Dragon Blood (Hurog #2)(16)

They weren't even going to let me pack. So much for the polite fiction of a "discussion" before the king. I couldn't see what Jakoven was gaining by this, other than the enmity of all of Shavig, but I would find out eventually. Moving against the Hurogmeten was something entirely different than moving against Beckram, the half-Shavig son of Lord Duraugh of Iftahar. It had to be something bigger than simple vengeance - though with Jakoven it was hard to say for sure.

"Ah," I said. "Tosten has a lady friend whom he is visiting. He hasn't been completely forthcoming on where she lives - I believe it is somewhere within a day's ride of here. He's quite enamored of her. You know how young men are." Due to a beating my father had once given me, I speak very slowly. It was making the general restless, so I continued talking. "Still, he usually only spends a couple of weeks at a time with her, so he should be back next week some time. Would you like to wait?"

"No," snapped the man so quickly I heard his teeth click. "The king may send someone else for him if necessary." All polite fictions aside, I was a prisoner and he wasn't going to give me a chance to escape. He also was impatient enough that he wasn't going to search for Tosten. Something in me relaxed knowing my brother and Tisala were safe.

Garranon was still closer to me than the general, and no one but I could see his face. He gave me a wry smile. He knew me well enough to understand what I was doing to the general, but he made no attempt to interfere.

"Well then," I said with impatience, as if it had been the general who was keeping us waiting. "If you are in such a hurry, what are you waiting for? Where is this horse you have for me?"

The horse they brought forward was solid enough to bear my weight, but clearly wasn't going to outrun anything anytime soon. Maybe fifteen years ago it might have picked up a canter.

Garranon clearly expected me to object, but I didn't. I didn't need to escape on the road, because Oreg, as fanatically loyal to me as if the ancient platinum ring I wore still bound him to my service, would find me in Estian.

With a shrug, I checked the cinch, tightened it, and mounted. I rode out of the broken gates without waiting for them. I would have lost the pose of an uncaring, slightly silly lordling if I had looked back - so I didn't. The stupider they thought me, the easier it would be for Oreg to get me out of this mess.

We rode until full dark. We didn't make it to Tyrfannig, which was the nearest town, so they drew up camp in a relatively flat field. I protested mildly when my wrists were tied, but allowed it without active resistance. While the men cursed and stumbled about putting up tents, I sat by the fire and watched.

The soldiers had dismissed me as a threat, so the ropes around my wrists were loose and comfortable. They all knew the reason that the writ had been issued in the first place was that I was stupid. Very stupid. If they'd heard rumors that I'd recovered, the information was more than countered by my size (which had initially alarmed them), my slow speech, and the pretense I kept up that I believed I was going to a genial discussion despite the ties on my wrists. Garranon could have warned them, and I found it most interesting that he didn't.

I put my forehead against my knees and tried to get used to being off Hurog land again. My head ached, my bones ached, and my muscles felt without strength. It would ease in a couple of days, but only being back on Hurog land would make it leave entirely.

When I lay down to sleep, my arm was tied to the general's wrist and that rope was well-tied. He was taking my continued presence very seriously. That was all right - I didn't intend to escape tonight anyway.

As I closed my eyes, I could feel Jade Eyes watching me.

He hadn't yet uttered a word, but his eyes had followed me constantly. The surveillance bothered me, but it was the knowledge that he was a wizard that really gave me pause. Oreg was in a nearby copse of trees not a hundred yards away.

I knew where Oreg was because finding was my best talent. It was the only magic my father hadn't stolen from me the day he tried to beat me to death. I could work magic now, but finding was second nature.

I wish Oreg hadn't stopped so near us. In his dragon form he oozed magic. He covered it well, but I didn't know if he was aware how good Jade Eyes was. Dragons, I had learned, were arrogant creatures.

When I awoke, the first thing I saw was the mage's ice-green gaze.

"What is it?" Jade Eyes asked in a voice like honey, "that you do when you dream?"

It was an odd question and I couldn't see what he wanted from my answer.

Without conscious decision, I fell back upon my old habit of sounding stupid when I was defensive. "I sleep when I dream," I said. Had I done something while I slept?

"I could feel your magic beside us in the woods all night long," he said. "It tastes of you as your home tasted of you. But when the sun began to rise this morning and you awoke, the magic went away. Why is that?"

He had it backward, I thought. Oreg and I both tasted of my home, not the other way around. I realized that I'd been worried for naught. No one would believe in a dragon - Jade Eyes found it much easier to conjure up a new power from his imagination than to believe there were dragons at Hurog again. There was desire in his eyes that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the lust for power.

"I can't work magic anymore," I said. People who lusted after power were dangerous; one of them had destroyed Hurog.