“It’s the truth,” I said, trying to diffuse the situation. The tension was running high and if something didn’t break soon, I could imagine the elders using their swords in a more forceful way. “On my eighteenth birthday, I fell. A dragon rescued me. He took me to his home at the other side of the mountains. There, I saw the people living just as we do. They have shops and houses and a town square just like this one. They are the same as you and I, except that they can turn into dragons. They have spent their lives protecting their village, just as you believe you have, but the truth of the matter is, there is no need. We are not fighting each other, we are fighting a perceived enemy. The dragons want to live in peace, just as we all do.”
“Why should we believe you? You’ve been living among them. You have been caught in their magic.” The same man that had spoken up numerous times shouted out again. I wished I could turn into a dragon at that point and bite his head off. I could see Spear getting annoyed at him too. Things had to turn around and quickly.
I saw my father’s head nodding out of the corner of my eye.
“They are shifters!” I shouted in desperation.
“Liar!” he shouted back, matching my tone.
Just then, Ash bounded over to the front of the stage. He was on ground level, so a good foot below me. The people didn’t know who he was, but they knew a stranger when they saw one. A dozen or so of the men in the crowd moved forward, ready to attack. Before anyone touched him, I heard the familiar creak of his bones. He was going to shift.
The people in the front few rows began to move back as his body contorted in a grotesque fashion. Chairs were knocked over in the panic as people tried to get away from him. His clothes ripped at their seams as a huge pair of red wings emerged from his back. Someone screamed and I saw a woman near the back faint. Not that I could blame her. I still wasn’t used to the horrific sight.
Ash, finishing his transformation, spread his magnificent wings and flapped them. More chairs went flying before he took off into the sky.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Pandemonium broke out as the villagers scattered. Chairs were knocked over in the panic and screams filled the air. Ash circled around a few times before heading back to the stage. I tried shouting to stop the stampede. Some were running away in fear. Some were running toward the stage with their swords aloft. People were disappearing under the feet of others, running in all directions. Chaos abounded and people were getting hurt. No one would listen to me, no matter how loudly I shouted, my voice couldn’t match the panicked noise that Ash’s transformation had caused.
I watched helplessly as an old man was knocked over and trampled. Ash opened his wings again and flew to the man, picking him up gently in his talons and flying him to one side, out of the way. Either people didn’t notice, or they didn’t care, because the rush of people carried on.
“Enough!”
A bright light filled the air and Morganna’s voice boomed out. So, she did have a little magic left after all! Her voice rose above the commotion, stopping people in their tracks. “You have walked over your own people to run away from your perceived threat, and yet that threat was the only person helping to save those that you all thoughtlessly trampled on. Look to the side if you don’t believe me. Ash was the only one that tried to save one of your own as you trampled over him. If he wanted to hurt you, would he have done that?”
Everyone looked over. The old man had sat himself down in a chair. He was visibly bruised from the trampling, but beyond that, seemed okay. As everyone watched, Ash took to the air again and dove into the crowd. This time, instead of panicking, they moved aside and watched as he plucked a small child from the crowd. The little girl had obviously broken her arm in the fracas. Someone shouted out from the back.
“My baby!”
Ash followed the sound of the mother and delicately flew the girl back to her, letting her go gently in the weeping mother’s arms.
Morganna raised an eyebrow. “There, you see? There is the monster that you’ve feared for centuries. He is a man. A man just like my friends here.” She gestured to Spear and the others. “None of these men want to hurt you. They never have. If they wanted to, they could turn into dragons now and burn the village down. Do you see any of them doing that? No! They just want their family and friends back. Family that you have spent centuries taking from them. They don’t want justice, they don’t want revenge. They just want their loved ones back in their arms.”
I looked out over the crowd as Ash flew overhead once again. He circled and landed next to me on the stage. Everyone was silent apart from the young girl, who was still crying. Morganna left the stage and walked right through the crowd that parted to let her through. She took the crying child from the mother and moved her hand up the little girl’s arm. Within a minute, the girl had stopped crying and was laughing. Morganna did have more magic than she let on.
“The Goblins!” My father shouted out inexplicably, forcing everyone to turn back to the stage. “The Goblins warned us long ago that the dragons would hurt us.”
“You lied to us,” a woman shouted.
“I was keeping you all safe!” my father replied, clearly trying to control an uncontrollable situation.
“You knew all this time what the dragons were. What our swords were doing!”
“It wasn’t just me,” my father protested a little too hard. “The other elders knew too.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Xander stepped forward and addressed the crowd. “I didn’t know.”
“Okay,” my father backtracked. “I left some of you out of the secret. Some of you were just too goody-two-shoes for your own good. I knew if I told you, you’d stop me, but the truth of the matter is, I was protecting my village...your village...all of you. Just like my father and his father before him.”
“No!” Xander strode up to my father. “The real truth is, you wanted the power. Your father led this village and you wanted that, too. You knew that the dragons’ souls made the swords stronger. That’s why you carried on this charade for so long. You know, I often wondered why you accompanied all the eighteen-year-olds up the mountain to their first kill. You always insisted on it. It wasn’t because you wanted to help them; it was so that you could make your own kill and therefore make your sword stronger. I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve been up that mountain, all in the name of protecting us. But it wasn’t protection of the village you wanted, it was power over the village.”
My father looked as though he was about to protest, but Xander stood up to him. There was little difference between them in height, but my father had the edge. In all his years of supremacy and toughness, I’ve never seen him quell under another man’s stare before, but Xander was mad. Mad that he had been duped all his life, mad that the other villagers had, too. My father almost cowered under the stare of the shorter man.
We had the rapt attention of the crowd now. The people who had run were now coming back. The wolves headed into the crowd to help pick up the chairs that were knocked over in the panic. The dragons went down to help. I could see the nervousness of the villagers as they descended into the crowd, but there was no fighting. For the first time in forever, these three tribes were finally working as a team. They were working as one.
It made my heart sing to finally see it.
I watched Alpha put his hand down to help pull up a woman that had fallen in the mêlée. The mother of the child who had been hurt purposefully walked over to Ash and hugged him, even though he was still in his dragon form.
The only people left on the stage were Morganna, my father, and I. Everyone else was helping tidy up the mess. It wasn’t just the mess of the panic, but the mess of the last couple of centuries. A lot of the townsfolk kept a wary distance from Ash, but no one tried to hurt him. I had a suspicion he would have turned back into his human form if he’d not ripped his only pair of clothes. Funnily enough, the villagers were less wary of the other dragons. Maybe because they looked
human.
I mentioned it to Morganna.
“It will come in time. Look how much you’ve achieved. Never in my whole life did I ever think I’d see the day when Slayers and dragons stood together.”
“Not to mention wolves,” I replied.
“It’s all because of you.” She stood silently for a second, then spoke again. “I came here today because I wanted to help you, but I have to admit, I didn’t think it would work. I thought we’d all be driven out of town.”
“You really thought we’d fail?”
“I’m sorry to say that I did. I underestimated you. I don’t know why. After watching you cut yourself so deeply to free those dragons, I know you are the most fearless warrior I’ve ever met. You might not have slain as many dragons as I, but you are braver on so many more levels. Slaying was easy. Looking beyond past prejudices and giving a sworn enemy, a chance takes a hell of a lot of courage.”
She patted my back. I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. My childhood hero, a woman who was famously fearless, was telling me that I was braver than her. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so happy in my life. I turned to my father. He looked like a broken man. My mother and brother had suddenly appeared and were sitting with him on the edge of the stage. My mother’s eyes were red-rimmed, as though she’d been crying for a long time. She probably had. She’d aged so much in the past few weeks. The silver in her hair had turned a ghostly white. I wanted to go over and comfort her, but strangely enough, walking over to my family was so much harder than fighting any dragon or talking to a hundred people from a stage. And yet, I couldn’t walk away from them. Whatever they had done, they were still my family. My mother was as innocent in this as the rest of the village, and as much as I hated to admit it, so was Jasper.
I took a deep breath and walked over to them. I lowered myself until I was sitting on the edge of the stage. My mother burst into a fresh round of tears and hugged me. Despite her diminutive size, she gave the most powerful hugs known to man. She could barely crack an egg without help, but she held me so tightly that she almost cracked my ribcage. Jasper wasn’t going to hug me. He just wasn’t made like that, but he gave me a nod of the head, which was enough. There was just my father left. He’d done some terrible, terrible things, but I knew that I wasn’t entirely blameless. When my mother finally let go of me, I stood and walked up to my father. Just as my mother had aged, he looked so much older than his years. He seemed to have shrunk too. No longer was he a colossal bear of a man; instead, he was a man who knew he’d lost everything. He’d lost his house, his standing in the community and the respect of the people. He was no longer the big man of the village.
“I’m sorry, Father,” I began, but he cut me off.
He didn’t speak. Instead, he handed me his sword. The sword I’d admired since I was a tiny scrap of a thing. That in itself spoke volumes. I wanted to say something else, but there was nothing else to say. Fixing my family would be more difficult than fixing the village. Funnily enough, I believed the dragons would be a great help in mending and rebuilding the houses that had been destroyed. They could carry a lot of wood and materials on their backs. I made a mental note to speak to Ash about it as soon as I could.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” my father began in a croaky voice. Even his booming voice had diminished. “The Goblins...”
“You don’t have to say anything. Now is the time to build and rebuild, not only the structures around the village but the link between our community and the dragons.”
My father nodded solemnly just as Ash appeared at my side. He was still in his dragon form and towered over me.
“See, Father? The dragons don’t want to hurt us. This is my friend Ash.” I could have told them he was my boyfriend, but I think they had enough to come to terms with in one day. They could probably guess by the way he’d stood by me over these past few weeks. I put my hand up to him, feeling his scaly skin. He looked my father straight in the eye and nodded his head. My father nodded back.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The meeting finally ended hours later. One of the Slayers brought out a couple of barrels of ale and another brought out food. It was their way of making amends, although they really had nothing to make amends for. Just like Morganna and me, they had not known the full truth of the situation. As the sky deepened in color and night set in, the chairs were moved from their positions in rows to a circle. In the center, a makeshift fire pit was quickly built up and Ash kindly started the fire for us. Xander went home and came back minutes later with some clean clothing so Ash could turn back into his human form.
It was a weird scene. Dragons sitting with Slayers and wolves, and for the first time in so many centuries, they were all getting along. Even those that had appeared cautious at first were now sitting and chatting with the dragons, probably due to the ale they had been sipping.
At some point, Spear and one of the village elders had gotten together and rounded up the remaining swords. There was a pile of them next to me. The next job would be to free the dragons within, but Ash forbade me from doing it so soon.
He sat next to me, his arm draped around my shoulder. It was a cold night, but the heat of the fire along with the heat of Ash’s body warmed me.
“They have been without souls for a long time. One more day won’t make much difference. Besides, if you use all those swords to draw your blood, it will kill you.”
He was right. I couldn’t possibly free all the dragons at once. It would be too much for my body to take. We would have to come up with a plan to do it without killing me off.
I felt completely at ease with the world with one exception. I thought back to my time in the Goblins’ lair. They had welcomed us, although they had wanted us to leave without giving us much information. I’d not really thought about it much before today, but everything boiled down to the Goblins.
I walked over to where Morganna sat. She was sharing a joke with Alpha and one of the Slayers. “I’ve been thinking about the Goblins...” I began.
“I have, too,” she said, standing and pulling me away from the fire. “It’s curious that they have been brought up so many times.”
“My father told me that they were the ones who told him that the dragons were evil.”
“This has been going on for way longer than your father has been around, but if they said that to him, they probably have been saying it for centuries.”
“I wonder if it’s a way to make more money? Each of our swords costs a small fortune.”
“A selling tool?” mused Morganna. “Do you really think that’s what this is?”
I thought for a second before shaking my head. “No.” I held up my sword. It was a thing of beauty and excellent craftsmanship. “They could charge what they liked for these anyway. Each one is unique and most hold precious stones. They had no reason to tell us to kill the dragons.”
Alpha spoke up. I’d not even realized he’d joined us. “I’m sorry for interrupting you ladies, but I heard what you were talking about. I’ve never told anyone this before, not even you Morganna, but many years ago, when I was still very young, I went to the Goblins with my father. He died long ago, but that is neither here nor there. He wanted magic. We walked for days, taking everything of any value that we had. The Goblins let us in and fed us. I remember as a boy being fascinated by the whole city they’d built indoors.”
I remembered it well. It was a feat of amazing engineering or powerful magic.
“I loved it there,” Alpha continued. “It was so different from the forest I grew up in...” Spear and Ash headed over to us to hear what was being said. Alpha continued his story. “They fed us the most wonderful food, and for a young boy that had been walking for days and was hungry, it was like heaven. They offered us shelter for a couple of nights, but they would not give us magic. My father was not rich enough. The few trinkets he had brought were of no use to them. I remember them being friendly about it, but I also remember the warning that
the head Goblin gave to my father as we were setting off home. He said that a great war was coming between the dragons and the Slayers, and we would be best to get home quickly and stay away from the area. My father believed them. We sped home so fast that I thought my feet would fall off. When we got back, my father realized that his trinkets were gone. At the time, he thought he’d dropped them in his haste to get back, but I always thought that the Goblins had stolen them. I guess I’ll never know.”
“I’ve only ever visited the Goblins once,” said Spear, joining in the conversation. “But I’ve heard stories, much the same as you all have. We were also warned about a great war with the Slayers. We have long since been told never to tell the Slayers the truth about the swords for if we did, the Slayers would fight back.”
“Well, they weren’t wrong,” pointed out Ash. “Maybe this was the great war they were talking about.”
“They’ve manipulated us all,” remarked Morganna, “but why?”
We stood silently, none of us knowing the answer. The Goblins had a lot more to do with this than any of us previously thought.
I looked over my shoulder at the people. Slayers, dragons, and wolves. The fire was dying out and many had left to go home. A few of the Slayers remained, drinking what was left of the ale. The dragons could fly up to Frokontas, but the wolves had nowhere to go.
“Did you set up a camp outside town?” I asked Alpha.
He seemed to notice for the first time how tired his men looked. It had been a long day. He stood and walked back to the fire pit, addressing all those that were still left. “My fellow Wolvren. We’ve had a long journey and I think it’s time we headed back to camp. I want to invite anyone who would like to join us, be they Slayer or dragon. Tomorrow, we will all talk some more. There is much work to be done.”
Dragon Tamer Page 30