“Halt!” I shouted, sliding my weapon from its scabbard just as the small and shadowed figure broke from the tree line and threw itself straight at the dragon. What was this person doing?
“Pax,” a familiar voice said, and I was looking at the pale and overjoyed face of Char as she wrapped her hands around the snout of the much larger Crimson Red, closing her eyes in satisfaction.
“Schrech!” Paxala purred at her, nudging her with her forehead to the floor with a not-so-gentle thump, and then playfully patting her fallen sister with one giant paw, as if she had been hunted.
“Char, by the heavens – how did you know we were here?” I whispered. And never mind just that, I thought, how did you sneak away from your father’s encampment?
“I had a dream.” Char said in a sleepy, cozy voice as she hefted the dragon’s paw from her chest with a groan, before jumping to scramble up onto Paxala’s shoulder, where she started to scratch around the dragon’s ears. I watched, grinning, as Paxala’s eyes drooped and threatened to close as, with a groan and a mighty thud, she flopped down to one side (almost dislodging Char perched on her shoulder, but not quite) as she purred at the attention.
Huh. She never did that with me.
“I was in one of my father’s tents, not sleeping really, when I dreamed that Paxala was flying out here, above me, and that she was calling to me.”
I felt a prickling in my teeth, and that haze of pressure that came whenever the dragon and the girl were sharing thoughts, and I knew that Paxala was talking to her directly.
“She says that she was,” Char smiled happily. “But it’s harder out here, farther away from each other, and farther away from the Dragon Mountain.” A frown crossed her face for a moment. “But I can’t leave my father right now. He’ll go to war against Prince Vincent...”
“You don’t have to!” I said excitedly, picking up my pack where it had tumbled to the floor, and taking out the different scrolls for her to look at.
“Neill, it’s pitch black. Even the initiates in the monastery library have candles!” Char grumbled playfully, and, in response Paxala coughed a brief spark of flame, to set alight some fallen branches.
“Pax! You can make fire?” Char looked delighted, once again seizing the dragon around the head and shaking her as if she were a cute dog. “What a clever girl you are,” Char baby-talked to her. “How long has she been making fire? I didn’t think that she could yet? Dorf told me that she might never be able to, as not all dragons could make fire at all.” Char was clearly overjoyed at this new development.
I didn’t know. If it was some new skill that the Crimson Red had developed since Char had left, this was the first time that I had seen it.
“This is excellent news, because if she is on her way to making fire, then she might just become strong enough to defeat Zaxx...”
“Ssss,” the Crimson Red hissed angrily at the sound of the bull dragon’s name, and even the night air felt a little colder somehow.
“Never mind that right now,” I said hurriedly, not wanting to upset either the dragon or Char. “Look at these.” I pointed her through the different passages of the scrolls by the flickering light of the embers. I watched as Char read them all slowly and carefully, moving her hand through the passages until she got to the legends of what happened to the old queen’s crown. I watched as her eyes widened, and her face took on a mask of wonder. It was good to see her looking hopeful, although I had no idea why she could be after everything that we had been through both last year and this, but maybe things might be about to go our way after all.
“My father’s castle is called the Queen’s Keep,” Char said. “They said it was because the old queen was the first to build it, way up in the north and the west to keep an eye on the mountain passes.”
“You see?” I whispered. “The Great Crown – your own father might have it, look, it says so right here!”
“Or it might be at the bottom of the sea, don’t forget,” Char pointed out, the shadow of indecision and fear infiltrating her face once again as a cloud crossed the face of the moon. “Or with Prince Griffith, a few thousand leagues to the south.”
“Skreych!” chirruped Paxala, and even I didn’t need the strange dragon bonding that Char had to understand what she must have said. The south. We could fly to the south, if we wanted. We now had a dragon, and that meant that we could go anywhere.
“Yes, Paxala, thank you, you are a most brave wyrm,” Char congratulated her. “So, it is settled. We will all travel north with my father, and when we get to Queen’s Keep we will look for the Great Crown.”
“And if we don’t find it?” I urged.
“If we don’t, then I guess that I will have to find some way of excusing myself, because we will have to fly a few thousand leagues south to Prince Griffith’s lands,” Char said with a shrug, although there was something in her eye. A hesitancy. Was she scared?
“We can do this, Char. I know it.” I smiled at her.
“Yeah, I hope so,” Char said, but I could tell that there was something bothering her. It must just be Zaxx’s threat, I thought as she continued. “But you two have to stay out of sight, please,” Char said urgently as she stroked Paxala’s ear. “You don’t know what my father is like. He’s not mad, or cruel like the Dark Prince, but he’s…” Char scowled. “He’s cold. Like the mountains. He only looks for the benefit of his kingdom and his people.”
“That would make him a good king,” I pointed out, echoing exactly what my father had said of the Northern Prince.
“Yes, but a terrible father,” Char said. “And if he saw you and Paxala here? Well, he wouldn’t see you, Neill, as my friend, but as a Son of Torvald of the Middle Kingdom. He would think about ways to influence you, or capture you, or what it would mean for his power over Prince Vincent. And if he saw Paxala…” Char shook her head sorrowfully. “He wants Paxala for the North. He wants her to fight in his battles for him.”
I shook my head in exasperation. It was a whole lot more familiar scenario than even I dared to let on. Hadn’t I, myself, been sent to the Draconis Order not on the face of it, to honor some three-kingdom peace treaty, but instead to spy on the monks for my father? Didn’t my father look at the world through the power and the threats that each person represented?
“Then we will keep her safe,” I agreed. “But we also won’t be far away from you. Ever.”
“Skreeach!” Paxala agreed, her eyes flashing gold and silver in the night.
CHAPTER 12
WILD
“Hmm. Are you sure?” My brother Wurgan looked at me oddly, and I nodded once again, causing his suspicious frown to only deepen into his ruddy mustache. “Something’s changed,” my giant of a brother said. “Maybe the good mountain air is doing you good.”
“Mount Hammal is also a mountain, you know,” I replied, remembering how Sigrid had hated the cold mountain air, but I had claimed it was ‘good for us.’ I wonder how Sigrid is getting along, I thought with a shiver of apprehension. Neill didn’t have time to tell me last night how he had managed to get away from the monastery, or in what state he had left the others. Would Lila the Raider have time to strengthen her bond with the young Blue? Would Maxal continue to help Dorf, Sigrid, and Lila with their studies into the origins of dragon magic? Would the Abbot, or Zaxx, take out his anger with us on them?
“Ah, spoke too soon,” Wurgan grumbled in front of me. “There’s that frown that I know and love so well,” he teased, and I punched him on the shoulder.
“It’s fine, Wurgan, get going with you. I can play nice daughter and entertain father’s captains and counsellors and all the rest. It makes a change from learning dead languages,” I said, wondering if I agreed with myself really or not. The truth was, it was a change from being in the monastery. Here, people actually smiled when they saw me coming, and almost a third maybe, of all of my father’s troops were also light-haired mountain folk like me. I wasn’t looked on as just ‘the bastard’ or the ‘wild
woman’ or some other such insult. Here, I was Char, daughter of Prince Lander, of the clan of Nefrette. I was a good shot with a bow, and I was good with horses and with dogs. The people of my father’s rough court knew me, and I didn’t have to prove myself constantly to them. But that didn’t mean I was free.
I wandered out of the tent behind Wurgan to see the guards standing to attention (not for me though, for my brother, a general in his own right). It was another cold day in Faldin’s Bridge, but thankfully, today we were going to be heading north, to Queen’s Keep, and leaving the world of barricades and reinforced positions behind.
Our father had left the sizable part of his troops at the bridge, as a brief, grey, and morose little ceremony had been held at first light, halfway across the bridge. Neither my father nor my uncle had been there, but Wurgan had, and he had told me all about it. A hand over of crates of gifts, and that was it. It made me think that all of this posturing on the part of my father was for show. He had just wanted to rattle some sabers to draw attention, to get me to go north with my dragon perhaps, and now that he had what he wanted, he was returning with his ‘prize’--me–to his fortress. I felt stupid, and taken for a fool, though at least I had good reason to go the Queen’s Keep myself.
“They’re over there,” Wurgan said. I rolled my eyes, before considering the band of mostly fat men, with a few gaunt and tall women amongst them. All were dressed in great animal pelts of bear, mountain lion, wolf, otter, (black, brown, or white) to signify their clan allegiances, and most had a mixture of robes, cloaks, and smaller furs like snow fox, beaver, or wolf sown into their garments. I recognized a few of the ‘difficult’ captains and counsellors in my father’s court, most particularly Lady Bel of the River Fork and Captain Virk of the Otter Clan. My father needed their warriors and I, with my mixed heritage, would show them how the ‘north could unify’ as my father was always saying. He had won over the tribes of the wild people with such talk, as I supposed he must have won my own mother’s heart.
And I was the result. The perfect union of Northlander and wild clans. Or so he thought.
“Greetings, ladies, gentlemen.” I nodded at the assembled, and elicited just a chorus of murmurs and dark looks. Wonderful. I sighed. “Let’s get saddled up and start going, shall we?” I said, as there was a shout from across the courtyard. My brother, and most of the hosts of mounted warriors, took to their own steeds and clattered joyously out onto the road. I was stuck with this lot, the phalanxes of a few hundred foot warriors, and my father’s own retinue and baggage trains.
It was supposed to be a great honor to be here, in the slow group with my father and these clan leaders but… My eyes sought out the dust on the road from my brother’s force. I would much rather be out there, with them.
Or better yet, I would much rather be on the back of Paxala, and flying far above all this. I sighed, but even I was unable to completely dispel the brighter feeling that my brother had noticed in me. He was right, something had changed in the night – but it wasn’t mountain air. It was the fact that I knew that Paxala and Neill were somewhere very close by, and all of this was just an act. At any moment, I could call on her to pluck me from this boredom.
“And Paxala would, little Char,” her voice whispered into my ears, making me chuckle in delight. After having feared that I might never see or hear her mind again, having her so close was a balm to the troubles of my soul.
“Char? I mean – princess, do you find something amusing about your old allies?” Lady Bel asked, looking at me oddly. She was a thin, tall woman dressed in blue, with long fair-to-white hair scraped severely back over her head and falling straight as an arrow down the center of her back, and a large black bear pelt flung over her shoulders.
“Lady Bel,” I greeted her. I knew her of old, when I was a kid and she would harangue my natural mother (Galetta) on behalf of my stepmother (Odette). She was a lady of the court, and was practically my ‘aunt,’ seeing how close she was to my step-mother. “Of course not, I was just remembering a friend, that was all.”
“This was a friend from the Draconis Order, was it?” Lady Bel raised an eyebrow archly as she settled into the saddle of her pony. “I heard you had become friendly with the Torvald boy there?”
Where did she hear that? I looked at her in alarm, and now it was the Lady Bel’s turn to smile as she continued.
“Oh, we all have friends and allies, princess,” the woman said mysteriously. “Now, Malos Torvald, the Warden of the East is quite a good match indeed, good tracts of land, the ear of the Middle Kingdom listening to him, but he’s no clan captain, is he?” Lady Bel said perfunctorily. “And as for his Sons of Torvald… The rumor has been that two of them are thugs, and the one at the monastery is a milkweed.” She laughed, causing a chuckle from some of the other larger men and women around her.
Oh, I see why father wanted me to ‘entertain’ these people, I thought with despair. They are going to try and tell me how great this marriage idea was, I groaned.
This was going to be a long day indeed.
“So, meditation is thinking about thinking?” argued Captain Virk, a small, almost entirely round man who looked very comical on his horse, with a horned helmet and a cloak made of otter pelts. As the Otter Clan chief, he had accepted my father’s calls to unify a decade or so ago, and had since moved to the rich lands surrounding Queen’s Keep and had made himself very rich. He was an important lynchpin between mountain and kingdom relations
“I suppose so, Captain Virk.” I shrugged. How was I supposed to explain what the Abbot’s meditation was to someone who only thought deeply about wine vintages? “But it’s a bit different. You would have to experience it for yourself to really understand.”
So far, the day had been about as interesting as one of the Abbot’s theory classes. So boring and slow, it made me want to do was go to sleep (which wouldn’t be very noble of me at all).
“And this Abbot… He is a good man, is he?” the Lady Bel asked.
“Good stars, no,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. He had tried to sacrifice me to Zaxx the Golden last year, and he had apparently been trying to hypnotize me as well, so that I would use my dragon abilities for his benefit alone. “But they say that he knows the most about dragons, more than anyone else at the monastery combined.”
Lady Bel pulled a disgusted face. “It sounds like a sham to me. Just the sort of thing that the Dark Prince,” she suddenly looked worried, “Prince Vincent, your uncle, I mean…” I shook my head that it was all right. I didn’t care anymore for the Dark Prince than I did for the Abbot. They were both terrible people in my book.
“Anyway…” Lady Bel opened her mouth to speak again, just as a far-off screech split the air. It was an eerie, snarling howl of a call, and one that I knew could belong to only one thing.
“Dragons!” Captain Virk was shouting, immediately looking around for his trusted Otter Guard.
“Paxala?” I reached out with my mind, to be instantly flooded with her fast, excited, and energetic thoughts.
“Dragons! More like me. I smell them. But they are not like me. They are angry. Very angry. They smell like blood and winter and cold…”
“Wild dragons, Paxala. They are dangerous, get yourself away,” I thought at her quickly, my hands gripping the reins in anxiousness. “Where are they?” I called out, standing on the stirrups to scan the horizon, many others in our troupe doing the same.
“They are coming. To the West,” Paxala’s answer breezed into my mind and I twisted to see shapes bounding down the barren rocks of the nearby peaks. Two, three, four maybe. They were long and sinuous like the Blue dragons of the Middle Kingdom, but they were nowhere near the size. Instead, they held themselves low to the ground, and undulated like a snake, deadly and fast. I stood transfixed at the sight of them as they each in turns took to the air to coil through the air on leathery wings and spiraling midnight-colored bodies, flashing black, purple and blue in the cold northern sun.
“Pssht! Little fierce dragons,” came Paxala’s immediate reply, and through our mental connection I sensed her excitement and unease. Distantly, on the far side of her mind I could even sense Neill’s worried mutterings and anxious movements, as he sought to calm her down. This connection I had with her still amazed me, every moment. Did this connection only work between me and Paxala or could other people also hear and feel dragons in their heads. Was it even possible to feel other dragons’ thoughts, like these wild ones?
“Princess, come on – no dawdling!” Lady Bel shouted, reaching to tug on the reins of my horse as she led us away with the other courtiers and captains, heading off the road to where the deep woods sat. It was an old tactic of the north: get underground, and if you can’t do that, light fires, and if you cannot get underground or light a fire to keep away the wild dragons, then you will have to get into the woods.
It wouldn’t stop them, I knew. Plenty of woods folk had been picked off by a hunting wild dragon in the past, but the trees would slow them, and we Northlanders knew that if you ran fast enough, and put enough obstacles in their way then these wild dragons would eventually give up their hunt for easier prey.
“People! Get to the woods,” my father bellowed, drawing forth his long steel hand-and-a-half sword to bark orders at the rest of them.
“I have to stand with him,” I cried, trying to fight against the Lady Bel’s pulling and the sudden rush of people. I might be the only person in the North who had bonded with any dragon. I had even been part-trained at the Dragon Monastery, and if I couldn’t help my father’s people now, in their hour of need, then who could? The wild dragons were boiling across the sky now, getting larger and larger with every passing second.
“You will do no such thing, Princess Char,” Lady Bel snapped. “Your father knows the risks of traveling in the open in the north.”
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