His teeth sheared through meat and bone, and he swallowed. Meat, bone, hide, hooves -- his belly didn't care. He swallowed again, and again, and again. The beast vanished. Khe'sha licked the blood-soaked marsh grass, savoring the bitterness of leaves under the salt of the blood. His belly swelled and quieted. He rumbled contentment.
"You have enjoyed my gift?"
Khe'sha spun in his tracks, water boiling around his tail. A dark woman stood above him on a low rise of land, just slightly out of reach -- olive skin, black hair, her clothing dark smoke gray as if she were Sha'khe in human form. He tested the air again with his tongue. No, not human. She was an Old One, one of those who came before the humans. No matter. He eased himself onto land.
{Gift?}
He slid further up the slope. Humans or Old Ones -- the only difference was that Old Ones could draw on the Power of this land. Both were his enemies; both were his prey.
She smiled at him, faintly mocking. "Don't waste your effort, love. I can move even faster than you. And we aren't enemies. Do enemies bring food? Was that moose the gift of an enemy?"
So that prey was called "moose." No wonder he'd never tasted its blood before. Someone had brought it here, to the edge of his marsh. He studied the dark witch. She claimed to have brought the "moose" as a gift, but his kind knew how to read truth. This Old One tasted slippery and evasive. She kept many secrets.
She smiled again, as if she read his thoughts. "There is a saying in many lands: 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' I hear vengeance in your thoughts."
{Then you hear well. There is another saying in the Celestial Temple: "The friend of my enemy is my enemy." I smell your kinship with those I hate. Why should I not eat you, along with them?}
She laughed. "Because you can't, love." And then her face turned grim, and he sensed truth in her thoughts. "I also seek revenge. I had a brother, a twin, as close to me as a dragon's mate. His bones lie near to your mate's in the forest. His killers also live in that stone house that crowns the hill. Kinship or not, they owe me blood and pain. For that and other things."
He eased back, letting his full belly float in the shallows. He felt the inner warmth that made him lazy for days after feeding, that called him to bask in the sun and drowse until hunger woke him again to hunt.
{You, too, seek revenge?}
"We think much alike, love, your kind and mine. Not surprising, since our dreams built these lands of legend and filled them with our thoughts. Your kind and mine have walked together since long before the humans drove us from the earth. The Sages of the Celestial Temple are my cousins."
Once again, her words walked the edge between truth and lie. Khe'sha remembered the Sages. They spoke with less malice and more calm. Their words danced in the sunlight while hers wore darkness like a cloak.
But his belly called out for sleep. Sha'khe might still guard the nest-mound, but her eyes were empty sockets and her claws lay scattered in the forest. Her teeth would never bite again. He had to return before his belly ruled his brain.
{What help can you offer? I have smelled the new rulers. They smell of trees and the ways of dangerous men, they smell of old songs and the ecstasies of breeding. I taste nothing of the Master's Power that bound us to his bidding. They are weak. I do not need your help for my revenge.}
"Ah, but they killed your mate, love, for all that taste of weakness. They killed the Master, and my brother. Don't think them weak. They have strength in ways you can't imagine, ways I can fight if we make alliance. We'll need subtlety as well as strength, if we're to taste their blood."
Khe'sha heard more than she said. He tasted the memory of traps that turned on the ones who set them, of plots twisted to ruin and power hidden and weakness destroying strength. This dark witch breathed out the smell of treachery. Such allies were dangerous.
But Sha'khe was dead. The new rulers of the keep had murdered her. And he did not care if he lived past his revenge. Khe'sha dipped his head and narrowed his eyes in the mode of watchful distrust.
{The enemy of my enemy is my friend.}
He could eat this one afterwards.
Her smile also tasted of wariness. "I'll need time to cast my nets around them. We'll need other allies, you and I. We'll need to divide them, bard and warrior and red-headed witch-sisters, set them each by themselves with their backs bared to knife and fang. You have great strength, but you'd attack a castle the same way you took that moose. Trust me for guile, love. Trust me for guile."
That carried the flavor of truth. Khe'sha slithered backward until he floated free of the marsh muck. The nest called to him, and the slow drowse of a full belly in the sun. She called for patience? Dragons were the most patient race in all the lands. Their plots spanned centuries. The songs told of revenge passed down through generations and finally brought to hatching when even the names of the first enemies were no more than echoes.
Chapter Three
Fiona closed her eyes and breathed deep through her nose, savoring the blended aromas of dew on the meadow grass, of clover and hedgerow flowers and the hidden traps she'd set. Her fields pleased her, neat and smoothly rolling and laid out like an artist’s dream of farm country. No ragged stubble after harvest
