The Heart of a Dragon

Part One: Captured Prince

1

It was a great victory for the Valleymen of Orchard Hill, the Midsummer Battle. The attacking force had come screaming down the Orchard Pass, and engaged the defenders immediately, ripping and tearing with monstrous teeth and claws, like raging animals. But the weary survivors of that battle, and all the ones before, knew the truth; that these attackers were far from unthinking animals.

They were demons.

XX

The war had been going on since Lord-Earth-knew-when, a series of skirmishes, some decisive battles, but always one had retreated before the other could enter their land.

Not today. This time, the men of Stonegard had refused to yield, pressed forward, and finally took down the arch-demon, the golden leader of the army, and took as a prisoner his red-and-gold-haired familiar. He was pulled in, arms bound to a stout pole hefted by the blacksmith and the blacksmith’s son, his head hanging as a broken leg flopped unnaturally behind him. His long blood-red hair shot through with gold, long like a woman’s, stuck to his bloodied, strong face. A silver circlet hardly thicker than a wire encircled his brow—it, too, was stained with his blood where it had cut into his forehead.

Flanked by cheering screaming howling crowds, the victorious fighters dragged their prize to the Council building, letting him drop at the feet of those Councilors too old to fight, gathered at the door. The dropped pole cracked across the prisoner’s shoulders, and he let out a hoarse gasp of agony—nothing more. He had already screamed himself out long before, as the Valleymen around him had slashed the throat of his father before his eyes, as they had beat him cruelly with belt, fists and feet. He didn’t tell them that they had killed his father, that they had taken the Dragon King’s only son. He didn’t have the words, nor the voice to use them.

Fighting the pain and the blackness at the edges of his vision, his garnet eyes searched the screaming mob of women and children and old men. Only one in the crowd saw the pleading, hoping look in those frightening eyes. She stared, and his eyes, one half-swollen shut from the beating he had taken, caught hers.

That was when Ilsa Peteri first saw Kendal e’Auroth as more than a demon’s familiar. She nodded, and his eyes closed, just as the Mediator of the Council ruled that he would die at dawn, three days from then. He only knew that the crowd erupted with a new wave of bloodthirsty cheers before he surrendered to unconsciousness.

XX

Kendal awoke in a windowless wooden hut, stoutly if hastily constructed. There was a single door, and threads of light came in underneath the door and through chinks in the wall. His only good eye wandered around, taking in everything, as he took a fuzzy inventory of his injuries. Concussion, probably; one or more broken ribs on his left side; a slashed left arm that still bled sluggishly; sprained, possibly broken wrist; a broken right leg; severely twisted left ankle; weals from an enemy’s belt, and various cuts and bruises, including a swollen black eye. Kendal’s simple fighting clothes were rags, barely covering him and encrusted with dirt, blood, and other things he didn’t want to think about. His leather jerkin was probably on some enemy’s back. That’s all he had time to think about before unconsciousness, like a cowardly enemy, sneaked up behind him and knocked him out.

XX

He woke again, keening and screaming, nightmares fresh in his mind.

Father…

The woman who had left her home and sneaked through the town in the night, after Midsummer celebrations had been taken indoors or far out in the fields, heard the hoarse screams—his keening was too high for her ears—and peeked through a knothole in the wall of the prisoner’s jail, and saw the tears leaking from the cursed-red eyes, the broken body heaving with agonized sobs. Ilsa’s ears filled with soft moans and she bit her lip. Maybe it was an act, maybe he knew she was there, but she doubted it… four years as a healer gave her some experience at distinguishing real pain from fakery. Demon or not, he was in pain. And her duty was to ease pain, was it not? She stole away unseen, unheard. Everyone was too drunken or too busy to take note.