Dragon Bones (Hurog #1)(7)

I touched Stala's shoulder. "What happened?" Unlike everyone else in the family, Stala always spoke to me as if I weren't stupid. Partly, I suppose, because I could use a sword as well as any.

"Stygian was madder than usual," said Stala, looking up at me, her voice expressing her distaste for my father's mount. The stallion might well act wildly, but he had such power and speed I thought it was worth putting up with the rest. My aunt disagreed; she said that riding a horse like Stygian was akin to fighting with a flawed sword - it always broke when you needed it most. "He tossed the Hurogmeten onto a dead tree. None of the external wounds are serious, but it broke something inside. I'm amazed he's survived so long."

"Die at home like my father before me," grunted the Hurogmeten, staring at me.

I'd never seen him look so old. It had seemed to me that my father always appeared a score of years younger than Mother, though he was actually older. This day he looked ancient, and my mother, next to his bed, looked no older than Ciarra.

"Bad enough to leave this to an oaf," he said to me, "but still worse to die with my oaths undone. When you die, you will give to your heir what I have given you - swear it." His speech was broken but nonetheless forceful for it.

He could only be talking about the ring. "Yes," I said, rubbing it.

He gave his head a short nod, though he didn't look relieved. "Good. Are you done yet, Licleng?"

"Yes, lord," replied the wizard, spreading sand over his writings, then shaking the page and bringing it to my father.

No fool even on his deathbed, my father read the script. Then he gestured for the quill and signed his name with a bloodstained hand that shook so much his signature was mostly illegible.

"You're too young to take care of Hurog. Too soft. Too stupid," he told me. "Can't do much about the softness, though I've tried - nor the stupidity."

The stupidity is your fault, I thought, but I didn't say it. When I was twelve, he'd beaten me senseless. When I recovered, I was changed, but not entirely in the way most people thought.

After drawing a couple more pain-filled breaths, my father said, "Should have married Stala instead of Muellen, but a young man is proud." Mother made no sign that his words bothered her; she heard only what she wanted to. "The Hurogmeten can't be marrying a peasant's bastard, no matter who her father was. Can't see any child of Stala's being as soft as you. But my brother will rule Hurog until you've reached your twenty-first birthday - then Siphern's wolves deliver poor Hurog."

My father, the Hurogmeten, shoved the paper at the old wizard. The quill he crushed in a spasm of pain or spleen at the unfairness of a life that left him with his oldest son an idiot, younger son a runaway, and his daughter a mute. Too concerned with the present to worry about the future, I merely nodded my head in acknowledgment of what he'd said.

The Hurogmeten grinned malevolently at me despite the pain he must have felt. "The only thing I've left to you is Stygian. Knowing Duraugh, he'd have the beast killed. If you can't ride him, use him for breeding stock."

Stala snorted. "And breed that temper into all of his get - though I suppose none of your get ended up with yours." I'd never been sure whether Stala disliked my father or just returned his spitefulness in kind. Certainly they'd been lovers for years, though I wasn't sure if anyone but me knew that.

The Hurogmeten made a dismissing gesture with his right hand. "Duraugh?"

My uncle came forward, intent on the space where the Brat was. I stepped in front of him, blocking his way, before he could push her into the background. At something over fourteen stone, I was a good deal less movable than she.

Uncle Duraugh raised an eyebrow before he walked to the other side of the bed, edging in front of Mother. "Yes, Fen?"

"You'll take care of Hurog."

"Of course."

"Good." My father sighed. "Duraugh, Tosten will be Ward's heir. Find him, wherever he is."

"I know where he is," I replied unwisely. But I couldn't resist the impulse. It would be the only chance I'd ever have to hint to my father that he might be wrong about me.

The Hurogmeten looked at me, surprised. He'd beaten me until I bled when my younger brother had disappeared two years ago. Then he'd decided if I'd known anything about Tosten, I'd have told him; everyone knew I was too stupid to lie well.

"Where?" he asked, but I shook my head.

If my uncle knew where he was, Tosten would be yanked back here, and he wouldn't want that. I'd come across him slitting his wrists one autumn night shortly after his fifteenth birthday and persuaded him that there was a better way to leave Hurog.

"He's safe." I hoped that was true.

He sighed again, closing his eyes. Abruptly, they opened again as he fought for air and lost a battle for the first time in his life.

Mother stood up. She hummed an eerie little melody, staring at his body for a moment, then she turned and left the room.

I felt lost and betrayed, as if I'd finally been winning a game at the expense of great effort and time, and my opponent left the playing field before he noticed I'd been winning. Which is, of course, what had happened.

Ciarra tightened her grip and leaned her cheek on my arm, her face a blank mask. My face, I knew from long practice, looked vaguely cowlike; the deep brown eyes Mother'd given me added to the general bovine appearance of my expression.