Flight of the Dragon Kyn Read online

  The king gripped his sister’s arm. “Are you certain? At her behest?”

  Gudjen nodded. “She is what you have sought all this time; she will succeed where other’s ploys have failed.” She fixed Rog with a meaningful stare.

  “I didn’t fail!” Rog sputtered. “Never say that I failed!”

  Gudjen ignored him. “Her fate is tied to yours in this matter. She …” Gudjen went on, and I saw the king was attending her, seemingly torn between stifling the row and hearing what she had to say.

  Why did she press so hard? I wondered. To thwart Rog only? Or for some other cause?

  “Nothing is proven of her, save for a passel of old wives’ tales from those bumpkins at her steading!” Rog’s voice was low, but his face crimsoned with reined-in rage. “I tell you, she cannot call down a dragonfly, never mind a dragon. And just see how she dresses! She wears more gold than my wife. More than our own mother! It is unseemly in one born to her state. And see how she did not deign to nod as folk yielded to her but kept her nose in the air, as if she were royalty itself. Neither did she kneel before you, my brother, but only curtsied. She is arrogant! A crude, grasping country girl of paltry means and no power—”

  “Cease this! Both of you!” King Orrik roared. In the abrupt silence he sighed and then shook his head. “Must you two bicker over everything? Must you nip and yap at me like ill-trained pups?”

  But I no longer listened. Lowborn! Grasping! Unseemly! I felt emptied of breath, as if someone had clouted me in the stomach.

  “My brother, one small token of proof!” Rog insisted. “You demean yourself and all our family to house this wench in the royal chambers! Likely she will take up all the gold she can lay hands on and abscond with it. All I ask—all we ask—” he raised his voice to an oratorical pitch and gestured at the folk in the hall—“is one small proof. One dove, called down from the rafters. Surely that is little enough to ask!”

  The throng in the hall began to murmur; someone shouted out, “Proof!” The king looked out at them, then back at me. His blue eyes wavered for a moment, then he shrugged as if in apology. “Lady Kara, if you would … one dove.” He held out both hands in a flourish, as if presenting me to them.

  Lowborn. Crude. Arrogant. Will take up all the gold she can lay hands on and abscond with it.

  For one fleeting moment I minded me of my resolve to prove I could do nothing; then the moment was gone. I glared at Rog, anger scalding my veins. I never asked for this. You took me from home against my will, and now you revile me. No power? We shall see.

  I looked up toward the rafters, where the doves still burbled and cooed. I held out both arms and called, loud as thunder in my mind.

  There was a trembling, a ripple of light, as first one dove, then another and another stirred upon its perch. Then a surge, a stream of pulsing movement, until the air throbbed with beating wings: wings from the doves in the rafters, a noisy torrent of wings pouring in through the smokehole from the sky. The whole upper portion of the war hall seemed to lift and wheel and cascade down to me. Doves alit upon my arms, my shoulders, my hair. They hooked their sharp claws into my cloak and gown until I was draped with them—head and shoulders and halfway to the floor—a heavy white mantle of cooing, fluttering doves.

  The throng had fallen silent; the king stared; Rog gaped. I thought I saw Gudjen smile and then quickly suppress it.

  But she could not hide the triumph in her eyes.

  Chapter 6

  Second only to the eagle in nobility and fierceness is the gyrfalcon.

  —THE FALCONER’S ART

  “Kara!”

  I opened my eyes and looked about me but could see little in the gloom of my bedcloset. Had someone whispered my name?

  I sat up beneath the bedclothes—two goosedown bolsters and three feather-stuffed quilts, with a thick sheepskin covering over all. Even the mattress was filled with feathers rather than straw—luxury unheard of in my home. I opened my bedcurtains the tiniest crack. In the ruddy glow of the braziers I could see draperied beds all arow along the wall. At the end was the king’s mother’s enormous bed, around which her bondmaids slept on pallets on the floor.

  Nothing stirred.

  “Kara!” came a voice from the other side of my bed. “It’s me, Rath. Would you wake up! They’ll catch me if you don’t, and—”

  Rath!

  I wrapped myself in sheepskin, flung open the drape, and looked out—into the eyes of the strangest-looking creature I had ever beheld. It wore a matron’s headlinen, but tilted all askew. The sleeves of its gown hung down below its hands; its shawl dragged on the floor. It grinned impishly….

  “Rath!” “Kara,” he whispered urgently, “I had to see you, but they wouldn’t let me. They won’t let anybody near you anymore. They won’t even tell you something for me. Listen, can you come to the mews today? My wind gull’s there and she’s faring well enough, but I want you to see her. The falconer says she’s well and it’s not time to take off her bindings, but … can you come? He has other birds I deem you’d like. I told him all about you, and he’s heard about the doves—everybody’s heard about that—but I don’t think he understands about you and … can you come? Can you?”

  As before, it took a moment to recover myself from Rath’s torrent of words. “I—I don’t know if Gudjen will brook it,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Where is the mews?”

  “Behind the old smithy, past the cow shed. Will you come?”

  “I don’t know, I—”

  “You little whelp!” Gudjen bore down upon him from around the bedcurtain. Rath fluttered his arms and babbled in a high, womanish voice, meanwhile bolting for the door. Quick as an eel, Gudjen snatched off his headlinen and latched onto his ear. Twisting it, she held him fast. “Don’t you ever let me find you here again. Do you mark me?”

  Rath seemed to want to nod but couldn’t move his head.

  “You’re wearing out my patience with your tricks. There was that frog—the one that leapt into the queen mother’s lap at supper—”

  “But it was wounded,” Rath said. “I only set it on the table for a moment.”

  “Heed yourself,” Gudjen said, twisting his ear harder. “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Lady!” Rath gritted his teeth against the pain; his face was turning red.

  “Now, go.” Gudjen released Rath’s ear and gave him a shove toward the door. “And don’t come plaguing the Lady Kara again.”

  She looked after him as he left, shaking her head, and a fond smile crossed her lips, as if she couldn’t suppress it.

  “He was on the ship with me,” I said. “I set a bird’s broken wing for him, and he wants me to look to it now.”

  “You are not to do what eight-winters-old boys want you to do,” Gudjen said. “You are to do what the king wants you to do.”

  “But I can’t do what he wants me to do,” I said. “I have told and told you this. I can’t call dragons—only birds.”

  “We will see,” Gudjen said. She turned toward her mother’s bed and disappeared behind the curtains.

  Slowly, I began to dress. Oh, why had I lost my temper and called down those doves? That had been three days ago, and now I was a prisoner. A cosseted prisoner, surely—I had a handmaiden and fine gowns, and all called me Lady Kara. Indeed, they did treat me well—with respect—which was far different from the way things stood at home. Yet Gudjen kept me pent up with the king’s mother’s women all the day long. I was not allowed even to see another soul except during meals.

  And the king was planning something, a journey, I had heard. But no one would speak of it to me. I knew only what I overheard: talk of warriors coming from afar, of weapons, of charts, of mountains to the east. Talk of me …

  You will call down dragons for the king, Gudjen had said. And now, because of the doves, they all believed it. Yet here, dragon girl seemed not the curse it was at home. There folk deemed me in league with dragons. Here I was allied in a great and popular cause against th
em.

  Now I heard the chink of Gudjen’s keys and footfalls moving toward the door. I leapt from my bed and ran to stop her. “Rath,” I said, “wants me to visit the mews, and I would like to do this. Surely there could be no harm—”

  “No telling where harm may lie,” Gudjen said shortly. “A maid of your station does not go flitting about the steading like a scullery girl. The king has taken you as his ward; your conduct reflects on him. Besides, the king has enemies. You may have enemies. In any case, the queen mother expects you for tablet weaving today.”

  Tablet weaving again! This was worse, if possible, than spinning. My mother owned one gown with a tablet-woven strip on it, which she had had all her grown life. No one had leisure for tablet weaving on our steading. It was enough to card and spin and weave the plain wadmal cloth we needed.

  All these past two days I had spent in the weavinghouse, grappling with the strange bone plaques with holes in them, poking my fingers with needles, unraveling threads from the tangled mats I made of them. Tablet weaving! And through it all the queen mother complained—of gout, of colic, of pains in her fingers and aches in her back. Rog’s meek, pallid wife fussed over her and sent: bondmaids hastening to and from the herbary with medicinal draughts and balms.

  Gudjen, I marked, had not lingered in the weavinghouse these past two days but had hastened straight away, “to attend to household matters,” she said. Had I not been kept like a caged bird, I would have devised matters to attend to as well.

  Now, as if kenning my thoughts, Gudjen said, “Enjoy this snug harbor while you may, child. For the king is plotting a dragon hunt. The day will soon come when you long for the safety and comfort of women’s work.” She turned on her heel and was gone.

  Yet on this morning the fates were with me. I broke my fast in the high hall, hedged about by the queen mother’s women at the high table. The king was much preoccupied with Kazan this day; I kept my gaze fixed on my trencher, for I did not wish to speak with Kazan, or even attract his notice.

  All at once I heard cries from without, and a housecarl burst in, babbling of something—I could not understand what. The folk nearest him rose from their benches and ran from the hall. “Fire,” I heard as they fled, and “kitchenhouse,” and “water.” Alarm spread through the hall in ripples, circling out from where the housecarl had come in. Someone, it seemed, had dropped a lighted faggot on the kitchenhouse floor, and the rushes had caught fire, and the whole building was imperiled. A chaos of shouts and scraping benches and jostling bodies enveloped me as wave upon wave of diners surged for the door.

  I stepped outside and watched as folk carrying all manner of ewers and barrels and buckets converged upon the smoking kitchenhouse. More folk thronged about the well, waiting for water; still more streamed into the courtyard from the barnyard and fields. Soon, I thought, they would have this fire well in hand. They had no need of me.

  All at once, I was seized by the urge to escape.

  But where to?

  The mews, Rath had said. Behind the old smithy, past the cow shed.

  I slipped through the crowd, picking my way through the churning mud. Snow was falling lightly, flurried about by the wind. I lingered at the stables, now strangely deserted. Stroking a big bay’s muzzle, I breathed in the familiar smells of hay and horseflesh and manure. I passed by the byre with its chickens and goats. The flock was still on the hillside; I judged it would not be brought to byre until winter hardened its grip. I peeked into the cow shed and into the dairy hard beside.

  At last I found the mews, behind the old smithy as Rath had said. It was a long stone building with horn-covered windows overlaid by vertical slats of wood.

  The door stood closed. I tugged at the latch; it opened. I peered in. “Hello?” I said.

  No reply.

  I stepped within. Despite the windows, it was much darker here than without, and at first I could not see well at all. A dusty smell tickled my nose—of sawdust, of mingled herbs, of leather and smoke and feathers. I heard a tinkling of bells and the dry click click click of talons stepping across a perch.

  Slowly the shapes came clear. I made out a cauldron above a still-smoking firepit, and several three-legged stools. One had been knocked over onto its side; a welter of leather strips and a half-eaten wedge of bread lay in the sawdust beside it, as if someone had left in haste. And something else: a soft lump of clay, shaped vaguely like a bird.

  Against one wall stood a rough wooden bench, strewn about with all manner of small knives and odd-looking instruments, as well as scraps of sacking and leather and cord.

  I drew near the bench. Above it, tiny bells and interlinked metal rings hung from a row of nails. And above these, lined upon a shelf, were the most wonderful things of all: tiny, exquisitely wrought hoods, each topped by a tiny black plume.

  There was a chirruping noise, the sound that hawks make deep in their throats. I looked far down the length of the room. There, on a row of perches, with the morning sun laying bars of golden light across them, were birds. Big birds: hunting birds.

  Slowly, I drew near. There was a goshawk, I saw, and a mountain falcon. A hunchbacked hawk and … was that a red-winged falcon? The wings were only tipped with red, but it might be a redwing in its youthful plumage. At the end of the row, screened off from the other birds by a stack of wooden boxes, perched a tiny kestrel. They all stood tense and alert, as if listening to see what I would do next.

  For a moment I forgot to breathe, they were so wild, so magnificent.

  “Hello,” I said, inside my mind. “Hello.”

  They regarded me for a long, slow heartbeat of time. Then the redwing rattled its feathers, and the mountain falcon scratched its chin with a talon, jingling its bells. The goshawk turned its back to me, and the kestrel did a cross-step dance across its perch.

  So. I was accepted. Or tolerated, at least.

  Each bird had its own perch, a flat wooden bar below which hung a length of canvas. Fastened to each perch was a leather leash, which in turn was tied to the thin leather jesses that encircled the birds’ legs.

  So these were screen perches. I had heard tell of them from a falconer who once came to our steading. The canvas gave the birds a way to climb back up to their perches when they bated. Without it, they could hang themselves.

  Where was Rath’s wind gull? I cast about me and at once caught sight of an odd-looking wooden box. There she was—the wind gull, sitting upon a perch set low inside the box. Her wings were still bound with the cloth I’d used. “Hello, old friend,” I said. She cocked her gray head and gave a hoarse peep.

  I was checking her bindings when I heard a rustling from an unexpected quarter—the dark far end of the mews. I turned and looked, then walked slowly toward what I had thought must be a storeroom.

  It was not a storeroom. It was a mew of thin wooden slats that ran from floor to thatch. There was a door, large enough for a man to enter, standing. And something within, something ghostly white. A snowy owl, perhaps?

  Drawing closer, I discerned its shape—not an owl’s shape. It was … I peered between the slats. It was a gyrfalcon, an arctic gyrfalcon. I had seen gyrfalcons before, of course, cavorting in the wind streams above our steading. But none so white as this. It must hie from the far, far north, where the whitest gyrfalcons dwell. Its fierce black eyes glared at me. It tugged at my heart. So wild, so beautiful to be imprisoned in this gloomy cage …

  I slipped the bolt from its hasp and opened the mew door. The falcon sidestepped on its perch, bobbing its head. I closed the door behind me and wrapped a piece of my cape about my fist. This bird was unjessed, I saw.

  “Come,” I summoned silently, and felt a tremolo of resistance in my mind: a pulling-away, a walling-off from me. Falcons do chat; it’s seldom they will come for me, save for the little merlins and kestrels.

  “Come.”

  The bird lowered its head and twisted sideways, watching me closely out of a malevolent eye.

  Surely it wouldn’t �
�� attack.

  I swept the fear from my mind. “Come.” Slowly, I raised my fist. “Come.”

  I felt something, then: a softening, a guttering away of rage. Then something else. A greeting? No, liker to … recognition.

  The falcon pushed off its perch, swooped, thumped down, and clutched my fist. It was heavy; its big, powerful talons pierced the cloth. I flinched but held myself still. It stared at me; I averted my eyes, as is polite with birds. Yet still I felt it: a rippling in my mind, stronger than ever I had known.

  I spoke to it soothingly, afraid, just yet, to stroke it. I turned—slowly, carefully—until the bird was touched with light. It was not completely white, I saw. Black arrow-shaped markings flecked its head and wings. Its thighs were clothed in pale yellow down, all the way to its feet. They looked for all the world like baggy leggings. Its feet and cere were pale yellow, its beak bluish gray, like slate.

  I could not tell by its coloring whether it were male or female, but it was big—nearly as long as my forearm—so I guessed it must be female.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said. “Do you know that?”

  The gyr fluffed its feathers—her feathers, I corrected myself. She looked at me as if I had said something ridiculously obvious.

  I was just reaching slowly to stroke her when the outer door creaked open. The bird pulled up straight, eyes alert, feathers closed tight. In walked a stranger, flanked by Rath and a very young girl. They were talking as they came, not seeing me. Then at once the man drew up short. He motioned Rath and the girl to stay back. Slowly he moved toward me, right to the gyrfalcon’s mew, and eyed me between the slats.

  “Get out,” he said in a voice ominously soft, “before I choke you with my own bare hands.”