Delno smiled and waved in greeting to her as she quickly circled and landed.
“There you are,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder if you had gotten into some trouble.”
“It took some time to convert my pension into usable funds and then make provisions for enough herd animals to feed a baby dragon for a month,” he said somewhat defensively.
“How did you accomplish all of that in one day?” she asked.
Delno started to answer her, but then, realizing that she wasn’t carrying the egg as he had expected, asked nervously, “Where is the egg?” Panic was again surging to the forefront of his thoughts.
“Relax,” she chuckled, “I buried it under a pile of leaves and brush. It is well hidden and the rotting vegetation kept it warm while I went above the falls to bathe where I wouldn’t be seen.” Then she added, “Now then, tell me what happened in town today.”
Delno started his tale of his day’s adventure with how he had procured the food and where it was stored, which brought an appreciative response from the dragon. Then he told her everything else, including his fabrications to Nassari, and to his parents. He added, “I don’t like lying to them. Even as a small boy I never lied to my parents, and Nassari and I have always been completely honest with each other, but I could think of no other way, short of slipping out of town under cover of darkness, and risking that someone might come looking for me.”
“You have done the right thing,” she said. “You told them the truth about your destination. The lie of omission you told about your purpose couldn’t be helped. Don’t let it worry you.”
As if by mutual agreement, they both stopped talking. They sat that way for nearly an hour, as the sun moved down until it could no longer be seen through the trees, and the clearing was washed in twilight.
Almost unconsciously, Delno reached out with his mind to touch the not quite conscious mind of his dragon partner. While they were never completely separated, he had allowed the awareness of the contact to recede while he was about his errands and while he spoke with his partner’s mother. The awareness he had felt before rushed to meet him, elated to have the link fully restored. Even still inside the egg and not fully conscious, the little dragon possessed a powerful mind. He realized that if she decided to turn that mind on him in a more aggressive manner, he would be hard pressed to protect himself. As that thought occurred to him, one word surfaced from the semi-consciousness of the dragon: NEVER! The word was wrapped in layers of deep and unrestricted affection. As all this was happening, Delno felt a crawling sensation on his face, and when he reached up to wipe away the bug that he was sure was there, all he found was a single tear rolling down his cheek. At that moment, though he had suspected it, he knew for sure that whatever else this bond was, love was the very core of it.
“You are in contact with her now, aren’t you?” the dragon’s question startled him as it interrupted the silence that had permeated the clearing.
“How can you tell?” he responded.
“Besides the far off look you get when you reach out to her,” she replied, “I can feel the connection between the two of you. To be bonded so strongly this early on is rare and beautiful.”
“Rare?” he asked.
“Yes, indeed,” she said, “normally dragon and rider can do little more than feel each other’s presence for the first week or so after hatching. They actually don’t convey much emotion until the hatchling begins to hunt for herself.”
“Then what she and I are doing is a good thing,” he mused almost dreamily, unwilling to pull back from the contact enough to carry on a real conversation and feeling proud of his connection to his partner.
“Yes,” she said in that tone he had already come to recognize as her teacher voice, “good,” then, after a dramatic pause for effect, she added, “And dangerous.”
Chapter 9
“DANGEROUS?!” he shouted, as the word sank into his mind and he became more fully centered on the conversation. “How can a bond which brings both her and me so much joy be dangerous?” He was suddenly terribly afraid he would somehow injure the little dragon. “How can such contact possibly harm her?” he asked, full of concern.
Again the dragon gave one of those annoying chuckles before answering. “It’s not her I’m worried about, young rider.” She let that sink in for just a few seconds, then spoke again quickly before he could interrupt her with questions. “It is still early, so I believe that we have enough time tonight to further your education about dragons. Are you ready to listen?”
He was suddenly brimming over with questions, but, even though he had only known the dragon a little more than a day, he realized it would be best to hold his tongue and let the dragon tutor him in her own way. So, at his nod, she continued. “As I have told you, a hatchling has a voracious appetite. While she will be large by human standards, she must eat enough to support a growth rate that most humans can’t comprehend.”
“Yes,” he said, “you’ve already explained that to me.”
Before he could further interrupt her with questions, she looked at him sternly and said, “Hush now, I am not finished, and you are not seeing my point. Let me continue and all will be clear.”
Again he held his tongue and bowed his head in acquiescence.
“Good,” she snorted, “let us move on.” “Look at things this way. You are large for a human, a little over two yards tall and weigh about fifteen stone, am I correct?” He started to open his mouth to respond, but, seeing the stern look she gave him, nodded his head. “When you were born, you were most likely about a half a yard long and weighed less than half a stone, correct?” At his nod, she smiled and continued. “During your life you have had to eat to grow. It most likely took you the better part of two decades to grow from small babe to large man, correct?” Again he nodded. “It took you nearly two decades to quadruple your height and increase your weight by a factor of thirty or more, correct?”
By now Delno’s eyes were beginning to widen, and the realization of what the dragon was getting at was just starting to sink in. Wanting to be sure he fully understood, she said it anyway. “Your partner is nearly as big as you are now and must grow to be as large as I am. She will do in six months what it took you two decades to do, and she will need to eat accordingly.” She again paused for effect. “Do you begin to see what a monumental task that is?” she asked.
Delno could only stare slack jawed and nod his head mutely as the full understanding hit him. “Good, now that you understand, we can continue.”
“Do you remember me telling you that one of the drawbacks to the bond between dragon and rider is that they share everything, joy, fear, pain, everything?” she asked. At his nod, she went on, “Usually, the rider is spared from the hatchling’s ravenous hunger pangs because it takes about a month for the bond to get that strong. By the end of the first month, young riders have been taught by a mentor to blunt such feelings so that they can concentrate on their tasks. Also, the hatchling is usually hunting on her own, and her concentration on catching prey further buffers her rider from the sensation.”
He could keep silent no longer. “What am I going to do?” he asked. “I will have no mentor, and if I am incapacitated by her hunger, I will be unable to care for her.”
“What you are going to do,” she replied in her stern teacher’s voice, “is pay attention, and I will teach you techniques that will keep her thoughts from overwhelming you.”
Realizing that he might not get a second chance at this lesson, Delno sat patiently, paying very close attention to his tutor.
“There are techniques,” she went on, “that dampen the connection between you and your partner. You will find these techniques very useful in her early growth periods to avoid being besieged by her needs, but you will both find them useful in the future when you need to think without the distraction of having another’s mind intruding. You will especially find these techniques useful when you take a lover or she participates in mating f
lights.”
While the prospect of either of them taking a lover hadn’t occurred to him until the dragon mentioned it, he could certainly see that these techniques might prevent awkward moments in their relationship. Although—the thought of dragons mating did seem like an interesting subject in an academic sort of way—having some knowledge of the draconic anatomy on the female’s side, he couldn’t quite suppress his curiosity at the mechanics involved.
The dragon cleared her throat irritably and he snapped back to the task at hand, realizing the she had been speaking, and he hadn’t heard a word she had said.
“If you are going to daydream,” she said, “we won’t get anywhere with this.”
He flushed and stammered a quick apology, after which she continued the lesson. “The first thing you must learn is that thoughts are nothing more than a form of energy. Energy can be controlled. This is not only the basis of mental training, but magical training as well. In fact, without learning mental discipline, you won’t be able to control the magic.”
Delno had nearly forgotten what the dragon had told him about riders being able to use magic. His attention on the lesson increased.
“Ah, I see I now have your full attention” she said. “Think of your mind as a container, like a glass ball, or box. Within this container there is energy. Some of this energy is always flowing, controlling the unconscious actions of your body like breathing, heartbeat, digestion, and so on. Some of the energy is dormant, or potential energy, not being used. The more consciousness a being has, the more potential energy there is available for things like conscious thought. Most of those creatures we consider to be conscious convert this energy into conscious thought and then express that thought in the form of physical action.”
She paused for a moment, letting him ponder this, then continued. “The physical action that we convert the thought into can take many forms; often these forms are so automatic that we perform them without thinking. The thought—I want to walk to the door—results in you getting out of a chair and walking to the door without further conscious attention on your part: though the thoughts for each footstep are there, you aren’t consciously aware of them, otherwise it would take you a quarter of an hour to walk across a room.”
Delno began shifting in his seat. While this lesson was interesting, he didn’t see what walking across a room had to do with telepathy, and said so to the dragon.
“Humans,” she snorted, “I think it’s the short life span that makes your species so impatient.”
Again he flushed and resigned himself to letting the dragon teach in her own time.
“Now then, as I was saying. Thought becomes action. The action that many thoughts are converted into, especially among your kind,” she added sarcastically, “is speech. You think about what you want to say and then you say it.” She quickly amended, “At least, you sometimes think about it first.”
Delno chuckled, realizing that he certainly couldn’t disagree with her last observation.
“What you and your partner do,” she continued, “is really not much different than the way you have been conversing with others all of your life. The only difference is that there is a channel of energy that connects the two of you, and you are able to project your thoughts directly along this to each other.”
Delno couldn’t hold his next question; “If that is the case, can I do this with others as well?”
Rather than being annoyed, as he had expected, the dragon seemed to be anticipating this question and was ready with a reply. “As your power grows, and you practice consciously moving energy, you will be able to do this with others. Most will be unable to project their thoughts back, but you will be able to hear what they are thinking. The stronger you get, the deeper into their minds you can to see.”
The prospect was fascinating, but Delno began to wonder if such eavesdropping was not a serious trespass, and said as much to the dragon.
“That it is,” she replied. “To enter the mind of another is a serious invasion of that person’s privacy and should never be done unless there is real need. Scanning the surface thoughts of someone you are dealing with to ensure that he isn’t trying to betray you is one thing. Becoming a psychic voyeur is something else again.”
Delno deliberated on that for a moment, and then said, “I’ve seen enough of humans at their best and their worst to know that I don’t want to randomly read other people’s thoughts.”
“Good,” she said, “because there are many ways that could be dangerous. You could find something that you didn’t want to know and then be compelled to act on the information and get yourself into no end of trouble. But the biggest danger is in delving into the thoughts of those who can detect what you’re doing. They could use the channel you open to get into your mind and work their own mischief. Two evenly matched opponents in such a contest could exhaust themselves quickly, and the result could be physical damage ranging from a simple headache up to death. In a mismatched contest of this type, the stronger of the two, once the channel was established, could do worse than kill the weaker one.”
“Worse than kill?” He hadn’t meant to speak the question out loud, but the dragon wasn’t perturbed by it.
“There are worse things than death, young rider,” she said. “Imagine someone having his mind obliterated, all memory wiped clean with no more wit than that of a newborn babe. That person could be kept as a mindless slave, or re-educated in a manner that suited the whims of the one who wiped his mind.”
“That sounds too fantastic to believe; is such a thing possible?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, “It’s possible. How do you think the nobility of your lands were forced to move to the less hospitable north? There was a blood feud among the ruling clans of the south. The wars had gone on for several generations; even many of the dragon riders became ensnarled in the political machinations of the time. Eventually, two of the families put aside their own differences and banded together. They were very powerful by themselves, but together they were invincible. One of the lesser families felt they had no choice but to resort to drastic magical means. A son of this lesser family was a sorcerer, especially skilled at the use of mental telepathy.”
“You’re saying . . . ?” Delno let the question trail off.
“Yes,” she said, “his family managed to capture a son from each of the two powerful houses, and he obliterated their minds. Then, using his magical abilities, he replaced what he had destroyed with his own constructs. His foul act turned each of the young men into assassins who were able to walk right through the defenses of the two noble houses and murder many of their own elders before the plot was discovered and the assassins could be stopped. In the end, the two great houses were so badly devastated by the loss of their leaders, and so terribly demoralized, that they felt that they could fight no more and their only choice was to flee from their enemies. They took whatever they could carry and went north. They were “The Exiled Kings” who founded the northern kingdoms over two millennia ago. After that, the feuds in the south continued for almost three decades before the families realized that their resources and their people were exhausted and continued fighting would destroy them all. When the full truth of how the two great families had been defeated, and how that defeat had then paved the way for the most devastating fighting of the feuds came to light, a council of kings declared such practices to be the foulest of magic and decreed that any who did similar acts in the future would forfeit their lives.”
The dragon paused, allowing Delno to absorb this before she went on. “So you see; the skills I am trying to teach you are powerful indeed. These skills have been used to commit foul acts that have destroyed kingdoms, and, despite being outlawed, such skills are still practiced by some to this day.”
“How can I hope to keep myself and my partner safe from such dishonorable magicians?” he asked.
“Do not underestimate your own power, young rider,” she chided, “and never underestimate the power y
our dragon brings to this partnership. As I have told you, there are advantages to being linked to a dragon. One of the advantages is that you share each other’s strength. When you have both gained more experience, the two of you together will be more powerful than any single being ever could. Even the elves, who practice magic as powerful as that of the dragons, can’t produce a sorcerer who is the equal of a dragon and rider together.”
“Elves,” he said thoughtfully, “I thought the stories of elves were tales told to children at bedtime, not real beings.”
“Oh, they are real enough,” she said. “They don’t much concern themselves with the affairs of humans or dragons. They live in their own realm, which is off to the southeast, and avoid getting involved in the affairs of others. Occasionally one of their kind will develop a wanderlust and travel for a time in the southern kingdoms, and a very select few choose to travel north each year to hunt down and destroy as many Roracks as they can find, but most elves simply keep to themselves, gardening and practicing their own magic. I have seen a few over the many years when I have rested near their lands after mating, but they are more interested in talking with trees than with dragons.”
Delno thought about this for a few moments and was brought out of his reverie when the dragon mentioned that if they didn’t get back to the lesson, they would not make much progress. They continued the session long into the night. At first, he mainly learned not to project his thoughts and to shield himself from those who would try to invade his mind. It was well into the wee hours of the morning, when he had begun to develop the art of skimming the surface thoughts of others that the dragon called for a break, and they both retired.
Chapter 10
Despite how late he got to bed the previous night, Delno woke early. Sunrise was just a hint on the horizon. He crawled from his tent, which had been hastily pitched by fire light after many hours of lessons. His camp was on the side of the clearing away from the stream. There was just enough room for his belongings and the old female dragon in the clearing.
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