“A young Golden Dragon,” I said, leading my father outside while the smoke cleared. I arched my trigger fingers over my head like little horns and swallowed the rest of my puns for my father's sake. In the glaring sunlight, his skin looked stretched and pale. His breathing was heavy just from walking to the front porch. He needed to get away from our dead tree cottage and breathe the sweet air of a living forest. “It's larger and livelier than all the dead baby dragons. He's about this tall at the shoulder.” I moved my hands to neck height.
“A real dragon at long last?” My father's smile widened and I was happy to see that mentioning the dead baby dragons no longer distressed him. “Not just another lizard with wings? Teeth and flames and everything?” All his worries and woes had vanished and he looked like a child on the verge of receiving some fantastic treat.
I led my father through the trees to the place with the dragon and the men. I did not know it yet, but we were racing towards my first encounter with the Dark Cabal.
The men had twisted and bound the dragon with their silver braids and flipped him on his back. A quick exam of the beast's morphology told me the dragon was a young drake, a male.
Grandfather told me once it's the relative size of the horns that ages a drake and this beast's horns were tiny nubs. Grandfather said the presence of the horns was not foolproof (some drakes are born polled, while some mavens are born horned) and comparing fore claws to hind claws is the safest way to sex a dragon. This one had nubs and longer fore claws. Apparently, drakes grow elongated fore claws for grabbing mavens to copulate. Both sexes keep their privates tucked away and he'd never met a living scholar who performed a genital palp on a live wyvern. Also, Grandfather said mature females were all larger and more vicious than males and he grinned when he said it.
Three men held the beast down while the last approached him with a long, skinny knife. The men all wore leather: dark slacks and boots and mottled gray vests. Some of them had curious silver orbs hanging from their belts. But were they really males? I had the urge to palp their privates with my brass knee cap.
“Why have you chained this creature?” Father asked, breathless and grabbing a tree. I offered my arm to steady him.
“Business,” the man with the knife said as he worked the blade slowly down the belly of the dragon, shaving golden flakes like corn kernels off the cob and exposing a rough, white surface underneath. Each scale made a musical twang as it parted the skin like a string breaking from a guitar. The man scooped these into a sack tied around his waist. Sometimes the twang was more of a flat twing. He would examine these scales closely and then discard most of them.
The dragon didn't seem to mind the belly shaving, but flared his nostrils and made soft whimpers and whuffing sounds as he flexed against the silver braids. I was a prisoner myself once. I held my body tensed and ready for Father's command to attack the ruffians and free that poor dragon.
Surely your breath caught up with you when you stopped running, Father? I wondered. Or are you struck by the hair raising horrors of dragon scalping?
Father pointed a shaking, accusatory finger at the men in mottled vests. “You're the Dark Cabal.”
Oh, Father. Is this what happens when you spend days and days simmering in a mental stew? Your brain softens? They are obviously deeply invested in their work. They have a vested interest in dragon scales. Now how can we divest the leader of his knife? The puns I had suppressed to help pop Father out of his dark bubble had found a new outlet and risen, bubbling, to the surface of my mind, popping out my mouth.
“No,” the man with the knife sneered. “We're that other secret organization that collects wyvern scales.”
“You must release that majestic creature,” my father said. “Nobody deserves to be chained. You can't bind that dragon with your rules. You can't use him for your schemes.” Father gathered himself, his voice rising to scream,“The dragon must be free.”
The man tossed his knife from hand to hand while he listened to Father's speech. The hilt was shaped into an ornate, brass dragon's head with the neck forming the handle, gaping jaws forming the hilt and swallowing the tang while the blade emerged from the mouth like a solid bar of silver fire. The flexible steel blade was long and curved, tapering to a nasty-looking hook.
“Who's going to stop us?” the knife man asked, wiping his nose on his vest while he worked. “You? Think I don't know who you are with that little, metal foot? We heard all about you. That imperial kid. The mage. You kill all our wyrms and then say we can't scrape a few scales off this wyvern here to make an honest living? Damn imp!”
Father sighed. “It seems no matter how hard I try to fit in, I will always be the stranger. Yes, I'm 'that imperial kid' and there's nothing honest about what you're doing. But slaughtering all those wyrms was a horrible accident. I've made my peace with that.”
“Well, isn't that nice for you? How hard did you trying to 'fit in' that you gutted our dragon reserves and destroyed the homes of our local customers?” the man asked, pointing his blade towards the mountain range stretching in the west. “Go back to your empire. Leave us to our harvest.”
Father's eyes narrowed to frozen, little wells. “You assaulted the dignity of the dragon. Then I shall mete out dragon justice,” my father said in a controlled voice that dripped icicles.
The knife man smiled, plucked a tiny, silver ball from his belt and threw it at my father. The ball unraveled as it hit Father's chest, and silver braids entwined around his arms and legs, trapping them. “Think we bind dragons with mere rope? Or that you and old Cornelius are the only magic users in this neck of Corel? We've got mages of our own, kid.”
“The Dark Cabal have wizards in their ranks?” Father muttered as he struggled. “Yet another nugget of wisdom Cornelius failed to share. That so-called Professor guards magic knowledge with all the fervor of a dragon hording his gold.”
“The more you struggle, the tighter it binds,” the knife man crowed. I tugged at the silver strands and Father screamed as the threads cut into his flesh. The knife man stroked the silver orbs still latched to his belt. “Ingenious, really. Once cast on a prisoner, they can only be undone with an external ethereal force. Any magic cast by the prisoner only makes the binding stronger.”
Father stopped struggling. “So, I can't remove my restraints with magic and anything that can restrain a dragon is far too strong for Styx's wooden muscles.” The knife man smiled and nodded, then resumed skinning the Golden Dragon. The man whistled a little song as he harvested the next row of scales. The beast cried and squirmed as the silver braids tightened. Father's lips pressed into a cold, thin smile. “But I can still remove his.” Father snapped his fingers and the dragon's silver braids vanished.
The dragon gave a short whuff of surprise as a silver orb appeared and dropped by his forepaws. Then he stretched his forelimbs and flung two of the leather clad men holding him into the trees. The third, he flicked aside with his tail. The beast yawned, a gentle roar like a crackling wood stove, exposing matching rows of stained, pearl dagger teeth and a gaping, red tunnel into his belly. He sneezed, setting a bush on fire, and then scratched his bare patch with a single, lazy claw.
The man with the knife reached down slowly and closed his pouch. Then he sheathed the blade at his hip and backed away.
The dragon rolled to his feet. He tucked his wings and snaked around the knife man, cutting off any hope of retreat. The agent of the cabal stared, face growing whiter and whiter as the dragon slowly curled his body around the man.
The dragon's muscles flexed and writhed as the tip of his tail snaked between the man's legs and the long, clawed fingers of his left forepaw clutched the man's torso and pinned those knifeless arms. The beast took the pouch of scales between his teeth and tore it loose with a delicate nip. Then he tossed the pouch into the woods. The dragon held his struggling prey tight, arched his neck, and sniffed the man's crotch.
I've never seen a dragon embrace someone before, I thought. What a gl
orious event.
The man screamed. The dragon squeezed. The man gasped and stopped screaming, but still quivered like a dead leaf rattling in the branches of a mighty oak.
The dragon whuffed and poised a head the size of a large dog over his prey's thigh. He sniffed at the leather sheath, and then started huffing. Faint smoke curled from the beast's nostrils and the air shimmered around his mouth.
The sheath singed to leather scraps along with part of the man's pants. The dragon shifted his grip, trapping the hot knife against the man's thigh, and continued the huff.
The man started whimpering and squirming. The dragon growled. The only noise I heard thereafter were the birds fleeing from the trees, the steady steam of dragon's breath, and my father's quiet laughter.
Between the gaps in the dragon's claws I could see the knife begin to deform like a hot candle. Like two hot candles: the ornate, brass hilt had started to soften long before the steel blade. The brass finished melting, trickling down the man's inner thigh like thin, golden butter while the steel stretched and wrapped around his leg like a silver bracelet.
Tears were racing themselves down the man's neck alongside the blood as he bit his lip to keep from screaming. The dragon tossed his prey to the ground and then extended his tongue to lick the blood off the man's chest. The dragon did not glance at my father or me as he balanced on his hind legs, spread his large, leathery wings, and launched himself into the air.
My father stared at those golden bat-like wings soaring into the distance and smiled. He went to examine the knifeless man and motioned for me to follow.
“You happy?” the knifeless man screamed, clutching his red, pus-blistering leg and blowing frantically on the silver band to cool it. “Did that wicked beast serve your stupid 'dragon justice' for you? Some of my men might be dead. Please,” he winced, glancing at the bodies wrapped around the trees. “Help me up. Help me walk. I need to go check on my men.”
“I can't.” Father rolled his shoulders. “Someone bound me with magic threads.”
Whimpering, the knifeless man made a curious whistling noise and patted his belt. The silver braids uncoiled and reformed into a ball, which rolled across the leaves and back home to the belt.
My father shook his head and wagged his finger, much like Grandfather. “I admit after seeing you Corelians reduce the majestic, fabled dragons of my childhood to nothing more than livestock, their majesty had faded a bit. But that dragon rekindled my awe. I could see the intelligence burning in his eyes. And his mastery of the magic fire. He could have so easily burnt your legs to a crisp, but instead he showed such delicate, exacting control of his powers. The finesse of that powerful strength. Such a precise plan to turn your own weapon to his advantage. That was no beast, but a mage dressed in scales punishing his foes. And I am a dragon, too. Hmmm, Dragon Boy. They always called me that, back in the empire.” Father smiled as he pointed towards the western mountains and fluttered his fingers, but his voice had hardened and the mirth never touched his eyes. “Allow me to show you why.”
“You promised to help me take care of my men,” the knifeless man begged. “Please, I think my leg is broken.”
“So I did.” My father helped the man to his feet. Together, they hobbled to a nearby tree and Father propped the man against the trunk. One by one, Father gathered all the wounded or dragged the dead and arranged the members of the Dark Cabal against a row of trees.
I moved to place myself between my father and those stricken men. Father patted me on the shoulder. “It's all right, son,” his voice softened as he gave me a gentle push. “Go back home to the cottage, Styx. Go home and wait for me while I take care of the evil men.”
“Was what these men did really so evil?” I asked, spreading my arms. “Harvesting a few scales?”
“Go! You don't need to see what I do to the poor, arrogant wretches who dare to hunt dragons.” My father clucked his tongue and stared at the cowering men. “A pity my scaly brother destroyed your knife, gentlemen. I had plans for that.”
I fled. This was a side of my father I had never imagined existed, that I never wanted to know existed. I struggle to understand him even now. In his heart, I know my father realizes he is no dragon. I think he does. Sometimes, Father is not quite sane. Did he empathize with the magic creature? Was he administering the vengeance so long denied him? Did my father the hunted mage have an animus against all hunters? Was he avenging generations of slain, skinned baby dragons or his missing foot or both or neither?
In later years, after many seasons witnessing the hot, serrated horrors men inflict upon each other and presiding over a few horrors myself, much worse than melting knives or dragon tree swatting, I ask different questions. I struggle to chisel the answer deep into my heartwood. Was I ever that naive waif whom I remember? Why did I refuse to believe the worst about my father despite the evidence of my own senses?
A barbarian was sitting alone with a large envelope on our front porch when I returned home. The man had lots of knives protruding from his tan vest and I wondered how long it would take to melt them. A red and black dragon tattoo which turned into a bird as I came closer flew across his chest and looked ready to bite his throat. Father assured me later the man smelled like a horse's butt, but I have never sniffed the rear end of any equine animals. I nodded and sat next to the man. He appraised me with his eyes and smiled.
The barbarian said nothing. I guess I was not the person whom he came to see. We sat in companionable silence and waited for my father to return home. I wondered if that young Golden Dragon had anyone waiting for him to come home.
The shadows of the trees stretched all the way across the clearing by the time my father came home to me. Father emerged from the forest looking clean and scrubbed.
“Hello there.” My father waved to the barbarian. “Raven, wasn't it? Where is your partner?”
The man Raven smiled and removed a knife from a sheath on his arm. The blade had wet red flecks on it. “We disagreed, and the knives got hot, but I set my knife aside. Boss doan pay me to fight my brothers. Then the fool offers insult to Clan Ave as we walk up this mountain. So, I hurt that man. Heh, more en hurt that man. The Reptar Clan gonna try and slake their knives in my blood, but that damn Snake deserved it.”
“And where is your master?” Father asked. “I want to hurt him.”
“He give us the parcel to deliver and got gone. I'd be enjoin hurting that man, too. But you gonna call him my boss or we fight again, kid. The Raven has no master.” The man wiped the bloody knife on his pants, kissed the clean blade, and then re-sheathed it. He stood and flexed his elbows. “This time, I cheat.” The barbarian smiled and brushed the dust off his frayed, leather pants. “Boss told me to make a delivery to the old wizard's house. Old man said the message was for you. Sent me here.”
Father ran up to the porch. “Message? What message?”
Raven pressed the plain envelope into my father's hands. “Old man tore the last bit and kept it. The rest is yours. Be seeing you.” The barbarian sauntered down the porch steps and jogged towards the woods.
“The trail's down that way, Mr. Raven,” Father pointed with the hand that was not clutching the envelope to his chest.
“Trails?” The barbarian laughed as he vanished into the trees. “Who's gonna need trails?”
My father sat on the porch and shook the envelope. A little note fell out. He read it aloud to me:
Dear Devin,
After reading your file, I find myself infected with a
dangerous degree of sympathy for your predicament despite
my resolve to capture and execute you as the law demands. I
believe in justice and those innocent artificers you
attacked broke the rules, didn't they? You had no
choice but to claw your way to victory and I respect that.
They refused to fight fair and trapped you. There is
something feral in your scaly, black, little heart and society's
&
nbsp; rules entrap you, don't they? Try and bend the rules, break
them if you dare, but you cannot escape. We are all chained
by the same laws and you ignore them at your peril.
I am but a humble knight errant hunting an evil dragon.
Remember: the dragon always loses.
Respectfully Yours,
Cpt. Armand Delacourt Vice
My father crumpled the letter in his fist. The paper blackened as smoke began to curl between his fingers. “The Butcher wanted me to know he'll catch up to me? That he's going to execute me? The bastard respects me? Arghhh!” Father ran to the railing and puked over the side.
I patted his back. “There, there, Father. Didn't the dragon win today?”
Father wiped his lips and cocked a thumb over his shoulder. “There are four men in the woods back there who will piss their pants the next time they so much as see a glint of golden scales.”
“So, you won. The dragon won,” I said. Oh my father, you have won the day. The darkness has passed and the sun is shining again for you have beaten the enemy and I could not be prouder of you. That glum frown does not suit you. Where is your smile, your fists raised in the air, and your grinning visage of victory?
“No, Styx,” Father explained slowly, “we still lost. The cabal is larger than those men we caught harvesting scales today. So long as there's a market for that horrible tea, the rest of the Dark Cabal will hunt again and again and again.”
“But we saved the dragon?” I asked. “We rescued the young Golden Dragon from the silver braids. He escaped. He flies free. We saved him, didn't we?”
Father shook his head. “Odds are high that young male dragon will be caught again and stripped again, golden scales and dignity all dangling from some man's leather pouch before he grows up and flies off to the mountains. You can't win. The game is rigged, Styx.” Father buried his head in his hands and moaned. “Captain Vice is right. The game was always rigged.”
The Artifice Mage Saga Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 41