As soon as Keeruk landed, Caron and the others rushed forward to ask what had happened.
Caron gripped her chest and then reached out to help Trysten down. “I saw Elevera come out of the pass without a rider...” Her jaw snapped shut, and her eyes squinted with the unthinkable, as she shook her head. Her hands were trembling.
“I’m all right,” Trysten said as she landed on the ground and put her arm across her mother’s shoulders. “Everyone is fine. I don’t know what happened. We lost the horde as soon as we entered the pass, and after we went through ourselves, we were attacked by...”
“Couriers,” Deslan offered as he stepped off of Keeruk’s stirrup. “It was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen. Two riderless couriers swooped down off the backside of the mountains as if they’d been watching us from the peaks, and they latched themselves onto Elevera’s hind legs and tried to pull her down.”
“Couriers?” asked Essist, one of the volunteers. “You said they were riderless?”
The man glanced from Deslan and Trysten to Elevera, who didn’t seem nearly as bothered by the indignity of the pool this time around. Trysten sensed that the dragon was grateful for the cool and soothing waters on her hindquarters.
“That was some fighting!” Kaylar said as she approached from Verillium. “Trysten got one! She ran it right through with her sword. From the back of Verillium!”
Trysten turned to Kaylar, then looked at the outpost workers who shifted their attention to Kaylar.
Caron grabbed Trysten’s arm. “You were on the back of three different dragons? I don’t even want to know how that happened.”
“You should have seen it,” Kaylar said. She spread her open palms out before herself as if setting a stage and parting the curtains. “There we were, flying through the pass, and the horde fleeing us just vanished...” She waved her open hands before herself as if a magician.
Trysten stepped aside and tapped Paege on the elbow as she did. He stepped back with her as the workers focused their attention on Kaylar’s dramatic reenactment of the battle.
Trysten lifted her jaw to just over the height of Paege’s shoulder as she leaned in close and whispered, “What did you see? When the Orig—when the dragon I killed fell to the ground?”
“That was an Original?” Paege asked, his voice low. “I thought so.”
“What did you see?” Trysten asked again.
They were drawing several sideways glances from Kaylar’s crowd, but the hordesman did an excellent job of distracting them with theatrics.
Paege drew in a deep breath, and it brushed past Trysten’s ear. He held it a second, then said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I wasn’t watching.”
“What?” Trysten asked as she took half a step back. “You weren’t watching? What were you looking at?”
A flash of color passed over Paege’s cheeks. “You. I was watching you. I wanted to make sure you were all right. You were dangling from the strap of your quiver while it was clenched in my dragon’s jaw. I was a little preoccupied with you at the time.”
Trysten looked out to the woods around them. She shook her head. “That’s fair,” she said. “And thank you.”
Paege shrugged. “My pleasure. No actually, it wasn’t. Please don’t ever do that again. I think my heart actually stopped.”
“Sorry. Did you see the one leap off of Elevera? Were you watching that?” Trysten asked.
The color dropped away from Paege’s face. He nodded solemnly. “I don’t know what I saw. I can’t really explain it.”
“Try.”
Paege looked over to Kaylar. He appeared to be collecting his thoughts. He finally turned back to her. “When you tried to jab him with your sword, from Verillium’s back, it was like... It was like the dragon was drawn back, away. Like the hands of the gods just plucked it back and drew it away at some awful speed, and then shoved a man into its place.”
He lowered her face as he shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t really explain it. It was... I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t... What did you see?”
“The dragon was blue-gray, right? Like the scale I showed you?”
Paege nodded.
“And the man? What did he look like?” she asked.
“What did he look like to you?”
“Come on, Paege. Please. It’s important,” Trysten pleaded.
Paege crossed his arms over his chest and gave his head a slight shake in frustration. “I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look at him. You were a good bit above me, and it all happened so fast.”
Someone in Kaylar’s crowd let out a gasp.
“...And then he just fell off,” Kaylar said, the tone of her voice dropping along with the climax of the story. She was quite a talented storyteller. Probably something she picked up while she was a barmaid.
“He dropped away, arms out,” Kaylar went on, her arms out at her side slightly, she arched her back and wavered a bit. “And there Trysten was, just dangling from a quiver strap, sword in hand, quiver clenched in Sone’s jaws, and her face dropped to watch this monster fall away. And then...”
Kaylar’s eyes darted to Trysten, and then away before Trysten could react.
“He split.”
“He split? On the rocks?” Essist asked.
One of the women in the crowd gasped and placed her fingers over her gaping mouth.
Trysten stood stock still, unable to stop Kaylar for her own curiosity to hear what the hordesman would say.
“No,” Kaylar said, her voice low and quiet, the shake of her head and the slow, sly grin on her face promised something no one wanted to miss.
The crowd grew deathly quiet as they leaned forward. Trysten’s attention shot to Caron. She stared right back at her daughter, clearly not amused.
“He split,” Kaylar repeated. She cleaved the air with the side of her hand. “Right down the middle, as if the sword was still cutting him, flaying him. Swick.”
“Broken feathers!” one man spat.
“And then,” Kaylar added, her palm up and out as if to pause the crowd’s reaction, hold it at bay for a statement longer, “one half of the man became another different man. And the other half... became a whole dragon. A huge battle dragon. And then... boom!”
The crowd jumped slightly and moved back. Most of them then looked to Trysten as if to seek confirmation of Kaylar’s tall tale.
“They hit the ground,” Kaylar went on and reeled the crowd back in. “They bounced down the slope. The man’s body wedged into a stone, but the dragon kept rolling, lifeless and dead, wings and neck and tail flailing until she finally hit a copse of trees that shuddered just as violently as I did at the ghastly sight.”
Once again, the crowd turned to Trysten. “No way,” someone said. “That’s too fanciful a tale to be true.”
“Ask her,” Kaylar said as she motioned to Trysten. “She’ll tell you every word of it is true.”
The crowd turned to Trysten, looking at her with expectation and bated breath.
Trysten inhaled deeply. She tasted the scent of dust and the tang of freshly cut pine. The rising cliff before and the trees all around her left her feeling hemmed in, trapped. Now more so than ever.
She nearly crossed her arms over her chest, then stopped herself. She settled for placing her hands upon her hips, and then let them slide into the small of her back before she grasped her wrist and held it there behind her.
“It don’t require thought,” Essist said. “If you have to think about it, it ain’t true.” He looked at Kaylar, his brow furrowed with annoyance.
There was no point in hiding the truth from these people. The fact was that they were out here, risking their lives on the construction of the outpost, helping her discover who it was that was attacking the Western kingdom. Denying it would cast Kaylar as a liar and only invite speculation and rumors, in addition to the denial being a lie itself.
Trysten nodded. “It’s true. Every word of it.”
The crowd
stood quiet and speechless for a moment.
“What?” Essist finally asked. He looked between Kaylar and Trysten. “Nuh-uh. No way. Dragons being calved from a dead man? No. No way. You’re lying.”
“Why would she lie about that?” Tolva, a woman in the crowd asked. “It’s a dumb thing to lie about because to tell you the truth, it scares the scales from me.”
Essist shook his head. “They need a tall tale to cover how they lost that other horde.” He pointed to the sky.
“I can’t believe that anyone from Aerona would call his dragoneer a liar,” Paege said quietly as he stepped forward.
“How are we going to defend ourselves from the Western kingdom?” Tolva asked as she turned her attention back to Trysten. “For all the sky, they came after us with an army. With those awful spear launchers. And how many hordes coming in from every direction? And now they have these...” She waved a hand in the air. “The riders and the dragon are the same now, is it? What kind of evil sorcery is that?”
She turned to Essist. “How do you cut such a thing from the sky? No wonder Trysten had to get it with a sword. How can you pluck the rider off with an arrow if he is part of the dragon!”
Murmurs grew through the crowd. Essist scoffed. “Listen to yourself, woman! Dragons and riders being the same? That’s the stuff of children’s tales.”
The murmuring among the workers grew in pitch, became more frantic. The mounting sense of panic burrowed into Trysten’s skin as well. Although she knew what they had faced, she had not anticipated finding Originals waiting for her on the other side. If she ever needed any evidence that the Western kingdom was working with the Originals, it seemed that she had it now. The realization hit hard.
What would they do?
Trysten stepped forward. “Listen. Hear me out.”
The crowd grew quiet and turned its attention to her.
“You have heard tales of the Originals. We all have. That is what we are dealing with here. They appear to be in league with the Western kingdom, and that is why their tactics have changed, why they, the Western kingdom, has become so aggressive lately.”
“What?” Essist said. “You can’t expect us to believe that? That we are under attack from the monsters of children’s tales? What? Were we all a bunch of bad boys and girls this year?”
“It’s the truth,” Deslan said. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“Your eyes might be a bit cowed by your dragoneer,” Essist replied.
“Stop,” Trysten called. “It is the truth. I have seen them. I have spoken to them.”
“If what you’re saying is true,” Tolva said, “then what hope have we against them? How are we going to turn back the Western kingdom?”
Murmurs of agreement filtered through the crowd.
Trysten gritted her teeth. It was a fair point, and a question she would love to have answered as well. But she didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the answer to be supplied to her. She needed an answer now to get ahead of any speculation and rumor-mongering that was bound to come. Even if Trysten ordered her hordesmen to silence, these people would speak as soon as they got back to the village.
“They want a fight,” Trysten said. “The Originals want to pit us against the Western kingdom, keep us fighting. They want confusion and fear. They want to divide us and leave us cowering and afraid. That is their goal. If we are united we can stand against them, so that is the last thing they want. We must do what we can to end the fighting between our kingdom and the West and unite against our common enemy. We are going to start doing this by being vigilant. We are going to complete this outpost and make a stand. We will decide who can enter and leave our territory through our mountains. For too long the Originals have been able to hide in a cloak of darkness and shadow. They have convinced others that they are nothing more than nightmarish fairy tales so that they might advance their goals in secret. But no more. If they are going to attack us, if they are going to pit our neighbors against us, then we will expose the Originals, and we will let all of the kingdoms in the land know what they are up to.”
Trysten surveyed the crowd. Essist shifted his weight from foot to foot. His jaw flexed, ready to say something.
Trysten pointed to the peaks towering over them. “We are going to secure this pass. We are going to secure it precisely because they don’t want us to. They fear scrutiny. We are going to—”
“Aren’t you their queen?” Essist called. “The Westerners? Can’t you just tell them to knock it off?” He folded his arms over his chest in defiance.
Trysten sucked in a deep breath. “I am the Dragoneer of Aerona weyr. That is my responsibility. My oath is to the safety and security of the village and its people. I will not divide my loyalties or my attention. I will not take advantage of their notions. You all know that I am not the queen of the Western kingdom. You all grew up with me, my father, my mother,” Trysten said with a nod to Caron.
Trysten looked back out over the crowd. “But the fighting has to stop. And that starts here,” Trysten said as she pointed to the ground. “Right here. We need this outpost to be completed as soon as possible. The sooner we can defend this pass, the sooner we can track who comes and goes, and the sooner we can show the Western kingdom and the Originals that we cannot be bullied or defeated. The Western kingdom will have to learn to live with us because they will not be able to live against us.”
Silence enveloped the crowd. It wasn’t the reaction Trysten had hoped for, but at least Essist hadn’t jumped forward to challenge her again. Not yet, anyway. She could see it coming to the surface of his face, however, as the silence began to unnerve them all.
“All right,” Jurdun said, and then slapped his hands together. “We have an outpost to build.” He stepped into the space between the crowd and Trysten, then spread his arms wide and swept gently forward as if the group was a bunch of sheep in need of herding.
“The sooner we have the fortifications built, the better off we will be, and the better off Aerona will be,” Jurdun called after them.
Caron resisted the gentle urging of Jurdun and stood her ground as she stared at Trysten, her face steady with concern.
Trysten nodded, then gave a slight wave to her mother and hoped that she’d take it to mean that she really was all right.
Caron stared a moment longer, then went back to the fortification.
Kaylar stepped up to Trysten. “I’m sorry about this, about scaring the scales off these people. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I shouldn’t have said a word about...”
Trysten shook her head, then looked at her friend. “Don’t worry about it. At this point, the truth is so outlandish that what will save us is our insistence on it being the truth. It’s too fantastic to be a lie. But if we get caught withholding information, we will be accused of lying in a heartbeat. We can’t risk that. We need the cooperation of our people more than ever.”
Kaylar looked out over the worksite. “What do you think they wanted? The Originals? It looked like they were going after Elevera. Like they wanted her more than anything.”
Trysten stepped back in order to see around the bulk of Keeruk. Elevera stood in the pool, staring back at Trysten, still and motionless as if she were meant to be there— someone’s absurd notion of a decoration.
A chill ran down Trysten’s back. Kaylar certainly had a point. It was Elevera they had been after, and they had only tried to stop Trysten once she began to interfere with their efforts to keep Elevera on the western side of the pass.
Was Elevera the key to all of this? Maybe Galelin was right. Everything the Originals did seemed to be designed to get Trysten to bring Elevera to the west, and then it looked like they meant to keep her there.
Her hand strayed up to the bodice of her riding armor, and her finger traced the edges of the pendant underneath.
But as she thought of it, she recalled that the Originals weren’t the only ones to express an interest in Elevera.
�
��Come on,” Trysten said. “Let’s get back to Aerona. I think I should have another chat with Cornyn.”
Chapter 36
Trysten knocked on Cornyn’s door. Inside, a chair shifted, then footsteps crossed to the doorway, and paused. Trysten’s brow furrowed slightly. She leaned forward as if she might be able to hear Cornyn listening from the other side of the door.
“Cornyn?” Trysten asked.
The latch clicked. The door opened far enough for the man to stick his head out. “What can I do for you?”
“I was thinking about our conversation the other day, and I have a few more questions for you.”
Cornyn looked away, to some space down around her knees. It was so apparent that he was fishing for an excuse that it was nearly embarrassing.
“I can’t,” Cornyn said. “I have to meet with someone soon.”
Trysten placed her hand against the door jamb and leaned her weight into it, blocking his way. “This will only take a few minutes of your time. If you’re late, please let whoever you are meeting with know that I am to blame, and I will be happy to explain why I kept you.”
Cornyn’s face, still pink with the sun of traveling, reddened more. He let out a small breath of frustration, then slipped out the room and shut the door behind himself, barring Trysten from seeing anything inside. He folded his arms over his chest. “Make it quick. I mean, please hurry.”
Trysten stepped back and placed her hands on her hips. “After our conversation, I wanted to know more about what kind of information you were collecting. What is a royal historian going to record about our little village? So I spoke to some of the people that you spoke with, and do you know what they told me?”
Cornyn shook his head as the color drained from his tightening lips.
“I found that you’ve been asking nearly everyone about Elevera and the line of Aerona dragons, but that’s all you’ve been asking.”
Cornyn lifted his eyebrow in disdain, as if annoyed that that was all that Trysten had for him. “And?”
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