Dragons of Wild (Upon Dragon's Breath Trilogy Book 1)

by Ava Richardson

  Remember what Zenema said. Jaydra’s thoughts echoed in my mind. I heard her shift her weight in the nearby woods, her scales sliding over the dirt and leaves and her claws clicking against stones. Follow what is in your blood. Follow your heart.

  She was wise, was Zenema. All dragons were—when they wanted to be. Even young, fierce Jaydra had a way of looking at the world that made it all seem to make more sense.

  Sitting upright, I glanced at Bower. “My parents abandoned me out in the Western Isles.”

  Mouth dropping open, Bower stared at me. I wanted to punch him. He snapped his mouth shut, glanced away and then asked, “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know. That’s one of the things I need to find out. Maybe they were scared for me. Or maybe they were scared of what I could do…the tricks.” I licked my lips.

  The band around my chest eased. Now that I had finally started to speak of myself, it seemed surprisingly easy. “The tricks are easy, but…well, I need to learn when to use it and how to stop. My…well, Zenema, who raised me as her own child, she said my parents came from the Middle Kingdom. She judged that by…by some cave drawings and by my clothes. And there was an old hermit out there who taught me my words and to read a little. I would like to think my folks wanted really to save me or hide me, but the truth is that I don’t know. And it is time for me to discover who my family was…who I am.”

  “Why didn’t this hermit ever try to help you find your folks?” Bower asked.

  I shook my head. “He was a hermit. He never left his hut, let alone his island.”

  I was suddenly at a loss for words. A tide of despair swelled in my chest. Maybe it was all a ridiculous quest to find out who my parents had been, and who I was, where my magic had come from. What if Zenema had just really sent me away because she didn’t want me to hurt the rest of the clutch with my erratic magic? But would she have allowed Jaydra to come with me if that was true?

  How could I know what the truth was?

  Bower frowned, but he gave a nod as if he understood. “Well, it sounds like this hermit did what he could, teaching you a few things you had to know. I’ve read there are villages in the Western Isles. We import something from the sea-- rare herbs and shells and sometimes fish.”

  I nodded. “They’re more like those savages you mentioned. They build simple huts and hunt with spears and dress in cloth made of pounded roots and paint their skin. I didn’t like them and they really didn’t like me.” I didn’t want to mention how the villagers treated me as if I was a young dragon—with wary respect and suspicion, as if I wanted only to raid their fishing nets.

  “Sounds like you were alone,” Bower said.

  Saffron never alone! Jaydra snorted.

  I shot a frown in her direction—she’d sounded more like a dragon and nothing like a horse giving a snort. Turning to Bower, I told him, “Not completely alone. I had Jaydra…and Zenema and other friends. But…” I couldn’t add that they were all dragons.

  Picking up a stick, Bower tossed it into the fire. A shower of sparks rose up in a spray of golden embers. “I thought I had it bad, but I never had a power or an ability that set me apart from anyone. I really did have people around me. But I know what it’s like to want to know more.”

  Tell Bower, Jaydra thought at me. He managed to flee his nest. He wants to learn. He may seem a fledgling, but Bower has a strength deep inside.

  Biting my lower lip, I decided that maybe it was getting a little too difficult to keep so many secrets. A part of me also wanted to tell Bower everything. At least Jaydra could then act like a real dragon in front of him, instead of trying to be a very large horse. But it was such a risk.

  Clearing my throat, I wet my lips and tried for a calm voice. “Bower? I’m going to tell you something that might change how you see the entire world.”

  He glanced at me, his forehead bunched with lines and his eyebrows lifted. He was probably imagining that I was about to tell him some other piece of a terrible past. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  The corner of Bower’s mouth lifted. “Don’t worry. I would hope I have tolerance enough to hear anything you might say. And I won’t tell. No matter what, I would never tell on you.”

  “We’ll see about that.” I muttered. Louder, I said, “There is another reason, I think, why we met each other out in the road. And yet another reason, why it is for Torvald that I am bound.”

  He waved a hand. “You told me. You need to find a fortress city made out of and on a mountain.”

  I shook my head. “Yes, there’s that. But…” I let the words fade and took a deep breath. This moment was like that of the one before I took a plunge off a cliff.

  Oh well. Follow the truth in the blood, as Zenema says.

  “I was never raised by any human hand. Zenema—my adopted mother—was something far more.”

  Bower’s eyebrows drew low and flat. He was staring at me like I had started to speak another language. “And Jaydra is more than she seems,” I said.

  I heard Jaydra shift and she thought to me, Now?

  Now. I thought the word back to her.

  Jaydra stepped into the clearing. For a moment, she still seemed to be a horse—a large, tall horse with a long tail and shades of blue in her deep, black coat. I sketched a small set of hand gestures in the air that I knew from experimenting, would clear all vision. My awareness of the world sharpened, as if a thin mist had been suddenly blown away. The sky seemed clearer, the wood smoke seemed warmer and stung my nose, the air on my back seemed colder, the ground I sat upon seemed harder.

  Bower and I were no longer two humans and a very large horse before us—instead, a blue-green dragon stood on the edge of the firelight, her eyes glinting with gold and green and brown. Jaydra lifted her head higher on her sinuous neck. She curled her tail around her. Her scales shimmered.

  Mouth falling open, Bower stared. For a moment, it seemed as if he could not even move. Then he jumped up with a strangled shout, staggered backwards, tripped over a rock and fell on his backside, his arms outstretched.

  Luckily, he hadn’t fallen into the fire. His cloak tangled his legs and he fumbled to pull it away and free himself.

  Standing, I moved over to put a hand on Jaydra’s warm scales. “I am going to Torvald to find my human family, but that is not my only family. And Jaydra is not my horse. She is my den-sister, my dragon kin, and my friend.”

  “By the name of the First!” Bower muttered. He got his cloak untangled and stood up again. He was still staring at Jaydra, his eyes huge.

  Jaydra blew smoke from her nose. Has Bower never seen a dragon before?

  I caught the humor in her thoughts and told her with my mind, Go easy on him—he hasn’t!

  Turning back to Bower, I studied his pale face. Was he shaking—and was that from fear or excitement? “Bower, you don’t have to worry—” I stopped myself. Of course he should worry. Jaydra was a dragon and he was a mere human. Unleashed from her horse-illusion, Jaydra seemed taller, larger and far more fierce with gleaming, pointed teeth, sharp claws and wings that she now spread and fluttered, stirring a breeze. “She isn’t about to eat you,” I said.

  Bower straightened and pushed his cloak back over one shoulder. “Of course not. Dragons rarely eat people, unless they are wild—the dragons, that is. Or that’s what I’ve read.” His words tumbled out in a rush and I realized from his tone that it wasn’t terror he was feeling. He laughed and spoke to me, but without dragging his stare from Jaydra. “You really were raised by dragons? That’s amazing. I’ve never read of that before. And the horse is a dragon?” He laughed again, clapped his hand together and rubbed them fiercely. “How do you do that? Is it an illusion? Or does she really become a horse? She is a she still, yes? Or can she change her entire form and shape? Can she look like a human?”

  With a shake of my head and a shrug, I said, “It’s just something we can do. It’s a dragon trick. It’s like how a fish hides in the rushes and weeds. Jaydra only
looked like a horse. It’s just a twisting of light and what’s around you. You can almost see that something is wrong, but unless you know how to look past the trick to the reality, you just see the trick. But that’s not important. What matters is that I saw drawings of dragons and a mountain and a city. That is why I have to get to Torvald. I think it might be the same place as the one on those drawings. The drawings that my parents made. I have to know why they did what they did. I have to know—”

  “Why you are the way you are,” Bower said, finishing my thought.

  I nodded. “Why we are the way we all are. I am not certain any of us knows what happened to us—why are there no dragon riders?”

  Bower stood a little straighter. “You’re right. We all need to know what happened to the dragon riders.”

  Part III

  To the City

  9

  Into Danger

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off her—the dragon that was. Jaydra had to be the most amazing thing I had ever seen. She surpassed all the drawings in any books I had ever read. She was an amazing dragon, even more so than the ones with mammoth size, or those with four wings instead of two. Those dragons had seemed like something from a dream, but Jaydra looked so real and solid. She even smelled like a dragon.

  Well, in truth, she smelled of fish and a touch of sooty smoke. Her scales seemed to shimmer with amazing shades of blue and green.

  The next morning—after Jaydra had brought us fish to share for our morning meal—I asked Saffron to allow Jaydra to stay in her dragon form. “She only has to hide as a horse when we hear others on the road. Even that though, was a mystery to me.

  I still didn’t understand how a dragon could look like something else. It had to be magic of a kind. Nowhere in the books I’d read was there mention of dragons pretending to be any other creature.

  Physically, it seemed impossible for Jaydra to take the shape of a horse. As a dragon, she was as long as two houses and half as tall as a pine. And Saffron said Jaydra wasn’t yet full grown. So her looking like a horse had to be illusion. Jaydra could fold her wings tight to her side. She also had small flares along the length of her tail that Saffron said helped her to fly.

  It seemed to me that Jaydra used her tail as much for communication as anything—it would flick when she was irritated or could curl up around her if she was pleased or thump the ground with irritation. Her eyes were also expressive, and her snout shorter than others types of dragon I had seen pictured. It seemed to me as though she was well adapted to swimming and diving.

  Were all dragon species so specialized?

  Pelting Saffron with questions, I learned more about dragons in a few minutes than I had in years of searching for information.

  It was clear they adored fish—and I mean adored! Or at least Jaydra did.

  We kept mostly to the woods, avoiding the roads and possible encounters with soldiers. At the sound of water—the splash of a river or creek—Jaydra would slip away, amazingly silent for such a big creature to investigate. We usually followed would find Jaydra sitting on the river bank, her tail swishing, her stare fixed on the flashes of silvery fish in the water. She would sweep the fish out with a claw, and after lunching on fish as well as having had fish for breakfast I could tell I would soon tire of such a diet. But I could never tire of watching Jaydra.

  The illustrations in my books hadn’t done justice to the way sunlight seemed to glow from her scales when she got them wet in a river, or how deep and multi-colored her eyes were when she looked at you.

  When we took a rest after eating our midday meal—for a change Saffron had trapped a rabbit to skin, roast and eat—I pulled out some scraps of paper from the back of one of my books and started scribbling notes.

  An Encounter with Dragons, By Bower of House Daris

  Of all of the strange things about my current situation, the strangest is probably the swiftness with which a sense of normality has been reached. As we travel toward the city of my birth—the place that may both answer our questions and seek to silence them forever—it seems that we have fallen into an easy rhythm. I walk side by side with the girl, Saffron, and usually behind us there trails the female dragon, Jaydra. Occasionally, Saffron will take the lead to scout ahead, for we must be ever watchful for the patrols which seem to be ever more numerous. I pulled back to walk beside the dragon and it felt to me like walking beside an old friend.

  I wonder if this is one of the many odd affects dragons have on humans. Is it an aura they radiate due to theirs size or warmth? Or perhaps they inspire us to be even better humans by the fact that they are so good at being dragons? It seems to me that our species were destined to be friends. In all my reading of the old books, I recall clearest the constant references to dragon riders and dragon friends. Perhaps there is a kinship between us that neither species can properly fathom?

  But what then of all I have been taught? Why do so many think dragons are nothing but stories of monsters meant to frighten children? And what of the official tales that dragons eat people, spread disease, and are frightening phantoms? Certainly, the story that there are no dragons is a lie, so it must follow the rest is untrue as well. But perhaps Jaydra is an exceptional dragon? She certainly exhibits an ease with me that is far more like that of a friend, and not that of a pet or companion animal.

  However, no friendship that I have with this one representative of dragon kind is anything compared to the connection between the dragon and her ‘den-sister’ which I take to mean some kind of familial relationship.

  From what little I have pieced together, the society and culture of these dragons is structured with dens and clutches. The den you might regard as your home, the territory which you live within and protect. The clutch refers to the place where the eggs are laid and those born and raised together. A clutch-sister grows up from the same batch of eggs under the den-mother. So Saffron regards herself as a den-sister, but not a clutch-sister to Jaydra the dragon. This means she was raised in the same nest by the same mother who they call Zenema.

  As Saffron has explained, her den is actually inside a long-extinct volcano. This snow-capped peak rising high over what Saffron has called their home island, and the volcano itself offers several den caves to more than a few den-mothers, but no dragon is as old or highly regarded as Zenema. I can just imagine how this impressive peak must pierce the sky like a dragon’s snout, standing head and shoulders over a lush, green jungle forest below. The way Saffron talks about it makes it sound as if the hillside is riddled with holes and tunnels. This is just one peak, and it seems the island dragons have many such dens throughout the Western Isles. This has led me to wonder if that is the original reason why the citadel of Torvald sits on Mount Hammal? Was Mount Hammal once taller? Or once home to dragons and dragon dens Mount Hammal certainly exploded at one point—the evidence of past upheaval is plain in scars that are still not fully healed or reforested.

  As with every bit of knowledge I discover, more questions are posed to me.

  But the question that puzzles me most is that of the connection between Saffron and the dragon. Saffron claims she actually talks to Jaydra, but from the dragon I can hear nothing but yips, snorts, chirrups, whistles and rumblings. Perhaps Saffron can understand this strange dragon language? Or, even though Jaydra’s lips cannot form or manipulate our words, it might just be the familiarity of growing up together that leaves them able to communicate. But could it be true that part of the bond between dragon friend and dragon is the ability to share thoughts, or even to share minds?

  I can see how this might frighten some—for in sharing is there not always the risk of losing something of oneself?

  “Come on, now!” Saffron laughed and poked at my shoulder. “Why spend all your time with your nose to a page when you can take a look around you instead?” She turned and spread her arms. I glanced up.

  We had strayed higher into the forest and hills, up to where a river wound down the hillside. Below us, we could see the valley
and the main road, which wound its way to Torvald. In the distance, the villages around Torvald cast up a haze of smoke from cooking fires. It was a chill day and I could almost wish to be beside one of those fires. But I could also see the movement of the king’s army in the distance—and the fires from their camps seemed to cast an even greater haze into the sky. It was odd the king should have so many of his troops so close to Torvald and not out protecting our borders, but there must be a reason for it.

  In the far distance loomed the hazy shape of Mount Hammal, and below it glittered the towers of Torvald and the king’s palace. It was easy to see why anyone might regard Torvald as impressive. The city was large enough to be a triangular scar upon the land, and the buildings and towers rose up into the clouds. The woods to the east seemed a hazy blue, and the grayish smudge of cooking fires, factories and chimneys gave the city an almost dream-like haze. Although I couldn’t see any details, I knew all too well the many terraces of Torvald, of the winding streets, the wooden houses of the poor districts and the large, stone houses of those rich enough to build with white marble brought to the city along the rivers that wound nearby. The entire city stood proud in the gently rolling landscape of the farmlands that surrounded it, as if it had been dropped here just to be a sparkling jewel.

  But there were troubling signs, too. I’d not been gone all that long from the city, but now it seemed as if the king’s soldiers camped around the city, almost as if they were ready for a battle. But who would they fight—the people of Torvald? The idea left my skin cold and I did not even want to think of such a thing. But then I also remembered the ruins of villages we had spotted in these hillsides, much like the one where we had stayed last night. What had happened to those villages? Had the people been taken away? Killed? Had their houses been burned just because they had harbored—or might have harbored—Salamander rebels?

  I could not believe such a thing. King Enric had ruled for so very long—as long as I could remember. He had to be secure on his throne. Perhaps the villagers had simply moved to Torvald to find work in the factories or to be under the protection of the Iron Guard. And yet still the idea lingered and left me uneasy. What if we were walking into a city soon to be plunged into disaster?