The Dragoneer: Book 1: The Bonding

by Vickie Knestaut

  Trysten placed a hand on the back of his shoulder. Paege rubbed at his neck, then allowed his hand to fall to his side. He glared at the snow between himself and Elevera. His shoulders heaved in a sigh. “We have to come up with a better plan. We have to figure out how to make your father listen.”

  Trysten lifted an eyebrow. “Listen? Didn’t you accept the role?”

  Paege gave his head a slight shake, and then he peered up into the sky. “You know how it is with your father. It’s not so much that he asks for your opinion as much as it is that he tells you what your opinion is.”

  Trysten gave a slight nod. He did have that quality about him.

  “What was I to do? I know how important it is to pass on the title, the role. He has no son of his own, and he did practically raise me after my own father died. The horde and the village are at stake here. How was I to say no to that? When it comes to something that big, this important, I can’t do what I want to do. I have to do what is best for the horde, for the village. What I want comes second.”

  Trysten crossed her arms over herself and rubbed them through her cloak. “But yet you’re telling me that we have to do something different?”

  “For the sake of the horde, we do. I’m not trying to get out of my obligation. Believe me, I’m not looking forward to the shame of being passed over, of knowing how incredibly disappointed my father would be in me for blowing this. Seeing me take the new alpha’s saddle would have been the proudest day of his life. I have no doubt about that. I don’t remember much about him, but I remember that. He wanted me to grow up and follow in his footsteps. He wanted me to ride dragons. He lost his life defending the kingdom. He gave up everything for me, for all of us. How do I repay that, you know? It seems so selfish to not follow in his footsteps, as if I think his sacrifice isn’t worth repaying.”

  Trysten opened her mouth to respond, but didn’t know what to say.

  “And then there’s your father,” Paege continued. “He treated me as one of his own. He made sure that my mother and I had enough to eat, that our cottage was always in good repair. She told me many times what a wonderful man your father was. That he honored my father and his service. That we all owed everything we had to your father. How was I to tell him no? Again, it’s not like he asked, as much as he told me that I would follow him. And after his accident and all…”

  Paege drew in a sharp breath.

  “You know,” Trysten said, “we need things in the village other than dragoneers and hordesmen. There are others who are needed, who have services and skills that are just as indispensable, and they all give. They all contribute to the village in their own way.”

  Paege nearly let out a snort. “Yeah, I doubt that the village would fall if we were suddenly without a blacksmith.”

  Trysten shrugged. “Who would make the buckles for our saddles? Or the tips for our arrows? Or the blades with which we slaughter the food for the dragons, or the food for ourselves? Who would make the spits on which we cook our meat?”

  Paege shook his head, but Trysten continued. “You know what I mean. This is a small village. One on the border of the kingdom. We all depend on each other to survive. You needn’t be a hordesman, or even a dragoneer to give back. You just have to be yourself.”

  Paege’s jaw clenched and flexed as if chewing on his words. “That sounds all fine and good to hear you say it, but it doesn’t address the bigger problem. What do we do when Aeronwind dies? Can you look into Elevera’s eyes and tell me what she feels? Can you tell me that she is going to feel like bonding? That she is going to obey my every wish and command and use her position among the horde to make sure the other dragons serve us?”

  “They don’t serve us,” Trysten said. “They’re not beasts of burden. They’re not mules with wings. They live with us. They work with us. The alpha gets satisfaction from the pride that the Dragoneer feels. That is what keeps the horde in Aerona. Aeronwind wants to make my father proud. She cares for him. She cares for him because he…” She recalled her father sitting in the stall, his back against his dragon with his twisted leg sticking out before himself. The look on his face, when he thought she wasn’t looking, set her back some. It was the closest thing to helplessness she had ever seen on the face of a man she thought capable of moving the whole world if the whim took him.

  “My father cares for Aeronwind in a way that he cares for no one else. He loves me, and he loves my mother, but there is something about him and that dragon. They fly together into battle. They depend upon one another. Aeronwind has kept him alive, has kept his family safe. She has selflessly thrown herself into battle when called upon. That’s what’s missing here, Paege. You have to care about Elevera. You have to care about her like you’ve never cared for anything else before.”

  The words yanked at her as they left her throat, as if each one were knotted to a piece of twine attached to her heart with a loop of steel. Each one was a part of her, a morsel of her that she handed off to this man who didn’t appear capable of understanding. What did he care about? What would he give his life for?

  Paege turned his face slowly towards her. Breath billowed out in a cloud from his parted lips. His nose glowed with the cold. His eyes were bright and shining in the gray light and bored straight into her. He sucked in a deep breath, and if it were there for her to grasp, Trysten would have clutched at a pole, a rail, anything solid as if she might be sucked in, or blown over by the words she feared he would say.

  Her fingers curled into a fist, and that was the best she could manage, unless she reached for Elevera.

  Then he turned away, and he stepped toward Elevera. He approached her and reached up to grab the edge of her saddle, leaving Trysten standing there weak and wobbly in the snow, wrung out from what had almost happened, which she wasn’t quite sure about. What she did know for sure was that she would not ask Paege to tell her what it was he cared for more than anything else.

  Paege stuck a foot in the stirrup, then pulled himself up and onto Elevera’s back.

  “We should be getting back. You’ve got a distance to walk. We’ll give you a ride to where we found you.”

  A little relief flowed through Trysten. The fact that he had said we instead of I was an indication that all was not hopeless or lost.

  She approached Paege and offered her hand. He helped her up onto the dragon’s back, and as Elevera shuffled in the snow to take advantage of the wind, Trysten wrapped her arms around Paege and laid her cheek in the space between his shoulder blades.

  How had things come this far?

  Chapter 17

  Shivers wracked Trysten by the time she entered the village. The snow had stopped some time ago, and the clouds had begun to bunch up, to show their edges and soft corners. It appeared at times that the sun might even pop through, but it never did. If the sun was going to come out, it wouldn’t be until the next morning.

  Back at the cottage, she changed clothes and warmed up by the fire as her mother sat on the other side of the hearth and worked on her knitting. She had asked Trysten about her walk, but didn’t push it too far. Both of them ended up staring into the fire, moving only to stoke it, add wood, or to pour a cup of tea from the kettle on the hob.

  Once warmed, Trysten helped her mother make dinner, and though she offered to take another basket to her father, Caron said she would take it this time.

  After Caron departed for the weyr, Trysten donned her dried over-sweater and cloak and headed off to a cottage a few doors down. There, she knocked on the door, waited, and was relieved to see Galelin open the door a crack, and then tug at the collar of his sweater.

  “Is something the matter with Aeronwind?” he asked.

  Trysten shook her head. “I haven’t seen her all day. My mother just went to visit her and my father.”

  The wrinkles in Galelin’s brow deepened. “What is it then, my dear?”

  “I have questions. I want to know a few things about dragons.”

  “Oh,” his head bobbed
as if it were the most natural thing in the world that she show up at his door when she never had before. “Come in, then. I’ll try to answer what I can.”

  He stepped back from the door and allowed it to swing open. Trysten stepped inside. All about the man’s cottage sat piles of books and baskets filled with scrolls. Her jaw dropped. It was an absolute prince’s fortune in books and scrolls, and here Galelin kept it all in a cottage not quite as big as her own.

  “Can I get you something to drink? A cup of tea, perhaps?” As the man shuffled over to his hearth, Trysten noted the smell. His whole cottage had the sharp smell of old books, a slight mustiness that she had only ever smelled before when she stuck her nose to the pages of the volumes in her father’s den. She had expected that his collection of a dozen or so books was the greatest in the village. Galelin had at least a hundred, and maybe more.

  “What are all of these?” she asked as she waved an absent hand toward a stack along the back of a table.

  Galelin paused as he reached for the kettle, then straightened his back. His spine cracked as he twisted around to see what she had gestured at. “Why, those are books, my dear.”

  Trysten let out an exasperated sigh. It had already been a long day. “What are they about?”

  Galelin reached for the kettle again. “Oh, a little of this, a little of that. As the dragon healer, I’m expected to also be a bit of a scholar. One never knows when a little geography or a little alchemy might come in handy. Even knowing a little bit about art is helpful from time to time.”

  “Art?”

  Galelin carried the kettle over to the table and placed it on an iron trivet. From a shallow reed basket on the table he produced a trembling sheaf of parchment and held it out to Trysten. She crossed the room and took it. Among sketches of plants and what appeared to be the interior of a fish, she examined a drawing of Aeronwind’s wound, next to what appeared to be the skeleton of a healthy dragon.

  “These are amazing,” Trysten said as she turned the parchment over and found even more sketches.

  “It’s not art. Not like the greats of old. But studying their work does help an old healer communicate better. I was able to show my friend in the mother city Aeronwind’s wound with more clarity and much less time than if I had to tried to use words alone.”

  He grinned at his own cleverness, then turned his attention to a tea pot and a small dish of dried leaves. “Now, what was it that you came here for? Certainly not to brighten an old man’s day, and definitely not for a cup of tea that could be had in any home in Aerona.”

  Trysten glanced at the parchment once more, then placed it on the table. “I wanted to ask you about the bonds between humans and dragons.”

  “Oh?” Galelin picked up the kettle and filled the teapot. Steam leaked up and out, and his hands lingered over it a moment as if sampling the warmth.

  “What is responsible for that bond? Why do humans and dragons bond at all? What causes it?”

  Galelin scooped several spoonfuls of leaves into the pot. “Concerned about young Paege, are you?”

  Trysten’s shoulders sunk a bit. “More like I’m concerned about the horde.”

  Galelin’s lips turned down at the corners. “It is troublesome. An absconding horde is never a good thing. Especially before the fighting season. And dear Yahi says, if I heard correctly, that the fighting season will visit us early this year.”

  “You know more about dragons than anyone in the village. Is there anything you can do to help foster the bond between Paege and Elevera? I’m… concerned that they aren’t taking to each other.”

  Galelin flashed a crooked grin. “Do you think your father has asked the same of me?”

  Trysten’s jaw dropped. It hadn’t occurred to her that he would ask. She had just assumed that he knew best, or that he at least thought he knew best.

  Galelin’s grin widened, and then he shook his head. “Well, he hasn’t, your father. The man is Dragoneer. You can’t have him going around acting like there is something he doesn’t know. It wouldn’t do now, would it?”

  He picked up the teapot, brought it to his face, and inhaled the steam deeply.

  Trysten sighed. “He thinks that Paege and Elevera will bond, but I have my doubts. He doesn’t…” she paused. There was no reason to try and protect his feelings now. This was too important. “Paege doesn’t care for Elevera the way that he should. You know how it is. That relationship between—”

  “Between you and Elevera?” Galelin asked.

  “Between my father and Aeronwind.”

  “Ah, yes. A man and his dragon.” Galelin poured the amber-colored tea into two cups. “The mythical idea that man can be married in a figurative sense to the wilderness of this land. It is at the center of our mythos, that something as noble and powerful as a female dragon can be made to mind a mere man—a pitiful creature without the benefit of scales, wings, or the breath of fire. It makes us feel quite important, as if the gods themselves had granted us our position on this land, doesn’t it?”

  Galelin shook his head. “No matter. I may have studied philosophy some, but I am no philosopher. I am merely a dragon healer.”

  “Can you help me secure the bond between Elevera and Paege?” Trysten asked.

  “Sit.” Galelin motioned to a stool at the table.

  As Trysten took her cup and sat at the table, Galelin took a sip from his own cup, then gave a nod as if passing approval on the tea. “I can do nothing for Paege and Elevera. I have heard of potions, of concoctions said to create a bond between any person and any dragon, but I suspect that it is a matter of fancy over a matter of fact. Anything that can be achieved through a mixture of herbs and elements is a matter of alchemy. The bond between your father and Aeronwind is beyond alchemy. It is a matter of soul.”

  “Soul?”

  Galelin nodded. “Soul. What is it that causes any two persons to fall in love?”

  Trysten stared at Galelin a few seconds, until she realized he was waiting for a response. She shrugged.

  A wide grin spread over the man’s face and framed his ramshackle teeth. “Ah, to be young enough to be ignorant. You have the whole world ahead of you, waiting to be discovered. But that is not what you came to know.”

  He cupped both of his hands around his tea, then took a sip. “There is in people, a hollowness. An emptiness. It is… If you had studied art, and you had seen the vases that are made by the masters of Tylu, you would see what I mean.”

  Galelin picked up the scrap of parchment he had shown her earlier, and then he plucked a stub of charcoal from its resting place between the edge of the table and the wall. He sketched an elaborate shape, like an inverted tear drop with a flower blossoming from the top of it.

  “This in no way does these vases any justice. It is purely for demonstration. But what makes these vases incredible is not so much the shape of them, but where the shape ends. It is the emptiness that surrounds them that defines their shapes, their curves, the very things that a person’s eye lingers upon. Understand?”

  Trysten looked up at Galelin. “Maybe?”

  He grinned again. “No matter. I don’t wish to bore you. Just suffice it to say that as we grow up, experience shapes us like hands that will shape wet clay into a pot or vessel. But where the hands draw the borders, the edges, the walls of the pot, there is emptiness. People are like that. Our experiences shape us, but also leave empty areas that define our edges, that give us our definitions. Now, a vase is quite content to sit upon a pedestal and be admired by a wealthy patron or some fool. But a person, aware and alive, in possession of a soul, is not content to let these empty areas be. We try to fill them. We try to find complementary shapes. We like to fit together. It makes us feel like we belong, understand?” Galelin held his hands up and threaded his fingers together.

  Trysten nodded. That bit she believed she understood.

  “Your father is a man of ambition. He was shaped that way by his grandfather. The lines that define him as such le
ave in him an emptiness that he feels keenly. Your father has always pined for an equal as leader among men. And in your mother, he found such. Your mother is a strong woman, as capable and strong and willful as any person of either gender. She complements your father’s shape. Likewise, Aeronwind complements your father’s shape and he complements hers. But a vase, taken from the kiln, can never be molded again, and I’m afraid that by the time your friend is old enough to be Dragoneer, he is old enough to be taken from the kiln, to be fired and fixed in the shape that he is. You cannot force him and Elevera to be together. It can’t be done.”

  Trysten shook her head. “But something has to be done. If those two can’t bond, the horde will abscond.”

  Galelin nodded as if agreeing with her assessment of the weather. “It happens.”

  “It happens? No! It doesn’t happen here. It can’t happen here. The fighting season is coming. The hordesmen of the Western Kingdom will push through the pass on the first clear day. We can’t be without the horde to protect us! You have to do something. You have to help me save the horde!”

  Galelin took another sip of tea, then shook his head. “There is nothing to be done. Believe me. I have studied this subject far and deep, ever since I was a young man.”

  Wistfulness fell off his statement as if a puff of dust had billowed up around a memory touched for the first time in a long time.

  Trysten placed her cup on the table.

  Galelin slapped his palms against his thighs. “Well, my dear, I’m frightfully afraid that I have done very little to help you, have I? But at the very least, I hope you are warmer and less thirsty than when you first arrived. Is there anything more to be done?”

  Trysten sat a moment longer. How could he give up like that? How could he just admit that the horde would abscond, and there was nothing to be done? There was always something that could be done.

  “Are you sure? If I could just get Paege to…” and she trailed off, letting go of the end of the sentence as if flinging it out in the open, a frayed bit of rope that she hoped the old healer would catch and knot off to another line of thought.