A Crown of Flames

by Pauline Creeden

  The people waved desperately. Rjupa instantly saw why. "Oh no. The undead have spotted them."

  Rjupa’s dragon flew faster. Rjupa gripped the forward strap tightly while Skeggi's arms tightened around her waist.

  Screams arose from the small family as a group of the undead detached themselves from the city walls and began lumbering toward them. More and more undead began to follow.

  Fluffy backwinged, swiftly landing in front of the small family.

  “Get on!” shouted Skeggi. “The little child can ride in front of Rjupa.”

  Rjupa reached her arms out to the little girl, who went shy and scared behind her daddy’s leg.

  The papa picked up his daughter, tossed her gently in his arms, kissed her, and handed her up to Rjupa. “It’s okay, little bird. She’s a dragon rider.”

  As soon as Rjupa sat the little girl down on the dragon’s back, she began to cry, drumming her bare heels on the dragon.

  She’s scared of me, said Fluffy, looking over her shoulder.

  The sight of the dragon’s great horned head made the little girl scream then sob harder. Fluffy quickly looked front again.

  Rjupa tried to shush the girl, wrapping her hands around her little shoulders. “It’s all right. You’re safe. We’re going to get you and Mommy and Daddy and your brother all out of here.” But the child wouldn’t stop howling.

  The undead turned their heads toward the crying, their empty eye hollows looking straight at Rjupa and the girl. Their shuffling feet moved faster as they dragged their rotten limbs toward them.

  As the rest of the family climbed onto the dragon, Rjupa sang a little song to the girl. Skeggi sang along. Fluffy lay down a line of fire at the incoming undead to force them back. The girl still cried, but not as loudly, and she stopped kicking, which gave her parents and brother time to climb aboard.

  “Stay balanced on the dragon’s back,” Skeggi told the family. “If you’re afraid of heights, hide your face on the back of whoever is ahead of you. Just look at their back. Dragon, fly gently.”

  The undead drew close.

  Here's some more fire, said Fluffy, blasting them back with flames.

  “Up!” called Rjupa.

  The dragon sprang into the air, her great wings beating. The wind of her launch knocked the undead down, sending them sprawling helplessly on the ground.

  The little girl stopped crying and watched them in wide-eyed amazement. From behind Rjupa, the boy yelled, “Yeah! Yeah! Whoo!!”

  “Are you going to be a dragonrider?” Skeggi asked.

  “Yeah!” the boy shouted.

  “Me, first!” the girl replied, and Rjupa squished her in a hug.

  “Stay balanced,” Skeggi reminded them. Even though Fluffy was flying low, falling off the dragon’s back now meant falling into a gang of undead.

  As the dragon passed over, the undead stopped trying to climb up the city walls. They reached up their broken, gray hands, clutching the air and groaning at the dragon and the people sitting on her back.

  Fluffy landed safely in the courtyard of the queen’s keep. Rjupa helped the little boy climb down and gently handed the little girl to her daddy. His hands were shaking, and once everybody was down, the mother and father pulled everybody close for a long hug. The mother wiped her eyes, trying to smile and look brave for her children, and the father gave her another squeeze.

  “We welcome you,” a Viking lady told them, bowing as she came forward. “The city of Skala had a fire recently and so we don’t have as much as we used to, but you are welcome to it and we’re willing to share. We are glad you have arrived safely.”

  “We have nothing to our name until the scourge of the undead comes to an end,” the mother said. “We had to leave it all behind in the cart outside the city walls.”

  “We will do our best to take care of you, just as we do with all the other incoming refugees,” she said, bowing. “It brings us great honor, for calamity befalls us all, one way or another.”

  Another dragon came down to land in the courtyard with another family on its back.

  “Hello, Rjupa, Skeggi," said the guardian dragonrider. "You've been working hard since the dawn. Why don’t you take a short rest?”

  "I'm doing fine," said Rjupa.

  "You are, but Fluffy should go up to the dragon’s keep and get some food so she doesn't get worn down. Skeggi, Rjupa, you do the same.”

  Rjupa and Skeggi went to the city walls. When there, she got some cheese and bread out of her pack. One of the people they’d saved insisted on sharing cheese and bread with them out of gratitude for her rescue. It was very good cheese. She cut off a generous chunk of both for Skeggi.

  Rjupa ate, but not very much, because of what was happening below, outside the walls. At the walls of the city, the undead moaned, many arms reaching up at them, ruined faces uplifted to her, gaping mouths open. Next to her, a group of kids were picking up bits of rock from the city wall and pitching them down at the undead, who didn’t even seem to notice, even when rocks struck them between the eyes.

  "Leave them be," Rjupa said sternly. "They didn't deserve this fate."

  The kids, seeing the burned dragonrider lecturing them, dropped their rocks and ran away.

  She shook her head. They would learn, in time. They were just kids.

  Standing further down the wall from them, a young wife wept. Rjupa knew her. She’d just been married last fall, and had a baby on the way. But her husband was among the mass of undead below the walls. Rjupa could see him, groaning up at her. To her undead husband, she was no longer his love, his wife, his all. She was only something to blindly devour.

  The young wife's friends were around her. Her mother stood at her side, hands on her shoulders, speaking softly to her, trying to coax her away from the wall. But the young woman didn’t want to go. She stood at the edge of the wall, her head drooped over the side, her tears falling on the surging undead, onto what remained of her husband’s face.

  “Long ago,” Rjupa told Skeggi, “My mama told me stories about how a maiden’s tears would transform a beast or a possessed man back into her husband, who’d been changed by an evil witch.”

  The young woman’s tears fell but the dead remained implacable.

  “I wish that worked in real life,” she said sadly.

  Skeggi pressed her hand in his. “If you weren’t a dragonrider, we’d both be down there right now.”

  Rjupa shook her head. “That’s just wrong, though. It's wrong that I’ve survived and they didn’t. Every one of those soldiers fought harder than I ever have. I was just sitting comfortably on a dragon while they were being swarmed."

  "I was with you, remember? You were directing your dragon and going after them with everything you had. You were very brave."

  Rjupa shook her head. "I’ve let them down. If we’d just been able to fight harder.”

  Just then, a young page came running up. “Rjupa? Skeggi?"

  "Yes, that's us," she said.

  "The Queen Saehildr is requesting the courtesy of your presence.”

  Rjupa and Skeggi looked at each other with some surprise.

  “Okay, lead the way,” Skeggi said.

  Rjupa waited for the page to run a little ahead of them before she asked Skeggi in a low voice, “Did we do something wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Skeggi made a face and clutched his stomach. “Ugh. I’ve never been called to meet the queen like this. It’s making me nervous. It’s so much easier to talk to her when we run into her around the castle.”

  “I’ve never been called to her either."

  They followed the page through the maze of castle hallways.

  "I’m worried, Skeggi," Rjupa said in a low voice. "I feel like Saehildr has changed since Thora died.”

  “Yeah, me too. I try to cut her a little slack. It’s hard on you when a daughter dies, not that it’s ever happened to me. But the way she's been acting is just … strange.”

  The page stopped a little way a
head of them and waited expectantly, her hands behind her back.

  “Go a little faster,” Rjupa said, watching Skeggi coming up the stairs after her. “I don’t want to rush you, but…”

  “I’m here.” Skeggi caught up, and they were hurrying up the stairs side by side again.

  Even now, when she was afraid that they were in trouble, Rjupa loved to see Skeggi’s brown eyes being thoughtful. Watching his eyes still touched off a spark of joy in her heart, that and they were lucky, so lucky to be together.

  Rjupa caught a glimpse of her hand on the railing, how the skin was now stretched and rippled from her time in the fire. She still hurt all over, felt like her skin now was too tight and she couldn’t loosen it. She hated how people she’d known all her life now stammered and said stupid things when they saw her ruined face, or how they tried to pretend they weren’t staring at her, or worse, stared outright, or went to great lengths to not talk to her. But the worst was when they talked to her in pitying tones, as if she were suddenly a child.

  But Skeggi had become closer to her than ever. In those first days when her dragon had brought her back to Skala, when Rjupa had been fighting the most intense pain she’d ever known, Skeggi had always been at her side, even when he was exhausted. The court magician had put her into a deep sleep for several weeks so she could be out of reach of the endless pain while they worked to heal her. Even with the sleep, and the magic, healing took a long time.

  When she awoke, Rjupa was sure she had lost Skeggi. Her hair had been burned away, and her face was never going to look the same. Those were hard days. The pain made her angry, and frustrated, and weepy by turns. He’d lost his temper too, from time to time.

  But now that the worst of the pain was gone, now that she was able to be busy with dragonriding again, he was still at her side. He deflected the worst of the staring people, helped her navigate her day, and still made her smile, though the stretching of the new skin on her face hurt when she smiled. “Keep exercising it,” he said, which made her smile again.

  It was a miracle Rjupa had survived passing through the dragons’ fire. But Skeggi said, “Every day is a gift.”

  Now they reached the arched pavilion where the queen’s quarters were. Rjupa gazed at the pavilion wonderingly. They’d never been called up here before, even when she’d lived for a time in the queen’s castle as an honored guest after she killed Iron Skull.

  A shudder of disgust clenched her heart for a moment at the thought of him, but here was her darling Skeggi gazing at her, brushing her short, choppy hair from her face. His eyes gave her strength.

  “Lead the way,” he murmured as they walked up to the great arch.

  He followed Rjupa as the guards bowed and opened the doors for them.

  They stepped into an airy room where a warm fire burned in a hearth. Torches gleamed on the wall and light came in through several windows of glass. Rjupa stared in awe. The light came in cleanly, as bright as if they were outside, though the surface of the glass was wavy and pretty bubbles were trapped inside it.

  Queen Saehildr met them in the middle of the room, her blonde hair in elaborate braids in her hair, her keen blue eyes smiling. “Skeggi and Rjupa,” she said warmly, taking their hands. “Come, have a seat.”

  16

  Meeting with the Queen

  A thrall-girl brought both of them a cup of mead that Rjupa thought tasted heavenly. Rjupa sank down in a lovely seat that felt like it had been packed with horsehair, and the cushions were of soft cloth, very comfortable and springy.

  Though they were sitting, the queen remained standing. “I called you here because Dyrfinna broke free a little while ago.”

  Rjupa sat up. “Your majesty, broke free from what?”

  The Queen huffed. “She was to be executed, and she escaped.”

  “Executed?” Rjupa cried. “Executed? Your majesty, why were you doing this to someone who had served you so long and so faithfully?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the queen said snippily.

  “Dyrfinna fought off the enemy with ten to one odds and rescued your army that she led from a shattering defeat. Her sword was wholly at your command, your majesty.”

  Rjupa was saying this, even as cold horror seized her insides. Queen Saehildr knew what they had done. She somehow knew the invisible dragon that had whisked Dyrfinna away was theirs.

  But Rjupa clenched her jaw. She was a dragonrider only because Dyrfinna’s father didn’t want to give the dragonrider’s position to Dyrfinna. And he had written that order of exile and execution for her. Dyrfinna’s own father!

  Dyrfinna had saved Rjupa’s life. She had given up the one man she loved because she loved Rjupa. There was no way on earth that Rjupa would turn her back on her friend.

  “You were close friends with Dyrfinna,” Queen Saehildr said quietly, looking from Rjupa to Skeggi.

  “We still are.” Skeggi spoke up, though his voice was quavering. “Though I’m not sure how we’re supposed to stay friends with her if you are actively trying to kill her now.” He placed a hand over his heart. “Please,” he said softly, “please try to understand, your majesty, how deeply shocked we are at this, and hurt, and angry. We’ve trained with Dyrfinna from the beginning. She invited me to train with her, clear back at the beginning, after my parents died and I was raising my four brothers on my own. She gave me a means to rise in the world, to become somebody important, of value. I wouldn’t be riding a dragon today with Rjupa if she hadn’t given me that chance.”

  “Nor would I,” said Rjupa, a hint of cold entering her voice. “I wouldn’t be dragonrider at all – no, nor would I be alive right now, if she hadn’t fought for me in the forest and helped rescue me from Iron Skull.”

  Queen Saehildr looked shocked. “I can’t believe you’d support a traitor to my crown.”

  “How many years have you known us?” Skeggi said. “I’ve never seen Dyrfinna act without honor. Never. She’s not a traitor.”

  “What do you know about Dyrfinna escaping?” the queen demanded.

  “We don’t know anything about it,” Rjupa said. “We didn’t even know you were trying to kill her! We were on the battlefield trying to rescue your soldiers from the undead shamblers. While somebody was busy trying to kill our closest friend, your battlefield has been overrun by the shambling dead, and they are crowding at the city walls trying to get in. Are you seriously trying to execute the woman who would have been the best commander that Skala has ever known, while all of this is going on?” Rjupa cried.

  The queen seemed to take this whole declaration badly. She shifted in her seat, but then pulled herself together and sat up. Rjupa watched this little act of uncertainty, trying not to show her disdain for it. For some reason, the queen had been acting antsy the whole time that Rjupa had been talking to her.

  “The best commander in Skala,” the queen spat. “Oh, but King Varinn’s second in command gave Dyrfinna those three ships. I suppose she accepted his ships out of Skala’s best interests.”

  Skeggi rose to stand next to Rjupa. “Your majesty, they told me that she was going after the person who was creating the undead.”

  “Stopping the undead at their source sounds like an awfully good idea right now,” Rjupa muttered under her breath.

  The Queen was undeterred. “Oh, then, she’s not a traitor at all, no, even though now she’s sailing ships under the command of the man who murdered my daughter. So now are you two going to make an alliance with him while our nations are at war?”

  “Well, good heavens, no. Of course not,” said Rjupa, though she didn’t mention that she thought it a good idea to dissolve the war immediately. “But now that the undead are roaming everywhere, we have got to stop this awful threat to all of us.”

  “But why are we even talking about this?” Skeggi asked. “Over half our army was killed on the field of battle, and those who died are now shamblers trying to climb the city walls. What are we going to do if Nauma kills all of
our fighting forces? What do we do when her shamblers kill all of our able-bodied people here in Skala? Isn’t that a greater problem than the war?”

  Rjupa resisted the urge to look at Skeggi. “A lot of the shamblers are people we know. Wives have seen their husbands, undead, trying to get their blood. It’s been distressing for all of us.”

  Suddenly, to Rjupa’s surprise, there was a huge thump outside. Startled, she turned toward the balcony.

  The Queen rose behind her. “What is she doing here?”

  Rjupa gasped. “Your majesty, I’m so sorry! I didn’t call her –“

  Her dragon, Fluffy, had landed on the balcony. Her huge horned face was peeking in through a little window. She tried to look in with both eyes, but then she had to swing her great head around and peer through with only one eye, so the whole window was filled with dragon face and a little roving eye in the middle.

  “What is your dragon doing up here without my leave?” the queen demanded.

  “I beg your pardon, your Majesty. Please grant me leave to move my dragon.” Despite the formal language, which Rjupa had slipped into because she was certain she was in trouble, she was worried about her dragon. Why in the name of wonder was she here? Fluffy knew the rules. She knew not to go landing on the queen’s balcony unless something was very, very wrong.

  “You may address her," the queen declared, "but let her know in no uncertain terms that she must not stay.”

  Rjupa hurried to the balcony door, and the guard standing there opened it for her. The guard’s face was impassive, but she looked at the dragon, her brow wrinkled slightly, as if also puzzled.

  Rjupa stepped out on the balcony and her dragon took her eye off the window, sitting up, and her jaws came open, it reminding her of a dog smiling at its owner.

  I am so glad to you see you, Fluffy said.

  “I’m happy to see you too, sweetie, but I’m talking to the queen right now. She says you shouldn’t be up here.”

  Fluffy crouched down again to peep in through the doorway this time. I’m worried about you in there, said the dragon. Can’t you see what’s going on?