With my size and features, no one expected me to be intelligent. I took a deep breath and concentrated on looking like a stupid ox instead of a vengeful brother before I crashed through the brush to the riverbank where the keep sewer emptied into the river. Tune to catch them and find out what they'd done. "She can point, can't she? I tell you, he'll kill us!" "He'll know it was us," predicted Erdrick with his customary gloom. "Good thing he's got the brains to match," Beckram said serenely. "Next time, don't tease a girl whose brother's the size of an ox." Erdrick might be right I might just kill them this time. "It's not my fault, Erdrick." Beckram, Erdrick's twin, spoke soothingly. My cousin and I were not friendly, but the nagging certainty that I was the "he" to whom my cousin referred gave me pause. The willows were so thick between the trail I followed and the river, he couldn't see me any more than I could see him. "He'll kill us." My cousin Erdrick's voice, though hushed, came from the river side of the trail. Magic gathered around me, pulsing through my veins as I roared out the Hurog battle cry. Impulsively, I rose to my feet and opened my crippled mind so I could feel Hurog's
It was my legacy, passed father to son, like my blond hair and large size.
Like most keeps in Shavig, northernmost of the Five Kingdoms of the Tallvenish High King, Hurog was greater in land than wealth. But from the sea harbor visible in the east to the bald-topped mountain in the west, the land belonged to Hurog. By the standards of the Five Kingdoms, Hurog was only a small keep, barely able to support itself from the meager harvest the north climate and rocky soils allowed.
The ancient fortress's dark stone walls rose protectively around the keep, formidable still, though there was little chance of enemy attack now. On each door, worn by years of harsh northern weather, a bas-relief bronze dragon kept watch over the valley below.īelow me, Hurog Keep perched on its man-made eyrie. Because the ground was angled, the tops of the doors were higher by several feet than the bottoms. The doors were huge, each as wide as I was tall and twice that in length. Breathing heavily from the climb, I sat upon the ancient bronze doors some long-distant ancestor had placed flat into the highest face of the mountain.
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