The Dragon's Egg Read online

  The Guardian set down her plate, and dabbed her mouth delicately with a flimsy cloth. “This is most interesting, Holder, but I think there is more,” she said. “Mistress Dru has been with you for thirty years, and you say she has been no trouble. But something has changed, I feel, to bring you all the way here to me.”

  Marisa’s happy mood vanished. “It’s true, something changed in her, oh, maybe two or three years ago. She got up in the middle of the night, woke me up, and all she would say was, ‘Where is my keeper?’ Over and over. It was all I could do to get her back to bed. Same thing the next night. It was a couple of seasons before she stopped, although she still does it occasionally. Then she started talking to the beasts. The goats at first, then the foxes, the cows, the pigs—”

  “Not the cows.” It was the first time Dru had spoken. She’d sat placidly the whole time, until now. “Or sheep. And the pigs don’t talk much, either.”

  “But the goats do?” the Guardian said, turning her golden eyes on Dru.

  “Aye, quite a bit. The chickens – they talk a lot. Don’t listen much, though. Not like the eagles. I liked them.”

  The Guardian nodded, for all the world as if Dru were saying something sensible. Marisa was fond of Dru, in a way, but she was strange sometimes, no doubt about it.

  “But that wasn’t all of it,” Marisa went on. “There was… a young man, Grent, his name was, and he… well, we don’t know exactly what happened, but he found Dru in the hay barn one day, and… next thing we knew, the hay was on fire. Luckily, we got to it before there was any real damage. But Grent… he’s not clever, but he’s not a liar, and he said that Dru started the fire. He said flames came out of her fingers. And she agrees with that, although she doesn’t know how she did it, and she’s never done it since. But we all felt that there’s something going on with her, and whatever it is, we don’t know how to cope with it. So that’s why we’ve come to the Keep.”

  Dru turned big eyes on her. “Where is my keeper?”

  Before Marisa could answer, the Guardian said gently, “Dru, why do you need to find your keeper?”

  “So that I can learn. My keeper will teach me all I have to know.”

  That was a surprise. But then Marisa had never asked anything about this keeper, she’d always imagined that if Dru didn’t know where he – or she – was, that she wouldn’t know anything else, either. Seems she was wrong.

  “What do you have to know?” the Guardian said.

  “Don’t know yet. My keeper will teach me that.”

  “Well, Dru, we don’t have a keeper here, but we can certainly teach you a great deal. Would you like that?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Then, if Holder Marisa agrees, you may stay here with us for a while.”

  Sudden tears prickled Marisa’s eyes. After so long, Dru would be leaving her. But it was for the best. The Lady Guardian would take care of her now, and perhaps find out what ailed her.

  “Then it is decided,” the Guardian said, rising smoothly to her feet. “Welcome to your new home, Dru. But that name will never do. Do you have a longer name?”

  “Drusinaar,” Dru answered.

  “Ah, drusin aar,” the Guardian said, in a way Marisa had never heard the word before. “A gift from the sea. Because your egg came from the sea, no doubt. There is also drusin fan, a gift from the forest, and drusin kel, a gift from the earth. How wonderful to find these old words still in use. There is a very famous poem about a drusin aar, quite a long one, but I liked it so much I memorised it as a girl. It starts: ‘Ashin, ashin, mahthorin zhar; Shal himmorin fa drusin aar’. Very pretty.”

  “‘Gheshtorim lorth fa girrinah; Shal zhalim zor fa drusin aar’,” Dru said.

  Everyone gaped at her in astonishment.

  “Dru!” Marisa said. “Whatever language is that? For I swear you never heard such words before.”

  “It’s my language,” Dru said. Then she smiled.

  5: The Tower (Garrett)

  “Stand still, Dru,” Shakara said crossly. “Let me get this wrap fastened.”

  “She’d be better with a simple cloak,” I said, trying not to sound too impatient. We had the whole day, after all. Even so, standing around in Drusinaar’s rooms while Shakara fiddled about with the complicated ties was tedious. It was not a large room, and with Drusinaar and Shakara, not to mention the three servant girls to hold this and that while Shakara tugged and tied and wrapped… I was beginning to feel a little crowded.

  “A simple cloak? What, like a peasant?”

  I bit back an acid response, but really, Shakara was too much, sometimes. For that was exactly what Drusinaar was, a peasant.

  “There!” Shakara said at last. “Now you won’t get wet. But be sure to keep your hair covered. You know how difficult it is to untangle when it gets wet.”

  “The rain stopped hours ago,” I pointed out. “Besides, she comes from a coastal holding. She’s used to a drop of rain.”

  “Not coastal,” Drusinaar said. “Twenty-seven marks from the sea by road. Seventeen flying.”

  “Flying?” That made me smile at the image in my mind. “Did you often fly to the sea, Drusinaar?”

  “No. I can’t fly.”

  Shakara tutted at me. “Of course not! Really, Garrett, you do talk nonsense sometimes.”

  “She started it,” I said. “I expect it’s just a saying she’s heard, isn’t it, Drusinaar? As the eagle flies, or perhaps as the goose flies. Something like that.”

  “As the dragon flies,” Drusinaar said, her big eyes gazing expressionlessly at me. So pale, her eyes, the colour of a rain-washed sky after a storm’s passed through. Sometimes they darkened, when she was watching something intently, then they flickered. Strange eyes.

  “Let’s go, shall we?” I said, picking up the food bag and slinging it over one shoulder. “If you’re quite sure she’s presentable, Shakara.”

  She scowled at me, and probably would have come back with some biting remark, if she could have thought of one. As it was, she just nodded. “Take care of her.”

  “Of course,” I said. You’d have thought we were setting off on a major expedition, the way she went on.

  Drusinaar’s quarters were high up in one of the smaller towers, with only a few servants’ rooms above. We had a long trek down the spiral stairs, the food bag bumping the wall with every step. I was thankful I wasn’t wearing my sword, just a thin knife strapped to one arm under my sleeve, a more solid one down my boot, a couple of throwing knives tucked out of sight, and a meat knife with a hidden extra blade clipped to my belt. I wasn’t likely to need them today, but I always carried them, just in case. Lifelong habits are hard to break.

  At the bottom of the stairs, we made our way through a multitude of servants’ corridors to the garden door. So it was called, anyway, although there was no garden here. The Outer Keep had a small herb and fruit garden, but the Keep itself was unencumbered by greenery. Not a single tree or shrub softened the sharp contours of the rocky outcrop on which it stood. A paved path ringed the outside wall, and beyond that was nothing but spiky grass and tiny flowers tossed about by the constant wind. And only a hundred paces further on, the land fell away and there was only the churning sea.

  It was beautiful.

  We left Shakara at the garden door. I’d been afraid she would insist on coming part way with us, but seemingly her fear of the weather overcame any scruples. The path was still rain-dark but there was no dampness in the air other than the lightest touch of sea spray, fine as a spider’s web. Off the path, the turf was soft and springy, the grass wet enough to soak our boots after a few paces.

  We headed west, the Keep at our backs and in front of us the line of the promontory, a bony finger reaching into the waves. A few gulls wheeled above our heads, optimistically looking for food, but they drifted away as we walked on.

  A hundred, two hundred paces brought us to the first gully, a sharp slice through the headland, with jagged cliffs on both sides. Broa
d steps had been cut, with a metal rail on the outside of them, and loops of rope against the cliff face. It was an easy descent, which Drusinaar managed without any help at all. Two guards watched a small stone bridge at the bottom, but stood aside to let us pass without challenge. As Drusinaar climbed the far side, her headscarf, which was rather too loose, fell back, but she didn’t bother to replace it.

  The top of the next section of the headland was level again. It was pleasant walking, the wind gentle in our faces, and insects humming about the flowers around our feet. Drusinaar strode on, not commenting, perhaps not even noticing any of it. But to me it was magical, a place where all the pressures and disappointments of my life dropped away, and there was only me, the rocks, the ocean and the vastness of the empty sky.

  “Have you ever seen a dragon?” I asked Drusinaar as we walked. So much easier now that she spoke Low. I was competent in southern dialect, but it was more of a struggle to get my tongue around it.

  “One on its own, lots of times. Sometimes a big group, a long way away, out to sea.”

  “Really? Surprising – they usually fly alone.”

  “Yes. Alone, or small family groups.”

  Interesting. There had been any number of rumours recently about dragons moving about in unusual numbers, and much further north than they would normally go. Perhaps the tales had some truth to them.

  Another deep gully, this one narrower and steeper, but again there were steps on both sides and a small bridge to cross the roiling water at the bottom. There were no guards here, since no one could get to this point without crossing the previous bridge.

  The next section was narrower and shorter, so we soon reached another gully. The gap here was wide, and the bridge spanned it about halfway down the cliff, suspended from giant poles. It was held by metal wires, but there was enough slackness in them to give it an alarming wobble.

  “This will sway about a bit, Drusinaar,” I said. “It’s quite safe, though.”

  “Yes.”

  And she scampered across without an instant’s hesitation, for all the world as if she were walking on a paved road.

  Now we came to the object of our expedition. As we climbed out of the final gorge, the tower appeared in all its glory ahead of us. This moment was most impressive when mist enfolded the headland, so that the tower loomed out of nowhere, its unearthly light oozing out of the blank greyness like an apparition. At night the walls shone surprisingly strongly, bright enough to read by. Even today, with the sky weighed down with clouds, there was a shimmer in the seamless stones that was anything but natural.

  Seen up close, the tower seemed higher than the Keep, although it wasn’t quite. And not a single marking anywhere on it – not a door or a window or any writing or carving. The walls tapered smoothly all the way up, with just a ring of arches circling the top, as if there ought to be windows there, although there were none. A conical roof crowned the summit.

  I stopped, and Drusinaar stopped too, waiting for instructions, her eyes blank. I’d never heard her ask a question, not once since she’d arrived, apart from the occasional “Where is my keeper?”, so perhaps she naturally felt no curiosity. But it seemed impossible to me that she could stand here calmly, and feel nothing. Anyone else would be gazing in awe at the tower stretching into the sky. Some I’d brought here wanted to touch it, some to walk all round it. One or two had been terrified and couldn’t wait to get away. But everyone felt some response. Everyone human, that is.

  Drusinaar waited.

  “I don’t know what this place is,” I said. “No one does. It was here before the Keep was built, before the Guardian arrived, before there were any people here at all. Perhaps the dragons understand its purpose, because no one else seems to. And so far as we know, nobody has managed to find a way into it. Not this one, anyway. There’s one on the southern coast – the Bennamore mages got into that one, by some accounts. But since they left, no one’s managed it.”

  Drusinaar stared at the tower wall, her flickering eyes the only sign that she was listening.

  “The Lady wants to get inside the tower, but normal folks like us don’t have the key. Not a real key,” I added hastily, for she had a very literal mind. “There’s no keyhole, so no key. I mean a way in – normal folks don’t have a way in. But special people like you – you might be able to find a way in. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. So I want you to have a walk around, touch the tower, tell me everything you see or hear or feel, all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Even so, she stood still, waiting, I guessed, for more precise instructions. “Do you see any markings on the outside of the tower?”

  “No.”

  “Do you feel anything unusual?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s fine. Walk right round the tower, then. I’ll wait for you here.”

  Still she waited. It took me a moment to realise she wanted me to tell her whether to start on the left or the right.

  “Oh – that way. Off you go.”

  She set off, then, striding up the hill. Probably the tower had been built on flat rock originally, but over the years – hundreds, no, thousands of years – the windblown sand had piled up on the seaward side, so that it was a steep climb now to reach the far side of the tower. Drusinaar’s thin frame became smaller, then vanished behind the tower. A few moments later, she emerged on the other side of it, and began the descent to where I stood.

  I’d been through this process with a number of possibilities, but I’d always had one advantage: I could see through their eyes, so I always knew exactly what they could see. If they’d been able to detect any unusual markings or openings, I’d have seen them too. But with Drusinaar, I could see nothing. I had no access to her eyes at all. It was an odd feeling, not being able to hop into her mind. I wasn’t even aware of her. If I shut my eyes, she would simply disappear. I suppose that was what life was like for everyone else, all those who didn’t have my gift.

  When she returned, I said, “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”

  That was too difficult a question, so she gazed at me, not speaking.

  “Hmm. Did you see any markings on the tower as you walked round? Any doors, windows, openings? Any grooves?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hear anything? A humming, buzzing, anything like that? Or a crackle?” I tried to think of every sound that might be associated with true magic, but I’d seen it so seldom that I hardly knew what it sounded like. Only twice, and that many years ago, and then it had been boringly silent. “How about a popping sound?”

  “No. I hear the sea, and the wind, and several terns and oystercatchers, and a cuckoo, and three sand-hopper flies, and your voice. Nothing else.”

  “And did you feel anything unexpected – a warmth, or tingling, or… anything?”

  “No warmth or tingling. But my finger has stopped hurting.”

  “Your… um, why was your finger hurting?”

  “I cut it two days ago with my meat knife. It slipped on a bone in the meat and stabbed my finger. It was sore. Now it isn’t sore.”

  “May I see?” She held up one hand and pointed to a gash on one finger, now scabbed over. “Was it sore as we walked here this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  And now it wasn’t sore. That was interesting.

  “Come and touch the tower, Drusinaar.”

  We went through the usual routine, but nothing else happened. Then, my own personal contribution to tower knowledge – we went through the tunnel. When I’d first come to the Keep and told the Lady all I’d heard about the tower on the southern coast, and the underground chamber at the roots of it where the secret doors were, she’d set me the task of finding out whether this tower had the same arrangement. I’d spent a year digging, and I’d found my way in, but it hadn’t helped. Still no one had been able to open a door into the tower.

  The tunnel entrance was artfully concealed behind a bou
lder halfway down a rocky slope. Inside, I lit a lamp from the supply kept there, and we walked into the hill beneath the tower, first along a level passageway, then down steep stairs that jinked back and forth, then another passage sloping slightly downhill, and finally, a few more steps down to level ground.

  We emerged into a perfectly rounded chamber with a flat floor of some kind of polished stone. In the centre of the circle sat the roots of the tower, wider here than it was up above, but just as smooth and unmarked, lighting the cavern with a soft glow. The one at the south coast was just the same, apparently. Probably they were all built to the same pattern, these towers, with this underground cave. This was where the doors were, so the Dristomar sailors had told me, who’d seen the Bennamore mages open them. Invisible doors. I’d scoffed, then, but I wasn’t quite so disbelieving now.

  Every time I came here, I felt the magic in the tower. Even without touching the walls, I could feel it, although it wasn’t a physical sensation, more a sense of well-being, somehow.

  Too subtle for Drusinaar, perhaps. For the first time, though, there was a response from her. Instead of waiting for instructions, she wandered towards the tower by herself. Halfway there, she stopped, eyes closed.

  “What is it? Can you feel something?”

  She turned puzzled eyes on me. “I thought someone was calling me. But there’s nothing there.”

  I got her to walk all round the tower again, and to touch it, but she saw and felt nothing. We sat with our backs to the smoothly curved outer wall facing the tower, and ate the meal the kitchens had prepared for us. It wasn’t much – some cooked eggs, cold meat, little loaves of bread filled with cheese, and thin ale to drink.

  “Do you want an apple?” I asked.

  “Yes, please.” She had just stretched out her hand to take it when she froze, her eyes fixed on the tower.