King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

“You will request tomorrow at the feast that they be tied up before nightfall.”

“I see. Ulric brings news to me that the guivre is restless. It needs nourishment. We cannot afford for it to break out of its cage as it did two months past when it grew overly hungry.”

“We must be patient, Your Highness. If anything remains after the sacrifice, we will transfer it to the cage. But what the guivre most needs we cannot procure for it here, as you know. Too many questions would be asked.”

“I leave this in your hands, then. Do not fail me.”

“I will not, Your Highness. Our Lady and Lord look favorably upon your appeal.”

“So you say. But the clerics of the royal schola who walk in attendance on my brother’s progress would not agree, I think. They interpret the ruling of the Council of Narvone differently, do they not, my dear biscop?”

“It is true they and I disagree on the use and benefit of sorcery within the church. So do you and I act together, Your Highness, as befits those whose claims have not received a just hearing.”

“We leave day after next?”

“Yes, all will be accomplished by then, Your Highness.”

The hounds barked halfheartedly a few times as the speakers walked away. Alain felt their absence as much by a cessation of the crawling prickling feeling along his skin as by the lack of their voices speaking out loud. His fingers were wrapped so tightly around one rung of the ladder that they hurt. He uncurled them and shook them free. He barely had time to collect his thoughts before Master Rodlin arrived to call him to evening service.

At the church, Alain knelt with the others, but he fixed his gaze first on the biscop and then on Frater Agius. Had Biscop Antonia truly spoken such strange and awful words? Strong blood will attract the spirits and draw them under my control. He could not be sure he had heard them correctly, or understood. She spoke Wendish with an accent; Antonia was a foreign name. Perhaps he should ask Frater Agius, but the frater appeared, as usual, wrapped in an inner tumult of his own. Alain did not know what to do.

bowed to her and began to walk back up through the ruins. Alain glanced back toward the altar house.

“Let Frater Agius pray, child. He has need of prayer. Come with me.”

So he walked back to Lavas Holding with Biscop Antonia. Lackling trailed three steps behind, shying like a frightened pup at every flutter of the wind through the trees. The biscop sang hymns to the glory of Our Lady as they walked, and although Alain was far too much in awe of her to presume to join his voice to hers, her clerics did so gladly and with vigor.

For the next two days, Alain saw Agius in the same place, as if he did not or could not move: on his knees in the church, head bowed, clasped hands pressed against his forehead, praying in a low murmur that sounded rather like a stream’s whisper heard from far off.

Alain served at table. Count Lavastine was polite to Lady Sabella, as of course he must be, but Sabella herself began to grow restive, even to look obviously annoyed … as if she was not getting something she wanted.

Twice daily a slaughtered sheep was thrown into the shrouded cage by the scarred and silent man who was its keeper. Once, while out running the hounds, Alain heard the sounds of a creature eating, much like a hound gnawing on bones. But no one dared peek inside, not even the youngest, brashest men-at-arms.

On the evening of the sixth day of the Ekstasis Alain fed the hounds as usual, fed the Eika prisoner, who suddenly lifted his head as if he meant to howl but instead growled low in his throat and shook his chained hands at Alain. The hounds barked and raced to the gate, snarling. Alain quickly ran over to control them, but they milled around him, barking so loudly it was only by chance he heard soft voices from the other side of the gate. He set a hand on the ladder and began to climb, then froze, listening, as the hounds circled and whined below him. Because the stockade was sturdily built of logs lashed together with rope, each log the thickness of a man’s leg, they could not see him through it, and he had not gotten high enough that those speaking on the other side of the gate could hear him.

But he could hear.

“He has agreed, but reluctantly, and only because I let it be plain that I would not leave until I received the creature as a present in return for our moving on. Now you must win me the other promises I need.”

“It is all arranged for tomorrow night, after the Feast of the Translatus, Your Highness. We will remove the prisoner and convey him to the ruins, and there perform the rite. Strong blood will attract the spirits and draw them under my control.”

“What of the hounds?”