Dragon Blood-Hurog 2 (36 page)

There was nothing I could do about my friends until I dealt with Jakoven. I was behind him now. There was a chance he would think any noise I made was his own sentry—the man I'd killed. Jakoven, for his part, was moving slowly toward the camp—trying, I supposed, to get close enough to tell his men from mine. I was almost upon him when I heard a roar I almost didn't recognize as the king's

voice.

"
Garranon
!" he howled.

Tosten had a song he liked, which I thought silly, about a soldier who finds his wife was a traitor. One of

the phrases I'd objected to said something about the man's voice trembling with betrayal and disbelief.

"How," I'd asked, "do betrayal and disbelief sound?" I heard it now in Jakoven's voice. Felt it in the thunder of power and magic that formed around his person.

I was close enough to have used my sword, but the branches of the trees were too close, hampering my swing, and my sword was not made for thrusting. So I bellowed like a bull moose and charged through the hampering foliage and set my shoulder into Jakoven's stomach before I even saw him with my eyes. My charge sent us both tumbling down a sharp incline and into the camp's clearing. It also interrupted whatever spell he'd intended for Garranon.

I rolled to my feet and struck in the same motion, but Jakoven's blade met mine and turned it. He let my weapon slide along his blade and replied to my thrust with a series of quick short moves designed to cut

rather than maim or kill.

It was an unexpected and effective style. He left several shallow cuts on my arms and a more serious one across my belly. His sword was shorter than mine, which should have been a disadvantage, except that he kept close to me, where my own weapon's length got in my way. Even so, I was stronger than he. I got one good solid block in and forced him away from me with a rush he couldn't turn. From there I kept him at a distance with the superior reach of sword and arm, making him play my game.

The cuts on my arm bled freely, and I could feel dampness from the slice in my middle all the way to the

knees of my trousers. I knew I would have little time to win this before weakness from the loss of blood

would seriously hamper me.

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Even as the thought registered, Garranon came up behind me calling, "Step back, Ward, I've got him. Bind your wounds before we have to carry you out of here."

We switched places as if we'd practiced the move a thousand times. I looked around, but I couldn't see the rest of the fighting because the tents were in the way. I stripped off my shirt quickly and wrapped it bandage-tight around my waist, just above my navel, tying the arms together to hold it. Hopefully that would stop the worst of the bleeding.

While I tied the makeshift bandaging, I watched Garranon fight Jakoven. The hiss that left my lips had more to do with the beauty of the swordwork I was watching than the burning pain in my abdomen. They

were so well matched, I was awed by the speed and savagery of the fight.

"Traitor," breathed Jakoven. "I
saved
you. Saved your brother and allowed you to
keep
your lands when the estates of other men who had smaller roles in the Rebellion than your father were given to those loyal

to me."

"You used me," corrected Garranon, all coolness to Jakoven's heat. "And I let you. I knew I could not save my family with my sword, but I could with my body."

"You loved me," said Jakoven.

"Never," replied Garranon. "If I could have taken the breath from your body and not lost all, I would have done so. I paid for spies, and spied myself, feeding the information to Alizon when he broke from your court."

"You lie." Jakoven's voice was confident. "I have never had a more passionate bedmate. Why do you think I kept you all these years?"

"Love is not necessary for sex," replied Garranon composedly. "And that's all it ever was—no matter how good it felt. But weighed against what you have done to my home and to the Five Kingdoms, it is less than nothing."

"You lie," repeated Jakoven, and he missed a block. Garranon' s blade slid easily through the simple silk

shirt Jakoven wore. The blow was too low to be immediately fatal.

"I loved you," said Jakoven, dropping to his knees, blood dyeing his hands a glistening black. Garranon pulled his weapon free and swung again. The blood-dark blade slid through the high king's throat and the

resulting spray of blood covered Garranon, dripping down his face like tears. I ducked my head, both to examine the worst of the wounds on my forearm and to give Garranon a moment of privacy. There was such grief on his face, I didn't think that he would want anyone else to see

it.

"Here," said Garranon. He ripped a strip of cloth from the bottom of his shirt and wound it around my right bicep. I hadn't noticed that one.

"We'd best go see how the rest are faring," he said.

I nodded, but couldn't help but take a last look at Jakoven's still body. I'd been in battle before, and I knew how quickly a man could go from life into death. It only took a single mistake. But it seemed almost

anticlimactic to stare at the dead body of the man who'd inflicted so much damage in his life. As if his
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death wasn't payment enough.

I followed Garranon and caught up to him. We pushed past the tents, and I had just time enough to glimpse Tisala still on her feet when the magelight above us went out. The hair on the back of my neck rose with the magic that swept over us like a giant wave hitting the surf.

I think I even stepped back, because I bumped into Garranon.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Farsonsbane," I said. "Oreg!" I bellowed, turning about as my night vision began to come back to me and shadows turned gradually into more familiar shapes of tents and men. No one answered me.

Garranon's night sight must have improved faster than mine, because he left my side abruptly to engage one of the shadowy figures before it could complete a strike at someone who was down. I sprinted toward the tent where the Bane was calling to me, hungry for what I could feed it.

"Oreg?" I called as I ran.

Surely only Oreg could have gotten past Jakoven's safeguards, but he still didn't answer me. I looked for

him with my magic and found him so near the Bane, I thought for a moment that the artifact's magic had

misled me.

I stumbled over a body, burnt and torn, and I took a few precious seconds to examine the forehead and eye that were left. Fear that it was Oreg almost kept me from seeing Arten, Jakoven's archmage, in the shape of the brow.

A few feet farther on I found another body, unrecognizable, but the fire that still fed on his flesh was full

of Oreg's familiar magic—he was one of the high king's wizards.

Jakoven's tent was dark and still, but the entrance flap was open. I tried to feel Oreg's magic, but if he were using any, it was swallowed up by the magic of the Bane.

Gods,
I thought, my mind playing out various scenarios as I slowed to sneak up on the tent. Oreg got through the traps set by Jakoven and tried to break the spell that held the Bane and failed. Or he was tired and was caught by a trap Jakoven set.

I ducked beneath the flap and magelight flared in the tent. There had been so many bodies on the ground, it had never occurred to me that anyone but Oreg would be in the tent with the Bane. But Jade Eyes smiled his beautiful smile at me.

For a moment all I could see was him. My body, remembering what he'd done to it while wearing that smile, broke into a cold sweat. Then I saw Oreg's limp body on the tent floor. Ignoring Jade Eyes, I took two steps forward and felt Oreg's neck for a pulse—sighing in relief when I felt it. I didn't like the knot that was rising on the back of his head, though. Stala always said that if you hit

a man in the head hard enough to knock him out, you had a good chance of killing him.
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"Welcome, Ward," whispered Jade Eyes. "I've been waiting for my opportunity to claim the Bane since I

first saw it. It is appropriate that you should be here, just as you were when it first called to me." Crouched beside Oreg, I looked up at Jade Eyes and recognized the madness in his eyes. I wondered if, like my mother, he tasted his own potions or if he was simply crazy. Either way, the slender staff topped

with a dragon holding a glowing ruby in its mouth scared me sick.

The Bane's angry red magic blew my hair away from my face and came back to bit me in the shoulder. The blow was as hard as any I've taken, and it was completely unexpected, because there was no change in Jade Eyes' s face or body that told me what he intended. It knocked me forward onto my arms, and one of the cuts that had closed reopened. I felt that breeze come back to taste my blood.

"Oh," he breathed. "They like you. Can you hear them? They called me and called me. I visited them every night, but I couldn't break Jakoven's protections. I came in tonight and found your wizard had done

all the work for me."

"
Who
?" asked a voice in my head, breathy and soft I almost couldn't hear it over Jade Eye's words. "
Who are you
?"

Hurog
, I thought.

"
We know you
." This time the voice was several and much stronger. I saw three dragons, though my eyes were closed. "
Know us, too
."

" … been working on a spell to release them," continued Jade Eyes, apparently unaware of the other conversation I found myself a part of. "Dragons are immortal. If I can release them from some of the restrictions that Farson placed upon them, they can be dragons again in truth. They will serve me as dragons served the Emperor. Alizon is right," he said intensely. "Jakoven should not be high king." The blackness began to flow under the violent red of the gem, just as it had the first time I saw it. I realized that this part of the Bane's magic seemed black to me, not because it was evil, but because it was so dense. It slid down the staff in a slow, heavy flow and began pooling on the floor of the tent, covering my hands and lapping over Oreg's body.

This was different, separate from the red magic, and it became more different all the time. It tasted like dragon, though I hadn't realized that dragon magic had a feel to it—a commonality between the magic of

Oreg, Hurog, and the Bane.

"It's almost drained now," said Jade Eyes, incorrectly, I thought. Farsonsbane was hiding its power from him. I shivered when I realized that I understood the Bane because of the connection Jakoven had forged between us with my blood and tears. The magic I saw as red was the power controlled by the mage wielding the Bane. I knew because the Bane told me so. The dark magic was power hoarded by the Bane itself, held in check by the binding Farson had imposed upon it so long ago.

"Jakoven used most of the magic on Buril—after making certain that Garranon wasn't there," continued Jade Eyes, unaware of the secondary communication between the Bane and me. "Peculiar of him, don't you think? I thought he was finished with Garranon. He hasn't taken Garranon since he found me last year. But I know something that Jakoven didn't."

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"What's that?" I asked, watching the blackness touch Jade Eyes' s feet and wash back like the sea hitting

the sand.

"That it is your tears the dragons need—they told me so.
Hurog
means dragon, he said. But he didn't go far enough. I looked it up. Did you know that
Hurogmeten
means Guardian of Dragons?" He crouched, unaware of the blackness that flowed around the tent. "Your tears will give my immortal dragons back their lives and they will serve me."

He was wrong. The Bane contained the revenants of dragons, and dead things could not be given anything but the semblance of life.

"Dragons aren't immortal," I said, touching my dragon's neck again, because I couldn't see him breathe underneath the layer of blackness that Jade Eyes couldn't perceive: He was not a Hurog. Against my fingers, Oreg's pulse beat steadily. "Dragons live a long time, longer than the dwarves. But they aren't immortal."

His smile broadened. "You don't know much," he said, and tilted the staff just a little. Pain coursed through me and I lost control of my muscles, falling limply to the floor, unable even to turn

my face aside and avoid the painful contact of noise and hard-packed earth.

"Always so quiet, my Ward," whispered Jade Eyes, and he turned my head away from the ground, tsking when he saw the blood flowing from my nose. "I liked that about you. Some people like the screaming, but I enjoy your pain, not noise." He touched his fingers to my upper lip and held his hand up

for me to see the dampness of my tears coating his fingertips. "I'm sorry you have to die. But I think that

you might be able to take them from me, if I don't kill you before I release them."

"A dragon is no man's slave," I managed to say around the pain. "Nor should he ever be. I think that you'll be like my father and find that it is more than you can safely hold."

"Your father had a
dragon
?" he asked, and the pain ebbed into memory. "They say that there is a dragon at Hurog now. Jakoven said it was illusion."

I took a deep breath. "Listen to me, Jade Eyes. The dragons died to make that gem. You can't bring them back to life. The first rule of magic is not to tamper with the natural order of things. If you break Farson's bindings, you'll only unleash death."

"
Yes
," said the red tide of magic, "
let me destroy
." But it didn't have the same living feeling as the black magic that coated me and drank my tears from my

cheeks. It was just destructive magic, cold and powerful.

Jade Eyes drew back.

"Did you hear that?" I asked. "There will be no new Empire to rule if you free them." His face changed abruptly to a hate-filled snarl and he jumped to his feet. "You think you know everything."