by Rex Jameson
Etcher wrenched himself free of Jandhar’s grip and continued to walk toward the door.
“Do not judge me for reaching for greatness,” Jandhar yelled. “What would you not do for your people? First stanza of any war manual: 1) do not underestimate your enemy, 2) never allow yourself to be outmaneuvered in tactics or technology, 3) always use your environment to your advantage. Why do I want adult dragons? Visanth has the Dragongrounds. We have a means to produce full grown dragons—the stuff of legend. I want dragons because I do not underestimate my enemies. I want dragons because Visanth will not be outmaneuvered again, especially not in our own country. If someone wants to attack my family again, I want them to walk through fire and blood to get to us.”
Etcher turned to him. “Surdel is across a sea… The Crellonis are across a desert…”
“And yet,” Jandhar said, “my father is dead.”
Etcher bit his lip and pulled at his leathery cheeks and coarse beard.
“You know,” Etcher said, “sometimes you can be right for all the wrong reasons…”
“Is that a compliment?” Jandhar asked with a laugh.
“I believe there is a greater evil than man coming,” Etcher said, “and when it comes, it will come for Visanth too.”
“I didn’t know you were religious,” Jandhar said with as little mockery as possible, trying to keep the old man engaged. “Which deities do your people pray to? Snakes? Dragons?”
“Where I come from,” Etcher said, “there’s no option to be irreligious. The truth of the heavens is right in front of you. You can’t hide from it. It beats down on you like the sun on the sands.”
“The sun, then?” Jandhar asked humorously. The joke was lost.
Etcher blinked a few times and then looked at Jandhar intently.
“Perhaps it is not my place to stop you,” Etcher said. “Not now. They say an army moves beneath the earth to the north.”
“An underground army?” Jandhar asked.
“An army of undead and demons,” Etcher said.
For the briefest moment, Jandhar tried to imagine such a force, but the thought was too childish. He couldn’t believe a man who seemed to possess unique insight into surgery and history would believe in such nonsense. Still, he needed Etcher to stop the madness that had gone on for too long. There was yet another tent full of academics burning behind him.
“I will defend the Visanth Empire from any adversary,” Jandhar said. “You give me those dragons, and I’ll burn the whole underworld if I have to until the ghouls and ghosts know their place, wherever that is.”
Etcher looked at Jandhar queerly. He seemed to be sizing the prince up and taking his words far more seriously than he had any right to, since it was a completely empty promise by someone who didn’t believe in such demonic creatures. Etcher peeked over the prince’s shoulder at the men pounding the surgeon and his assistant with cloaks and blankets.
“You shouldn’t be weakening the lining of the throat walls,” Etcher said clinically. “I didn’t cut a piece out of the damned things and replace the segment with a brother’s organs. I grafted a soft piece of living tissue from inside the throat but somewhere far removed from the cursed area and moved it over the sacs.”
“OK!” Jandhar said, shaking Etcher’s hand. “Thank you!”
“That’s not the most important part,” Etcher said. “I didn’t just grab the closest few dragons I could find. You have to look for thick neck lining. It’s a time consuming and dangerous process, but the thicker that wall inside of its mouth, the more likely the stitches and graft will hold. And you have to keep them tame. They cannot agitate the wounds during the healing process. Opium. Alcohol. Something. Practice some damned patience and learning.”
“Got it,” Jandhar said breathlessly.
Etcher pulled his hand free, turned, and walked out of the building.
“Thank you!” Jandhar called.
Jandhar bent low to inspect a burnt patch of ground beneath a jumble of bones, scales, and sticky flesh. He shook his head as he looked up to glare at a seven-foot, green dragon—his prized breeder Ameazima.
“That’s the fourth mate in a year,” he accused.
She squawked in protest as she paced along the wall of her spacious outdoor pen. Atop three of the largest pillows lounged her children. Jahgo had already outgrown his mother. His impressive black-and-yellow patterns drew Jandhar’s eyes. The three green siblings Nintil, Zosa, and Venzin purred and nipped at each other as they belly-crawled to the edge of their pillows to get closer to their adopted father Jandhar. They were almost as big as Ameazima now.
Jandhar poked at the still smoldering remains of Rwhkhadira with the end of a broom that had been laid against a stone column within his southern palace, where he kept his most prized possessions. The signs of the latest vicious courtship were all around him. This male had certainly tried to impress her. The recently planted palm trees were scorched all along the base roots, and there were scratch marks all along the charred bark. Deep divots were all along the hard earth where he had tried to coax Ameazima, but she had obviously gotten tired of his advances.
“He was a good mate,” Jandhar complained. “His neck lining was almost as thick as Qawiun.”
He pointed at Jahgo, the large black dragon, and her first son. He knew she understood. She had killed Jahgo’s father Qawiun just like this one. Disemboweled with her back claws and decapitated and mauled with her jaws and front talons.
She tapped her bladed feet menacingly or nervously, he couldn’t tell, as she squawked again in protest.
“I know you’re not a cow to be fattened and bred,” he explained, talking to her soothingly as if she were a daughter—a princess. “You are the Great Mother—the thick-lined beauty of my dreams and Surdel’s nightmares. You must take another mate. We need more of your strong sons—or maybe a daughter. Give me a daughter, and I’ll move you anywhere you want. I’ll build you your own palace!”
She tapped with her two sharp talons on her front legs and inspected masonry, as if she were bored.
Jandhar walked over to the pillows where the sons pretended to lounge but showed all the signs of anticipation of the Dragon Prince approaching. He smiled as their tails began to flail and beat against the back wall and pillows. Jahgo lifted his head to Jandhar’s level and yawned, impressively exposing his long, sharp teeth and rolling tongue.
“Hello, old friend,” Jandhar said as he stroked the softer yellow scales under the dragon’s chin and along his neck toward his belly.
The greens chirped and barked in protest. They fell over each other jockeying for position for the next neck rub. Nintil was slightly larger than the other two and always the most aggressive. He pushed Zosa off the pillows with the side of his head and toppled Venzin with his muscled arms.
“I’ll get to you in just a minute,” he said, but Nintil nudged him with his snout and chirped.
Clearly, a minute would be too long. Jandhar rubbed the top of the dragon’s head with his other hand but continued to stroke Jahgo, who looked up at him adoringly with his cat-like, orange-yellow eyes. Jahgo was the obvious alpha, not only in size but demeanor. The others jostled for whatever roles were left. Out of the lot, Nintil was the top contender for beta, but the truth was that Jandhar wanted at least another dragon as big as his black beauty. The greens were unlikely to even hit ten feet in length at their current rate, and Jahgo was already fifteen feet long.
Jandhar and his surgeons had spent months combing the markets and Dragongrounds, looking for what Etcher had described. It was in a market in Scythica that Jandhar finally came across the red-backed, green-bodied, feisty creature he named Ameazima. She had the first truly successful surgery, though it was not as well-done as the surgeons had gotten with Jahgo or the greens. Jahgo’s surgery had taken over six hours, but he took to the transferred skin graft better than any of his siblings. Nintil, Zosa, and Venzin required constant maintenance. Their neck lining just wasn’t as strong, and the
y moved about with so much energy to contend with their larger brother that their stitches were constantly coming out.
There was a string of a dozen failed couplings over the years for Ameazima. He had also tried to mate Jahgo with a few females that seemed to show promise, but each of these had died quite spectacularly—either mauled to death by the matriarch Ameazima or through some horrible happenstance brought about by Sven’s curse. Out of dozens of couplings and hundreds and maybe even thousands of inspected dragons, only four sons had been born. Still, they were four mighty sons—enough to hopefully bring Surdel to its knees.
His mother Sabarna had finally softened to his vision and ambition. She visited him for the first time at Ezcril after the triplets were grafted. After seeing their majestic wing spans and witnessing them consume walls and target dummies in fire, she had little choice. She stopped protesting the burden on the royal treasury. His brother Roshan took to walking the parapets and walls of the city of Ezcril, observing quietly, and undoubtedly reporting the progress of Jandhar’s superweapons back to their mother and generals in Scythica.
Jandhar looked up to the walls, half-expecting his brother to be standing there—watching him. But Roshan was back in the capital. He had a kingdom to run while Jandhar saw to his babies. He reached down to pet the other two green dragons and noticed Ameazima behaving peculiarly around one of the back columns.
He pulled his hand back and the three greens lodged noisy protests beneath him on their pillows. He walked to where Ameazima’s red-lined, green tail flicked. She spewed fresh fire around the base of the column and pawed at the earth.
“What have you got there?” he asked. He tried not to get his hopes up. Dragons were playful creatures and taken to games of digging and burning things, but there was a chance…
She curled around something behind the pillar, and he peeked around it to find her looking up at him, cuddling next to a beautiful, pure-white egg.
“You mated with him!” he exclaimed.
She chirped and snuggled against it before playfully rolling it and pushing it gingerly with her back claws.
“Oh, you are such a good girl!” he cooed to her. “Oh, I’m bringing you the finest steaks tonight. Whatever you want! Bless you, Great Mother!”
He picked the egg up and cradled it, peering down and wondering over what Ameazima and her unfortunate mate had created. Perhaps, a girl this time.
She rolled along the ground playfully, tapping her talons along the stones around the pillar and then rolling laterally as she extended her claws and tucked in her wings. The greens chirped up at their adopted father.
When he didn’t pay attention to them, they swarmed their mother instead as she continued to frolic in the dirt and grasses within the large courtyard. Jahgo appeared suddenly beside him, strolling slowly and confidently to a favored right-hand spot. He sniffed at the egg and then feigned disinterest, watching the play of the greens with their mother instead.
“You have a new brother or sister, Jahgo,” Jandhar said. “Maybe you’ll have yourself a sister as big as you to play with one day!”
Jahgo made a half-purr, half-grunt as he nuzzled softly against Jandhar’s right arm. His gaze stayed on the siblings.
“I’ve never seen a pure white dragon egg like this,” Jandhar said, “not even in the markets. Nintil and Zosa had a soft green shell. Venzin was red, like his mother’s, but hints of green. Yours was dark as night with yellow spots. A white egg should—”
A sudden, violent explosion rocked the palace, knocking Jandhar backwards as he clutched the egg to his chest. He slid along his back and side, the force and impact turning him away from the brood. He felt the egg that was still in his arms, panicked that he might have crushed it, but it was fine.
“Ugh,” he complained as the aches and pains assaulted his nerves, but then a pit of despair formed in his stomach. Someone had exploded. Not something. Someone—one of his children. He almost couldn’t roll over, and tears formed in his eyes. The all-too-familiar explosion had been right next to him. No matter who it was, this was going to be devastating.
His ears rang from the violent sound wave, and the noises around him were muted. He rolled over to find Jahgo sniffing and calling down to someone. A green wing fluttered and then another as the three smaller dragons cried out. They bobbed their heads repeatedly, a sign that Jandhar had always associated with nervousness or grief.
She was almost unrecognizable. The explosion had ripped her head from her body and flung much of her neck against the far wall. Her eyes twitched as she seemed to gasp for air, but Jandhar knew she felt nothing—that this death had been quick and she had felt no pain.
“Ameazima,” he whispered, tears falling down his face. “Great Mother…”
The sounds became fuller as the ringing subsided. The greens howled to the sky in mourning. Even Jahgo showed emotion as he paced around her body. The black dragon retrieved her head in his jaws and pawed her other remains over several minutes until they rested beside the pillar. The greens continued to nudge her and slam their backs and sides into her in an attempt to rouse her.
Jandhar cradled the white egg again as he returned to his feet. He shuffled slowly toward her.
“This was your mother, little one,” he whispered to the egg as he stared at the mangled corpse of the only female he’d ever loved. “Her name was Ameazima, but do not worry yourself.” He jostled the egg up-and-down as if it were a human baby. “We will give her a royal funeral. Everyone will come. Everyone will pay homage. You’ll see. She was a great lady—the Royal Mother. No one will forget her. Not ever.”
Nearly a hundred thousand onlookers from Scythica and Malak crowded the mouth of the Raveaduin as her royal ship was rowed into the ocean. The servants were allowed to leave the barge after the current picked it up. Three war birlinns carried the hundreds of rowing servants back as Ameazima’s four surviving, adult sons stood behind Jandhar on the shore. Jahgo nestled his huge, black-scaled snout against Jandhar’s right shoulder as the prince carried the last egg like a newborn baby. Nintil, Zosa, and Venzin playfully fought for the chance to nestle his left shoulder.
He watched over the sons of Ameazima as if he had been their true father. He fed them lizards and butchered meat from cattle and goats each morning. He rolled with them in their pens. He read to them on a variety of topics. The published stories of his father Jofka’s exploits. The tales of Sven from the Scythica University library. Love poems from The Lonely Merchant of Kulandi. He had no idea if they understood what he said to them, but he spoke to them nonetheless. He was more affectionate with them than he had ever been with his mother or brother. The children of Ameazima were more than pets to him; they were his children.
He patted Nintil and Jahgo with his free hand and then brushed them away as he walked into the ocean. He waded into the surf up to his knees and waist.
“Ameazima!” he yelled. “Mother to the majestic, harbinger of fire and doom! I salute you, Great Royal Mother!”
He held the white egg high above.
“We will never forget the love you put into each of your children,” he shouted. “Know that I will cherish them as I would my own sons!”
He dipped the egg briefly into the water and then kissed it, before slowly backing out of the waves, careful not to let the rolling water topple him and cause him to lose her offspring into the ocean.
He turned toward Jahgo, and the black giant chirped and paced in excitement. Nintil, Zosa, and Venzin nipped at each other and bobbed their heads in anticipation.
“My sons,” he said, as he cradled the egg once more. He pointed toward the drifting barge. “Your mother requires your flames. Send her to the afterlife as only the true sons of the Royal Mother can… Light her ship. Burn her body.”
Jahgo’s powerful wings flapped, pushing Jandhar toward the water. The guards around him were pressed by the gales into the hundreds of onlookers who got too close. The green dragons also took flight, and a cloud of dust obscured
everything behind them. Jandhar covered his eyes and turned toward the barge.
He watched as Jahgo skimmed the surface of the ocean. The alpha was the first to reach his mother’s ship. His powerful jet of liquids ignited, and he ascended as a result of the thrust of the ejected fluid. By the time he closed his mouth, Jahgo was thirty feet above the waves and banking for a second pass. Nintil and Venzin came at the boat from port and starboard, respectively, while Zosa followed the trail of flaming water left by Jahgo.
The crowd gasped as the dragons swooped three more times, leaving oily, lingering flames on the barge and the surface of the water.
“Come!” Jandhar commanded.
From hundreds of feet away, their massive, scaled heads turned as they screeched, chirped, and cooed. Jahgo swooped in front of the three greens, who fought with each other to be the second to return. As they landed between the guards and Jandhar, they snapped and nipped at each other.
Jandhar left the crowd in shocked silence, followed by his black dragon and three greens who jockeyed with each other for second best. Neither would ever gain that right. The white egg hatched three days later, and the first recorded albino dragon was born. A female named Jasmine.
Over three years, she grew so fast and so strong that even Jahgo acknowledged her with respect. The greens continued to bicker at each other, but Jahgo and Jasmine grew ever closer—often sharing the lead of the pack role and walking side-by-side when following Prince Jandhar. As they both approached twenty feet in length, Jandhar saddled them both and took turns taking flight on them in the skies above Scythica and Malak, looking out at the sea every chance he got. His eyes and mind sometimes tricked him with an image of a charred boat, reminding him of Ameazima. But he didn’t watch the waves of the Small Sea to remember the Royal Mother. He watched the blue waters because just beyond them lay Surdel. Just beyond that churning sea were the Eldenwalds and Theodore Crowe.
Jandhar sat with his mother and brother in the royal palace in Scythica. He looked out at the huge, golden domes of the city through the balcony beside him. His mother droned on about the undead and demons that supposedly roamed Surdel. He hadn’t listened much. All he needed to hear had already been said. King Aethis had just given Visanth permission to cross the sea. Jandhar didn’t even have to build a true war fleet or recall the ships from the Great Ocean. The fools were just going to let him pass through their armadas in whatever ships Visanth could put together. Surdel was actually inviting him onto their shores with dragons.