But I was a threat. I was Warblood, Jewel of the Crown. Most drakes postured and preened. I killed.
It was daylight and I had no advantage other than the fact that I had killed more than my share of drakes as large as he. An even match, I wagered, and I spread my wings, prepared to accept his challenge.
A second drake rose to the ridge however, blue wings beating a backdraft and he bellowed at the sight of me. Almost immediately, they were joined by a snarling red drakina and a bronze drake. The three hovered in perfect synchronicity and I marvelled at their co-operation. Drakes and drakinas working together to protect their aerie and the thought occurred to me that perhaps not all intelligent dragons were slaves to sticks.
It also occurred to me, then, that perhaps our dragonsongs had summoned them.
A fourth and then a fifth rose up from the ridge, blotting out the sun.
I could win against one, perhaps even against two, but not against all these and not in the daylight. I leapt from the ridge and dipped a wing, wheeling in the air and leaving the aerie for my own lands. While everything in me wanted to, I forced myself not to look back, for it would be humbling to let them win such a simple conquest. However, as I returned to my own lair that evening, I vowed I would investigate further in the coming days. Naturally, at night.
I like to think of myself as a patient dragon but I know that this is not completely true. I do believe I gave it the time between Blinking Eyes and Sleeping, knowing that during the Sleeping Eyes of Draco Stellorum, there would not even be moonslight to give me away. And so one evening during the Sleeping Eyes, I left my lair and flew those many hours, flying by scent and memory alone until my night eyes spied the ridge. I landed silently and gazed down into the valley.
There was nothing.
Not one drake, not one drakina, not one nest of chicks to be seen. I could smell them sure enough, but the scent was days old and I puzzled at the meaning. Slowly, carefully, I sliced through the valley, landing on one of the nests to find the branches cold. I took a deep breath and chirruped into the night. Nothing. I bugled now, the only sound the dull echo as my call bounced across the rocks. The aerie, which had once been filled with life and dragons, was empty.
It was then that I heard the music.
Music like the sighing of stars, notes rising and falling like the ocean waves, plucking my strings like dragonsong from long, long, very long ago.
It was coming from the dome and spire. In the absence of moonslight and with only stars to guide me, I flew for less than an hour before the dome blocked out even those and I soared toward it, lured by the music of the night. There was a low building at its base and I smelled sticks and leather, but the music was not coming from that building. I swept over it, circling instead the great spire capped with snow and pure gold.
Soft and low, coming from within. Pipes…
It stirred something deep within me, calling me the way the night called me. Unlike the pipes, the night and I were one. I was a curious dragon and strong from my life in the wild. Besides, I loved the smell of gold. I breathed it in as I circled the dome, ignoring the prickles of warning racing up and down my spine. This was a place of sticks. I should have flown far, far away. But the music called so I stayed.
In the darkness, I could see holes all along this tower from base to roof. Windows, I thought, or doors open to the night sky. Without mesh, without glass, they were large enough even for very large dragons and the music floated out through them like incense. I spied one such hole near the top and landed, prepared to leap back into the sky in a heartbeat. I peered down.
It was dark but the smell of dragons was strong and after a moment, I could make out nests built into the walls with stucco and wood. Empty nests made of sticks and straw and chaff. I could also smell men. This was an aviary like Gavius’ – constructed by sticks to house their dragons. I could smell old leather and old blood and gold and another scent that triggered memories from ages past. My heart ached as the music stopped, echoed away like leaves on the wind.
Below me, a lantern flickered to life.
“Stormfall…”
A boy on the stone floor far, far down. He lifted it so the light fell across his face.
“Stormfall, you’ve grown…”
Dark face, dark eyes, wild curly hair.
My heart leapt into my throat and I wheeled in the window and sprang into the night, flying as fast as I could to return to my lair and the lands that I had claimed as my own. I settled into my nest by dawn but did not sleep one wit, for my heart did not slow its race, nor did my mind stop its spinning. I could not, I would not believe what it was telling me.
That day at dusk, I left my den to return to the golden spire, finding it still empty of dragons.
There, Rue was waiting for me.
Chapter 15
RUE
I watched him from the tower top, sleeping in one of the lower nests with a lantern by his side. He stirred after several moments, rubbed his eyes and stared up at me for a long time. Finally, he stepped to the floor, picked up the lantern and walked out the main floor door. I could hear him outside and I swung on my perch, watching the lantern light swing across the rocks. It stopped on a narrow plateau between cliff and trees and I could see him making a fire on the grass. It was not high enough for snow here and I wondered if the rains would come even to the mountains. If so, warmth and dry wood would not be taken for granted for long.
Then again, the sound of the pipes.
Low and trilling like the music of dragonsong and my heart lurched within me. I leapt from my perch and soared through the night sky, sweeping down over his head like a great black wind. I rose up to the mountains but the pipes were so sad and sweet and they called me with a sharper tug than any rope, so I circled and swept over him again. I heard him laugh and call my name, my old name, my first name before I knew that dragons could have names. I wheeled in the air and dropped to the ground several spans away, wings wide and ready to fly at the first sign of others.
In the light of the fire, I could see him. Lankier, older but still the same.
Rue.
Alive, not dead like Serkus had said. Alive and Rue.
My Rue.
He turned as he sat, lowered the pipe and smiled.
“I can’t believe how big you are,” he said. “Cirrus was right. You’re magnificent.”
I shook my head, snapping my mane of spines.
He reached into a pocket, pulled out a gold coin, held it up in the firelight.
“Look,” he said. “I still have it, the coin he gave us to enter the Citadel. That was so long ago. We were both so young.”
I stared at him. My Rue. I didn’t know him.
He looked down, sighed. Slipped it back into his pocket.
“You used to sit on my shoulder, remember? Even when you were too big to do it, you did. Scared all the girls on the docks. You’d scare them plenty now, you’re so big. You’d crush me like a beetle.”
I snapped my beak at him, like the old days.
“I don’t have any lemonwhites for you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I—”
His voice caught in his throat and he drew a long, shuddering breath. His eyes were filling with moonshine and oceans.
“I’m sorry about so many things,” he said. “I didn’t look for you when Serkus sold you. I was so angry then, so broken and defeated and angry. I left the Shores and never looked back. But I thought about you all the time.”
I couldn’t smell other dragons or sticks or traps. There was only Rue so I took several steps toward the fire. The stones were warm so I lay down, folding my wings across my back.
“You have a ring,” he said and he made a face. I think it was a sad one. It didn’t matter. It was my ring. I had earned it, along with my scars.
“Cirrus said you were in the Pits,” he said. “That they called you Warblood and that you were undefeated.”
I turned my head, nibbled an imagined itch on my shoulder. I always lik
ed the sound of his voice. Up and down like ocean waves. Soothing and musical like a dragon.
“I’m sorry you were in the Pits. I can’t imagine you there. You were the best fisher dragon I ever knew.”
I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten last night or the night before, for that matter, and my belly made a rumbling sound. I yawned to disguise it and once again, Rue laughed.
“I have some dried stoat in the hut,” he said, nodding towards the spire and the little house at its base. “It’s not much but the riders didn’t leave anything and I’ve had to pretty much fend for myself. I do miss the lemonwhites, though.”
I looked at him. Blinked slowly. Marvelled that out of all the sticks I had come to hate in my life, he was not one of them. Even though he had been the one to catch me, the first to put a band on my throat. My Rue.
“I can understand you, you know that?” he said and he poked at the fire with a long stick. “Cirrus told me that Dragon Riders are chosen because they understand dragon thought. He found me in Venitus after a rider told him about a dragon at the Prefect’s house. There was a riot in the streets and a dragon almost died. He was the colour of night and stars.”
He grinned now, a small sideways grin, stirred the fire so that sparks rose up into the darkness.
“Actually, he said this night dragon lifted a flaming funeral carriage into the air. I said it sounded like something you’d do.”
I remembered it vividly. It was an impressive thing, but then again, I was an impressive dragon.
“Cirrus tried to find you but the funeral owner had closed his business and left town. He lost track of you after that but we talked all night. He came to visit a few times afterwards. I was working in a fish shop in Venitus, helping the owners buy and sell Shore fish. We sold to senators who vacationed there with their families. We sold lots of fish.”
My belly grumbled at the thought.
“We never bought from Serkus, though,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to him. Someone told me he was gone. I hope he’s dead.”
So did I.
“See? Cirrus said you can tell the dragons that will make good Flight dragons. You can almost hear their thoughts, active and sharp. You think all the time, Stormfall. Not all dragons do. Maybe that’s why we got along so well. I think all the time too. It’s not so good when you’re a soul-boy. You’re always thinking about what you would do if you weren’t.”
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what he wanted. A part of me wanted to go home, kill a nox and eat well, and then sleep for the rest of the night and then all day as well, just because I could. But another part of me wanted to sit and enjoy his company a while longer, listen to that voice that was like the waves. Perhaps it brought back memories of a simpler time and a younger self, when my imagination was as wide as the sea and my feet firmly planted on the shoulders of a boy.
“Cirrus thinks you could be a Flight Dragon,” said Rue. He looked up at me. “And he thinks I could be a Rider. He said we should be a team. I’d like that. It’d be better than selling fish to fat senators and their wives. That’s what soul-boys dream of when they have the time.”
A rider.
I had dreamed lately of the brown rider, his legs across my shoulders, his hand on my spines. Living and working with sticks for a noble purpose, no band of silver at my throat.
But I was Warblood the Undefeated Jewel of the Crown, killer of sticks and dragons.
It was just a dream.
He looked back at the fire, poked it so that ash floated up to the stars.
“I dream all the time. That night when the pirates attacked the docks, that was the end and the beginning for me. You helped the Flight, Cirrus said. He said you saved his life and the life of his dragon and that he would do his best to find you and bring us together to the Citadel. You can’t imagine what that meant for me, up to my arms in fish guts, to hear that a Dragon Rider wanted to help. But maybe you can. You are that kind of dragon.”
He had no idea. My imagination had been slaughtered in the Crown. I was nothing but a spectacular killer, all ash and stars and blood.
“I didn’t get my soul, see? Even when I left my servitude, I never got it back. I still feel the same as I did before I was free. Ruminor hasn’t smiled on me at all.”
I wondered if that was my problem too. My father, Draco Stellorum, was aloof, unreachable, implacable. It was hard to believe in stars when your life was filled with blood.
“After the riots in Bangarden, I didn’t see Cirrus for months,” Rue went on. “And then ten days ago, he showed up again. He said you had been seen here, at South Aerie Four and that if I was still interested in a life as a Dragon Rider, that I’d best get up here as soon as I could. I’ve been waiting for days.”
He looked up.
“But I didn’t give up. Not this time. I knew you’d come back. You’re faithful and proud and curious. Your mind never stops. I just had to wait. And here you are.”
I looked past him into the fire, the yellow dancing tongues of flame and the twisting reaching fingers of smoke. Men could tame fire, but it was the dragons that ruled it.
He sat for a long while, poking the fire with the stick, watching the embers sizzle and burn. This was the most I’d ever heard him talk. Even in those long nights on the little boat, we mostly fished in silence. He had never been one for words.
After a while, he sighed.
“Never mind,” he said. “It’s just a silly dream. You’re wild and I’m poor and neither of us will be any more than what we are. We’re alive and that’s the best either of us could hope for.”
And he rose to his feet, stood before me as if unafraid. I could kill him with one breath, with one snap of my jaws. He was thin as a reed. Slowly, he reached out his hand, the hand that used to feed me lemonwhites and silverfins and dillies. Trembling, it hovered under my scaly chin and I growled, remembering nets and rings and silver bands.
He turned his palms up, hands empty and open.
So I let him approach, bristling at the brush of his fingers on my jaw. He traced the spikes and spines of my mane, the spiralling steel that was my horns.
“Pebbles,” he said as he reached up to my scales with both hands now. “Like smooth, warm pebbles…”
He ran his hands back down my face to my beak, to the ring still lying between my nostrils. Odd how both Rue and the golden drakina had marked it. Truth be told, I didn’t think of it much anymore. It was part of my history. Dragons don’t care much for history.
And his hands ran down my neck, pausing at the scars from Bloodtooth, at the healed spear wound, the fireburns along my flank. Prizes of my adulthood, I reckoned. Not many dragons lived beyond the age of three. Not in the service of sticks.
He released a deep breath and continued, running his hand up to the hump and hollow where my wings met my neck.
“This is where the rider sits,” he whispered. “I can’t imagine riding a dragon. I can’t imagine flying. It must be terrifying, more terrifying than being in a small boat in a big storm. But then again, you were never afraid of anything.”
He was wrong. I was afraid of the silver band.
He stepped back and back again. kicking dirt onto the fire and causing it to crackle and die.
“You should go. Go back to your den or your nest or whatever dragons call their homes. I’ll go back to my fish shop in Venitus. It’s not so bad.”
His eyes were shining like oceans once again. Now, they spilled like rivers.
“You are a fine, fine dragon, Stormfall,” he said. “I’m glad I got to know you and I hope you live until you are the size of a mountain.”
And then Rue turned and was gone, disappearing into the night like a shadow. I stayed where I was for a long time, wrestling with the war of memory and yearning, freedom and friendship. I must confess that the night was colder without him.
But a Flight Dragon?
There were Flight Dragons at my last match in the Pits to protect the Primar and his
company. I hated the Primar and his company. They had orchestrated a battle between dragons for their entertainment. But the Flight had been there only to protect.
There were Flight Dragons in Bangarden, presiding over the funeral of the old Prefect and the skirmish on the streets. I hated Bangarden. The carts and the mud, the mash and the harnesses. The sticks were merely players, using dragons without thought. I was glad Allum had lost his business and I hoped they all burned in the fire started by the funeral carriage. But Junias had been kind and had stood up to Philius to protect Towndrell from the lash. In the riots, the brown rider had saved my life at the risk of his own. Surely, both were acts of nobility, worthy of a dragon heart.
There were Flight Dragons at the Battle for the Udan Shores. The only defense against the Lamoan pirates, they had dispatched those ships with impressive skill. I hated the pirates but the Flight had been against them, burning their ships and dying for the village. Their sacrifice was noble, stirring a deep current of pride in my veins.
And then there was Rue.
I looked up to the sky where the sun was rising over the horizon. No vast ocean horizon but still, the Crescent Mountains were majestic with their snowy peaks and rocky valleys. The sky was huge, with pink and yellow bands streaking across the clouds. I had seen so many different sunrises, each beautiful in it’s own way. Like dragons and maybe, just maybe, like sticks.
My territory now was big and impressive and all mine, but it was empty. I had no nests except the one I slept in every night. The golden drakina was gone, leaving an ache that bit like a cold wind. My life was rich but meaningless and I wondered what might change if I were a Flight Dragon.
I would have Rue.
I sat for so long and was so still that a feathernewt fluttered by my face. I snapped and it was down my throat, the first meal in three nights. Small, sweet and oddly satisfying.
Rue and Tacita, Junias and Cirrus. Kindness was like a feathernewt – small and sweet and for me, a rare but satisfying thing.
Dragon of Ash & Stars: The Autobiography of a Night Dragon Page 14