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

wouldn’t kill me.” I tried to put instinctive knowledge into terms someone else might understand. “My father is—was the Hurogmeten. Perhaps you know what that means better than anyone else. To him it was the most important thing a human could be, better than high king, but the title was only temporary, to be given away like this ring when he died.”
    â€œBut all men must do that,” commented Oreg reasonably. “His father entrusted Hurog to Fenwick. He would live on through his children.”
    â€œHe killed my grandfather,” I said. It was the first time I’d ever said it out loud.
    Everything about Oreg went still. Then he whispered, “Your grandfather was killed by bandits. Your father brought him here to die.”
    â€œMy grandfather was struck from behind by my father’s arrow. My father admitted it once when he was drunk.”
    We’d been hunting, just the two of us, when I was nine or ten. We’d camped up in the mountains, and my father began drinking as soon as we’d set up the tent. I don’tremember what led him to confess, but I still remembered the look he’d turned on me afterward. He hadn’t meant to let that slip, and even then I’d known it was dangerous knowledge. I’d pretended I hadn’t heard him, that his words had been too slurred. It might have been that slip that sent him over the edge, but I’d come to believe his antagonism went deeper than that.
    â€œHe saw me as a rival for Hurog. Time was his enemy, and I its standard bearer.” That sounded like something my hero Seleg might have written in his journals. It also would have sounded better on paper than it did out loud, so I tried for a less dramatic tone. “My father didn’t like to lose battles.”
    I left the bed and went to the polished square of metal hanging on the wall. I looked like my father, not so startling without the Hurog blue eyes, but a younger version of my father all the same. The size came from his mother’s family, but the features were Hurog. “I was his successor, a constant reminder that he would someday lose Hurog. I’m not certain even he realized it, but from the day I first held a sword, he thought of me as a threat. You might recall, if you were paying attention, that the beating responsible for my “change” was not the first time he beat me unconscious. If it had continued, he would have killed me before I was old enough to defend myself. And I had the example of my mother to follow.”
    â€œWhen she lost herself in dreams, he didn’t beat her as much. Or visit her bed,” agreed the boy solemnly.
    â€œMy speaking problem made my father think I’d become an idiot, and I decided to take advantage of it.”
    â€œWhy continue it now, after he is dead?”
    I felt my way to an answer. “My uncle rules here for the next two years. Like my father, he was raised to believe that becoming Hurogmeten is the summit of what a man can accomplish. I’m not sure he’ll want to give it back.”
    â€œYou’re so certain he’s a villain? He was a nice boy . . .”Oreg’s voice dropped to a whisper. “At least I think it was Duraugh, but sometimes I don’t remember so well.”
    I closed my eyes. “I don’t know him, only that he has little patience with idiots. The gods know I wouldn’t want an idiot in charge of Hurog, either. We live too close to the edge of survival.” I shrugged and looked at Oreg, who’d somehow come to be crouched at my feet. “I don’t trust him.”
    I’d talked more to Oreg than I ever remember talking to anyone except Ciarra. Speech was still something of an effort, and it tired me. Ironic how honesty felt much more awkward than lying.”
    â€œTrust your instincts,” said Oreg after a moment. “It will harm none if you remain cautious for a while yet.”
    He