Page 18 of Silverbow
“She’s a fine lady, my lord,” he stumbled. Her father smirked as if Liam told another joke, and he hurried on. “Any lord would be lucky to have her as his wife.”
Every word was true, even if they were bitter on his tongue, but he still felt that blasted heat spreading across his face under Lord Ryerson’s contemplative gaze.
“Indeed.” He frowned, and Liam feared he said something wrong, not that Renley Ryerson was the kind of man to punish him for it.
The Widow of Westforks had been a sharp reminder of his station and that Renley was a far better lord than most. His da often said him how lucky they were to be in his service, and the thought of another man running the house, regardless of what Lord Ryerson said about the running of such things, made him jittery. Orat least, that was the reason Liam usually told himself for why the suitors seemed to get under his skin.
But it was another voice in his head that told him as pretty and shy as Ella Coblegh was, she could not hold a candle to Enya.Of course not, you bloody goose. She’s a lord’s daughter, not a farm girl.
Still, over the last few months, it was Enya that made him leap about like a fool. It was Enya that set his heart racing when she brushed too close. It was Enya that made his chest swell when she beamed at him. The thoughts were enough to make a bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck.
All his life, Enya had been part wicked little sister, part scrappy stable boy, but she suddenly...grew up. He was doing his best to ignore it. It served nothing and no one to pine after her. And she wasn’t that different, after all.
She still looked much the same as she had when they were kids. Her hair was held back in the same long braid; a braid he once cut and she’d almost strangled him over. The freckles that would darken her high cheekbones in summer were only hinted at now, freckles he’d once teased her for. But the awkward knees and elbows were gone, and smooth curves... Liam halted that thought in its tracks, mortified.
He glanced sidelong at the lord again, and not for the first time, he thought there was little of him in his daughter’s face. Liam knew enough from breeding horses that bay usually beat red, and gray often trumped all. But Renley Ryerson, dark of hair and eye, had sired a girl with brilliant green eyes and copper hair. Rhiannon must have been as fair as Renley was dark.
But seeing that Enya was unlikely to join Lady Ryerson in the afterlife today and his coppers were still well wagered, Liam bobbed his head to her father. He slunk back into the stable before any other unbidden thoughts could land his head on a spike over the gate. He had to find something to do with his shaking hands.
Neither of them had much of an appetite when Mistress Ashill set chicken soup before them at lunch. He pushed carrots around his bowl, watching Enya stare at her reflection in the back of her spoon. From the way she’d stomped back into the stable, he inferred her round with Igg did little to soothe her temper, so he said nothing.
“Do you think they’re coming today?” She asked finally, eyes flicking up to his face.
He shrugged. “Probably not.”
“I hate the waiting.”
Liam did too, but he said, “Neither of us can wield.”
She gave a tight nod and pushed the bowl away without taking a single bite.
Afternoon faded to evening and still the wielders hadn’t arrived. Mistress Ashill only half-heartedly clucked over the plates they didn’t finish at dinner, knowing it was futile. Liam started setting his stones on the board before Enya could refuse a game, and she silently accepted the invitation and smashed him in an embarrassing defeat as her father looked on.
When the fire in the drawing room burned low and Liam’s da slipped in after a last check in the stables, Lord Ryerson thumbed through a worn copy ofA History of Dragonkind. The leather bound tome was a favorite of both father and daughter. He chose a dog eared page near the front and began to read. The Dragon’s Dream was a part Lord Ryerson often chose when winter winds blew icy drafts through the house, and Liam knew it as well as if he’d had his own tutor.
When the first men kept time and scratched out stories, the continent was a wild place. The land itself still trembled with growing pains. Beasts long erased from myth and memory stalked the nights and the days in every corner from the Zauwrun Sands to the snow capped peaks of Tuminzar. Magics so dark they struck fear into the black blooded witches snared men and dwarves in tangled webs, devouring their hearts and souls.
When the gods bestowed upon the elves great gifts to hold the darkness at bay, they built Oyamor. In the east, the dwarves fortified their mountain holds. All the while, men battled beasts and brethren alike. Nations rose and fell, toppled as often from forces within as forces without.
It was a man called Castien who dreamt the first dream of the dragons. In the dream, he found a place where the dark things dared not dwell. In the craggy peaks and valleys of the Vale, still belching hot rock and ash into the sky, Solignis’s serpentine beasts burned shadows to ash, guarding their nests with flame, fang, and claw.
Castien did not just see the hatching grounds as a man sees them. He soared over them on dragonback, and saw through eyes foreign to his own. It was those eyes that showed him what could be, what must be, and as the dragon soared out around the Lake of Soileh, he showed Castien the treacherous path ahead.
With his sister Sana at his back, they approached Queen Dasyra of a small land then called Ostra, and told her of the dream. Castien vowed to forge the peaceof the Dragon’s Dream and asked for a dozen of her best men to make the journey through the Vale. The wise young queen granted him fifty.
The fifty-two forgers, they became, though half of Ostra’s escort was lost to the wild things in the mountains before they ever laid eyes on the Lake of Soileh. Half again were lost in the ascent to the hatching grounds. It was a bloody and battered dozen who finally stumbled onto the sacred ground and bowed before the nine dragon clans.
From among them, the first Nine on High were chosen, and despite the age that stretched between, every child in Elaria had grown up knowing their names: Castien Dreamwalker, Tharren Thunderfist, Ithronel Darksbane, Kilyn Firebringer, Siverel Goldenclaw, Helena Harbinger, Delsanra of the Dawn, Galen Longtooth, and Velathla the Valiant. Legend had not forgotten the other three who descended on foot rather than dragonback either. Sana Silverbow, Aywin Shortsword, and Erendrial Ironheart all went on to carve out their own stories in the forging of the Dragon’s Dream.
Smelt and forge the Nine on High did, shattering old barriers, melding the lands of men into one, and hammering out something new. When they were finished, Ostra and all the others like it vanished into the heart of Estryia, and the first High Queen sat the Haarstrond Throne. Under Queen Dasyra and the Nine, treaties were drafted with Oyamor, Eastwood, and Tuminzar, and as one, elf, man, dwarf, and dragon hunted, and the shadow was scoured from the land.
For five hundred years, the Dragon’s Dream held.
Roads were built, connecting north and south, east and west. Up and down them flowed trade and craftsmen, musicians and bards. From Tuminzar came the great stonemasons, and from Oyamor, the great healers and scholars. Bridges spanned rivers that were once impassable. Castles rose to pierce the clouds. Teaching was done in great schools and libraries. A skilled healer could be found in every town and village, and it was said a child could carry a chest of gold all the way from Analuz to Valbelle.
Because above it all, the dragons flew.
But Ryland’s Rebellion shattered the Dragon’s Dream, and Estryia hardly emerged whole. The elves and dwarves retreated behind their warded borders, abandoning the oath breakers to their fates. Despite how the queens since and the Nine tried to salvage the shards of what had been, the dragons lost faith in the weak hearts of men.
