I reached out for Mavrik with my thoughts, calling to him just like I had before. I waited until I felt that sensation of weight in my chest to open my eyes toward the sky. “Mavrik, it’s time. Let them taste of your flame!” I spoke in the elven language, hoping that it would still work and that none of the guards standing around me—particularly the one with his foot on my chest—would be able to understand.
The warden looked down at me with a menacing smirk. “What did you say, whelp?”
Mavrik answered him for me with a deep, bellowing roar from overhead. It was a sound I knew all too well. Everyone looked skyward, including the Lord General, who clearly hadn’t been expecting any other dragons to be cruising the area.
Mavrik roared again, with Nova joining him in a chorus of fury from the air. There was an explosion of flame somewhere outside the prison camp. All the guards began to scream in alarm.
Dragon flame isn’t what most people imagine. It isn’t like the flames from an oven or a fireplace that stops burning once you douse them with water. Dragons spit a sticky, very acidic venom that reacts with the air and starts to burn instantly. They have two jets in the back of their throat, and can spit that potent mucus about twenty feet. It sticks to whatever it touches like milky-colored tar, and even if you manage to snuff out the flames with water, the acid will still eat away your skin in a matter of seconds. It’s pretty awful stuff. Sile had once explained to me that dragons rarely spat flame unless commanded to. They used it as a defensive mechanism, to protect themselves or their eggs on the ground where they couldn’t walk or run as quickly as other predators.
I smelled the pungent odor of the dragons’ flame burning in my nose, and I heard men shouting, the sounds of bowstrings snapping as arrows were fired. I knew that now was my chance.
The warden wasn’t looking at me. He was staring up at the sky like everyone else, looking for the dragons that were showering the ground outside the prison camp with their burning venom. I pulled out the hunting knife hidden under my tunic, and rammed it as hard as I could into his calf. Before he could react, I ripped the knife back out again. I stabbed him twice, and the warden howled in pain. He went stumbling back and finally fell over as he clutched at his bleeding leg.
I was back on my feet in an instant, rushing to where Sile lay on the ground. I cut the ropes on his hands, and pulled the gag off his mouth.
“We have to get out of here now!” I shouted over the chaos.
He was still looking at me with that weird, haunted look of terror in his eyes. I decided maybe he was just in shock. Maybe he was confused, worried he was seeing a ghost, or had been beaten to the point of being delirious.
“How . . . ?” he spoke in a weak voice.
“I’ll explain later,” I told him. “We’ve only got a few minutes! Hurry, you have to get up!”
A sudden rush of heat sucked all the air right out of my lungs. Something exploded on the ground only a few yards away, bursting into flame as it was showered with sticky dragon venom that caught fire immediately. It burned my eyes, and I had to shield my face. I recognized the shards of a clay jug that landed on the ground near my boots, and knew it had been Beckah. She was using the jugs of oil as explosives, keeping the guards occupied and confused while we tried to make our escape.
“It’s those little fledglings from Blybrig. Don’t just stand there, you fools! Shoot them!” The Lord General bellowed with fury.
At that moment, he seemed to realize who I was. He turned around slowly, leveling a burning glare on me as I was helping Sile up to his feet. I met his gaze, seeing the reflections of the flames in his eyes.
“Ah,” he growled, showing me a wicked smirk. “So you are the little piece of halfbreed filth that has infected my ranks. I heard about you and your wild, mongrel of a drake.”
I squeezed the hunting knife in my hand, putting myself between the Lord General and Sile. “No,” I said. “I’m the little piece of halfbreed filth that isn’t going to let you murder my sponsor!”
“A mistake you won’t live to regret, I’m afraid.” His smirk broadened, and he pulled the biggest sword I’d ever seen from a sheath at his hip. It was almost as long as I was tall, made of black metal, and had the head of a dragon that looked a lot like Icarus engraved on the hilt with two red rubies for eyes.
He started to advance on me, and I got a much better appreciation for just how tall he was. My head almost came to the middle of his chest. Almost. A sense of doom loomed over my head as he started to size me up, looking over me like he was deciding which part of me he wanted to chop off first.
The dragons kept raining fire down from the sky, and I heard Icarus bellow a roar of challenge to them. Men shouted orders or screamed in pain as the acidic venom burned them. And through it all, the Lord General came striding toward me with the fires of battle reflecting off his bronze armor. Behind him, I saw the ghostly figures of the elite guards through the flames.
I braced for impact, trying to remember all my combat training. Of course, we hadn’t trained for anything like this before. The Lord General outclassed me in every way possible, and I knew this was going to be my end. But if he was going to kill me, I wasn’t going to let him do it without a fight—however brief it might be.
Suddenly there was another crash, another explosion of flame as Beckah threw another jug of oil. It hit that big gold-plated box, and fire belched up into the sky as it was smashed into a million pieces. The Lord General let out a primal yell of frustration, running to the remains of the box and trying to look through the wreckage like he was searching for something.
That something rolled across the ground toward me and came to a stop right in front of my feet.
It was some kind of orb, a big round stone the size of a grapefruit. It sat there at my feet, peek out from a charred cloth it had been wrapped in, and I could see that it was a milky, bright green color. There were strange markings on it like splotches of gold, but it didn’t look like anything that had been drawn onto it by hand. The marks looked natural, like they had just formed that way somehow, but I couldn’t see enough of the stone to tell if the marks made any patterns or designs.
The minute I saw it, I felt like I couldn’t move. It was splattered in burning oil from the jug, and I got this eerie feeling that the stone was looking back at me. My whole body got cold. My hair stood on end. I felt short of breath, and suddenly that pressure in my chest became so intense that it hurt. My head started burning again. But I couldn’t look away. I was caught up in staring at the stone, feeling like I was drowning under its pale green surface.
“Don’t look at it!” Sile was right behind me. He smacked his only working hand over my eyes and started pulling me away.
Immediately, I snapped out of my trance.
He was right. This is the chance we’d been hoping for.
Together, Sile and I ran for the front gate. We dodged screaming prisoners who were running from their burning shacks, guards trying to put out the fires, and falling jugs that exploded into new bursts of flame. Sile was hurt badly. He had a hard time running, but he couldn’t exactly lean on me since I was half his size. He staggered and stumbled, and a few times I had to use all my strength to keep him from falling.
Finally, I saw the gate. It was cracked open already, and Felix was standing just outside it with his eyes wide in horror at the chaos we’d unleashed. I saw him looking through the blazing madness, desperately searching for us. When he spotted us struggling to get away from the chaos, he didn’t hesitate for a single second. He sprinted toward us and put Sile’s good arm around his shoulder, helping him along as we made our final dash for the open prison camp gate.
As we ran out of the prison gate, my spirits soared with new hope. We had made it out. Sile was with us. We had rescued him. And I thought for an instant that it was over. I thought we were free.
I was wrong.
When we stopped to catch our breath, waiting for Beckah to descend with Mavrik and Nova and carry us away
into the night, I made the mistake of looking back. From back inside the prison camp, I heard a deafening roar that shook the ground under my feet. Dragon flame burst through the prison camp gate, melting the iron and turning it to a pile of molten mush in a matter of seconds.
Icarus came crawling out of the inferno like a demon straight out of the pits of hell. His red eyes gleamed, and the flames danced over his glossy black scales. He hissed, baring rows of dripping fangs as he charged straight for us, ready to burn us all to ash. On his back, I could see the Lord General sitting in the saddle with his sword still drawn. I could have sworn I heard him laughing over the roaring of his dragon and the rush of the flames.
Icarus was coming for us, and there was no way we could outrun him. Huddled together, looking into the fires of doom, Felix, Sile, and I exchanged a meaningful look. This was it. We were trapped like rats, with nothing to cling to now except each other.
I closed my eyes again for a moment, and then looked up to the sky. Finding that quiet place in my mind was easy for some reason, even in the face of certain death. The sound of Icarus growling became distant, and my thoughts were crystal clear.
“Don’t come down here, Mavrik.” I told him. I knew he would hear, and he’d be furious that I was refusing his help again. “We can’t let Beckah get hurt. If you bring her down here, she would be killed with the rest of us. I can’t let that happen, so don’t land. It’s all right.”
Then something strange happened, something that had never happened before.
Mavrik answered me.
It wasn’t with words. I saw a flash of images in my mind, like a dream only I wasn’t sleeping. Mavrik was sending me these images, communicating with me through pictures and colors. First he showed me a flash of our first encounter, when I’d made my deal with him. Then he showed me the giant paludix turtle that I’d called out of the marsh. Finally, I saw myself standing in front of Icarus, while the huge king drake lowered his head in submission.
Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. Mavrik had given me the answer. I stood up, pushing away from the others and beginning to walk toward Icarus.
Felix shouted after me, “What are you doing?!”
I didn’t look back at him. “I’m going to have a word with the king.”
Icarus came to a halt directly in front of me. He towered so far above me that he blended into the night sky, and all I could see of his head were his two glowing red eyes. He snarled, his lips curling back to show me rows of jagged teeth that were dripping with that burning venom.
“Crush his bones,” the Lord General commanded. “Leave nothing but ash for his friends to bury.”
Icarus hissed and seemed happy to oblige. He started to lower his massive spine-covered head down toward me. I could hear him taking in a breath, preparing to blast me with a spray of his flame.
I knew what I had to do. Icarus was a king drake, the most powerful of his kind. Sile had told me before that once dragons chose their riders, that they shared a bond of comradery, but now they were treated more like livestock. That was why my connection with Mavrik was so special; he had chosen me and accepted me as his rider of his own free will. But chances were, that hadn’t been the case for Icarus. Now, I was about to put that to the ultimate test.
“Great king, please hear me,” I called out to Icarus. I went down onto one knee before the king drake, showing him reverence he’d probably never been given before. “Why are you taking orders from a rider you didn’t choose? He’s ordering you to kill me, but I come to you with respect and ask you to show me mercy. Remember who you are. Don’t let this human rule you. You owe him nothing!”
Icarus paused. His bottomless red eyes were staring right at me, boring into my soul. I could sense how powerful he was, how wise and old. And now he was listening to me.
“What right does he have to command you?” I continued. “A king should have the right to choose who rides upon his back. No one should force that choice upon you, or any of your kin! Take back your freedom!”
The king drake growled. I saw his big nostrils puff, sampling my scent with a deep breath that made my hair blow wildly around my head.
“What are you doing?!” The Lord General screamed with rage. “You stupid beast, do as you’re told! Burn him until his bones are nothing but charred coals!”
All of a sudden, Icarus turned on him. He spread his leather black wings, reared back onto his hind legs, and let out another booming roar. But this time, it wasn’t directed at me.
As I started to run back toward Sile and Felix, I saw the king drake whip his head around and strip the saddle off his back with his teeth, taking the Lord General with it. I heard the sound of screaming, pleading, and dragon teeth against armor. I couldn’t bear to watch Icarus devour his own rider, so I just ducked my head and kept running.
Felix and Sile were already hobbling away as fast as they could. When I caught up to them, I tried to help Felix carry Sile’s weight. We made it away from the burning prison camp safely to the rolling grassy hills of the farmland beyond. By then, the dragonriders from the castle were circling over head, looking for what had caused this mess, but Mavrik and Nova were already long gone. Soldiers and people from the city were trying to put out the blaze.
I, for one, wasn’t sad at all to see that horrible place go up in smoke.
We laid Sile down in the grass, and sat down to catch our breath. We didn’t speak at first. Instead, we just sat there watching the prison camp burn against the night sky.
Sile grabbed my arm and squeezed it tightly, looking up at me with a sense of urgency. “Never do that again,” he growled.
“Call to a dragon?” I wasn’t sure what he meant. I’d done a lot of things recently I probably shouldn’t have.
“No,” he said hoarsely, and his grip on my arm weakened a little. “Risk your life for mine.”
twenty-one
Beckah was waiting for us at the corner of the same farmer’s field where we had stolen the tools. She was standing between Mavrik and Nova with the night wind blowing in her long dark hair. When she saw us coming, her eyes filled with tears, and she ran toward us with her arms open wide.
Beckah hugged her father tightly, and he put his good arm around her while he kissed the top of her head. “Beck!” His voice quavered, and I saw tears in his eyes as well. “What are you doing here?”
It was a long story, and there wasn’t time right then to go hash it all out for him. It would just have to wait. We had to get as far away from that prison camp as possible. Sile saddled up with Felix, Beckah sat with me, and we took off into the twilight and left the prison camp far behind.
As she sat in front of me, I saw Beckah smiling again. It made my stomach swim with nervousness. She took my arm and wrapped it around her waist so she could squeeze it tightly, and my insides just squirmed harder.
“Thank you so much, Jae,” she said, looking back at me over her shoulder. “You’re amazing.” She was sitting so close to me that her nose almost touched mine when she turned back to see me. I could count every freckle on her cheeks and nose.
I blushed so hard I could barely see straight. “You’re welcome.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Over on Nova’s back, I caught a glimpse of Sile staring at us. He didn’t look very happy. In fact, I could have sworn he was glaring daggers at me. I quickly leaned back away from Beckah, and took my arm out from around her waist.
It was a long trip back to Blybrig. We flew all the way without stopping, finally landing outside the breaking dome as the sun began to set. There was a big group of instructors and students waiting there for us as soon as we touched down. I noticed that there were also armored city guards from Halfax standing around, men the king must have sent. I recognized the style of their armor from when I lived with my mother in the ghetto. That made dread hit me like a kick to the gut.
The other instructors were quick to help us get Sile down out of the saddle. They carried him toward the infirmary, because he was s
o weak. As he disappeared through the crowd, Beckah followed closely behind and held on to his good hand. Felix and I were left standing there awkwardly by our dragons, wondering what would happen to us now.
Everyone was staring right at us. Students, instructors, even the guards were just standing there with expressions I couldn’t interpret. No one said a word.
Felix and I looked horrible. We were both still wearing the tunics Felix had cut out of old grain sacks, and we were caked with smelly mud from the marsh. We were filthy, hungry, and completely exhausted. But no one was looking at us with pity or sympathy. No one seemed glad to see us, either. I couldn’t help but wonder if we were about to be kicked out of Blybrig, or arrested. I didn’t even want to think about how many rules we had broken.
Finally, the somber-faced instructor standing nearest to me went down onto one knee, putting a fist on the ground as he bowed to us. Like a ripple, all the others in the crowd began to do the same—even the guards from Halfax. Felix and I exchanged a wide-eyed glance. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was pretty certain no one had ever bowed to a halfbreed like this before.
No one tried to stop us when we finally went to put our dragons away in the Roost. I took my time removing Mavrik’s saddles and feeding him big hunks of raw meat. I ran my hands over his scaly head, scratching him behind the ears until I heard him begin to purr. He looked at me with his bright yellow eyes. I got an eerie feeling when I remembered how he’d spoken back to me at the prison camp. He really did understand it when I talked to him, and he now could communicate back.
“Thank you,” I said as I rubbed his snout. “I’m lucky to have you as a partner.”
Mavrik made a happy chirping noise, and the image of us flying together flashed through my mind. It startled me. I couldn’t stop grinning at him. “Get some rest. I’d say we’ve both earned it.”
Fledgling (The Dragonrider Chronicles) Page 18