The Dragon's Son Read Free

his face—the face that pained Bellona to look upon because
she had loved Ven’s mother dearly and grieved her deeply and she blamed Ven for
her loss. And, not for the first time in his life, Ven thought about his
father.
    The father, who had given him his legs—the legs of
a beast— and who was the reason for his name.
     

2
     
    VEN SPENT THE DAY IN THE CAVE. BELLONA WOULD NOT miss him. He was free to do
what he liked during the day, so long as he completed his chores. The rule was
to be home by sunset. The one time he broke that rule, ventured too far away,
so that he was late coming back, Bellona whipped him with a willow branch, then
made him stand in the middle of the room all night. If he started to slump or
doze off, she flicked him with the branch.
    The cave was not a large one, to Yen’s disappointment, for he often saw
visions in his mind of vast caverns with enormous chambers and labyrinthine
passages to be endlessly explored. Sometimes, at night, if Ven couldn’t sleep
or if the snarl of the wild cat or the snuffling and pawing of a bear around
their hut woke him, he would imagine he was curled up safely in the darkest,
deepest depths of his cave, so that no one in the world could ever, ever find
him. Not even his mother.
    Yen’s cave had only one chamber and had apparently been used by a bear
taking its long sleep in the winter. Last fall, Ven had been certain that the
bear would return to claim it and he had prepared himself to defend it, for
under Bellona’s tutelage he was already a deft hand with a small bow.
Fortunately for him and for the bear, the animal had smelled his strange and
vaguely terrifying scent and sought another refuge, leaving Ven in sole
possession of the cave.
    Screened by a heavy stand of trees and a jumble of rock, the cave was always
in shadow. Ven loved the darkness, for it was not dark to him. For him,
darkness was filled with vibrant colors, wild and clashing and dazzling, that
blazed across his mind. Alone, safe and protected by the darkness, he could
close his eyes and watch the colors, touch them, handle them, shape them, as
Bellona shaped the arrowheads or planed the arrow’s shaft.
    He played with the colors on this day, his birthday. He tossed the colors
into the air and caught them as they fell. He used the colors to form an image
of his mother, Melisande, giving her his face, for Bellona had told him last
year on his birthday that he had his mother’s face.
    Ven made his mother’s face softer than his, forming it to match the faces of
mothers he’d seen at the faire. Melisande’s face was soft and kind and always
sad, for no matter how hard he tried, he could not imagine her smiling at him,
as other mothers smiled at their children. He hoped that today she might smile,
for it was his birthday, and when he had created her, he reached out his hand
to her.
    Another hand—a child’s hand, like his own—took shape and form in his
darkness. The hand was not made up of the colors of his mind, but was formed of
colors of another mind. The child’s hand reached for his hand. . . .
    Startled, Ven lost control. The colors swirled about and the image of his
mother and the strange hand vanished in the confusion. He sat hunched in the
cave in the darkness and wondered •what had happened. Another mind had touched
his, that much he knew. As he and Bellona talked with words, the other mind
talked with colors. Ven had heard a voice within the colors, but he hadn’t been
able to understand what it said.
    The experience jarred him. He didn’t know whether he liked it or not. In
some ways, it was pleasurable and exciting, and in some ways terrifying. He sat
in the darkness, keeping the colors carefully subdued. He wanted to hear the
voice again, to try to understand it.
    He thought about the rabbit snares.
    Ven summoned the colors and painted his mother’s face, used her face to bait
the trap. He opened his mind to the vast darkness and waited, impatiently,
expectantly, for