“Skreayaar!” The shrieks and calls died down, and I heard then – for real this time – a whistling noise coming from the lake.
“Oh, Paxala no, shhh!” I muttered as I picked up my steps – not talking to the dragon but talking to myself, really, as I hurried down the last of the incline and then on the gravely beach around the lake, as the fog started to lift.
“Paxala?” I whispered into the tree line. “Pax? There’s a good girl…” I called again, taking the bag of food that I had brought from my shoulder. There, below where a mountain stream emptied into the lake via a waterfall, was a cave obscured by the water. It was damp near the front, but farther in it was dry and, given the number of branches and blankets I had snuck in over the last year – it was even warm. That was where I had left the dragon. My dragon. The one I called Pax, short for Paxala. From somewhere in the murk, there was a snarl and the sound of a heavy beast moving around.
“Come now, Pax,” I tried. “You just have to be quiet, don’t you? Otherwise Zaxx will hear you, and the monks have said that he’s already rejected two broods before…” I tried to reason with her – not sure that the dragon could even understand me. And if Zaxx heard her, then he might come and finish the task he started with her parents. For some reason, Zaxx had taken a dislike to the Crimson Reds, and tried to crush their eggs after he had killed them.
There was a snarl, as a large red snout pushed its way through the waterfall, and took a deep, flaring sniff of the air.
“You can smell the food, can’t you,” I whispered. Pax seemed to like being talked at, so I kept it up as I opened my backpack and allowed the smell of the old joint of ham to waft into the cold morning air. By now the dragons of the crater had stopped their distant dawn anthem – but that did not mean that they were silent. There was still the odd haunting shriek, jabber, or roar. I took a deep breath, feeling a little calmer. Maybe Zaxx wouldn’t notice the grunts and whistling chirrups of this red dragon amongst all of the others that were nearer to him in the dragon crater.
The snout withdrew, back into the cave before suddenly Pax burst out of the waterfall in one smooth glide. Her leathery wings were almost as long as the entire Monastery Main Hall, I realized as she flew above me, scaled legs tucked under her, each talon as long as my arm passing just a few feet from my head.
“Yeah!” I cheered. Every time I saw her it made my heart soar. She was a Crimson Red dragon, and, if she survived into adulthood she would be large as well. I felt a fierce pride of her as she alighted on the gravel beach, snuffing the air towards the ridgeway (and the other dragons beyond) before ducking her head to lap at the water of the lake.
“Here Pax, here.” I started with the joints of ham, throwing them ahead of us for the young dragon to bound after, and then the wedges of cheese, the bread, and cured fish – anything that I could find, barter for, or steal from the kitchens. “We’ll have to get you fishing, soon, and hunting properly,” I said absently, looking at the way her scales sat close to her ribs. Too close for my liking. “But only when I know that you can be silent, at least as we hunt this close to Zaxx and the others.” I threw the bits of food over the beach, and watching as the Crimson Red cocked her head to whistle at me. I had in mind that we would hunt the way that my mother’s people hunted falcons. I would have to whistle and call to scare out game, and she would fly to catch it. Or maybe I would have to shoot the game with my bow and arrow, for her to fly to catch…? It frustrated me how young Paxala really was, despite how large and capable she seemed to be. Dragons must mature slowly, I think – because Paxala had only just learnt how to fish. She had never been hunting for land game, and I did not even know how to start teaching her.
“Why be silent? It is morning, and dragons sing in the morning.” Again, the voice pressed itself into my mind, and I coughed with the shock of it. I ducked, looked around behind me, to either side of me.
There was a whistling set of chirrups in front of me, and I turned to see that the Crimson Red had bounded forward a few steps, and was regarding me like I was playing a game.
“No, no, it’s not a game, Paxie…” I whispered, my heart hammering in my chest. Had that really just happened? Was there something wrong with my ears? Had someone followed me here? I looked around, suddenly scared.
“Paxala,” the invisible voice said, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that the strange voice was reprimanding me. Had I gone mad? I searched first back at the waterfall and the cave the tree line, the ridgeway (now crested with bright sunlight) the beach…
And there stood the Crimson Red, directly in front of me, and lowering her head to my level. Warm, sooty breath breathed over me as she ignored the food on the ground, and ever so gently, bumped her snout onto my head.
“Hey!” I said, feeling my fear subside just a little. I had heard the ancient stories of course- who hadn’t? About the counsels that the Abbot had with the dragons when he first came up here to build his monastery, and that the dragons had listened to him, and talked back to him in human tongue. But my father and brothers had thought that they were just stories used to scare or inspire people. Not, you know, real.
“You… You can talk?” I said to the dragon, who chirruped at me.
Maybe I was going mad. I started to think. Maybe this was one of the reasons why the Abbot forbid any human contact with the dragons that wasn’t under the strictest of monk supervision. Maybe they sent you mad, like they had an illness or something. My brother Wurgan had once eaten a bunch of wild mushrooms that had made him see things and speak to people who weren’t there for two solid days. What if I had caught an illness like that?
“Char is babbling.” Again, the voice that sounded like what I had always thought that Paxala would sound like, reptilian, female, warm, and humorous. And once again, the Crimson Red bumped her snout on the top of my head, a little harder this time as if in rebuke.
“So, you can talk.” I looked at her, and knew that it was the truth as she regarded me with her flashing golden eyes. She blinked.
“When I want to. Not many dragons share minds.”
“Sharing minds? Is that what we are doing?” I said in awe. Can you hear all of my thoughts? I thought, looking at the dragon’s great golden eyes, but there was no flicker of response from her, no return of that warm, feminine, lizard intelligence to my own. So, my thoughts were still my own. Or some of them are, at least. I wondered if it was like opening a door, when Paxala chose to open it she could wander in and speak to me, but most of the time it was closed? A window, I corrected myself, because that felt better, more right somehow inside my own head. I put my hand out to touch her scales. They felt warm, and as strong as steel. It was like seeing her all again for the first time.
Paxala had just been a mewling cub – or newt, as some of the older monks called that state – when I had seen her. I had traipsed out onto the wilds behind the ridge--angry at Quartermaster Greer for treating me with such disdain and casual nonchalance just for being ‘a girl’-- when I had seen something. A patch of splintered trees on the slopes below, a glitter of pale blue that shone as strong as the sky above. When I had gone to investigate, I had found the broken fragments of sky-blue egg (as large as my torso) and a baby dragon tottering on its four legs like it was walking on stilts. Already larger than a dog, and almost the size of the little ponies the monks kept. The red hatchling newt had looked at me, and bleated in a pathetic way, its legs wobbling and its eyes barely open. What could I do? I had brought it here, somewhere warm and out of the way while I sought some of the monks for help.
It was lucky I ran into Nan Barrow first, I thought with a shiver of dread at how close we had come to throwing all of this way, unknowing at the time. I had run through my usual secret path into the back of the Kitchen Gardens, and collided straight with a worried Nan Barrow, telling me I had to stay inside monastery grounds, as the monks had issued a curfew after some large dragon fight the night before.
I had told her about finding the newt, and t
hat I needed help caring for it, and that I had to tell the monks – and she had told me not to. “Zaxx is trying to assert his dominance in the crater, and that young hatchling isn’t his,” Nan Barrow told me. “It’s up to you to keep the creature safe for the moment, Char, at least until we know where to take it.”
Instead of going to the monks, she had said that I should go back to my studies and come back after dinner. In my absence, Nan had managed to arrange blankets and fish to be delivered to the cave behind the waterfall – and ever since then it had been our secret. That had been almost two years ago, and in that time Paxala had become a strong, young dragon, and somehow miraculously, still a secret.
“But how, Pax…?” I tried asking my friend for answers directly of this strange ability, but it seemed that dragons didn’t feel the need to answer every question asked of them. She then slowly bent her head to eat the nearest hunk of ham delicately.
“But, but Paxie…”
A snort from the young dragon, and a lash of her tail that sprayed beach stone everywhere. “Paxala, or Pax.”
“Of course, I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling oddly out of my depth. I was being tutored on etiquette by a creature that I had raised from hatchling to young dragon. “But why now? Why never before? Why don’t all the dragons speak?” I had so many questions to ask her, now I knew that we could talk together. Before, it had been a matter of observing her behavior, trying to gauge the best way to look after the hatching egg that I had found…
“Char saved me,” the dragon said. “And I told you my true name.”
Was that what had happened? I thought. I didn’t remember any reptilian voice suddenly popping into my head a year ago, but then again all I did remember was that one day I was looking after a baby dragon, and the next the name ‘Paxala’ was there and shining inside my mind. Maybe she had reached in and planted the name there, and I just thought that I had come up with it?
“Char couldn’t listen. At first. And Paxala didn’t know how to talk,” the dragon said very pragmatically, sitting down on her haunches with a heavy, contented whumpf as she tore into the cured fish. “Mhm. Fish!” She made her rattling, contented-purr noise.
“All this time…” I shook my head in wonder. I had found the hatchling egg one day early on in my time here at the monastery. Just a few weeks after being sent here, and sick to the teeth of Quartermaster Greer’s attitude towards women and the wild folk, I had stormed onto the mountainside, to be amongst the elements, and, as my mother always advised me to do - ‘walk it out.’ I had grown tired, and my white-hot fury diminished, but the anger remained. I reminded myself that I was here to make peace on behalf of my father, but that didn’t mean that I had to take insults. I had just decided to calmly tell Quartermaster Greer of this new dedication, when I had heard a high-pitched screech, like a baby – but not a human one.
I had followed the noise to a flattened bit of forest with broken and splintered trees, where it seems that there must have been some sort of dragon skirmish. They did that occasionally, when one of the younger dragons decided that it wanted the best sunbathing spot, and Zaxx had to reassert his dominance.
But here, something different had happened. There had been blood, and broken trees – like there had been a massive fight between the creatures, and there in the center was a cracked egg, already hatched, and with Paxala tottering from it on unsteady scaled legs. She had been just a little smaller than one of the small mountain ponies that the shepherd brings up here occasionally.
So, what could I do? I did the only thing that I could–I cared for her by bringing her here, and every day bringing food, provisions, toys, what I could to try and keep the baby dragon alive.
“You did, Char. You saved me.” Paxala looked at me once again with those gold and green eyes, and I felt a wave of fierce, loyal affection wash over me. Tears came to my eyes.
“So, now what?” I asked of her, but she returned back to the food that I had brought. Life was simpler for a dragon, it seemed. Even one that could share minds with a human.
A loud noise blared three times.
“The dragon pipes,” I said in alarm, as Paxala sniffed at the air in the direction of the monastery. “That means that I am going to be very late for the first lesson of the day. Drat! I guess I know what is next for me…” I turned to look at the young Crimson Red, happily eating her stash of food that I had brought.
“I, uh, I will try to get back later, if I can.”
She chirruped in answer, and continued to eat. With an astonished look, I turned and ran back the way that I had come, not stopping until I got back to the monastery itself. I was elated and I was overjoyed, but I was also a little scared, to tell the truth.
Why was I the one to hear dragons in my head? How come I had never learned of anyone else having this ability? Why hadn’t the monks ever taught us about this skill? Certainly, no monk I had seen seemed to have the kind of relationship with any of their charges that I had with Paxala. Could it be they didn’t even know it was possible?
Chapter 8
Testing
Our testing was to start the very next day, and it was a day that I had awoken to find a rime of frost up the green-glass windows of our dormitory room that I shared with Dorf.
“Huh!” The larger boy was shivering where he sat in his bed, unwilling to get up. “If I manage to live out the winter, it’ll be a miracle!” he said through gritted teeth, and I could only agree with him, although it was clear that I was much more equipped to deal with it than he was. I crawled out of bed and set the fire, blowing on the coals and the dried wool to get the kindling to catch.
Whoosh! In just a moment the fire had roared into life, and I felt the welcome warmth wash over me as I rubbed my face and got dressed. Feeling a little better, I wandered over to crack the ice on the window and peer out at the day.
“We Lessers are supposed to live in rich grain fields on the river plains, not on the tops of mountains,” Dorf grumbled, still wrapped in his blankets as he took my place at the hearth. “I don’t know how you put up with it.”
Another reason why those bandits that attacked me probably weren’t Lessers, I thought. I had never heard of the Lessers going out raiding at all, preferring to protect their fields and flocks. “Me?” I said over my shoulder. “Never mind me – what about her!” I rubbed at the window so that I could see a little clearer. The lock of her platinum-white hair that had escaped from under the heavy black cloak and cowl gave Char Nefrette away immediately, as she crossed the courtyard outside, heading for one of the side doors that led out onto the mountain.
Where is she going, I wonder?
“Oh, Prince Lander’s girl?” Dorf peered over my shoulder. “Oh, she’s half Wildman, isn’t she? She can probably dance through the snow and not care. Probably out to do weird Wildman things on the mountain,” he said, causing me to frown.
That was a little unfair. People said the same kind of things about me, too. ‘Off to do weird Gypsy things’ and such. Dorf Lesser wasn’t being mean, he just didn’t know any better. But saying something stupid doesn’t mean you didn’t say it – as my father Malos would say. “Back in the Eastern Marches, I would hear my brother’s saying almost the same thing about me,” I said with a frown and a shrug. “That I’m half-Gypsy, so I must be able to read palms and curse people and do weird things…”
“Oh! I didn’t mean…” Dorf flushed an embarrassed scarlet. “I’m sorry, Neill – I was being stupid.”
“It’s nothing. Already forgotten,” I said with a half-smile. It was easier to forgive and forget Dorf’s clumsy jokes than it was the demeaning looks and sniggers from people like my brothers, who really ought to know better.
I looked back to the courtyard, to catch a glimpse of the small door closing in the outer wall, and a flash of white and black. Curious, I thought.
“Hey – you like the Nefrette girl, don’t you? Is that why you’re mooning over her?” Dorf punched me teasingly in the shoulder.
I blushed. “No! Of course not, I’m just intrigued that’s all,” I said, feeling suddenly annoyed and angry with Lesser.
“Char and Neill…” He tried the words out in funny voice, pulling faces at me.
“Oh, shut up, you big oaf,” I said, punching him back playfully. “Come on. Today is the first tryouts.”
“Ugh. Well, I think we all already know what you’re going to be,” Dorf moaned. “Protector.”
“I hope so.” I was coming to the slow realization that, apart from a few people here, I was actually one of the better fighters of the students. It was something which I had never dreamed of being, given that I wasn’t the biggest or quickest. But I guess that a childhood of getting picked on by my older brothers made me learn how to fight.
“Don’t worry, Dorf, you’re sure-fire Scribe material.” I congratulated him, knowing that from the stack of scrolls and books that he kept by his bedside it was what he would have wanted to become. Dorf just looked at me in near alarm as we left the dormitory room.
“Scribe? Yeah, that would be great I guess – but I’m holding out for becoming a Mage!” he said, and I shrugged.
“You never know, Dorf, you could be,” I said, my mind starting to churn with the orders from my father. Find out where their magic comes from. How did the Draconis Order get so powerful? How did the dragons ‘teach’ them, as the Abbot had implied? Was there some other source of their power here on the mountain? And could I get Dorf to tell me the secrets of the Order magic if he learnt it?
Dammit! I bit my lip to stop from cursing as I heard another set of footsteps approaching. We had the morning free to ‘mentally prepare ourselves’ for the rigorous testing the Quartermaster had promised would come later that day.
I had taken the opportunity to slip away from the others, and try to find out where the Library of the monastery was. Maybe it was down there that there would be heaps of scrolls detailing how the Draconis Monks summoned their magic, or teaching how to do it. I mean, they were monks, right? They had to have a big library….
Dragon God (The First Dragon Rider Book 1) Page 6