King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

“Not in your heart,” she said. She drew her sword. Whatever he expected, no light flamed off the blade; it did not gleam or spark. It was dull metal, hard, good metal, made for killing. She swung it over his head in a high arc and pointed back the way she had come.

The air seemed sucked away from the height on which they stood. As down a long tunnel, seen with the sight of eagles, he saw the monastery, though he could not possibly see it from here. The orderly pattern of buildings, the retaining wall: Seen from so high, he thought for an instant he could discern a second pattern underlying the monastery buildings, something ancient and troubling.

But his view tumbled, down and down and down, until he saw two boats drawn up on the strand and the creatures pouring forth from them. They could not be called men, with their strange, sharp faces and inhuman coloring. Naked to the waist, their torsos and faces were patterned with white scars and garish painted colors. They carried axes and spears and bows with stone-tipped arrows, and their skin bore a scaly, metallic sheen. Some had claws bursting from their knuckles, a horrible, white growth. Dogs ran with them, packs of huge, ugly dogs that had less mercy than their masters.

They burned as they went, setting fire to the thatched roofs of the outlying buildings. They slaughtered the monks without mercy. Somehow he could see inside the chapel. He could see Brother Gilles, where he knelt praying at the altar, silver-haired and frail, clutching his beloved gold-leafed Book of Unities, the treasure of the monastery. A white-haired barbarian stuck the old man through from behind and wrenched the precious book from his dying grasp, then ripped the gold, jewel-encrusted cover off the binding, tossing the parchment leaves like so much offal onto Brother Gilles’ bloody corpse.

“You are not yet sworn by your own oath,” said the woman. With a wrench Alain stood again on the ridge, hemmed in by storm.

“I must go!” he cried. He started up, impelled forward by some wild notion of saving Brother Gilles.

She stopped him with the flat of her sword. “It is too late for them. But see.”

And pointed with her sword toward the village.

A haze of lights. Red streamers flapped damply against eaves. Most of the houses were well shut, except for Aunt Bel’s. She stood huddled in the doorway, staring forlornly, with bitter concern, up the road in the direction he had gone. Behind her, Stancy played chess at the table with her youngest sister, little Agnes; she moved, white Dragon takes red Castle. The other children cast circle-sticks by the hearth, and the baby slept in its cradle. The fire blazed and cracked, hot, smoking.

Alain’s eyes watered from it, such heat, and then he was yanked outside into the sharp cold and the stinging wind. On the strand below the village, a long, narrow boat beached. Ai, Lord and Lady! There were more of them! They flooded out of the boat, clawed, painted, readying their weapons.

Fog boiled past his eyes. He swatted it away. Tears streaked his face. “It’s too late.” He turned to her where she sat as serene as death on her white horse. “Why are you showing me this?”

She smiled. She had a terrible beauty, seared by hardship and agony and the wild madness of battle. “Serve me,” she said. “Serve me, Alain Henrisson, and I will spare the village.”

“How can you?” he gasped, remembering Brother Gilles impaled, the monastery in flames, seeing the wild, savage creatures who charged up the strand toward the houses of his kin and neighbors.

“Serve me,” she said.

Alain collapsed to his knees. Was that the baby’s scream on the wind? “I swear it.”

“Stand.”

He stood. The cold steel of her sword came to rest on his right shoulder, then his left, then, last, achingly cold, so that it seemed to suck all heat from him and yet burn him at the same time, she rested the flat of the blade on his head.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

The sword, like pain by death, was lifted. Her reply rang out and yet was muted by the howl of the wind. “I am the Lady of Battles. Keep this, my token.”

And she was gone. A blinding light pierced his eyes, and pain stabbed through his heart. The dark clouds blew up and enveloped him. Far away, he heard a hoarse, gleeful battle cry, and then he fainted.

He woke suddenly. Sat up in fear. It was morning, St. Euseb?’s Day, a bright, fine, clear spring dawning without a trace of cloud. A day of good omens. The bay ran in smooth ripples below. The rich old green of trees rimmed the blue bowl of the sky. He swore, shaking off his stupor, and stood up.

And saw, on the path, a tiny blood-red rose. It glittered like a jewel, but when he reached to pick it up, its petals were as soft as the first flower of spring. He shifted his grip, and a thorn pricked his skin, drawing a welling bulb of blood.

“Aunt Bel,” he murmured. “Stancy.” The baby. He thrust the rose stem under his belt and ran all the way back to Osna.

A few people stared when he halted, gasping for breath, at the edge of the village common. Aunt Bel saw him, and her face went from white to red in one instant. She rushed across to him and pinned him in her arms.

“Alain! Oh, my child, I thought you were lost to us.”

“You’re all here? All well? Where is Stancy—?”

“In the workshop. My poor lad, come in, come in.” She led him unprotesting into the longhouse and sat him at the table, setting a mug of warm goat’s milk in front of him. “Lord and Lady.” She wiped a tear from her weathered face. “I was sure you must have been there. Lord and Lady, thank Them, thank Them.” She drew the Circle of Unity, throat to heart and back again. “How did you escape? When old Gilles brought the news—”

He felt a surge of hope and relief. “Brother Gilles?”

“No, lad. Gilles Fisher. He never saw the ships, they came so fast, in with that cursed storm and gone again as quickly. The whole monastery they burned, and every monk they slaughtered where he stood. All dead. But somehow, Their blessings on us, we were spared. Never a sound or a sight of them here. We’re all safe. I’m sure Henri is well south by now. They came from out of the north.”

“I never got as far as the monastery,” he whispered, but all he could see was that distant, unnatural sight of the painted men, burning, killing … beaching their ship on the strand below the village. He could not bring himself to speak of his vision, if vision it was.