The Dragons of Morad Read online

  Mostly, though, he misses his best friend. He does not want to remember the last day he saw Theo. He was horrid to his friend, and this is not the memory he would like to keep of their time together, though it is the only one that visits him anymore. He would like to remember the time before those last days, when Theo took him out to his father’s work shed, which had stacks and stacks of wood in corners and across a large table. Prince Virgil remembers seeing, that day, a collection of wood laid out like a table, unfinished, for someone in the village, perhaps. Prince Virgil wonders if the table still exists, unfinished, with no one in the village to need it.

  His father, in the last days, has broken two of the royal dining room chairs. Prince Virgil had seen his father break one this eve, a mighty crack sounding through the room and startling the servants. Prince Virgil, in truth, had to work very hard not to laugh at the sight of it—his father lying on his back, unable to get back on his feet. It took three servants to pick him up again.

  They had no Arthur to fix those chairs. When they were all broken, what would they do? The king would, perhaps, eat while sitting on his throne. Those who dined with him, which was usually no one but, on occasion now, Prince Virgil, would sit at his feet, as the king preferred his inferiors.

  Prince Virgil had overheard the servants whispering about the king, that he was growing much too fat and soon would need a throne of special order from the land of the giants. Prince Virgil’s ears burned to hear his father spoken of like this, but he did not correct them, merely went on his own way. He did not want to make more enemies than he had in the castle.

  A boy of twelve, with enemies, you might ask? How could this be?

  Well, you see, it is not entirely correct to say that Prince Virgil has enemies for any reason other than the fact that he is the king’s son. Not many within the castle, alas, love King Willis. By extension, not many love Prince Virgil, though it must be said that the servants love their dear Queen Clarion. Perhaps if the prince spent more time with his mother. Perhaps if he called them by their proper names. Perhaps if he showed them a shred of his sorrow, they would love him as they did his mother.

  Just before retiring to his chambers this eve, Prince Virgil had sat on the throne, at his father’s behest. The throne, it seemed, preferred him to remember the last day he had seen Theo and so had lobbed the memory at him over and over again, until Prince Virgil could do nothing more than fly from his seat and out the doors, unable to hear his father calling after him. The words that chased him to his bedchamber were the last ones Theo had said to him—that he would not want the throne even if he did have magic (which he had lied about, by the way. Prince Virgil cannot forgive this just yet).

  So it is that Prince Virgil is shut behind his door, hiding away from the sun’s setting that is not really a sun’s setting at all, but like one glowing cloud that fades as quickly as it caught on fire. So it is that he thinks, desperately, of another day, a better day, when Theo brought him to the corner of Arthur’s shop, where a crate of wood touched the wall. That day, Theo rummaged through the scraps and pulled out a small box.

  “I made this for you,” he had said, staring at the ground. He handed the box to Prince Virgil. “For your birthday. It is not much, but...”

  Prince Virgil had turned the wooden box over and over in his hands. On the top was carved Prince Virgil and the crest of the kingdom, a ferocious bear bordered by elegant flourishes. On the bottom was a message. To my best friend. He could not, at the time, imagine how long it had taken his friend to make a treasure such as that one, and the thought of days and days spent carving and smoothing was what made Prince Virgil hug Theo as he had never done before. Theo, surprised, had hugged him back.

  The memory shifts. He remembers Theo looking at the floor, saying he made that beautiful box for Prince Virgil. But why would he look at the floor? Was he lying? Did he have something to hide?

  The throne, you see, has made its mark on Prince Virgil, even in the short time he has been sitting on its golden seat. The light, even now, wrestles with the dark, though he is far away from it inside his bedchambers. The memory grows dark. He sees his friend lying. He sees his friend using magic instead of the carving knife he used to whittle scraps of his father’s wood into figures. He sees only what the darkness wants him to see.

  And this is what pulls Prince Virgil from his bed, what carries him to the keepsake box, what flings it from his hands onto the marble floor. He watches it shatter, splinters and wood shards flying all beneath the furniture that Arthur built.

  Prince Virgil collapses to the floor. It is the first time he has cried since his friends disappeared, since he told their secret, since he decided the throne was better than companionship. And oh, dear reader, how he regrets it. He gathers the splinters toward him, unaware of the way they cut the skin on his hands. He wishes he had not broken this box. It is all that remains of his friend. He touches the talisman around his neck. No. Not all that remains. But this box was touched lovingly by Theo. Why did he break what his friend had touched?

  His friend was never his friend in the first place. Prince Virgil flings the pieces away once more.

  But this is Theo’s work, made for him. Prince Virgil gathers them up.

  He was no friend. Prince Virgil flings them away.

  This is how Queen Clarion finds her son when she comes in to bid him goodnight. He is curled up on the floor, grasping the wood in both his hands, begging to keep them.

  “My son,” she says. She rushes to his side and kneels before him. Her skirts brush pieces of wood. “Whatever is the matter?”

  Prince Virgil does not want to talk about it. So he says nothing.

  Queen Clarion takes her son in her arms. She pulls him to his feet and leads him to his bed. “You are tired, my dear,” she says. “You must get some rest.” She touches his bandage, her hand trailing his cheek.

  Prince Virgil permits her to tuck him beneath the blankets. Queen Clarion sits on the side of his bed, examining his hands. “Your hands,” she says. She looks toward the broken box. “The wood.”

  Prince Virgil finally speaks. “It does not hurt,” he says, though, in truth, it does. It hurts quite a bit, the wood pieces lodged in his hands, tiny little ones that would take a seeing glass to extract. But it is the price one must pay for betrayal. So he does not say a word about them.

  “I will summon Calvin,” Queen Clarion says, rising from the bed. “He is skilled in healing, I have heard.”

  “No,” Prince Virgil says. “Please, Mother, tell me a story.”

  Queen Clarion hesitates for a moment, though she loves stories as much as her boy does. But his hands. His rest. She sits on the side of the bed again, unable to resist this request from her son. She has told him all sorts of stories over the years—but there was one she had not dared tell him.

  Perhaps it is time.

  She has, after all, seen her son sitting on the throne. She has seen him wrestling with the light and the dark. She has seen the mark it has laid upon him, and she must, now, tell of another who could not escape its hold.

  So she begins her story. “Once upon a time,” she says, “in a land far away, there lived a brave prince.” She looks at her son. “He looked quite a bit like you, my son. Handsome. Kind. Strong of heart and love. But he had an evil father.”

  Thus she weaves her tale, so skillfully Prince Virgil does not know how much of it is true. So he asks.

  “It was a true story?” he says.

  Queen Clarion dips her head. She has woven the truth into a story, but she does not know if she wants to tell him this or if she would rather have him come to his own conclusions. But she decides it is best to tell the truth. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, it is a true story. Your grandfather, King Sebastien...”

  She does not finish, but Prince Virgil pieces it together. “So he died from the wounds of a blackbird,” he says. The story, you see, told of an evil king who had been blinded by a blackbird.

  “Not immediately
,” Queen Clarion says. “We do not know if he died from the blackbird’s attack or whether it was something else entirely.”

  “What else might it have been?” Prince Virgil says, though, if you remember, his mother has told him once before.

  “Heart sickness,” Queen Clarion says. “As we suspect.”

  “But he was attacked by a blackbird,” Prince Virgil says. He shivers.

  “Yes,” Queen Clarion says.

  “Why would a blackbird attack my grandfather?” Prince Virgil says.

  Queen Clarion looks at her son, sees his pale face and his sad eyes and the curly hair gathered around his cheeks. The fire’s glow softens the hard lines of his face, making him appear more boy than young man. “In this land,” she says, “blackbirds are known for seeking out evil.”

  “And destroying it?” Prince Virgil says.

  “If they are permitted,” Queen Clarion says.

  “And someone permitted my grandfather’s death?” Prince Virgil says.

  “It was done on a dark night,” Queen Clarion says. “No one knew.” She does not meet her son’s eyes, as if there are more secrets left for another day. Of course there are always more secrets, dear reader. One does not often learn the whole truth in one moment or story.

  “Was the bird caught?” Prince Virgil says.

  Queen Clarion stares into the fire. Her eyes dance with flames, yellow sparks licking her blue. “No,” she says. “The bird never came back after it had finished with your grandfather.”

  “And do you think it lives still?” Prince Virgil says, for, as one might expect, he is a bit worried about this blackbird. He did not realize they were so dangerous.

  “Perhaps,” Queen Clarion says. “But you do not have to worry over such things.” She touches her son’s hand and smiles. “You are not evil, my son.”

  Prince Virgil does not say anything for a long while. He has seen the darkness in his own heart. He knows it lives there. What if a blackbird finds him? What if it sees the evil, too? And because a wondering so large as this cannot be contained in one single body, Prince Virgil speaks his words aloud. “What if I am evil, too?”

  “Oh, my child,” Queen Clarion says. She enfolds her son in the warmth of her arms, and he feels the light of her spread to his chest and settle there. “You are nothing like your grandfather.” She kisses the top of his head. “Nothing.”

  He pulls away from her. “But what if I am?” he says, for now he has another wondering, and sometimes, dear reader, we just need to know that we will still be loved, regardless of the darkness that may live in us. Prince Virgil knows this need well. His father loves only the dark. Does his mother love only the light? Will he have to choose between the love of one and the love of another?

  Queen Clarion rests her hand on the side of his face, and she does not take her eyes from his. “I will love you no matter who you decide to be,” she says. “No matter what you do or have done or will do. No matter where you go.”

  Oh, the gift of words such as these. For a moment Prince Virgil can see only light, reaching from his mother’s eyes to his own, and then he can feel the warmth of goodness shifting through him. He feels fuller.

  And he knows that he does not have to worry about a blackbird that once pecked the life out of his grandfather. Because he is made of both dark and light, and this night, he has chosen light.

  Perhaps it will not always be so, but it is this night.

  Queen Clarion rises from Prince Virgil’s bed and kisses her son’s head once more. She hovers in the doorway to watch him settle onto his back, close his eyes and fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  She smiles to herself and shuts his door.

  MAUDE is growing restless. Arthur has ventured out once more, though now, when she looks from the mouth of the cave, she can see the armor of an army flashing in the light of the moon. She knows the men have found them, and where there are king’s men, there is grave danger for the children. So she waits. And fidgets. And waits. Every now and again, she rises from her place at the head of her daughter, who sleeps like all the other children, and peers out once more. Arthur has been gone much longer than he has ever been gone. Before he slipped out this time, he told her that he would search for more water, but it was not likely that the dragon’s land had much water at all beyond the first drying-up pool he found. Arthur believes the dragons have left, that all the nourishment the land used to hold has dried up. Maude, though, has always been the more practical of the two. She would rather proceed through the land with great caution, as if the dragons still live here, rather than great recklessness, to which Arthur, as long as she has known him, has been prone.

  Arthur delivered to her that bit of news, the bit about the dragons no longer living here, with great disappointment, though Maude could not for the life of her understand why dragons abandoning a land they must cross with all these children would come as a disappointment to her husband, before announcing, in a whisper that would not wake the sleeping children, that he must locate more water, for they had run out of their last stores and were, even now, breathing through the driest mouths they had ever tasted. She had agreed, for she knew they could not live long in a world without water.

  But now that Arthur has gone missing, Maude is not so sure she should have let him out. If he does not return, how would she get the children across the land on her own, with the king’s men watching? How would she save them? They would not survive in a cave. How long would the king’s men wait?

  Might she take the children elsewhere? She does not know these lands as Arthur does, but perhaps...

  She cannot think on this. She peers into the dark, but there is nothing to indicate that her husband has been discovered, which is cause for relief, or returned, which is cause for fear.

  Her belly rumbles. Somewhere a child stirs. They have only eaten old dried-out leaves in this land, for it does not hold much life and the children no longer hold much magic. They have lost the strongest among them. They have grown too hungry, too thirsty, to channel their gift.

  And Hazel. Maude has not dared ask if Hazel has felt her gift drain from her veins, for she cannot know, yet, what has happened to her dear Theo, not while they all still face danger.

  Maude shivers. The land has grown colder even in the few hours they have slept in the cave. They must journey north, to temperatures even colder than this. They are ill prepared. They will never make it.

  Our dear Maude has momentarily forgotten how to hope. She needs Arthur for this, too. But Arthur does not come. She is left only with starving children and shallow breaths and the king’s men lined up outside the mouth of the cave, waiting.

  Were we to see Arthur, we would know, as Maude cannot, that the reason for his delay is that he has ventured much farther than he has ever gone before. He must, for there are no more leaves. There is only dirt, and I am sure you will agree that children cannot eat dirt. But he has come upon a small stream in the center of the land, only a trickle, but flowing still, and so he bends and tries to fill the jug, again and again and again until he has a few drops that might be spread among the children, to sustain them for another day.

  The jug is not heavy on his return, though Arthur is more bones than flesh now. But hope sustains him. They will leave on the morrow, and they will make it to the stream at midday, and the children will be able to drink as long as they wish. He will make sure of that.

  A flash turns his head toward the Weeping Woods. What is it, catching the light of the moon? He squints, stretches his neck, but it is impossible to see, for clouds creep over the moon now. If he cannot see it, perhaps it cannot see him. Still, he moves silently, slowly, taking cover behind rocks that nearly hide him in his entirety.

  It takes him much longer to reach the mouth of the cave than he intends. Maude sleeps, her back slumped against the wall.

  “Dear Maude,” he whispers when he reaches her and crouches before her form. He takes her hands, and she startles awake.

  “Ar
thur,” Maude says, her eyes wide. She pulls him to her, and he nearly crashes into the wall. “I thought we had lost you.”

  Arthur pulls back. “I found more water,” he says. He nearly laughs himself silly with the news of it. “In the middle of the land.” He holds the jug up for her to see. She peers in, and though it is dark, it is plain to see that not much water sits in the bottom. But Maude does not say anything.

  “Shall we wake the children?” Arthur says. He looks behind her, though darkness covers the sleeping ones.

  “No,” Maude says. “It will be morning soon enough.”

  “We shall leave at first light,” Arthur says. “We will make it to the water by midday.”

  “Arthur—” Maude says, but Arthur is still laying out his plan.

  “The water should carry us through the remainder of the land, if we are careful. And then we shall be back in lands of food and water and opportunity.” Arthur grabs Maude’s hand and brings it to his lips. “No more than three days’ journey, if I remember correctly.”

  “Perhaps you did not see them,” Maude says, as if speaking to herself. Her voice grows soft, hardly a whisper.

  “See what?” Arthur says.

  Maude looks at her husband. Her eyes turn glassy and soft. “The king’s men.”

  “The king’s men?” Arthur says. A child stirs, and he and Maude wait until the breathing has evened again. The poor children. They are so very tired.

  “They are right outside the boundary,” Maude says. “They are too close to us.”

  Arthur rocks back on his heels. “No,” he says.

  “They arrived while you were out searching for food,” Maude says. She does not ask if he found food, though her stomach wants nothing more than something to fill it.