Dragon's Keep (27 page)

Rain pelted our backs and wind battered us as
we fled over the steep hill. To our right a great tree swayed low and lower in
the heavy gusts, then with a crack it broke in two and came
crashing down. We slid down the muddy hill and
reached a small
cave beneath an overhanging rock.

"Rosie," said Kit, and
"Rosie" again as if she could not say my name enough. I knew I had to
push her away from Dragon's Keep without speaking a word or she would be
dragon's meat. Still, I couldn't let her go just yet. I'd longed so for her
company.

We stayed close in our little cave. With luck
the smoke from the fire in the dragons' den mingled with the heavy rain would
befuddle Faul's nose and keep Kit's scent from his
nostrils, if only
for a time.

"I came to bring you home, Rosie,"
said Kit. "Things have gone wrong since you ..." She bit her lip, her
cropped hair such
as novices wear dripping
rain down her cheeks. I placed her hand
on my pin, her pin, to encourage
her. I could not say the message aloud but she knew well enough what was
etched there.

Slowly she drew back. "I wish . .
." she said. "I don't want to . . ." She was fighting with her words.
I could not help her.

"Rosie, your mother—"

I covered her lips with my fingers and shook
my head.

Dead.
I knew by Kit's look and I would not let her speak
it. Kit took my hand away. "Your mother mourned after you were taken, and
worse still after your father's death. In her grief she
sent word to Saint Brigid's Abbey asking for my mother to come.
They'd
known each other when they were young," she added.

I nodded. Mother would want AJiss, her oldest and dearest friend with her, I
knew.

"My mother arrived to find the queen slender as a stem and failing. Sir
Magnus had made her crave the poppy potion, and though my mother tried to keep
the drug away, the queen took more and more. She dreamed though she did not
sleep. Times she saw things that were not there, screamed and fought with
shadows." Kit frowned saying this. "Other times she did not know what
was before her. She was lost, Rosie, do you see? And then one day she took so
much potion
..."

Hot tears flowed down my cheeks. My breath came fast as a startled creature.

"My mother's sure it was the poppy potion killed her, and that this was
Sir Magnus's intent, though she was clever enough not to say this to his face.
But as soon as the queen was laid in the tomb, Magnus locked my mother in the
dungeon." Kit grabbed my arms. "You have to come home, Rosie. You're
the only one can free my mother and stop Sir Magnus before he's crowned
king."

Kit said these last things panting, her words spilling out sharp and quick.
And I heard them like the pelting of stones.
Mother dead.
Kit's mother locked away.
The murderer, Sir Magnus, about to
be crowned.

My head swirled. My vow of silence had kept
Faul
from
feasting on my people, but I hadn't kept them safe at all.
Treachery,
murder, and deceit.
I couldn't let Magnus sit on my father's throne. Yet
how could I go home?

I wept on Kit's shoulder as quietly as I could, knowing Lord

Faul slept less than a league away. I was
trapped as hawk to the tether. Go with Kit, promise broken and the dragon was
released
to kill again. Stay, send Kit away
and the kingdom was lost to Sir
Magnus.

"Tell me," said Kit softly.
"What will you do?"

I drew back and shook my head.

Kit frowned. "A silence is upon
you?"

I nodded.

She shivered. "A shadow wraith . . .
stuffed down your throat?"

A loud crack came from somewhere down the
hill, and fearing Lord Faul's discovery, I pushed Kit from our little cave,
grabbed her hand, and ran.

We raced through the
waving grass. Rain soaked our backs as
we
clambered down the cliff rocks to the sandy beach. Kit had tied her small
sailing vessel to a thick branch at the mouth of the
Ashath
River
. I marveled that she could have made it to
Dragon's
Keep in such a small ship but had little time to wonder at it.
Kit untied the rope, leaped inside, and held out her hand. "Hurry,
Rosie!"

I stepped back. Sir Magnus was not yet king.

Leave Dragons Keep now and Lord Faul would
find us sure. He'd feast on Kit. Then speeding to Wilde Island, he'd swallow
man and maid alike, his hunger whetted by my
deceit. There was
no reason to risk Kit's life when I could escape in my
boat later and alone.

I gripped the stern and pushed her skiff
away. She rowed back to me, shouting,
"
Get in,
Rosie!"

Away I pushed her boat again, this time
harder, and running fast I reached the cliff.

"Rosie! What's happened to you?"
screamed Kit across the
wind and waves.
"My mother rots inside her cell!" she screamed
through the
wall of rain. "Won't you come save her?"

I kept climbing.

"Don't you love me anymore?" she
screamed. "Do you love only dragons now?"

Halfway up the cliff I hung, her words
wounding me so
deep, I could not move. I
clenched my jaw and screamed into my
teeth.

"Rosie!" cried Kit. "I come
back for you!"

And turning round, I saw her rowing toward
the shore. Would nothing turn this girl away? I scrambled down the cliff and
threw a stone at her. Kit held her oar above the waves and stared, mouth agape,
at me across the water. The next stone struck her shoulder and she screamed,
gazing on me now as if 1 were cursed. Another stone flew past her face and
another until Kit turned her small craft round.

Rain pounded the water, waves crashed, and
mist blew gray
between us. "Live, sweet
Kit," I whispered. "Live till you are old
and your hair is the
white of dandelions." Curling the last stone tight inside my fingers, I
watched Kit row away.

The Takings of the
Storm

The
path along the river
was
brown and swollen with rain.
Shedding the
dragon skin I'd wrapped about my hand, I fought my way through the gusting
wind, climbing over one downed
tree after
another. So many trees had fallen. Such a storm I'd never
seen on Dragon's Keep. The pool at the base of
the waterfall had
risen higher in the past few hours. Muddy water lapped
against the entrance of the dragons' lair, wetting my feet to the ankle as I
went in.

"Where have you
been?" Faul growled, lifting his great head.

"Walking," I said in DragonTongue.

"In this rain?"
He scratched himself. "Only fools walk on such a
day."

There was a bit of care in his saying that,
but he was quick to cover it. "The pips thirst for thistle milk. You are
server here, or have you forgotten?"

I prepared the milk and poured the brew into
the pips' drinking shells. As the pips lapped their drink, I drew up to the

fire
. Wind and weather warred outside. I wondered now, if
in trying to save Kit, I'd condemned her to death.

The logs sent sparks to the ceiling, and I
thought on how Mother used to sit with me beside the fire in my solar and sing
"Lady Come Ye Over" as she wove a purple ribbon in my hair. Now she
was gone, lying dead beside Father, and I blamed her dream for it. It was the
dream that had demanded my father's life in service to Empress Matilda.
The dream that drove Mother to cover my flaw.
The dream that twisted her to murder.
Sir Magnus may have
helped her dose herself with poppy potion, but the dream was Mother's poison.

I wrapped my arms about my legs and rocked.
None bothered over me, the pips to their drink and Lord Faul curled up
nose to tail. All were used to my tears; it was
as much my task to
weep on Dragon's Keep as it was to gather thistles.

A loud crash outside gave me such a fright
that I leaped up and raced to the mouth of the cave. A fallen pine spanned the
river at the far edge of the pool. The water swelled about the tree as a mud
slide rolled down, burying the roots.

"A tree's gone
over," I said with a shiver.

Lord Faul came up beside me. Just then a
second pine crashed down the steep hill. It splashed into the river near the
first, and a great wall of mud came tumbling after. The muscles on the dragon's
back tensed. "We have to move them," he said, "or soon our cave
will be underwater."

Lord Faul was large, strong backed, and
strong legged, but
the pines were as tall
as citadels and broader round than his great
neck. I hadn't faith that
we could move them.

"Pips," said Faul. "Come
quick."

The pips gathered behind their father.

"Together we will
move those trees damming the river," said
Faul.

"I won't go in," said Kadmi.

"You will!" roared Faul. "We
must dig the roots out of the mud,
then
roll the trees
aside so the water can get through."

"It's that or lose our cave," I
said to Kadmi. And so we ventured out.

In the freezing water I dug beside the
dragons, feeling small and useless as a beetle. Still, I'd seen many a sexton
beetle do a
great deal of digging in the
walled garden when it was pleased to
bury a dead mouse, so I worked as
best I could in the muddy river.

Faul's great claws dug and tossed out heaps
of mud. Rain pelted his strong back as he worked on the left side of the trees
where the water was deepest. The rest of us dug to the right of the fallen
pines.

Kadmi and Chawl hurled their mud hard and
fast. More than once the mud landed square on Eetha's back and once straight in
my face. Fearing the flinging mud would knock Eetha into the river, I called,
"Toss another way!" but they could not hear me over the rushing water
and the howling wind.

Eetha and I moved closer to the tree where Ore was at work freeing a tangle of roots. Ore was still half the size of the other
pips, and being no larger than I was, she had to
delve close to the
river's edge. Eetha bent to help her wee sister with
the roots. "We'll never dig these out!"
said
Eetha in DragonTongue.

"There's too much danger here, Briar. We
should get out now. Our cave is already lost."

"Not lost yet," I said. Ah, but I
should have listened to Eetha, who had the keenest mind of all the pips and too
she had the sight. Time after time she'd proven her powers. But I turned
away from Eetha's warning, licked my lips, spat
mud in the river,
and dug all the harder.

Would
that we had stopped and backed away.
The loss of the
cave was nothing to the loss our staying on would bring.
I worked
another hour beside Eetha and Ore as the storm shouted thunder
in my ears.
When the sky went green with lightning, my lips quiv
ered with prayer to Saint
Scholastica, who has power over storms.
Trees thrashed in the wind,
bowing low as brooms to sweep the hill
as
Kadmi climbed over the log to dig beside his father.

I was groaning with the weight of mud, wet to
the bone, and praying for Kit, when I heard the roaring from the hill above.
The sound was like a mountain ripping in two. With it came another fallen tree
and a wall of mud rushing down at us. Before we could escape, the sliding hill
threw us all into the water.

I fought against the heavy mud in the
freezing river, then choking and flailing, I came up and sputtered for air.
Chawl, Eetha, and Ore struggled at my side. We grabbed the roots and pulled
ourselves out of the tumbling water. But to the other side of the tree, Faul
and Kadmi were still buried.
Faul to his knees,
Kadmi to his neck.
The pine had rolled over Kadmi, and the river
was
rising!

"Help him!"
shouted Faul. We rushed to Kadmi's side. "We'll
dig you out!" I screamed. Then each of us about
his neck thrust

m

claws
and hands into the water. Faul dug himself out, and
joined us, clawing mud all about the tree to free his pip.

All of us were ringed about Kadmi, thrusting
arms into the mud as if in some frantic dance. We scooped and shouted, flinging
mud all which way. How we tried to free him, but even in the cold river, I felt
the heat of fear burning in my veins as the water swirled near Kadmi's mouth.

"Sing your favorite rhyme," ordered
Faul. He hated the English rhyme, but even Faul would shed DragonTongue to
help us
drive away our fears. Kadmi raised
his jaws, so close to the water's
edge by now, he had to spit before he
chanted.

"Bright fire.
Dragon's fire.
Broken sword.
One black talon ends the war." The rest
of us joined in as we worked to unearth him.

"Turn them into mincemeat. Bake them in
the flame. Cut them up! Spit them out! Start the war again!"

As we chanted and dug to free Kadmi, I
spotted Kit high on the hill. She'd made her way back to shore! Drenched and
clinging to a tree above us, I saw her take us in, the buried pip, our
frenzied digging. Faul's back to her, she could have turned then and slipped
away unnoticed, but seeing me at work beside the dragon's claws, and hearing
the quaver in my voice as I tried to comfort Kadmi with the silly chant, Kit
rushed down the hill and splashed into the churning river.

"Turn them into mincemeat! Bake them in
the flame!" she chanted right beside me, thrusting her hands into the mud
and
tossing it behind. Lord Faul's eyes hardened
as she dug near him,
but he could not spare the time to question her.