It wasn’t just me, although my own mental dragon silence was perhaps worse than the others since the newer Dragon Riders could not yet hear their dragons’ true voices as I could, and so they could not know what they were missing out on.
“Bower!” I shouted back at the true king sitting behind me, his pale face creased with worry as one rider after another lost control over their dragons. “I think there’s something wrong with the connection. Can you hear the dragons? Can you hear Jaydra?” I was panicked, and I knew that wasn’t good for the flight. If the rest suspected that even I, supposedly their dragon teacher, could be out of control on her dragon, then what faith could any of the rest of them have?
Bower half-closed his eyes in concentration, before he nodded. “Jaydra says that she cannot hear any of the others. And she cannot hear you!” he called, his face a mask of concern.
So, it wasn’t just me. This wasn’t just some feature of the potion that Dol Agur was making me drink. This was something else. Some trick of Enric’s. It had to be.
“Bower, can you reach Jaydra and the other dragons?” I had a plan. “I need you to use your Dragon King’s ability talk to the dragons. All of them. Just calm them, tell them that it is going to be all right, and that we’ll find a way to break this.”
Bower nodded and leaned forward, both hands on either side of Jaydra’s spine. I couldn’t see or hear what he was saying, but I could feel the way that Jaydra moved underneath me, she relaxed slightly. Even without hearing my voice inside, she at least knew how to read my body movements and I hers.
Around us the other dragons calmed too, and for a moment they flew almost in formation.
“We have to land,” I said and pointed to a wide, flat area beside a curving river valley up ahead, “and see what is causing this.”
“I agree. I’ll tell the dragons.” Bower frowned once again and gritted his teeth as he performed his rare magic.
Which left me with the task of trying to communicate with the human riders what we were doing. What was it that Bower used to say? Flags and arm movements? Bower was always full of ideas of techniques that he had picked up from some old soldier’s manual or another, and apparently, this was one of the ways that the old Dragon Riders used to navigate.
I tried my best, half-standing up in my saddle and waving to get as much attention as I could, and got a few half-hearted arm raises in response.
“That way!” I brought both of my arms down to point towards the river valley. I did a large sweeping motion, imitating our flight swooping downwards, before Jaydra below me started to angle her wings, one wing high the other low to force us to curve around and down. I just hoped they understood what I meant, so they didn’t get worried about their dragons going rogue. We had only just managed to forge this new connection between the Three Rivers riders and the dragons, and if the riders thought that their dragons weren’t listening to them at all, then all of our efforts could be wasted, I thought as we headed towards the relative safety of the flatter ground.
Flying without the constant mental conversation with Jaydra made me feel like I was flying blind, even though my body and my eyes knew exactly what to do. Is this how all of the other riders feel, all of the time? But no, their flying had briefly which had become so remarkably better than before and had now gone back to being all over the place. They too must know that something had changed.
Even without my help Jaydra hit the ground running, as perfectly as she usually did. Though she always preferred to land in the water, she must’ve chosen to land on the meadow for Bower and my benefit.
Above us, other mountain and island dragons were making their own landings, and I could see that they too were flapping unsteadily to the meadow.
“Thank you, sister,” I said to her, knowing that she would be able to understand my words even if she could not hear them in her mind. Jaydra gave a tail thump in answer. I turned to see Bower gritting his teeth and sweating. Any use of his king’s magic did that. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked him to do it. “Let’s get some food and rest, and try to figure out what is wrong. It might be a passing thing,” I tried to say hopefully, even though hopeful was the very last thing that I felt right about now. “If we cannot communicate with the dragons by nightfall, then we should return to Kingswood and get some advice from Mother Gorlas and Dol Agur. Apart from you and me, they’re the only ones who might know anything about dragons or the old Salamander lore that could help us. We cannot fight like this,” I reasoned, already unclipping my harness and deciding that I would take Jaydra to the river to fish. Maybe I could encourage the other Dragon Riders to do the same, and that might help restore their connection to each other. I had to try.
“But we have to fight, Saffron, we have to fight and win!” Bower surprised me by saying.
“Bower, but, we can’t fight like this…”
“No, Saffron, you don’t understand, we have to. If I return with my tail between my legs, all of the people of the Three Rivers and Kingswood will only see me as a failure. They’ll turn to Vere to lead them, or worse, still just disband on their own. I have to show them that they can trust me as their king.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Bower!” I said, feeling frustrated and out of my depth. What he was saying was probably true, but I still couldn’t understand why the humans couldn’t be more like the dragons that I had grown up with. What was the point of throwing your life away, or heedlessly continuing a failing task when you could live to fight another day? I wondered just how long it would be until the dragons around me started thinking the same.
“Saffron, please. This is important. Just as important as curing whatever spell or illness this is,” Bower said. “We need to stop Enric enslaving everyone! We need to stop his evil from spreading across the realm!”
Spell or illness, my brain caught up with what he had just said. “Bower. What was that you just said, just now?”
“That a king needs people to defend, otherwise he’s no king, just a madman with a sword?” Bower said a little sullenly.
“No, before that! That you thought that the dragons were ill, or enchanted.” I started to look around at our sudden encampment, wondering if he was onto something.
“Well, it stands to reason doesn’t it?” Bower said. “Remember what Dol Agur told us up in Stone Tooth Mountain? That the evil Maddoxes of old had cast some sort of spell, used nightmare-magic to break the bond between humans and dragons? Maybe that’s what’s going on!”
“Do you have the maps with you?” I asked, my fear rising.
“I memorized the route we were going to take… Let me see….” Bower turned this way and that in the saddle. “We traveled out of the mountains, past that bog, across all of those little rivers…” he bit his lip in concentration, and I could just imagine him still biting the feather quill of one of his old scribing pens as he pored over maps and dusty old books. “Now this river looks to be a pretty major one, so that means it can only either be the Falan, the Ube, or the Matiss…” he murmured to himself.
“Never mind the name, are we inside the Middle Kingdom?” I asked.
“Oh yes, clearly.” Bower nodded.
“Maybe that’s why Zenema fled to the Western Archipelago, and the Stone Tooth traveled as far north as they could go.”
“What are you talking about, Saffron?” Bower was confused. “They fled to get out of the reach of the ancient Maddox curse—” he stopped suddenly as the realization hit him and I nodded.
“The enchantment! This is the nightmare-magic again,” I said.
“But that can’t be true!” Bower shook his head. “You and I have been straight into the heart of the king’s palace itself, and you could still talk to Jaydra there.”
It was true, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was on the right track. “Maybe he’s learned how to re-establish the original curse or ritual or whatever it was.” A shiver of fear went through me.
Bower looked crestfallen. “If he does that, we’re doome
d. How can we rally against that?”
“Where’s your faith? Don’t you remember what Zenema said,” I said, even though I could feel my heart break in my chest at the memory. “The flame within is strong. It still burns. We have to have hope.”
Bower nodded, but I could see that I hadn’t convinced him.
“I’m going to take Jaydra to fish. Please,” I urged him, ignoring the squawking, confused cries of the dragons, now oddly alien to my ears, “come with us.”
“No. I have the dragon-king ability, I have to use it to unite us. I have to talk to the dragons,” Bower said seriously, refusing to dismount from the saddle. I was instantly irritated with him. Jaydra was my sister, after all, but I held my tongue. It would do no good for the rest of the army to see us fighting, and Bower turned to stand in his saddle and address the throng as something small and black in the sky grew larger and closer.
“Bower!” I screamed as the shape hurtled towards us. It was a large black metal harpoon, heading straight for Bower. “No!” I thrust my hand out and it erupted with a purple and green burst of energy that shot over Bower’s head, narrowly missing him. The eldritch flame engulfed the harpoon and, with a resounding crack it shattered into a handful of tiny pieces, showering us with painful metal hail.
“Attacked! We are attacked!” Bower shouted, blinking and spitting out the iron shrapnel, as around us more black metal harpoons fell amongst the assembled riders and dragons.
Rallying troops was the job of a king, and just the sound of Bower’s voice drew the disorientated riders scrambling for their mounts, hastily clipping themselves into their harnesses, or else hanging on for dear life in the confusion.
All around were the sounds of heavy thuds and terrifying thunks as iron harpoons drove themselves into the ground. I heard at least one screaming dragon, and hot anger coursed through me. It was the Iron Guard, it had to be, they were the only ones who could lift and fire those spear-harpoons, but where were they?
Dragons screamed, trying to avoid trampling atop each other as they moved out of the way. It didn’t take long for me to see where the attack was coming from.
“The river cliff. The other side of the river!” I pointed at the line of dark figures, each almost as tall as the trees and boulders up there. How had they known that we would be here?
“It’s an ambush!” one of the Dragon Riders was shouting, trying to steady his mount, and I knew then with a sinking feeling that it was true. First the enchantment, breaking our bonds and causing great confusion, forcing us to land here, the nearest suitable place, and now the attack.
“He’s right. They knew that we were coming,” Bower said through clenched, furious jaws. “Someone betrayed us.”
Before I could even wonder who could have done such an evil and foul thing, the ground rattled with a heavy thunk from right in front of Jaydra’s nose as one of the harpoons seared through meadow mud and shattered the rocks beneath it.
“Dragon Riders!” I called out to them all, hoping they might take heart from my voice. “Take to the skies!” I flicked a glance at Bower, to make sure that he agreed with my decision. He was strapping himself back down into the saddle and drawing his sword.
Okay. So, we fight. Somehow, I thought, and Jaydra roared, pouncing into the air as the skies became a mess of squawking, snarling, and snapping dragons, each seeking to get above the deadly rain of metal harpoons.
20
Bower, Blind-Fighting
All around us, the air was hot with the sooty breath of dragons, and the sky was pierced by their cries. Great blue, black, and green lumbering bodies moved chaotically all around, but some sixth sense that the dragons possessed stopped them from colliding with each other.
There was the sickening sound of a harpoon hitting and tearing the flesh of one of the island dragons nearby, and it rolled to one side in agony, deep red blood pouring from her wound to ink into the fast-flowing river below. In one of those rare crystal-clear moments of perception, I saw the puff of steam as the hot blood hit the water.
The dragons were trying their best to fly above the deadly rain, but the Iron Guard were high up on the top of the cliff to our right over the river, and their strong metal bodies could throw their harpoons far and fast. Dragons, similar to large flying birds I guessed, needed a lot of room to slowly climb into the air. That was why they chose to roost high, in the tops of mountains, to aid their sudden deadly swoops into the air.
Here, we were flying in tight circles, and constrained by the black thunders of the iron darts on all sides, and it was taking a lot to climb out of their reach…
Another island dragon let out a screeching roar of frustration, and the air filled with smell of soot and tar, bitter and acrid, full of the tang of noxious chemicals and sulphurs. She was about to release her dragon fire! I thought in alarm. That would be disastrous with so many dragons in such close proximity to each other.
“They have us pinned. Like spearing fish in a barrel,” I shouted to Saffron, her mouth open in horror at what was happening all around. There was only one choice I could see, and I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to call on Saffron to use her magic knowing how many times I had warned her not to give in to it, knowing it had been on my advice that she had taken the potion, designed to quell her anger, and her magic. But what other choice did I have? “Please!” I called again. “Can you do something?”
Saffron was looking back at me in consternation, first shaking her head. “I can’t control it,” she shouted back, as the wind whipped around us.
There were more dragon screams, and the smell of soot grew stronger. Soon the dragons would no longer be able to contain their fury. Surely Saffron could still feel that much.
“Saffron! Please!” I pleaded.
“All right,” she said, already frowning in concentration. She turned, took a deep breath, and threw both of her arms forward in pushing motion. The air bent, the way it does on a hot, humid day, and suddenly the wall of the singular river cliff, white and cream, and covered in creepers and the holes of hundreds of creatures, shook as if a great hand had hit it. There was a rumbling, and the cliff itself shivered loose rocks from as small as my fist to as large as my entire body—the hail of deadly iron harpoons stopped for a moment.
Up above I could see how many of the Iron Guard had fallen to their feet, but even as I watched, they were standing slowly back up all over again. Underneath them the cliff was hollowed out, more like a grotto now than a river cliff, and the water beneath us all was a churning, frothing murk.
It wasn’t enough. They would still get up, they would still attack us, but many dragons had at least managed to climb high enough to get out of their reach and were turning, turning, starting the strafing runs they used when they wanted to set fire to all in their path.
They’ll fire the others as well! I thought in anguish.
The drops of blood were falling faster and all around us now, and two dragons and their riders had fallen into the river, the deadly iron harpoons finding their beasts’ hearts. The river steamed with the heat, and I had an idea.
“Dragons of Torvald!” I bellowed, reaching out with my dragon-ability. “Turn your fire to the river itself! Cast a smoke that will save us all!” I thought-felt at them, and, as the Iron Guard lifted their missiles at us again, Jaydra was the first to unleash her flames.
Instantly thick gouts of white steam billowed up around us, engulfing our dragon and the cliffs beyond. Around us, more dragons screamed their fire into the river and the thick white steam deepened and thickened.
“Dragons! Those that can, fly up. Help those below!” I called, knowing that we were near the middle of the pack, and it would take longer for us to reach the clear blue air.
I will stay as long as my brothers and sister do. Have no fear, Bower-King. Jaydra’s voice came as a whisper. Around us the steam was heavy and we were drenched in river moisture where it condensed against us. Large, flapping shapes moved past us, each one following t
he tail of a dragon above, until only two or three stayed to keep up the steam camouflage.
“Bower! We have to go!” Saffron’s voice was thin against the roar of the dragons and the steam.
More iron harpoons fell around us, and even though I could not see what they hit, I did not hear splashing smacks I might have expected if they’d hit the river, but instead, hard, clanging noises. For a wild-eyed moment of wonder, I wondered if the dragons had managed to burn the river dry, right down to its riverbed, but already Jaydra was rising, as red fire blossomed across the steam.
The dragons shrieked and the ones that had escaped were turning their fire onto the cliff and the Iron Guard. I smelled burning wood and hot metal as Jaydra flew up and out of the clouds, and blinked my smarting eyes against the late afternoon light.
Saffron was pointing at the smoking, blackened, wasteland that the entire river valley and cliff had become. Dark shadows struggled to pick themselves up, and press forward once more. The Iron Guard. We had not managed to destroy all of them, despite the assault of more than thirty dragons.
“We can’t stop them,” I said in horrified awe as a line of three Iron Guard, glowing almost incandescent from the heat of the dragon flames, reached for the part-melted sections of their brethren, and pounded them with metal hands into the crude shapes of spears, still glowing hot.
How can we stop an enemy like that? An enemy which, even when melted, can be fashioned into weapons?
“Dragons and Dragon Riders!” I called, dismayed at how few of us there now were. “Retreat! Quit this madness!”
21
Saffron, The Traitor Inside
“We were betrayed,” Bower said once more, and a new expression crossed his features, one I had not seen before. Fury. We stood on a promontory just above Kingswood and below us were the tents, yurts, and temporary structures of the camp that had swelled to almost three thousand people in the last few days, despite what Chief Vere was calling “our great defeat.”
Dragons of Dark (Upon Dragons Breath Trilogy Book 3) Page 14