King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1)

PROLOGUE

ON a hill surrounded on three sides by forest and on the fourth by the ruins of a fortress stood a ring of stones. They crowned the hill with stark beauty, like the bones of a castle buried so deeply in the soil that only the battlements of the tallest tower rose above the earth. It was said by some that chambers lay beneath the standing stones, rooms filled with treasure, with haunts, with creatures not of human form. It was said that passageways led out from these chambers like rivers stretching from a landlocked lake, leading from this hill across the land, even to the cold sea in the north, even to the great mountains far to the south.

On the third day of the month of Avril, as afternoon faded into twilight and the full moon shone low in the darkening sky, a lone traveler made her way up through the tumbled stones of the old fortress. She wore leggings, a plain linen tunic, and sandals laced up to her knees, human clothing which she had become accustomed to here in this foreign land but not what she felt comfortable in. With a staff gripped in one hand and a small pouch tied to her belt, she negotiated the maze of walls as if she knew it by heart.

The ruins lay on a gentle incline, stretching from the banks of a narrow river up to where the last wall, no taller than a year-old child, lay crumbling into the dirt and grass. The forest rose beyond. A single watch fire burned on the other side of the river, past the stumps of felled trees and fields newly burned for a spring planting of barley, marking the only village that lay within sight of the hill crowned by stones.

The traveler paused before she stepped over the last wall of the fortress. She threw back her hood. Her hair was so pale it seemed to shine with a light of its own. She reached into the pouch and drew out a scrap of torn cloth, stained with red. With a grimace, she made to cast it to the ground, as if by throwing it away she would free herself from its binding power before she passed into the wild majesty of the stones.

But she paused, cocking her head to one side, listening. And she cursed. She hesitated, and that moment was enough for the lead horseman to spot her.

It was dusk, but her hair was bright and his eyes were young and keen, and he was looking for her.

“Alia!” he cried. “Beloved!” Recklessly, he urged his horse forward, picking his way up through the fort. More riders appeared behind him. He paused, reining his mount aside, so men on foot, carrying torches, could catch up and guide him forward. He used only one hand on the reins. In his other arm he carried a bundle of cloth tucked against his chest.

She winced away from the sight of that small burden. The vow she had made years ago, as humans measured time, seemed rash and ugly now. She had stood up in front of the assembled council and spoken boldly, but she had not known then what she would suffer in the world of men.

Then her gaze caught on a banner. A battle-scarred man in a gold and black surcoat closed the gap between himself and the young prince. Upright and arrogant in the saddle, he held in one hand the dragon banner, symbol of the elite guards who protected the heir and by extension the kingdom itself: a black dragon coiled on a gold background; a cluster of seven brilliant stars studded the gold field above the dragon’s figure. She traced this constellation with her gaze to remind herself of what it stood for, the Crown of Stars worn by the ruler of the ancient Empire, half-forgotten now in the world of humankind but destined to return. It was for this she had made the sacrifice.

By this time, aided by her hesitation, the young prince had pulled his horse up beside her. Torches threw wings of light over the ruins, and their heat surrounded her like a prison built with walls of fire.

“Why did you follow me?” she asked. “You knew I intended to leave.”

“How can you leave?” he demanded, like a child wailing against being abandoned. But he was so young, barely a man, only eighteen years old according to the calendars of this world. With an effort he schooled his expression to one of haughty disdain and tried a different path. “Surely you will stay until the child is a year or two old, so you might know that it lives and thrives.”

“No disease known to you will touch him, nor will any wound inflicted by any creature male or female cause his death.” She spoke without thinking.

A murmur, like the breath of wind through a forest, passed through the assembled soldiers, those close enough to hear her prophesy whispering her words to those who stood farther away. The old soldier urged his horse forward to halt beside the young prince. The dragon banner lapped over the saddle, brushing the young man’s arm.

At that moment, the bundle stirred. The baby woke, batting aside the swaddling with blind infant groping. She saw the black shock of hair that crowned the baby’s head, the tiny face and its open, staring eyes, as vivid as fine green jade, its skin that marked it as flesh of her flesh, a fine burnished bronze nothing like the northern pallor of the young prince’s complexion even where it was roughened by exposure to sun and wind. The tiny hand closed on a corner of the dragon banner, gripping it with infant strength. The men-at-arms pointed and exclaimed over this omen: The bastard child born of no human woman sensed its fate already, though it was not yet two months old.