“This is not my dream,” Tyber said with a shake of his head.
“What is your dream, then?”
Tyber’s gaze fell away as if a bridge between them had collapsed.
“Help me, Tyber. For all that is wild and split, please help me. I need you.” Theola clutched his arm. “I need your help. Stay. Finish the trial. We’ll be fine. Having you around wouldn’t have changed anything with Lin, and in fact, I hate to say this, but you’d be another mouth to feed.”
“I could—”
“Shut-uh-uh!” Theola said with a wag of her finger. It was a gesture reserved for his younger siblings. He was both amused by it and slightly irritated that Theola was addressing him as a child.
“Running around with Nather is what got you into this mess. I don’t need anything else to worry about.”
Tyber turned away from Theola. He crossed his arms over his chest and craned his neck back to the roof of the academy. He squinted into the light as the sun approached its zenith.
“I’m not kidding, Tyber. You leave here without those braids on your shoulder, then I am leaving the following day. I am not wasting my life to give you the space to waste your own.”
Tyber looked back to Theola. Her eyes burned with the fierceness of a winter sky over fresh-fallen snow.
“I’ll try to visit,” Tyber said.
“Daramel,” Theola called, then motioned for the girl with her fingers. “That would be nice if you could manage it. Fafa would like to see you. So would the others. I’ll bring Jack next week.”
Tyber took a deep breath. “I’ll be here.”
Theola gave a sharp, curt nod. “Good. Now try to enjoy it. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to live in a place like this.” She nodded at the academy.
Tyber blushed a bit, then turned his attention to Daramel. “Hey! Thanks for coming to see your big brother. You behave for your big sister, all right?”
Daramel nodded.
Tyber ruffled her hair. “And you keep the others in line, too. Make sure they behave.”
Daramel nodded again and smiled. “When can you bring your dragon home?”
Tyber’s grin widened. “She is home. She lives here.” He pointed to the front of the academy where the main weyr sat. His heart slowed a bit, and his grin faltered slightly at the hollowness that opened up in him at the thought of leaving Rius behind.
To the wilds, when did that happen?
Chapter 20
Not long after Theola and Daramel departed, Fang received a visit from his parents and two older brothers. His father looked as nervous and meek as his son. It seemed nearly comical in a sad way to think of Fang on his dragon, riding into battle, quiver across his back and bow clutched in hand.
“Is your father coming for a visit?” Tyber asked Ren as they sat on a bench in the garden, and absently watched Fang with his family.
Ren leaned forward, planted his elbows on his knees, and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
The silence offered Ren an opportunity to explain, but then grew awkward as Ren said no more.
Tyber crossed his leg over his knee and moved to a different topic. “Why do we call him Fang?”
Ren smirked then looked up from the ground between his feet. “That’s his story to tell, but he’ll never tell you.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
Ren sat up straight, then leaned against the back of the bench. He laced his fingers together and held them in his lap. “Nah. It’s his story to tell.”
Tyber looked away, to a recruit laughing and holding his arms out as if to indicate something large, huge. A young boy sat on the ground before him and rocked with laughter, his cheeks reddened under the sun.
“Have you heard of the dragon queen?” Tyber asked.
“Of Aerona? Oh, yeah. Of course.”
Tyber looked at Ren. “My sister was telling me about her.”
“I bet she was.”
“What about her?”
“Who?” Ren asked. “The dragon queen?”
“Yes. I’ve heard that women can’t ride dragons, yet there is a woman on the western edge of the kingdom who not only rides a dragon but has her own horde? Isn’t that what Master Gury said? She’s a dragoneer, isn’t she?”
Ren snorted with derision. “Do you believe the Originals will come and get you if you are a bad boy, too?”
Tyber peered at the small, neat track of perfectly round gravel that formed the path before them. “That’s a children’s tale. But my sister says she’s going to Aerona to join the dragon queen’s horde.”
“She’ll be sorely disappointed if she does. My father says there’s nothing to the story. There is a woman riding a dragon out on the edge of the kingdom, but she’s not the dragoneer. Her father is.”
“But still. A woman? Riding a dragon?”
Ren shrugged. He looked at Tyber and squinted slightly. The sun was starting to sink into the western sky. “We didn’t really ride our dragons the other day, did we? It was Dragoneer Chanson and Merilyss who did all the work. It’s no different in Aerona. Their dragoneer commands his horde, and he commands one of the older, more docile dragons not to toss his daughter to the rocks below.”
Tyber shook his head. “But why would he do that?”
Ren reached over and twisted off the stem of a short, squat tree that grew next to the bench. He began to twist the thick, green leaves from the stem. He pitched several shredded leaves to the ground before he shrugged again. “I don’t know. Maybe he lost his sons in battle. My father says the Western kingdom is a real terror this year. Armies have marched over the mountains and descended upon the border garrisons. They’ve all fallen except one.”
“Aerona?” Tyber asked.
Ren nodded but offered no more.
Tyber looked out to Dragon Lane as if he might see one of the Western Kingdom’s armies rushing the city now, swords swinging, arrows flying. “Armies? Enemy armies on our own soil?”
“Yeah, but we’re so far away,” Ren said.
“Did you see how close the mountains were when we were up in the air earlier this week?”
Ren shrugged. “Mountains are huge. They’re farther away than they look. Father says it’d be weeks before they’d get here.”
“Weeks? How many?”
Ren shook his head, then looked out to Dragon Lane himself. His lips pursed together briefly as he shook his head. “We don’t have to worry. Cadwaller raised a few armies of his own from the surrounding villages. They’re marching out there to meet the Western dogs now.”
“Now,” Tyber said. “But when we finish the trials…”
Ren uttered a half-hearted chuckle. “I know. Father told me I was stupid for signing up. That I wasn’t going to do anything but get myself killed. But you don’t have to finish the trials.”
Tyber looked to the wall at the other end of Dragon Lane. It was a dark blot over the end of the lane. The wall would repulse any army. The dragons would help them resist a siege. But if the Western kingdom had their own dragons…
“Is your sister always that fiery?”
Tyber turned back to Ren.
Ren’s smile was coy. “She’s something. I hope she doesn’t take after her mother.”
“Our mother is dead.”
Ren looked at the ground. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Still…” Ren said. He reached over and twisted another stem from the tree.
“I can see why she wants to believe in the dragon queen, though. It’d be kind of comforting, you know?” Ren said.
Tyber shook his head. “No. I don’t know.”
“Well, think about it. Look at you. Things are so bad here in the mother city that the King is enlisting paupers just to put men in the saddles. And those saddles are on dragons far too young to be flying into battle anyway. Armies are marching around the western edge of the kingdom, working their way here. Seems like any day now we have to bar the gates and
secure the city, you know? So what harm does it do to believe that something mythical is real?”
Tyber looked at the roof of the King’s palace. Ren might have a point.
“These are desperate times,” Ren said. “We just don’t know it yet here in the mother city. And when times get desperate, people get frightened, and the best the King can do is gather some paupers up off the streets and dress them up like dragon knights.”
Ren snorted and shook his head. “People need to sleep at night, man. So you either lay in bed and imagine a Western soldier slitting your throat and leaving you to gurgle out the last of your blood and breath, or you dream up a hero instead. A savior. It’s easier to believe that there is a dragon queen out there, you know? Some woman with total command over all the dragons. And that she’s out there, fighting for you, turning back all of the scary monsters. She’s like your mother—I’m sorry, not like your mother, maybe, but my mother used to check my room for Originals when I was younger, like half the size of your younger sister. It seemed like there was nothing she couldn’t protect me from.”
Ren cast the broken and twisted stem to his feet. “It’s not much of a leap to use your imagination and come up with a similar figure. A woman who can drive away all the things that terrify you?”
“I suppose,” Tyber said, though not convinced his friend was right.
“At least until that first time you go out alone into the street, and you meet that older kid who wants your slip of copper or whatever, and he pounds you into the pavers. It’s like your ears open up to a new world. You hear yourself cry in a way you’ve never heard before. And you come to realize that your mother can’t protect you from everything. For all the sky, she can’t even protect you from most things. And that monster on the street is far more dangerous than the one under your bed. The one in the street can actually get you.”
Tyber sat still and quiet on the bench for a second. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Ren said with a sneer.
“That you know that.”
Ren shrugged, then stood. “I’d rather live with the truth. No offense, but people like your sister who hang onto myths are dangerous. You’re on your own in this life. The sooner you realize that the sooner you can do for yourself rather than wait for someone to come along and do something for you.”
Without another word, Ren walked off and left Tyber alone on the bench to receive a startled look from Fang.
Chapter 21
To Tyber’s frustration and dismay, Ander wouldn’t even consider allowing him to go home for a visit, even though Lin was sick. Ander shrugged and said there was nothing he could do. He sympathized, but it was against the rules. Hordesmen couldn’t leave the battle and go home for family emergencies, and so the recruits were not allowed to leave the academy grounds for anything other than academy business.
By the next Sunday, however, Theola brought Jack along as well as the news that Lin was feeling better. It was a more pleasant visit, and Jack was pleased and eager to hear about Tyber’s training. Dragoneer Chanson had begun to teach them how to fly, instructing them in the array of motions and maneuvers needed to control the dragons. They even saddled up and practiced on the dragons as Merilyss conveyed to the younger dragons what each movement meant.
Or at least that was the Dragoneer’s claim. Tyber suspected Rius was actually responding to his commands. She seemed to understand him even when they weren’t in the air as if she could sense what he needed without him telling her. But the Dragoneer probably didn’t want the recruits to know they had power yet.
One evening, after dinner, Ander told them their training was to be put into practice the following day. He confirmed a rumor going around that they would take to the skies a second time. This time, the recruits would try to guide their dragons through a series of maneuvers.
The thought of being on the back of Rius and up in the air again kept Tyber awake long into the night, staring at the bottom of Ren’s bunk. As he finally drifted off to sleep, a clanging bell woke them all with a start.
Tyber sat up in his bunk as a knot twisted itself into his stomach. Was this the trial? No one would confirm when the trial was or what it would consist of. Even Ren, who delighted in being the one who knew everything, would shrug his shoulders and lift his palms when pressed. He’d begged his father for hints, but his father would only tell him that it wasn’t what he had expected.
One of the boys went to the open window. He peered back at the others in the dark. “It’s a fire bell,” he said. It was Weiss voice.
He climbed up onto the window sill, and with one hand clasped on the frame, stepped out onto the ledge.
Tyber put his feet on the floor, ready to warn him of the dragon man, but then stopped. Who would believe him?
Weiss lifted his face to the sky and sniffed at the air. He looked back at the others. “I can’t smell anything, but that’s the fire bell.”
“Is the academy on fire?” one of the recruits asked.
“All those dragons and straw below?” Ren asked. He snorted. “Perish the thought.”
Weiss looked down to the head of the courtyard. He shook his head. “It’s not the weyr. It’s something big, though. I hear several bells. They’re calling for people from all over the city.”
“What do we do?” another boy asked. “Is this the trial? Are we supposed to go put out the fire?”
“Put out the fire?” Ren asked. “On the back of a dragon? What do you suppose we do? Have the dragon try and blow the fire out? Whoosh!” Ren made a motion with his hands near his mouth to simulate a gout of firebreath.
Tyber stood. “We answer the bell. That’s what we did before I was here. The fire bell rang, you ran for the bell until you knew where the fire was.”
“Yeah,” Ren said, “Except for one problem: We’re not allowed to leave the academy grounds.”
Tyber shook his head. He yanked his foot trunk out from under his bunk and flipped the lid back. “Surely that doesn’t apply now.”
Several of the boys began to get dressed, but without any hurry.
“You can’t be serious,” Ren said. “My father never said anything about this. He never had to go fight a fire. Not while he was a recruit.”
Tyber dumped his clothes onto his bunk and began to dress with haste. Several of the other boys started to do so as well.
The door flew open. Light fell from a torch in Ander’s hand. “What in the wilds are you all doing? Why aren’t you dressed? Didn’t you hear the bells?”
Ren stood from his bed. “I didn’t know we had to get dressed—”
“You need someone to tell you to go fight a fire? For all the sky, what does a hordesman do but protect the city and the kingdom? Come on! Get dressed. All of you, now. Get down to the weyr on the double.”
Ander dodged out of the doorway.
The activity in the room grew into a frenzy as the boys dressed.
“This is ridiculous!” Ren called out. “What are we going to do?”
“Pass buckets, probably. It’s what we did outside True Gate when there was a fire,” Tyber said, pulling on his boots.
“Do you think we’re going to go get the buckets from the weyr, then? Why else would Ander tell us to meet him down there?” Ren asked.
He’ll tell you when you get down there,” Tyber said, then slammed the lid of his foot trunk. He stepped up on the sill and hurried to the nearest pole, sparing only the merest glance to the stars sprawled above him.
Tyber was the first recruit that entered the weyr. Once the others arrived, they raced to saddle their dragons as ordered, then grabbed buckets from hooks and attached them to the saddles. As Tyber led Rius down the aisle, he looked back at her and couldn’t help but think how the buckets looked like upside-down bells. He recalled the mules and donkeys led through the streets bedecked in bells on the day of the Feast of Adalina.
But such thoughts fell away as he exited the weyr and saw a glow in the sky. The city wall to the north stoo
d in stark contrast to the orange, twisting glow of billowing smoke. By the dragons’ breath, the fire was outside the city. Outside True Gate.
“Listen up!” Ander called. “Chanson will be in charge of the dragons. Do not try to guide them. Let Chanson do the flying. When we set down, you are to take the buckets and run for the nearest well. You will form a bucket brigade and do your best to stop the fire. I and the other proctors, as well as Chanson, will remain in the air. We will be searching for people in need of rescue. You will stay, and you will fight the fire until someone from the academy comes to relieve you. Is that understood?”
Tyber nodded. A few mumbled responses traveled down the line.
“Understood?” Ander barked.
“Yes, Proctor!” the recruits shouted back.
“Good. On your dragons, men! Now!”
Tyber pulled himself up and dropped into the saddle, careful not to upset the four buckets tied to various points of the saddle. Rius shifted beneath him as he secured his restraints.
“It’ll be all right,” Tyber said. He reached forward and patted the dragon’s neck. “I’ve done this before. Well, the bucket part, that is.”
Dragoneer Chanson let out his cry, and the dragons leaped into the sky. As Tyber gripped the lip of his saddle, his eyes watched billows of smoke twist into the night sky. The fire was large. Very large, if the smoke was an indication. It blotted out many of the eyes of the gods, but many more still twinkled and stared.
“Watch over me,” Tyber whispered to the sky above. “Us,” he added, nodding to the dragon beneath him.
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