Patricia Briggs - Dragon Bones

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DRAGON BONES - Patricia Briggs

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DRAGON BONES

Patricia Briggs

To Mike Briggs, Kaye Roberson, Anne Sowards, Nanci McCloskey, and the Wordos

of Eugene, who read through the rough stuff and gave me good advice. To Virginia

Kidd, Jim Allen, Linn Prentis, and the rest of the folks at the Virginia Kidd Agency for

their patience and wisdom. To Big Cesar (Engine #9), Sirocco, Scratch, Skipper W,

Teddy, Hussan, MonAmi, Meekum, and the rest of the Terra Verde Crowd, to

Gazania, and my own Nahero, who allow me to make characters of my fictional

horses. As always, the mistakes are mine, but there are fewer of them because of these

folks.

1—WARDWICK OF HUROG

Hurog means dragon.

Breathing heavily from the climb, I sat upon the ancient bronze doors some long-distant ancestor had

placed flat into the highest face of the mountain. The doors were huge, each as wide as I was tall and

twice that in length. Because the ground was angled, the tops of the doors were higher by several feet

than the bottoms. On each door, worn by years of harsh northern weather, a bas-relief bronze dragon

kept watch over the valley below.

Below me, Hurog Keep perched on its man-made eyrie. The ancient fortress's dark stone walls rose

protectively around the keep, formidable still, though there was little chance of enemy attack now. By

the standards of the Five Kingdoms, Hurog was only a small keep, barely able to support itself from the

meager harvest the north climate and rocky soils allowed. But from the sea harbor visible in the east to

the bald-topped mountain in the west, the land belonged to Hurog. Like most keeps in Shavig,

northernmost of the Five Kingdoms of the Tallvenish High King, Hurog was greater in land than wealth.

It was my legacy, passed father to son, like my blond hair and large size.

In the old tongue, Hurog meant dragon.

Impulsively, I rose to my feet and opened my crippled mind so I could feel Hurog's magic gathered

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DRAGON BONES - Patricia Briggs

around me, pulsing through my veins as I roared out the Hurog battle cry.

Hurog.

Mine, if my father didn't kill me first.

"He'll kill us." My cousin Erdrick's voice, though hushed, came from the river side of the trail.

The willows were so thick between the trail I followed and the river, he couldn't see me any more than I

could see him. I was tempted to walk on. My cousin and I were not friendly, but the nagging certainty

that I was the "he" to whom my cousin referred gave me pause.

"It's not my fault, Erdrick." Beckram, Erdrick's twin, spoke soothingly. "You saw her. She took off like a

startled rabbit."

They'd been teasing my sister again. Erdrick might be right; I might just kill them this time.

"Next time, don't tease a girl whose brother's the size of an ox."

"Good thing he's got the brains to match," Beckram said serenely. "Come on, let's get out of here. She'll

show up safe and sound."

"He'll know it was us," predicted Erdrick with his customary gloom.

"How? She can't tell him."

My sister was mute from birth.

"She can point, can't she? I tell you, he'll kill us!"

Tune to catch them and find out what they'd done. I took a deep breath and concentrated on looking like

a stupid ox instead of a vengeful brother before I crashed through the brush to the riverbank where the

keep sewer emptied into the river. With my size and features, no one expected me to be intelligent. I'd

taken that and played on it. Stupid Wardwick was no threat to his father's position.

They might be twenty to my nineteen, but I was a head taller than either and three stone heavier. I'd been

out hunting, so my crossbow hung over my shoulder, and my hunting knife was in my belt. They were

unarmed. Not that I intended to use a weapon on them. Really.

My hands worked just fine.

"Who will kill you?" I asked, untangling myself from a branch that had caught my shirt as I'd plowed

through the bushes.

Struck dumb, Erdrick just stared at me in mute horror. Beckram was made of sterner stuff. His mobile

face curved in a charming smile as if he were glad to see me there.

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DRAGON BONES - Patricia Briggs

"Ward. Good morning, cousin. You've been out hunting? Any luck?"

"No," I replied.

From their light-chestnut hair, handsome features, and dark complexions to their peculiar purple blue

(Hurog blue) eyes, they were virtually identical in appearance, though not in spirit. Beckram was bold

and charismatic, leaving Erdrick forever Beckram's hand-wringing shadow.

I looked at the river, the trees, the keep's sewer outlet. When my eyes crossed the last, Erdrick drew in a

loud breath, so I looked closer. The grate, which kept out wandering wildlife, was loose, leaving a

narrow gap. A small foot had sunk ankle deep in the mud by the tunnel entrance.

I walked over to the grate and stared at it awhile. Erdrick quivered with tension. I reached up and

wiggled the grate, and it slipped back easily. The gap widened into a passageway large enough for my

small sister to sneak into.

After a long pause, I turned to Beckram. "Did Ciarra go in here? That was her footprint."

He turned over several answers in his head before he said, "We think so. We were just going to look for

her."

"Ciarra!" I yelled down the tunnel. "Brat, come out!"

I used my pet name for her, in case the tunnel's acoustics distorted my voice. I was the only one who

called her Brat. My bellow echoed in the tunnel's depths like a dragon's roar. There was no reply, but, of

course, Ciarra couldn't make one.

I didn't need the muddy tracks inside to tell me that she was in there somewhere. The only thing left of

my childhood gift of magic—other than a few minor tricks—was a talent for finding things. Ciarra was

in there somewhere; I could feel her. I looked up at the sun. If she was late to dinner, the Hurogmeten,

our father, would beat her. I took off the pack that carried my bolts and a bit of lunch.

"What'd you do to her?" I asked.

"I tried to stop her. I told her it was dangerous in there," pleaded Erdrick before Beckram could stop him.

"Ah?" I straightened and took a step nearer to Beckram.

"She's a silly chicken," sputtered Beckram, finally losing his nerve and backing away. "I wasn't going to

hurt her. Just a little harmless flirting."

I hit him. If I'd wanted to, I could have killed him or broken his jaw. Instead, I pulled my punch and

gave him the start of a beautiful black eye. It dazed him long enough for me to turn my attention to

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DRAGON BONES - Patricia Briggs

Erdrick.

"Really, Ward, all he did was tell her he liked her hair," he said.

I continued to stare at him.

Finally, Erdrick squirmed and muttered, "But you know how he is; it's not what he says, it's how. She

took off like a startled doe and charged out the gates. We followed because it isn't safe out here for a girl

alone."

Erdrick might be an irritating weakling, but he was usually truthful. There weren't any rats or insects in

the sewer—some magic of the dwarves who built it, though my brother Tosten had populated it with all

kinds of monsters in his stories.

The opening the Brat had slipped through was nowhere near large enough for me. I pulled hard, but the

grate only creaked.

"You won't fit," predicted Beckram, sitting up and touching his eye delicately. He must be feeling guilty,

or he'd have tried to hit me back. A bully he might be, but Beckram was no coward. "Neither Erdrick nor

I could. She'll come out when she's ready."

It was almost time for dinner now. I couldn't bear it when Father hit her. Wouldn't bear it again, and it

was too soon for that. I wasn't good enough to defeat him yet. I stripped out of my thick leather tunic

and set it down with my hunting gear.

"Take my things to the keep," I said and took a good grip on the grate and pulled. There was an easier

way, of course, but an idiot wouldn't think of it. I had to continue struggling until my cousins were gone

or Beckram lost patience …

"Take out the linchpin, then we can pull the damn thing off," muttered Beckram. I was right; he was

really feeling guilty.

"Linchpin?" I asked. I stepped back to look at the grate better, carefully not looking at the single heavy

hinge.

"The bolt holding the hinge together," sighed Erdrick.

"Ah." I stared at the hinge for a good long time before Erdrick took his knife out and worked the thick

old pin out of the hinges. He ruined his knife doing it.

With the linchpin gone, the iron grate popped out of the hinge, and I lifted it away from the opening.

"Damn," swore Beckram softly as I moved the grate and propped it up near the opening.

The grate was heavy. If I hadn't been trying to impress my cousins, I'd have asked for help. As it was,

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DRAGON BONES - Patricia Briggs

Beckram might remember this when he thought about scaring the Brat again.

This near the river, the tunnel was mushroom shaped, with walks on either side of a deep, narrow ditch

that ran sluggishly with sewer water. The walkways were meant for dwarves, not hulking brutes who

towered over most grown men. With a sigh, I dropped to my hands and knees and began crawling

through the foul-smelling muck.

"Brat!" I shouted, but the sound just dampened in the mossy growth that covered the walls.

The tunnel took a bend that obscured the last of the daylight. In front of me, on both sides of the wall,

dwarvenstones lit themselves as I approached, illuminating the tunnel with pale blue light. Most keeps

didn't have sewers anymore, not even the high king's new palace at Estian. Stonework on that scale had

been the dwarves' domain, and they were gone now, taking their secrets with them.

The sewer tunnel narrowed to a large tube, and I knew the outer walls of the keep were above and just in

front of me. Not that I'd explored the sewers much, but there were copies of the ancient plans in the

library, buried where few bothered to look. At any rate, the sewer tunnel narrowed by two-thirds so an

invading army would not be able to use the sewer to undermine the walls. Not even a child could swing

a pick or shovel in the narrow stone confines.

Sweat gathered on my forehead from the effort of keeping track of Ciarra through magic. I seldom used

magic because it made me remember how it was to do more, but for Ciarra, alone and maybe frightened,

I was grateful for what little I had left.

I crawled forward into the narrow section, trying not to think about what was in the muck I'd just set my

hand in. On the bright side, my nose was showing signs of self-defense because the odors were less

overwhelming.

There were dwarvenstones in the smaller tunnel, too.

They weren't bright enough to allow me to see what I was crawling through, but that was just as well.

Ciarra was getting farther away from me now, but she was a lot smaller and wouldn't be as hampered by

the size of the tunnel.

As the eldest, I'd always looked after my brother and sister. Tosten was two years safely gone from

Hurog. But since Ciarra was both adventurous and mute, her safety was a constant undertaking. Ciarra

was supposed to be helping Mother today. But I knew Mother. And I knew Ciarra, too. With my uncle

and cousins here, I should have stayed home, but the mountains had called to me.

We were bound to be late for dinner now, unless Father's hunting party took longer than usual. But at

least with both of us equal miscreants, my father would concentrate on me instead of Ciarra. The tunnel

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Patricia Briggs - Dragon Bones

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