[Hurog 01] - Dragon Bones by Patricia Briggs Read Free Book Online

unexpected, I’d learned that you often got more answers than if you asked questions.
    His head snapped up, and he looked at me, frowning. Whatever he thought to read in my face, I don’t think he found it. “I try to watch out for her,” he said. “It isn’t much. A door that lets her escape to a quiet place where her father can’t find her but her brothers can.”
    We sat for a bit in a companionable silence, while I thought about what he’d meant when he told me that he was the keep. I played idly with the unaccustomed ring on my finger.
    â€œYou can’t take the ring off,” Oreg said with a start, as if he’d just remembered what he’d come here to do. “It gives you control of the keep. Only if you are dying will it come off. Then you must give it to your heir.”
    â€œIf I give it to someone else?” I asked, after trying to get the ring off and failing. I wished I’d known about that before I put it on. Rings weren’t good to wear when you fight; they change your sword grip and catch on things. At the very least, I’d have put it on my left hand.
    â€œWhomever you give it to becomes your heir.”
    â€œAh,” I said. “Tell me more about the spell, the ring, the keep, and yourself.”
    His face went curiously blank. I recognized the look.After all, I’d practiced it in the polished shield on my wall until it was the expression I usually wore. I wondered if he’d watched me. If he’d had cow eyes like mine, he might have looked stupid, too. As it was, he just looked secretive.
    â€œI am a slave,” he said. “Your slave, Master, bound to your ring. Soul slave to you. Whatever you ask of me, I will do if I am able—and I have much power.”
    I thought of what that would have meant to some of the more disreputable of my ancestors. He was a pretty boy, like my brother. Poor slave.
    â€œIf I were to ask you to sit where you are without moving, what would happen?” I asked.
    â€œI sit here without moving,” he said with bleak truthfulness, “until you die or tell me differently. I must do whatever you tell me.” There was tension in his body, though if he’d been here all this time, he should know that I didn’t torment people in my power. But, I supposed, that like Stygian . . . Pansy, it would take him time to learn.
    â€œWhen you said that you were the keep, did you mean that literally? Or that you are tied to it by magic?”
    â€œI don’t think there is much of a difference,” he said, examining his hands.
    â€œDo you know what’s going on in the keep?”
    The boy tilted his head, his eyes looking at something other than what was before them. “In the great hall, the fire is banked for the night. There’s a rat sniffing in the corner for food. Your uncle is standing before the fireplace, hands behind his back, rocking a little on his heels—”
    â€œEnough,” I said. “Can you look more than one place at a time?”
    â€œNo more than you can look at the far wall and behind you at the same time.”
    â€œCan you hear as well?”
    â€œYes.”
    I rubbed my pant legs. I could work with Pansy’s fears because I understood him. I won over Penrod by the samemeans. I needed to understand Oreg as well as I understood the mistreated horse. “Does it hurt you when the keep is damaged?”
    â€œNo,” he said, then continued almost reluctantly, “I can feel it, but it doesn’t hurt.”
    â€œDo you occupy the whole of the keep, or just the older parts?”
    â€œThe whole keep, and that which belongs to it. The curtain walls, the stables, the smithy—the sewers, even.”
    â€œIf you are the keep, how is it that you still have a body?” I asked, tipping my head at his human body.
    â€œIt amused my father.”
    I thought about what he’d said for a while. “If the