Authors: Margaret Weis
“Now that is strange that you should ask, Master,” said the porter. “You are
the second person who has made inquiry after such a boy. What is all the more
uncommon is that no such lad ever came here.”
“Are you certain?” Draconas feigned surprise. “Perhaps you were off-duty and
did not see him.”
“No, I have been here the livelong day. I’ve seen all who came and all who
went and not a boy among them, let alone a boy with a hurt leg.”
“Well, then, he must not have been so badly hurt as I feared,” said
Draconas, adding offhandedly, “Who was the other who made inquiry about him?”
“A holy sister. She seemed right put out that he was not here. Insisted that
he was and would not take no for an answer. She went in to look for herself.
She left here in high dudgeon and when I •wished her good day, she cast me such
a look as it was a wonder did not roast me where I stood.”
“She was probably worried about him,” said Draconas. “Did you know her?”
“Oh, no, sir,” said the porter. “But then, it’s not likely I would. We are
an out-of-the-way place most of the year, with few visitors.”
“I suppose that is true. Well, I will not keep you longer. That pasty looks
too good to let go to waste. Return to your dinner, good Porter,” said
Draconas. He fished about in his coin purse. “And thank you for your
information. Please put this toward feeding the poor, will you?”
The porter accepted the money with a blessing and settled himself down with
his pie once more.
Convinced that his fears for the boy’s safety were justified, Draconas made
his way back to Bellona’s campsite. With any luck, he’d find the boy with her,
for the afternoon was waning toward evening and a young stomach would demand to
be fed. Draconas was well aware that his reception would be chill. He’d make
the two of them listen to his warning about the nun, if he had to spell-bind
them to do it.
Draconas arrived back at the place where Bellona had pitched her tent, but
he didn’t find the boy.
He didn’t find a tent.
He didn’t find Bellona.
No tent, no furs, no boy, no cart. The spot where the tent had stood was
empty. He told himself that perhaps he had remembered wrong, that this was the
wrong site, but he couldn’t fool himself for long. Ruts from the cart’s wheels
were plainly visible in the ground, alongside a patch of yellow, flattened
grass corresponding to the shape of the tent.
“She fooled me,” he muttered, torn between rage and admiration. Admiration
for her, rage for himself. “She fooled me completely. I thought she didn’t give
a damn, when, in truth, she was scared witless. So scared that she packed up
and left.”
What about the boy? Maybe he’d been there all along, hiding inside the tent.
Or perhaps Bellona had gone seeking the boy in the forest, knowing that she
could find him when no one else could.
“At least, I
hope
no one else found him,” Draconas said gravely.
He scanned the landscape—the bright green of the rolling hillsides, the
deeper green of the forests, the fairegrounds splashed with the speckles of
booths and tents. The road was crowded with people, coming and going.
If only he could take dragon form! Spread his wings, dig his hind claws into
the ground, and propel himself into the air with his powerful, heavily muscled
hind legs. If only he could reach with his wings to seize hold of the sky and
pull himself up among the clouds. He could soar over the hills and fields and
roads far below, searching with his keen eyes until he spotted them.
Fleeing safety. Rushing headlong into danger.
A wonderful image, but that was all it was or ever could be. Too many humans
about. The babble of their voices surrounded him. Their smell filled the air.
He pictured himself transforming, flaring up from among the grass in a blaze of
orange-red, sun-fired scales—a creature of dreams, a monster of legend, a
dragon of wrath and death and destruction. He pictured the panic, the chaos.
Draconas looked down at his dust-covered boots—the toes scuffed, the heels
worn down after only a few months’ wear. He was the walker and this was how he
came by his name. He spent more money on shoe leather than on anything else in
this world of humans.
With a grim sigh, he set off walking, tracking the
ruts made by the wheels of a cart being hauled with haste through the grass.
BELLONA HAD DONE ALL THAT DRACONAS HAD ENVIsioned, with one exception. She
had not taken the cart. More frightened than she could have ever imagined at
hearing of the disaster that had befallen Ven, she lost her head and acted
rashly and impulsively. Such behavior was not usual with her and she was
astonished by it, even as she gave in to it.
Bellona had once been a warrior for the kingdom of Seth, the same kingdom
where Melisande had been high priestess. Both of them unwittingly served the
dragon Maristara. Bellona had trained as a warrior from an early age, and part
of that training included learning to keep her shield raised, her sword arm
steady. Bellona had believed herself secure behind her shield, safe in the
knowledge that since Melisande’s death the weapon had not been forged that
could penetrate her defenses.
Then came Draconas and his tale of what had happened to Ven at the faire,
and suddenly fear’s sharp point slipped past her shield, struck her to the
heart.
Bellona was surprised to feel pain, for she had imagined she could not feel
anything. The pain of her grief had been so agonizing that she had never wanted
to feel anything, ever again.
Bellona had not known until that moment how much she cared for Ven. She had
not cared for him at all when he’d been a babe in arms, forced upon her by the
untimely death of his mother, her beloved Melisande. Bellona would have refused
to take him, but she had made a promise to the dying Melisande to care for her
sons—both this child and his human twin—and Bellona had been taught to honor
any promise she made to the dead.
She could not look back on those first few months with the infant Ven
without experiencing again the burning ache of loss that had nearly suffocated
her. She could not draw a breath without feeling her grief catch in her chest.
The pain was so terrible she often thought it would be easier to die than to go
on bearing it, and she might have died, if it had not been for Ven. She had to
live for the baby’s sake. He was so utterly dependent on her and she was such a
poor substitute for a mother.
At that, he nearly did die, for she knew nothing about raising babies. He
almost starved to death, until she found a peasant girl willing to serve as his
wet nurse in return for food. Bellona was able to keep his lower extremities
wrapped in swaddling bands, so that the girl, who was dull-witted as it was,
never suspected the child she held to her breast was anything other than a
pretty, fair-haired, blue-eyed babe. Once Ven was weaned, Bellona carried him
deep in the forest, and there they had lived ever since.
She named him Vengeance, because she fully intended that he would grow up to
avenge his mother’s death. In order to do this, he would have to enter a world
of normal humans, and Bellona raised him for that, or tried to. She trained him
to be self-reliant and fearless and she gave him a shield like her own, a
shield against feeling. She did not know he was hiding behind that shield,
because she did not realize she was hiding behind hers.
After hearing Draconas’s story of Yen’s mishap, Bellona had only one
panicked thought—escape.
Escape the faire, escape Draconas.
She blamed him for the tragedy that had befallen Melisande and she did not
trust him in regard to Ven. Bellona was the only human in the world who knew
the truth about Draconas—that he was a dragon who had taken human form. He had
told her the truth on the day Melisande died. He had told her because, he said,
she had a right to know.
In those hard, early days, Bellona had often hoped that Draconas would come
to take the burden of the dragon’s son from her. Her feelings had changed. She
would do all in her power to keep him away from Melisande’s child.
She sold the remainder of her pelts at a loss to a happily astonished
furrier and when he said he could not take them at that moment, but would need
to find a vehicle to transport them, she threw her cart into the bargain.
Anything to get rid of him.
She helped the man load, flinging the pelts into
the cart in haste, and fidgeting with impatience while he carefully counted
every coin twice before handing over the agreed-upon sum. She dismantled the
tent and was packed up before he was halfway down the hill. Slinging the tent
roll over one shoulder, she hurried into the woods to find Ven and take him
home.
Day was drawing to a close as Bellona entered the forest. The abbey bells
were ringing the call to Vespers, though that meant nothing to Bellona. She had
been raised to worship the Mistress of Dragons, the woman who defended Bellona
and her people from the dragons. Betrayed in that belief, Bellona had never
sought another. For her, the bells rang the tenth hour, which meant she had two
or three more hours of daylight left.
Searching the fringes of the woods, Bellona came across Ven’s boot lying
beneath a tree. Draconas had claimed he’d brought the boy into the woods to
examine the wound. Thus far, it seemed he was telling the truth. Bellona saw
traces of the boy’s flight. He’d cut a wide swath through brush and fern. He
must have been terrified.
“Poor kid,” she said, surprising herself, for generally she spared sympathy
for no one. She carried his boot with her.
Tracking him through the tangle of trees and undergrowth, she took care to
move as stealthily as if she were tracking some wild beast. Instinct warned her
not to call out his name. Like a wounded animal, he had crawled off to be alone.
He might well run from her.
She came upon him lying curled in a ball on a pile of dead leaves. He was so
pale and lay so still that fear smote her, lanced through her heart, robbed her
of breath. She had to wait a moment for the sensation to pass before she could
trust herself to examine him.
She touched his forehead and found his flesh warm. The pulse in his neck was
strong. He was not dead. Worn out, he had fallen asleep.
Bellona reached down, roughly shook him.
“Ven, wake up!”
He slept so soundly, he didn’t hear her. She flicked him hard on the cheek
with her nails.
At the sharp, stinging pain, he woke up and sat up all in one movement,
staring confusedly about.
His eyes found her and left her, searching for another. Seeing no one else,
Ven looked back at her and his eyes flickered.
“I know what happened,” she said, to spare him. “Does it hurt? Where the dog
bit you?”
He shook his head.
She tossed his boot at him. “Put that on then.”
She stood over him, her arms crossed, her expression stern. She was nervous,
ill at ease. The snap of a twig made her jump.
“Hurry up,” she said impatiently, as Ven fumbled at the boot, tugging it
over his clawed foot.
“I won’t go back,” Ven stated defiantly, meaning the faire.
“No,” she said. “Neither will I. We’re going home.”
He looked up at her, surprised. “But the furs . . .”
“I’ve sold them. We didn’t make much, but we’ll get by. Damn it, I told you
to hurry!”
She seized hold of him by his arm and dragged him to his feet. She started
to give him a tug, to pull him along. To her astonishment, he jerked his arm
free and drew back from her when she tried again to take hold of him.
“Why am I like this?” he cried, a cry that came from somewhere deep inside
him, ripping and tearing through him. He was bleeding inside, his face ghastly
white, his eyes pale blue with pure flame. “Who made me like this?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Bellona said brutally. She didn’t understand. How
could she explain it to him? “I’ll tell you when you’re older—”
He leapt to his feet, rushed past her, limping through the brush.
The muscles of his injured leg had stiffened, were bruised and sore, and
Bellona easily caught up with him.
“Very well,” she said coldly, “if you want—”
He came to a stop, looked up at her. “I changed my mind. I don’t want anything.
Except to go home.”
He held out his hand.
Fear and anxiety softened her. Taking his hand, she looked down at him and
saw how small he was and how lonely and forlorn.
“Me, too,” she said simply.
BELLONA STEERED CLEAR OF THE FAIREGROUNDS, MADE a wide detour around them.
She did not enter the city of Fair-field, but avoided that, too, following a
circuitous path that led south along the river. They traveled several furlongs
away from the city before Bellona deemed it safe to return to the road. She was
growing increasingly concerned over Ven. He made no complaint and he managed to
keep up the swift pace she set, but his limp was worse. The bruised leg was
obviously causing him pain.
Bellona glanced to the west, to the sun sinking gently into a feathery cloud
bank of purple and saffron. Night would be on them soon. She toyed with the
idea of halting for Ven’s sake, but she wanted to put as much distance between
Ven and Draconas as possible. They could walk another couple of miles before
darkness forced them to make camp. Ven could keep going a little longer. After
all, Bellona reasoned, he’d have all the night to rest his leg.
The two of them had the road to themselves. What few travelers they met were
all heading toward the city, making haste, so as not to be benighted in the
wilderness. Bellona had no fears on that score. Danger lay in the hot and noisy
city, not in the quiet, cool darkness. When the last vestige of the sun’s
afterglow faded from the heavens and the evening star shone bright against
blue-black, Bellona began to search for a place to camp. The night was hot,
oppressive. There would be rain before morning.