One Cannot Deny a Blood Oath with a Dragon

by T P Sheehan

  Catanya could sense Rubea’s nervousness and anticipation. But then one of the High Priests imposed on her conversation.

  “It is time for you to give the mark of the priesthood,” the High Priest said to Rubea.

  Catanya stared at the priest. His demeanour was so disciplined and his face so expressionless she found it hard to get a measure on him. She found his voice unnerving. It had an air of authority but was tainted with an unpleasant, condescending tone.

  Rubea remained enthusiastic and so Catanya decided to focus on her, watching as she lifted her left forefoot and gently placed her heel talon against the delicate flesh of Catanya’s temple. Catanya winced, anticipating pain. Soon enough, it came.

  It was faster and far worse than she could ever have imagined. Rubea pushed her talon harder. Heat seared through the side of her head as if hot oil had been poured over her and was burning off her flesh. She drew a sharp breath at the sudden sensation but relaxed as it subsided. The priests moved close and looked her in the eyes. Catanya looked to each of them, wanting an explanation for what had just happened. The priests then looked to Rubea who once again brought her talon toward her head.

  Oh… not again! Catanya thought, gritting her teeth.

  Rubea pushed her talon harder into her head this time. Heat burned through her with greater strength and continued across her entire head, down her neck, her arms and across her chest. From here, Catanya felt the searing heat shoot down the length of her body like a jolt of lightning. The speed of the shock made her body leap from the surface of the altar for a moment. Just as quickly, the heat was gone—all except for a persisting sharp sting across the left side of her head.

  Catanya lay motionless on the hard stone altar. The High Priests stood over her again and prised her eyes wide open, studying them closely. Catanya looked at them both. Her vision was tainted with a reddish hue as though she were peering through coloured glass. The priests examined the left side of Catanya’s head before looking to one another, nodding their approval. They turned to the other priests and likewise nodded to them.

  The temple filled with chanting as the priests moved toward the altar. They formed a line and Joffren was first, helping Catanya to sit up. One at a time the other priests drew back their hoods and congratulated Catanya. They kissed their closed fist, touched it on their own forehead then placed their palm against Catanya’s forehead. They were all eager to give their blessing.

  Catanya was speechless. After days of having little to do with anyone except Joffren, she was now the centre of attention. Eventually, when all of the priests had touched her forehead, given blessings and left the temple, Catanya was left alone with Joffren and the two dragons. She wanted to ask Rubea what she had done to her but when she opened her mouth, she retched violently and vomited on the floor.

  “Well done, Semsarian,” Joffren said, seemingly oblivious to her sickness. She heaved and was sick again.

  “I don’t understand…” Catanya muttered breathlessly.

  “Come, you must rest. You have entered the cycle known at Anunya. It is the transformation process as your body accepts—”

  “What have you done to me?” Catanya demanded, looking at Rubea, her stomach churning.

  “I have blessed you, young Irucantî. We are as sisters now!”

  “You have received the sacrament of the Fire Realm,” Joffren explained further. “A blessing of the powers bestowed unto our dragons.”

  “I have? Me?”

  “Do not be alarmed,” Joffren said. “We all receive this blessing. Your blood is still your own, but you have a bond we all share. You should be proud.”

  Joffren helped Catanya stand but she was too weak to walk unaided. “You keep finding ways to try and kill me,” she mumbled, retching once again. She felt a fever begin to take hold and her head continued to throb with pain. Feeling the side of her head with her fingers, she winced at her own touch. The smooth flesh she had felt before was replaced now with rough markings that covered the side of her head, over her temple and back behind her ear. “Ouch!”

  “Alas, you survive and are ever the stronger because of it.” Joffren smiled again. “And now, you are an Irucantî.”

  AWAKENINGS

  In the clearing in Froughton Forest the weather had turned and it was raining hard. The ground was waterlogged and the soil beneath the grass had turned to mud. The three dead Quagmen’s bodies were gone but those of Breona, Thioci and Magnus remained where they had fallen. Unlike the Quagmen, two of them were still alive.

  The dragon’s body twitched and its lungs heaved begrudgingly with a sound like bellows blowing wind on a fire. The gleam of its scales had faded like a fire’s last embers. Not ten feet from the fallen dragon lay Magnus. He had not moved since succumbing to his injuries.

  After two days of lying motionless, Magnus woke from his dream state. He sat up in the thundering rain and the darkness of night, broken only by the continuous flash of lightning. In the white flashes he saw Breona’s limp body and Thioci’s sodden wings draped sadly over the muddy ground. Magnus’s entire body throbbed with pain—no part of him was immune to the agony—yet his body showed no evidence of the wounds he had received from Crugion’s blades.

  Resting back on his arms, he clenched his hands into fistfuls of the mud beneath him. He screamed as loud and long as his lungs could bear.

  “This is not right!”

  “This is not natural!”

  “This is not fair!”

  The storm fell calm for a moment and so did Magnus. Was it all a dream? In a silent flash of lightning he saw the ground surrounding him awash with the redness of his blood, yet the rain had washed it free of his body. The only scar he bore was the one on his right wrist made by the dragon’s talon.

  “What’s happening to me?” Magnus said out loud. His stomach heaved and he vomited. He began to shake with fever.

  “Anunya,” a voice whispered as a thought.

  “Who’s there? What have you done to me?” Magnus’s body was overtaken by convulsions.

  “Your body takes my blood. You are purged of your own. It is ‘Anunya’.”

  Magnus looked at Thioci. A weak eye peered from beneath a heavy lid.

  “You?” Magnus cried between violent shudders. “You did this to me?”

  Thioci’s lungs heaved. “Anunya.”

  “Anunya… What is that?” Magnus’s fever worsened and his vision blurred. Shaking, he lay back down on the sodden ground and curled himself into a ball. The rain showered upon him and drenched him through, yet he felt no cold. He lay in the mud sweating as the sickness gripped him.

  By morning the rain had shifted to the south and Magnus had recovered from the sickness. He stood, slumped, and walked to Breona. He checked her over to see if there were any signs of life but found none. Magnus felt the softness of her face for a moment, searching for reason within the violent episode that led to her death. Unable to find such reason, he turned away from Breona.

  He went to the dragon youngling and sat beside him. Thioci was still alive yet hung to the thinnest of life’s threads. Magnus touched the dragon’s mind delicately and found himself immersed in the dark labyrinth where the youngling had retreated, waiting for its time in this world to pass. But Thioci recognised Magnus and was grateful for his presence.

  “You are well?” Thioci whispered thinly, like that of rustling autumn leaves moments before they fall from the tree. All his strength and rawness had passed.

  “I am healed of my wounds, thanks to you.”

  “Then why such sorrow?”

  “You traded your life for mine. Why did you do that?”

  “My wounds were beyond healing. But yours I could repair. My role in this life is complete. Yours has just begun.”

  With each thought, Thioci faded further from Magnus’s mind. He tried desperately to stay with him. He needed to know more. He needed to know why. There was no sadness in the dragon’s mind. He was content. But as it was with Breona—where T
hioci was going Magnus could not follow.

  “Thank you, Thioci,” Magnus said, wanting the last thing the youngling heard to be his gratitude. Thioci’s mind trailed off, beyond his reach, and so Magnus withdrew from the darkness into his own mind. Here, he felt a stranger in his own world. He looked upon the youngling one more time, holding its paw and examining the talon in its heel. A smidgen of Magnus’s blood still stained its tip. The scar on the back of Magnus’s wrist was testament to how real everything was—this was not a dream.

  Magnus sat back against the dragon’s body and felt the rising sun warm his face. He breathed deeply as the life of the forest surrounding him entered his chest and permeated his body. He knew then it was time to move on. He knew not why, but if there were a purpose to this fate, it was not to be found in Froughton Forest.

  Magnus spoke the peculiar chant that Catanya had when she placed the bracelet upon his wrist—“Shalla boyowa muto evavar.” The words were awkward for Magnus for although they were Fireisgh, they were of a dialect unique to Catanya’s family. But it worked. They broke the spell and he was able to remove the bracelet. He wrapped it around Breona’s left foreleg, whispering the chant once again to ensure it stayed with her. He found comfort knowing a part of him would stay with her in the forest.

  Magnus scouted about, soon finding his sword lying a short distance away. He reunited it with its scabbard, slung it over his back then bid farewell to his fallen companions.

  With the Quagmen gone, and a sense of having nothing to lose, Magnus trekked westward for a day until he reached the Outer Rim and the familiar road. Night came but he felt no desire to rest. In fact, he felt a restlessness that needed to be vented. He started to run. Air filled his lungs and his heart pounded with new strength. Magnus began to feel whole again, although not entirely himself. The more he ran the more he pushed. Morning came and still he kept the pace up, no more tired than he was the previous day.

  What was not so assuring was how strange everything felt to him. He could feel the pulsating veins in his limbs—they looked more pronounced than ever before. His muscles seemed toned as though he’d done a day’s work in the fields, but without the fatigue.

  By midway through the second day he came across an area familiar to him. It was where he had encountered the tree nymph—the meliae as Eamon had called it. He stopped and looked around, astounded that he had travelled so far in so short a time. He listened to the forest for a while and heard the silence differently than before. Magnus peered down into the Valley. Not far away was the ash tree he had foolishly let himself rest upon not so long ago. He stood and he stared, deep into the darkness. He knew she was waiting for him. He knew she was hoping he would return and part of him longed to feel the tenderness she had offered him.

  “She’ll make you suffer more than you could ever imagine should you cross paths again.” Eamon’s words came back to him as a timely warning. But he resented having to acknowledge the value of the old man’s wisdom. Why did he offer me such guidance only to betray me? The paradox played on his mind as he moved swiftly through the Outer Rim toward the western border. Did he have a change of heart or was there an agenda from the very beginning? Either way his conclusion was the same—Eamon was not to be trusted.

  Night came and Magnus reached the end of the road and the western border of Froughton Forest. Nearly two weeks had passed since he had entered at this exact same spot. Little had been achieved and yet he felt a greater sense of purpose. He realised he may be the only free person in Allumbreve who knew the truth of the Authoritarium’s alliance with the Quag.

  Magnus reflected on his options once again and decided there was only one. With the Quag thinking he was dead, he would enter Ba’rrat and find his parents without Crugion looking for him. With newfound vigour, Magnus vowed to find a way into Ba’rrat. He would head south along the border of Froughton Forest and navigate the southern plains as he saw fit.

  He stretched his arms above his head, intrigued with how malleable his body had become. With each stretch he felt heat course through his limbs, leaving him invigorated. But something was not right. The heat began to turn to fever once again and the nausea and blurred vision returned. Magnus lay on the ground, shaking from the sickness as before. “Anunya,” he remembered Thioci saying. How long will this sickness last?

  It was still night when he regained enough strength to stand again. By the moon’s shift through the clear sky, he must have been out for several hours. This is not good. He vowed as he headed south toward Ba’rrat to keep close to the forest border so if he were to fall ill again he would hopefully have enough warning to hide himself away in the woods.

  Through the rest of the night Magnus ran southward across the grassy fields with the forest to his left. As before, it seemed with every passing hour his strength increased and the muscles in his legs thrived on the abuse he dealt them. Nothing can stop me now.

  JAEL

  It took Jael three days out from The Core of Froughton Forest to pick up the youngling’s trail. His movements were irrational and that frustrated her. Frustration was not a quality she accepted in herself so she was pleased when she finally came upon the remains of a small deer that had been eaten almost entirely except for its entrails.

  Dragon’s have no taste for offal, Jael reflected. Furthermore, no other creature in the forest capable of devouring an entire deer—bones and all—had such discerning taste. From here, the youngling’s trail was easy to track.

  He appeared to have entered the Valley of Shadows further west than she had suspected. He then continued in a northeasterly direction. His trail kept clear of established routes but for a brief period along one of the Valley’s ancient Juniper paths. It made it easy for Jael to track the destruction through the forest and yet, even after a day following his course, no definite reason for his journey came to her.

  He seems to have picked up on a scent of some kind.

  In the afternoon on the second day of following the trail, the youngling’s course seemed to come to a sudden halt. Here, Jael found tracks of both human and horse and traces of blood belonging to both. She was relieved no trace of dragon blood was found. The following day she had found a campsite with the ashes of a three-day-old fire beside a flowing river, and further traces of both human and horse blood. Most confusing to Jael, it appeared as though the youngling had rested with the human and the horse for the night. On the far side of the river, Jael found the carcass of a slaughtered black-skinned creature. It was about four and a half foot tall and had the most ghostly white eyes.

  A worgriel… foul creature. Why has it wandered this far from the caves beneath the Corville Mountains? Jael grew concerned for the strange goings on within the forest realm.

  From here the youngling’s course seemed to backtrack. On her fourth day of tracking, Jael crossed the Nuyan River and discovered the black Quag arrow together with the congealed blood of the dragon youngling. She moved to higher ground south of the river and drew her lance from its scabbard, holding it at the ready. Jael traversed down the embankment then through the trees and ferns to the edge of the clearing beyond. Here, she saw the fallen dragon youngling, together with the body of a white Astermeer.

  Gasping for breath, Jael fought to keep herself from panicking. She closed her eyes and controlled her breathing, utilising her skills as an Irucantî to bring herself back into the moment and evaluate the situation critically. First, she needed to ensure this was not a trap, enticing her to run into the clearing. She canvassed the area until she was sure neither person nor any other living creature was within a half mile of the clearing. Satisfied, Jael approached the fallen dragon. By the time she reached Thioci she was sobbing and fell upon him, trying desperately to find some sign of life.

  Soon enough, she accepted the inevitable—the youngling was dead. Jael sat back and looked at him, his scales cold and grey. It made no sense to her.

  A dragon’s scales should shine for a thousand years, even after they have died.
<
br />   She walked over to the fallen Astermeer, trying to make sense of the situation from a different perspective.

  “So this is the horse you were tracking in the Valley,” Jael sniffed, wiping tears from her face. “I can see why—she was beautiful.”

  Jael thought about the track marks she had been following. There was someone missing from this scene. “Astermeers never leave their foresworn, so where is yours?”

  Jael examined the puncture wounds in the bodies of both creatures made by arrows that had since been removed. She estimated they had been dead for several days and feared they would soon draw scavengers from the forest seeking an easy meal. She cast a spell to protect Thioci’s remains, putting a small but effective shield over his body.

  Something unusual then caught her eye. She crouched by the white horse’s foreleg and took in her hand the leather-plaited bracelet fixed upon it. She tried to remove it only to discover it was protected by an unusual enchantment.

  Leaving the horse’s side, she turned her attention to the youngling once again, examining him in further detail. Her eyes soon found the talon on his left heel, stained in dried blood. Jael smeared some of the blood onto her forefinger and tasted it.

  “Human blood.” Jael stood back and considered the situation again, looking from one fallen creature to the other. It was in that moment she knew. “The dragon has bonded with a human.” Jael looked back to the bracelet on the Astermeer’s leg. She knew it held the answer to whom the dragon youngling had bonded with.

  As the truth came to her, Jael became aware of the sound of masked movement in the forest surrounding the clearing. It was coming from several directions and seemed to be closing in.

  Jael worked feverishly to decipher the riddle of the enchantment bonding the bracelet to the Astermeer’s leg. As she did, she was aware the movement in the forest was becoming more widespread. It was taking her much longer than she anticipated. The enchantment seemed to be Fireisgh, but of a peculiar dialect she could not decipher. Sweat beaded across her forehead. Whatever was in the woods was now moving across the clearing from all directions.