At dinner, we were overseen just as at breakfast and lunch, but this time the Quartermaster had none other than Olan Draconis with him, sitting at a high table and eating themselves. They watched as we ate, and they allowed us to talk as long as our conversations never got too loud or too raucous. At their table also sat Char, Maxal, and a few others, separated from the main body of the students – all of the students who were studying dragon magic, it seemed.
They all had that same tired and anxious look upon their faces as well, I saw, watching as they kept their eyes low on their food as Greer and Olan ate beside them.
There was no way that I was going to get word to Char about what Jodreth had told Nan, about Paxala needing more food now that she was growing, or to any of the others. I cursed myself, chewing my cold meats in silent fury until it was time to wash up our dishes. The students at the ‘head table,’ as I was coming to think of them, filed out with Greer and Olan, leaving the rest of us visibly relieved at the sudden lack of observation. I walked to the plateglass windows there to see the small group trudge across the freezing cold courtyard and up to the tower where the Abbot presumably was going to teach them the arcane secrets of dragon magic. I waited until the top floor bloomed with a soft orange light from the torches up there. That was where I needed to be, too—thinking about what my father had ordered me to do. Would I be able to ask Char what the secret was?
No, not any time soon anyway. It seemed that the rest of us had been dismissed as unimportant for the evening, but we were too tired from our renewed lessons to do much of anything but return to our dormitory rooms. There was always studying and practicing to do for the next day, and plenty to keep us busy.
Of course, I had more to keep me busy than most of the others. I waited for the crowd to thin before making my escape to the old storeroom, and, beyond that, to the Kitchen Gardens.
The sun had gone down, and I was creeping past the sprays of parsnip heads when I heard a cough from one of the bowers; a collection of fruiting bushes intertwined with willow to form a protecting arc. I froze.
“I see you, Neill Torvald!” Nan Barrow called
“I, I’m sorry?” I tried, wondering just how much she knew that I knew, or whether I had got the wrong end of the stick entirely.
“Well I’m, not. I’ve been waiting here for the best part of a watch, and the rest of the kitchen girls think that I’ve gone dotty.” She reached under the small wooden bench to produce a hessian sack stuffed full of scraps of cured meat. It was larger than the sack that Char usually carried. “I’ve put extra in there as she didn’t have the proper meal she needs this morning,” Nan Barrow said, matter-of-factly. “But you have to get her hunting, because you can’t keep her reliant on scraps. She needs a proper carcass, which she can find, hunt, and kill all of her own if she is to grow big. You understand?”
“Yes, Nan Barrow.” I nodded, and then started to ask how she knew so much about dragons.
“No questions. It’s better that you don’t ask them and I don’t answer them. Go, quickly now. I’ll tell the monks that you’re on an errand for me. But that will only work a few times.”
“Thank you, Nan, thank you,” I said, grabbing the bag and turned to go, but paused.
“But, Char–?” I wanted to ask her what was happening to her, why she looked so withdrawn and pale now, and hardly ate. What was happening to the Mage students up there in the Abbot’s Tower?
“–is in trouble, but she might not see it. Yes, I know. She will need a friend.”
Char was in trouble? I felt my heart lurch in my chest. I was failing her. I was failing her already. “What sort of trouble?” I asked breathlessly.
“I told you before, Torvald, just how many Mages have been successfully trained here at the monastery? One. Two, if you count the Abbot – not that he counts.”
“What?” I said in alarm. But this wasn’t what the Order had led everyone to believe. They claimed they had armies of mages around the kingdoms, performing their magic for the good of the realm… But I had never seen one, nor met one. It dawned on me that there was almost nothing that I could trust that came out of the Abbot’s mouth. But what was even more pressing was Nan’s suggestion that the Mage training was dangerous. “How much danger is Char in, Nan?” I asked again.
“I don’t know, Torvald, I’m just a glorified cook, and for even having this conversation they could send me up the mountain to freeze. Go and feed your dragon, Torvald. Go.” Nan hushed me with a flick of her hand, and I did as I was told, rushing into the night on the mountain, breaking the monastery rules, and running to feed Paxala. My heart was in turmoil by what I had just heard, and even though it seemed that I now had the opportunity to actually get to know a dragon for myself, and to take that knowledge back with me to my father – I felt that right now the more important duty was to try and keep Char safe.
“Paxala?” I whispered, as my feet crunched on the stones of the beach. How did Char call her again? Was there a special technique, a signal that she used? Despite the fact that I had met the Crimson Red and knew that we were friends, I still felt that shiver of apprehension at the idea that I was here, just a small human invading an almost feral dragon’s territory. I hoped Paxala would remember me.
“Skreep-pip?” A chirruping croak from the dark of the trees. Was it the dragon? Or another dragon? Or an owl, or night hawk?
“Err… hello?” I tried again, looking into the darkness.
“Ssss…” A rumbling, hissing sound came from the dark, as two great lambent gold-green eyes opened, and seemed to glow. The red dragon pushed her snout forward out of the trees and into the moonlight, sniffing suspiciously towards me.
“I, I’m sorry – but Char couldn’t make it,” I said.
“Skreych!” The great dragon issued a sharp croak of rebuke.
“But she will be here as soon as she can get away.” I wondered just how much the dragon could even understand what I was saying without Char here, but the great beast seemed to be following every action of my body avidly. “She – Char is having to do extra lessons…”
“Skrich?” A confused sort of whistling chirrup from the Crimson Red.
“Uh, like how she teaches you, I guess? Chores. Work. Exercise…” I tried.
The Crimson hissed a little, and lashed her tail against the ferns in the undergrowth, sniffing contemptuously at the ridge above us, and the Dragon Monastery beyond.
“Yeah, I know – I wish that you could just fly over there and save her too,” I guessed at what the gesture must have meant, before opening the sack of food from the kitchens. “But we can’t. It’s too dangerous. Look – I brought food,”
The dragon gave a final snort to the unseen captors of her closest friend, and turned her head back to me and what I had brought. I could tell that she was worried and sad, and so I knelt down, keeping my movements slow as I threw first one hunk of food towards her, and then the next, slowly drawing her closer to me. This was how I fed some of the guard dogs in the dog kennels when I was younger, befriending them so they wouldn’t look at every human with worry and alarm. Dragons are not like puppies, of course I knew that, but it worked a little. Paxala crept forward until her immense red and scaled snout was just inches away from my hands and I could feel the warmth radiating out from her body, as if somewhere deep inside there was a constant fire burning. She had a long, strong neck, with two lines of muscle on either side of her throat that looked to me like they would become the long fire-muscles that the dragons used. I hadn’t seen Paxala make her fire yet, and wondered when it would start.
I was also amazed at how precise she was with her teeth, delicately seizing each piece of meat very daintily, careful not to drop any or pick up any grass or pebbles that lay around. I put out my hand, and found that I could touch the side of her head quite easily.
“Skrip-pip?” Again, Paxala made that chirruping sound as she very slowly and very carefully raised her head away from my touch to regard me warily with one
eye, head cocked like a bird.
Oh crap. Had I gone too far in touching her while she ate? What was good etiquette for a dragon, anyway?
She huffed hot, sooty sort of air at me and nudged me in the chest with her snout, like one of the Shire horses in my father’s stables did. She was much stronger than even a Shire though, and pushed me back onto my bum, to a crunch of beach pebbles.
“Ow!” I laughed, and the Crimson Red turned to eat the rest of the meal that I had brought. I took it as a sign that she was happy to be in my presence, but not to be touched while eating, thank you very much.
“Okay, then. I can obey that.” I laughed, standing up again. “But I have to go now too, Paxala. I wish I could stay, I really do,” I said, feeling real remorse. “I have exercise and lessons like Char too, but I will try to get out here as soon as I can, either tomorrow morning, or tomorrow evening.” If she understood me, she made no indication of it at all. I wondered if she even knew how to hunt for herself. What was it that I had overheard Nan and Jodreth say? That the dragon couldn’t live on scraps?
Paxala was immersed in sniffing the ground for the last traces of food, ignoring me completely. “Okay Paxala, I’ll be going then?” I said again, a little louder.
She lashed her tail as if to say ‘well, get on with it’ and I shook my head. Although making friends with a dragon was an amazing thing, it did not mean that I understood our friendship at all. I left her to her food, and trudged back up the lake, my legs already aching from all of the walking and training that I had done over the last few days alone, and it was only going to get worse, I thought, as I had to keep up appearances with the Quartermaster and the Abbot that I was doing nothing unexpected. And I had to ensure that no one caught me coming and going, because I didn’t want to find out what punishment the Abbot might have in store for me next.
I sighed at the weight of all of the troubles that were stacking themselves against me. Char’s lessons, the Quartermaster’s hatred, my father’s injury, my mission at the monastery. Somehow, I had to (do what??), when all I wanted to do right now was to spend time out here, in the wilds, with a dragon.
Chapter 21
Char’s Lessons
I stood in the freezing cold tower-top room, about an arm’s length apart from the other Mage trainees, whilst the Abbot Ansall lectured at us, asked us to perform various physical and mental exercises, and peppered us with questions, all the time refusing to let us sit down or have quills, paper, or even desks. It felt infuriatingly pointless, when all I wanted was to be with Paxala.
“And what would you call this type of power?” the Abbot asked at the front of the class. “Ganna, again?” The Abbot pointed one long finger at the shortest trainee in front of me.
The tower room had shutters, but the Abbot wanted them open. For warmth, I suppose, he allowed us each a candle and told us all to concentrate upon it, while shouting above the wind, “To feel the cold is weakness! To feel anything that distracts from the magic is weakness.”
“Dark power?” Maxal hazarded, and a couple of the other students beside me nodded in agreement. I had completely lost the thread of what they were saying, or why these different types of energy could be called different things.
The Abbot’s lecture was long and tedious and complicated—amounting to there being many different invisible energies, like the currents of air that flew through the skies. Some of these ‘energies’ were attracted to heat, light, and fire, others to war and suffering, others to the growing things, and the secret urge that made a seed sprout. Now the Abbot was quizzing us about it all.
The Abbot frowned at Maxal’s answer. “I suppose that you could call this family of powers dark, if strength, stamina, and might are also to be considered dark. Explain your thesis, Ganna!”
The boy swallowed nervously. “We-we were talking about the sort of energy that might exist in a battle, or a fight between people. Anger and fear, and how a magician has to know how to tap into it to power their own magic…” The boy looked fearful himself. “Well, that, that seems to be dark to me. Like, ill-fated. Unlucky…” Ganna tried.
“Bah!” The Abbot made a loud, croaking sort of cough that I realized was his laugh. I shuddered at the sound of it. “You, Ganna, really! Always thinking the world only needs a drop of honey to make it better.” The Abbot wiped his eyes in mirth. “But I understand what you are saying, and perhaps you are right – but do not great heroes also do great deeds in battle? Isn’t our very own Three Kingdoms founded on the conquests and victories of great people? Cannot people be brave, and strong, and powerful in righteous anger?”
We all nodded. The Abbot might appear to be asking questions, but he didn’t really want to hear our opinions.
“So, you see, the powers of strength, of might, even of anger are not always dark. We can harness these energies like a farmer harnesses great steeds to his cart,” the Abbot said. “Try not to think of it as being angry or being happy or sad.” The man glowered at us. “I do not want you to feel happy or angry or sad.”
I was confused. How were we supposed to use or feel these energies then?
“Be like the cart horse.” The Abbot illustrated by raising one fist, and then adding another behind it. “It does not know or care what it pulls. It could be a cart load of weapons, or a cart load of remedies. The cart is the energies that I tell you to channel, and you pull them, you fill yourself with them, and you direct them as I tell you. Understand?”
No, I thought. To me, it sounded like he was asking us not to care about what we felt, or what we did. But that couldn’t be the secret of magic, could it?
“Nefrette!” the Abbot suddenly barked at me. “You are scowling. What don’t you understand? Or do you presume to disagree?”
“No – I do not disagree, sire…” I lied sullenly. Despite the apparent ‘mountain blood’ in my veins, I was getting cold from the open windows letting in the freezing midnight air, and my legs were starting to shake with effort of standing in one place.
“Then let us see how well you understand. Close your eyes. Remember the breathing techniques, try to pour your anger into that candle in the middle of the room, but try not to get angry yourself!”
“I don’t… I don’t know how…” I shook my head. This sounded impossible.
“Do it!” the Abbot suddenly snapped, and it was easy for me to find my anger then. I closed my eyes and took the deep breaths that followed by the shorter breaths that he had taught us, in a quick, repetitious cycle until I started to feel a little dizzy and lightheaded, and the concerns of my body started to melt away.
My anger, however, was easy to find. I was angry at the Abbot. I was angry at the Quartermaster Greer, I was angry at having to be here and not out there with Paxala. I hope Neill got to her, I thought in worry and alarm.
“Woah...” someone said, and I opened my eyes to see the candle was now a puddle of wax on the floor, its wick drowning with a guttering spurt of flame. Just a second ago, the candle had been fat and tall, and would have taken many hours to burn through so steadily. Maxal Ganna was looking at me in horror, but the Abbot was looking at me with an appraising smile.
“Well done, very well done. Maybe there is some truth to what they say about the famous mountain temper of your people,” he said, his smile slowly vanishing. “But you didn’t control it, did you? You were not the cart horse pulling the anger behind you, or the bottle containing the wine, you were furious at something, weren’t you?”
“I, uh, no,” I lied.
“Liar!” the Abbot said, and something hit me in the chest with a thump, pushing me back like a hard shove, although there was nothing touching me. My legs, already aching, wobbled as I staggered backwards and stumbled against his desk of books and papers.
Silence fell through the room, pierced only by a long, mournful sound of a dragon call from somewhere up on the mountain. No, Paxala, don’t let it be you… I thought in terror. My face must have blanched pale, because the Abbot nodded to hims
elf, and I prayed he took my expression as a sign of his mastery over me and not what it truly was—my fear for Paxala.
“Yes, I know when you are lying, girl,” he said in disgust. “I have many years’ practice at telling a lie from the truth. But also – if you had managed to perform the deed as I had told you, then you would not have burned through the candle so quickly, and so suddenly. You would have been able to hold that emotion and the flame instead. That is why I am trying to teach you all this, because otherwise you might become like her – a slave to your emotions, and good for nothing!” The Abbot ranted, stalking between the students.
“That is why you can have no heat, and you must endure the cold. Because you cannot give in to weakness! You cannot hanker for warmth! That is why I ask you to practice here, every night, and under my personal supervision. If you were to allow yourself to become slaves to your emotions then you would become dangerous. You might take out your thwarted dreams of power, or your petty rivalries, or your idiocies on others.” The Abbot rounded on me, as if he had been talking about me all along.
“You must feel nothing. You must think nothing. You must only do as I tell you. You must become a receptacle for the dragon magic. Do you understand?” He shouted again.
“Yes, Abbot-sire,” we all muttered.
“Good. Now–physical endurance.” And with that he ordered us to spend the next few hours doing the most painful and grueling exercises until, one by one, we all collapsed into shivering heaps. When we had all succumbed, the Abbot finally nodded.
“The flesh is so weak, so very weak my students. That is why you come here, and that is why I try to make your spirits strong. The lesson is over for tonight, and I will expect you all ready to learn and on time tomorrow evening after dinner. You are dismissed!”
Dragon God (The First Dragon Rider Book 1) Page 18