The Dragons' Chosen (9 page)

Chapter 11

Chris gritted her teeth as she struggled onto the saddle. Captain Markus had rearranged the supplies, mounting her on a tall cow-hocked gelding with the unlikely name of Glory. An uglier riding horse I hadn’t seen, with masses of coarse brown mane, a thick shaggy coat and an unfortunate braying whinny. Chris immediately renamed him Janis after a heroine of hers. Dressed in one of my riding skirts and a large inelegant jacket of Lucinda’s, Chris wasn’t likely to set fashion. And no matter what I did, her straight hair escaped my third best snood.

Much to Chris’s annoyance, Jonathan and Malcolm told everyone who would listen about her attempts to mount from the wrong side. Jonathan argued that the horse couldn’t tell the difference between Chris and the supplies the pack horse had recently carried, but Malcolm insisted that he had seen sacks of meal that rode with more grace. Fortunately, Glory, or Janis Joplin as Chris persisted in calling him, appeared indifferent to his new burden, placidly following nose to withers with my horse, Winter. We kept to a fast walk most of the next morning. My men took bets on how soon Chris would fall.

We rode through a forest of oak and ash that spilled out to a stand of willows clustered by the side of a stream. Every few miles the landscape opened, and the hills of Perpinan appeared, and beyond, wrapped in a cloak of mists, the Crystal mountain of Fandrite. A frisson of fear crept down my back as we neared my destiny, and I was glad that Chris rode beside me.

Chris kept her eyes pinned to Janis’s neck, her fingers entwined in his mane as if that might help her stay on. Where could she have been raised that she rode so badly, worse than any peasant? I had so many questions about her and few answers.

My gaze flitted over her, trying to fit the puzzle piece that was Chris into my circumstances. Something that could explain Chris to me, to understand her better. I ventured a guess. “Is your card a family heirloom? Something handed down from a seer ancestor?”

She gingerly extracted one hand from Janis’s mane and reached inside the folds of Lucinda’s jacket. “It was a gift from Nana, my great-grandmother. She was known as a bit of a firecracker but never a seer.” She held the card out for me to reexamine. I had seen it once before: the girl sitting on the throne supported as if by clouds. Across the top, an interlocking design framed the illustration. I frowned; something niggled in my brain.

“Nana died during the holidays. The card was left for me. Part of my inheritance: money for college, the small enamel box that contained this card and the poem written in her curly script.”

We both looked at it again.

“When I was little, she kept it near her, though she would never let me touch it. She would sometimes look at it and I thought she might cry—longing and pain or whatever. I never understood.”

I tried to concentrate on her speech. It was difficult to parse out and there were concepts that I didn’t understand. I tried to shape her words into something I could comprehend but I found my mind wandering. Something about the design on the card distracted me; it seemed familiar.

She shook her head, tucking the card back into the jacket. “That day, the first time I saw you, I had cupped the card in my hand. And I felt pulled, drawn in. The words on the note whispered themselves to me and I heard myself repeating them like a mantra—the next thing I knew, I was there in your room.” She waved her hand at the landscape.

Janis lifted his head and jogged for a few steps. Chris grabbed back onto his mane. “Each time I hold the card and say the words, I’m here with you. Wherever you are.” She looked around, with some peculiar expression of contemplation and study. “She meant for me to be here. I’m positive of that. But I am not sure what I am supposed to do!”

She shrugged off her train of thought.

“So what’s our plan?”

I rearranged my riding skirts. “There is no plan, we arrive in a fortnight.”

A little sound of air escaped her mouth. “You can’t be serious.”

I patted Winter’s neck before I spoke. “I must go. You’re a comfort to me and I value your thoughts, but there’s no way out of this. You must know that.”

“Well, actually, no, I don’t know that.” She relinquished Janis’s mane and waved her hands. “Look at what you’re doing. Don’t you have any sense at all? Can’t you see what your people are doing to you? They’re sending you to your death.” By this time she was so upset she was sputtering. “Your own father sent you to die.”

I held my composure against this onslaught, trying to make her understand. To put it right. “No, it isn’t like that. Those are my people, my responsibility. Father is king. It is his burden. We both know our duty. There is no honor in causing our towns to be burned to the ground, thousands killed. That’s what would happen if I’d stayed. Someone had to go, and I was the one chosen. One life, one princess of royal blood—one instead of thousands.”

I thought back to a conversation with my father two weeks before I left. “Genevieve, I never thought I would rue my kingship. Here I stand bound, wishing that I were but a farmer, with no obligation, no duty to my kingdom.” He had reached out, placing his hand on my shoulder and spoke, misery heavy in his voice. “We’re two of a kind, both of us confined by duty and honor. I wish it were different.”

Tears had brimmed in my eyes, threatening to fall if I moved. He pulled me close, rocking me gently. The tears did spill then. We both knew the cost to our land, our people. I shivered, thinking of the devastation that dragons would wreak on our land.

He had moved away, pacing back and forth. “As a king, you steel yourself to the loss of your children—your sons, perhaps to war, and your daughters to distant marriage, but this…

“We don’t really know what happens at the Crystal Cave. Perhaps there is some hope. Perhaps—no, no, I’m fooling myself.” He sank into a chair, his head buried in his hands.

I had remained silent, grieving for him and for me. When next he spoke, looking up, it was with such despair that I could hardly bear it.

“Your mother is taking this hard. Her own great-aunt, Victoria, was one of the chosen. Your mother sits for hours in front of the gallery of chosen princesses, looking at her great-aunt’s portrait, looking at the portrait of you now also gracing the wall.” He held out his hand. “I will abide with you as long as I am able.” I folded myself up on the floor next to him, resting against his knee, and we sat silently there for the better part of the night.

Chris stared at me in dismay, probably wondering at my sudden silence. I realized there was no way of instructing Chris, who hailed from a land bereft of kings, of the obligations of royalty to their people. I turned my head away so I didn’t have to address her lack of understanding. We rode awhile in uncomfortable silence.

“Might I ask why you disappeared so abruptly in the Goddess’s maze?” I asked after some time.

“Oh, um. I was startled before. I think I have a handle on that now. My karate instructor says that self-awareness is the beginning of discipline. That even the most fearless person can flinch.” She looked at me. “You know, that second before you leap into action when your focus wavers?”

“No.” I shook my head, utterly confused by her comments.

Chris shrugged, “Oh, well, it can happen.”

A screech came from above and we both looked: a falcon kiting, beating its wings to stay in a single place. The falcon dove, rising with some small luckless mammal in its grasp. Lately, I watched predators and prey with a new fascination. I had never before felt myself to be in the prey category. But now that my status had moved from princess to entree, I had a new empathy for them. Chris poked her foot at me.

“Look, we don’t have much time. We have to talk.”

I listened for over an hour as she explained the dynamics of scapegoats throughout the history of her land. It didn’t make much sense to me, but then not much about Chris did.

The terrain closed in once we passed the Daine River. Trees loomed, forming dense woods, and little rivulets crossed and re-crossed our way.

We rode side by side, weaving various theories of dragons and schemes into a patchwork of solutions. Not that any would work, but it was comforting to pretend, to indulge Chris’s faith. She was still displeased with my decision and she railed against my continuing on this journey.

“My professor of Women’s Studies says this kind of thing happened all the time. It’s cultural, men sending women off to their deaths. In Hawaii, women were dropped into the mouth of the volcano to appease the Goddess Pele; in India, they were placed on their husbands’ funeral pyres and burned; the Inuit deposited their unwanted women on icebergs when they tired of them. Your people ship them off to dragons.”

Chris swatted at a biting fly on her horse’s withers and Janis jogged a step or two in response. Chris was so focused on her diatribe that she forgot to clutch at Janis’s mane as she continued talking. “You need to stop this madness. Take a stand! I still say we dress the pig up in your clothes and tether it. The dragons may be very happy with pork, happier even. It isn’t like they are kosher or anything.”

I frowned at her odd language but refused to respond. We’d been over this four times just that day.

“Even if they notice, maybe they’ll think of it as an hors d’oeuvre. We could slather the pig with rat poison. Arsenic? I know, dragon’s bane! Do you have any of that? I bet that would mess with a dragon’s digestion.”

I had heard this before also. In fact, I was becoming quite an expert at the tribal practices of her land and on her various proposals of how to kill dragons.

I answered her again as I had these past days. “It is my duty.” I watched her mouth curl into a sneer.

I looked away, and she erupted. “They’re using you, and you’re letting them.”

“So tell me,” I shot back, my voice now heated. “Would you abandon your people, your family and lands to war and destruction to save one life, your life? If it meant the death of thousands, would you?” I looked at her, then whispered, “I can’t.”

Chris was still and finally spoke, “Ok, I see your point. Maybe I wouldn’t. But I would want to be absolutely positive that it was necessary. That there was a valid need.”

I forced myself to speak normally. “Let’s go back to thinking of solutions. Ones that don’t involve my running away and losing my honor.”

“Oh, for frigging sake, you are so holier-than-thou.”

I looked at her, startled. “I’m not particularly religious, no more than most.”

Chris rolled her eyes. “Do you always have to be so literal? It’s just an expression.”

I resigned myself to being forever confused when with Chris. She was my only confidante, but there was no understanding the woman.

Chapter 12

At night we stopped, camping out under the stars. Lucinda’s ankle was slowly healing but still I insisted she rest. Chris, while obviously not a horsewoman, eagerly helped around the camp once she recovered from her saddle stiffness.

With Lucinda injured, Ethan took over the cooking. I was checking Winter’s legs for burrs when I witnessed a small tussle between Chris and Douglas about a bucket of water and an axe.

Water sloshed as Chris and Douglas vied for ownership. Chris’s brows lowered into a frown. “Let go. I can do this myself.”

Douglas tugged on the bucket, ineffectually trying to pry it from her hand. “Oh no, My Lady, allow me. It isn’t right that you should haul water and chop wood.”