Dragon Spear (22 page)

“Pippin!” Marta knelt down to gather up the little white ball of hair that had been the lapdog of Princess Amalia of Roulain and now ruled Feniul’s kennel.

Despite her size, Pippin was an alpha female, though I hadn’t seen much of her since I’d come to the Far Isles. Now I understood why: trailing through the sand behind her were three minuscule brown and white puppies. Bringing up the rear was their father, a brown dog at least twice Pippin’s size. We admired her puppies until the shrieking couldn’t be avoided.

“Hello, Ruli,” Marta said finally. The monkey she had bought in Citatie was swinging from Ria’s horns and screaming at us. I’d run afoul of the little beast a number of times in the past weeks, and quickly fished a couple of nuts from a purse at my waist. I handed them to Marta, who threw them at her erstwhile pet to make him be quiet.

When he had taken the treats and scampered away, Marta brushed her hands together.

“Now then!” She started walking up the beach. “Are the guesthouses this way? I want to wash, and then we need to get to work. If you want to be married next week, when both moons are full, we’ve got a lot to do.”

Avoiding her eyes, I said, “I don’t know what you mean—I’ve been working on my dress for months.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Creel. You always have been,” Marta said briskly. “I knew the minute we finished talking through the speaking pool that something was wrong. You very obviously didn’t mention your wedding gown, even though it’s all you’ve talked about for six months. It got dirty, didn’t it? Or you lost a part?”

She realized that no one was following her, and turned around. Seeing the look on my face, and Luka’s face, her mouth opened into an “O.”

“How bad is it?”

“It’s not really a gown anymore, so much as a large pile of ribbons,” Luka said as tactfully as he could.

I covered my face with my hands.

“Creel! Caxon’s bones! What did you do?”

“I saved a clutch of dragon eggs,” I said, lowering my hands from my red face. “And I’m not going to tell the whole story until Alle gets here, because I don’t want to relive it over and over again.”

Marta shook her head at me, then squinted into the distance. “Well, I can see two more dragons coming right now,” she said. “So it shouldn’t be long. Feniul had some sort of bet going with Leontes, which is how we got here first. I thought my hair was going to be blown right off my head.”

The others did arrive quickly: Alle, Tobin’s sister, Ulfrid, Luka’s brother, Miles, and his wife, Isla. To avoid causing an uproar, we had invited only these few chosen friends, contacting Marta through a speaking pool and sending her to tell the rest. King Caxel had no idea that his younger son was about to be married in this unorthodox fashion, and we figured it was better this way.

But then Leontes smiled at us and pointed with a wing in the direction they had come. “My mate is bringing the other guests,” he said. “They should be here shortly.”

“Other guests?” I frowned. “Who?”

“You’ll see.”

Marta and Alle winked at each other, and Miles was smiling broadly. When Niva landed, we saw why.

I had a horrified flash of my aunt arriving with all my cousins, to complain about the sand and the heat and all the dragons, and sweat broke out on my upper lip. But if it were Aunt Reena, surely Miles wouldn’t be smiling?

To my delight, the Duke and Duchess of Mordrel clambered down from Niva’s back and rushed to embrace us. I greeted them with real pleasure. The duchess made much of my embroidered tunic and trousers, and that reminded me of my wedding gown dilemma again.

Marta and Alle, standing nearby, heard her, and I could see that they had been reminded as well. They immediately came to my side.

“We have a lot to do,” Marta said briskly. “If someone can show us where we will be staying, and we can get our luggage unpacked, we’ll need to get to work.”

“Yes, please, everyone come this way.” Gala stood at the head of the path that led to the guest houses. “We have houses prepared, although some of you may have to share now.” Shardas and Velika had designated her the hostess for the wedding, and she was doing an admirable job.

She led us down the shady path to the guesthouses. The Mordrels would have their own and Tobin and Marta easily agreed to share with Ulfrid. I told Alle to put her things with mine. Luka was already sharing with Hagen, so the most crowded house would have been his, now that his brother and sister-in-law had arrived. But Hagen solved the problem, saying he would move his things into Leontes and Niva’s cave.

At least until the wedding.

Shardas had told me that he and Feniul were preparing a special house for Luka and me, but we were not to see it until after the ceremony. Which was all right with me, since just thinking about it made me blush furiously.

I was helping Alle shake out her gowns and hang them on the hooks on the wall next to mine when Marta whipped into the house with a twinkle in her eyes, a basket on one arm, and Pippin and her family at her heels. Marta plopped the basket down on the bed, then boosted the tiny dogs up as well. They sat neatly in a row and watched with their dark eyes, heads cocked in identical poses of curiosity.

Wanting to avoid what was coming next, I rubbed the little puppies behind their ears until Alle cleared her throat loudly and Marta started tapping her foot with a sharp sound on the wooden floor. I turned around to explain what had happened in the forest far to the south, and instead saw . . . a wedding gown.

“I don’t believe it!” While they grinned with pride, I put both hands to my cheeks, and felt tears start in my eyes.

It was Marta’s wedding gown—I could tell by the skirt, which I myself had painstakingly embroidered with clusters of flowers and tiny crystals. But Marta and Alle had taken off the high ruff to lower the neckline the way I preferred, and slashed the sleeves to put in lace inserts. Only someone who had seen Marta’s gown every day for months, as I had, would recognize it, but even if they did it wouldn’t matter.

It was gorgeous.

Eggshells

T
he weeks I had spent down in the lesser temple waiting for the eggs to harden had seemed eternal, but the one leading to my wedding went by in the blink of an eye.

We had to do the final fitting for Marta’s attendant gown, since she insisted that only my stitching made her waist appear small enough. She and Alle had matching gowns of pale blue, embroidered with dragon scales and flowers in shades of turquoise and silvery gray. We had planned them before I decided to be married in the Far Isles, and I couldn’t be more pleased at the way the clear waters that surrounded the island complemented the gowns.

Ria and Gala were putting their heads together with Isla and the duchess over the decorations, so after the attendants’ gowns were finished, Marta and Alle and I only had to worry about fitting my gown. I put it off until the day before the wedding, however, convinced that something terrible would happen if I touched it: a stain, a snag,
something
.

So it was with great trepidation that I tried the gown on at last. I took a bath, made Marta and Alle wash their hands, and even swept the floor of my house first. My friends helped me into it, and I kept my eyes closed as they laced the tiny, tiny ribbons that ran up the back.

“Open your eyes, Creel,” Marta said in a breathy voice.

I dared to look at last.

It fit like a dream: bodice tight, skirt flaring to just the right length. Marta and I were similar in size, and of course we kept straw-stuffed dummies made to our sizes in the shop. The sleeves were the right length too, just fitted enough without impeding movement. I sighed, and grinned, and twisted to look at myself from the back.

“Perfect,” Alle agreed. “Perfect.”

“It’s better than the one I had—” I was cut off in mid-sentence by the sound of roaring.

Many dragons roaring. In a high, strange way I had never heard before.

We ran out of the guest house and down the path, nearly colliding with Miles and the Duke of Mordrel as they came out of Luka’s house. We all raced for the beach and my only concession to my delicate, white skirts was holding them high off the sands. I was fleetingly grateful that I was barefoot, and didn’t need to worry about ruining my new satin slippers.

All the dragons were streaming down the shore toward Shardas and Velika’s private section of beach. They had their mouths open wide and were roaring or trilling—it was a bizarre combination of both.

“What is it? What’s happening?”

Some were flying, but Feniul and Ria ran out of the jungle and started trotting up the beach beside us. They were streaming a trail of children like a parade.

“The hatching!” Feniul stopped roaring long enough to say the words with an explosion of joy. “The hatching!”

Luka caught up with us, and I told him the news as we ran. He linked his arm through mine and helped me speed along the sands. My heart was pounding against my tight bodice. We would see Shardas and Velika’s eggs hatch!

Perhaps.

When we got to their section of the beach, there was such a solid wall of dragon bodies that I couldn’t see anything but scales in front of me. Some of the dragons hovered in the air so that they could get a better look. Then Velika raised her head high (I could just catch a glimpse of the end of her snout), and said, “Where is Creelisel?”

“Here!” I jumped up and down.

“Make way for her, please.”

Reluctantly, the dragons began to clear a path.

“Make way for all the humans,” Shardas said.

We gathered in a ring around the sandy nest. The eggs were glowing red, and rocking slightly. I reached out to touch one, then drew back, but Velika nodded at me and I touched the nearest egg. It was so hot that I quickly pulled back again, and smiled at the queen dragon with a welling of emotion in my breast too great to express.

“We wish to have all our friends with us,” Shardas announced loudly. “Human and dragon. One of these eggs will produce the future queen of the dragons, and there must be witnesses. For the first time in history, some of those witnesses will be human, to build stronger bonds between all our people—dragon and human.”

We were all solemn, but then one of the eggs rocked itself up on end and we gasped. I fell to my knees beside the egg, fists clenched, and began
willing
it to hatch a female. Leontes had told us that if the first egg to hatch was a female—the future queen—it was a very good omen.

Suddenly cracks appeared in the shell. They grew longer and wider, and with a final snapping sound, a baby dragon the size of a large dog tumbled out.

Its wings were wet, its scales looked like crumpled paper, its eyes weren’t open, and it was covered in goo. It was hideous and sweet all at the same time. It opened its mouth and mewed, and the dragons roared with joy.

“The future queen, the future queen,” one of them bellowed in my ear.

Another egg was hatching now, but I was busy kissing Luka in celebration.

And then the sound of the roaring changed.

Alle screamed, and I whirled around just in time to see a gray dragon—Rannym, the very dragon I had once served as a
klgaosh
—scoop up the tiny queenlet and leap into the sky with her.

It was desperation, or madness, for he was surrounded by dragons loyal to Shardas and Velika. But still he pumped his wings, heading up and up. Shardas bellowed and leaped into the air after him, but it was Luka who moved the fastest.

He had been hunting small jungle deer with Tobin for our wedding feast. He still wore his bow and quiver, and before Shardas’s wings could fully extend, Luka had nocked an arrow and aimed directly at the eye of the gray dragon. Rannym screamed and dropped the tiny, mewling hatchling.

Shardas snatched at his firstborn daughter, but she was so wet she slid out of his claws.

I didn’t even think.

I grabbed Tobin’s shoulders and we ran forward, locking our arms in a loose cradle. The hatchling fell into our arms with a plop. My knees buckled and Tobin knelt quickly so that we didn’t drop her. She keened and pressed herself against my chest, and I felt tears dripping down my cheeks onto her.

“You’re all right, it’s all right, precious baby,” I murmured over and over.

The arrow had dealt a mortal wound to my old master, but the others didn’t even let his body fall to the sands. He was plucked from the air and taken far out over the sea, to be dropped with a splash we could see from the shore.

Tobin and I carried the future queen to her parents, who were huddled over their remaining eggs. More of them were cracking now, and Velika looked wild, not certain who to comfort first. We placed the firstborn in her foreclaws, and she settled down.

“Creel,” Shardas said, and his voice was choked with emotion, “Creel . . .”

“It’s a good thing you saved me from those bandits all those years ago,” I told him.

Then, just as I had when Shardas had first saved me, I fainted.

I woke up on the sand, in Luka’s arms, surrounded by cheeping baby dragons and a distraught Marta.

“The gown is
ruined
,” she wailed.

Defying the Curse Again

C
reel? What are you doing in there?” Luka knocked urgently on the door of my little house.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I just have to fix this.”

“Marta says there’s no way to fix it,” he replied. Even muffled by the door, his voice was gentle. “I’m sorry. She said you were acting rather strange about it.” He cleared his throat. “If you need to delay the wedding . . .”

“The moons will be full tomorrow night,” I reminded him. “A member of the royal family can only get married when both moons are full. We’d have to wait another two months.”

“We can wait,” he said stoutly.

“Luka, my darling, go away and let me fix this so that we won’t have to,” I said. “And tell Marta to stop coming around weeping and wringing her hands: I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Quite, quite sure.”

Even his sigh was audible through the door. “Very well. I shall see you in the morning?”

“At the wedding,” I promised.