by Sever Bronny
Leera went over to the table and picked up the sculpture. “I think it depicts Castle Arinthian! It’s clay—has to be Mrs. Stone’s work.” She examined it. “Exquisite detail … it even has the windows. Oh, wow!” She held it up for the others to see. “The windows glow with candlelight!”
Everybody crowded close to examine the wondrous little sculpture. Sure enough, the little windows wavered with a tiny candlelight effect.
“Now that’s neat arcanery,” Olaf noted.
They returned to exploring.
“Unnameables help me there are copper faucets!” Haylee squealed from the bathing room and privy, located to the right of the stairs. “Like they have in the finest royal houses! And there’s a tub—and it’s made from black marble! And the faucets and everything work by pressing a button!” She made a girlish swooning sound. “Everything is so … fine.”
Olaf spotted a button underneath one of the lamps. “It’s decorated with a Helix. Does that mean it’s safe to press?”
“Yes,” Bridget said, watching him with a doting expression.
He pressed the button and the lamp lit up with a small arcane flame, casting a comfortable and dim light. “Ooh, that’s brilliant,” he cooed. “So … advanced. Makes me pop’s shack look like a kitchen coop.”
Bridget chortled. “You mean chicken coop.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said kitchen.”
“I refuse to believe it, Bridget Abigail Burns.”
As the pair bantered and Haylee and Jengo discussed the bathing room, Leera’s bespectacled gaze fell upon Augum—and there was a distinctly mischievous gleam in her dark eyes. Augum fantasized about picking her up and carrying her upstairs into the furthest room and kicking the door shut behind them. Then they’d go at each other like half-starved wolves. Just as he was about to throw caution to the wind and reach for her hand, someone sniffed deeply from the other side of the door. A contented “Ah” was followed by a loud rap at the door.
“I’ll get it,” Leera sang, and purposely brushed Augum with her shoulder as she walked by, flashing him a cute smirk. She threw open the door, revealing a tall and muscular man who had finished smelling the flowers. He looked to be in his late thirties, with pale metallic skin and a boxy chin. Like all Leyans, he was completely hairless and had black eyes—except in his case, there was a gigantic tattooed mustache above his lips, an inked echo of a style only the oldest knights were allowed to wear as a badge of honor. And his clothes looked somewhat knightly too—he wore a loose faded white surcoat belted in the middle with mustard-colored hemp rope, a long chainmail robe underneath. The colorful crest on his surcoat was unfamiliar, probably the crest of a long-dead king. A longsword hung at his side in a leather scabbard and he held a large handled basket in a meaty hand—a hand that in its day would likely have been as hairy as a dog’s paw.
“Hi,” Leera blurted, stepping away from the big man. “Uh … who are you?”
“I have been dubbed Myrymydion the Mad,” the man replied in a booming and distinctly Canterran lilt. “But thou may call me by my Arcaner title—Dragoon Myrymydion.”
Dragoon Myrymydion
The questions came in a torrent as the others crashed their way over. “You’re an Arcaner?” “And Canterran?” “And a Leyan!” “How can that be!” And even, “You wrote my—er, the—Spectral ’Port instructional! I mean, Spectral Teleport.” And so on, until Bridget held up her hands. “Let’s stop mobbing him and let him enter first,” she said, gently shoving the gawkers aside.
The man entered. “Dragoon Burns, I presume?”
Bridget curtsied properly. “Yes, sir. And please forgive our excitement, we have … experienced quite a bit of late and are a little overwhelmed.”
“Yes, and please do come in, sir!” Haylee said, primping her hair and grinning like a fool.
“I thank thee, young dame.” The man strode past them and placed the large basket on the polished basalt dining table. Then he turned in place to get a good look at them with his night-black eyes. “And here we must have Dragoon Hroljassen, Dragoon Okeke, Dragoon Tennyson, Dragoon Jones, and Dragoon Stone. And yes, Dragoon Jones, I did indeed write that instructional set of parchments.”
Leera shot over to her rucksack, tore out the parchments, and rushed back over, thrusting them into the man’s hands while squealing, “I’ve been studying every word, every concept—and I can’t wait to try it. I’m almost ready, there’s just a few concepts I still do not understand.”
The man held the parchments as if they were sacred. He skimmed the first page and flipped it over while gently shaking his head, as if remembering things he had long forgotten.
Leera clasped her hands together. “Will you … will you help me learn it?”
Dragoon Myrymydion returned the parchments. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Dragoon Jones.” Then he closed his eyes and took a meditative breath. “May I say that this moment—this very moment we dwell in—never did I dare think would come.” He opened his eyes to look past them. “Stared did I at the sands of the desert, at the snowy rubble of the mountains, at the boulder-strewn valleys, at the trawling clouds, and at the twinkling stars, watching the years bleed by like old opponents on the field of battle, dreaming of this most beautiful and simple of moments. Learned have I become, yet surprise wields its blade anew—and Fates have mercy for I have been stung by its cut!”
He looked from face to face, taking his time examining their features as they examined his. “Here I stand, eighty-seven and four hundred years old, having spent sixty of those years in my old kingdoms of Canterra and then Solia, where I became an Arcaner—and yet the Arcaner paint on my soul has not dulled nor lost its sheen. To commemorate that paint, my tattoo I do reink every fifty years, for we Leyans lose our hair in due course. You see, in my time, Arcaners who ascended certain rank grew magnificent bushes—a point of honor, it was.” He looked to the parchments he had written so long ago, now held by the next generation. “For so long a time I had been the last and most lonesome of Arcaners. Words cannot express the depth of feeling in my bosom upon seeing that lonesome loneliness pass. My purpose renewed, relevance dawns again on this withered old soul.”
The big Arcaner’s lower lip trembled before he turned his back on them. “Forgive my most un-Leyan countenance, young dames and young sirs. It seems my candle has not expired, for I have new lessons to learn yet.”
Bridget dabbed at her eyes with her finger and sniffed. “We are honored to meet you, Dragoon Myrymydion.”
He still did not turn around. “And I thee, Dragoon Burns. Nary could I believe my own Leyan ears when I had been informed that the order had risen from the ashes like a phoenix reborn.” He ceremoniously withdrew a stack of white linen towels from the basket, followed by linen nightgowns and fine soaps. Next came bundles of black iron forks, knives and spoons, each set wrapped in linen and tied with hemp string. The Helix was either stamped or embroidered or carved into every single piece.
“Six of each there are, forged and woven by Leyan hands.” He picked up one item at a time and carefully made six piles. Then he picked up one of the piles and brought it to Bridget, who accepted it with a graceful curtsy. “Anna has taught me much about your lives.” He picked up another pile and brought it to Olaf. “We have spent many evenings around sacred fires in distant places as she explained your myriad challenges—” He handed a pile off to Haylee. “—and what she knew of the trio’s classmates.” She blushed and curtsied her thanks. He returned for another bundle and brought it to Jengo. “And lo, your party is complete, for it even has a healer.”
“Thank you, Dragoon Myrymydion,” Jengo whispered, bowing deeply.
“I will serve as your mentor in the ways of Arcaners,” the man continued, bringing a pile for Leera. “For there are many customs you should be aware of, and have earned the enjoyment thereof, including, if I may be so bold as to say, Arcaner weddings.”
Leera went crimson as she
accepted her pile and awkwardly did a half-bow, half-curtsy.
Myrymydion retrieved the last pile. “Know we did not who would come, but enjoy I so ever did hearing about the gentle souls that surround the heroic three, heroes who so gallantly vanquished the mighty Lord of the Legion.”
The ancient Arcaner at last stepped before Augum. “And yet mere pups you are not, that has been made plain to me. War is etched upon your souls like constellations. Warriors you are, needing to know only the truths that will better those warrior skills, both on the field of combat—” He presented the final bundle to Augum, who humbly accepted it. “—and in your personal lives.”
The man stepped back to admire them all. “Will you, gallant dragoons, do an old man a kindness and present your shields for him?”
“The honor would be ours, Dragoon Myrymydion,” Augum replied.
The group lined up abreast and summoned their shields. The man gulped sharply at the sight. He pressed a shaking hand against his heart and whispered, “How I crave to hear the songs echo off the walls of the Great Hall once more. Fervently doth my heart beat in memory of my companions. Companions bled I with. Companions watched I as, one by one, perished did they in the world of old. Women and men who in their day did sing and be merry, and did so gallivant about righting wrongs. Like leaves falling from autumn maples, watched I the order dry up and die until its heart beat no more.” His voice fell to a bare whisper. “Still hear I echoes of old songs none sing but I.” He closed his eyes as if listening to that song. “Still see I faces none remember but I.”
The friends glanced at each other, bittersweet pride reflected in their eyes.
Myrymydion composed himself by smoothing his surcoat and raising his chin. “Mark you my words and mark you them well, for my old kingdom has fallen prey to grotesquely inexcusable corruption. What we always feared has come to pass—the nobles, curse their greedy natures, have come together across all kingdoms to usurp the commoners. They have banded together to poison common minds so that commoners are pitted against each other whilst the nobles pick their pockets blind. And now, it seems, my eye doth spy that a corrupted form hath taken the shape of your antithesis, cloaking itself in faith and balance.”
“A corruption of the forms,” Augum whispered, echoing what he had heard his great-grandmother say earlier to Akeya.
“A corruption of the forms. And this way they shuffle miserably in penance, and eager they will be to call me traitor, when it is they who wield black rings upon their flesh, young misguided minds accepting death as their cradle. Well, say I to you, they shall know death most intimately, for they know not of the lost stories I—” He stabbed his heart with a bulbous thumb. “—have read in the archives; know not of stories depicting feats of legend performed within winged terrors; know not that thou will be able to paint their castles with their own blood—”
He stopped abruptly to take a calming breath, closing his black eyes as he continued in a whisper. “Too late was I born to witness the awesome annihilations performed by the winged arbiters of justice, arbiters who lost their dragon privileges with but a single dishonorable dimming of their shields, lending full credibility to their plight.” He opened his eyes and narrowed them like a hawk. “But thou hast come to renew that winged strength so that thou may purge the terror from Sithesia’s aching heart; so that thou may suck the poison from the wound. And I shall not rest until in peaceful winds your banner flutters over the fields of battle.”
Augum felt a guilty pang in his gut for having already dimmed his shield. He had failed when the battle had hardly even begun, and redemption was a mountain he had to climb bare of foot.
Dragoon Myrymydion looked to the door. They turned to see Mrs. Stone casually leaning against the frame, her arms folded across her chest, a small, proud smile gracing her lips. Augum wondered how long she had been standing there.
“Methodically have Anna and I been turning pages and unfurling scrolls and repairing ancient clay tablet fragments,” Myrymydion went on, “absorbing every written word on the matter of a certain simul.”
“The dragon simul,” Augum whispered, exchanging giddy and awed looks with his friends.
“We believe we know enough of this legend simul to train you in its fundamentals—perhaps enough to give you lead in your start with it. Would you care to know its name now … or after this one’s birthday—” The Arcaner thumbed at Augum while glancing at the others, the first sign of a sense of humor they had seen of the man—or really of any Leyan at all.
“Now, please!” Augum blurted, glancing between the two Leyans, ashamed of his eagerness. “Er … sir.”
The others nodded along in agreement, sheepishly mumbling, “Now, sir.”
“Very well then.” Dragoon Myrymydion smiled as the friends leaned forward in anticipation. “The sacred name of the sacred simul is known as … Spirit of the Dragon.”
Friendship
After a communal “Ooh,” the six friends could hardly stop asking questions about the Spirit of the Dragon simul. Even as they chose rooms and put their things away—except the linen-wrapped iron cutlery, which they’d need for supper—someone would rather uncouthly holler a question, such as when Leera shouted from the room next to Augum’s, “But how will it work with our spells, sir?” to which Myrymydion replied in a booming voice that filled the house, “That we doth not as yet know, Dragoon Jones, for we can only surmise the rudiments of the spell.”
“Will the dragon be as big as Orion?” Haylee shouted from within her room. “That one was eight-barn.”
“Forgive me, Dragoon Tennyson, but unfamiliar I am with that term.”
“That’s just our way of describing its total size, sir, including wingspan. The thing is massive—as wide as eight barns.”
“Ah, clever indeed. Alas, know this doth we not.”
“It must be a very difficult simul to learn then, right?” Augum asked, breathing quickly from running back down the stairs.
“I would expect it to be, Great-grandson,” Mrs. Stone replied, still leaning against the doorway.
The questions continued as they walked toward the communal supper hall in the Mortal District, questions Dragoon Myrymydion and Mrs. Stone patiently answered as best they could.
Augum became conscious of his friends throwing him mischievous looks. He eyed them suspiciously as they neared the hall, his guard up. But his attention was quickly captured by what he saw once they arrived, for there on the table was a true birthday banquet. It was bursting with exotic Leyan dishes—all the foods in Ley were strange variations on what he was used to, and summoned pre-made using ancient arcanery lost to Sithesians. There were sweets too—creamed custard tarts; sweet sugar cakes; honeyed Leyan apples, which looked more like pears; candied pink bananas; and so on. There was even what looked like a roasted boar but with six tusks. Its skin had been caramelized, another Leyan apple in its mouth. And all of it was lit warmly by surrounding torches, as well as by fat candles that dotted the table.
Bridget turned to Leera. “Now?”
Augum wagged an accusing finger at them. “Wait, what are you villainous lot planning?”
Leera dropped her rucksack, which only now Augum noticed. “Most definitely,” she said, and snatched Augum’s left arm while Bridget snatched his right. Then Olaf stuck his head between Augum’s legs and heaved him up onto his shoulders, huffing, “Up you go, Three Toes!”
Augum pretended to be insulted, though of course he wasn’t—his heart was bursting with a mix of joy and cringing embarrassment.
Leera then withdrew a stick hidden within her robes. She raised it above her head and started the first note of the traditional Solian birthday song Augum knew all too well. “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii—” and the others joined in, waiting for the stick to drop. She grinned at him as she sang the note, and the others began drumming on Augum’s thighs and back with their hands, creating an impromptu drum roll.
“Iiiiiiiit’s … theeeeee—” The stick dropped and they be
gan marching while belting out the song. “—day of your birth, the day of your birth, the day of your birth, all glow-cheeked with mirth—” Haylee had Jengo pick her up so that she could pinch Augum’s cheek, except she missed and grabbed his ear instead, nearly toppling him over and making the girls snort. But the song did not let up and Leera swung the stick wildly about like a military conductor, raising her feet high with each stomp. “—because that’s what you’re worth, grab a fistful of earth—” She abruptly turned to shove a fistful of dirt into his hand, which, as tradition demanded, he threw over his shoulder for good luck. “—’cause it’s the day of your birth, the day of your birth, the day of your birth.” They rounded the table and headed toward a smiling Dragoon Myrymydion and Mrs. Stone, the latter singing along, head bobbing this way and that.
“It’s just another notch on the belt. Oh, what a life! What a life! Just another notch, just another notch—” And as always, the song now sped up with each line. “May you grow old and be happy, grow laugh lines be sappy, catch a wife—” The friends playfully jostled Leera, who pretended to stab at them with the stick. “—cat chasing a mouse, then build a house, up to your eyelids with kids—don’t forget the potlids—and have chickens and pigs and geese and a well, and don’t mind the smell—” The song slowed back down. “—another notch on the belt … of … liiiiiife …!” Everyone, including a fiercely self-conscious Augum, raised their arms and wiggled their fingers as they dragged out the last word. And as always, some of the friends threw in a few teasing lines at the end.
“Seventeen-leventeen, ain’t no in-between!” Bridget shouted, hands cupped around her mouth, quoting an old saying.
“You’re so getting ribbed all day!” Haylee shouted.
“Three Toes can’t stop drooling over his girl even for a moment!” Olaf sang.
“I call on a double wedding!” Jengo forked two fingers between Augum and Leera. “You two and me and Priya.”