Silence echoed in the room. How many of them had given thought to Kellen over the years? Kellen, who had been a quiet, good-natured boy, sentenced to life in a small, dark cell. Had they lied to convince themselves that the fit of illness that Jakoven used to justify his imprisonment of Kellen had been real?
When I felt they'd had time to feel such guilt as they would, I continued. "Both reasons for rescuing Kellen are true. But it is also true that I know Jakoven will not let me or mine hide in peace again. I no longer have the luxury of hiding here in Hurog and hoping the king will forget me again."
"Alizon's rebellion is doomed," I said. I let my gaze sweep across the room and saw agreement in some faces and repressed anger in others. "Or so I thought. But as it turns out, it has never been Alizon's rebellion—it is Kellen's."
I let the murmur of conversation swell for a beat or two, then continued. "So by helping Kellen out of that hellish place—" Someone smiled and I stopped.
"Don't any of you believe the fictions that Jakoven spouts about luxury and good treatment in the Asylum," I said. "I've been there and I wouldn't leave a dog I cared about in the 'gentle' keeping of the men who run the King's Asylum for Noble Embarrassments and Inconveniences."
I'd put too much feeling in it. I would rather have left them believing that all that Jakoven's wizards had done was question me while I played stupid.
I swallowed and continued on in deadly seriousness, my carefully memorized speech forgotten. "So as Orvidin has already speculated, it was entirely self-interest that led me to help Kellen and join in his rebellion. But I believe that it is a self-interest that all Shavigmen share."
I took my tankard off the table and let the sweet water pour down my throat. My uncle gave me a small smile of encouragement that would have been invisible to anyone farther away. I set the empty tankard down, and turned back, trying not to notice the way the sound of the metal tankard hitting the table echoed in the silence of the room.
They want to be convinced, my uncle had said. They'll listen as long as it takes you to do it.
"Let me tell you why it is imperative to your survival that you help us here," I said. "It is the reason that Jakoven will not let my family alone."
I took a deep breath and plunged on. "While I was in the Asylum, I saw Jakoven produce an artifact he found while renovating his castle at Estian: a staff head bearing a dragon with a black gem."
"Are you telling us you think Jakoven found Farsonsbane, Pup?" asked Orvidin.
"I'm telling what I saw," I said. "And I'll tell you that Jakoven told me he found Farsonsbane and I, a wizard, believed him."
"Even so," said someone else. He sat near the eastern Shavig group, but the room was shadowed and I couldn't tell for sure who it was that spoke. "There are no dragons left to activate it."
"Jakoven managed to get the Bane to do something with my blood while he held me," I said. "As soon as I left, he went after one of my half brothers—whom Garranon spirited here."
"You're claiming to be a dragon?" asked Orvidin incredulously, standing up again with such force that the bench he'd sat upon rocked back. "You don't expect us to believe that. I tell you, Pup, I came here ready to throw my support behind Kellen—but I will not abide following a man stupid enough to try to make me swallow a story about a mythological artifact and then compound it by seriously declaring that he bears the blood of dragons." He turned on his heel and gestured to his supporters, who rose noisily to follow him.
I'd hoped no one would draw attention to the reason my blood awakened the Bane. I had planned on spinning some connection between the Hurog name and the legend that the Bane drew its power from dragon's blood. But Orvidin was too quick. He gave me a choice of lying outright or spinning them a truth that was unbelievable—and I would not lie to the Shavig Council.
The role I'd been assigned this night had been a deliberate attempt to remind those here of our Shavig heritage. I'd come before them as Hurogmeten and not wizard. Duraugh's speech did not mention the Bane at all. As I talked, I'd come to believe that the Council had to know what it was they were facing. Too late I realized that the Hurog warrior I'd shown them was so prosaic it made it impossible for them to accept the Bane and dragons. Myths belong in the darkness, in wild woods, in mages dressed in fantastic garb—not to a too-large man dressed in plain clothes.
"I never claimed to be a dragon," I said, my voice still audible even over the clatter. "Only a Hurog."
But it wasn't my voice that stopped Orvidin. Out of the flickering shadows left by the torchlights, a dragon coalesced in the large walkway that ran from the lord's dais where I sat to the outside doors on the far side of the great hallway.
I glanced at the table where Oreg had been, and sure enough, he was gone.
The lavender scales looked purple in the dim light and the dark violet on his muzzle matched the black on his wings. He lifted onto his hind legs until his head rose to the braced vaulting in the ceiling: I winced a little, hoping he didn't knock any of the stonework loose. His wings spread, knocking tables and their occupants carelessly aside. Slowly, he set his forefeet onto the ground. He sat motionless for a moment, then stretched his head forward until his muzzle was only inches from Orvidin's face.
"Don't you know your own language?" asked Oreg softly. He'd let an ancient accent fill his voice so no one but I, who'd heard him speak like that before, would know it was he. "Hurog means dragon—did you think that was chance?"
Some of the people in the room began moving closer to Oreg. I watched their faces carefully, but no one made a move to draw sword or knife. Before Oreg drew my attention back to him, I caught a glimpse of the narrow face of Charva, who had the distinction of holding the northernmost keep in Shavig. That he was a very capable wizard might have had something to do with his ability to hold lands where no one else had. The northern reaches of Shavig were infested with a number of interesting creatures who dined on humans when they could. On his face I saw an expression of awe that reminded me of how I felt the first time I saw Oreg take on his dragon shape.
"I am an ancient of my kind," said Oreg. I don't know if he was telling the truth or not. I'm not certain how long dragons live—or if Oreg even considered himself more dragon than human. But it sounded impressive. "I was here when the family Hurog was born of the unhappy marriage of dragon and human blood, before the fall of the Empire," he said.
He let the quiet build and raised his head, sweeping his gaze over the Shavigmen who occupied my hall. When he spoke, his voice was even softer than it had been, but there wasn't a person there who could not hear him. "I was here when the Empire of Man covered the land from western sea to eastern, from the northern mountains to southern glaciers, while wizards wielded powers that you consider legend. I was here when Farson brought his Bane to humankind and the Empire was destroyed. I witnessed the few humans who remained living in scattered, hidden populations that had lost the trappings of civilization and were little more than animals fighting to survive."
In the fire-lit darkness of the hall, some of the beauty of his coloring was muted, but nothing lessened the impact of what he was, of what he said. His body had to coil upon itself to fit in the space between Orvidin and the doorway. Abruptly he folded his wings in, hiding their lighter, reflective undersides and leaving the impression that darkness had descended upon the hall in the darker scales of his body.