Talon the Black

by Melissa Mitchell

50

  Fort Squall

  Tamara stood nervously in front of Lord Davi’s door. She lifted her hand several times before conjuring enough courage to knock. “You may enter,” a muffled voice called from within. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

  Emmy greeted her with a warm smile. “Follow me, dear.” She was ushered through several rooms to a large oak table. They both took a seat at the end, with Emmy at the head.

  The fort leader’s mate folded her delicate hands. She wore a plain silver band on her right forefinger. Upon her left wrist was a pattern of vines, etched into her skin like scars. Tamara had seen this before on other Riders.

  Emmy’s voice brought her eyes up. “This is Fort Squall’s council chamber. You will come to know it well. Davi conducts all his formal affairs here. I thought it would be adequate for our lessons.”

  She looked around the room. It was fairly plain—not ornate like the council chambers at Redport. There were large windows along the west-facing wall. She saw the sea, sparkling with its dark blue waters. Ships traveled to and from the port at Squall’s End, sails unfurled. A few Drengr swooped back and forth through the air, training with their Riders. She suppressed a pang of jealousy and looked away.

  Her circumstances were unusual. When mates were recognized, a ceremony was held and their bond solidified. Following this, formal lessons commenced training the Rider in areas of magic, politics, combat, and flying. Since she could not yet seal her bond with Byron, typical rules did not apply.

  “I know your situation is different compared to most,” Emmy said. She turned her attention back to the matter at hand. “Davi and I have agreed that until you are ready, you will receive lessons from me exclusively.” Emmy appeared pleased with her position as tutor. “You and I will discuss politics, history, the structure of the Drengr monarchy, and anything else that may benefit you. I encourage you to ask questions and learn as much as you can.”

  “No magic?”

  Emmy’s smile was kind. “Not yet, dear. A Rider’s ability to do magic comes from the Drengr, but you are not yet mated.”

  She sighed in disappointment. “I wish we could be. I am sure my womanhood will come soon.”

  “My sweet girl, be careful what you wish for.” Emmy leaned back in her chair and regarded her with twinkling eyes.

  “What do you mean, Lady Emmy?”

  “Please, Emmy will do. And what I mean is, enjoy this time. Once your womanhood is upon you, I assure you, you will not be so eager for it. And believe me, you will be stuck with it for a while.”

  “A while?” The woman made it sound like a plague, like some kind of unfortunate sickness. She swallowed. “How long is a while?”

  “You must contend with it until you bear a child. After that, it will depart you and you will be glad of it.”

  Childbirth? Hadn’t she escaped her responsibilities to avoid becoming someone’s broodmare? Emmy’s words scared her; they left her feeling panicked. Would she be required to bear children for Byron? What might that be like? She adored her mate-to-be, so perhaps for Byron she could manage. Still, it was hardly something she wanted to consider at the present.

  Emmy was very patient. “For your sake, dear, I hope that your child does not wait too long. The sooner the better, we Riders often say. But rest assured it will depart.”

  “It simply leaves after childbirth?”

  “Well yes, because you will only bear one child. You have no need of it afterward.”

  She blinked in confusion. “Only one? My mother had my brothers and me.”

  “Your mother was not a Rider. You can thank Queen Isabella if you like, for depriving us of the joy of multiple children. She paid the price for her misjudgment.”

  “I am afraid that I do not understand?” She did not know of this misjudgment, nor the price that was paid.

  “Come now, Tamara, surely you have heard the story of our forefathers? Queen Isabella’s Price?”

  Ashamed, she shook her head. Her cheeks burned. She turned her face towards the table, hoping Emmy would not notice her embarrassment.

  “Gods, girl! Did your kenna teach you nothing?”

  She looked up and stuttered an answer. “Well—she—she taught me to sew, my needle work, to sing, to draw. Sometimes I played instruments—”

  “Yes, yes. The marks of a true lady.” Emmy spoke with contempt, waving a hand to whisk away the nonsense. “I am all too familiar with stories like yours. Rest assured, what we teach in the fort is far more useful.”

  She liked Emmy. The woman did not waste time. Clearly she could learn a lot from her. “Emmy, if you would not mind, I would very much like to know the story about Queen Isabella.”

  “Good. I was hoping you would ask. Let us consider it your first lesson.” The woman’s eyes burned brightly. “It is a good thing I have taken your education into my own hands. It seems we have a great deal to teach you.”

  She nodded.

  “Now, as I am sure you know, Queen Isabella made the Drengr race for a single purpose. Do you remember?”

  She nodded eagerly. “Yes, to unite the peoples of Dragonwall against the common enemy.”

  “Good.” The side of Emmy’s mouth twitched in approval, earning her a half-wink. “All is not lost, dear girl. You are correct.”

  She sighed with relief, happy to produce a correct answer.

  “Queen Isabella—being a typical Sprite—worried that the Drengr might become the new enemy. She feared her creation would overpopulate our world and outnumber the rightful owners of the land. Thus, she implanted a fail-safe. Can you guess it?”

  “Only one child?” It was an easy deduction.

  “Good.” Emmy nodded. “With her magic, she ensured that mated pairs would have a single child. She combined this into the price she promised the Drengr race, a price all Drengr would pay on behalf of her bestowed favor.”

  Emmy adjusted her skirts before continuing. “Now, here is where this story takes a turn.”

  Tamara leaned forward in her chair.

  “The Sprites are great fortune tellers. Queen Isabella herself saw the Drengr coming before she decided to make them. But she never bothered predicting her own future once they were created.”

  “She didn’t?”

  Emmy shook her head. “She was destined to become a Rider—a mate—and she never knew it. Vigilance loved her, his dragon loved her, long before she changed him. Somehow that imprint of feelings, that undying love, rewrote the spell-work of the world.”

  “Vigilance?” she whispered. The name sounded vaguely familiar.

  “Ah. The stories you are familiar with call him King Eymar, founder of Kastali Dun. But he was born with a dragon name because he was born a dragon.”

  “Oh…” She knew King Eymar—everyone did. King Eymar was the most famous Drengr of them all, responsible for vanquishing Rage and his evil Ice Clan. As a child she often begged for the story until she was old enough to read it herself.

  “Anyway, perhaps the gods intended for Queen Isabella to become King Eymar’s mate. Perhaps they wanted to punish her for her wicked trick.” Emmy shook her head in disgust. “Permitting a single child when humans can have as many as they please! It is ridiculous—selfish! After all, we mothers are not so different from humans. You, Tamara, are human until you mate.”

  She thought about Emmy’s words. Indeed she was human until she mated with Byron. What would that change be like? What would life be like when fate tied her to him? She would no longer die young. Instead she would outlive her family for generations to come.

  “What happened to Queen Isabella?” she asked.

  Emmy’s smile was sad. “Queen Isabella tried to run from the bond, but her love for Vigilance was too strong. By then he was already calling himself King Eymar. The two of them mated, becoming King and Queen of Dragonwall, retiring to the south where they built Kastali Dun. And then the queen bore a baby girl.”

  “Princess Irelia…” she whispered.

  “
That is correct. Irelia was the jewel of the kingdom, the first of the world to be born with both Sprite and Drengr blood. She was destined to do great things. Do you know what happened to her?”

  She swallowed, recalling the tragedy. “Irelia died at a young age,” she whispered. “But I do not believe it.”

  “You do not?”

  She shook her head adamantly. “Her body was never found.”

  “Indeed. At the age of thirteen she disappeared. Drengr were sent far and wide to search for her. And not just the Drengr; many dragons still remained in the world. They too searched. King Eymar’s own clan, the Iron Clan, the clan your future mate descended from, searched the kingdom never to find her. At last, her death was accepted.”

  “But they never found her.”

  “Thirteen-year-olds do not simply vanish, Tamara.” Perhaps Emmy was right. “Queen Isabella was devastated. She was grief stricken. She retreated into Kastali Dun working hard to finish the great citadel that now adorns the city’s center. The Great Keep, they call it.” Her gaze took on a dreamy, faraway look. Emmy was picturing the castle in her mind’s eye. “Queen Isabella used the remainder of her magic to finish its construction. It is the only great castle to be built in the length of a human’s lifespan, and far more marvelous than any to come after it, or any that will ever come again.”

  “It is all so sad,” she cried, her heart aching for the poor Sprite queen. The woman was only trying to do what she believed was right. Instead she was punished for it. A new thought struck her. “Emmy, I have heard that the Sprites are meant to live for thousands of years, far longer than any Drengr.”

  “They do. But as you can imagine, Queen Isabella paid more than one price. With her daughter gone, she could never have another child, for she was mated. She was subjected to her own curse. Perhaps another child might have given her a new purpose to live.” Lady Emmy sighed and shrugged. “I suppose we will never truly know. But consider this: Sprites never do well away from their fountains, their trees, and their forest’s essence. By all accounts, the Sprite queen could have lived for thousands of years. After all, Queen Jade is said to be twenty thousand years old, perhaps more.”

  “So she died?”

  “Yes, she died when King Eymar was only six hundred years old. The grief of losing both his daughter and his mate was too much for him. He followed them to the grave shortly thereafter.”

  “It’s so tragic,” she cried, utterly disheartened. The heartbreaking story freed her tears, which slid down her cheek and dropped onto her folded hands.

  “A sad story indeed. And now you know: Queen Isabella paid the price of her own making, as terrible as it is. We Riders have one child. This ensures that our race will never outnumber those we protect.”

  She hardly knew what to say. For several long minutes, they sat in silence. Emmy’s face showed plainly the pain she felt by the limitation. She’d seen a similar expression when she discovered her bond with Byron. It was the look of a mother who knew her child would not be a child forever.

  “Wait!” A realization hit her. She was overcome with excitement by the discovery. “Emmy, what about Davi? Is he not brothers with Lord Reyr the Gold?”

  “Ah-ha!” Emmy’s face lit up. “It seems you have discovered the loophole.”

  Her brow scrunched together. “Loophole? How?”

  “Well, Davi and Reyr are identical twins. Moreover, they are not the first. It is rare, rarer in fact than the birth of a female child, which we all know is seldom.”

  “So it has happened before?” Her curiosity was rising. It appeared that there was a great deal she did not yet understand about the Drengr.

  “Indeed, it has happened a number of times.” Emmy began to tick off the names of those throughout history to be born as identical twins. She found it hard to follow, especially because her head was spinning with information. “It seems,” Emmy concluded, “that there is one set with every generation. Davi and Reyr were this generation’s.” There was pride in her voice.

  “And what about females?” she asked, thinking of her dear friend Sophie who was not successful in finding a mate. “Sophie said that her great-grandmother was born a female to a Drengr-Rider pair. She has Drengr blood.”

  “Yes, I know of whom you speak.” Emmy sighed. “There is a great deal we will never understand about Queen Isabella. But know this, she is far more selfish than most will ever know.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Because of the one child rule?”

  “Her deceit goes much deeper than that. Tell me, what do you think happened to all the dragons after the Drengr came to be?”

  Her eyes widened. “She killed them?” The thought was appalling because not all of the dragons were bad, only those who supported Rage.

  “No, dear. No. But she certainly wasn’t kind to us. Queen Isabella was a Sprite, through-and-through. Her race walked this world long before the dragons, longer still before the Asarlaí.”

  “Truly?” she gasped. How old were the mysterious forest dwellers? If Emmy was correct, the Sprites were present during Dragonwall’s First Age, long before it was ever called Dragonwall.

  “Do you think the Sprites were happy when the Asarlaí made the dragons? Of course not! And then, in desperation, Queen Isabella created a new super race to defeat those dragons. In her mind, she was solving one problem by creating another, and she couldn’t settle for that.”

  “I never thought of it this way...” she mused.

  “Queen Isabella, in all her infinite wisdom, was cunning. She understood something most did not. See, the dragons secretly coveted humanity’s fragility. They longed to fit in. They envied the human race.”

  Tamara’s jaw dropped.

  “Behind Vigilance’s back—and keep in mind this was long before they were mated—Queen Isabella devised a plan of her own. When he went away to war, there were plenty of good dragons who did not partake in the final battle. Thousands of them, in fact. Queen Isabella went from clan to clan, secretly offering them humanity. They took it eagerly.”

  “I can hardly believe it!”

  Emmy nodded. “When Vigilance returned from his ice battle, he returned victorious. He also returned to find more than a thousand Drengr in the world.”

  She blinked several times as her mind turned over the information. “I always believed that the Drengr merely grew in population. That she only changed a few of Vigilance’s friends, and together, they grew their race over time.”

  Emmy shook her head. “No, sweet girl. Queen Isabella knew that the fastest way to rid the world of dragons was to offer them something fleeting. They would still live a long life, but they would be condemned to one child, which they did not know at the time of their blessing.”

  “So she intended to defeat both dragons and Drengr stretched out over a long time scale?” Her heart hammered in her chest as the atrocity sank in. “The Drengr race is dying. You said there were more than a thousand when Vigilance returned. But now...” She did a quick calculation. “Now each fort has a mere two hundred, and there are only four forts.”

  “There are currently five-hundred-twenty-four Drengr alive today, split between the four forts. In another fifty-thousand years, twice the length of time since their creation, the Drengr will be extinct.”

  “But can’t we do something? We can go to the Sprites! Beg them to reverse the curse.”

  Emmy laughed outright. “The Sprites do not care for our race! Nor have they ever. Besides, it was Isabella’s curse. Only her blood can reverse it, and as you know, her only child died.”

  “Why didn’t she reverse it after Irelia’s death when she had the chance?”

  Emmy shrugged. “Who can say? Stubbornness? Grief? Perhaps she was too weak when the essence of the forest began leaking from her soul.”

  “So we will all die?” She felt sick. It was cruel. Queen Isabella was someone she’d grown to revere. Everyone admired the great Sprite queen for her creation. She never would have imagined how horr
id the woman’s intentions were.

  “You will not die, dear. Neither will your child. But over time, with every female born, with every Drengr who fails to find a mate, with those who fail to conceive, and those who die in war, our race dwindles.”

  They were running out of time! It was frightening. The world had gone unchanged for thousands of years. Nearly fifty generations of Drengr had come and gone since Isabella’s creation began. It was difficult to stomach their evanescence. Dragonwall itself was in its Third Age, the age of the Drengr monarchy. The Fourth Age—what would that look like? She swallowed. “Emmy? How—how often are females born?”

  Emmy turned her gaze to the windows to watch the training Drengr-Rider pairs. “Who can say, dear. If I remember correctly, your friend’s great-grandmother was the only female to be born in two hundred years. I suppose we see a few females every generation of a thousand years.”

  “Are they hated?”

  Emmy turned to her in surprise. “Hated, dear?”

  “Yes. I mean, if every female birth adds to the dwindling of the line of Drengr, shouldn’t they be hated?”

  “Gods no! Every child born to a Drengr-Rider pair is precious. If anything, the females are more precious. Think of Princess Lena.”

  She recalled the famous princess Lady Emmy referred to. Princess Lena was born a female into the Drengr monarchy six generations after Queen Isabella’s death. Tamara was quite familiar with her. Princess Lena and Prince Gallant were a popular romance story. She grew up with the storybook above her bed on a shelf.

  “Princess Lena’s parents loved her fiercely, did they not?” asked Lady Emmy.

  She nodded.

  “Very well then, Tamara. I think that is enough history for one day, especially on such a depressing subject.” Emmy was right. She was eager for a topic change.

  “Emmy?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “What are those markings on your wrist?”

  “Ah.” Emmy lifted her wrist and pulled back the sleeve of her gown. “This is the symbol of my bond with Davi. Every Rider has this, though it does not always look identical. You will also bear this mark when you become mated.”