The Captive

by Paul Lauritsen

  “Aralye,” Halena said, twisting around to look back at the other girl. “Did you say the wound-packing poultice was ready?”

  “Smells ready. What do you think, Khollo?”

  The young Keeper leaned over the bowl, studying the mixture within. “Looks right, based on what I read.”

  “Then we’ll call it done,” Aralye decided, racing over to where Halena knelt at Kanin’s side. “Where do you want it?”

  “Everywhere those thugs put a hole in Kanin,” Halena replied. “Just push some of that into every exposed gash he has and rub it around, get it worked into his flesh.”

  Aralye scooped up a dollop of the medicine with a finger, grimacing, then poked the poultice into one of Kanin’s arrow wounds, smearing it all around the inside. “And I thought the smell was bad,” she muttered. “This is disgusting.”

  “Well, you might be saving Kanin’s life.”

  “It’s worth it,” Aralye decided. “Don’t worry, Halena, I can do this. You just focus on getting those arrows out.”

  Khollo half listened to their conversation, focusing on the task at hand instead, beating his own poultice into a thick pulp. It felt good to mash something repeatedly, something that couldn’t fight back, something he could completely dominate and destroy. Something that wouldn’t create more problems than it would solve. As he worked, Khollo reviewed his conversation with Relam and the ensuing battle, scowling at the bowl of medicine and pounding away savagely.

  Some friend Relam had turned out to be. Turning on him and trying to destroy Kanin the first time something went wrong. Admittedly, the loss of Ishkabur and Lord Horam was a blow, as well as the destruction – redestruction? – of the Renlor Basin. But to launch a crusade against all dragons as a result?

  “Khollo, is that membrane healer ready?” Sven called. “I’ve spread Kanin’s wing and secured it so we can work.”

  The young Keeper pushed thoughts of Relam’s treachery out of his mind for the moment and joined Sven by Kanin’s outstretched wing, extending the bowl. “Here, take some and smear it over the punctures. Especially where the holes are.”

  “Won’t it just drip through?”

  “Too thick for that,” Khollo replied, shaking his head. “The idea is for this to temporarily plug the holes in the membrane and also provide assistance for the healing process. As new membrane grows, the poultice is ingested and consumed, releasing more nutrients and healing agents to speed the healing process.”

  “Huh,” Sven mused, “I didn’t understand a word you said, but it sounded good.”

  “That will do,” Khollo grunted, scooping up a glob of medicine for himself and rubbing it over one of the many punctures in Kanin’s wings. “Get to work, Sven. There are a lot of holes to plug here.”

  “I’m working,” Sven promised, daintily dabbing the poultice on Kanin’s wings, his face twisted by an expression of extreme disgust. “This is a really foul potion you’ve got here, you know that? It looks like exotic dung and smells ten times worse.”

  “Poultice, not potion,” Khollo corrected. “And this is what it’s supposed to look and smell like. Get over it and work faster. Kanin’s already lost a ton of blood.”

  Sven grimaced but did as Khollo asked, working faster and more confidently every minute. Khollo meanwhile paid the northerner little mind, moving from puncture to puncture as fast as possible and spreading the healing poultice. He tried to reach out to Kanin a half-dozen times while he worked, but the emerald dragon remained unresponsive.

  He and Sven finished the first wing, and were in the process of spreading Kanin’s other wing when Halena stood and stretched with a heavy sigh. “That’s the last of the arrows removed,” she reported. “Unless he’s lying on top of some wounds we can’t get to.”

  “Those will just have to wait,” Khollo told her. “We need to keep his wings spread out like this for at least an hour for this poultice to set.”

  “Well, all of the wounds here are packed now,” Aralye said, pushing a little more of the medicine into the hole L’tel and Halena had just been working on. “Just barely enough too.”

  “If there’s any left at all, you should go back to the other spots and smear it around on the surface some too,” Halena suggested. “No sense in wasting it.”

  “It is time to wash this blood from my hands,” L’tel muttered. “I know we may have saved a life – ”

  “But it’s a messy process,” Halena agreed, extending her arms in front of her and grimacing. They were dyed with blood and gore from elbow to fingertip, the result of digging in Kanin’s flesh for arrowheads that needed to be removed. “Fortunately, we have a nice big sea right here we can clean up in.”

  While L’tel and Halena washed their arms off, Khollo and Sven worked in silence on the second wing, until every nick, scratch, and hole had been liberally daubed with the medicine. This done, the two went to the sea as well, where Khollo rinsed out the bowl and washed his hands of the foul-smelling substance. Aralye joined them a moment later, her own bowl scraped completely clean.

  “Has he said anything?” she asked Khollo, nodding back towards Kanin’s still form.

  “No,” Khollo replied quietly. “He seems pretty out of it.”

  “He’s still alive right?” Sven asked.

  “Yes,” Khollo grunted.

  “Is he in danger?”

  “Hard to know without being able to contact him.”

  “Maybe we’re handling this wrong,” Aralye mused, looking to where the other dragons stood guard. She cocked her head at Ayrmi, and Khollo saw the purple dragon twitch, tail flicking back at forth. A moment later, Ayrmi’s head swung towards Kanin, then to Aralye, opalescent eyes whirling slowly.

  “Ayrmi says Kanin is resting,” Aralye reported carefully. “He is weak, very weak, but he seems to be stable.”

  “How does Ayrmi know?” Sven asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Because, being a dragon, she understands dragon physiology better than us.”

  “Is that a word?”

  “Yes. You’ve never heard it before?” Aralye asked, surprised.

  “No.”

  “You’ve never studied how animals or humans work on the inside, to understand the body and how it operates?”

  “No. I just understand where to whack people with my axe for maximum effect,” Sven explained.

  “A little bit of a narrow focus, but useful,” Khollo muttered. “There’s a few people I would like to whack with an axe right now. Repeatedly.”

  “No one here though, right?” Sven asked with mock concern.

  Khollo offered a faint smile. “No, no one here. I’m grateful to all of you for your work with Kanin. If Ayrmi’s right and he is stable for now – ”

  “She’s very confident in that,” Aralye interrupted, drying her hands.

  Kanin is fine, Ayrmi’s voice echoed a moment later. Well, not fine, but he will be fine. He is a strong and resilient dragon. He just needs rest for a little while, to recover his strength.

  “We may not have a little while,” Khollo muttered. “There could be soldiers on their way, even now.”

  They sat in awkward silence at the edge of the lake, while behind them Khollo could hear Halena and L’tel cleaning up the small camp and counting the arrows they had removed.

  “Khollo, I understand you might not want to talk about it,” Aralye said hesitantly, “But, what happened in Etares?”

  “Yeah,” Sven agreed. “I thought we had a pact with the king or something?”

  Khollo nodded wearily. “We did.” He rose and turned back towards the camp. “Let’s gather around the fire for a little while. We have a lot to discuss.”

  Chapter 39:

  The Keepers Convene

  “First of all,” Khollo said when the others had all made themselves comfortable around the fire. “We’re in enemy territory right now. The Sthan kingdom has declared war on all of dragon kind.” He took a deep breath, let it out in a massive, defeated sigh. “It seem
s a rogue dragon is attacking settlements in the South, and it razed Ishkabur recently. There’s nothing left, or so I’m told.”

  “That’s what we heard when we got to Narne,” Aralye added. “They would not even let us land in the city, so we flew off and sent Halena back in alone to scout the situation.”

  “Rumors about the attack were everywhere,” Halena added, glancing at Khollo. “I only had to spend a few minutes in the city to realize you and Kanin were in terrible danger. There was no talk of vertaga, only of a rogue dragon, so we knew there was a chance you had been set up by the king.”

  “So we came to rescue you, as fast as we could,” Aralye finished. “Even though our dragons were exhausted from their journey. And it looks like we were just in time.”

  “Yes,” Khollo agreed. “It’s a lucky thing Kanin and I were delayed so many times on the way north. Otherwise, you never would have caught up to us in time to change the course of the battle. Even if,” he added, frowning, “You disobeyed a direct order – in multiple ways, I might add – and put your lives and those of your dragons at risk.”

  “It was the right thing to do,” Aralye said stubbornly. “If we hadn’t disobeyed you, you’d both be dead.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Khollo assured her. “I’m just making sure you are fully aware of what the consequences of your actions might have been, had events worked out differently.”

  “We knew the risks,” L’tel grunted. “And so did the dragons. They wanted to help.”

  “Whose idea was it?” Khollo asked curiously. “Who decided to come to Etares?”

  The others stiffened slightly, then Halena, Sven, and L’tel all glanced furtively at Aralye. The huntress shrugged uncertainly.

  “I . . . I guess I did,” she said finally. “But we all agreed it was the right thing to do.”

  “You did well,” Khollo promised. “And I’m not mad. I just wanted to know who I should thank for taking the initiative.”

  “Definitely Aralye,” Halena replied. “She came up with the idea to send me into Narne, then suggested we fly after you. And when we got to Etares and saw the battle – ”

  “She made a plan on the fly to save everyone,” Sven finished. “While sparing as many of the Sthan as we could.”

  Aralye flushed at the praise of her companions. “Ayrmi helped,” she pointed out. “I wouldn’t have been able to locate Khollo without her, or get to him in that massive palace.”

  “And without Thela, Amang, and Uthano, we never would have gotten Kanin out of Etares,” Khollo added. “That’s a whole lot of dragon to move.” He looked around at the circle of young faces staring back at him, for the first time feeling something good may have come out of this whole disaster. “You all contributed, and so did each of your dragons. You worked as a team.”

  “It felt . . . natural,” Sven said, shrugging.

  “It felt right,” L’tel added. “We just went with it, fell into our roles, where we each were strongest.”

  “And you did well,” Khollo told them. “Very well. Now, you asked about what happened with Relam. As much as I would like to forget that conversation and the battle, you need to know everything so we can plan our next steps.”

  He quickly outlined his discussion with the regents and the young king, how they had focused their ire on dragon kind, and deliberately lured him and Kanin into an ambush and separated them. He went on to describe their repeated accusations against him and the Keepers, claiming they had all gone rogue and would burn the kingdom. Khollo finished by recounting the council’s final conclusions, that the dragons were to blame and they could not be controlled. Hence, their attempt to exterminate all dragons, starting with Kanin.

  “Stupid thing to attempt, really,” Sven muttered. “Ambushing a winged war machine of a dragon like Kanin.”

  “It almost worked,” Khollo muttered. “The question is, what now? The Sthan are hunting dragons, and there’s a silver dragon loose in the South that we’ve never heard of until now.”

  “It’s obvious,” Aralye replied immediately. “We have to hunt this beast down, find it, find out why it’s gone rogue.”

  “And we have to put as much distance as possible between us and the king,” Halena added.

  “What, run from a fight?” Sven demanded.

  “We don’t want to fight them,” Khollo reminded him. “They may have turned against us, but as long as Kanin lives I am willing to forgive that mistake. I understand why they did it. They’re scared, they don’t know what’s going on, and the Order that was supposed to be their greatest defender has done nothing to save them. And, worse, might have been part of the treachery.”

  “I can see where they are coming from,” L’tel agreed. “But they should have listened to reason a little better than they did.”

  “Reason and fear do not exist in the same place together,” Halena murmured. “Just like peace and war.”

  “Well said,” Khollo agreed. “As far as putting distance between ourselves and Etares, well, there’s a problem with that.”

  “Kanin’s not going anywhere,” L’tel agreed. “So, what can we do to protect him while he heals?”

  “A grounded dragon is a vulnerable dragon,” Aralye murmured. “And there are only the five of us and four young dragons to defend him. We would have to stay on the ground to protect him from the Sthan foot soldiers.”

  “And dragons are least effective on the ground in battle,” Khollo grunted. “Besides, like you said, it would be the four of them and five of us against an army. There’s only one way that ends.”

  “That’s depressing and pessimistic,” Sven muttered. “I like a challenge though.”

  “If Relam finds us, you might get just that,” Khollo warned. He sighed. “The only chance we have is if they don’t find us. This means keeping a low profile. It also means getting as many dragons out of the area as possible.”

  “To draw less attention,” Halena agreed. “Smart.”

  “Logical,” L’tel countered. “Although, Khollo is certainly intelligent. And crafty.”

  “Thanks,” Khollo said wryly. “Anyway, we need to get you all out of the area, and we need to find out what’s going on in the South. We can do both of those at the same time, but it will be dangerous. Maybe too dangerous to justify attempting it.”

  “We just flew into our first ever battle against an army and carried out a wounded dragon,” Sven observed. “It doesn’t get much more dangerous than that.”

  “It wasn’t really a battle though,” Aralye pointed out. “We didn’t have to do any fighting. In fact, our dragons did most of the work for us.”

  “They tend to do that,” Khollo agreed. “But, anyway, this mission won’t be a battle either. Or at least it shouldn’t be.”

  “Great,” Sven said. “What is it?”

  Khollo leaned forward. “We need to know what’s going on in the South. I have my suspicions, but we need to investigate before going any further.”

  “Scout the area?” Aralye guessed. “We can do that.”

  “It’s harder than it sounds, because I don’t want you to engage this silver dragon, or be seen by it,” Khollo explained. “Whoever is controlling it probably doesn’t know about you yet. I’d like to keep it that way, if at all possible.”

  “That won’t be easy,” L’tel observed. “A flying dragon is one of the most blindingly obvious things in the world.”

  “Not easy,” Khollo agreed, “But possible. If you fly only at night, keep at a sufficient altitude, and trust your dragons to do the searching for you, we may get by.”

  “They can see that well in the dark?” Sven asked.

  “Kanin can.”

  “Huh,” the northerner muttered. “That’s useful.”

  “Especially now,” Aralye agreed. “We can do it Khollo, don’t worry about us.”

  Khollo nodded. “It can be done. But I want you to stay here with us, Aralye.”

  “What?” she demanded. “I’m the best hunte
r and tracker we have!”

  “And you wouldn’t be able to hunt or track from way up in the sky while it’s dark,” Khollo countered. “But if something were to happen and I needed to get a message somewhere fast or get healing supplies for Kanin, having you and Ayrmi here would be important. Otherwise, Kanin and I are stranded without help.”

  “You’re stranded anyways.”

  “Yes, but with you here, we can get help if we need it.”

  Aralye wavered uncertainly. “Two dragons will be more obvious than one wounded one.”

  “And the one wounded one will still be safer this way,” Khollo assured her. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

  “I could stay,” Halena suggested. “I’m the healer after all, and Amang is still fast, even if he isn’t as fast as Ayrmi.”

  Khollo shook his head. “Kanin’s stable, and I know how to make more poultice if needed. Besides, Ayrmi was able to communicate with Kanin earlier. And if three of you are flying into the unknown, I’d like the healer to be one of the three, just in case.”

  “Fair enough,” Halena replied, shrugging. “Just making sure we had thought of every option.”

  “That’s good,” Khollo said approvingly. “So, Aralye will stay. Halena, Sven, and L’tel will go. I want you three to check in every five days, so that I’m kept up to date and I know when to start worrying if you don’t show. Are we agreed?”

  The others nodded, Aralye reluctantly. “Then you leave tomorrow,” Khollo said, glancing at the setting sun in the west. “Rest tonight. The dragons will wake us if anything comes near.”

  “No sentries?” L’tel queried.

  “We don’t need them with the dragons.”

  “They’re exhausted,” Sven warned. “They might not catch things they normally would.”

  “I’m not taking any chances,” L’tel announced. “I’ll stand guard.”

  “And I’ll switch off with you whenever you need,” Sven agreed. “The dragons are going to be doing all the work the next few days, and you and I were the least helpful earlier.”

  “You contributed,” Khollo assured him.

  “Yeah, but not as much as the healer or the huntress who knows every plant in the world,” Sven replied, grinning. “Let us do this, Khollo. I’m a fighter, so I’m accustomed to sentry duty.”