Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2)

by Ava Richardson

  “Char? Char – are you okay… Why does my head hurt so much?” Neill muttered.

  “Ah, my deepest apologies, little man, it was a mistake please – I am Wurgan Lander, Prince of the Northern Kingdom.” Wurgan winced, standing from his task to walk over to Neill and extend a hand down to help him up to his feet.

  “Neill Torvald, Son of the Chief Warden Malos Torvald,” Neill offered, holding his head and blinking, and worry and concern blossomed on my brother’s face when it dawned on him that this was the boy I had written home about, the one who rode dragons, and the one who was my friend.

  “Are we captured?” Neill asked unsteadily.

  “No!” Wurgan said quickly, and I snorted in disgust. My brother could be charming, but he was also so transparent. You’re only being nice to Neill because he might have a dragon somewhere… I glared at Wurgan.

  “No,” my brother repeated, as around us the other men of his troupe started to gather their things and pack them away. “But I am under orders to return the Princess Nefrette back to her rightful place in our father’s keep.”

  “The Princess Nefrette…?” Neill looked confused, before suddenly realizing who my brother was talking about. “Ah, you mean Char.”

  “I’m not going,” I said quickly and immediately, before Wurgan could get his hopes up.

  “Sister! It is our father’s orders,” were the first words out of his mouth.

  “Orders,” I whispered. Not ‘he cares for me’ or ‘he is worried about me.’ No, it was ‘orders.’

  “Yes. You cannot stay here, it is impossible. The Middle Kingdom is collapsing, no offence, Torvald,” Wurgan said as an aside to Neill, “but it is true. Word has reached even the Queen’s Keep of what the Sons of Torvald attempted, and how Prince Vincent”—Wurgan made a sour face—“has reacted.”

  “What do you mean? How has Prince Vincent reacted?” Neill asked with a worried frown.

  “You don’t know?” Wurgan looked shocked. “You haven’t heard? Prince Vincent of the Middle Kingdom, this kingdom we are in now, has closed all of the borders, and there have been sudden attacks on travelers up and down the country. It is clear to see who is behind it. The Dark Prince is seeking to rout out any who oppose his rule.” Wurgan looked back at me. “I am sorry, sister, but our father has decreed that he cannot leave you down here in the Middle Kingdom, at the mercy of Prince Vincent. You are to come home with me and my men, now.”

  I shook my head once more. “Wurgan, I won’t, and I can’t.”

  Wurgan folded his hands over his chest. That was a bad sign, and one that I knew well from my childhood. Our father had always said that we had inherited our mother’s stubborn ways, in that we both would look at him and plant ourselves squarely into the ground like a mountain, refusing to budge on whatever we’d set our minds to. This was what the large man my brother had turned into was doing now. He was big and broad, with thick studded brown leather armor (not his full chain mail for this mission, I saw) and boots with fur tops.

  “Char, I will carry you if I have to…” Wurgan growled, and I knew that he would as well. It was just then that a dragon-scream split the sky.

  A shadow swooped low over the ridgeline, flashing over us and causing Wurgan and the rest of his men to tumble to the floor and roll to the shadow of the nearest rocks.

  “Paxala, stop playing games,” I said, as the young Crimson Red roared once more and landed, her wings causing a gale as her talons scratched at the rocks beside us.

  “Medi, get me the iron arrows, quickly,” Wurgan was saying, his face almost as pale as my hair as I tried not to laugh at him.

  “You will do no such thing, brother.” I said, looking over to Neill. We were the only two people who hadn’t fallen to the floor and scrambled for cover as the mighty dragon had landed.

  “Char? This one smells like you. He is your family? Why are you hurt?” Paxala sniffed and chirruped at me as I walked forward, reaching towards her with my hand.

  “Sister? You are mad!” Wurgan spat, but fell silent as Paxala leaned her long snout down to bump at my hand affectionately, before looking up to make a low rumbling noise of warning at the other warriors.

  “Wurgan, meet Paxala. Paxala, this is my fool of a brother.” I introduced them.

  “He smells like a goat,” Paxala cocked her head at him, making me laugh. From their places by the rocks, Dorf and Sigrid were woozily coming to, wincing and groaning at all of the commotion around them.

  “Sister, you… You know this dragon?” Wurgan managed to get himself into a crouch, but could not summon the courage to stand up and walk to where I patted Paxala’s warm and smooth scales. My friend. I always felt better when I was in contact with her. She was like my sister, in just the same way that Wurgan was my brother – more so, even, because Paxala could share my innermost thoughts and feelings; whereas sometimes Wurgan just looked at me as if he didn’t even know where I had come from.

  “Yes, Wurgan, I do know this dragon. And she is the reason why I cannot leave the Draconis Order with you, as much as I might want to.”

  “Leave? Char wants to leave me?” I felt the fear stiffen through Paxala as she slowly swung her head down to regard me.

  “No, I won’t leave you, Pax,” I whispered into her great golden eyes. “I will never leave you.”

  “Zaxx is still strong here,” Paxala reminded me. “Any dragon under him is in threat. We cannot abandon them to him.”

  “Then we must fight him,” I whispered to her.

  “Sister? Can you not bring the dragon with you?” Wurgan had managed a half-crouch, and I could see that he was looking in wonder at Paxala’s strong legs, her complete armored hide, the spines and talons that were growing sharper and longer every day now. “What a magnificent beast! Imagine the terror we could strike into our enemies with it!” he said in awe.

  “She isn’t a beast,” Neill said. “She’s a dragon. She can probably understand just what you are saying about her, you know.” And as if in answer to Neill’s comment there was a loud thump from Paxala’s tail against the rock.

  “Brother, I am sorry, you will have to take this message back to our father: that I have work to do here, and you can see I have friends who will keep me safe.” I patted Paxala’s neck once more, causing her to rattle a throaty purr.

  My brother frowned once more. “He won’t like it,” he said, shaking his head, but it was clear to both of us that there was no way that Wurgan and his small group of men were going to make us do anything, not with a dragon at our side. “But you have my word that I will tell father your message.” He growled, looking hurt. “I just wish that you cared more for your people at Queen’s Keep, sister mine.”

  “I do!” I burst out, feeling suddenly angry. How could he dare to say I cared any less for my father’s home and my father himself, and all of the people up there than I did for my friends!? At that moment, I could have run forward and hit my brother just as I had done all through my childhood, with both of us ending up rolling on the floor as we fought, tearing clothes and giving each other bruises, but the throaty purr from the Crimson Red dragon above me had turned into a warning growl. Paxala was sharing in my anger.

  “Easy, Paxala,” I shushed her. “He is just being an idiot. It is what brothers and sister do.”

  “I think I understand – although I never knew my own hatch-mates, Char,” Paxala said mournfully, but she at least stopped growling as we watched Wurgan and his warriors standing awkwardly in front of us.

  “I have to give father something…” Wurgan started to say, attempting to look at me with that same look of displeasure that father used. It wasn’t going to work on me.

  “You can give him my assurance that I am doing the best for his realm, down here,” I countered.

  “Oh, for Stars’ sake!” Wurgan turned on his heel, rolling his shoulders as he did so. I knew he was angry, and likely wanted to shout at me and drag me back to our father’s lands as if I were just a petulant girl –
but I could also see the worried looks of his warriors beside him. None of them particularly wanted to get on the wrong side of an angry dragon.

  I waited for Wurgan to calm down. He was always like this. Hot-tempered, but with my father’s gift for battle and strategy, and thus the ability to rein in his mood when it mattered. After kicking a bit of rock, his shoulders slumped a little. My brother wasn’t a man who was used to losing.

  “Wurgan” I tried again. “You have to trust me that I know what I am doing,” I said, although a part of me wondered if I really did. “I’m good at this. I made friends with a dragon, after all!”

  “Hmph.” Wurgan grumbled, still shaking his head as he turned back to me. “I will lead the warband off the mountain, and we will head north to where there is a wood that is still pretty much wild,” he said, thinking strategically. “There is an old water mill there, do you know of it?”

  I nodded. “I do.” It wasn’t used by the monastery at all, but the wood was visible from the monastery walls.

  “Then the warband and I will stay at the old water mill for a further two nights, before heading north once more. You may change your mind. You will be able to follow us and join up with us there.”

  “I would be able to follow you for a thousand leagues with my eyes shut!” Paxala’s voice in mind whickered with laughter.

  “I won’t change my mind, Wurgan,” I informed him, but he only shook his head at me, before he led his men away. I felt caught between two evils. Either betray my family and help out the dragons, or betray the helpless dragons and obey my father.

  The air was still for a while as we watched my brother’s group slip back into the hidden paths between the rocks, and behind us we could hear alarm shouts as Draconis Order scouts and monks spied the Crimson Red clearly visible out on the slopes of the mountain.

  “Oh hell, we’d better get you back to the lake, and us back to lessons…” I murmured to Paxala.

  “Before they make that painful shrieking noise again…” Paxala agreed in my mind, and for a moment I didn’t quite know what she meant until I heard it for myself.

  BWAAR! BWAAAR! It was the dragon pipes, the contraption made of brass tubes like an organ that was built into one of the towers of the monastery. The monks used it to try and scare and control the dragons when they got too rowdy, and right now I could see its effects close up on Paxala at our side.

  To us humans, the pipes just sounded like a very loud, strangulated goose perhaps, or a plains bison call. But to a sensitive dragons’ ears, the sound was painful.

  “Hssss! One day I will destroy it, I swear, that and the tower it lives in!” Paxala shrieked and, before I could say sorry she had leapt into the air, showering us with grit and sand as she flapped hurriedly over the ridge and out of the vicinity of the dragon pipes.

  “Oh.” I felt even worse now, but perhaps not as bad as my bruised and groggy friends who crowded around me.

  “What was all that about?” Sigrid said as she held her temples.

  “My brother wants me to go back home to my father’s fortress,” I muttered. “And Paxala wants to destroy the dragon pipes.”

  “And Zaxx wants to eat everybody!” Dorf said brightly, as if we were playing a game of competing bad news.

  “Yeah.” I nodded, wondering, as I trudged back with the others, how on earth we were going to succeed at anything. It wasn’t even breakfast and already I had failed three times.

  CHAPTER 3

  NEILL, A SON OF TORVALD

  “Torvald!” A voice shouted across the practice courtyard, and my heart fell. It was Olan, the monk who seemed to have taken over many of Quartermaster Greer’s duties after Greer’s unfortunate ‘accident’ during the battle (well, he had tried to kill me, and ended up falling out of the Abbot’s Tower to the rocks below). At first I’d been glad, because Olan had disappeared in the days after the battle, having apparently been sent by the Abbot out to ‘accompany’ the Prince Vincent, though I daresay that really meant Olan was being used as a spy for the Abbot. But now Olan was back. The monk was small-featured, and a bit smaller than me even though he was a good ten years older. He had straw-colored hair and wore the heavy black clothes of the Order, and always vaguely reminded me of a ferret somehow.

  “Brother Olan,” I greeted him. It was a crisp summery morning, but my body was aching from the morning’s antics in the dragon crater. Char had disappeared as soon as we had got into the Dragon Monastery, claiming that she needed time to think, leaving Sigrid, Dorf, and me to rush to get breakfast before the monks realized we had been gone.

  “Word is that dragon of yours was seen—” Olan began.

  “She’s not mine, she’s her own,” I said quickly.

  “That dragon was seen outside the monastery walls this morning, and the pipes were played to drive her away. What do you know of this?” Monk Olan’s booted feet crunched over the dirt and sand of the practice courtyard until he was standing almost eye to eye with me. I know that it was petty of me, but I reveled in the fact that I must have grown in the months Olan had been gone, and certainly since leaving Torvald lands so long ago. I think I was even a few inches taller and broader than him. He had to look up to me now.

  “She’s a free dragon, Brother Olan,” I replied, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. “She can fly where she wants.”

  “Do I have to remind you of the Abbot’s proclamation, trainee Torvald?” Olan narrowed his eyes at me. I could see that he didn’t believe a word that I said, not that I blamed him. The feeling was pretty mutual between us. “The Abbot has forbidden any dragon-flight over or near the confines of the monastery. If it happens again, then the Abbot will have to take steps to defend the monastery.”

  “Will he now?” I felt a flash of anger. Was this little man threatening me? I felt my chest swell with the injustice of it. The Abbot Ansall, so beloved by the Prince Vincent of the Middle Kingdom was responsible for selecting dragons to die! He was responsible for trying to kill Jodreth, and to possess Char, and a thousand other acts of petty cruelty. Why should such a man as that have such power?

  “Torvald?” said a new voice, and I looked up to see Monk Feodor, entering the practice courtyard with Lila at his side, carrying the heavy leather kit bags for today’s Advanced Protectors classes. There was a warning note to his voice, and I realized in my anger that I had taken a step forward towards Monk Olan, ready to strike him, and he was regarding me with a mixture of fear and glee.

  He would win if I attacked him. He would be able to denounce me to the Abbot and have me thrown out of the monastery – not that there weren’t enough voices already wanting to do just that, I thought. There was a knot of the older monks here who grumbled and rolled their eyes every time they saw me or any other student they thought ‘inferior’ to the Draconis Order’s ‘holy calling.’

  But if I wanted to protect Paxala and keep my friend Char safe from the Abbot then I had to stay here. Stay a student. I took a deep breath, and stepped back, hating the petty victory I saw reflected in Brother Olan’s smirk.

  “Good day to you, trainee Torvald.” Olan turned to go. “And bear in mind what I said. We would hate for that dragon to get hurt.”

  This time I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stop from physically snarling at him. I should be thankful that it was me he was trying to goad, and not Char who was bonded with Paxala – as I had no doubt that Char would have knocked him to the floor for that threat and gotten herself expelled in the bargain—and then what would happen to Paxala and the other dragons?

  “Neill, are you alright?” Feodor muttered at me as he shucked the kit bags to the floor, waving to all of us students to start taking out their contents. Leather cuirasses and jerkins made of many strips of material over padding, and each section of the garment loosely tied together with string. He showed us how to put them on, before proceeding to help me to tie up my shoulder pieces (pauldrons) to the arms (greaves) and the chest. As he worked, he whispered under his breath.r />
  “You need to be more careful around Monk Olan from now on,” the man said. “He means you no good will.”

  “I think I can see that,” I said, still seething from his threat to Paxala.

  Thud. There was a light cuff to the side of the leather cap that I had put on. Ow!” I said. “What was that for?”

  “Mind your backchat, Torvald,” Feodor growled. “You can get away with it on me, as I grew up amongst soldiers, but the other monks will have you up for disciplinary for using a tone like that.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I protested, not caring if the other students heard me or not. “It was Olan who was threatening me!”

  “Shh!” The larger monk trainer grabbed me by the shoulders and none too gently spun me around on the spot until I was facing him. He looked angry, and an animal part of me realized that Feodor was much bigger and much more experienced at brawling than I was. “And you’ll keep that to yourself, young Torvald,” he muttered, holding me by the shoulders still, and lowering his face as he looked me in the eyes, waiting for me to blink and look away. As soon as I did he released me, but whispered, “Things have changed since the battle. The Abbot and the other monks are edgy. There hasn’t been a battle up here for ten years or more, and now you come along riding dragons and your brothers are knocking on our gates?”

  “I didn’t ask them to—” I began, but Feodor silenced me with a scowl.

  “I’m doing this for your own good, Neill. The students might think that you are something special, but the monks see you as a threat to their power. So, stop acting all big and tough, and keep your head down for a while, will you?” Feodor growled, stepping back.

  I hung my head and scuffed my boots on the sand. Things had changed since the battle, I couldn’t deny it. We had seen the dark magic that the Abbot could summon (with the help of his acolyte Mage-trainees like Char), and the world had seen just what sorts of men my brothers were – angry, violent, aggressive. It was how the older monks viewed them and would mutter darkly about “the brutes of Torvald” and, I hated to say that I even agreed. Before, the Sons of Torvald had been known as fierce and effective warriors, but a certain pride and respect had always seemed to go hand in hand with that (or maybe I believed that because my father insulated me from the views of the villagers and townspeople). Now, however, it was obvious that everyone knew what I had always known in private: that Rubin and Rik were violent, greedy, and demanding. It made me feel tired, and didn’t feel like a vindication at all.