Dragon Bones (Hurog #1)(13)

"You used to do magic - make flowers bloom for your mother." Oreg was relaxing a bit. He'd settled on the bench near the door.

"I can still find things. Ciarra nearly scared me out of a winter's growth today when I discovered she was suddenly so far below me. I take it she didn't fall out of the tunnel like I did? You led her by another path?" He nodded. "But otherwise, I can't work magic anymore. I can feel it but not work it."

"But you aren't stupid. Why did you pretend?"

"So my father wouldn't kill me." I tried to put instinctive knowledge into terms someone else might understand. "My father is - was the Hurogmeten. Perhaps you know what that means better than anyone else. To him it was the most important thing a human could be, better than high king, but the title was only temporary, to be given away like this ring when he died."

"But all men must do that," commented Oreg reasonably. "His father entrusted Hurog to Fenwick. He would live on through his children."

"He killed my grandfather," I said. It was the first time I'd ever said it out loud.

Everything about Oreg went still. Then he whispered, "Your grandfather was killed by bandits. Your father brought him here to die."

"My grandfather was struck from behind by my father's arrow. My father admitted it once when he was drunk."

We'd been hunting, just the two of us, when I was nine or ten. We'd camped up in the mountains, and my father began drinking as soon as we'd set up the tent. I don't remember what led him to confess, but I still remembered the look he'd turned on me afterward. He hadn't meant to let that slip, and even then I'd known it was dangerous knowledge. I'd pretended I hadn't heard him, that his words had been too slurred. It might have been that slip that sent him over the edge, but I'd come to believe his antagonism went deeper than that.

"He saw me as a rival for Hurog. Time was his enemy, and I its standard bearer." That sounded like something my hero Seleg might have written in his journals. It also would have sounded better on paper than it did out loud, so I tried for a less dramatic tone. "My father didn't like to lose battles."

I left the bed and went to the polished square of metal hanging on the wall. I looked like my father, not so startling without the Hurog blue eyes, but a younger version of my father all the same. The size came from his mother's family, but the features were Hurog. "I was his successor, a constant reminder that he would someday lose Hurog. I'm not certain even he realized it, but from the day I first held a sword, he thought of me as a threat. You might recall, if you were paying attention, that the beating responsible for my "change" was not the first time he beat me unconscious. If it had continued, he would have killed me before I was old enough to defend myself. And I had the example of my mother to follow."

"When she lost herself in dreams, he didn't beat her as much. Or visit her bed," agreed the boy solemnly.

"My speaking problem made my father think I'd become an idiot, and I decided to take advantage of it."

"Why continue it now, after he is dead?"

I felt my way to an answer. "My uncle rules here for the next two years. Like my father, he was raised to believe that becoming Hurogmeten is the summit of what a man can accomplish. I'm not sure he'll want to give it back."

"You're so certain he's a villain? He was a nice boy..."

Oreg's voice dropped to a whisper. "At least I think it was Duraugh, but sometimes I don't remember so well."

I closed my eyes. "I don't know him, only that he has little patience with idiots. The gods know I wouldn't want an idiot in charge of Hurog, either. We live too close to the edge of survival." I shrugged and looked at Oreg, who'd somehow come to be crouched at my feet. "I don't trust him."

I'd talked more to Oreg than I ever remember talking to anyone except Ciarra. Speech was still something of an effort, and it tired me. Ironic how honesty felt much more awkward than lying.

"Trust your instincts," said Oreg after a moment. "It will harm none if you remain cautious for a while yet."

He left then, not going through the passageway or the door, just disappeared, leaving me to my memories.

My instincts, eh? My father was dead, and I didn't know if I was joy- or grief-stricken. Hurog was mine at last, but it wasn't. Should I reveal myself? Say, "Thought you'd like to know I'm not really an idiot"? I wasn't even sure that there was anything left of me but the stupid surface covering the constant vigilance underneath. I would wait.

I rested my folded arms on the top of the fence rail and breathed the early-morning air while Harron, one of the grooms, told me about the night's excitement.

Someone left the gate to the mares' paddock open, and Pansy was found snorting and charging in the paddock with my father's best mare ("Who was in season, damn the luck," Harron said cheerfully). The other mares were safely in their barns, but Moth had been restless. Penrod had thought a night in the field might calm her. He had spoken to my uncle about it.

As Harron talked, we watched most of the stable hands and my uncle chase Pansy with halters, ropes, and grain buckets. Pansy eluded his pursuers with a flagged tail and a shake of his magnificent head. My uncle saw me and left the stablemen to their job. While he climbed through the fence, I sent Harron to get grain and a halter.