Dragon Master

by Alan Carr

  ***

  Daija didn’t show up to hear us tell the town our story. But Laciann did, and I could tell that she was excited to see us. Well, she was excited to see Boe at least. Daija’s mother stood with Verrill and listened to us talk. She seemed to be genuinely concerned whenever we reached parts of the story where Boe was in any danger, even though he was standing in front of her and obviously okay. I just tried to rush through it, and was glad when it was done.

  Afterwards, we returned to the Valora’s house. Daija wasn’t around, though Laciann dragged her home when she showed up a short time later. Laciann had changed into a new outfit, very frilly and very yellow.

  “Hi Caedan!” she said, brightly. Then, “Hello Boe, welcome home!”

  We both rose off the long bench where we were sitting, and I shook Laciann’s hand and Boe gave her a brief hug. She blushed when he touched her. I looked at Daija for some of that commiseration that we’d shared back at the festival, but she was looking intently into the dancing flames in the fireplace. I could watch the reflection of those flames in her eyes forever. They were the prettiest eyes I’d ever seen.

  Boe’s parents retreated to their back porch and left the four of us in the common room.

  “Your eyes look really pretty tonight,” I said to Daija, just to say something. Laciann tittered and wrapped her arm around Boe’s hand, and then just smiled when I shot her a look. Daija closed her eyes for a moment, then fixed me with her searching gaze. I smiled and shrugged. “Well, they do. I mean, they always do. Not just tonight.”

  “My eyes look pretty?” Daija asked, but she wasn’t really asking. “Caedan,” she said but then she didn’t say whatever she was going to say next. Instead she just exhaled sharply then suggested that we all take seats around the fire and warm ourselves.

  I sat by the fireplace and Daija sat next to me. Boe and then Laciann completed the little semicircle.

  “Your eyes look beautiful tonight too,” Laciann teased Boe, “I guess it’s just a family trait.”

  Boe chuckled nervously.

  “Dad’s still letting you train?” he finally asked Daija after a few long moments.

  “Those aren’t the words I would use.”

  “Still letting you play with swords then?” he teased.

  “I could beat you in a duel easily,” she responded, sounding like she was seriously challenging him. I felt uneasy about the whole conversation.

  Boe didn’t respond and things were descending into that terrible silence phase.

  “We’ve got an opening on the team if you want to join our next dragon quest,” I said without thinking. I wasn’t being serious, of course. But bringing up the empty spot on our team made me think of Warley, and thinking of Warley brought a wave of seriousness over me. I saw that Boe felt it too. I didn’t want to think about the academy now, or dragon quests. I just wanted to think about now, this moment, here with Daija.

  “There was an impostor on our team,” Boe explained.

  “What? And you just turned him in?” Daija asked. She obviously thought that was the last thing we should do.

  Boe shook his head. “He didn’t really give us a choice. There were others, and they might have killed him on the spot if Caedan hadn’t drawn his sword to defend Warley.” I thought about that moment.

  “Well, I wasn’t really thinking. I wasn’t even really awake,” I explained. “I just saw Bayrd about to attack Warley and reacted, I guess.”

  “Probably for the best,” Laciann said. That was that. I began to fear another uncomfortable silence when Laciann asked Daija out of nowhere, “Did you see my shoes? Your mother said that they would go perfectly with this outfit and she was right, I think. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Daija said, but I was watching her and she didn’t even look at the shoes.

  The topic of Laciann’s shoes now exhausted, I fished around for something else to talk about.

  I finally came up with something. “Boe told me about the time when you were throwing rocks out at a pond and hit a caiman, and then you had to kick it to keep it from biting Boe when he fell down trying to run away. I guess he’s always needed someone to keep him out of trouble.”

  “You remembered that?” Daija asked Boe. He shrugged.

  “So what stuff do you do now that you don’t need to spend all your time rescuing Boe from distress?”

  “She’s preparing,” Laciann said mysteriously. Her eyes got wide and then she burst into laughter.

  “I was born from the Stoneflame ceremony you know,” she said, watching the flames again, “I mean, Boe and I both, of course. We’re twins.”

  “Right,” I said, “but …” I didn’t finish the sentence. She knew what I was going to say.

  “But I’m not a boy,” she finished for me, and then laughed again. It wasn’t an amused laugh. “I knew that’s how you’d be.”

  “It’s just that you’re not a Stone Soul,” I said, trying to defend myself, “I mean, that’s not your fault, but it’s a good thing, it means you don’t have to train.”

  “And you think that I spend hours every day begging my father to train me because I thought I had to? Have you never thought that some people would do anything to get into that academy you take for granted?” I was afraid she would rip a tear in the rug from how tightly she was gripping it. She refused to look at me.

  “Well,” I said, trying to sound apologetic, “I would trade places with you if I could.”

  She did look at me then, and there was no confusion as to how she felt about me. Angry. Purely angry. She was burning hotter than Gable when he’d found out about Warley. I didn’t understand how this was happening, how this was going so wrong.

  “You know, I used to think you were different, that you had a good heart. That even when you wouldn’t talk to me it was just some macho bravado thing that you didn’t really feel. But the festival ends and then that’s it from you, and then you just show up here with your fancy academy wisdom to tell me that I’m not a Stone Soul?” She stood up and stormed into her room, slamming the door behind her while yelling back, “I don’t even know why Boe’s your friend.”

  After a moment, Boe took Laciann’s hand and led her out the front door, leaving me sitting alone in front of the fire. Alone with my thoughts, except they were too jumbled and fuzzy even to keep me any kind of company. I didn’t have any idea what I thought. But I knew what I was feeling. That squeezing sensation inside of me revealed itself for what it really was, a dragon’s talon, and it was digging sharply into me, ripping me apart from the inside. Making it so that I couldn’t even stand up, could barely breathe. I had to fight off tears. I curled on the bench under a blanket that Tahlor had provided and buried my head in case Boe or his parents came in the room, and I tried not to make any noise.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Flame

  When we returned to the academy, there was only a week of formal training left. Warley’s fate was still officially undecided, but it was clear from whispers in the mess hall or in the rare breaks in training that everyone was sure that he and his family would be found to be guilty of intentionally trying to pass him off as an impostor. We trained with our teams, and Bayrd seemed more determined than ever. I went through the motions without complaining even though I felt numb inside. But if I wasn’t performing up to the expected level, nobody brought it up with me, not even Bayrd or Master Walker. I’d hardly spoken to Boe on the ride back to Rægena, and neither of us seemed interested in changing that once we’d returned. I don’t know what he thought of me, but I couldn’t blame him: I didn’t know what I thought of myself. I decided to give up thinking altogether.

  Then, the month of Flame came. After ten years, training was over. Graduation was a simple affair, not even a feast or a chance to invite loved ones to congratulate us. Congratulations would come if we turned out right. If we become Dragon Masters.

  The waiting be
gan.

  We were encouraged to stay rested and refreshed so that we would be ready once the first reports of a Dragonbirth came in. These were often rumors that didn’t turn out to be completely accurate, so teams would be sent out one at a time to respond and report back when the threat was deemed false or neutralized. As part of what was now a team of four, I expected to be held in reserve to the end. That made me feel restless. The way I was feeling, a dragon seemed like the perfect opponent for me to loose some frustration upon.

  Now that training was over, some of the Stone Souls were making plans about what they would do once the dragons had been killed. The ones who didn’t die or kill a dragon would basically be released from the academy until the next Stoneflame ceremony. Some would get jobs in the keep, or in the surrounding city just to stay in Rægena. Others would go back home, or else as far away from their old homes as they could get, and find work. We still qualified for stipends, which would go directly to us now rather than our families, but many of our families were dependent on those funds so plans differed about how to handle that stuff. Some of the Stone Souls would continue to allow their families to receive them, others were planning to move back home and share in them. Some planned to take the full amounts for themselves and let their families worry about supporting themselves. I had no plans. Plans required thinking.

  Boe spent the first day of Flame in the study, and while I thought about joining him and grilling Magnilda about the Dragonborn, none of it seemed to matter. I tried just staying in my bunk and sleeping, but I became restless very quickly and ended up gearing up as if for training. When I walked to the training grounds, I saw how tough it was for us Stone Souls to break our habits. Most of the class was there, holding impromptu duels, or having horse races, or just practicing moves against wooden dummies. I didn’t want to use my practice sword, so I took my real sword and ventured deep into the woods. When I was so far in that I could be sure that nobody else was around me, I began to spar with some trees.

  I whirled and sliced, stabbed, jabbed, dodged splinters and chopped all around me, as if the surrounding thorny sicklebush and grasping claw trees were an entire brood of dragons, closing in to make a group feast of me. I looked at my blade, spattered with sap and covered in dirt and bark. The trees were getting the better of me.

  Involuntarily, I pictured Daija, swinging her sword around. She was good. She was right, she would be able to defeat Boe in a duel. Probably. She could probably defeat me. But what was the point?

  I lopped off a low hanging inknut branch that was getting dangerously close.

  She had to know that throughout all of history no girl had ever defeated a dragon. Only Stone Souls ever had, for as long as Stone Souls had been training to kill dragons.

  I kicked a rock that was giving me a dangerous look, sending it careening satisfyingly off a distant ironwood.

  She was wasting her life when she could be doing something more productive with it. Like—like what? Shopping with her mother? Finding matching shoes to go with her dress?

  I got my sword wedged into a thick purple-gray tree trunk and had to kick against it to pull my blade free.

  Well, what was so wrong with shopping? Wasn’t Boe here training so that Daija could do that if she wanted?

  I loosed a battle cry and took a slice at a young sicklebush. I missed.

  What Daija wanted was to train. What was wrong with training?

  I jumped up and swung wildly at a bird flying far overhead. I didn’t come close to hitting it. I tried flinging my sword into the air when it circled around, then had to dart to safety as the blade came spinning back toward me.

  If Daija was good with a sword, there was plenty she could do with one. There were tournaments she could enter in some parts of the Realm, weren’t there? Were there? I didn’t know.

  I retrieved my sword and slumped down, out of breath.

  I wished I’d been able to write that letter. That I hadn’t passed out from the dragon’s toxin or whatever. That I hadn’t decided to try to get her that tapestry and I’d been there when she had to leave the festival. I wished I said the right things that night at her house. I wished she’d been happy to see me. I wished she didn’t have to make everything so complicated. I wished I could just forget about her. I wished she had just let Boe and I hang out together at the festival and that she just ate her spicy foods alone or that she didn’t bring a friend that insisted on hanging out with Boe. I wished I’d spent more time with her when I had the chance. I wished my insides would stop throbbing like they were. I wished a dragon would just show up already and I’d at least have something to do.

  As the sun started setting, I picked myself off the ground and found my way back to the academy. There was some commotion going on and I thought at first that I’d gotten at least one of my wishes, that a dragon had been born already and teams were being assigned to go after it. Maybe Bayrd would be able to persuade Master Walker to let us be one of the first teams to go since we were the only team with any experience. But it wasn’t that kind of commotion, I wasn’t getting my wish.

  There was a large family gathered in the center of the training grounds, and I recognized them as Warley’s family. He had five siblings, and they were all standing together with their hands tied in front of them. I saw his one sister, and realized that she was my age. With her dark skin and short cropped black hair falling over her eyes, it seemed that she was trying to disappear into the shadows. She was the one Warley had told us about, the one he’d been switched with, however that worked. I didn’t want to watch whatever was going to happen, so I tried to escape toward the keep, but Gable saw me and called me over. I didn’t have the energy to ignore him.

  “… Found guilty of knowingly withholding information about this impostor serving as a false Stone Soul in the …”

  The Rector, dressed in his most formal gray robes, was reading in a monotone voice from a stack of parchment in front of him. I was glad to see that he appeared to be almost to the bottom of the stack. It was clear that everyone had been found guilty, that they were being sentenced individually to the same fate. Their belongings would be confiscated and sold to be paid back to the academy and they would be employed as servants in Rægena, keeping no earnings. They would probably spend the rest of their lives this way. Was that worth it? Did they really understand the risks they were taking when they sent Warley here under false pretenses?

  I stood in a daze through the proceedings, trying not to look at the family. At one moment I did look up, and I saw Warley staring back at me. I felt guilty that he’d seen me standing in the crowd, but he gave me a nod. It was a nod like the one he’d given me when I’d beaten him in that skirmish. I understood. He was thanking me for raising my sword to defend him from Bayrd’s fury, for saving his life. Some life it was going to be.

  I kept thinking about everything that evening as I ate my roast in the mess hall. At least Daija wasn’t pretending to be a Stone Soul, she was just training on her own. She was planning to risk only her own life. Well, to throw her own life away. Unless she was somehow right, but how was that even possible? I decided that the next day I would visit the study after all, talk to Magnilda about it. I’d want to get there early, before Boe. I still wasn’t ready to talk to him about everything that had happened. He’d been there, but he hadn’t stood up for me. He’d just let Daija say that he shouldn’t even be my friend. And then he’d left me, hadn’t he? Well, he’d taken Laciann out of the room, and I supposed I was grateful for that, but I doubted he’d done it for me. I wasn’t sure how late he’d stayed out with her, I had surprised myself by falling asleep quickly and not waking again until the next morning.

  When I felt like I had enough food in my system, I left the mess and went straight to my bunk and hoped I could fall asleep quickly once again.

  ***

  Boe shook me awake early the next morning.

  “Are you doing okay?”

&nb
sp; I struggled to sit up in bed and found that I was still wearing my full armor. I wiped at my puffy eyes and didn’t answer the question.

  “Why don’t we see if there’s anything we can eat in the mess hall,” he suggested.

  I nodded my head and then slumped back into bed.

  He shook me again. “Go on, get up, I’ll meet you right outside.”

  I stretched and got out of bed, changed clothes and then joined Boe outside the bunk. The chill in the air belied the season.

  “Want to race to the mess?” Boe asked. Then he took off running, and I chased a half step behind him. The crisp morning sun washing over me as I ran felt refreshing. Plus, I had to admit, it felt good that Boe and I seemed to be speaking again.

  The doors to the mess were locked, but Boe led me around to the back kitchen entrance and we walked in to the smells and sounds of a half dozen cooks preparing breakfast for the keep. There were recently picked starberries being sliced in fourths, large bowls of batter being mixed, chefs squeezing some kind of cream into delicate pastries, and piles of freshly baked bread stacked in baskets. Some of the chefs smiled and nodded at us as we each grabbed a loaf of bread. Boe quickly scooped a handful of whole starberries before a protesting chef could stop him. We had huge smiles on our faces as we went running out of the kitchen, Boe clutching his food expertly to his chest to prevent any berries from spilling onto the ground.

  There was a morning bustle within the keep that I couldn’t remember ever seeing before. Wizards and chamber maids walked briskly past each other in a routine that must go on every morning as we were sleeping or having early morning training. There was a life and an energy to the old stone keep that furthered my sense of reinvigoration. Even the study seemed transformed—light streamed in effortlessly through the windows and poured over the books, making them look inviting, full of promise. We passed the desk where I’d tried to write to Daija before and I suddenly knew that I would try again, and that this time I would succeed.