by T. A. White
“You have a talent for problems that require a unique solution,” he said. “The empire hopes to make better use of such talents in the future.”
Before Tate could respond, Dewdrop and the cubs barreled into the room. They slid to a stop at the sight of the strange man.
“Are these the ones who are requesting that their species be recognized as sentient?” he asked, his gaze curious as it slid over the cubs. “Fascinating. This world never fails to surprise me.”
Willa bared her teeth and sidled sideways, putting Tate between her and the strange man.
Thad’s eyes raised to Tate’s. They held a slight smile in them.
“Who are you?” Tate asked.
“This is a new experience. It is not often that I have to introduce myself,” he said. “My name is Thaddeus Aureus.”
Dewdrop jerked at her side and drew in a sharp gasp.
Thad’s eyes slid to Dewdrop. They had a sly look in them. “As I’ve said, your actions in this mediation have impressed me. I think a role in my dragon corps will suit you just fine.”
Tate’s mouth opened on an angry retort. Dewdrop grabbed her arm and shook his head in warning. She closed her mouth on the words she was about to say. Dewdrop had never led her wrong before.
“You’ve been on probation until my men could verify your claim to the dragon. That is over now. I’ve decided that however you’ve come to be Dragon-Ridden you are not a current threat to my empire.” Thad’s eyes hardened, giving a glimpse of the ruthless man lurking inside. “I recommend you keep it that way.” His eyes lightened. “You will be given the full rights and responsibilities of your station.”
Tate watched him carefully, not sure how to respond to that proclamation. She still had no idea who this man was, though given his dress and the authority with which he spoke, she had a feeling he was fairly important.
Thaddeus looked around. “I would recommend you start your new duties by finding lodgings more suitable to your station. These are rather small and will not be practical in the long term.”
He didn’t give her time to respond before sweeping out of the room with a last probing look at Tate, Dewdrop and the cubs.
Dewdrop gestured sharply for silence when she would have spoken. He darted over to the window and looked out at the carriage waiting below. Tate drifted over in time to see a footman open the carriage door for Thaddeus and close it behind him. The footman climbed on the back of the carriage as it started down the road.
“He’s gone.” A whoosh of breath left Dewdrop and he bent in place.
“How did he even get in here?” Tate asked. “I know that door was locked when I left.”
“Do you know who that was?” Dewdrop asked, his voice high and cracking on the last word.
“Someone important.”
His laugh was slightly hysterical. “You’d be right. The most important person on this continent. Perhaps the world.”
“Who is he?”
“You just hosted the emperor in your personal quarters,” Dewdrop said, resting his head against the wall.
Tate’s jaw dropped. Her eyes went to the window, then back to Dewdrop before returning to the window.
“No.”
“Yes.”
Tate shook her head. That wasn’t possible. The emperor couldn’t be the homeless man she’d given money to several times this month. He couldn’t be the man who had greeted her so casually just a few minutes ago.
“Where were his guards?” Tate asked, her voice reaching a high pitch.
“I don’t know.”
“What were they thinking letting someone like that wander around the Lower surprising normal folk?”
“No idea.”
“What does this mean?” Tate asked Dewdrop. She was a little dismayed.
“For starters, you’re not on probation anymore. They recognize you fully as Dragon-Ridden.”
Tate let that settle and tried not to think about having someone who held so much power over her life in close proximity where she could have caused grave insult.
A thought occurred to her. “Do you think this means I won’t have to go to any more of Daiske’s lectures?”
Dewdrop stared at her for a moment. Laughter erupted from him. “Only you could take that as your silver lining in all this.”
Tate shrugged. She counted never having to listen to Daiske lecture her about inconsequential things as a life goal.
One of the cubs stood on its back legs and patted her thigh. Tate stared down at Pax as he gave her a playful look.
“Where’s Night?” she asked.
“He wanted to see if he could catch Brown Eyes’ trail before it went cold. Why?”
“Ah.”
Dewdrop followed her gaze to the cubs who had twin looks of craftiness on their faces.
“Your turn,” Tate said. She would have made a run for it, but her shoulder wasn’t having it.
Dewdrop stood and tried to slink to the door. “They should stay with you. Keep watch on your injury. Make sure you don’t need anything.”
“Your turn, Dewdrop. I’m injured.”
He took several more steps. Tate tried to stop him and ended up wincing and cradling her shoulder at the sharp movement.
“Sorry, Tate. I’ll be back to check on you when they’re asleep.” Dewdrop made a break for it. He was out the door.
Tate cursed. She frowned down at the two innocent faces beaming up at her.
“There are going to be rules this time.”
Their whiskers turned up in their feline version of a smile.
Chapter Twenty Three
Tate walked down another tunnel of endless black. She hoped she was going the right way. Visiting the tunnels under Aurelia hadn’t been something she wanted to do, but a promise was a promise.
She liked to think she was the sort of person who kept promises before the long sleep. In the absence of her memories, she’d decided to act the way she felt now and quit worrying about who she was before.
This version of Tate kept promises. Even when it would be easier not to.
She’d left Dewdrop and Night behind. It hadn’t been easy. Dewdrop had stuck to her even tighter than usual for fear that something might happen. Luckily, Jost had decided that her adventure in the tunnels and the subsequent wounds gave her ample reason not to be present when he delivered his judgment for the mediation.
She’d told Dewdrop that he needed to watch the reactions of the Silva, Academics, and Kairi to Jost’s verdict and report back to her. It had given her the privacy she needed to slip away. She didn’t want an audience for this next task.
Tate had left a message on her desk to explain where she’d gone in case they got back before she returned. It should buy her a little bit of time, though she wasn’t looking forward to the lecture she would receive when she returned.
The tunnels flashed and then Tate was standing in the white room where she’d met Ai for the first time.
A girl, looking to be no more than fifteen, stood in front of Tate. She had a sweet looking face framed by long brown hair hanging in a loose, straight sheet down her back. The corners of her ice blue eyes crinkled as she gave Tate a welcoming smile.
“You’ve been practicing,” Tate said.
Her smile looked almost human. It was an improvement over the first time Tate had met her when the expression on Ai’s face had seemed vaguely sinister.
“Yes. Thank you for noticing.”
Tate couldn’t say that Ai didn’t still make her uncomfortable or inspire the strong urge to get as far away from here as possible. The other girl didn’t do it intentionally but there was something off about her.
Ai’s face settled back into that cold blankness. The kind that looked more at home on a statue.
“You did not come here to see what progress I’ve made in mastering human facial expressions,” Ai said. Despite the lack of emotion, she managed to look faintly quizzical.
“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.” Tate had sa
id that she’d visit Ai, but this was the first time she’d been back here. “I needed to talk to you.”
Ai drifted forward, her feet not moving. “I will help if I can.”
“I met another. Like you, I think.”
Tate couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw Ai frown.
“Where?”
“Down the coast a couple of hours, to the south. There’s a set of tunnels that they’ve discovered in a swamp.”
“Was there anything outside to mark these tunnels?”
Tate thought back. “An obelisk I think. There were at least three entrances but only one was marked.”
“And you say there was one like me?” Ai turned her back and drifted to the white table in the middle of the room. She set a hand on the table. Symbols scrolled past. She lifted her hand away. Images appeared above her. “Is one of them the being you saw?”
Tate stepped forward looking at the images. There were people from the waist up, floating in the air above them. There were at least five of them.
“Are all of these people like you?” Tate asked.
“Perhaps.”
It was not an answer, but Tate didn’t press, looking back at the beings floating in midair. They weren’t flat in the way of paintings, more three dimensional like a statue. The boy and man Tate had met in the underground chamber was not among them.
“No, I don’t see him.”
Ai frowned. “Strange.”
“He wanted me to give you a message. He said, ‘The sleepers awaken. Owl hunts again.’”
Ai looked away, her form flickering.
“That’s not the only thing that happened,” Tate said, stepping closer to Ai. “Someone I met said that I’d been sleeping for thousands of years. He said that I was one of the Saviors. That the Creators had a hand in Ilith’s dragon bonding with me. Is this true?”
Tate wasn’t sure what she expected from Ai. The girl had known her name. She seemed to have knowledge of Tate from before her memories went missing.
“Parts of it are true, but there are many pieces of the story that I simply cannot tell you at this time.”
Tate exhaled, her breath shaky. She cleared her throat. She needed to concentrate on the rest. Her past could wait.
“What did the boy mean?”
Ai looked back at her, resolve in her face. “It means that it’s not a coincidence that you woke up in this time and place. Our enemies are waking.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. This world is about to change, and you might be the only one to stand between it and enslavement.”
Discover More by T.A. White
Chronicles of the Dragon-Ridden
Dragon-Ridden – Book One
The Broken Lands Series
Pathfinder’s Way – Book One
The Aileen Travers Series
Shadow’s Messenger – Book One
Midnight’s Emissary – Book Two
Connect with Me
Twitter: @tawhiteauthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tawhiteauthor/
Website: tawhiteauthor.com
Blog: http://dragon-ridden.blogspot.com/
About the Author
Writing is my first love. Even before I could read or put coherent sentences down on paper, I would beg the older kids to team up with me for the purpose of crafting ghost stories to share with our friends. This first writing partnership came to a tragic end when my coauthor decided to quit a day later, and I threw my cookies at her head. Today, I stick with solo writing, telling the stories that would otherwise keep me up at night.
Most days (and nights) are spent feeding my tea addiction while defending the computer keyboard from my feline companion, Loki
Pathfinder’s Way Excerpt
The Trateri are about to learn a vital lesson of the Broken Lands. Deep in the remote expanse where anything can happen, it pays to be on a pathfinder’s good side.
Nobody ventures beyond their village walls. Nobody sane that is. Monstrous creatures and deadly mysteries wait out there. Lucky for the people she serves, Shea’s not exactly sane. As a pathfinder, it’s her job to face what others fear and protect her charges from the dangers that await in the Broken Lands. It’s not an easy job, but she’s the best at what she does.
When the people she serves betray her, Shea must rely on her wits and skill to survive the Trateri, a barbarian horde sweeping in to conquer the Lowlands, and their warlord, a man as dangerous as he is compelling. Her actions and the decisions she makes might mean the difference between life or death. Danger looms on the horizon and a partnership with the Warlord may be the only thing preventing the destruction of everything she holds dear.
Chapter One
“For God’s sake, woman, the village will still be there if we take an hour’s break.”
Shea rolled her eyes at the soaring mountains before her. This was the third rest stop the man had called for since setting out this morning.
“We must be half way there by now,” he continued.
Maybe if they hadn’t stopped several times already or if they had moved with a purpose, but as it stood the group had probably traveled less than two miles. Half of that nearly vertical. At this pace, it would take an extra half day to get back to Birdon Leaf.
And who would they blame for the delayed arrival?
Shea. Even though it wasn’t her needing to stop on every other hill when they felt a muscle cramp or experienced shortness of breath. Since she was the pathfinder, it was obviously her fault.
She could hear it now.
The pathfinder sets the pace. The pathfinder chooses when to take breaks. Yada. Yada. Yada.
She hated running missions with villagers. They thought that since they’d gone on day trips outside their village barriers as children, they knew a thing or two about trail signs and the Highlands in general.
It was always, ‘We should take this route. I think this route is faster. Why is it taking so long? These mountain passes are sooo steep.’
Never mind it was her that had walked these damn routes since the time she could toddle after the adults or that the paths they suggested would take them right through a beast’s nest.
Nope. She was just a pathfinder. A female pathfinder. A female pathfinder who hadn’t grown up in the same village as them. Obviously, she knew nothing of her craft.
The man yammered on about how they couldn’t take another step. Any reasonable person could see how worn out they were. She wasn’t the one carrying the gear or the trade goods.
Whine. Whine. Whine.
That’s all she heard. Over the last several months, she’d perfected the art of tuning them out without missing pertinent information.
It was all in the pitch. Their voices tended to approach a higher frequency when they regressed to bitching about what couldn’t be changed. As if she could make the switchbacks approaching the Garylow Mountain pass any less steep or treacherous.
“We’ll take a rest once we reach the pass,” she said for what seemed like the hundredth time.
They had begged for another break since about five minutes after the last one.
She had a deadline to meet. Sleep to catch. Most importantly, she didn’t think she could last another half day with this lot.
“We’re nowhere near that pass,” the man raged.
The rest break obviously meant a lot to him.
“It’s just over that ridge,” Shea pointed above her.
Well, over that ridge and then another slight incline or two. It was just a small lie, really. If the man knew the truth, he’d probably sit down and refuse to take another step.
“That’s nearly a half mile away.” The man’s face flushed red.
Really if he had enough energy to be angry, he had enough energy to walk.
“Quarter mile at most.”
“We’re tired. We’ve been walking for days. First to the trading outpost and then back. What does an hour’s difference make?”
“You’re right, an hour’s rest won’t make much difference.” His face lit up. “However, you’ve already wasted two hours today on the last two breaks. You also wasted several hours yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. We should have been back already.”
She held up her hand when he opened his mouth.
“Now, we are getting up that pass. We need to be over it and down the mountain by nightfall. Otherwise you’re going to have to fend off nightfliers. Do you want to fend off nightfliers when you could be sleeping? Or would you rather suck it up and get over that damn ridge?”
The man paled at the mention of nightfliers, a beast about three times the size of a bat that had a disturbing tendency of picking up its food and dropping it from a high altitude. It made it easier to get to the good parts on the inside.
“We’ll wait to take the break.” He turned and headed down to the last switchback where the rest of their party waited.
“Oh, and Kent.” Shea’s voice rose just loud enough for him to hear. “Please let them know that if anybody refuses to walk, I’ll leave them here to fend for themselves. Nightfliers aren’t the only things that roam this pass come nightfall.”
He gave her a look full of loathing before heading down to his friends. Shea kept her snicker to herself. Good things never happened when they thought she was laughing at them.
Idiot. As if pathfinders would abandon their charges. If that was the case, she would have left this lot behind days ago. There were oaths preventing that kind of behavior.
What she wouldn’t give to enjoy a little quiet time relaxing on the roof of her small home right about now.
They didn’t make it back to the village until early the next morning. Shea brought up the rear as their group straggled past the wooden wall encircling the small village of Birdon Leaf.