Call of the Dragon

by Jessica Drake

  “That was amazing!” I exclaimed, clapping my hands.

  Eventually we made our way into the academy gardens. All the bright colors and scents were like candy for Lessie—she raced up and down the paths, sniffing at all the different bushes and flowers. Her excitement was infectious, and I found myself smiling as we walked, experiencing an entirely new appreciation for the flora that grew here.

  “Zara!” I turned to see Rhia hurrying up the path toward me. There was a devilish grin on her face, and I buried a groan. “I heard someone went flying yesterday.”

  “Figured it would get back to you sooner or later.” A few students had seen Jallis drop me off outside the dormitories yesterday, and the glances and whispers had been flying fast and furious in the hallways today. A few girls had even sidled up to me at lunch to ask me about my “date” with Jallis, but even though I’d enjoyed the absolutely murderous looks Aria had been giving me for getting all this attention, I’d given them scant details.

  Rhia rolled her eyes. “Of course it did. The entire female population is talking about it.” She flipped a skein of hair over her shoulder as she joined me. “I almost wish I hadn’t been gone, so I could have been the first to get the inside scoop.” She waggled her eyebrows at me.

  I snorted. “Where have you been, anyway? I was worried when I didn’t see you at breakfast this morning.”

  Rhia sighed. “Mother needed my help yesterday and today. Things have been a bit difficult lately. But never mind that—tell me about Jallis!”

  I bit back a sigh, and told Rhia about our adventure, keeping my voice down so we wouldn’t be overheard. When I finished, Rhia’s face was slack with shock.

  “You actually managed to find an entire palace underground?” she said, sounding as if she could scarcely believe it. “A palace no one else has discovered yet? But how?”

  “Research,” I said. “I’m usually able to narrow down the location of a site to a general area, and then I use my talent for finding valuable objects to find the exact location. It can be really slow going, because there’s all kinds of stuff that tends to get buried in the ground, but eventually I always find what I’m looking for.”

  Rhia shook her head. “I wish I had a talent like that,” she said. “You can find valuable objects, and Jallis can tame wild animals. All I can do is tell when someone is lying.”

  I blinked. “Is that why you said that guy in the shop was lying about that sphere?”

  “Yes.” Rhia gave me a sheepish look. “Although now that I know about your talent, I can see that my assistance was completely unnecessary.”

  I laughed. “Rhia, your talent is far from useless. I’m usually pretty good at reading people, but if I was able to tell when someone was lying to me I could have saved myself from a whole lot of drama and heartache.” My gut twisted as I thought of Rajek, and I stomped on the memory before it could fully take root in my mind.

  “That’s true,” Rhia said, “but it also makes it tough to trust people—especially boyfriends. I’ve never had a relationship last more than a week because of it.”

  “Damn.” My view on Rhia’s talent shifted, and I felt a twinge of sympathy for her. “I guess sometimes ignorance really is bliss. But at least you were able to get out of those relationships before someone really hurt you.”

  A dark look crossed Rhia’s face, but it disappeared beneath a sunny smile. “Enough about me,” she said, waving a hand to encompass the garden in front of us. “Why don’t you see if there’s anything buried here in the garden? It would be pretty cool if we were standing on top of some secret treasure.”

  I laughed. “You mean like a buried dragon skeleton or something?” I said, only half joking. Part of me was actually a bit nervous about using my talent here on the grounds. What if I found something that wasn’t meant to be uncovered?

  And just what is that supposed to mean? I asked myself. Everything is meant to be uncovered. That’s practically your motto.

  But then I remembered the pieces of the World Eater’s heart, and I shuddered. Weren’t some things better left forgotten?

  “Zara?” Rhia asked, sounding concerned. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.” I shook the thought away and pasted a smile on my face. “Let’s see what we can uncover.”

  I opened up my senses, allowing the objects in the area to call out to me. Instantly, I heard hundreds of chimes and gongs clamoring from the academy itself—items ranging from modest to priceless in value. I tuned them out, since that wasn’t the game, and focused my senses on the garden.

  Nothing too special. Most of the sounds here came from the statues and benches, and even some of the rarer plants that had high medicinal value. But there was one object that called to me, like the peal of a bell, and I followed the sound to one of the gravel paths near the outskirts of the garden.

  “Here.” I dropped to my knees on the path and began to dig. Within seconds, I’d unearthed a dirt-encrusted ring. “What do you make of this?” I handed her the ring.

  Rhia used her sleeve to rub some of the dirt away, revealing a seal beneath. “Dragon’s breath,” she murmured. “This is House Taurin’s sigil. I think this is a signet ring!”

  Well that explains the value. The ring was easily worth a hundred gold dorans—it was wrought of gold, the dragon sigil carved in the face of a round emerald.

  Lessie rose up onto her hindlegs to look, drawn by the commotion and my excitement. “It’s very pretty,” she said. “I imagine the owners will be wanting it back.”

  “Is there anyone from House Taurin here at the academy?” I asked Rhia. “A teacher or a student?”

  “Actually, yes,” Rhia said. “Merelia is a Taurin.”

  I grimaced. Merelia was one of Aria’s sidekicks. “I guess I’d better go and find her,” I said reluctantly.

  I returned Lessie to the stables, then went to the common areas in search of Merelia. I found her sitting on a large, velvet-upholstered couch with Aria and a strawberry-blonde called Danari, pretending to study while they gossiped.

  “Well.” Aria curled her lip as I stopped in front of them, casting a shadow over the books they’d spread across the low table. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  I ignored her completely, turning my attention toward the slim brunette seated to her left. “Merelia?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She thinned her lips as she looked me up and down. “What do you want?”

  I pulled the ring from my pocket and handed it to her. “I think this belongs to you?”

  Her eyes grew wide as she took the ring. “W-where did you find this?” she stammered.

  I frowned—her face had turned pale, as if she’d seen a ghost. “On the grounds,” I said. “I was using my talent to see if there was anything interesting buried in the garden, and I found this beneath a patch of gravel. Why?”

  “I…I thought I’d lost it.” Her cheeks colored. “I’d borrowed it from my father’s chambers a few weeks ago so I could—well, never mind.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you for bringing it back to me.” She fished a coin out of her pocket and handed it to me.

  “That’s really not necessary.”

  Aria snorted. “What, are you too good to accept our coin, ground-dweller?”

  “Some things don’t require payment,” I said coldly. Was there anything I could do that she wouldn’t find fault with?

  “Hey.” Someone tapped me on my shoulder. I turned around to see a freckle-faced boy, maybe around sixteen years old, standing behind me. “I overheard you saying that you used your talent to find that ring. Any chance you might be able to help me find something I lost?” He gave me a shy smile.

  “I’m not really in the habit of running around finding lost items for people,” I said, folding my arms.

  “I understand.” His face crumpled. “It’s just…my uncle gave me this dagger. And I can’t seem to figure out what happened to it.”

  The crestfallen look on his face tugged at my heartstrings, and I
gave a reluctant sigh. “All right. Tell me what it looks like.”

  He gave me a detailed description of the dagger, including the materials it was made of and its approximate value. I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses, searching for similar objects. I couldn’t actually see specific objects, but I could track them by estimated value. This was a trick I’d used a couple of times when I’d misplaced an item, but it was usually within the confines of my room. I’d never tried it over a large radius.

  Slowly, I expanded the field of my senses across the entire building. Five different items called back to me that roughly matched the value of the dagger. One of them was in the dormitories, so I decided to start there.

  “This way,” I said, waving to him.

  The boy followed, and not alone, either. Apparently, I had gathered a small audience—ten other students, most of them level one but a few were two and three, had gathered around, and they eagerly tailed us, wanting to see if my talent was legitimate.

  “This is dumb,” one of them sneered. “There’s no way she can track a specific item like that.”

  “Just because your talent is lame doesn’t mean hers has to be,” a girl retorted. “Don’t be jealous, Hastin.”

  “I’m not jealous. Just skeptical. How do we know she didn’t just step on that ring by accident?”

  “Here we are.” I stopped in front of a bedroom door. “Let’s see what’s in here.”

  “Hang on a minute!” Hastin shouted. “That’s my room!”

  “Oh.” I turned to him with a smile. “Then would you do the honors for us and open it up?”

  “I will not!” His face turned purple. “You have no right to trespass on my privacy!”

  “Oh, all right.” I fished my lock pick out of my hidden pocket. “Then I’ll do it.”

  Hastin made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. He tried to lunge for me, but two of the other students grabbed him before he could make contact. I unlocked the door and stepped into the room, then headed straight for the armoire.

  “Here you are.” I fished the dagger out of the back of the closet. “One heirloom dagger.”

  “Thank you!” The boy snatched it out of my hand, a joyful look on his face. But it quickly morphed into anger as he turned toward the other boy. “Hastin, how could you? I thought we were friends!”

  The two teenagers immediately engaged in a shouting match, and I regretted giving the boy his dagger back when the two of them started shoving each other. Mrs. Browning ended up breaking up the fight, and all three of us got a demerit for “disturbing the peace,” as she called it. But when I woke up the next day, I discovered I’d become a sensation overnight. Over the next couple of weeks, I received requests left, right, and center to help recover lost or stolen objects. Even a few of the teachers were asking me to help them find things, and I became so inundated with requests that I started charging for my services to discourage them from asking.

  But despite the turn in my fortunes, the mood in the academy was somber. There were rumblings of an impending war with Zallabar, and the older students, both those with and without dragons, were pulled off to train more intensively. The good thing about this was I rarely saw Aria anymore. The bad thing was that I also didn’t get to see Jallis. I’d been hoping we’d be able to go for another dragon ride on the weekends, but the cadets had flown out to a training camp two hundred miles to the west, in the middle of the Trappalian Ocean. I doubted he was even coming back to see his family on the weekends, never mind me.

  Lessie, unfortunately, did not share my sentiments. “We should be out there training with them,” she grumbled one afternoon during a grooming session. “I am large enough to fly now.”

  “Yes, but you still can’t carry me yet.” I ran a hand along Lessie’s flank. She was the size of a small pony now, her wingspan roughly as wide as I was tall. I estimated she weighed around four hundred pounds, most of it muscle, and ate a third of that in raw meat every day.

  “Yet being the operative word,” Lessie said with a sniff as I carefully removed dirt from the scales behind her right foreleg. “We’re doing perfectly fine with our lessons on the ground. And I can breathe fire now.” She lifted her head and exhaled a puff of smoke that formed into a perfect ring.

  “Hey.” I coughed, waving my hand to clear the smoke from my face. “That was uncalled for.” Lessie did have a point—now that she was large enough, we were joining in with the others on ground formation and balance drills. “I know you’re frustrated, but there’s nothing we can do until you’re old enough. And personally, I’m glad of it.”

  “Glad?” Lessie narrowed her fiery eyes at me. “Why are you glad that we get to sit at home while others go off to battle and gain glory?”

  “Because I’d like to keep my limbs intact.”

  Lessie huffed. “As if I would let you come to harm.”

  But Lessie was naïve about modern warfare, and the more I learned about the conflict, which we discussed extensively in our military and history classes, the more nervous I felt. Apparently, Zallabar wanted to avenge a defeat they’d suffered a hundred years ago. At that time, countries had begun using cannons in warfare, and Zallabar decided to test them out against our dragons.

  “Naturally,” Professor Ubiar said smugly, “their campaign was a disastrous failure. The cannons were too slow to fire and had limited range, so our riders were able to fly circles around them. They also melted down quite nicely when exposed to dragon fire.”

  Many of the students laughed at this, and the professor paused for a moment to allow the snickers to subside before he went on. “After the war, Elantia exacted very heavy compensation payments against Zallabar, and their army was decimated. But they have recently come upon very rich veins of gold in the Kiritar Mountains that edge their northern border, and have built up their financial resources significantly.”

  “I don’t see how that matters,” another student said disdainfully. “Their cannons were not very effective before. We will simply crush them again.”

  But I wasn’t so certain about that. It had been close to a century since that war, and common sense told me that if Zallabar was willing to take up arms against Elantia again, they’d probably spent considerable time trying to improve their cannons.

  “Why did Zallabar attack us in the first place?” I asked before the professor could continue his lecture. “Weren’t we responsible for taking away several overseas colonies from them, and encroaching on their natural resources?”

  The professor arched an eyebrow. “Zallabar wasn’t strong enough to hold onto those territories,” he said. “If not us, another country would have wrested them away.”

  But I wasn’t certain that was true. I’d been pouring over the history texts, catching myself up with the rest of the class, and to my eye, it seemed that Elantia had done a good job of keeping neighboring countries down over the centuries—treating them with contempt and outright provocation, engaging in skirmishes here and there that hurt these other countries just enough to keep them from becoming outright rivals. I’d traveled to Zallabar on more than one occasion. Like many other countries, it had become heavily industrialized, far more so than Elantia, which still held to the old ways. If they truly wanted to go to war with us again, I knew in my bones it wasn’t going to be an easy one. And my blood chilled at the idea of Lessie and me being caught up in the middle of it all.

  Carina was also put out by the impending war, but for different reasons. “I was really hoping this new beau of yours meant you’d be coming back with more artifacts for me to sell,” she complained as we went through the new inventory, placing valuations on the items and prepping them for the shelves. Night had fallen, and the shades had been drawn over the display windows, announcing to the world that we were closed. “Those jade figures you brought back have already been sold.”

  “Yeah, I’ll just tell Jallis to come back from training so he can ferry me to another ruin.” I’d taken a few small items from th
e underground palace before Jallis and I had left, and had given them to Carina to sell. Thanks to the steady stream of business we’d gotten due to Captain Marcas, they’d sold almost immediately. “The sergeant will completely understand.”

  Carina sighed. “Part of me is glad you’re a first-year student, and that your dragon is too young for flying or combat,” she said as she polished a Dragon War shield. Her hand absently moved over the surface in circular motions, coaxing a warm shine from the dull bronze with each pass of the rag. “Training to be a dragon rider is all well and good, but I don’t know what I’d do if you were killed.”

  “I’m not too keen on the idea of going to war myself,” I told her, “but Lessie doesn’t feel the same way. If she was big enough, she would have snatched me up in her claws and hauled me to the training camp, to hell with what the instructors said.” I sighed. “I guess it wouldn’t bother me so much if I didn’t think this entire war was one giant mistake.”

  “What do you mean—” Carina started to ask, but before she could finish the question, someone rapped sharply on the glass.

  “A messenger?” I frowned at the sight of the young boy in his green cap and trousers, a satchel slung over his narrow hip. “Are you expecting a package, Carina?” I asked as I went to answer the door.

  “No,” she said, sounding puzzled. “Certainly nothing that would need to be delivered by special courier.”

  I opened the door, and the boy inclined his head. “Message for Miss Zara Kenrook,” he said, fishing a letter out of his bag. “Are you she?”

  “I am,” I said warily, holding my hand out for the letter. “Who is the missive from?”

  He pressed the thick, cream-colored envelope into my hand. “Lord Varrick Tavarian, Miss.”

  Tension gripped my shoulders like a vise. What did Tavarian want? Thanking the messenger, I went back inside and tore open the envelope to read the contents of the letter.

  “Well?” Carina asked. “What is it?”

  “He’s summoning me to his house for breakfast tomorrow,” I said. “An airship will be coming to pick me up at seven-thirty in the morning from the academy. I’m to bring Lessie, too.”