Born of Dragons

CHAPTER THREE

For so much of her life, Lenore had been perfect, meek, obedient. She had been the epitome of a princess, while around her, her sisters had done more or less as they wished. Nerra had always been quick to run into the forest, while Erin had played at soldiers. Lenore had been left to be the one doing all the things a princess should.

Now, though, she was doing what she wanted.

“Are you sure we should head down into the city, my lady?” Orianne asked, as they walked toward the entrance to the castle. “It may not be safe to go alone.”

A shiver ran down Lenore’s spine at the memory of her kidnapping, but she shook her head.

“There might be threats outside the city,” she said, “but Royalsport is safe. Besides, we’ll take a guard.” She picked one out. “You, you’ll escort us down into the city, won’t you?”

“As you command, your highness,” the man said, falling into step with the two of them.

“But why the city?” Orianne asked. “You were never one to go into it before.”

That was true. Of all her family, Lenore had been the one to spend the least time outside the ordered world of the royal court. Now, though, now she couldn’t stand to be there. She couldn’t stand there with more people congratulating her on her marriage, with her father lying near death and her mother little more than a grieving shadow. She couldn’t stand to be there with Finnal, however much he might require her to stay by his side.

There was another reason too: she thought she’d seen Devin heading down into the city from time to time, and she hoped that he might be down there. The thought of speaking with him again made Lenore’s heart lift when nothing else would. Just the thought of him, and his kindness, made her smile in ways that thoughts of her new husband couldn’t.

“We’ll go down there and let people see that even in a time of grief, we are there for them,” Lenore said.

She set off with Orianne and the guard in her wake, stepping past the guards on the gate, then walking down toward the body of the city. Lenore took in the houses on either side, their height and their grandeur, took in the rich scent of the city air, the feel of the cobbles beneath her feet. She could have ridden in a carriage, but that would have isolated her from the city around her. Besides, the last time she had done that was on her wedding harvest, and Lenore was trying to escape those memories, not revisit them.

She headed down into a pleasant garden district close to the castle, the houses there clearly those of nobles, the streets clean and not too busy with people. It wasn’t enough for Lenore right then. She knew that Devin was probably from a much poorer area than this, and she wanted to see for herself what that meant in Royalsport.

“Are you sure you want to go this way, Lenore?” Orianne asked her as they took a bridge over to an area that was clearly a little poorer, the houses more closely packed, the people more clearly at work rather than leisure. The smoke of the House of Weapons rose overhead.

“This is exactly where I need to be,” Lenore said. “I need to see the real city, all of it.”

And if they happened to find Devin along the way, then that would be even better. Lenore admitted to herself then that her heart skipped a beat every time she saw him. Of course, it had done the same with Finnal, but there was a difference. Devin wasn’t there for some marriage that would lead to lands, didn’t have ugly rumors running around him. All that Lenore had seen or heard of him showed him to be brave and kind… the type of man she should have married, were it not impossible.

“Much further, and we’ll be close to the House of Sighs,” Orianne said. Lenore could see it in the distance over the rooftops, gaudy colors set there to catch the eye. An idea came to her.

“You should go there,” she said to her maid. “Talk to… our friend there. Assure her of our good will.”

“You’re sure?” Orianne asked. “It would be a delicate place to be associated with.”

“I’m sure,” Lenore said. She’d seen what Finnal was now; she needed all the allies she could get, even if they came from places that had once made her blush just to think of them.

“As you wish, my lady,” Orianne said, sweeping a curtsey and hurrying off.

That left Lenore and the guard to wander through the streets. Lenore didn’t really have a direction in mind; the wandering was enough, the freedom to go in whatever direction she wished.

She was still wandering when she heard footsteps behind them. Lenore frowned and looked to the guard.

“Do you hear that?” she said.

“Hear what, your highness?”

Maybe it was just her fears getting the better of her, being out here in a place that should have been familiar, yet was anything but that. Even so, she was sure she could hear footsteps again, thought that she caught a glimpse of a figure somewhere over her shoulder, there and then gone again in the city streets as more people wandered past. Lenore started to walk faster.

She took the next couple of turnings at random, then cursed as she and her guard reached a dead end in a quiet courtyard surrounded by houses. She looked back, and now a man approached, in dark clothes, a knife at his hip, wearing insignia that marked him as one of Duke Viris’s men; Finnal’s men.

Lenore should have breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of her husband’s man there, since at least it wasn’t some ruffian there to rob her. Instead, Lenore felt the tension balling up inside her.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Who are you?”

“My name is Higgis, your highness,” the man said, sweeping a bow. “I am a servant, sent with instructions from your husband.”

“What instructions?” Lenore asked.

The man came up from his bow with his knife already in his hand, stepping close to the guard Lenore had brought with her and thrusting once, then again. Lenore gasped, pressing herself back against the nearest of the buildings, but with the man between her and the exit to the courtyard, there was no escape.

“I was sent to save you from ruffians who set upon you,” the man said. He wiped off his knife and put it away. “They killed your guard and beat you before stealing from you. All because you did not heed your husband’s instructions to stay where he set you. As a result, he will be forced to take you away from the city to convalesce.”

The servant stepped forward, cracking his knuckles.

“You’re really going to strike a princess?” Lenore demanded. “I’ll have your head.”

“No, your highness,” the man said. “You will not, while your husband will reward me, as he has before. Now, I would say that this will go easier on you if you hold still, but that would be a lie.”

He drew back a fist, and for a moment, Lenore was sure that there would be nothing but pain in her future. Then a second, smaller, figure rushed past the man into the courtyard, stepping in between Lenore and her would-be attacker.

“Erin?” Lenore said.

Her sister stood there, staff in her hands before her, spinning it casually as she waited. Finnal’s servant didn’t hesitate, but rushed toward her. Erin waited until the very last moment, then stepped aside, staff lashing out into the man’s midriff, his knee, his skull. The weapon seemed to be everywhere at once in that moment, moving in a blur that was punctuated only by the crack of wood against flesh.

The servant stepped back, drawing his knife again. Erin lashed out with her staff, striking at his wrist, the crack of bone audible to Lenore as the weapon connected. The man cried out, stumbled back, and then turned and ran. For a moment, Lenore thought her sister might set after him in chase, but then she stopped, turning back to Lenore.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Did he hurt you?”

Lenore shook her head. “Not me, but my guard…” She looked down at the dead eyes of the guardsman, staring out in shock. It was far too similar to those she’d seen before. “What are you doing here, Erin?”

“I thought I’d follow you down into town. I had a break from training with Odd. But then I saw this one following you, and I wanted to know what was going on.” She fixed Lenore with a level look. “What is going on, sister?”

“It…” Lenore forced her voice to stay level. She would not be weak, would not be trembling and hysterical, would not be any of the things Finnal probably thought she was. “It’s my new husband.”

“Finnal?” Erin said.

“He’s every bit as bad as they say, Erin,” Lenore said. “He only cares about what he can get from our marriage, not about me. And this… he’s sent a man to beat me just because I’ve left the castle without his say.”

Erin’s face was hard. “I’ll kill him. I’ll gut him and stick his head on a pike.”

“No,” Lenore said. “You can’t. Kill Duke Viris’s son? It would be civil war.”

“You think I care?” Erin demanded.

“I think I have to care,” Lenore said. “No, we have to be smarter than that.”

“We?” Erin said.

“My maid, Orianne, knows what Finnal is like. She will help. So will others, like Devin.”

Lenore didn’t know why it was his name that came to mind, but it was.

“That’s it?” Erin asked. She shook her head. “Well, it’s a start. We could go to Vars.”

“He wouldn’t care,” Lenore pointed out. “I’d find a way to divorce Finnal if I thought Vars would listen.”

“Then we’ll find something even he’ll listen to,” Erin insisted.

Lenore shook her head. “That won’t be easy.”

Erin sighed. “I know. But I swear to you, Lenore, that Finnal won’t hurt you more than he has. No one will. From now on, I go where you do, and if anyone attacks you… I’ll stand by your side and cut their hearts out if they try.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Nerra knelt by the waters of the temple fountain, among the bones of those dead who had tried it before. Above her, the slopes of the volcano seemed to look down angrily, forbidding her to try what she was about to try. Looking at her arms, she could see the patches of scale sickness there, the lines of it dark on her arms.

She would not die like Lina. Even if these waters meant death, it was better than waiting for the sickness to claim her out here on the island her dragon had brought her to. Seeing her friend die had been the fuel to propel her all this way to the temple, to the fountain she had promised the island’s keeper, Kleos, she would not seek.

She drank its waters now. She took in the water in a single long swallow that drained her cupped hands. There seemed to be no point in just sipping when any touch of the water was supposed to mean death.

She did not dare to hope for what else it might mean.

“They wouldn’t call it a healing fountain just as a lie,” Nerra said aloud, as if doing so would make it true. “They wouldn’t build all this.”

Why build an open air temple if the only goal was to kill those who came? Why bother with a fountain at all, or the strange pressure that had seemed to push her back from the place as she had walked the volcano’s slopes? Kleos, the keeper of the sick, had told her that to drink was death, that it was all just a way to let those with the dragon sickness kill themselves, but Nerra had to hope that he was wrong, or lying, or both.

It would work. It had to.

Nerra stood and looked out over the island around her, so close to the continent of Sarras and yet not quite a part of it. She looked out over the fiery volcanic landscape she had crossed, and over the jungle of the rest. From here, she couldn’t see the small village that sought to contain the sick and the dying, those slowly transforming from the sickness into monstrous things that knew only hunger and death. Wasn’t it better to try this than to sit there, waiting for the bitter mercy of Kleos’s knife when she became too twisted?

Nerra stood there, waiting, trying to imagine the water working inside her. Should she have felt something by now? She knew herbs well enough to know that the effects were rarely instant, but somehow, she’d expected healing waters to be—

Nerra screamed as the pain hit her, so sharp and so all-consuming that it drove her to her knees once more. She clutched at her stomach as her body writhed with agony, her cries coming so quickly that she didn’t even have the breath for it.

Kleos hadn’t lied; the fountain was poison to those who drank from it. Nerra could feel the water within her now, twisting through her like some kind of barbed serpent, burning through her as if she had swallowed the volcano’s lava rather than mere water. She tried to throw it up, but it wouldn’t come; she didn’t even have enough control over herself for that.

“Please…” Nerra cried out.

She felt as if her whole body were tearing itself apart, muscle by muscle, bone by bone. It felt as if every scrap of her was at war with the rest, waging a conflict where she was the battlefield, the warriors and the barren plain it would leave behind, all life ripped from her.

“No…” Nerra cried out. She found herself thinking in that moment of everything she had been forced to leave behind in the Northern Kingdom, everything that she would never see again as the agony of the deadly waters ripped into her. She thought of her brothers and sisters, elegant Lenore and anything but elegant Erin, Rodry who was always so quick to charge in to defend others and Greave, who was so quiet and thoughtful. She even found herself thinking of Vars.

Above all of it though, she found herself thinking of the dragon she had found. In her mind’s eye, it was grown, impossibly quickly, its scales shining with a rainbow sheen, its wings spread wide as it soared. The image was so clear that Nerra looked up, half expecting to see it in the sky, as it had been when the bandits had come for her in the woods. It had carried her here, so why would it not be here?

She was alone, though; more alone than she’d ever been. Even in the forest, there had been animals, and a sense of peace. Now… now there was only the pain that filled her, twisted her, broke her. Nerra felt her arm snap, and she screamed with it, felt the muscles of her fingers contract so hard that they shattered the bones within.

Somewhere in it, she must have passed out from the pain, because she saw the dragon again, saw more dragons, rising again on Sarras, in flights and flocks that filled the sky. They spun above her, and then she was among them, taking in the multitude of their colors, black and red, gold and emerald and more.

She was on the ground now, moving through the remnants of buildings now far older than anything in the Northern Kingdom, things that looked as though they had been grown, not built. She thought she could see other figures moving among those buildings, flickering in the corners of her vision, yet every time she tried to turn her head to get a better view, it seemed that they scattered, fading away into the distance, impossible to catch up to.

Nerra tried to chase them, but they ran into tunnels where the walls seemed to shift and stretch even as Nerra plunged into them. It was this living stone that reached out for her, and grabbed her, and twisted her like clay until Nerra ran out of the breath even to scream anymore in her dreams.

Then she did the one thing she had never expected to do: she woke up.

It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. The sun was still in the sky, but a dozen days might have passed for all Nerra knew. Her body ached with the memory of all the agony the water had put it through, and she felt so weak that…

No, wait; she didn’t feel weak. She felt thirsty, and hungry, and tired, but not weak. If anything, she felt strong. She stood, and for the first time in what seemed like a long time, there was no hint of dizziness as she did it. Even so, Nerra almost fell. The muscles of her legs felt… wrong, somehow. Different.

Even the world around her seemed different, changed somehow. The colors of it seemed subtly changed, as if she could see more of them than ever before, while it seemed that the smells of the jungle nearby were so strong that she could all but taste them.

Right now though, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she had survived. Did that mean… did it mean that she was cured? Had the fountain healed her?

Nerra barely dared to hope that it might be true, that she might have survived when so many others had died, but hope did start to rise in her. She was definitely alive, and all of the awful, bone-breaking sensations in her body were gone. If she was whole, was it too much to hope that she might also have been cured?

Then Nerra saw her arm. It was still a humanoid arm, not twisted into the hideous, misshapen things those with the dragon sickness became down in the village, but it was completely covered in iridescent scales of a deep blue. Muscles moved under the skin, far thicker than they had been before, and even as Nerra watched, she saw claws extend from her fingers, wickedly sharp-looking.

She cried out in shock at the sight of her arm like that, clawing at the scales, and there were claws with which to do it, which only made it feel worse. What was happening to her, what had she become? She felt as if she couldn’t breathe, and this had nothing to do with the illness and everything to do with the sheer strangeness of what was happening. She took a step back, but that only took her toward the pool of water. She couldn’t stop herself; she had to look.

The being that stared back at her was utterly changed from who she had been, and yet not the broken, twisted thing that she had been so scared of becoming. Nerra could only stare at it for long seconds, unable to make sense of it, horror, shock, and sheer fascination battling for supremacy within her.

Her skin was scaled, her eyes yellow as a snake’s, her features extended into something more draconic, yet there was an undeniable symmetry and beauty to those features. Nera would have rejected it all, even so, but there was still something about them that reminded Nerra of herself. Even the memory of her hair was there, in frond-like strands that were more like the crest of a lizard. Her body was just as scaled, and more muscled with it, able to move in sinuous ways thanks to the rearrangement of her joints, yet she didn’t look like a monster.

“Of course I’m a monster!” she said aloud, and her voice was the only part of her that didn’t seem changed. That made it worse, somehow, not better. How could that part of her be the same, when so much of the rest of her was so twisted? A thought came to her, that none of her family would recognize her now, that she had lost everything. Rage came up inside her, swift and sudden and total, and she picked up a lump of temple masonry and crushed it between her hands. It was only as she did it that she realized just how strong this new form had become.

The rage was still there, and Nerra could feel it fighting to bubble up, to take her over, the way all the transformed ones in the village turned into mindless things. Nerra fought back against that, against the shock, against the sheer grief of this transformation, forcing all of it down inside her, refusing to become anything like that. She clung to the side of the pool, staring down into the water, forcing herself to look at this changed version of who she was until she thought she could bear it.

The fountain hadn’t killed her, hadn’t healed her, it had changed her. It had been like a catalyst for the transformation the sickness brought, but it had taken her right past the twisted forms it usually created, into being something sleek and lithe, lizard-like and human all at once.

Nerra didn’t know what to do with that thought, didn’t know how to get past the shock of what she was, what she’d become. She didn’t understand this, didn’t know what to do next. She needed to know what was going on, and what had happened to her, but there was only one place she could think of that she might get answers, and that was one where they might kill her just for what she was.

Striding out over the surface of the volcano, Nerra set off back in the direction of the village.

CHAPTER FIVE

Stalking Finnal and his people was easy enough for Erin; after all, as a princess, she could go everywhere in the castle, and as a knight, no one looked twice at her for doing it with her short spear by her side, the head of it still sheathed so that it looked like a staff.

What would anyone truly see if they glanced her way? A girl shorter than her sisters, in chain and plate armor, dark hair cropped short so that it would be out of the way for fighting, features fixed with determination. They wouldn’t be able to guess what she was about, wouldn’t be able to fathom the part where, sooner or later, she planned on thrusting her spear through Finnal’s heart. People didn’t want to look at princesses and think that they might do something like that.

People were stupid.

For now, Erin was just following, moving among the crowds of the castle, going from the gathered knights to the clusters of servants as Finnal made his way across the courtyard toward the great hall. There were tents out in the courtyard at the moment, in the shadow of the high walls, soldiers camped there as they waited for new commands. Some sat around cooking fires in the open air, and Finnal paused at some of them, making jokes and laughing. At a few, he handed out coins, probably trying to buy affection.

Erin couldn’t work out what her sister had ever seen in him. Oh, he was pretty enough as these things went, all elegant grace, high cheekbones, and a ready smile. He dressed in dark clothes edged with silver, the better to draw attention to the shine of the rest of him. And certainly, everyone around him responded to him as if the sun itself had just come out from behind a cloud whenever he passed. Yet Lenore deserved more than that; deserved someone who actually loved her.

She certainly deserved someone who wouldn’t try to hold her a virtual hostage in their marriage, sending thugs after her just because she’d dared to go outside. Finnal would pay for that, and dearly.

Erin smiled as she saw Finnal’s path arc toward the stables on his way across to the great hall. With so many people in the castle at the moment, it was hard to find a good place for an ambush, but Erin was sure there would be a spot there. She knew just the place.

Abandoning her attempts to be a silent shadow behind him, Erin ran across the courtyard at an angle away from Finnal. She cut back around and, running up a flight of stone steps until she was on the lowest level of the walls, she slipped past one of the guards who looked out over the islands of the city, padding on silent feet before she dropped down onto the roof of the stables.

She’d hidden here plenty of times when she was younger, partly because it was a good place to crouch when she wanted to avoid the etiquette lessons her mother wanted her to learn, and partly because there was a space where it was possible to look down into the stables. Erin had used it to spy on hunting parties or knights getting ready to go out into the kingdom, always feeling jealous that they got to do all that when she didn’t. Now she waited and watched, gripping the haft of her spear.