The Dragon's Son (29 page)

Glancing at Ven from the corner of her eye, to make sure he noticed, she
said with a quiver of her chin and a tear in her voice, “You may have your way
with me anytime you want me. What can I do to stop you? Imprisoned by those
terrible monks, who killed”—she gave a sob, but struggled bravely on—”killed my
poor father . . .”

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” said Ven. He did not enter the room, but
remained standing in the door. “I am sorry for it and for the fact that you had
to witness it. That must have been horrible for you.”

Evelina gave another sob and a yank on her skirt. She kept watch on him from
beneath her long lashes.

“And you are not a prisoner,” he added. “You may come and go freely.”

“And can I freely leave this city?” she cried wildly. “A city that rises up
out of nothing and nowhere, barricaded by a wall of solid stone through which
we pass like wraiths. Tell me how am I to leave this city. I do not not know
where I am or what is going to happen to me.”

She was careful to weep just a little; otherwise her nose would swell and
her eyes would turn red. She sobbed only enough so that he would come to
comfort her.

Except that he didn’t. Evelina peeped at him beneath her fingers. Ven
continued to stand in the doorway.

“It is true that you cannot leave the city,” he said. “But you may walk its
streets freely, speak to anyone, go where you will. You need have no fear on my
account. Even though I have been given quarters next to yours, I assure you I
will not disturb you. I will never come near you. I will not speak to you
again.”

He started to shut the door.

Evelina was considerably put out. She’d heard the troubadour’s songs in
which the lover prides himself on never telling the object of his love that he
loves her and then, in celebration of that love, he does away with himself in
the last stanza. She’d found the notion silly then. She found it annoying now.

“Wait, Ven,” Evelina called faintly, half rising from the bed, her hair
falling in cascades over her shoulders. “I have misjudged you. I thought... I
thought you were like the rest of the men I’ve known. Like that pig
Glimmershanks, who took advantage of my youth and my innocence. I see now I was
mistaken.”

She held out her hand to him in a pretty, placating gesture.

“Please forgive me, Ven. I am ashamed of myself. I did what I did because
they made me. I never meant to bring harm to you. I was afraid of what they
would do to me.”

She lowered her head. Real tears trickled down her cheeks.

Hearing the door shut, she closed her eyes, smiled a wan smile, and lay back
down on the bed in a yielding, helpless manner.

Long moments passed. No heavy body weighted down the bed. No lips sought
hers. Evelina opened her eyes.

Ven was gone. The door was shut. He’d walked off and left her.

“You bloody stupid bugger!” cursed Evelina.

Ven turned from Evelina’s door to find one of the monks standing in the
corridor, watching. Ven didn’t like these monks, didn’t trust them. Some
appeared normal as most men, but others were like this one—gaunt and pale, with
a lean, spare body on which his robes hung like laundry from a tree limb.

“What do you want here?” Ven demanded harshly.

“Grald will grant you an audience, Dragon’s Son.”

The monk’s hands were in constant motion, nervous fingers plucking at the
hems of his sleeves or picking at sores on his face or tugging at his
straggling hair. He watched Ven with eyes that gleamed with an eerie light that
had something disquieting behind it. If Ven had not been assured by the holy
sister that these monks revered him, he would have called the look one of
hatred and loathing.

“I want a bar on this woman’s door,” said Ven, pointing.

The monk’s eyes nicked to the door, flicked back. He said nothing.

“A bar that locks the door from the inside,” Ven added.

The monk bowed. “As you will it, Dragon’s Son. And now, if you will
accompany me. Grald does not like to be kept waiting.”

Ven didn’t have much faith in the monk’s promise. He didn’t like to leave
Evelina alone, undefended, yet he wanted to talk with the dragon.

Ven turned back to the door and knocked on it. Before Evelina could reply,
he opened the door. She sat bolt upright on the bed, staring at him, her eyes
red-rimmed and glistening. Drawing his knife from his boot, he tossed it onto
the floor beside the bed.

“Do not be afraid to use it,” he told her and, shutting the door, he stepped
back out into the corridor.

“I will see Grald now,” Ven told the monk, making it clear that it was his
choice.

He needn’t have bothered. The monk merely bowed again and turned on his
heel, leading the way.

Ven followed after the monk. They walked down the
corridor, then descended the spiral staircase that led from the upper floors of
the guesthouse to the ground level. Ven wondered dourly, as he went, what sort
of guests one entertained in a city that no one could find.

The Abbey was the largest building in Dragonkeep, according to the monk, who
told Ven of its history in a rambling and disjointed manner that rather
resembled the Abbey itself. The first structure raised in Dragonkeep, the Abbey
stood at the foot of the mountain whose bones had been used in its
construction. The city had grown up around it, expanded beyond it to the limits
of the wall, and now burrowed into the mountain itself.

As were all the other buildings in Dragonkeep, the Abbey was simple in
design, being made of stones that had been dropped on top of each other with no
particular regard to fit, since they were all fused together by dragon fire.
Originally only one level— arranged in a long rectangle and topped by logs and
thatch—the Abbey had since acquired three additional floors. Its human dwellers
had added such undragonlike touches as doors and windows, stairs, and a
slate-tile roof. Outbuildings had been constructed over time; some by the
dragon, but most by those humans who had been born without the dragon magic in
their blood and who therefore served as laborers or nursemaids or guards for
those blessed with what the monk termed proudly “the blood bane.”

“What is the blood bane?” asked Ven, thinking it had a sinister sound. Rain
had started to fall. Storm clouds hung gray over the mountain.

“It is the colors in our mind,” the monk answered. “It is the eyes of the
dragon, always watching over us. It is the fire that burns within and without.
It is the pain and the hunger that saves us from the madness.”

Ven could understand the colors of the mind of which the monk spoke and the
fire and the ever-watchful eyes of the dragon. Ven was baffled by this talk of
the madness, however, though he could see it plainly in the monk’s eyes.

Ven wanted to be rid of the wretch, and when they reached the Abbey’s main
building, Ven informed the monk that he could find his way alone.

The monk would have no part of it. Grald had ordered the monk to bring Ven
directly to him, and the monk was bound to obey. Nothing Ven could say would
cause the man to budge, and so Ven gave in. He and the monk stepped through a
large wooden door banded with iron and entered immediately into a great hall.

“Cavernous” was the word for the hall. Cavelike.

The hall was large—extending the full length of the building— and dark, for
it had no windows; the dragon seeing no need for what he considered to be
useless breaches in his defenses. There was a large fireplace that had once
been used to keep the humans—particularly the babies—warm. Since the humans had
moved out of this building over two hundred years ago, the fireplace had been
blocked up with stones.

The walls were of exposed rock, not covered over by plaster, as Ven had seen
done in the guesthouse. The hall was devoid of decoration, for what need have
dragons of tapestries woven of cloth when they can weave far more splendid
tapestries in their minds? Iron sconces for torches ringed the walls—a
concession to the limitations of human eyesight—and iron braziers stood at
intervals along the walls. The only furniture was a large thronelike chair
placed at the back of the hall, directly across from the door.

The atmosphere inside the hall was chill and dank as a cave. When the door
shut behind them, it shut out all the light.

“Wait here, Dragon’s Son.” The monk lifted a torch from a bucket that stood
inside the door. “I will find Grald.”

Ven could see the dragon’s human body quite clearly. The warm flesh gave off
a radiance that made it seem illuminated from within.

“Never mind that,” said Ven. “He is here.”

The monk looked at Ven askance, for to his human eyes, the hall was dark as
a starless, moonless, fog-bound midnight.

“Get out,” said Grald, his harsh, deep voice echoing among the stones, “and
leave me alone with the Dragon’s Son.”

The monk obeyed with alacrity, bowing and muttering to himself, and
twitching. Ven was thankful to be rid of him.

“Come closer, Dragon’s Son, so that I can see you in this murk,” Grald
ordered, grumbling. “This human body that I have appropriated is good for many
things, but it lacks the capacity to see in the darkness—a trait I am pleased
to note that you have inherited from me.”

“I do not want to talk to you, Grald,” said Ven, coming to stand in front of
the human. “I want to talk to my father.”

“You are talking to your father,” Grald returned. “The human is my mouth,
that is all. The words and thoughts are mine. You don’t understand, do you? I
will explain. You have met the walker? Draconas?”

Ven thought the dragon was changing the subject. He considered whether or
not to make his demand to see his father an issue. He decided that he would let
it go. Not forever. Just for now. He gave a brief nod.

“Draconas has taken human form, as I have. But his appearance is a powerful,
marvelous illusion that required the work of many of my kind months to create.
I did not have the luxury of all those dragon dreams at my disposal. Yet I
needed a human body. I found a way to take over a human’s body by ripping out
the still-beating heart, working my magic on it, then imprisoning the living
remains. I keep what is left alive until the aging process takes its toll on
this body and I am forced to find another. The body is a shell, nothing more.
The mind”—Grald tapped his head—”is mine. What do you say to that, my son? Are
you shocked? Revolted?”

“I say that from what I know of the Grald whose heart you stole, he got what
he deserved,” Ven answered.

Grald laughed. “ ‘Like father, like son,’ the humans say. Our thinking runs
along the same lines.” He waved a deprecating hand. “You crouch in the darkness
of your mind, as I sit in the darkness of this hall. Yet as you can see me, I
can see you, my son.”

Grald sat back comfortably in his chair, thrust out his huge legs. “Oh, yes,
you have defenses. Defenses you have built up over what—sixteen years? Bah!
What is that to me? I have slept for sixteen years at a time and considered
that little more than a brief nap. If I wanted to, I could tear down your puny
defenses and reach inside your lair and rip out your soul, as easily as I
ripped out this human’s heart.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

“Because it would destroy you. And I don’t want to destroy you. You are my
son. You have a great destiny before you. Sit down.” Grald gestured to another
chair. “We have much to discuss.”

“I will stand,” said Ven. “My dragon legs do not tire easily.”

“I detect a note of bitterness in your voice.” Grald sat forward, his
shoulders hunched, his eyes intent on Ven. “You should not feel bitter, Dragon’s
Son. You should rejoice. I made you better than any human ever born. Better,
stronger, swifter, smarter. You have the magic of our people, a power for which
humans hunger, but one which, when it is given to them—” Grald paused.

“—drives them insane,” Ven finished, understanding now the madness of the
monks.

“Only the men,” Grald conceded. “The women suffer a feverish sickness that
soon passes. We are working with our breeding program to overcome these problems
and we are making some progress, though not as much as I had hoped. Not as much
as Draconas made with your human brother.”

Grald said this very casually, but Ven could see the eyes— shadowed by the
overhanging forehead—gleam. “I want to meet this brother of yours. I think you
know how to find him.”

“I only learned I had a brother this morning.” Ven shrugged. He wondered for
a moment why Grald made such a distinction of saying “human” brother, but then
forgot about it in his preoccupation. “How should I know where he is?”

Grald’s eyes half shut to slits. “You know.”

“And you
don’t
know. My brother has defenses, too, apparently.”

“You can reach him. He will listen to you. Summon him here and he will come.”

“So you can do what? Rip out his soul? Or maybe his heart? Do your own dirty
work, Grald. Don’t get me involved.” Ven turned to leave. “And the next time my
father wants to see me, tell him that I want to see him. Not you.”

He was halfway to the door before Grald spoke.

“You are not the only one who lusts after the girl, Dragon’s Son. The human
body I inhabit wants her and there is no good reason why I should not let him
have her. He is not gentle with women, as you know.”

Ven halted, turned slowly back. “So this is why you brought her here?
Because you want her?”

“No,” said Grald. “Because you do. Speak to your brother, Dragon’s Son. Tell
him you need to see him. And the girl will remain safe, to be used for your
pleasure alone.” Grald sat back. “What do you say?”

Ven considered, then said, with a shrug, “I would
say I am looking forward to meeting my brother.”

THE SMELL OF THUNDER WAS IN THE AIR. STORM clouds climbed on each other’s
backs, trying to see which could mount higher into the heavens. A gust of wind
took hold of the tops of the trees, whipped them, shook them. Ripples darkened
the river to slate gray, sent waves dashing up against the shore. Marcus had
watched the advance of the storm, rolling in from the west, for as long as
Bellona had been talking to him. He had the dreamlike notion that she’d raised
the wind and lightning to accompany her unsettling tale of love and birth and
death.