Patricia Briggs - Dragon Blood

"Every armsman on the wall, every servant in the hall, every horse in its stall," said Allysaian in a monotone, the rhyme adding an eeriness to her quiet words. I saw her knuckles whiten on Garranon's arm. "All the plants were withered and dead."

Alizon looked at Haverness, who was shaking his head in disbelief, though the expression on his face argued that he was reconsidering even as he shook his head.

"Gods," said Duraugh. "I'm sorry, Garranon."

"How much blood does he have left? Could he get power from all that death, Oreg?" I asked Oreg quietly.

"I don't know," he replied, his arms wrapped around his middle as if he'd been punched in the stomach. I wondered what I'd feel right now if I'd already witnessed the Bane destroy civilization once. "I don't know how much it takes to use the stone. I would guess it would take more because the blood is impure. But he may have found someone else of Hurog blood to use. As for the other, he can't power the stone with death magic, but he certainly could gain power himself. I doubt it in this case, because it usually takes some sort of ceremony and the bodies collected. It would have taken days, not hours."

Garranon turned to Oreg, apparently having overheard—and the eyes in his blank face were wild with rage. "How close would he have to be to use it?"

Oreg shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't know. I was in Hurog while the world fell, but I was young and … it was not a pleasant time. My memories of the Fall of the Empire are not entirely intact."

Alizon and Haverness turned to stare at Oreg.

"At this rate there won't be a soul in the Five Kingdoms who doesn't know Hurog's secrets, Oreg," I said, exasperated.

He turned to me, his eyes caught in the past, and said in an abject voice I'd hoped never to hear from him again, "I'm sorry, my lord."

I shook my head. "No matter, Oreg. It's your secret to keep or not." I looked at Alizon. "I mean that. You'll have to ask him about it—later."

Garranon swung abruptly to Alizon. "This gives you the attack you claimed you needed to pull Oranstone together. I hope that my people's deaths buy Jakoven's destruction."

"Kellen will see to it," Alizon promised.

The whole time we'd been talking, Allysaian had been standing beside Garranon with her arms wrapped around herself, muttering something sotto voice. When Garranon put his free arm around her and walked her past us, headed for somewhere private, I heard what she was saying.

"The children, the children … oh gods, so many children dead."

Bile rose to choke me.

"Excuse me," I said, "I don't feel well." I turned abruptly and exited behind Garranon.

Unnoticed, I followed Garranon through the maze of halls that led to the guest rooms. Unlike me, he had no problem negotiating his way to the room he'd been given, three doors down from my own.

I walked on to my room and closed the door behind me. Chills crept down my spine and stayed there. Not because of Buril's fate, though that was certainly part of it. Not because of fear, though what I was planning scared me spitless.

I'd been thinking while the others had been arguing downstairs in the hall.

Jakoven's first two attacks had been aimed at Garranon. The king had been seeking revenge, I thought, because Garranon had left him at long last. They'd also been experiments, to see what the Bane could do, successful experiments. Jakoven wouldn't have wasted his last drop of Tychis's blood on experiments, so I had to assume he had enough to power the Bane for at least one more attack—a real attack this time. Only if a weapon tested well, my aunt said, should it be used in battle.

My father had respected Jakoven's grasp of strategy. And good strategy would send Jakoven to attack Hurog next. Jakoven, like my uncle, would have seen the power of Hurog over Shavig. If he took Hurog right now, before the first battle, Shavig would lose the united front against Jakoven. All the dragon-blooded people who lived at Hurog made it an even more inviting target, more power for his Bane. And by now, he'd know we were keeping Kellen there.

We'd been counting on the winter to keep Hurog safe until improvements to the gate and walls could be completed, but we'd left the Bane out of our calculations. Jakoven would need no besieging army to take out Hurog with the Bane—not if he killed every person in Buril in a matter of hours.

If I were Jakoven, I would take Hurog next. Since I was the Hurogmeten instead, I had to stop him—and Garranon had just told me how I might do it.

Garranon had asked how far away the Bane had been from Buril. I'd come up with an interesting answer.

Magic doesn't work well long distance. My own pain every time I left Hurog taught me that over and over again. Jakoven hadn't had to be at Hurog the night his creature had attacked—a geas had done the traveling for him. There were other ways to work magic over a distance. Runes sometimes worked—or a jewel could carry a spell almost forever until it was loosed. Oreg had once transported himself a day's ride to a place he'd never been—but, as he'd later explained, he'd only done that because the magic that had bound him to me pulled him far more strongly than his body did. So there were exceptions, but I didn't think that Buril was one of those.

I believed Jakoven had brought Farsonsbane to Buril—and I had the means to test my theory.

Sitting on my bed, I closed my eyes. I wouldn't look for Jakoven. Finding takes magic, and there was always a chance that a wizard might feel the magic I used to find him. So I sought Farsonsbane instead.

I thought of the Bane as I'd last seen it, an age-darkened bronze dragon, poorly wrought and crude. It was unremarkable except for the unmistakable power that hung about it and the small jewel that hovered in the dragon's mouth.

I found the Bane half a day's ride away to the north.

I opened my eyes and could barely breathe over the possibilities of what I had discovered. A chance.

As I'd tried to explain to Haverness, no man would want to announce he was using Farsonsbane—not in the position Jakoven found himself. He wanted a world to rule, not a barren wasteland. So he had to keep the Bane secret until people were so cowed by it, and him, they would not fight against it—say after he laid waste to Hurog, for instance, something more spectacular than the mere death he'd left behind him at Buril. But for now he had to keep it secret or his own men would turn against him.

If Jakoven had brought an army with him, they'd have turned on him the moment he brought out the Bane and used it. If he'd brought an army, his use of the Bane to destroy Buril would not be a secret. I knew with absolute certainty that Jakoven wasn't stupid enough to have brought an army with him.

He'd come in secret, and was leaving the same way. And I knew that Jade Eyes would be with him.

The chill in my spine was anticipation. A part of me salivated at the thought of sinking ax or blade into Jade Eyes's flesh. Blood lust was a portion of the legacy of my father, and not something I was proud of. But I preferred the hunger for Jade Eyes's death to the bone-deep fear the rest of me felt.

If I were to go after Jakoven, I couldn't let Kellen or the Oranstonians know what I intended. The Kellen who'd fought to engage the poor geas-driven thing Jakoven had sent after Garranon in my hall would never stay behind given a chance to face Jakoven one on one. That was something I wouldn't allow to happen. If the attempt to wrest the Bane from Jakoven failed, Kellen would be Shavig's only hope.

Jakoven had the Bane. With it he could slay any army sent against him if he had sufficient warning—warning that the sounds of an approaching army would bring. A stealth attack could work, though. If Jakoven were a half-day's ride away from Callis, traveling to Estian, it would take us at least two hard days to catch him.