Dragon Heart (4 page)

The next day, he dove into the lagoon and was gone and she went back to the search, working her way steadily from one end of the cliff to the other, trying to find a way out. She went back through every crevice, tried to chimney up the sides, and crawled along the top of huge mounds of rubble. She found many openings back into the cliff, but always the space came to an end, the cliff pressed down on her, dark and cold.

She crept back out to the sunlit lagoon again. The beauty of it struck her, as it always did, the water clear and blue, grading darker toward the middle of the lagoon and paler in the ring of the shore, the tiny ripples of the waves, the cream-colored sand. The sky was cloudless. The cliff vaulted up hundreds of feet high, sheer as a wall of glass.

As she stood there, wondering what to do, the blue water began to churn, throwing off breaking waves, and the dragon's great head thrust up through the center of it, a white fish between his long jaws.

He saw her, and came to her, cast down the fish, and breathed on it with the harsh fire of his breath, and then, as usual, stood there watching her eat it. She was hungry and ate all the pale, flaky meat. Being close to him made her edgy. She had thought of a good story to tell him, with a long chase through a forest and the dragon's escape at the end. She could not look at him, afraid of what she might see brimming in the great red eyes.

He sat quietly throughout the story, as he always did. She had learned to feel the quality of his attention and she knew he was deeply involved in it. She brought it to an end, and stood.

His head moved, fast as a serpent, and he caught her between his jaws. He laid her down on her back between his forepaws. She lay so stiff her fists were clenched, looking up at the wedge-shaped head above her, and then he began to lick her all over.

His tongue was long and supple, silky smooth, longer than she was tall, so that sometimes he was licking her whole body all at once. She was afraid to move. He licked at her dress until it was bunched up under her armpits. His touch was soft, gentle, even tender, stroking over her breasts he paused an instant, his warm tongue over her, and against her will she gasped.

He said, in his deep, harsh voice, “It's only me, the Prince,” and chuckled. He slid his tongue down her side and curled it over her legs.

She clutched her thighs together, but the tip of his tongue flicked between them, into the cleft of her body. She shut her eyes. She held her whole body tight, as if she could make an armor of her skin. Her strength was useless against him.

But nothing more happened. He slept, eventually, his head over her. She dozed fitfully, starting up from nightmares, her body licked in green fire.

In the morning he went off as usual and she searched desperately along the cliff face. At the waterfall she stood in the tumbling water, thinking of his tongue on her, wondering what else he would do.

Through the streaming water she looked back into the crevice in the rock and saw a way to climb up.

She stepped in behind the waterfall. The air was cool and damp, the rock wall of the hillside hung with long green weed. The gap where she stood closed up above her head, but just beyond, within reach it seemed of the very top, was a ledge, where a little twisted bramble sprouted.

She slid her hands over the smooth, mossy rock, found a place to hold on with her hands, and got her foot wedged into a crack. She began to climb. The wet green weed was soft and her toes clutched at it and her soles skidded across it. She found a handhold deeper into the crevice and pulled herself higher. That led her back into the waterfall, which slammed down on her shoulders, her head. She reached up, grabbed the bramble, and drew herself up, and the bramble pulled out and she fell hard down into the rocks.

She rolled over, her whole side throbbing, her hair plastered to her face. I can't do this, she thought. I can't do this. The water pounded her. She stood again, filthy and soaked, and looked up. Knowing better what to look for on the rock, she picked out a seam where she could put her fingers. A bulge below that where she might be able to get a foothold. She leaned up, bent her hands into the niche, and stretched her leg up and got her foot on the bulge, and pushed up, hard, lunging toward the top. With her free foot she scrabbled at the curve of the mossy wall, and for an instant got enough hold to lunge higher. Her head and shoulders burst up out of the waterfall and she stretched her arms across the ledge.

Her feet lost their grip. She was sliding back again. Her hands rasped helplessly over the bare rock of the ledge. She pumped her legs, and jamming one knee against the rock she got an unexpected purchase and lurched up and forward again and got most of herself onto the ledge.

Stretched on her belly on the warm stone, she closed her eyes. Her knee burnt with pain and her hands were numb. She wanted to rest, but she could not stay here, she was still too near the beach, and she got to all fours.

The ledge ran crosswise of the cliff, but up there, several body lengths above her, was another such shelf, bigger. She ran her eyes over the stone before her. From below the rock face looked blank, but now she could see the little fissures and edges and seams. She started cautiously, sliding one hand up above her over the rock, finding something to hold on to, moving each foot until she was sure of its grip.

A roar from below shook her. She nearly fell. Pressed against the stone, rigid with fear, she sobbed for breath.

“No! Come down! Come down now!”

Her heart was banging against her ribs. He could burn her here, cook her like a fish. She thrust her hand into a crevice of the rock, and with her feet paddling at the wall she dragged herself up. If she fell he'd kill her. In a rush she scrambled over sheer rock to the next ledge and crept out onto it. Panting, her whole body trembling, she could not move for a moment. The muscles in her calves jerked.

“Come down!” he shouted. “You're making me angry! Don't make me angry!”

She licked her lips. He might do anything now, if she went back. She got to her knees, her gaze sweeping the rock. There seemed no way up, except, to the right side, a nearly vertical gulley, a runoff channel, full of pebbles.

She began to creep up along it, her face to the cliff, her hands groping along. Under her feet the pebbles rolled and slipped and her ankle began to throb. Her arms felt heavy and limp as water and it took all her effort to reach up. Her body ached all over. Her face was inches from the black rock; her nose banged it, more painful each time.

“I'll never let you go!” he roared, and a wave of heat flared over her feet and legs. “I'll hunt you down until I find you.” Her heels felt scalded. She smelled burnt hair. She could not go back now, ever.

Yet he had not killed her: she had gotten out of reach of the edge of his flame.

Below her he raged and bellowed up and down the beach, threatening and pleading with her and howling out blasts of green flames. Her dress was soaked with sweat, the late sun burning on her back. Her fingers bled so she could not grip the rock. She rested, pressed to the cliff face, panting. She dared not look down.

She found a toehold on the rock and pushed herself up, her hands sliding up over the surface. The palisade wall changed abruptly from black rock to deep-packed dirt, hairy with roots. Nothing to hold on to, only loose dirt. She tasted dirt. She got one foot on the ridge where the rock ended, and pushed herself up. Slipped, and for a sickening moment was sliding; the rock ledge against her stomach stopped her hard. She hung there. She was too tired. Her legs wobbled under her. She leaned on the dirt, her eyes shut, her mind blank. Bent her knee, slid it blindly up onto the ridge, and pulled herself up. The dirt had fallen away here. Tilted inward. She leaned her back against the crevice, her hands numb.

It was hard to move again. She had dirt in her eyes. Stretching her arm up, she groped for a handhold, a root, anything. Her hand reached over the edge of the cliff into air and grass.

She clutched a handful of grass. The sun was going down. Behind her, the dragon gave up a despairing cry. She lurched upward, over the top of the cliff.

Her eyes that for hours had seen only rock a few inches from her nose now stretched their gaze across a broad meadow, an oak tree, a pond of water. She had escaped. She did not turn back even to look at him. She crawled up over the rim of the cliff into the grass and lay still and slept. All night, in her sleep, she heard him roaring.

*   *   *

She had nothing to eat, but the spring had come; the meadow was full of mushrooms, and the trees of birds' nests and eggs. She walked a whole day inland, picking a way down a long ridge, and finally came to a path. She followed that much of the night, through a brilliant waxing moon, going steeply downhill, and toward dawn came on a heap of stones: a road marker.

Yet she saw no one else. The narrow, stony path tracked across an inland valley clogged with brambles and thickets of willow, and when the path climbed up high onto the next ridge she looked back and saw only mountains. She walked on, eating whatever she could find—roots, nuts, even flowers and grubs and crickets.

On the third day the little path climbed up to the high road, winding along the crest of a hill from north to south. She sat down under a spreading oak by the side of the great road, and after another day she saw some travelers coming toward her.

This was an ox-drawn cart, with two women riding in it, a man walking beside the ox, three boys with sticks herding along four or five sheep. Tirza sat up, eager. After days without words she wanted to talk again. When she told them who she was, they would take her home and she would reward them with stories. She began forming the stories in her mind, beginning with the dragon.

Turn by turn of the wheels they drew nearer, and when she could see their faces she stood up, waved her arms, and called out, “Help me—please help me!”

The cart stopped, all the people bunching together. A woman cried, “What is she?” The man with his staff stepped forward and called, “What do you want?”

She went toward them, her arms out to them. “I am a Princess of Castle Ocean, lost and alone. Take me home and you will be well rewarded.”

In the frightened cluster of people one of the women screamed. The boys stooped to gather rocks. Even the ox recoiled from Tirza. The man called, “Get away! Get away!” and shook his staff at her.

Alarmed, she stopped, her arms falling to her sides. “No. You don't understand.” In her own ears now she heard her voice as they heard it, no words, only growls and whistles and shrieks. A rock struck her on the arm.

“Get away! Witch! Demon! Get away!”

With a scream she turned and ran. Another rock flew by her head. Tears dribbled down her face; she had lost; she had lost; it was all gone. Their screeching voices behind her sounded fainter, farther. When she could hear them no more, she flung herself down in the wild grass and wept.

 

2

The sea came out of the west from beyond the world's edge, and broke at last against the tip of the continent at Cape of the Winds, and there on those jagged black rocks, with the sea on three sides, stood Castle Ocean. Its five towers, its ramparts braced up with tree trunks where the sea had eaten away the base, its balconies and terraces and pinnacles, rose up like forms of the natural rock, as if it had been there since the world began. Even on calm days the surf crashed and beat endlessly around the foot of it, and on this afternoon, with a storm coming in, the wind screaming, the salt spray lashed up even as high as the King's Tower, the tallest, where Marioza stood looking out the window into the west.

The Queen of Castle Ocean loved such storms. Nothing ruled this wind, this cloudy streaming uproar. Another rolling crackle of thunder made her laugh. She laid her plump forearms on the naked rock of the windowsill and thrust her head out to the air, the sea's wild breath all around her, her hair already soaked.

Cousins of the King, her family had always lived in Castle Ocean. When she married Reymarro, she had only changed rooms. Here, in this place, was who she was. Now her King was gone, and she stood alone against this final enemy, who ruled everywhere but here.

She had never seen the Emperor, and yet she thought of him endlessly, how to resist him, how to defeat him, piece by piece, somehow. She would not submit. She could see no way to win, but that did not matter.

The treaty insisted she marry his brother. He had sent her one, with a wedding party, and she had killed him and sent the party back. This time he had sent soldiers. Also: another brother, another wedding, another ring, the shackle on her thumb, braided gold like rope. So far she had forestalled the ceremony, since a mother in mourning for her youngest daughter could not be expected to marry. She leaned farther into the tumbling air. Her face was soaked with the salt spray, mingled warm and cold. In her blood the connection with the sea ran like a salt and tidal memory.

“I have him now,” Reymarro had said. “He's cornered up in the mountains. One last push and he's gone. You must keep my castle. When I come back I will bring you diamonds.” He never came back. And now she was about to give her sacred charge to an ordinary man, without webs between his toes.

Behind her, the door opened and a page said, “Mistress, the noble Imperial Archduke Erdhart will see you now.”

Ordering himself into her own room. Within the massive fortress of her flesh she gathered herself for combat. “Send him in.”

He was already there, the Emperor's brother. Smooth, pale, his face always smiling. He seemed polished. His clothes were exact and his fine fair hair perfect. His hands were soft as a nun's, the nails trimmed to pink and white ovals; he held his hands together, stroking each other, below the constant smile of even teeth. She had turned from the window, although she still leaned with one arm on the sill. She brushed back her dripping, salty hair.

“Yes, my lord. You wish something?”