by Anna Rose
“Aya! You ungrateful little slut, when I get through with you – “
He never finished his sentence.
Aya’s dragon appeared out of nowhere, in the much more massive form she would sometimes take, her eyes flashing like fire, and her father stopped short, throwing his arms in front of his face in a protective gesture, a short scream escaping his lips.
“Dragonguard! Where is the Dragonguard?” he demanded in terror. He looked around wildly. “Why are they here?”
“You’re looking at her, Andagebi,” she replied, disdaining to give him his parental honorific. “She is mine. I only came to tell you goodbye, and to let you know you will never see me again.”
“You? A Dragonguard? You are a girl. That’s not possible!” he scoffed. “You’re neither highborn nor male. Where is the real Dragonguard, girl?”
He made her gender sound like an insult.
“You need to pay more attention to the riders, then, father,” she snorted. “Both men and women can be Dragonguard. You don’t know as much as you pretend.”
Anger clouded his face, and Andagebi forgot himself and took another a step toward his daughter, fist raised to strike. The dragon swung her massive head down between them, interposing herself between father and daughter. Andagebi stepped back again.
Enjoying the look of fear on his face, Aya reached up a hand and scratched the dragon’s jawline, a smug expression on her face as she did so. The look on her father’s face was priceless as the dragon hummed a happy sound and closed her eyes until they were half-lidded.
Andagebi, not the brightest star in the sky, stepped forward again, and Aya straightened. He began to reach out a hand to touch the dragon, but Aya intercepted his filthy hand.
“Do not touch my dragon, Andagebi!” she spat.
Feeling Aya’s anger at her father, the dragon snapped at the man. She was sure the inside of her dragon’s mouth was terrifying to behold. While the creature might not eat, she could and did bite when necessary.
“I’ve not forgotten what you did to Mother,” she told him, her rage loosening her tongue. “She told me about my sisters, too. The ones you murdered. I hope Gebi’s new wife knows that her daughters are in danger from their grandfather.”
“Daughters are useless. I did not want more daughters,” he replied dismissively, anger still burning in his eyes. “You were burden enough.”
“You are a murderer, like that baker you planned to sell me to as a wife.”
“Your mother was telling you tales,” he protested. “He is a fine man. You would have had a fine house in town.”
“Fine house or not, I was not going to marry some old man. You did not care that his last wife died suspiciously. What kind of marriage was Gebi sold into? Has his new wife started popping out new farmhands for you?”
“Loris and Gebi did not marry,” her father said in disgust. “The contract was canceled because of the fire. The dowry was lost.”
The dowry was lost. Was that all that was important to Aya’s father? She knew it was nonsense even to suggest otherwise.
It was clear that Andagebi had cared more for his gain than anyone’s happiness. His selfish attitude only made Aya angrier.
She was so angry that she forgot that her dragon would be a mirror of that growing anger.
“Good. You and Gebi can live with yourselves.”
“Gebiarno did not return after he went to find you,” Andagebi said quietly, although his eyes had not lost their anger. “I do not know where he went.”
A growl murmured through the air.
“Good,” she replied with a smile, much cockier, as her dragon was there to protect her from the kind of violence that had led to Zoraya’s death. She was pleased to know that her brother had taken his leave of his father and the family farm as soon as he was able. “The farther away from you, the better.”
Andagebi began to sputter with apoplectic rage and shook his dirty fist in her face. Aya stood her ground, not giving even an inch.
The murmuring growl changed to something more intense.
Aya did not even flinch at her father’s proximity.
Enraged by Aya’s stance, words, and evident pleasure, Andagebi soon forgot himself and moved toward his daughter. His work-gnarled fingers reached out to grab her shoulders –
The growl became a roar of intractable rage.
Andagebi screamed as the dragon knocked Aya aside and then let loose with a blast of blue flame that wreathed up around the screaming man. Much hotter than natural fire, the flames instantly blackened Andagebi’s flesh, and moved inward to his bones.
Andagebi’s scream of agony climbed the register to become a high, porcine squeal, and then abruptly ceased as the flames took his life. Was it too soon, or not quickly enough? Aya had no answer to that thought.
She stood up and watched as the dancing blue flames burned her sire to ashes, unsympathetic and unmoved by his demise. As his corpse burned away to nothing, the day seemed to brighten, and she felt a great weight lift from her shoulders.
The air stank of grilling sausages and Aya wondered in passing if she would ever be able to enjoy them again. She filed that thought away for later experimentation.
The lives Andagebi had damaged, but not destroyed during his long reign of terror would be better with his presence removed from the world. His carcass burned a long time, and Aya stood there, watching as her father became nothing but an unidentifiable mound of embers on the ground.
“You should have paid attention when she warned you off the first time,” she said to what remained, in a scolding tone. “She’d never have let you lay a finger on me. Now, you’ll never terrorize anyone again.”
She looked up at the dragon and reached out a hand to scratch a chin the size of her head. Someone who did not know where dragons came from would have marveled at her sheer bravery in doing so.
The dragon stared down at her, confusion in her enormous, beautiful eyes, a confusion that mirrored what Aya felt at that moment. Should she climb on board and fly away to parts unknown, or should she own what she had done and tell Dran, allowing the die to fall where it would?
Of course, she would go back, tell Dran what had happened, and leave herself to the justice of the Council. One did not run away from things that were truly important. A Dragonguard took responsibility.
Aya wondered how the dragon had acted on her own if she was simply a reflection of her human self. Somehow, she had responded on her own, without Aya anticipating what she would do and perhaps stepping in. She had watched and, perhaps, thought about what she saw, and then had acted when Aya was given a real threat of bodily harm.
“How did you do that, big girl?” she asked the dragon. The beast licked gently at her hand, a comforting gesture for them both. “You looked out for me when I needed you most.”
It was as though she heard a ping in her head.
You looked out for me when I needed you most.
You looked out for me.
Like a watchman. A guardian. A sentinel.
“Sentinel,” she said firmly. “Your name is Sentinel!”
The freshly named dragon chirped a happy response and went off to bother the hogs, who were terrified at the monster that loomed over their pen. They had no idea she was not a danger to them, and Aya had to admit to herself that it was amusing to watch the beasts scatter as Sentinel sniffed their backs.
Gebi had probably followed Aya’s example, once the wolves had stopped chasing him. She had no real interest in finding him, as she was still angry that he had left their mother to be beaten to death, but she hoped he found some happiness, wherever he was now.
Aya was distressed to see that Sentinel seemed slightly translucent. That could only mean one thing, and lessons she had learned shortly after her Dreaming came back to her, reminding her that this was very important. The release of flame must have taken extra energy from the dragon that she might not otherwise have expended, and she could now see the results of that.
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br /> Aware that she was now very hungry, Aya went into the rebuilt cottage and saw a pot of cold porridge atop a rude wooden table. Andagebi had never been good at cooking, and the few times Zoraya had been too ill to cook, porridge was the order of the day.
Grabbing the wooden spoon from the pot, she began shoveling the otherwise unappetizing sludge and shoveled it down. Yes, it was as she remembered it. Mostly grain, with some meat cooked down to the point where it had fallen apart and was now unidentifiable to the naked eye.
While it tasted bland, salty, but not bad, Aya knew it would give her dragon the strength she now lacked, and would then be able to fly the two of them back to Sundance, where she would face what she had done to her father.
To be able to swallow it down, she focused on the fact that she was doing this for Sentinel. The dragon was the most important thing in the world to her, and she wanted her well away from the sadness and desolation that was the home of her youth.
After opening the barn door and blocking it with a suitable stone, Aya took the time to free the remaining livestock, this time for good, as the odds of a visitor coming to call were not much. The old sow was still there, along with her now half-grown offspring. The two wandered off toward the ripening crops, grunting with contentment.
The cow and her calf moved, as one, to the tall mounds of blue-green hay stacked on the shaded side of the barn. Not the most energetic of creatures at the best of times, and with easy food so close, the cow would eat the hay down to the last straw before moving on to the bounty of the fields. Her still-suckling calf would now have all of its mother’s milk, instead of having to share it with humans.
When she went to check on the chickens, Aya found the coop long deserted by poultry, but now inhabited by a half dozen opportunistic wild pigeons and their noisy, messy hatchlings. All of Aya’s careful cleaning was now undone, replaced with tall piles of gray and white pigeon guano.
At least she would no longer be expected to clean the rickety old coop, but she wondered what condemnation awaited her back home, once she told Dran and the rest of Sundance about what she had done, and if they would ever forgive her for doing it.
Climbing aboard Sentinel, she started her long flight home. Understanding that Aya did not want to rush back, the dragon took the flight at as slow a speed as was possible, considering her energy limitations.
14
“Dran… I have to talk to you about something, but in private,” she said when she found the older Dragonguard alone. Sentinel was wherever dragons went when they were not with their human selves. “Please.”
Aya did not want an extended audience for whatever Dran’s reaction would be when he learned what she and Sentinel had done. How much would he hate her? How disappointed would he be?
He raised an eyebrow at her words, scrutinizing her face as if seeking answers in her expression.
“What is it, Aya,” he finally asked her kindly, directing her to sit on the low rock wall behind him, and then sitting. He patted the open space next to him invitingly. “What could be so serious?”
“I killed my father!” she blurted, collapsing onto the sun-warmed wall and then bursting into tears. Instead of making an exclamation, Dran enfolded her with his good arm and pulled her in toward his chest, Aya’s tears soaking into the soft fabric of his best tunic.
“I can’t imagine you doing something like that. What happened?”
“He tried to grab me, and Sentinel set him on fire!”
“Sentinel? She has a name now?”
“Y-yes,” she stammered. Aya expected to hear condemnation from him, but it did not come. Drannar seemed more interested in the fact that Aya’s dragon was no longer nameless.
“I don’t want to go to prison, but she – I – we – killed a man!”
“You said he tried to grab you? You didn’t tell Sentinel to do it?”
“No, I didn’t, but if Sentinel and I are the same, then I did it, didn’t I? It’s all my fault!” She could not catch her breath and began gasping for air.
“Calm down, Aya. Just calm down. Relax and try to breathe.” He stroked her back soothingly. “Don’t panic, Aya. Don’t panic.”
“What am I going to do?”
“He tried to grab you, and Sentinel acted to protect you. Did she warn him off, first?”
“Well, she did get in his way more than once and growled at him, but he wanted to hurt me,” she allowed. “I did say some bad things to him, though.”
“Only words? You never touched him?”
Aya shook her head, confused. It would never have occurred to her to attempt to slap her father.
“Then, whatever you may have said to him, that would never excuse his trying to hurt you.”
“I’m afraid, Dran,” she told him, staring up into his face. “I’m so scared. I have a good home now, and I do not want to lose it! I don’t want to lose the friends and the life I’ve made here.”
“I think you’ll be okay, but we’ll both speak to the Council in the morning, and then they will decide what’s to be done. Tell them everything, and do not leave anything out. Always be honest with them, and they’ll be honest with you, too.”
15
Facing the entire Council had been one of the hardest things Aya had done in her entire life, but she knew that it had to be done. In the time since she had joined the Dragonguard, she had found them to be fair and reasonable in their decisions, in addition to being the administration of the minutiae of daily life in the Dragonguard, dealing out both justice and mercy as needed. A male and a female worked as co-leaders, with another six Councilmembers assisting, three females, and three males. It was the complete antithesis of how her father had always told his family the world worked.
They had first spoken with Drannar about what she had told him, then she had been called in, and the Council had spent the better part of three hours grilling her on what had happened between her and her father that ended in his horrific death.
Aya had lost track of how many times they asked her to repeat the events of that day; she just knew that by the time they had dismissed her to begin their deliberations, she had been exhausted down to her bones.
Gy’yara, the female Council leader, had been meticulous in her questioning of events. She wanted to know every little detail of the day and Aya’s life before she left her family.
Tennon, the male Council leader, was a small, almost nondescript man, someone who would probably occasion little notice in the outside world, were his dragon nowhere in sight. He had been a kinder interrogator than Gy’yara had, but no less thorough.
The other Council members had asked fewer questions, but they all appeared to bear their complete attention on the matter at hand.
Before the meeting, Drannar had told Aya that the Journaler, as she was called, would write down everyone’s words. Aya wondered how anyone could do something so thoroughly and be able to keep up with what was being said, but somehow, she did. The Journaler took copious notes during the entire process, entering the discussion into a leather-bound journal as they spoke. Once in a while, a Councilmember might ask the Journaler to repeat something that had already been said, and she would dutifully read it out to them.
Several hours later, Aya was dismissed, and she went to her quarters, wondering what punishment she would face for the crime she had committed. She was not hungry, and even Lauro could not tempt her with what he knew to be her favorite foods. Instead, she curled up on her bed, facing the wall and weeping. Only when Dran forced the issue did she finally leave her rooms, but then she went to the farthest corner of the hold and sat alone, except for the constant attendance of her dragon.
16
The Council signaled that its business was completed, but the assembly did not rise to leave. Something was up, but she had no idea what that might be. As she looked around to see was going on, she heard someone call her name, and looked back toward the dais. Dran had stood up, and was beckoning to her.
Knowing that she
was going to get into trouble for Sentinel’s killing of her father, but also knowing she had no alternative, Aya reluctantly went to join him. She wondered if she would be banished from the Dragonfort for what she had done, but decided that whatever her punishment, she would accept it. As long as she had her dragon with her, she could survive anything.
Of course, the time had come, and Aya’s sentence was about to be pronounced. The respite she had enjoyed could not have lasted indefinitely. All good things…, and all that.
In the time since her interrogation by the Council, Aya had been living her life through rote action, not paying attention to the world around her, as she knew that the freedom she had come to love over the short time she had been a Dragonguard was about to be torn away.
The older Dragonguard put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes, appearing to search for something. Aya steeled herself for the condemnation to come.
“The Council has discussed the unfortunate situation of what happened to your sire, Andagebi. He died a terrible death. That cannot be denied,” Drannar declared.
Aya nodded, wordless.
The Councilmembers simply looked at her, their faces unreadable. She stood as still as she could, but it was difficult not to fidget under their steely regard.
“At the Council’s behest, I investigated Andagebi and discovered that he had an unwholesome reputation. Many who knew him told me that he was an unusually cruel man. With the knowledge that he also murdered your defenseless infant sisters, it is clear that he would not hesitate to kill again. Those who would kill a child will have no trouble doing so again.”
“But I — Sentinel — killed him! A man is dead because of me! He was not a good man, but that does not excuse what I did,” Aya cried, stricken. “I need to be punished for what I did!”
“Aya, you have been punishing yourself for what happened ever since it happened. It is clear that you have great remorse for his death,” said Gy’yara from the Council table. “Don’t think we have not noticed your demeanor, child.”