by James Duvall
The young man's face appeared over the side of the cart, looking down. “A what wolf?” he asked, looking down at Cedric. The werewolf appeared behind him and gave him a little push.
“W-w-w-woah!” He pinwheeled his arms backward and then tumbled into the mud below. The werewolf peered over the edge and grinned. Everyone, even Cedric, had a laugh as one of the boy's friends hauled him back to his feet.
“A werewolf,” she said, smirking. “Sorry for the alarm. I heard you had a dragon. Thought I'd have a look. You have nothing to fear from me. What are your plans when he wakes up? They breathe fire you know. Might not want to be standing quite so close to the bars...”
“I have that handled.”
“I'm sure you do,” the werewolf said. She swung her legs off the edge and sat, looking down at them.
Cedric plucked his hat off and held it to his chest. It was a black top hat with a red feather on one side. “Forgive me for not introducing myself properly. I am Cedric Carrowin, leader of this caravan. I don't believe I caught your name.”
“Kaidira Nightsparrow,” said Kaidira. “Pleased to meet you.”
“A lovely name. Tell me, Kaidira, do you know about dragons?”
“My fair share. This one's a Night Seeker. They're quick, and stealthy as dragons go. Not really the talkative type. They need an amulet to speak.”
Kaidira noticed Cedric's men exchanging wary glances and surmised that one of them had stolen this dragon's amulet. She perked her brow at them and then looked at Cedric. “Where did you get him?”
“We found it out in the Valley of Mists.”
Gradually Kaidira's gaze found its way to the one of the corners of the cart. A dark green gem was affixed there. She gave it a little tap and listened to it sing. “You've been to Calderr, I see. That will hold him for a while, but you should let him go.”
Cedric grimaced at the fiscal obscenity of the idea. “Why would I do that?”
“He has within him the same spark of life as you or I,” Kaidira explained. “He too is set apart from the beasts of the field.”
Cedric considered this for a moment. “Then it will interest you to know it killed a man.”
“Did he?” Kaidira leaned over to look down between the bars. The slumbering dragon was certainly capable of the crime. “Has he told you his story?”
“We've not got a word out of it. Found it sleeping by the corpse. In Sylmar, we put monsters in cages,” Cedric said, eyeing the sleeping dragon. He rested both hands on his cane and frowned at it. “We washed the blood off him and loaded him up. Thrashed like crazy when it woke up; snarling and clawing at the bars like a thing possessed. Everyone's better off with him in that cage. But if you're right and he sobers up I see no reason we can't readdress the issue.”
“And in the meantime you'll use him to draw crowds to your caravan?”
“Food is not free, Miss Kaidira,” Cedric said plainly. “I'm simply making the best of a bad situation.”
“How do I know that you aren't planning to chop him up and sell him off in pieces?”
Cedric feigned injury. “A little faith, priestess,” he said. Kaidira must have looked skeptical still because she soon found Cedric trying to sweeten the deal.
“He's worth more alive.”
“Are you a good man, Mr. Carrowin?”
Without missing a beat Cedric gave her a genuine-looking smile. “I like to think of myself that way. Helps me sleep at night.”
“I feel like we're negotiating. Why is that, Mr. Carrowin?”
“People are a good investment,” he said. “I find myself in need of a caretaker for the dragon. What do you say?”
“Me?” Kaidira asked. She pointed to herself, mystified.
“Yes. I can't offer you much, but you'll have a salary and I will provide any supplies you need for caring for our guest. And of course you can continue to ply your trade as a priestess while you travel with us. Call it a mission of faith and compassion.”
Kaidira thought it over for a moment while Cedric and his men waited. She hopped down in front of him. His men didn't take a step back.
“I accept your offer,” she said. She held out her hand and Cedric shook it eagerly.
“That's how it's done boys,” the merchant said with a grin. As though on cue his men started clapping for him. He had the distinct feeling that not a soul among them had a clue as to why they were clapping. “Feh, someone find her a room.” All the enthusiasm had gone out of his voice.
As he walked away they began to debate who the responsibility would fall to. Cedric paused just long enough to holler back “And not with the livestock!”
Kaidira ignored the squabbling and looked through the bar at her new charge. The commotion had stirred the dragon. He tried to speak but the growling tongue of dragons fell on deaf ears. Kaidira could offer him little more than a closed-mouth smile. Still he growled, clawing at the bars. Emerald lightning crawled along them and arched from scale to scale as he struggled desperately against the damping field to not avail. His alter would not show within the magically enhanced cage. Kaidira leaned forward and looked into his sapphire eyes. They burned with hate.
Chapter 28
What You Are in the Dark
King's Highway, Arcamyn
The night has changed many a man.
~The Journal of Alexander Barov, written in a trembling hand.
Far on the horizon, the moon peered out through a gap in the mountains, painting fields of wheat blue with its cool radiance. It was the part of the night when the fields would be emptying into homes and taverns and people like Kaidira and Anthony Graham would take to the streets to stand watch, each in their own way.
“Good evening,” Kaidira sang. The night seeker raised his head to look at her, then snorted and laid back down. She had hoped the warmth of Ryvarra would lift his spirits as it had for her, but the dragon was as gloomy as ever.
“I see,” she said. She leaned up against the side of his cage and looked at him. He had the glassy look in his eyes of someone who is present in the body but far far away in his mind.
“Thinking of something?”
A guttural hunger rumbled in the dragon's belly like distant thunder. Kaidira lobbed a fish through the bars and watched it disappear. She took her seat again and watched a few of the men from the caravan tending a small fire. After some time they became very drunk and started to sing. It brought a smile to Kaidira's face.
“I used to sing, when I was a child,” she said dreamily. Good memories flowed through her mind in a steady stream. She could still remember the first time her father marched her up to the front of the church and made her sing. Standing there in front of all the empty pews in the middle of the night and belting out a song as though the entire congregation was there singing with her. It was a fruitless exercise. For all her practice she had never once sang in the choir. But she had loved him for it. He would sit there, watching, clapping for her when she was done.
“Have you ever sang?”
The dragon didn't answer. He turned his head away with an anti-social growl, punctuated with a sharp snort to let her know it was deliberate. Eventually Kaidira gave up and found her way over to the campfire. They were drinking songs and she didn't know the words, but she sang along with them anyway, howling along when her wordsmithing gave out.
When the caravan called a halt the following evening she made her way back to Joshua's cage before it got too dark. This time she found him waiting for her. Seated on his haunches the top of his wings brushed against the roof.
“Hungry?”
The dragon lifted his head and shook it up and down.
“Much better today,” Kaidira said, smiling warmly. She slipped his dinner through the bars one fish at a time until there was a respectable heap.
While the dragon was preoccupied with his food, Kaidira reached through the bars to pat him on the nose. The dragon jerked back and slammed his head into the top of the cage, getting a little shock from the pr
otective wards despite the innocence of the action. Amidst a shower of sparks he growled down at her with vindictive eyes as though to say 'look what you made me do!'
“Sorry,” Kaidira said, flinching in sympathy. Her ears drooped a little. “I'll have you out of there soon enough. I promise.”
The dragon curled up on the floor and rested his head on his paws with his back to her. The view of the forest was the same either way.
“Tomorrow we reach Tavyn,” Kaidira announced. “I will come see you again, but I will be in my human form, much like your alter. You must think I am silly for not using it more often. I have met a few others like myself and they think I am a crazy person. 'Who would want to look like a monster?' they ask. But it does not bother me. Being a werewolf does not make a person a monster."
Kaidira reached up and ran her fingertips along the smooth, cool surface of her silver cross. It seemed to shine in the moonlight. The glint of it danced across the ceiling of Joshua's very small world and despite himself he turned his head to look for the source.
“You like it?” she asked. She held it up to the cart for a minute to give him a good look, then turned it slowly in her fingertips. “I almost lost it a few weeks ago. I was lucky to get it back. A good friend of mine was... was murdered. His name was Harig. He was a very good man. One of the best men I've ever known."
Her voice thinned to a hoarse whisper and for a moment she felt like she was standing back at the graveside again. "I went to his gravestone the night they buried him, and there it was." Her necklace had been repaired. She found it draped around the crossbeam of the white stone cross that marked Harig's final resting place, a small solace left for her by Anthony Graham. A new wave of tears came to her eyes as she returned it to its rightful place.
Kaidira wiped the bit of excess moisture from her eyes and when she opened them again, she found the dragon's eyes had softened when he looked at her. Pity? She thought she could see it in his eyes, though she acknowledged that the facial expressions of dragons were subtle and hard to read when they were not expressing some varying degree of rage. Gingerly she reached through the bars.
Kaidira had almost placed the flat of her palm on the dragon's snout when Jengus seized her from behind and yanked her back from the cage. She spun to face him, her lips tugging back to reveal sharp teeth for just a moment.
"Are you out of your mind!" Jengus shouted, waving animatedly at the bemused dragon watching them. "What were you thinking?!"
Kaidira's features had softened again, the brief flash of anger buried beneath a lifetime of calm and discipline. "I was going to rub his nose."
Jengus opened his mouth and worked his jaw mechanically without producing sound as his mind ground to a halt, all the various criticisms he had planned piling into each other at the door. “You were... what?”
“I was going to pet him," she answered matter-of-factly, though she knew it was not going to gain her any ground in the conversation unfolding.
“You wanted to pet him? Kaidira, he is a dragon! Not a puppy. This is a dangerous animal and I won't see you mangled or eaten by it just because you think you have some sort of sublime ability to discern what it's thinking and that it would like its nose rubbed. Do I need to tell Cedric that you cannot continue in your duties?”
“He doesn't seem all that dangerous to me,” she said. She reclined against the wagon wheel and rubbed her shoulders against the rough spokes. “I have met monsters, Jengus. Do you know what I do?”
“You take care of the dragon,” he answered.
“I hunt monsters,” she corrected.
“You hunt monsters?”
“I hunt monsters," she echoed.
"Murderers, witches, warlocks... There are those that practice dark rituals. I find them, and I stop them. By any means necessary,” she added darkly.
“Why?” he asked, spitting the word out tersely.
"Someone must," she said.
Jengus scowled. "No, why you? Let someone else do it. You're just..."
"I am not a puppy," Kaidira said, and Jengus rolled his eyes. "To someone else, I am someone else. I am strong enough, I can bear the burdens most cannot. I am a werewolf, and that changes things for me. What do you know of werewolves, Jengus?”
“You seem alright," he said, and Kaidira knew immediately he meant her specifically, and not the species as a whole.
“We have a reputation," she began. "I'm sure you'll hear about it eventually if you stay in Ryvarra long, so you might as well hear it from me. We are wrathful, violent, and dangerous. We were humans once, just like you. Being a werewolf is a curse. I can't go out in the day and people fear me, so I do what good I can, when I can.”
Jengus thought this over for a moment, looking her up and down. Kaidira's soft blue eyes shone when he looked into her smiling face. “You're not like that...”
“I am not," she conceded, "but most others are. You would do well to remember it. We can be human by day, but the eyes can give us away. Even in the day they glow from the curse, and when the moon is full we become wolves and most are lost to their darker nature.”
“The moon is full tonight,” Jengus pointed out uncomfortably. "You're still here."
“It no longer controls me. I have a... peacefulness,” she answered, smiling with her soft-glowing eyes. “It was a difficult lesson, but I had a good teacher. I found the werewolf curse at an early age and my parents abandoned me. I became feral. My savagery knew no bounds. Then one day, I fell into a pit and broke my leg. It was the end, I thought. A priest found me a few days later. I was weak from hunger, covered in mud. My dress was torn and bloody. I was savage as ever, snarling and growling at him like a rabid wolf. In my heart I knew what was going through his mind. Filth! Wretch! Disgrace! Beast!”
“I knew because I had heard those words every day in my own mind. But the insults never came. Nor did the stones. Instead he reached down into the pit, and offered me his hand. I still remember how shocked I was. I took it without thinking, and let him haul me out of there. He took me home with him and mended my leg. I still didn't trust him, not for a while, but he raised me as though I were his own daughter. For the longest time I didn't understand why. So one day I asked him, and you know what he told me?”
“I haven't the slightest.”
“I always wanted a pet,” said Kaidira miserably. A sharp snort came from Jengus as he clamped his hand tightly over his mouth to keep the laughter at bay.
“You're joking!" Jengus blurted out.
“Not at all,” Kaidira said. She slouched back against the wagon wheel and chortled at the memory. “It was a terrible thing to say to a young girl, but my father always had the worst taste in jokes. In the end I realized he had seen someone lost in a dark and lonely place, and he brought her back into the light. He loved me all his life and he didn't have to.“
“That's a nice story and all, but it doesn't explain why you do what you do.”
Kaidira shrugged. “It's a long story, but that's how it begins." She noticed the dragon was looking on in interest, listening attentively to her words.
"I think he liked it," she said, grinning at her charge. Joshua nodded, eliciting a soft chuckle from the priestess.
“The only thing my father taught me was how to hunt elk,” Jengus said. “Took my first when I was eight. Made me gut it and skin it too.”
Jengus rapped his knuckles on the drinking horn fastened to his belt. “Gave me this the same day. Filled it all the way to the top with spirits and had me drink the whole thing in one go. Slapped me on the back while I was still choking on it and said 'That's my boy! Now you're a man!' Best day of my life.”
“Your father sounds like quite a character.”
“He is. He's mellowed a bit with the years. Makes furniture these days. Seen that big one on Cedric's wagon? One of my old man's. That chair got me in the good with Cedric. Been on with him ever since.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Few years,” he said absent
ly.
“So you know him well?”
“As any man can.”
“How do I convince him to set the dragon free?”
“It's worth a pretty big heap of gold to him,” Jengus said. He dug into his pocket and came up with a little tin of tobacco. He shook it once and then thumped it firmly with his thumb before opening.
“What are you doing?”
“Cooking a turkey dinner,” Jengus said wryly as he rolled himself a fresh cigarette. “Gonna try to talk me about of it?”
“You'll make him jealous.”
“Make wh-- the dragon?” he asked in disbelief.
“Yes!”
“Dragon!” Jengus tapped at the bars. “Mind if I smoke?”
The dragon snorted.
“See? He doesn't care,” Jengus said. He stuffed the tip of it in his mouth and struck a match. Only, he didn't quite get it lit. The dragon put his muzzle to the bars and with a little puff of chilly air, blew it right out. Jengus dropped both in surprise and wheel around, beating a hasty retreat from the cage as his hat tumbled off the back of his head.
“That's downright creepy!” he said. The dragon simply snickered in reply.
“Aww, he likes you!” Kaidira teased.
“You're both crazy! The both of you! Crazy!” shouted Jengus. He snatched his hat off the ground, rammed it onto his head and stormed off to have a smoke somewhere in peace.
***
It was nights like these that Isaac would sit alone, looking out at his father's city. From his father's throne he could see St. Penathor's in all its splendor. The great white tower in its center sparkled like a diamond in the night sky, brighter than all of the stars. Twice a week his father had taken him down to the sanctuary. There was a special box for the royal family, right there at the front. It was the only place in the city Rufus would go without a guard. When once he was asked why, he pointed to the two dragons over the baptistry and declared, “In this house, those are the only guards I need.”
Some years later, in Camden's darkest hour, one of those dragons had come in answer to his father's need. Only, Dakrym had not come to bring salvation for the beleaguered city. That would be won by the hands and swords of the men in the city below. Like a thief in the night, Dakrym slipped into Isaac's world.