Dragon School_First Flight

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

  “What’s your name, trainee?”

  “Amel Leafbrought.”

  “I think it’s likely we’ll meet again. Work hard, Amel Leafbrought. We accept only the best in Purple.”

  I nodded and he started to leave, but I called after him, surprised at my own boldness. “What is your name, Dragon Rider?”

  “Leng Shardson.” His eyes twinkled as he answered, but his expression remained serious. I wanted him to know that I was worthy of Purple, but I wasn’t sure how to do that. And what if I couldn’t convince him? What if I said the wrong thing and looked stupid?

  I watched him stride away, watched his slightly bow-legged walk and his careful movements, like he was always balancing on the back of a dragon. Did he shave his head to make it easier to fly without hair swirling around his face? I should consider what to do with my own hair. Savette probably had ideas about that.

  My pace was slow as I worked my way past the alcoves. I found it frustrating, even though I was used to it. At home, I hadn’t had to walk far, but the stables alone were as large as my village and the five others in our area combined. I’d never had to walk so far before and being slow chafed. At least it gave me time to take in all the details.

  Insignia were draped on some dragon doors. I assumed these ones belonged to Castelans or High Castelans, because Savette’s alcove had an intricately designed banner hanging over her door. Castelans ran the Towers of the Dominion. And Towers governed the towns and villages surrounding them. High Castelans lorded over groups of Towers. Until I’d arrived here, I’d never seen a tower in my life, and now I was living in the most majestic of all the towers – Dragon School. Not that it was man-made. It was carved from the great land divide – a natural up-thrust of layered rock and waterfalls. Tufts of mist rose up from the wet river delta below as the golden sun burned across the land. The river flashed, snake-like between greens and browns of shrubbery until it boiled brown and churning into the silver ocean. I allowed myself to be distracted by it for a moment.

  A scream shredded the air and as I turned to see where it was coming from, someone ran past me, knocking my crutch out. I stumbled, falling onto the ledge and grazing my knee. Ouch. I tried to stand, but a second person crashed into me, knocking me flat on my face. My chin hit the rock. Defensively, I curled into a ball, wrapping my arms around my head. Footsteps and yells were all around me and I felt my heart beating at a dizzying speed. I needed to get up so that I wasn’t kicked.

  I scrambled up, recovering my crutch. The rush of people was past me, but someone was still screaming, and cries filled the air. I hobbled forward. At the end of the row of recruit dragon alcoves, the rest of the students were clustered. Someone was rushing from the other side of the stables with a stretcher under one arm.

  “Back up! Back up!” That was Grandis Elfar yelling. She and the man with the stretcher shoved their way through the knot of people. By the time I made it to the edge of the group, Savette was pushing her way out of the knot, face white and mouth wide in distress.

  “Savette?” I laid a hand on her trembling arm. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she gasped. Her eyes flicked wildly until they settled on something behind me. I turned to see she was staring at her dragon’s alcove.

  “Is your dragon alright?”

  “What?” She was in shock.

  “Your dragon - Eeamdor – is he alright?”

  She looked at me like I’d grown another head. “Who cares about dragons? It’s Dannil. He... he...”

  Her voice trailed off and then a surge of the crowd came towards us. I held on to her to avoid being swept away. As the other trainees moved behind us I finally had a look at the center of the group. Dannil lay in a pool of blood, while a dragon school medic tried to bind his wound. The screaming had stopped. He was unconscious on the stretcher they’d brought – and he was missing his right arm.

  I swallowed back a sudden wave of nausea. His dragon had bit off his arm?

  “How -?”

  “They’re dragons, Amel,” Savette said. Her expression was severe. “They aren’t pets.”

  The medics strapped him to the stretcher and Grandis Elfar finished rigging a rope to a pulley against the rock face. They were going to lower him down to another level of dragon school. I’d been wondering what they did when people couldn’t climb the ladders and now I knew.

  What would happen to Dannil? Would he come back and try to ride his dragon once he was healed? I didn’t realize I’d said that out loud until Savette scoffed.

  “He lost his right arm. You have to be strong and healthy to ride a dragon and no one can do it with a missing limb.”

  I let go of her like I’d been burned by the touch. Anger and frustration clouded my mind so that all my thoughts were in shards and spiky shattered pieces that wanted nothing but to harm and damage. I clamped down tightly on the impulse and tried to smooth my face and make my breathing easy. Anger and frustration did nothing to erase an insult.

  “That’s enough for today. We’re breaking early for noonday meal. You’ll be given further instructions after your meal,” Grandis Elfar’s voice cut across the ambient noise and we all fell silent. “Let today be a lesson to you. Tack and Stables is not a game or a job for servants. The wild dragon that has been brought here for you to gentle is not a pet or a pony. You must have your wits about you during even the simplest of tasks or you will end up like your friend – maimed for life. Dismissed.”

  I followed the line of people to the ladders heading down to the dining hall level, but my eyes wandered to the hidden pulley. Things around here sure would go quicker for me if I could use those to ascend and descend levels. I felt a lurch in my stomach at the thought of swaying out over that deadly drop, but I needed to find an edge. Any edge. Savette’s expression as she spoke about Dannil was enough to convince me that I needed to change people’s minds about me, or they’d always be thinking of me as “that crippled girl” instead of a Dragon Rider.

  Chapter Seven

  “No one likes to sit inside when the weather is beautiful, not even instructors.” Grandis Leman was our instructor after lunch. His lips had a bitter quirk to them and the classroom smelled musty and neglected. Perhaps he was serious about spending all his time out of doors. “This is Maps, Geography, and Regions. It’s better to learn these skills practically from the backs of your dragons, but until your First Flight there are only books to help you.”

  Grandis Leman talked with the bored air of someone who would rather be anywhere else. His nose was like a wide blade, so dominant that it was almost all I noticed – even before his age or hair color. He’d wrapped his hair back in a silken bandana, though it flowed down almost as long as my own and was interspersed with braids. Maybe that was what I should do with mine.

  “You’ll see three textbooks in front of you. Do all of you know how to read?”

  By Dominion decree, every child was schooled from the ages of five to ten. There should be no one who was illiterate. Though literacy and numeracy weren’t all that helpful in a peasant’s life of farming, it made things easier if peasants were recruited to the military, taken as servants of Castelans, or volunteered as Dragon Riders. Most serving jobs required basic literacy.

  “Excellent,” Grandis Leman said, his tone belying his words. “There are three books in front of you: Maps of the Dominion, Lantris’ Cartography, and Jogler’s Kingdoms, Regions, and Unknown Lands. These are precious and belong to Dragon School. Treat them with care. You will read them all thoroughly before the week is over and you will be tested on them after your First Flight. The test is standard. Failure is unacceptable.”

  Daedru’s hand shot up and Grandis Leman waved to him. “What happens if we fail?”

  “Don’t.” Grandis Leman punctuated his reply with the flat of his hand slamming on the tabletop beside him. I wouldn’t be asking him any questions. “I dislike being cooped up indoors, as I trust is true of all of you. Go read somewhere else. Bring the books back with
you to our next class.”

  He stalked out of the room, leaving us looking at each other in amazement. Was this really one of our teachers? We had to study these three books without instruction for the rest of the week? At least in this, I had the exact same hand dealt to me as everyone else. I could study just as quickly as any of them – although going somewhere else to do it would certainly claw into my time.

  I opened the first book, determined to stay and read what I could. Scuffling chairs and feet and chatter were quickly blocked out by the book. I’d started with Jogler’s Kingdoms, Regions and Unknown Lands. It was the thickest book of the three, but it launched into excitement from the first word:

  The tales of the five kingdoms and the lands beyond are not for those faint of heart or dim of wits. Read with caution for wisdom may be found in these accounts and by them, ye may learn not to repeat the mistakes of olde.

  I felt the tingle in my bones of a tale to be told. I shivered slightly, curled my feet up under me and read on. Eventually, the room quieted, although I heard the furtive sounds of someone else nearby. After what felt like only minutes, the light grew dim so that the words were hard to make out and I was forced to close my book and look up. I surfaced back to the present time like a diver from the depths and I saw a boy sitting opposite to me holding his books against his chest like they were a newborn lamb or kitten needing the warmth of a body close by.

  “You’re Amel Leafbrought.” He was about my age with curling dark hair and a sad expression around his eyes. In the faint light, it was hard to tell much more about him except that his skin was paler than mine and it glowed in the half-light.

  “Did the crutch give it away?” I asked, fishing a leather thong out of my pocket to tie the books together so they could be managed with one hand. I was used to keeping string or leather thongs on my person for this purpose.

  He laughed and I smiled with him. Had I found the only other person here with a sense of humor?

  “I’m Tamas Dawes.”

  I smiled shyly but realized he wouldn’t be able to see my expression in the fading light. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You must be very studious.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You read through dinner and it’s almost curfew bell.”

  Disappointment surged through me. I would have liked more of that amazing food. My belly growled at the thought.

  “Maybe I should have said something.” He laughed again and I liked his laugh.

  “If it’s almost curfew bell then I should get moving,” I said, settling my crutch and heading out of the classroom. “How does everyone else seem to know the schedule here? No one told me what the bells mean or where I should be for them.”

  The moon was rising over the delta below and silver edged the landscape and alcoves of Dragon School. Above the cliffside, tall spires rose like icicles sticking the wrong way up. Towers of the Dragon Riders. Children sketched those in the dirt of our village even though we’d never seen them. We followed the ledge together, towards the ladder.

  “It follows the Castelan schedule. If you grew up noble you know it by heart. First bell is waking, second is meditation, third breakfast, fourth is first duty, fifth lunch, sixth is second duty, seventh supper, eighth is third duty, ninth songs, tenth curfew and then the night bells.”

  “They ring bells at night?”

  “For the night watches or the evening meditations and patrols.”

  “So, everyone else knows what to do because they were raised to this and it’s only the details that change?”

  We reached the ladder and I slotted my crutch into place on my back. Tamas seemed content to wait for me.

  “Exactly. Details are given at meals right now while we’re trainees. It changes after First Flight, but things are informal this first week. The Dragon Riders don’t like to get too attached.”

  “You must be noble, then,” I said as we scaled the ladder. It seemed even more frightening to climb the cliff side in the dark of night. “Since you know the schedule.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

  We arrived at the girls’ dorms and he paused for a moment. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Amel Leafbrought. I was hoping to make a friend my first week here.”

  “Does that mean we’re friends?”

  “We are if you want to be.” Was that a twinkle in his eye or a glint of moonlight?

  “I could use a friend.” I was too shy to wait for his response. What if he took back his offer? I hurried into the dorm and almost collided with Starie.

  “Watch it, peasant. And watch who you’re spending your time with. People who start as servants can always go back to that position.”

  What did she mean by that?

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, I used what I learned to get ready and in the right place in time for breakfast. The dining hall was loud with chatter and hot clattering dishes. Steam filled the air as a serving girl pulled the silver lid off a dish of eggs and set them on the long serving table. Metal pitchers of hot teas were quickly refilled as soon as they ran dry by a series of servants arriving with cast-iron kettles. The cold air of the fresh morning fueled my appetite and smelling yeasty goodness in the air as a Dragon Rider nearby broke open a fresh-baked roll made my mouth water.

  Even arriving right at the bell, I was only one among many pouring into the great hall. Dragon Riders were outdoors people and they were morning people. More people than in my entire village – than in all the five villages of my home – lived in Dragon School and they all ate together, except the servants, of course.

  Off to one side of the hall, I caught a glimpse of the boy I’d met last night, Tamas, talking to a white-clad servant. His arms were crossed like he was upset about something. Should I try to help somehow? His body language suggested that he didn’t want to be interrupted.

  I hurried to the trainee table, gathering up two of the hot crusty rolls from a basket and piece of fruit. I couldn’t afford to linger here if I was going to make it up to Tack and Stables in time for the morning lesson.

  “Sit down, you’re blocking my view,” Starie was her usual pleasant self as she slid onto the bench beside me. Space was limited at the trainee table, or I doubted she would choose to sit near me. Perhaps she wasn’t a morning person like the other Dragon Riders.

  “Trainees.” Grandis Dantriet strode up to our table. “Lesson changes this morning. Due to yesterday’s events, Tack and Stables will be abbreviated. Clean your dragon’s stable quickly and carefully. You will have only fifteen minutes to finish. After that, you will go topside to watch a display of skill by the Inducted. I shall meet you there.”

  He strode off, head high and businesslike. For a school, these people certainly didn’t seem to enjoy a lot of talking or lecturing. Every single one of them was a person of action – fresh air, exercise, sharp words and good food - that was my impression of Dragon Riders.

  I tore a bite out of my chunk of bread and tucked the rest in my pockets, heading for the door. I would have loved to stay and sit for a while. The cheerful bustle of the dining hall brought back memories of home, and the combination of cool morning air and steaming piles of food was hard to resist. It would be fun to sit in a corner, sipping tea and listening to all the conversations, but if I wanted to get my dragon’s stable clean in time, I would need to hurry.

  I made it up the ladder just as the bell for first duty was sounding. At least I knew what the bells meant now! I’d love to see some of them ringing. There was more than one that rang, but I didn’t know where they were. With the echoing of the cliff face, they could be anywhere.

  You’re back.

  I smiled as I heard his voice in my mind. I was getting used to Raolcan. Did he like it here?

  I’m a prisoner.

  Of course. I should have remembered that.

  But no more than you are. You can’t ever leave either, can you?

  I couldn’t, but I was a peasant girl wi
th a bad leg. Raolcan was a massive, powerful dragon.

  We have a treaty with the Dominion. It is an old bond. Our part of the treaty is to provide you with dragons to ride.

  Are you saying that you volunteered?

  Who would choose a life under the rule of another? But someone had to go, and I have no mate, no children. I will not be missed as much as others would.

  Do you miss your home?

  I miss everything.

  I missed my home, too. If he agreed to come, then why did they tie him up? It seemed needlessly cruel. He was no brute beast.

  Thank you.

  Why did he thank me?

  For your trust. You shouldn’t trust dragons, though. I will rend and flame as much as any other.

  But not me. I knew he wouldn’t try to harm me. He’d admitted as much.

  We shall see. I am still a dragon.

  But he was also my friend. And we were in this together. I thought I could feel him smile as I hobbled along the ledge towards his alcove. I wondered what it would be like to embark on this journey with anyone else but Raolcan. Imagine if I were Dannil whose dragon bit his arm right off? I shuddered, peering into the alcoves as I went.

  There was Daedru’s golden dragon, its mane shimmering in the dawn light. He yawned, his massive mouth opening so wide that I could step inside and my head would barely brush the roof of his mouth. I shuddered and moved on.

  Once I neared the Reds, I saw Savette’s Eeamdor, but I didn’t near his pen. His sleek red scales shone in the sun like polished glass, but he was gouting flames out the door of his alcove. I timed my passing carefully to avoid them.

  When I reached the Green stables, I saw a chalkboard with Tamas’ name written on it beside the name ‘Ieffban.’ So, Tamas was going to be Green if he prevailed. What sort of dragon had he been given? The alcove was dark and the door had thick woolen hangings over it. Perhaps Tamas really was rich of he could afford those. They had no embroidery or fancy dye work like the other curtains. Curious, I pulled back the draping to look inside.