by Dan Allen
I won’t tell him.
Chapter 12
Montazi Realm. Ferrin-tat.
Terith’s eyes popped open and the delicious dream he was having about Lilleth vanished.
“Are you ready, sir?” repeated the servant boy standing on the ladder to the loft where Terith was sleeping. “It’s almost time for the challenge. Here, I brought some riding leathers for you.” He held up a bundle of heavy leather riding gear with sturdy stitching.
“Who are you?” Terith said hoarsely.
“Aon,” the boy replied smartly.
“Aon?” Terith repeated dimly, struggling to remember where he was.
“Yes, sir. The keeper sent me. He figured you’d want something to wear for the challenge. You’ve got a few hours before it starts, though.”
“Dank dungeons of the seventh hell—I slept the whole afternoon and night?” Terith sat up quickly, hitting his head squarely on an overhead ceiling beam of the weaver’s loft. He decided instantly that despite whatever Mya had said about swearing, it was not a demon’s doing.
Checking under his blanket, he was relieved to see that the sisters had at least left his clothes on while he slept.
“Who did you say sent you up here?” Terith said, banishing the last lingering remnants of his bizarre, tantalizing dream.
“Bergulo sent me, sir. On orders from the lady, I think.”
“Which lady?” Terith asked cautiously.
“One of Ferrin’s daughters. I don’t know which. I’ve left your breakfast on the cutting table down in the hall. Bergulo is expecting you at the keep. You still need a dragon.”
Terith rolled his stiff shoulder. “We’ll see.”
“The lady also sent your cloak.” Aon held out the pliable dragonwing skin.
“Must have been Lilleth,” Terith mused, “because I lent it to Enala.”
Terith dropped down from the loft and suited up in the strangely well-fitted riding gear: leather liners, trousers, a coat, a vest, a wide harness belt, neck wrap, and hood, finally replacing his own boots with the custom hooks. The protective leather garment was a quarter of an inch thick in most places. He pulled the protective leather hood over his head, but left the mouth cover down, for now. Only his eyes would be unprotected from dragon flame when he secured it.
“The leathers are Ferrin’s, sir,” Aon added.
Terith nodded his thanks and squinted out the window slats at the mid-morning sun.
“Dungeons!”
The race was only a few hours away.
He lifted his dragon-wing cloak and tied it over his shoulders. It was folded lengthwise and top to bottom so that the four corners met at his shoulders where two ties gathered the four rings that held the corners of the lightweight, nearly impenetrable dragon-wing skin.
“What are those rings for?” Aon asked.
“Handles,” Terith said tersely.
“What do you need to hang onto your cloak for?” Aon asked curiously.
“In case I’m falling and want to slow down. I can pull those slip knots and the whole thing unfolds.”
“So it’s for gliding?”
“More of a drag chute, unless there’s an updraft,” Terith explained.
“Does it work?”
Terith caught a bloodsucking wasp in his fist and crushed it. “Let’s hope I don’t need to find out.”
“You mean you’ve never actually tested it?” Aon said as he sat on a stool in front of a large loom.
Terith sat down and began shoveling heaping spoonfuls of cold porridge into his mouth.
“Your arm looks well enough to ride,” Aon said cheerfully. “I had heard you were injured.”
“Scorpion sting,” Terith said with his mouth full. “But I’ve got bigger problems.”
“You need a dragon.”
“Exactly. Let’s go.”
Terith stepped out of the weaver’s cabin and ran down the trail toward Ferrin’s keep. Aon scampered beside him, trying to keep pace.
As Terith neared the keep, his gut wormed with anxiety about what kind of mount could be scrounged up at such late notice for an extreme cross-country endurance race.
He emerged from the dense forest and he stepped onto the wide landing field. It was like sauntering into the devil’s parlor. Even Terith, who had worked with the creatures his whole life, felt sweat slick his palms. Getting a group of dragons together for a race was an especially good way to arrange an unscheduled massacre.
Nine oversized cages were spread out in the landing field outside the cavern that kept Ferrin’s dragons. They ranged from cubical wooden boxes with windows to nearly spherical enclosures of bent crisscrossing ivy limbs, all resting on wheeled carts or carriage poles. Like birds, dragons were built light for flight and could be carried to races. It kept them rested, but mostly it protected the public.
The nearest thing in nature to a dragon attack was a lightning strike—the only difference being that, on occasion, someone might actually survive a lightning strike.
Pent-up and angry dragons lashed about, turning, seething, screeching, and roaring at each other. Keepers with long poles and wands of burning pecan wood, a pacifant, worked to keep the creatures at bay. The potent reek of dragon dung hung in the air, along with the lingering fragrance of death.
A tethered dral in a coop nearest the cavernous opening of the keep caught Terith’s eye. Its jaws were huge and muscular. Clawed fingers on its winged forearms gripped log-sized bars. Motionless, its eyes tracked Terith below its grotesque, leafy headdress of flat neck spines. The face looked like death had collided with a forest and spit out a dragon. Its chest was large and powerful. Of all the dragon species, the dral had the longest and strongest finger talons which it used to snare prey as it hung along the sides of the canyons. Its forearm wings were camouflaged like leaves of great ivy down to the scalloped edges and veins of the great ivy leaves. There was always something dripping from the corner of a dral’s jaw, either saliva or blood. The predators were built and bred to kill.
The next two cages held dragons with muted green and yellow coloring that resembled fruit dragons, but their build balanced their weight more forward toward their larger wings. Their neck spines were the shortest of all the dragons, which only made the rippled muscles on their backs more evident. Terith recognized the crossbreed racers, bred for speed and strength. These were the most docile—until the race started. Muscle tone was evident in both dragons. They were in exquisite condition. Neither snarled or made shows of strength, conserving energy, waiting for their chance to take to the sky on their clean-edged kite wings.
At the far end of the clearing Pert’s mossy green velra turned continuously in its enclosure. It had long, hooked claws on its hind legs and a pale blue-tinted underbelly. Its long, thin, barrel-like snout was loaded with spear-like teeth that interlaced on the outside of its red gums. The fishing dragon was sleek with powerful shoulders. It was built for diving and then climbing with its prey locked in its teeth or talons. In Ferrin’s challenge that had both steep and long climbs, a velra was the ideal mount. Seeing the size and form of the dragon did nothing to ease Terith’s anxiety about his own situation. The velra was magnificent.
Closer to Terith a lithe, long-fanged, gray strythe dropped the ram’s head it had been gnawing on and let fly a burst of fire into the air—it was tired of waiting. The green wood of its enclosure didn’t catch fire, but the smoldering rope lashings had to be doused with buckets of water. It reared back in its egg-shaped cage and barked loudly enough to pain Terith’s ears. Birds scattered from nearby trees and likely every edible creature within a mile dove for its burrow—including several curious children unwisely wandering the landing area who quickly ducked behind anybody nearby that would pass for a larger target. Keepers cranked on chains about the strythe’s wide neck, pulling its head to the floor of the cage, where its
mouth could not open far enough to expel the flammable gas of fermenting ragoon weed from its pouch-like second stomach.
Nearby its rider was rubbing oil on the dragon’s well-kept saddle.
Perhaps too well kept, Terith noted. Oil burns.
In all, there were nine dragons for ten riders.
At least Pert wasn’t around to rub it in.
“There is the dragon rider of Neutat!” thundered Bergulo, the keeper of Ferrin’s dragons. He gave a hearty slap on Terith’s sore shoulder.
Bergulo was a distant cousin of Ferrin, a muscular beast of a man that Terith had seen more than one unbroken dragon submit to on sight.
“Where’s your mount?” he asked. “It’s almost time to ride.”
“It’s dead.”
“Dead? You’re joking.”
Terith explained the steam explosion, sparing the still painful details of Akara’s fall into the deep. “What have you got that I could rent for the challenge?”
“I won’t take a single piece from you for using my dragons,” Bergulo stated firmly. “But Ferrin’s dragon Bander and all our largest war dragons I moved north to the keep at Breytat last week to make room for the challengers’ and visitors’ dragons. Still got a few, but they’re trained for sky chariot work and rather timid.”
Breytat was the better part of a day’s ride away. Terith wished he’d thought to come see Bergulo the day before. But he realized that even if he had gotten there in time to find a dragon, that it would have been exhausted from an all-night ride back to Ferrin-tat and unable to complete the challenge.
“Have a look.” Bergulo gestured to the gaping opening of the cavern keep. “You might find something,” Bergulo said unconvincingly.
Terith walked into the keep alongside Bergulo, appraising the reptilian candidates.
The dregs were a sorry lot, either too old or too young.
“None of these could complete the circuit in a day,” Terith said.
Bergulo nodded regretfully. “What other options have you got?”
“None, I’m afraid.”
“What about last year’s crop from Neutat—any winners?” Bergulo asked hopefully.
“Hardly. And I haven’t got time to go back anyway.”
Just then, a page hurried into the keep, careful not to shout. “Sir, there’s another cage waiting at the crossing.”
“Another cage?” Bergulo wondered, exchanging looks with Terith. “But all the dragons for the challengers have already arrived.”
“It came around from the southeast.”
In the distance, the service horn blared out.
Bergulo yanked the runner around and shoved him forward so hard that he stumbled in to a run. “Get the strongmen to the bridge, lad. Ha-hah!” He clapped a beefy hand on Terith’s shoulder again with a heavy thud. “Just you wait. Something’s coming for you. I can feel it. You’re not out yet. Ten times you should have been dead by my count. Fate has an appointment with you, Terith. Come on!”
With all of Bergulo’s overbearing optimism Terith had a hard time keeping up a healthy skepticism.
From the southeast . . . Neutat.
He jogged with the keeper after the page and joined up with a group of four burly soldiers coming down from the guard shack.
Across the lattice and rope bridge, with its spider web of constraining tethers running out from along its underside, was a long lumpy figure leaning against a ramshackle cage.
“Werm!” Terith shouted across the chasm. “What are you doing?”
“I brought your dragon. She was getting lonely,” he sounded back. His words echoed off the canyon walls over the sound of the distant waterfall.
Terith hurried across the lashed slats and embraced his oversized friend. Akara lay curled in the cramped crate, looking as though she could burst the thing to pieces by yawning.
Terith wondered at the sight, eyes wide and mouth agape in a split-face grin at his eminent luck.
“How?” He walked full around the cart as four of Neutat’s border guards, who had dragged the cart fifteen miles in a day, fed long poles through rings on the sides.
Werm put his fists on his love handles proudly. “I took the archers around to the east side of Neutat to haul out another temporary bridge. The damage wasn’t so bad on that corner. And there she was, snarling and doing like dragons do. I supposed she survived that blast—just stunned you know. She must have woken up before those flesh-eating flies down in the deep of the canyon got through her hide. Got a few nicks I can see. Other than that, she looks ready.”
“So you got back on the ropes after your last trip across,” Terith said, eyes aglow with excitement. “That’s surprising.”
“Tanna threatened me.”
“I believe it.”
“The keep was in good order when we came to it,” Werm said. “The younger dragons had come back, waiting to be fed—lazy critters. Redif got things sorted out with the devils while we got the salvage operation going. Part of the great ivy stems were tossed over the half of Neutat that’s still around. A whole bundle of homes is still there—just upside down.”
The guards and strongmen from Ferrin-tat heaved the cage off its cart. With the long poles over their shoulders, they began the careful descent to the center of the footbridge, where the sway was largest.
Terith and Werm followed, taking places at the back of the poles.
“How is Tanna?” Terith asked. “Is she taking charge at the place of resort? Is she checking on the women and the elders?”
“Uh,” said Werm lamely, “why don’t you just ask her when she gets here?”
Terith nearly let go of the pole. “What?”
“She says she’s got something you need and not to let them start the challenge until she gets here.”
“Noon is noon; I can’t delay the start—she isn’t still working on the harness?”
“You said it, not me.”
“But—”
“The big root her workshop was in was just hanging off the side of the megalith,” Werm said merrily. “It didn’t look like it was going anywhere so she climbed down and went back to work. I can’t imagine it looked any messier in there. Sways a bit in the wind, though. She was puking her guts out after a while—I guess I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
Terith laughed as he reshouldered the pole for the ascent up the other side of the bridge. The weight of the dragon cage on his shoulder seemed to erase every other burden.
At the upper landing, the strongmen lowered the cage onto rough-hewn stone supports. “Mind that box attached to the side!” Werm cautioned. “You don’t want to be banging that around.”
As the strongmen filtered away, getting an earful from Bergulo about their disorganized descent, Terith pointed to the crated box. “What’s in there?”
Werm grabbed his suspenders and nodded knowingly. “Emergency supplies.”
“No it’s not.” Terith sniffed the crate and broke into a grin. “It smells of sulfur. These are fireworks.”
“Well somebody must have thought they were emergency supplies because they showed up at the place of resort.” Werm laughed heartily, slapping Terith on the back. “Those are my best whistlers. Congratulations, you’ve officially got yourself a chance.”
Chapter 13
Erdali Realm. Citadel of Toran.
Members of the Benevolent Union of Traders had been trickling into the castle for several days. That should have triggered Reann to remember the ceremony. It was an inexplicable lapse in attention bordering on irresponsibility, a sin so abhorrent Reann felt as though she would never be rid of it.
To forget something made her feel like a normal person who wasn’t at all clever and hadn’t a clue or a plan and had to make things up on the spot.
It was excruciating, especially since Ret knew. He never forgot t
his sort of thing.
And ever-present in her anxious mind was the moment that had frozen into her memory: Trinah, her gray dress, and the morning light slanting through the room and cutting across her hair.
She was the Furendali heir, a future queen, the product of Toran’s secret clan union between Erdal and the Furendal, but the only thing she could do about it was try to learn more about Trinah.
Did she have a plan to reveal herself? Did she know the other heirs? Would she hide from her heritage forever? When Verick discovered her, what would he do?
Meanwhile, dozens of arriving traders called for bags to be carried and room arrangements to be made, demanding the dining schedule and tours. Yet despite all the work that needed doing by castle servants, Reann in her elegant dress never got a single request to lift a finger.
Reann couldn’t help but smirk as she briskly walked past Carena and Illa, who stared with narrowed eyes and whispered behind their hands to each other.
Reann even caught a few of the younger traders turning their heads as she passed. It was an utterly new experience and she loved it.
She felt like she was floating.
Trinah, rather predictably, was at the aviary grilling Ret about the birds’ hunting capabilities.
“Is everything to your liking, Trinah?” Reann asked politely.
Trinah didn’t answer.
After a few minutes of conversation about the birds’ peculiar eating habits, Reann added, “I think they’re beautiful.”
Trinah turned and looked at Reann. “Do you need something?”
“I . . . no . . . just came here to make sure everything is satisfactory.”
“Quite,” Trinah said and turned back to Ret who suppressed a chuckle. Then she added, “Until you arrived. Are you here to ask more questions or have I met my quota?”
Ret snickered. Reann gave him a crusty look and swished—not stomped—away.
Still hungry for information, Reann walked around the outer wall to the small Furendali encampment and quizzed some of the stoic spear throwers. The only information she gleaned from their mumbles—