by Rex Jameson
“War dragons,” Roshan said.
“Are you out of your mind?” she asked, ramming a finger into her son’s chest.
“No,” Jandhar said, “and if you want me to ever take the crown, you’ll let me do this.”
She bit her lip and fumed silently. “So, the kingdom goes kingless… That’s your big plan?”
“Yes,” he said, “until we burn down the reeds.”
“And the heir apparent… goes into the Dragongrounds…”
“And comes out with weapons that can cross oceans,” he said.
She cursed and paced in front of him.
“You’re just like your father! Impetuous. Impractical. Too blinded by emotion to lead.”
He glared at her. “My father was a great man!”
“A great man,” she said, “but a bad king!”
He raised a hand to slap her, and she winced. He didn’t strike her, but he came close. She picked up her gown by the hem and rushed to the door. She looked back at him, a mixture of indecipherable emotions on her face.
“If you fail at this task,” she said, “will you accept the crown and lead your people?”
“I will not fail,” he declared. “I will raise an army of adult dragons, and I will blaze a path from Sevania to Kingarth. I will destroy the Eldenwald line, and I will watch as the fiend Theodore Crowe burns!”
She groaned as she left the room.
Roshan held his steepled hands to his chin. He was two years younger than Jandhar, but he had always behaved himself with the reservation of a much older man. He didn’t drink or chase girls. He obeyed his mother and brother, and now was no different. He bowed his head slightly before following Sabarna from the room.
Jandhar returned to the edge of the bed and his contemplation of the day of his father’s murder. The purple drapes became crimson. The carpet stained red. His hands grew sticky and coated in blood in his mind’s eye.
“You will be avenged, father,” he said. “I promise.”
4
Sven’s Curse
Jandhar roamed the markets of Ezcril for weeks before he found a dozen eggs. But as word spread that a rich noble was paying almost any price for dragons, supply began to meet demand. Tent-pole markets for eggs popped up. Within a month, hundreds of eggs were passing through his buyers every week.
In the beginning, he bought everything he could put his hands on. Green eggs. White eggs. Countless imposters appeared, and he didn’t realize the deception until they hatched—and he was greeted by a chicken or ostrich. The great commerce machines of the coastal cities imported thousands of large bird and lizard eggs to supplement what they couldn’t find in the Dragongrounds. Jandhar hung some of these false merchants, but as ostriches and scaled-lizards from the east began to walk around his pens, he found a use for them too. The baby dragons needed sustenance, and they were voracious consumers of meat.
Within the markets in Ezcril, the sounds of dragon wings flapping and the pops of exploding winged lizards became common place. A new profession of dragon-handler emerged, and these poor souls soon filled makeshift hospitals with severe burns on their hands and arms. Within the first 200 real dragon eggs, not a single adult survived. Half died within hours of hatching. A few dozen made it to a foot long, and only a handful managed to mate.
These were the hardest times for Jandhar. His mother Sabarna asked for reports, but he gave her no feedback on the expenditures he charged to the treasury. She seemed intent on shutting down his effort, and he refused to give her more leverage in the arguments that inevitably happened whenever she found him in markets or at one of his apartments. With grim determination, he doubled his efforts.
He brought in doctors, surgeons, and court magicians to examine the corpses of the poor creatures. The explosions tended to occur in the dragon’s throat, but sometimes, the entire stomach lining ruptured spectacularly—showering markets with flaming gelatin. He brought in mystics and even farmers who had experience with large animals.
“I want to understand how they work,” Jandhar told his brother Roshan during one of the latter’s monthly checkups, “but there are no dragon experts in Visanth. The only way to remedy the situation is to keep trying. Fail and try again.”
His brother Roshan never outwardly judged him. Where Jandhar was bold and brash, Roshan was quiet and contemplative. He listened and offered counsel only when asked, and that’s what Jandhar felt he needed—an adviser.
“Brother,” Roshan said, “perhaps your energies might be better harnessed in Scythica. I’ll continue to keep the funds flowing into this project, but maybe your time is better spent with the councils and the politics of the capital. Let the academics examine the dragon corpses, make their reports, and read their scrolls to you. That’s what they do.”
But Jandhar’s instincts told him that these experts would not properly pursue his experiment. They’d take his money and report that his demands were impossible—that he couldn’t even raise one adult dragon, much less several. They didn’t believe like he did. So, he made his visits more frequent. He trained under surgeons on pigs, cattle, and reptiles. He learned anatomy and physics from the top scholars in the empire. He studied, and he raised dragons.
But again and again, he failed. Even four-foot-long juveniles were elusive.
A year into his experiments and hundreds of dead infant dragons later, Jandhar grew despondent. He decided to leave the great southern city and search for his own answers in the wild. He kept his surgeons, scholars, and engineers in Ezcril, where they experimented and drained the royal treasury. In the markets and schools of the city, he felt he had lost his path. He needed to return to the source. So, he gathered a small guard and wandered south into the Dragongrounds.
He sat for days with his royal guard, watching the life and death cycle of the dragons. He walked east to Gelzvani and sat atop the long dead ruins of the dark elves. Blue dragons made roosts there. They chirped and cooed in lover’s circles before exploding spectacularly against the marble columns and granite palisades. These dark elven cities remained remarkably intact, with many of their treasures still hidden inside. He and his guards entered a few of the ruins and found handfuls of jewels, strange devices, and trinkets in week-long expeditions. He let his men keep whatever spoils they wanted to carry in their satchels. His focus was solely on his quest for the vessels of his vengeance—the potential discovery and grooming of adult-sized, flying fire-breathers.
He traveled west into the great chasm in the Dragongrounds, watching greens, reds, and purples play and pop, only to be joined by other excited dragonlings—completely unphased by the rapid deaths of their siblings. The reptiles lived fast and furiously. They reminded him of traveling with his father on the Raveaduin and of the wisdom Jofka passed down to him and his brother in the privacy of the river barge. Be bold. Take risks.
There were many moments spent in the mating grounds when he could have given up and chosen an easier path. He could have returned to Scythica and invaded Surdel with a large army of pikemen and risk failure against their knights, archers, and elven allies. Or he could have simply returned to his rightful place as king. But whenever he sunk to his lowest points, he always heard his father ask him what kind of star he wanted to be. And his answer always came out as strong as it had been on the barge many years before.
Forget Alnair and Almeisan. Better to be like the sun.
When it came to his retribution against Surdel, there would be no half measures. He would have his dragons, or he would die in the desert trying.
Like the dragons, he could not see himself living to old age. Like them, he cared not for sitting in a roost, growing fat and old. He wanted to launch himself into the fight. He wanted to be like his father—or even better. He felt closer to these airborne reptiles than to his own mother and brother. He wanted to see these creatures succeed and live to older age almost as much as he wanted them to burn down all of Surdel. Almost.
And so he crossed the chasm in the Dragongr
ounds, and he made his way to the ancient, abandoned elven city of Halispata. He entered the elven ruins and sat upon the tallest spires and balconies with his guards. They feasted on cacti and the carcasses of wolves, lizards, and even dragons—but only when the men were starving, as Jandhar saw the winged lizards as pets. There were no markets or settlements, and they lived hard on the land. Then, one day, he spotted smoke from a campfire outside of the dark elven ruins.
Curious as to which of his subjects would venture so close to the Crelloni lands, he led his guards down the stone paths. He found an impossibly old man near a brightly-burning fire. The man wielded a primitive hacksaw made of black glass, and he and his instruments were drenched in blood. As Jandhar came closer, he realized the fire was not made of wood but of the carcasses of medium-sized dragons. Some of them were over eight feet long.
“How did you do it?” Jandhar asked.
The old man grunted and held up the black saw.
“Smashed one black rock against another,” he said, as explanation of the blade.
His hands shook, and his hair dripped with dragon blood. Jandhar was so ecstatic to have found a real dragon-handler that he outran his guards. Panicked, the old man pointed the saw at him and pushed himself back across the granite steps of a ruined elven market.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jandhar said. “I want to hire you. I want to learn from you.”
“Hire me?” the man asked, puzzled.
“Do you know who I am?”
The old man tilted his head and appeared to think about how he wanted to respond. “I’ve heard of a man… going around the markets… collecting dragons.”
“So, you’ve heard of me?”
“How could I not?” the man asked. “Everyone knows about Prince Jandhar—the king who would not be king. The man with such an interest in dragons. You could say I’m here because I’ve found a market for information in the Dragongrounds.”
Jandhar grew slightly irritated. If the old man knew who he was, he had probably also heard about Jandhar’s lack of patience in the markets—that he had flogged arrogant academics who had wasted his time and insulted him. He had hung merchants who sold him false eggs that they knew were not dragons. And even amongst the hundreds of dragons he had seen hatched and raised, none had grown as big as any one of the few this man seemed to have found or groomed to these lengths. This man had something Jandhar actually wanted, and there was no price he wouldn’t pay. All the man had to do was name his rate.
“You know who I am,” Jandhar said, trying not to sound too eager. “Who are you?”
“Which do you want to know?” the man asked. “My name or where I come from?”
“Both, if you’d be so kind. I wish to honor you, friend.”
“You do so with your presence,” the man said, offering flattery but neither his name nor origin.
He seemed to wait for the prince to do something. Jandhar looked at the carcass and the man instead. After appearing to sense that the prince wished him no harm, the man lowered his onyx blade and scooted back to his dragon carcass.
The man’s features and emotions were hard to discern through the blood and wrinkles. He must have spent most of his life in the sun. His skin was hard as aged leather, and his eyes were milky. Jandhar figured the man must be in his late sixties, but they had been a rough sixty years spent in the open desert. They eyed each other over the fire of a burning juvenile dragon.
“Where did you learn your craft?” Jandhar asked.
The old man cocked his head to the side. He looked at Jandhar queerly, and then set upon his previous work, sawing into the neck of the dragon. He lifted the upper jaw and pulled it back, exposing the inner neck with surprising strength and quickness. The man sniffed against his arm and attempted to clear his face with a sleeve, but he somehow managed to wipe even more blood onto the side of his face.
“Jarl Sven cursed these poor creatures,” the man said.
“Jarl Sven?” one of the guards asked, laughing.
“I heard it was Cronos himself,” another guard said.
“No,” the old man said, continuing to saw into the neck lining and stomach of his latest dissection. “It was Sven. Cronos is an aged god—a timeless creature, devoid of malice. Trusting to a fault, really. Sven is young… impetuous… he doesn’t understand his power or how to use it constructively. They say he did this by accident.”
“You speak of the gods as if you know them,” Jandhar said, smiling warmly—still hoping to strike a conversation with this man who seemed to know all that Jandhar truly wanted to know in the world.
“The gods have been gone a long while,” the man said, “asleep or dead. For thousands of years, we’ve toiled in the unremarkable. And yet here,” the man tapped at the exposed internal organs of the dragon, “we see the evidence of the divine.”
“I see a powerful creature,” Jandhar said, “but one that needs help.”
“They say Sven leapt across the Small Sea,” the old man said, “and smote the ground so hard that it burned straight through to the ground water, hundreds of feet beneath the desert.”
“You’re talking about the creation of the Zsvenkessian Oasis?” Jandhar asked.
“I’m talking about the punishment of a swarm of powerful creatures,” the man said. “They were offended by the water’s lack of heat and fire, and they attacked him. He spoke the words of creation and changed their species forever.”
“I’m not here to talk about legends,” Jandhar said dismissively. “I’m here to learn from you. Perhaps we can reverse this curse.”
The old man looked up at Jandhar. “Do you not see the folly of tampering with fate? Do you not understand the ebb and flow of destiny?”
Jandhar pointed at the sun. The old man covered his eyes and looked up.
“My father told me,” Jandhar said, “that destinies are like stars in the sky. Some fates are dim and obscured by the daylight. They have no real ambition. Others are so bright that they radiate through the heavens, even outshining the sun itself during the daytime.”
“They say you have an interest in dragons,” the man said. “Do you feel your bright destiny is tied to them?”
“I feel a kinship to them,” Jandhar said evasively.
“Because of their vigor and vitality?” the old man asked with obvious mirth.
Jandhar laughed richly. “You are quite the sprite yourself, old man. Perhaps I should aspire to be more like you.”
“Undoubtedly,” the man said. The unflappable man stared at him seriously.
Jandhar grew more somber too.
“I believe my empire could be more powerful with these creatures by my side. I cannot see my fate, but I can see their potential. If we could only harness their power, what wonders we could accomplish!”
The old man sighed heavily. He looked away from Jandhar, toward the west. The prince followed the old man’s gaze.
“So, the Crelloni are your people,” Jandhar said. “Are you worried that I would use these creatures against the Separatists? Is that why you hesitate? I swear that I would not. My father believed in peace with your people.”
“Your father did not believe in peace,” the old man said. “He believed in power and wielding it.”
“Now, listen here—”
“Do you want to know the secret to Sven’s curse or not?”
Jandhar’s mind went silent. Whatever protest he might have had for the memory of his father was squelched. He sat beside the fire and motioned for his guards to observe. Two stood guard, while the other two sat down and watched closely.
“You’ll teach me?” Jandhar asked.
“I will show you the way,” the man said, “but if you would want me to stay, then you must listen.”
Jandhar nodded and made a line with his finger across his lips. He leaned forward as if to hoard every word between his knees.
“The legends say,” the old man said, “that Jarl Sven became wroth with the Visanthi people. Many t
housands of years ago, some offense was made, and he crossed the Small Sea on the back of his mighty raven. He leapt from its dark plumage and plunged his spear of white light into the desert, and death was everywhere. The people were smote and the cities crumbled. But Sven was not a normal man—”
“He’s a son of Cronos!” one of the guards said.
The old man nodded, grinning appreciatively.
“How could the son of the Creator be so callous?” Jandhar asked. “Why would a god choose sides between kingdoms?”
The old man frowned. “Legends exaggerate truths. Perhaps, Sven was a god, born from Cronos. Perhaps, he was never taught the limits of his power and wielded it haphazardly and accidentally.”
He held up a finger. “There is another legend told by my people—quite separate from the ones you’d hear here. This legend says that when Sven impacted the ground in Visanth, there was actually no groundwater under the oasis. The moisture was a reaction to a creature of life so violently impacting the un-life of the desert. When he hit the ground like a rock from the heavens, a festering wound of raw nature blossomed from the desert.”
The old man nodded fervently and wagged his finger, as if he had rediscovered a truth of the universe all over again.
“I like this version of the story,” the man said, “To me, it seems closer to the truth. What if this son of Cronos did not mean to destroy? What if the destruction was a side effect of the creation of life in a desert?”
“And so the curse of the dragon was what?” Jandhar asked.
“An accident,” the man said. “Legend says that Cronos is not dead—that he has gone under the earth, and that his son was born atop it. Imagine a god capable of anything but without a teacher to guide him. Imagine knowing the words of creation, and yet, never having an instructor. Every lesson self-taught and more often a curse than a blessing. They say that he never truly learned to speak because every time he formed a word, every friend turned to stone or worse.”
The old man pointed at the carcass of the dragon. “Imagine bringing forth a new body of water to satiate the masses and grow the population of Visanth by three-fold. Now, imagine the first creatures to greet this miracle burn him with fire. Would you curse them or bless them, Prince Jandhar?”