hugged him again, muttering gibberish. He held her tight, grateful for this love, known from the womb. She settled back again, smiling at him, and he said, “Where were you, all this time? Just wandering around?”

She made sounds; she twitched from side to side, something urgent, which she could not tell him; her hands moved in the air. Her face crinkled up, baffled, and she shrugged, and set one hand in her lap and with the other made the circling gesture he knew meant, “And you?”

“Back at home, most of the time. Until I heard about you.” He shrugged. “Then looking for you. I don't remember anything about the shipwreck. All I remember is the storm, the lightning. Then floating a long way.”

He wiped his jaw with his hand, still burdened with the memory, like something ahead, an ambush. He was clenching his teeth. She shook her head at him, her face puckered with worry.

He said, “I was so thirsty I drank seawater. When they found me I was raving. I still have horrible dreams.”

She shook her head at him. Her eyes filled with tears. She made those shapes in the air again, uttering senseless noises.

“It's all right,” he said. He did not have to know. They would go home now. Good beds, food, wine, the family around, the common life. “Casea and Mervaly will help me keep you out of Santomalo. Mother loves you; she wants you back, whatever she says. And we need help against Erdhart.”

At that, Tirza pushed away from him and sat there straight upright, the rags of her clothes hanging around her like molting. She said something, a low growl, staring off into the woods. He gave a little shake of his head. She was angry about something, not Erdhart and not Mother. The old longing gripped him, to understand her, hear her voice. Yet she was here now, he had found her, and he had saved her, when no one else had really thought he would, and he sat smiling into the fire, enjoying that.

*   *   *

Just before she fell asleep, she thought, They will send me back to Santomalo.

She fell into a fitful sleep, into a dark, obscure place, moving and shifting around her. She seemed to be standing on a shore, looking up at a hillside layered with the red roofs and awnings of a town. At the top a white ledge of a building was the monastery. The sun was rising, away to the side of her. Behind her, people were screaming. Then a roar began that turned her bones to ice.

She burst with sweat. She could not move. A man ran by her, up the hill, and another, and then some women, looking back as they ran, but she was stuck in her place. A flickering baleful light, darker than the sunrise, shone all around her. The smoke burned her nostrils. The shrieking people ran by her and from above them the dragon struck and caught them in his teeth. She saw them sticking out between his jaws, their legs waving. He strode past her, the light glowing on his scales. He let out a blast of his breath and the houses before her burst into flame.

People ran ahead of him and he was eating them as he climbed the hill. His long head swung from side to side, but he did not see her. He caught running people and gobbled them up, and burned their houses. When he saw her he would eat her too. The flames roared up around her, their crackle deafening. She could not run. She was so hot she could not breathe.

Then something seized her by the arms. She opened her eyes, and saw Jeon's face above her, his hands on her arms, shaking her awake.

“Tirza, what is it?”

Panting, she stared into his face, the dream melting away into the deeps of her mind. She sat up, shaking, soaked with sweat. He held out a cup to her, full of fresh, clear water, and she drank. The water spread through her, cool in her chest.

He said, “I have bad dreams, too, sometimes.” He hugged her. “It's all right. It will go away.”

She shook her head again. He did not understand: it would not go away. It was only coming closer. She wanted to tell him everything, to make him remember, so he would help her, but she could not.

The dragon was coming after her. That was what the dream meant. They would go home now, and she would have to face her mother. And she could not tell them. And they would lock her away again, and let the dragon eat her.

*   *   *

They followed the coast west, which was slow going; the tide had washed out long stretches of the road and they often had to wait for the sea to relent and let them pass. Jeon's pack of food was empty, but Tirza was adept at catching crabs and digging up clams. Jeon realized she had been living so for the whole long time she had been lost. They chewed seaweed and drank from streams. One morning, crossing a narrow little beach toward a cliff, Tirza went running off ahead of him around the bend.

A moment later she reappeared, running back, and three men in striped doublets, with pikes, raced around the foot of the cliff after her.

Jeon galloped up to his sister, and she ran into the shelter of the horse. The three Imperial pikemen surrounded them. One seized the bridle of the horse. Another soldier thrust the tip of the pike up into Jeon's face.

“Off the horse!”

Tirza clung to his stirrup, a seed between millstones, and he reached one hand down and gripped her shoulder fast. The soldiers were reaching for him. The pike jabbed at him. He shouted, “I am Prince Jeon of Castle Ocean, and if you don't stand back, I will see the Archduke—”

“Stop!” one soldier shouted. “Stand back!” In unison, the other two stepped back, lowering their pikes to their sides. The helmet stared at Jeon a moment and said, “Yes, that's one of them. Look at the hair.” He bowed to Jeon, very deep. “My lord Prince, I plead your pardon; we did not recognize you, come here so alone and without ceremony.”

Tirza growled at him. Jeon still had one arm stretched down to her and she pulled herself up behind him on the horse. She pointed on ahead. Jeon lifted his reins, and the helmet moved, abruptly, and got in front of him, blocking the way. The two pikes came up beside him.

“It's well we did meet you, though; my lord Prince, you must turn back. The way ahead is not passable.”

Jeon lowered his hand to the pommel of his saddle, crossed the other hand over it, and stared at him. Behind him Tirza was grumbling and fussing, and she pushed him; she wanted him to go forward, to strut his way through this, as Luka would. Make them let him pass in his own country. He saw something else. Erdhart's name had backed them up the first time, but now the men were willing to stand against him, so whatever was going on that they did not want him to see was Erdhart's business.