The Dragon Queen by Alice Borchardt
Author:Alice Borchardt [Borchardt, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-44950-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2001-09-21T16:00:00+00:00
TEN
E WOKE, KNOWING HE WAS BEING watched, the fear like a stone in his gut, closing his throat. He was lying under a bush, a holly bush, the sharpened points of its leaves pricking through the homespun shirt he wore. He was lying on his stomach. He moved and the prickly leaves wounded him again.
When he woke, he wiggled forward on his stomach until he was clear of the bush, then rose to his knees. He pushed up with his left hand instinctively. And when he looked at his right, he saw why. It was swollen and had two oozing marks surrounded by angry red tissue on the back where the fangs went in.
Experimentally, he moved his fingers—it hurt. And he knew he wouldn’t have much use of it for some time.
He had been bitten by a snake.
Had he been bitten by a snake? He didn’t know, his mind wasn’t clear. He was having a lot of trouble thinking. Thinking and seeing both. When he tried to look around, the light pained his eyes. But he did see enough to know he was in a forest.
He was kneeling next to the holly bush that was growing out of a pile of fallen limbs near the trunk of a giant oak, resting on its side, broken by lightning.
Just beyond the tangle of dead wood that had been the tree’s crown was a pool. He could see the glint of the sky’s reflection in the water from where he knelt.
He staggered to his feet, not out of any confidence that he could walk but because he couldn’t crawl. He was certain his damaged right hand wouldn’t support him. He wanted water badly. His tongue felt like a file in his mouth.
He was right. On his feet he was so dizzy he could barely stand. But his thirst was so great that he managed to stagger to the pool, fall to his knees, then lie down and drink.
It looked up at him from the bottom of the pool.
He jerked back so quickly that inadvertently he used his right hand to push himself, and a blast of raw agony lanced up his arm to his shoulder, followed by a terrible wave of nausea.
He lay down again, rolled over on his back, and closed his eyes.
She was there.
He could see her face as clearly as if she stood before him. Young, the woman’s features still a bit blurred by the child’s. Almost, not quite, ready for love. Rose-petal skin, spun gold hair, lips like autumn rose hips, and eyes warm and blue as a summer sky.
Somewhere in his mind he laughed at himself. All the poetic banalities, and yet all love.
Women, he remembered someone in the warrior society saying. Oh, yes, there are always women. Women for pleasure, women for breeding—very important that. Women for work, all the ceaseless cooking, washing, and cleaning. All the worrisome, monotonous tasks women are so good at. Women. Don’t worry about women.
Her eyes looked into his. Oh, yes, they were the summer sky, an arch of cloud-filled crystalline light over a green, warm world.
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