Dragons and Destiny Read online

  Alyei, unaware of the two mentors travelling in his wake, made good time but try as he might, he could sense nothing of the human girl during the day although at intervals he stopped to listen. When night fell he stretched his mind northwards again and sensed her although it was not as strong as that first contact. By now he was now running in the ward inhabited by those the Lind called ‘unfriendly persons’ so he avoided their villages and settlements. When hunger beckoned he grabbed an injured wild kura who had fallen into a ravine and of which he made a fine meal.

  * * * * *

  Julia was existing in a despondent hell, complaisant on the outside but inside she was screaming. The betrothal binding was imminent. Julia had by now ‘met’ her intended although no words had been spoken. This was not unusual. The man was older than she had expected, indeed she now learnt that he capped her father’s age by some years. Stooped, grey-haired and wrinkled, he had looked at Julia with a certain look in his eyes that made her feel most uncomfortable.

  The third night she went to bed feeling more miserable than ever. There was no escape; she would be married to that old man and when he died, then what? Probably she would stay on at her son-in-law’s house as unpaid housekeeper. Again her emotions began to seep out. Alyei, resting on the top of a small hill not far away, latched on to it and followed it to its source.

  Julia, half-asleep, began to be aware of a ‘presence’. She thought she was dreaming. In her dream began to talk to this ‘presence’, to answer the questions and respond to the invitation. Still thinking she was living a dream (one from which she did not want to wake up) she pushed her mind out as the ‘presence’ was telling her to. There was an instantaneous moment of recognition from Alyei then before Julia had the chance to back away he threw welcoming and loving thoughts in her direction, of comradeship, of friendship and of the end of loneliness.

  Although panicking more than a little with the force of emotions that were threatening to overwhelm her, Julia didn’t break the contact although Alyei half-suspected she might.

  : Who are you? :

  : I Alyei am. Alyei of rtath Gainsya. You are Julia :

  There was a snap as the mind-link cemented between them.

  : I can feel what you are feeling. How is this? :

  : Because our minds are one :

  Alyei mentally thanked the old Lind teacher of his youth who had insisted that he and his year mates learn the rudiments of the human tongue.

  : You are unhappy. Come to me :

  : How? :

  : I am waiting on the long hill outside your domta. Come to me so we can be together :

  Is this a dream? Julia pinched herself to make sure. It hurt. Okay then, not a dream.

  Julia came to the decision that would change her life. Whatever all this meant, she was going to meet this Lind, this Alyei who was talking to her. She had never met a Lind and she was desperate to do so even for a few snatched moments in the middle of the night. If she had to marry Thomal Allanson she wanted the chance to meet one of these wonderful creatures before she did.

  She sat up and felt for her dress with her left hand. Her feet found her shoes, there was no time to think about stockings. Julia stood up. She struggled into her dress and crept towards the loft ladder. She left the hated head-scarf behind.

  No one stirred as she ghosted through the downstairs room and towards the door. She picked up the first coat she found on the pegs, not realising it was her father’s best leather jacket. The door-bolt was stiff but she managed it and slipped outside. With due care for the latch-noise she shut it and throwing all caution to the wind ran as fast as her cumbersome skirts would allow towards the long hill. As it was dark as pitch, she stumbled painfully and often on the uneven ground until she reached the farm boundary fence which she clambered over with some difficulty. Her skirt caught in the post and she tore it as she broke free.

  Alyei was waiting just beyond arrow range of the farm. He saw her struggling up to him.

  : I see you Julia. Come to me :

  They ran towards each other.

  : I am here :

  Julia’s arms were round Alyei’s neck. She was sobbing with joy, filled with the sense of love and belonging that was Alyei and she knew now as she stood beside him that he shared these feelings in full.

  : We must go :

  : Go? Where? :

  : To Vada. We are together, now and for always :

  The two followers that Sanei had sent to keep an eye on Alyei looked at each other with happy faces and turned away, returning to their patrol area with satisfaction of a job well done. Alyei had found his life-partner.

  Julia looked down at the buildings that had once been her home. Her disappearance would be noticed in the morning as soon as her mother realised the water hadn’t been brought in and the range lit.

  “Let’s go now,” she agreed with a thrill of nervous anticipation. “My father has a fast horse. When he finds out I’m missing he’ll come after us.”

  “He will not catch us,” declared Alyei with a grin, his great white teeth showing bright even in the dark. “Horse run fast but Lind run faster.”

  “I still think we’d better go now.”

  When Anselm Wallace found out that his eldest daughter was nowhere to be found, the duo were long gone. She never knew of his anger, disappointment and loss of face amongst the villagers, nor of her formal out-casting by the resident priest.

  * * * * *

  AL580 - Niaill

  Eight year old Niaill loved playing the game ‘Hide and Seek’. With a laugh he ran off to find a hiding place where his cousins, brothers and sisters wouldn’t be able to find him. Out he ran from the trees that surrounded the open space on top of the Mound where he and his extended family were having a picnic, intent on a quest for the perfect hidey-hole.

  Where should he go? The seekers would first look for him up in the trees; Niaill was a consummate tree-climber and they would be sure to search there. If he wanted to stay hidden the longest (and that was the aim of the game) he would have to find somewhere better than that. He gazed around the clearing looking for inspiration and found it; a great chunk of moss covered stone at the edge of the shorter grass near the rocks. He didn’t have much time; he could hear his older brother Danal counting. He ran towards the stone and peeked behind. Could he possibly hide in there? Was there room enough? Yes, plenty room enough for his skinny body. No one, he was sure, would look for him there. For the young Niaill to think was to act. With scant regard to what it might do to his clothes (and what his mother would say about it later), he squeezed behind the stone.

  He managed to get himself into a fairly comfortable position, a third crouching, a third sitting, a third standing and settled down to wait.

  Danal and the others wouldn’t find him here. He pressed his body hard against the back-facing of the stone monument.

  He heard Danal calling, his brother found Doug and Catlina who usually hid together, the twins then little Gemma. Now they would all be looking for him. He could hear their excited voices.

  Absently, he rubbed a grubby finger against the moss and stickleweed, exposing a small section of the stone underneath.

  He had previously noticed that the front facing of the stone had been smooth and now he found to his astonishment that the back of the stone was of the same smoothness. Strange that the ancestors had smoothed the back where no one would see it set against the rock face.

  Keeping as quiet as a vuz, he probed his finger deeper and encountered the unexpected; there were letters carved into the stone, regular indentations, man-made.

  Game forgotten, he began to scrape away more of the weed and moss and feel for the indentations. Why, there was the letter W and an H right next to it.

  He could hear the others calling his name, searching for him, they were getting closer. If he didn’t want them to find his hiding place and the secret it contained he’d better get out fast.

  He raised his head, there was no one in sight and he
scrambled out, flinching as rough bits of the stone and stickleweed scraped at his arms and legs. He would come back later, on his own. Niaill didn’t want to share this discovery with anybody.

  It took Niaill a whole two days free-time to clear away the stickleweed and moss from the letters and he gathered not a few scratches and bruises in the process. What he did to his clothes brought his mother’s anger down on him again, not that he cared. At last it was done and he was able to trace out the letters with his fingers. He couldn’t see them, there was barely room enough between the stone and the rock face and the light wasn’t too good.

  With eager fingers he traced out each letter, spelling them out in his mind and committing them to memory.

  ‘If danger dire dost thrive.

  And north and south fight to survive,

  Look ye to the west,

  Where at our behest,

  As Mariya was solemnly bidden,

  Gtrathlin evermore keep hidden,

  Deep inside the ground,

  Answers may be found.”

  “TS and K’

  Greatly mystified, he pulled the stickleweed back over the letters. This was his secret. He hugged himself with glee.

  Over the next few years Niaill thought over the riddle he had discovered and tried to make sense of it. Who was Mariya? Who were TS and K? He grew older and taller, too big to squeeze in behind the stone. At fifteen he life-bonded with his Lind, Taraya, and became a Vada Cadet. He thought back to the riddle on occasion and discussed it with her but these occasions became ever more infrequent as he grew into adulthood. By the time he was eighteen, he and Taraya had become a vadeln-pair within a fighting Ryzck and he began to look back at the great secret of his boyhood with nostalgic indulgence.

  Months, years and decades passed.

  He forgot about the riddle. Taraya did not.

  * * * * *

  AL582 - The Ammokko

  It was dark; it was black, it was space. It was large; it was huge; it was gigantic. It carried with it an aura of threat and menace.

  The colossal ship turned and began the slow, ponderous journey towards its destination.

  * * * * *

  AL590 - Elliot

  Paul, Prince-Heir of the Kingdom of Murdoch ran on light feet towards the Conclave Chamber at the Royal Palace at Fort.

  He had a son.

  The Kingdom had an Heir of the Bloodline.

  Not that the kingdom was in any crisis of inheritance. Only once before had the direct bloodline failed and that had been over four hundred years ago but there was safety in numbers and this baby was the eldest legitimate, royal great-grandson of the King, through his eldest son and his son after that.

  The baby prince would put to an end any ambitious ideas about future kingship from the various ducal houses.

  The Kingdom of Murdoch had always been fraught with strife and discord. In Queen Petra the First’s time her sons and relations had fought each other for the crown and that fratricide had lasted over sixty years until King Robert the First had ended it with his ascension in AL417, deposing and executing his great-nephew in the process. Before this there had been other civil wars, just as bloody.

  The problem was the junior princes. What to do with royal younger sons was a perennial problem.

  Paul’s brother Xavier was betrothed to the Daughter-Heir of the Duke of South Baker and on his marriage would become the Prince-Duke-Heir of that Duchy and Prince-Duke in his own right on the death of his father-in-law. With the marriage he would abdicate any succession rights as had all the Prince-Dukes before him.

  The King’s second son was the present Prince-Duke of Brentwood with a seat on Conclave and was technically no longer a Prince of the Bloodline. He was a powerful man in his own right but that was not to say that he would stay loyal to the bloodline, especially if the King was a weak one, or if, horror of horrors, the heir was a female.

  There had been four Queens Regnant in Murdoch and all had experienced difficult reigns. Three had married and their husbands had performed the real governance of the country. Only one had ruled in her own right and she had never married, in fact, tradition told that Queen Petra the Second was more man than woman which probably explained a lot.

  Royal and noble marriages were what tied the Kingdom together, that and the threat of the Larg on their borders, but the Larg had not attacked for decades, since King Robert the Fourth had defeated them at the Battle of the Ford in AL503.

  Prince-Heir Paul was not pondering these grave issues as he made his way down the corridor to inform his father, grandfather and the rest of the Conclave the wonderful news, he was a father. His heir was born and he was sure that he would father many more. He was young and his wife, Queen Susan, young and healthy.

  He burst into the Chamber and proclaimed the news in a loud and exultant voice.

  * * * * *

  AL591 - Hilla, Rilla and Zilla

  It was with a painful sense of accomplishment that an exhausted Zanda, wife of Innkeeper Talan of the Little Rover Inn at Dunetown pushed her fourth daughter into the world. As expected, twins again.

  “Small, but healthy,” smiled the midwife as she cleaned up the second infant and placed her beside her sister in the big double cradle.

  “I hope Talan won’t be too disappointed.”

  “Why should he be?” asked the midwife with a fair touch of asperity, “I suppose you’re going to tell me that he wanted another son.”

  Zanda nodded weakly and the midwife wondered again about the male desire for sons. She had never understood it. In Argyll, daughters could inherit as well as sons. She herself had produced no less than nine children, all girls and her husband had been delighted with each and every one. “Don’t you worry about it my dear,” she said as she bent over her patient. “The afterbirth now and then we can get you tidied up.” She wiped Zanda’s forehead with a blessedly cold cloth.

  But the pains that began to rack Zanda’s exhausted body didn’t feel like the pains that heralded the afterbirth. Zanda cried out with their intensity.

  “Not afterbirth,” she managed to gasp through clenched teeth and the midwife frowned as she bent closer. This was not Zanda’s first labour. Ten years ago the twins Zak and Zala had arrived and two years after that the singleton, Tala.

  What the midwife saw made her call out in a voice tinged with excited disbelief for more cloths and towels. A third moist crown was emerging into the dim light of the chamber.

  “What is it? What is happening?” demanded Zanda with a shrill scream of anguished protest as her lower abdomen exploded with another great rack of pain.

  “Push,” ordered the midwife, “number three is on its way. I know you’re tired my dear but that’s the only way I know to end the pain.”

  Zanda, with supreme effort managed to obey and a third wailing infant skittered out on to the birthing cloths.

  “What is it?”

  “Another little girl. Triplets my dear.”

  Zanda sighed. After all this, three little girls and it was unlikely that she would quicken again. Zanda’s fortieth birthday was looming on the horizon and the doctors had informed her that this pregnancy should be her last. The midwife however looked triumphant. She had never birthed triplets before.

  “Your man will be pleased. First triplets born in the village within living memory, maybe the first ever,” she exclaimed and was rewarded with a wan smile. “You’ll see. It’ll be the talk of the village and beyond for years to come.”

  The midwife had the right of it. Talan was delighted, at least at first. Not only did he break open his best champagne to ‘wet the babies heads’, he splashed out a small fortune to send the surprising news via the Express to all their relatives, even those living as far away as Vadath.

  The three elder children were even more excited than their father and fell over themselves, their feet, their mother and their mother’s feet helping her care for the babies.

  The triplets were not identical although at birth
they had been almost so, each with a shock of dusky blond hair and a smudge of a nose.

  As the months passed, Hilla, the eldest, grew the fastest and her hair darkened to a deep red like that of her doting father. She was most like him in character. Rilla, the middle triplet was as tall as Hilla though slimmer in build and her hair darkened as to be almost black like the twins Zak and Zala. Zilla, the youngest remained the smaller and slightest of the three. Her hair remained blond. She was the most like her mother.

  * * * * *

  AL595 - Robain

  Pirates had been rampaging throughout the Great Eastern Sea for centuries and despite the attempts of the Argyllian Navy the privateers and slavers had thrived, enforcing tributes from a multitude of islands in the Great Eastern Sea. Those unwilling to send tribute they punished with death and slavery.

  The Relentless was a privateer. She was the biggest, darkest, most feared pirate slave-galley of them all.

  The boy was called Robain. He was fourteen years old. He had three sisters, three brothers and was a part of a close and loving family headed by an invalid father and the teachings of the Temple to the contrary, run by his more than capable mother.

  This was the Island of Hallam, an island governed by the Priests of the Holy Temple, an island of religious observance and compliance, similar but stricter in observance than the religious areas in north eastern Argyll.

  With Robain, hidden behind the large dugo bush was his youngest brother Liam, the third son of the family and the one most at risk during the dangerous day ahead. This was tribute day when the slavers were coming to collect their dues.