The Dragoneer: Book 1: The Bonding

by Vickie Knestaut

  Trysten hugged her legs tighter. “She felt bad. She felt real bad for hurting Father. He lived to ride.”

  “He lived to ride her.”

  “I’ve never seen him like that. Oh, Mother, he just…” Trysten slumped sideways into her mother. Another sob escaped her and dropped into her mother’s lap. Caron wrapped her arm around her daughter and pulled her close. Trysten buried her face in Caron’s shoulder. She smelled of burnt candles and wood smoke as she stroked her daughter’s hair until Trysten’s sobs subsided.

  Trysten pushed herself upright, then wiped her eyes on her sleeve again. “It was so awful. All of it. I’ve seen dragons die before, but not like that. They all… They hissed. They stopped breathing when Aeronwind did, and then they all began to hiss and it sounded so awful. It sounded horrible as if…”

  The words stopped off there, like a ragged trail that dwindled into a bit of nothing, into solid scrub and rock heather that stretched as far as the eye could see. There were no words. Words were for the humans. The hissing had filled her with a sense of the world shifting. It sounded like the noise that might fill the air if the entire mountain and the foothills and plains were all dragged across the lands that stretched out beyond the horizon. It sounded as if the world had been relocated, and the feelings that came with it…she didn’t know how to describe them to her mother.

  There was something else among it. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. So much had been thrown at her. The emotions and the thoughts of the dragons had threatened to overwhelm her, and she waded through it as fast and hard as she could looking for any indication of what it was that Elevera was going to do. Would she take Paege as her bonded human, as her dragoneer or not?

  “You might find this hard to believe, but I do understand,” her mother said.

  Trysten quivered in the press of the cold night. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond. How could her mother even begin to understand?

  “Emotions run high at these times. It must have been frightening to see your father undone like that.” Caron tightened her grip upon her daughter.

  “Your father has always had to keep up an image of strength, of being made of stone. He had to be the mountains himself.”

  “Why?” Trysten asked. “He didn’t have to do it for the dragons.”

  Caron stroked her daughter’s hair a few times. “No, that is true. He did have to do it for the men, though. For the hordesmen. They put such an air of mysticism about it, don’t they? They make it out as if your father must eat iron and spit rust in order to be the Dragoneer. He had to be perceived as the most able, more fierce warrior in the land in order to be the one chosen to ride into battle on the back of the alpha.”

  Trysten listened to her mother’s heart. It throbbed far away, under layers of wool and cotton, muffled and hidden behind so many curtains. It seemed so distant, unlike when she had been a girl and able to curl up in her mother’s lap and listen to that sound whenever she wanted.

  “It’s not like that,” Trysten said.

  “No. But they pretend it is. And now they have a problem. Paege isn’t the kind of person one would expect to be the Dragoneer, is he?”

  “In the bunk hall, when I went to get him, he started to give orders. He started to sound like Father.”

  Trysten heard her mother smile.

  “I’m sure your father has been coaching him. It was the hordesmen who responded to Paege, and not the dragons, right?”

  Trysten gave a slight nod.

  “These hordesmen not only fly into battle under the command of the Dragoneer, but also on the backs of the Dragoneer’s dragons. He controls the alpha, and the alpha controls the dragons.”

  “It’s not that way,” Trysten said. “Not entirely. He doesn’t control the alpha. She just wants… It’s hard to explain. It’s not just a matter of wanting to please him, to make him proud, but there’s also a… They are protecting him. They see us as rather silly and weak and ridiculous. They protect us so that we will build them shelters and bring them food.”

  A slight sound escaped Caron. Trysten wasn’t sure what it was, what it meant.

  “Is that what you think?” her mother asked.

  Trysten placed a hand upon her mother’s knee and felt the firmness and the warmth. It wasn’t a matter of what she thought.

  “Well,” Caron continued, “it’s not the allegiance of the dragons Paege has to worry about, but rather the allegiance of the hordesmen. A dragon’s faith is unbreakable. Men, however, are fickle. Projecting an air of authority, of being larger than life is one way to assure these men that your father was worth following into battle. If they placed their lives in his hands, he would care for them like a dragon, lead them true, and bring them home to the cottages they have defended. It’s all an act. Posturing.”

  Trysten recalled the look of utter and complete anguish on her father’s face.

  “But you know what the true secret is, don’t you?” Caron asked.

  Trysten nearly snorted. “If I did, I would have told Paege. He needs the help.”

  “I know your father better than anyone thinks. I can imagine his response when Aeronwind passed. Your father is a very passionate man. I’m sure it tore him apart to lose his dragon. The fact that he could feel that loss so deeply, so keenly is why Aeronwind chose him.”

  Trysten swallowed hard. That statement did not help her feel any better about Paege’s abilities.

  “Dragons are amazing beasts. The legends say that when the gods made these lands, they wanted someone to admire them, to appreciate their work, so they made the Originals. But these people, the Originals, felt emotion too strongly. Too keenly. They were overcome with the beauty and the harshness of the land, and the beauty and the harshness of themselves, the creations of the gods.

  “The gods became fearful of their new creations. They had not expected such passions. They knew that among the gods themselves egos existed that would use the Originals, stoke their passions, fire them up until they could be turned into an army. And that army could turn on all of the gods and destroy them.

  “So a hail of lightning fell upon the land. It shattered the paradise the gods had built, but it also split their creatures in two. The passion and emotion gave rise to the dragons, and the ambition and reason gave rise to humans.”

  It was an old story that Trysten had heard before, but she dared not interrupt her mother. She was quite content to listen to the story, to listen to the sound of Caron’s voice.

  “People like your father are a little more like the old ones, the Originals. They have it in their blood. They can draw up some of the passion of the ancients, and that is what the dragons respond to. It is what I imagine you saw tonight. It is also why the title is almost always passed down from father to son.”

  “But not daughter?” Trysten asked. She pushed herself up out of her mother’s lap and wrapped her arms around her legs.

  They sat and listened to the river, swollen with rain. They listened to the trail lark and the wind that would start to tell of something it had seen far away, but then fall quiet as it realized that no one really cared. All of Trysten’s focus was on her mother, on her response.

  “There’s nothing that forbids it,” Caron finally said.

  Trysten huffed. “Nothing except Father.”

  “He loves you, you know.”

  “What does that have to do with anything? With this?”

  “Everything. You have to look at it from his side. He…” Caron grabbed Trysten’s knee and squeezed. “We know you are a special girl, Little Heart.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not little. Not anymore.”

  In the starlight, Caron’s grin was visible. “Oh, dear, until you are older than me, you will never outgrown that name. But your father knows that you… you feel things on a very deep level. You feel things deeper than him, even. And he worries about you. He worries because what dragons feel is so large and…”

  Caron gave her daughter’s knee anothe
r squeeze. “To be frank, we worry about where you will put it all. How do you make room inside yourself for what the dragons feel?”

  Every bit of Trysten felt as if it were plunged into ice. Her breath stopped. Her heart struggled, staggered in her chest. The dark blades of grass before her stirred in the last of the wind’s tepid tale. How much did her mother really know? How much did her parents know?

  “I questioned your father’s refusal to let you even participate in the consideration, but after your fainting spell in the weyr, I knew that he had made the right decision. You are unlike many of the people across this land. There might not even be another like you alive today. I can see that your empathy towards the dragons runs as deep as any since possibly the Originals walked this land, or the land that was. But you are not one of the Originals. You are human. And you have the limits of a human. Your father is concerned about what would happen to you in the heat of battle, when passions run at their highest, their hottest.”

  Trysten drew her legs closer to her. A shiver ran through her. The wind spoke up. It whispered into the grasses a muffled story of a young woman, a warrior princess who flew into battle on the back of a dragon, and the mere mention of it sent gooseflesh across Trysten’s arms.

  “This isn’t about you alone, Little Heart,” her mother said. “This is about the village and the kingdom. You’re father feels things far more deeply than he will ever let on or admit to, and that includes fear. He is frightened of what would become of you in battle. He is frightened of that first. Beyond that, he is frightened for the village and the kingdom. What would happen to the horde if you became overwhelmed in battle?”

  Trysten shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”

  “It is not for you to decide. Your father is your father, and so what becomes of you is the responsibility of us both. But he is… He was the Dragoneer, and it was his decision to make. The Dragoneer is the Dragoneer first. Before he is your father, before he is your friend, before he is your husband even, he is the Dragoneer. The horde comes first, and the village soon after.

  Trysten peered up at the weyr. The dark shape of it obscured the stars at the top of the hill behind her. Soft light from torches and lanterns bathed and lapped against the stone wall. All seemed quiet. She thought of Galelin’s story, of how the Drowlin weyr lost their horde. It sounded as if it had happened so fast, in the blink of an eye. Everything above seemed calm. Surely she had been worried about nothing. Elevera had probably done what she needed to do and bonded with Paege.

  She looked back and shook her head. It would take a while to think of him as the Dragoneer.

  Trysten glanced at her mother. How much did her mother and father know about her ability to hear the dragons, to feel them? They knew more than she had assumed, but how deep did their true understanding go?

  As Trysten considered how to word it, how to ask it, her mother patted her on the knee. “Come along, Little Heart. One thing that death teaches us is that life goes on. There is a burial feast to prepare.”

  Trysten took a deep breath, then let it all go. It had been a tough night. And there was a lot of work ahead. She pushed herself off the rock she had been sitting on. Her mother slipped to the ground beside her and drew her into a great embrace. Trysten buried her face in her mother’s shoulder and thought about what she had said about all of the emotions not being able to fit inside her. It startled her to hear that. It was closer to the truth than Trysten had realized. Standing among the reeds near the river’s edge, she felt like a sack stretched out of shape by some ungainly thing forced inside her. She thought of Elevera’s eyes, and the way she stared at her, and the look of expectation. What she wanted would not possibly fit inside Trysten, but Elevera had wanted it anyway.

  She shuddered.

  Caron patted her on the back. “Everything will be fine. This is life unfolding. That is all it is. You’ll see.”

  “I suppose so,” Trysten said as she pushed back away from her mother. She wiped at the corners of her eyes again, and then the two of them started up the trail for the village.

  Chapter 24

  At the head of the trail, a sense of ill-ease struck Trysten. It left a taste on the back of her tongue; cold and bitter like metal. At the weyr, people milled about outside of it under the lights of torches and lanterns. Their chatter had an edge to it, a strained anticipation.

  Dread fell into Trysten. Something more was going on than villagers simply mourning the passing of the alpha dragon. Something wasn’t going right, and she feared it was the bonding. Elevera was preparing to abscond.

  “Mother…” Trysten whispered.

  Her mother stopped and slid an arm around Trysten’s shoulders. They stared at the scene before them. A few stragglers joined those outside the weyr. In animated gestures, the villagers told the newcomers what was happening. On the breeze, Trysten caught mention of Aeronwind and Paege. The dragons. Lee, the baker, waved a wild hand at the weyr. Whatever was going on wasn’t welcomed.

  Caron’s grip tightened around Trysten’s shoulder. If she truly had the blood of the ancients coursing through her, if she had an ability to connect with the dragons that no one had had since the time of the Originals, then she could stop Elevera before she absconded. If Paege could not, then she would.

  Caron’s grip fell away as Trysten plunged across the yard that separated the hillside and the weyr. The people milling about called to her, asked of her father, of Paege and Elevera. They passed along condolences for Aeronwind, and then they parted as she pushed through. Muffled pardons and apologies trailed behind as she brushed past people and penetrated the crowd as it grew tighter and denser as she approached the weyr’s opening.

  With a last drop of her shoulder and a slight shove, she plunged past the last barrier and stepped into the central aisle of the weyr. All about her, dragons shuffled and groaned in their stalls. A few of the smaller ones turned tight circles. Wings snapped open and shut. Bits of straw skittered away from stalls beneath the brush of quick, brief breezes.

  At Elevera’s stall, Paege stood among a knot of hordesmen and weyrmen. He donned her father’s helmet. The great, gray braids that had fallen over her father’s shoulders when he rode Aeronwind now fell over Paege’s shoulders, and they appeared so much larger, like thick ropes meant to tie him down, to restrain him. He lifted his hands to Elevera, lifted them over his head and held them apart as if pleading. The rear corner of the weyr flickered with light as a dragon released a stream of fire.

  A quiver shook Trysten’s knees. This would not go well. She had never witnessed a succession before, but the dragon’s tenor suggested that it was not going as it should. A restlessness rippled through her, crawled beneath her skin. Tightness drew over her lungs. The whispering and tongue-wagging of the crowd behind her grew in pitch.

  A dragon of the lightest silver color drew up on his back legs. His wings snapped open wide as he clawed at the air. A spurt of fire slipped through his maw. When he dropped forward again, his claws clutched the stall gate. The wood cracked. The top set of hinges was torn from the post with a groan.

  A weyrmen rushed to the stall and waved his hands helplessly.

  The sky. The dragons all thought of the sky. They searched for sky, for something they believed would be there. It called to them so strongly that Trysten glanced back, over the heads of the people she had grown up with. There, she expected to see strange light, a new sun in the sky. A new kind of light. Darkness held, pinned into place with a few bright stars visible over the trembling ends of a few torches lifted over the heads of the crowd.

  Trysten shifted her feet. The sky, the sky. She would charge outside, spread her wings, and take to the sky. Her arms twitched.

  A man screamed.

  Trysten whipped around. The weyrman who had tried to calm the silver dragon now lay upon the ground several feet away. He clutched his upper arm with his left hand as he struggled to prop himself up on an elbow. Several others gave the dragon a wide berth as they ran to the fallen
weyrman. A spurt of fire roasted the air where the man had been a second before rolling away.

  No. This would not happen. She would not permit the horde to abscond. It wasn’t possible. It wouldn’t happen.

  But how would she stop them?

  A great roar escaped Elevera as if to answer the challenge. She swept her head at Paege. He leaped back and avoided the dragon’s teeth by inches as several others around him dove to the ground. She roared again, then reared up as she spread her great wings. They appeared to have grown in size since the last time Trysten had seen them, since Aeronwind had died.

  The dragon’s gaze fell upon Trysten. The sky. Take to the sky!

  Trysten clenched her fists and stamped a foot. No! They would not leave. She forbid it. She would do what she had to do to keep the horde in the weyr. Nothing would stop her. Nothing.

  Chapter 25

  Trysten stormed down the aisle. She clenched her teeth and tightened her fists against an urge to rear back on her feet, to fling her wings open and roar. Elevera’s thoughts and feelings blasted into her, harder than ever before, as though the dragon’s mind and heart together were a great fire, a fire blazing higher even than the roof of the weyr. And Trysten marched forward, steadfast and steady into that great rolling heat that only she and Elevera felt. The press and intensity of it threatened to set her own heart and mind ablaze, sent hot, burning waves through her, across her chest, up to the base of her throat, the ends of her jaw, and the thoughts and sudden wild emotions of Elevera and the horde crashed across her, threatened to overwhelm and douse and drown her in a thundering river of fire.

  “Get her out of here!” Bolsar shouted, struggling to his feet beside Paege. As he pointed a finger at her and motioned for the weyrmen to grab her, the attention of the entire horde channeled through her. They were watching, listening, drawn to her suddenly as if she were the sky, vast and blue, and the one thing in it that they wished to find.