The Dragon Seed Box Set

by Resa Nelson

Her look made Skallagrim nervous. “To be more accurate, she was my teacher.” Remembering that he’d not only seen a dragon but that it had knocked him unconscious with its tail, Skallagrim searched the landscape of the beach to make sure the beast didn’t lurk somewhere nearby. “She taught me how to quell dragons.”

  The woman gave a slight gasp. “Quell dragons? I know of no one in my country who can do that, much less teach it.”

  Skallagrim thought back to his training days at Bellesguard. “She wasn’t actually a dragon queller. She was a companion to my teacher.”

  “He taught you how to quell dragons?”

  “No,” Skallagrim said. “He taught me how to kill them.”

  The warm pink flush faded from the woman’s face. “I see.”

  “But his companion—Mistress Po—she was known as a demon queller.”

  The woman regained her composure. She spoke with certainty. “Pingzi Po.”

  “Yes! That’s her.”

  “She honored you. Pingzi Po belongs to the royal house of Po. She’s related to Emperor Po, the great ruler of the city of Zangcheen in the Wulong Province of the Far East.”

  Royalty? Mistress Po? Why didn’t anyone tell us?

  “I didn’t know,” Skallagrim said. “But she was a good teacher and friend to me.”

  The woman smiled. “Not everyone in the Northlands is welcoming to those from the Far East.”

  Skallagrim chuckled. “We hardly ever see anyone from the Far East. Probably, people just don’t know what to make of you.”

  She handed the skin of water back to Skallagrim. “Slow sips this time,” she said.

  When he accepted the water from her, the woman’s hand grazed his skin.

  Her touch felt like tiny sparks from a fire landing on Skallagrim’s skin. The sensation had a slight sting, but it also warmed and vibrated in such a pleasant way that it made Skallagrim feel as if he were coming alive, back from the dead.

  When she looked into his eyes, Skallagrim felt as if she were staring straight into his soul in such a way that he felt truly seen for who he was and accepted for it. “My name,” the woman said, “is Lumara.”

  Skallagrim swallowed hard and forgot to drink from the skin of water in his hand. “Skallagrim.” When he looked into her eyes, a feeling of hope and happiness washed over him. Skallagrim felt as if he’d come home to a place more welcoming than anything he’d ever known. Overwhelmed by the feeling, he became nervous and talked too much. “I’m a Scalding. From Tower Island.” He pointed inland. “It’s that way, but not on the land. It’s an island. It’s in the sea.” Not knowing what to do with his pointing hand, Skallagrim ran it through his hair, hoping the wind hadn’t already blown through it enough to make him look like a ragamuffin. “I’m a dragonslayer.”

  Lumara looked at him with such intent that it made him tremble.

  Even more nervous, Skallagrim kept rambling. “I trained at Bellesguard in the Southlands. That’s where I met Mistress Po, but she’s not the one who taught me how to kill dragons. That was Master Benzel.”

  “Benzel of the Wolf.”

  Skallagrim looked at her in astonishment. “You know of Master Benzel?”

  “Everyone in the Far East knows of Benzel of the Wolf.”

  Perplexed, Skallagrim said, “How? I mean, why? Are there dragonslayers in the Far East? Does he teach there, too?”

  Lumara’s expression became forbidding. “No one kills dragons in the Far East. People honor them instead.”

  Before Skallagrim could pepper her with questions, Lumara’s gaze lifted above and beyond his head.

  Afraid the dragon that attacked him had returned, Skallagrim followed her gaze toward the sea.

  A merchant ship sailed far from the shore in the direction of the Midlands.

  Skallagrim forgot his nerves and jumped to his feet. He waved frantically and shouted. “Here! We’re over here!”

  Lumara remained seated. “I don’t think they can hear you.”

  Skallagrim continued waving and shouting, but the ship continued sailing without a sign that anyone on board noticed him. “No!” Skallagrim shouted. He paced, wracked with panic. “That’s the ship I bought passage on. It wasn’t supposed to sail until later.”

  “I see no need to worry.”

  “No need?” Skallagrim felt more helpless by the moment. “It’s my duty to follow the winter route. That means making a final pass through the Midlands to make sure no dragons straggled behind when they migrated through. It means making a pass through the Southlands to make sure the dragons have cleared out of there as well.”

  Lumara stood and brushed the sand from her dress.

  For the first time, Skallagrim noticed it was the same dress he’d seen floating empty through the air when he first arrived. He remembered watching it land on the high end of the beach near the grass line.

  Why wasn’t she wearing it? Why did she leave the dress empty?

  The incoming tide lapped up over his feet, and Skallagrim skittered away from it. At the same time, he saw how the seawater had been washing away all the footprints surrounding him.

  In a heartbeat, Skallagrim noted the types of footprints. From the dune over which the dragon had climbed, he saw a steady stretch of clawed footprints. But he didn’t see any mortal footprints he’d expect to see if Lumara had come from behind the dune or the ocean or the grass line. The only mortal footprints he saw were the ones he’d made from the opposite direction and the ones surrounding them.

  Skallagrim gave a sharp look at Lumara. “Where were you before you found me?”

  She nodded back at the large dune reaching out to the ocean. “Back there. The wind blew my dress away when I was bathing in the ocean.”

  Skallagrim looked back at the footprints on the beach, but they were completely covered by the tide. When it receded, the water had compromised all the footprints to a point where it was impossible to distinguish mortal footprints from dragon footprints.

  Did I really see what I think I saw?

  “Skallagrim?” Lumara said.

  He looked at her, not sure what he saw.

  Lumara gave him a warm smile. In a teasing voice, she said, “Skallagrim Scalding of Tower Island. Dragonslayer. Dragon queller. Don’t worry about that passing ship. I think it is a gift.”

  Puzzled by her words, Skallagrim snapped out of his anxiety. “How’s that?”

  Lumara took his hand in hers.

  Once more, his skin prickled from the spark-like sensation.

  “If you miss your winter route, will the world end?”

  Skallagrim considered the question. He’d never missed the winter route before. “I don’t know.”

  Lumara laughed. “Are there no other dragonslayers who check the Midlands and scour the Southlands?”

  “All dragonslayers do it.”

  “And what happens once they check the Southlands?”

  Skallagrim began to understand her point. “Dragons migrate back to a rocky island off the southernmost coast of the Southlands. They swim there. After all dragonslayers check to make sure there aren’t any dragons left in the Southlands, some spend the winter keeping an eye on the countryside. Some go to Bellesguard to help train new dragonslayers.”

  “Has any other dragonslayer ever missed the winter route?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Has it ever caused any problems?”

  “There was one time when a rogue dragon attacked a village.” Skallagrim paused at the memory. “But there were two dragonslayers staying there, so they made quick work of it.”

  Lumara shuddered.

  Skallagrim remembered how Mistress Po never liked hearing stories about dragonslayers’ conquests, much less seeing a dragon killed.

  Far Easterners are sensitive to that kind of thing. And what was it that Lumara said? Something about the Far East honoring dragons instead of killing them?

  No one had ever perplexed Skallagrim as much as Lumara.

  “It seems to me,” Lu
mara said, “that with all the merchants and tourists gone for the season that there will be many empty beds in Gott. I see no reason why we couldn’t each find a place to stay in the same city to weather out the winter.”

  Unlike the silly Northlander girls in the Gott tavern, Lumara gave no indication that she wanted to share a bed with Skallagrim. Nor even stay under the same roof.

  That made Lumara all the more attractive.

  Skallagrim didn’t have the shallow urges he normally felt toward women who caught his attention.

  Instead, his desires extended to wanting to know and understand Lumara. Skallagrim could think of nothing more enticing than spending the winter with her.

  “And if we live in the same city for the winter,” Lumara continued, “we would have the chance to get to know each other.”

  Skallagrim beamed. He turned his back to the ocean and the sight of the ship he’d intended to board leaving him behind. For the first time in his calling to be a dragonslayer, he didn’t worry about missing the winter route.

  CHAPTER 12

  Up until the moment when the unexpected happened, Pingzi Po was having a good day.

  She walked the hilly streets in her neighborhood, one of dozens that formed the outer ring of the city of Zangcheen in the Wulong Province of the Far East. The royal palace and complex sat like a jewel in the center of a brooch. Lush green parks, temples to the dragon gods, and buildings for officials stood around the royal complex, leaving the homes for the city’s residents to form the perimeter.

  As a relative of the Emperor Po, Pingzi had every right to live in her own apartment inside the royal palace like all of her relatives.

  But unlike everyone else in the Po family, Pingzi had no desire to live a royal life.

  She preferred a life of adventure. Pingzi counted her blessings every day that she’d been lucky enough to be born with the power of portents.

  Even better, years before her birth, the need for a demon queller had been foreseen, which made it easy to leave not only the royal complex but the entire country.

  Pingzi loved spring in Zangcheen. While she strolled down the dirt street crammed with angular wooden houses, Pingzi breathed in the subtle and fruity scent of dragon berry blossoms. The sun warmed her skin. A few whirling pods from a neighbor’s dove-leaf tree flew through the air on wings as delicate and brown as parchment paper. When she looked toward the neighbor’s yard, it gave her a start to see Benzel of the Wolf pruning the dove-leaf tree.

  She walked toward him. Since leaving the Southlands where Benzel had trained the up-and-coming dragonslayers, Pingzi tried to use his native Northlander language whenever she spoke to him in order to keep her skills intact. Today, however, Pingzi felt lazy and decided to speak in her own Far Eastern language instead. “Benzel. What are you doing here?”

  The old man turned to her with a smile.

  His age reminded Pingzi of her own. In the years since they’d first met, Pingzi had born and raised children, now old enough to live their own lives outside of Zangcheen. Her daughter, the eldest, had married a Northlander, requiring her to live abroad for her own safety. Pingzi married a man she thought she loved, only to discover throughout the years that his character wasn’t as strong as she first believed. Once their children left home, Pingzi’s husband left to pursue a more compliable woman in a different province.

  The sun had burned and tanned Benzel’s pale Northlander skin so many times during the past several years that it looked like leather. His bald head reflected the sunlight. His eyes still twinkled bright blue, even though his white beard now grew sparse. “Making myself useful.”

  These particular neighbors irritated Pingzi because they often took advantage of Benzel’s offer to work without giving any payment in return. She pressed her lips together in frustration. “You’re just encouraging them.”

  Benzel’s smile sagged. “Consider it atonement.”

  Pingzi’s spirits sank. “Don’t say that!”

  “Am I not a demon?”

  “Not now. Not anymore.”

  “Because you succeeded in quelling me.”

  “Of wanting to murder your fellow Northlanders, yes.”

  Benzel of the Wolf bristled. “I would hardly call them Northlanders. ‘Cold-blooded butchers’ seems more appropriate.” He crossed his arms in defiance. “And I’ve never understood why I’m a demon to be quelled when they’re the ones who brought so much mayhem to the Northlands.”

  Pingzi wondered how many times she’d have to explain it. “The berserkers who harmed you and your people are incorrigible. Nothing can change them. They are lost souls.” Her voice softened. “But you’re not. Most people are like you: if tragedy leads them astray, a demon queller can drive the madness out of their hearts.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if you should have left well enough alone,” Benzel said. “I could have killed them all by now.”

  “That’s the point. If you’d killed those who hurt you, then you would have become just like them. You would have become one of them. Is that something you can live with?”

  Benzel stared at the ground and loosened a rock from the soil with the toe of his shoe. He kicked the rock away. “Possibly.”

  Pingzi snorted. “I know you better than that. It would eat you up if you had to live with that kind of blood on your hands.”

  Benzel shrugged, still staring at the ground.

  Pingzi continued. “Think about how your actions could have snowballed. Northlanders would have seen you as a monster and would have hunted you down. They would have feared you. And feared for the safety of their families and villages.”

  Benzel shook his head. “I was trained to slay dragons.”

  “And you were trained to slay men.”

  Pingzi and Benzel stared at each other for several long moments.

  “Northlanders would have had every reason to fear you,” Pingzi continued. “Knowing how to slay dragons and men alike made you the most dangerous man in the Northlands. If you’d started killing people, no one would feel safe letting you live. Killing you could have led to things getting so far out of hand that the Northlands might have turned into a murderous nation.” Pingzi exhaled in frustration. “That’s why you were a demon, and that’s why you had to be quelled. You were the one with the sense to stop the killing before it could begin.”

  Benzel smirked.

  Pingzi drew in a sharp breath.

  When will I learn? He’s simply goading me again for his own entertainment.

  Pingzi pointed at a branch of the tree damaged by insects. “I think I should quell you with that branch.”

  Benzel reached up and poked at the end of the diseased branch. “It would help if you’d make some temper spice tea. It’s always soothing.”

  Pingzi’s frustration fell away. “I’d be happy to make some temper spice tea for you.”

  Benzel’s eyes regained their sparkle. “Who said the tea was for me?”

  Pingzi suppressed the urge to smack him and smiled sweetly instead. “Very funny.”

  Benzel chuckled and returned to his work.

  “I’ll get your tea,” Pingzi muttered. “You could use some quelling today.”

  I’m out of temper spice anyway. It’s a good day to walk to the city.

  Pingzi always enjoyed a walk into the heart of Zangcheen. Few people knew she belonged to the emperor’s family, and that gave her the treasured opportunity to live a normal life. Her relatives lived inside the royal palace because it protected them from constant requests for a special audience with the emperor or suggestions to influence his decisions. Common folk also tended to be inquisitive about the royal magician and the royal astrologer. The last thing Pingzi wanted was to be inundated with people asking to see them.

  Instead, she relished her anonymity and nodded a simple greeting to everyone she encountered on the way to the public medicinal garden, a massive outdoor space dedicated to neat and well-kept rows of all herbs known in the Far East. Catching a glimpse of
the garden up ahead, Pingzi closed her eyes and breathed in the dreamy and heady scents carried from it by the wind.

  As she strolled beneath the canopy of a cat-claw tree, Pingzi started at the sensation of water splashing against her face. She wiped it away and looked up.

  Droplets of water hanging from the long and narrow leaves of the tree glistened in the sunlight.

  Pingzi remembered dark clouds that rolled in at sunset the previous day.

  It must have rained last night.

  Pingzi noticed a cart parked at the entrance to the medicinal garden. It overflowed with neat stacks of cloth dyed in bright colors. A man who looked like a Midlander stood close to the cart. He held a cane carved in the shape of a simple stick and used it to point to the cloth while talking to a small group of women circled before him.

  That looks like linen from the Northlands. It’s rare we see a merchant bold enough to come here.

  She tuned her ears in his direction and recognized his fluency in the Far Eastern language.

  “I’ve also been inside the royal complex,” the merchant said.

  The audience of women clucked with delight.

  “My boy will bring out my greatest find. It took a lot of bargaining to convince the royal store master of fabric to relinquish any of this silk, because it was reserved for the empress.”

  The women gasped with awe and delight.

  The merchant grinned. “I have exactly enough for one outfit to be made. For the right price, it’s yours.”

  A boy wrestled an armful of creamy white silk from the cart. Even though folded, its slippery nature required two solid arms to control. With a steady and careful approach, the boy walked around the merchant and toward the women.

  But when his foot landed on a slick patch of mud from last night’s rainfall, the boy’s legs flew out from beneath him and he fell to the ground.

  The creamy white silk sailed into the air above his head only to land in the mud.

  The women cried out.

  “It’s ruined!” one of them shouted.

  The boy scrambled onto his hands and knees. He reached out in an attempt to salvage the fabric, but he slipped and fell onto it. Even more mud splattered across the silk.