Patricia McKillip - The Tower at Stony Wood

She saw the sudden glint in the bole of the staff Thayne carried, a flash of wicked, warning fire. He held it loosely, without intent, but she didn’t like the look of it. She sent a jolt of thought into the skull-smooth bole, avoiding the power in the eye. The staff jumped out of Thayne’s hand. He staggered, loosing a cry that was part curse, and hunched over his hand. She looked past him to the man on the steps.

“Regis Aurum?”

The king nodded, searching for a word. He brought it out finally. “Baker?”

The dragon swiveled its head suddenly, its jaws opening wide, and hissed at a parapet wall. The archer hiding there, crouched and aiming at Thayne, shouted and dropped his bow into the yard.

“My daughter persuaded me to come here,” Sel told the king. “She said that Cyan Dag was afraid that he wouldn’t get here to warn you about Thayne Ysse and the dragon. I came as fast as I could. Faster sometimes than others. I’m still learning things.”

“Cyan Dag?” The king took a step, remembered the dragon. “Have you seen him?”

“Yes. He passed through Stony Wood.” She paused, remembering the knight who had found her in the tower and followed her into the sea. “He helped me when I was in need. When Melanthos told me he was in distress, I thought I’d return the favor.” She sensed a turmoil of conflicting thought on the dragon’s back, and added curiously, “You’d think that if Thayne Ysse were truly going to burn down Gloinmere, he would have done it before the dragon landed in the yard. What’s he waiting for? The dragon could do it easily.”

The king stepped back warily. Thayne Ysse only threw her a grim, harassed glance. Something , she thought. Something not as it seems .

Behind the king, the doors began to open. Thayne Ysse whirled abruptly, slamming them shut with a gesture. Fists battered furiously at them; they refused to budge. Sel raised her voice.

“Shall I go up and talk to him?”

“Talk!” Regis Aurum answered furiously. “He talks too much. I should have dragged him to Gloinmere seven years ago, put an end to that flea-ridden, gadfly family. But I mistook his pledges for truth—”

The dragon’s head fell so quickly toward him that the king barely had time to upend his blade with both hands, aim it at the lowering throat. It stopped as suddenly, just out of reach. The king quelled a visible impulse to throw his sword at it.

“I never pledged you anything,” Thayne retorted passionately. “Kneeling to you in the rain was hard enough; a word would have choked me.”

“Your father pledged fealty.”

“He was wounded; he barely knew—”

“He knew,” Regis Aurum said levelly, “that the North Islands have belonged to Yves for centuries. The only thing that you can claim there is your name. You asked for war when you refused to offer fealty to me in Gloinmere when I was crowned. I gave you what you wanted.”

“You nearly destroyed us.” Thayne’s back was to Sel, but she saw the power gathering in him again, as clearly as she could see the shining bones of transparent fish deep in the sea. The air shimmered around him, roiling, pulsing.

Regis, oblivious, snapped, “I will.”

Sel moved then, the way she had crossed vast distances through Yves. She focused her attention on a gleaming scallop of the dragon’s folded wing, and took a step toward it. She was there, suddenly, on the dragon’s back, feeling the blaze of Thayne’s fury like an open oven in the bakery.

He loosed it at her instead of Regis when he found her unexpectedly beside him. She hid herself within the lightning shock and flare of air, moving with it like a selkie within a wave, safe from any storm. She reappeared. He stared at her, the air fading around him to the color of twilight.

“What are you?”

“Thayne,” the young man murmured edgily, leaning on a sword for balance. “Use the dragon before she stops you. You’re not fighting, you’re just talking, and they’ll find a way to kill you.”

“He has a point,” Sel said. “What are you doing here if you didn’t come to destroy Gloinmere?”

He answered tautly, “I thought the dragon might persuade the king to listen to me.”

“Listen!” the young man repeated in horror. “I thought we came to fight!”

Thayne’s fists clenched. “I promised—”

“What? What did you promise?” He reached out to grip Thayne with both hands. The sword slid away from him; he clung to Thayne for balance. “Who made you promise? Thayne, she could kill you, if you don’t fight!”

Thayne shook his head wordlessly. Sel saw the young man’s withered leg, dragging next to the one muscled with labor. She picked up the staff, pushed the bole under his arm.

“Who are you?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, didn’t look at her; all his bewildered attention was on Thayne, who breathed, “She’ll kill you if I do.”

“Who?” Sel demanded abruptly. “Who will?”

Their faces swung toward her, one confused, the other desperate. The young man loosed Thayne slowly, swallowing. He echoed Sel’s question.

“Who?”

“Just be quiet and let me think. This is my brother Craiche,” he added to Sel. “He was wounded in the battle the North Islands fought against Yves seven years ago.”

Sel grunted. “You lost more than the battle, then. Your father and your brother wounded. Is your father still alive?”

Thayne started to answer, then raised his head, listening. Sel heard the faint, ragged thrum of many running feet spiraling up the stone steps within the towers. “He recovered,” Thayne said tersely. “But his mind wanders. He can’t remember my name, but he knew enough to send me to Skye to find the dragon. Are you really a baker?”

Sel nodded. “I’m used to it. I’m not used to this.” As she spoke, Thayne’s eyes changed. She felt the dragon stir, one eye turned down to meet his gaze. It drew its wings together over their heads. Arrows shot from archers’ windows in the towers pattered like rain against the dragon’s scales. “It seems your brother is right,” she added. “You can burn down Gloinmere or leave with the dragon. You should do one or the other before they kill you.”

He looked at her, his eyes like the dragon’s, fuming with light. “I thought you were fighting for Regis Aurum.”

“I don’t know either one of you. You’re not afraid of the king. You could feed him to the dragon if that’s what you want—”

“I don’t! What good would that king’s heart do to anything alive? He’d go to his death with the same arrogance in his eyes, the same oblivion worse than contempt with which he views us even while he demands our hope, our loyalty, our lives. I don’t want war. The cost will be too great. I want freedom for the North Islands from Yves.”

Sel was silent, weighing certain things in her mind: Craiche’s leg, the look in the king’s eyes, Thayne’s mysterious restraint, her own unlikely power. She drew breath, barked like the selkie she might have been, “Regis Aurum!”

The dragon’s wing dropped down between them; its other curved more closely over them. The king gripped his sword more tightly and stared at her. “What?”

“Come here.”

He balked; she pulled him when he did not move fast enough, hauling him in like a fish in a net. Thayne, breathing something inaudible, moved to stand in front of Craiche. But he left the sword in the king’s hand, for it was worth nothing, there on the dragon’s back, except to help Regis Aurum think.

“You’ve brought this on yourself,” Sel said to him. “You’ve driven Thayne Ysse to this. Look at his brother. You made war on boys not old enough to grow beards—”

“I didn’t war on children!” Regis snapped. “And I nearly died myself in that battle.”