Dragon Blood (Hurog #2)

16 - WARDWICK

It is one of those lessons that every child should learn: Don't play with fire, sharp objects, or ancient artifacts.

We rose before the winter sun, eating and packing until it grew light enough to see our way. It had stopped raining, but everything around us was still wet. The trail Tisala led us on was little more than a deer trail, and I on my tall horses suffered the most from the undergrowth and low, wet branches. Consulting maps and the results of my frequent seeking for the Bane proved we'd chosen our way correctly: Jakoven was definitely headed toward the secondary pass.

We arrived at the base of the climb shortly before the evening sun went down. We back-trailed a few hundred yards and found a flat area to camp. Jakoven had stopped moving about six miles away, and we assumed that he was camping there.

"Oreg," I said as I helped him set up the tents. "When you followed me to Estian, Jade Eyes felt you - he thought it was me. Is there something you can do so he won't know you're here?"

"How's this?" he asked, and the comforting feeling of his magic disappeared.

I took a deep breath. I hadn't realized how much I counted on the feeling of Oreg's magic to bandage the hole that leaving Hurog tore in my spirit. When I put some power behind my search, though, I could feel him faintly.

"That's better," I said. "Do I need to do something of the same thing?"

Oreg shook his head. "You're always shielded. Your problem has always been that nothing much gets through your shields. That's why you couldn't work magic for such a long time."

"If you really want to take them by surprise," said Axiel, "we ought to confront them now. We can tether the horses here and walk upon Jakoven's camp while they're sleeping."

"Let's go," I agreed. A part of me hoped for one more night, but Axiel was right. If we could take them by surprise, we had a chance. If they knew we were coming, we were dead.

We tethered the horses in the trail where someone would find them if we didn't make it back. We took off our mail and anything else that would clatter, and darkened our faces with the readily available mud before starting out in the darkness.

Travel by stealth at night is slow. By the time we smelled their campfire, it was already second watch. I sent Axiel, with his dwarven eyesight, out to scout the camp and hunkered down with the others under the shelter of a small fir tree.

Something cold and wet touched my forearm. I glanced down and saw it was Tisala's hand. I tucked it against my side, warming it.

Axiel came back too soon with a report. "I make out twelve of them," he said. "At least there's a dozen horses with riding saddles. There are four tents that could hold as many as five men each. He's got three people on watch, two armsmen dressed in the colors of Jakoven's own guard and someone in dark clothing who stinks of foul magic."

"Can you tell which tent Jakoven's in?" I asked. We had to get to Jakoven first, so he couldn't use the Bane.

Axiel shook his head. "They're all alike."

"He'll be in a tent alone," said Garranon with certainty. "He doesn't trust Jade Eyes enough to sleep with him. All the wizards will be by themselves in another tent. The guardsmen will share the other two. If there's a way to do it, his tent will be surrounded by the others."

Axiel grabbed a handful of stones and wordlessly laid out the camp as he'd seen it. Garranon hesitated over the two central tents.

"One of these will be the wizards' and the other Jakoven's," he said.

"Right," I said. "We all will go in at the same time as quietly as possible. Oreg will take this tent." I pointed at one of the tents Garranon held suspect. "I'll take the tent here. Hopefully, that'll give the two of us the mages. Axiel, Garranon, Tisala, and Tosten stay together and stop here." I set my hand between the tents that held the guards, so that any of the guards had to fight their way through my fighters to get to the wizards. "Wait to strike until the attacks on the mages start or until the sentries call alert. If we can kill the mages before they think to do anything nasty, it'll be the better for us."

"Kill them all," said Garranon. "It'll look bad for Kellen's cause - an assassination rather than justice. But we don't want word of the Bane to make anyone else greedy for it."

"Fine," I said, having come to the same conclusion myself. "Any better suggestions? Any questions or objections? Once we leave this tree, we need to be silent until we reach the camp."

"What about the sentries, Ward?" asked Tosten. "I'm not worried about the guardsmen, but I don't like having a wizard scurrying about."

"I don't like it, either," I agreed. "But what are our chances of taking him out first without alerting the camp?"

"Not good," answered Axiel. "He's too close to the camp. Even the sound of his body dropping is likely to wake someone."

"Our first goal is to get the Bane," I said. "That almost certainly means confronting Jakoven. Remember he's a wizard, and the only safe wizard is a dead one. Oreg or I, whichever one of us gets through with his target first, will have to go after the mage on sentry duty. The rest of you remember that sentry mage and keep to the shadows until the guards come out. Hopefully they'll serve to keep the mage from attacking you for fear of hitting them."

"I can take the mage, before we move on the camp," said Oreg thoughtfully. "I've been used as an assassin before."

I shook my head. "No."

He snorted and appealed to Tisala. "It's really the 'used' he objects to. If I'd just told him I knew how to kill quietly, he'd have let me do it."

"No," I said again, though, indeed, he was right. But there was a better reason. "If Axiel says it can't be done, I'll not risk it. We need surprise on our side."

"So we leave the wizard and hope he doesn't kill one of us before you and Oreg get to him," said my brother.

I nodded. "I don't see any way around it."

So we crept through the mire and underbrush. I silently blessed the dampness that quieted the leaves that littered the ground at the same time as I cursed it for soaking up through leather and cloth. I lost sight of everyone except Tosten as we burrowed separately around the foliage that surrounded Jakoven's camp.

One of the sentries walked out of the shadows not a hand's span from Tosten's outstretched hand. My brother and I froze, breathless, waiting for the man to look down and see Tosten lying on his belly in the mud. Eventually, the sentry continued on his way.

My aunt usually posted sentinels rather than roving guards. She said it was too easy to be seen when you walk, and harder to see an enemy's movement. The only reason to have roving sentries, she claimed, is when the troops are all tired and walking is necessary to stay awake.

Tosten and I continued on our way after exchanging quick, relieved grins. I lost sight of Tosten shortly before I emerged, mud and leaf covered, into the clearing where Jakoven's camp was set.

I sent my magic out searching for the Bane and found it in the tent I'd chosen for my own. Oreg would face Jade Eyes, then. Relief and regret swept over me in equal parts.

I crept forward slowly, from one shadow to another. The cloud-covered sky clothed the camp in darkness except for the area right around the banked campfire, so finding a shadowed path to my chosen tent was easy.

I pulled out my knife and slit the side of the tent rather than bother trying to find the flap. The blade was sharp and slid through the wet fabric without making a sound.

Inside the tent it was darker than the starlit night. I crouched just inside the slit I'd made and listened for Jakoven's breathing. But I heard nothing because there was no one there.

Only the Bane lurked in the darkness, invisible. But that didn't matter - I knew just where it was, even without using my ability to find things. The power of it filled the tent, calling out to me.

Late in the first summer of rebuilding Hurog, shortly after Oreg had returned, we'd come upon a hidden cache buried under a mound of crumbled stone. I'd reached out to touch a wand of wood covered with faded paint that intrigued me. Oreg's hand had clamped down on my wrist.

"Never a good idea," he'd murmured, "to touch a wizard's toy. Especially when it calls to you. I'll teach you a few of the nastier things you can ward your own treasures with."

And that had been the beginning of his lessons to me.

Would Jakoven have left the Bane here unguarded from the rest of his mages? I thought not, and pulled my hand away. I didn't think Jakoven could activate the thing from a distance. It would be safer here until Oreg or I got a chance to look at it - after I found Jakoven.

So I sheathed my knife, drew my sword, and looked for Jakoven. If he felt me, it wouldn't matter; he would know we were there in a matter of moments anyway - as soon as Jakoven's wizards discovered the dragon in their midst. Oreg could kill one wizard silently, but I doubted that he could keep all of them quiet.

I found the high king near the edge of the woods. I cursed to myself as I slid out of the tent and sprinted off through the trees as quickly as I could. Haste was more important than stealth now.

Jakoven was the sentry mage. Axiel must not have recognized him. It wasn't his fault. The night was dark, and who would have thought that the high king would stand watch with his men? Certainly not me.

I hadn't made but five strides before the camp erupted in noise and smoke. Oreg's tent burst into explosive flame, and I got a quick glimpse of dark bodies and sparks as steel met steel before the underbrush obscured the camp.

I kept my link to Jakoven, as much to assure myself he wasn't anywhere near the Bane as because I needed it to find him. One of the mages had lit the campsite, and I could see the glow through the branches I clawed my way past.

I burst through one section of clinging branches and all but ran into one of the sentries who had just released a crossbow bolt into the camp. My sword took his head without my slowing a step, as I tried not to think about where the bolt he'd loosed had hit

There was nothing I could do about my friends until I dealt with Jakoven. I was behind him now. There was a chance he would think any noise I made was his own sentry - the man I'd killed.

Jakoven, for his part, was moving slowly toward the camp - trying, I supposed, to get close enough to tell his men from mine. I was almost upon him when I heard a roar I almost didn't recognize as the king's voice.

"Garranon!" he howled.

Tosten had a song he liked, which I thought silly, about a soldier who finds his wife was a traitor. One of the phrases I'd objected to said something about the man's voice trembling with betrayal and disbelief.

"How," I'd asked, "do betrayal and disbelief sound?"

I heard it now in Jakoven's voice. Felt it in the thunder of power and magic that formed around his person.

I was close enough to have used my sword, but the branches of the trees were too close, hampering my swing, and my sword was not made for thrusting. So I bellowed like a bull moose and charged through the hampering foliage and set my shoulder into Jakoven's stomach before I even saw him with my eyes.

My charge sent us both tumbling down a sharp incline and into the camp's clearing. It also interrupted whatever spell he'd intended for Garranon.

I rolled to my feet and struck in the same motion, but Jakoven's blade met mine and turned it. He let my weapon slide along his blade and replied to my thrust with a series of quick short moves designed to cut rather than maim or kill.

It was an unexpected and effective style. He left several shallow cuts on my arms and a more serious one across my belly. His sword was shorter than mine, which should have been a disadvantage, except that he kept close to me, where my own weapon's length got in my way.

Even so, I was stronger than he. I got one good solid block in and forced him away from me with a rush he couldn't turn. From there I kept him at a distance with the superior reach of sword and arm, making him play my game.

The cuts on my arm bled freely, and I could feel dampness from the slice in my middle all the way to the knees of my trousers. I knew I would have little time to win this before weakness from the loss of blood would seriously hamper me.

Even as the thought registered, Garranon came up behind me calling, "Step back, Ward, I've got him. Bind your wounds before we have to carry you out of here."

We switched places as if we'd practiced the move a thousand times. I looked around, but I couldn't see the rest of the fighting because the tents were in the way. I stripped off my shirt quickly and wrapped it bandage-tight around my waist, just above my navel, tying the arms together to hold it. Hopefully that would stop the worst of the bleeding.

While I tied the makeshift bandaging, I watched Garranon fight Jakoven. The hiss that left my lips had more to do with the beauty of the swordwork I was watching than the burning pain in my abdomen. They were so well matched, I was awed by the speed and savagery of the fight.

"Traitor," breathed Jakoven. "I saved you. Saved your brother and allowed you to keep your lands when the estates of other men who had smaller roles in the Rebellion than your father were given to those loyal to me."

"You used me," corrected Garranon, all coolness to Jakoven's heat. "And I let you. I knew I could not save my family with my sword, but I could with my body."

"You loved me," said Jakoven.

"Never," replied Garranon. "If I could have taken the breath from your body and not lost all, I would have done so. I paid for spies, and spied myself, feeding the information to Alizon when he broke from your court."

"You lie." Jakoven's voice was confident. "I have never had a more passionate bedmate. Why do you think I kept you all these years?"

"Love is not necessary for sex," replied Garranon composedly. "And that's all it ever was - no matter how good it felt. But weighed against what you have done to my home and to the Five Kingdoms, it is less than nothing."

"You lie," repeated Jakoven, and he missed a block. Garranon's blade slid easily through the simple silk shirt Jakoven wore. The blow was too low to be immediately fatal.

"I loved you," said Jakoven, dropping to his knees, blood dyeing his hands a glistening black. Garranon pulled his weapon free and swung again. The blood-dark blade slid through the high king's throat and the resulting spray of blood covered Garranon, dripping down his face like tears.

I ducked my head, both to examine the worst of the wounds on my forearm and to give Garranon a moment of privacy. There was such grief on his face, I didn't think that he would want anyone else to see it.

"Here," said Garranon. He ripped a strip of cloth from the bottom of his shirt and wound it around my right bicep. I hadn't noticed that one.

"We'd best go see how the rest are faring," he said.

I nodded, but couldn't help but take a last look at Jakoven's still body. I'd been in battle before, and I knew how quickly a man could go from life into death. It only took a single mistake. But it seemed almost anticlimactic to stare at the dead body of the man who'd inflicted so much damage in his life. As if his death wasn't payment enough.

I followed Garranon and caught up to him. We pushed past the tents, and I had just time enough to glimpse Tisala still on her feet when the magelight above us went out.

The hair on the back of my neck rose with the magic that swept over us like a giant wave hitting the surf. I think I even stepped back, because I bumped into Garranon.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Farsonsbane," I said. "Oreg!" I bellowed, turning about as my night vision began to come back to me and shadows turned gradually into more familiar shapes of tents and men.

No one answered me.

Garranon's night sight must have improved faster than mine, because he left my side abruptly to engage one of the shadowy figures before it could complete a strike at someone who was down.

I sprinted toward the tent where the Bane was calling to me, hungry for what I could feed it.

"Oreg?" I called as I ran.

Surely only Oreg could have gotten past Jakoven's safeguards, but he still didn't answer me. I looked for him with my magic and found him so near the Bane, I thought for a moment that the artifact's magic had misled me.

I stumbled over a body, burnt and torn, and I took a few precious seconds to examine the forehead and eye that were left. Fear that it was Oreg almost kept me from seeing Arten, Jakoven's archmage, in the shape of the brow.

A few feet farther on I found another body, unrecognizable, but the fire that still fed on his flesh was full of Oreg's familiar magic - he was one of the high king's wizards.

Jakoven's tent was dark and still, but the entrance flap was open. I tried to feel Oreg's magic, but if he were using any, it was swallowed up by the magic of the Bane.

Gods, I thought, my mind playing out various scenarios as I slowed to sneak up on the tent. Oreg got through the traps set by Jakoven and tried to break the spell that held the Bane and failed. Or he was tired and was caught by a trap Jakoven set.

I ducked beneath the flap and magelight flared in the tent. There had been so many bodies on the ground, it had never occurred to me that anyone but Oreg would be in the tent with the Bane. But Jade Eyes smiled his beautiful smile at me.

For a moment all I could see was him. My body, remembering what he'd done to it while wearing that smile, broke into a cold sweat. Then I saw Oreg's limp body on the tent floor.

Ignoring Jade Eyes, I took two steps forward and felt Oreg's neck for a pulse - sighing in relief when I felt it. I didn't like the knot that was rising on the back of his head, though. Stala always said that if you hit a man in the head hard enough to knock him out, you had a good chance of killing him.

"Welcome, Ward," whispered Jade Eyes. "I've been waiting for my opportunity to claim the Bane since I first saw it. It is appropriate that you should be here, just as you were when it first called to me."

Crouched beside Oreg, I looked up at Jade Eyes and recognized the madness in his eyes. I wondered if, like my mother, he tasted his own potions or if he was simply crazy. Either way, the slender staff topped with a dragon holding a glowing ruby in its mouth scared me sick.

The Bane's angry red magic blew my hair away from my face and came back to bit me in the shoulder. The blow was as hard as any I've taken, and it was completely unexpected, because there was no change in Jade Eyes's face or body that told me what he intended. It knocked me forward onto my arms, and one of the cuts that had closed reopened. I felt that breeze come back to taste my blood.

"Oh," he breathed. "They like you. Can you hear them? They called me and called me. I visited them every night, but I couldn't break Jakoven's protections. I came in tonight and found your wizard had done all the work for me."

"Who?" asked a voice in my head, breathy and soft I almost couldn't hear it over Jade Eye's words. "Who are you?"

Hurog, I thought.

"We know you." This time the voice was several and much stronger. I saw three dragons, though my eyes were closed. "Know us, too."

" ... been working on a spell to release them," continued Jade Eyes, apparently unaware of the other conversation I found myself a part of. "Dragons are immortal. If I can release them from some of the restrictions that Farson placed upon them, they can be dragons again in truth. They will serve me as dragons served the Emperor. Alizon is right," he said intensely. "Jakoven should not be high king."

The blackness began to flow under the violent red of the gem, just as it had the first time I saw it. I realized that this part of the Bane's magic seemed black to me, not because it was evil, but because it was so dense. It slid down the staff in a slow, heavy flow and began pooling on the floor of the tent, covering my hands and lapping over Oreg's body.

This was different, separate from the red magic, and it became more different all the time. It tasted like dragon, though I hadn't realized that dragon magic had a feel to it - a commonality between the magic of Oreg, Hurog, and the Bane.

"It's almost drained now," said Jade Eyes, incorrectly, I thought.

Farsonsbane was hiding its power from him. I shivered when I realized that I understood the Bane because of the connection Jakoven had forged between us with my blood and tears. The magic I saw as red was the power controlled by the mage wielding the Bane. I knew because the Bane told me so. The dark magic was power hoarded by the Bane itself, held in check by the binding Farson had imposed upon it so long ago.

"Jakoven used most of the magic on Buril - after making certain that Garranon wasn't there," continued Jade Eyes, unaware of the secondary communication between the Bane and me. "Peculiar of him, don't you think? I thought he was finished with Garranon. He hasn't taken Garranon since he found me last year. But I know something that Jakoven didn't."

"What's that?" I asked, watching the blackness touch Jade Eyes's feet and wash back like the sea hitting the sand.

"That it is your tears the dragons need - they told me so. Hurog means dragon, he said. But he didn't go far enough. I looked it up. Did you know that Hurogmeten means Guardian of Dragons?" He crouched, unaware of the blackness that flowed around the tent. "Your tears will give my immortal dragons back their lives and they will serve me."

He was wrong. The Bane contained the revenants of dragons, and dead things could not be given anything but the semblance of life.

"Dragons aren't immortal," I said, touching my dragon's neck again, because I couldn't see him breathe underneath the layer of blackness that Jade Eyes couldn't perceive: He was not a Hurog. Against my fingers, Oreg's pulse beat steadily. "Dragons live a long time, longer than the dwarves. But they aren't immortal."

His smile broadened. "You don't know much," he said, and tilted the staff just a little.

Pain coursed through me and I lost control of my muscles, falling limply to the floor, unable even to turn my face aside and avoid the painful contact of noise and hard-packed earth.

"Always so quiet, my Ward," whispered Jade Eyes, and he turned my head away from the ground, tsking when he saw the blood flowing from my nose. "I liked that about you. Some people like the screaming, but I enjoy your pain, not noise." He touched his fingers to my upper lip and held his hand up for me to see the dampness of my tears coating his fingertips. "I'm sorry you have to die. But I think that you might be able to take them from me, if I don't kill you before I release them."

"A dragon is no man's slave," I managed to say around the pain. "Nor should he ever be. I think that you'll be like my father and find that it is more than you can safely hold."

"Your father had a dragon?" he asked, and the pain ebbed into memory. "They say that there is a dragon at Hurog now. Jakoven said it was illusion."

I took a deep breath. "Listen to me, Jade Eyes. The dragons died to make that gem. You can't bring them back to life. The first rule of magic is not to tamper with the natural order of things. If you break Farson's bindings, you'll only unleash death."

"Yes," said the red tide of magic, "let me destroy."

But it didn't have the same living feeling as the black magic that coated me and drank my tears from my cheeks. It was just destructive magic, cold and powerful.

Jade Eyes drew back.

"Did you hear that?" I asked. "There will be no new Empire to rule if you free them."

His face changed abruptly to a hate-filled snarl and he jumped to his feet. "You think you know everything."

He slammed the end of the staff into my diaphragm and I curled up, gasping for breath that wouldn't come. Darkness hovered in front of my eyes, but I remembered my aunt's voice in my ear "Straighten out, boy. Give your lungs room to work." And I forced my legs straight and drew in a small breath of air. The next breath was larger.

I opened my eyes in time to see him touch the gem with his tear-covered fingers. The black mist of magic grew very still, as if it were waiting.

Jade Eyes snapped his fingers impatiently. "It must need blood, too," he said.

He rolled me flat on my back and drew his knife. He bent and cut the stained bandage from my waist, ripping the fabric off and setting the wound bleeding again. He took the staff and shoved the Bane into my wound.

I felt the icy touch of the gem, felt it feed on me. It sent slivers of agony arcing through my bones, and warm writhing pleasure through my muscles until I couldn't tell which was which.

"Up, Ward, damn it. If you lay like a lump because you've taken a bruise, you'll end up with a slit throat." The memory of my aunt's voice seemed tied into the mist feathering my cheeks with an icy touch that brought some clearness to my head.

With the force of will that had been toughened by my father and my aunt for different purposes, I reached up and gripped the staff with both hands and ripped it out of Jade Eyes's hands.

He must have been using magic on the Bane as well as my blood, because his body convulsed when he lost contact with the staff. He fell, momentarily unconscious, half on top of Oreg.

I pulled the Bane from my flesh, and it was harder than it should have been to do that. Using the staff to aid me, I struggled to my feet, my head hitting the pole that held that section of the tent roof rigid. Then I realized that Jade Eyes must have set a command upon the staff before releasing it.

He'd wanted me dead so no other would have a claim upon the Bane, and the red tide of magic, bloated from my blood, flooded my body in an attempt to carry out Jade Eyes's directive.

I knew the form of several binding spells. Oreg had taught most of them to me.

"If you don't know them," he'd said, "you can't break them."

I could see the bindings on the gem when I focused on it. The ties that held the Bane to follow Jade Eyes's command faded under my thrust of magic but not quickly enough. A red tide of pain sliced through me and breathing became difficult.

Hurog blood had given the Bane to Jade Eyes's control. I'd rested the fingers of my right hand on the bloody lump rising on the back of Oreg's head. True dragon's blood, or nearer to it than mine.

Red heat seared my flesh, empty blackness struck me deaf and dumb, and cool blue power touched my skin with ice. Blue for tears, I thought. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't hear but for the sound of dragon breath in my ears. Blindly I raised my right hand and felt for the gem. I couldn't feel the staff or the Bane against my fingers, but the cold gem glowed with a wealth of power and I covered it with my hand.

One moment I struggled against the Bane and the next the rush of power was gone. I gulped in air, and my sight returned as if it had never left me.

The gemstone in the mouth of the bronze dragon glowed with cool purple-blue light. I neither felt nor saw either the heavy blackness of the trapped revenants or the red magic that answered to the master of the Bane.

I leaned against the staff, which was the only thing holding me up.

I couldn't sense any magic except for the slight pulse that made the gem glow, illuminating the tent with blueish light. I was too tired to probe the nature of the magic that caused the luminescence, but light could easily have been the result of leftover magic when Farson's spells were released. Blood and tears, I thought, remembering Oreg's belief that the magic could break free.

Oreg had made me kill him to break the spell that bound him to Hurog. It did not seem at all strange to me that those dragon spirits bound to the Bane would be willing to make an equal sacrifice.

There would be time to analyze later. Now there was a battle going on outside the tent - and as soon as I could stand on my own, I needed to get out and help. But even as the thought came to me, I realized that although there was quite a bit of noise, the familiar sound of battle had disappeared sometime while I'd been struggling with Jade Eyes and the Bane.

Jade Eyes.

I started to kneel down and check the mage, but just then he rolled off Oreg. I worried for a moment, because in my current condition a kitten could have knocked me over, but he lay limply on the floor, and Oreg sat up.

Oreg looked around, a hand to his head. He glanced at the Bane, let his gaze linger on Jade Eyes, and said, "Missed all the fun, did I? I can't believe I let him take me from behind."

"No more can I," I agreed, still propped up by the staff. "We need to see what's going on out there." I gestured vaguely toward the entrance flap. "But first, I think we ought to make certain Jade Eyes doesn't do anything we'll regret when he wakes up. There has to be a rope of some kind around here. Since I'm a little under the weather - not having slept through the excitement like some here - that leaves you."

"Jade Eyes?" said Oreg thoughtfully. His right hand moved, drawing the knife in his belt and bringing it across Jade Eyes's throat before I choked out a belated "Stop."

Oreg came to his feet, narrowing his eyes at me - or maybe against the pain of his head injury. "I've heard your nightmares," he said. "I'll not suffer him to live - I gave him a more merciful end than he deserved." To change the subject, he pointed at the Bane. "What are you going to do with that?"

"I want nothing to do with it," I said, rather firmly for someone who would have fallen but for my grip on the Farsonsbane staff.

"Wait until they come out," said Haverness's voice clearly from outside the tent. "You don't want to interrupt wizards."

Oreg and I exchanged glances. However our party had fared, it seemed that we had unexpected reinforcements.

Letting the staff take some of my weight, I ducked back out of the tent. A faint trace of light in the east told me that time had passed while I fought the Bane. In the darkness of the early morning, the gem glowed like a fistful of dwarven stones, and in that light I saw that Haverness had brought a small army with him.

I looked around for Tisala, but I saw Kellen first. Facing Oreg and me, at a sword's-length distance, Kellen stood with his blade drawn, Rosem at his right. Haverness waited behind him, and I finally found Tisala at his side, battered but intact. The rest of the people were hidden by the darkness, but there were a lot of them. In fact, as I looked around, I could see that they surrounded the tent.

They must have been waiting half the night for the outcome of the battle in Jakoven's tent. The sight of Oreg and me didn't seem to reassure Kellen. I wondered what results he'd hoped for.

"Sire," I said, not bowing because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stand up again. "I didn't expect you here."

"Yes," he said. "I rather thought we'd surprise you. It was Garranon who tipped the scales - did you really expect me to believe that he'd go hunting after the attack on Buril?"

"No." I shook my head. "But we needed enough of a head start to catch Jakoven before he became aware of you. We had to take him by surprise before he could use the Bane."

I tipped my head to the staff and swayed a little with the motion.

"Did you?" asked Kellen softly. "Or did you see the chance for power and take it?"

"Kellen's worried that Jakoven's downfall might be a good time for old traditions to reassert themselves," said Haverness, his voice carefully neutral. "The Hurogs are the last of the royal line of Shavig."

I was too exhausted to deal with stupid suspicions, especially, as usual when I was tired, when talking was difficult. I tried to gather my thoughts and had to grip the staff harder to stay on my feet.

"Ward?" Tisala's voice drew my gaze, and I saw her more clearly. Part of me noted uneasily that the light of the gem had followed my gaze without my bidding, but the rest of me was focused on Tisala. I straightened abruptly, anger stiffening my spine. The battering, I realized, had probably come from Jakoven's men, but her hands were bound and she was obviously a prisoner.

I looked back at Kellen, who said quietly, "Is that the Bane, Ward?" His eyes were trying to convey a message to me, but I was too tired and angry to work it out.

"It's not Kellen who doubts you," said my uncle, and I saw that he was here, too. "But when we realized where you were going, a number of the Oranstonian lords who knew your father expressed their doubts. In your place, he would have taken the Bane and used it to gain the throne - and they don't know you."

His words bounced off the rising tide of my wrath, which grew apace when I noticed that he was bound as well.

I waved my hand, drawing on the power of the staff ("What power?" asked a small, rational part of me, buried beneath the roil of anger) and the ropes fell from Tisala's wrists. "Tosten, Axiel, Garranon," I said in a voice I hardly recognized.

"Here, Ward," said Garranon behind me. "I'm fine."

"And I," said Axiel.

Tosten said, "Nothing wrong with me that won't mend. Have a care, Ward. Keep your head."

I didn't even have to look at them to release their bonds as well as Duraugh's. The magic of the staff filled me up and powered my finding sense until I could have identified every man in the camp, though I'd never seen most of them before.

"Why are my people bound?" I asked gently. "They've done nothing wrong. With this"  -  I shook the staff - "Jakoven could have leveled a battlefield. Stealth was the only way. So these people risked their lives for you and you make prisoners of them?"

When Tisala came to me, no one tried to stop her. "My love," she said, as if she'd always called me that. "Ward, listen to me. No one was hurt. Farrawell and a few of his ilk believe that claiming the Bane was your purpose from the beginning. There are enough of them here who agree that Kellen had no choice but to confront you."

I listened to her, but I kept my eyes on Kellen. She might say he had no choice, but I knew better. The power that filled me quivered in rage at the thought. And it told me exactly what I could do about Kellen and the Oranstonians who put my people in bonds.

"Ward," said Oreg clearly. "Your eyes are glowing Hurog-blue - like the staff."

I turned to the dragon-mage and the awareness that was a part of the Bane's magic knew him as dragon. It calmed at his presence, giving me space to understand what he'd said. And as it faded, the urge to destroy Farrawell and Kellen ebbed. But it wasn't gone, just concealed as it had concealed itself from me before.

I took a deep, if shaky breath. "Siphern save me," I whispered. "I thought it was gone." But the Bane had only hidden, waiting to infect me with its ravaging madness.

I knew then that Jade Eyes had been both correct and wrong. Blood and tears had indeed freed the Bane, freed it of any control. Knew moreover what it intended to do, because destruction was all it understood: The Bane was a far more capable Death-Bringer than my little brother's fat gelding.

"Oreg, aid me," I said, but the Bane read my intentions before I could say anything and launched an attack - not at me, but at Tisala, who held my arm and had no protection against magic.

I threw up a warding around the bronze dragon head even as I pushed Tisala away from me. But the Bane had been storing power for a long time and was sated on dragon's blood. My safeguard wavered, and Tisala collapsed to the ground.

Oreg's hands closed on my shoulders and the barrier stabilized, holding the Bane momentarily.

It gave me time to say, "Away from us. Get back, it's loosed."

Kellen gestured sharply and the people who'd been crowded around us stepped back to the trees. Haverness, though, came forward and picked up Tisala. She moaned as he carried her away and I knew a moment's relief that the Bane hadn't killed her.

Then the Bane began struggling again and I had to turn my concentration elsewhere.

"What do we do?" I asked as I strengthened the warding. "We can't just continue to contain it."

"You were right," Oreg said, "it is connected to you. You understand it best - I'll loan you my strength to do what you can."

"I think I could bind it again," I said.

As if the Bane understood, it redoubled its attack on our barrier. Slowly I gave control of the warding to Oreg, to free my weaving for a more permanent solution.

"If you can," replied Oreg.

I knew one binding spell that would hold the Bane as it had tied Oreg to Hurog - a slave to the whims of the Hurogmeten. I drew my knife with my free hand and awkwardly cut myself without losing my hold on the staff, because that spell began with a sacrifice of blood.

Dragons' voices wailed in pleading terror as I began the spell and they made me hesitate. How could I do this?

The question stalled me further. It had been Oreg's father binding his son to Hurog that had tainted the world with his evil act and my destruction of that binding had begun healing the earth. If I bound these creatures, revenant though they were, would it compound the evil that Farson had started?

As I struggled inwardly, the Bane struck the warding with sudden immense power - as like its previous struggles as an acorn is to a hundred-year oak. Its energies burned through Oreg's weaving as if he were not an ancient dragon, but his strength slowed it enough that I could catch the fraying edges of the warding and hold it together.

But I could feel the Bane regathering its magic for another attempt. It had burnt out Oreg's magic; he wouldn't be able to work magic for hours. That left only me.

The Bane hit my barrier again. I howled in agony and writhed as I sent magic into the warding until I had none left. I searched frantically for more, because if I did not stop it, the Bane would destroy everything and everyone that I loved.

If I hadn't come, Jade Eyes would never have gotten his hands on the Bane. I could feel the patterns of possibilities woven into the gem, where spells once had bound, and knew that Jade Eyes had been right. Without my tears, the bindings would have held for centuries longer. But magic is made more effective through the use of sympathetic intention and symbolism; doors are easier to break open with magic than walls because doors are meant to open and walls to stand firm. The tears and blood of the guardian of dragons made a sharp knife to cut through spells imprisoning dragons.

Haverness had brought his mage and I sucked him dry of power. He didn't fight me, but his magic was a drop compared to Oreg's ocean and neither was adequate, so I cast my net further afield.

Nothing.

I screamed a second time, not just from pain, but from effort and frustration. My hold slipped and I felt the Bane's triumph.

"At last to be free, to burn and consume until there is nothing left."

Then I felt it. Hurog. Over five hundred miles away, the magic of Hurog heard my call and came to me when I couldn't reach it. A thin, cool stream of power spilled over the warding, taking the governance of the spell gently from my hands. Hurog touched me and read my desire to neutralize the Bane.

The ward dissolved, replaced by Hurog magic that engulfed the Bane and cleaned it of taint and anger. Dragon magic absorbed the Bane and left me except for a silk-fine thread, connecting me to my home.

A pea-sized stone the color of obsidian glass fell out of the staff to land on a flattish rock. Almost absently I crushed it with the butt-end of the staff and the little stone dissolved into powder, drifting away when a stray breeze swept through the clearing.

I cleared my throat and looked up to meet Kellen's grim face.

"I'm sorry, sire," I said to him. "It seems the Bane was more dangerous than I thought." Letting the staff slip through my grip, I knelt before him and bowed my head. "Let all here bear witness that the dragons of Hurog do follow Kellen Tallven, High King of the Five Kingdoms."

The world tilted oddly and someone cried out; I think it was my brother.

"Idiot," muttered Oreg to me as he and Kellen hauled me to my feet. "Have you forgotten what I've told you about destroying magical items? You're lucky you didn't kill everyone here when you broke the gem."

Garranon was somehow there, stitching up my belly with thread and needle. "I thought you had this stopped," he said.

I was puzzled for a minute at the abrupt shift of scene, then realized somewhat muzzily that I must have passed out, because I was sitting, braced against a tree, and the camp was lit with morning sun instead of blue gemstone.

"Still prisoners?" I asked.

"No," said Tisala acidly. "You proved to everyone's satisfaction that you had no intention of keeping the Bane's power for yourself. Kellen declared you a hero, and, after the impressive fire and spark show you put on, no one decided to argue with him. Next time, I'd appreciate it if you'd only face one deadly foe at a time. A paranoid king or two, evil sorcerers, an ancient evil artifact - fine. But not all at once. It makes it hard to defend you."

I realized that the slender tree that kept me upright was Tisala, herself. It was her knee that pressed so uncomfortably against a bruise on my back, but I was too tired to shift away. It was worth the small hurt to know that she was safe. Garranon distracted me from the bruise when he took another stitch.

"And you didn't even kill anyone," said Oreg, then added, "at least none of our allies." I saw that he was lying next to me with his eyes shut tight against the light.

"Are you all right, Oreg?"

"Damn it, quit wiggling," snapped Garranon. "Unless you want a few more pinholes to add to your wounds."

"Just a headache," said Oreg when Garranon had finished speaking. "Axiel tells me I'll feel like living again in a week or so - about the same time I'll have enough magic to light a candle. Tosten's in one of the tents with Axiel, who has a nasty cut on his thigh that someone stitched up."

"My father," supplied Tisala from behind me. "He also sewed up Tosten's back. He - my father, not Tosten - says both Axiel and Tosten will mend. He says you are suffering from blood loss, as well as whatever damage your battle with the Bane did, but if you haven't died yet, you are unlikely to at this point. Unless, of course, one of your wounds gets infected." It didn't sound as if it would bother her.

"Speaking of death," said Oreg, "have I mentioned that I'm unhappy with you? Destroying something as powerful as the Bane's gemstone could have left a new valley where these mountains stand."

Garranon's steady progress across my sore abdomen paused and then resumed.

"I thought of that," I said, relaxing against Tisala. "But the magic was gone, eaten by the dragons of Hurog."

"What do you mean?" Kellen rounded Oreg's splayed body and crouched behind Garranon.

"You're in my light," growled Garranon, and Kellen moved obligingly to my left.

"What do you mean eaten by Hurog?" asked Kellen again.

"Magic," I said, "is a strange thing."

Tisala laughed against the back of my neck. "Most people think so," she said.

"Most wizards think it's like the wind or the rain," I said. "An uncaring force of nature. And for the most part they're right. But I've been places where that wasn't true. Where the magic is as alive as the trees here, or more so. Menogue is one of them," I told Kellen. "It is as alive as you or I." I hissed as Garranon stuck his needle into a particularly tender spot.

"I could sear it, instead," he offered.

"No," I replied hastily. "Go ahead. Just caught me by surprise."

"The Bane was somewhat more perplexing," I said. "I think the spirits of the dragons were tied into the original spell. Jade Eyes ... " I paused.

"Yes," said Kellen. "We found his body in Jakoven's tent. Oreg told us he managed to get the Bane before you did."

"Jade Eyes was insane," I said. "He'd been talking to the spirits and they told him how to free them. He thought they'd turn back into dragons. But they were just ravening spirits, not dragons any longer, and only the binding spells kept them from destroying everything. I thought I stopped it, but I was too late. If it hadn't been for Hurog, they'd have killed us all."

The wound across my stomach was deeper than I'd realized, forcing Garranon to stitch up muscle first, then skin. I looked away and continued talking to distract myself. "Hurog is alive, too. When I sought for more magic to hold the Bane, it came and ... ate the Bane. That's what dragons do with their dead, you know."

"No, I didn't know that. Ward ... " Kellen began.

I could hear the apology in his voice and waved my hand in dismissal. "If you trusted every barbarian Shavigman who happened upon your way, you wouldn't be much of a king," I said. "However, I hope you don't expect me to destroy ancient artifacts to prove my loyalty on a regular basis."

"Done," he agreed with a grin. Someone called out his name and he excused himself.

Garranon finished stitching and wrapped my middle with cloth that looked as if it had been part of someone's bedroll. When he was finished, Tisala slid backward until my head rested on her knee.

I looked at her face from my new vantage point. Her left eye was swollen shut and she had a bandage wrapped around her upper arm that was stained with blood. She was beautiful and I told her so.

She laughed and kissed my forehead; "Don't be an idiot," she said. She loved me, too.

I closed my eyes, content to rest where I was. Doubtless the politics would continue for a long time yet, but my part was done. Hurog was safe and its dragon was stretched out beside me, safe and whole. The sun was shining through the rain clouds and Tisala's leg was warm under my head. I slept.