King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

“Just as the Enemy turns the faithful from the Path of Light toward the Abyss, so can unbelievers be turned away from their error to see the promise of the Chamber of Light. We must counter the power given into the hands of this unwitting child with power of our own.”

“There is this difference,” said the second speaker, “that while we know our opponents exist, they do not know of us.”

“Or so we believe,” said the first man. He sat stiffly, a man of action unaccustomed to long stillnesses.

“We must trust to Our Lord and Lady,” said the woman, and the rest nodded and murmured agreement.

The only light given to their circle was that flickering from the candles, bright flames throwing sharp glints on the surface of the obsidian altar, and that from the stars above and the round, still globe of the moon. Great blocks of shadow surrounded them, an entourage of giants.

Beyond, wind muttered through the open shells of buildings, unseen but felt, the last relics of a great empire lost long ago to fire and sword and blood and magic. The ruins ended at a shoreline as abruptly as if a knife had sheared them off. Surf hissed and swelled at the verge. Sand got caught up on the wind and swirled up from the shore into the circle, catching on tongues and in the folds of cloaks.

One of the watchers shivered and tugged a hood hard down over her hair. “It’s a fool’s errand,” this one said. “They are stronger than we are, here and in their own country.”

“Then we must reach for powers that are greater still,” said she who sat first among them.

They responded to her words with expectant silence.

“I will make the sacrifice,” she continued. “I alone. They wish to sunder the world while we desire only to bring it closer to the Chamber of Light toward which all our souls strive. If they bring one agent into the world, then we must bring another. Of ourselves we cannot defeat them.”

One by one they bowed their heads, acquiescing to her judgment, until only one man remained, head unbowed. He rested a hand on the woman’s shoulder and spoke. “You will not be alone.”

In this way they considered in silence. The great ruins lay around them, echoing their silence, the skeleton of a city unattended by ghost walls or visions of past grandeur. Sand skirled up the streets, spattering against stone, grain by grain erasing the vast murals that adorned the long walls. But where the walls marched out to the sea, where the knife-edge cut them clean, the shadow form of the old city mingled with the waves, the memory of what once had been—not drowned by the sea but utterly gone.

Stars wheeled above on their endless round.

The candles illuminated the gleaming surface of the obsidian altar. In its black depths an image of the distant ring of stones, far to the north, still stood, and the last torches borne by the prince’s retinue flickered and faded into nothing as they passed beyond view.

PART ONE

THE

MOTHERLESS

CHILD

I

A STORM FROM

THE SEA

1

WHEN winter turned to spring and the village deacon sang the mass in honor of St. Thecla’s witnessing of the Ekstasis of the blessed Daisan, it came time to prepare the boats for the sailing season and the summer’s journeying to other ports.

Alain had tarred his father’s boat in the autumn; now he examined the hull, crawling beneath the boat where it had wintered on the beach on a bed of logs. The old boat had weathered the winter well, but one plank was loose. He fastened the plank with a willow treenail, stuffing sheep’s wool greased with tar into the gap and driving the nail home onto a grommet also made of wool. Otherwise the boat was sound. After Holy Week his father would load the boat with casks of oil and with quern-stones brought in from nearby quarries and finished in workshops in the village.

But Alain would not be going with him, though he had begged to be given the chance, just this one season.

He turned, hearing laughter from up the strand where the road ran in to the village. He wiped his hands on a rag and waited for his father to finish speaking with the other Osna merchants who had come down to examine their boats, to make ready for the voyage out now that Holy Week had ended.

“Come, son,” said Henri after he had looked over the boat. “Your aunt has prepared a fine feast and then we’ll pray for good weather at the midnight bell.”

They walked back to Osna village in silence. Henri was a broad-shouldered man, not very tall, his brown hair shot through with silver. Henri spent most of the year away, visiting ports all up and down the coast, and during the winter he sat in his quiet way in his sister Bel’s workshop and built chairs and benches and tables. He spoke little, and when he did speak did so in a soft voice quite unlike his sister’s, who, everyone joked, could intimidate a wolf with her sharp tongue.

Alain had darker hair and was certainly taller, lanky enough that he was likely to grow more just as certain spring days are likely to bring squalls and sudden bursts of rain. As usual, Alain did not quite know what to say to his father, but this day as they walked along the sandy path he tried, one more time, to change his father’s mind.

“Julien sailed with you the year he turned sixteen, even before he spent his year in the count’s service! Why can’t I go this year?”