Outposts

by Vickie Knestaut

  “Mardoc!” Caron snapped. “You aren’t suggesting that we play their beliefs against them to serve our own purposes, are you?”

  Mardoc shrugged. “I’m not suggesting that, no, but if that is what they believe, then that is their choice. And if their beliefs allow us to end this war all that much sooner, then I don’t think that is a bad thing, especially if the alternative is that we ramp up hostilities and keep killing each other.”

  Trysten watched Paege cross the room again with the kettle. He hung it on an iron hook over the low, smoldering fire. It’d take an hour for it to get hot enough for tea, but it was comforting to watch his steady movements. After all that had happened so far this day, her head threatened to spin out of control.

  “What will happen once they discover that Trysten is not their queen?” Galelin asked. He placed his hands upon his knees and leaned forward slightly toward Mardoc. “They might be upset enough to not only resume the war but to do it with added vigor.”

  “More than they’ve already shown?” Mardoc asked with a vague gesture at the west.

  Galelin sat up and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Besides,” Mardoc continued. “We know so little about these people. What is to say that Trysten is not their queen?”

  “Mardoc!” Caron snapped again.

  Trysten shook her head. “I’m not.”

  Galelin scoffed. “Well I know Caron isn’t descended from Western royalty, so unless you are hiding something, then I don’t see how that can be.”

  “The first king of Cadwaller,” Mardoc said. “Was he descended from royalty?”

  “Of course he was,” Galelin said.

  Mardoc smirked. “In his head. His claim to the throne of Seelia was just a way to shore up his claim to the throne here. The truth of the matter is that he made himself king. There is no divine right that flows through heirs. The only heritage a king has is the power handed to him by his father. In this case, Trysten has power. Why shouldn’t she be their queen?”

  “Because I’m not,” Trysten said.

  Paege nodded and folded his arms across his chest as if considering the arguments at a public debate.

  Galelin shook his head. “Semantics won’t win you a war, Mardoc. Whatever it is their beliefs dictate, it won’t be enough to dress Trysten up and parade her before them as their ruler.”

  “What will...” Trysten stopped with the word win on her lips. It seemed like an awful thing, a bitter fruit. How terrible to think of it in such a way, as if there could be any winners after so many had fallen in this pointless, unending fight. There were only losers on either side, people who had lost so much.

  “What was that?” Paege asked.

  Trysten shook her head. “Nothing... It just seems odd to me.” She looked up at Paege. “There was a Dragon Lord among the Second Hordesmen. I know it. I felt him. I could tell... It’s where I got the idea of the dragon bridge. I could sense him there, on the other side of the dragons’ awareness.”

  Paege stiffened. “By the breath.”

  “I’m sorry,” Galelin said, “but I seem to have used all my wit and wisdom in my better, younger days. What are you two getting on about?”

  “Did you kill their king?” Mardoc asked.

  Galelin took in a slow, deep breath.

  Caron openly guffawed. “Oh, listen to yourselves! Really. Is she the queen? Did she kill their king? I swear you men go out of your way to make things more complicated than they need to be. It’s just as simple as what it seems to be. They probably have legends similar to ours. They have the stories of Adalina as well. Her kingdom spanned the entire land, did it not? And so here Trysten took their dragons from them and commanded riderless dragons. They were desperate for an explanation, and so Rodden provided it for them. Remember when he ran into the weyr yard right after these men landed on their dragons? He shouted something at them. They became docile, almost subservient. He gave them an explanation for them to latch on to, one that would prevent a slaughter. They latched on.”

  “I’m not saying anything different, dear,” Mardoc said. He lifted his hand and held it suspended between the two of them as if he wished to place it on Caron’s thigh, but was unsure of whether or not to proceed. “But what I am saying is that if these people choose to believe that Trysten is their queen—”

  “You mean the heart of Adalina,” Paege interrupted.

  Mardoc’s eyes flicked to Paege with hard annoyance, then went back to Caron. “If these people believe what Rodden told them, if that is their choice, then what harm is there in using that to guide them toward a conclusion that is mutually beneficial to both kingdoms?”

  “Because it’s not true,” Trysten said.

  “Because it’s a distraction,” Caron followed. “And distractions can be deadly.” She turned to Trysten as if driving home that the statement was intended for her. “Nothing has changed. Nothing is different. We still have the same problems, the same mysteries, the same needs now that we had two hours ago. If anything, all we have is more questions. It’s dangerous to play with this.”

  “When the sun no longer sets around me,” Trysten muttered to herself.

  “What was that, Little Heart?” Caron asked.

  She shook her head. “Something Paege said to me a while back.”

  Paege stiffened up beside the fireplace as Trysten turned his way.

  “You had said that you were concerned about Rodden’s deference towards me. You asked me what he would do when he found out that the sun did not set around me.”

  Paege nodded. “He will be disappointed.”

  “A wise, young man indeed,” Galelin said as he rubbed at his knees.

  Caron looked at Mardoc. “That is precisely why we can’t do this. We can’t take advantage of their beliefs. Should it go wrong, then we will pay a steep price.”

  “And Trysten will pay the steepest price,” Paege said.

  Mardoc sat back in his chair and ran his hand through his gray-flecked beard. “I suppose you’re right.”

  Caron grinned and leaned in toward Mardoc. “Of course I am. You wouldn’t have married a fool, would you?”

  Mardoc chuckled and shook his head. “I suppose not.”

  Mardoc looked at Trysten. “But still, if there was a way to convince the Western kingdom that you were indeed their queen, or at least—”

  “No!” Trysten said as she waved her hands before herself to dismiss the idea. “No, we’re not doing that.”

  “Well, we don’t have to do anything except allow them to believe what they believe,” Mardoc said. “They are convinced of this themselves. What if we simply sent them home? That would solve two problems, would it not? They could take word back to the Western kingdom, and we would not be in the position of jail-keepers once again.”

  “What makes you think they’d go home?” Galelin asked. “By the looks of them, half of them died just trying to get back here.”

  “All right,” Paege said. “So we’ve decided what we won’t do concerning their beliefs, but what are we going to do with these men? They can’t stay here.”

  Trysten shook her head. “What we need to do is gather information. All of this,” she said as she waved her hands before herself, “is speculation and nothing more. Am I the queen of the Western kingdom? Of course not. Did I kill the Western King? Come on. No. I killed another Dragon Lord, and now he’s some kind of crazed Original who is trying to get me and Elevera to go with him to the end of the world, wherever that is. How the Western kingdom is involved in this, or if they’re even involved in this at all is something we don’t know. We need information. Knowledge. This war is about ignorance. When we defeat ignorance, we will put an end to this war.”

  “Well said,” Paege said.

  “Indeed,” Mardoc said as he shifted in his chair. “But how will we educate ourselves on these matters?”

  Trysten opened her mouth to speak, but Mardoc cut her off.

  “Rodden has certainly been a help, an
d he may very well have handed us the thing we need to end this war in victory, but we cannot put all of our trust in an enemy hordesman. Especially one who claims that he and his countrymen attack us in response to our attacks upon them. He is clearly lying or mistaken.”

  “Do you think he is lying?” Galelin asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mardoc said. “All I know for certain is that he can’t be both correct and honest. Not with this claim.”

  “This isn’t very helpful,” Trysten said.

  Mardoc and Galelin looked at her.

  “We can sit here and speculate all day, but if I’ve learned anything since all of this began, it’s that nothing is as it seems,” she said.

  “Well, what are we going to do next?” Paege asked.

  “That is certainly the question,” Mardoc said.

  Trysten shook her head. “Mother’s right. The prisoners and their claim don’t change a thing. Father’s right. Rodden’s claim against us is dubious at best. I don’t think he would lie to me. He seems quite sincere in his belief about me. But he could just be mistaken. If the Originals wanted to keep this war going, then attacking the Western kingdom in our name certainly would achieve that.”

  “Things have changed,” Paege said. “The army. The tactics. The Originals are here now.”

  “You’re here now,” Caron said to Trysten.

  “Or more precisely,” Galelin said, “Elevera is here. As the alpha.”

  Trysten turned to Galelin. “What are you suggesting?”

  Galelin shrugged. “Perhaps nothing. But that is what changed. It wasn’t simply that you became Dragoneer, but also that Elevera became alpha. What if this is about her?”

  Every muscle in Trysten’s body went tight to the point that her breath hardly leaked through.

  “As I understand things, or how things have unfolded thus far, the Originals were destroyed by the gods,” Galelin said. “A few were able to escape, and they hid in a place where the eyes of the gods couldn’t see them.”

  The old dragon healer looked up to the ceiling. A bone in his spine popped before he looked back to Trysten. “Perhaps they were trapped. Imprisoned. And it was the act of the Second Hordesmen that freed them from their imprisonment. You and young Paege here said that the cairns where you buried the fallen Second Hordesmen were empty. All except for the one who lost his pendant.”

  Trysten nodded.

  “Their dragons were gone, too,” Galelin said.

  Trysten shivered as she recalled the sight of the Original in her den, the way she saw shadows of wings, a hint of a tail as he catapulted himself through the air over her head.

  Galelin laced his fingers together and continued. “The Originals were said to be split apart, to be made into humans and dragons. It appears that our friends have discovered a way to reunite themselves. The fallen Second Hordesmen and their dragons have perhaps been bound back together.”

  “Together?” Mardoc asked, incredulity swamping his voice. “How so?”

  Galelin shrugged. “Magic.”

  “Magic! But there is no such thing as an Original to begin with. It is but a children’s story,” Mardoc protested.

  “Did you honestly not believe, even a bit, in the tales of the Originals before all of this began to occur?” Galelin asked, his palms held out before himself as if presenting the question to Mardoc.

  Mardoc sat back in his chair. His face reddened a bit as he fumed.

  “The stories of the Originals were stories parents told their children to get them to help with the chores, to be truthful, to frighten them into doing whatever it was that the parents wanted without having to resort to reasoning. That’s all they were,” the fallen dragoneer said.

  Mardoc glanced at Caron, who smiled in a soft, subtle manner.

  “But it appears that the Originals are real, that they exist and that their hands are all throughout matters here.” Galelin snorted once, and his snort led to a short coughing fit. Paege crossed the room and filled a cup with water.

  “Thank you,” Galelin said as he took the cup and drank from it. “As I was saying, if you don’t believe in magic, Mardoc, then you might as well not believe in your daughter. It’s no coincidence that the Western hordesmen have mistaken her for a mythical queen.”

  “Adalina is no myth,” Caron interjected.

  “But that she would come back as your daughter?” Galelin asked with a raised eyebrow.

  Caron nodded. “You make a good point,” she said to her uncle.

  Trysten cleared her throat. “As I recall, I was once told by a wise, older man that just because we don’t understand something doesn’t make it magic.”

  Galelin nodded. “Sounds like the words of a wise, old man, indeed. But such a man would also tell you that absence of proof is not proof itself. Only a fool would say that something doesn’t exist simply because there is no proof one way or the other. I cannot prove magic exists, but I cannot prove that it doesn’t exist, either.”

  “So what are you getting at?” Paege asked. “I’m lost.”

  “Yes,” Galelin said with a nod. “Thank you. To get back on the path here, what I am getting at is that the Originals, by magic or device,” Galelin said as he pointed to the pendant that Trysten wore beneath her tunic, “can return to our world by combining the... essence? Soul? They are able to reconstitute themselves from combining a man and a dragon.”

  “And if that dragon should happen to be...” Paege began.

  Trysten’s jaw tightened, and her heart thundered in her chest.

  “Or should the man be, in this case, a woman with the skills of a Dragon Lord and her alpha, such a bonding might result in powers beyond anything the Originals currently have,” Galelin finished.

  “By the scale,” Mardoc whispered.

  “But this is mere speculation!” Galelin snapped and held his index finger out as if in warning to the others. “Theory.”

  “It makes sense,” Mardoc said. “I don’t like it, but it makes terrifying sense.”

  Trysten nodded. “They need me to agree. Whatever it is they want, they need me to agree to go with them. It makes sense. What would it take to force a dragon of Elevera’s might to go where she doesn’t want to go?”

  “And where would she not go that her dragoneer wished her to go?” Galelin asked.

  Caron shook her head and pressed her hand to her heart.

  “Dear?” Galelin asked.

  “Mother,” Caron said. “I was just thinking of her.”

  “What of her?” Trysten asked.

  Caron shrugged. “Just how I wish that I had talked to her more. That I had taken more time to listen to her. If she were around today, she might be able to help.”

  “No sense in that,” Galelin said as he rubbed his knees again and looked to the floor of the cottage.

  “So if these creatures are forged from a man and a dragon, then how might we split them apart?” Mardoc asked.

  “That’s a good question,” Galelin said. “I wish I had an answer, but I am an old healer. I don’t know much of magic or device.”

  Trysten curled her fingers into her tunic and tugged lightly at the chain around her neck. “If you studied the pendant, do you think you could determine how it works?”

  Galelin stared off into the space between the two of them for a moment and then shook his head. “I’m afraid not.” He looked up to the eyes of his niece. “I’m afraid that it is beyond my understanding. I can’t even see the complete nature of it, can I? Not like you and your mother can see it.”

  Trysten stood. She paced across the room, and as she approached, Yallit scratched at the door.

  “I have a book,” Trysten said. “Aymon gave it to me. He gave me two of them the day he left. One is about Adalina. The other is about the Originals. He said that they contain all that he’s learned about both subjects.”

  “Fascinating,” Galelin said.

  “They’re not in the den where the Originals can get them, are they?” Mardoc
asked.

  Galelin scoffed. “Why would keeping something out of the den keep the Originals from it.”

  “Well, that is the only place they’ve dared to show themselves.”

  “One visited me in the yard,” Trysten said. “But the point is, I’ve been reading the one about Adalina. There could be answers to our questions in the book of the Originals.”

  “Galelin should read it,” Mardoc said.

  “Well, I’ve never turned down a book before,” Galelin said. “I don’t see that I should start now.”

  “I’ll go get you the book now,” Trysten said. “If I read the book of Adalina and you read the book of the Originals, then we’ll know what Aymon knew much quicker.”

  “By the heavens, we do need more information,” Galelin said. “Books will always fix that need.”

  “In the meantime,” Trysten went on, “I’ll tell Kaylar and Rodden to continue working together and to see what they can learn from the prisoners. If they work together to learn our language, then things should speed up there.”

  “And I’ll get some more people out to the outpost,” Paege offered. “More hands.”

  “That’s right,” Trysten said with a nod. “Whatever is going on, the Originals don’t want us near the pass. The one in my den warned me to keep our people close to Aerona. I’m sure he meant that we are to stay away from the pass.”

  Trysten turned to Galelin, then reached into the neck of her tunic and fished out the pendant. “One other thing. The Original who gave this to me called it a key—”

  “That’s the other thing that gets me,” Mardoc said and wagged his finger as if to warn the others that nothing was going to slip past him. “What of the female Original? She seems to have been trying to help matters.”

  Galelin shrugged. “We’ve already established that we don’t understand their motives. Perhaps she is a good one. There are good people and bad people, aren’t there?”

  “Are there bad dragons?” Paege asked.

  “No,” Mardoc said, and his tone let everyone know that the question had been answered.

  “Anyway,” Trysten said, “as I was saying, the female Original called this a key. And the other Original, the male one, said that I was welcome to come in, but that he would not have me peeping through the keyhole. What do you suppose that means?”