It was dark inside, but not cold. Instead, the air was even warmer and dryer than in the crater, and there was no sound. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, and could see the hazy shapes of what I thought were rocks. I hoped that was all that they were anyway, as I didn’t want to blunder onto a sleeping dragon just before dawn!
“Where are they?” Neill was whispering to me and I shrugged. Why did he think that I would be the one to know? Only because a dragon had bonded to me, didn’t mean that I was suddenly an expert on all things draconic! In fact, that was one of the many reasons why I knew that we had to do this. There was still so much to know about dragons – did they really need to live with a mean old bull like Zaxx, or could they live quite happily on their own, as Paxala did? Would other dragons bond with humans if they had the chance to, as Paxala and I had?
And could we ride them…? I thought with the thrum of excitement I always felt at the prospect. Just as Neill had done. Just as Neill had shown us what we could do. We could stop this cruel farming that the Draconis Order seemed to be doing, and instead, we could have bonded dragons and humans - as friends, working together.
Still so much we don’t know… I was thinking, as my feet scrunched on something softer on the ground. Dried grasses and leaves. The nest!
“Have you got the bags ready?” I whispered, and heard Neill grunt in the affirmative. They were little more than old canvas sacks I had begged from the stables, with softer velvet material that I had begged from Nan Barrow, the House Mistress and resident cook. I wasn’t a great seamstress (my father thinking it more befitting for a daughter of the Northern Prince to learn how to shoot arrows than thread needles) but I had made it work. We now had three soft-lined bags, each of which might hold two or three eggs. I didn’t even know how many eggs a dragon laid at a time, that was how little I knew.
“Okay, quiet now…” I hunkered down, taking a step forward. The nest of the dragon was large, a vast mound of grass, bark, branches and dried foliage forming a round mound, in the center of which sat three large pale blue and speckled eggs. They were beautiful, the color of the softest summer sky – but they were not what had alarmed me.
Scrunch. The dried grasses crackled and crunched and I froze, my heart hammering in my throat. But nothing happened. Maybe there were no dragons nearby. I reached forward, patting the dried grasses carefully around me, reaching as far as I could until-
My hand hit something solid, smooth, and radiating warmth, as if from some inner flame. An egg! “Neill!” I hissed. “I think I’ve found them.” I reached further, following the smooth curve of the egg to its nearest fellow, and then feeling the curve of another beside it. This one, too, was slightly warm to the touch and I was sure that I could feel a slight vibration coming from inside, like the beat of a heart that was already the size of my thumb.
Hang on. How big are the eggs? I moved forward (crunch-scrunch) to use both hands this time. The egg was almost the size of my entire torso. It was huge! What an idiot I was, I cursed myself – of course they were going to be large! For some reason, I had thought that they might be just a bit bigger than a goose’s eggs, or the size of my hand. If they were this big then they would barely fit into the bags, and we could only carry one each…
“Hissssss…” There was a rattling sound from the darkness ahead. Oh crap. I froze, not even breathing, my hands hovering over where I thought that the Vicious Green’s dragon eggs would be. Could I slip my lined bag over one, turn and run? I wondered, waiting to see what would happen next.
Nothing. Whatever dragon had made that sound out there in the dark, they had either gone back to sleep or decided that I wasn’t a threat. I moved my hands to my belt where the bag was tied.
“Sccckrrr…” This time, the dragon noise didn’t come from deeper in the cavern ahead of us, but outside, and above us.
“Paxala?” I tried to ‘think’ at her, wondering if she had defied all of my orders and flown into the crater anyway. “Please, no, Zaxx will kill you!” I bit my lip, as suddenly there was another startled screeching from outside.
“Sessekrear!” Another dragon called, this time in a much higher pitch.
“Char?” Neill whispered, and when I turned to look back I could clearly see his outline silhouetted against the grey dawn light of the cave’s entrance. “It’s dawn. The dragons are waking up.”
“I can hear that!” I hissed back at him, turning once more to the nest in front of me, and stopping in alarm at what I could see.
That was the snout of a very large, and very perturbed Giant White dragon that was raised from its slumber. The Giant Whites – the largest of all of the dragon species apart from Zaxx the Golden himself--made excellent brood-mothers. The Whites seemed to like taking care of, tending, and insulating the eggs of other dragons. She was looking at me with gold-green eyes that flashed an internal fire.
“Neill…?” I said slowly, my voice trembling.
“I see it, Char…” he responded, in just the same careful tone of voice, while outside more dragons rose their voices to join the dawn chorus.
The White’s nostrils flared, breathing in the strange human scent that had invaded the birthing caves. I watched as her brows furrowed, clearly trying to work out whether we were threats or food.
“There now.” I tried to keep my voice as calm and as low as possible, taking a step back down the nest.
Scrunch. As soon as my shoe crunched on the nest, the Giant White seemed to make up its mind that me plus nest wasn’t something she would tolerate. Her throat inflated and filled like a bellows, and she opened her maw to make a long, warning and hooting noise that almost knocked me from my knees.
“Run!” I shouted, turning and leaping from the nest, my bag empty. In response to the Giant White’s alarm call the dragons outside went silent for just a moment – and then erupted into a cacophony of shrieks that went up from every available cave and tunnel around us as we ran out onto the sand of the crater floor, moving as fast as our legs could carry us.
With sharp shrieks, the smaller Messenger dragons shot out from their roosts in some of the tallest of scrub trees, flapping in alarm as they tried to work out whether it was the dawn call or something else that was causing the ruckus.
“The ledge!” Neill was saying, grabbing me by the hand, and yanking me up ahead of him. We clambered quickly, hand over hand as dragons behind us forced themselves out of their homes. Some of the wingless Earth Brown dragons who had been outside, basking in the steaming pools and mud holes at the bottom of the crater, raised their heads to croak at us in alarm. But it wasn’t them that I was worried about.
“Here, this way,” Neill helped me (even though I was the better climber than he was) and we crossed the area of broken boulders to the small ledge where we had tied the rope. Sinuous Blues were wending their way out of their caves, croaking at the first rays of sun that hit the rocks.
“We might just make it, if they begin their dawn call,” Neill was saying, pushing me ahead of him onto the rope. Now, without most of the ledge underneath it we had to do a very undignified sort of hand-over-hand swing, something that made my shoulders scream in agony.
“Come on, come on!” Sigrid was clapping her hands to buoy us along, as we heard a deep rumble from below. The walls of the cliff itself shook, and the rope danced. It was Zaxx, emerging from his nest.
“WHAT IS THIS I SMELL? HUMANS?” The voice of the bull dragon hit my mind like a storm. It was like the internal joining of minds that I had with Paxala, only that the bull dragon could reach anyone’s mind, human, dragon, bonded or not. I paused on the rope to look behind me – that was a mistake.
Down below us on the crater floor the vast maw of Zaxx the Golden broke the surface, nosing and pushing from a previously-concealed tunnel entrance, followed by the sunken scales of his ancient face, his deep-set eyes and swept-back horns of broken bone. His immense body followed. Rolls of skin that must have once been filled with muscle now hung like loose-fitting c
lothes, visible cords of tendons running beneath it. He was still a strong, powerful beast. The mightiest creature I had ever seen, for all of his years and cracked scales. Claws almost as long as I was pulled the beast to the surface, and I was reminded of a horrible worm or insect coiled around the heart of an apple, and it almost made me sick. The nostrils of the great gold were billowing and pumping, and his forked tongue flopped horridly into the air to taste where we might be.
“Char, come on!” Sigrid was saying, as I crossed the scrubby gorse bush and scrabbled for the ledge that took me back to her. “Take my hand.” She leaned out, pulling me towards her and towards safety.
“But Neill is still out there,” I said in alarm, looking back to see Neill already swinging from hand to hand along the rope, his fear lending speed to his movements.
“THE DRAGON-CHILD! THE BOY! THERE YOU ARE…” Zaxx tasted us on the air, swiveling his mighty head as smaller dragons started to crow towards the rising sun. Their calls were deafening as they followed an instinctive need to greet the sun, the object that gave them all of their energy and life.
“Neill,” I said in terror, as Zaxx raised his neck, stretching it like a snake. “Cut the rope!” I hissed at him.
“What?” He paused in alarm, as Zaxx slithered and climbed the boulder field behind.
“Cut the rope behind you,” I called again and the boy nodded, seeing what I meant to do. He drew out his boot knife, and, with one swift wrench, severed the rope that I had spent so long getting attached in the morning darkness. He fell like a stone, holding onto the rope as I pulled, jumping back, with Sigrid and Dorf at my side.
I grunted with effort as the sudden, heavy lurch of the rope dragged me towards the edge, but between the three of us, we managed to pull the rope up while Zaxx perched on the boulders below. Lucky for us, the great gold dragon hadn’t warmed up yet from the sun. He was still sluggish and nowhere near his full speed or strength, his eyes drooping and blinking.
“THAT’S RIGHT, LITTLE HUMANS. RUN FROM THIS PLACE, BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND AND EAT YOU!” Zaxx’s voice resounded in our heads, as one of Neill’s hands appeared over the edge, gripping onto the slab of rock, and then the other, to be followed by his pale and wide-eyed face. We pulled him on top of us, dropping the rope to scramble back over the broken lip of the dragon crater, and out, with stumbling feet onto the upper slopes of the Dragon Mountain itself.
I felt miserable. We had failed and that meant that there were at least three young hatchlings in there that would have to endure a lifetime of Zaxx’s cruelty.
CHAPTER 2
PRINCESS OF THE NORTHERN LANDS
“We can try again in a few days or weeks, when the dragons have calmed down,” Neill murmured at my side, trying to dispel the gloom that had fallen over me since leaving the dragon crater. We were trudging back to the monastery, our feet taking us up over the peak of the mountain itself and along the ridge line. Below us, the morning was spreading across the land, taking the fields and woods below from the darks of night to the greens of summer. Behind us came the excited sounds of the morning dragon call.
“Not if they stay like that,” I muttered back to Neill. “It will take the dragons weeks to calm back down, and we might not have weeks.”
“You think Zaxx might reject the eggs?” Neill asked.
I nodded. The older dragon could do what he wanted, and it was only by luck alone that I had managed to rescue Paxala after Zaxx had killed her mother for hiding her nest in the wilds beyond the crater.
“But it’s not just that.” I nodded to where Sigrid and Dorf where trudging ahead, clearly nervous and apprehensive of how we were going to sneak back into the Draconis Monastery without being seen. “It’s them.”
“Sigrid and Dorf?” Neill looked at our friends in confusion.
“Well, not just them, but people like them, you know. The other students. I overhead the older monks talking about trying to do what you did, riding the dragons,” I pointed out.
Neill nodded. “Feodor told me.” Feodor was the chief trainer for the Protector Monks; a bear of a man who had been a soldier in his youth. “He thinks it’s a terrible idea.”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” I pointed out, thinking of the scars that crisscrossed the monk’s body from getting on the wrong end of a dragon. “And he would be right,” I conceded with a groan, “if the monks go about it like they do everything else. They’ll probably try to put a harness on them or shackle them, train them like horses or dogs, when they’re not. They’re not steeds.” I was irritable, and my arms were still aching from the climb. “I think it only worked with you because of the bond that we share with Paxala, you know?”
Neill nodded, his face shadowed. “I know. The thought of Monk Olan, or the Abbot, or any of the other Draconis Order trying to train the dragons just terrifies me,” he confided. “Someone will get hurt.”
“Unless we can get access to those eggs and raise them with humans,” I said. It was the only way that I could see it working. That was how it had worked with Paxala after all, wasn’t it?
“Hurk!” There was a strange sound from up ahead, and I raised my eyes to see what had happened to Sigrid and Dorf, only to see that they had rounded the last bend in the mountain path and must be descending the narrow stone stairs back to the rear of the monastery walls.
“It’s Dorf – he’s probably hungry,” Neill teased, and I playfully slapped him on the shoulder. Boys were so horrible to each other, I thought, even when they are trying to be friends.
“You idiot,” I said to Neill, just as there was a sudden scuff from the rocks around us. I looked up, just in time to see a shape rising from the rocks. “Neill – down!” I gasped, as the shape threw something out over the air. It spun and hummed as it flew. A rope net!
The heavy weights attached to the ends of the netting hit me, knocking the breath out of me as I tried to throw a hand up to protect my face. I couldn’t move, as the heavy rope whirled all around me, knotting itself together and tangling worse as I struggled.
“Char? You – release her now!” Neill shouted, and I saw his feet slipping on the shale and gravel as other shapes rose from the rocks around him.
“Shut him up,” said one of our attackers, in a thick, guttural accent.
There were sounds of a struggle, and a sudden hiss as Neill, unarmed save for a knife, managed to kick one of them in places where he didn’t want to get kicked. Meanwhile, rough hands grabbed me, turning me over and growling as I bucked like a fish, and lashed out with my own feet.
“Ow! Why, you little…” my would-be assailant snarled as I got a good stamp on his shins, and he hopped out of the way. “I thought you said she was a Princess?” the man snapped at one of his fellows.
Thud. “Got him.” There was a loud thump and suddenly Neill stopped fighting with his attacker as I squirmed and rolled, trying to get my hands to my belt. I had a knife. It might be enough to cut the bonds…
“Char?” Paxala, already jittery and nervous after our confrontation with Zaxx, could be heard in my mind. I could sense her launching herself into the air above the lake. She was going to fly here, and save me.
“No, wait!” I tried to plead with her. What if she got hurt? But I already knew that there was nothing that I could say to stop a dragon that had made up its mind. My fingers found the knife at my belt and I tugged and tore at the rope bonds that held me, severing first one heavy strand enough to get a hand through the net, and then another-
“Hold it, Char!” A voice shouted, and I knew suddenly whose it was. “For heaven’s sake, sister. Stop struggling – we’re doing this for your own good!” said Wurgan, my older brother as he bounded over the boulders to my side.
Wurgan, like me, took after my mother’s side of the family. He was my true-blood brother, son of Prince Lander and our mother Galetta Nefrette, who was the Northern Prince’s mistress. Despite both being born out of wedlock, our father had recognized us as was the mountain custom – and ev
en his official wife, the Lady Odette Lander, acted as our stepmother. Wurgan was big and tall like most mountain men, with flame-red ginger hair and a heavy mustache.
He was also a complete idiot.
“What the hell did you do that for, Wurgan – these people are my friends!” I said angrily to him, endeavoring to keep my voice down in case any scouts from the Draconis Order were nearby. For a moment, I wondered if Wurgan, already a general in our father’s army, had come to Mount Hammal with the armies of the north at his back just as the Sons of Torvald had arrived with theirs. It seems that everyone wants something from the Dragon Monastery.
“I’m sorry, but we have no time. I had to act now, or else I would lose you again into that place.” Wurgan gave the monastery a suspicious look. He had never liked the idea of me going so far south to this place, and didn’t trust the Draconis Order any more than Neill seemed to.
“But look.” I pointed to the bodies of my unconscious friends. “Did you have to hit them over the head?”
“How was I to know that they weren’t more of those monks, about to do something terrible to you?” Wurgan protested, as he sat on the ground and began unravelling the nets and ropes he had used to entrap us back into their carry sacks. We had moved behind the nearest of the boulders to stay out of sight of the watching walls of the Dragon Monastery, but I also knew that it wouldn’t be long before the scouts would start going out, and people would start raising the alarm. We had been gone too long already.
“Shame you weren’t here a watch ago, then you could really have seen something terrible about to happen to me,” I murmured, as Neill groaned from his place by the side of the rocks.
Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2) Page 2