Before the gate opened wide out of sheer momentum, Elena was already at the stables. Ashkent stopped so fast his hind legs bent under him. His front hoofs dug two deep gashes in the sand as he forced his body to stop. Elena was already out of the saddle before he came to a complete halt.
She more or less dragged him into the stables, trying to run. Quickly and surely, she unsaddled Ashkent and, needing a stool to reach all the way to his back, rubbed him dry. While she was at it, he started to eat, losing interest in the rest of the world.
The whole operation took her only a few minutes. When she finished, she patted him on the neck happily, snuck him an apple, and ran! Elena was late and knew it. She was in huge trouble! The speed with which she dashed through the corridors was undoubtedly impressive, but undignified even more. Everybody scattered out of her way. An angry nanny awaited her, when she burst into her chambers.
“I know, I know!” wheezed Elena, utterly out of breath. She already had her shirt halfway over her head. All her vagabond clothes off; she splashed herself with cold water, and with nanny’s help pulled on an evening gown. With a few well-trained movements, she tamed her long red hair into an elegant chignon and pinned it down with knife sharp hairpins.
“Shoes!” yelled her nanny, as Elena started out the door barefoot. Slipping into a pair, the girl kissed her nanny on the cheek, and ran again. Her skirts gathered above her knees, she skidded round most corners, before slowing at the last one. To catch her breath, she walked the final section of the corridor at a ladylike tempo. In front of the small dining room door, she straightened her dress and beckoned to the guards. They opened the door for her, both poker-faced, well hiding their amused smiles. Every occupant of the room turned to look at her.
“Good evening. I beg your pardon for being late!” she curtsied. The door closed behind her with a click.
“You are late!” her father rebuked, quite obviously angry. Elena dropped her eyes meekly.
“Where have you been?” John’s voice was sharp. Though Elena had anticipated this question, she was still unsure how to answer it without telling a lie. What was she supposed to say? I saved a dragon cub and summoned a dragon King? Yeah, right! Her father would go spare! So far, he was only, well, ill-tempered. She spent most days at the training ground, at school, or training with her mother. But on those occasional days when she had no duties, one of her few limitations was to be home before dark, in time for a family dinner. It was a way to keep her fairly close to the castle, at a relatively safe distance from home. And she had broken this very basic rule.
“I beg your pardon, father. I went near the Dragon hills and lost track of time.” It was not the greatest excuse, but at least she had not lied.
“What was so important that you lost track of time?” he snapped immediately.
Elena stood, her hands clasped behind her back, staring at her feet so hard the tips of her shoes tried to hide under her skirt to elude her attention. Under the suspicion that something impertinent, disrespectful, or even worse would come out of her mouth if she opened it, she kept silent. There was no need to make things even worse. Her heart was beating like crazy, she still fought to catch her breath. And she was dying to tell Mother what had happened in the mountains.
◆◆◆
Ashka watched her intently. There was definitely something Elena was not telling them. Her husband was clearly aware of it too; that was probably why he leaped into a litany on responsibility, or rather irresponsibility. He emphasized how much freedom Elena had and that she should realize it came at the price of her being responsible for her actions. She had betrayed his trust by misusing her freedom. Followed a lecture about her being obliged to behave like a young lady of no less than royal blood. Elena strived to listen attentively, but her thoughts kept straying to mountains and dragons. She tried not to fidget. It would have been so much easier had none of her brothers been here. They were sure to keep her on the hop for this mess-up! They would pick on her even more than they already did. Especially Dars would. That much was obvious. He stood slightly out of the family group, out of Father’s sight, and had this nasty smirk on his face.
“I do apologize, father. I will do my best not to fail you again,” she mumbled the moment he paused for breath. She was crimson to her ears.
“If you do it again, you will be assigned a personal guard,” he threatened. And then I will be tied home by my butt, Elena thought.
“Yes, father,” was an answer the King was taken aback by. His daughter not arguing with him seemed, well, strange to say the least. He gave her a long, searching look, quite sure there was something fishy going on here. Elena began to panic under his gaze. Oh, oh! She thought. Now what? How the hell is she going to wriggle out of this?
Ashka touched John’s shoulder gently.
“Dinner is getting cold, dear,” the queen commented in a soft motherly tone. Dars sneered. His mother gave him a reproachful look.
“We will talk again later!” Father promised, but motioned to a cook standing inconspicuously in a corner, and sat down. The whole family followed his example. Elena breathed out with relief. According to etiquette, she was the last to sit. Food was brought to the table. Since she had almost no lunch, she had to restrain herself from gobbling down her dinner. That would definitely earn her an even bigger rebuke. Besides, she needed to draw as little attention to herself as possible. A lady. Was that all her father cared about, her being a lady? But she had summoned a dragon! She was anxious for the dinner to be over, so she could talk to Mother. Ashka watched her attentively, knowing her daughter far too well not to suspect that Elena was hiding something. The child was fidgety and nervous, her back rigid. She even totally ignored Dars, who kept needling at her, a malicious grin twisting his lips. Concentrating on her food without even lifting her eyes was definitely out of character with the lass.
Everyone finished eating. Elena impatiently waited for Mother to walk away from the table. Throughout the whole dinner, she was trying to figure out how to attract Ashka’s attention without inviting unwanted attention from Father. As soon as she stepped up to Ashka and grabbed her hand, Mother asked: “shall we go for a walk?”
Elena gave her a relieved smile. Hand in hand, they walked out of the room, into the gardens, into a night enlightened by trillions of stars and a pale waxing moon.
“I summoned a dragon!” fired Elena without any kind of introduction.
Ashka halted in surprise. “I beg your pardon, what is it you have done?”
“I summoned a dragon!” Elena repeated. Her face radiated a mixture of excitement, surprise, and sheer happiness.
“There was this dragon cub, really small, dark blue-green and shiny, it just hatched out of an egg in this rock pile a farmer was sitting on, and he freaked, and ran, and came back, and had others with him, and they wanted to hurt the cub, and it hid, but they would have had found it so I told them to git, that if they hurt him, his mother would come and destroy their village and eat them all, and I took him, and his name is Wilbur, and I didn’ know what to do, and I coudn’ bring him to the castle, what if his parents came looking for him, and I couldn’ leave him there, and I took him to the mountains, and I tried to summon a dragon the way you taught me, and it worked, and he was huge, and his name is Ashrack.” A continuous flow of words spilled out, all on one breath, all in one sentence, all the possible word endings swallowed, so they would not slow her down. It was such a relief to get it all out of her system! She took a deep breath and a wide smile crossed her face saying: that’s that, do what you can with the information.
Ashka looked at Elena with astonishment, trying to make sense of at least something her daughter had just said. Finally she decided it was beyond her competence.
“Pray, Eleanora, this is not how a princess should express herself. Say it again. Talk slowly, clearly, and do not swallow anything that should be said out loud,” Ashka tutored the child. Elena gave her a desperate look. Are you serious? She managed to summon a drag
on, a really big dragon, and all her mother cares about is her swallowing syllables? Nevertheless, just a bit slower, and as clearly as she was able to manage, she tried to tell her story again. Ashka listened, interrupting only with a few clarifying questions. She asked about the spell her daughter used, the exact wording of it. She enquired about the dragon and what had he looked like, how he behaved. Until the moment when Elena proclaimed to have had touched the dragon’s snout, it seemed as if Ashka was not all that interested in the story.
“You touched a dragon?” Ashka suddenly jumped in, sounding surprised and alarmed at the same time.
“Well, he stretched his neck out so far … I don’t know why I did it. He was so beautiful! Do you know that dragon skin is almost velvety? It isn’t rough at all,” Elena sounded exhilarated.
Silence fell. An uncomfortable thought began to nag at Elena. Something was wrong. Her mother’s reaction was far from what the girl had expected. Ashka went pale, looking into her daughter’s now confused face, into the wide dark eyes. Desperately she clung to a last string of hope.
“When you touched the dragon, did anything happen?” the queen asked very quietly, scaring her daughter with her tone. For the first time, it occurred to Elena that she might have done something wrong, because Mother was angry with her. Even so, she was not able to keep the excitement out of her voice, when she recapitulated what had happened. She could not take it back anyway, could she now?
When Elena finished, the ensuing silence was almost tangible. The last of Ashka’s hopes, vanished. She turned her back on Elena and stared at the stars for a moment. When she turned back, she moved with surprising speed, grabbing Elena’s hand and yanking it palm up. Her long, elegant fingers closed painfully on the tiny wrist.
“That hurts!” Elena complained and tried to free her arm from the steel-like grip. Her mother refused to let go. She stared at a little hand, at the strange light it was glowing with.
“What have you done?” whispered Ashka almost inaudibly. She let Elena’s wrist go, leaving angry red fingermarks on it. Her face was stern; her otherwise gentle features set into a hard, severe expression that appalled the princess.
“But you said dragons were good, that we should protect them.” Elena pleaded, baffled, absentmindedly massaging her sore wrist.
“What?” answered Ashka, her thoughts elsewhere.
“You said we have to protect dragons, that we are of the same blood. I didn’t know what else to do. I just did what you taught me. And you are angry.” It was not the plea in Elena’s shaking voice, but the pained look in her daughter’s eyes, what reached Ashka’s heart. She knelt and hugged her daughter.
“I am angry, sweetie, but not with you. What you did is amazing.”
“But …” Elena tried. Ashka stood up. The gardens were not a good place for the discussion now awaiting them.
“I will try to explain, but not here.” Hurriedly she led her daughter back to the castle.
Elena found refuge inside the niche of her favorite window and settled comfortably, cradling a cup of hot chocolate in both her hands. Ashka waited for the maid to leave, and then sat opposite her daughter into the pillowed window niche. She did not really know where to start or what to say, even though she had known for quite some time that this conversation would come. However, she had not expected it to happen so soon, she was sure she had probably another ten long years to prepare. As if that was not enough of a problem, she couldn’t be sure what had really occurred in that forest, and that complicated matters even more.
“The dragon you managed to summon is Ashrack. Even though the dragons themselves would not call him that, he is a dragon king” started Ashka with the obvious. “I have told you that dragons are magical creatures. They have in them more magical power than any other creature of our world. Their power is the power of the land itself, or nature, if you will. I have also taught you that the Adragon are ancient people. You are my daughter. That is why in your blood, you carry a power that binds us to the dragons. The Adragon have passed their knowledge from generation to generation and for ages have protected dragons from human ill will and ignorance. For centuries girls of the Adragon had been trained the way I train you. Just as we are predestined to be of a certain height or have a particular eye color, each of us given a different amount of magical power. However, all of us are able to use these powers in the same way as any of the magicians you have heard stories about.” For a moment, Ashka went quiet. How do you tell an eight-year-old something that is meant only for the ears of grown women?
“Some of us are chosen. Our legends say that once in a long while, a girl is born whose power is equal to that of the dragons. No such girl had been born for many generations. Or maybe the dragons have just not considered anyone to be worthy of the Gift of Dragon Power. Only the dragons can sense the power within you. If they find a girl with such a power, only they can awaken it to its full potential. However, for them to do such a thing, the girl must prove she is worthy of such a great gift. She must prove her wisdom, maturity, self-discipline, and kindness of heart. If she thus proves herself, the day she is of age, the day she is eighteen, she is awakened. The ritual is sort of an initiation that brings the power of blood to full life, full strength. Never in all of history has a girl been awakened before the age of eighteen.”
Once again, silence filled the room.
“A girl as young as you is not ready for awakening. You are not ready for awakening,” Ashka finally managed to say.
“That’s OK, there was no initiation, no ceremony, no nothing,” Elena protested light-heartedly.
“There was no ceremony, but unless I am mistaken, none was necessary. You touched the head of a dragon king. Most likely, by that one touch, you have been awakened. Touching a dragon’s snout is part of the ceremony and that is what you have done. I am not sure what happened, but something has. Your hand glows with magical light. That is not something we can overlook,” Ashka explained. Elena stared at her palm. In the candle light, the glow was almost invisible.
“Remember, how I taught you how to recognize magic in other people?” Elena nodded, still staring at her palm, tilting it this way and that, trying to glimpse the glow.
“The power I sense in you is different from what it used to be.” Silence. For the first time in her life, Ashka was at loss, not knowing what to say to her daughter.
Elena was thinking so hard her brow furrowed. “You said dragons have huge power,” she stated quietly.
“Yes, they do.”
“But they are so big. If I have dragon power, how does it all fit into me?” Her assessment of the situation was surprisingly accurate, although very childish. Elena pinpointed something Ashka thought her daughter would not be able to understand for years. The queen smiled.
“Dragon power is not really too large, but too strong for you. The problem is not that it would not fit into you, but the fact that you are not ready for power of such strength. You don’t know how to control it. Uncontrolled magic can overpower and control you, and that is very dangerous.”
“Like when magic overpowered the Black Saurians and made monsters out of them?”
“Exactly.” Ashka was surprised how easily Elena could simplify matters so difficult the best magicians of all ages had spent their lives exploring them.
“So, now what? I don’t want to become a monster.” All of a sudden, Elena looked worried. Ashka caressed her cheek.
“Remember that, then. You will have a lot to learn. Hopefully we will be able to teach you enough to control your powers,” Ashka replied soothingly, adding: “You will have to be very careful so no one finds out, though.”
Elena frowned. She did not like the idea, but in a way this was just another secret she had to keep. It was just a bit… bigger. For a large part of the night, they sat inside the window, talking. That night Ashka began teaching Elena how to control her stronger powers.
◆◆◆
Training ground looked different the following mo
rning. Nothing was as Elena had been used to. It seemed as if the buildings, weapons, the training ground itself, people and their familiar faces, everything had extra details. It felt as if she was seeing this place and all its occupants for the first time in her life, although she had seen them a million times before. The noise of the training ground had also changed. Its regular confusion broke into tiny splinters of clear, comprehensible sounds. She heard every single one of them. She heard every command shouted or spoken, every weapon strike another, people shuffling their feet in the sand, every twang of a bowstring, whiz of an arrow, every thud of an arrow hitting its target, she heard the rustle of clothes as people moved around her. All the sounds, sharp colors, and smells were attacking her senses and making her dizzy, giving her a hard time to concentrate on her own tasks, at the commands shouted at her. It was difficult to concentrate on her opponent.
Dars took advantage of Elena’s inattention and struck. She managed to react, but was too slow. Her trak shot out of her hand. Dars’ second strike hit her in the side, the strength of it knocking her down. Dars laughed. He attacked over and over again, even though she was on the ground and unarmed. She rolled and dodged to get out of his reach, trying to protect herself from the blows.
A body flew through the air. A smaller, stocky, boy jumped Dars and knocked him to the ground. They rolled in the dust for a few moments, before Dars manage to untangle himself from the boy’s grip and stood up laboriously. The other boy got to his feet a lot faster.
“How dare you!” yelled Dars at the smaller boy.
“She was unarmed and on the ground.” answered the other calmly. Dars screamed and attacked. They fought, rolling on the ground, hitting each other as hard as they could. A crowd gathered around them. Elena struggled to her feet.
The Witch (Dragon Eyes Book 1) Page 4