Patricia McKillip - The Tower at Stony Wood

“Of course,” Thayne said, reining in his temper. He dropped his head in one hand, drew his fingers back through his hair, and straightened again. Craiche watched him with an obdurate, maddening calm. “If I die in Gloinmere, so will you. And then who will rule the North Islands?”

“It won’t matter,” Craiche said softly. “You know that. If you fail in Gloinmere, Regis Aurum will send his army here and the only thing left alive when they finish with the North Islands will be the sand crabs.”

Thayne was silent, knowing that Craiche was probably right. He said harshly, “Then what? Should I stop this war?”

“It will be inevitable, when Regis Aurum finds out about the gold. And the dragon. And you.”

Thayne shifted restively, stilled himself. Craiche had changed in the past weeks. Thayne himself had changed his brother from a clear-eyed, reckless boy who laughed at fate to a young man driven, more deeply even than Thayne, to extract justice out of Yves, and the ancient powers of Ysse out of Thayne. Craiche had sat through every war council Thayne had called; he had an answer for every argument Thayne could raise. Even his smile had changed; it flashed out then, deceptively sweet, edged with danger.

“Besides, I want to see Regis Aurum’s face when he finds a dragon in his yard.”

Thayne rubbed his eyes. He slept badly, those days, still disturbed by dreams. “I can force you to stay,” he heard himself say. “I could seal the walls around this house so that you could not find the gates, or see out any window, or find your way to the top of any wall.”

“I know that spell,” their father said.

Craiche only looked at Thayne patiently. “But you won’t, or you wouldn’t have told me that.”

“Craiche. Please.”

“Please what? You don’t have to ask. You just told me so.” He paused, no longer smiling, his eyes quizzical, curious. A thread of uncertainty worked itself across his brow, as if he had seen too far into Thayne. He reached out impulsively, let his hand drop between them on the table. “What are you afraid of?”

A woman in a dream , Thayne thought. A feeling in my bones .

“Something,” he admitted finally to Craiche. “Something feels wrong. I’m not seeing something I should see. I’m doing everything we planned, but I’m missing what’s standing under my nose and shouting—”

“I found it!” Their father spun across the floor behind Thayne, dropped a tome, weighty with gold leaf and pearls, in front of Thayne. “Here. Do what this says, Bowan, and the dragon will become invisible even in the noonday sky.”

Thayne slumped wearily over the book. Despite himself, the words, in a precise and graceful script, charmed their way into his thoughts.

He looked at Craiche, who said, “It’s not a bad idea. If you keep the dragon quiet, no one will know we’re coming until we’re already there, disrupting the king’s dinner in Gloinmere. He won’t have a chance to prepare for us.”

“Cyan Dag will prepare him.”

“Only if he gets there before we do.”

“There must be rumors of dragons in Yves by now. Anyone dropping a hook off a boat on the north side of the channel would see it.”

“Maybe,” Craiche said. “But who would believe it?” He bent down, looking under the table for his crutch, neatly avoiding Thayne’s eyes. “We should leave soon. The men are armed, the horses are shod, the dragon lord of Ysse has nothing left to learn—”

“That,” Thayne said soberly, “is what I’m afraid of: what I will not learn until we face the king in Gloinmere.”

He spent his dreams, as always during those nights, in the company of the harper from Skye. Sometimes she played her harp, a single deep note over and over again, measured to his heartbeat. Sometimes she spoke in a language he did not know, the words urgent, compelling, so that he twisted his thoughts into knots trying to understand. And then she would speak the one word that would wake him like a cold slap of water from a bucket.

Craiche.

He interrupted her that night, in the midst of her dire, incomprehensible chattering. “All right!” he shouted at her. “Then tell me what to do. You tell me. Tell me. You sent me to find the dragon! What did you expect me to do with it?”

She was silent, so silent he wondered if he had died in the middle of his dream. Then she smiled, and he knew he must be dead, because he was more afraid than he had ever been in his life.

She told him.

A morning later, before the sun rose, he cast a spell over the dragon, a web of words and air that wound around it strand by strand, and hid all its glittering scales, its massive claws, the slitted, golden pools of its eyes. He finished finally at sunrise, and found the dragon’s shadow still underfoot, with the bulky shadows of packs and arms, and Craiche’s crutch dangling from behind one wing. Thayne opened the eye in the bole of the staff Craiche tossed him, and let the shadow flow into it. He found his father beside him, gazing at the empty sand where the dragon had lain outside the tower. It had melted, here and there, into hard, shimmering pools of glass.

“You are Ferle’s heir, Thayne,” his father said with wonder. “You were born with all the magic of Ysse. But what have you done with Craiche?”

“I can still see him,” Thayne said. He embraced his father tightly, moved as always by the briefest recognition. “Stay well and safe.”

“My greetings to Regis Aurum.” His father gave the absent king his tight, wolfish smile. “I would bring them myself, but someone must guard the secrets in this tower.”

“No one could do it but you.”

“Bring his crown back with you, Bowan.”

“I will.”

The dragon lowered its neck. To his father’s eyes, and the eyes of men watching over the wall, Thayne knew he must be mounting air. But his father only raised a fist in salute and farewell, before Thayne turned himself invisible.

“I can’t see you,” Craiche breathed as Thayne coaxed the dragon above the sea. “Or the dragon. I can’t see anything but air beneath me.”

Thayne put a hand over Craiche’s eyes. “See out of mine, then,” he said. He lifted his hand, aware of Craiche in his mind, a thread of quicksilver thought, restless, unpredictable. He added, as Craiche blinked at him, “For a change.”

Craiche turned to look back at Ysse, a quarter moon of land hanging above the mainland in a sea of silver fire. “Where are the boats?” he asked after a moment. “They should be starting across the channel by now. We’ll have to wait for them.”

“They’re not coming.”

He felt the quicksilver flash of astonishment behind his eyes before Craiche swung around to stare at him. “What do you mean they’re not coming?”

“I—”

“You bought half the horses in north Yves, and arms from every trader beyond Yves—”

“So we’re armed,” Thayne said evenly. “I gave orders last night for the army to stay on the islands unless I send for them.”

“You mean until—”

“No.” He felt the dragon fire in his eyes then, a wash of gold that blurred the sea and stopped Craiche’s breath.

“It’s you and me and this dragon against the king in Gloinmere.”

“Why?” Craiche whispered.

“It’s a promise I made to someone.”

“What promise?”

Thayne didn’t answer that. He smiled thinly, and dropped a hand on Craiche’s shoulder. “The dragon alone could destroy Gloinmere. So could I. There’s no one in all of Yves who could fight me.”

“But they wanted war—they wanted another chance at Regis Aurum and his knights! With you and the dragon protecting them, they could have taken Gloinmere, and crowned you King of Yves with Regis Aurum’s crown!”