46. Drakes

I stalked into our bedroom, slamming the door behind me with all the grace and maturity of a girl of twelve and I seethed.

I was angry with myself as well.

From a young age, I had been prone to rage, constantly butting heads with the teachings of Rodwin, jealous of my brothers’ freedoms and frustrated with my parents’ detached disappointment in me.

I had softened for Thrush, but after winters of no child, his own disappointment in me was oppressive and I had had to bite my tongue after the first time I lashed out and he spoke to our priest.

I had been boxed then.

And any hint of rebellion in me, as well as my moon’s bleeds, resulted in a day in the box.

Then it had been two days, then three.

When I ran away, I had to find work in Eccleston.

Cleaning rooms in the university was humbling and I again, had to prune the wildness of my anger so as to stay employed.

This restraint made me learn how to be approachable, to be a solution not a difficulty and my genial attitude had allowed me to speak to the right people and be placed in the scriptorium.

My ability to keep peace and create a sense of community led to my being head scribe.

The flames inside me had been banked.

All my new husband had to do was say ‘gods’ in that perplexed tone with those brows drawn together and winters of conscious moderation disappeared.

Muttering curses under my breath, I put my head in my hands, elbows on the desk.

I could not be married to this man.

I was a fool to ever think we could have gotten along as reluctant companions, perhaps even become friends.

I had time to waste before the next meal and I picked up Gareth Pope’s journal.

Keturah says she is now certain I have a strong general earth magic, that mineral, rock, sand, dust, soil, dirt, ore and gem all respond to my blood.

This is rare.

Some days I am relieved from army duty entirely so as to visit the farmlands with her and her priests, observing them both heal withered crops as well as negotiate taxation issues.

That is what holds me back from priesthood.

I care little for the law or for bureaucracy.

The idea of a life in paper is, frankly, beneath me.

I have always been a decent and kind boy and I am now a decent and kind young man, but while I appreciate the literacy provided by my mother, I do not see it as a way of life.

I do not keep this account because I like to write.

I keep it because I have secrets I can tell no one, or at least not all of them.

So they are here, all of them in one place.

I looked up from the journal and out through the window, the sounds of a now busy city on the breeze.

This was the first time I had found myself annoyed by Gareth.

My working life had been one of paper and administration, highlighted by work helping illuminate with Helena and Maureen.

Why was that not a life in which to take pride? I reminded myself that he seemed a man of only twenty or so winters when he had written this.

Again I wondered if he still lived.

Peregrine could be no more than thirty-five.

He had yet to be mentioned in this journal, nor had Queen Modwenna, which made me think the brothers very far apart in age.

Gareth had mentioned that Hinnom was near thirty.

The king must be between sixty and seventy winters despite a younger appearance.

Perhaps his sea magic was so powerful it kept him from aging as quickly.

I did not know the full ins and outs of magic yet.

I thought of the fact that he had never married.

Was that why Hinnom’s father had decided to marry again in his old age, a second time trying for an heir that would marry? Most royalty married younger so as to have more chance of heirs.

It was unusual that Hinnom had never married and that Peregrine was past thirty with no bride.

I continued to read.

I spend my mornings with Keturah and my days with the army and my nights with him.

I have finally seen the breadth of his sea magic.

On a rest day, he told me to take one of the sloops from the naval dock and sail it out just past the farthest stone drake, that he would swim out to me.

I loved those drake rocks.

I had liked the bedtime tale of the ancient earth Tintarians commanding the rocks to transform into stone drakes made up of shard and boulders, stomping in the ocean like it was a wading pool.

I know now how they were commanded, those old Tintarian earth worshippers bleeding out a cupped left hand’s worth of blood.

For, having access to Keturah’s collection of works about earth magic, I believe I have uncovered what could make the drake rocks assemble themselves.

I found it in a book of worship and poetry to the goddess:

Something’s coming of rock, roar and might

Something’s coming and with it, the stone sight

Only the left hand of blood will summon the stone drakes

Only the left hand of blood makes them form and quake

Something’s coming to split, to cleave, to surge

Something’s coming and slabs and crags will merge

Only the left hand of loss will bring forth the wonder

Only the left hand of loss to sacrifice and to sunder

Something comes of rock, roar and might

Something comes from first the left and then the right

From my research, I believe a slice on the fleshier part of the left palm, cupped until full of blood and then poured out onto the body of the goddess will result in this.

This is of course unusual for earth temple staff as they usually prick their right hand on the pointed sagaris end hanging to their right.

This makes the mention of the use of the left hand’s blood one of significance.

The mossy rock on the top of the keep is likely the best place.

The moss representing how soft Mother Earth can be and the bluff rock repenting her hardness.

It is so easy a sacrifice that I can only think it works for very powerful earth Tintarians, otherwise they all would have been summoning stone drakes continuously and there would be more written on them than bedtime tales.

And Keturah said I am such, that I had enough in me to one day take her place.

I thought perhaps my prince wanted us to have a romantic night of sailing around these great formations that fascinate his lover, but no.

Hinnom wanted to show me he could kill a shark with his bare hands.

He swam to the sloop and climbed aboard, kissed me and sailed us past the rocks and towards the horizon until we could no longer see the shore.

I had never been this far out to sea and was horrified.

He dropped anchor and dived off the edge of the sloop without a word to me.

I watched the dark gray and green sea for him, but he did not return for some time.

Then he resurfaced with a slick, dark writhing thing that was twice his size.

They thrashed on the frothing surface for what seemed like an hour to me, although my prince assures me it was not even a tenth of an hour.

I do not know how he killed it because I could not bear to watch.

I was terrified for him but also felt sympathy for the shark.

I wondered at Sister Sea allowing him to be so potent and yet murder her creations.

He did not wrestle them to eat or make use of their flesh in some medicinal way.

He wanted their bones.

He liked their teeth.

He gave me a necklace of a shark’s tooth but it clacked against the adderstone Keturah gave me.

I hung it from my bedpost.

I told him it helps me sleep.

Gareth then started writing about the sex he and his lover had had after Hinnom dragged the mighty body of the shark from the naval docks into the keep, shouting for it to be stripped of its flesh down to its bones.

These passages about sex and love always made me sad because I believed Hinnom, whilst having had feelings for Gareth, had used him and Gareth had clearly fallen for his king.

After a desultory hour of flicking through the journal and sipping a tin cup of water, I made my way to the dormitory.