Bloodstone by Johannes Helen C

Author:Johannes, Helen C. [Johannes, Helen C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Medieval, Dragons, Paranormal, Fantasy
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press, Inc
Published: 2013-10-25T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

When Durren returned to the courtyard, the lion was sauntering toward the outer gate. The beast paused at the sound of his boot kicking a pebble and looked over her shoulder.

What do you want from me? his mind messaged.

What I’ve always wanted, Durren. But you’re not ready to give it. Yet. She flicked her tail, and the black-lined lips curved. Enjoy my gifts. Both of them. Then she faded into thickening shadows.

Durren kicked another, bigger stone. He wanted to throw it, but he knew the lion would evade his best effort, and an emphatic kick at least gave him the satisfaction of thumping something. Besides, in the unlikely probability the lion were truly Ayliss, she would do as she damned well pleased regardless of what he thought, wanted, or said. Just as she’d always done since they were children and she’d watched his training with cool emerald eyes...

“That sword should be mine,” Ayliss was saying as she looked over the top of the scroll she’d been studying. “I’m the firstborn by more than a year.”

“Don’t be daft.” Durren hefted the Sword of Drakkonwehr once more, enjoying a balance so perfect he could imagine himself easily fending off the mage-spawn of Beggeth even though the weapon wouldn’t come to him until his sixteenth birthday. Four long years. He sighed and replaced the weapon in its sheath over the mantel. “Koronolan gave it to his sons. His sons, Ayliss.”

“Can you recite the Deeds of Kiros? In Shadowspeech? I can.”

“I’ll know it when I have to. I need to learn the ways of a warrior first. I can’t spend all day reading Owender’s History—”

“No,” she said with a look he couldn’t decipher, “you’ve better things to do, training to protect the world and all that.”

“Look, I didn’t choose when to be born, and I don’t make the rules—”

“Rules? Or traditions?” Ayliss tossed aside the scroll and stood. At thirteen, she was already as tall as a young willow, and he had to look up at her. Durren couldn’t wait for the growth spurt his feet promised was coming. Then she would see what it felt like to look up to him for a change. But Ayliss was already speaking. “Did you ever think—isn’t it possible that one person can’t possibly know everything? I mean, have you any idea what’s in these scrolls? There are spells and chants here and—”

“Father will teach me everything.”

Her eyes flashed with more heat than he’d ever seen in them. “Yes, everything he knows. Listen, I could help you. We could work together and—”

“You?” He stared at her, aghast at the idea she could have any part in his training. She was just jealous, as always, wishing she hadn’t been born a woman.

Her face shut down, the animation gone like the flicker of a firefly, vanished before the viewer realizes what he’s seen. “Forget I said anything.” Scooping up her scroll, she swept from the room...

She never broached the subject with him again but buried her nose in the scrolls stuffed into chests and stored in the crannies of chambers deep beneath Drakkonwehr.

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