Dragon's Keep Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One

  The Queen’s Knife

  The Sacred Finger Bone

  The Stolen Child

  Dragonstone

  Dragonslayers

  Pilgrimage

  The Kiss

  Angel’s Betrayal

  Flying as in a Dream

  Friend and Fowl

  Diviner Eggs

  Witch’s Hollow

  The Hag

  Punishment

  Her Spirit Unbound

  Part Two

  The Listing Ship

  Demon Fire

  The Shell

  If Wolves Should Come

  Twine Unraveled

  Taken

  Burningstone

  The Breaking

  Knight’s Folly

  The Bargain

  Part Three

  A Language Lesson

  Hissstory

  Strange Treasure

  Flight

  The Scales

  The Hunt

  The Messenger

  The Takings of the Storm

  Lord Faul

  Voice in the Falls

  Discovered

  Witch Trial

  The Devil’s Footpath

  Blood Proof

  Talon

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2007 by Janet Lee Carey

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Carey, Janet Lee.

  Dragon’s keep/Janet Lee Carey.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In 1145 A.D., as foretold by Merlin, fourteen-year-old Rosalind, who will be the twenty-first Pendragon Queen of Wilde Island, has much to accomplish to fulfill her destiny, while hiding from her people the dragon’s claw she was born with that reflects only one of her mother’s dark secrets.

  [1. Princesses—Fiction. 2. Dragons—Fiction. 3. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 4. Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. 5. Abnormalities, Human—Fiction. 6. British Isles—History—12th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C2125Dra 2007

  [Fic]—dc22 2006024669

  ISBN 978-0-15-205926-2

  eISBN 978-0-547-41602-1

  v2.0115

  This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously to lend a sense of realism to the story.

  To Heidi Pettit, who helped me find the

  dragon’s cave below the waterfall

  FOR SIX HUNDRED YEARS Pendragon kings and queens ruled Wilde Island, though none in England recognized their lineage. King Arthur’s younger sister, Evaine, was the first queen of the isle. Banished from England in AD 520, she lived and died in exile. And if there is no record of her birth or lineage in history or legend, the blame rests with her father, King Uther.

  The night he learned his youngest child had ridden to the wild-wood to wed and bed the outlaw Kaydon Mallory, King Uther spat upon a candle. In the dark he swore never to speak Evaine’s name again. And though Queen Ygraine wept and pleaded with him, Uther would not be moved. Eschewing jail or burning (she was his daughter, after all), he cursed Evaine and banished her.

  That night as Ygraine wept and King Uther paced the halls, Evaine packed her chests for the long voyage. In went all her gowns, jewels, her crown, and the royal Pendragon scepter, taken from her father’s strong room. With these things she planned to rule her own kingdom without the blessing of her father.

  She heard Merlin slip into her room, knowing he’d passed the guards invisibly and entered without a key, but she kept packing.

  “A storm comes,” said Merlin.

  “It does not matter,” said Evaine. “I set sail with Kaydon at dawn.”

  Merlin eyed the chests now spilling over with castle bounty. “You take more than Kaydon with you. ”

  Ignoring the remark, Evaine peered out the window and heard an owl’s cry in the trees. She shivered. Not for the owl or for her good man waiting in the woods, but for the fearsome journey ahead. None had ever returned from Wilde Island once they’d been sent to rot there.

  “You shall live,” said Merlin. “And the child within you.”

  Evaine turned to face the wizard. “Have you read my destiny in the stars?”

  “Not your destiny, Evaine, but one that will come long after.”

  “What shall her name be?”

  Merlin shook his head. “Names are not written in the stars, but destinies. The signs all point to the twenty-first queen of Wilde Island.” He stepped to the window and peered into the night. “Three things the stars say of this queen. She shall redeem the name Pendragon. End war with the wave of her hand. And restore the glory of Wilde Island. ”

  He tilted his head. “And yet I see darkly in the stars . . . a beast. ”

  Evaine heard Merlin breathing hard, as if the starry vision had him by the throat. So there was a dark side to this prophecy. Well, she didn’t want to hear it. It was enough to know her offspring would endure centuries of banishment. “The twenty-first queen?” said Evaine, a slow heat rising up her spine. “Do you think this vision pleases me? By the gods, Merlin! This prophecy could take six hundred years!”

  Part One

  Wormwood & Poppy

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Queen’s Knife

  WILDE ISLAND AD 1145

  MOTHER PULLED OUT HER KNIFE. We were alone in her solar.

  “It’s time,” she said. “Give me your hand.”

  I drew back. “It’s not yet Sunday eve.”

  “We’re together, Rosalind, and the door’s well locked.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tonight.” Then softening her voice she said, “Come, Rosie, take off your gloves.”

  Her blade flashed in the firelight and sent a russet glow across the room. She was ready for the ritual. I dreaded it.

  “Take yours off first.”

  Mother placed her knife on the table and bared her hands. Queen Gweneth’s fingers were finely tapered as candles, her skin milky as the moon. It was a shame for her to wear golden gloves, but she’d donned them at my birth to protect me, and worn them ever since.

  “Now you, Rosie.”

  I bit my lip as she removed my right glove. Pretty hand that never saw the sun; the skin was soft and creamy not unlike her own. Mother kissed it. Then taking my other hand in hers, she peeled away the left glove. None but Mother and myself knew what hid underneath.

  My throat tightened as we looked at my fourth finger. The horny flesh. Blue-green and scaly as a lizard’s hide. Claw of the beast with a black curving talon at the end.

  I rubbed the scar at the base of my claw. A wound I’d made myself the night of Nell’s witch burning. With her cunning craft Nell had lured folk into the woods and fed them to the dragon. Of this she was accused, and too she had a devil’s mark on her back. I’d seen the mark myself before they burned her—it was nothing compared to mine.

  With Cook’s sharp knife I’d stolen to my room to try to cut off my cursed part. The wound was deep and the blood had drench
ed my kirtle before Mother caught me.

  The queen was peering at my claw now, working her face to hold back a sickened sneer, but with all her trying, her lip still tightened. “The sorrow of it,” she whispered. “That it should be your wedding finger.”

  “No man would marry me unless he was a leper.”

  “Rosie. Don’t say such things.”

  “Then say it isn’t true.”

  Mother pulled out her silver vial, sipped the poppy potion, and closed her eyes. The fire crackled. When the lines around her eyes and mouth grew smooth she capped the bottle and set her jaw. “Now.”

  I hid my hand behind my back. “It will hurt.”

  “I’ll cut with care.” Tugging my wrist close, she used her knife to peel the black talon as a fletcher sharpens an arrow.

  Curled bits of hard black nail fell to the floor. Sparks flew and a trail of smoke rose as she trimmed the nail. It was a wonder we’d shaken our heads at. For what kind of talon hides a spark?

  Scrape. Scrape. I closed my eyes and smelled the odor of ground bone and, stranger still, a scent of rusted metal. The stench filled me with shame.

  I waited for her to finish, taking slow breaths to calm myself. Then I felt a sharp prick.

  “Too close to the quick!” I drew back and blinked away the tears.

  “Done,” said Mother, sweeping the broken bits of nail into her hand and tossing them in the fire.

  Gently now, she slid my golden gloves back on and put her cool hand on my cheek. “This secret is heavy between us,” she said. “But don’t cry, Rosie. I’ll find a way to cure you. I swear it on my life.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Sacred Finger Bone

  QUEEN GWENETH TOLD ME THE STORY of my birth once, and has never spoken of it since.

  All her life she’d known she was to bear the twenty-first Pendragon queen named in Merlin’s prophecy. But from her wedding day her body had turned against her. Six years she tried to conceive; still her womb was empty as a cockleshell. Neither prayer, nor fasting, nor herbs had quickened it. Then in her seventh year of marriage a holy pilgrim brought Saint Monica’s finger bone to Mother. Monica, patron saint of mothers, blessed her womb at last. The saint’s small bone did great service to her and Mother esteems it still.

  I thought long on Monica’s blessing and once asked Mother why a saint would give her a child with a devil’s mark.

  Mother’s eyes went dark as burningstone. “Never,” she said, “speak that way of a saint!”

  She herded me to chapel and told Father Hugh I was to kneel on the prayer stool till evensong. I had no chance to ask her if my “mar,” as Mother called it, were some punishment for Monica’s finger bone. Did the saint wish it back? Was that why she’d given me a beast finger in exchange for Mother’s treasure?

  I was not to ask. So I held the tale of Monica and my birth in my mind from that day on—a cold tale, for I was a winter’s child.

  On the twelfth night of the new year 1131, a blizzard swept over Wilde Island, and outside the castle walls Queen Gweneth heard a death wraith keening. The queen thought the howl-song was for her when the labor pains came on strong enough to make her bite the cloth. But Midwife Glossen eased her mind. “All will be well,” she said, rubbing the queen’s round belly with minted goose fat. “I’ve sent the king to unseal every jar and loosen every knot. You’ll have a babe as soon as soon.”

  All night Mother gripped the bedposts, screaming when the pains were on her.

  An hour before dawn, she pushed one last time and I came into the world.

  “A girl,” said the midwife.

  Mother wept with joy. “Praise God. Merlin’s prophecy is fulfilled.” But she saw the midwife’s eyes grow wide with terror.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Let me see her now.”

  “I must . . . wrap her first.” With trembling hands Glossen bound me in swaddling cloth. She passed me to my mother and backed toward the door.

  Mother touched my little face, so new, then kissed my lips, which she said were pink as a rosebud. “Rosalind,” she whispered. “Rosalind. Beautiful rose.”

  She reached to pull the swaddling cloth away.

  “Nay!” screamed the midwife. Before Mother could stop her she fled the room, ran down the steps and out into the blinding snow.

  Mother told me that her heart raced then, wondering what had frightened the woman so. In the empty room she tugged the corner of the cloth away and saw the devil’s claw on my left hand.

  She did not scream. She was a queen even in that hour.

  “Maid,” she called to the woman waiting in the hall. “Lock the door.”

  Alone with me, and silently, she wept.

  On the morrow a castle groom found the midwife’s body crumpled in the snow near the castle wall. Her mouth was agape as if in prayer, or song, or strangled scream. A spot of blood frozen red as a rosebud lay on her tongue.

  I knew Mother was grateful to the storm for killing the midwife.

  A dead woman cannot speak.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Stolen Child

  AD 1145

  I WAS TAKEN BY SURPRISE on Saint Luke’s feast day when the warning bells rang out. High in my solar my nursemaid, Marn, and I peered out the window bars. Marn was as old as the world itself, having been the nursemaid to my mother before she was mine, and she was near blind so I doubted she could see much at all looking out my window. I squinted. No enemy ships approached that I could see, no marauders attacking Dentsmore village far below. I wondered where the trouble lay.

  Marn held my arm. A chill grip and hard, but her voice came in a whisper. “Red clouds without the aid of sun. Traveler beware. The dragon comes.” And I saw, seeming with her very words, the clouds turn a deeper red like the royal carpet rolled out for Mother and Father on high feast days.

  Over the sea the dragon flew, his blue-green scales bright as rippling water, his broad wings pumping. My legs went weak. I pressed my knees against the wall and gripped the window bars.

  Marn had told me dragon tales all my life. I knew about Nell, and I’d heard accounts of dragon attacks on the north side of our island where the villagers are wealthy in wheat and overplump. But I’d never seen the beast close-up before. The full of him. The starkness of him. Like a winged demon sweeping over the world.

  Outside the castle people ran for the drawbridge. Dragon-slayers rushed to the stables, pulled out their gear, shouted orders, mounted horses.

  Closer, closer, came the pounding of the wings. My claw throbbed in rhythm with the sound, and I gripped the bars tighter to press against the pain.

  “Look!” cried Marn. Even she couldn’t miss the creature circling Dentsmore below. “No!” she moaned. “Not our little village! Can you—,” she pleaded. “Can you see the blacksmith’s?” Her grown son lived with his family by the smithy.

  “He’s flying farther west.” Villagers dove into their shops and cottages as the dragon soared overhead, the size of him like hell’s galleon on a fiery sea. And I saw how small the dwellings looked below his outspread wings.

  Our dragonslayers thundered over the drawbridge, some still donning helmets or adjusting their scabbards as they galloped full speed down Kingsway Road toward town. Not far below my window more knights lined up behind the battlement walls, readying their bows.

  “Did Sir Magnus put out angelica this morning?” I whispered.

  “Aye, across every doorway. I heard him whispering his charm, ‘Step not across, thou evil beast,’ to ward the dragon off.”

  “But if he should fly over and get to us that way?”

  “Step or fly, it’s all the same.” Marn said this frowning, not believing herself in Sir Magnus’s charm, for now we’d seen the beast with our own eyes. What was a charm or prayer to him?

  I tried to swallow, but could not, for out in the barley field south of town, the dragon had suddenly dived and captured a peasant. Man or woman, I could not tell from so far away. I thought by the spee
d a man, for he’d run halfway across the field before the beast cornered him. His death was swift; first the fire, then the devouring. But the dragon’s belly was not full yet.

  Circling the field, he turned and flew at us. The pain in my claw increased as he came on. I squeezed my finger tight and tighter to make it stop, but it seemed to press the sharp pain deeper into the bone.

  Down on the road the slayers wheeled about as the beast winged past. Arrows flew skyward. Thirty or more, and three at least made the mark. They struck his broad golden chest like pins tossed to a high gold-plated ceiling, then fell to the earth again.

  Knights scattered under the raining arrows. They regrouped and shot more skyward. But the dragon flew from range, heading toward Morgesh Mountain.

  I ran to my east window. He was gone beyond the trees. Then out he came again, soaring over Kaydon River, the water catching his reflection as he flew toward our orchards. It was then I saw Magda, the brewer’s child, coming through the apple trees, swinging her fruit basket. Magda was like a little sister to me, often running down the halls to greet me with a leaf she’d found or a toad she’d caught by the pond. And singing, she was always singing.

  Magda! She must have heard the warning bells. Didn’t she know what they meant?

  I raced through the door and down the hall. At the top of the stairwell, Sir Kent caught my arm.

  “Let go! He’s after Magda!”

  “I have my orders, Princess.” He pushed me back inside my solar, shut and locked the door.

  “Let me out!” I kicked the door. Pounded it.

  Marn put her hand on my shoulder. “Now, Rosie, the slayers will save our Magda. Don’t you be afeared.”

  I pushed her away and ran back to the window. Only an hour before I’d had Cook send Magda to the orchard.

  “Apples,” I’d said. “I will have them baked and sprinkled with sweet crumbles and no other way.” So Cook had sent the child out with her basket.