For love’s sake, he started a war. For peace, he could lose it all.
Ballot’s Keep, Book 2
Three armies are converging on the isolated town of Ballot’s Keep, and a harsh, icy winter is just
around the corner. Xeras and his infant dragon are heading out of town, but not to escape. It was his
meddling that caused all this trouble for his lover, Carly, and for the town. And it’s his job to set it right.
Or, as his companion ghost likes to remind him, get killed trying.
Carly, the duke of Ballot’s Keep, would like nothing better than to protect his troubled, magic-tainted
lover. But what dragon magic has wrought, dragon magic must repair—and Xeras insists on facing the
consequences of his actions. Alone.
The fate of thousands of innocent people rides on Xeras’s talent for causing trouble—only this time,
in turning their enemies against each other. But his need for secrecy could be too much of a betrayal for
Carly to forgive…
Warning: Perhaps not as much hot gay lovin’ as you might be hoping for because Xeras is busy
saving the town. Oh, there are also several murders, light cussing, heavy petting and some very bad puns.
You have been warned.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or
have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
Lover of Ghosts
Copyright © 2010 by Emily Veinglory
ISBN: 978-1-60928-182-3
Edited by Anne Scott
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First
Lover of Ghosts
Emily Veinglory
Dedication
To the members of the Schaumburg Writers Meetup group—past, present and future.
Chapter One
Xeras wedged the brining barrel between his knees and positioned the bung. It sat crookedly over the
drilled hole. He checked to make sure the bung was the right way up, with the slightly narrower end against
the barrel.
“It doesn’t fit,” he said.
Parlen sighed and answered without looking up. “It will, when you tap it in.”
The chamberlain had been less than enthusiastic about Xeras’s offer to help, but Xeras had insisted.
He was running out of ways to make himself useful around the keep, having already been sent away by the
duke, his co-ruler and sister Katinka, the cook, and the shepherd—amongst others. This was his last chance
of accomplishing some constructive task in the course of a day that was very nearly over.
It had been his personal goal to do something, anything, useful today. He had even insisted that his
ghost companion, Drin, leave him alone so he would not be distracted. Somewhat amazingly, Drin had
agreed to comply, but Xeras could still feel the weight of the ghost’s concerned regard hanging over him
like the clouds hung over the snow-capped mountains that surrounded the town.
“Tap it in,” Parlen repeated. “It will fit if you tap it in.”
Xeras held the bung over the hole and brought down the wooden mallet, attempting to emulate
Parlen’s nonchalant precision. The old man was keeping a skeptical eye on him, much as a parent might
watch a small child. Parlen knew, no doubt, that Xeras did not have much experience with manual labor,
nor any conspicuous native dexterity. Xeras was also feeling weak from feeding the infant dragon, Drinia.
The wooden mallet felt heavy and awkward in his hand.
Parlen on the other hand seemed to glow with vigor, benefiting from the upsurge in magic at Ballot’s
Keep. With just a touch, the old man could report on the grain of a limb’s wood, whether food was good or
had spoiled. His was a quiet, slow-growing magic, and he was mastering it well, having come to it so late.
The mallet rebounded off the bung, which shot out of Xeras’s hand. The bung flew into the air and
bounced off the top of Parlen’s balding head with a muted clunk. Parlen flinched, then pursed his lips and
put aside the staves he had been assembling into a cask. They collapsed, clattering into a disordered pile of
tapering planks of fresh, pale wood. The old man bent, retrieved the bung and proffered it to Xeras with a
rigid arm.
Lover of Ghosts
7
Behind him a great many planed lengths of wood and metal hoops were haphazardly piled. To the
other side lay finished and filled casks, heavy with salted water, loaded with pickles, fish and other meats
for the winter. Placing the bung should have been the simplest part of the job.
Xeras retrieved the mallet, took the bung and positioned it again. He brought every ounce of his will
to bear on doing this one, simple task with basic competency. As Parlen watched—his gray, straggling
mustache bristling with obvious skepticism—Xeras brought down the mallet with what he already
suspected was a slight excess of force. With a crack and a pop, the bung was forced right through the hole
and out the other side. The entire face of the barrel sank in a finger’s width, and the top hoop snapped. In an
instant the stout, finished barrel surrendered its form. Brine and small fish spilled out in all directions,
flooding the room and sweeping straw, tools, wood and everything else before it.
For a small household, the contents of even one cask were important; Xeras looked down, wondering
if the fish were irretrievably spoiled. Quite why people in this part of the world ate baitfish for breakfast he
did not know. But given that they did, perhaps he could…
Parlen pointed one finger towards the great double doors of the stable, opening onto the cobbled
street. “Out,” he commanded.
Xeras should, no doubt, have apologized to Parlen, but if he had said anything at all, it would not have
been civil. Civility in general was not Xeras’s strong suit no matter how much it was called for. Internally,
Xeras fumed. I realize going from dragon bane to barrel-plugger is a considerable promotion, but your
dour supervision is considerably more terrifying than looking down the maw of a giant, ravening beast.
Perhaps if you combed yesterday’s dinner out of your moustache, your glowering would present less of a
distraction…
And so he had left in silence.
The temperature was frigid, even more so outside the stable where a stiff breeze scudded down off the
mountains and swirled in the narrow channel of the street. That morning Xeras had heard Carly’s sister,
Katinka, comment on the mildness of the day for this brief autumnal season of the year—and it was already
below freezing. Winter was bound to be harsh in the lofty heights where the town of Ballot’s Keep was
perched, in its narrow defile. He could imagine snow filling the town to the level of the mountaintops and
all the villagers hibernating in their cottages like giant cotton rats. Xeras smiled briefly at the thought of
Katinka weaving a giant nest out of withered grass and shredded linens.
Xeras sighed, standing for a moment to inspect the shallow graze on his finger, left by the edge of the
errant mallet. He was lucky not to have smashed it flat. It would be dusk soon and he had to concede that
his mission to find a way to participate in the keep’s seasonal preparations must be declared an utter failure.
He was distracted from this gloomy conclusion by some kind of commotion behind the great house.
Lacking any better purpose, Xeras went to investigate.
Emily Veinglory
8
Farley the fowlherd was cursing, her voice emerging from inside her stout coop. A creature burst into
the open in the wake of her tirade. Drinia, the young dragon, had grown a great deal over the last few
weeks. She had sprouted from the size of a large mouse to that of a healthy rat, and added to that was the
expanse of her rose-colored leathery wings that, when fully extended, were about the length of a man’s
arm. Those wings were sturdier now too, holding her in the air in a flurry of snapping flaps. She careened
out, dipped and collided with the ground. A large speckled egg slipped from her small red paws and
miraculously bounced once before hitting the ground and smashing, spilling its contents onto the sodden
cinders. The perfect golden yolk slid across the muddy grit surface in mute condemnation.
Farley emerged from the hen hutch in flustered disarray, flushed of face and sharp of tongue. “There
is something you can do for me after all,” she all but shrieked. “Take this curséd beast and get it away from
my birds before I put it through the sausage grinder and feed it to the pigs.”
“I am surprised you have such little regard for the swine.”
“What?” Farley stopped just short of him, her cheeks a maze of broken veins and strands of straw
projecting at crazy angles from her short-cropped gray hair.
“I am fairly sure,” Xeras opined, “that she would prove poisonous, and I have destroyed enough of the
town’s provisions for one day.”
Any deference the townsfolk had felt towards the infant dragon had quickly faded away. She was a
constant menace, underfoot and overhead, and generally in the worst possible place at any given time,
getting into the worst kind of trouble. Farley just snorted, reached down, grabbed Drinia, and thrust her into
Xeras’s arms. The dragon made a sound partway between a quack and the shriek of a cat whose tail has
been trodden on.
“She’s your poison,” Farley said, albeit with less ire. “You take her.”
Drinia was, it had to be said, neither an elegant nor an attractive creature. All of her parts seemed at
odds, and her temperament was limited to endless destructive curiosity and utter outrage whenever her
investigations were cut short. Xeras feared she took after her mother in displaying rather limited
intelligence, which would only become a more vexing issue as she grew larger. Holding her involved being
clawed, jabbed, pinched and subject to endless squirming and complaints. Xeras wrestled with his
squealing charge as Farley turned her back, satisfied, and shuffled back into the henhouse.
There was a time, Xeras considered with detachment, where merely showing your rear to a high-
house Tirrinian such as he warranted flogging. Well, a time and a place, to be specific. A place where
having the right heritage was reason enough for deference; you didn’t need to be useful. Where being good
at any productive aspect of everyday life was actually considered the mark of a lower kind of peasant or
servant.
Lover of Ghosts
9
There was a small balcony outside Carly’s chamber that offered a retreat from the prying eyes of a
small town. Xeras had acquired a set of skeleton keys from Parlen’s office, borrowed them, if you will. He
used them to let himself into Carly’s chambers and through it to a place of refuge, at least for a while.
Drinia continued to struggle and complain but Xeras was implacable.
“One more little escapade like that,” he muttered, “and I will trade you in for one of those little
yapping dogs or a singing bird, something you can keep on a leash or in a cage…”
Drinia squawked even louder, as if in protest at the very thought of confinement.
The duke’s room addressed the rear of the house, overlooking the narrow stretch of garden that
separated the house from the steep mountainside sweeping up behind the town.
Xeras knew that it was well past time to go and talk to Jarvice, the stone dragon guarding the gate into
town. But the dragon had taken to bemoaning that dull duty, and Xeras was holding in too many complaints
of his own to feign interest in anyone else’s right now, albeit that the matter of the gate was rather more
important than his maundering. Ballot’s Keep and its great gate bridged the one small pass that allowed
easy access between the high plains and the lowlands. A gate that opened upon a road that meandered
through miles of fertile land and down to the distant sea, all the way to the large, lurking island of Tirrin.
Tirrin, that was once the jewel in the crown of a great empire, crouched there in enmity. The plainsmen
trapped behind that gate were fomenting war that, if released, might sweep across the land, conquering and
seizing all that lay in their path.
But how was he supposed to do something about a problem on that scale, when he could not even
hammer in a barrel bung? If today was any lesson, he might do more harm than good in the attempt. Xeras
wrapped his cloak around him and sat upon a simple bench seat in the cramped area the balcony afforded.
The stone balustrade was too high to see over once he pressed his back against the wall. It didn’t matter. He
wasn’t here for the view, but for the solitude. Except, of course, for Drinia.
Drinia was whistling to herself now, a kind of ongoing, muted complaint. She burrowed into his cloak
and nestled up under his armpit. She would be hungry. Raising a dragon had proved yet another thing he
seemed to be incompetent at. Drinia had no actual use for a hen’s egg other than to irritate the hen and its
keeper. Even after all this time, Xeras had not managed to wean Drinia off the only food she would accept
when she was newborn, his own blood. She infiltrated under his clothes, against his skin, and with a slight
sting fastened onto his side with fine needle-tipped teeth that seemed ominously well designed for that
purpose.
When Xeras had been wounded, the baby dragon had given him the strength to heal rapidly, but now
he suspected he was paying her back with interest. As she nursed from his blood, he slipped into a daze
filled with illusory warmth and a scent he never managed to find any apt comparison for. It was the smell
of comfort, sweetness and death all rolled into one. Xeras leaned back into the corner between the outer
wall of the manse and the balcony wall, and let his eyes fall shut.
Emily Veinglory
10
The euphoria ebbed away only slowly. Drinia detached like a sated tick and curled by his side,
digesting. As she had grown, Drinia had taken to nibbling at more normal types of food, and the others
never seemed to question how she cobbled together sustenance from that. Dragons were magical after all;
people did not expect the simple feeding equations of livestock to apply. And somehow he did not want to
admit what had proved necessary, even as he felt it weakening him more with every passing day.
As his senses returned, he became aware of a wintry chill that had seized his lean body. Dusk had
begun to fall and the nights were always cold, but torpor clouded his mind and he still did not move. It was
easier to stay where he was than to discover whether he had the strength to stand. Xeras hunched into his
corner and watched the small sliver of sky that he could see slide through shades of rose and crimson and
finally indigo edging towards abject black.
He felt the great expanse of the night descending like a great hunting raptor swooping from above.
Somewhere out there in the dark, the plainsmen were waiting beyond the gate for a chance to burst through
into the more arable lowlands. Their scouts had been seen slipping through the town at night, peering and
prying at the keep’s meager defenses. The lowland towns beyond were each too small and inward-looking
to take an interest in a threat emanating from beyond the gate—or any place beyond the shadowed confines
of their huddled eaves. And those with greater ambitions, the denizens of his own home state, the island of
Tirrin, would only protect Ballot’s Keep if in the process they could possess it, and most of the surrounding
land as well. Indeed, they had helped provoke this very conflict in the hope of profiting from the resulting
chaos. If the towns suddenly felt the need to band together, who better to lead them than the rump of the
empire to which they had all once belonged?
Fate offered a precipice and it seemed likely they were going to stumble right off it, blinded by self-
interest or locked step-in-step by people all around. Xeras had never felt more helpless. What could he do?
Carly, the town’s duke, was a good man, and when this town fell, he would fall with it. Xeras had always
been taught that the loss of one village more or less was a matter of no importance in the great, cold scheme
of things. In his father’s eyes, only Tirrin mattered. But his father had deserted somebody he was meant to
love, his wife, in obedience to his nation—and Xeras had done the reverse.
And now here he was. What he felt for Carly was warm and true and real. That alone might be enough
to try to fight for a town in which he had no other role but love. It was quite possibly the only untainted
love for another human being he had ever felt. And he had to believe that mattered. He was torn between
that flickering promise of love and the towering darkness that seemed to close in all around. Xeras grappled
with a host of unfamiliar, all-too-obtrusive feelings, and when they overwhelmed him, he had to push them
away as a whole, even the love.
After all, the past offered more hints of doom than hope. Xeras had loved Drin too, the man after
whom the little dragon had been named. It had been a difficult matter, a nobleman and a servant, a crime of
miscegenation—a relationship between high and low—for which Drin had ultimately been executed.
Lover of Ghosts
11
But that was hardly Drin’s fault.
You have to tell him about me.
Drin’s voice seemed sharper, somehow coming as a surprise after almost a whole day of
uncharacteristic silence. Typically, the ghost had counted a day as the period of light, not the more
generous accounting to the turn of midnight.
But Drin’s return could not cut through this growing hopelessness that was a weight upon Xeras’s
whole body and even his mind. He only needed to think his words to answer the ghost, but he did not.
Telling his living lover about his dead lover really did not strike him as a pressing and necessary act; life
was complicated enough already.
It is cold, darkling. Take yourself inside, at least.
Xeras knew that self-pity really wasn’t getting him anywhere. He wasn’t even very good at it, lacking
the soft good looks of a troubadour’s tragic hero, or indeed the moral high ground from which to proclaim
the world so terribly unfair. There was nothing that had happened to Xeras that he was not somehow
complicit in. What vexed him most was the chaos he was causing in the lives of others with his choices and
entanglements.
It was fully nighttime when Drinia finally stirred, stretched and worked her way out of his clothing,
dropping down onto the ground and letting in even colder air as she did it. She trotted over to the door, the
faint starlight glinting off her scales as she waited there for him.
“I suppose I was meant to be scolding you,” Xeras mused. He sat up stiffly stretching his shoulders
and arms. Was it just his imagination, or the biting chill or autumn in the mountains…? While he had never
been a paragon of strength, there seemed less strength in his limbs than there once had been. “So here you
go. You are a disruptive and useless creature.” He paused and sighed. “But you are a rare creature and an
infant at that, of whom nothing more should be expected. I have no such excuse.”
Xeras, must you really be so…
The door cracked open from inside and Drinia slipped through. Carly stood in silhouette. “Xeras, have
you been sitting out here all this time? You must be mad.”
“Have you ever known me to deny it?”
Carly reached out and all but scooped Xeras into the room. There was no light inside beyond the
hearth fire at the end of the room opposite the bed. The duke wore just a robe tied tight at his waist. He was
a big, broad man with an honest face and ruddy hair, curling on his head and coarse in his beard, which
Xeras secretly disliked. Sometimes he wondered if he disliked it simply to have something to dislike in a
man who was otherwise quite unreasonably patient and virtuous, not to mention attractive.
“I was wondering where you had got to.” Carly closed the door with a shudder and reflexively went to
let Drinia out as she scratched at the door that led into the rest of the house. She trotted off, apparently with
her own ideas about where to spend the night. “It seems we are alone,” he said.
Emily Veinglory
12
“After a fashion.”
“Apart from each other,” Carly chided. “Which is more or less my point. And besides, if love makes
two people one, wouldn’t that make us alone?”
Xeras smiled wanly but turned away from Carly’s touch. Drin stayed quiet but he was still there, he
was always there. Being a ghost and haunting Xeras, there was nowhere else he could be, even if he wanted
to.
Xeras felt Drin not saying anything in response to that thought. No doubt he was trying to be discreet.
Drin approved of the match with Carly. The ghost saw sensible Carly as someone who might keep Xeras
out of trouble and supply him with life’s sundry necessities now that Drin was not longer part of the
corporeal world. But somehow Xeras felt Drin would still be hurt if theirs proved to be a truly deep and
romantic love, rather than a relationship that swarmed with ambiguities and secrets.
Xeras’s hands were numb as he pulled his cloak tight around him, but it was as if the cold he carried
with him defeated the warmth of the chamber. Carly was not so easily dissuaded; he took Xeras gently by
the shoulder and led him to the bed. Xeras looked aside but allowed himself to be guided to sit on the edge
of the pallet. Carly stood before him, unfolding the length of the cloak thrown over Xeras’s shoulder. His
touch was careful, solicitous, and his hand were always most undeniably warm.
“It may seem a strange complaint,” Carly mused. “But it disturbs me how polite you have been of
late, and how biddable. That is not the Xeras I know…and love.”
You see?
Xeras closed his eyes. Drin had indeed been arguing that Carly’s interest was not some passing
fancy—that somehow he truly did like Xeras despite his spiky ways, or even because of them.
“Is it such a painful proposition?” Carly pressed. He pushed Xeras’s cloak back off his shoulders,
revealing the frayed and gape-necked tunic beneath. It had been black once and now sunk in to an
indiscriminate, dejected brown.
Why do you do this to the poor man? Tell him you love him too. Lie if you must, but at least be kind.
It was not that he did not love Carly. It was not even that he did not want to say it, but with Drin there
listening he could not. How could you say that to one man, when the last one you said it to stood invisibly
in the room? When the last man you loved died horribly because of it?
So you continue to torture me by destroying your own happiness.
It’s what I do best, Drin. Xeras tried not to let Drin feel his other thoughts, that Drin’s haunting
distractions would probably always make it impossible to form new relationships with people who were
still alive.
Xeras glanced up, belatedly, and saw how Carly’s smile had faded. But the duke pressed on, glossing
over Xeras’s lack of response. He was a strong and foursquare man, but his touch was light, untying
Lover of Ghosts
13
Xeras’s belt and lifting his tunic up and over his head. Yet another person who seemed to recognize that
despite looking like a full-grown man, inside he was little more than a child.
Every place Carly touched Xeras, true warmth blossomed and endured. But Xeras clasped his arm
down over the line of faint bruise-rosettes and tiny scabs left by Drinia’s nursing. Barely evident by touch,
and probably invisible in the near darkness, but just one more thing he had no desire to divulge or discuss
in the absence of any possible solution. The duke had troubles enough with war and winter both on his
doorstep.
“Love is a strange thing,” Carly said, apparently giving up entirely on Xeras participating in the
conversation. “It makes me feel…light and invincible and full of optimism.” He continued to undress Xeras
is if he were nothing more than a large doll from which any great degree of cooperation was not to be
expected.
Look at him, at least. How can you be so indifferent to this man and what he offers you?
Because, amongst so many other things, if he fell into the complacency of new love, Drin would leave
him. The ghost would feel his task complete. Xeras’s happiness and future somehow secured, he would
move on to whatever lay beyond. The exact nature of that fate seemed unclear even to Drin—perhaps it
was simple oblivion. And for all that was probably the proper thing to happen, Xeras wasn’t ready to give
him up. He let Carly settle him into the bed, folding the covers over them both, lying side by side,
untouching.
“Maybe it doesn’t have that effect on you,” Carly said quietly. “Maybe it does and you just haven’t
found it yet. It would be nice to think the world gave every lover that same love in return. But I know that
isn’t always true.”
Xeras could feel Drin seething. The ghost was angry at him—but angry, disappointed or even
despairing he would stay. The question was, how much would Carly put up with? He was already being
tolerant beyond all reason. Xeras was caught. He did not want the love of the living to cost him the
companionship of Drin’s ghost, but he feared what would happen if he was left only with the love of the
dead.
In the darkness Xeras stirred. He turned towards Carly’s warmth and reached out under the heavy
blankets. Carly was lying on his back. Xeras’s hand curled over his broad forearm. What Xeras could not
say in words he offered in gestures, brushing his lips over Carly’s shoulder. He reached out and laid his
palm lightly on Carly’s chest, just at the base of his rib cage, sliding down to his abdomen.
Xeras felt anxious tension trembling in his own hands. Carly was not moving in response to his touch.
In the darkness Xeras closed his eyes, grimacing. He was used to his own morose nature, but there was no
need to sink into maudlin fits of tears at the least provocation. He felt wetness beading in his eyes and tried,
angrily, to push those feeling away. He had indulged them far too much already. Even he was sick of
himself.
Emily Veinglory
14
But Carly finally sighed and reached his arm out and around, gathering Xeras up against his body.
“You’re so cold,” Carly said, tucking the blankets up around them both.
Xeras rested his head against Carly’s shoulder. The first time he had done that, it had felt like coming
home. But he knew he was cold in a far broader sense of the word. He was like Drinia, sucking the warmth
out of Carly and giving nothing back. Carly, for some inexplicable reason, allowed it, but that did not make
it right or fair, and unlike a mindless little beast, Xeras had it within his power to give more…or break free.
His need was after all his need, not any obligation on Carly, let alone this entire town.
Xeras moved his hand back up across Carly’s chest, just idly considering the solid bulk of his form
and the generous warmth that radiated from it, more like a hearthstone than a man. Muscles ran under his
skin in smooth forms, like some deity had sculpted them. With his eyes still closed, Xeras got control of
himself again, feeling the soft grain of Carly’s sparse chest hair swirling out from the center of his chest,
brushing over his nipple and contemplatively tracing down the gentle ripple of his muscular rib cage.
With a soft moan Carly rolled towards him, all but pinning him down with a full, warm kiss. All his
life Xeras had fought so hard to stand up, to be his own person. His father Harus was a member of Triton’s
ruling counsel, and no one ever seemed to see Xeras as more than a misbred disappointment who would
always be an unwanted drain and disappointment, not a fit heir and continuation of his esteemed lineage.
But in Carly’s arms, he felt subsumed and overwhelmed, and caught in the moment, he didn’t care at
all. Carly’s substantial body felt like a safe harbor, a place he could consider being only himself, no matter
how frail and flawed that self might be—and if possessing no great strength, at least constituting a light
burden. Xeras pressed against Carly like a vine against the tree, molding to that greater strength. Carly’s
hardening cock pressed against his thigh. He ached for it, kissing Carly hungrily and pulling him in. Sliding
one leg around Carly, he urged his lover on.
In the darkness he felt a furtive whisper, not even a real sound just a feeling…the feeling of being
watched. Drin was always somehow there. Xeras tried to drive it from his mind, digging his fingers into
Carly’s broad back. Carly was slow to respond, being by nature a deliberate, gentle man. But he kindled,
pressing Xeras down, his lips becoming gentle bites. His cock was hard now and insistent. Xeras raised his
knees, Carly hesitated again. Xeras hissed in irritation, wanting Carly inside him to drive the constant
worrying out.
“You’re like mountain weather, Xeras. You have a sudden way about you.”
“I can only hope it is part of my charm,” Xeras whispered. “Else I have none at all.”
Carly exhaled in a muted semblance of a laugh, and he pressed forward, into Xeras, in a completion
that felt, for that one long fleeting moment, like they truly united into one—and no other person was
present, or existed at all.
Chapter Two
Xeras awoke slowly, grudgingly. After the adventures of the last few months, he enjoyed the
sensation of a soft bed, still warm from the heat of a body rather more substantial than his own—especially
before full awareness brought its burden of cares and failings.
Xeras had always been gangly and thin, even for a Tirrinian. After his lover, Drin, had been executed
by method of starvation, food had come to be even less appealing to him. Some days a melancholia would
hit Xeras, and it was hard to eat anything at all except when Drinia’s bloodletting brought on bursts of
furious appetite. But his sporadic black moods seems to be thinning now into a more enduring and
somehow even less tolerable grayness in which his nights with Carly were the only relief. The pain of grief
was ebbing, but the numbness in its wake seemed to be setting in like autumn in the mountains, so swift,
and deeper every day.
Carly was the one bright promise for the healing of his heart. But Xeras couldn’t quite convince
himself that what he felt for Carly was not a betrayal of everything Drin had risked, and ultimately
sacrificed. Xeras had lost, mourned and perversely regained the great love of his life, and did not really
know what to do with the possibility of another.
There was a whisper of sound in the room, a movement of cloth. Reluctantly, Xeras opened his eyes,
still trying to cling to the frayed edges of his contented mood. Carly was already dressed in the russet tunic
and hose he favored. Lifting the thick, gold chain of office over his head, he settled it in place around his
neck. By tradition he shared his office with a woman, normally a wife, but in his case his older sister. From
what Xeras had seen, kind-hearted Katinka actually carried out the bulk of the routine tasks associated with
managing the town, collecting and distributing the tolls from the traders that passed through the gate in the
warmer months. But Carly excelled in dealing with disputes and managing their relations with the
neighboring tribes and city-states—even the plainsmen before a shift in power had left another more hostile
group in control of the land immediately around the other side of the gate. And he was a most sturdy and
reassuring figurehead for a town so precariously placed in terms of the physical and political terrain.
“It is an audience day, you’ll recall,” Carly said, noticing Xeras was awake.
Xeras did not recall any such thing, but did not doubt he had been told about it some time or another.
He knew the town held audience days when people could air problems and disputes, and Carly had a knack
for bringing about some kind of settlement.
Emily Veinglory
16
“While I am busy, you might try talking to Kassius.” Carly reached for his thick over-robe from the
end of the bed. “I don’t know why you are bothering the townsfolk in their work anyway, when Kassius
clearly needs help with his.”
“If I’m a mage-teacher, Drinia is a fowlherd,” Xeras snapped.
Carly laughed. “Now that is the Xeras I know and love. Go speak with Kassius. If nothing else, I
could use your assessment of his loyalty. Not so long ago he was trying to destroy us. Now we have him as
an ambassador of Tirrin and ‘doer of good works’. Love may transform a man, but this strikes me as a little
much. Who knows what he will do if the wind changes again before the freeze.”
Carly was clearly thinking their current situation through calmly and carefully, as a leader should.
And you should support him, as a true partner would.
Maybe he needed to get rid of the ghost after all. Xeras sighed. Even at his most irritating, Drin was
usually right. In fact his propensity for being right was a good part of why he was so irritating. The
question was not what a good lover does, but whether Xeras was capable of being one, even if he tried.
“If it will please you for me to waste my time in this way, then I shall oblige you,” Xeras said
acerbically.
Carly leaned over him. He stooped into a kiss that erased Xeras’s annoyance. Carly was being patient.
Curious really, with all that was going on—the peril surrounding them. Carly still took the time to woo him
like some doting beau. It was not as if he hadn’t already tasted the goods.
“It will please me. Greatly. And I also wonder whether a good argument with our Kassius might
improve your mood. In fact I am hoping he is at his most provocative.” He leant in, close enough that his
breath scudded over Xeras’s cheek as he spoke. Then he brushed one finger against Xeras’s cheek as he
went. “I’ll see you tonight. We should take some time.” Carly left the room without so much as a backward
glance.
With all the secrets he harbored, the idea of time alone with Carly almost felt like a threat. Despite all
they had been through, they did not know each other very well. If they really talked, Xeras was probably
going to have to let some of those secrets go, and as secrets went his were a real box of snakes.
Then the least you could do is go to see “our” Kassius as he asks. But first you had better find out
what trouble the dragonchild has gotten into overnight.
In a way it had been easier when little Drinia followed him around like a chick after a hen. That way
he normally saw the trouble she was getting into, even if he couldn’t put a stop to it. Of late she had taken
to wandering about like a cat, getting into everything, and any attempt to lock her into one area led to
dragon tantrums destructive beyond anything a creature her size should be capable of. On the last occasion,
she managed to burp out a few odiferous flames and set fire to the rushes on the parlor floor. The whole
house had been filled with smoke for hours, and the townsfolk had come running, thinking the building was
afire.
Lover of Ghosts
17
After that they all agreed, some rather grudgingly, to let the dragon wander about freely. Xeras and
the rest of the inhabitants of the keep tried to watch over her as best they could. Not everyone was very
pleased with the outcome. Sometimes Xeras worried about the little monster…and sometimes he worried
about the town. Drinia for all her yet-small stature and apparent fragility always came out unscathed but the
pens, kitchens, houses and livestock of the village were not so fortunate.
Damn. The more he thought about it, the more worry gnawed at him, giving impetus to his dulled
will. If there was anything he was truly obligated to do, it was to look after Drinia, no matter how poor a
job he did of it. And if only by a lack of persistent protest, he had agreed to go and talk to that arrogant
bastard Kassius.
Only a few months ago, Xeras had exiled himself from Tirrin, unable to bear to stay after Drin’s
execution. He had walked on his own two feet all the way from the coast to the high reaches outside of
Ballot’s Keep. But now the mere act of getting himself upright, dressed and splashing water on his face was
exhausting. Xeras decided he needed to swing past the hall to look in on Carly again first. It was not so
much physical strength he lacked as some kind of inner vigor that only Carly’s presence seemed to help
him with.
He could feel Drin’s smug satisfaction. The ghost was growing noticeably less talkative these days,
but he hadn’t given up on his own mission to see Xeras paired off. Xeras’s contrary nature urged him to
change his plans if only to spite the matchmaking specter, but he wasn’t strong enough to follow through.
As his father often complained, Xeras wasn’t the sort to run hither and fro in the pursuit of personal
ambitions—not his father’s, and not even his own.
Other than traversing most of the known world just to make a point?
Other than that, of course.
There were two balconies over the deep, narrow meeting hall. The hall had been built into a space left
between the great house and the gate, little more than a roof thrown over the gap. One of the blackwood
balconies could only be entered by a set of crooked stairs inside the hall. That was where any observers of
the day’s events, who had no plans to speak, could seat themselves. The other, strangely enough, could be
reached only through a curtained doorway from the duke’s house. It was higher off the ground and
completely inaccessible from the body of the hall. Xeras knew he would probably have that vantage all to
himself.
Is that what we might call a metaphor? Drin ventured, but with less than his usual aplomb.
Xeras tried not to think about that too deeply. He slipped onto the balcony, staying back against the
wall so as to be almost imperceptible from the hall. Not that there was any great danger of causing a
distraction. There was a small crowd in the hall, and both Carly and Katinka were on their feet, facing
them. Drinia was with Katinka, playing with the swaying edge of her long skirt like some kind of
Emily Veinglory
18
misshapen kitten. So it seemed he had achieved his first goal of the day despite himself, he had located
Drinia and reassured himself that she had made it through another night unscathed. Perhaps it was a good
omen.
“I saw one of those plainsfolk in the alley behind my house,” Garia the alewife said. “Just walking
around, like she owned the place.”
“They have right of passage through the town.” Katinka made a placating gesture with her hands as if
she could manually suppress the lady’s volume of speak. “That is part of the traditional agreement between
the town and the plainsmen.”
“In the middle of the night? Through my yard!”
“Even so.”
“Through the middle of my vegetable patch? At the expense of one of my finest late-session sweet
gourds?”
There was a ripple of general laughter which leavened the mood. Garia was clearly more worried
about her produce than any grand schemes the folk of the high plains might have.
Carly seized the initiative. “These few incidents aside, we have always had respectful dealings with
the families of the plains, dealings to our mutual advantage in trading our excess goods for their fine
ponies, leathers and herbs. But with the changes, there are different families living on the other side of the
gate. We need time to reforge our traditional connection with these people, and make sure old
understandings are respected. We have put out the banner of parley, asking to speak with their
representative…”
“And you have had it out there for weeks,” Janis the shepherd broke in. “Are we to sit in fear through
the entire winter wondering what will sneak into town during the night?”
Another man might have blustered but Carly turned to his people with his arms outspread.
“Have they offered any threat?” he said. “I think we have every reason to be patient.”
“Carly, lord duke.” Farley did not speak loudly, but she also spoke rarely and only with good reason
so the room hushed to hear her. “Several of my birds were killed in the night and just left to be found. And
it was not an animal that did it but a person who lifted a secure latch and used a sharp knife. I do not know
if we can assume that there is cause to be complacent.”
The hush continued some time and Carly’s broad brow creased in a frown. Even now a glimpse of his
face was like a beam of light. The world around him swirled in chaos but Carly stood and considered,
without haste.
“We cannot know with certainty who killed the birds, or why. But I must agree that this is worrying,
and we need to take stronger steps to ensure our message is received by the plainsfolk. So that we will
know if they refuse to talk or are simply delaying for some reason.”
Lover of Ghosts
19
He sat down at his chair and the others sat in theirs. The tone of the room changed, becoming less
angry and more contemplative.
“We must,” Farley said firmly, “make them listen…”
Withdrawing into the darkness of the house, Xeras made his way slowly through the narrow
passageways. He exited the manse through the side door and went out across the cinder court between the
house and the stable. Parlen was there, directing a party of men who were pushing the duke’s carriage into
the stable.
Parlen beckoned him over. “Master Xeras, if you are free I am sure I can find some use for you.”
Despite his best and somewhat touching attempt at magnanimity, Parlen was obviously reluctant. It
seemed, however, that he had picked up on Xeras’s desperation to find a role for himself—a fact that
pricked the remnants of Xeras’s pride.
“And I am sure I could find a way to make you regret the offer,” Xeras replied. “No, I don’t think so.”
He looked across the road to the guildhouse; Kassius had been holding court there over the last few
weeks. Since the arrival of Xeras and Drinia, the dragon magic had been making itself felt. As a scryer with
Tirrinian training in the arts of magic, Kassius had volunteered to help people adjust to their new and
growing abilities. It was a suspiciously helpful gesture from a man who was essentially a spy and
provocateur. But the townsfolk put it down to his engagement to the young noblewoman, Phinia, from the
neighboring borough of Thurst.
“Perhaps you should go and pay him a visit,” Parlen said. “Your kinsman seems to be making himself
useful…and at home.”
Xeras looked at him sharply. Xeras no longer counted himself of Tirrin, which Parlen knew full well.
But getting annoyed with the chamberlain was about as productive as cursing at a fencepost. He was going
to keep doing just what he wanted.
“I find it difficult to talk to Kassius without succumbing to the urge to bludgeon him with something
considerably larger than that barrel bung,” Xeras admitted.
Parlen responded with little more that a lilt to his bushy eyebrow. But as he turned away he said, “I
could lend you my mallet.”
Xeras watched him go. So the chamberlain didn’t trust Kassius either. Interesting. Most of the
townsfolk had accepted his sudden change of heart at face value, putting it down to the redeeming powers
of true love, or the motivating power of lust and infatuation (depending on their levels of cynicism). In
either case, the princess was temporarily back home with her parents. So although matrimony appeared to
be in the cards, it was likely to be delayed until spring. Maybe rather longer if Phinia’s mother had a say in
it and the duchess was rarely found speechless.
Parlen caught Xeras watching him and made a vague shooing gesture before returning to his duties.
Emily Veinglory
20
So, go talk to Kassius, Drin suggested. Carly’s right, it might at least get your blood, and perhaps a
few other things, up. It’s well past time you pulled yourself out of this malaise. It is doing more harm than
you can know.
As he crossed the road, Xeras muttered, “If there is anything more tedious than being haunted, it is
being haunted by a ghost that is forever urging one to cheer up.”
Drin’s laughter followed him to the doorway of the guildhouse; it was fortunate no one else could
hear it.
There was something about seeing Kassius, a fellow native of Tirrin in good standing back home, that
made it feel like he was entering another world. With every step, Xeras felt more shabby, disheveled and
disgraced. The scant months since his exile had worked great changes on Xeras and it would be hard to call
them improvements. But Kassius looked just as he would have standing in the conclave hall of his island
home. He seemed, somehow, to carry Tirrin within him.
Kassius was speaking with a young woman from the family of shepherds who lived near the edge of
the town. But seeing Xeras, he bent and said a few words to her, and she passed Xeras on her way out. Both
of them stood a good head taller than most of the locals. High-house blood came out in other ways as well,
from their matching almond-shaped eyes to the wry insincerity of their greeting smiles. Kassius was older
and more handsome, higher in rank, and a mage. It was hard not to defer to him automatically, as if they
were back home where rank and magic meant everything. And even by the standards of Ballot’s Keep,
Kassius was the more valuable of the two.
Kassius bowed with exaggerated and rather sarcastic courtesy. “Xeras of the house of Harus. How do
I come to be blessed with your august presence? I have some time, as it happens, before my noon class. So
I am at your disposal.”
“You do not wish to know how I would dispose of you, Kassius. Needless to say it would be in pieces
no bigger than my closed fist.”
Kassius laughed, a piercing ascending trill that gave the impression of being well practiced. “Really,
my brother Tirrinian, what cause could I ever have given you for this rancor? Did you receive the gift I
forwarded to you, sent by my beloved Phinia?”
“You encouraged plainsmen to attack this town and had Carly abducted by a dragon. And the wine
your ‘beloved’ sent me tasted rather strange. Are you sure you added nothing to its ingredients before you
passed it on?”
“Your paranoia is so amusing,” Kassius replied blithely, but in a lower voice. “And as for the rest, it is
in the past. And besides, what have I done to you? Really, what kind of people are these? Not like you or I,
you must admit. But then, I suppose you always did have an unnatural fondness for creatures, didn’t you?”
Xeras seethed at that tangential reference to Drin, of the servant class counted barely above cattle,
rather than the magical so-called high houses of Tirrin. The conclave had a horror of miscegenation,
Lover of Ghosts
21
particularly when it came to servants. They clung tight to the fading magic in their family lines. In a way
Xeras had been pleased when he had been born “dull”. Except that if he had magic, there might have been
something he could have done…
Calmly, Xeras. He cannot hurt me now. Besides, he might also be thinking of Plegura. Not every
Tirrinian ends up falling pregnant to a dragon.
Xeras’s irrational rage lessened, but also expanded to include Kassius, Drin, Plegura and the general
insanity of a world that brought them all together in this way. He struggled to remember his purpose here,
to feel out Kassius’s loyalty to the town, which was quickly revealing itself to be nonexistent. And in
Kassius, transparency was not something to be trusted, or even believed.
In fact, up close Kassius seemed a little different. He was upright, his pale hair carefully curled, his
ivory-colored livery immaculate down to the gloves, but he seemed…brittle, somehow. And deep in his
eyes something else glimmered, but was it malice or desperation? Perhaps in a creature like Kassius, this
was the appearance of love?
“So how does it make you feel?” Xeras pressed. “To see magic coming to these lowly peasants while
grand Tirrin fades away?”
“Magic pigs are still pigs.” Kassius waved one hand elegantly to emphasize his words, as if he were
still standing in some gilded ballroom. “Just as even a Tirrinian with your obviously failings in the arts of
magic is still my brother Tirrinian—a man born into privilege and with the potential to possess it for the
rest of his life, whether he sees fit to make use of it or not. But I, personally, have confidence you will
eventually tire of this wallowing in bestiality and we will put this situation right.”
Smug self-assurance seemed to well up within the man, bolstering his will and re-establishing his
usual arrogant demeanor. “That was our mistake, you know,” Kassius added, turning to lead Xeras into his
impromptu classroom. “You would have tired of that burly house servant too, given time. In the end a man
of intellect will seek intimacy with a true peer.”
Xeras, don’t!
Xeras’s dispassion broke open like ice over a river. He took one step forward, questing for a weapon
to use to smash that supercilious sneer right off Kassius’s pretty, symmetrical features. It felt like he was
reaching inside himself for a force of pure anger when he stopped short, staggering with sudden, wrenching
pain. A veritable wall of air pushed back against him, and a wet and rending sensation filled his body,
blurred his vision and folded him over. The next thing Xeras knew, he was crouched on the ground, palms
splayed out on the dusty planks of the floor, gasping for breath. Xeras peered up to see Kassius standing
over him.
“I thought so,” Kassius said with only the mildest of interest. Clearly his provocative words had been
entirely calculated. “The instinct for magic is in you. But why not the power? Are you rejecting it, or is it
rejecting you?” He sounded like he was leaning to the latter option.
Emily Veinglory
22
Kassius’s equanimity was so complete. Even as Xeras crawled at his feet barely able to draw breath,
he wanted to tear the man apart with his bare hands. Somewhere behind him, he heard Drinia’s claws
tapping very faintly on the wooden floorboards, a skittering sound like a spider’s steps.
“You are a positive void of dragon magic when you should be its heart,” Kassius mused, still focused
on Xeras. “I should be working with you, shaping you, not this parade of yokels. Dragon magic, a new
source of it for a new generation, and it should be springing in all its abundance directly from you, not
welling corrupted up from this earth like a muddy seep-hole…”
Xeras was quite sure that being “shaped” by Kassius would be an experience akin to vivisection. He
quailed to see the frustrated avarice in Kassius’s eyes, his own magic impressive only on the scale of the
fast-fading abilities of Tirrin—long bereft of the presence of dragons. Kassius might be crazy, but he
certainly seemed sincere in this. He wanted Xeras, he wanted the power Xeras might be able to control.
And he wanted it very badly.
Very badly? I suspect that whatever Kassius wants is pure evil.
Kassius delicately drew off one glove and thrust his naked hand in Xeras’s direction. A palpable force
rushed into Xeras, like a breath that took itself. He could feel Kassius’s acrid will inside his body—
inspecting, sorting and judging the meager fibers of his being.
Drin’s alarmed voice burst into his awareness: Get out. Get out of here, now!
That was easy for Drin to say but quite impossible for Xeras to do. Some deep instinct reached for the
power to fight back, but only new waves of pain answered. His muscles contracted beyond his control,
leaving him curled on his side upon the floor at Kassius’s feet. He felt a deep, futile rage at Kassius, but he
couldn’t move at all.
Then, with a gust of wind and a screech like a hunting hawk, the pressure suddenly eased. A dizzy
flood of blood and breath made the world rush back. The shrieking continued, but this time it was Kassius,
Kassius screaming. Xeras peered up blearily to see him struggling to pry the enraged infant dragon from his
face. Spurts of blood marred the pallor of his skin and garb as the skin of his face tore audibly. The dragon
flailed and fumed with sulfurous wisps.
Drinia, no! Drin called, as if he thought anyone but Xeras could hear him, then: Call her off, quickly.
Xeras was not quite convinced that haste was called for. Surely the little dragon couldn’t do that much
damage? And she had certainly wiped that supercilious expression off the Tirrinian’s face. But the blood
was beginning to run in streams so Xeras called for the dragon after a gasp gave him the breath to do it.
“Drinia, that’s enough, come here. I’m all right.”
And for a beast that seemed pretty indifferent to his welfare most of the time, she obeyed him now
with conspicuous alacrity. Drinia dropped to the floor, leaving small red paw prints as she trotted towards
him, and planted herself between Xeras and Kassius with a hiss and a glare back at Kassius.
Lover of Ghosts
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Only then did Xeras notice that the dragon’s claws, which had always seemed so small as to be
harmless, were now fully unsheathed and clicking on the floor. Still not large, really, but sharp all along
their length like glinting daggers and so much longer than he had ever seen them. With her eyes bulging
and teeth bared, she looked as terrifying as anything no larger than a boot could be.
What was rather more demonstrative of their power was Kassius. As he staggered back and lowered
his hands, his face was revealed. Kassius’s classical features were smeared with blood and scored with cuts.
One deep wound was slashed across his temple, and flesh was showing through a hanging flap of skin.
Xeras staggered upright, ran to the door and called out, “Parlen, somebody, help. Kassius is hurt.”
Drinia was already advancing on Kassius again. Xeras gave her a foot-push just short of a kick and
grabbed Kassius. He tried to guide him to a chair.
“Put your hands back up,” Xeras said. “And press hard.”
Parlen arrived shortly afterwards, and predictably, he knew just what to do.
Chapter Three
“If the infant dragon is dangerous, that casts a new light on things,” Chamberlain Parlen said. “And
the shepherdess seemed to think it was doing only as it was commanded.”
“Meaning what?” Xeras replied. “That I am the dangerous one?”
There seemed to be no immediate answer to that from anyone, except for a faint sigh from Drin.
“I may be useless,” Xeras muttered. “But the upside of that was nobody thought I was anything but
harmless.”
They sat around the small, square table—one on each side: Parlen, Carly, his sister Katinka and
Xeras. In the middle of the glossy, polished tabletop sat Drinia. She was carefully and meticulously licking
human blood off her paws. It seemed it was not only his blood that she could eat, and that was a rather
disquieting thought. Each dragon took exclusively to a different source of food, and he had hoped blood
was like milk to dragons, something they weaned from with age. But if that was not the case, she would be
unlikely to limit her predations to the supply his own meager frame could offer.
Do not leap to such dire conclusions, Drin said. Besides, she is not vicious. Kassius was hurting you.
She was protecting you, her father.
I am ill-equipped to be any kind of father, Xeras thought in reply. Let alone for a creature I barely
understand and am not sure I even like.
And technically he had been hurting himself. When Kassius had tried to scry his mind, Xeras had
reached instinctively for the magic that was meant to be inside him—the power that came to him as a father
of a dragon. But magic had not answered, only pain. Useless, even in that. If magic was meant to be used,
the dragons might have done better to choose Kassius to raise their spawn.
All Drinia knew was that you were hurting and he was standing over you. She was defending you
because she is like you; she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. I shudder to think what a dragon raised by
Kassius would be like.
“Do you have anything else to say? Perhaps a denial?” Parlen prompted loudly. “I swear that man
doesn’t quite live in this world.”
The second part was a peevish aside to Katinka, who smiled a wan response.
“When Drinia came into the room I was on the ground,” Xeras tried gamely to explain. “Kassius was
standing over me. He was scrying me, I don’t know why—I think he was looking for something I knew…”
Lover of Ghosts
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As he spoke, Xeras couldn’t help but wonder what, exactly, Kassius had hoped to learn by barging
into his head with such uncharacteristic brutishness. Nothing Xeras knew could possibly do him any good,
nothing about Drin or Drinia. Nothing from his past. Then one word floated into his consciousness like a
bubble from dark and swampy depths. Yulia. The name of his mysterious, missing, not-quite-as-deceased-
as-she-was-meant-to-be mother. Something that had not, fortunately, been on his mind when he was talking
to Kassius.
When Kassius had decided to stay on at Ballot’s Keep and, at least ostensibly, desert his plan to
provoke the plainsmen into attacking the town, he had casually mentioned the name of the woman who led
the plainsmen’s war party, and that name was Yulia. It was an uncommon name, a Tirrinian name. It could
hardly be a coincidence.
Xeras. You can tell the truth. If you really insist, you can lie. But you need to talk to these people.
Now.
One of the downsides of a voice nobody else could hear was that the time you spent listening to it left
something of a gap in the conversation.
“What was it,” Parlen said, perhaps not for the first time, “that Kassius wanted to know?”
“Scryers are like squirrels and about as smart,” Xeras said with a scowl. “They don’t just look where
things are buried, they look everywhere all the time, in the hope something toothsome is there.”
It was the wrong answer. Parlen was questioning him with overt suspicion; Carly and Katinka were
obviously uncomfortable but had not exactly put a stop to it. As the evasive answer slipped out of his
mouth, Xeras saw their expressions harden and the first signs of real doubt.
Talk, Xeras. Talk fast and try telling the whole truth this time.
Leaning forward, Xeras fixed his eyes on Carly. “And the only thing more Tirrinian than prying, is
hiding. Not necessarily because there is a secret, but because anything you tell anyone might one day be
used against you. We are creatures of habit, Kassius and I. Drinia on the other hand is a creature of instinct.
She attacked Kassius because she felt she had to. Because I am her father, and despite all her irritating
foibles, she will protect family if they are threatened. She isn’t dangerous to anyone who isn’t dangerous to
her, or to me.”
The question in Carly’s eyes was: But what about you? Are you dangerous to my family? And seeing
it, Xeras was acutely aware of how much he had depended upon the duke’s unquestioning support,
irrational as it might be. But Carly did have his sister to think of, and this town. Even Carly must
occasionally think of himself.
Katinka spoke up, breaking the moment. “We don’t have time to get into this now, not with
everything we need to get done before nightfall. We just have to keep Drinia out of the way, make sure one
of us has an eye on her all the time.”
“I had an eye on her,” Xeras said, “when she was trying to rip Kassius’s face off.”
Emily Veinglory
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Are you trying to get her chained up like some wild beast? Let Katinka change the subject, darkling.
“But, um, what exactly is it that needs to be done?” Xeras added.
And Carly laid out his plan, the result of the morning’s audience. It was not, it must be said, a
particularly wise plan. In fact it smacked of a group of people doing something, anything, rather than just
sitting on their hands and waiting for the worst to happen.
The folk of Ballot’s Keep were going to catch a plainsman.
“We only want to talk. To give him, or perhaps her, a message,” Carly explained.
“Imagine trying to explain your intentions to a wolf or a wild boar once they have fallen into a pit. It
is unlikely to pay much heed,” Xeras pointed out.
“But this isn’t some kind of wild beast we are talking about,” Katinka objected, unconsciously
echoing Drin.
“Caught in a trap and surrounded by the enemy, anyone is a wild beast,” Xeras replied.
That is not a point you want to dwell on if Drinia is to keep her freedom. Let alone keep your options
open with dear Mama.
Xeras stood, pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger, and turned partly away from the
assembled company. Things were beginning to happen a little too quickly here. “You don’t know what the
people on the other side of the gate are thinking. If someone gets overexcited, something goes wrong…”
Xeras was aware of the irony of trying to be the voice of reason.
“Petry, the eldest son of the toll-taker, has picked up an unusual skill from this dragon magic of
yours,” Katinka said rather smugly. “He can make people go to sleep, and this is one occasion where that
skill might be used to good advantage.”
“Even frightened or angry people?”
“He thinks so.”
“A young man, is he, proud of his new talents? I doubt a well-raised son of Ballot’s Keep has exactly
been testing whether it is a talent that will work on a terrified victim.” Xeras threw his hands up and spoke
no more. If these people were going to do this, then they were going to do it. He paced a little farther from
the table as if trying to tangibly separate himself from this folly.
Maybe Jarvice could help. No one could harm him or beat him in a test of strength.
Xeras shook his head. Jarvice was an adult dragon who could turn his whole, massive body into stone.
Currently he was fully occupied blocking the great gate whose occult mechanism had malfunctioned just as
winter was coming and war was in the air.
“I said,” Carly insisted, apparently repeating himself. “That the plainsman, who is after all trespassing
in our town, would not be anyone’s helpless victim. They will not be harmed…”
“They will probably not see it that way on the first matter, or being inclined to trust you on the
second.”
Lover of Ghosts
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“Do you really have grounds for lecturing us on matters of trust…? I mean…” But what Carly said in
haste was clearly true, and not unjustified at that. Still, he obviously regretted the outburst. It seemed that
his forbearance would likely continue a little longer. Carly stood and walked over to where Xeras stood in
the window well. His heavy hand settled over Xeras’s shoulder and squeezed.
Look him in the eye and listen to what he says, Drin counseled. It has taken some doing but you are
beginning to lose him.
Xeras felt his brow crease in a frown as he tried to push aside a lifetime of training never to let anyone
close, never to trust anyone completely.
“I know I am no great exemplar of trustworthiness,” Xeras said. “But perhaps you will concede I am
very adept at suspicion, the giving and receiving thereof. If you want to be in a position of trust and
friendly commerce, you shouldn’t… What is it exactly that is being planned, a snare, pit, giant net?
Nothing good will come of it, and possible a great deal that is bad. People are more likely to listen calmly
to equals or those weaker than them…not their captors.”
“The proposal was more in the nature of a stockade,” Katinka explained. “According to the
observation of our lighter-sleeping citizens, the plainsmen are moving along the smaller alleys that pass
behind the houses on the main thoroughfare. Doing so frequently enough to represent a nightly occurrence,
particularly on the south side nearer the gate. These are narrow passageways, and in some places, where the
houses adjoin each other, it would be possible to block them at each end. Wait, let me show you.”
She grabbed a handful of blotting dust from the mantle and sprinkled it on the table. Xeras was drawn
back to the table by this demonstration, Carly by his side.
Using her finger to sketch confident broad lines, Katinka said: “Here is the main street, the gate and
the cliff face. On this side where we are, there is really only one way through for a party, or a man with a
horse or burden. But we know that a single plainsman, afoot and traveling light, can get through a number
of very perilous passes—at least while the weather conditions still aren’t too bad. Frozen fingers would
make such difficult paths well nigh impossible. They seem to pass through the town mainly using the first
alley on the other side of the main road. If this is us, they have been seen here, here and here pretty
regularly.”
Xeras noted, quite reflexively, that all of the sightings were between the gate and the guildhouse. And
Kassius had insisted on moving out of the big house to live in a suite of rooms at the back of that
guildhouse.
They aren’t going through town at all.
Drin, as ever, had a fine grasp of the obvious.
Xeras as ever is keeping his mouth shut when clearly it would make more sense to share what he
knows.
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Now that was true. Xeras swayed back, keeping his eyes on the tabletop. This compulsion to keep his
own counsel, it made no sense. If Kassius was still in contact with the plainsmen, not only did the duke
need to know, but it would help show that having his handsome face rearranged by an infant dragon was no
more than Kassius deserved.
Yet Xeras’s lip remained pressed together.
“If the one we catch thinks the worst of our intentions, Petry’s ability to cause sleep will ensure no
one comes to harm,” Katinka concluded, although there was a slightly hesitant quality to this last statement.
Xeras gestured vaguely with both hands. What would come to harm were their last slim hopes for
peace, but there seemed no point in saying so if even sensible Katinka had settled on this course of
misguided action. “What would I know, really,” he said. “The only thing I have been responsible for in my
entire life is Drinia, and you can see how well that is going. The best I can offer is not to get involved, and
then you will have some chance of making this work.”
“Are you not done with the self-pity yet?” Parlen leaned back in his chair.
Xeras turned to him. “The only way to really experience self-pity is to wallow in it. So no, I’m not
done with it yet. When I wake one day and discover I am, for example that I am you—that is when I
transition smoothly into supercilious smugness and the world will become an orderly and benevolent place
filled with glazed fruit pies and fluffy little kittens.”
Parlen leaned back even farther so that his chair squeaked and his chest was thrust out. He folded his
arms and looked Xeras up and down calmly, with his bushy eyebrow raised at a skeptical angle.
“I have a palisade to construct,” he said dismissively. “I’ll round up some of the town hotheads to
help. It will take their minds off what Drinia did to Kassius. You know some of them are rather fond of
him.”
But he didn’t actually seem annoyed. More like he was putting Xeras on notice that his patience was
coming to an end. Xeras began to suspect that his time as Ballot’s Keep was drawing to a close.
“Do you think Petry could cast a sleep-spell on himself?” Xeras asked.
Carly put a finger to his lips. They were crouched together inside a rough lean-to packed with pungent
logs of firewood. Petry and several other men were meant to be concealed on the other side of the alley.
But Petry’s head kept bobbing up at the window before vanishing abruptly, as if his companions were
yanking him back down. Others were concealed out of sight awaiting a call.
Carly yawned and scratched his chin idly. He reached and put one arm around Xeras’s shoulder and
drew him close. That was somewhat bemusing. Xeras had assumed that Carly and he were, well…not
exactly having a fight, but certainly having differences. But it also appeared that Carly didn’t even agree
with him about that.
So why are you tensed up? Lean in. Grab his…
Lover of Ghosts
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Xeras closed his eyes and tried to think la la la loud enough to drown out the rest.
“…eras?”
“What!” Xeras winced as he realized he’d said that too loudly, trying to talk over the din in his mind.
Carly leaned very close, whispering his words. “You might try paying more attention.”
“I don’t think that the force with which I am watching the near total darkness inside this shed will
help your trap work any better,” Xeras hissed. “You might remember that my plan was to not get involved
in your plan.”
“I don’t mean you need to pay attention to the trap, Xeras. I mean you need to pay a little more
attention to your life. You always seem to be listening to us from a great distance like you are… I don’t
know if you are separated from us by a deep well or on top of some tall crumbling pillar.”
“This really is a bad plan. It has the stamp of your characteristically unsophisticated approach to
obstacles, but I am surprised Katinka approved of it.” Xeras said, quite uncomfortable with the implications
of either of the options Carly mentioned, and the conversation in general.
“We’ll see.”
Of course Carly didn’t get bothered by implied (and not so implied) insults. In fact, thinking back,
Carly didn’t get bothered about anything. His equanimity had been one of the first things that had attracted
Xeras to him, but somewhere along the way it had started to become perversely annoying.
Don’t start looking for excuses, Drin opined. Even a man who is only almost perfect is far better than
you deserve.
“No matter what you and I might do,” Xeras whispered, exhausted enough that the conversations in
his head and out loud were beginning to blur together. “I doubt a plainsman would wander into a trap this
ob…”
A splintering crash and a series of loud shouts and thudding feet interrupted him. Xeras scrambled to
his feet with a curse. Carly, despite his bulk, sprang forth and quickly left him behind. Xeras staggered out,
legs stiff from crouching so long, to find Carly overseeing the improvised enclosure.
There was a sharp bend in the alley right before the guildhouse, and it had been blocked with a stout
wooden palisade. The men had laid in wait to close in the other end, and it seemed that this was what they
had done. Xeras and Carly had taken a position to one side; Petry and his keepers were lookouts on the
other. Within a few moments, there was quite a crowd peering down on this one small stretch of muddy
walkway and its single, involuntary inhabitant.
The flickering firelight revealed a lanky male youth who had backed up against the wall of the house
that made up the far side of his improvised stockade. Xeras first noticed the boy’s fingers, curled over the
stones of its outside wall, tacitly considering whether there was enough purchase to climb. The boy glanced
furtively up as if to scout for some place to climb to. Xeras’s gaze naturally moved up the youth’s arm, clad
in roughly finished fur and hide, just as the boy looked over in his direction. Their eyes met.
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There was a sensation like falling, like the boy’s face was rushing upwards towards him, every detail
becoming extremely clear, far too clear given the distance between them. The boy’s face was harshly
familiar, long, pale and awkward with slightly slanting hazel eyes. If Xeras had been a lot more beautiful,
this is what he might have looked like some ten years ago.
A silence fell.
“He looks just like…” Carly began.
The boy leapt forward. In his other hand he had been holding a dagger, but he grasped the handle in
his mouth and threw himself at the wall beneath their feet. He began to scale it towards them, with eerie
ease, like a lizard. Xeras took a step back in alarm, but then he couldn’t even see… The duke merely leaned
forward with a considering gaze.
Across the way, Petry made a tentative gesture. There was a muted thud. Xeras winced at the sound of
it, and then realized from the delay and the emphasis of the impact just how close the plainsman must have
been to reaching them. It seemed Xeras had been wrong to doubt Petry’s ability to cause a man to sleep,
even under rather alarming circumstances. He also realized that Carly had stepped forward, quite
deliberately between Xeras and the danger approaching. He had done it calmly, as if it did not even take a
moment’s thought.
I guess that tells us some of what dear Mama has been getting up to all this time while she was
“dead”.
That comment slipped past Xeras’s practiced indifference and struck deep inside him. It hit a wound
that had been quietly bleeding since the moment, weeks ago, when he had heard that the leader of the
plainsmen war party bore the name of his dead mother. He shouldn’t care. He’d gone through most of his
life thinking his mother was dead. It really shouldn’t matter what she thought of him now, or even if she’d
never thought of him at all.
Xeras realized when he first heard Yulia’s name most of his anger had left him, his quick tongue, his
spirit, his confidence. It was from that moment he had felt the need for the townsmen to accept him, to be
useful, to be one of them. But in this moment he realized what a vain hope that had been. A home of trust
and trusting love was never meant to be his, even if his own temperament did not betray him, perverse fate
had a hundred tricks like this to play.
He was left feeling hollow, empty and unafraid. Un-anything. Leaning over, he saw the young
plainsman who looked so much like him sprawled in the muddy alley on his back. Parlen knelt beside the
boy and looking up gave a sort of shrug and head tilt to signal Carly that the kid was okay. But when he
saw Xeras, his eyes grew hard.
Winter was coming, and everything around seemed hard and cold.
And dark.
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31
Ballot’s Keep didn’t have a jail, as such. There was a cramped cellar room in the guildhouse where a
man might be put if he needed to sleep off a drunk. There was even a pillory in the square used on rare
occasions where a passing trader didn’t respect the hospitality of the town. But for their current guest be-it-
his-will-or-no, the best that could be arranged for the moment was the meeting hall.
Parlen was overseeing the binding of the boy with soft but secure ropes, and the confiscation of his
knife. A group of men were preparing to carry him to the hall where he could be quite securely surrounded
by the men of the town. Then he would be woken and Carly would speak to him. Xeras stepped a little
closer to the edge, looking at them gathered around their unconscious captive. It seemed that, so far at least,
their plan was actually working.
Xeras? Darkling?
Drin’s voice still conjured the same flash of memory. Drin, starved to death in a bare cell, for the sin
of sleeping with a highborn man. But there was no flinch, no pain, accompanying the scar of remembrance.
It all floated up away from him like a feather in the wind. That was the honor, the inviolate bloodline his
family schemed and cowered, killed and died for. That was their miscegenation. It was rather satisfying,
really, to know at least someone had in fact committed the crime for which dear Drin had died. Even if it
was a dragon.
Xeras?
Drin’s voice was quieter, not like a whisper, more like the speaker was farther away and the wind
howled between them.
“Xeras?”
This time it was Carly, drawing him back from the edge. The tone of voice was eerily similar, and
who was to say the same could not be said of their fates? It was his name spoken as a generic question. For
how would the duke even know what question to ask to make what he had just seen explicable? Carly drew
Xeras aside into the dubious privacy of a darkened yard between the householder’s fences; Carly would not
have long—they would need him in the hall.
“Yes, Carly?” Xeras replied mildly.
He felt calm. This is where it would end. It wasn’t as if this could really be his life, after all. Dragon
bane, town hero, duke’s lover. That wasn’t Xeras. He knew not what to go on to, but he could not stay here.
He shouldn’t have stopped here. This wasn’t the place. Maybe the place for him didn’t even exist.
There was enough light filtering through the clouds to show the duke’s face. Carly’s mouth was a
single, straight line, his expression pensive. In the silence Xeras felt but did not hear Drin’s voice, like the
moon up their somewhere behind the clouds. There was a kind of pressure, like the blood in his veins and
the ache in his heart. No doubt the ghost was saying, “Tell him!” Drin’s voice really had started to become
part of him.
Carly was going to ask, quite reasonably, just what the hell was going on.
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Xeras wasn’t going to be able to answer.
He could feel the heavy silence in his mouth like a sweet ball of shadows. For the first time it didn’t
feel entirely like his own stupid, contrary recalcitrance. For the first time he began to wonder if it was
something else. A compulsion, a binding…even magic? Had Kassius gotten further into Xeras’s mind than
he had realized and planted this ever more rancid and destructive silence that weighted down his tongue?
But Carly didn’t say anything more. He waited.
Finally Carly took a deep breath and leaned back, stretching his back. He looked from side to side, as
if there was anything to see from this vantage.
“I’m going to go to the hall and talk to this kid,” he finally said. “And you’re not going with me.
When I’m done I’m going to come and look for you, and we’ll have that time I spoke of. What happens
next is up to you.”
Chapter Four
Although he generally slept (or otherwise) in Carly’s suite, Xeras still technically occupied a room on
the ground floor of the big house. It was the room Parlen gave him when he had chased off Plegura and
become the official Dragon Bane of Ballot’s Keep. Most nights he had no use for it; this clearly was not
most nights.
The room was cold and stale. It seemed that the staff had not been bothering with airing it out or
keeping a fire lit in the small stone hearth beside the bed. The shutters were closed. Xeras could hear them
shuddering and banging slightly against the sill with each suck and hiss of the passing wind.
Xeras’s eyes had adjusted to the overcast evening and so he had not bothered trying to find and light a
candle. He closed the door and stood, feeling the pitch-blackness of the room, the faint starlight blocked out
by stone and planks. It was as if by moving his feet, or making any movement, he would lift up gently off
the floor and the shadows would swallow him whole. It felt somewhat like that night in the forest when
he’d stumbled across the amorous she-dragon Plegura and become the accidental father of the infant-slash-
monster, Drinia.
An irritating thought forced its way to the front of his mind. He had noticed on the first few nights
when he had slept in this room that there was a metal hook on the inside of the shutter. And when the wind
shook the shutter, the hook would rattle.
The hook wasn’t rattling.
The reason as to why the shutter was unlatched… Well it was more of an intuition, but there was no
great risk in speaking to an empty room.
“I really don’t have very much to say to you right now, Kassius.”
He hoped to find his suspicions were foolish, but it seemed the world never hesitated to live down to
Xeras’s expectations. Kassius’s voice was a hiss, sharp as a needle in the black air.
“You are not in your father’s house, scion of Tirrin. Your wishes may no longer be the most important
of matters. And if you are not more considerate of your countryman, we may have to press the issue of your
dangerous spawn. The people of the town are becoming afeared of her, and it would take very little to push
them towards action, even with these distractions your misbred lover offers to their thoughts.”
For a moment he thought Kassius somehow knew about Drin, that he had stolen that knowledge in his
attack. But it was probably Carly to whom he referred. In either case, Xeras was careful to show no
reaction. For who knows what a scryer will see, even in the darkness.
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Kassius sounded as if he was seated in the chair against the side wall. Xeras toe-felt his way across
the room to the window and opened the shutters fully to the scant light of the cliff-shadowed garden. He
supposed the rattling would bother Kassius’s refined senses at the best of times, and a few hours after a
dragon tries to rip your face off is unlikely to be the best of times. Kassius would be angry about what had
happened, but he would not take revenge on that small matter till it was ice cold—and, no doubt, make a
thorough job of it.
“And I might tell him how our visitors from the plains are coming to speak to you,” he retorted, but
wearily.
“You have not spread this lie already?” Kassius said sharply.
“There is just the two of us here and no reason to lie, except perhaps long habit.” Xeras wondered if
Kassius really was bluffing. And if Kassius had placed some silencing spell in Xeras’s mind, then the secret
would be safe beyond question. So perhaps it was a double bluff to conceal that gambit…
Xeras turned and leaned back against the windowsill. The cold breeze skimmed across his back and
the emptiness of the night resonated within the void inside him. Even if Kassius had drawn a blade and
sought to take his life, it would have been hard to care. Apathy pulled at his will. He waited for some
comment from Drin, but it did not come. The silence within his mind was strange.
He could barely see Kassius, just a slight glint in his eyes and the hint of his movement as he shifted
in his chair. “It is good you have not spoken of this yet,” Kassius said grudgingly, not quite conceding the
truth of the accusation. “I wish to suggest a deal.”
“A deal?”
“Oh yes. You do want to keep the little dragon safe, I think? If not for the creature’s own sake then for
the gifts its wardship seems to confer.”
Xeras tried to stir the embers of his will to comprehend whatever intrigue Kassius was trying to
perpetrate. He saw Drinia as a source of power, and power was to be coveted if not for its own sake, then
for the honor and glory of Tirrin. That made Kassius a danger to her and to him—which was perhaps
redundant, like putting armor and spikes on a ravening tiger. Kassius was dangerous by his very nature.
“Tell me your proposition,” Xeras replied. “And make it a good one or I shall turn to honesty instead,
and suffer the consequences.”
Kassius laughed as if the very idea of candor was ridiculous beyond consideration. Xeras felt a stab of
pain in his temples. Drin of course would counsel just that course, but Xeras did not reach out for that
missing voice no matter how much he was tempted. The silence was easier for now. He had yearned for it
often enough while the wraith haunted and harangued him. No need to question it so soon.
“I noticed how you reacted to Yulia’s name when you first heard it,” Kassius said. “And speaking by
scry glass to my masters back in Tirrin, I did eventually discover that it was the name of your unfortunate
near-peasant mother—now apparently turned troublemaker on the dismal plains of our former chattel lands.
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It did explain why a petty savage chieftainess would never meet with me directly, not wanting me to know,
it seems, that she was partly of our blood.”
That was all but a tacit admission that Kassius had been fomenting war with the plainsmen. And yet it
made no great sense if Yulia was sending, what—her son?—to Ballot’s Keep to speak to Kassius this very
night. Or even risking having him seen at all. Clearly there was much that Kassius, for all his smugness,
still did not know.
Kassius continued to muse. “I suppose even the weakest of Tirrin blood, even in a woman, would be
enough to reign supreme amongst such as they—barely people at all except in name.”
The arrogant bastard seemed uncowed by his recent experiences. His smarmy ways made it hard for
Xeras to concentrate. How could any of them get through all these conflicting purposes and
misunderstandings, when each person clung so tightly to the pieces of the puzzle they had in their
possession, and none of them appeared to appreciate the entire picture? Or did Kassius lie in saying he did
not know about Yulia’s past?
The dark room somehow represented so much. Xeras could barely discern the man standing right in
front of him. A man he had known, albeit casually, all his life. This chilled room was no real home, and
even so it was more than he deserved. And on the brink of being lost to him, at that.
“What is it that you want, Kassius?” Xeras said coolly. “Can you not, for once in your life, break with
tradition? Can you not just tell me?” He leaned forward, trying to make out Kassius’s face, straining to hear
his kinsman’s voice in its every nuance.
“What do I want?” Kassius echoed quietly, coldly. “I want magic back in the hands of our people, not
strewn before these swinish peasants, preoccupied with using it in their venal pursuits. Scrying for lost
sheep, I ask you. Is this a fit purpose for the highest of human arts? I want you back with your people, you
and the dragon and the magic.” And then with a soft, sinister emphasis, “What would I have to do to make
this happen?”
Xeras found the answer sprang to him without thought or effort. “You would have to be able to secure
and assure the safety of this town and all the people in it. You would have to do that, when nobody else
could. Towards that aim, and for that reason only, would I return to my pointless existence in Tirrin, my
role as disappointment to my father, deviant pariah amongst my peers, and scholar of matters no one on the
island cares a wit for. Can I be any plainer? I will return to the people I was born to, only to benefit the
people I have chosen, here.”
“It seems these creatures suit you. You have adopted their overt and uncultured approach to discourse
as well as their brutish ways.”
Xeras grunted his irritation and stood. What exactly had he hoped for in exposing himself to Kassius’s
contempt? Why was this viper the only one he could speak frankly to?
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“No, wait,” Kassius said, standing also. “If I do this, I could hold you to your word? You and the
dragon, back in Tirrin, claiming your true people as your own again. Bringing the dragon magic to our
home, its ancient power back where it is meant to be. That would be worth everything I have suffered in
my service to Tirrin.”
“If you do this, bring true and settled peace and safety, I would be bound by my given word,” Xeras
agreed. It seemed hardly likely that one man could settle an enmity with a history that went back to before
the time of the Tirrinian Empire. The lowland settlements and itinerant plains families, even when not at
war, could never be said to be at settled peace, even if it was Kassius who had most recently brought it to
the boil. “This surely was not the deal you came to offer?” Xeras asked, with faint hope of any meaningful
reply.
“What I offer is whatever is needed to achieve what I desire. No more, and certainly no less.”
Kassius’s voice was clipped, but rang with subtle steel. “You may yet be surprised by what I am capable of
in service of my realm, even holding back from a revenge I feel I am justly owed. While you, on the other
hand, never fail to surprise me in how far you are willing to sink from the estate your birth in Tirrin
conferred upon you…” He bit his words off short, as if he was—for once—upon the verge of disclosing
more than strategy alone necessitated.
Kassius departed, the strength of his passions leaving Xeras cold. Despite his words there was an edge
to his voice, a personal resentment that could not augur well. He needed to keep Drinia away from that man
if she was going to survive to adulthood. She had been more than a match for him once, but next time he
would not be taken by surprise.
What exactly have you just agreed to, darkling?
Thus ended his brief respite from spectral commentary. Xeras sighed. “That depends on just how
great a fool I am.”
Then perchance we are doomed.
The warmth in Drin’s voice showed he was only chiding Xeras’s rashness. But many a true word,
Xeras considered gloomily, passed as jest. He was just grateful Drin did not raise the issue of the brief
period when Xeras had been unable to hear his words. He could not have failed to notice it.
Xeras stepped out into the foyer to light a lamp, and bringing it back to his room, he saw a single
feather lying in the center of his cold pillow. It was a yellow-gold downy chicken feather marred by a
single spot of blood. He picked up the feather and blew the lamp out again.
Chapter Five
Xeras sat on the bed with the snuffed lamp balanced somewhat precariously on the soft mattress by
his side. He stared at the empty doorway trying to work out just what he’d let that bastard Kassius get away
with, and how soon it was going to get them all killed. He twirled the feather in his hand, the stem between
his forefinger and thumb. It was hard to imagine Kassius sneaking out of a night to kill chickens, but what
other message could the feather bear? Some generalized accusation of cowardice? Some pure accident he
was obsessing over for no reason?
What, you?
Xeras shook his head. Whatever small talent he’d once had for plotting and scheming seemed to have
melted away under the influence of a few short months of living amongst honest peasants.
A natural tendency towards honesty is hardly something to be ashamed of.
Katinka burst into his room. “Why is it so dark in here?”
“I have that effect.” He dropped the feather guiltily. Bad enough that Drinia was bothering the birds
without giving people reason to think he had something to do with… Well, whatever nasty motives they
could think of that would result in a brace of dead hens.
“Thrice-damned Phinia is here,” she said, ignoring his aside blithely. “Entertain her in the parlor
while we deal with this other matter. No one can find Kassius and it is probably better if someone prepares
the little princess to see his injuries anyway.”
“Because that is going to work so well coming from me. Hi, Phinia. Good to see you. My dragon
spawn tried to rip your fiancé’s head o…”
“Less mouthing off, more moving.” Katinka grabbed Xeras’s arm and thrust him out of the room. He
rebounded rather forcefully off the doorframe before she caught him again and propelled him in the general
direction of the main entrance. She hurried off the other way.
By the time Xeras got to the front door, Phinia was coming in. She was more impeded than assisted
by Limry, one of the small staff of the duke’s house and normally not far away when anything interesting
was happening.
Phinia pulled off her snow-dusted fur cloak and tossed it in the general direction of a Limry who
lunged to keep the expensive garment off the ground. Beneath it Phinia was wearing a scanty, much-
wrinkled gown more suitable for a ball than traveling. A ribboned corset clung to her torso and a satiny
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skirt fell down from it, marred by a dark margin where it had brushed through the mud and slush. Her eyes
sparkled with excitement, as she proceeded into the house in little hops like a bird.
“You’ll be cold, I suppose.” Xeras regarded the alarming pallor of the even-more-alarming expanses
of naked flesh she was exposing. Last time he had met the princess, she had been dressed like an enormous
baby doll, and now she was hardly garbed at all. It was something of a startling transformation and not, in
his opinion, an improvement.
Phinia leaned into him and purred, “I am sure you could warm me up.”
Please, Xeras. Last time you seduced Phinia it led directly to being abducted by a dragon, falling off a
cliff and almost dying. On your current scale of disasters, it is second only to seducing that dragon.
I did not seduce Phinia. Or Plegura, for that matter!
Distracted by his outrage, Xeras forgot to fend the girl off. He felt her fit her body against his side and
start to draw him into the parlor as Limry held the door open for them. And Limry’s powers of gossip were
almost preternatural; she would have the story of what she was seeing all over town faster than the
mountain wind. Xeras belatedly recognized Durrin, Phinia’s manservant, trailing reluctantly behind them
both. Xeras met Durrin’s gaze over the princess’s shoulder. The servant shook his head, an ambiguous
gesture that suggested there was even more trouble coming.
Make yourself useful, Drin, he thought in the general direction of the ghost. Tell me what I missed that
my enemy is happy and his intended is coming on to me. Because this isn’t adding up.
It could be worse, her mother could be here.
“And the duchess?” Xeras enquired nervously of Phinia.
“Oh, I ran away,” Phinia said with excruciating smugness. “They were trying to keep me from
Kassius. So I suppose we shall have to elope. Or ‘inlope’ for I am sure the snows due shortly will keep us
both here and them at home in Thurst.”
Xeras tried rather gingerly to extract himself from the princess as they went through to the gloomy
receiving chamber. To his discomfort she just leaned into him and slipped her arm around his waist as if by
long habit.
“Ah, yes. Kassius.” Xeras grimaced.
Limry closed the door behind them, with Durrin slipping away with her and leaving them alone
together. Damn it. He had thought her match with Kassius a true one.
“There is something I have to tell you about Kassius,” Xeras ventured.
Take care, darkling. This is a girl who thought she was in love with you on first sight. Given your
looks she might be considered a little easy-hearted.
Not helpful. Really.
“Perhaps we should, um…” Xeras made a vague gesture to the over-stuffed chairs before the fire.
Lover of Ghosts
39
“Perhaps we should.” Phinia grabbed the front of Xeras’s tunic and, taking him unawares, toppled
him rather forcefully onto a couch pushed up against the side wall of the small room.
“I had in mind tea,” Xeras said weakly, “candies, talking about the weather, complimenting you on
that dress you’re almost wearing…”
“I had in mind, this.”
Phinia stalked up his body like a large hungry cat and pressed a kiss onto his lips that was so forceful
their teeth clashed together. Her tongue pried at his lips and Xeras did his very best to keep his mouth
clamped shut, which rather prevented him from making any further comment. There was a strong flavor in
his mouth, like salt and spoiled fruit. Like that damned wine Kassius said she had sent him. Perhaps the girl
had been drinking liquor on her journey? It might explain her outrageous behavior.
After a fairly sustained assault, Xeras was trying to squirm down between the throw pillows and
Phinia pulled back from him with an exasperated hiss.
Easy in a few other ways too, it seems.
“Wait up a moment here, everyone.” Xeras struggled to push Phinia back. “When last we met you
seemed like a rather sweet girl who was set on marrying our Kassius.”
Phinia sat back, still straddling him, planting her rear down in the vicinity of Xeras’s groin. “Oh don’t
be silly, I am still going to marry Kassius. I just want to be pregnant by you when I do it.”
“Oh. I mean, what?”
“You have the dragon magic, the strongest there is,” she said with the great confidence of a woman
who thinks swiftly but only in straight lines. “And the magic is passed down through families. Kassius
would want an heir with a lot of magic, and so does Mama.”
“Um, and what about me?”
Try that again, as a statement not a question.
“What makes you think I’m going to…” Xeras added, which he belatedly realized was still a question.
“Mama said the real question is actually quite simple.” She squirmed against him. “Are you a man?”
She pressed her well-rounded body down against him. Xeras grappled with the furniture trying to get
out from under her without actually having to touch her. Parts of his body, rather without permission,
decided they were male after all, thank you very much. Under the circumstances it was something he
couldn’t easily hide and it only served to encourage the princess.
Finally Xeras attempted to break free and lunged for the nearest exit. They both toppled off the couch
and rolled across the dusty floorboards. Somewhat to his surprise Xeras found himself on top. Phinia’s
corset ended up a little lower than it was really supposed to be, and the door behind them burst open.
That’ll be Kassius.
Phinia let out a scream like a wounded rabbit, startling Xeras so he sprang back to reveal Phinia,
unkempt, flushed and half-undressed.
Emily Veinglory
40
It was Kassius.
Carly and Katinka were right behind him.
“That wasn’t quite the type of entertainment I had in mind,” Katinka said dryly.
“I assure you I was not…”
Phinia was sobbing, rather convincingly, and threw herself into Kassius’s arms. To her credit she did
not even hesitate at the unsightly stitches dotting and dashing his face, and the bloodied bandage across his
brow.
“Xeras…” Carly said in a tone that was, wonder of wonders, almost strained. “I do wonder what is on
your mind when you carry on so.”
“On my mind?” Xeras snapped. “I am not in it long enough to know for sure. And I am certainly not
alone in that.”
They stood, scattered in a loose arc just inside the door, looking at him. At least his humiliation rather
rapidly deflated any incriminating bodily evidence of arousal. Xeras felt his confusion funnel down into a
moment of certainty, albeit probably insane and suicidal certainty. He knew what he had to do.
Back to business as usual then?
If it really was his mother out there on the plains, it was clear she wasn’t in a hurry to come and talk
to him.
“I shall just have to go to her,” Xeras muttered.
Chapter Six
Alacrity is the key to making a clean exit. Xeras had pushed past his impromptu audience before they
had a chance to protest. His plan, such as it was, fell into two general areas. The first part was not too
terribly demanding, although the winding path, as ever, took some time to traverse. Xeras made his way to
the top arch of the gate. He needed to determine whether Jarvice was intending to stand his post, defending
the town—even if Xeras was no longer in it.
The gate was the height of two hundred men, with the breadth of as many standing with their arms
spread and fingertip touching fingertip. The stones of the gate had a deep, glossy patina of age, but seemed
not to have worn in the slightest since they were set, although everyone said it was an ancient edifice.
Every surface was straight, smooth and tightly fitted.
With the fall of winter, the duke would usually have taken this path to the windy walkway atop the
gate and set the amulet in his chain or office into a niche in a small alcove. In response to that mystic
command, the great beaten-metal gates, far too heavy for any number of men or beasts to move by physical
force alone, should have grated closed. But not this year. This year Carly had gone through this process as
usual, but the gate had not moved, not an inch. As a temporary measure the great expanse within the stone
arch was filled, at Xeras’s request, by the impermeable flesh of Jarvice, the stone dragon.
“You could visit me more often,” Jarvice said gloomily, his booming voice wafting up from below
Xeras’s feet.
Nervous of the height, Xeras clutched the low balustrade very tightly and leaned over the side. He
looked down on the craggy upper surface of the dragon’s muzzle. One of the dragon’s small, black eyes
swiveled upwards to regard him.
“You know I am a creature of intellect,” Jarvice added sonorously. “And being employed, as I am, in
the rather undemanding duty, I am unable to seek out the company of those I prefer.” There was a subtle
emphasis on the last phrase to suggest that Xeras would not normally be honored with such a designation.
“However any company capable of conversation would be a boon and small compensation for being so
obliging as to allow my body to be used essentially as a piece of furniture.”
Under most circumstances the giant dragon would be a pretty frightening prospect. Jarvice was the
dragon-father of Drinia, by some process Xeras frankly preferred not to know about. He had dragged Xeras
hither and yon, nearly dropped him off a mountain, nearly frozen him to death and stuck him with Drinia
the rat-sized spawn of the abyss.
Emily Veinglory
42
“Don’t you find,” Xeras asked, “that intellect is something of a mixed blessing?”
“No,” replied Jarvice flatly. “Perhaps what you perceive as a problem of excess is actually a difficulty
of deficit.”
Xeras did not miss the implied insult, but if Jarvice lacked conversation, he should try being a little
more agreeable.
Wise words, if ironic. If you want the dragon to keep protecting the town, perhaps you should do the
same.
“So why, exactly do you stay here? Is it just for Drinia?”
“To protect the little one is your duty,” Jarvice intoned.
“And protecting me?”
“…is also your duty, you are a grown man.”
Xeras looked out over the darkened plains, but there was little to see but a rolling, dull gray fog. Drin
was probably right, but deep down Xeras doubted that Jarvice would move from his station. Jarvice seemed
to like at least a few of the people who lived in the lands the plainsfolk were set to invade. So the odds were
he was going to stay right where he was, especially so long as Drinia was in the town. The question was,
would she stay there?
You might, nevertheless, want to consider not provoking the enormous dragon, darkling.
Whether I try or not, Xeras thought in reply, it seems to be my nature. Maybe I should simply accept
that. Maybe you should.
And then in the breezy mists that scudded over the gate, he saw a faint image of Drin, a silvery wraith
against the night sky. Drin stood beside Xeras and gazed out over the obscured plains. Drin had proven in
the past that he had the ability to make himself visible, but it was something he rarely did.
“I know you well enough to guess your plans. Do not do this,” Drin said. Xeras was transfixed to see
his face again, even as nothing more than a sheer vapor, a mask for the winds. Xeras…
“Xeras,” called another more corporeal voice, far below. At this height it was barely a suggestion of
sound, but like anyone Xeras was acutely aware of the shape of his name in the air. It was Carly, he needn’t
look to know it, and it would only weaken his will to do so. Carly was calling for him from somewhere
down in the town.
Xeras caught one last glimpse of Drin’s face, creased with frustration, before his form dissolved into a
puff of briefly glinting motes, and was gone. Xeras wondered just how clearly Drin divined his plans.
Sometimes it seemed the ghost could see into the depths of his mind, but other times he was as obtuse as
ever so. Maybe it was just that they had known each other so well in life—and death had added nothing to
that bond other than more time together.
But a glancing thought of love made him ponder for a moment the situation with Kassius, and an echo
of what Drin had said. What Kassius loves is evil. There was something awry with the apparently sincere
Lover of Ghosts
43
regard Kassius held for Phinia—who as Thurstian should be no less a lower creature than the denizens of
the keep. There was more to the motives of these people than he discerned, or maybe less. But he worried
what they would do to the people who dwelt here, given the chance.
Jarvice sighed heavily. Xeras peered down at the small portion he could see of Jarvice’s implacable
face. The dragon’s eye was now closed. The gate was remote and inhospitable enough that Carly would
take some time to think of looking for him here. But if the great dragon spoke again, it might just be heard
below and attract attention. The stone dragon was quiet, and with time, so was the house and the town
below. Xeras clasped his pilfered set of keys in a rictus grip with his aching-cold fingers.
He turned back towards the hazardous path down to the town, rendered even more chancy by sleet
underfoot and the gloom of night.
Must you be such a fool? Drin asked with weary resignation.
“Experience suggests as much,” Xeras replied. “I can only hope consistency counts for something.”
Navigating the narrowest section of stairway, which was cut rather haphazardly from the raw cliff
face, Xeras could not help but think this would be the most inconvenient time for Drinia to make an
appearance.
Predictably, she flopped onto the path behind him and clambered up his leg as far as the back of his
knee. His trousers began to sag and a tie snapped, so he was obliged to grab at the waist to avoid an
entanglement that would be as dangerous as it was humiliating.
“Drinia, my dear,” he said between gritted teeth, “could you please remove yourself from my person.
If you topple me from this ledge, I have no doubt you will fly away to safety. I, however, would not be so
fortunate.”
Drinia responded by digging in her claws deeper and flapping her wings in a startling flurry—but
otherwise staying put.
“Drinia, get off!” He slapped at her awkwardly, feeling his feet starting to slip just as his trousers
were.
Xeras, darkling, you should stand still. Really you should.
Through the worn-thin sole of his boot, Xeras felt the edge of his foot slipping over the side of the
path, where there was nothing but a sickening drop to the roadway below. Not being entirely immune to
good sense, Xeras moved both hands to his waistband and shuffled over to press his back against the cliff
face and regain his bearings. Drinia muttered as she was wedged between his leg and the slimy rock, but
she finally stilled. Xeras limped carefully the rest of the way to safety with Drinia still digging her claws
into his lower calf.
Why do you persist in your attempts to join me so precipitously?
Emily Veinglory
44
The ghost was right, of course. A few years ago Xeras would have been too frightened by the
dizzying height to even climb up to the gate. Back then he didn’t even like to look out a tower window.
However, in the time since his self-exile, Xeras had been dangled, flung or jumped from hills, mountains
and on one memorable occasion a dragon in flight. It wasn’t that he had become braver so much as that his
ability to be terrified was becoming depleted.
If not your ability to behave foolishly.
That time Drin really had actually heard his thoughts, surely? Xeras frowned, he was quite sure he had
not directed that thought to Drin. The ghost had always flitted around the edges of his mind but never
seemed to infiltrate it fully. But the degree to which Xeras and Drin were becoming melded together
seemed to be increasing the longer they were together. That was not a comfortable thought.
On the upside, and it was a rather meager upside, Xeras had located Drinia—or vice versa. Xeras was
not entirely sure how the dragonette fitted into his plan, such as it was, but… As he reached the doorway
that led into the manse, Drinia rendered the point moot. She detached from his leg, flopped and skidded on
the wet stone, and launched into the dark night sky with the confidant gracelessness of a gigantic moth.
Xeras groaned, expressing equal parts relief and dejection. It was like things only ever went his way
for a moment or two, just to taunt him. He idly scratched the nicks and abrasions her tiny claws had left on
his leg. With his luck, they would be infected with whatever grime the little monster had been climbing
around in.
He saw the frayed edges of his plan; in fact it was more a disordered tangle than a woven cloth. But in
his mind he had already leapt, and he saw no option but to go on. Tonight the townsfolk had locked the
plainsman in the guildhouse, but tomorrow they would speak to their captive in earnest and so Xeras might
never have another chance such as this. The plainsman could guide him to Yulia and her forces, and thus to
the secrets of his own past and maybe a peaceful future for Ballot’s Keep. It was a slim hope, but better
than none at all.
It is an active way to get killed rather than a passive one. I do not see any virtue in that.
Xeras shook his head and made his way down the chiseled path, the cobbled stairs and into Carly’s
house. The halls were quiet as he tiptoed the backstairs to the ground floor. As he went, Xeras managed to
tie together the frayed remains of his waistband to keep his trousers up.
Drinia remained on his mind. He needed to leave Ballot’s Keep, but Drinia was tied to this town as
well as to him. Perhaps it was best to simply allow her to make her own choice. She was a child in some
ways, but in others an animal—and animals had their own wisdom free of the endless prattling of the
human mind. Xeras felt it was in the dragon’s instincts to know what best befitted her needs. At least he
hoped so. It was probably a weak excuse to gloss over his persistent failings as a dragon father.
He let himself out onto the empty streets. The ring of long-necked keys gave him access to most of
the public buildings of the town. That would include the rear entrance to the guildhall and the internal door
Lover of Ghosts
45
that lead to the basement hallway. The guildhall was not, after all, designed to be a prison. Nor were these
people martial in their habits of thought. There was every chance that the entry and the adjoining door
would be unguarded.
But Xeras made his way across the street and into the shadowed alleys aware that the townsfolk were
on alert, due to the presence of plainsmen skulking through the town. So when Drin spoke he could not
help but jump in surprise.
Was it not you who so recently spoke of how a man is likely to react when he finds himself trapped
and imprisoned—no matter what the intent of the person who approaches him?
Xeras clenched his jaw. He peered around the corner of the tannery, reeking with its usual distinctive
odor. He approached the thick, plain door deeply ensconced into the thick stone wall of the guildhouse. In
the stillness of the night, he heard the unmistakable scuff of feet on the other side of the door, and the
suggestion of a dispirited sigh. He had been too optimistic in thinking there might be no guard.
Xeras circled around to the front of the building, as if they would have guarded the rear and somehow
neglected to similarly provide for the main entrance in view of a public thoroughfare. But as he came up
Smithy Close, Xeras literally collided with someone in the darkness. He dropped his keys with a clatter on
the scuffed cobbles.
“Are you going to l-let him out?”
It was too dark to see clearly, but the timorous voice was that of Petry, the young man who could spell
someone to sleep. Unless Xeras acted quickly, this juvenile dolt could bring a very premature end to his
plans. As icing on the cake Drinia fluttered to land with a thud on the overhanging eve of the tannery, and
Xeras fancied he could hear a mumbling of voices from inside the upper floor of the building where the
proprietor presumably slept.
Xeras held his hands out, placating, and whispered very quietly, “Now don’t jump to any conclusions
here, you know I wouldn’t…” He felt with his toes and located the dropped keys.
“I think someone oughtta let him go,” Petry blurted. “I thought it was a good idea and all, but that
boy’s been all crying and scared. And he’s no older than my little brother Jule. And the more I think on it,
the more I think it isn’t right. And I think you’ve been thinkin’ it too.”
Apparently the dolt finds you quite transparent.
Look who’s talking.
Drinia craned her neck to peer down at them, enjoying the show. Xeras tried to stay calm, in case she
decided to try an impromptu face removal on the poor kid. There seemed to be no situation bad enough that
a dragon couldn’t make worse.
“I do think the town will be safer if we let him go,” Xeras said as calmly as he could. “I have the key
here, and I can take him to the edge of the town so he can go back to his people. But there’s a man at the
back door…?”
Emily Veinglory
46
Petry shuffled his feet. He seemed to be immune to subtle suggestion.
“And maybe you could have him fall asleep,” Xeras added, irritated at having to spell it out. “It being
so late at night and him being on his own and all…”
“I, what?” Petry said far too loudly, as he palpably failed to comprehend what was a rather obvious
plan, clearly explained, in words of two syllables or less.
There was a scraping sound above them like someone starting to open their window shutters. Xeras
scooped up the keys, which clattered like a clarion, and grabbed a handful of Petry’s oversized tunic before
heading back towards the rear of the building, dragging the kid along.
Great, get a kid involved. That’ll help. Come to think of it, perhaps he’ll talk some sense into you.
“Let’s say the man on the other side of this guildhouse back door was to fall asleep, really deeply
asleep,” Xeras said with exaggerated patience. “That would be understandable this late at night, right?”
Petry gave him a look that was about as alert as a cud-chewing bovine. Xeras patted his cheek lightly and
tried yet again. “Make the man in there fall asleep, then go home with a clear conscience and never mention
that you were here.”
“Oh, I mean I normally have to see them…”
“Have you tried it when you could only hear them?”
“Um, no?” Petry sounded uncertain even about this.
“Well, try.” Xeras gave Petry a small but rather over-forceful shove in the direction of the back door
of the guildhouse. He stayed at the corner of the building and tried to will Petry to do what he wanted. The
alleyway was crooked enough to hide him from the tanner who he could now hear blearily shouting at
Drinia. The dragon’s claws were clattering up and down his roof slates as she gave disapproving hisses in
reply to each of his curses. It was a wonder the whole town had not come awake from the din. At least it
might provide some cover for any little noises he or Petry might make.
Petry’s face was crunched up like a scolded puppy’s, but he dutifully peered at the door as if in some
hope of seeing right through it. After a while he turned back to Xeras and gave a kind of half-smile that
signaled, but hardly guaranteed, success. Xeras made a shooing gesture and Petry ambled off into the
darkness, with stuttering steps and hunched shoulders.
Once he was finally out of sight, Xeras moved over to the door himself. There was no noise coming
from behind it, but that was hardly reassuring. Xeras was trying to invent some innocuous reason for going
to the guildhouse in the dark of night, in case an all-too-awake guard was waiting just on the other side.
So you have thought how this will look to the people of this town, then? Drin interrupted. They’ll have
every reason to trust Kassius more than you. And even Carly…
Xeras felt his jaw tense; he could not even complete a thought without the interference of this fretting
ghost.
Lover of Ghosts
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He had to force the key in the hole but finally turned the grating, rusted workings of the lock all the
way over. The inward-opening door was heavy, but part of that was an illusion produced by the lax,
sleeping body of a middle-aged man on the other side. There was no way to get in without pushing the door
into the sleeping man’s expansive stomach. Xeras slid through the smallest gap he could.
He’s lucky you’re skinny. But then he’d be a lot luckier if you were smart enough not to come up with
half-baked schemes like this. So now you are done bruising up this poor man’s belly, are you going to move
on to getting slaughtered by the young savage?
As Xeras tried to shut the door in his head to that rhetorical question, he found he was having a little
trouble shutting the rather more corporeal door of the guildhouse. It looked like some bunched-up scrap of
the man’s clothing was…
He cursed and yanked the door open again as he realized the scrap was Drinia’s leathery wing. He had
not realized the little dragon had been following him. Xeras winced as the door slammed back into the
sleeping man, somehow still not waking him, and as Drinia pulled free with a loud squawk. He leaned his
head out the door and saw Drinia scampering away with a wounded backward glance, but apparently no
great damage to her diminutive person. At first she seemed to drag one wing but then she flicked it out
straight and leapt into the air. She floundered into the sky with her usual ungainly but vigorous wing beats.
She must be all right, Xeras told himself.
The way you are carrying on, the farther she gets away from you, the safer she will be. I, however,
may not be so fortunate.
Xeras closed the door again and clambered back over the prone form of the guard. He made his way
down the stairs and along the hall. There was a storeroom at the back that had been set up as a drunk room
for any man found in the town too inebriated to be let loose on his own recognizance. The door had been
reinforced somewhat, as sometimes the man in question would get to feeling belligerent. And there was a
hole drilled in the door at eye height, just a bit too small for an angry man to stick a finger through. There
was no light inside the room, and so all the eyehole revealed was a small, round and uninformative button
of darkness.
You could go in there and tell me what the plainsman is doing, Xeras thought. Unless you have some
objection to being in any way useful?
I may not be able to stop you from acting the fool, but I am not going to assist you in the process.
Don’t…
“The one thing I am not doing, is ‘acting’,” Xeras muttered. He tapped on the door. “Hey, kid,” he
said, as loudly as he dared, “if you want to get out of here I suggest you come and talk to me.”
There was not the slightest sound. For all Xeras knew he was talking to an empty room. He bit
absently on the end of his thumbnail as he considered how to make a deal with someone who had even less
reason to trust him than most.
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48
You never did get around to buying that dagger, Drin added unhelpfully.
Which was true, fortunately for Drinia, as he had been less than sanguine about his role as father of a
dragon back then. The closest thing he had to a weapon was a belt or a bunch of keys.
Not to mention your boots are all but worn out, you have no food and you left your cloak in Carly’s
room. Perhaps you could use your wits as a blunt instrument and bludgeon him with it…
“How can you say ‘not to mention’ and then go on and mention every scrap of whatever is on your
mind?”
“What do you want?” said a voice within the cell. “I can’t hear you.”
Xeras took a deep breath and spoke louder for the kid’s benefit. “We’re going to make a deal. I will
let you out if you will show me the way to your people.”
There was a long silence.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard,” the boy replied. After a pause he added, “You ask too much. If you let me out, I will show
you the hidden path from the village to the plains. But you will have to make your own way from there.”
A less-than-honest man would not have quibbled, surely? At least that suggested the plainsman was
intending to follow through on his bargain.
“Very well,” Xeras said. “I hold you to your word.”
Drin, it seemed, was finally speechless.
Up close, the resemblance was even more striking. It was not so much his own face that Xeras saw on
the boy. Not having spent all that long gazing into mirrors, he wasn’t overly familiar with his own features.
But, apparel and hygiene deficit aside, the plainsman would have fitted seamlessly into a crowd of Xeras’s
relatives, and to some extent any man of Tirrin. Xeras has become used to the squarish, symmetrical faces
of the people of Ballot’s Keep—and their strong, foursquare build—and this young man seemed hardly of
the same species.
There were a lot of questions Xeras wanted to ask the kid, but now was not the time to dig back into
his own familial past. He had to get through the next few hours and days in one piece first.
The plainsman followed him, obliging enough, along the dark closes to a niche just across the road
from the manse.
“You must wait here, while I get my cloak and some food,” Xeras said, carefully enunciating as if to
an infant.
The plainsman shook his head. “That is not our deal,” he whispered. “I will show you the path and I
will do it now. If you choose not to come with me that is not my failing.”
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“And if I choose to shout ‘help, help, the plainsman has escaped’ the consequences of that action will
not be my concern. But I wouldn’t fancy your chances of making it out of town. Besides, wouldn’t your
rather have some food for your journey?”
“I would not eat your food.”
Drinia plummeted from the sky, overshot, and clawed her way back to Xeras’s shoulder, pulling
roughly at his clothes and steadying herself by grasping his ear with a needle-clawed paw. All the while she
scolded him with a chirruping call like an angry squirrel crossed with a clogged drain.
“Drinia, desist. Hush.” Xeras reached for her with one hand and she leapt away with a shriek, like he
beat her regularly. “Oh, come on. That was an accident and you know it.”
Drinia hit the ground heavily, wings in disarray. She shrugged their folds back in order and muttered
as she scampered over to the plainsman. The little dragon perched on the toe of his boot and looked over to
Xeras as if to say: Who needs you?
The plainsman stood still, blanched pale and all but trembling. “Is that…a dragon?”
“Well, she’s like a dragon, only smaller,” Xeras replied. “Her name is Drinia, and yours is?”
“I will not tell you my name.” The plainsman folded his arms. But his voice seemed to possess
slightly less confidence than before.
“Have it as you will, but I suggest you don’t move while I am away. She can breathe fire, you know.”
He hurried across the road and into the duke’s house. His cloak was actually in his own room on the
ground floor. Drin was lying when he said it was in the duke’s suite—in an attempt to spoil his escape.
Escape from what exactly? Food, love and people who don’t want to kill you… Well, who don’t want
to kill you very much. Because frankly, darkling, to know you is to want to murder you, if just a little.
It bothered Xeras that Drin had lied, even about something so trivial. He had always assumed that was
somehow impossible.
So much for the cheering section, he thought at the ghost, pointedly.
Look who’s talking. I think that for someone who is dead I am actually fairly upbeat.
Xeras stuffed his belt-purse with food from the kitchen and jogged back to the close where he was
relieved to find the plainsman waiting. Drinia was still planted on his foot, puffs of pale smoke swirling
from her nostrils. Given her diminutive size, she looked rather fierce.
The effect was somewhat spoiled when Drinia made quite a show of being startled by Xeras’s
approach. She scampered off into the darkness, theatrical in her terror. Maybe she was getting smarter; she
had to have some kind of intelligence to attempt to manipulate his feelings like this.
Or maybe she is so stupid she actually thinks you hurt her on purpose.
All the better, if it meant she would stay in the relative safety of the town.
“Now we can go,” Xeras said.
Emily Veinglory
50
The plainsman simply nodded and led the way out of town, along the west alley and behind the
darkened houses. A dog barked ferociously at their passing. Xeras stumbled along the uneven dirt path,
tripping repeatedly, at first on the uneven cobbles and then on the ruts and gnarled roots that encroached
upon raw dirt of the roadway at the edge of the town. The houses were farther apart as the way became
steeper, each well-tended yard separated by increasing expanses of scree and scrub and mounds of stone
projecting up out of the ground.
“How far is it?” Xeras finally asked.
“As far as it is.”
Could the little brat be any less helpful?
Yes, as I expect you shall discover once you are both out of earshot of the town.
“Perhaps you are too suspicious,” Xeras muttered. He was already getting rather used to the ghost
replying even to his private thoughts.
You are suspicious enough for both of us; the area you fall short in is caution.
“So, do you think repetition is the key to success? Because if you could nag sense into me I suspect it
would have happened by now.”
Perhaps I am wasting my time, darkling. After all, the connection between suspicion and caution is
intelligence. Something I once thought you had.
“And I once thought you had compassion.” Xeras felt guilt the moment he said that.
Be fair, Xeras. Compassion is the connection between you and I. And that is why I badger you so to
see to your own safety. It is why I am here at all…
“Instead of where you are meant to be!” Xeras stopped short. “I shouldn’t be clinging to you as I do.
It isn’t natural. It isn’t right to use your feelings to stop you from going on to…”
“Who are you talking to?” the plainsman interrupted.
“A ghost,” Xeras replied blandly. “They can be every bit as irritating as dragons, and don’t let anyone
tell you differently.”
The plainsman gave him a blank look. That very mask-like expression probably meant something was
going on inside his head, but unfortunately Xeras couldn’t tell what that something was. Well, he was
probably happier that way.
“The path is through here,” the plainsman finally said. “You will have to crawl.”
“The world likes to find ways to make me do that.”
Maybe it is divine punishment for your tendency to self-pity.
It was more a slither than a crawl, really, under scrub and thorns and through mud and leaf mold. The
plainsman moved swiftly; he was lithe like some kind of smug, young lizard. Xeras scrambled to try and
keep up, scrunching his body against the ground and breaking through cobwebs his guide had somehow left
undisturbed, he plowed headfirst into a slimy boulder.
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“I curse whatever foul forces gave this mountain birth,” Xeras said, mainly for his own benefit. “Not
to mention you, me and Drinia to boot…” Xeras squirmed, his hair caught in a half-dead bush that seemed
to be made mostly out of fishhooks and spite.
That would be you.
“What?”
The foul force that gave birth to Drinia. As I recall.
“Hold up!” Xeras called.
Where on earth could I possibly go? Other than wherever you are going of course. I thought one thing
you did understand was this whole “haunting” thing…
“Not you, damn it, this misbegotten son of… Well never mind.” Xeras shouted out again, “Hey, it
doesn’t count as showing me the way if you move too fast to see, curse you.”
“Curse me?”
The boy’s face was just a few feet directly above him; he seemed to be hanging headfirst down the
nearly sheer cliff face.
“What?”
“Have you really cursed me? Because the only sure way to bury a curse is to kill the one who cast it.”
Say no, darkling. Quickly now. And try to fake some sincerity.
“No, I haven’t actually cursed you.” This was not a subject Xeras wanted to dwell on. “So, um, this is
the path then?” he asked, not really seeing any path at all. Apparently his bemusement was not well hidden.
“It is the path and easy enough to follow. For me, at least. If it is not for you, that is not my
responsibility.” The plainsman paused and added, with what he clearly felt was a lavish amount of
generosity, “But I will go slowly.”
He retreated up the rock in a manner that could not, by anyone over the age of thirty, be described as
slowly. Xeras yanked the majority of his hair from the shrubbery and threw himself into a vigorous, if not
terribly effective, pursuit.
The plainsman did stop just often enough to remain intermittently in sight, if Xeras blinked up
through rain and smattering of sleet that was starting to fall. His hair was tangled and twisting, slapping
across his face. As they climbed higher, his fingers quickly grew numb, his palms were rubbed raw by the
rock face, and fingernails torn from clinging to the crevices as he made his way as best he could. The wind
was determined to suck him right off the rock, and the slippery rain and mud to ease him all the way back
down. What passed for a path looked impossible for any grown man to traverse. Only pure necessity drove
Xeras on.
In a lull in the building storm, Drin added, Perhaps nature is trying to give you a message.
At about the same time, the plainsman said, “…is the pass.”
“This is the pass?” Xeras repeated. “Then what the hell have I been slithering up all this while?”
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“The pass is the top of the path,” the plainsman enunciated rather patronizingly. “The pass provides
passage between the snow orchid mount and goat’s peak. On the other side of the pass is the descent.”
Xeras peered through the rain that was now pelting down in solid sheets. He realized that his guide
was standing on what seemed like only a slight outcropping. Behind him was a crevice, partly filled by
fallen boulders to produce what was in effect a narrow opening in the rock, barely large enough—he had to
presume—for one person to crawl through. From below it would be completely obscured from view by a
protruding lip of stone.
Xeras eyed the crumbling rocks that crowded down over the opening, the full weight of them
balancing upon one large boulder that was wedged in place to leave the slight crevice. It seemed a
precarious opening, at best. “After you,” he said.
Xeras turned for a moment and craned out his neck far enough to look down onto the sleeping town.
He had not seen the shape of Ballot’s Keep from this aspect before, having last surveyed this crumpled
concatenation of rooftops from the main road in from the lowlands. Now he was facing in the opposite
direction. The rooftops seemed more jagged from this angle, less like harmonious waves and more liked
scales or teeth.
A faint movement showed a party of riders riding into the maw of the town, much as he once had in
pursuit of the dragon Plegura. (Plegura, curse her name, being Drinia’s mother who had been terrorizing the
inhabitants of Ballot’s Keep and supplementing her diet with their livestock.) The group of riders would
have been easy to miss at this distance in the gloom of night, except that one of them was riding a pale-
colored horse and another held a lax, drooping banner made of bright, embroidered cloth.
They were Tirrinian guardsmen.
Xeras clamped his mouth shut, knowing the one thing he did not want to do was alert the plainsman to
a force of their enemies entering the town. And there was no way he could turn back at this point, without
drawing attention to that very thing.
But one matter had been made more than clear by Kassius—the Tirrinians wanted Drinia. Idiot or not,
Drinia would actually be better off with him right now, rather than in a town full of Tirrinians. Xeras had
faced his own choice between a life of captivity on Tirrin and rather more uncertain proposition of being a
penniless and talentless itinerant traveling the townships of the lowland and mountains. He knew any kind
of risk or uncertainty was better than being under the control of Tirrin, for him and for Drinia. But
where…?
As if summoned by his thoughts, he heard the thwap, thwap, thwap of Drinia’s wing beats. Peering up
into the misty skies, he could just see the flicker of the small dragon descending out of the boiling clouds.
There was a storm brewing in more ways than one. He had only a few moments to commit to his choice
before fate was taking scissors to his alternatives in a reckless and arbitrary manner. But in his heart that
choice was already made.
Lover of Ghosts
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As he followed the plainsman through the pass, Xeras had a long, dark, wet time to think about the
wisdom of his own reckless and arbitrary decision. Not to mention the look the plainsman gave him before
clambering out of sight in a maneuver that looked disturbingly like a reverse birth.
Because your relationship with your mother isn’t weird enough already.
Exactly what relationship would that be, Drin? I haven’t even met the woman!
Xeras paused and pressed his forehead down on the damp, grimy stone. He had more important things
to worry about right now. Not the least being what the townsfolk might think of his sudden disappearance
from their midst. Xeras could have told them that Tirrinian soldiers were ruthless and their commanders
without mercy—but he was not going to be there to do it.
Fooled by Kassius’s contrived acts of friendship, they might think the Tirrinians could be trifled with,
that they could be opposed by force of arms. Many of them might die. But even wracked with doubt, Xeras
went on. True peace lay on the plains. Kassius needed to overwinter, he needed the town and all the people
in it. He would not harm the townsfolk, not because he was compassionate, but because he was clever.
It wasn’t a friendly look.
Xeras jackknifed his body around a particularly acute bend, hoping he was still following his guide
rather than heading down some natural oubliette into the bowels of the earth. Drinia had followed him as he
had hoped. She was, of course, making that a mixed blessing by scampering after the trailing edge of his
cloak and intermittently pinning it down and pulling it back sharply against his throat.
“What?”
The plainsman.
“So? It was an unfriendly look. So what? We may well be kin, but we aren’t exactly buddies.”
Indeed, and, I wonder what could possibly be disconcerting him so. Other than his capture, giving
away this secret path, your people being at war and you looking just like he does. Because normally people
find you so charming. Little Xerry Sunshine, they often call you.
“I don’t recall you doing any complaining. Well, at least not while you were still alive.”
Then, of course, there is your habit of talking to invisible people.
“That would only be crazy if you were also an inaudible person.”
Xeras, darkling, to him that is exactly what I am.
“Anyway, under the circumstances, charming the little dear is not one of my top priorities…”
At which point Drinia apparently tired of following behind and scrambled hastily along the back of
one of Xeras’s legs, clawed up his back, and scratched up over his head, making blithe and ample use of
her fully extended claws. Preoccupied with cursing her usual lack of consideration, Xeras clambered after
the beast and found himself clutching empty air. He gulped, suddenly choked as a strong hand grasped the
neck of tunic and cloak, and yanked him back with a disconcerting sound of rending cloth. Xeras swayed
onto solid ground and clutched at the rock with a graceless whimper.
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He had almost taken “the descent” in a very rapid, if not terribly healthy, manner.
The plainsman contrived not to notice. “The path continues this way,” he said, pointing to the side. “A
child could navigate it. From here, even you could probably find your own way. If you go slowly. Or you
could wait for dawn when the light will be better.”
The plainsman would no doubt like him to delay, for any reason. It would give him more time to go in
advance and prepare a “welcome”.
The path that his erstwhile guide indicated was considerably less sheer than the one they had come up,
its shape more rounded and spotted with shrubbery and rippling swathes of tussock that shimmered with
faint silver under the misty starlight. The meandering track followed fairly easy ground, although it was
still a good long way down and there was a sheer bluff directly next to where they stood… Xeras peered
over the edge and quickly went back to clinging to the rock with renewed vigor. The smarmy plainsman
was standing such that he blocked Xeras’s access to the safe path.
The rain had stopped, albeit with the air of a temporary respite. Drinia sailed away into the open air
and was soon little more than a ruddy speck in the sky.
“So our covenant is satisfied?” the boy asked. “I have done as you asked?”
“You are in such a hurry to get away from me?”
“Of course.”
A glinting wind started to swirl up from the plains and Xeras tentatively used one hand to wrap his
tattered cloak tightly around him. He would be happy to get down from these inhospitable heights and
couldn’t understand why the obstinate boy was just standing there like some insentient hunk of stone.
“Of course? You say that with the vehemence I normally only hear from people who know me
better,” Xeras said. “As we are about to part ways, perhaps you could tell me the reason for your
vehemence?”
You had to ask, didn’t you?
The plainsmen looked at him, head tilted slightly to one side. “You have a dragon familiar, you speak
to the air, and you carry my face. You are clearly a spirit of wilds and dangerous to all men not on their true
path. But I have been true to my word and nothing now binds my actions.”
And with that, he pushed Xeras almost gently backwards and off the ledge.
Chapter Seven
I told you, Drin said sadly, that the plainsman meant you harm. Furthermore I told you that if you
kept trying to fall to your death you would eventually succeed. In fact it is truly wondrous that it took this
many attempts given how easy most people find it to get from high places to low places by the fastest
possible route… Of course you have still managed to survive long enough to freeze to death.
“Are you trying to irritate me into consciousness?” Xeras croaked.
I would carry you bodily to safety…
“…if you had a body. Drin, is joking about your own death really appropriate?”
If black humor is ever going to be appropriate, I am thinking this is the time and place.
It was time to open his eyes.
Yes, it was definitely time to open his eyes.
You could start by opening your eyes, darkling.
“Sqwark!”
After tumbling down most of a mountain, it was perhaps understandable that Xeras took a few
moments to conclude that neither he nor Drin had made that sound. He found that his eyes were now in fact
open. The scenery was somewhat unedifying. Mostly white. In the absence of memory or equilibrium, he
was not even sure if it was sky or land, or if the fall had somehow made him blind.
Drinia, for the first time, helped everything to make sense. She emitted another slightly inquisitive
squeak as she peered into his field of vision from her vantage point on his chest. Without moving his head,
Xeras gradually made sense of his situation. He was on his back, his feet elevated and much of his body
covered with snow. The dragon, though a relatively slight weight, was not making it any easier to breathe.
The next step should probably be to move and try to get under some kind of shelter. He tentatively
lifted his right hand. He could not really feel it and brought it into his view as if it was merely some object,
not truly under his control. The skin of his palm was frosted with ice that fractured and sloughed off, and
the skin beneath was mottled with dark patches.
“That can’t be good.”
Not really something to celebrate, no. But crawl now, talk later.
“If you are any indication, I might even be talking after I’m dead.”
But not breathing, darkling. And all things considered, breathing is a good thing.
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“Can you imagine haunting Carly? It would be like… Well, I’ll come up with a clever metaphor when
my head thaws out.”
You couldn’t haunt Carly, darkling. You don’t love him enough.
“Yeah, well… That is not going to be the last thing I hear before I die.” Xeras kicked with legs he
could barely feel and twisted until he got over on his side. He felt the ice breaking around him.
Note to self: love Carly more.
His left arm had been lying up on top of his body and he could still pretty much feel the fingers on
that hand. He used that and the elbow of his other arm to pull himself forward. With all the pieces that
seemed preparing to freeze and break off, there was going to be a lot less of him to love in return.
At the bottom of the chasm he had fallen into, a small stream gurgled beneath a crust of dirty ice. A
crust of ice that cracked and broke as he crawled over it. On the far side of the small rocky valley, the slope
was even steeper and overhung slightly.
“On the upside I am out of the wind here,” Xeras muttered. “On the downside, I am soaked through.”
He hugged his cramped-up hand to his chest, and as it began to thaw, the pain was literally
breathtaking. Xeras fought the urge to plunge it back into the snow.
“Is it really an achievement to avoid plummeting to my death so I can painfully freeze to death
instead?”
You never beat death, darkling. You just keep it at bay for as long as you can.
“And if I somehow avoid turning into a block of ice, I have starving to death to look forward to…”
Xeras faltered into silence. Drin had died by that very method under sentence of the Tirrinian Council.
How could he have possibly forgotten that for even a moment?
It’s not painful.
“What?”
It is not a painful way to die, at least not at the end. I have told you that before, but it was when you
first left Tirrin. I do not think you paid me much heed then. You could not distinguish between your
thoughts and mine. You did not really believe it was me.
“I suppose I should apologize for that.”
I don’t see why. Drin became faintly visible, seated on a rock near Xeras’s feet. “I don’t know that we
can choose what we believe, any more than who we fall in love with.”
“Then why do you keep telling me to fall for Carly?”
“Because you already have and simply refuse to admit it. Falling seems to be your specialty. It’s the
hanging on that needs work.”
And Drin clearly knew a little something about hanging on.
Xeras clasped his aching hand to his chest and waited in vain for the sensation to pass. It did not pass,
but built, throbbing with each beat of his pulse. He hoped for something to distract his mind from the
Lover of Ghosts
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overriding pain, even if it were only some other, lesser kind of pain. His empty stomach twisted like a
trapped snake, bringing phlegm up in his throat.
“So what are you going to? Lie down and die?”
“You are not very good at that, you know.”
“Good at what?”
“Being callous. It is clearly what you think is called for to get me moving. I appreciate the sentiment
but you lack something in the delivery.”
“So you are going to lie down and die because I am not the most stirring of orators?”
“I would if I could get some peace. But if I am going to be in agony and subject to incessant nagging,
I may as well try moving. At the very least is will reduce two plagues down to one.”
Xeras’s legs proved a little more cooperative now. They hurt of course, that was something of a
theme. He got onto his feet in twenty or so creaking, cautious stages and, with his if not good, at least better
hand, unfolded the edge of his cloak from the other. His fingers were curled and looking at them was
enough to tell him not to try moving them. He looked up to see Drin had faded again from sight.
The nausea returned and this time he recognized it as hunger. He had exerted himself pretty hard
without so much as a bite to eat, and the milder pangs had been subsumed by his body’s many other
complaints. But reaching down, he found his belt pouch was little more than a clasp and tied above a series
of ragged ribbon. It might have happened in the pass, scraped by the rocks—it might have been some
animals that found him lying insensible. He was lucky nothing had eaten what remained of his body.
Whatever the cause, he had no food himself.
He took a step and fought back dizziness.
“Die here, die somewhere else. It is all the same really,” he said with feigned cheer. “I might as well
have a change of view.”
Although ironically, the movement seemed to cause his vision to fog over. Xeras paused. He couldn’t
feel where he was putting his feet so he needed to see the ground before he could proceed.
You will need food of some kind.
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to work on that,” Xeras replied sarcastically. “A roast pig perhaps, and a flakey
summer berry pie.”
Don’t torture yourself, Xeras.
“I’d have to get in line just to have the chance.”
You got yourself into this, darkling. All that remains to be seen is whether you can get yourself out.
The first obstacle to getting out, Xeras realized, was that he had no way to know which way he should
go. After picking his way carefully up from the narrow ravine into which he had fallen, there was nothing
but the mountain to his back and the plains ahead and to either side. They seemed to go on forever. Out of
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the shadow of the mountain the snow lay in sporadic patches between the boulders and clumps of
vegetation.
Xeras stood, listening to the subtle sounds of the tussock whispering in the wind. Xeras was so weary
he could barely focus his eyes and so hungry the world hardly seemed real. Perhaps it really was time to
give up on the whole thing. At least this time he knew he wasn’t completely alone.
I’d threaten to leave you if I thought it would work.
If you thought I would believe you.
You know me too well. But you would like to see your mother’s face, just once, wouldn’t you?
“It seems to me we’ve come this way before, dear Drin. How many times do you think it will take?”
Third time’s the charm, they say.
“Aye, well, there’s that.”
And Xeras began to walk.
On second thought, perhaps the best thing you could do would be to go back to town, get some rest
and provisions. You know exactly where Ballot’s Keep is, and that it is close by.
“I’d never make it back over the pass.” Xeras swayed. “And the town is full of Tirrinians who might
not be too interested in making me a packed lunch.”
He took a few more steps and paused again. He was winding down, and soon he’d be able to take just
two steps, or one, before he had to stop. But so long as he could stay upright he could keep moving after a
fashion.
…instead you intend to head off for a destination certain to be much farther away, if you even knew
where it was at all.
“I am not saying it is much of a plan.”
I don’t see how you can say it is a plan at all.
“You don’t like the lie-down-and-die plan, you don’t like the get-up-and-walk plan. Drin, this really is
not the time to get on board with the going-up-somewhere-high-and-falling-to-my-death plan. I am no
longer a proponent.”
He took another step. His toe caught on some kind of animal burrow and he went down on one knee.
The ground was thick with rough moss as wet as everything else around him.
Get up, Xeras.
“I am trying.”
No, you are not. And you, so on your high horse about lying.
“True enough. I am trying not to fall over any farther, but…”
He fell forward and put one hand on the ground, his other he held back and he ended up toppled over
awkwardly onto his side.
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“I am not strong enough, Drin,” Xeras whispered. “I suppose I never was.”
We don’t have time for maundering now.
“Now that was more convincing. Am I teaching you to hate me at least? Parlen, you, I imagine Carly
will be next…or maybe that has already happened. After all, we never did have that talk.”
No, never that. I despair of you, Xeras. But I love you all the same.
Drin seemed like he was lying there right beside him. Xeras could almost imagine that the tickling
breeze was his breath, and the cold was almost becoming warm.
You just need to eat a little; you just need a little strength. Not that you’ve ever really lacked that. You
have always somehow had the strength to be yourself no matter what it cost you. Maybe it’s actually a little
weakness you needed, or some common sense.
“Sqwark?”
Drinia. Xeras might be more in danger of being eaten than the reverse.
He forced his eyes open. He saw the tufted roots of the grasses, and then Drinia’s bright eyes. Her
head dipped from sight again and she reappeared, waddling. Beneath her she was dragging a lumpy object.
The breeze ruffled its fur.
Drinia was towing a bedraggled rabbit with a snowy fleece, its body at least three times her size. She
deposited it in front of him. Its head lolled back to reveal how its throat had been torn. The pink gleaming
flesh lay gruesomely exposed.
The dragon regarded him with bemusement, looked at the rabbit and dragged it a little closer before
dropping it again.
“I apologize for doubting you,” Xeras croaked. “But I don’t know if I can eat that.”
Drinia blinked and yawned. There was fresh blood between her teeth, sharp tines like those of a fish,
but even more crowded. Apparently she was diversifying her diet, after a fashion. A few wisps of smoke
belched from her nostrils, and she blew a pale-gold flame over the exposed meat of the unfortunate
creature. The air was tainted with the smell of cooked flesh and burnt hair. She gave him a reproachful look
as if to say “I don’t know why you prefer your food spoiled in this way, but have it as you will.”
All right, so she isn’t all that stupid, Drin conceded.
After bolting down what was easily the most disgusting and most appreciated meal of his life, Xeras
drank water from the ground that was stained dark brown from seeping through the peaty soil—he just
hoped it didn’t harbor any breed of plague or parasite. Thus fortified he began, albeit slowly, to make his
way forward again, sinking ankle or knee deep into the mire with every step. He laughed at his own
shambling ineptitude.
“Xeras of the High House of Harus,” he muttered to himself. “Finally sinking, quite literally, to his
proper level…”
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Drinia scampered along ahead of him, still dragging the ragged remains of the rabbit like some kind
of macabre security blanket. Her slight weight did not break through the layer of debris and weeds growing
over the surface of the sucking swamp. In fact she looked rather irritated that he was making such hard
going of it. She would scamper ahead, chirrup back at him and wait with exaggerated patience for him to
catch up—and repeat the process all over again.
Movement started to warm his body tolerably, but for his hand which was a lump of pain. Only his
fingers remained numb, except when a misstep or stumble sparked them into painful life. The way
continued to get wetter and slicker. Sometimes Xeras waded through sucking mud, sometimes clambered
over slimy boulders and fallen tree trunks.
Although there did not seem to be any standing trees with trunks thicker than a man’s thumb, the
fallen trunks of giants were strewn haphazardly across the landscape. Xeras rested for a while, straddling
one pallid log so large his toe tips barely touched the ground on either side.
“I don’t see how there could ever have been a forest here,” Xeras mused as he scanned the far, ragged
horizon for any signs of life.
Lost in hostile lands, Tirrinians in Ballot’s Keep, and you are wondering about trees.
“Dead trees,” Xeras joked. “Perhaps you could ask them what happened to them.”
I dare say I’d get more sense out of them than you.
Looking back the way he had come, Xeras could just make out the narrow pass and the ledge he must
have fallen from. It was clearly a long, long way from that vantage to the bottom of the crevice where he
had awoken.
“That fall should have killed me,” Xeras muttered.
Don’t you remember?
“Remember?”
Drinia and I, between us we slowed your fall.
Despite himself Xeras felt a flash of paternal alarm. “Drinia could have been hurt!”
She’s not as delicate as you think. Beside, she let go long before you hit the ground. Much sooner
than I did, in fact.
“Well, you are already dead.”
Thank you for that gift of self-knowledge; that had quite slipped my memory.
Xeras grimaced. “I just mean that if something happened to Drinia…”
Well, the consequences would be wider than his complete failure as a parent and the loss of that one
rare handful of magical life. Jarvice would probably desert his post and leave the Tirrinians and plainsmen
free to clash, right in the middle of the cobbled streets of Ballot’s Keep.
“Thank you, I guess,” Xeras said, belatedly.
You’re welcome, I guess.
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Drinia could be heard moving somewhere amongst the rushes, out of sight. “And you too, brat,”
Xeras added.
He looked out into the plains again. There seemed to be a faint movement far in the distance. Maybe
nothing, maybe someone out there, or an animal, or the wind. Still, it presented itself as a goal. Xeras
swung his leg over and sank into a puddle of muck on the lee side of the log. With a sigh he wrenched out
first one foot and then the other, and proceeded.
In the midst of one particularly intransigent bog, Xeras’s ankle became wedged under what felt like a
tree root, though no tree was in sight, and against a jagged rock. He wiggled it tentatively, yanked, cursed,
and achieved nothing more than to topple over backwards. His rear end proceeded to sink into the mire as
far as his waist. The green slime and weed skimmed over the surface of the muck and reformed around
him. It presented an image to his mind of sinking to an unmarked grave in such a swamp or puddle, leaving
not even the slightest mark of his passing or his place of rest.
Xeras shuddered. After wiggling and twisting his foot, he determined… “I’m trapped.”
The good news is that while you are trapped you can’t do anything more stupid than you currently
are.
Xeras slumped sideways, his cloth-swathed arm also sinking into the mud, elbow first.
The bad news is that what you are doing right now is really very stupid indeed.
“There is no act so stupid that pointless nagging cannot make it even more frustrating, and any kind of
solution less likely to be arrived at,” Xeras snapped.
If I nag, you might be a little more peeved. If I don’t I shall be all the more frustrated. So I ask you,
which of the two of us deserves a little respite and which a little more grief?
Xeras struggled to stand but as he pulled, his trapped foot pivoted slightly and it seemed the rock it
was jammed beneath shifted and crushed down even tighter.
With a wordless cry Xeras fell onto his back, reflexively clutching his aching hand to his chest. He
began to sink bodily into the muck. He felt his cloak balloon up around him but almost immediately the
stinking water and rotting slurry poured through and around the saturated woolen cloth. Thrusting down
with his one good arm, Xeras’s hand scudded over the slick rocks and he could find no purchase. With an
alarmed squeak, Drinia landed on his face and immediate launched off again, thrusting his head deep into
the mud. She had grabbed a few tangled locks of his hair and flew into the air, yanking the hair forcefully
from his head.
Xeras managed to get his free foot under him and level his head and shoulders out of the sucking
mud, in time to see a large, gray-clad figure towering threateningly over Drinia who was flopping on the
ground beyond his feet. Xeras groped instinctively for some kind of weapon, but nothing came to hand but
mud and mush.
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The figure turned, revealing the face of a woman in middle years, with sharp features and, beneath a
swaddling of ragged furred clothing, a tall stature. As their eyes met, the green motes flared and rushed in
towards him. A furtive movement to the side momentarily distracted Xeras. The plainsman, Xeras’s fickle
guide-cum-assassin, loomed overhead.
Then everything went black.
Chapter Eight
Kassius stood on the steps of the duke’s manse. Deep snow weighed down the roofs of the houses all
around and was trampled into a discolored mush on the street. A large group of the town’s citizens stood in
the street, mostly older men and a few women. They were circled by Tirrin soldiers, some on horseback
and all with stern expressions that suggested the gathering was not entirely a voluntary one.
“…I know your every power, and how to nullify it. And as you now appreciate it, every one of my
men is a high-born magus—the most powerful men Tirrin can muster—every single one of them worth
easily a hundred common soldiers…”
This was a different Kassius. It seemed like he was damaged not only in his visage, but his soul. His
tone was callous, his stance unyielding. Was this the Kassius that had always lurked beneath a veneer of
handsome charm?
Xeras was foggily aware that he was true-dreaming, that he was seeing the future. It had happened
once before, but then he had felt clearer, less vulnerable. This felt less like a scene he was watching and
more like actually being there.
Something nagged at the corner of his mind, making it hard to concentrate on the visions before him.
His perspective dropped slowly, as if he floated down as an intangible presence, gently from above.
“…I am here not to hold this town, but to liberate it,” Kassius declared.
The townsfolks’ face remained quite impassive but someone in the crowd could not stifle a skeptical
snort.
“I shall pass through this gate and on to the camp of the hostile plainsmen, whose location I know full
well. I shall remove this threat from your doorstep, permanently. Then I and these men, even be it the
depths of winter, shall leave this town. And I cannot say with certainty it shall be never to return…”
Kassius laughed, more freely this time, “…but we shall be occupied for a while rebuilding our empire
through the full expanse of the islands and lowlands before we will feel the need to set foot in this
insignificant, rocky wasteland of duchy again.”
Kassius shuffled his feet in the snow, planted them firmly, and placed his hands on his hips. “You
shall all be far more safe and secure for my actions, and have every reason to be grateful. I will
inconvenience you just a short while in this inclement weather. As a reminder to your lord duke, that the
benefit of his cooperation need not be so distant or diffuse. He shall operate the gate for me…” He added in
an equally blithe and indifferent tone: “Or I will build a ramp with your bodies.”
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Kassius’s gaze raked the air, fixed on Xeras, and in a sotto voice he said, “I will hold you to your
promise, Xeras. To your given word.”
Xeras reared back, trying with all his will to wake, but unable to. Instead he felt himself pulled along
behind Kassius who raised one hand towards him, long fingers beckoning. Xeras followed intangibly with
Kassius as he walked triumphantly through the halls of the manse, up the stairs and to the arch of the gate.
It was as if Kassius had quite casually leashed his spirit and towed it along behind him.
“Scry me all you like, Son of Harus. Even the might of dragons cannot make a competent magus out
of a dullard, it seems,” Kassius mocked. “Besides, the mechanism of my plans has moved perfectly into
place. No single hand can hold it back from its conclusion.”
Kassius paused to examine his own hand for a moment. Usually gloved, it was making a rare
appearance, pale, perfect and unscarred. Unlike his face, a mass of scabs and stitches in which his eyes
shone even brighter. Kassius looked up sharply at Xeras. It was a moment Xeras might normally have
expected to hear from Drin, but in this dream the ghost was absent.
Xeras tried not to even think anymore, for fear that Kassius would divine his thoughts. He struggled to
swim backwards through the currents of Kassius’s will. Then he saw Carly, held between two tall men at
the alcove at the peak of the gate.
Carly and his captors stood near the place on the gate where the town’s duke was supposed to
command the great gate to close when winter came, and open it for spring trade. But what could Kassius
possibly hope to achieve? The gate had failed to close, and the way was blocked only by the stone dragon
Jarvice. Carly could do nothing.
Find your own toys, Xeras thought at Kassius, trying to blot any unfortunate flotsam from his
thoughts. The duke is no use to you. He knew his mental voice came though clearly, Drin had given him
some practice in that.
Kassius leaned in to Carly. “Allow me to explain,” he said with condescending simplicity, “what use
you are to me. This is the first step in my plan to help you and your pack of hilltop-dwelling yokels. I shall
show you that this gate is, in fact, perfectly operational. Once I have dispensed with the more agitated
elements of your nomadic neighbors, it will be more than sufficient to protect the town. Only the tribe with
the Tirrinian woman as a leader is, after all, a real threat. And then one of my more useful associates will
close up even the narrowest of paths and passes that circumvent this one entranceway. When I am finished,
your pitiful little town shall be quite safe.” He turned aside and muttered so that only Xeras could hear him.
“From everything, that is, except for me.”
Carly shook his head. “The gate will not move I assure you. I have tried.”
“Of course you have. But the power to which this gate answers has become confused and divided. The
remnants of the dragon’s gift to the people of this area, that being this gate, is vested in that atrocious
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jewelry marking your menial office. But Xeras represents another form of that same power, vested in his
own body. The gate can respond only to one of you.”
Kassius paused and looked speculatively out beyond the town and into the plains.
“It is tiresome,” he continued, “to have to explain your own heritage to you. But no matter. Things
will shortly return to their natural order.”
Kassius gestured casually and the two Tirrinians holding Carly thrust the duke towards the aperture
into which the emblem on his chain of office fitted.
“Close the gate and shove that doorstop of a dragon out of the way. If you do not you will be the only
casualty of this temporary invasion. Your demise will vest the remaining dragon magic in my brother
Tirrinian, dear Xeras. When I recover him, he will close the gate. I am indifferent as to which of you serves
my purposes. So I advise you not to fail me, for your sake.”
“You said you will leave this town safe,” Carly said, impressively uncowed. “It is safe only if this
gate is functioning. I know that as well as you do, and care about it rather more. I have made every effort
already, and it does not become more possible just because you demand it.”
“I am aware of that,” Kassius said smugly. “But it seemed only sporting to give you one last chance. I
suggest that you take it.”
He pointed rather casually. In response one of the guards wrenched Carly’s chain of office from his
neck then thrust it into his hands. Carly pressed it into the small niche provided to accept it. The gate made
no move.
Xeras, watching, wished that Carly would try a little harder. But he must have already gone through
these actions a great many times. His mind whirled, trying to think of some way to intervene, but a true
dream was meant to be something seen, not influenced. None of this had, in any real sense, even happened
yet. But Kassius should not have been able to speak to him if that was the case, let alone hold his spirit
captive.
“So be it,” Kassius said with a shrug. “You need not worry for the town. Xeras will close the gate.
Once I have removed him back to his proper home in Tirrin, the gate will once again defer to the holder of
the chain of office, and this town full of dullards will have all winter to elect another duke.”
Kassius, you know that the power is in the chain. There is no reason to threaten Carly, let alone to kill
him. It achieves nothing.
Kassius turned his back to the others and spoke for Xeras’s benefit alone. “It serves to amuse me. To
show you that I am not one to be trifled with. I hold your given word, and in my hand, it is as an iron
chain.” His hissed whisper snaked through the air, unmistakable in its candor and its ruthlessness budding
into madness. “You will have nothing but me, you will serve only me, or he will be the first of many to
die.”
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There was a deep creaking sound. Xeras recognized it as Jarvice, the stone dragon shifting slightly
below them. Dragons have their own agendas. There was no way of knowing if he could hear what was
happening over his head, or what he would do about it if he could. But Kassius’s expression froze a little,
as if the possibility of finding himself up against a giant dragon with impervious skin was something of a
concern.
Kassius turned back to his soldiers. Their expressions were a little too familiar to Xeras, the
expressions of people who wondered why a man was talking to the air. It might even have been amusing if
not for what Kassius said next.
“Keep the chain,” he commanded, gesturing over the edge of the bridge. “Dispose of this hairy excuse
for a man. I am sick of the sight of him.”
Carly struggled with all his might, but he was clearly outnumbered and would soon be overwhelmed.
Xeras awoke with a start. Given that he had lost consciousness in about as bad of a state as he could
imagine, he found it dispiriting to wake up feeling even worse. A sharp, pulsing headache had been added
to his blossoming catalogue of woes. As he struggled to sit up, the sensation become even more
preoccupying in its intensity and his hand joined in the cacophony of pain as if resentful of being found in
the kind of company where it could, briefly, be ignored.
But despite it all, Xeras’s thoughts struggled towards a conclusion. Kassius had thought Xeras was
scrying him on the bridge, far away but in the same time. But it was actually a prescient dream, like the
dream he had once had of Carly being snatched by a dragon. These events had not happened yet. So if
Kassius really was going to defenestrate the duke—and Kassius did not seem the type to make empty
threats—there was still time to save him. It was hard to know how much time, but if it was the same as the
last dream he’d had, it might be a couple of days. He certainly hoped he had that long given how far away
he was.
As I recall, somebody told you it wasn’t a good idea to leave…
With concerted effort, Xeras managed to bring the surface directly in front of his eyes slowly into
focus, a task made that much more difficult by the way it warped and moved. It was a large expanse of
some kind of gray felted cloth a few feet away that rippled sluggishly in the face of the wind. The corner
lifted, revealing edges strung with hanging laces and irregular toggles. A tall woman entered, the one he
had fleetingly glimpsed before passing out. She had in tow two sullen-looking young men, one of whom
was rather familiar.
Last seen receding rapidly into the distance, stage “up”.
The woman stood looking down at Xeras as he lay on the generous accommodation offered by a
single blanket on the lumpy floor, another odiferous blanket tossed loosely over him. Either he was going
blind or the light was dim. It had the quality of evening rather than morning, but he couldn’t tell for sure.
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She said, rather perfunctorily—in fact very perfunctorily: “I imagine you have been sent by the
council to claim that you are my long-lost son. In which case you should know, I have no interest in
hearing these all-too-obvious machinations of home. In fact I have no interest in you at all.”
Well, now I can see where you get it from.
Get what?
Your charm and ingratiating ways.
“Well, I’ll be going then,” Xeras said, acidly obliging.
In the process of standing, the heavy blanket crumpled and fell to the floor, and Xeras found himself
standing naked. Even he had to admit it could not currently be considered an edifying sight.
“In the interests of obliging your disinterest, perhaps you could provide me with my clothes,” Xeras
added. “It is rather cold and I am reliably informed that winter is on the way. You could also tell me what
happened to Drinia. I would hate to think I put up with her this long for noth…”
“You’ll get your clothes when I am ready for you to leave,” the woman replied. “And not before.
Watch him.”
That last to his erstwhile would-be assassin, and then she left.
Hardly a sterling recommendation for the position of guard.
I doubt he is here to protect me from anything, Xeras thought. He is here to protect them from me. As
if I was capable of being much of a threat to anyone right now.
You are always a threat, albeit mostly to yourself.
The boy glowered at him with feet planted and arms folded. Xeras settled, cross-legged on the ground,
clutching the scratchy blanket around him and returned his gaze impassively. He brushed his fingers lightly
over his frozen hand, the fingertips were dark and shriveled at the tips. He also felt dizzy, nauseous and
pretty much appalling in every possible way.
You’re going to need help from these people, no matter what you do. So you might want to make some
effort at getting them on side. It’s a secret you’ve hidden well from pretty much everyone but me, but you
actually can be charming, when sufficiently motivated.
Drinia might need him, Xeras considered, and very soon Carly definitely would. On the other hand,
he couldn’t take this kid on a good day—and this was not a good day. This was one of those days he
couldn’t even take on himself.
So lie down and rest. You came all this way; you may as well get something out of it. Maybe a hot
meal?
No, he needed to find Drinia right now. If she was up to her usual tricks, she might have annoyed
someone less sanguine than the Ballot’s Keep villagers. Xeras knew himself to be a feckless enough sort of
man, yet somehow these responsibilities had settled themselves on his shoulders, including the
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responsibilities of a parent. He had little choice but to try to live up to them. He grabbed the blanket
awkwardly around him with one hand and staggered to his feet. The plainsman looked at him, unmoving.
“That woman, she is called Yulia?”
The plainsman made no reply. Xeras nodded. He had hardly been expecting much help from that
quarter.
“I am going to have to speak with her,” Xeras added. “Speak to her further, I mean.”
The plainsman stayed standing in front of the door flap. Xeras’s mind was set on a single clear path,
stretching before him like a wire with three beads upon it: Yulia, Drinia, Carly.
He started towards the doorway as if there was no conceivable impediment to him going straight out
of it. Drinia was on his mind as he walked, and he felt the flicker of verdant energy about him, gathering
and scintillating around him—reinforcing his will. This, he realized, was what the power was for. Whatever
men might want from magic, such power was not native to them and not created for their benefit. It was in
the gift of the dragons and it was given for their purpose, for the protection and proliferation of their kind.
It was meant to be used to protect their children.
Xeras still felt considerable surprise when the dragon magic brushed the plainsman aside and blew
open the door flap. Xeras tried not to think too much more about the sudden return of that promised power.
Not returned as a reliable tool, but more like a half-trained hound that obliged him according to its own
interests, but… No.
He could think, or he could act.
It might be about time you learned to combine those two activities, darkling.
…or he could listen to ghosts. And despite all the practice Drin had given him, he did not seem to
have mastered the art of doing more than one of these things in any given moment.
Once outside he could see he was in a camp set up around the base of a large rock that projected up
through a hump of earth like a huge boil erupting from the flesh of the marsh. There were about a score of
tent-houses, all roughly square and made of crude felted fiber topped by a cap of rushes from which a
misting rain dripped. Between the houses and the face of the rock, a stockade had been constructed from
what looked like the green wood of saplings cunningly woven together.
There were people scattered throughout the scene, in the flap-doors, stooped over various tasks or
work, and tending to the stocky, shaggy-haired ponies. Pretty much every one of them, ponies included,
was looking at Xeras.
Yulia came around the side of a neighboring house and appeared in front of him, a stern expression
creasing her face. Xeras felt rather than saw his guard running to catch up with him and rebounding off a
cloud around him that sparked momentarily with the impact. He hit the ground with a very satisfying oof.
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Xeras continued as if their conversation had not been interrupted. “You have a strange way of
showing disinterest, my lady. I am asking for nothing more than I came here with, my clothing and my
daughter.”
At the edge of his vision, Xeras saw the young plainsman scrambling to his feet with murder in his
eye, but he paused.
“Sedge, gather some wood for tonight,” Yulia said, without even looking at the boy. “As for you, if
you will not have enough sense to rest, then come, and at least try to speak to us with proper courtesy.”
She did not sound too hopeful at the prospect, but turned and walked away. Xeras’s best guess was
that he was supposed to follow her.
In the largest of the structures, there was a group of people who appeared to be waiting for them,
which made them either prescient or just patient. Women for the most part. The first woman he had met
must indeed be Yulia. The rest of them were cut from a different cloth entirely with small stature, tawny
hair and patient eyes. It was annoying that what had felt like an impulsive, even courageous act to him, had
apparently been entirely predictable to everyone gathered here.
There were eight women sitting cross-legged, facing in towards the center of the room. A number of
younger women and some men sat behind them. Yulia took her place, directly opposite the door flap. She
was the only one whose position was slightly elevated by a low wide stool, more like a small platform.
“This young man,” she said, “seems to have come some way, albeit ill-prepared. I imagine he has
something to say.” But her voice sounded steely and hostile rather than a welcoming invitation.
Xeras had a moment of feeling excruciatingly ridiculous. He was grimy, with matted hair, a shriveled-
up hand, and clad only in a stiff blanket, standing before a group of women twice his age and more. But as
cowering under the covers and hoping the whole problem would go away wasn’t really an option, he took a
deep breath, straightened his back, and prepared to address Yulia unapologetically.
One of the others interrupted him.
A wiry old woman with thick gray hair sat to one side. “He has come to tell stirring tales of battles to
be fought,” she sneered. “Can’t you see it in his stance? Young men are all the same.”
“Battles?” Xeras rejoined, his voice deliberately quiet. “I have never fought in one and I hope I never
shall. I left Ballot’s Keep for the sake of my daughter.”
The old woman snapped back, “Daughter? What does man care for his daughter?”
Xeras let the blanket sag slightly, exposing his blacked hand held lax, and the scar on his side, ridged
and ragged where Drinia had emerged. “You will join the ranks of those who think me crazy if I tell you
the whole tale. But you have no real interest in hearing it, and I have no interest in wasting my time telling
it. Especially now, when I do not know where she is, or how she is—and so I would rather be looking for
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her than entertaining you. So if you will avail me of my clothing, I will divest you of my presence—and we
shall both have satisfaction.”
A third person spoke up, a frail-looking woman with snow white hair. “Between what is torn and what
has rotted, there is very little left of your clothing. So tell us, why should we replace it for you?”
“To get rid of me. Most people find that motivation enough.”
“Will you not stay here to rant and rail and convince us that Tirrinians are just over the hill?” the
white-haired woman asked, almost rhetorically. Xeras got the impression she was actually trying to help
him.
“Tirrinian’s are more subtle in their threats,” Yulia broke in. “Do not be fooled, Tanta. If they send us
someone who seems vulnerable, it is because it serves their interests to do so.”
She thinks you are vulnerable, darkling. Perhaps you are getting to her after all.
Xeras shrugged. “You can confirm the position of the Tirrinian forces for yourself if you care to.
Other than that you know what I came seeking, and you have made it very clear that I will not find it here.”
For a man who can be most irrationally persistent, you give up easily.
Xeras shook his head. Perhaps the dragon magic could keep him warm as well, if needs be. He was
wasting his time here and Drinia had still not shown herself.
The frail woman, Tanta, smiled. “I think he is rather like you,” she said to Yulia.
“It is just that he is a Tirrinian, Tanta,” Yulia replied with exasperation. “If I could change the shape
of my face and tongue to eradicate that last vestige of my heritage, I would. It means nothing.”
“He comes to us much as you did those many years ago.”
Yulia rose abruptly. “I shall give him clothing of my own if it will rid us of him.” She grabbed him by
the upper arm and yanked him out into the open where it was beginning to rain, in a pale near-mist. “It is
the only garb we have that might fit him anyway.”
So. This is going well.
Xeras was tripping over a length of blank that felt like it had been made by the expedience of pressing
a very small sheep completely flat under a very large rock. He struggled to decide what was more
humiliating, being dragged along like a naughty toddler or having a half-naked tantrum about it in the rain.
The tent-houses were scattered along the front of the rock face, three or four deep. Down the far end
was a particularly large structure which seemed to be their intended destination.
But at least one concern could be crossed off the list. From up in the sky came a raucous squawk.
Yulia released him in surprise and Xeras had just enough time to spin and raise one arm in a defensive
gesture. Drinia rebounded off his forearm and hit the ground with a loud slap and an annoyed chirp, before
immediately climbing back up the blanket as far as his waist. Drinia was clearly a lot hardier than her
appearance might suggest. The edge of the blanket pulled loose, leaving the little dragon dangling and
twisting in the air flailing her wings.
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“It’s not that I don’t understand deserting a kid at birth,” Xeras said. “But I am sure I was not quite
this annoying as a mere infant.”
“Be content to know that you are making up for it now.”
In spite of himself, Xeras laughed. The laugh turned into a cough, and somehow he seemed to just
lose his balance. He shakily lowered Drinia to the ground, and then his knees began to slowly fold and he
joined her there. It continued to rain, gently. The earth was soft and tepid beneath him.
It’s cold, darkling, icy cold. You’re just not warm enough yourself to feel it. Go inside with Mommy.
Ask for some num nums.
Drinia skipped away from him and started to play with the door flap. Yulia was standing, holding it
open, and she looked down at the dragon with obvious distaste. She did not look at Xeras at all. Despite
himself, Xeras found he was disappointed to see not even the tiniest vestige of maternal concern in her.
“Children do have a way of living down to one’s expectations,” Xeras said.
“Perhaps that is further proof that you are not mine.” Yulia looked at him at last. “My expectations
sank as low as a creature like Kassius. You and this perversion of nature would require a more vivid and
cynical imagination than mine.” She went inside and let the flap fall shut behind her.
Xeras’s jaw clamped shut; indignation gave him a little energy, enough to push himself upright again.
Well, at least he was achieving his goals, if not in the order he was expecting: Yulia, Drinia. Something to
wear…
…and something to eat…
And he would be on his way. His thoughts shared that same disordered quality as he tried to formulate
a way forward. He had Drinia, the little terror, in his sight and none the worse for wear. He wasn’t going to
last too much longer at this rate, of course. Some kind of clothing would help and he should try to be
grateful for that gift, no matter how grudgingly it was offered.
He followed his mother into the dark interior.
Xeras strove to pretend his injured hand was not even his as its renewed complaints began to crowd
other thoughts out of his mind with each jagged pulse. He was somewhat bemused to see this did not seem
to be Yulia’s house. The older woman, Tanta, followed them inside with the air of a householder. The front
of her dwelling was arranged in the form of a large awning.
“Sit.” Yulia indicated a thin cushion upon the ground. He collapsed into an awkward cross-legged
position, while Tanta settled into a sling seat and took Xeras’s hand in her lap. She then began, without a
word, paring off the ragged edge of skin on his fingertips with a small, sharp knife. It made no difference
that Xeras tried to flinch away. Like Drinia, the old woman was stronger than she looked. She assiduously
prepared his fingers with some kind of fat or lard and wrapped them in strips of what looked like husks or
leaves. Some cloth bandages lay close at hand for what was intended to be the last stage of the process.
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Xeras gave up and just let her do as she wished. Probably not a good idea given that the plainsmen
were no friends, or even allies, of his.
Perhaps you are being uncharacteristically rational.
Since when?
Perhaps, despite lacking wisdom, you are capable of responding to it in others.
Tanta chuckled slightly, to herself.
Perhaps it is just my fate to fall into the hands of crazy women. He thought briefly of the old woman
who had helped him when Drinia was born. She had said the wild women had once held the dragon gift,
before it fell to Tirrin.
Xeras experienced a strange sensation, like there was more truth in that thought than he truly realized.
Nevertheless he let the old woman complete her painful ministrations. The only relief from the complaints
of his frozen finger to be had was in distracting himself, observing Tanta’s household. It was composed
chiefly of two men, a little younger than her, who both assisted her with the ease of long familiarity. If
either had been there alone, he would have assumed he was her husband.
It was growing darker, so Xeras was sure now that it must be evening. He looked out into the mists.
He did not know for sure when the scene he foresaw on the bridge would occur. Perhaps tomorrow,
certainly no more than a day or two after that—and on the whole he would rather not take any chances by
delaying. He had to get back to the gate as soon as possible.
Yulia returned and tossed a bundle of wadded-up clothing in Xeras’s lap. He made hard work of
donning the unfamiliar garments with only one good hand. The clothing they had given him was heavy, and
itched.
Try to be a little grateful, darkling.
Yulia stood to one side, alert and disapproving with her arms crossed. Drinia played about Yulia’s
feet. The little beast always seemed attracted to those who were least comfortable with her. Xeras
remembered what he had said about children living down to their parent’s expectations. Maybe with a
dragon it was far more literally true. Jarvice had said as much on several occasions, that the human parent
had a direct impact on how the dragon child developed, on what they became. He had never really thought
too hard about the mechanism of that effect.
So start expecting her to be biddable and obliging. And say thank you to your mother.
Xeras turned to Yulia. “Thank you, I guess.” He heard Drin sigh at the equivocation.
There was a lot of traffic past Tanta’s tent. Rather like people were making excuses to wander around
in the vicinity and satisfy their curiosity. Xeras saw several women for each man, and it hardly seemed like
this was the sort of group where females were expected to stay inside and out of sight. Quite the reverse.
So maybe there are more women in this group. If women are the leaders of this tribe, it would only
make sense if they attracted the more strong-minded women from other tribes. Those who do not wish to
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take on the role of helpmate and follower. So perhaps you should be respectful and listen to these female
leaders and wise women when they speak to you.
“…is not so unusual for us to be patching up a young man who has outdistanced his own strength…or
good sense,” Tanta continued. “It is the custom for men of the plains to take as many wives as they can
support. But in years where the constant battling for territory is not so severe, there are young men in want
of a wife and the older men would rather cast them out than compete with them. Only a few of them stay,
however. Most prefer to group together in bachelor bands and try to steal girls away, or run as bandits.”
Yulia interjected, “There is no need to explain our ways to this…”
“This young man has wit enough to notice what is around him, and there is no harm in explaining it.”
She beckoned for Xeras to return to her side and finished treating his hand by binding it into a tight
mitten. “It took Yulia to suggest the natural reverse of the situation. That a sensible young man, and a few
of them are, would rather share a wife than have none. In fact the arrangement can be quite agreeable for all
involved. And with a tribe made up of strong men and able women—well, it did not take us long to be able
to travel and stay wherever we pleased. Within the plains, at least.”
Tanta looked up at Yulia, who glared back with straight-backed disapproval. There was no doubt that
Tanta could have said a great deal more but she chose not to. Instead she stood up with the tentative care of
the aged.
“The boy’s not well enough to go wandering off on his own,” Tanta said.
Xeras felt himself glower at being treated like some wandering toddler.
“The boy is not our responsibility,” Yulia replied.
Tanta laughed; she looked between the two of them. “Do not fool yourself, Yulia. This one’s yours.
It’s in his eyes as much as his bones. He carries a part of your spirit, mixed even as it is with the spirit of
the dragon, and the dead.”
“He has High House magics, that is all,” Yulia said dismissively. “He can probably seem to be
whatever he wishes to. And he is no doubt used to getting his way. Their magic is corrupting, like any
arbitrary power—and maybe more so.”
“Strange, he doesn’t have the look of a man who always gets his way,” Tanta said with a smile.
“Unless he has rather perverse ways.”
“You don’t know Tirrinians.”
She doesn’t know you. Perhaps you should let her know you.
Xeras wanted to get to his feet again, but his feet, legs and the rest of his body were in no hurry to
oblige him. “I have to go back to the gate. I don’t know how much time I have. Carly…”
“Ah,” Tanta said. “There’s a girl involved.” She turned to Yulia. “Men don’t really need a reason to
behave foolishly, but when they do so to excess, there is usually a girl involved.”
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“Carly isn’t a woman,” Yulia said flatly. “That is the name of the Duke of Ballot’s Keep. A position
that can only be held by a man.”
“By a man with a woman’s help,” Xeras added. “Not a man alone.”
“And not a woman with a man’s help,” Yulia replied.
Xeras shrugged. “I’m not one to tell people how to run their lives. If I was, the Lady Katinka would
probably get the post. In fact she basically has, bar the title and the jewelry.”
He turned and found Yulia standing right next to him. He saw her tanned skin, her confident stance,
and the square set of her shoulders. She had such strength. She had walked away from Tirrin, cast off by
her husband, her newborn child stolen from her, and she had come all this way. She had made a new home,
taken a husband or two, started a new life—risen to a high station and guided her adopted people to
success…
And set them on a course for war and carnage.
Well, no one was perfect.
“It occurs to me that Xeras has the right to speak before a full council,” Tanta said speculatively.
Yulia raised a sublimely skeptical eyebrow.
“Think about it, my dear,” Tanta added. “The requirements are that one has the love of a man and has
birthed a child.”
“…and been accepted as a member of the tribe by unanimous agreement.”
“Or born to one who is a member of the tribe.”
“Ha,” Yulia snorted. “He is not my child, he is not a child at all.”
“Of the two of us, I have always been a little more forgiving in my interpretations.”
“Of the two of us,” Yulia said, albeit kindly, “only one was elected leader of all. Your role is to
consider all angles and provide counsel, and mine is to pick the one path we will take. Do not chide me for
being exactly as I should be. As I must be.”
Xeras struggled to follow what was being said. He dimly perceived it might be important but
exhaustion was stealing over his mind like a fog. His eyes felt heavy, and his head started to tip forward as
his consciousness wavered.
The two women were still speaking, but he had lost the ability to grasp more than the distinctive
cadence of their voices, Tanta gentle and insistent, Yulia firm and steady.
Drin’s voice, most familiar of all, seemed more real than either—a whisper in his ear so vivid he
should have been able to feel the breath of every exhaled word.
You’ll make no progress tonight, worn out as you are, and never find your way in the dark of night.
Rest, at least, until dawn.
A hand on his arm roused Xeras to jerk groggily awake.
“Rest here tonight,” Tanta said, almost as an echo to Drin. “We have a place for you.”
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Yulia would surely not agree with that sentiment. Some time must have passed because they had a
pallet made up out under the awning. He looked around, but Yulia was gone.
“I should…” The words came out slurred.
“The body has its own wisdom,” Tanta added. “I suggest that you listen to it.”
It has certainly suffered enough as a result of the lack of wisdom in your mind.
Drin’s harping was becoming a little tiresome in its own right. But Xeras had to concede he would get
no farther tonight. One of Tanta’s…well, husbands he supposed, all but carried Xeras to his rest.
“I need to…” Xeras faltered, losing his chain of thought after just a few words.
The darkness was closing in inexorably and he could no longer fight it back. He felt Drinia climb up
onto his chest and settle herself, and somehow it seemed Drin’s arm was around him in the darkness. A
strange family indeed. He sank reluctantly into sleep.
Chapter Nine
Xeras awoke thinking of Carly and fell into an argument with Drin before he was even fully awake.
There is still this matter of people inexorably on a course towards war.
“I am learning, Drin, that I am not really a big-picture sort of person. I shall just have to focus on
Carly’s inexorable course towards the valley floor.”
You might at least ask their purpose in being so close to Ballot’s Keep, and their intentions.
“If their intention is to invade, Kassius got there first. Perhaps we could deal with one hostile invader
at a time.”
Kassius has a plan for that too, and it involves you going back to Tirrin. If that doesn’t bother you,
imagine what your kin would do with Drinia if they got their hands on her.
“Yeah, well. How about you come up with a plan to deal with the gathering armies. I need to get back
to the gate before we can implement it, so you’ll have at least that long.”
First he needed to bend his knees, and apparently that wasn’t happening, they seemed to have
stiffened in place. He managed to lever his legs around and get his torso upright. Drinia rolled into the
warm spot left behind and stretched out her legs and tail with a satisfied trill.
The sky was predawn gray and his body felt about a million years old. Xeras opened his eyes. The
area beneath Tanta’s awning had been partially closed by a heavy curtain along the front. The space within
seemed vacant at first, but then he saw a still figure seated in Tanta’s seat, watching. It was a middle-aged
plainsman Xeras did not recall having seen before.
“Do you always talk to yourself?” the man asked.
“I was not talking to myself.”
“Well you weren’t talking to me, or that.” He indicated Drinia with a slight nod.
“No, I wasn’t,” Xeras confirmed unhelpfully. “And Drinia is a ‘her’.” He took a deep breath, tried to
hold it a moment and broke into coughing. Turning onto his side, he managed to get it under control. “So
what are you?” he wheezed. “My new guard?”
You could try starting with hello rather than launching straight into the alienating accusations.
It is not a…
“I am here on my own behalf.” The man stood and took down a ladle that hung from a rope strung
along the wall of the main tent. He stepped over to dip it into a small rain barrel that sat just outside the
shelter of the awning, the roofline of the tent angled to channel water into its maw.
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Xeras attempted to smile, but he was willing to bet that it came out more as a grimace.
And a rather touching inability to lie even in the smallest of ways.
“So what does bring you here?” Xeras asked, somewhat stiffly. “Even in your own right, you still
must have a purpose.”
The plainsman handed the ladle to Xeras. In taking it, he realized how his hand was shaking. His grip
on the angled handle was awkward and weak.
“I am Clayne. I came here to see if you are…useful to me, to us.”
“Well I can answer that for you,” Xeras replied. “More fully than you probably require. I was born
with a great deal of potential, to a high estate. But I have, since that moment, been squandering all my
advantage, and you see before you now an abject liability, in every way. But to those who I am loyal, I
make my best efforts available—poor as they may be. And for that reason, there is another place I need to
be right now and other things that I must be doing.”
Drinia looked up drowsily and yawned.
Indeed, Drin added. You also still possess the truly Tirrinian ability to deliver a pretentious
monologue when it really is not called for.
Xeras decided to let that one go. Drin had a tendency to be a little snippy first thing in the morning.
You’d think life as a house servant would have acclimatized him to early hours.
Xeras stooped to cautiously sip the water and it was, without a doubt, the best thing he had ever
drunk. It was cool and clean and fresh—it was the taste of clarity. He set the ladle down beside him and
endeavored, very carefully, to stand. The plainsman, Clayne, came over and, taking a decorous hold of his
arm, helped Xeras to rise to his feet.
“And what,” Xeras asked wearily, “are you are planning to do?”
“I am going to help you. Does it matter why?”
Whatever you are thinking of saying, don’t.
Xeras snorted at that. He stood unsteadily at the side of the curtain. Well, the hour had seemed early
to him, but the encampment was already busy, albeit in an eerily silent way. Several of the houses had
already been disassembled and stolid-looking ponies were being loaded with all kinds of items.
Clayne stood beside him. “If you are going back to Ballot’s Keep, this will be quite convenient for
you. That happens to be where the entire tribe is going.”
“Oh good,” Xeras said weakly.
There might be a little less time to make that plan than you thought.
Xeras felt events swiftly overtaking him, yet again. He had to be realistic. There was no way he could
get to the gate before the plainsmen. Without their aid, he would do well to get there at all.
Maybe it was time for that plan.
His mind was blank.
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“You are in no fit state to walk,” Clayne said with a voice that managed to be both kind and utterly
intransigent. “You will ride the pony.”
“I have never been fit for much of anything.” Xeras folded his hands. “But you might be surprised just
how much I have achieved in the arena of walking. I walked here all the way from Tirrin unaided, and if I
didn’t need a horse for that, I doubt I ever will.”
Somewhere off to the side he heard a laugh, it sounded like Tanta. Most of the plainsmen were
contriving not to listen. Only Yulia turned to them directly.
“Let him do as he pleases,” she said. “If he cannot keep up that is not our concern.”
At least one of her sons takes after her.
“Don’t you start.”
Clayne muttered, “You shouldn’t provoke her.”
“She shouldn’t provoke me.”
Oh, what are you going to do? Sulk her into contrition?
Not being entirely immune to reason, Xeras considered the pony. It was short…very short, and very
round. The animal’s shaggy coat was covered either in irregular dapples or festering spots of dirt and
mold—either option seemed plausible. Drinia had spent this time sitting on top of Xeras’s foot and
belching diminutive plumes of sulfurous smoke. She looked to have grown a little more, in length if not
any other dimensions. She was regarding the pony with bright and slightly worrying interest.
I don’t think she is ready to graduate from bunnies to livestock quite yet.
Xeras made a vague attempt at stopping her as she suddenly launched off his foot towards the beast.
He winced with preparatory embarrassment. However the pony didn’t even flinch as Drinia landed on a
length of over-hanging mane and crawled up to a vantage between its actually rather rabbit-like ears.
Xeras looked down and saw the spot where his boot and the ground had been was dried from Drinia’s
flames in a half-circle about the size of a man’s spread hand. A tuft of grass at the apex was actually
smoldering and flickering into flame. In the cold and damp it was not great risk, but Xeras still stamped out
the small embers with the sole of this foot. He remembered the blasted and scorched valley where Drinia’s
dragon-mother, Plegura, lived. Somehow he had never thought, all indications to the contrary, that Drinia
would grow up to be that kind of great mindless ravening beast.
Looking up, he saw one of the pony’s ears swivel in what should have been an anatomically
impossible manner, and Drinia peered inside.
“That’s where most individuals keep their brains, Drinia,” Xeras said. “Ones with heads larger than a
walnut and wits to keep in them.” He turned to Clayne. “Does no one in this part of the world make an
ordinary horse-sized horse? If I sat on that thing, my legs would probably still touch the ground on either
side. Or they would if not for the creature’s girth. Does it walk across the ground or roll?”
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You should be grateful, given your poor riding ability. Its limited height just means a smaller distance
to fall, and I doubt it can move very fast.
People around him were starting to move off, and Xeras needed to do the same or be left behind. He
had to keep up. He had to—if at all possible—get ahead and arrive at the town first to give warning.
Reluctantly he found himself feeling some faint connection to Clayne, the only one set on waiting behind
for him as he made up his mind. As if there was really a choice.
He reached out with his bandaged left hand before realizing it would be little help to him. A folded
blanket promised to serve as a makeshift saddle, so there was no stirrup. The main body of the tribe was
opening a gap as they pulled gradually away. Xeras looked at the portly pony, and suddenly it might as well
have been a mountain.
Well, you’ve climbed a few of those now. Make this one more.
The “mountain” gave him a quick curious look and a snort. It had pale, beady eyes more indicative of
the intellect of a curious bird than a portly equine. Drinia swung around on top of the pony’s head,
apparently quite enamored with her new friend-slash-transportation.
Xeras remembered the end he had brought to the last, and only other, horse he had ridden. The ill-
fated Lefty had long since passed through the digestive tract of a golden dragon. He resolved, in this case,
not to get too attached.
Good luck with that. You like animals, you just don’t like that you like them.
And, for the most part, they don’t like me.
The tribe appeared to consist of about three score people, not counting children, and the last of them
were navigating politely around Xeras, Clayne and the pony. One woman with a sword at her side hung
back.
Xeras reached over and tried to climb on board. Clayne put one strong hand under Xeras’s knee and
helped heft him aloft. The plainsman kept a firm hold on Xeras’s leg to stop him from sliding off the other
side.
“Grip with your knees,” Clayne advised patiently.
It was an instruction that really should have been self-evident, but apparently enough time has passed
since Xeras last rode a horse for him to forget what little he had learned in the process. Xeras placed his
good hand between what served as the pony’s shoulders, and tentatively squeezed in with his knees.
The pony took this as some kind of command, and it started to clomp forward with its
disproportionately large hooves. Xeras kept his balance on the rounded body of the beast, which
nevertheless harbored an uncomfortable, jutting spine. Clayne walked alongside, letting the beast lead the
way.
Probably wise. A dumb beast will get into less trouble than a clever man any day of the week.
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Looking cautiously around, Xeras saw they were now completely at the rear of the group, behind
some young girls and boys who were leading heavily laden ponies, and in one case coaxing along a small
group of black and white piebald goats. Of the entire group, he was the only one riding. Even old men and
women picked their own way along with the help of their family and friends. The only things loaded on
ponies were baggage, tent poles, foodstuffs and belongings of various sorts. His embarrassment growing,
Xeras fidgeted with his injured hand, gaining some perverse satisfaction from the pain it caused every time
he tried to flex or clench his fingers.
Given the flatness of the marsh, even the very slight elevation of being on the pony gave Xeras a
better view, with the exception of the back of the horse’s head and the back end of Drinia—complete with
twitching tail—upon it.
Crossing the marsh under a briefly clear sky was like being inside the wet mouth of a giant beast, the
mountains ringing around them like a distant row of teeth. He could not see the gate, but could make out
the tops of the peaks that towered over it and the profiles of the goat and orchid mountains between which
the secret passage ran. They were dusted now with snow, which was beginning to encroach upon the marsh
in glinting waves across the sky. Then the clouds descended and stamped out the horizon altogether.
Standing next to the gate and knowing the great structure was made with human hands (albeit aided
by dragon magic), it seemed almost unimaginably huge. But from this distance it was literally insignificant,
it had vanished entirely. And that was how Xeras felt too, with three groups of hardened fighting people
falling down like three hammers on the same anvil. Pity the people of Ballot’s Keep if they were depending
upon him for any aid. And yet, he had to try.
“You say you want to help me, Clayne?” Xeras asked.
Wait for it; here comes the foolish plan.
“I have said so,” the plainsman replied, a less-than-committed response.
“Is there some path we could take that would allow us to get ahead of this group? They must go at the
pace of the slowest, the livestock, the most burdened ponies…”
Clayne looked like he would like to ask more about Xeras’s plan, but surprisingly he did not. Instead
he let them fall farther behind. Only the girl goatherd noticed when they look a different path, farther to the
right, and broke away from the rest.
So now you are alone with a big, bad plainsman again. Based on our previous experience, I suggest
not telling him that you are trying to thwart his tribe’s plans.
My charming half-brother isn’t big, and Clayne really doesn’t seem that bad.
And we all know what a wonderful judge of character you are.
“And the fine quality of your advice,” Xeras muttered, earning himself a confused glance from
Clayne, an ear flick from the pony and an inquisitive chirp from Drinia. “Everyone’s a critic…”
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Intermittent sleet was beginning to fall again, moistening the folds of the roughly tanned skin clothing
he was wearing. Xeras realized ruefully that he had never properly thanked Yulia for that. The clothing was
lined with some kind of wretched fur that made his skin crawl with imagined lice, but he had to admit it
was much warmer than his usual thin and sodden garb. It even seemed to repel the water somewhat, so it
dripped off the rough-stitched seams rather than soaking in.
Fascinating. Now about those three armies?
I am getting to that.
As they clambered down a slight rocky hump, the pony started to trot, and Xeras grabbed for the
mane with his good hand as he started to slide to the side. Pain flared with each jounce. He knew he was
going to fall off; the only question was whether he was going to get thoroughly trampled in the process.
Clayne leapt to his side and managed to get one hand around Xeras’s waist, while keeping the other
on the startled pony’s reins. The pony tugged and tossed its head, the force of the movement transmitted
through Clayne’s body, and Clayne began to lose his footing on the mossy earth. But he still let Xeras
down slowly and let go of him so he could devote his full attention to calming the beast.
Xeras thrust back his good hand to balance himself but ended up sprawled ungracefully on the frigid
ground trying to right himself. He felt the prickly, giving surface of the moss. There was something small
and metallic pressing against his palm, something small, something warm. Settling back awkwardly onto
his elbows, he raised the object for inspection. It was a small, beaten-metal buckle attached to a scrap of
dark leather. The buckle was tepid from recent contact with human skin.
Xeras folded his fingers over it and looked around.
Clayne had the pony under control. He was looking down at the slashes of raw black dirt showing
where the gray-green moss had been disturbed. He pushed some of the dislodged sod back into place with
his toe but was obviously dissatisfied with the results.
“These marks will make us easier to find and track,” Clayne said morosely. “And this is not a good
place to be easily found. The lands around the gate are considered…desirable. Disaffected bachelors lurk in
these marshes.”
There is absolutely no reason not to tell him what you have found.
Which was true. But Xeras was long used to treating every little fact and finding as something to
hoard and hold, something to use to his own advantage. It was only with palpable effort that he raised the
tiny piece of metal with his fingertip and thumb. But breaking through his reserve to speak to Clayne was
easier than he expected.
“It may be a little too late for that,” he said.
Clayne’s sanguine manner dropped away and he snatched the tiny item from Xeras’s hand.
“Where did you find this?” he demanded, with a radical change in his demeanor.
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Xeras responded to his sudden vehemence by falling reflectively back into sarcastic obfuscation.
“Well what with all the wandering around I have been doing it is hard to…”
Xeras!
“It was right here.” Xeras pointed to the ground. “And still warm.”
Clayne glanced around. His face illuminated with alert concern, making him considerably more
handsome…
Xeras.
“You need to go and warn them,” Xeras said. “I would only slow you down. Go ahead.”
“You will wait here?”
“I’m not promising anything. But you go ahead.”
“I said I would take care of you,” Clayne said.
“All bets are off when your loved ones are in danger.”
Clayne looked down at him, his mood visibly settling again. Xeras tried to appear as self-sufficient
and stalwart as he could in a recumbent position.
The plainsman turned the tiny buckle in his finger. “There are no large tribes nearby. This is most
likely from a bachelor group, hoping to seize a woman for a wife. They are approaching the tribe from the
rear. I can do no good following behind them. My best chance is to go around this way to the front and alert
Yulia and the other fighters to turn and face them.”
“You really are just wasting time, explaining it to me,” Xeras observed.
Charming.
“I am explaining,” Clayne enunciated with exaggerated care, “why you should go on to the gate, or
follow behind the way I go, but do not go back the way we came. That will most likely lead you to the
bachelor group who are probably approaching the tribe from the rear. They will be hardened, aggressive
young men with very little to lose. Not to mention that, with your hair like that, you could be mistaken for a
woman.”
“I hear you,” Xeras said rather tersely. “Now get going.”
Clayne sighed. He thrust the pony’s reins into Xeras’s hand and set off at a tangent from the path.
“Good luck,” Xeras said, long after Clayne could possibly hear him.
Xeras got gingerly to his feet. The fat pony was looking at him, ears flattened and showing a few
yellowed teeth. Even Drinia seemed nervous and she dropped off the beast’s head and onto the ground. But
she didn’t exactly run to Xeras’s side—just scuttled off as if she was a neutral third party to any potential
dispute.
“Do horses bite?” Xeras asked.
They have teeth. One assumes they can bite if they want to.
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Xeras took a step back. It was taking quite a lot of effort to keep his knees locked and his chin raised.
Getting bitten by the shaggy mountain was more than he wanted to deal with right now. Fortunately it
seemed to have had a change of priorities. The pony charged past where he had been standing and trotted
back down the path. It ripped the reins out of his hands and was soon out of sight.
Why didn’t you hold on?
“I only have one good hand left,” Xeras snapped. “So I want to keep all its fingers attached.”
Xeras turned to look the way Clayne had gone, and then the way the pony had gone. He had the
strength to walk a few minutes, maybe an hour. That would not get him to the gate. That probably wouldn’t
get him back to the tribe as it continued to move. It might not even get him to the pony unless it had
stopped at the first nice leafy branch and was now in a more obliging mood. But the last of those options
was at least in the realm of possibility.
Xeras started to retrace their steps.
“Drinia, I really need you to stick with me right now,” Xeras said.
Oddly enough Drinia reappeared promptly from amongst the gray-brown ferns and mosses, and kept
pace with him. Either he was making some progress civilizing the little monster, or he was hallucinating.
Do you remember, Drin interjected patiently, the part where the plainsman who doesn’t seem so bad
said that the one thing you should not do is retrace your steps?
“There is nothing wrong with my memory, Drin.”
Follow Clayne then, maybe you are right and he isn’t all that bad.
“Clayne has other priorities. I can’t depend on him to come back and look after us.”
You think you can depend on that lump of misbred horseflesh?
No. But it has nothing better to do right now. Besides, I am sure that pony is perfectly bred for its
environment. It has a better chance out here than me.
It’s less obliging than Clayne, as I recall…
“Shhh.” Xeras froze, one finger raised to quiet the voice that only he could hear.
He guessed they had come back perhaps half the way from where they had left the tribe. Just ahead,
between two thick clumps of bramble and fern, was the ample, hairy ass of the pony. It wasn’t really the
end he was trying to get hold of, but at least from this angle the damned thing wouldn’t see him approach.
So long as he didn’t make too much noise…
Xeras crept forward. He could see the frayed end of the lead rope lying right between the pony’s rear
hooves. Xeras crawled slowly until he was no more than a few steps away, a little too far to grab. But
getting any closer brought into play some possibility that ranged from undignified to fatal.
And if you do grab the end of the rope, it is still positioned right under the animal. You might do
better to try and grab it from the side. Horses can bite, but they are outright experts at kicking.
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Xeras held his breath as he executed a tripod crawl through the grass. Finally he looked up from the
rope, almost close enough to reach, and into the eyes of the pony which had turned its head to watch him
with a patronizing lack of surprise. There was something in the creature’s eye that told him it would not be
wise to reach for the rein.
The hushed stillness was broken by a shrill cry. The pony’s head shot up, ears flicked forward. Then it
looked back at him with one ear twisted towards him and the other jutted forward quizzically.
“I don’t know what it is. This is your stomping ground,” Xeras replied.
The cry rang out again, stifled this time. Given that the pony wasn’t falling for his masterful stalking,
Xeras stood up, tilting his head to try to work out what direction it was coming from.
Xeras, maybe you don’t want to draw…
There was a crashing, rushing sound close by and a large man burst from the cover growing over a
creek bed. He heaved himself up onto the low rocky mound with dirty water streaming down his legs.
There were other sounds here and there, like other men moving in roughly the same direction. Drinia
squeaked and fled the strange man, lofting herself at Xeras’s shoulder. He caught her awkwardly in his
hands.
The man paused a moment, looking at Xeras with bemusement. At the same time, Xeras realized the
bundle he was carrying under his arm was a child. The man’s hand was clasped over the girl’s mouth. He
met the terrified eyes of the goatherd girl. That man had no business at all having that girl.
Well, at least this was going to be a less pointless way to get killed.
Xeras was already moving as he thought that. He threw Drinia away from him, to the side and
hopefully out of harm’s way. His body seemed to have some innate wisdom. It knew not to try grabbing the
girl from the huge hairy plainsman. Even if he had any chance of winning, the girl would not enjoy being in
the middle of a tug-of-war. He went for the man’s eyes with his good hand, for the plainsman’s bullish
neck with his other arm. He didn’t really hit either target but got their bodies well enough tangled up that
they hit the ground with an anticlimactic sodden splat. Except the plainsman whose head hit a projecting
rock with a slightly less wet clunk.
Unfortunately it didn’t seem to slow the plainsman down much. Xeras ended up on the bottom. His
mind flashed up an entirely inappropriate image of Phinia on the sofa back at the manse. That was the
Tirrinian mind, always thinking, always thinking—always thinking about the wrong cursed thing at the
worst possible moment.
The plainsman had one hand around Xeras’s throat, the other tangled somewhere between them.
Xeras was calmly aware that he had no chance whatsoever of getting this brute-of-a-man’s fingers off his
throat. He felt the child caught between their bodies and heaved with all the leverage his long legs could
give. He tried to roll the big man off her, and felt some relief as she wiggled away. Xeras hoped she would
make good her escape.
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Don’t give up. Fight! Fight!
But he could feel the trained, honed strength of the man bearing down on him with overwhelming
strength. It hardly seemed worth the effort.
Fight!
The plainsman reared back and started to stand. He kept one hand bunched on the front of Xeras’s
clothes, the tough hide holding Xeras as firmly as leather straps. The plainsman reached back with his other
hand, pulling out a tarnished, serrated dagger. He was almost on his feet. The bastard was smiling a really
wide, yellow-toothed, smug, smarmy smile, a smile of easy and ultimate triumph. The blade started to arc
up towards Xeras’s stomach with nasty inevitability. Time seemed to slow, so slow, and yet Xeras could
not move at all.
That was when the pony bit the plainsman’s ear off.
He roared and dropped the dagger. In a momentary skill born of pure instinctive self-preservation,
Xeras actually caught the dagger as it bounced back up, ringing off the stony ground. He fumbled to get a
grip on the hilt and slashed at the plainsman’s back, missed entirely and sliced across the side of his neck.
Blood jetted out, dark against the washed-out sky. The man fell with a hoarse gasp.
The body lay, quite persistently still, on the ground. The pony slammed down her front hooves,
jumping into the air to pound down in his body with all of its strength. After doing this a few times she
backed off.
Xeras stood on one side of the body, the pony stood on the other, casually chewing on part of a human
ear and a flap of skin.
“Way to go,” Xeras said to it. “Disgusting, but still, way to go.”
I told you they bite…and kick. I distinctly remember mentioning the kicking.
“Maybe you should haunt the runt horse. Apparently it knows how to fight.”
The pony leaned down and nosed the plainsman, then bit him again on the rear end. The lack of any
response made it pretty certain the man was dead. That and the amount of blood painting their surroundings
and the front of Xeras’s clothes, already seeping, spreading and fading in the sodden conditions.
What about the kid? Not to mention your kid, Drinia.
Oh, right.
But Xeras continued to look at the pony. It had one ear up and one ear down, which seemed like a bit
of a split vote. Did it understand the difference between a nasty plainsman abductor and friendly Tirrinian
wayfarer…?
Who is trying to prevent his tribe from moving to the warm arable grassy lowlands.
So not helping.
“Hey, kid,” Xeras said without looking away from the warrior pony.
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There was a sound of shuffling, but no reply. So either that kid had not run away but was not in a
hurry to come back, or the plainsman’s friends were arriving to see what had happened to him.
“Hey, girl. You know about animals, right?”
“Goats,” the girl specified, rather laconically for one so young.
“Well, a pony is just like a big goat, right?”
The girl giggled. “Ponies are nothing at all like goats.”
“There you go then. You clearly know a lot more about animals than me. Why don’t you come over
here and help me with our fluffy friend. So we can get you back to your folks.”
The girl came up to his side. Drinia seemed to have transferred herself from the pony to the girl and
was perched on her head like a particularly grotesque hat. The girl wasn’t much higher than his waist,
looking to be about seven or eight years old. The pony snorted, touching its muzzle briefly to Drinia and to
the girl’s cheek, leaving a few beads of bloodied saliva on her skin. The girl reached up and caught the end
of the dragging rein deftly in one hand.
“Ponies aren’t fluffy,” she said. “They are hairy. They have hair.”
“My mistake.” Xeras wondered idly what on earth the man wanted with a small child like her.
With the girl in charge of the hairy menace, Xeras felt safe enough to look around. Everything was
still, other than the ever-present swoosh of wind and leaf under the gushing strands of wind and freezing
rain. There was no sign of anyone else.
Presumably the locals are quite good at hiding.
Still not helping.
The girl tugged on the edge of the shapeless shirt/tunic/jumper Xeras was wearing. “I’m Kirri and this
is Freckles. She belongs to Yulia.”
“Yes, well,” Xeras replied awkwardly, not used to talking to children. “How remiss of me not to
ensure we were properly introduced. Perhaps we should escort Freckles back to your folks. They must be
missing him by now.”
Kirri giggled. “Freckles is a girl. Can’t you see that? She’s going to have a baby soon.”
“Ah, well I said I didn’t know much about animals.” Xeras felt vaguely guilty for just assuming the
creature was fat, let alone for giving her an extra burden while she was pregnant.
Kirri started to lead the pony, continuing to retrace their steps. “I hope the goats are all right.”
Before you say anything, Xeras thought to Drin, I am going to assume she and the ferocious she-horse
know what they are doing.
I didn’t say a word.
They were met about halfway back, in Xeras’s very approximate estimation, by a party of armed
plainswomen led by Yulia herself. Kirri dropped the lead rope and ran up to Yulia. Drinia hissed and
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jumped clear before Yulia caught Kirri up in a brief hug. The honorable Freckles stopped as soon as the
rein was dropped and waited patiently.
She wasn’t as obliging for me.
You weren’t being terribly polite to her either. Relationships tend to be reciprocal in nature. In fact
even with nature.
This philosophizing was cut short by Yulia’s accusing gaze. She dropped the child to the ground and,
holding her hand, approached Xeras. There were four other women with her. Two of them kept jogging
down the path and the other two flanked their leader. Kirri seemed to have recovered rather quickly from
her ordeal; she all but skipped by Yulia’s side.
“The baby dragon rode on my head,” she said. “He’s funny.”
“The dragon is a girl,” Xeras corrected mildly, glad to actually have some area where his knowledge
outstripped that of a half-civilized child. Drinia planted herself on Xeras’s foot, although given how quickly
she was growing she didn’t really fit anymore and kept sliding off.
“That funny man killed the man who tried to take me,” Kirri said, blithely taking him up as the subject
of her prattling. “The funny man never told me his name.”
“How rude of me,” Xeras replied.
Quite.
“The funny man’s name is Xeras,” Yulia said tersely.
“That’s a funny name,” Kirri replied.
“That is why it suits me.”
Another look from Yulia suggested his contributions to the conversation were not appreciated. But the
younger woman to her left put her hand up to cover a smile.
Yulia stooped somewhat to address Kirri. “How did Xeras kill the bad man who took you?”
“He used a knife.”
“But he doesn’t have a knife.”
“He took it from the bad man first.”
“Ah.” Yulia seemed rather skeptical.
How perceptive of her.
“Oh, don’t you start,” Xeras muttered.
“Don’t start what?” Yulia asked.
Xeras was rescued from making any reply by the return of the other two women, dragging between
them the remains of Freckles’ latest victim.
Latest?
Xeras remembered to only think his reply this time. She seemed a little too adept to be a novice.
“He looks like he was beaten to death with a club, not stabbed,” Yulia observed.
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“I guess I just don’t know my own strength.” Xeras chose not to look at the gruesome remains. “Of
course the blood on Freckles’ hooves is entirely coincidental.”
That time even Yulia smiled, albeit only a faint flicker of that expression.
“Xeras stabbed him, and then Freckles bit him and jumped on him. She was real mad.”
“So she should be,” Yulia replied. “You go with Nalia and check on your goats. Your brother is
looking after them for you.”
Xeras watched her go, blinking to keep his vision focused. Now that he was relatively safe again, the
last nervous energy was draining out of his body.
“Why did he take a little girl?” he asked Yulia.
“When it comes to females, they are not very discriminating,” Yulia replied.
“Oh.” The notion of what might have happened to little Kirri literally made Xeras shiver. He
supposed he was naïve not to have thought of it. “They didn’t get anyone else, did they?”
One of the other women replied, the younger one. “No, we repelled them,” she said with obvious
pride.
Xeras turned to see them systematically stripping the dead man of pretty much everything on him,
even his clothes. The body was rolled unceremoniously onto the ground. Now facedown the slash across
the side of the neck gaped open. Xeras grimaced; he knew he shouldn’t have looked.
“I suppose,” Yulia said grudgingly, “that we should talk.”
Yulia stood on a small outcropping of black, rounded stone—like the broad shoulder of a giant sucked
into this incessant bog. Some of her people, mostly women and a few men, were scouting the area to make
sure it was safe to continue. The others were grouped more tightly together, even their livestock gathered in
and penned with loose stockades. Around the edge of the main group, he could see lightly laden women
with weapons at their sides or in their hands. Xeras supposed they had been there all along, but he had not
paid much attention to them.
“Do you think these people should have to live like this?” Yulia asked.
From even that slight elevation, the desolate landscape spread for miles. But the oppressive storm
clouds were rising and slivers of turquoise sky broke through and expanded.
“Some might choose to,” Xeras ventured.
“Some certainly would not. Such as any mother who wants to raise her children without taking the
risk that they might starve over the winter or be snatched by some mad man when just a few feet from your
side.”
“Or any father…”
Yulia just snorted.
So did Drin, in disconcerting unison. What is with you defending fathers all of a sudden?
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I am a father now, remember?
Not that he was sure where Drinia was. Once the people had seen Kirri playing with Drinia, they
relaxed around the little dragon. And perhaps in a place that was either raining or flooding, she was about
as close to harmless as she was likely to get. In any case, she was running loose again.
Yulia seemed to take his distraction as an affront. “And those who would choose something else.
Should they be imprisoned here? Should their entire lives be encompassed by an accident of birth?”
“That would be in the nature of a rhetorical question,” Xeras observed.
“Oh, and why is that?”
“It is not something within my power to change.”
Yulia looked at him very sharply. It was rather like being eyed by a five-foot-tall hunting raptor.
You lie poorly, darkling.
“It is most likely something not within my power to change,” Xeras amended.
“Oh dear,” Yulia said smoothly. “You forgot to equivocate and you are a terrible liar. No wonder you
had to leave Tirrin. It is amazing they did not eat you alive, like a wolf with a crippled cub.”
“I thought they had killed my mother, I knew they had killed my lover. That is why I left Tirrin. And
yet it seems everyone is willing to kill, to get what they want for them and theirs.”
“This is not the same!” Yulia drew herself up tall. She had an innate air of command that pushed
against Xeras almost palpably. His own reflexive obstinacy made him push back.
“You lie well,” he said. “Perhaps the trick is to believe your own lies.”
Well, you are certainly ingratiating yourself with Mommy now.
“I am giving you a consideration,” Yulia said with exaggerated calm. “Don’t make me change my
mind. One day. When we get to the town you will have one day.”
One day was never going to be enough.
“There are Tirrinians in Ballot’s Keep,” Xeras blurted. He felt a pain again. A deep pain and the taste
of spoiled fruit upon his tongue. But Drin seemed oblivious to this visceral reaction.
Congratulations, darkling, he said. You actually told someone something. This is quite the positive
development.
Then why does it hurt so much? Xeras pressed a hand to his gut, leaning forward and breathing
through his mouth to ease the pain.
Yulia looked to him with a frown, but no great concern. “Yes, Kassius. I know all about him. Sedge
has been keeping a very close eye on him for me.”
You know she has been dealing with Kassius already. Tell her more; get her to believe you.
Xeras took a moment or two to separate the two strands of speech in his mind before replying. It
seemed to him that they had been mistaken in thinking Kassius and Yulia were in league.
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“Kassius, and two score of soldiers,” he said. “All with ability in the magical arts. They arrived the
same night I released your ungrateful offspring from jail. You are welcome by the way.”
The pain stabbed him again with each word. There was definitely some nasty, amateurish magic at
work here. He had suspected that some kind of spell was making him keep Tirrin’s secrets. Now either it
was weakening or he was getting stronger—because he was able to push through it.
Yulia watched him, her head tilted skeptically to one side. She did not ask what pained him. She still
did not seem to care. “You do not take after your father. He was very charming.”
Say something nice, darkling. Your mother has acknowledged you for the first time.
With an insult.
Nevertheless.
Yulia continued, “Perhaps it is just as well. In the end he chose to protect his comfort and position,
over me. Over our marriage or even my life.” Her voice was quiet now, without any real emphasis or
emotion.
Xeras could only consider that he was unlikely to ever make such a callow decision, if only because
he held no real position and had precious little comfort. He could not look at Yulia; he felt the lines of pain
loosen as he changed the subject. “I had assumed Harus helped you to escape, that he saved you life.”
“No. Anything I did, I did by myself. I came all this way alone, on foot, before I found people who
would accept me. As I am. On my own merits.”
So you take after her. Literally.
“On your own merits…” Xeras mused. It felt, somehow, like that should be the core of the matter.
I sense yet another foolish plan coming on.
“By my calculations, you might be owed something,” Yulia conceded. “You interceded for Kirri, you
released Sedge…”
“Who tried to kill me.”
“…but you would most certainly have died in the marshes if Nalia and I had not discovered you.”
“And had her spawn knock me out cold with a rock even though I was helplessly trapped.”
Yulia hissed with irritation. “Get out of my sight before I change my mind. We will camp near the
gate. You will have that day to try and secure some other resolution, such as the town’s surrender. But I am
leading my people out of this wasteland regardless of what you do.”
She gave a smile. A sort of “and do you think you could stop me?” smile.
I am pretty sure you could.
I am equally sure I really don’t want to try, if I don’t have to. And that I couldn’t if I did.
His mother walked away from him. Xeras supposed he should have been used to that by now.
Still, with the self-pity?
Still with the nagging?
Chapter Ten
The sheer, fitted stone wall to the side of the gate towered overhead. The arched void at its center was
filled by what looked like rock that had melted and frozen at the same time, into a jagged downward flow.
The stone dragon fooled Xeras’s eyes every time, his form indistinguishable within the jumbled mass of
rock, until he moved. But Xeras did not want him to move right now. That was one thing that could make
the situation even more fraught.
Drinia had attached herself to Xeras again. She was beginning to develop a talent for knowing when
he was going somewhere and turning up to tag along. It was certainly more convenient than having to go
searching for her, but how did she know…?
Xeras approached the stone garden with suppressed nervousness. Fortunately Jarvice was the stolid
sort, he could usually be depended upon not to do very much of anything, at least not on impulse. The
dragon was undemonstrative with information too, espousing the view that the human parents of dragons
usually did better if they figured things out for themselves. Perhaps he had sensed Xeras’s singular talent
for ignorance.
Or your singular tenacity in the face of adversity.
Now Xeras knew he was truly in trouble. Drin was being nice to him.
Xeras placed his hand tentatively on the rock. Somehow he almost expected it to be warm, or pliable.
But it was cold, hard, grimy rock. There was even a small patch of reddish moss growing upon it and a few
flecks of eggshell-colored lichen.
The question was, how to communicate with Jarvice, whose head was somewhere way up there just
beneath the passageway that passed right over the top of the gate.
Then he felt a slight tingle, like the feeling of holding a spear thrust between the stones on the bed of a
fast-flowing river. A sonorous voice echoed over his mind.
“Kassius is just now ascending the stairs.”
Just what he needed, another voice in his head.
“Did you wish to converse with me, or did you not?”
Xeras could hear the phantom sound of Drin’s laughter in the background.
“Um, Jarvice?” Xeras ventured. “If Kassius has the duke slung over the edge do you think that you
could catch him? Like you caught me when I fell off your back on that mountaintop?”
“All things are possible. But if it is my will, I can move with the speed of lightning.”
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“And, um, do you think you might be able to do so without Kassius or his men noticing what has
happened?”
“For a man who is feeding our progeny on raw marsh vermin, I think you are being rather
demanding.”
“For a dragon who was involved in my involuntary impregnation, I think you are being rather snippy
about being asked to move one of your limbs a few feet into the air.”
Xeras, darkling. Don’t argue with the nice dragon. Especially when you are depending on him to save
your lover’s life…and also not to squash you flat with his big stone foot.
Drinia trilled an impatient inquiry. Xeras supposed that even if she could hear any of this, it was
unlikely that she could understand it. Despite her recent gains in apparent intellect, or at least obligingness,
she was only happy so long as there was motion, but quickly frustrated by any kind of pause.
“You need to learn some patience, child,” Xeras said.
Says the man who wandered off in the wilderness simply for the lack of any other course of action.
This time it was Jarvice’s amusement that could be heard in the background. Great, it had not taken
long for the two voices in his head to start ganging up on him.
“Jarvice, please.”
“Step closer into the shadow,” Javice said. “I shall ensure they cannot see you with their physical or
magical sense. You also should be more patient with Drinia. You have been slow in your own development,
after all. You are an infant in magic and it limits your ability to hide her from enemies and threats… Almost
as much as your outlook does.”
“I am aware of my failings and reminded of them often. That is why I depend on others to help my
friends.”
“Am I not you friend?” This was asked not with emotion but a tone of nothing more than mild
interest.
“You have done a lot for me, Jarvice. But I think we both know that it was in the service of care for
Drinia.”
“Do parents never have feelings for each other also?”
And somehow it felt like there was genuine naivety beneath these questions. “Jarvice, I really cannot
be having this discussion now, and I don’t greatly relish having it ever.”
Jarvice sighed. The rock face shivered, and small pebbles and clots of dirt and mold tumbled down.
Xeras’s instinct was to leap away, but Kassius and his people might already be at the top of the bridge, so
he did not dare step out where they might see him. The cliff caved in to create a small hollow, presumably
Jarvice’s idea of “stepping closer into the shadow”. The accommodations were not exactly ample. And
Xeras tried not to think about what part of Jarvice’s body might be involved.
Too late.
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Xeras took a step backwards to try to determine whether he would be a fool to comply, or a fool not
to. He barely avoided standing on Drinia. She had quickly developed her hunting prowess and currently
had a recently deceased mouse clamped in her diminutive jaws.
In the moment that he was looking down at Drinia, he felt rather than saw something stooping down
onto him from above. He felt his body jerk, a flash of gray, engulfed by darkness and…comprehension
escaped him but his whole body seemed to be tightly encased, his arms forced down by his side and barely
enough room left to breath, let alone struggle. He leapt smoothly through absolute panic to a kind of frozen
and detached helpless calm.
Jarvice did indeed move like lightning when he wanted to. And he had swallowed Xeras.
“It is time,” Jarvice stated unapologetically.
“Time to be eaten by a dragon? Because to be honest I don’t think any time is the right time to be
eaten by a dragon.”
Xeras groped for his unreliable magic, but dragon magic did not seem to lend itself to being used
against dragons. Xeras closed his eyes and decided, with significant effort, to remain calm. The ways of
dragons were not easy to understand, but Jarvice had gone to rather too much trouble over Xeras to make a
snack of him.
Wow, Drin remarked. That is a dizzying leap from misanthropy to utter faith, under the circumstances.
What exactly do you expect me to do? Mis-dragonry may well be justified, but it is unlikely to be
productive.
“You could try directing your comments to the dragon in question,” Jarvice interjected.
So you’re not eating me, right?
“Of course I am eating you; it won’t do you any harm. It is part of the process. Kassius and Carly are
on the bridge now,” Jarvice added. “Everything is exactly as you saw it. Everything will proceed as it
should.”
And Xeras could feel the dragon, an encompassing presence squeezing in around him…and through
him—both a physical and mystical ubiquity. Jarvice was not just talking to his mind but within it like a
huge fish moving in murky waters. And he could feel Drinia too, she was in there with him.
Xeras’s eyes sprung open, but it was still pitch-black. Instantly panicked again, Xeras thrust out his
hands but his palms met unyielding stone. Bracing feet and back, he found himself fully encased in a
roughly circular chamber of unfinished stone. Dozens of hideous thoughts bubbled in his mind, death by
suffocation, crushing, digestion, Carly, Drinia… Drinia. She was suddenly shrieking with a sound like a
siren that was deafening in the tiny space, and clambering up over his shoulder and onto his head as if it
was somehow possible to climb out of their predicament. Xeras fumbled for her, banging his head hard on
the stone, and felt the small, cold body of Drinia’s erstwhile prey fall under his tunic and down his back.
“She is panicking because you are panicking,” Jarvice said.
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“I am panicking because I have been swallowed by a dragon! I may not be a paragon of courage but I
think this would be a little worrying for anyone!” Xeras retorted, his fear transforming into peevish anger
as he spoke.
Isn’t that what I was just saying? said Drin.
“This is as it is meant to be,” Jarvice added.
“And Carly?”
We have him, Xeras. See?
And with another layer of disorientation, Xeras felt Drin’s presence settle over him, like a veil, and
the presence of Jarvice was gently but inexorably expelled, and reversed. Xeras’s awareness spread
outward like a body of mist. He was Jarvice, he was holding Carly, clasped and concealed against his chest,
curled within a huge stone paw as securely as a carved stone jar.
Just when I thought my life could not possibly get any stranger.
But then he felt his awareness pushed back out again and restrained at the limits of the small black
void in which he and Drinia were effectively imprisoned.
And me too, it seems, Drin added.
That goes without saying.
That’s all very well for you. But the one advantage of being dead is that I could, for once, go with
saying. Perhaps I feel I have been kept a secret long enough.
You do pick your moments, Drin.
Xeras felt the panic building in him, confinement like the grave, and Carly so close, quite literally, at
hand. And the space he was in seemed to be gradually shrinking, or was that just some trick of his mind?
Drinia became suddenly quiet. Xeras had cut his forehead on the uneven stone; a slight trickle of blood ran
down to his eyebrow. His mind focused in on one thing—he had to get out.
Jarvice, what the hell do you mean, this is as it was meant to be. I am really not feeling the natural
order of things right now.
“The dragon is born from the man, the man from the dragon.”
Well, can we cut his gestation a bit short? Now really is not a good time. There are two warring
factions ready to trample over each other.
“It begins when it is ready to begin. And it takes as long as it takes.”
As long as it takes to do what?
“To be born.”
So that’s how it is. Time to be born. Drinia came out a good deal earlier than was probably intended;
he would just have to do the same. Xeras felt around with his fingers for any gap or give in the stone. It was
not smooth but a collection of shallow angles like paper that has been crumpled up and then partially
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smoothed out again. It seemed to move, very slowly, under his fingertips but it made no concessions to his
pushing and prying. Xeras channeled every piece of fear and anger into his will to get out.
Being born once was bad enough, but at least he’d had the good fortune to be less-than-sentient when
it occurred. Xeras felt a tightness in his chest, but he could not tell if it was suffocation or just fear.
Think, Xeras. It is one the one thing you have always been good at. At least the activity of it, if not the
intended results.
Under the circumstances Xeras tried to take the advice rather than argue about the grace, or lack
thereof, with which it was proffered. If force would not suffice, which was no great surprise given the size
and consistency of the stone dragon, the means would have to be magic. If this was some part of their
bizarre process, perhaps magic would answer after all. He thrust his will inside searching for that dragon
magic that was meant to be within him. He had to get out, not only for himself, but for Drinia. They both
needed a home, they needed Carly, they needed the town of Ballot’s Keep.
He held Drinia in his mind and also rested one hand over her back where she clung nervously to his
side. He remembered the feeling of Jarvice around him as he had been shown Carly was safe. And then he
thought of Drin.
We are in this together, Drin. And if it has anything to do with me, we always will be. If there is
anything you can do here, I hope you will.
Always, darkling.
And with that he let all of the tension out of his body, curling back to rest on the “ground” with his
knees pulled up uncomfortably and his head falling forward. He pulled Drinia around to the front, protected
as much as was possible by his own body. And he pushed out with his will, feeling Drin’s misty essence
blend with his own, and also the pale green-gold sprout of dragon power, but coming not from Jarvice or
from some greater intangible power—it came from Drinia.
Progress was slow, but finally he was certain it was indeed being made. He felt the lacunae in the
rocky body tightening around him, the air growing warm, wet and stale, but his will was spreading again to
invade Jarvice. He felt a moment of doubt, he had not liked Jarvice invading his own mind… But Jarvice
had taken something of a liberty and now was not the time to be overly courteous in return.
Jarvice’s body was still. The pattern repeated itself like the skin of a plant bulb. Drinia within Xeras,
Xeras within Drin, Carly clutched tight by the grip of the stone dragon. Xeras pushed himself towards the
surface like a growing tip pushing up towards the sun.
He opened his eyes, not to darkness but to a gray and sparkling reality. He opened Jarvice’s eyes. He
felt a moment of complete confusion, trying to hold on to any sense of reality. He was, and was not,
Jarvice—a part and not part of all of them. This, he was pretty sure, was not how it was meant to be. He
focused on being Jarvice, the one in control of all of their fates for the immediate moment.
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The dragon’s senses were surprisingly muted. There was almost no color, but lights and darks were
painfully sharp. Things that were close by, within fifty feet or so, were clear in the tiniest detail down to
specks of dust and tiny strands of moss or floating pollen. But anything beyond that quickly coalesced into
a blur. And Jarvice’s sense of magic was as clear and comprehensive as any other sense. Kassius was still
up on the bridge, as were his men. Each of them a flare of magical power of different hues, shades and
intensity—but that intensity rather less than one might expect from the best mages Tirrin could muster.
Either Tirrin’s greatness had faded more than Xeras had known, or Kassius was overstating the resources
placed under his control…
Kassius was not happy. It showed in the jagged flickering of his powers. Xeras sensed him scrying
outwards in a flash. He used his magic like he wanted to hurt the world, not just understand it. There were
less than forty of them in all. Distinguished by their flaring, sharp hardness from the more warmed and
meandering presences of the townsfolk, many with their own gently growing powers. Xeras felt his own
prescience spirit overhead, in Kassius’s power. He felt the lines of power and control sewing everyone
together, so many of the stitches full tight, twisted and tearing the fabric of the communities entangled
within them.
And before him the plainsfolk, Yulia’s family, was scattered, some few of them had clambered to
overlook the town. But most, three or four score, were grouped together just to one side of the gate. In
terms of magic, they would be roughly equally matched. Tanta’s ruse had worked if Kassius felt he had any
advantage in the realm of the high arts. The plainsmen were less powerful as individuals, but as an
unfocussed force, their powers connected in a seamless web that glowed with the power of their collective,
unanimous will. And at the center of it was Yulia, still marked by the scintillating shades of Tirrin, a hard
jewel embellishing a woven purse.
But what none of them seemed to know about was a force approaching from the east, moving through
the land and subtly distorting its nature. A party of men-at-arms from Thurst coming, no doubt, for their
princess, Phinia. He tasted their intent, dimly. Not an invading army—but a father reclaiming his daughter
who had so presumptuously eloped.
And it would all meet…collide here, by dusk. Come together like hammers upon an anvil and so
many lives at the nexus of the collision. For just as Yulia was the center of her people, Xeras felt the grim
sensation of being at the center of all the troubles converging on this town. Not that he had done it
deliberately—but responsibility is not always a matter of choice.
You can choose to run away from it, Drin said.
“Or,” Jarvice unexpectedly added, “you can choose to face it.”
It was something of a relief to know Jarvice was still in there, not greatly harmed, within the
confusion of identities that he, they, everyone had become.
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If in doubt, Xeras considered, the best thing to do was probably the very last thing Kassius would
want him to do. And he better do it fast while he still had some kind of control.
Tentatively at first, he shifted in place, pulling in his flared wings and feeling pliability returned to his
form. He separated from the surrounding stone and felt the foreign, awkward proportions of his lumbering,
stocky dragon body.
“This from a man who looks like a scarecrow somebody forgot to dress properly,” Jarvice said. “You
quite ruined the clothing I took such trouble to provide for you.”
Xeras brushed aside that point. He thought pointedly to Jarvice: You don’t seem very disturbed by
events. Is this what is meant to happen?
“Oh, certainly not. But having lived as long as I have, very few things are able to truly interest me.
This is interesting, almost surprising in fact. And I doubt a creature such as you could do a body such as
mine any great harm.”
You underestimate him, Drin commented dryly.
Well thank you, Drin. Always there with a constructive suggestion.
“So what is it, exactly, that you plan to do?” Jarvice asked.
I plan to make Kassius nervous. Even if it doesn’t help the situation very much, it will amuse me. And
in general, that which crosses Kassius is good for everyone else. Xeras lifted his front paw-slash-hand and
gingerly inspected Carly. He looked disheveled and more than a little nervous, but otherwise unharmed.
But first, Xeras added, there is a little side trip I need to make. To sway Yulia’s mind would require
someone with unmistakable sincerity, and a way with words. That was clearly never going to be me. He
needed Carly to speak to Yulia, and sooner rather than later.
You don’t say.
“Remember to breathe.”
“I…you, don’t need to breathe,” Xeras said.
“I don’t, you do. It is easy to forget because it is only necessary when there is one inside.”
I thought nothing could trump giving birth to a dragon, but now you seem to be pregnant with
yourself. The things you do, Xeras. The things you do.
“It is quite normal for a dragon male to carry young.”
Xeras, is not a dragon.
“I beg to differ. Xeras has been part dragon since the night he lay with Plegura. And there is no
mistaking that he is entirely dragon in the current moment.”
“Look, guys, having two voices in my head is bad enough. But perhaps you could do me the courtesy
of directing you comments to me, not to each other.”
“Currently we are all, technically, in my mind and you are the guests.”
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With a sigh Xeras wrangled his foursquare dragon body and made his way awkwardly back towards
the town in a more stable three-footed gait while keeping Carly safely in hand. He lumbered towards the
gaping archway where a few men could be seen peering tentatively, and a few more looking down from the
top of the bridge. One of those at the top was Kassius.
Xeras stopped in front of the gate; he shifted his weight back onto his rear legs.
“Use your tail for balance,” Jarvice advised.
Not something you hear every day.
But it did help. He raised his head to the level of the top of the gate, and tried not to look down for
fear of being struck with a very unfortunate attack of vertigo.
Kassius was still there, standing right next to the balustrade with his feet planted firmly and his hands
on his hip.
“Dragon!” the Tirrinian commanded. “Heed me, who will soon be your master!”
Xeras tried to arch one eyebrow, but he seemed to be lacking the requisite eyebrow, so instead he just
looked across at Kassius and sighed. Kassius sure didn’t understand how things worked with dragons.
“I. Am. Heeding.” He found it strangely hard to speak. Maybe it was the size of his body, maybe the
consistency. But he was satisfied that he still managed to imbue the words with sarcasm. “Do you. Have
something. Worthwhile. For me. To heed?”
“Why are you moving now?” Kassius demanded, his eyes flicking to the distance. “Why did you take
the duke?”
“These people. Came calling,” Xeras/Jarvice said, finding it easier to string his words together with
practice. “Far be it from me, to get in their way.”
Kassius laughed. “So I will kill them here instead of having to go look for them.”
“Then I suggest you hurry. Lest you be disturbed by the approaching men-at-arms from Thurst before
you are done. Because I am thinking. That they might be a little bit annoyed with you. Right now.”
Kassius stared at Jarvice with what could only be described as childlike confusion. It gave his face a
whole new and unfamiliar look, younger and almost attractive despite the scabs and scars upon it. Of
course if two armed forces and a conversation with a dragon was what it took to “confuse” Kassius, it
wasn’t surprising he didn’t get much use out of the expression. Nor did it last long.
“You get back to me,” Xeras said. “I’ll be sitting here in the vicinity of the gate until the duke gets
back. What I do then will rather depend on which of you makes a better offer.”
It was fortunate Kassius had never spoken to the real Jarvice, for this was hardly the way he talked.
Xeras settled back heavily on his borrowed haunches. He eyed the cavity of the giant gate and decided not
to try to return to the position Jarvice had taken completely blocking the gateway. With his current level of
coordination he would probably knock the whole thing down. Anyway, having the gate open would help
keep Kassius off balance.
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Well, Xeras thought, it is time you got out of me. Or me out of you…if only to simplify the linguistic
situation. So what do you think, Jarvice? Feel like hanging out here until Carly and Kassius get together?
“You aren’t breathing.”
“Damn, I haven’t killed…me yet, have I?”
“No. But how exactly do you plan on getting out?”
“By whatever means necessary.”
“Then you are probably ready. So long as you are actually capable.”
And in a flash Xeras was back inside his proper body. His very cool, still, entombed body. He tried to
take a breath, but there was no breath to take. Xeras’s sense of his body began to fade again. He floated
slowly into a void and dimly wondered why Drin wasn’t there to meet him. But as his tangible senses
faded, his magical facility, so long unreliable and distinguished mainly by its absence, flared into life.
The stone body around him, Xeras realized, was nothing. It was mere matter, as fleeting and fragile as
dust in the wind. His own body, a cottony seed caught in a spider web. It took a little care to extract one
from the other, but no real degree of strength.
And Carly, Carly in Jarvice’s paw suddenly seemed so terribly, acutely fragile, so mortal and so
precious.
So why don’t we put him down, Drin urged.
That is up to Jarvice now, Xeras replied.
Jarvice, it seemed, was now in a mood to be obliging. The pale spark of Carly’s life set down gently
upon the misty spirit of the ground, like one seed blowing gently loose from one small web, in a larger one.
Jarvice was sitting with his broad back to the gate and the town. Xeras simply stepped forward. The
dragon’s flesh was no more of an obstacle than a veil of cobwebs, of a waterfall. It parted around him and
reformed behind him. But as with water, it seemed to leave something of itself in him as well. Xeras felt
loosely connected to the concrete world, like it was some campfire story he was being told, rather than a
pressing concern of life and death.
“Xeras?”
Drin’s voice was not an illusory whisper echoing only within his mind. It was a real voice, and beside
him stood the real man.
“This is not how it should be,” Drin said. “At least, not yet.”
The real world around them was nothing but distant fireflies in a hazy dusk. Drin turned to him, a
hand on each shoulder, and kissed him very gently on the lips—and then pushed. Xeras stumbled back into
the world, tripped and sprawled onto the ground.
“I am getting very tired of people doing that,” Xeras muttered.
Drinia sat on his foot, unperturbed. Jarvice towered above him. The shadow falling over his shoulder
and onto the ground suggested Carly was standing just behind him. At least he hoped it was Carly.
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“Now that,” Carly said, “is not something you see every day.”
Xeras wasn’t entirely sure what the last few moments would have looked like from Carly’s point of
view, and he hesitated to ask.
Carly reached down and helped Xeras get to his feet, and rather reluctant feet they were. Xeras
grabbed Carly and hugged him tight. Carly seemed very real, the epitome of the real world to which he, all
of a sudden, felt rather loosely connected. Xeras would have kissed Carly, but he was pretty sure he
smelled like a three-day-old carcass and probably wouldn’t taste much better.
“Carly, we need to talk,” Xeras forestalled. “But it can’t be now. We have just one day before the
plainsmen following Yulia intend to take the town. I need to speak to Kassius. You need to speak to Yulia.
And you need to do a better job of it than I did. I won us just one day—the rest is up to you.”
Oh what the hell. It seemed time for a kiss.
Carly kissed him without any apparent reservation, but held him so gingerly, hesitantly, as if he
wanted to push Xeras away.
Xeras finally pulled back. “What?”
Carly actually smiled, but it was halfway between that expression and a grimace. “You look as bad as
when we first met, maybe even worse. You really should let me look after you, Xeras. Somebody needs
to.”
“That’s the first thing you have to say to me?” Xeras said, amazed.
“What would you have me say?”
“How about where did you go, and why? And why didn’t you tell me, and why didn’t you stay, with
Tirrinians coming into town? After all, who would understand them better than me? And…”
“I’m going to ask you a few of these things, I assure you, although not in such a hostile tone.” Carly
looked up, assuring himself that Jarvice’s looming form block them from sight or shot before taking Xeras
by the shoulders and continuing quite earnestly. “You exasperate me, Xeras. And I may yet reach my limits
but I know there’s no bad will in you. A lot of foolishness, but no evil… But an explanation would be nice
about now.” He paused, and then amended, “Or at least rather soon.”
Xeras looked up at the darkening sky. “So little time. So little time and so much going wrong. You
have to talk to Yulia, she’s…” That rotten fruit taste returned, and the pain. “Damn this spell,” Xeras
snapped. “And…”
And he recalled the first time he had tasted that noxious combination of berries and bile. It had been
the wine from Phinia, and on the lips of Phinia. His mind whirled.
“Xeras, what spell?”
“The spell,” Xeras explained through gritted teeth, “that stops me from telling you anything about
Tirrin or Tirrinian schemes and plans. The spell laid by devious Phinia, who is clearly a more cunning
creature than I realized.” The pain did not lessen, nor did it greatly build. Xeras pushed on, trying to order
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his thoughts well enough to share them. “The leader of the new tribe near that gate is Yulia, she is Tirrinian
and my mother. Please don’t interrupt…” He leaned forward, putting his hand on Carly’s shoulder and
squeezing, as much to keep himself upright as to reassure him.
“Xeras…”
“She will attack tomorrow, and all I’ve done is make her even more angry. You have to talk to her,
Carly. You can make her understand. I have to… I have to…” He gestured towards the town. “There are
soldiers coming from Thurst as well. Phinia is more than she seems…and to be honest it would be hard to
be less—the sheer extent of her venality should have been clue enough…”
“Xeras, you are babbling.”
Xeras shuddered. “Dare I ask you to trust me one more time?”
The pain lessened, it was passing through him now. He felt it, but somehow he cared less about
feeling it. The verdant lines of how the dragons see flared out from them. Paths followed, paths yet to be
followed, fates and furies, soundless calls to a million muddled ends. But only one called to him truly, only
one was the end they all needed.
“You can dare to ask me anything but to leave this town, or to leave you.”
Xeras felt tears in his eyes. “But that’s exactly what I have to ask. I have to go in there…” He waved
towards Ballot’s Keep. “You see I do understand Tirrinians better than you could. But you have to deal
with the plainsfolk, because I have tried, not tried enough or well, but tried and failed. We have three
armies on our doorstep, Carly.”
“And we have to face them together.”
“Yes, we shall…tomorrow.” Xeras stepped back. “Tomorrow we will face them together. But tonight
we need to spend just one more night apart.” He said it with certainty, because he felt it with certainty.
“Carly, you have to talk to Yulia, talk sense and sincerity and not like a Tirrinian, but as you do it. Because
my people tried to kill her and when she looks at me that’s what she sees.”
“I’m sorry, Xeras.”
“You what…”
“You wanted her to see her son.”
“There it is,” Xeras replied. “You see right through people. Now go and see right through her. I will
join you by dawn. But there are things I must find out about Kassius and his intended. Things they probably
haven’t even told each other, scheming their separate schemes. In many ways they really are a perfect
match…”
He pushed Carly away, but the duke caught his hand and held it.
“How are you so sure…”
“The dragons. I see how they see. I see a way though this…” As he spoke, the eye of Xeras’s mind
was distracted by the thread that went not forward from where they stood, but back. Each dragon giving
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power to a new group. Each group expanding its influence, growing, expending like a tick sucking up the
magic given to it. Then shrinking into a bitter shadow of its former self, watching the next power rise and
overshadow them.
Was this the best future the people of Ballot’s Keep could win? Xeras shook his head. He tried to drag
himself back to the current moment, one man in the arms of another.
“Make sense to her,” Xeras urged. “Just as you are the only thing that has ever made sense to me, that
makes sense of things for me.”
And as he pushed Carly away, he felt himself growing intangible again, unreachable.
“Damn it, Xeras.”
“Speak to her, Carly,” he said, but he wasn’t sure if the words could be heard. He turned back towards
Ballot’s Keep knowing that, armed with this new ability, nothing could stop him now.
Nothing but yourself.
Chapter Eleven
It was a tenuous thing, this being and not being. He felt his form shimmer and fade. He turned and
easily walked right through the stone, dragon body and natural rock alike. It wasn’t even dark inside, he
could see right through to the village. But the more he looked, the more he looked through, the less it all
seemed real. The less it all seemed, quite literally, matter.
Xeras tried to remember what he was doing. It was like some memory on waking, some remembrance
of a dream. Where was he going? He dimly recalled the feeling of urgency, but not the object of that
feeling.
There was a man walking beside him. A handsome man with long, wildly curly hair and strong brows.
Handsome and tall, it seemed like this was someone he knew—someone he should know. But even
thinking that, Xeras felt the knowledge of his own identity fading away.
“Forgive me for this,” the long-haired man said.
Xeras felt himself grabbed roughly and slapped hard across the face. Xeras fell. And fell. And fell.
Xeras came back to himself slowly, and with the growing awareness that he could not tarry here. As
ever, Drin’s voice was the backdrop to his confusion.
So having found the duke and saved the duke—we are now leaving him. I am beginning to understand
how things work in Xeras-land. If you love someone treat them badly, if you like a place avoid it, if
someone is trying to kill you, follow them to the ends of the earth. The only…
Xeras curled on his side on the grimy cobbles. “I could have held you.” His mind was caught on the
sensation of Drin’s hands, Drin’s hand so real and so tangible…pushing him away.
And the three armies, Xeras. Remember the three armies. They are still coming.
“We were in the same place, Drin. Somehow we were in the same place. I could have touched you.
But I didn’t even remember who you were.”
Drin paused and spoke again in a more somber tone. Dragon magic, he said. It is for dragons. I
sometimes think people were never meant to use it at all—and it never seems to do them any good in the
long run. Some things, after all, just are not meant to be.
Xeras felt himself collecting together again, returning to the present moment in waves, first like
cobwebs and then like heavy, sodden blankets so that he could hardly bear the weight of it. The binding
garb of his reckless acts and their unintended consequences.
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Drinia flopped out of the sky and crashed to the ground, skating towards him over the wet stone and
tumbling into his arms. Xeras caught her reflexively. The little dragon had grown, her body the size of a
large rabbit now, with a sinuous neck like a snake and a delicate head with eyes that glinted like rubies. Her
small clawed paws clutched his arm and held on, and she chirruped happiness to see him before cringing
slightly as if she knew that she needed to stay quiet.
“It’s all right,” Xeras said softly. “I bet you make less sound than me anyway.”
He heard a loud clomp, clomp, clomp of hooves coming down the close. Xeras leapt to his feet,
clutching Drinia to his chest and whirling to face what he was sure would be a mounted Tirrinian soldier
coming to investigate the racket.
It was Freckles the pony.
“You have to be kidding me,” Xeras said.
I think Jarvice let her through.
“Has Jarvice completely lost his mind?”
The only thing more mysterious than the ways of ponies and dragons, is the way you carry on,
darkling. You know you do not have to speak aloud for me to hear you, and neither Drinia nor the
illustrious Freckles understand a word you say.
Freckles stood hipshot and looked expectantly at Xeras. Drinia struggled free and reunited with the
pony with obvious delight, clambering up to her preferred position on the top of the little horse’s head.
Freckles seemed content to ignore the little dragon.
“You,” Xeras whispered to Freckles and Drinia collectively, “need to stay here. Do you understand?”
Of course they don’t.
And, indeed, they both gave him a look of immaculate lack-of-comprehension.
“Oh come on, neither of you are that stupid.”
They continued to look at him, unblinking.
There wasn’t much to be done about it. Xeras clambered awkwardly to his feet. He tiptoed up towards
the main street. But the exaggerated care Xeras took to proceed in silence was rather undermined by the
heavy clomp, clomp, clomp of a curious pony following closely behind him.
With a sigh Xeras stopped, straightened and sidled off the main street. The alley behind the houses ran
parallel to the main street and had a plain mud surface which might muffle the sound.
And it kind of makes more sense to go the backway anyway?
Xeras did not reply. He looked around hoping to see something he could use as a rope to tie the pony
up or maybe a gate he could trap her behind. But Freckles showed him her yellowed teeth and shook her
head. Drinia clung on and squeaked with disapproval. His words she ignored, but the damn thing seemed to
be able to read his thoughts.
You are probably safer with her along. If anyone ever needed a bodyguard…
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Xeras attempted to surrender with some vestige of grace. As much grace as is possible when being
both outwitted and physically cowed by a pregnant pony. He opened his senses to the dragon magic just a
little, watching for the brighter glints of those with magic of their own. He tried to dim his own light, watch
all around and remember the layout of the manse as he approached it. His goal was Limry, a serving
woman who worked in the duke’s house and was renowned as the greatest gossip in town. If there was ever
a time that skill would come in useful, it was now.
He crept forward slowly enough that the pony was walking at a leisurely pace and not thumping its
oversized hooves down with every step. Xeras was so acutely aware of what the beast behind him was
doing, and what his goal ahead was, that he wasn’t really paying due attention to where he was putting his
own feet. His toe caught and he sprawled forward into the mud. Both hands slammed down into the dirt and
skidded forward. He winced, but noticed a complete lack of pain.
Still kneeling in the mud, he massaged his erstwhile frozen hand. It seemed fine. He had not even
marked its recovery amidst the mayhem. But was it his imagination or was his little finger a little too short?
He felt it with the fingers of his other hand, feeling a rounded nub with no fingernail.
How did I not notice that before, he thought. It must have happened while I was inside Jarvice.
Well, he had been lucky not to have every finger of that hand frozen off. A minor deformity was not
going to detract significantly from his already plain appearance.
Freckles bumped him roughly on the back with her nose, pushing him onto his hands and knees again.
At least somebody is keeping their mind on the job.
Of all the somebodies physically present. But I still think I am the only one that is in possession of a
mind capable of reason.
Oh please, Freckles saved your life out there in the swamp.
And her all-too-conspicuous presence is about to cost me my life here, so I guess we will be even.
Stop arguing and get her out of sight then!
Xeras breathed out heavily though his nose, trying to master his temper. He stood and attempted, in
vain, to brush a little of the mud off his sleeves and trousers.
Some time before dawn would be good.
Xeras continued on, past the back of the manse to the stable. He peeked in and everything seemed
quiet. As he slipped inside, the one remaining carriage horse looked out over her stable door. Xeras went
far enough that Freckles followed him over the threshold, then edged around and closed the door behind
them both.
The stall near the front held the small pony Katinka had adopted after it was deserted for having four
unlucky white-stockinged legs. Xeras focused all his energy on thinking positive. He opened the stall door.
“You wait in there, Socks,” he said. “Freckles meet Socks. Socks, Freckles. Now be a good pony and
stay here for me, and keep an eye on Drinia, all right? Because it would be really very bad for Kassius to
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get hold of her right now. Not to mention that having a plainspony wandering around town is likely to draw
attention and cause alarm…and might get us all killed.”
Freckled wandered into the stall and started to help herself to the remains of some sweet oats in the
manger.
“Huh,” Xeras said. “Maybe I should give this positive-attitude crap a bit more credit.”
He closed the stall door and backed away slowly.
He collided with someone in the darkness. Xeras leapt away with a rather unmanly shriek and spun to
find Phinia standing there with a fur-trimmed robe wrapped around her and dainty woolfelt slippers on her
feet.
“I thought I saw someone out here,” she said. “My rooms overlook the stables, you know.”
“Well, everyone knows how you like the horses.”
“And everyone knows that you can’t ride. Which apparently means exactly what my father said it
did.”
Phinia seemed rather a different woman every time Xeras met her. First a childlike pawn, then a
seductress, and now…
“Come in out of the chill,” she said. “Kassius will leave you stone cold if he finds you out here.”
She grabbed him by the sleeve and took him in through the side door, leading him up the side stairs
with exaggerated checks to the right and left at every landing and corridor. She pulled him inside her suite,
just two rooms, and the smaller one did indeed overlook the cinder court in front of the stable.
Xeras’s mind raced. Had she seen Freckles and Drinia? Something told him she hadn’t. In fact his
intuition was that she hadn’t been in her room at all. The hearth fire was banked and the room was barely
warmer than the night air outside. Rather it seemed that she had already been outside and seen the stable
door ajar.
Keep your mind in the present, darkling. You have more than enough to deal with here.
Phinia settled the metal door bolt in its closed position, ensuring their privacy.
“Don’t look so worried,” she said. “It has been made clear to me that you are not what they call ‘the
marrying kind’. And that serves my purposes well enough, better in fact.”
She was taking off her over-robe and the gown beneath seemed to fit with her new aesthetic, leaning
towards diaphanous cloth and not too much of it at last. Xeras stooped and fed some fresh kindling and a
hefty log into the fire.
When he straightened from that task, he noticed a wine bottle and two ceramic goblets sitting on the
mantle. He idly lifted the cork and smelled that fruity scent.
“It is Thurstian wine,” Phinia said. “I am told that it does not suit a sophisticated palate. But it is
pleasant enough. Sweet and full of the tastes of summer, pungent herbs and ripe fruit…”
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She leaned close, and it was clear that the wine was not the only ripe fruit in the room. She unwound a
small lace scarf from around her throat and draped it over Xeras’s shoulder. Her cleavage was truly a
wonder to behold. In fact he could have sworn that most of it wasn’t there when they first met less than a
year ago.
There is something about the wine…
There was, indeed, something about the wine. He could feel it right through the smoky glass of the
bottle, a liquid as dark and absorbent as blotting sand. The wine had been created with a magical purpose in
mind. It had been created to carry the will of the one who imprinted it. Xeras looked at it, and for a moment
he saw not the physical brew or its container—he saw the will of Kassius steeped into the very fabric of the
beverage. But it was fading, time was eroding the force of the command within the wine. The command to
be silent about the schemes of Tirrin.
Phinia sighed and leaned one arm across the mantle. “You really aren’t attracted to me at all, are you?
That’s kind of cute really.”
Pour her a glass of wine, darkling.
That wasn’t a bad idea.
“So as long as I won’t be breeding any dragon-powered offspring, you’re happy to throw in with
Kassius?” Xeras tried to sound neutral.
Phinia shrugged. “It matters not how powerful people are in the grand scheme of things. All they need
to be is a little bit more powerful than their enemies. If Kassius can seize the dragon power, I will seize
Kassius. He will be our future.”
I wish her the joy of “seizing” that handful of nettles.
Xeras poured a goblet of wine and offered it to her, a tangible oath of loyalty to Tirrin. But with his
new knowledge of the hidden nature of things, he imprinted the glass with a new command. For once the
magic came easily to him, he tried not to think too hard about it for fear of losing the knack. The impulse
he imbued that wine with was the urge to go and placate the approaching Thurstian forces, and to make
some kind of peace with her father. Phinia herself possessed no magic of her own as far as Xeras knew, so
he hoped it would work on her.
“I will drink, if you will,” Phinia replied. “We can both get everything we need from Tirrin’s return to
power. There is no reason why the second house of the dragon cannot also be the third.”
Xeras closed his eyes for a moment. Then added, “Or the first? You are counting the wise women as
the first. That is where your mother the duchess comes in, I suppose.”
Ah, Drin added. Which is why Kassius sees her as a potential mate, not a “creature”…
Phinia smiled. “Pour yourself a glass, and I will drink a toast, to all of us.”
She wasn’t confirming it in any overt way, but the smile was enough. There seemed to be something
about the dragon power, any group that had it became very loath to let it go. The wise women, Tirrin…
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Kassius and Phinia would unite the first two “houses” as she called it, to usurp Ballot Keep’s destiny as the
third.
And maybe Ballot’s Keep would be better off if that was exactly what happened.
The thing is, he couldn’t trust them. They didn’t really trust each other. Phinia had dragged him up
here to talk to him alone, not given him to Kassius.
Xeras poured one glass and, cradling it in his hand, he stripped Kassius’s will from the wine. His skill
with magic was a moment-by-moment proposition, but fortunately he was having a good moment. He felt
balanced and certain, and poured his will into the contents of the goblet. Phinia must go and make peace
with her father. She must meet them outside of town and prevent any further conflict from embroiling the
town.
He offered her the goblet and Phinia draw up straight, her chin raised, as if she would refuse.
“As I have said, I will drink if you will, Xeras. For it is in my interest to unite my ends entirely with
Tirrin, only if I know that you will do the same.”
Which is, at least, one way to stop her from trying to “unite her end” with you.
Xeras smiled. He poured another glass and removed the spell from it as he swirled the wine. He
thought for a moment that Phinia might insist on swapping the glasses. But it seemed she shared Kassius’s
estimation that Xeras’s skill with the arts was slim to none.
She took the goblet he offered her and, with a challenging glare, drained it in one gulp. Xeras took a
little longer to empty his own glass. As he did so, he watched Phinia. She glanced to the window once, and
then again.
“You know you father’s forces will arrive by dawn,” Xeras said. “I can’t imagine that is a part of the
plan.”
“I will deal with my father,” Phinia replied. “You must unite your interests with Kassius and I. You
must keep the dragon safe. Where is it?”
“In good hands, so to speak,” Xeras replied.
“Speak with Kassius, now. He will believe you better if you go on your own—rather than in my
company.”
What a charming basis of trust they have, great foundation for a marriage.
“I dare say I will speak with him.” Xeras set his empty goblet aside.
The door to the room shook, as someone inside tried to push it open—and there shortly followed an
impatient knock.
“Get out the window,” Phinia urged, pushing Xeras towards it. “He is already suspicious enough.”
And whose fault is that? Drin muttered.
“…to the guildhouse and his men will call him back to speak to you,” Phinia continued.
Xeras looked out the window, the second-floor window.
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“You must be kidding.”
At least it is a fall that would only maim you a little, not kill you outright. I suppose I must consider
that progress.
“I’m not…” Xeras began.
But Phinia was already bundling him out the window with surprising, panicked strength, and onto a
narrow stone ledge from which no easy escape was evident.
The knock on the door became louder. “Phinia, wake up,” Kassius called. “I need to talk to you!”
Phinia ran back as far as the bed. “What, without a chaperone?” she teased as she made frantic
shooing gestures to Xeras who was sprawled half in and half out of the window.
“Just let me in,” Kassius snapped. “I think we are a little past that nonsense.”
The anger in his voice made Xeras feel inclined to be obliging. Kassius he might possibly be able to
handle, but Kassius had a small army at his command. There was no need to start the war early.
Phinia stripped off her dress and put on an even more scanty sleeping gown, apparently oblivious to
Xeras watching her as he edged onto the ledge.
Perhaps you should keep your eyes where your feet are going…
She hastily rumpled the bed, then ran over and carefully closed and latched the shutters behind him. It
occurred to Xeras that he was getting to play out all the clichéd adventures, and experience all the
unpleasant complications of being a lover, but not actually getting any of the benefits.
Welcome to my world.
Xeras shuffled along the ledge. Peering around the corner, he was relieved to see another window that
abutted the same palms-width plateau.
This might have worked better if you had positioned yourself facing into the wall rather than away
from it.
“And that advice might have been useful if you gave it to me when I was getting onto the ledge, not
trying to get off it.”
Making his way around the corner was not going to be fun. Xeras contemplated going back.
You have never been very good at going back. I do hope you break that habit with Carly.
“Not the same, and not the time.”
Xeras tried to edge one foot around, but couldn’t reach. He had to inch a little closer to the corner and
try again, bending his knee around the stone. He shifted his weight tentatively. Almost there. Almost there.
For a moment he was balanced, hands stretched about to either side, on the very point of falling forward.
Then, with a sigh, he made it around.
It was harder than it should have been to get the rest of the way over to the window. His muscles were
weak and his heart pounded furiously. If memory served, this window should be to Limry’s room. If
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memory did not serve, this was probably going to be a rather significant mistake. He rapped as loud as he
dared on the shutters.
He waited, holding his breath. Finally the shutters burst open and Limry stood there with a lantern
balanced on the windowsill, a heavy statuette held over her head. She looked out and down, and frowned.
Xeras coughed and raised his finger to his lips to beg for silence.
Limry peered around the shutter and arched one eyebrow as if to suggest that the need for silence was
something she could figure out for herself. She closed the nearest shutter and left the other open, an
eminently sensible way to let him in. Limry helped him clamber through the rather high window, but
Xeras’s foot slipped and he began to plummet downwards. Limry yanked him forward by the collar, and he
landed on his stomach, half in and half out of the window with the breath knocked clear out of him.
With one final tug, Limry got him unstuck and he tumbled forward, knocking her over and ending up
with his nose more-or-less stuck into the generous amounts of cleavage exposed by her ruffled night
chemise.
Xeras scrambled back. “Oops. I mean sorry.”
“Well I assume that is not why you came to see me in the dark of night. Although you do seem to
have been visiting someone.” She plucked the lacy scarf off his shoulder and flowery perfume wafted into
the air.
Xeras snatched the scarf back and shoved it into the side of his boot. “That’s not… I, um, I need to
know what has been going on in town. So that meant I wanted to talk to you.”
“You are not so much of an idiot as I thought if you realized my true role. But I do not know what we
can do now that Carly…”
Try not to look like an idiot, darkling. She is clearly more than just a garden-variety gossip.
“Carly is safe. Well, he was last time I saw him. But we both have to get a lot done in a single night,
and I knew you would have to be part of it. The only thing I am not entirely sure of,” Xeras extemporized,
“is exactly who you report to.”
“Katinka, of course,” Limry chided as she helped him up. “Like most men, Carly is handsome enough
and makes people think there is a big man in charge of things. But the female half of the ruling partnership
has always been responsible for the truly…significant aspects of responsible government—money,
medicine and keeping the men in line.” She smiled, albeit in a rather patronizing way.
And Xeras heard the echoes then of that tradition. Before the Tirrinians and whatever dragon they had
raised, there had been the wise women. And the wise women, he suspected, had raised Jarvice.
“But I had thought…” Xeras began.
“But you had thought what, my dear?”
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“Phinia,” Xeras struggled to explain even as he ordered his own thoughts. “Phinia wants to seize the
dragon power so much, it suggests her family has some long-lost claim to it. I had begun to think the
duchess…but then Phinia has clearly thrown in her lot with Kassius and…”
“Ah, Phinia, yes. She puts on a fine act.” Limry sat on the end of her bed and patted the mattress by
her side.
Xeras sat just about as far away as he could from Limry. It was all getting a little too cozy for
comfort.
The porcelain-doll act.
“Yes, I realize that,” Xeras muttered.
“Well then you were hiding it very well.”
“I was slow to catch on,” Xeras added. “I am just a man after all.”
Limry laughed. “Don’t take my joking so seriously. Everyone makes too much of a deal of male
versus female, this nation and that. Keeping everything all separate. So that it bottles up, runs over, bursts
and breaks things.”
Xeras felt a stabbing pain in his temple. He had been an idiot. But what kind of idiot?
I have some ideas about that…
“Phinia has some power,” Xeras ploughed ahead, trying to order his thoughts through his words. “She
used it to stop me from telling anyone about Kassius or Tirrin and what they might be doing.” He still felt a
choking taint of rotten fruit as he spoke of it, but the strength of the spell was broken, and it was now
merely unpleasant.
“We should let Katinka know you are here,” Limry said. “She was never sure how committed the
little princess was to Kassius. But this…”
“It’s an alliance, not a romance—or at least not a very romantic romance. There is probably a deal
between Tirrin and the duchess. But I don’t think even her father knows about it or he wouldn’t be on his
way here.”
“Yes, dear.” Limry patted Xeras on the knee. “The duchess has always wanted Ballot’s Keep, the
little dragon just sweetened the deal. Hooking Phinia up with Carly would ease the transition of power. But
failing that, Kassius is probably going to end up some kind of regional power in his own right. And if his
children are strong in magic…”
Xeras leaned back. “I am an idiot. But I do know one thing. I know that Carly and I together should
be able to regain control of the gate, so long as we are able to act as one.”
“That’s fine, Xeras. But couldn’t you do pretty much the same thing by making a request of the stone
dragon.”
“Not forever.”
“Forever is not the current problem.”
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Xeras leaned forward again. He rested his head in his hands. “The problem right now…” He stopped,
and turned to Limry. “If the Tirrinians will not fight the plainsmen and ceased being an occupying force in
the town, could they leave?”
“Oh, no,” Limry said. “The pass is entirely closed by now. A small part might make the road from
Thurst, though not for long. And the road to the lowlands is no use to man or beast, and will not be until the
spring thaw. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. Whoever is in town, is staying in town, and to survive
we are all just going to have to get along.”
Xeras nodded. “Phinia is, I hope, going to deal with the Thurstians and I am hoping Katinka can meet
them when they get into town in the morning. Carly is talking to the plainsmen. And I suppose Kassius and
his crew are my problem.”
Oh is that all? Just a small army of power-hungry sorcerers? And there I thought we were in trouble.
Limry shook her head, but she didn’t naysay him. She stood and got her robe. “I’ll tell Katinka how
you see things. But I hope you know what you are doing.”
“As do I,” Xeras replied.
As do we all.
Chapter Twelve
Controlling the gate would keep the plainsmen at bay, but maybe a different kind of relationship with
their neighbors was what was needed there. And Kassius…
Xeras slipped out the back door of the manse, and cautiously, silently closed the door behind him. As
he turned, there was a figure standing directly in front of him.
It was Kassius.
“Xeras, Xeras, Xeras,” Kassius scolded. “Do you really think you can hide from a scryer?” Arms
reached out of the darkness to grab him. “Now, where is the dragon?” Kassius asked, in a breezy,
conversational tone.
Try to think, very positively, about Drinia staying in the stable. I don’t think Freckles can come to the
rescue on this one.
Xeras thought it better not to think of Drinia at all with Kassius around. It was hard to come up with
any plan one way or the other whilst also being considerably terrified. Kassius’s men dragged him over to
the guildhall, the frontage of which was dressed up with a Tirrinian battle banner. As he was thrust over the
threshold, several Tirrinians within stood to attention. Their expressions were mixed, blanking over as
Kassius followed Xeras inside.
It was not the first time Xeras had found himself on his hands and knees on these particular
floorboards, but a lot had changed in the meantime. Last time he’d had little on his mind but hating
Kassius…
Little wonder that Drinia attacked him.
Kassius walked into the light of the hanging candle chandelier. If anything, his face looked even
worse. The wound on his cheek had pulled his skin as it dried and healed, warping his face into an apt and
permanent grimace.
“I am surprised that you are in such a hurry to have a reunion with dear little Drinia,” Xeras said. “As
I recall, she didn’t take to you.”
Or rather, she did. But perhaps enraging your captor isn’t the wisest strategy right now.
Xeras got to his feet and made a feeble attempt to brush off the mud coating much of his person.
Under better light, he was somewhat embarrassed about how he had presented himself to Phinia. Villain or
not, she was a lady.
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His first, instinctual terror was waning. It felt like there was an opportunity here, if only he could
figure out how to seize it. After all, the mood of the Tirrinian guards and soldiers around him was
surprisingly ambiguous.
But their blades are, no doubt, unambiguously sharp.
That might not be too much of a problem, if he could just get a hold of the dragon magic he could step
out of the world…
I really wouldn’t recommend that. You are clearly having increasing trouble, um, coming back.
I am still pretty sure that it would be easier than coming back from the grave.
“…will keep the vicious little cretin in an iron cage,” Kassius continued. And really it didn’t seem
interesting enough to pay much attention to. “But I will have the power.” With a dramatic flourish Kassius
commanded, “Bind him!”
A glum-looking older man appeared with a set of manacles. Xeras remembered him as an archivist
from the council library. Xeras had spent most of his former life skulking around some part of the archive
and its associated annexes.
“Hello, Marl.” Xeras didn’t bother with token resistance. “How is that volume on apothecary herbs
going? Did you ever get hold of a fresh Kennelwort specimen?”
As Marl snapped the restraints closed, Xeras experienced a twinge of doubt. Dangerous or not, he
hoped he would be able to magically slip away when the time came. But he needed to wait as long as he
could to try to come up with some kind of plan to overcome the Tirrinian forces. And if a substantial
number of these forces were not trained soldiers, that could only help.
“I never did,” the Marl said glumly. “The council appears to have undergone something of a change in
priorities.”
Another man tied a rope to the short chain connecting the two manacles. Glancing up, Xeras saw that
the other end of the rope had been thrown over the main beam of the room.
“I don’t like where this is going,” Xeras said. “Please tell me you haven’t been doing too much of this
sort of thing. I mean none of the villagers have been hurt?”
“I do believe the duke…” Marl began.
But then the old archivist stumbled backwards, pushed by an intangible force that Xeras felt brush by
him. It emanated from the slim young woman, no, girl who followed in Kassius’s wake. On closer
inspection, she couldn’t have been much more than ten years old, although she had a jaded and unpleasant
expression in her eyes. There was a redheaded woman to his other side who was dressed as a soldier. But
unlike the girl, she didn’t look like she was enjoying herself.
The redhead looked familiar. Ah, Meluda the mind reader. Now he remembered. The number of
strongly gifted individuals in Tirrin was small, and shrinking. The arrival of a force that included so many
of them in a backwater such as Ballot’s Keep should have caused him more suspicion.
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At Kassius’s command, the rope was jerked and he was raised up not quite off the ground, but
uncomfortably onto the balls of his feet.
“I am…unlikely to tell you…where the dragon is…” Xeras said. “If I cannot…breathe.”
“You don’t need to talk,” Kassius said. “If I cause you enough pain, I am quite sure that your bestial
offspring shall make an appearance.”
I am beginning to see the wisdom in you making a disappearance, darkling.
It was interesting, little consolation but still interesting, that the assembled Tirrinian were looking
even more uncertain. Casual brutality was a part of Tirrinian life, but only at the behest of the council. It
had been a great many generations since any single Tirrin presumed to wield the swift autonomy of martial
command.
Kassius leaned in towards Xeras. “But it would be easier on everyone if you tell me where it is. Or
just think it, just think about where the little beast is…”
Xeras could not help but see the stable in his mind’s eye. He had never been trained as a magus to
have complete discipline of mind. Kassius turned with a smirk to Meluda, but her expression was rather
blank.
“She is a long way off,” Meluda said. “Up in the mountains somewhere, another town I think.”
She was lying. She was lying a lot.
Try not to look surprised. You might be able to do something with her help—no matter why she is
giving it.
Xeras tried to get some pressure off his chest by winding his fingers around the manacle chain and
pulling himself up to expand his lungs. “You didn’t really think Phinia put you ahead of her mother,” Xeras
wheezed. “They got in first. I came back here because no matter how opposed I might be to Tirrin having
the dragon magic, the duchess will be even worse.”
“You lie!” Kassius spat. He turned to Meluda again.
She shook her head. “I can’t tell if that is true or not. Something in him is making his mind hard to
read. And you know that pain and fear fogs people’s thoughts.”
Kassius jabbed one finger at her. “I know that you keep telling me so. But I suspect that is a
prevarication stemming from your feminine weakness. This is the very reason why we need dragon magic,
a new line of power, a new army of men.”
Meluda to her credit just stood impassively. She did not shrink back from him at all. But the tension in
the room was palpable. Finally she replied, “Better an army of women than a ruler who is a madman.”
Kassius’s palm cracked across her face with no warning. Meluda stepped backwards, her head jerking
to one side under the force of the blow. Several men started to go to her aid, but after a step or two, they
stopped themselves.
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Kassius seems to have gone downhill rather quickly, Drin remarked. I really do think that it is time to
take your leave.
The dragon magic, however, was not coming to Xeras. Kassius loomed over Meluda who stayed
turned away from him. He had once seemed venal but harmless, and now he was completely out of control.
But it was hardly all that surprising. Xeras had changed too. It was a time and a place for change, for good
or ill.
Or both.
When Kassius raised his hand to strike her again, Xeras felt the same calm descend over him as when
he had faced the plainsman kidnapper. He tightened his grip and pushed back with all his might, then
swung forward. He kicked his legs out, swinging off the ground on the tightrope. Xeras tried to get his knee
around Kassius’s neck but only managed to catch him awkwardly on the chin. It was still enough to knock
him off balance.
Even more telling, the men did not rush to stop him with the exception of the young girl, whose power
rippled through the air. Xeras spun away, as if caught up in a hurricane. The rope twisted and he had no
control over his body, feeling his foot hit someone hard. He hoped to hell that it wasn’t Meluda. He tried to
grasp the dragon power, but he was too disoriented.
He finally got his foot on the ground and managed to twist around. Kassius was coming towards him.
The large gash on his forehead was torn open again, exposing a pink-blue ribbon of flesh. He advanced on
Xeras, bare sword raised in his hand.
Go now, now, now!
Xeras tried to get a hold of himself even as he felt each of Kassius’s steps as potentially the last
moments of his life. The blade arched towards him, seemed to slow in the air, and to fade. Xeras felt a
sensation of falling.
Outside of space again, but this was not a realm of verdant light. All around them was the texture of a
stormy sky, and it grew darker and darker. Drin was there with him. He seemed so real in this magical
place, just as he had been in life. Xeras struggled to hold on to his memory. This time he knew who Drin
was.
But even as he watched, Drin began to look different. His skin became sallow, his body shrank upon
his frame, and his hair hung lank and graying. It was like he was dying right in front of Xeras.
Drin reached forward and Xeras could not help but shrink back from the apparition he was becoming.
“This isn’t me,” Drin said. “You are doing this. You have so much more power than control, or even
awareness. I am beginning to think that will never change.” All the while Drin’s body shriveled into a
horror almost beyond imagining. “You need to move,” the apparition urged him in an incongruously caring
voice, “to get somewhere safe and go back to the world.”
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High above them the clouds started to coalesce into a dank, black, swirling mist, settling down slowly
upon them from the sky.
“Go back into the world,” Drin urged. “Quickly. I can explain this later.”
“You know what that is?” Xeras gestured to the tempest swooping down upon them.
“Move, go back!” Drin pushed him away from the coalescing storm. But even as he did so his fingers
seemed to crack and break. They were the fingers not even of a starving man, but of a corpse. Drin’s eyes
dulled and sank back into their sockets. His hair started to drift from his head in tufts, borne away by the
howling winds. Xeras jerked back in horror. He stumbled a few steps and fell.
He reached out for the real world not because he wanted it, but because he was fleeing from the horror
before him. He hit the ground again, but this time it was ordinary dirt beneath his hand and ordinary
darkness around him.
Xeras was shaking, to be so directly confronted with the greatest horror of his life. Of his lover,
starved to death by his father’s order. And he had not, somehow, even thought of the rotted body Drin must
really be by now. He hugged his arms tightly around him, not wanting to look around and see where he
was, immobilized by horror.
That is the very thing you cannot do.
Xeras simply could not reply.
That darkness is your despair. Like me, it exists in a place beyond normal space. And all the magic
locked away inside you has been feeding it, growing it. And since you have been moving in that mythic
space, it has been seeking you. You cannot do that again, Xeras. At least not until your power has found its
proper form and bled the strength from that darkness.
Xeras felt his heartbeat slow again, listening to that familiar, unchanging voice—the voice he
remembered.
“Wow,” said a voice.
Xeras twisted his head. Sitting in the corner was Petry, the toll-taker’s son. Looking around slowly, he
saw a group of others huddled in the single large cell, stirring from sleep.
“Well congratulations, Dragon Bane. You have such a unique approach to things,” Parlen said. “Now
you have broken into a prison. Tell me, can you get out again?”
“It may…” Xeras considered, “…not be that easy.”
He stood and yet again tried to brush off the ever-increasing accumulation of dirt and muck, wiping
his palms on the front of a tunic not noticeably cleaner than his hands.
“So he imprisoned anyone that showed signs of powers. That is sensible, I suppose,” Xeras
concluded, looking at the assembled company. They were all from Kassius’s master class.
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“He was perfectly placed to know who we were,” Parlen said bitterly. “His soldiers stay out of our
range except when they travel in groups, too many for us to overcome. And besides, they would take
revenge on our friends and family for anything we did.”
“You don’t want to break out of here?” Xeras asked.
“We dare not,” Jarus the shepherd replied. “But you could take the boy, Petry. I am sure we could
conceal his absence. They do not check too closely—they don’t want to be around us for long.”
“I am not leaving,” Petry said indignantly. “Not if the women and the rest of you are staying behind.”
“You’ll do as you’re told,” Parlen growled.
If only it was that easy.
Xeras pressed his grimy fingers to his forehead where his headache was growing. “Other than
Kassius, how do they behave around you?”
“Not so bad,” Parlen said. “Some are even a bit apologetic.”
Xeras nodded. “Petry, you need to come with me, but it is not to run away. It is to bring this whole
mess to an end.”
“If you get him killed,” Parlen said, quite sanguinely, “I will wring your neck.”
Xeras, how do you plan to get out? You can’t…
For once Xeras managed not to make the reply to Drin, that would sound entirely wrong to Parlen. I
must.
“Petry,” Xeras said, “I need you to focus right now. Can you do that?”
Something seemed to have happened to Petry over the last few days. His eyes had a sharp glint to
them, but also a hint of suspicion that had never been a part of his character before. “What, exactly, is your
plan?”
“Kassius is the lynchpin of our problems,” Xeras said. “If we can remove him, tomorrow, at just the
right moment, his plans may yet be thwarted.”
“On second thought,” Parlen said, “I had better go with you too.”
Drin is it possible? To take them both through?
I don’t know. I will help you as much as I can. But the darkness is waiting for you and I don’t know
how you can hold on to two other people as well as yourself. Do you even know how?
He could only try. If it didn’t work he’d just look like an idiot, and there was nothing new in that.
Or you could get all three of you killed in the spirit world. I am pretty sure that’s a bad thing to do—I
don’t even know what would happen to you.
Parlen coughed. “Now is not really the best time for you to drift off into daydream land, Xeras.”
“Are you under the impression that walking through walls is done easily and with a moment’s
thought?” Xeras snapped.
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“The impolite answer would be: the fact that you can do it suggests as much,” Parlen replied. “And
anyway, you said you couldn’t do magic.”
“I could not. But I am a quick learner.”
“The pickled smolt beg to differ.”
Petry broke in, “Um, I’m thinking there is not a lot of time before dawn.”
Xeras looked at Petry, somewhat relieved at the interruption as he could not think of a good comeback
to Parlen’s gibe anyway.
Also, the boy is right.
“Right, let’s get going,” Parlen said. “Should we hold hands or something?”
“It probably wouldn’t hurt.”
Xeras reached out his hands, chagrinned to notice that his were obviously shaking. He really wasn’t
looking forward to this, especially now that more than his own life was on the line.
Drin, what do you look like right now?
I’m a spirit, Xeras. I don’t look like anything. Anything you see is coming from you.
Time to try to see the bright side of things. Xeras reached out, taking possession of all three of the
bodies and slipped them out of the realm of ordinary things. It was a little too easy to do, like the darkness
was drawing him back.
They stepped straight into the eye of a storm. A black howling scream pierced the void, and although
Xeras could feel some kind of solid surface beneath his feet, it also felt like he was falling, plummeting
from a great height.
Xeras felt his sense of self beginning to float away again. But he never lost the sense of two other
people with him, depending on him to guide them out of danger. Saving them was the most important
thing. The responsibility did not lessen his fear, but it provided weight to hold him against the wind, clarity
to see through the swirling fog and raw, screaming anger all around them.
The spirit whose name he could not quite remember walked in front of them, his body illuminated
from within by a light that flickered with each assault of the storm. But the clouds parted and the way
became smoother. The beautiful spirit turned and nodded, and the veils of reality began to fall again. The
night sky, the sheer veils of snow, the gloomy backdrop of the mountains and the tussock underfoot. They
were back in the real world.
“That was quite…” Parlen said quietly.
Don’t look now but he may actually be ready to give you a compliment.
Parlen shook his hand loose. “Did you have to hang on that tight? You may have broken my fingers.
So now what do we do?”
“I would suggest,” Xeras said, “that you stay here with Petry. It will be safer than wandering around
in the dark. I will ascertain what is happening with the plainsmen and whether they will be approaching the
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town in the morning. We need an apparent threat from the plainsmen to draw Kassius and his forces to the
gate, so that we have two of the three parts of our problem gathered together in one place.”
“There’s another part?” Petry said in a quavering voice. “It’s not that big black shrieking thing, is it?”
Xeras laughed. “No, actually as hard as it may be to believe, apparently that is me. The third part is in
Katinka’s hands…”
“Oh good.” Parlen turned away, quite satisfied to worry on it no more, it seemed. “There is a cave
over here, behind the thorn bushes. We shall wait for you there.”
Chapter Thirteen
Xeras stood, once again, looking out into faintly starlit plains.
Oh good, another trek into the marsh.
“This time I know the way.” And he did. The dragon sense had not left him entirely. But it was as if in
passing through the black storm, something of those mists had become lodged inside him. The world was
sparked with dragon light but otherwise seemed flat and far away. It took a slight but palpable effort to hold
on to who he was and just what he was trying to do.
He did not need to see the plainsmen to know where they were. He sensed them as a constellation of
slight disturbances in the subtle ebb and flow of the life force of the land. It was not like blood flowing or
breath or weather—but somehow all three of these things and many others besides.
Nevertheless, you must admit the events of your life have a way of repeating themselves in various
forms and guises. One can only hope being attacked by a sword-wielding Kassius is not being added to
your repertoire.
“Variations upon a theme, perhaps. Next time he might have a club…or a whip.”
Well, as repetitions go, this trek into the marsh will involve a variation. Just as well, you do better
when you have company.
A movement stirred the darkness to his side. Xeras took a jerky, startled step away as a Tirrinian
woman stepped out of the shadows.
“Xeras, you must remember me?”
Meluda, her face thin, pale and framed by a thick felt-wool cowl. A woman traveling with the
Tirrinian party was an anomaly. That she carried a dagger by her side and wore men’s riding clothes was
almost unthinkable.
“Except, of course,” Meluda said, “that you are thinking it. And that is exactly why I have no desire
to spend the rest of my life with Tirrinians. Thinking, thinking, thinking like a fish darting and circling
within its tiny bowl, but never going anywhere. That and…”
“If you are interested in the company of non-Tirrinians,” Xeras interjected in turn, “you are currently
spoiled for choice. So why are you bothering me?”
Maybe it is to say thank you?
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Drin could be charmingly naive sometimes. This was, after all, a Tirrinian before him. Xeras watched,
but Meluda did not seem to respond to Drin’s voice. Perhaps she could only read the thoughts in his head
that were actually his…
“Because I want to speak to the plains people,” she said. “I want to beg them to allow me to join
them, and you can take me to them.”
“You want to be a plainsman?” Xeras asked, incredulous. “What appeals to you most about the
lifestyle on the plains, the stinking mud, the stinging insects or the constant warfare?”
“I want to be a plainswoman. And what objection can you possibly have to that? You have clearly
chosen to leave the ranks of Tirrin, and I have at least as good a reason as you.”
“Oh, do you,” Xeras muttered icily.
You can’t know her reasons, Xeras. Be fair.
This time Meluda looked at Xeras with obvious alarm, as if she had noticed the ghost’s voice…and
that was a conversation Xeras did not want to have.
Not so long ago you would have been happy to have confirmation that my voice was real.
“I am going to visit our charming brethren of the north right now. What you do is your concern.”
Forms and guises, Drin whispered, as if not too comfortable with being overheard, himself.
But Xeras’s dim hope of reversing his humiliation of struggling to follow his half-brother through the
path was quickly disappointed. Meluda easy matched the fastest pace he could set and, in fact, she tended
to stray ahead of him, eagerly peering through the foggy gloom as if in hopes of seeing their destination.
Finally, it was Xeras who was forced to pause to catch his breath and rest his aching limbs,
particularly his knees and ankles which protested the way he had to wrench his booted feet from the
sucking mud with every step.
“This wretched mire is set to disassemble me from the bottom up,” he wheezed morosely. “Why on
earth would you want to live here? Even the plainsmen don’t want to live here.”
Meluda spun towards him. “What do you mean they don’t want to live here? The plainsmen are as
much a part of the land as the gray ponies or the razor rushes.”
“Razor rushes?” Xeras looked around nervously. He had yet to come across a kind of grass that could
slit your wrists, but that probably had more to do with luck than care.
“I want to live with the people because they are here,” Meluda said, somewhat shrilly. “Because their
thoughts must center on living, on making a living from this beautiful, desolate place. It gives them
meaning and purpose and an identity other than empty academia, political posturing and endless pointless
schemes, revenge and spite.”
She ended on a rather vehement and high-pitched note. Xeras leaned back against a mossy stump and
scratched an itching welt on his neck.
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“Do feel free to remind them of that,” he said. “Because they seem to want their life to center around
propping their feet up next to a warm fire and having all the pie they can eat.”
He was trying not to think about Petry and Parlen, but of course the more he tried, the more he failed.
And if he was going to fail anyway, he might as well jump. The two of them would arrive at the camp
fairly soon and he did not have a lot of time.
“I will help you as best I can…” Xeras began.
“From the tenor of your thoughts, I gather the plainsmen might not be terribly fond of you,” Meluda
replied, obviously in a hurry to get going again. “I am not sure your help would be any help at all.”
“Their leader is my mother,” Xeras said wearily. “That might well count for something.”
“Your mother is a plainswoman?”
“Impeccable logic there. I suppose she is…now. She was probably a bit like you, seeking some way
out of the threshing machine we call Tirrin. But that is beside the point.”
“Not to me.” Meluda folded her arms.
This is going well.
“Who is that?” Meluda asked, peering at him as if she wanted to see right inside his head.
“Oh, that’s Drin. I imagine you heard about my lover Drin.”
“That’s impossible. He is dead and there is no such thing as ghosts.”
“So say the grand old souls of the Tirrinian colleges. But then they also say there is no such thing as
dragons, so I’m long past considering them infallible.”
Shit, some father he was. He had forgotten all about Drinia. All he could do was try to think, as
optimistically as possible, that Drinia would know to stay where she was. And hope, even more
optimistically, that a plainspony would go unnoticed in the confusion that was bound to come with
morning. Presumably the Tirrinian soldiers were not making themselves useful around the place by helping
with the mucking out.
“Listen, Meluda…” No, that was not the way to go. Meluda was clearly sick of being told what to do
by scheming men. Xeras began again. “You want the tribe to stay here. I think some of the elders like Tanta
want that too, and I certainly want the same. Surely we can work together on this?”
Meluda just shrugged. “We’ll see.” She chose what she seemed to think was the most likely direction
and strode into the darkness.
Xeras coughed and stood. “It is this way.”
His hope for a low-key arrival was quickly dashed. They were challenged by a guard and led to an
area on the lee of a small ridge. There, most of the tribe could be found gathered around a central area that
was lit rather ominously by glowing coals set in a circular trough. In the middle of this area stood Carly.
He looked completely relaxed.
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Maybe, unlike you, he knows what he is doing…
Maybe you could give me room to think; now of all times I cannot be distracted.
Besides, it was more likely to be an effective demonstration of the duke’s imperturbable nature, and
the advantages of it. Surely not even Carly could get the plainsmen on side in less than a day?
Carly raised his hands, placating. “There is no obstacle to plainsmen coming to Ballot’s Keep, but not
all at once, not in the middle of winter…”
Yulia stepped into the circle, and Carly, apparently apprised of the rules of this forum, stepped out
and ceded the attention of the audience to her. She glanced up and saw Xeras, her gaze skated over Meluda,
and she disregarded them both.
“It is the nature of our people to be family. To move as family, to live as family, to exist as part of a
family.”
Rules be damned, Xeras thought. “Families change,” he said as he walked up through the mostly
seated crowd. His voice seemed to fall neatly into a silence, as if the moment had been waiting for him.
“Some people are born into the perfect family for them,” Xeras continued as he picked his way forward,
walking slowly to give himself enough time. The guard following him fell back, and so did Meluda after a
few more steps. “Some people seek the family they are meant to be with.” Xeras waved vaguely to Meluda.
“Others create it. Families change, in whole or in part. So maybe only part of this family wants to go to the
lowlands. And maybe if they do so slowly, they will be accepted there, peacefully.”
Yulia laughed, but there was something about her posture that suggested she was listening. “So these
people will welcome us with open arms, different people with no possessions to speak of and the skills of a
different way of life.”
Xeras stepped into the circle. And after a long, challenging stare, Yulia ceded the floor to him.
He couldn’t really face towards the audience; the people were all around him. So Xeras faced Yulia
but raised his voice to travel to the rest. “I came to Ballot’s Keep.” His gaze naturally drifted to Carly
whose brow was furrowed with a slight frown. He forced himself to focus again on Yulia. “I have no skills
to speak of, from their point of view. I think that became clear pretty quickly. I got rid of one dragon and
brought another who was about as much trouble. I was at best a disruptive influence and at worst a bringer
of chaos and peril. But they welcomed me. I am not a sort, by temperament, who expects the best—who
gives the benefit of the doubt. But people will surprise you, given the chance.”
“You are one person, we are many,” called a voice from the back of the crowd.
“And so perhaps those who wish to leave the plains could do so one at a time. Each week, one more.
People to find work, to send back to their families the things they need and carry out trade, to find a place
in the world so that the people of the plains expand what they are, rather than deserting one way of life for
another. After all, no place, no way of life is perfect for anyone—or right for everyone. Not everyone is
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born in the place they are truly meant to be.” For a moment Xeras’s looked to Carly, and belatedly felt the
truth of what he said.
“What about children?” one woman asked. “They could not go alone.”
Xeras was rather surprised that anyone was convinced enough by what he said to be considering the
details. “A child in arms would go with his or her mother, counting as one.”
“Would the town agree to this?” Xeras recognized Tanta’s voice.
Xeras gave a nod to Carly and stepped out of the circle.
Carly took a deep breath. Underlit by the fire, he was a figure of heroic proportions, his hair a ruddy
halo and his arms spread wide. But his voice was—as ever—warm, low and carrying. “As I have told you,
the people of Ballot’s Keep want peace, and they will share what they have with anyone who wants to work
and will commit to the town and its common purpose.”
A young man called out, “And what is its purpose, but to keep us here?” His hand waved to the gate,
out of sight in the darkness.
“Our purpose is to live in comfort and happiness together, and to raise our children in safety to be a
part of our traditions. And I invite anyone who wishes to, to come and become a part of that. Or to come
through the town and seek whatever they may want outside of our small community, in the lands beyond.”
Carly waved his hands to indicate the great sweep of the lowlands that lay beyond this rocky plateau.
“Xeras is wise,” he continued, “to suggest that for a person to find a new family, or a family to find a
new home can be a good thing, a change for growth and the betterment of our lives and the lives of future
generations. But it cannot happen overnight. Nor does it go only one way. If there are people who wish to
come from us, or the lands beyond us, to join you—how will you welcome them?”
“And who would want to do that?” Tanta asked. She did so with a smile, divining—it seemed—
Meluda’s purpose.
Meluda straightened. “I do. I respectfully petition to be allowed to live here, amongst you, and to
show you that I can contribute to your family.”
She followed everyone’s gazes to Yulia. But Yulia did not admit anyone into her regard until she was
good and ready. She was still watching Carly where he stood within the circle.
“I might almost believe you,” she said. “But who controls this town of yours now? It does not seem to
be you.”
“About that…” Xeras began.
It was somewhere between late night and early morning when Xeras and Carly final got some time
alone, ostensibly to grab an hour or two of sleep.
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The damp confines of the tent smelled of livestock and all the sounds of the camp could be plainly
heard through the fragile privacy of its wavering walls. But it was dark, and that was enough. And Carly,
Carly was very solid and very real. Xeras felt a panic rising within him.
After all your efforts to leave him behind, he is here. Darkling, with respect, I shall leave you two
alone.
Xeras embraced Carly tightly, trying to hold on to the wordless moment. His hands on Carly’s back,
over that subtle terrain of firm muscle and soft skin. Somehow he had forgotten how much taller than Carly
he was; it always seemed that Carly was the bigger man. Xeras’s chin brushed Carly’s ear and there was no
way he could rest his head on Carly’s shoulder. But with eyes closed, the last fugitive glints of light were
cut off, and he tried to banish the rest of the world with them. He could have just stayed like that, probably
forever.
After a while Carly tried to pull away, but Xeras wasn’t ready to let him.
“So did you miss me?” Carly joked weakly.
Xeras didn’t reply.
Carly sighed and relaxed. “So perhaps we could do this lying down. I don’t know about you, but I
have had an eventful few days.”
The thought of even trying to catch each other up with what had happened was even more tiring. But,
as ever, Carly did not press the matter. Perhaps one day he should, but Xeras was relieved to feel his lover’s
arms around him, lowering him gently to the thin blankets that lay upon the bare ground. It felt like ten feet
of fluffy down now that they were finally together again.
He wanted to feel Carly’s skin, searching through the layers of clothing, furiously pushing back layers
of concern. Where was Drinia? Was Drin watching? Was Meluda out there peeping into his thoughts? Was
Kassius scrying? All those people out there, discontented, spying, prying, always peering and bothering
each other. He wanted to just be here, be with Carly, alone together. And by sheer force of will, he almost
managed it.
Carly tried to hold him. “It’s all right, Xeras. It’s all right,” he muttered.
Xeras pulled him into a frantic kiss, to which Carly barely responded. There was an awkwardness
between them, collisions of bodies, clothing, teeth. Finally Carly rolled over Xeras, pinning him down by
the shoulder and arm.
“It’s all right,” Carly said again. “Really.”
But how could it be? How could it possibly be all right?
Carly waited a while. He must have been looking down at Xeras but Xeras kept his eyes closed. Even
one bright glimpse of anything might bring it all crashing down on him, losing the no-matter-how-illusory
sense of privacy that intimacy required.
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But Carly’s strong square fingers settled on Xeras’s jaw, tilting his face. It was a silent request, too
strong to resist. Cautiously, Xeras opened his eyes, expecting the moment to be lost. Instead he was trapped
in the duke’s eyes, almost hidden in shadows. Carly loomed over him, holding him down firmly.
“I’m beginning to work it out,” Carly said. “The less you speak, the worse things are. Sarcasm and
insult with you are like pet names and pleasantries for any other man. And at this moment I need to know if
you are all right, if there is anything I need to know right now to avoid making this tenuous situation we
find ourselves in any more disastrous.”
Xeras shook his head, feeling Carly’s hand still resting along his cheek and jaw.
“Are you sure?”
Xeras nodded.
“We will need to make some kind of plan before the meeting in the morning.”
Xeras nodded again.
“Can you say at least one word for me, for my peace of mind?”
Xeras shook his head again.
Carly sighed. He settled down onto his elbows so that he was lying partly across Xeras’s body,
looking down on him from a distance of just a few inches. “I remember when I was talking to Katinka
about that dragon of yours. I was concerned at the time that her attack on Kassius might be the beginning of
a change in her temperament, that she might become more like her ferocious mother. Oh don’t bristle at
me, Xeras. It was a reasonable enough thought at the time, before Kassius demonstrated just how deserving
of defacing he truly is.
“Anyway I was saying that no matter how an idea—a possibility—might appeal to you, wishing
cannot make a cougar into a kitten. Some things are tame and others wild. The tame you may bend to your
wishes, the wild bend you to theirs. And I remember Katinka laughed at me, and she wouldn’t say why. I
think maybe now I understand the irony of my warning.”
Xeras felt a pit of dread opening in his stomach. He had changed everything in Carly’s world, and not
for the better. He had brought Drinia into Ballot’s Keep. He had dragged the ambitions of Tirrin in his
wake and torn a hole in the peace with the plainsman—exacerbating changes started by his mother in
whose footsteps he had unknowingly followed. But somehow it had never occurred to him that Carly
himself was affected. Carly was strong, calm, eternal. Carly was his one fixed point when all around was
chaos, a chaos of Xeras’s own making.
Carly was finally realizing how destructive Xeras was to all the things he loved, and how much he
demanded of Carly’s time and patience. Carly might leave him, and for one horrible moment, Xeras
wondered whether he should. Wouldn’t they all be better off without him, even if it left Xeras with nothing
at all?
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The dragon senses were relentless, like eyes he could not close. The gilded, green-hued hints of life,
the specks and strands that swayed and streamed and flared. But then he felt them flicker and slowly dim. It
was Drin, somehow draping his influence around Xeras like a veil, blinding him—for a moment—to
everything. Drin didn’t speak, but he was as absent as he could be, present only as a shield against the rest
of the world.
Xeras exhaled with limp relief.
“What is it now?” Carly asked.
“Nothing,” Xeras replied. “A rather hard-won nothing. Could we keep it like that for just a while?”
Xeras awoke, truly hungry, and not sure if it was a moment later, or hours. Hunger was a feeling he
had almost forgotten and he rather enjoyed it. It was still dark, but the very dark gray of day beginning to
muse on dawning, as best could be discerned from the crack and crevice of the structure around them.
Xeras felt warm, protected…held in Carly’s arm circled around a little too firmly for the duke to be asleep.
Drin hovered over them both like a benevolent vapor.
Within the limited confines of the felt tent, everything was right with the world. Or at least, how it
was meant to be, imperfections and all. Although, very soon, they would have to implement their plan for
retaking the town.
“Are you awake?” Carly asked.
“Perhaps. Finally.”
“What do you mean?”
“It seems,” Xeras said, “that I cannot help but be a fool. It is time I became a thoroughgoing one. For
the thoroughgoing fool has the gift of selfishness, certainty and oblivion to the ridicule around him.”
So how exactly do you plan to act even more the fool? It strains the bounds of imagination…
“That’s nice, Xeras. But would you consider answering a few questions first?”
Xeras shook his head to dismiss Drin and considered saying no to Carly. But having vanished in the
middle of the night while Ballot’s Keep fell under occupation, a few answers was hardly an unreasonable
request.
“Such as?”
“Like the leader here, Yulia, says that you talk to ghosts.”
“I was very clear about that with her benighted offspring. I speak to one ghost, one. And one is more
than enough.” So, it was out—and surprisingly easily done.
Given that he had to know exactly what to ask you to get an answer at all…
“And you never thought to mention that to Katinka, or myself, or anyone in the town?”
Xeras made a shadow of a shrug. “It is hardly something you can slip into polite conversation.”
“But you mentioned it to this plainsman?”
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“The conversation we were having was anything but polite. In fact it culminated with him attempting
to murder me.”
“There seems to be a lot of that going around.” Carly placed his arm casually around Xeras’s waist,
simultaneously drawing him in and subtly holding him down.
“What? Oh yes.” Xeras belatedly recalled Carly’s own recent brush with death. “Strange the only two
times I have had true dreams, they were both about you. There is a certain symmetry to it I suppose…”
“You had a dream?”
“The first time you almost died at the hands of a dragon, the second you were saved by one.”
He must be wondering why you left Ballot’s Keep.
“Drin says you must be wondering why I left Ballot’s Keep.”
“Drin?”
“The ghost.”
“You named Drinia after him, I suppose.”
“Yes, well, he wanted children. Under the circumstances we would have to adopt.”
“You are still with him.”
“He is still with me. He is haunting me. It’s not really in the nature of being optional. And don’t start,
Drin, you know I am not trying to get rid of you.”
Now is not the time to be talking to me.
“Now you start thinking of that. It never seemed to stop you before.”
“You’re talking to him?” Carly asked. “Where is he?”
Xeras sighed and tried to settle deeper into the covers tangled around them both. He had the urge to
pull the blanket up over his head.
“Well I suppose you have to talk to someone,” Carly continued. “And it certainly isn’t me.”
Xeras pulled the blanket up over his head.
Well, that’s very constructive of you.
“Carly,” Xeras ventured from beneath the heavy woolen blanket. “Much as the thought of losing you
terrifies me, we are in a camp full of people who are thinking of attacking your town, which is already
occupied by a small army. And there is a bit more besides that I don’t really want to talk about because
there could be some people nearby listening in, and with the wonders of the magic arts, some people not so
nearby also listening—and it is not impossible that people are reading our minds…”
You are babbling, darkling.
“…and Drin tells me I am babbling.”
“It is nice to hear a few words from you, Xeras. Whether they make sense or not.” Carly’s voice was
warm, indicating he was joking. But physically he had relaxed his grip, no longer holding Xeras close. “But
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if we cannot talk, or even think, what are we meant to do to save the people of Ballot’s Keep from these
hostile forces. Assuming that is what you are also trying to do?”
“Of course I am.”
He reared up out of the warmth of their bed and snatched up his clothes. It was cold enough that, even
in the tent, they had half-frozen into frigid folds. With a grimace he shook them out and started to dress. He
supposed he should have kept them under the mattress or somewhere else that was a little warmer.
“I would say ‘don’t be like that’,” Carly said. “But that also doesn’t seem to be optional.”
“Don’t give up on me yet,” Xeras said as he left the tent. “You may be one of the few people alive
who could put up with being in close quarters with me for more than a few consecutive days, and I
appreciate that—I do.”
“But we have a town to save.”
“But we have a town to save, and I have a plan.”
A foolish plan.
Naturally.
Chapter Fourteen
“I. Hate. Heights,” Xeras said morosely.
“You could have stayed down below, and Carly could have come with me.” Petry failed to hide his
preference for the latter option.
“Carly is bigger. He would hit the ground with a much bigger thud,” Xeras rejoined.
In truth he did not really have that much to complain about. Jarvice was rearranging his rocky surface
to provide purchase. But nothing he did could change the essentially vertical nature of the ascent, or the
long, long way down. That and Yulia had insisted he take a weapon, a hatchet with a slender handle and
heavy head that banged against the back of his knees every time he moved.
Nevertheless, in the fresh dawn hours they were drawing near the top of the bridge—apparently
undetected. They found a perch behind a clump of dry ferns projecting from the rocky face to the side of
the bridge.
With dawn, Kassius appeared. He looked down over the balustrade, where Carly, Yulia and a couple
of armed plainswomen waited. Meluda stood just behind Yulia, dressed as the others, with a furred
trimmed cowl obscuring her face. Somehow Xeras doubted that ruse would be effective.
“So,” Petry whispered, far too loudly. “It’s all down to us.”
Specifically, once Petry took care of Kassius, it was all down to Xeras. And if ever there was a recipe
for disaster…
This is not a time for negative thinking.
I have not yet begun to think negatively, Xeras thought in reply.
In a crisis, you can be rather capable, Xeras. You can do this.
No problem. All he needed to accomplish, hopefully, was to take out Kassius. Without their
monomaniacal leader, the Tirrinians might think better of their entire mission and just go back home.
The first step would be to choose his moment…
Kassius looked straight at Xeras, through the obscuring rocks and grasses. He straightened and called
out, “Are you and that scrawny item of half-grown human livestock actually meant to be hiding?”
“This is going well,” Xeras muttered.
He stood, carefully, and Jarvice obligingly provided a ledge that allowed him to walk from his
vantage to the bridge. He put one hand on Petry’s shoulder, keeping him nearby.
“He couldn’t have seen us there,” Petry whined.
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“I, dear boy, am a seer,” Kassius replied. “Do you know what that means?”
Petry shrugged.
“It means…” Kassius’s voice rose in volume, “…that I can see! I can see you, I can see them, I can
see that cowering, traitorous woman. I can see what is happening here. I can see it all!”
“What is happening here is that you are under attack,” Xeras replied glumly. He moved towards
Kassius only very slowly, so that he still had to shout a bit to cover the distance between them.
Kassius laughed. “That is an attack? I have the advantage of numbers, power, and this not
inconsiderable rampart. They cannot hope to prevail.”
He gave a nod and the horn sounded, summoning the Tirrinian occupation force, forming in ranks
behind the gate and across the top. As they climbed up the narrow stairs on either side, Xeras noticed that
they looked at him with curiosity as they brushed past, not rancor. His plan hung by a slender thread, but it
did hang.
So try to look strong and confident, like someone an army would want to follow.
Xeras also noticed that they carried bows and arrows, spears and hoppers of flaming pitch. In a short
time, the narrow surface of the bridge would be transformed into a smoking expanse of martial power.
Kassius was right. If it came to a fully committed battle, he could not fail.
Xeras and Petry were carried forward, closer to Kassius. Xeras squeezed the boy’s shoulder as a
signal to take Kassius down. It might be better to wait, but he could not take the chance. Now, now would
have to be good enough.
“There is one thing that you don’t have,” Xeras observed.
Kassius continued to smile, looking out at the disordered forces of the plainsmen. “And what is that?”
he asked, but with no real sign of interest.
“Morale,” Xeras said. “Your forces don’t seem to have an awful lot of it.”
“I think overpowering force and unwavering duty will do. And you can stop yanking on the dolt’s
arm. His little parlor trick will not work on me now. I have been studying them all, you must have noticed
that. I brought in a man here, who can nullify their petty powers.”
He gestured lazily to someone in the ranks. Or maybe just to his men in general, not being too
interested in where one individual was, no matter how useful.
Xeras experienced the nasty, sinking feeling that it was going to fall on his shoulders, after all. He had
no faith in his ability to prevail. “Get back there and find somewhere safe.” Xeras pushed Petry away.
You can do it. I believe it even if you don’t.
Xeras untied the lace attaching the hand axe to his belt, fumbling with knots in the damn string.
“And what do you think you are doing?” Kassius asked with a sneer.
“That rather depends on what your little army here lets me do.”
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Xeras hefted the weapon in his hand. Its length and weight were reassuring. Maybe he didn’t know all
that much about fighting, but Kassius—for all his pretensions—was not a great deal better equipped. He
saw himself as a general, not a soldier. His fine sword probably never had a chance to get a scratch or notch
upon it, in battle or in practice.
“So that’s how it’s going to be, is it?” Kassius said, quite calmly. “I don’t think so.” With a nod of his
head, he commanded the men next to him. “Get rid of this fool.”
Xeras kept his eyes on Kassius. The Tirrinian’s scarred visage was contorted with contempt. “I don’t
think so. This is between you and me. Neither of us have any kind of magic you can use in a fight. Neither
of us has any business being up here in the mountains, in the cold, let alone dragging this lot along into it.
And you’ve got a weapon there just like I do. It’s only fair.”
Only four or five more steps would close the distance between them. Only two or three would put him
within striking range. Kassius glanced aside with a frown, scowling with outrage. His command still went
unanswered. In the Tirrinian scheme of things, Xeras was right. Soldiers fight, but nobleman to nobleman,
the proper format was a duel. A ragged desperate duel, for sure—but a duel all the same.
Are you sure? Do you really think they won’t defend him? Do you really think you can take him with
an overgrown hatchet you’ve never used before?
So much for thinking positively. Xeras was stuck with the reality that this makeshift excuse for a duel
was the only option he had right now. He had to hope for the best—and use every possible advantage that
presented itself. Even if it was a rather unfair one.
Xeras pulled out Phinia’s scarf, tucked safely in his belt pouch.
“So sure you know the truth of things?” Xeras said as he held it up like a lover’s token. “What exactly
do you think I have here, M’Lord Kassius?”
Kassius’s eyes fastened on that tiny scrap of cloth, and for the first time Xeras felt he truly had the
man’s attention.
“You actually love her, don’t you,” Xeras said. “And being a seer you must have some idea what she
is really like…what she really wants.”
“She has not pledged herself to anyone but me, and once we are married she never will.”
“But you are not married yet. And she’s in no great hurry, is she? Neither are we at war yet. And
they”—Xeras waved to the ranks of Tirrinians—“are in no great hurry either. She is stalling, Kassius. And
why do you think that might be?”
“I have will enough for them all!” Kassius shouted, spittle flying from his lips. “She will do my
bidding, they will do my bidding, and after our victory you will be bound by your promise, and I. Will.
Have. It. All! Because it is my birthright. Because it is my will and I will bend the very fabric of reality to
serve me if I must.”
He’s gone completely insane.
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From the look in the eyes of the Tirrinians nearest to him, Drin was not the only one thinking that.
“So where is she, your princess?” Xeras asked mildly, trying to set his reasonable tone in stark
contrast with that of the soldiers’ current commander. “Not here to see your moment of triumph? In fact, is
she so far away you don’t even know where she is, whether she is being unfaithful, whether she left you
after all…”
“Get rid of this maniac.” Kassius pulled his own short sword from its scabbard with a dramatic
flourish, the gold-washed blade glinting in the first rays of the sun. “Put him away somewhere for his own
safety. Hurry…”
Seeing his men still hesitate to obey, Kassius actually raised his blade to threaten the man nearest to
him. Xeras saw others in the rank stifle a movement, reaching for their own weapons, not to aid Kassius but
to defend their fellow soldiers from him.
Xeras resisted an urge to step back. It was a delicate balance, and could still tip either way. “Maybe I
am not the one who needs to be put away somewhere. I am not the one trying to start a war, just for
personal gain, and putting all Tirrin at risk to do it.”
“I do this for Tirrin,” Kassius said, regaining his composure. “Always for Tirrin. It is you who is the
traitor here.”
“I have it!” called a voice from the village. “Tell the commander that I have it.”
And there was no great mystery what “it” was. A most terrible squarking, squalling sound radiated up
into the air. It was Drinia.
Oh no. Do something!
Xeras pushed through the Tirrinians to the other side of the bridge and leaned out as far as he dared.
Below, two liveried Tirrinians stood, peering upwards. One of them held aloft, by a curved handle, a small
wrought-iron cage. He could not see Drinia, the cage had a solid metal top. But billows of yellow-tinged
smoke boiled out, and the carefully designed container shook and rattled with each outraged squeal.
Kassius spoke, quiet and controlled. “How fortuitous. You have just become entirely dispensable.
That will simplify my plans considerab…”
Each word suggested a position that was closer and closer to Xeras. Some useful, but hitherto well-
hidden instinct came to the fore as Xeras spun around and raised the axe with one hand at each end of the
handle.
Kassius’s shiny blade sliced down, notching deep onto the dry wood, the force of the blow pushing
Xeras so that his shoulders leaned back over the low balustrade and his booted feet slipped in the mud and
slush.
Xeras pushed back with all of his might, but his back only arched farther, his feet slipped farther
forward as his knees began to buckle, and the tip of the blade moved inexorably closer to his face.
Fight! Push!
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That’s why everyone keeps ghosts around, for the astounding insights and sage counsel.
Sarcasm isn’t going to help you here.
Xeras gritted his teeth and pushed ’til every sinew screamed. The stone behind him shifted slightly.
The weighted head of the axe meant his left hand seemed to have more strength. The blade caught in its
haft twisted, and Kassius staggered forward as Xeras dodged aside, pulling his blade free.
The Tirrinians merely stepped out of their way, leaving a rough square, bounded by a low wall and
long fall on two sides, and a row of armored soldiers, shields raised, on the other two. Xeras scrambled to
his feet, swinging the axe up. Its head was a puny weapon, more bludgeon than blade, and the handle too
short to reach past Kassius’s darting blade.
Kassius turned to his side, presenting a slim target with his sword’s point extended. He approached
slowly, cool eyes seeking a target that his supple wrist would surely never miss. Even if it was not a craft
he had much practiced, he seemed to know the forms. Xeras backed away just as slowly. He felt a shock of
cold sweat prickle over his body, the chill wind sucking away his warmth.
Kassius darted forward, fast as a snake. Xeras felt his feet like anchors on the stone; he made a rash
grab for magic fading towards the intangible realm. The blade sliced through empty air as Xeras took one
deep, shuddering breath of the frigid storm. His awareness of all that was happening in the real world began
to fade, and like a stream of silk passing through his fingers, he knew it would very soon be gone.
No, Xeras. You do that one more time and you will probably never come back.
Drin grabbed his spirit form and pushed him back onto the bridge. Xeras tripped and rebounded off
the raised shield of a soldier, who thrust him, stumbling, back to the center where Kassius waited. He fell
roughly to the ground, but for a moment, Kassius did not press his advantage.
“No use of the art,” Kassius declared. “This is a duel of honor, so you will humor me by at least
pretending to have some. Renry, make sure that does not happen again.”
Xeras was on all fours, kneeling on the ground before Kassius, but this time there was no Drinia to
come to his defense. This time there was far more than his pride at stake.
So stand up, Xeras. Kassius will not gloat for long.
Xeras grasped his axe and got up, but he had a deep, nasty feeling it was only for the purpose of
meeting death on his feet. Kassius drove at him over and over with a force that was more vehement than
trained, but effective all the same, especially as Xeras did not have a shield. Xeras stepped back again and
again, to keep away from the questing blade. His heel collided with the balustrade at the other side of the
bridge. He felt his balance pass through the tipping point, as he leaned out into space.
In a reflexive move he raised the axe, flailing forward with it to try and use the weight of it to pull him
back onto solid ground. Kassius loomed before him, sword raised dramatically overhead.
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The axe-head caught Kassius in the side of his jaw. It hit with a muted, wet sound and clove upwards
into the softer spaces behind his face before lodging in his skull. Kassius froze, his eyes filmed over as life
palpably fled. He toppled backwards, pulling Xeras back from the edge as he slumped to the ground.
Way to go, Drin chimed in. Disgusting, but way to go.
Xeras looked down at the still, mutilated figure. Viscous fluid seeped from the gaping wound and
onto the flagstones. His eyes were glued to Kassius’s contorted face, his mind trapped in the amber of the
moment.
It shouldn’t be that easy, he thought to himself. It should not be that easy to kill someone.
It would have been just as easy to die, and wouldn’t have bothered Kassius one bit.
A Tirrinian came to his side. “You had to do that. The commander was going to kill you. And killing
a fellow Tirrinian is never lawful, so we were not obliged to assist him.”
“But it does put us in something of a tricky situation,” another man added.
It’s what they wanted, darkling. They need your reassurance. Quickly now.
Xeras managed to look up, to seek out that second man, but he could not pick him out from the group.
Globs of sleet-snow started to fall, first a smattering and then a more sustained downfall.
“The situation you are in…” Xeras paused. He raised his voice to carry to the gathered Tirrinian
forces. “The situation you are in is that you—we —we will be spending winter in this town. For there is no
way to get through the steep passes now. The whole of the lowlands are out of reach until the thaw. The
townsfolk of Ballot’s Keep have a treaty with the plainsmen. They are officially at peace. I suggest you
follow that example.”
The man next to him was vaguely familiar, almost of his father’s age, and Xeras suspected he should
know his name. “What should we do? We cannot accept your commands. Though you were born a
Tirrinian and so shall live and die one, you are without rank or standing, and cannot hold command.”
What could they do? Xeras looked around. His gaze settled on Petry, who was trying with little
success to look inconspicuous by the tower sconce.
“You could be pragmatic and realize that getting through this winter will require the good will of the
town. You could release the prisoners, and then adjourn to your quarters to determine, by whatever means
seem apt, just which of you is in command right now. And that person should come and speak to the duke.”
“Um,” the man said hesitantly, “but the duke is…”
“The duke is fine,” Xeras interjected.
Very fine indeed.
“And the duke will soon be back in his manse,” Xeras said, “um, being the duke. He will be ready to
talk to you by the time you have decided who will speak to him on your behalf.”
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And given the nature of Tirrinian bureaucracy, even in a rough and abbreviated form, that was a safe
bet. Xeras smiled. “It is cold. Let us get off this cursed bridge. And somebody should bring me my
dragon.”
On the stoop outside the duke’s manse, Xeras and Carly were reunited again. Snow melted between
them as they embraced. And it kept falling. Heavy splats fell on his head and slush slid down his neck.
“So, are you quite done now?” Carly asked. “The weather is not good for any further traveling.”
Please say you are ready to settle down.
“I am done. And the weather hasn’t exactly been balmy since the moment I set foot in this fine but
rather damp land of yours,” Xeras said. “Of course, the real question is, is the rest of the world and all the
bastards in it done with us?”
Carly’s heavy hand settled on his shoulder. “I have a new idea. Whatever happens next, let’s try
facing it together. Besides, most of those bastards are going to be stuck in town right along with us, at least
until the thaw.”
He had not heard Katinka approach, but recognized her distinctive voice. “I have settled our Thurstian
guests in the great hall. It looks like they might be stuck here for a while too. It is so charming that our
friends, neighbors and in-laws have small private armies in need of billeting.”
“I am sure we would be greatly obliged if you could look after that little matter,” Carly replied. “Just
how small is the Thurstian contingent?”
“And is Phinia with them?” Xeras added.
“Yes, that she is.”
“How does she look?” Xeras inquired.
“Annoyed, but what worries me more is that her father was not with them.” She turned rather
skeptically to Xeras. “Did you not say her father led this party?”
“Of course. Why would guardsmen come all this way alone? Unless the duchess…?”
“No, just the guardsmen, and a very shifty lot at that. I am not best pleased to have them as our guests,
but not quite willing to cast them out into the cold. If they left with the duke, her father, they have arrived
without him—and they will answer no questions on the matter—deferring in all cases to the little princess.”
Xeras thought for a moment of what he might have done by sending Phinia to meet her father.
Surely she would not have…?
Perhaps they had all underestimated Phinia’s ambition, and what she was willing to do in its pursuit.
“Let’s adjourn inside,” Carly said. “Who knows how long the Tirrinians will take to send us a
representative.”
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And Katinka added, “We will be seeing Phinia soon enough, and Parlen. Once he has released the
townsfolk with talent, and checked with the quartermasters to judge what state our people and provisions
are in.”
Carly reached his arm around Xeras and they went inside together. In the hallway they met Limry
who was carrying a metal shuttle filled with split wood towards the parlor.
Xeras broke away from Carly. “Let me take that.”
The damn thing proved to be very heavy, but he was mindful now that Limry was not some menial
servant. And would it really matter if she was? Drin had been a servant, after all, and it did not place him
below consideration and courtesy—or at least it should not.
You were a while getting here, darkling. But you may finally be growing up.
Limry took over again at the hearth. “I doubt you know how to light a candle properly. Let alone build
a proper hearth fire.”
Carly sat on the bench seat and Xeras slumped down at his side, leaning back against the cold stone
wall. “You could use a tapestry or something here.”
“Perhaps you could take up needlework,” Limry said.
“Who knows, it might be my true calling,” Xeras replied, unrankled. “I will need something to keep
me busy once I give up troublemaking.”
Drin snorted skeptically.
A Tirrinian soldier came in with Drinia’s cage and placed it gingerly by Xeras’s feet. Xeras peered in,
and Drinia hissed and spat fire at him, apparently undiscriminating in her pique.
You might want to let her calm down a bit before turning loose a fire-breathing monster—albeit a
small one—in a house full of cantankerous warmongers.
Xeras’s mind became foggy for a moment, and he was not sure if he had simply rested his eyes or
drifted into sleep. Then Katinka returned in the company of a wiry Tirrinian swaddled in a sheepskin coat,
and closely followed by Parlen and Phinia. They looked like very…tiring company. It took such an effort to
work out what they wanted, what they needed, what they were scheming and conniving to do as soon as
they were out of sight. That was at least one thing in Drinia’s favor. She might be a source of trouble and
strife, but one never had to wonder what Drinia was thinking or how she felt about a person.
Xeras leaned away from Carly. “This looks like it will call for diplomacy,” he said. “I will leave you
to it.”
Carly’s arm remained settled implacably over Xeras’s shoulders, not letting him get away. “We
discussed this ‘leaving’ habit of yours. And if it takes irons and chain, you’ll be doing no more of it.”
Xeras sighed and sat back down, closing his eyes.
How very constructive of you.
My attempts at providing helpful input, Xeras thought in reply, tend to go horribly awry.
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He tentatively opened one eye and found the collected company mostly staring down at him.
Xeras closed his eyes, propped one foot up on the cage in which Drinia was still sulking. It was
distinctly warm underfoot. He pointed one finger at Carly. “This one is the duke, in case you have
forgotten. My authority is limited to dragon-related issues, which are currently under control, thank you
very much.”
“What do you think will happen when you let her out?” Katinka asked mildly.
“Oh, screaming, burning, wailing and general chaos. So perhaps you should deal with the opposing
armies and fortify yourself for dragon destruction at a later date, or at least a later hour.”
Carly laughed.
The Tirrin sounded like he was rather more somber when he said, “It is you who murdered our
commander.”
Carly seemed like he was going to rise, but Xeras forced himself to straighten his back, stretch out his
arms, blocking Carly’s path. “I think the fact he was trying to fillet me with a sword would count as a
mitigating circumstance, and besides, you have very little reason to complain. A loyal soldier is always
willing to fight, but his chances of living a long life are improved when he doesn’t.”
“Why don’t we all take a seat,” Katinka said wearily. “The snow is already near waist-deep outside,
and so—one way or another, we will be spending some time together in this town until the thaw.”
They took their places on the rough-hewn furniture which was positioned in a ragged circle with a gap
where Limry was fanning an already well-established fire. Xeras noticed that a sharp-looking metal poker
was positioned close beside her. But she disregarded the rest of them entirely.
The company could be divided, with the exception of Carly, into those who looked at Xeras with
loathing, the Tirrinian and Phinia, and those who considered him with a milder form of disdain, Katinka,
Limry and Parlen—the chamberlain looking even more shaggy and unkempt than ever.
Days in a dungeon and a night in a freezing cave can have that effect. You aren’t exactly coiffed like a
courtier yourself.
“As my sister has noted,” Carly said, taking charge of the gathering, “we will be here together until
the passes thaw…”
“Assuming we will be inclined to leave at that time,” Phinia broke in.
“At least until the thaw,” Carly amended, unperturbed. “And whatever each of us might think of the
others, we want our own people to make it through this winter in good order. Can we agree at least on
that?”
“I would sacrifice quite a few of my men to see this Tirrinian dead.” Phinia pointed her delicate finger
at Xeras.
“I sacrificed your fiancé,” Xeras replied implacably, “to keep a few of your men alive. As their ruler I
hope you would see that as a fair trade.”
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Phinia leapt to her feet. “You impugn my honor!”
“You impugned mine first, if you will recall.” Xeras slumped back against the wall. He had just saved
a lot of people from dying in a senseless war. Thanks, apparently, was too much to ask for.
Did you do it for the accolades and glory?
And of course he hadn’t.
Should she not care that her fiancé was killed?
He had done it to stay alive and to keep people alive. First the people he knew and loved, and
eventually the whole damn lot of them. And in the end, he had done it by killing someone.
Because you had to. But you must realize that even a man like Kassius will be mourned by some.
Somehow Xeras felt it had all got messed up, and he had gone on this long twisted journey just to end
up exactly where he never wanted to be.
“…you even listening to me!” Phinia shouted.
The Tirrinian, presumably their new commander, reached out and restrained her. Something jogged
Xeras’s memory. This was the one Kassius called Renry, the one who could stop people from using their
gift of dragon magic.
Xeras looked up into Phinia’s flashing eyes. “He was going to kill me, and then some of the
plainsmen, some of my people and along the way some of yours. I suppose you loved him, in your way.
But how many people would you sacrifice for that love?”
“As many as it took. As many as I had to.”
“Maybe I don’t understand love,” Xeras replied. “It seems to me that it is something to live for, not to
kill for.”
“Then you are a hypocrite,” she spat.
Which seemed like a valid point.
Hardly.
“If I may remind you all,” Carly interjected. “We are here to work out how to all get through the
winter together. Without anyone else getting killed.”
“And as I said, that calls for diplomacy,” Xeras said. “Which is not a skill I bring to the table. I don’t
think my presence will make it very easy for M’Lady Phinia or Commander Renry to be conciliatory. They
have scores with me which shall, in all likelihood, need to be settled…personally.”
Xeras bent forward and picked up the cage in which Drinia continued to mutter to herself.
“Xeras…” Carly said.
“When you are done with this, you know where to find me.”
“Do I?”
“Your rooms.”
“Our rooms.”
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“As you please.”
He bore the fuming cage away, trying to clear the air both literally and figuratively. This time Carly
let him go.
Placing the cage in the center of the cinder court, on the reasoning that it was not an area conducive to
getting any more burnt than it already was, Xeras consider how to get an angry dragon out of a cage. The
metal base sank quickly into the snow, and melt-water started to seep inside. Discontent flowed out of the
small dragon, picking up one paw after the other and flicking the cold water off it.
“I didn’t put you in there, Drinia. You know that.”
Drinia snapped her teeth at him through the bars.
I do not think she is interested in making conversation. She wants out.
“Forms and guises,” Xeras muttered.
He stood as far back as he could. He lifted the guillotine-style door with the tip of his finger. It was
hot enough that he flinched back, but he didn’t need to raise it all of the way. Drinia started to squeeze and
wiggle through as soon as any gap was evident. She pushed the door fully open and burst out in a confusion
of wings, flames and unfocussed fury.
Duck!
Xeras yelped, covered his face and dove down into the snow, fearing for a moment that Drinia would
rearrange his features as she had with Kassius.
Not a wise thing to be thinking about right now.
Nevertheless, the little dragon scrambled over his back as if he was nothing more than an obstacle,
jumped off, pushing him deeper into the snow and slush, and took to the sky. Xeras rolled to his side, trying
to keep Drinia in sight. She spiraled upwards with laboring wing beats and was quickly lost to sight in the
descending veils of snow.
Said snow was now inside Xeras’s collar, cuffs and boots. He stood gingerly, brushing off what he
could, as a roughly equivalent amount fell onto him from above.
“I don’t know about the rest of them,” Xeras remarked. “But I doubt I will make it through the winter
regardless.” Tirrin never got this cold.
He wedged his hands under his armpits, then took them out to try and wrap his ragged cloak more
tightly about him.
You’ll do fine, so long as you are smart enough to go in where it is warm.
“Toasty warm and full of murderous intentions.”
Carly would not let anything happen to you, and besides you told him you would wait in his rooms.
You might like to start keeping your promises to him—just for a change of pace.
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Looking upwards gained Xeras nothing more than a face full of thick snowflakes. His forehead ached
with cold as a frigid wind swirled around him.
“I can’t leave Drinia out here.”
You let her go out here.
“If I’d let her go in there the whole place would be afire by now. It is very tiring trying to keep
everyone safe.”
It is very tiring to me that you consider it your sole responsibility.
He tilted his heard, hearing the faint squawking of the dragon. He sensed that she was perched
somewhere on top of the gate. Xeras really, really did not want to go up there. Really.
So don’t.
“She’ll catch her death of cold out here. How would you feel if we went back inside and found her
frozen solid like some kind of distorted gargoyle come morning?”
I have a little more faith in her than you do. Come to think of it I have a little more faith in her than I
do in you. If she needs to come in from the cold, she’ll do it.
“And if she doesn’t?”
If you are going to climb up there after her, darkling, just get on with it. Standing here in the cold
talking to me will just make you all the colder and more likely to fall. But if you break your neck now, after
all this, I hope you will appreciate the irony.
“It will be the only thing on my mind as I plummet to the ground.”
That and the words of a ghost saying…?
“I told you so.”
Exactly.
Nevertheless, Xeras made it to the top of the gate, yet again. He could hear the sound of some kind of
happy gathering from the town. There were a lot of lights on at Garia’s house, so it was probably the newly
liberated townsfolk celebrating. But trying to peer down into the town against a driving, icy wind stung his
eyes so he could now barely see. But he could sense Drinia scampering along the low wall.
“It is all very well for you, brat. You can fly,” Xeras grumbled.
She really doesn’t seem to feel the cold.
As he walked across the top of the gate, she scurried along ahead of him, just out of reach. When he
got to the other end, she glided over his head and went back the other way. They repeated this performance
with Xeras sometimes sweet-talking and coaxing her, and other times cursing and threatening her under his
breath and making frantic grabs for the tip of her elusive tail.
You have to concede, the cold is not bothering her and not slowing her down. I think she could do this
all night.
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Xeras tried, vainly, to shelter in the small turret that housed the sconce the duke was meant to be able
to use to open and close the gate. The gusting wind was building to a gale. Drinia sat on the other side of
the walkway, nonchalantly grooming the end of her tail, wisps of smoke blustering away from her tapered
snout.
“Contrary, delinquent beast,” Xeras muttered.
Takes after her father, no doubt.
Pursing his chapped lips Xeras made one final attempt, rushing towards her. Drinia sat, regarding him
quite calmly, but at the last moment leapt into the air. Xeras made a wild grab, reaching out from the edge
of the bridge.
Strong hands caught him and pulled him back. “What in blazes are you doing, Xeras?” Carly asked,
shouting over the now ever-present wind.
“I can’t leave the little monster out in this weather,” Xeras yelled back.
“It is almost dark, and if you weren’t up here chasing her around she’d probably be home already. The
cold may not bother her, but she’ll get hungry sooner or later.”
“She can hunt for herself,” Xeras said, not without some grudging pride.
“And she’s steaming like a coal dropped in the quenching trough. I don’t think it’s her we need to be
worried about.” He took Xeras’s ungloved hands in his, and even that gentle warmth was almost painful.
“While we are up here, let’s get this gate closed once and for all, and get inside. There’s a warm bed
waiting for the both of us.”
A man after my own heart, or more to the point, after yours. Surely it is about time you let him have
it?
“You think we can close the gate now?” Xeras asked.
“It is surely what Kassius thought. And while he was mad as a wet hen, that man was not stupid. We
simply have to be of one mind.”
Xeras laughed bitterly. “I’m of more than one mind all on my own.” He shivered convulsively as the
cold bit in.
“Well, if the weather does not focus your mind, the delicate peace below probably should,” Carly
said. “Come on, think about closing a gate.”
“Just like that? Right now? Isn’t there some ritual, some invocation?”
“Maybe there was once.” Carly wrapped his own cloak partly around Xeras. “But it’s long forgotten
and we seem to get by fine without it.”
With his other hand, he drew the heavy chain of office over his head. The main stone dangled,
heaving and twisting. Carly flicked up the chain and caught the pendant.
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“I have done this before,” he reminded Xeras as he pressed the stone forward into the carved
receptacle. The stone of the chain and the stone of the bridge melded together, much like the stone dragon,
Jarvice, would meld with the stone when he climbed in the mountains.
Think about the gate closing, Drin prompted.
Right. Xeras closed his eyes and tried his best to imagine the closing of the gate, the doors he had
never seen sweeping across the arched void. Yet somehow in his mind’s eyes, he did see them. From a
distance the gate appeared strangely jeweled or scaled. He felt the secure presence of them closing in the
small, steep valley, beginning the winter closeness when the fog would be dense in the street both day and
night. He felt the cold security of it, the timeless revolution of the seasons with the gate opening and
closing. The gate itself seemed to feel the tardiness of its duty.
Beneath their feet the stone rumbled and there was a screech of protest, crumbling, falling dirt and a
sound like a waterfall in the distance or a herd of hoofed animals moving closer and closer. Xeras did not
have to look.
The great gate of Ballot’s Keep was closing.
A cheer swelled up from the town.
“You did it,” Carly said with a smile.
“We did it,” Xeras replied. “And what I did was mostly try to be less of an obstacle.”
Carly shook his head. “You are humble enough to refuse credit, but arrogant enough to insist on
running off to deal with things all on your own. You don’t make a bit of sense, Xeras.”
“Then I can only hope you find enigmatic men irresistible.”
Chapter Fifteen
Carly ushered Xeras into his room, and Drin signaled that he intended to be as absent as possible. It
looked like Xeras and Carly were finally going to have that talk.
Xeras went and stood before the fire, extending his hands to its glow.
“There’s just one thing I want to know,” Carly said.
Just one? That seemed rather restrained under the circumstances.
“Why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do?” Carly finished latching the door and came over
to Xeras’s side, close but not touching. “Did you think I would try to stop you?”
“You might have.”
“And it was not a risk you were willing to take.”
“It is not that, exactly.”
Carly sighed.
“I wonder…” Xeras said.
“Wonder what?”
“I wonder why you put up with me sometimes. I can give you explanations and excuses, spells and
schemes and tales of childhood woes. But I know I am a difficult man, and one with few charms. And I
wonder.”
“I’ll be honest, Xeras. Sometimes I wonder too. For myself, it is my choice. You have peculiar
charms, I will admit, but you certainly have them. But I have responsibilities. Enough that I do not need
one more. Enough that…”
And this was the very talk Xeras had been afraid of having. “I tried to make it right.” Xeras backed
slightly away from Carly. “There really was a spell that stopped me from talking to you, or anyone, about
any plans of Tirrin—about everything Kassius and Phinia were doing. But it did not stop me from
acting…I mean, taking action…”
“So you could not tell me you were leaving and going to the plains?”
Xeras stared into the fire. He knew he had, finally, to be honest. He suspected it would turn out to be a
mistake. “I do not know,” he admitted. “I really do not know how much of my reticence was due to the
spell, and how much was just me.”
He wanted to say that it had kind of worked out in the end, but this didn’t seem like the time.
“You don’t know?” Carly asked.
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Xeras just shook his head.
“I am not ungrateful. You brought plainsmen to use, willing to parley at last. It made all the
difference. I feel ungrateful, because I have spent these days so afraid for everyone—and for you. I did not
know if Kassius had killed you. I was suddenly facing all of this, alone.” Carly reached over, settling his
hand on Xeras’s shoulder right next to his neck. Xeras saw for the first time the real fear beneath Carly’s
stalwart manner. Carly continued, “I have never felt for anyone what I feel for you. And I felt shut out, not
even knowing about your past, about this Drin…”
“That I could have told you. Drin told me to. It may be wrong of me but I am so afraid of losing Drin
again. And if I let myself be happy, I think he will go. If I let myself love you, it is like turning my back on
having loved…loving, him.”
Carly smiled. “It may seem self-centered to say. But if you let yourself, I am sure you could love us
both, in different ways. I am not a possessive man, and you have a greater heart than you seem to know.
Look how quickly you came to take responsibility for that dragon, for this whole town, for Kassius’s
actions, for your mother’s…”
“That I couldn’t tell you, about Yulia I mean. I am pretty sure that was covered by the spell.”
“It doesn’t really matter exactly what was or wasn’t responsible, what the spell did and what was you.
You have taken responsibilities, most of which are meant to be shared—and that can be worse than taking
none at all. Just like it took the two of us to close the gate, it takes the entire town to be responsible for the
town. And frankly you cannot go about it alone, even inside this building. I do not think it will be safe. And
I do not know how much more of it I can take. All right?”
“All right, yes,” Xeras agreed reluctantly. Then he paused, looking towards the door. “I suppose this
must be how Drinia feels, when I try to…”
“And I am sure, like her, you will resent it. But there is more than one person in this town who sees
you as the man who foiled their plans. And if they do manage to kill you, it will break the treaty and thrust
us back into the arms of war. So you will have to be a little more amiable, and avoid going about the place
alone…and it won’t be all bad.”
“No?”
“You have to admit, we have some catching up to do…”
Chapter Sixteen
Carly and Xeras stood, side by side, at the bottom of the gate. Katinka and Parlen were with them, and
a few other townsfolk were loitering about. It was a relief to see Drinia still hopping around on the
alewife’s rooftop, clattering along the guttering and sending a few pieces of loose slate hurtling down to
break on the cobbles. Xeras contrived to ignore the damage she was doing. No doubt he would be hearing
all about it from Garia soon enough.
The Thurstians and Tirrinians had not been invited to this makeshift reception, and it seemed they
weren’t going to press the issue—although they might well be using the vantage offered by the doors and
windows of the hall and the guildhouse.
“So there is a gate in the gate?” Xeras asked.
In reply Katinka pointed to the great face of the gate. “More like a door.”
The gate seemed to be made of wood, although how wood could have lasted this long, Xeras could
not imagine. It was clad in squares of metal as large as a generously sized serving platter, fixed in place
with huge square-headed forged nails. The two sides of the gate came together with matching crenulated
edges that meshed like teeth.
Just before them, there was indeed a simple door, the seams of its edges were almost hidden by the
meeting of the corroded metal plates, but the large, ornate hinges were easy to see. Also, at the center of the
door was some kind of seal, ringed about by decoration. But as Xeras leaned forward, the vine-like pattern
resolved into hard-worn characters in dragon script. He reached up and rubbed the curious, colorful rust
with his finger, further exposing the script that ringed the central starburst.
“The entrance of the bold,” he translated roughly. “To the welcome of the just.”
“Is that what it says?” Carly said. “I had always wondered.”
“No you didn’t,” Parlen grumbled.
“Maybe not, but I should have.”
“I’ll do the wondering,” Katinka said. “You do the welcoming. At this point we’d better play to our
strengths.”
So you will be doing the annoying…
“We could,” Xeras suggested, “send someone up top to check who they are sending through.”
“It would look like we don’t trust them,” Carly said.
Emily Veinglory
148
“I don’t,” Parlen commented. “And if you have any sense you won’t either… Forget I said that. Your
sister is the only one with any sense.”
He just hasn’t met me yet.
Xeras smiled; at least it sounded like Drin was planning to stay around.
Carly turned to Parlen with a frown and the chamberlain shrugged. “I guess I’ll go and…be
somewhere else,” he muttered.
Given that Parlen had spent most of the last few weeks locked in a dungeon, a certain degree of
animosity was perhaps to be expected.
Today the first of the weekly permitted immigrants would arrive, perhaps with a child in arms. They
were meant to bring enough supplies to carry them for a month or more, and be able to do such work as
might be available, to earn their way.
“I am pretty sure it is dawn.” Katinka looked up into the pale-colored sky. The actual sun would be
rising diagonally over the plains, not yet visible from where they stood.
Xeras considered the door, chewing on one ragged thumbnail. Carly placed his seal of office in the
center of the design and pulled in a hook-shaped protuberance at the side of the door.
Think about wanting to open the door.
But the thing was, Xeras wasn’t feeling too keen on opening the door. There were already enough
people in town who would like to murder him in his sleep. Phinia’s Thurstian forces were billeted in the
meeting hall, which had direct access to the manse. Even now he saw that she had come out to stand on an
upper balcony, looking like she wished she had a crossbow and a good alibi. The remaining Tirrinians
seemed have rather mixed feelings. Some of them were still less than friendly. Did he really want to add
plainsmen to the mix?
The alternative was a war. You do remember that, don’t you?
Right.
With the next tug, Carly had the door open. By a coincidence of position, Xeras had the first good
look at what stood on the other side.
“Tell me, Carly?” Xeras asked. “Did you happen to specify how old a child could be in order not to
count as an extra person?”
“No, only that they should be a child in…”
Carly leaned over. In the doorway stood Yulia, and in her arms was the rather disgruntled figure of
her fully grown son, Sedge.
To join our merry band of people who have tried to kill you, or would like to.
“…arms.” Carly finished. “Oh well, we may have to further refine that section of the agreement.”
“Oh good,” Xeras replied. “Did this agreement happen to mention anything about weapons, poisons,
dangerous things in general that they might want to bring with them?”
Lover of Ghosts
149
“Xeras do not be so rude to your mother,” Carly replied. “After all, I imagine they will both be
staying with us.” He held the door fully open, and Yulia came through and set her overgrown offspring
down on the ground. Yulia had a small triumphant smile on her face, Sedge a slightly embarrassed smirk.
“I’ll go see about a room for them, shall I?” Xeras asked.
Inside the manse he was not surprised to find that Limry was already preparing a suite at the far end
of the building from the duke’s rooms. She had opened the shutters to air the room and was lighting a fire
in the hearth to heat it once they were done. It had to be said that she had a very practiced and efficient way
of doing it. Xeras picked up a broom that was lying against the bed and made himself useful clearing debris
from the floor.
Parlen appeared in the doorway. “They’ll never really belong in this town.”
“They will…if you tap them in,” Xeras replied, continuing his work.
Parlen began to pull the dustcover from the bed. “Don’t think I won’t,” he grumbled.
“Better you than me,” Xeras replied.
Somewhere outside he could hear Garia cursing Drinia, who was squawking unapologetically in
reply. And, for some reason, he smiled.
Look for these titles by Emily Veinglory
Now Available:
King of Dragons, King of Men
Wolfkin
Ballot’s Keep
Father of Dragons
One grieving man is forced to uphold an ancient bargain—by giving birth to a dragon. If only life were that
simple.
Father of Dragons
© 2007 Emily Veinglory
Ballot’s Keep, Book 1
After his lover is executed for the simple crime of being a commoner, Xeras, a young nobleman of
Tirrin, turns his back on his life of privilege and flees into the wilderness.
Weighed down with grief, exhaustion and hunger, Xeras awakens from one confusing night in the
forest with the ghostly voice of his lover in his head—and the embryo of a dragon implanted in his side.
When Xeras encounters Carly, the charming Duke of Ballot’s Keep, he is far from ready to fall in
love again. Still grieving, and angry about the predicament into which he’s been forced, Xeras accepts an
opportunity to go after the dragons who have been making life difficult for the people of the local towns.
But there is sinister magic behind the machinations of the dragons, magic that emanates from Xeras’s
distant home island of Tirrin. Magic that puts the lives of both Carly and the tiny infant dragon in danger.
Xeras finds that he can’t turn his back on either of them.
For their sake he must face down his own countrymen and somehow thwart the Tirrin mages’ evil
plans.
Warning, this title contains the following: Some M/M sex, some dragons, even some sex with dragons.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Father of Dragons:
The young man peered at Xeras with a slight squint, suggesting that his eyesight was less than keen.
“Is there a problem?”
“Well,” Xeras explained with exaggerated care, “that rather depends on how you look at it. I am going
to Ballot’s Keep, and you are going in that same direction. I am going on foot, which is not only a damp
and exhausting proposition, but also rather slow. You are traveling a little quicker and in a lot more comfort
in this sound carriage of yours. Now as it happens I am on the road ahead of you. So I could get
courteously out of your way and let you travel on—no doubt splashing me with mud in passing—or I could
walk, even more slowly, all the rest of the way knowing that those well-mannered horses of yours are not
likely to run me down.”
“Or,” the young man added, “as we are all going to Ballot’s Keep we could do the sensible thing and
offer you a ride.”
“What?”
Drin’s laughter tickled his ears. I like this one. He’ll drive you crazy, my dear.
The young man smiled slightly at Xeras’s surprise. “Was that not what you were, in your own rather
interesting way, suggesting?” His open, wide and rather pleasingly symmetrical face seemed just as
charming as his words. His eyes were rather small, which was an unwelcome reminder of the stone dragon,
but as he was in possession of a carriage Xeras was willing to forgive that one small failing.
Xeras stood and stared at him for a moment. The boiling edge of his anger refused to dissipate even in
the face of what certainly seemed to be good will. As he walked to the side of the carriage, they could
simply drive off and leave him behind, but that suspicion was forestalled as the man jumped out onto the
muddy verge and gestured for Xeras to climb in ahead of him.
With really no sensible objection to make, Xeras walked over and peered into the dark interior. Two
bench seats faced each other. On the forward-facing seat sat a young woman in a demure but densely
embroidered grey dress who regarded him with amusement. “Why don’t you get in before you get soaked?”
“It is a little late for that.”
But Xeras did clamber in and sat with a distinct squelch on the rear-facing seat. The young man
jumped back in spryly and seated himself next to the woman. He pulled the door shut again with a vigorous
jerk, and fastened it. Xeras stared at them both incredulously, incensed that in their charitable good sense
they gave him no obstacle to rail against, nothing to fight. Sure, it was an irrational feeling, but with an
infant dragon passing for a boil on his stomach and the ghost of his dead love whispering in his ear, Xeras
didn’t feel inclined to be rational.
“I am Katinka,” the young lady said with a nod. “This is my brother Carly—the Ballot Duke.”
“The Ballot Duke?”
“You don’t know what that is?”
“No and please don’t explain. I imagine you get tired of doing it and I don’t really give a damn, so I
might as well save you the trouble.”
Carly laughed explosively, slapping his hand on his knee. A knee that Xeras noted, reflexively, was
attached to a substantial and well-muscled thigh. The man’s overall frame was rather impressive, if built
more square than lithe. Xeras glared at him, even finding the man attractive angered him.
“Here’s one who might give you a run for your money, Tinka. And he has prettier eyes than you to
boot.”
Prettier all ’round, but we won’t hold that against her, Drin piped up. But Xeras was determined not
to react to his asides any more, let alone when others might see it.
“I can hardly help that I was not born with bright green eyes,” Katinka replied primly. “And I really
don’t care what you seem to be suggesting about my character or that of our guest. Some of the old boys at
the keep may think me a harridan, but I don’t see them complaining when doing as I ask gets the drain
working properly or stops the food from spoiling.”
“I don’t have green eyes,” Xeras interrupted.
“But you do,” Carly corrected with a bemused glance. “Bright green eyes, as my sister was kind
enough to mention. And not an unpleasing shade at that.”
Xeras looked at him, then leaned his head back against the seat as the carriage began to rumble down
the road. He’d liked his eyes hazel; Drin had liked them that way too. “Damn it. That really is taking a
liberty.”
If he ever caught up with Plegura, dragon or not, they were going to have words.
No trust without truth.
Many Roads Home
© 2009 Ann Somerville
Fleeing his murderous brother-in-law, Vicont Yveni, heir to the Duchy of Sardelsa, seeks safety
abroad until he can reclaim his birthright. Instead he ends up shipwrecked, captured and taken to the one
country where he dare not reveal his identity. Worse, he’s just been bought by a man with no love for
Sardelsa.
Ripped from his family as a child and sold into slavery, Paole’s natural gift for healing made him a
valuable asset but did little to shield him from abuse and prejudice. Though he’s now free, for the first time
in his life he’s alone—and he hates it. All he wanted was an apprentice and traveling companion in this
hostile land. Instead he winds up the unintentional owner of a slave with a mulish attitude…and a
suspicious history.
Yveni dares not tell the truth about who he is, and Paole refuses to trust him until he comes clean. The
battle of wills only serves to heat up a sizzling attraction that throws a new complication into the mix: love.
Paole wants acceptance. Yveni wants his birthright. Even if they manage to come to an understanding,
forces are gathering against them that could tear them apart forever…
Warning: Virginal angsting, interminable UST, and tender loving.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Many Roads Home:
His irritation grew as he discovered another difficulty keeping an unwilling prisoner brought him. His
normal routine when he arrived in a town, same as Mathias’s had been, was to make a camp just outside
and go in on foot with what he needed, occasionally taking Peni if he was collecting materials or supplies.
Mathias had always taken Paole with him, and even sent him off to deal with patients on his own, as
Mathias’s age meant he could do less than was demanded of him. But Paole couldn’t turn up to see people
with a slave on a chain. Mathias had never chained him, had never needed to. Gaelin would run off as soon
as Paole unleashed him.
So he was forced to drive into town, leaving the boy chained to the wagon while he visited the
ironmongers for what he needed, then head out to where he planned to make camp. He had to make sure
there was a tree sturdy enough for the purpose, since he didn’t dare leave the brat with easy access to the
wagon and all its tools in the back.
Gaelin resisted as Paole dragged him over to the tree. “Why are you chaining me up here?” he
demanded as Paole fastened the lock on the new longer chain and tested it. “What have I done now?”
“Nothing, and that’s the way I want it to stay.”
“But what if it rains, or I need to eat?”
Blast it. Paole hadn’t considered that. “Then you’ll get wet.” The sky was clear, so there was no risk
today, but it was something else to worry about. “I’ll leave you food and water.”
“Is there no task you want to set me?”
Paole had a dozen things a trustworthy apprentice could be set to, but nothing for this boy. “No, and
mind your tongue.”
“I just want to be useful, master.”
Paole felt like rolling his eyes.
“Is there not even a book I could read?”
He supposed that was reasonable, though he suspected the boy’s motives. “I’ll see if there’s
something. Now, no more demands, or you’ll do without food and water until tomorrow.”
“I understand, master.”
Again that flat tone which carried no obvious insult, but it still managed to sting. Perhaps it was just
Paole’s guilty conscience. Better not to engage with him at all, until he felt calmer.
He left the boy with Kusa’s Herbalist, since it was replaceable if the brat decided to damage it, as well
as the canteen of water, some fruit and dried meat. He’d buy bread in the town and other supplies.
Something else to consider—he’d have to buy enough for two now. And what about the winter? He nearly
groaned. He hadn’t thought this through in the least.
He did his best to lose his foul temper before he reached the town again, but Addler the healer still
quirked an eyebrow at him. “Something biting you, Master Paole?”
“Not really. Just some business in Kivnic that went awry.”
“Someone said they thought you had a companion with you as you came through earlier.”
“Aye. Giving a lad a ride towards Sunik.”
Addler lifted the other eyebrow in surprise, but Paole didn’t elaborate on the lie. Let people chatter.
Better that than they learned the truth.
He bought supplies, spread the word he was in town, called in on two of Mathias’s regular patients
and spent time socialising, all the time with his mind half on the brat back at his camp and what mischief he
might be up to. When he returned that evening, he was so wound up to expect a problem, that finding the
boy quietly reading and causing no difficulty whatsoever didn’t appease his annoyance at all.
He held out his hand for the book. “Give it to me.”
The boy frowned but handed the volume over without further argument. None of the pages had been
folded over, and Paole could see no food or drink stains on the cover. Normally, this would please him, but
his irritation overrode everything. “I didn’t damage it.”
“I told you to mind your tongue.”
Gaelin’s mouth snapped shut. Paole instantly regretted his temper, but he couldn’t apologise to the
boy because that would show weakness. Instead he put the supplies and book away, and tried to calm
down. He was a wreck after a few hours owning this boy. Such a dreadful mistake he’d made.
He fetched a fresh bread roll from his new purchases, thinking to offer that instead of an apology. He
found Gaelin talking to Peni and scratching her jaw. “Leave her alone.”
“I was just—”
“I said, leave her alone!”
Gaelin stepped back at his bellow, and Peni whinnied in distress. Paole closed his eyes and took a
deep breath. He opened his eyes, and held out the bread. “Here. That’ll tide you over until I make supper.”
The boy took the bread and mumbled a wary “thank you”. He made sure to keep well away from Peni
and from Paole both.
Paole walked off. This wouldn’t work. After he finished in town, he’d return to Kivnic and leave
Gaelin there. The slavers would be gone, and the boy would have to fend for himself. He was smart
enough, and there were the mysterious friends he couldn’t bring himself to tell Paole about. They could
help him.
The decision made, he felt calmer. Better to put this stupidity behind him and find another way to
make it through the winters. At least this way he’d only be hurting himself.
Gaelin was back under the tree when he returned, the roll already eaten. Time to make the fire and put
on the beans he’d had soaking. The boy said nothing until Paole had the fire laid and the beans and dried
meat cooking.
“You could leave me that kind of thing to do.”
“No thanks.”
The boy sighed. “My friend has that book. She had one she said was better though, from Uemire.
Hosta’s On Medicinals. Do you know it?” He’d switched to Uemi to ask the question.
Paole answered in Tetu. “One, I don’t read Uemi because I was a child when I was abducted, and two,
stop trying to be nice.”
The boy straightened up, haughty indignation on his pretty features. “I’m not trying. I’m not the one
in a bad mood all the time. I enjoyed the book. Sofia used to dose her family, and us. She sometimes read
to us from that book. I didn’t know what it all meant but it sounded interesting. Is that what you do? Make
medicine?”
Paole knew better than to answer, but he did anyway. “Yes. I’m a healer, though not certificated. I
have the Healing Sight.”
“Oh, like Raina.” The enthusiasm sounded real. “I was travelling to Grekil with her clan. I thought it
was a rare gift, though.”
“It is.”
Who was this boy? So friendly with Uemiriens, yet possibly in league with slavers. Open about his
friends, but not about his family or his destination. “Why won’t you tell me the truth?” he murmured to
himself.
“Because the people who are after me will kill me, you and those who helped me, like my friends.”
Paole narrowed his eyes at the boy. “After you? Have you committed a crime?”
“Only to be born.” He said it with such bitterness, Paole could not believe it was fake. “I’m heir to
property someone else wants. If they kill me, nothing stands in their way.”
“But then you could go to the law. The sheriffs or whatever you have in Sardelsa.”
“Not that simple. I really wish I could tell you, but Karvis is…well, the person after me has ties here.”
That made no sense. How much power could one person have? “Now you’re making it up again.”
“No, I’m not. But this is why it’s pointless to talk to you. I have trouble believing it sometimes. I’m
not surprised you do.”
Paole’s determination to rid himself of this boy wavered again. What if he was telling the truth? “If I
set you free, where would you go?”
“To Horches. My friend has relatives there. I’d be safe.”
“I only want the truth, Gaelin. All of it.”
“I know. If I gave you my word to work for you for three years, would you let me go after that?”
Why three years? “Not exactly a bargain for me.”
“I’m sorry, but if I don’t return home then, my sisters will be left to suffer.”
Paole shook his head. “I gave you the deal. It’s more than most masters would offer.”
The boy grimaced. “You’re not being fair.”
“Fairer than anyone treated me at your age. Move back and keep quiet. I have things to do.”
A modern knight, a noble quest, and a magical sword. What could go wrong?
House of Stone
© 2010 Vaughn R. Demont
Welcome to the City, where gods run nightclubs, goblins hire out as mercs, sorcerers work their
magic, the Fae hold court over every neighborhood…and humanity is blissfully ignorant of it all.
For minor Fae noble Richard Stone, life is going well. He has a decent fiefdom (okay, it’s a slum), a
budding acting career (okay, so it’s porn), and one of only five magical swords in the City. An arranged
marriage is barely a blip on his worry meter—until his family blade loses its magic. The shame of it puts
his noble standing in jeopardy.
To regain his status, Richard needs help. Fortunately, his new bride is a sidhe knight and his servant
Simaron has, er, his back. Together they embark on a quest to find the demon who slew his father,
investigate a conspiracy that goes to the highest echelons of Fae nobility, and discover a secret family
legacy that could ruin his House.
All while keeping up appearances to a society that demands perfection. And they say a noble’s life is
easy…
Warning: This book contains explicit gay sex, not-so-explicit gay sex, explicitly implied gay sex,
routine breaking of the fourth wall, occasional bouts of Pearl Jam fanboy-ism, and plot. Side effects
include confusion and headaches, and are best avoided by reading the pages therein in numerical order.
Enjoy the following excerpt for House of Stone:
“Did your scene go as expected, Your Excellency?” I’m greeted as always by Simaron, my
manservant. Sim’s father served my father, his grandfather served my grandfather, you can probably see
where this is going. He’s a couple inches shorter than I at six flat, and built more solidly than I as well, and
dressed impeccably in a butler’s uniform. Short black hair, bright blue eyes, his skin a bit lighter than mine.
You’d never guess there was sidhe blood in him.
“Well as can be expected, Sim. We’re on lunch for the next hour. The new kid came too fast so he
needs time to recover.”
“Very well, my lord.” He motions to a platter of fresh fruit and a goblet of poured wine. “I have
prepared a small meal, sir. I apologize for the limited selection. May I assist you with your armor?”
I nod, primarily because he’s the one who put it on me in the first place. His fingers work the straps
and catches, and within minutes I’m wearing naught but a padded vest and my armor is on a stand. I’m still
exposed from the waist down, but Sim sees me naked every day when he dresses me. (He has made
comments about my usual taste in attire. “T-shirts and jeans are not proper for a man of your station, good
sir.”)
“You seem a bit tense, Your Excellency. Is there anything amiss?” I see his eyes dart down to my
groin for the barest of seconds, and realize I’m still rather erect. I shake my head once.
“Everything is fine. Any tension is from wearing that armor all day.” I stretch my back and grab an
apple, biting out a hunk of it. I have no idea where he finds fresh fruit and good wine in St. Benedict (or
just the Benedict as the locals say), but I’m not about to ask. “I didn’t get to finish the scene, so I’m afraid
I’m still a bit eager in that regard.”
“Would you like me to attend to it, Your Excellency? My skills are as always at your disposal.”
“More than anything I’d like a shoulder rub. My back is full of knots.” Cool air slides over my body
as I take off my vest. After I hand it to Sim, he dutifully folds the vest and places it on the table. I toss out
the apple after taking another big bite and lie down on the cot, which Sim has furnished with satin sheets.
My boots are still on. But considering how long it takes to get them off with all the laces, it’s best to leave
them where they are. While on my stomach, I hear the bed creak as Sim straddles my thighs, the fabric of
his slacks rubbing against my skin.
I put my face in a pillow so I won’t moan too loud when he works his magic on my shoulders. He
isn’t professionally trained or anything, but after doing this for fifteen years he’s rather well-acquainted
with my musculature and knows how to work out anything he’ll encounter.
“Harder, Sim, I’ve got less than an hour.” I wriggle a bit to get comfortable, sandwiching my penis
between my stomach and the mattress. His fingers press harder, changing their positioning, aiming for deep
tissue to find the tension and work it out as his hands travel my shoulders and spine.
“As you wish, my lord.” I can already feel the stress and tension melting away, he’s that damned good
at his job. “A message arrived for you by courier this morning, sir.”
“Was it an actual courier,” I say, well, half-moan. Like I said, he’s good at this. “Or are you talking
about the mailman again?”
“The post arrives in early afternoon, sir. The message was from a courier of Her Grace, Duchess
Cadwyn.” His hands immediately move to the knots that just bunched up in my shoulders. There’s a bit of
tension in them, now.
The City has many counties. Not counties you might think of. I mean actual counties with counts and
viscounts, baronies with real barons, as well as two duchies, all part of the Kingdom of Rainbows (because
when my ancestors first arrived here, there was, you guessed it, a rainbow overhead). I’m the viscount of a
small part of St. Benedict that no one among my people really cares about. Duchess Cadwyn is the Duchess
of Tolon Wood, right in the middle of Allora, surrounded by the rich, the famous and the cultured, which
everyone among my people cares about.
And since the Queen has other areas of her kingdom that require her attention, most of the
responsibilities fall to the most powerful and favored noble, who is Duchess Cadwyn. And if she sent her
courier, it means one of two things, which I can discern by asking one question.
“How was it addressed, Sim?”
“To His Excellency.” His voice immediately takes a formal tone. “Count Pembroke Kendrick
Llewellyn Richard Firemane, Lord of the House of Stone, Knight of the Realm, Viscount of the Benedict
Shores, and Custodian of the Azure Blade.”
Fuck.
“Nice calligraphy?” I ask, but it’s a given.
“And in silver ink, sir,” he says, putting some accent on silver. His hands gently inspect my shoulders,
my spine. I’m not tense, it’s just…I really don’t want to go. When you get an invitation written in silver ink
from the Duchess of Tolon Park, to your full formal title, though, you go, lest you gravely insult her and
humiliate yourself, your father, your grandfather… “Shall I continue the deep-tissue massage, my lord?”
“When is it?” Might as well find out so I can get it over with. I know that he opened the message, it’s
his job to. It’s probably why he didn’t drop it on me until he was already giving me a rub down.
“Tomorrow, sir. Your presence is requested at dusk, formal attire of course, so your armor will need
to be properly cleansed.” I hear the soft sigh, and I know what’s going through his mind: Thank the gods
that Count Kendrick and Countess Regina are not alive to see their son treating family heirlooms in such a
fashion.
Hey, I could be doing worse, like using the hilt of the family blade in a rather vulgar fashion in these
films.
Still, tomorrow?
“Sim.” I try to keep the grumbling out of my voice. “Right now I believe I will need a much deeper
massage to lift my spirits.”
“If you feel it necessary, my lord.” He gets off the cot and begins disrobing, quickly, efficiently,
everything neatly gathered and folded and immaculate for the moment he needs it.
Simaron stands to the side, au naturel. His body hair is sparse and short, and he’d gladly shave it off
every day if I allowed him to. Even his pubes are groomed, shorn close to his skin. His eyes are cast
downward toward his feet, embarrassed, bordering on shame. This has nothing to do with the fact that he’s
standing nude before His Excellency. This has to do with the fact that I can see he has body hair.
For the record, Simaron is what is called in the Fae community a “tainted dream”. What’s so tainted
about body hair? Mostly the fact that the only way a Fae can ever grow hair anywhere other than their face,
head and groin is if the still and glorious dream of Fae perfection was tainted by base human waste. In other
words, Simaron’s mother was a talented and gifted pianist with a wonderful personality, a beautiful face
and a magnificent soul, who made the dreadful mistake of being human and having a sidhe’s bastard son.
Granted, it’d have been considered a mistake even if she’d had the son of a pooka or a brownie, but a
sidhe? Most revolting, apparently.
I refuse to allow him to shave off any of his body hair because I’m not about to let him forget that
he’s half-human, or that his mother was human. I figure that my family owes his mother that much, at least.
Besides, thanks to his “tainted” blood, Simaron could easily get a job here as an actor if he “ever
allowed himself to stoop to such depraved acts of public debauchery.” (Though my working here is “an
unfortunate but ultimately noble sacrifice of my dignity to preserve the solvency of my county.”) He’s hung
like a satyr. Twelve and a half inches, uncut, straddling the line of too thick and just right, it’s…well…
It’s bigger than mine, that’s for sure.
“Your Excellency, may I remind you again that this is quite improper?” His eyes plead me but I’m not
letting him out of this.
“You may not. Now, His Excellency will need some preparation first. Fetch some oil, Simaron.”
Despite all his protestations about protocol and how my father must be rolling in his grave and my
mother must be wailing in shame, he never fails to stand erect when I ask him for this. And the shame isn’t
because I’m asking another man to slicken his fingers with oil and tenderly slip them inside me,
considering that my mother and father probably only slept together a few times to conceive me.
It’s not even that I’m asking a servant to please me sexually, considering that my father’s preferred
lover was apparently Simaron’s father, who was Dad’s manservant since he was ten, much like with
Simaron has been with me. Mother had a few handmaidens as well. Both of them were happy, got along,
produced an heir, and there were no bastard children. That’s how it usually is with the Fae here. Sex and
love don’t necessarily go hand and hand with us. Love is a beautiful emotional bond between souls. Sex is
a base desire that has no greater importance than brushing one’s teeth, as far as romance is concerned.
Granted, that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy doing it.
So why is Simaron so convinced that my parents are being humiliated as we speak? I’m on bottom in
this scenario. A noble? Taking it in the ass from a mere servant? And a tainted one at that? Oh! The
scandal!
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