CHAPTER 4: Dragon’s Blood
A sharp jolt, the wagon hitting a rough patch, and Kyric sat up fully awake. Aiyan wasn’t there.
“Your uncle said he had to see someone in Karta,” Ventin said over his shoulder, “and that he’d catch up with you in Aeva.”
“We’re past the Karta road already?” Kyric said, looking out and seeing the sun beginning to sink into the west.
“Passed it half an hour ago.”
“My uncle is ill,” Kyric said, furiously rolling his bed and gathering his other gear. “He shouldn’t be traveling alone.” And he vaulted the tail gate, nearly falling in the road, and began a steady jog against the flow of traffic.
“You’re not leaving without an explanation,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “You and your essence of the secret fire — we’ll see about that.”
He ran until he could see the road to Karta, a vineyard to his left preventing him from cutting the corner. When he turned off the paved highroad he slowed to a brisk walk. Karta was still five miles away.
He walked straight into the setting sun. Even with only a few horse-drawn carts on the road, the air was hazy with dust, and Kyric couldn’t see very far ahead. He walked hard, at times running a short way to help vent his anger, hoping to come across Aiyan lying in the ditch, weak with fever.
The western sky had become a deep blue curtain by the time Kyric could see the town of Karta. He knew that the ruins stood to the south on a small rocky uplift, near this side of the town. Crossing a large pasture, he saw a movement in the fast-falling darkness ahead where a shallow ravine lead upwards into the ruins. He broke into a run, scrambling over the loose stones in the ravine and onto a landscape of crumbling walls and roofless temples. Indistinct shapes covered in overgrowth jammed the alleys between the teetering facades.
He didn’t see him anywhere. “Aiyan!” he called.
His voice seemed too loud. Suddenly it felt dangerous to be making noise.
He crept past a row of leaning columns, coming to a courtyard with fallen walls and broken statues. Something scraped on a stone behind him and he turned. A man stood there with a pistol in his hand at full cock. Another man nearby opened the shutters of a lantern.
The one with the pistol, some sort of gentleman cavalier with lace cuffs, knee-high boots and a plume in his hat, looked past Kyric and said, “Hold him.”
Kyric tried to run, but two big men appeared on either side of him, grabbing his arms and pinning them behind his back with a painful twist. With their tattoos and earrings and a cutlass at their sides, Kyric thought they must be sailors and the gentleman their captain. The one with the lantern was thin with a drooping moustache and carried a double-barrel pistol in a red sash.
“What are you doing here?” asked the captain with deadly calm.
Kyric could only look at him.
One of the sailors punched him hard in the stomach. He tried to double over but they held him firmly and he couldn’t breathe as the pain rang like a bell inside him.
“It will take too long this way,” the captain said. “We will use the blood.”
The one with the lantern set it down and went to his boss drawing a small knife. He pricked the captain’s thumb, smearing a few drops on the tip of the blade. Then he stepped closer and held it up to Kyric, pushing it towards his mouth. In the weak glow of the lantern, the smear of blood looked black.
The captain raised his pistol, carefully sighting at Kyric’s stomach. “If you think that blow hurt, wait till you feel a lead ball in there. Lick the blood from the knife or I will shoot you right now, and in the end you will taste it anyway. I do not lie and I will not ask you again.”
Even the dim light Kyric could see it was true, that he would do it. He was so afraid he couldn’t think. Fear took him then. He licked the blade. It didn’t taste like blood, more like an exotic liquor made with sea water, salty and breathtaking.
At once the fear was gone. How silly to have been afraid. The captain meant to help him — no, it was more than that. The kindness of offering his blood was a sharing closer than that of brothers; it was like they had known each other all their lives. The captain would be the older brother he had never had, one who would understand him and care for him deeply. The captain would never leave him to fend for himself. He would teach him, and comfort him, and protect him all of their days together. And Kyric loved him with all his heart.
With a wave from the captain the two sailors released him. “So. What are you doing here?” asked his new brother in the kindly manner he always used.
“I’m looking for Aiyan.”
“And who, exactly, is Aiyan?”
“Well,” Kyric said, “that’s a good question. He doesn’t say much about himself. But he did tell me that he stole a book of rudders from Senator Lekon and hid it here in the ruins.”
“Wh—“ the captain began to say, then without warning he leaped to the side, raising his pistol and twirling in midair to face where Aiyan stood with the shouldered blunderbuss. Aiyan slid to one side even as they fired, both shots sounding as one. The captain was thrown back against a broken obelisk as a handful of bullets ripped into him. He somehow kept his feet, and even had his sabre half drawn when Aiyan sprang forward and cut him down with a flaming sword. Kyric could feel it as his beloved brother died.
He sank to his knees in grief. “No!” he cried. “Please, no!”
The same shock seemed to strike the two big sailors. For a moment they stared in disbelief. But the thin one didn’t hesitate, and he pulled the pistol from his sash. It was a wheel-lock, but the dogs were open and he had to push them down. Aiyan was quicker. Alight with a blue-white flame, his sword cut an arc against the night sky and the thin man’s pistol fell to the ground along with his severed hands. He opened his mouth to scream, but a sharp thrust silenced him. The two sailors ran.
Kyric began sobbing, harder and harder. His brother was going to share all that he was with him. And now he was gone. Gone.
Aiyan walked over to him. He was furious. His voice shook with rage as he said, “Elistar’s holy breath! You took some of his blood.”
He struck Kyric across the face with the flat of his flaming blade. It burned like hot iron. Seeing it close now, it flickered unearthly, more like the ghost of a flame. The were-fire went out as he sheathed the sword.
“We have no time for this,” Aiyan growled. “A troop of Lekon’s cavalry are camped nearby. We have to go. But first . . . ” He lifted Kyric up by the shirt collar and dragged him to where the body of the captain lay. He brought the lantern over and held it close.
Black blood, blacker than the night, leaked from the wounds in the captain’s body. “Look at this,” Aiyan commanded. “See it and remember it.” He paused to listen for a moment. “Now we go. Grab the lantern and both of those pistols.”
When Kyric didn’t move at once, Aiyan did it himself, not forgetting the spanner for the pistol. He placed the lantern in Kyric’s hand. “Crack the shutters just enough to see your footing,” he said.
“I loved him,” Kyric said helplessly.
Aiyan stopped and looked him in the eye. Gently he said, “I know. But soon it will seem like another man’s memory.”
He took Kyric by the hand and led him deeper into the ruins.
“I had almost come to it when I heard you call,” he said very softly. When Kyric didn’t answer he said, “I blame myself, not you. I should have known something like this could happen.” He shook his head. “We have ways of knowing—” he paused and swallowed an ironic chuckle. “Well, we have ways of reading certain signs if we think to look for them.”
They skirted one of the roofless temples, pushing through thick undergrowth, then along a stone path winding among vague upright shapes. The full black of night had come.
At length they found themselves facing a thick intact wall taller than their heads. Aiyan followed the wall to the left for a few min
utes then slowed to a stop.
“I think it’s one of these,” he said, choosing one of the foot-long blocks. Finding a pair of unseen finger holds, he worked the block out slowly. It made a grinding sound. “This knowing of places, it is one of the weird arts that a warrior may learn.”
“You mean you could feel where you left it, even in the dark?”
“That’s one way to do it,” Aiyan said. “But I tried to know the place where I would look for it when I first hid it, in case I was pressed for time when I returned.”
He slid the block of stone all the way out and lowered it quickly to the ground, almost dropping it as he suddenly favored his right side.
“What is it?” said Kyric.
“His shot grazed me,” Aiyan answered. “If my ribs aren’t cracked they’re certainly bruised.”
He reached in the hole, and Kyric brought the lantern close. It was just as Aiyan had said, an outlandish jacket that matched those crazy pantaloons, a false belly, and a large book with a wooden cover.
Distant voices echoed in the ruins behind them. They could see no pursuit, but the moon had begun to rise.
“Leave the lantern here,” Aiyan said. “The moon is near full and will be more than enough. And stay close on my left, for there is a fairly long drop-off to the right.”
He struck out across a field of overgrown rubble, heading due south, the rising moon casting long black shadows across the jumbled landscape. Sharp stones jabbed at Kyric through the worn soles of his boots. Past the rubble, a rocky slope led them down and away from the ruins, into a wide pasture sparsely dotted with old oak trees.
Kyric’s heart and head were racing. As his love faded for that man, the captain, his anger grew. He would have done anything for him. He would have killed for him, or been his willing slave. Wasn’t that what Aiyan had said in his fever? The man’s blood had been black, and it had done this to him. And that was the truth of it.
“Your sword,” he said to Aiyan. “What was the strange fire that ran along the blade?”
Aiyan was quiet for a moment. “My sword is named Ivestra. It was forged long ago and was first carried by Sir Mecaithen, a founding Knight of the Order of the Flaming Blade, and over the last two centuries it has been carried by many true warriors. Ivestra and I are bonded in the realm of power, for we have each chosen the other. When in my hands and touched by the essence of the secret fire, it becomes a weapon of spirit as well as steel and will hold that flame as I will it.”
He looked at Kyric. “You were troubled earlier that I did not tell you enough. Do I now say too much?”
Kyric didn’t look up. “I don’t know.”
They crossed the pasture and cut between two wheat fields, the scent of the farm faint on the light breeze. The moon climbed into the night sky and by the time they reached a rutted east-west road Kyric felt all too visible.
Aiyan knelt at the edge of the road, silent, listening again. Standing, he said, “I don’t feel that we are closely pursued.” He looked each direction down the road. Nothing moved. “Going west and walking hard all night we could be at the narrows by morning, but if I were Morae I would send the cavalry that way. And besides, I would have to leave you there.”
“Don’t you want to do that anyway?” Kyric said. “I’m beginning to think that was the best idea, you with the holy quest of the merchant princes tucked under your arm and all.”
A thin smile crossed Aiyan’s lips. “Too late for that now,” he said. “Now you’re too vulnerable, and too much of a target. You would be a nice catch for them.”
He shook his head. “Two of them. Right under the nose of Esaiya. How bold. Now I know this isn’t Morae’s own private enterprise. No, this must be part of the Master’s plan.”
“What can I do?”
“You must stay with me until the taint of the blood fades away. Then you can decide. The west gate of Aeva is only a few miles down this road. I know a safe place to stay where I can learn of the goings-on that the missing rudders have incited. We’ll rest for a day, then I can have a boatman take me to Esaiya, and you can go to the archery tournament.” His eyes danced with a mischievous light. “Besides, I have a rather long story to tell you. You’ve certainly earned the right to hear it.”
Aiyan set a quick march pace down the road. “I’m going to tell you this story as it was told to me. And if it’s a little dramatic, well, that’s how I heard it.”