King's Exile: Chronicles of the Dragon-Bound: Book 1

by William Culbertson

  “Kahshect. Not little one.” The thought was distinct as well as curt. Even if the dragon had not spoken aloud, the harrumph was plain. Kahshect tossed the morsel with a shake of his head to reposition it, then he swallowed it with a gulp. “More,” he demanded.

  Dax fed the dragon a second piece and a third. Both disappeared as quickly as the first. He marveled at the bundle of muscle he held. Kahshect’s body was about a foot long, but the thrashing tail added at least that much length. His head—for it was a he, the sense of that had come when Kahshect had named himself—had a long, pointed muzzle that made the dragon look a little fox-like. The head was longer, more like a horse, but the eyes were set in, pointing straight ahead. There was no fur, of course, but Kahshect’s body was covered with tiny iridescent scales. He was the most beautiful thing Dax had ever seen.

  His fascination was broken by a gentle nudge from Treyhorn. “So, who do we have here?”

  Dax looked up at her and beamed. “Kahshect. He says his name is Kahshect. He already knows me!”

  Treyhorn nodded at Dax’s pride. “You better believe he does. The dragon-bound are a team. You will never be alone again.”

  Dax’s breath caught in his throat. Never alone again! Tears came to his eyes. He had been so alone for so long. The thought of having a companion to share his thoughts, hopes, and dreams was overwhelming.

  “You are sad. Don’t be. I am here.” With that reassuring thought, the little dragon nestled deeper into the pocket of his arms. “I’m tired. Rest.”

  Dax blinked his eyes and smiled at the feeling of comfortable relaxation from the dragon. “Not a bad idea,” he murmured.

  However, the dragon-bound in attendance had other ideas. The Kotkel had dispersed after the dragon appeared. Now the humans gathered around the one remaining table left standing at the edge of the clearing. Treyhorn encouraged Dax into the center of the group. All the dragon-bound wanted a glimpse of the new arrival. Even the dragons strode over and stood craning their necks down over the circle of people, trying to get their own view. Dax noticed that none of the dragon-bound reached in to touch the baby dragon the way adults would have fussed over a human baby.

  The little dragon stirred in Dax’s arms. “Just as well, too,” thought Kahshect.

  Dax had spoken to the dragon out loud until now. Now for the first time, he ventured a thought to Kahshect. “I’m glad to have you with me.”

  The dragon radiated gratitude. “Me too. More to eat?”

  Dax had to smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “What’s that?” Treyhorn said at his side.

  “Sorry, ma’am. He just said he’s hungry.”

  “Better get used to that. Young dragons are hungry all the time. It’s good that you are young and still growing. You’ll feel your dragon’s appetite, and it’s easy to put on a fair amount of weight yourself while they grow.”

  “How long will that take? I mean, how long will it be before he gets as big as . . .” He trailed off, uncertain of a reference size.

  “Well, dragons aren’t fully grown until they are about ten years old. Namkafnir, now he was a little pig. By the end of the first year, he was about as big as a pony. Once they get to be that size, there’s not much else in this world they need to fear. Full-grown, Kahshect will be about the size of a couple of draft horses, body-wise. Add the neck and tail . . . eh, maybe twenty feet or more.”

  The dragon-bound had produced a small keg of ale and another plate of meat. One of them, a rail-thin older man named Gadford Rudale, took one look at the meat and laughed. “Ah, good. Dragon sausage!” He grabbed a piece, took a bite, and washed it down with ale.

  The meat, in a pile of circular slices, was dark in color and looked like a well-cured sausage. Treyhorn leaned over and confidentially told Dax, “It’s a mixture of pork and mutton. They call it dragon sausage because dragons love it.”

  Indeed, at that moment Kahshect took a big sniff and sat up in Dax’s arms. Dax struggled for a moment to keep the dragon from diving at the platter. “Hold on there a second, and I’ll get you some,” he said.

  Treyhorn chuckled in amusement. “Young dragons are not much on table manners. Better hang on to him, or he’ll claim the whole thing for himself.”

  “Of course it’s mine.” The dragon’s thought was indignant.

  Dax held on to Kahshect with one hand and retrieved three pieces. He laid two on the table in front of the dragon and tasted the other himself. The flavor was rich, deep, and smoky.

  “Good!”

  Dax nodded in agreement. “But we have to let the others have some too.” This time he did not speak out loud but directed the thought to the young dragon.

  “Why?”

  “Well, they are hungry too,” Dax explained, “and they brought this food to share with us.”

  “Why?”

  Dax was reminded of the last time he had visited his aunt Lesley. His three-year-old cousin Nita had peppered him with questions, most of which started with the word why.

  “I want more.” Even as the thought echoed in Dax’s head, Kahshect levered himself out of Dax’s arms and onto the table, with his head in the platter of meat.

  Dax grabbed for the young dragon, but Kahshect knew he was coming and slipped to the side. It took two more tries before Dax managed to grab the squirming beast and drag him off the table. Only then did he look around and realize that all the other dragon-bound were sitting quietly watching him struggle to get the animal under control.

  Rudale nodded and gave him a small, thin smile. “First thing you must learn is to work with your dragon to keep him out of trouble.”

  Dax looked around the table. All the dragon-bound were staring at him and his dragon. He thought for a minute before he spoke. “This was a test, wasn’t it, sir?” He was uncertain about his status with the group. As a youngster, he opted to be formal.

  Rudale nodded. “That’s why we call it dragon sausage. Young dragons can’t resist it. You need to watch out for Kahshect whenever he is with you for the next year or so.”

  “What if I hadn’t been able to drag him away from the meat, sir?”

  “That sometimes happens, and you and your dragon would have learned another important lesson. When they are this size, their appetites outsize their stomachs. He would have eaten the whole lot and had a nasty bellyache. You, as his dragon-bound partner, would have shared his misery. It’s a good object lesson either way.”

  “So we share our aches and pains. What about emotions? If Kahshect gets angry, do I get angry too? Is that where my fighting anger comes from when I’m in danger?”

  The older man smiled. “Exactly. You’ve gone right to the heart of it. You both have a lot to learn. Since you had a wild egg, you have some catching up to do.”

  “A wild egg?” The man was giving information, and Dax took advantage.

  Rudale nodded. “Happens sometimes. Our bondmates bring us draig eggs from the Dragon Lands for us to sift for bondmates.”

  “Sift?”

  The man eyed him owlishly, but Treyhorn broke in. “Gadford, remember this is the first time he’s been around the dragon-bound.” She turned to Dax. “It’s how we find our bondmates. The dragon-bound take eggs from town to town, letting people handle them. The cold always surprises them, and there’s lots of hilarity, horseplay, and hollering. Every now and then, someone will just stand there holding the egg with their eyes big as gold crowns and not want to let go. That’s when we know the egg has bonded.”

  “The dragon-bound help other people find their dragons?” Dax wanted to make sure he had it right.

  “Well, some of us are better at it than others,” replied Treyhorn looking pointedly at Rudale. “Gadford has been known to scare newly bonded youngsters half to death.”

  “You got over it,” Rudale growled. “And I didn’t mean it.” He snorted. “Besides, that was a really long time ago. I’ve mellowed.”

  Dax looked at Treyhorn and saw her eyes were dancing with
amusement. “Mellowed like the stump of an old thorn tree.”

  As Treyhorn spoke, Carel Osset, an older dragon-bound woman sitting beside Dax, gave him a nudge. “Do what we do, dear,” she spoke to Dax, but she was looking toward Rudale and Treyhorn. “Just ignore those two when they get started.”

  Dax relaxed. When his father had taken him to informal meetings with his advisors, Dax had seen this kind of teasing among colleagues who liked each other. If the dragon-bound liked each other well enough to tease each other in front of him, it meant he was being accepted into the group. Dax asked his next question with more confidence. “You said something else a moment ago about ‘whenever’ he is with me. Where else will he be?”

  Rudale shrugged. “Various places. Once his wings are ready and he is fully fledged, he’ll fly back to the Dragon Lands with one of the other dragons for a time. He has to learn to be a dragon, after all.”

  “Just like I’m going to Iron Moor to learn to be a soldier.” Dax had the confidence now to announce this to his new associates.

  “Ah, is that so?” Rudale said. “Well, I couldn’t think of a better place for you.” He nodded at Dax. “You are a fine young lad. Good manners always make it easier to get along with people. However, you are dragon-bound, as are we all. You don’t need to be so formal with us. We came to meet your dragon, but we also gathered to meet you.”

  “Yeah, Rudale, you old goat,” broke in Effet Burrlage, “you are a fine one to recognize manners when you get ’em, but how about when you give ’em?” The others laughed, and Dax smiled. He would enjoy getting to know these people.

  Rudale gave the gathering a sour look, then gestured to Dax with his mug of ale. “Now honor your new family of brothers and sisters by joining us in a small celebration.”

  Treyhorn leaned over to Dax as she set a mug of ale on the table in front of him. He turned to thank her, and she said, “One thing the ‘old goat’ didn’t warn you of is to be cautious of drink.”

  Dax looked at her over his shoulder and nodded. “I already had noticed none of you attacked the keg like a group of guardsmen would have. I thought you were all being polite.”

  She smiled. “No. While we enjoy a mug of ale as much as any, something about the bond with our dragons causes problems if we drink a second mug before the first wears off. Just about the time you start to get a little tipsy, you get a blinding headache. That sort of takes the fun out of it. Before we get falling-down drunk, we would fall down from the pain in our head.”

  Dax was puzzled. “Why would that be?”

  “We’ve talked about it for years,” she answered. “We’ve decided it must have something to do with the fact that the dragon-bound can never tell lies. Even our bodies are not allowed to lie to us.”

  Dax nodded, thinking. Maybe that was why the fallenfairy that Zodas had used on him affected him the way it had. No, he would never drink more than a pint of ale if he had to go through something like that! Another thought intruded. During his father’s illness, the doctors had given him poppy to ease the pain. It gave his father visions, but what would it have done to him if he had not fled Mathilde’s awful ministrations?

  Their conversation, or rather the adults’ conversation, went on into the evening. Kahshect nestled asleep in his arms—once the dragon sausage had entirely disappeared. Dax, sleepy himself, mostly sat and listened. The other dragon-bound all knew each other and continued to talk about what they had been doing and whom they had met since the last time they were together. Most of it concerned people he had never heard of and places he had never been. His head nodded toward his chest a number of times. Questions about how he would get to Iron Moor, what he needed to do for his dragon, and more chased through his head, but with the comforting presence of Kahshect warm and asleep against his chest, the questions were not terribly important tonight. For the moment he was content to relax and let the flow of conversation wash around him.

  #

  The next day he set out for Iron Moor with Bindle Treyhorn. While the Kotkel had not encouraged him to leave, they had not encouraged him to stay either. The Kotkel and the settling had allowed him to visit, but Dax had sensed that he was only a tolerated outsider. He was not sure whether Treyhorn had volunteered for the job or not, but she and Namkafnir were to be their escorts for the journey to Iron Moor. She told him they would take their time on the journey because he and Kahshect needed time to get to know each other. Their education as a bonded pair would start on the trip.

  Dax had been disappointed to learn Namkafnir was not going to fly them to the mainland. Treyhorn explained that dragons, at least the draigs, were deft but not powerful flyers. A draig could carry its bondmate in a time of need, but it was not easy, and they tired quickly. In fact the other dragon-bound had left together at sunup carried in a group atop one of the much larger drakons. Treyhorn told him that a drakon was several times the size of a draig and could carry as many as ten dragon-bound in special saddles on its back.

  The draigs Dax had seen last night were strongly muscled and deep chested. They carried their wings folded along their backs, making a graceful line from their large heads, down their long necks, on to their lengthy, sinuous tails. While draigs shared intelligence with their human bondmates, drakons were placid beasts with the mental capacity of saddle horses—extremely large saddle horses with wings. As the dragon-bound communicated with their draigs, a draig could communicate with a drakon and guide it in a common effort.

  Dax would have given anything to have seen one of the house-size drakons, but he had fallen asleep at the table with Kahshect cradled in his arms. He had awakened midmorning, lying on a blanket, with his dragon curled up against him. Only Treyhorn had stayed behind. The fire had been kept burning, and with the pleasant weather, Dax had been warm throughout the night.

  They departed the Kotkel island by boat, a surprise for Dax. It turned out the Kotkel had boats, but they used them infrequently. Treyhorn told him that when she had once asked, the Kotkel had told her, “We have all we want at our settling. Why should we leave our harmony for the outside world?” Dax had not seen Styr since the Kotkel had led him to the settling, but Styr was the master of the small craft on which they sailed this day. Two other Kotkel helped tend the oddly shaped sails, and they maneuvered the slim-hulled vessel with easy competence. While the Kotkel worked the boat, they kept up what sounded like a three-part version of the song that permeated the settling of Maha Gramah.

  Namkafnir had gone to hunt that morning before they departed, and Treyhorn said he would rejoin them on the mainland. They sailed out the channel past the flèches and turned north, setting a course on the outside of Deadman’s Finger. Treyhorn explained that Styr would take them to a landing near the town of Leyden. Once ashore they would trek overland to the east, making for Timberlake on the upper Weston River, bypassing the city of Bington farther north on the coast.

  At the mention of Bington, Dax thought of Trimble. He had been Moryn’s cousin’s son, and Dax had thought if they had passed through the city, he would try to find Trimble’s family and tell them what had happened. It would probably have been hopeless, but now he would not have the chance.

  Kahshect liked the Kotkel ship just fine. The first day he explored anywhere and everywhere he could get to on the boat, and given his small size, that was everywhere. From time to time he would come back on deck to sit with Dax. The little dragon smelled of bilge, but he would sit there with Dax, radiating happiness and excitement until he fell asleep. Whenever Kahshect was awake and on deck, his head swiveled from side to side as he tracked passing sea birds, breaking tops of waves, and every other distraction the voyage offered.

  Dax had packed ample supplies of cooked meat on the advice of Treyhorn. Dragons ate just about anything, but growing dragons needed lots of meat. Dragons preferred their food cooked, and with their fire, a grown dragon had the means to cook it. Kahshect would soon have his fire, but until he learned to control it, it would not be safe to have him trying
to toast his dinner on board a wooden boat.

  They put in to shore toward evening. Styr did not like to sail in the dark, and they were in no real hurry. Styr appeared to know this coast well, and as the sun was getting low in the west, he steered into an inlet where a small river flowed into the sea between high banks covered with rough grass.

  #

  The second day on the boat, Kahshect had just awakened from an afternoon nap when a gull flashed by close overhead. The little dragon pushed off from his leg, and Dax caught only a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye as Kahshect darted toward the bow in pursuit. In a moment Kahshect was perched at the top of the mast, watching in frustration as the gull continued on its way, riding easily on the currents of air.

  “Too fast!” he complained. “I need my wings to work.”

  Treyhorn had already explained to Dax that while a dragon’s legs worked just fine at hatching, their wings took longer to develop. In the month or so they would be on the road, Kahshect’s wings would develop, and he would start to fly. He would be able to fly to the Dragon Lands before long. Dax could not go to the Dragon Lands, because humans were forbidden by the Great Treaty. Namkafnir would be Kahshect’s escort for that trip.

  Now, however, Kahshect clutched the top of the mast while his small wings beat the air as he tried to keep his balance. Styr looked up at the dragon and turned to Dax. “Mind that he doesn’t tear the sail or cut one of the lines. You won’t enjoy working up there to repair any damage he does.”

  Dax started. “Me?”

  “He’s your dragon.”

  “I can see the land from up here!” the dragon announced. For the moment Kahshect was enjoying the new view.

  “So,” Dax thought to the dragon, “have you thought about how you will get down?”

  Kahshect’s reply was scornful. “I’ll hang on to your back while you climb down.”

  “If you haven’t noticed, I don’t have claws. Climbing that mast would be impossible for me.”