Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #13 April 2015 | Page 170

had splintered in his rage. No one seemed to notice
the little girl moving slowly toward the pallet on the
floor, her chest heaving as her breathing became faster
until she was gasping for air. Rhiannon stopped and
looked down at the still form on the pallet. The bodice of her mother’s yellow gown that she had worn at
the tournament was now stained the same color as her
hair; glittering gouts of her life’s blood covered her
neck and shoulders, ran rivulets down her outstretched
arm, pooled into the cracks in the stone floor. The
traitor’s arrow had pierced through her throat. Rhiannon looked at her mother’s face and was seized with
horror: wax-white, like a candle, hazel eyes dulled,
lips parted with unformed words. Never again would
her mother see her or speak to her. Shaking and
struggling with her breath as her mother did in her last
moments, Rhiannon’s vision started to spiral down
into murkiness as she reached out to the lifeless form,
when a strong hand took hers and pulled her slightly
away from the body. Sir Gwydion looked down at
her, his anguished face and dented armor splashed
with mud and blood. “Come away, child. It is ill-done. Stop. Breathe.” His other hand engulfed the side
of her neck, his thumb on her jaw to make sure she
looked into his eyes and not at the body again. “Do
not look upon her like that. Your mother is elsewhere
now. Come away, your father needs you.” At that moment her father looked up and saw her, and stretched
out his arms to her, his face tracked with tears. She
ran to him without looking back at the knight or the
blood-stained pallet.

Rhiannon nodded, and then looked closely at the cloth
he had given her. “Oh!” she exclaimed shakily. “This
was mine!” She held up the red scarf with crooked
gold stitches forming a sleeping dragon in the middle.
“This was one of my first embroidery attempts.” She
looked up, smiling incredulously although her eyes
still shone from her tears. “I gave you this at one of
the tournaments… and you’ve kept it all these years?”
“Ah… ” he grinned a little sheepishly, “I liked it.”
Rhiannon laughed, pleased, and traced the uneven
stitches on the dragon’s folded wings.

Gwydion quickly handed her a cloth to catch her tears
with. His brow furrowed in concern. “I did not mean
to make you upset with memories. Of course your father’s liege knights were intent on capturing Maelogan
and the rest of his lackeys. I myself almost had him
in the lists but ran afoul of the mud. His treachery
was… most unexpected.”

“Of course they can,” Rhiannon chided the knight,
who was slowly shaking his head in disbelief. “They
are marvelous creatures of wisdom and wit. This
book not only contains the runes of their language but
also their stories, beliefs, and history. It is the Dragon
Tome, and the only one of its kind. If it is lost, then so
is all their knowledge lost to people. I am its keeper,
as was my mother before me, and my grandmother,

“Rhiannon,” the knight hesitated, and gestured at the
ruins around them. “Why are we here? And why is
your book,” he pointed at the pack next to her, “so
important?”
Her lips twitched but she kept herself steady, not
wanting to reveal the slight measure of triumph she
felt from his questioning. Another step ahead, she
thought, and her palms gave a tingling pulse as she
pulled her book out from its pouch onto her lap.

“This is a book of secrets that my mother bequeathed
to me as my birthright.” She spread the red cloth
out onto the grass before her and the stitched dragon
caught the strong light of the western sun. “Gules,
a dragon dormant Or. Our family’s coat of arms is
actually passed through the female line.” She arched
an eyebrow at Sir Gwydion’s dumbfounded expression. “Don’t tell my father that I told you that. That’s
one secret,” she said slyly. “You know there have
Remembering how it was Sir Gwydion who rescued
been dragons sighted on our lands for centuries. This
her sanity from the wreck of her mother’s body on that book,” she said, as she ran her palms along the leather,
dire day, Rhiannon whispered, “You were the only one “deciphers the language of the dragons.”
who recognized a daughter’s grief. You helped me; I
remember now. Thank you.” Sorrow spilled from her “Dragons can… ” he cleared his throat, “they can
eyes.
speak?”

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