The Return of Kavin Read Online Free PDF

like him. He put me in cage!”
    Hugon chuckled at the creature’s anger.
    “I help you,” Fraak said, and uttered the oboe note that meant pleasure. “You good.”
    “That’s fine,” Hugon said, and stood up. “Would you help me now?” he asked, coaxingly. “Catch a bird, or a rabbit if we find one?”
    The dragonet spread its wings, uttered a fierce cawing cry, and sprang into the air, circling Hugon’s head.
    “I’m off to the hunt,” Hugon said, and strode into the scrubby wood, the dragonet sailing above him.
    “Ungrateful little beast,” Gwynna said, staring after Hugon.
    Zamor, sitting next to her, glanced at her and chuckled.
    “Your dragonet?” he asked.
    “My lord…” she stopped, and bit her lip, then regained her control. “My Lord Barazan gave that… creature… the best of food, bright toys, a handsome cage… and now it seems to have fallen completely in love with that filthy renegade vagabond, that…”
    “A handsome cage, you said?” Zamor asked, calmly. “Better than the cage he gave us, below there, I suppose.” He grinned at her. “Many beasts dislike a cage, no matter how cunningly made it may be. As we Numori, for instance…”
    She shrugged. After a moment, she looked at him, oddly.
    “You… your people were rebels against the Emperor, weren’t you?” she asked.
    “Our Queens were rulers when your Emperor’s ancestors scratched each other’s fleas in a cave,” Zamor said, coldly.
    After a while she said, in a conciliatory tone, “I am sorry. I meant no… well, I have little knowledge of such things. Wars and conquests and the like.” She grimaced. “Dull lists of names and deeds. My… husband’s… only source of conversation, except for court gossip.” She stared into the fire.
    Another time passed. Then she spoke again, with a forced calm. “Poor dog, I’m sorry he’s dead. He had a lusty way about him… but that was all he had, alas. I… I learned to seek for more in a man than a stallion’s skill, in Armadoc.”
    “You seem to know Hugon, lady,” Zamor said. “How is that?”
    Her teeth gleamed in a mirthless smile. “Ah, I know him. And he knows me, too well. Would you like to hear it all, big one? Listen, then. I was mistress of Armadoc, there on the north coast of Meryon. Mistress alone, my parents dead, none to say no to anything I wished…” She stopped, staring into the fire.
    “Armadoc is a great hold, there where the river enters the sea,” Gwynna went on. “It is a key to the north of Meryon, held since the first days, by my own family. No army can pass Armadoc, toward the High King’s seat. Well, he that is King in Meryon now, prince that was, gave me cause for anger, and I gave Armadoc to his great enemy, the Emperor.” She laughed, suddenly. “If the Emperor had slain all, laid Meryon waste, I would have counted it no more than fair return for that insult. But he sent Barazan, who could not hold even Armadoc, in the end. He offered me marriage, at any rate, and high honor in Mazain… and since I had nothing left otherwise…” She shrugged, eloquently.
    “Ah,” Zamor said, nodding. He had heard of that war, in some small part. The Mazainians had struck at Meryon, across the sea, on some pretext; in a summer’s time, they had been thrust out again, and since then an uneasy peace had been made.
    “Your friend, that Hugon,” Gwynna said. “The second son of a house with a great name… and no wealth at all. A maker of poems, I’ve heard, and one that was forever traveling about, pretending to study one sort of wisdom or another. There are many like that in Meryon land. Too many. My people… love to talk and lie and sing, but for anything of use…”
    Zamor grunted, carefully noncommittal.
    “He sent me a poem once,” she said, after a while. “A bad one. I’ve written better myself.”
    “Ah,” Zamor said.
    There was a long silence. He could feel her green eyes on him, probing.
    “You seem a man of… some