Realm of Dragons

What was so bad about the scale sickness, anyway? Nerra looked down at her arm, realized that her sleeve was still loose, and ripped it away completely. What did it matter, now that people already knew? She stared down at the black, scale-like lines that traced over her arm, more solid now than they had been, palpably different from the rest of her skin. They were as much a part of her as anything else, so what was so wrong about them?

No one had ever answered that question for her, or even come close to it. The doctors her father had found had looked as though they hadn’t even considered that question, and certainly didn’t know the answer. Master Grey… well, who knew what the sorcerer really thought about anything? He spoke little at all, and about this, he’d said nothing to her, only offered her a poultice that had taken away some of the itching that came with the scales’ growth.

“There has to be some reason why people are cast out,” Nerra said, as she continued her way through the forest. People wouldn’t do it for no reason, would they? Or would they? It was hard to fathom half the things that people did. She didn’t understand the way Vars treated people, or why Rodry felt the need to fight all the time. Maybe it was just because she was different, or maybe it was just the fear of ending up like her, turned into something larger.

It didn’t matter now, of course. The reason for her banishment didn’t matter so much as the simple fact that she was banished. Anyone who saw her would be entitled to try to kill her, or do whatever else they wanted, and she would have no protection from the law. It was a terrifying thought.

“You’re safe here,” she told herself, leaning against one of the trees and feeling the solidity of it. She knew the forest better than anyone, knew every twist and turn of it. She could survive here, could even thrive here…

…and she had her secret here.

Nerra realized that even without thinking about it, she’d been heading in the direction of the cave where she’d hidden the dragon. She wanted to find it, wanted to see it again. She had been looking after it, and now it was likely to be the only companion she would have. They could live in the forest together, hunting down food, staying safe from the view of men.

It was a nice thought, but it was also one that was interrupted. Nerra knew this feeling; knew the dizziness and the sense of sickness. On another day, she would have retired to her rooms so that no one could see her like this, maybe sent for hot drinks as if it were just an ordinary kind of sickness. Now she had no rooms to go to. There was only the thought of the dragon, somewhere ahead of her.

Nerra kept walking, ignoring the unsteadiness. She would feel better soon, because she always did. She would feel better once she found her dragon, because at least some of this was the pain of loneliness and separation; it had to be. Maybe if she found something to eat.

Back home, she would have sent for a servant, but out here Nerra knew she would have to find her own food. She knew what she was doing, at least, knew which fungi and plants were edible, and which were poisons. She took a handful of berries, eating them one by one even though her dizziness made them taste like ash in her mouth.

It didn’t help, so Nerra found herself looking around for leaves that she could make into a tincture to slow down the feelings of weakness that were making her limbs start to shake with every step. The effort of looking, though, made it seem as though she was wading through the depths of the great river that divided the kingdom, every step an effort.

“Maybe I’ll sit for a while until it passes,” Nerra said. She found a solid-looking oak to sit against, setting her back against it as she sat there and waiting for the feelings of weakness and dizziness to pass. They always had in the past.

She sat there and tried to think of all the things she might do with her life. All that she had lost hurt so much, but Nerra was determined to think about all the things she might still do, all the things that might still happen for her. She’d hated court life, had always wanted to be out in the forest, had always wanted to spend her time apart from people, only offering help where people needed it. Maybe this was her chance.

Maybe, except that even those thoughts didn’t encourage the feelings of sickness to pass. Nerra felt it in the dizziness that threatened to consume her, in a tingling in her mouth, in a pulsing in her arm from where the scale patterns felt as though they were about to burst from her skin.

“Help,” she called out weakly, but there was no one to help her out there. Even if someone had come, they’d have seen her arm, and killed her for it. At the very least, they would have shied away from her, leaving her to the mercy of the shivering and the weakness and…

Somewhere in the course of it, Nerra realized that she had fallen over to her side, her cheek scraping against the leaves and twigs of the forest floor. Her breathing was shallow now, and the world felt as though it was coming from behind a veil that meant Nerra could barely see it. Her eyes flickered open and closed, and this felt different from all the other times she’d felt unwell, different, and worse.

There was a pressure building in Nerra’s skull now, as if a whole world was there inside it, fighting to get out. She screamed, then realized that no sound had come out; she was just twitching there on the ground, staring up at the canopy of the forest, sure that she would die there alone and unheralded. Would someone find her there, or would her body simply stay there to be scavenged by the animals? Would she even be dead before that happened?

Suddenly, Nerra felt very afraid. She found herself thinking of her brothers and sisters, of the dragon abandoned in the cave. She wished that any of them were here, that someone were here.

“Help,” she called again, and to her shock, there was someone there now.

There were several people, gathered around in the woodland and staring down at her. The largest of them was at the front, bald and tattooed, muscled like a bear and looking at her like he’d just walked into a room full of treasure.

“Princess,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Greave lay in bed, panting, and, for almost the first time in his life, truly happy. Sunlight spilled in through the window, shining down on the sleeping form of Aurelle Hardacre. She looked perfect lying there, but then, she looked perfect everywhere.

Greave’s mind flashed back to how she’d looked before, in the moments when they’d been making love. It had been an experience that had been beyond anything he could have imagined, beautiful and wondrous, pleasure filled and somehow complete in a way that almost nothing else ever seemed. Greave could see now why men wrote poetry about such things, and sang songs about the beauty of love.

She had grabbed him almost the moment he had left his father’s chambers.

“You’re angry, my love,” she had whispered.

“I…” He hadn’t had the words for how upset he was. “I need to find a way to make this right, to make this better.”

“I can’t help with that,” Aurelle had said. She had pulled him back in the direction of his rooms. “But there’s one thing I can do.”

Now she lay beside him, breathing softly in her sleep.

“Aurelle, my love,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”

There was no answer, and Greave did not wish to wake her now. He stared at Aurelle as she lay there, feeling luckier than any man had a right to be that she had simply walked into his life like that. Previously, women had always thought his features too effeminate, or his personality too dour. Aurelle had seen something in him that had lifted Greave to more than that, made his heart sing in a way that he hadn’t known was even possible.

He thought about waking her with a kiss, but slipped from the bed instead, dressing in silence. He’d been so caught up with Aurelle in the last few days that he hadn’t done even the one thing that he’d promised himself he would do. Now, with the reminder of his sister being sent away, and the argument with his father, he needed to do it.

Greave slipped from his rooms and headed through the castle in the direction of the library. Now that the last of the feasting was done with, it was a quiet place, almost an empty one. Greave could feel some of that emptiness inside him, at the thought that one of his sisters had been cast out, while another was missing. Greave could help with one of those, though, if he could only find what he was looking for.

He stepped into the chaos of the library, which looked even more out of order than when he’d left it. Had servants been in trying to find things, or maybe a noble bored from the feasting? It didn’t matter, so long as he could still find the book he wanted.

What had it been called? For a moment, Greave thought perhaps he might have forgotten the title, and he had an instant of panic at that thought. What if he couldn’t remember? What if the chance to find out what his stepmother was involved in had slipped from him through simple thoughtlessness?

No, he remembered it: On the Body. There, it seemed that a mind used to remembering vast tracts of poetry and plays had its uses. Idly, Greave wondered what his father might make of that thought.

He couldn’t tell him, of course, couldn’t tell anyone. Until such time as he found a cure that might save his sister, then just by telling people that he was looking, Greave would place them all in danger.

“No,” he said. “I need to find the cure first.”

That meant finding the book, and that was easier said than done in a library like this. Greave started to search the shelves.

It took what seemed like forever, with book after book tossed aside. Observations on philosophy went the way of Fauna of the Third Land and Notes on River Navigation. On another day, maybe Greave would have glanced at them, reasoning that all knowledge was worth having, but not today.

On another day, of course, he would have given up by now, his efforts washed away in the sense that all was worthless. If there had been one thing Aurelle’s arrival in his life had shown him, though, it was that some things were worth the effort. Greave kept digging through the library.

And then, it happened.

He froze.

Greave caught sight of the book he wanted almost by accident, buried behind a collection of works on the architecture of the kingdom back in the days when it had been unified.

With trembling hands, he reached out and took it.

It was so frail in his fingers.

On the Body was a slender volume, so old that Greave barely dared to open it. He did so with trembling fingers and started to read.

What he read there made no sense to him. He had read many books in his time, but here there were notes on dissections and the chemical processes of the body. There was a whole section on the scale sickness, detailing the process of the transformation, and the damage to the body that it could do, tearing people asunder as it sought to reshape them into… into…

…things. Greave stared at the pages, unable to believe the horror of some of the things there. Would his sister become one of these? No, not if he could do anything to stop it.

But despite all the horrors of the disease, a cure exists. The process for producing it is complex, but…