Evangeline had a thin strip of thick cotton wrapped expertly around her hand now and we’d all automatically sat down in the same chairs we’d sat in during orientation. Everyone looked weary, and as we waited quietly at the table, I could hear Marko setting meal dishes onto the trolley in the kitchen.
“Who’s missing?” asked Dominic impatiently, as he glanced towards the kitchen too. He was obviously hungry and he knew Marko wouldn’t serve the meal until everyone was present at the table. Seth looked at Evangeline impatiently.
“Is your servant partner ever on time?” he asked her, as he frowned. Evangeline looked at Seth and narrowed her eyes slightly.
“Caspian is never early, but he’s never late either. Don’t fret. He’ll be at the table on time,” she said waspishly, and I smiled to myself. I guessed Caspian had proven to be useful to Evangeline when it came to surviving the dangers of challenge quests and it was Evangeline’s way to give him some respect in return for whatever it was he’d done for her.
Sure enough, Caspian joined us right on time and, just as he fitted his wad of parchments into his inside jacket pocket, the midday meal was served. As we began to eat, to break the awkward silence, Evangeline told us she’d been injured by a flying glass bottle. She and Caspian had been dropped into one of the looting riots which were common during the time of the meltdown. Imogen and Erin told us they’d found themselves in the middle of an earthquake and had narrowly missed being swallowed by a crack in the earth. Dominic and Seth had been dropped into the middle of a desert and it sounded like it was their good fortune that a camel caravan had passed by their marker in the early hours of this morning and given them some much needed water to drink. I noticed they both drank several more cups of water with their lunch.
“So, what happened to you two? You don’t look like you’ve suffered too badly,” asked Imogen, and by the slightly scornful edge to her tone, I guessed she presumed I’d been given an easy quest since I was the daughter of the King. I smiled at her sweetly.
“The town at our marker was in the process of being attacked by giants,” I said, and everyone at the table stopped eating and stared at us.
“What did you do your Highness?” asked Seth worriedly, as he frowned.
“Livia took down three of them at a time with her arrows.” Morgan spoke before I could reply and I could tell he was trying not to laugh.
“And Morgan killed the rest of them with his bare hands,” I added cheerfully, and I grinned at him while everyone continued to stare at us.
“Oh….ah……well……good for you, your Highness,” stammered Seth, and I could tell by the glances between them that Erin, Imogen, Seth and Dominic weren’t sure whether to believe us or not.
Across the table from us, Caspian took out his wad of parchments and his writing stick and I watched him make a note on one of his pages. He looked deep in thought again and I guessed he hadn’t heard a word of the conversation, and I doubted he was interested in where any of us had been dropped.
After the midday meal, Morgan went next door to play handball with the off duty marker guards. He’d introduced himself to the two guards who’d eaten the midday meal with us and they’d told him the other guards were playing and he’d be welcome to join them. I went up to the dorm room and unpacked my clothes, and I folded them neatly as I placed them into the wooden chest at the end of my bed. Evangeline, Erin and Imogen all dozed on their beds and I guessed they hadn’t had much sleep last night. I frowned to myself as I wondered, for the first time, if Morgan had slept at all or if he’d stayed awake all night trying to think of a plan for us while listening to the giants. While the other girls slept, I took the opportunity to slip Josh’s music cartridge beneath my mattress and, when I’d finished unpacking, I went down to the dining room and wrote a message to the King and Queen of Aldiris. I let both my mother and father know that I’d passed my first challenge, but I doubted they’d care. My mother would wonder why I’d sent a message to tell her something that was simply to be expected of me and my father would probably never read his. It would become lost beneath the battle plan parchments which, as far as I knew, always littered the surface of his desk.
I gave my message parchments to one of the marker guards in the courtyard and he bowed slightly before stashing my messages in his jacket pocket.
We were supposed to meet Zurina in the sitting room at set four, but when Morgan finished playing handball against the guards, there was time for us to go for another walk together around the neighbourhood. This time, the front door opened to Morgan’s voice command and I think he was a little disappointed that he didn’t get to play with the house control panel again.
“Dante and Shania are still in that cave,” I said, as we walked slowly along the street. Morgan looked at the row of silent houses behind their tall fences and then up at the neon mist that covered the sun.
“Yes, but, unlike these people, they get to come out in a week,” he said quietly, and I nodded slowly.
“We get to stay here for a whole month,” I said, and Morgan grinned.
“We should fail a few challenges when we get close to the end and then we can stay here longer,” he said, and I smiled.
A silent delivery vehicle sped past us and I watched it pull up outside a house and deposit a plastic wrapped box over the top of the fence. We looked at each other and shook our heads. These people needed a day at the beach.
We walked almost to the gate of the fenced estate and we passed only one other person. A few times I saw blinds move out of the corner of my eye and I wasn’t surprised. Some of these people had probably never heard laughter before. When Morgan pulled his pendant from beneath his shirt to check the time, we were disappointed that we had to turn back. On the way home, we tried to guess the nature of our next quest and Morgan made me laugh as he pretended to be Zurina.
“You will go to the Discovery Era, to the year of my birth, and you will try to find my sense of humour. It was lost there, many, many centuries ago and if you return with it you will fail, as will your partner and every quester from this day on who dares to visit my house,” he said, in an exact copy of Zurina’s commanding tone.
Not long after this, at exactly set four, we waited for Zurina in the sitting room and when she marched into the room, I couldn’t look at Morgan at all because I was trying hard not to laugh. Zurina glared at all of us and, when she folded her arms, my urge to laugh disappeared suddenly. She walked slowly around the room, as was her way, and when she was sure she had our full and undivided attention, she spoke to us in her usual, brisk manner.
“Tomorrow you will travel to the Ancient Era year of 1433 for a partner graded challenge. The marker will be in herd dragon territory and your quest will be to retrieve an egg from a dragon’s nest and return with it to this house. Bows will be allowed but, as I’m sure you are aware, you are forbidden to kill or injure a dragon. The bows are for self defence against the other ancient animals known for their aggression in that part of the world. These animals include common unicorns, tawny skinned tigers, giant ground lizards, and running birds. Your challenge will be to take care of the egg you have retrieved overnight, before returning the dragon’s off spring to the same nest the next day. I will mark your eggs tomorrow night and I will scour the area tomorrow afternoon to check the dragons’ off spring have been returned to their nests. We will know this has been the case when we see the off spring have not been rejected,” said Zurina, and I glanced at Morgan. I recalled he’d heard a rumour about this particular challenge.
“May your quest be short, and your rewards be ever long. You’ll all leave together at rise nine; straight after the morning meal and you will return with your egg by sundown. Good set,” finished Zurina briskly, before she strode from the room. I looked at Morgan as the others began to discuss the upcoming quest.
“Come with me, Liv,” he said quietly, as he indicated towards the hallway and I followed him out of the sitting room and back to the dining room.
&nbs
p; “Good; there’s still plenty here.” Morgan sounded pleased as he picked up some parchment from the stack in the basket, and a writing stick as well, from the glass jar.
“You need to send a message to Mirren,” he said to me quietly, and I frowned. The message service was to Aldiris, not to +2013. Morgan saw my frown and he grinned. “One of the guards here will take it to her tonight, and they’ll wait for a reply. Marker guards travel whenever they can find an excuse. They need to relieve their boredom and they love to catch up on the gossip at other markers,” he said, and he was still speaking softly. “I have some coins from a few different eras which might help persuade them as well,” he added cheerfully. I shook my head.
“What’s the message?” I asked him, as I took the parchment and the writing stick from his hands and sat down at the table. He sat down beside me and leant towards me as I addressed my tutor formally at the top of the page.
“Ask Mirren if she knows how to tell when a dragon egg is close to hatching and ask her what else she can tell about dragons and their eggs. I know dragons begin to nest during the summer and I know their eggs hatch during autumn, but we need to know more because this challenge won’t be easy. I’m almost positive it’s impossible to return an egg to a dragon’s nest, but I definitely don’t want to babysit a live dragon overnight,” Morgan said with feeling, and I agreed with him wholeheartedly on that.
“Do you think Mirren will know anything about dragon eggs?” I asked Morgan doubtfully. He nodded.
“Mirren obviously spent her spare time at the city zoo when her students were attending school in +2013, hence the relationship with the local zoo keeper. I’m guessing she has an interest in animals, and she was first in her community class of scholars, so I hope she’s a good chance of knowing some obscure facts about dragons,” he said, and he read over my shoulder as I wrote the message on the parchment. I handed it to him when I was done and he raised his eyebrows and grinned again as he left me to do his thing with the marker guards. I had no doubt he would get this message to Mirren tonight, and probably a reply too. I shook my head again as I replaced the writing stick and wandered back into the sitting room.
The others had taken the Ancient Era parchment scrolls from the cupboards and they were looking through them for dragon facts. They’d found a section about herd dragons but it only outlined basic facts about them, which most of us already knew. I listened to Dominic telling Imogen his father had told him a dragon can’t smell anything but the smoke in its nose. I’d heard that too, but, as far as I was concerned, it didn’t hurt to be downwind of a dragon. You could never be too careful when it came to dragons. Herd dragons were cumbersome and didn’t move fast, but their claws were sharp enough to cut through tree trunks and their teeth sawed through wood with no trouble at all. Normally, herd dragons were docile but, while nesting, a mother herd dragon would attack anything she decided was a threat to her nest.
Herd dragons ate a diet of cypress wood and their stomach acids were so hot, that the wood smouldered in their stomachs producing the tell-tale dragon smoke during digestion. While nesting, a female’s digestive system heated up even more than usual. This made her eat more wood, which in turn, gave her the energy to look after her babies and her eggs. Sometimes, a nesting female’s stomach acids ignited the cypress in her stomach and the wood exploded sending a belch of fire from her snout. An agitated female protecting her nest could belch a large explosion of fire from her snout, and this was usually her weapon of choice against anything, or anyone, who approached her eggs. Morgan was right. This challenge wouldn’t be easy.
I decided to go upstairs so I could bathe before the evening meal and, when I undressed, I could just see the shape of my underwear on my skin thanks to my morning of lying in the sun. I smiled as I turned on the convenient water taps and I wondered if we’d have another discovery style quest sometime in the next couple of weeks. If we did, Morgan and I could go back to the beach.
After dinner, Evangeline asked me to sit with her in the first aide room while Marko checked her wound. Her cut was jagged and it ran from the base of her thumb right across her palm. Already, the healing pastes had knitted the skin together into a pale, jagged red line and Marko smoothed on more of the paste that kept the skin supple and prevented scar tissue from forming. After that, he placed a piece of Early Era skin leaf across the palm of her hand. This leaf attached itself to the skin by tiny, sticky particles and its properties were naturally antibacterial. The leaf was large and thin, and could be cut to size. It was basically nature’s answer to a Synthetic Era plaster. The plant had never been found in any other Era other than the Early Era, and we cultivated it in special hot houses back home in Aldiris. Marko told Evangeline she would need to have the leaf replaced in the morning before her run, but that tomorrow night it could be removed after the evening meal. He said, she’d be able to use her hand normally then without fear of the severed skin separating again.
Morgan and I spent the evening with the other questers searching through the Ancient Era parchments for more information about dragons, but, while we found a few fascinating and frightening facts about wild phoenixes and their nests, we found no new information about dragons. When I lay in bed that night, I frowned to myself and I hoped Mirren had received our message before she left her house to meet her boyfriend from the city zoo……..
CHAPTER 13:
I woke to the sound of a bell ringing in my ears. It was a gentle bell, but it was still a bell, and I knew it was the house alarm which had been set to wake us all in time for the morning run. I groaned to myself. Last night, after dinner, Zurina had presented us each with some running shoes and a small stack of sports clothing appropriate to this time segment. When I’d looked at my running shoes, Morgan had laughed out loud at the look on my face and Zurina had frowned at him as she’d told us she’d been sent our sizes from our previous tutors. She’d also told us that the private forest which was behind our house was popular with many running clubs and outdoor activity enthusiasts, and, as such, it was necessary that we look as if we belonged to this time segment while running along the tracks. Apparently, Zurina was going to be joining us for the run each morning too and I’d grimaced at this news. She had the look of someone who wasn’t going to set an easy pace.
I changed quickly into running pants and a long sleeve shirt before tying the synthetic laces on my black and red, synthetic running shoes. I didn’t completely hate these shoes, but I still hated running.
I could tell, as soon as I saw him waiting for me in the hallway, that Morgan had received a reply from Mirren about the dragons, but he didn’t tell me what she’d said until we were running behind the other questers along the uneven, forest track. Zurina ran with us and, as I’d feared, she set a fast pace as she led the way through the evergreen cypress forest that spread out into the hills behind our house. The dirt track was well used and wide, but we didn’t pass any other runners as our breath made small puffs of fog in the cold, misty morning air. After a few minutes of running, Morgan deliberately slowed our pace until we fell a little behind Evangeline who ran directly in front of us.
“Mirren knew a lot about dragons,” he said, and he grinned when I glanced at him. “She said a dragon lays her eggs over a few weeks during summer so they won’t all hatch together. Eggs that are ready to hatch will have turned from white to a speckled green and these will hatch only once the air temperature is at seven points of measure above freezing for two hours straight. This is why they usually hatch in the fall. Once an egg begins to hatch, it can’t be slowed down or stopped and……I was right; it is impossible to return an unhatched egg to a nest,” he said, as we jogged along the track. The forest was thick both sides of us and I frowned and glanced at Morgan. If we can’t return an egg, how were we supposed to pass this challenge? Morgan knew what I was thinking and he nodded.
“Mirren said once a dragon loses an egg, she’ll not leave the nest again for at least forty eight clock turns. She won’t even sle
ep, and she’ll be so mad she’ll burn anything that even looks in her direction for at least two days. We have no fire shields and I can’t think of anything to use as one, so I know of only one possible way to pass this challenge,” said Morgan, and I looked at him again.
“We’ll have to take an egg that’s ready to hatch,” I guessed, as our track curved through the trees and I jumped over a tree root.
“Unfortunately, yes, we’ll have to hatch our egg. The temperature in the Quest house is set to a constant nineteen points of measure above freezing; I checked it this morning, but, if I override the voice activation and reprogram the house panel just before we go to bed, I can set the house temperature to fall to seven above freezing two hours before we have to wake,” said Morgan, and he grinned at me. “That way, our dragon will hatch first thing in the morning. It’ll be easy to return it to the nest then and, unfortunately, we’ll have to miss our morning run to look after it,” he finished smugly, and I smiled too.
“I love this plan,” I said with feeling, and he laughed. My lungs were starting to burn already and anything, even looking after a baby dragon, was better than running. We increased our pace in order to catch up with the rest of our class and Evangeline glanced behind her and frowned at us suspiciously……..
TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy) Page 21