“Borsal, did you speak to my father like this when he was the Dragoneer? I somehow doubt it. I have many things to see to, including right now. What do you need?” She turned back to Elevera.
The dragon crouched down, lowering herself to her haunches and elbows. She extended her neck and forced Borsal to step aside rather than be knocked over by the dragon’s muzzle.
“Those new recruits of yours. I wasn’t told that there would be women among them.”
Trysten tossed the saddle onto Elevera’s back. “What of it?”
“Well, what do you expect me to do with them if they pass the trial?”
“They will pass. They will earn it. I have no doubt about that. The dragons know.”
Borsal shook his head. “I’m not here to debate with you about whether there should be lady hordesmen… hordesladies, hordeswomen—what are we to call them?”
“Hordesmen,” Trysten said as she began to draw leather straps tight across Elevera and buckle them into place. “They are to be treated and respected as hordesmen. They are doing the same job and doing it just as well as any man if they fly with us.”
“I understand that, but do you plan to house the lady hordesmen in the same quarters as the male hordesmen, since they’re doing the same job and all? As head weyrman, I have to think of these things, you know. And no one told me what to do, how to prepare for this. It’s just going to be dumped in my lap—”
“No hordesman has ever been forced to sleep in the bunkhouse. There have been men who had families and stayed in their own cottages. The women will be allowed the same privilege.” Trysten kept her voice even and measured, although her impatience with the man was growing.
To be fair, Borsal was an adequate weyr manager. She had no one to replace him and he raised legitimate questions. He had adjusted better than she expected to the addition of the Hollin and Western dragons to the weyr census, and it was her job to make sure he had what he needed to run the weyr. She turned and gave him her full attention.
“What if they choose to sleep in the bunkhouse, then?” Borsal countered. “Then what?”
“We’ll work it out later. Perhaps the second bunkhouse will be for women if that is what everyone wants.”
Borsal flushed. “The second bunkhouse? But Mardoc said it was going to be identical to this one. Do you plan to fill it up with lady hordesmen?”
Trysten gave a final tug to the rigging and satisfied herself with its security. She brushed her hands together, then picked up Elevera’s reins. “I will fill the second bunkhouse with capable hordesmen, Borsal. I don’t particularly care which gender they are. I do understand, though, that changes are happening very quickly and I appreciate your patience and attention to detail. You have my word as Dragoneer that I will ask for your input before any decisions are made. Now please step aside. I have work to do.”
Borsal backed up and looked slightly confused, not sure what to do with his anger now that Trysten had made it unnecessary.
Elevera trotted out of her stall in the awkward way of dragons on foot. As much as Trysten wanted to climb in the saddle and leap into the air, brushing aside Borsal and his complaints, she gave the reins a tug and calmly led the dragon out of the weyr.
Once in the weyr yard, Elevera crouched and Trysten stepped up into the saddle. The moment she finished securing the leather saddle straps around her waist the dragon reared slightly, spread her great golden wings, and leaped into the sky, crushing the air beneath them. She was as tired of being confined as Trysten was.
Chapter 10
There had been no thought in Trysten’s head about which direction to go when she and Elevera left the weyr. She only wanted to be in the sky on the back of her dragon. The wind rolled off the mountains and pushed her braids back from her face as they flew away from the weyr’s opening. She squinted her eyes at the sun hanging fat and full over a bank of clouds that rested above the peaks. The clouds were tipped with white, but faded into dark gray, making it appear as if a second mountain range was billowing up behind the old one.
With a nudge of her heels, Trysten urged a little more speed from Elevera. May the wind scour the concerns from her head for a short while. She rode without thinking, without any direction other than faster until the last of the sun slipped behind the clouds and shadows fell across the ground. Elevera leveled out her wings, and the movement of her shoulders ceased. The dragon’s chest heaved as she sucked in the wind, exhausted from trying to outrun time.
Trysten laid a palm against the base of Elevera’s neck. Even though the dragon had known that Trysten wanted her to go to ground and have a bit of a rest, she waited until that touch to slant her wings and slowly drop through the sky.
Below, cairns took shape out of the shadows. At first, Trysten thought they were descending to Aerona’s own burial mounds until she glanced behind herself and saw nothing where the village ought to be. They were descending to the burial grounds where she had fought and defeated the Second Horde. She gasped.
Her hand went to her waist, as if she might find the hilt of the dragonslayer sword there, materialized as a curse she inherited from killing the horde’s Dragon Lord. Of course, she found nothing beyond the leather safety cords and the fabric of her tunic. She immediately regretted not arming herself before she left the weyr. It was the fighting season after all, and she was the Dragoneer. And if Mardoc and Galelin were right, she had become hunted. She must be more careful in the future.
Elevera’s wings flared out. She fluttered them a bit as her hindquarters dropped and her back legs caught the stony ground before her forelegs did the same.
Trysten slid from the saddle and to the ground before Elevera could crouch. Her boots crunched in the gravel as she walked across the site to the oldest cairns. Mounds of stones stood around her, and in each pile, the remains of a dragon rested. Some of the cairns were elongated, or lopsided, and in those, Trysten knew that the dragon had been buried with its rider, or else the grave had been disturbed, the dragon’s skull taken as a trophy by a macabre adventurer.
How old were these cairns? There were no villages nearby. As far as she knew, there never had been. She had asked her father about it, and he knew of the burial ground but did not know of the village that had built it.
These were true ghosts, out alone on the plains, in the shadows of the mountains. Her father suggested that the ground might have been the site of a fierce battle, one in which so many people died that they were buried where they fell because it was too difficult to carry the dead back to their village for a proper burial. That could not be the case. The cairns were too regularly spaced. Those buried here had been carried to this spot.
Her footfalls sounded too loud to her ears. It felt like she should sneak among the cairns, tread with more care. Otherwise, one of the Second Hordesmen would step out from behind a cairn and come running for Trysten, dragonslayer blade held high in both hands, ready to thrust it down into her heart.
A shiver wracked her. By all that was wild, what was she doing out here? Elevera had come this way only because Trysten had unknowingly willed her to do so. It was Trysten who had wanted to come here, and Elevera had followed her desire.
She turned around. Elevera stood between two burial mounds and watched Trysten. Her wings were folded up on her back. Her neck was arched slightly. She was uneasy. She did not like this place.
“Why are we here, then?” Trysten asked the golden dragon.
Elevera swung her head side-to-side, perhaps suggesting that she was looking for a reason, but could see none.
“Have you caught your breath? How about we head home?” Trysten glanced up at the mountains. The clouds continued to gather above the peaks. The sun was behind them, and nearly behind the ridges as well. Dusk was settling thick and heavy across the ground.
As Trysten moved toward Elevera, she stopped. To her left, she saw a pile of stones that had recently been disturbed, the heather crushed. It was the site where one of the Second Hordesmen had fal
len from the sky. Trysten stepped over to the spot, a chill running through her.
A glint caught Trysten’s eye. At first, she thought it was a piece of quartz reflecting the last of the sun’s light. She stepped over to where she had seen it out of the corner of her eye. There, just to the side of a tamped down clump of heather and next to a flat, rectangular stone, she caught sight of a piece of metal.
She reached under the heather, and her hand closed around something sharp, smooth like metal, but not warm with the last of the day’s heat. It felt more like a sharpened stone. She wrapped her fingers around it and pulled it out. A delicate chain dangled from her closed fist. The metal was unlike anything she had seen before. It had the luster of gold but was a pale silver color. The links were fine, forged with great skill. She turned her hand over and opened her fist.
A dragon tooth pendant.
The tooth was about the size of her palm and set in the same odd metal as the chain. Almost translucent, the ivory colored tooth seemed to glow in the scant daylight that was left. Trysten glanced around as if the owner might step out from behind a cairn to claim it, perhaps even sever her hand at the wrist with a dragonslayer sword, but no such thing happened. Her heart beat faster. She looked around one more time as if making sure there was no one close by to see her, then she slipped it into her pocket.
With quick steps that grated and echoed across the graveyard, she approached Elevera. The dragon crouched down and laid her head upon the stones and nearly looked dead herself as she waited. Trysten swiftly climbed into the saddle, and before she finished securing the leather cords, Elevera leaped into the air once more and began to seek out the weyr that was their home.
The deepening shadows hid most of the details on the ground as the weyr lanterns came into sight in the distance. Trysten looked down to the darkening ground beneath them and saw something moving through the heather. It was a woman in a red dress that looked like the one Tannil had worn to the recruitment meeting that morning.
Without word or indication from Trysten, Elevera adjusted her wings and dropped down out of the sky. She swept low over Tannil, then banked around to approach from the opposite direction. The young woman halted and held a hand clutched over her heart as Elevera grasped the stones and ground beneath her and settled to the land.
“It’s nearly dark out,” Trysten called. “Would you like a ride?”
Tannil nodded, then ran forward, sure-footed and careful not to twist an ankle upon the stone or get a toe caught in the scrubby heather.
“Thank you,” she called out as she approached. “I guess I got lost.”
“Have you been out here all day?”
Tannil nodded as she stepped up to the dragon. Elevera crouched. Trysten held out a hand and helped the young woman up behind her.
“Here,” Trysten said as she unhooked a water skin from the saddle and handed it back to the girl.
Tannil drank noisily from the skin and sighed loudly once finished. “Thank you. Were you sent out to find me?”
Trysten shook her head. “I didn’t know you were missing. We were just out for a flight. I happened to see you on our way back.”
“I’m glad you did. I’m exhausted. I was just so…you know.“ She handed the water skin back to Trysten. Trysten nodded. She did know.
After she stowed the skin away, Trysten told Tannil to grasp her belt and to hang on tightly. Elevera made a show of crouching, and then leaping up and grabbing the air with her wings. Tannil let out a yelp of surprise as the dragon vaulted into the evening sky.
Elevera flew slowly, holding close to the ground due to the untethered rider on her back. Trysten urged the dragon higher until the plains spread out beneath them and Aerona was a clump of twinkling lanterns and light-colored stone against the darker plains, shadowed in heather and lichen-cloaked rock beside the shallow and chattering River Gul.
“It’s so beautiful,” Tannil said into Trysten’s ear. “How can you stand it up here?”
Trysten’s heart buoyed a bit as she took in the sights with fresh eyes. There were horrible things to see, certainly, but right now, as the world slipped away into dreams, all was quiet. All was peaceful as far as the eye could see.
Chapter 11
Wild dreams kept Trysten up half the night, and so when the sky lightened from black to gray, she crawled from bed and dressed. As she pulled her tunic on over her head, her eyes rested on the pendant she had found at the burial mounds. She scooped it off her shelf and slipped it into her pocket.
Outside, she glanced to the east and saw thick clouds covering the dawn. She craned her neck to the west. The mountains sat where they always sat, their peaks obscured by the clouds. It looked every bit like the sky of the peaceful season, except the air was too warm, and the heather and the river grasses were the wrong colors. Peace was an illusion for now.
She reached into her tunic and closed her hand around the pendant. The sharp, serrated edges of the dragon tooth dug into her flesh. She looked in the direction of Galelin’s cottage, then decided to let him be. It was too early in the day. In all likelihood, he was still up poring through his books for references to sa yalla, but just in case he had managed to drift off, his head on a book, a puddle of drool dampening the pages underneath, she didn’t want to disturb him. It was a day to envy those who could find sleep.
Instead, Trysten went to the weyr where she could do a bit of research on her own. As she entered, Paege looked up from the front of a stall that housed Sone. Upon sight of her, he crossed the weyr, and she waited for him at the bottom of the stairs.
“How are you doing?” Paege asked. His eyes roved over her in apparent concern.
“Why? Do I look that bad?”
“You look exhausted.”
Trysten nodded. “That was the look I was going for.”
Paege lifted his eyebrows slightly.
“I’m sorry,” Trysten said with a shake of her head. She closed her eyes. They burned behind her eyelids. “I didn’t sleep much last night. Tossed and turned.”
“Would you like me to take care of the recruits today?”
“Oh, that would be appreciated,” she said, trying to smile. As much as she disliked the idea of not working with the recruits, she did want to retreat to her den and go through the old texts looking for information on the pendant. She’d like to try and make a go of it before she bothered Galelin.
“Consider it done,” Paege said. He swallowed like he had a lump in his throat, maybe something he wanted to say.
“Look,” Paege said, blushing. “I just want you to know that if the Prince comes—”
“Oh, he’s coming,” Trysten said.
“When he comes, I want you to know—if he tries to ban you from the weyr, or send you away from Aerona, then he will get no help from me or from any of the other hordesmen.” He gave a final, affirmative nod. “We’ve discussed it.”
Trysten’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyes burned, and she glanced away, to the rear corner of the stall behind Paege. Ulbeg shuffled his feet and lowered his head in response to Trysten. She pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips and took a deep, wobbly breath. She wouldn’t let the men see her cry. Not until Elevera died, if that day ever came. The only day she had ever seen her father cry was the day his dragon died. She would be the same.
But her father also relied on his hordesmen. They trusted each with their lives. So, too, should Trysten be trusting her hordesmen. She pulled her fingers from her lips and motioned for Paege to follow her as she climbed the wooden stairs to her den. By the time Paege closed the door, and she sat at the far end of the table, she had regained her composure.
“What’s going on?” Paege asked as he stood before the chair on the other side of the table. He did not sit.
Trysten reached into the pocket of her tunic and pulled out the dragon tooth pendant. She held it up for him to see, then lowered it to the table. The chain slipped from her fingers and flowed like water to the table top where it lay
in a pool of pale silver metal.
“What is that?” Paege asked.
“I don’t know,” Trysten said. “It’s a mystery. I went for a ride last night. I don’t know how or why, but Elevera flew back to the old burial ground, the one where we fought the battle last week. And there, near a place where one of the Second Hordesmen fell—”
“The Second Hordesmen?” Paege asked.
He touched the edge of the table with the tips of his fingers as if the story was something he could pause, like placing his fingers upon the strings of a bard’s lute.
Trysten leaned against the back of her chair. She stared up at Paege, then motioned at the chair behind him.
He turned and looked behind him as if what he found there might explain something. It was a chair. He sat.
“The Second Hordesmen are the ones with the dragonslayer swords.” Trysten motioned at a long, thin wooden box in the corner. “They are mythical. Or at least their origin is. They are supposed to be the personal guards of an Original.”
Paege tilted his head slightly as if he expected to quickly understand why and how this was going to become a joke. He glanced at the pendant on the table.
“The swords are described in a book that Galelin has. A book of history or myth, depending on how you want to look at it.”
Paege shook his head. “I’m sorry, but you can’t possibly believe that they were the personal guards of an Original, can you? I mean, you killed one, and then they killed themselves. That doesn’t sound like a very effective fighting force, does it?”
Paege sat back in his chair. A corner of his lips curled up as if he expected the nature of the joke to be revealed.
Trysten sighed. She stood and looked out the window. The warped glass distorted the scenery into pools of color, softened all of the shapes. She turned back to Paege and leaned against the window sill.
“They are after me. They killed themselves because they wanted to send a message to the person who sent them. That message was that they had found what they were looking for.”
The Dragoneer Trilogy Page 35