Free Dragonheart by Charles Edward POGUE

lips, the fullness of her breasts, the sweep of her brow, and the thick lashes of her eyes. It was never anything she consciously aspired to, or thought about, or even made an effort to enhance. It was just indelibly there one day. She found it frightening and strangely wonderful, but she was still uncomfortable and did not know what to do with it. No, she was not the child the piglet remembered. She had greatly changed. In many ways. And not all were physical.
    Searching the pale intensity of Einon’s gaze, she wondered if he could strip away the altering years and unmask the truth. And if not, would he connect her to Riagon and, in so doing, prompt his memory of that day on the battlefield?
    “Who is that dog, Brok?” Einon shifted his gaze from Kara to Riagon, poised in blind uncertainty, confused by what was happening around him.
    Brok shrugged, “One of those rebels you crushed, isn’t he?”
    Kara smiled. No, there would be no connection made between her and Riagon the Red. Nor even a connection between the white-haired, sightless skeleton and the red-maned giant who had slain Freyne. Piglet didn’t remember him at all. His vendetta had been merely a moment of mindless violence, forgotten once the toll had been exacted. Now Riagon was just another rebel he had blinded, another peasant he had maimed, or whipped, or slain. Just another faceless body among a heap of faceless bodies in his charnel house of tyranny. They meant nothing to him; she meant nothing. There was no savoring of Riagon’s fate, only indifference to it. And in that indifference, Kara saw hope.
    “He is of no further use to you, milord.” Kara pleaded her suit carefully. “And he will remember your punishment always as he gropes through your kingdom in darkness.”
    “True,” Einon mused amiably, staring at her.
    Put a crown on a pig, he’s still a pig, thought Kara. “For pity’s sake, Your Highness, release him.”
    “Release him?” Those pale eyes stared at her curiously, then sparkled. “Granted, wench!”
    In one flashy blur of motion, Einon notched another arrow and sent it flying . . . straight into Riagon’s heart, pitching him back over the very stone he was shaping. Kara stood dumbstuck.
    “I always said death was a release, not a punishment,” the king philosophized.
    The laughter of his sycophants could not shut out Kara’s scream.
    “Father!” She ran toward the fallen man, her hood flying back, unleashing her wild red tumble of hair.
    “Father . . .” Kara knelt beside Riagon, cradling him to her.
    “K-K-Kara . . .” The redbeard’s gnarled hand clutched for his daughter, then flopped back, unrewarded. His head sagged against her breast. Kara rocked his lifeless body, weeping. His headband fell off and his hair spilled down over his blind eyes.
    Hoofbeats intruded upon her grief. She looked up to see the piglet and his flunkies riding out of the quarry. Einon spurred his horse around for one last look, then sped off to overtake the others. Leaving her to her mourning. The crackling of the smithy’s fire sounded the dirge. Kara picked her father’s headband out of the dust. Pressing it to her face, she washed it with her tears.

Eight
    AVALON
    “Avalon is a fable, priest.”
“In Avalon, lost Avalon, so the legends say
In mystery and mist, there valiant Arthur lay.
And resting with him, the vanquished heroes of his day.”
    The grease on Gilbert’s pink, plump cheeks glistened in the firelight as he stuffed more meat into them. Without swallowing, he swung back into his florid recitation of the scribbled parchment in his hand, spraying bits of half-chewed food along with his poetry as he waved his mutton joint in time to his suspect meter.
“Oh, Avalon, fair Avalon, this poor world’s astray.
So in honor of your dead, I bend my knees to pray
To seek your shining wisdom, to find your secret way!”
    Gilbert rose and paced, still flailing out the dubious rhythm with his wagging mutton bone. He began his