King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

Hugh walked into the cell. He was travel-worn and damp, his riding cloak slung over one shoulder and his frater’s robe spotted with rain. His golden hair was wild in disarray, there was a smudge of dirt on his pale cheek, and he looked completely satisfied.

“What’s this?” he asked. She could not move. He took the book from her nerveless fingers and scanned the pages that lay open. “Not only can you read, but you can read this edifying work. I am impressed, but not entirely surprised, that you know Dariyan, even in this antique form. Surely you do not know Jinna as well? Even I, with my court education, do not know Jinna, although of course I can read the Arethousan as well as I can read Dariyan.”

“You know Arethousan?” she demanded, torn by such an acute desire to know that she forgot herself. Then she broke off, grabbed her own worn blanket, and wrapped it tightly around her torso. The linen undershift was far too light to wear alone, in front of him.

He smiled. He set the book down on the table, casually, loosened each finger of his gloves and drew them off slowly. He rested his hands on the bed, close to her, bending down right next to her, his face a hand’s breadth away from hers. “I like your hair unbound.” He lifted a hand and ran it up along her neck, then drew his fingers back down through her hair. “And so clean. Have you changed your mind, my beauty?” His voice changed timbre, taking on an odd, hoarse note.

“No.” She turned her head away, out of his touch, and waited for him to hit her.

He straightened. “It is a comfortable bed. You’ll share it with me soon enough. I want a bath. You may keep the undershift, as long as you promise me you will care for it properly. Fine cloth is too precious to be treated carelessly. And dinner will be tonight, instead of Ladysday next. You’ll wear the gold overdress for dinner.” He glanced down at the open chest. “Which you’ve already found.” He smiled again. Liath could not imagine what had transpired to put him in such good humor.

“There will be much finer things than these, Liath. The abbot of Firsebarg has died at last. My mother has duly overseen the election of his successor. When shall we ride south? You’ll like Firsebarg. I think you’ll even like my mother. She was convent educated, so she can read, though not, I think, as well as you or I. And certainly she can’t read Jinna, which is never taught in the church schools.”

Ride south. Liath stared up at him. She had not really considered before that she might be torn away from the last people she knew and trusted, from her last link with Da. How could she possibly carry the book on such a journey without Hugh finding it? He must know she would take it with her. In Firsebarg, knowing no one, she would be entirely within his power.

Hugh watched her, enjoying her discomfiture. “Not until spring, I think. There’s no hurry. I do hate traveling this late in the year.”

She said nothing, only held tight to the blanket, gripping it around her as if it could protect her.

“Must we keep up this pretense? I know you are educated. You betray yourself constantly, with words, with the way you speak, with knowledge you ought not to have. I am bored, Liath. I have never been so bored as these last two years, wandering here in these northern wilds tending to my blessed sheep. Ai, Liath, we might at least call a truce so we can converse like the educated people we are. I will even offer you a trade.”

ost herself.

Book One. The Courses of the Stars and the Spheres of the Heavens, how they may be divined according to the ancient Babaharshan magicians to lend strength to the Art.

Dariyan she knew so well that she could read it mostly with her eyes, her lips shaping the words but not speaking them aloud. To read the Jinna was a more laborious process, though she had once spoken it easily. She must sound out each letter and, melding them together, create the words.

But at least much of this material was familiar to her. The stars follow a fixed course, and the pole star, Kokab, is the axle around which the great wheel of the stars spins on its infinite round. The lesser wheel is known as the zodiac, the world dragon that binds the heavens. It is a circle of constellations, each representing one of the Houses of Night, and through these houses move the Sun and the Moon and the wandering stars known as planets. The ancient Babaharshan magicians gleaned this knowledge from a thousand years of observation and mastered sorcery by drawing on the powers of the stars and the planets as they waxed and waned.

A scuffing sound. Then a low laugh. Utterly startled, Liath gasped and jerked her gaze up from the book. Froze, terrified. She had no idea how long she had been reading or how long he had been standing there, watching her scan the pages and turn them, watching her form the difficult Jinna words and speak them out loud. Thus did she betray herself to him.

Hugh walked into the cell. He was travel-worn and damp, his riding cloak slung over one shoulder and his frater’s robe spotted with rain. His golden hair was wild in disarray, there was a smudge of dirt on his pale cheek, and he looked completely satisfied.

“What’s this?” he asked. She could not move. He took the book from her nerveless fingers and scanned the pages that lay open. “Not only can you read, but you can read this edifying work. I am impressed, but not entirely surprised, that you know Dariyan, even in this antique form. Surely you do not know Jinna as well? Even I, with my court education, do not know Jinna, although of course I can read the Arethousan as well as I can read Dariyan.”

“You know Arethousan?” she demanded, torn by such an acute desire to know that she forgot herself. Then she broke off, grabbed her own worn blanket, and wrapped it tightly around her torso. The linen undershift was far too light to wear alone, in front of him.

He smiled. He set the book down on the table, casually, loosened each finger of his gloves and drew them off slowly. He rested his hands on the bed, close to her, bending down right next to her, his face a hand’s breadth away from hers. “I like your hair unbound.” He lifted a hand and ran it up along her neck, then drew his fingers back down through her hair. “And so clean. Have you changed your mind, my beauty?” His voice changed timbre, taking on an odd, hoarse note.

“No.” She turned her head away, out of his touch, and waited for him to hit her.

He straightened. “It is a comfortable bed. You’ll share it with me soon enough. I want a bath. You may keep the undershift, as long as you promise me you will care for it properly. Fine cloth is too precious to be treated carelessly. And dinner will be tonight, instead of Ladysday next. You’ll wear the gold overdress for dinner.” He glanced down at the open chest. “Which you’ve already found.” He smiled again. Liath could not imagine what had transpired to put him in such good humor.

“There will be much finer things than these, Liath. The abbot of Firsebarg has died at last. My mother has duly overseen the election of his successor. When shall we ride south? You’ll like Firsebarg. I think you’ll even like my mother. She was convent educated, so she can read, though not, I think, as well as you or I. And certainly she can’t read Jinna, which is never taught in the church schools.”

Ride south. Liath stared up at him. She had not really considered before that she might be torn away from the last people she knew and trusted, from her last link with Da. How could she possibly carry the book on such a journey without Hugh finding it? He must know she would take it with her. In Firsebarg, knowing no one, she would be entirely within his power.

Hugh watched her, enjoying her discomfiture. “Not until spring, I think. There’s no hurry. I do hate traveling this late in the year.”

She said nothing, only held tight to the blanket, gripping it around her as if it could protect her.

“Must we keep up this pretense? I know you are educated. You betray yourself constantly, with words, with the way you speak, with knowledge you ought not to have. I am bored, Liath. I have never been so bored as these last two years, wandering here in these northern wilds tending to my blessed sheep. Ai, Liath, we might at least call a truce so we can converse like the educated people we are. I will even offer you a trade.”

He paused, to let her consider his generosity. “I will teach you Arethousan. If you will teach me Jinna. Queen Sophia, while she lived, was very firm that all of us in the king’s schola be taught Arethousan. She was the Arethousan Emperor’s niece, as I’m sure you know, a marriage prize brought to these benighted lands by the younger Arnulf for his heir. And although our praeceptor, Cleric Monica, thought it acceptable that those few of us chosen for her special tutoring should indeed learn Arethousan, should any of us ever be called upon to lead an embassy to that distant land, she cuffed me hard and well the one time I asked if she might teach us Jinna as well. ‘A language fit only for infidels and sorcerers,’ she said, which only made me wish to learn it the more, although I never said so to her again. But I never met anyone who knew it until I met your father. And now you, my treasure. What do you say?”

There was something very wrong with all this, and Liath knew it. As long as she gave him nothing, she was safe from him. But a small doubt had arisen. Perhaps he was owed some sympathy, flung from the bright center of the king’s progress into these hinterlands, where there was no one like him. No wonder he had gravitated toward Da.

And if she could learn Arethousan, she could translate the glosses in the oldest text of The Book of Secrets. Perhaps she could even puzzle out the unknown language, written in that ancient hand. …