Rhiana

Rhiana

Michele

Hauf

www.LUNA-Books.com

Holly LaMon, Alice Countryman and Nita Krevans,

incredible women, each in their own manner.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

COMING NEXT MONTH

CHAPTER ONE

Western shore of France—1437

The face of the limestone wall was not sheer. Juts of jagged rock poked out like gooseflesh on a cold man’s arm, which made for good handholds. Feet bare, for better hold, Rhiana balanced on a helmet-sized shelf of rock. Her back and shoulders pinned to the wall, with outstretched arms, she clasped the uneven surface.

Her heartbeat thudded. A whisper of early-morning breeze curled into the strands of red hair come unbound from the leather strips she used to wrestle her waist-length curls from her eyes. Her skull vibrated with the constant pulse of excitement. This was the sort of endurance test she craved.

One misbalanced step would see her plunging to the rocky seashore below. Rhiana did not remark even a flutter of fear in her breast. No mincing, faint-hearted female be she. Tears and fright were her sister Odette’s mien.

’Twas the wee hours of the morning, just past lauds. A few white-bellied seabirds coasted over the somnambulant waves below. A silver sky, this day. The moon had fallen behind the distant line of centuries-old oak and elm that topped the cliff with a thick emerald cap. Only the tides below that hugged the shore with intermittent shushes marked the time.

This was the hour it slept, the moments between the moon’s descent and dawn’s rise. Rhiana’s trainer had taught her to observe and understand the beast, though she had only once before had the opportunity, and that had been brief.

Opportunity had again come, but not without risk.

The creature inhabited the caves wending beneath the mountain that shielded the village of St. Rénan on the north side from the brisk sea storms that frequently arose in the winter months. Caves labryinthed for leagues throughout the mountain, poking out dozens of exit holes along the craggy limestone wall facing the sea.

The wall of stone to which Rhiana clung.

Swinging her right shoulder, she shuffled her feet on the small jut, rotated her hips, and swung her body around. A deft move, which placed her nose to the wall of rock. The stone smelled like the sea, salted by centuries of wind and wave. Dashing out her tongue, it tasted dry and salty, much like last evening’s fish stew cooked by Odette. Her sister should keep to the medical arts she so liked to dabble in, and leave the cooking for…well, certainly not Rhiana. ’Twas their mother, Lydia, who created marvels from flour and sugar.

She moved onward. And down.

A wide ledge served as opening to one of the caves, and it stretched out below her like a minstrel’s stage. Yet it was a dangerous leap. The castle’s finest acrobats might form a tower of four men to broach the distance. A precarious descent.

“I can do this,” she muttered to the stone wall. Wasn’t as if she’d never before made this climb. “Slowly but surely.”

With fingers curved to strong hooks to cling for hold, Rhiana managed another cautious move. She slid her right leg out and tapped a small jut with her toes, testing its stability. Bits of rock crumbled away. Quickly, she retracted and bent her left leg. The toes of her right foot found a more secure spot. The rhythm of her heartbeat remained steady—focused. She worked herself lower.

’Twould be better to fashion a rope ladder and secure it high. Would that she had so clever an idea before making this perilous descent. But she would certainly remember it for future visits. Sure as the snow always fell in winter, there would be future visits.

Pray she survived this day to see that future.

The scrape of her scaled armor against the stone cautioned Rhiana to go slowly. Mustn’t make overmuch noise. The creature’s hearing was excellent. As was hers. The only thing known to muffle its senses—and hers—was fire and smoke.

It wasn’t so much that she heard the sound of the beast’s heartbeats in her ears and processed it as noise, rather, the pulse beats of life echoed in her blood as if an ancient stirring of instinct. All her life, Rhiana had noticed, before all others, when a dragon had nested in the caves of St. Rénan. Even as a child of five she had alerted her stepfather to a dragon flying the distant skies.

Only now was she capable of doing something about that eerie cognizance.

Now she determined the distance for a jump was right. Fingers dry and dusted with limestone powder, she secured a good fingerhold on two craggy dents of rock, and dangled her legs over the cave opening. The muscles in her arms stretched to a luxurious ache. Biceps strained, but did not threaten mutiny. This task was to her mettle. Such inner power, it felt good. Strength—it was her boon.

“Admit it!” Memories gushed back from childhood. She’d held her best friend, Rudolph against the wall, her wooden practice sword to his gut. “Say it!”

“I surrender!”

“Not that, Rudolph.”

“Oh. Must I?”

“Yes!”

On the verge of tears, Rudolph’s lips trembled, but he managed to say, “Girls are better than boys.”

Letting go, Rhiana landed her feet and immediately rolled to her side and shoulders, making a complete tumbling circle across the smooth, stone landing. To roll lessened the impact and spread it throughout her body, minimizing the hazard of broken bones. Her trainer had taught her the acrobatic move. She was indebted to Amandine Fleche for the summer he’d spent helping her to master the skills required to perform such tasks. For she constantly sought danger and answered its call.

As well, the call to seek fire ever tempted.

Scrambling to the edge of the cave opening, Rhiana pressed her back to the magnesium-flecked wall that arced and curved about the half moon of blackness. The entrance to hell, the villagers named any and all of the cave openings dotting the seashore.

The scriff of her armor against stone was muted thanks to the leather tunic upon which the scales had been lashed. Paul Tassot had designed the armored tunic, fashioned from the iridescent indigo and violet scales removed from Rhiana’s first—and only—kill. The scales were impervious to blade, bolt and flame, though she rarely worried for flame.

Many leagues of tunnels and snaking passages wended through the darkness, eventually forming the narrow tunnels that led to the penetralia deep beneath the heart of St. Rénan. Never before had more than a single beast nested within the caves at a time.

Here, standing at the mouth to the cave, the vibrations pulsing in Rhiana’s blood amplified. Mayhap she had gauged the heartbeat incorrectly? Could there be…more than one?

“Pray to St. Agatha’s veil there be but the one,” she murmured.

This day she would not enter the darkness. She had but come to mark out her suspicions and verify what the entire fortressed village of St. Rénan feared. A dragon had once again come to nest in the caves that opened onto the sea.

And while past years had proven little interest to the dragons—none had attacked the village for over a decade—this time it was different.

Yesterday evening, Jean Claude Coopier, the village ferrier, had been snatched from his very boots by a vicious dragon. Indeed, Rhiana had noted the empty boots, still standing upright as if a man wore them, as she passed through the field of vivid pinks to the north of St. Rénan on her trek to the caves. Jean Claude had been the third villager taken in five days.

Taken wasn’t exactly the word for…murder. A second man had been found—well, parts of him had been discovered at the edge of the forest. A third had been plucked up and dropped into the sea, never to be rescued.

A carnivorous hell had settled into the caves.

Dragons had ever troubled St. Rénan—the hoard drew them. Or it once had. For two years the caves had stood empty. Not since the summer of Rhiana’s training had she seen a dragon. The people had become complacent. The festive hoard-raids had flourished. Even youngsters banned from the raids had begun to trek to the massive caves to sneak about, and the very few returned with a glittering gold coin as proof of their daring. Of course, the youngsters were aware only of the hoard that lured the dragons.

Two days ago, St. Rénan had battened down. Rhiana felt the changed attitude as a tangible shiver in her bones. The people feared. A fear which grew stronger every day, for this time, it was different. Never had the dragon so boldly hunted people. Once, a man need fear danger only should he stumble into the caves and upon a sleeping dragon. History told the creature had to be aggravated to attack. It must sense danger to itself or its offspring. And very little posed danger to a dragon.

One dragon was easily endured, for the beast rarely remained long. Being social animals, the voracious rampants required the company of their kind while they were young and wily. Only the elder, maxima dragons chose to inhabit a hoard and nest for decades, never leaving, content to exist alone in torpor.

Never, in Rhiana’s two decades, could she recall a dragon purposefully swooping down from the sky to snatch up a helpless and flailing body.

No man in St. Rénan dared step forth to challenge the beast. Such boldness was the slayer’s vocation.

Yet there did happen to be a slayer in residence.

For many years Rhiana had felt a stirring in her blood. Mayhap, since the very day she entered this world near the warm licking flames of the massive hearth fire in the castle kitchens. The hearth was so huge a grown man could step inside it without bending his head and shoulders. The warmth of the constant blazing flame ever entranced her. Visits to her mother, Lydia, who worked in the castle kitchen, were long and frequently silent, for Rhiana would sit before the flames and become transfixed.

When she was three and her mother would leave her to her stepfather’s care in the armory, Rhiana would sit before the glowing brazier. Once, she had grabbed for the entrancing flames. Paul, who had just turned to speak to her, let out a shriek and lunged to jerk her hand from the flame. The hem of her sleeve had frayed and burned, yet her flesh had not. Paul had never told Lydia, for he had been remiss in watching Rhiana.

One would think Rhiana had learned a lesson then. But no, it happened on a few more occasions; each time Paul would remand her and shake his head. He’d lost his fright over her strange compulsion to flame, but never his astonishment.

Fire chaser, her stepfather had taken to calling her, when no one else was around, for most would use it as an oath against an arrogant slayer. Ever enchanted by fire, and not afraid of harm.

As for a fire-breathing dragon? This day, Rhiana would stand tall before danger and show it her teeth.

Stepping out to the center of the landing, she marked her steps. Ten paces. Which made the landing about twenty paces squared. It likely served as a main entrance. There were dozens of openings in the rock wall that hugged the sea and stretched for leagues beyond Rhiana’s sight, though this was the only one she’d ever explored.

The cry of a seabird soaring overhead distracted her momentarily. And in that moment the shadows within the cave grew darker. The entrance to hell had never before felt so ominous.

Gifted with Lucifer’s flame… Or so legend told.

Sage scented the air. Sweet and heady, a familiar scent, but never before in so voluminous a concentration. Ancient scholars said that sage could expand one’s lifetime to the point of immortality.

Rhiana didn’t believe it. No one lived forever.

The fine hairs at her wrists sprang upright. Sensing the ominous presence before seeing it, she lowered her gaze to search the black void. Crouching, she centered her balance. All power manifested in her belly, her female center. From there she drew up her strength.

Tilting her head, she listened. The basso heartbeats pulsed out a tormenting tattoo.

The distinct scent of the beast curled through Rhiana’s nostrils. It tasted bitter and warning at the back of her throat, and spoke on slithering hisses. I am here. You cannot stop me. Attack scent, that. Once before she had scented it, sharp like the sea, innate and feral. And once before she had vanquished the threat.

Spreading her legs and squaring her hips beneath her shoulders for a firm stance, Rhiana reached behind her back and unlatched the crossbow from the leather baldric slung from shoulder to hip. Specially designed by Paul, and forged completely of steel, the crossbow bore not a sliver of wood that might easily be burned to ash. The string? Fashioned from finely braided dragon’s gut, as well, impervious to flame. A cumbersome windlass was not required to draw taunt the string on this precious bit of weapon. Flexible at rest, the dragon-gut was easily pulled to notch, yet shrank tightly for a forceful release.

She notched an iron bolt into place. But she would not fire unless the beast proved a threat. It could be wandering in a sleepy daze, have mistakenly scampered out to the cave opening. Despite their deadly nature, Rhiana revered the dragons. Elegant, wondrous creatures of flight and flame, she felt an affinity toward the scaled beasts.

“Not of hell,” she murmured in awe.

’Tis a wicked enchantment, surely, that birthed them. An enchantment that, much against her intuitive calling, lured her to arms.

The click of curved ebony talons, stealthy, marking its pace upon the stone cave floor, told Rhiana this one did not approach in a somnambulant daze.

She slid her free hand over the dagger secured at her hip. The handle was fashioned from an ebony dragon talon.

Emerging into the pale grayness of the pre-dawn, one scaled paw studded with deadly talons rattled out a warning staccato. Indigo scales glinted even in the feeble light. All about, a heavy silence thickened the air. Not so much as a lap of seawater against the stones on the shore below could be heard.

And then, from out of the dark void, the beast’s head swept forward. The size of two field oxen and rimmed in hard indigo scales and juts of deadly spines was the skull. The horns stabbing out from the temples were small, no longer than Rhiana’s forearm, but weapons she respected. Tusks at the corner of the mouth were but short picks spiking to the sides. ’Twas a rampant, young and wild, many decades of growth still required to reach the elder maxima’s size and docility.

But no less dangerous to a man’s mortality.

Thrusting back her shoulders and lifting her chin, Rhiana declared, “I am come! Let us begin this dance of will and strength.”

The beast tilted its head, for a moment seeming to wonder at her words.

Rhiana did know they could speak the mortal tongue no more than she could read their beastly thoughts. Yet, Amandine had told her the maxima had such ability.

Focusing on the pattern of ridged scales between the eyes, shaped like an inverted cross, she readied her aim.

A hiss of sage-tainted smoke billowed from the nostrils in a creepy fog. So sweet, their breath. Intoxicating, should one lose focus and succumb. Smoke dulled her senses, but she knew it had the same effect on her opponent.

The beast drew up tall, its head rising as it stretched up its long neck.

Rhiana anticipated its next move.

Defiant in her stance, she merely smiled as the creature’s head lunged and the jaws opened wide. Deadly maws targeted her feeble size. A filigree of amber flame danced upon the air. One moment it formed a wisp of steam at the corners of the dragon’s tusk-pointed jaw, the next, it formed a rippling cacophony of heat and fire and evil that encompassed Rhiana’s body.

Heat, smothering, yet intoxicatingly dreamy, wavered images of the world before her. Amber wall of stone on fire. Distorted crystal sky. A frenzied blotch of scale and fang behind the wall of flame.

Standing amidst the fire Rhiana could not breathe. Her lungs expanded, then sealed up. Her chest felt bloated, stopped up. Her senses began to shut down. But she did not fear.

Fire. ’Twas her vitae.

As the last tendril of flame extinguished, Rhiana confidently raised her crossbow and sighted in her mark. The dragon, its head still lowered as if to attack, held its wide gold eyes at a level to her shoulders. Inverted cross in sight above the top of her bolt—perfect.

She released the trigger. The heavy steel bolt hissed through the sky and landed the target. There, in the center of the beast’s skull, right between the eyes—the kill spot, a direct entrance to the brain through a fine seam in the skull. Cursed by Heaven for its fall from grace.

Impact forced the creature up onto its powerful hind legs. The belly of soft, semipermeable violet scales glittered as the first beams of sunlight broke the horizon. Great pellicle wings scooped the air, the force of wind pushing Rhiana back a few steps. She marked her position. Fire did no harm, but a slap from a wildly flailing wing could push her over the edge.

And then, it tumbled. Over the side of the cliff it soared with little grace. Once an elegant beast of flight, now it crashed upon the stones and boulders below with a bone- and scale-crunching sound that sifted up dust and caused the seabirds to cry out the death of its winged compatriot.

A quick death, that.

Rhiana, still standing her ground, waited for the calamity to settle. Breaths huffing, a smile formed.

Swiping a palm across her face she nodded, and then propped the crossbow against her shoulder. “’Tis not a good day to be a dragon.”

CHAPTER TWO

The beast had landed the shore; its upper half, including the neck and skull, had plunged into the sea. No bones or scales to claim this day; the tide would carry away the carcass before nightfall.

From within the blackness of the cave opening another heartbeat yet pulsed, but she did not sense the second had been wakened by the attack.

A second? Truly, there was another.

Was it the mate? The fallen dragon was female, evident in its bright coloring. It was the male that protected the eggs, and which was in need of dull gray scales. Never had Rhiana seen a dragon egg. Or a male, for that matter.

Topside, after a perilous climb up the cliff face, Rhiana rushed across the open meadow to the forest and retrieved the thick wool cloak she’d secreted behind the twisted trunk of a burned-out oak stump. Swinging the cloak around her shoulders, she then followed the purlieu of the forest a league back to the battlement walls.

The sun dashed a gold line across the horizon and even from a distance Rhiana heard a rooster crow the morn. Beads of dew danced at grass-tip blades like faery finery. The morning smelled fresh and salted with the slightest tang of sage.

As she walked, she pulled the leather tie from her bound hair and shook it over her shoulder. True, dragon’s flame did little harm to her flesh and hair. But she hadn’t yet discovered a fabric that could withstand the heat, be it dragon flame or a simple hearth fire. The thin cambric tunic she wore beneath the scaled leather armor had burned away during her flaming, proving the wool cloak a necessity.

This armor was remarkable. Fashioned by her stepfather Paul, the leather cuirass was more a tunic that covered chest, back and the tops of her shoulders and arms. Secured at the backs of her arms and down her torso with leather straps, the thin strips were stitched through with fine mail wire to allow malleable strength that couldn’t be burned away. As for the mail chausses, Rhiana had made them herself, utilizing double rings instead of the usual single ring method. Rarely did she wear but hose beneath them—heavier chamois braies were unnecessary—for the thick mail protected verily, even one’s modesty.

Rhiana felt she might wear merely the armor, baring more flesh than any maiden should, for it would save on damaged clothing. But she must be cautious. Should she be spied in such attire, surely there would be a price to pay.

All in St. Rénan knew of her industry. They had seen her tromping about in the armor and wielding her dagger. “She’s an odd one,” they’d mutter to themselves. “Always has been.” Why, some had mistaken her for a boy when younger, for her antics and attraction to all things muddy or slimy, and her frequent play with makeshift weapons.

Yet, all in St. Rénan believed the real slayer who had been visiting the village two years earlier had taken down the dragon. A dragon Rhiana had slain. At the time, she hadn’t felt the need to correct perceptions, for she’d been so excited, the elation of the kill had far outweighed any glory the villagers might have bestowed. Instead, she’d gladly stood back while Amandine had collected his dragon’s purse from the hoard council as payment for his kill.

Praise and acknowledgment mattered very little to Rhiana, only that her loved ones were kept safe. For without family, what had one left?

The village walls were sixty feet high and fashioned from massive bricks shaped from the same ocher limestone that frilled the seashore. Four towers set at each direction of the compass punctuated the battlement walls, with wide parapet walks stretching between them all. The walls completely closed in the village, for it was small, yet growing, though none had chosen to build outside the walls for the dangers were real.

Avoiding the drawbridge that crossed to St. Rénan’s barbican and main entrance gates, Rhiana skipped along the curtain wall to the north entrance, close to where the artillery stored dusty trebuchets and long-forgotten cannonballs. It was rarely used, for siege and battle were nonexistent.

A narrow plank, no wider than two fists, stretched across the dry, yet deep, moat, attracting only the most deft and balanced.

Steadying herself with but one outstretched arm, Rhiana danced across the wobbly plank. The scaled armor clicked softly and her mail chausses chinged. The sound of mail in motion made her smile. It signified all things chivalrous and adventurous to her. Halfway across she lunged into a bounce. The plank wobbled, digging up plumes of dry earth at either end. Lifting one foot out before her, Rhiana performed another bounce, landed her foot and skipped quickly to ground and the thick iron door.

She glanced back at the expanse of moat she’d crossed. A satisfied nod followed. Every opportunity to danger must be met.

Rudolph manned the barbican in the early morn, but his watch didn’t start until prime, so Rhiana had coerced him to guard this door. Rudolph was a lifelong friend and fellow cohort in today’s mission, for ’twas his brother Jean Claude who had been snatched from his very boots.