The Book of Jade Sample Chapters
Chapter One
Jade
“Where are you, Chard!” I shoved
the window open and looked out into the night sky. Thick, wet fog curled around
the turret wall. Particles of mist touched my cheeks.
I searched the sky for the green
glow that would tell me he was coming, but there was only a grey, living
darkness crawling through the sky. There was no sign of Chard, and my heart
sank deep within me.
I needed him.
I needed to escape my father’s
prison. I needed to soar through the night sky like wind and fire. I needed to
forget about demons and witches and kings that hid their daughters from the
world in cold, damp castle turrets.
I sank into the window sill and
hung my head. The night breathed its bitter breath on me. It sank into my flesh
and chilled me to the bone. I stared into the cylinder-shaped room, glaring at
it as if it were its fault I had been hidden away from the world outside my
father’s castle for seventeen miserable and lonely years, as if it was its
fault I was sad and lonely. Mountains of books filled my room, but even they
had never been capable of quenching my thirst for the world outside King
Trentis’s Castle walls.
A sudden gush of air at the
window ripped me from my thoughts and a blast of heat pressed against the flesh
of my face and arms. Chard landed against the face of the turret wall. The claws
in his feet dug into the cracks in the stones. His giant, black wings folded
around the turret, as if to embrace me.
Chard was nothing less than
magnificent, in my opinion. He was both beast and man. Both human and dragon.
From the hips up, he was every bit a man, rippling and bulging with muscle.
Long, raven-black hair framed his perfect and handsome face. But from the waist
down, Chard was every bit a dragon. His scales emanated a green, gaseous hue
that came from the tiny flecks of green crystals that were lodged beneath his
scales.
I looked into his illuminated
eyes. I was flooded by their emerald light. And then I threw my arms around his
neck and sank into the sanctuary that was his body.
Chard did not say a word to me.
He knew what I needed. Sometimes more than even I did. He reached in through the
window, curled his arm around me and pulled me out and onto his fire-hot back.
I wrapped my arms around him, locked my knees against his ribs and closed my
eyes, feeling the warmth of him chase away the chill in my
bones.
Chard pushed away from the
turret wall. I could feel his wings thrust against the sky with powerful
strokes, and I knew I was safe, if only for the while.
The dragman soared over the
curtain wall. The constant rush of wind at my face left me gulping for air. I
tucked my face into the bend of my arm and watched as the Kingdom of Fairaway rolled out of sight below us.
The fog had crept away from the
sea and was now forming a ceiling above the kingdom. But having spent my entire
life looking down on Fairaway, I did not have to see it to know what was below
me. I knew the kingdom by heart. It looked like a scar in the thick woods of
Whisper
Forest. It was like a giant
hand had risen up out of the sea and pressed its thumb down onto the land,
crushing the trees and creating a small valley in the mountains. Water, as black
as a grave, inhaled and exhaled on a shoreline that curved like a horse’s shoe.
The sand matched the snow-packed faces of the mountain peaks that dominated the
horizon.
Forty-seven cottages dotted the
earth below, thirty-eight barns, four sunken huts, and one rickety long-house.
I never did care to count the cows, chickens, horses and goats. Although I
should have, knowing how Chard liked to make it rain things. But I did take
care in knowing that there were forty-four families, nineteen children (each by
which I could call by name) and seven women who were with child. I loved every
single one of them and dreamed of the day when every one of them would love me
back. Until then, for reasons I had yet to understand, I would remain dead to
them.
The clouds were illuminated by
the light of Chard’s eyes and the green, gaseous hue emanating from the dragon
half of his body. With his wings stiff, cutting the air like a warm knife
through chilled cream, he glided over the white sands where the sea drank of the
land.
His body against mine was on the
brink of being unbearably hot, but the flow of the crisp night sky, breathing
on my skin, made the heat tolerable, almost pleasurable. The corded muscles in
Chard’s back hardened and flexed with each stroke of his wings, and I could feel
his raw power as he lorded over the sky.
It was one of the most beautiful
experiences I had ever known, riding on the back of a dragman, flying through
the night sky, gulping in wind, sometimes rain and sometimes snow. There were
often times where I would feel guilty for being the only one privileged enough
to experience this. Chard was the last of his kind. I was absolutely positive
that I was the only one he allowed on his back. Perhaps, even the only one who
knew he existed. That is, with the exception of Priscilla, The Witch.
“Hold on,” Chard warned. The
rumbling of his voice reverberated against my body.
“Whatever for?” I
asked, instantly worried. Chard arched his back and, after a sudden downward
stroke of his wings, shot for the sky in a spiraling, frenzied manner.
I locked my knees and elbows
against his ribs, screeching, as Chard turned us belly-to-the-sky and into a
backward soar. It was really gravity and the speed at which we were going that
kept me on his back. When I opened my eyes to find us rushing for the sea,
panic twisted inside of me. I knew what was going to happen next, so I took a
big gulp of air and closed my eyes tight. And just in time, before Chard
penetrated the sea, face first, and black water swallowed us whole.
The sea, as dark as a tomb,
spoke in a humming, drumming voice. The waters clung to my body, desperately
trying to claim me, as Chard soared up and out of the water, seemingly with as
much momentum as he had when he had dove into it. Face to the moonless sky,
Chard made like an arrow and shot upward, back up into the sky. Beads of water
popped and danced on Chard’s hot flesh before the wind carried them
away.
“Chard! You know how much that
frightens me!” I yelled.
“Yes. But I also know how much
that excites you, Princess.”
“No, it does not!” I blurted,
angrily, before realizing I was going to tell a lie. “Very well, it does,” I
mumbled. “Now take me back to the castle this instant!”
“You do not wish to go back
there, Princess.” Chard tilted toward the sea as he gracefully flew over the
black-capped water toward Fairaway.
“Oh, yes I do! Take me back,
now!” I yelled at him. Chard knew I hated the water. He knew that it was the one
and only thing in this world that frightened me to the core. But what he didn’t
know was that Lord Lanchester frightened me even more than this.
“I will take you back. Only if
you let me lick the brine from your lips.”
“Animal!” I growled at him,
dropping my cheek onto my forearm and trying to will my body to relax. Which
was difficult, due to the fact that my belly gently, almost without notice,
rose and fell with the slight rise and fall of Chard’s body moving in and out
of gravity’s reach.
From this far out over the sea,
I could see Lord Damorian Lanchester’s castle perched on the edge of a high
cliff that jutted out over the water like a crooked finger. I shivered at the
sight of it. A portion of Whisper
Forest was all that separated the
Kingdom of
Fairaway from Lord
Lanchester’s land in Norham. Though it was a generous portion of woods, there
still was not enough space between him and my kingdom, in my
opinion.
Everyone loved Damorian
Lanchester. They feared him too fiercely not to. But not me. I would not admit
to myself that in a secret place within me I loved Lord Lanchester far more than
anyone else.
I abhorred the man. He was
arrogant and atrocious. He was prodigious and narcissistic. And worst of all, he
was possessed by the angelic sons of Lucifer. No one seemed to notice this but
me. I had not only spied Lord Lanchester in my dreams, but several times I had
spied him while I was growing up. Lord Lanchester was hired by King Trentis to
train the king’s men when I was just a girl.
I saw it the very first time I
laid my eyes upon him. Lord Damorian Lanchester was a demon.
And I still loved him in secret,
for he was the man of my dreams; my soul’s eternal mate.
“Well, well. What do we have
here?” Chard said, coaxing me out of my thoughts. “Hello, little kitty! Oh, and
a puppy dog too.”
I looked down through the thin
vale of fog and could see a small puppy romping about the McDullie’s croft in
playful pursuit of its own tail. “Chard! You will not make it rain
puppies!”
“I will not?” he chuckled,
sending his back rippling against my stomach. “I do believe I would,
Princess.”
And he was right. He would. I
knew this because Chard had made a hobby out of raining
things long ago. Things like sheep. Things like horses and cows and
pigs.
I tugged on Chard’s hair as hard
as I could, letting him know that I was angry with him.
His shoulders sank. His neck
arched. He flew down into the fog. The underside of his body skimmed over the
cottages, so close that the slightest dip of his tail would have left a trail
of destruction, as it would have ripped away the roof tops. Instinctively, I
slid my knees upward along his ribs, protecting my feet, even though they were
well out of harm’s way.
Chard flew over the gate tower,
the barbican and then the outer ward, gliding over the granary and the
blacksmith shop before he ascended over the inner curtain wall. When he got
close to the tower, his hind legs extended outward, his back arched and, with
practiced ease, he landed on the side of the turret wall, shoving his talons
deep into the crevasses of the stones and clutching the top of the parapet at
the same time. The birds of prey in the aviary above my bedchamber were used the
beast’s presence by now and were hardly irritated by him anymore. Unlike in the
beginning. Chard’s presence caused quite an up-roar in the aviary. The flapping
and squawking was so loud that it often brought Arden, my house-carl, to my door with banging
fists.
I slid off Chard’s warm back and
slipped through the window into a cold chamber, realizing that my sopping robe
and bloomers had been clinging to me like a second skin. My hair, half wet,
half air dried, was a snarled mess.
“If I wake to rumors that in the
night it rained anything other than water then I will— ” I thought about this
for a moment. I wasn’t sure what I would do. Countless times Chard had told me
stories of the things he’d dropped from the sky, describing, in grotesque
detail, the precise way that particular thing landed. “I will do something!” I
warned, on my way to the fire place. I squatted down to get closer to the few
chard logs that were glowing red and I held my hands over them, absorbing what
little heat they had to offer.
“Not even cows and chickens?”
Chard said, with a mischievous tone in his voice. “I am almost certain that they
would make for an interesting night.”
I shot Chard a look from over my
shoulder.
“More interesting than kitties
and puppies, I do believe. Or. . .what about horses?” Chard smiled at the
thought. “They make a pretty big splat! Can I make it rain
horses?”
“Chard!”
I fortified my face with a frown, but a smile formed a militia against
me. The thought was kind of funny. “Go away with you!” I said. I went to the
armoire. It was difficult stifling a giggle, but I managed.
“Very well,” Chard said,
sounding disappointed. He was about to push off the ledge but then he paused.
“You won’t wake to news from the cottagers that in the night it rained mountain
sheep and bunny rabbits in Spirit Forest, will you?” By the tone of his
voice I could tell that he thought the bunny rabbits would be quite a
bore.
I tugged a chemise and a dry
pair of bloomers off a cedar shelf, rolling my eyes. “Of course not, you animal!
No one goes to Spirit Forest. And if they did, they certainly
would not go in the wee hours of morning. Why must you be so brutal?”
Chard was distracting me from
the thoughts that lingered just beneath the surface of my mind, but I could feel
the sadness, the anger stirring inside me. Knowing Chard was about to leave me,
knowing I would soon be all alone again, caused the anger and the sadness to
grow, until these emotions reached a space within me into which Chard was
capable of seeing.
“There is something wrong,”
Chard said. He used that thick, hot tone he only used when he spoke about my
father, confirming that he knew the effects of that morning’s events were
lurking in my under-thoughts.
Part of the
conversation King Trendal Trentis and I had had bobbed to the surface of my
mind. “You are a disgrace to the Trentis
blood! An abomination! Of course I shall forever keep you hidden
from my people! They will
never know how something like you has come from my loins. . . ."
I hung my head. My stomach
twisted into a painful knot. What was so shamefully wrong about me that I would
have to stay hidden from my people forever? I wished I knew. I wished someone
would tell me.
“Tell me why you are
angry, Princess. Has your fever returned?” he cocked his head, as if in this
position he would be able to see a little deeper inside me. “It is your father
again, is it not?” Little curls of grey smoke leaked out from the corners of
Chard’s mouth.
I moved to the window, stepping
into the pool of green light that was coming from his eyes. “Do not be angry
with him. He is not deserving of it,” I said, but I felt a little odd saying
this because a part of me believed he was deserving of it. A part of me wanted to give Chard that permission he
had so impatiently been waited for, to rip off my father’s head. But, at the
same time, I believed that if my father felt he had a good reason to hide me in
his castle all my life then he must have had a good reason. “He is a kind man
and means well,” I added, more trying to remind myself of these qualities my
father possessed.
“Not deserving?” Chard’s words
came out in a puff of smoke, and I flinched at the intensity of his voice. “For
seventeen years your father’s kept you a prisoner in this castle! Seventeen
years! No one outside these castle walls, save The Witch, knows you are still
alive! He hides you away because he is ashamed of you. Not only because his beloved queen died giving birth to you,
but because of your gift! Your gift is remarkable! You can look into the eyes of
strangers and see their thoughts, dream and learn of things to come and things
that past. You are a seer! He should be proud of you, not ashamed! He should
show you to his people –your people–
not hide you from them.”
Chard’s voice, though corrosive and cruel, was as sweet as honey, oozing into my
heart and smothering the fact that he was a beast. For one beautiful moment,
Chard was simply a man whom I secretly loved beyond words, beyond any fairytale
feeling I had ever read in a book. But like all the other moments before, it
came to pass. Now the man was gone, the beast had reappeared before my very
eyes, and the secret became a secret once again.
“Tell me that you honestly
believe my father speaks truths when he says that it is out of shame why he
hides me here! Tell me that his tongue must taste bitter from lies when the
accusations rolls from it that it is my fault I am here,” I
retorted.
“Honestly, Princess, I have no
idea what the king’s tongue tastes like. Beckon him, why don’t you. Beckon him
and lure him to the window. I will hold him down so that you can look into his
eyes and see everything you wish to see! And then, when you are through with
him, I will have my turn! And believe me, I will not give him the pleasure of
setting him a flame before I sink my fangs into his plump little body! I will
eat him raw. Eat him alive! Slow and—”
“Chard!”
I interrupted.
Chard suddenly puckered his
lips, his cheeks ballooned and his eyes widened just slightly. “Yes?” he said,
through tight lips. A little curl of fire escaped his mouth and licked his
cheek.
“Well, spit it out, why don’t
you?”
Chard barely turned his head
away from the window before a stream of fire shot from his mouth and flames
lashed at the cool night air. A flash of hot wind whirled in my face and blew my
hair away from my shoulders. I squinted my eyes and shielded my face with my
hand.
Chard kept his face turned away
from me. I knew it was because he did not want me to witness the battle that
was going on inside him. He loathed my father. Almost as much as he loathed the
mysterious man who had slain his own father and mother.
Cautiously, I reached a hand up
and out the window and I touched the side of his face with my palm. Chard was
part human, yes. But he was also a beast, and often I was wary of his beastly
nature. I turned him to look at me. Our eyes met and heat spiraled through me.
Momentarily, I was distracted by my secret feelings I had for him. He was so
magnificent and so handsome.
But he loved my mother. That was
for whom he had reserved his heart. For Kaneesis. I had to remember this. I had
to forget that he was the keeper of my heart. I had to figure out a way to be
all right with the fact that I would never be loved by Chard the way that my
mother was loved by him.
“Please do not be so indignant.
My father must feel that it is best I stay hidden or he would not hide me,
Chard. And he does not blame me for Kaneesis’ death. She did not die giving
birth to me. She died because she was ill, and he knows this.”
Chard lifted his face out of my
hand, as if suddenly insulted by my touch. It may have been the mention of my
mother, his lost love, his mourning that upset him. I dropped my chin and
pulled my hand close to my belly.
“She died because of her gift,
Jade,” he said, solemnly. The light in his eyes seemed to fade just slightly.
It may have been my imagination, but I did not believe so. Chard looked into my
eyes intently. “And your gift is far more powerful than hers was.” I could see
the impending doom in the expression on his face, and I knew what he was
thinking.
I swallowed hard. It was a fact,
and I knew it. One that I refused to think about. Until now. Until Chard aimed
that doom at me.
I was dying, too. Death was near
to me and growing nearer every day. I could feel it in my bones. The fevers had
returned, and I was not well. I did not know what to say to Chard that would
help him to rid his face of that expression. I did not like it there. Seeing it
there only confirmed the truth I had been refusing to face.
Smoke slithered through the
corners of Chard’s lips. I watched the anger twist in his expression. He may not
have loved me like he did my mother, but Chard loved me. He loved me like he
would if I were his daughter. The fact that death was inevitable was a fact that
Chard did not want to face any more than I did.
He shoved away from the turret
wall without so much as a goodbye. He twisted at the torso and spread his wings.
He took to the sky and quickly dissolved into the thick, bloated
fog.
I let out a heavy sigh and
peeled the wet clothing from my damp body. I slipped into warm, dry linen and
curled beneath the layers of blankets on my four-poster bed. I tried to keep
myself from thinking, but I knew, even if I kept death and my father and my
mourning from my mind, I was certain my dream world would not be void of
anything hauntingly strange, grotesquely scary or unprecedented and
spine-tingling.
Reluctantly, I closed my eyes
and fell fast asleep.
****
Chapter Two
Jade
With a washbasin of warm water
in her wrinkled hands, chambermaid Kate slowly climbed the steep, narrow
staircase in the turret. I could see her through the fog in my mind. When she
reached the top, she found Arden, my house-carl, with his head slumped
between his shoulders and snoring so loudly that it caused an upset to the birds
of prey in the aviary above my bedchamber. Kate gave the burly man a kick in the
knee. “You make for an unreliable watchdog, Arden!”
she affirmed.
Arden barely flinched.
Glossy-eyed and groggy, he looked up at Kate, confused. Then, realizing the
washbasin in her hands, he got to his feet and quickly opened the door for her.
“Still haven’t found the pitcher, aye Kate? Surely anything else would be easier
than lugging the whole basin up here,” he said in his gruff voice.
Kate shook her head
disapprovingly as she passed him by. “A king who wishes is daughter not to flee,
surely could choose a more suitable guard to stand at her door,” she muttered
under her breath. She crossed the chamber and placing the water basin in the pot
cupboard next to the bed-side table. Then she turned to discover how deathly ill
I was.
With a gasp, Kate rushed to the
bedside and covered my forehead with the palm of her hand. Though I wasn’t in
my right frame of mind, her touch still had the ability to allow me to see and
feel myself the way that she was seeing and feeling me: I was hot and clammy. A
hint of blue colored my lips. Even though I was normally pale as ivory, I
looked as if the hand of death had wrung me free of color.
The panic coursing through
Kate’s veins felt like my own. I had been sick my entire life. Fever was a
common occurrence, and even still, every time, Kate responded to it as if it
were something new, something different, something life-threatening.
And this time she was right.
This time, it felt different. This time, Kate had a good reason to
panic.
“Arden!” Kate cried. “Send for the Medicine
Man!” She brushed sweat-soaked strands of black hair away from my face, the way
I imagined a mother would. Then she remembered what the Medicine Man had said
about the blankets being a cozy
sanctuary for the fever to lay, and she ripped the covers from the bed,
viciously, as if it were their fault the fever had returned.
I shivered with a chill that
felt as though it resided in my bones. It paining me to the point that tears
began to well in my eyes. The humming sound in my head held undertones of
pounding that were now creating such an incredible pressure that I felt like I
had to clutch my head in order to keep my skull from bursting. The pain in my
muscles was the worst of all. It felt like my muscles were being stretched out
like the toffee candy made by Sophy, a pheasant lady in the
kingdom.
Kate stormed to the chamber
door, leaned out the threshold and looked down to find Arden asleep, yet again.
“Arden!” Kate
yelled, kicking him hard in the shin. Arden startled awake and opened his eyes wide.
He scrambled to his feet instantly.
“Find the Medicine Man and make
haste in doing so! Jade has taken ill again!”
Arden couldn’t have
descended the staircase any faster than he had without having stumbled and
tumbled all the way down to the Great Hall. I saw him in my mind, for a brief
period of time, and I almost laughed. I had never seen him run before. But the
pain, the heat, the cold chill, the splintering ache in my bones made laughter
impossible.
“Jade! Oh, sweet little
princess, are you alright?”
Kate’s voice cut
through my head like a sharp blade, slicing from one ear to the other, causing
me to rise to my elbows, whimpering, trying to get away from the pain. The room
was spinning in a slow, dizzying circle. I swayed at the shoulders. Nausea
churned my stomach.
Kate rushed back to the bedside
and eased me down into the pillows. “Where do you think you are going, little
Princess?”
“Wherever this fever is not,” I
muttered. And this was the last thing I remembered before the fever responded
abruptly. With a cruel, hard jolt, it pulled me into darkness and carried me
away into a deep, menacing dream world.