Land of Dragon

4

The Offering

 

 

 

 

 

 

Treylen watched a trickle of blood as it flowed through a narrow

channel carved into the floor of the antechamber. There’d been no screams when the blood started, only the soft murmur of conversation from the top of the stairs in front of them.

All he could do was watch it run beneath his feet and wonder what was happening up above.

There was nothing else to look at. The staircase blocked the view of the audience hall, and the passage behind them curved out and away toward the palace ground. Six guards bracketed them, dressed in matching blue tabards over delicate silver mail that shone like the scales of a river fish. Each carried a polearm with a blade affixed to the top, its point angled inward toward the visitors.

Treylen tried to remain stock-still like the guards. Rime sat on his shoulder as he’d been instructed, sniffing the air. Felicity rested on the floor between him and Aaron, doing her best to appear disinterested in the blood. Whatever Marziel had told the dragons about this visit, it had made an impression on them. They would never have behaved so well if Treylen had asked.

“Aaron. Treylen.” Treylen half expected the guards to run Marziel through for speaking.

“Yes? What?”

“One thing I forgot. The Queen's shadow will be here. He doesn’t like to be looked at.”

“Queen’s shadow?” It was a curse. He’d spoken it countless times, but he

never suspected the words referred to a real person. “Not her literal shadow. Her master of assassins.”

“I understand,” Treylen agreed, but it made no sense. The old children’s stories said the queen’s shadow could slip into your home through the smallest of openings and squeeze the life from traitors. The queen’s shadow could be anywhere at any time. Now he was to believe that the shadow was a real person—blood and flesh.

“How will we know who he is?” Aaron asked. “You will know.”

Soft chimes rang out at the top of the stairs.

The soldiers shifted in unison, then began to march, and the three assassins moved with them. As they left the blind corridor up the staircase, Treylen had the distinct impression this was what it felt like to be a heifer in an abattoir. That uneasiness fell away as they emerged into the dazzling wonderment of the audience hall.

The largest indoor space that Treylen had ever seen curved above them, every inch of it hung with cut crystal that flashed and twinkled where the sun streamed through prisms set into the roof of the dome.

A trench ran round the outside of the room and the stairs climbed up out of it onto a raised floor of polished stone—white banded with blue. Throngs of people stood around the perimeter of this room. Treylen had seen some of them riding toward the palace in carriages as his oxcart had rolled into town

—high nobles with their servants in tow. They were the visiting nobility and their guests. This was where Treylen’s parents would have stood when they were presented to the queen. Of course they’d come with one of their employers, a count out of Lakehold.

All of the people here were standing, and pressed as close to the outside of the floor as they could without falling off the edge, as if they dared not move any closer. Still, they managed to mingle and chatter as only nobility could while their servants moved about, doting on them. Passing through the outer ring, the guards led them across some unmarked boundary into the Queen’s middle court, where plump cushions were laid out on the floor, and people lounged about. Servants carried food and drink, and beside each cushion stood an assassin. Their blades were drawn, eyes scanning the room around them, heads tilted slightly as they listened to every word spoken by the nobles.

There were no dragons with the assassins, but Rime had smelled them

when they entered.

Past the courtiers was another ring of empty space. Their escort stopped. Before them at the center of the room stood a black rock the size of a small house with stairs carved up the front of it. Pure obsidian—this was the rock that the last Dragon King had died upon, and the first Iveran queen, so full of grief, had hauled it down from the mountains of the northern Dragon Lands to found a new kingdom.

All the while as they had been walking, the blood had trickled in the grooves under their feet. Now, as they approached the stone, a body came into view. Throat cut, the young man lay off to the side, like they had been tossed from the top of the stone. A pair of attendants took the arms and dragged it away, while two others followed, pouring water to rinse the blood. A stooped man with a sponge in each hand crawled on his knees to wipe the last of it into the channels carved in the floor.

Nobody paid them any mind.

The guards stopped at the base of the stone and Marziel looked back. “We ascend on our own.” He put his hands on the stairs, then crawled up

hand over hand so he reached the top of the stone already bowed. Aaron did the same. Then Treylen.

The dragons came up behind them and stopped just before the top of the stairs.

The top of the stone had been flattened and polished. Low cushions encircled the perimeter, and figures in silver and blue robes rested on them, each with an assassin at their side. Unlike the last ring of courtiers, these assassins kept their blades in their sheaths.

The throne was carved from the same obsidian and jutted up from the center of the circle. Marziel reached the top of the stairs and knelt at the edge. Aaron and Treylen crawled to the top, then waited beside him.

The talking around the ring of cushions continued. Treylen heard bits of conversation. His mind was running too fast to put any of it together, and the dozen courtiers spoke with a strange inflection. His eyes itched, so he blinked them, one at a time. The assassin standing nearest tensed then relaxed.

Two other petitioners knelt in front of the throne, blocking his view of the queen. Two advisers leaned against either side of the throne, speaking to the visitors.

“Oh, no no no, that’s unacceptable.” One of the advisers laughed, then flicked his hand toward the guests. The assassin nearest the petitioner

twitched and the man fell to the ground, a slash across his throat. The whispered conversations continued around the circle, the courtiers hardly seeming to notice. The remaining petitioner held stock-still as the assassin bent down and took the man by the hair, dragging the body to the edge of the stone and letting it fall.

The adviser leaning on the opposite side of the throne presented a palm. “Congratulations on the contract, Lady Soroun. We hope it's profitable

for you.”

“Yes, yes, it will profit all of Iverna. I will not disappoint you; I won’t.” Her voice was all cheer as she pressed her hands together, nodding and grinning like a mad woman, but Treylen could see the sweat beating on her neck. She bowed vigorously, again and again until someone waved a hand, then she backed away and down the stairs.

As the petitioner moved, Treylen caught his first clear glimpse of the Queen.

He had known that the last queen had given over her throne only recently. He’d heard many rumors about the new queen—intriguing and terrifying. But he hadn't expected her to be quite so young.

Round faced, with full cheeks, she was dressed in a ruffled gown of silver embroidery that spilled down to cover the floor surrounding her throne. The queen’s hair glittered white with diamonds, her features were painted with lead and cobalt, but she couldn’t have been a day older than Treylen’s sister

—who had only just left home to study medicine in Wodurn. Her ears were not any taller or more pointed than any Iveran. He’d expected her to look more like the elves he’d seen in the forests of Lome.

Treylen almost blinked again but caught himself. He closed one eye, then the other. The assassins watched. Who were they? he wondered. He didn’t recognize any from those he’d trained with at the abbey.

Marziel spoke first.

“The queen’s assassins return from their mission.”

One of the advisers who leaned on either side motioned to him and he stood.

“Marziel, it is good to see you again.” The young queen, who’d seemed to have only been half listening to the last group, now beamed at Marziel, her plump lips splitting into a wide grin. And Treylen couldn't help but think that she looked like Miliness, the barmaid at the Dragon’s Hide. He banished the thought. It was the worst kind of treason.