Flight of the Dragon Kyn Read online

  I hesitated.

  “Oh, for the love of plunder!” Gudjen turned deliberately away, muttering in a disgusted tone, “Rustics.”

  I am not a rustic, I thought angrily, as with fumbling fingers I stripped off my sodden, salt-crusted gown and shift and leggings. My father holds a steading of seventeen landkir; I’m not a rustic!

  Hastily, I donned the garment she had given me, a short bath tunic of loosely formed weave. I was accustomed to undressing at bath with my mother and my brothers’ wives at home, but with this witchy, formidable woman I felt … exposed.

  Gudjen, absorbed in building up the fire, took no notice of me. With a long wooden pole she shut the smokehole cover, a square panel of translucent horn. Dim yellow mist curled about her; she was a ghostly shadow, haloed in smoke. I heard the hiss as water struck the hot stones; I recoiled from the sudden explosion of curling steam, which billowed to the rafters.

  Around the fire’s edge Gudjen trod, pouring water on stone, shrouded in rising plumes of mist. Steam now seethed in the air above our heads. The sound of hissing filled my ears; moisture beaded my face and dampened my hair. I breathed in hard, dragged the hot, heavy air into my lungs until I felt as if they would burst.

  The bathhouse blurred, seemed to tip and sway. The floor dipped beneath my feet. In the rafters, churning drifts of mist massed more and more densely together, until I thought—or did I only imagine it? But it seemed as if they were gathering into a shape in the air, something faraway and flying. Flying nearer. Flying fast. There was a rushing noise, the sound of the wind in distant trees as the steam-form took on shape: long and twisting, with wings and a tail, with teeth and glaring eyes.

  A dragon shape.

  It is not real, I thought. It cannot be real.

  And yet it seemed to solidify as I watched, to draw nearer and clearer and brighter, until its back ridge cleaved the darkness, until I kenned the pattern of its scales. It whooshed through the air above me, its breath scorching my face, its wingbeat fanning my hair. I whirled around to watch it as it went, then heard the sigh escape Gudjen’s lips: “Ahhhh …” And as if blown by the selfsame breath, the dragon began to swirl, to shrink, to thin, to disperse. It rose in tattered clouds, which settled in the rafters until Gudjen opened the smokehole and the bathhouse began to clear. And now my breath came easily, and I could again pick out with my eyes the rafters beneath the thatch, the stones beside the fire, the empty water vessels….

  And Gudjen was bringing me a pitcher, telling me to wash and dress, pointing to a heap of clothing on a bench—as if nothing unwonted had passed. “Quickly now,” she said. “No time to stand about gaping. I go now to the king; if he is ready, you will be presented to him. When you have dressed yourself, put on these”—here, Gudjen opened a carved oaken box filled with gold and silver jewelry—“all of these, mark you? And don’t forget the circlet! And comb that hair of yours, too—it’s tangled as a crow’s nest. Make haste, now, or I will be forced to wash and dress you myself.” She paused, and I thought then that she looked at me differently from before. Not with more respect:, but with … interest.

  Then she opened the door and was gone.

  I sank down upon the flagstones. My mind felt blurred and numb. That dragon had not been real. Could not have been. It was a vision—only a vision.

  Slowly I rose, washed myself with trembling hands, put on the shift and gown she had brought. I felt drained, as if something had been sucked out of me.

  The shift, against: my skin, felt uncommonly soft. The gown’s white wool was thin as silk. About its borders wound strips of tablet weaving, worked in purple and scarlet and gold. Like those on Gudjen’s headlinen and gown, I recalled.

  As the king’s own kin, Rog had said. And now at last it seemed true. But somehow, it made me uneasy. I wanted only to get away from this place. I wanted only to go home.

  I fastened the oval shoulder brooches to my gown straps and secured the crimson cape at my throat with the narrow brooch remaining. At last I drew on the boots Gudjen had left for me: supple leather boots the color of fresh-hewn wood.

  There was a wealth of rings in the box: arm rings and neck rings and finger rings; rings of hammered silver and of twisted gold; rings with smooth, smoky stones; rings that glittered with sharply faceted jewels.

  Had she said to wear all of them? But there were enough finger rings alone for three on every finger. Gudjen herself wore that many but … folk would count me overproud to bedeck myself as richly as the king’s own sister. I chose a simple twisted neck ring, an arm ring of hammered silver, and a finger ring with a purple stone; the others I left in the box. There was an ivory comb among all the rings; I sat on the bench and tried to settle my mind as I worked the tangles out of my hair.

  I must keep my wits about me with the king. I must discover how he wished to make use of me, and then show myself to be of no use. He would find that his efforts were wasted on me—and then he would send me home.

  Gudjen soon returned, banged the door shut, strode swiftly across the room, and examined me as if I were a horse to be sold. “I told you to put on the circlet,” she said, picking it up and setting it firmly upon my head. “And the other rings. Is that too toilsome for you?”

  I flushed. “But I will seem … overproud.”

  Gudjen began pulling rings out of the box and jamming them onto my fingers and wrists. “In the king’s court we call it not overproud—we call it wealth.” She clasped a golden hinged ring about my neck. “If you are to be the king’s summoner, you need to look the part.”

  “But—” I protested.

  “At the wharf they saw you dressed in sodden wadmal. Do you want them to deem you a rustic? No.” Gudjen answered her own question. “That will not do.” She pushed me firmly toward the door.

  “Wait,” I said, turning to face her. “Rog said I might go home if I … if I am of no use to the king.”

  Gudjen said nothing, but cocked an eyebrow as if to say, And you believed him?

  “Stand up straight,” she said. “Don’t slouch! Look neither left nor right, and take no heed of what folk say. Follow me until we come to the hall. Then you must walk alone to the king.”

  Gudjen strode past me, began to open the door. “Wait!” I said again. “What is this … summoner, you said. What am I to summon? They promised me this had nothing to do with birds.”

  “Birds?” Slowly, Gudjen turned around to face me. “Saw you not my steam-working?”

  I stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “Didn’t Rog tell you?”

  I shook my head.

  Gudjen sighed and pulled the door shut. “Orrik’s lady-love, Signy, will not marry him until he slays the dragons that killed her brother and nearly killed her father, the king of Romjek. But of course you must have known that.”

  I gaped. I had known that the king’s first wife had died in childbirth, and the long-awaited heir along with her. And Rog had spoken of this lady-love. But slaying dragons … that must be the vow he would not explain.

  “How do you get by, not knowing the news of the world? No—” Gudjen held up her hand to quell my response. “Don’t answer. I don’t want to know.” She drew in a long breath. “Well. The dragons lair in the mountains north and east of here. They had been preying on the Romjek lambs, as on our own. So Signy’s father and her brother and a small warrior band went to clean out the vipers’ nest.

  “They lost, as I have told you. Now Signy’s father lies on his deathbed and cries out to be avenged. He has promised Orrik Signy’s hand and rule of Romjek if he succeeds. Then Kragland would be united with Romjek; we would be a force to be reckoned with. Orrik has sworn before all to take up this blood feud, to make Signy’s cause his own.”

  Gudjen paused, and a sick heaviness began to press down upon me, for I knew now where this led.

  “They say that you can call down winged things from the sky.”

  “Birds!” I said. “Only birds!”

  “Saw you not my
steam-working?” Gudjen repeated. The light from the smokehole fell upon her face and glittered in her eyes.

  “You,” she said, “will call down dragons for the king.”

  Chapter 4

  For vermilion fever, quaff one full horn dragon’s milk morning and evening, until the eyes turn wholly green.

  —KRAGISH FOLK REMEDY

  There is a story about me and dragons.

  When I had four winters to my life, they say, I was taken with vermilion fever. To this day I have the mark upon my cheek—tiny, needlepricklike scars in the shape of a vermilion blossom. For a half-moon I ate nothing and drank little; my breathing grew fainter and fainter and then stopped.

  This is what they tell me. I think of it sometimes, and I wonder if perhaps it was that I did not stop breathing entirely, if perhaps I breathed yet so faintly that they could not mark it. Perhaps they expected me to stop breathing, for no one ever before had survived vermilion fever. But when they tell the story, they always say that I had no breath.

  They carried me north in a reed-woven casket to a cave high in the mountains. They held a funeral procession and keening rites, and they strewed me with herbs and dried flowers in the ancient way. Then they went home, left me for dead.

  Here there is a gap in the tale, and each teller fills it in his way. My mother says a dragon lived in that cave, and she had lost her young. She breathed her magic breath on me to quicken me to life and nursed me in her draclings’ stead.

  My father says a baby dragon nipped me and licked the wound to heal it, and my blood began once more to pulse. This dracling, he says, treated me as its own dear sister and brought me bits of food until I grew strong enough to escape.

  My aunt once said I was a changeling child—the spirit of a dragon baby breathed into my own dead body and brought back to life. My mother cried when she heard her say it; my father shushed my aunt and commanded her never again to utter that tale.

  I remember none of it: nothing of a cave, nothing of dragons. It rankles that each tale treats with dragons, for that part no one saw. True, there were rumors of a dragon hatching in that cave. Many sheep had disappeared from the nearby steadings, and odd, glazed whorls were seen in the snow. My mother says for many moon-turns after I returned, I cried out a dragon name in my sleep.

  But who can know for certain what words children cry out in their sleep, or by what names dragons may call themselves?

  Still, all agree that a moon-turn after they left me in that cave, I walked whole and hale into a steading, as plump and rosy as if I had never been ill. And yet my cheek was vermilion marked. And another thing: All swear that my eyes were blue before, but since that time they have been green.

  As long as I can recall, I have had to live with this dragon tale. I have heard the bondmaids whispering behind my back. I have endured their children calling me “dragon girl.” I have seen, from the corners of my eyes, the old crones making the sign against evil as I pass. I have had to listen to my aunt say over and again that no one would marry a girl tainted by dragons; she was as enraged by my two proposals as she was at my turning them down.

  And each year the dragons raid more of our sheep at night, and each year the rumblings grow that I am somehow to blame, and each year I escape more and more often into the hills.

  I wish they would forget those dragon tales! I hate being the dragon girl!

  But my father says the fault is mine that they do not forget. If it weren’t for my calling down birds …

  I remember the day I discovered that not everyone could. I had six winters then, and I called down a raven into the courtyard. I simply held out my arm and called into the sky—aloud, I think—and it grew from a speck to a blotch to a wing-beating, glossy-feathered thing, and it swooped down and lit with a thunk upon my wrist. I was admiring the shiny blue-blackness of its eyes when my mother and my aunt and two of my brothers came running, waving their arms and shouting to scare it away. The raven flapped its wings and cawed, but would not release its wiry grip upon my wrist until I turned my eyes away. I felt it push off from my arm, felt the breath of its wingbeat on my face, heard its caw-caw-cawing fade in the distant sky. And there was silence in the courtyard—a silent throng of family and thralls and their children—all staring, stunned, at me.

  Perhaps I ought to have quit. I told my father I would. Yet I didn’t, and somehow folk knew.

  But who would not call down birds, once they knew the joy of it?

  I see nothing strange in that.

  Chapter 5

  As the byre cat is kin to the holt cat and the dog is kin to the wolf so is the bird kin to the dragon.

  —KRAGISH BESTIARY

  A throng milled about the door: fishwives and bondmaids, farmers and fishermen and smiths. Gudjen walked directly into them as was her wont; folk yielded to her one by one. She looked straight ahead, neither acknowledging their nods nor slackening her pace.

  Neither did I look about me, not wanting to meet their frankly staring eyes. I held myself tall and trod carefully in Gudjen’s wake, with her words still echoing in my ears:

  You will call down dragons for the king.

  But I couldn’t call down dragons. I’d never seen a dragon, unless you credited that tale they told of me. If this was why the king had summoned me, it was all a mistake.

  I fastened my gaze on Gudjen’s back, trotting, now, to keep up.

  I would tell the king that they were wrong about me. I would tell him it was birds I could call—it had nothing to do with dragons. I might even try to call a dragon, and prove that I could not.

  I clung to the thought as I hastened behind Gudjen through the muddy courtyard, between the turf-roofed storehouses and bakinghouses and weavinghouses. I will tell the king. He will let me go home.

  A steeply peaked building now loomed before us. The high hall, it must be. Two sentries dragged open the massive wooden doors; there was a cacophony of voices, and winter darkness, softened by drifts of golden light.

  “Go,” Gudjen said. “I will follow.”

  I hesitated. My eyes, accustomed to the brightness out of doors, gradually made out the shape of the hall. Narrow, horn-covered windows striped the walls, shedding a dim, honeyed glow across a shifting tide of warriors and an undertow of dogs. A darkish smoke-haze lingered high in the network of beams and rafters, where perched a flock of doves.

  One by one the warriors broke off talking and turned to look at me. Silence grew until it seemed to fill the hall, until the doves’ placid burbling sounded loud.

  I turned round to implore Gudjen to go before me, but again she said, “Go!” and, prodding me forward, whispered, “Curtsy! Do not kneel!”

  I walked as I had seen Gudjen do, directly ahead without regard for those who stood in my way, yet sure that no one would yield to me as they had done for her. The nearest man looked square at me and made no move to yield. But just as I slowed my pace to avoid walking into him, he moved the smallest bit and the way before me came clear. Others yielded now, moving little, but enough, until I slowed not at all but strode forward without pause.

  Silently, the men yielded, stood before me, yielded. The floor reeds crunched beneath my boots; a whiff of angelica wafted up, mingled with the reeks of sweat and fur and smoke. In the rafters, doves rustled and cooed. The men yielded, stood before me, yielded, until at once the hall was clear and before me I beheld the king.

  I knew he must be king. He stood lumined in the shaft of light from the smokehole, set apart from the hearth companions who flanked him on either side. He was clad most richly: in a scarlet cape trimmed with purple-and-gold tablet weaving; in a purple jerkin of soft, napped cloth; in leather boots the color of corberries. His fingers, like Gudjen’s, were bedecked with many rings. Upon his head sat a circlet like to mine, but set with a crimson stone.

  Curtsy—do not kneel, Gudjen had said. I curtsied.

  “We welcome you, Kara, Asmund’s daughter,” said the king, striding to greet me. A wolfhound lunged to its fee
t and sauntered along beside him.

  He was tall and lean, this king. I had expected a broader, bearlike man. Faded blond hair curled beneath his helm; his beard, of a darker blond, was streaked with gray. Now he smiled at me, and his face creased like well-worn leather about his mouth and clear blue eyes. I recalled that he was not young. Forty winters, had my father said? Small wonder folk worried themselves about an heir, and rallied round to grant his lady-love’s boon.

  And yet there was something of the boy about him: a boyish quirk to his smile, a boyish bounce to his gait. He seemed … amiable. Far more amiable than his quarrelsome brother and sister.

  Tell him, then, I admonished myself. Tell him you cannot call dragons.

  But the king was asking after my family, and questioning me about my voyage, and querying if there were aught I might need. I answered as briefly as I could, discomfited by the many folk watching.

  “And how do your lodgings please you?” he asked.

  “She has not”—Gudjen’s voice came from just behind me—“has not yet seen her lodgings, my brother, for I would not take her to them. Rog”—Gudjen’s voice dripped with scorn—“has taken it upon himself to remove her belongings to the bursloft with the serving women.”

  “They are freeborn maids and not thralls!” Rog stepped forward from the band of hearth companions. “I see no reason why she should not—”

  Gudjen did not deign to address Rog but spoke directly to the king. “She is the daughter of a loyal and prosperous subject, my brother, a steader of seventeen landkir. And so I have sent word that her belongings be removed to the royal women’s quarters—”

  “The royal women’s quarters!” Rog exploded. “Our sister forgets that I fetched this girl from her home and saw what she is accustomed to. The bursloft will be luxury for her!”

  I felt my face grow hot. “Hush you!” the king said in a low, angry voice. “This talk is unseemly here and now. Speak to me later, alone.”

  “Orrik.” Gudjen’s voice was soft but intense. “What this girl can do with birds has been witnessed by many. And well you know what is said of birds and dragons. They are akin: What one hears, the other hears also; what one obeys, so obeys the other. Yet none but I know what I worked in the steam of her: a dragon that came at her behest.”