The Dragoneer Trilogy

by Vickie Knestaut

  Chapter 23

  The night dug its fingers into Trysten and rattled her, gripped her muscles and shook her bones. She lifted her face off her knees and hugged her legs tighter, trying harder to draw the heat in. The rock she sat on dug into her butt, but she didn’t care. With the sleeve of her sweater, she wiped tears away from her eyes and stared up at the tatters of clouds and the riot of stars beyond them. It looked as if the old world had been torn away, just ripped off the surface of the village, and underneath, or up above, as it was with the case of the sky, bits of bone shone down through the dark muscle of whatever hovered over them, whatever saw fit to see things turn out as they had.

  It wasn’t fair in the least. None of it. Yet as soon as she thought it, she saw her father crying, sobbing. That wasn’t her father at all. It was some ghost, some demon left in his body after Aeronwind’s death. Then there was Elevera’s expectant stare, wanting something, and wanting it from her.

  She didn’t have it. Whatever it was that Elevera wanted, whatever it was that Trysten needed in order to make her father believe that she should have succeeded him, she certainly didn’t have it. It wasn’t in her.

  On top of that, there was Aeronwind. Poor Aeronwind. She had known. She knew that it was her fault that her dragoneer was injured, that he could no longer ride after she broke her leg and fell on him upon landing. How awful it was for her to die feeling like such a disappointment. Whether Aeronwind was concerned about Elevera’s ability to succeed her, Trysten couldn’t tell.

  All of it, however, was just awful. It was terrible that it happened to them, out here in the middle of nowhere with the fighting season bearing down on them.

  She glanced to the mountains. How much longer would it be before the first of the hordesmen from the Western Kingdom came across? And how would they ever be ready for them?

  Trysten wiped her palms across her face. At least it was out of her hands at this point. There was nothing to be done. She took a deep breath. If Elevera was unable to find what she needed in Paege and the horde absconded, then there was nothing Trysten could do any longer.

  A small spray of rocks tumbled down the path off to Trysten’s left. She peered back into the darkness. A familiar form walked down the path and then made her way through the marsh grass. Without a word, Trysten’s mother climbed up on the rocks and sat beside her daughter in the dark. Together, they peered at the clouds and stars and listened to the river burble as a lone trail lark let out a series of low, long whistles that sounded like it wanted to tell the mountains of its profound disappointment and loneliness.

  “I wasn’t supposed to be there,” Trysten finally said.

  Her mother didn’t respond right away. “I didn’t think Aeronwind would pass tonight. It usually takes a third fever for a dragon to succumb.”

  Trysten hugged her legs tighter. “She felt awful for hurting father. He lived to ride.”

  “He lived to ride her.”

  “I’ve never seen him like that. Oh, Mother, he just…” Trysten slumped sideways into her mother. Another sob escaped her and dropped into her mother’s lap. Caron wrapped her arm around her daughter and pulled her close. Trysten buried her face in Caron’s shoulder. She smelled of burnt candles and wood smoke as she stroked her daughter’s hair until Trysten’s sobs subsided.

  Trysten pushed herself upright, then wiped her eyes on her sleeve again. “It was so awful. All of it. I’ve seen dragons die before, but not like that. They all… They hissed. They stopped breathing when Aeronwind did, and then they all began to hiss, and it sounded so awful. It sounded horrible as if…”

  The words stopped off there, like a ragged trail that dwindled into a bit of nothing, into solid scrub and rock heather that stretched as far as the eye could see. There were no words. Words were for humans. The hissing had filled her with a sense of the world shifting. It sounded like the noise that might fill the air if the entire mountain and the foothills and plains were all dragged across the lands that stretched out beyond the horizon. It sounded as if the world had been relocated, and the feelings that came with it…she didn’t know how to describe them to her mother.

  There was something else among it. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. So much had been thrown at her. The emotions and the thoughts of the dragons had threatened to overwhelm her, and she waded through it as fast and hard as she could looking for any indication of what it was that Elevera was going to do. Would she take Paege as her bonded human, as her dragoneer or not?

  “You might find this hard to believe, but I do understand,” her mother said.

  Trysten quivered in the press of the cold night. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond. How could her mother even begin to understand?

  “Emotions run high at these times. It must have been frightening to see your father undone like that.” Caron tightened her grip upon her daughter.

  “Your father has always had to keep up an image of strength, of being made of stone. He had to be the mountains himself.”

  “Why?” Trysten asked. “He didn’t have to do it for the dragons.”

  Caron stroked her daughter’s hair a few times. “No, that is true. He did have to do it for the men, though. For the hordesmen. They put such an air of mysticism about it, don’t they? They make it out as if your father must eat iron and spit rust in order to be the Dragoneer. He had to be perceived as the most able, more fierce warrior in the land in order to be the one chosen to ride into battle on the back of the alpha.”

  Trysten listened to her mother’s heart. It throbbed far away, under layers of wool and cotton, muffled and hidden behind so many curtains. It seemed so distant, unlike when she had been a girl and able to curl up in her mother’s lap and listen to that sound whenever she wanted.

  “It’s not like that,” Trysten said.

  “No. But they pretend it is. And now they have a problem. Paege isn’t the kind of person one would expect to be the Dragoneer, is he?”

  “In the bunk hall, when I went to get him, he started to give orders. He started to sound like Father.”

  Trysten heard her mother smile.

  “I’m sure your father has been coaching him. It was the hordesmen who responded to Paege, and not the dragons, right?”

  Trysten gave a slight nod.

  “These hordesmen not only fly into battle under the command of the Dragoneer but also on the backs of the Dragoneer’s dragons. He controls the alpha, and the alpha controls the dragons.”

  “It’s not that way,” Trysten said. “Not entirely. He doesn’t control the alpha. She just wants… It’s hard to explain. It’s not just a matter of wanting to please him, to make him proud, but there’s also a… They are protecting him. They see us as rather silly and weak and ridiculous. They protect us so that we will build them shelters and bring them food.”

  A slight sound escaped Caron. Trysten wasn’t sure what it was, what it meant.

  “Is that what you think?” her mother asked.

  Trysten placed a hand upon her mother’s knee and felt the firmness and the warmth. It wasn’t a matter of what she thought.

  “Well,” Caron continued, “it’s not the allegiance of the dragons Paege has to worry about, but rather the allegiance of the hordesmen. A dragon’s faith is unbreakable. Men, however, are fickle. Projecting an air of authority, of being larger than life is one way to assure these men that your father was worth following into battle. If they placed their lives in his hands, he would care for them like a dragon, lead them true, and bring them home to the cottages they have defended. It’s all an act. Posturing.”

  Trysten recalled the look of utter and complete anguish on her father’s face.

  “But you know what the true secret is, don’t you?” Caron asked.

  Trysten nearly snorted. “If I did, I would have told Paege. He needs the help.”

  “I know your father better than anyone thinks. I can imagine his response when Aeronwind passed. Your father is a very passionate man. I’m sure it t
ore him apart to lose his dragon. The fact that he could feel that loss so deeply, so keenly is why Aeronwind chose him.”

  Trysten swallowed hard. That statement did not help her feel any better about Paege’s abilities.

  “Dragons are amazing beasts. The legends say that when the gods made these lands, and they wanted someone to admire them, to appreciate their work, so they made the Originals. But these people, the Originals, felt emotion too strongly. Too keenly. They were overcome with the beauty and the harshness of the land, and the beauty and the harshness of themselves, the creations of the gods.

  “The gods became fearful of their new creations. They had not expected such passions. They knew that among the gods themselves egos existed that would use the Originals, stoke their passions, fire them up until they could be turned into an army. And that army could turn on all of the gods and destroy them.

  “So a hail of lightning fell upon the land. It shattered the paradise the gods had built, but it also split their creatures in two. The passion and emotion gave rise to the dragons, and the ambition and reason gave rise to humans.”

  It was an old story that Trysten had heard before, but she dared not interrupt her mother. She was quite content to listen to the story, to listen to the sound of Caron’s voice.

  “People like your dad are a little more like the old ones, the Originals. They have it in their blood. They can draw up some of the passion of the ancients, and that is what the dragons respond to. It is what I imagine you saw tonight. It is also why the title is almost always passed down from father to son.”

  “But not daughter?” Trysten asked. She pushed herself up out of her mother’s lap and wrapped her arms around her legs.

  They sat and listened to the river, swollen with rain. They listened to the trail lark and the wind that would start to tell of something it had seen far away, but then fall quiet as it realized that no one really cared. All of Trysten’s focus was on her mother, on her response.

  “There’s nothing that forbids it,” Caron finally said.

  Trysten huffed. “Nothing except Father.”

  “He loves you, you know.”

  “What does that have to do with anything? With this?”

  “Everything. You have to look at it from his side. He…” Caron grabbed Trysten’s knee and squeezed. “We know you are a special girl, Little Heart.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not little. Not anymore.”

  In the starlight, Caron’s grin was visible. “Oh, dear, until you are older than me, you will never outgrow that name. But your father knows that you… you feel things on a very deep level. You feel things deeper than him, even. And he worries about you. He worries because what dragons feel is so large and…”

  Caron gave her daughter’s knee another squeeze. “To be frank, we worry about where you will put it all. How do you make room inside yourself for what the dragons feel?”

  Every bit of Trysten felt as if it were plunged into ice. Her breath stopped. Her heart struggled, staggered in her chest. She glanced at the dark blades of grass before her as they stirred in the last of the wind’s tepid tale. How much did her mother really know? How much did her parents know?

  “I questioned your father’s refusal to let you even participate in the consideration, but after your fainting spell in the weyr, I knew that he had made the right decision. You are unlike many of the people across this land. There might not even be another like you alive today. I can see that your empathy towards the dragons runs as deep as any since possibly the Originals walked this land or the land that was. But you are not one of the Originals. You are human. And you have the limits of a human. Your father is concerned about what would happen to you in the heat of battle when passions run at their highest, their hottest.”

  Trysten drew her legs closer to her. A shiver ran through her. The wind spoke up. It whispered into the grasses a muffled story of a young woman, a warrior princess who flew into battle on the back of a dragon, and the mere mention of it sent goose flesh across Trysten’s arms.

  “This isn’t about you alone, little heart,” her mother said. “This is about the village and the kingdom. Your father feels things far more deeply than he will ever let on or admit to, and that includes fear. He is frightened of what would become of you in battle. He is frightened of that first. Beyond that, he is frightened for the village and the kingdom. What would happen to the horde if you became overwhelmed in battle?”

  Trysten shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”

  “It is not for you to decide. Your father is your father, and so what becomes of you is the responsibility of us both. But he is… He was the Dragoneer, and it was his decision to make. The Dragoneer is the Dragoneer first. Before he is your father, before he is your friend, before he is your husband even, he is the Dragoneer. The horde comes first, and the village soon after.

  Trysten glanced up at the weyr. The dark shape of it obscured the stars at the top of the hill behind her. Soft light from torches and lanterns bathed and lapped against the stone wall. All seemed quiet. She thought of Galelin’s story, of how the Drowlin weyr lost their horde. It sounded as if it had happened so fast, in the blink of an eye. Everything above seemed calm. Surely she had been worried about nothing. Elevera had probably done what she needed to do and bonded with Paege.

  She looked back and shook her head. It would take a while to think of him as the Dragoneer.

  Trysten glanced at her mother. How much did her mother and father know about her ability to hear the dragons, to feel them? They knew more than she had assumed, but how deep did their true understanding go?

  As Trysten considered how to word it, how to ask it, her mother patted her on the knee. “Come along, little heart. One thing that death teaches us is that life goes on. There is a burial feast to prepare.”

  Trysten took a deep breath, then let it all go. It had been a tough night. And there was a lot of work ahead. She pushed herself off the rock she had been sitting on. Her mother slipped to the ground beside her and drew her into a great embrace. Trysten buried her face in her mother’s shoulder and thought about what she had said about all of the emotions not being able to fit inside her. It startled her to hear that. It was closer to the truth than Trysten had even realized. Standing among the reeds near the river’s edge, she felt like a sack stretched out of shape by some ungainly thing forced inside her. She thought of Elevera’s eyes, and the way she stared at her, and the look of expectation. What she wanted would not possibly fit inside Trysten, but Elevera had wanted it anyway.

  She shuddered.

  Caron patted her on the back. “Everything will be fine. This is life unfolding. That is all it is. You’ll see.”

  “I suppose so,” Trysten said as she pushed back away from her mother. She wiped at the corners of her eyes again, and then the two of them started up the trail for the village.

  Chapter 24

  At the head of the trail, a sense of ill-ease struck Trysten. It left a taste on the back of her tongue; cold and bitter like metal. She glanced at the weyr, at the people milling about outside of it under the lights of torches and lanterns. Their chatter had an edge to it, a strained anticipation.

  Dread fell into Trysten. Something more was going on than villagers simply mourning the passing of the alpha dragon. Something wasn’t going right, and she feared it was the bonding. Elevera was preparing to abscond.

  “Mother…” Trysten whispered.

  Her mother stopped and slid an arm around Trysten’s shoulders. They stared at the scene before them. A few stragglers joined those outside the weyr. In animated gestures, the villagers told the newcomers what was happening. On the breeze, Trysten caught mention of Aeronwind and Paege. The dragons. Lee, the baker, waved a wild hand at the weyr. Whatever was going on wasn’t welcomed.

  Caron’s grip tightened around Trysten’s shoulder. If she truly had the blood of the ancients coursing through her, if she had an ability to connect with the dragons that no one had had since the t
ime of the Originals, then she could stop Elevera before she absconded. If Paege could not, then she would.

  Caron’s grip fell away as Trysten plunged across the yard that separated the hillside and the weyr. The people milling about called to her, asked of her father, of Paege and Elevera. They passed along condolences for Aeronwind, and then they parted as she plunged through. Muffled pardons and apologies trailed behind as she brushed past people and penetrated the crowd as it grew tighter and denser as she approached the weyr’s opening.

  With a last drop of her shoulder and a slight shove, she plunged past the last barrier and stepped into the central aisle of the weyr. All about her, dragons shuffled and groaned in their stalls. A few of the smaller ones turned tight circles. Wings snapped open and shut. Bits of straw skittered away from stalls beneath the brush of quick, brief breezes.

  At Elevera’s stall, Paege stood among a knot of hordesmen and weyrmen. He donned her father’s helmet. The great, gray braids that had fallen over her father’s shoulders when he rode Aeronwind now fell over Paege’s shoulders, and they appeared so much larger, like thick ropes meant to tie him down, to restrain him. He lifted his hands to Elevera, lifted them over his head and held them apart as if pleading. The rear corner of the weyr flickered with light as a dragon released a stream of fire.

  A quiver shook Trysten’s knees. This would not go well. She had never witnessed a succession before, but the dragon’s tenor suggested that it was not going as it should. A restlessness rippled through her, crawled beneath her skin. Tightness drew over her lungs. The whispering and tongue-wagging of the crowd behind her grew in pitch.

  A dragon of the lightest silver color drew up on his back legs. His wings snapped open wide as he clawed at the air. A spurt of fire slipped through his maw. When he dropped forward again, his claws clutched the stall gate. The wood cracked. The top set of hinges was torn from the post with a groan.

  A weyrmen rushed to the stall and waved his hands helplessly.