[Hurog 01] - Dragon Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

raised an eyebrow before he walked to the other side of the bed, edging in front of Mother. “Yes, Fen?”
    â€œYou’ll take care of Hurog.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œGood.” My father sighed. “Duraugh, Tosten will be Ward’s heir. Find him, wherever he is.”
    â€œI know where he is,” I replied unwisely. But I couldn’t resist the impulse. It would be the only chance I’d ever have to hint to my father that he might be wrong about me.
    The Hurogmeten looked at me, surprised. He’d beaten me until I bled when my younger brother had disappeared two years ago. Then he’d decided if I’d known anything about Tosten, I’d have told him; everyone knew I was too stupid to lie well.
    â€œWhere?” he asked, but I shook my head.
    If my uncle knew where he was, Tosten would be yanked back here, and he wouldn’t want that. I’d come across him slitting his wrists one autumn night shortly after his fifteenth birthday and persuaded him that there was a better way to leave Hurog.
    â€œHe’s safe.” I hoped that was true.
    He sighed again, closing his eyes. Abruptly, they opened again as he fought for air and lost a battle for the first time in his life.
    Mother stood up. She hummed an eerie little melody,staring at his body for a moment, then she turned and left the room.
    I felt lost and betrayed, as if I’d finally been winning a game at the expense of great effort and time, and my opponent left the playing field before he noticed I’d been winning. Which is, of course, what had happened.
    Ciarra tightened her grip and leaned her cheek on my arm, her face a blank mask. My face, I knew from long practice, looked vaguely cowlike; the deep brown eyes Mother’d given me added to the general bovine appearance of my expression.
    My uncle looked at me closely. “You do understand what has just happened?”
    â€œThe Hurogmeten is dead,” I replied.
    â€œAnd you are the new Hurogmeten, but I’ll be holder in your place for two years.” Duraugh’s eyes hooded for a moment, and underneath the Hurog-stern face was excitement as well as grief. Duraugh wanted Hurog.
    â€œI get father’s horse,” I said, having searched for the most inane comment I could make. “I’m going to go see him now.”
    â€œChange your clothes first,” suggested my uncle. “When you get back, your mother and I will have decided how to honor your father. We’ll have to call your brother home for the funeral.”
    When I’m dead and buried, I thought, but I nodded anyway. “All right.”
    I turned as if I’d forgotten the Brat on my arm. She stumbled, trying to keep up with me, so I shifted and hefted her under my arm, carrying her up the stairs at a rapid pace. She was really getting too old for that kind of play, but we both enjoyed it, and it reminded my fa—my uncle, just how strong I was. Part of the game, I thought, part of the game.
    So did my uncle take my father’s place as my opponent.

2
Wardwick
    I missed my father. I kept looking over my shoulder for him, though he was safely buried.
    THE STABLEMEN WHO DRAGGED my father’s horse from the stall looked none too happy about it, but then neither did the horse.
    â€œHe ran back here some time before the hunting party returned, milord,” said my father’s stable master, Penrod. He was one of my mother’s imports, a Tallvenish flatlander. He’d ridden with the Blue Guard when my father had fought in the king’s battles the better part of two decades ago, before slipping into the position of stable master when the old one died. Unlike many of the higher-ranking keep folk, Penrod always treated me with the same deference he used with my father.
    â€œWe’re still trying to clean the blood off the Hurogmeten’s saddle,” he said. “I expect it’s the smell that’s kept Stygian so