Dragon's Winter Read Online Free Page B

out like ridges through Karadur’s shirt. “Tenjiro, you cannot believe that. A child in the womb makes no choices. I did not choose to be eldest. And by all the gods, I did not desire our mother’s death!”
    “So you say,” said Tenjiro contemptuously. “I do not believe it. I have never believed it. I should have been the changeling child. I should have been eldest. I would have been dragon and wizard, both. Can you feel the chill, the weakness in your heart, Kaji? Do you like my little box? I made it especially for your little dragon. It will eat your little dragon, Kaji. It will eat your heart.”
    “Tenjiro, don’t do this.”
    “It’s done. By darkness and by ice, I bind your power.” Below, in the Keep’s deserted courtyard, a horse whinnied. Karadur closed his eyes. His muscular body tightened with effort. The lamp began to glow. The wood in the hearth burst into flame. Tenjiro’s face whitened with surprise and sudden terror. He said a string of sibilant words, very fast. Karadur gasped, and slumped. The lamplight vanished; the fire hissed, and died as if doused in water. Tenjiro Atani laughed malignantly, and stretched his spine like an athlete too long confined. “Ah, I have you! Struggle as you will, Kaji. I learned my lessons well, this year.”
    The door to the chamber opened. Azil stuck his head through. He said tonelessly, “Tenjiro, the horses are ready, we can leave.”
    Karadur lifted his head, “Azil?” He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Azil, don’t go with him. I don’t know what he has told you, but whatever it is, it is not as you think.”
    “Shut up, Kaji!” Tenjiro said. “I don’t want you to speak to him.” His supple hands wove swiftly. “There, now you can’t. Azil, wait for me in the courtyard.” Without looking at the man on the floor, Azil left the room. “It’s too late, Karadur. What, do you love him? He betrayed you. He is mine, now. Don’t worry; I will punish him for you. I will care for him with the exact tenderness that you have used toward me.” His face no longer resembled his brother’s. His eyes were wide and black. “Unfortunately, I suspect I cannot kill you, just as you could not butcher me in our mothers womb as you desired. But I can take everything you care for, and I will. Let us see who shall be Dragon! Fare ill, brother mine!”
    Karadur Atani, trembling, strained to speak, to move. But his frozen muscles would not unlock. He lay paralyzed, while the tower room lightened with the dawn. At last, fire flared in the hearth. Grimacing with pain, Karadur pushed to his knees, to his feet, took an unsteady step, another. Tears, like droplets of blue flame, ran down his face.
     

     

 
     
    2
     
     
    Winter came hard to eastern Ippa that year. Snow lay deep on the roads. Trappers returned to their villages telling of snowdrifts higher than trees, and a thick fog that drifted down the mountain trails, sending goats and deer and a few tired hunters to their death.
    Inside Dragon Keep, the mood was grim. All autumn, since the September morning that nobody could quite remember, the morning Tenjiro Atani and Azil Aumson vanished from the Keep, Karadur Atani had kept to himself. His soldiers watched him silently, unhappily. Only Lorimir Ness, who had watched, frozen and helpless, from the rampart as Tenjiro Atani and the harpist left the dormant Keep and rode slowly north, dared to speak of it. The glare Karadur turned on him sent him to the floor as if he had been clubbed. It took some time before he could stand.
    Early in March the following year, a yellow-eyed, soft-voiced stranger appeared in Sleeth village. He came from Ujo, in Nakase, and had been born in a village named Nyo, he said, which lay south, at the border between Nakase and Issho, where the Estre River poured into the Crystal Lake.
    The folk of Sleeth who heard these names shrugged, for few of them had ever been south of the domain. They were courteous, but wary, fearing