by Gow, Kailin
“We can look after you and your baby,” Gem promised. “We can see to it that no one steals your egg again. We’ll find a way to feed you too, I promise. This ravaging the countryside has to stop, though.”
Gem felt silly, saying all that. The dragon didn’t understand her. How could it possibly understand?
With great slowness, the dragon’s head before her nodded up and down. Gem let out a laugh, then leapt nimbly over the head to land on the creature’s back, still clutching the egg.
“Come on, Rio. I think we’ve got ourselves a dragon.”
Chapter 14
The dragon swooped and soared, toying with the wind around it as though trying to show off for them. For his part, Rio wasn’t so much impressed as thinking about what would happen if he and Gem fell off from so far up. That was replaced by the thought that Gem wouldn’t let it happen, because she seemed so totally in control of the creature…
Gem was so busy enjoying the feeling of flight that she found it hard to keep any track of time. Had they been there minutes, hours? She had wrapped the egg in Rio’s cloak so it wouldn’t fall, and it nestled snugly against her. Eventually, they would have to come back to earth, but not yet…
Sparks ran with the others, heading for the village at the base of the castle. They had lost track of the dragon, but even so far out they could make out smoke…
Kat was starting to flag when she saw the smoke. She quickened her step. If this was real, then she wasn’t going to just leave people to be eaten by some dragon…
Goolrick saw the smoke too, but he knew what dragon smoke looked like, and this wasn’t it. There was only one other explanation. ‘Spurious!’ he yelled, stepping up the pace. ‘Spurious are attacking the village!”
Eventually, Gem realized that they would need to head for the village, if only to let Goolrick and the others know what they had managed to do.
“Take us to the village,” she called out, struggling to be heard above the rush of air as the dragon flew. Apparently, dragons had sharp hearing, or maybe it was having three sets of ears to hear with, because the creature wheeled and flew towards the distant shape of the castle. It ate up the miles with powerful strokes of its leathery wings, and Gem idly wondered if the world might be better if everyone could travel by dragon. No, she decided, as one of the dragon’s heads snapped out to eat half of a passing flock of pigeons, probably not.
Even with occasional digressions though the flight didn’t take long. The castle changed from a dot on the horizon to the huge, forbidding structure it actually was. Beneath it, Anachronia’s central village smoldered. From their perch high above, Gem could just about make out two antlike mobs closing on one another.
“It looks like a war,” Rio said from his spot behind her on the dragon’s back. Gem nodded.
“Spurious must have attacked. We have to stop this, Rio.”
“How?”
Gem looked down at the people on the ground, then turned back to the dragon. One of the heads was turned back to her, clearly waiting for instructions.
“Can you take us lower?” Gem asked.
There was no answering nod from the dragon, but the world rushed up towards them with a speed that made Gem wish she had specified how quickly the dragon should take them lower. It felt like being on a roller coaster, only without quite so many things to hold them in place.
As uncomfortable as the feeling was, it still had to be better than how things would seem on the ground as the dragon circled so much closer. Gem could imagine how it would feel, looking up, knowing that the dragon was coming. Sure enough, looking down, she could see that some of the people below were already running.
Not all of them were, though. The figures below were a motley bunch, and now that Gem was closer she could see the ogres among them, and the wolves. She could see the bodies where people had fallen in the fighting, too. Nobody was fighting now though, and a couple of people had even stopped on the verge of delivering huge blows, looking very much like the music had just paused in a particularly violent game of musical statues.
Everybody was looking up. The men of Perfidious were looking up. The men whom Gem assumed were from Spurious were looking up. The ogres were looking up, squinting short-sightedly in the sun. Even the wolves were looking up, and howling at the sight of the great lizard above them.
Gem tried to pick out the figures of the others in the suddenly paused melee. Sparks and Goolrick were easy to spot, at the heart of the fighting. Kat was off at one edge, and appeared to be making the most of the distraction to inch out of reach of an ogre’s axe while the creature wasn’t looking. Jack seemed to have taken his bow to a safe perch on one of the buildings’ roofs, from where he could shoot down at the soldiers.
Gem picked out another figure, dressed in what seemed to be layer after layer of gray clothes. Bizarrely, that wasn’t what made him stand out. What did that was the fact that he was staring up through binoculars; ones that Gem recognized from Jack’s backpack. Even as Gem watched, he took the binoculars from his eyes and yelled, loud enough that, in the silence where the sounds of battle had been, even Gem could hear him.
“The dragon has riders! A girl with hair of gold and a dark haired boy! It is a sign! A sign, I tell you! The rulers! The rulers have come back!”
Even from so far above, Gem could hear the excitement in his voice. It was echoed in a general murmur of “a sign” from the Spurious men, occasionally echoed by “what’s a sign?” from one of the ogres. A little shuffling ripple seemed to run through the men on the Spurious side then. It was a little fidgeting wave of motion as men half-glanced at their swords and then sheathed them or put them behind their backs as if to say, “Fight? What fight? We weren’t having a fight, honest.”
The general effect on the Perfidious side wasn’t perhaps as noticeable, but their arrival certainly had an effect on Goolrick. He looked up, then motioned for his men to pull back. Along with Sparks, Kat and Jack, they headed for the castle in a sort of mass backing away, as though afraid of what the Spurious soldiers might do if they turned their backs even for a moment.
“We should meet them in the castle,” Rio suggested, and Gem nodded, but the dragon seemed to have already understood the idea. A few beats of its wings took it up over the castle’s walls before it spread them, using them almost like a parachute as it came in to land in the space beyond with a bump. The others were already running to meet them as Gem and Rio slid down from the dragon’s back. They gave the dragon wary looks, but seemed delighted to see the two of them.
“You did it,” Sparks said. “You actually managed to tame the dragon.”
“Doesn’t that mean you’re the rulers of this place?” Kat put in. If there was a jealous note there, it was a transient one. Jack shook his head.
“Only… only one of them can be ruler. I’m fairly s-sure that’s what Mr. Word said.”
“But which one?” Goolrick asked it, though Gem noticed that he gave the dragon’s egg she held wrapped up in Rio’s cloak a glance. “I see that you found a way to defeat the beast, dear Gem. And with your brains instead of simple strength. Exemplary, truly exemplary.”
Gem shook her head.
“I couldn’t have done it by myself. Rio helped. So did the shadow creatures in the forest. If I’d been on my own, I would never have managed it.”
To Gem, Goolrick didn’t seem entirely happy about that, but he hid it well. He stepped forward, throwing an arm each around her shoulders and Rio’s.
“Then it is not yet certain which of you should be the ruler.”
He led the two of them up a flight of stone steps to the battlements, from where they could look down on the ground outside the gate. A crowd had gathered, containing both Spurious and Perfidious men, who jostled and pushed for a better view. Frankly Gem was just glad that no one had gone back to fighting once the shock of seeing her and Rio on the dragon had worn off. Goolrick stood between them on the gatehouse walls, spreading his hands like some great orator mak
ing it clear he was about to make a speech. Gem kept hold of the dragon’s egg and waited to hear what he would say.
“My friends, my occasional enemies, behold! The dragon is tamed!”
“But which one of them did it?” a voice from the crowd demanded. Others joined it. “Yeah. Which one of them is the Fire Tamer, the one who tamed the Dragon?”
“Who did it?”
“Why have we stopped fighting? I was enjoying it.”
The last comment was from one of the ogres, who took a half-hearted swing at a section of wall on the off chance that it would fight back. Everyone ignored him. Mostly, they were too busy staring. For a moment, Gem thought they were simply staring at her and Rio, but then it occurred to her that they were staring somewhere above her. She looked back.
The dragon had reared up, as it had done in the cave, its three heads dancing back and forth above the level of the walls. It seemed to pause, as though making very sure that every eye was on it, then opened its three mouths at once to let out a vertical jet of flame that reached up to the clouds in a single blue-white column of heat.
From the corner of her eye, Gem saw Rio take a step back, pressing against the stone of the crenulations. Even Goolrick, perhaps remembering what that flame had done in the cave, edged away from the dragon. For her part, Gem just cradled the creature’s egg to her carefully. She knew the dragon wouldn’t hurt her. Not now. Not with what she could do for it and its child.
Slowly, and surprisingly gracefully, the central head lowered itself to Gem’s level. The other two kept a stern eye on the watching crowd as though daring them to look away. Nobody did. Well, nobody except the ogre who’d tried attacking the wall, and that was mostly because he’d resorted to fighting himself in the absence of anyone else, and had done so with sufficient vigor to knock himself unconscious.
Gem didn’t notice it. She was too busy staring into those huge, reptilian eyes, bigger than her head. The pupils were mere slits, like a snake’s. How much did it understand? How clever was it? Gem didn’t know for sure. It had understood her enough to bargain, and had understood her instructions. Could it really understand enough of what was going on to be doing this though?
Well, it was doing it, so the answer to that was obviously yes.
The dragon nudged at Gem with its head the way a kitten might, except that no kitten could nudge hard enough to leave Gem bracing herself against the wall.
“What do you want?” she said softly, then smiled. There was an easy way to find out. Pressing Goolrick’s ring to the scales brought images of Gem climbing onto the dragon’s back. Of them giving the crowd a sight to remember before flying off.
“You want to take me somewhere?”
In answer, the dragon nudged her again. Gem took the hint, sliding down the offered neck to a spot on the dragon’s back. Its wings spread out with a snap of leather.
“Gem?” Sparks demanded. “What are you doing?”
“Just going for a quick flight. Nothing to worry about.”
Gem might have said more, but the dragon chose that moment to leap into flight, its wings forcing it upwards. Below her, Gem could see the crowd still staring. They wouldn’t be in any doubt now about which of them had tamed the dragon. The dragon let out a sound that might have been a snort of satisfaction, along with another burst of flame above the heads of the watching group.
“Less of that,” Gem ordered. “You’ll scare them.”
The dragon let out another, not altogether happy sound, but it didn’t flame again. Instead, it circled slowly, obviously wanting to give those watching plenty of time to see what was happening. Finally, it banked away, and Gem did her best to cling onto both it and the egg as it picked out a new course along the edge of the trees.
“So,” Gem said conversationally, “where are you taking me?”
Gem didn’t expect a reply, obviously, and touching the dragon with Goolrick’s ring wasn’t much help. It gave her a location, but only in the same general way as she had seen the way to the bird’s nest before. It was only when they got closer that Gem understood what she was seeing. The dragon was flying steadily towards a village of gray stone houses and turf roofs, getting lower as it got closer.
There were obviously some people it wanted Gem to meet.
Sparks’ heart had been in his mouth when Rio and Gem had arrived together, but then, when it had become clear which of them the dragon had chosen, he’d dared to relax. Now though, Gem had gone off with it, and he just had to hope that she was safe…
Rio silently cursed himself for stepping back, but he knew that it didn’t make much difference. He had clung to the dragon for fear of falling, but Gem, she had ridden it as surely as if it had been a horse. He just hoped that she was riding it somewhere safe now…
Kat edged closer as Rio watched the dragon leave. Tentatively, she put a comforting arm around his waist…
Jack found himself thinking about dragons. In legend, they were supposed to be clever, so would this one be clever enough to have a plan of its own?
Goolrick watched the flight of the dragon with pure admiration. So much power, controlled so easily…
Chapter 15
There was no sign of anybody as the dragon landed, the thud of its impact with the ground shaking through Gem. She stared around at the village with its stone houses spread out in an unplanned scatter. There was washing left on lines, and livestock left out in pens. Even a bucket of water stood in the middle of a patch of grass near a well, clearly having been abandoned in the rush to get inside.
Gem sighed and slid down from the dragon’s back, taking care not to damage the egg she held. She should have expected this. The dragon had spent years killing and burning in villages like this. People were hardly going to rush out to meet her with cakes, were they? Well, not unless they happened to be particularly fire proof cakes, anyway. Even so, Gem couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed by it. How was she supposed to talk to people if all they would do was hide?
Briefly, Gem considered using the “orator” ruler word to bring people out. She was almost certain that it would work. Was it the right thing to do, though? People would hardly trust her if the first thing she did was use magic on them as they hid. No, she would simply have to be patient. People would come out eventually. More theatrically than she needed to, Gem sat down, resting her head on the dragon’s flank like it was some huge, scaly pillow. It made a rumbling sound and Gem started, only to realize that the creature was purring like a cat. Gem rubbed a hand along its scales.
“At least you like me.”
It took almost fifteen minutes before anyone dared to show their faces. Even then, it was the small children who came, running too quickly for hands that tried to pull them back inside. They gathered round in a small circle, their mothers edging out after them cautiously. There didn’t seem to be any men around, except for a couple of very elderly ones. Then again, all the men of fighting age would probably have gone over to the castle.
One of the children, a boy who couldn’t have been more than two or three, toddled forward when his mother wasn’t looking. He stopped in front of Gem, giving her that too-serious look that small children sometimes manage before reaching out to take hold of her sleeve. Gem did her best to steady him, and the little boy smiled, reaching up to touch her hair. Gem smiled back, letting him.
That seemed to be the signal for about half the other children, who crowded close, trying to touch either Gem or the dragon. The older ones fired off strings of questions that Gem hardly had time to take in, let alone answer, before the next one came.
“Are you a princess?”
“Why are you holding that egg?”
“Is this your dragon?”
“How big is it?”
forWhat does it eat?”
Gem half expected the mothers of Spurious to rush forward to reclaim their children, but most of them seemed to be smiling, even if it was a little nervously. The idea of letting their children get so close to a
dragon obviously worried them, but since it wasn’t eating anyone so far, and since Gem hadn’t been anything but gentle with the children, they seemed content enough to let things be.
Eventually though, Gem knew that she would have to get up and try talking to the children’s parents too, so she disengaged the children’s hands from her dress as carefully as she could, making her way over to the watching crowd.
“Hi,” she tried. “I’m Gem.”
The gathered women didn’t answer, but they did step aside to leave a path to one of the huts. The door was open, and silhouetted in it was a woman who was easily older than all the others. Possibly put together. Her gray hair hung loosely to her waist, while her features were even more wrinkled than the long black dress she wore. If she had said she was a hundred, Gem might have believed her. She lent on a stick as she walked over to Gem, though something about the way the woman did it suggested that the stick was more there for hitting the shins of people who got in the way than because she actually needed it.
If so, the stick probably didn’t see much use. The other women looked on her with a level of veneration and respect that made it clear who was in charge in the village with the men gone. Probably while they were there, too. The elderly woman looked Gem up and down, and then stared past her at the dragon for a second before nodding.
Her wrinkled and liver spotted hand snaked out with surprising speed to settle over Gem’s. It pressed into the ring Goolrick had given her, and Gem braced herself to see another heart’s desire. This one was simple. The elderly woman wanted peace. No more killing. Prosperity for all of Anachronia, not just those bits of it that could fight the hardest. It came through so clearly that seeing the desires of the dragon had been like staring through mud by comparison.