It would require evil. Greater evil than had been visited on me. I accepted this. I would make any sacrifice, pay any price, to see it through. I would give of myself so that Ophiliana would return.
I had to restore her. Her heart was gone and would need to be replaced. This would difficult. Dragon’s hearts were not easy to come by. Obtaining one would require pawns; playthings to be thrown on an altar.
Sacrificed so Ophiliana could live. The truth slowly dawned. Sacrifice was the key. The humans had the right idea. But they simply were not thinking big enough.
Slowly, loss hardened and forged itself into ambition. Goals. I could cry no longer, and it would serve no good; all of Drathari knowing my pain was not enough.
They must share it.
A Word from David Adams
A good chunk of this story was written on a flight to Canberra, 30,000 above the ground encased in the belly of a metal dragon.
I’ve always been drawn to dragons. Although my primary series is science fiction, I’ve recently begun dabbling in fantasy. Contremulus is a character in my series, Ren of Atikala, and I wanted to show some his history and motivations. What made him the way he is. Ren of Atikala: The Scars of Northaven touches on some of this, but in order to really feel what he felt, we needed to see the world through his eyes.
I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. For more of my writing…
My website is here:
http://www.lacunaverse.com
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It’s Time to Change
by Terah Edun
VEDARIS SAT UP and looked at himself, wincing at the blood that coated his chest and the tears, well the new tears, in the second of the only two pairs of pants he owned. He’d been caught counting cards at the tavern in the merchants’ arena. It wasn’t illegal, but that just meant the moneygrubbers had to sic their personal guards on him rather than the City Watch.
How he’d ended up still alive in this alley with only bruises on his face and torn clothes to show for it was a mystery.
In fact, he rather preferred death.
He rubbed his head as he slowly felt around on his temple for the source of his pain.
“Ah,” he said with a wince as his fingers landed on a sensitive knot the size of a chicken’s egg on his forehead and pain shot from the egg throughout his brain.
“That’d be it,” he muttered as he sighed and dropped his hand.
He wished he could say it was the only ache he had, but he’d just have to add it to the list of bruises and cuts on his flesh.
Vedaris was smart, fast, and a quick study. Those three things were the only reason he was alive. He’d trade every one for the one thing that should have been his from birth. The ability to shape shift.
He was nothing without that and he knew it. As he stared around the alley morosely he wondered what could possibly be left for him to do. There was nowhere for him to go. No one who wanted him home, and as a freak with no powers he was pretty much guaranteed to be gutter trash for the rest of his life.
The sound of more people coming down the alley quickly forced him to stand. He had all the bruises he could handle right now and he didn’t know how to heal a single one, let alone have the coin to pay someone else to do it for him.
He stood and limped away down a side alley, hoping to avoid others. Lost in his dreams.
His life hadn’t always been like this. Filled with self-loathing and a meager existence of day-by-day.
“No,” he whispered to himself, “It used to be different. I used to belong…before the tests. Before I failed.”
He remembered one night when he was young like it was yesterday. He had inherited that ability from his mother. The gift to perfectly recall everything that he’d ever done. To recall every instance of rejection and despair. But also to recall the hope and the dreams of his younger days.
This time he remembered tossing and turning all night. His sheets were wrapped around him and his bed was soaked from familiar night terrors.
The laughter and warmth of the day lingered in his dreams. He ran through fields of green vines that twined around sticks in the ground. It was late spring, pruning season for his mother's gardens. Heat exaggerated the vegetable scents that hung heavy in the air. Sunrays shone down with unrelenting force, scattered in an almost grid-like pattern.
He ran through the bursts of sun that danced like spotlights through the irrigation canopy overheard. As any true Sahalian knew, basking in the splashes of sun was the best part of spring and summer.
If felt like heaven to have these rays of heat and warmth on his skin. He'd been told that upon gaining his wings, a long day in the desert sun would be more enticing than any opiate—whatever that was.
As he continued his play, he stumbled closer to his mother. He could see her through the vines, although she was turned away from him. Clad in gardening gloves and an apron, from behind she looked like any human scullery maid.
He saw that his father, strong and lean with ivory skin, was sneaking up on her. With her exceptional hearing, she turned to him first, of course.
Normally, now would be the time for Vedaris to leave. Usually it got super-gross super-fast, what with the kisses and touches and all.
As he turned to do just that, the tension in his mother's and father's stances halted him. He saw that they faced each other silently in the garden clearing. They stood just a few feet apart, but with the unhappiness radiating from his father's stiff shoulders, it might as well have been miles.
"Did you petition the healers for an annulment of our union?" his father asked.
She raised her chin and said, "I did."
"Why…is our family not enough? Was our love not strong?" He kept his voice low, speaking through clenched teeth, mindful of his children sleeping in the house.
"Our love was strong," his mother replied, "but our union was not."
As he had surged up out of the tangled sheets in the dark night, the last thing Vedaris remembered was the stricken look on his father's face.
Even now he shook as the fading glimpses of his past slipped slowly away.
The Decision
He hadn’t really known what his mother meant then. Now he did. Now he couldn’t escape who he was…or rather what he had never become. He was a Sahalian pariah. As one of the few outcastes among the dragon race, he could neither transform his shape nor control the elements.
It rankled Vedaris as nothing else did. In a society that prided itself on power and magework, he was a freak. Often, he was considered of lower caste ranking than a human.
The caste system was fickle — based on power, race and wealth…in that order, and often in combination.
Usually being born a dragon meant an inheritance of primacy in all three. He was one of the lucky few to be born a dragon with no power, no wealth and shunned from childhood by all those who knew.
He had been orphaned at an early age with the death of his father — a Steel Magecaster.
His father had been normal. He had had extraordinary talent and the ability to cast steel weapons, dragon armor and magical objects.
In fact he had been known throughout the medina as the best dragon armorer in centuries — sought out by both the nobility and the merchants.
Vedaris, on the other hand, was sorely lacking in both his father’s ability and his race’s natural talent to transform and fly. Although he did look like his father, with large brown eyes, skin the color of ivory and hair so black it shone with hints of blue.
If there were another person such as he, someone who lacked all inherent Sahalian abilities, he wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d been killed at the age of six. Six being the time when all natural abilities were made manifest, or the children were hidden away by their fathers in fear.
The s
hame, especially among noblemen, would be immense.
He guessed that being without family had been a blessing in some ways. His father had never known of his failure.
It was a curse, of course, in many other ways. Not having someone to watch his back on the streets being one of them.
It was midmorning now and he had two choices. “I could go to the whore’s dock and beg the madams to take me on as some rich nobleman’s amusement…”
Taking a deep breath he thought, “Or I could steal aboard a Sahalian merchant ship as a human runner.”
The latter was a risk, he’d have to avoid all the merchantmen he’d tried to shaft last night, and make sure anyone who hinted of the dragon race didn’t get a glimpse of him.
Sahalians could sense each other when an individual used the magic unique to their race or, unfortunately for him, recognize another dragon by eyesight.
Any Sahalian who could transform, which meant all of them, had golden eyes with flecks of green in them. Their eyes were a warm brown when born, slowly lightening to a golden hue as they grew. The flecks of green, a sign of power, appeared during the first tests of childhood.
His ordinary brown eyes had never made the transition. He remembered his father saying that it would come. In a particularly frustrating instance at four and a half years old he had been trying to lift a freshly baked meatpie off his mother’s kitchen countertop without her noticing.
His sister, Noor, had been able to do that trick at three. His father, coming in from the steam baths in the garden after a long day’s work, had with a wry glance at him magepushed the meatpie over with a cold breeze to cool it down.
He got the feeling his mother had known what his father had done. She probably would have stayed if Vedaris had been the one to do it.
That time in his life was gone. His father was dead and his mother, as much as the human term could be applied, was gone. She had chosen her duties and taken Noor with her.
Since being orphaned his lack of mage abilities had allowed him to masquerade as a human, first in the cloister and now on the streets.
The appearance of humanity was often the only thing that saved him in his hardscrabble life on the streets. Gangs and packs of kids always underestimated the strength that lay in his wiry frame.
With a wry smile he decided to toss fate to the winds, scrambled up and began to limp down the trash-strewn alley toward the shipyard.
The Journey
It only took a good amount of wheedling and a promise to do some work on the ship’s rigging to get onboard the massive vessel going across the seas to his new home.
Vedaris had taken the captain’s offer with a wink and a smile, and had gotten settled in a bunk before the hour was out.
Now he sat in his little corner of the large and packed crew’s deck trying not to get seasick and wondering what the new world would bring.
“Can’t be any worse than the old one,” he muttered as he turned on his side and tuned out the game of cow’s bones going on on the floor next to him.
Instead, he remembered the last time he’d stayed in a new place that was neither home to family nor friends. It had been the first day he’d stayed in the cloister. Ado had been so excited. It was a small, compact and homely place with the orphans on one floor and the nuns, all sweethearts, on the floor below.
He and Ado, who was four years younger than him, had shared quarters. Ado had been excited that they had gotten to pick out a room that was a triple but that they could keep just for the two of them. It was comfy looking and Ado couldn’t wait to get in there.
Vedaris was not so easily taken in. At that point in his life he’d been shuttled between neighbors for months. He was always on a quest to reunite with family. He was wary but accepting.
Ado, who had spent the past two years on the streets, was pacing around with trembling hands and hopeful glances. Caught up on kat, the street drug that induced a temporary high, he had yet to hit bottom.
Vedaris still hadn’t gotten the full story from him about why he was on the streets. When he asked Ado where his family was, the tousle-headed boy with golden hair would just hunch his shoulders and frown down at the dust.
It hadn’t mattered to Vedaris in the least. They had just met a seven-day before. There was a roof over his head that he wasn’t in jeopardy of getting kicked out of for looking at someone the wrong way, and he had time to make inquiries about his missing sister and absent mother.
Though he had to admit, the first night in a warm bed with an actual pallet and frame had been very welcome after months on his step-aunt’s kitchen floor and sleeping in the sawdust of his third cousin’s gryffin stable loft. The same cousin he’d fled after one too many run-ins with both the beasts and bullies. He hadn’t liked the loft. Not least because gryffins really didn’t like him. Well, they didn’t like dragons in general, but they respected those that were stronger than them. Vedaris didn’t fall into that category and the gryffins clearly knew that.
His third cousin hadn’t. Vedaris was just grateful Mattis had been too self-absorbed to enquire as to why Vedaris didn’t challenge the gryffins for dominance in the stable loft.
In truth, the stable lofts had become a refuge later in his life. Running from packs of dragon brats straight into the claws of the gryffins had definitely saved his bum a time or two.
He had known how to evade the attacks of the three gryffins, but his tormenters didn’t. What’s more, it was illegal to break the dominant trait of a gryffin without the owner’s permission first.
If the brats had taken the fight with the gryffins to the next level magically or transformed into their Sahalian form they would have had to face a dominance battle with Mattis, who was no slouch in the ring — owning three battle gryffins ensured that.
Every day of his life with his family, on the streets, in the cloister and now on the ship presented a separate period of maturity. Now he would have to use all of that knowledge as he made his way in the city of Sandrin.
It didn’t take long, however, before the ship’s feeling of safe haven was turned into one of open peril. Weeks out at sea and Vedaris was beginning to wish he’d never left his home on the streets. At least on the streets he wouldn’t drown like a rat in a vat of dirty bath water.
Vedaris was sure his face was as green as a gilly fish but he was determined to get above deck. Stumbling around as the ship rolled and rose with the waves, he crashed into a wooden pole and then into a person who pushed him away roughly with a curse.
Luckily, the harsh shove encouraged him to move in the right direction.
With a moan, Vedaris grabbed onto the stair railing in front of him and hauled himself above the deck. He’d been living in the belly of the ship for at least eighteen days by his last count and if he was going to die, he was going to do it like a proper dragon. Wind in his face and staring at his enemy like a Sahalian. None of this hiding below decks would do for him.
Water was roaring down the steps, making them slippery and dangerous to get a foothold on.
But he made it to the top deck with a triumphant yell and was promptly knocked to his knees with a look of horror on his face as a fearsome wave crossed the deck and Vedaris stared at death itself.
The eye of a hurricane was descending down on his small ship with mighty winds and a gigantic roar.
A New Home
The ship swayed side to side violently in the open ocean. Lightning rolled alongside and above the sails in clouds of dark purple and blue. They sometimes struck frighteningly close to his small vessel. The sailors rushed fore and aft to keep the ship from capsizing in the waves.
After it became clear that he wouldn’t die right that second, Vedaris did his part by hanging onto the smallest of the three masts for dear life, crossing his heart, praying to the dragon gods and staying the frack out of the way of the crew.
From what he’d heard earlier when he was eavesdropping on the captain and the first mate, not snooping mind you, they were rounding
the Windswept Isles.
The area around the isles was known, even to a city dweller such as himself, by tales of the horror of wind funnels from the sea and furies who sailed the winds ready to grab greedy pirates off of ship’s decks.
Not that a fury could take a dragon in flight. But the nasty bitches did have a tendency to harry, and the combination of their nuisance tactics and a heavy storm could spell death.
As the ship continued to plow through the waves, Vedaris heard an ominous crack. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but all of a sudden the entire ship became topsy-turvy. It was already awhirl from the winds and waves but he would swear to his dying day that this time it was airborne.
The last thing he remembered before the darkness hit was a pirate’s surprised face as he flew across the deck, a face that strangely enough reminded him of the baker’s son — fat and greedy.
When he awoke voices chattered nearby — a man and a woman. They were moving away from him. Slowly he began to get feeling in his arms and his legs. By the gods, he ached.
As he opened his eyes he saw that he was in a room. Not on a ship and certainly not in the midst of a storm.
The healers were still speaking quietly on the other side of the room. He sat up, too quickly as it turned out, and his head spun. The healers rushed over. He struggled to rise. His legs felt weak and his head was spinning, but he had never had a good experience with Sahalian healers.
As a child the state-sponsored healers tsked at his late development in magical abilities. Assigned throughout pregnancy and delivery to expectant Sahalian mothers, each healer took a vested interest in their charges.
The abilities of the child later in life reflected well upon the nourishment and techniques designed by the healer in the pre-natal and post-birth terms. In his healers’ eyes he had been a blemish upon their careers until eventually his father had stopped allowing them in the house and they had stopping calling on his family.
The Dragon Chronicles Page 15