by LeRoy Clary
Flame was still on my mind. So was sleep or lack of it. We rode through the few empty streets of the Port of Mercia. It seemed most activities of the city took place at night. During the day everyone was busy loading or unloading the ships. We took the old river road where the city had stood between the waterfalls a few days earlier, then we picked a path through the rubble as the sun warmed the early morning air. At the base of the stone stairs, we stretched a rope from side to side and tied the horses to it, so they could move around and graze on what little there was to eat.
We’d learned of the stairs from a mage who had been reluctant to join with the others in keeping the dragon penned inside a cave near the top. Otherwise, his story wasn’t important. But, there were too many things we didn’t know about dragons, magic, spirits, and the elusive substance referred to as essence—the source of all magic. In those areas, we were complete dolts, but the cooperative mage had been killed by those of his ilk, and we were left clueless to find what we could.
One thing we knew was that the dragon Kendra had freed always remained close to her, if only to protect her, or thank her. Or to make friends. We didn’t know which. Maybe it didn’t have another place to go or other friends. Since the dragon couldn’t speak, who would know? Not us, for sure. We had to figure things out, most of them well beyond what we were trained to do.
Kendra paused at the bottom of the daunting rise of stone steps cut into the granite with hammer and chisel. “Are you ready for this?”
My eyes followed the direction of hers. The stairs followed the natural side of the mountain and turned back on themselves a few times. A quick count came to three-hundred steps to the first landing. At home, in the palace, twenty steps winded me, especially if taken quickly.
“They could have picked a smaller mountain,” I complained.
“Unless there is something special about this one.”
“And we won’t know that until we reach the cave,” I reluctantly agreed with her.
We climbed slowly. After stumbling twice at the beginning, the reason quickly revealed itself. The stairs had been individually cut right into the solid stone, but not all were the same height. The slight variations had us stumbling from not taking a high enough step, or one too short. The obvious solution was to take each step as if it was the greater height and allow our feet to drop until reaching the step, however, when the next step was shorter than normal, we also stumbled. Going very slow was the only option.
Kendra pointed down. “Hollows in the steps.”
Small puddles held water near the center on most of them. I said, “A lot of feet walked here to do that.”
She nodded as she carefully took a few more steps without falling or stumbling. “Over four hundred years, they say. For this dragon—and there were others before.”
We paused twice on the way to the first landing, sitting on the steps and drawing in huge gasps of air. My thighs and calves burned. My back hurt. I was sleepy and hungover. A certain girl wouldn’t leave my mind. The things I should have said to her, those I would say in the future, and some I wished to take back.
Kendra stood, “Go slower. We will try and make it to the landing before stopping again.”
Her goal seemed impossible, but we did it. A good-hearted soul had placed a sturdy bench there, and we fell on it as I eyed the next section, which was steeper, and with the same uneven cut of stone.
“Enjoy yourself last night?” she asked slyly, without looking my way.
It was her first mention of the wild-haired girl. For some reason, I hesitated to even reveal her name. It might remove some of the magic of the night. Now that I was over twenty years old, women of all colors and sizes attracted me, and often the other way around. Kendra and I were different, as we’d always known. Most people in Dire were smaller, had wide flat noses, and lighter skins. We had darker skin, thin features, and dark stiff hair.
“I did enjoy myself,” was my simple answer as I hoped she would go on to other subjects.
But my mind remained on the girl from last night and how different she appeared from me. Then it reluctantly shifted to other things. The outlaws, or highwaymen, or spirit-directed beings who had attacked us in the mountains had all looked like Kendra and me. For the first time, we’d met people who have skin and features like us. We’d killed them all, but something else had happened. We found they came from a land called Kondor and there were more of them from Kondor working on the ships at the port. More people like us. At the same port, we’d been in last night. From a distance, while walking our horses down the main street, I’d see a few, noticed their startled expressions when they identified us, but we spoke to none.
There had also been four mages who had kept the dragon bound and captive, and they had escaped on ships—gone to Kondor, some said. Even Avery had mentioned he would meet up with us in Kondor as if he knew that was our ultimate destination, yet neither Kendra nor I had ever suggested such a trip. For whatever reasons, he assumed we would follow him there.
Kendra stood and looked expectantly at me, ready to climb more endless stairs. Perhaps this was a good time to talk to her about it. Certainly, we wouldn’t be interrupted by anyone nearby.
“After this, where are we going?” I asked.
She set another slow pace, one step, one step. Pause. “Back to the inn, I suppose. I paid for three nights so you can spend time more with Flame before Princess Elizabeth gets here with the army and news from Crestfallen.”
So, Kendra somehow knew the name of the girl at the inn and how to needle me with it as if mentioning her name was by accident. But she was right about waiting for Elizabeth’s arrival. I said, “No need for her to bring an army, now. Especially, if the king is well.”
We talked in shorter sentences than normal, the words strung out with breaks to draw gasps of air. Kendra paused and bent to rest her palms on her knees. “We don’t know that for sure. Not yet. Maybe we’ll get some answers up here.”
“I know.” Then caught my breath again. “But that wasn’t what I meant by where we will go.”
“Kondor?”
She’d probably known all along that was what I meant when saying, after this. The thing was, we’d been orphaned for a few years, survived on our own, and never knew what happened to our parents. It gnawed at us like a hungry dog with a new bone. We had no history, no memories. A land filled with people like us tugged at every fiber of my being.
Elizabeth had been wonderful in taking us in for the last ten years, but we knew we looked different, no matter how they glossed it over or accepted us. We were different. There was a story of our beginnings that haunted us. Now that we knew there were others living in a place called Kondor, we had to go there to find a sense of our identity, a sense of belonging and perhaps family or a reason of why we were orphaned in a strange land.
Like all orphans, we’d shared common dreams and ideas that we were lost royalty from a far-off kingdom, and our families were waiting with open arms for us to return and place crowns upon our heads and wrap us in loving arms. Also, as with all orphans, that was never going to happen. But there might be something there. We had to find out. Inside, I knew my sister felt the same, even if she didn’t say it.
Near the top of the stairs, someone had piled four small flat stones, one upon the other. The little tower tilted to one side unsteadily. What caught my attention about it, was that when the dragon had broken free, it had shattered the roof of its cave to escape. Half a mountain rained down. Then it had attacked the city below, and the ground had shaken until buildings fell. My eyes fixed on the flat stones as if they were offensive. How had the little stack of rocks remained upright? It didn’t make sense.
Unconsciously, as I’d done a thousand times, I reached out with my mind and used small-magic to nudge the rocks, just the slightest touch. They tipped to one side and fell over.
They shouldn’t have.
I didn’t have any more magic. “Kendra, did you see that?”
“
What?” she panted, pausing to rest as we spoke.
“Those stones over there. They were piled up, four of them. I knocked them over with magic. And how were they able to be piled on top of each other?”
She instantly scowled and said, “You know you are not able to . . .”
The meaning of my words had finally reached her. A twig lay on the flat surface nearby. I levitated it and moved it closer to her. She snatched it from the air. “How? You lost your magic.”
“I don’t know either of those things. Besides, who piled those stones? When? It had to be since the dragon broke free, and why have my powers returned?”
Kendra tossed the twig aside and began slowly climbing again, her jaw clamped tight. One step, two. Another stumble. More steps. Later, a second landing with another bench and a small trickle of water falling across the solid stone from above. Not a waterfall, or even a small stream. It was no wider than my hand, and when I placed my finger in it, the water depth came to the first knuckle. But it was wet and cold. We slaked our thirst without talking.
We were so tired and winded we barely talked as we rested. My legs were on fire. I’d twisted my back on one of my many falls forward as I missed a step. The only things to be grateful for were the benches, the little waterfall, and the fact that all of the other mountains in sight were taller and we were climbing the smallest. I was grateful nobody had chosen one of the others to cut the stairway into.
Later, the stairs made another switchback, and we went up more slowly. I leaned forward and used my hands to touch each step as if crawling, which I was. That last rise of stairs was shorter, and I spent the entire way trying to think of how my returned small-magic might help us without coming up with a good idea.
Sure, I could use my miniscule powers to ease a paper from a purse, toss a pebble a decent distance, increase speed and accuracy of something I threw, or slosh ale over the side of a mug and embarrass someone. They were small things. While often useful in certain situations, none of it was helpful in climbing stairs.
“I think I see the top,” Kendra said from below me.
Looking up, she was right. We reached a flat area carved into the side of the mountain after only a few more steps. The area was a few hundred steps wide and the same length, while part of the hillside above had been broken apart and jagged pieces of what I assumed had been the solid rock roof covered the smooth, flat surface. The rest of the roof had slid over the side, and the destruction of the path it took was easy to see. The vegetation had been scoured free, and the exposed rock appeared fresh.
The entire side of the mountain above what had been the cave confining a dragon the size of a barn was shattered and broken. Most of the remains of the roof had tumbled onto the flat area that had been the cave floor. There were only a few places where the rock was not piled higher than my head on the polished floor. I used my hand and wiped away smaller debris, dust, and rock. The original surface was polished in the same shade of gray as this part of the world seemed to be, but the slight sheen appeared as if it had been polished by the passing of many feet.
Kendra joined me. “So, this is it.”
Her face was red with exhaustion. The wind had picked up, and there was a touch of fear in her eyes. Well, fear, hate, puzzlement, and who knows what else? Easier to just say, emotion. She was overwhelmed with it. She wove a path around the largest boulders, moving to where the back of the cave would have been.
I stood up to follow as I caught my breath, but she pulled to an abrupt stop. Her head tilted back, and her fists balled.
A cry of rage came from her so loud my ears hurt. At first, I was mistaken. It was not Kendra screaming in rage I heard, or if she was, her scream was lost in the roar of a dragon. It flew into sight around the nearest peak and dived at us, spreading its wings and approaching in a controlled glide, the eyes fixed on us. My thought, probably my last, was that the beast was going to eat me. No matter, I stood as if made of the same rock as the cave, unable to move.
As it reached the mountaintop, the wind from its wings rustled my beard, mussed my hair, and blew up a cloud of dirt and sand that blinded me. I threw up an arm to protect my eyes.
When my eyes cleared, a dragon had landed so close an underhanded toss of a rock would strike it. It was the first dragon I’d ever seen, and only the third time.
Again, it was the true dragon, not a snakelike Wyvern. The beast in front of me stood on all four feet, great wings retracted, much like a bat. Its knees were taller than my head. The head of the great animal faced away from me, so I had an up-close view of the dragon’s butt, and my fear bubbled up in a nervous laugh at the thought. Dragon’s butt. I would forever recognize Kendra’s dragon in the future when I saw its butt.
The phrase didn’t seem so funny when it heard me laugh, and the neck swiveled until the cold brown eyes found me. It shifted its body slightly to better examine me, the second time it had done that. While it had been this close to us on the road, I’d seen it reach out and snap up a man no closer than me, then killing him before he could take a single step. The dragon had been standing in a similar position. My life was in the decision the dragon made.
My heart pounded, sweat coated me despite the chill in the morning breeze, and my legs refused to move. Kendra stepped protectively past me and walked up to the beast as if they were old friends. She held up her right arm and waved to gain its attention, and it finally looked at her instead of me, then it moved closer and sniffed her while making a huffing sound.
Her action surprised me. Kendra had never been the brave one of us three: her, Elizabeth, and myself. She was usually the first to stop or quit difficult tasks, the worst at archery, the easiest to defeat in wrestling or fighting. Yet, she stood there and faced down a dragon.
“Good girl,” she cooed.
The dragon shot out a thin, red tongue with a split at the end. It flicked this way and that, never quite touching Kendra, but sensing her. It shifted again and faced me. The tongue darted all around me, but it was not bravery that held my feet to that one spot. It was cowardice.
Kendra said, “Talk to her. Introduce yourself.”
“U-uh, good morning.”
The dragon backed off a step and slowly turned her head away. A low rumble emitted from her chest. She took a few steps to one side and used her nose to shove blocks of rock as large as wagons aside, and some over the edge. They rolled and shattered on their way down. She pushed others, larger ones, aside with her two front feet planted on them, and then snorted so hard most of the sand and smaller rocks were pushed like a wave rolling onto a beach pushing seashells before it. She reminded me of a dog trying to locate a hidden bone.
A line or pathway in the rubble emerged as she worked, a wavering streak that traveled from one place to another. At one point, the dragon snorted again and emitted the low rumble of anger again. The snort sounded again, and dust cleared to reveal a rusted iron chain, each link as large around as my arm. Once my eyes picked out the pattern on the floor, it was clear—and then there were others. Four in all. One hated chain for each leg.
Around the base of the dragon’s feet were the scars where iron cuffs had circled each foot. At the end of the exposed chains were open links. There were no cuffs large enough to circle a dragon’s foot. Yet, the dragon no longer wore the iron cuffs that had been attached. I looked at Kendra.
“You did that? Removed the ankle irons from her?”
She said, “To free it, I had to. Yes, I destroyed the bracelets. Then she could fly away.”
Bracelets? More like the iron bands on wagon wheels, but larger and thicker. My sister had destroyed them? Without ever coming up here? The true meaning of magical power was making itself known, and the reason my weakling sister was now called the Dragon Queen by some became easier to understand.
Kendra rubbed the scar tissue of a foot and examined the dragon for injuries as she said to me, “The bracelets were the weak point, Damon. I could have broken the chains, but then she would have to
live with them still on her. But the bracelets were not solid. They had huge iron locks. I only had to destroy the locks, and the bracelets fell open.”
That’s all. From a distance of a day’s travel, she had destroyed the locks. A horsefly buzzed me and returned for another attempt at eating a piece of me. Without thinking about it, I shooed it away with a little brush of wind created by my small-magic. At the action, the dragon lurched and came on point as much as any hunting dog spotting a game bird. Its eyes searched for the source of the magic that was used. I knew they looked for me.
“Damon, will you stop before you upset her?”
“S-sure, no problem. No more magic.”
Despite the warning, using my gift for small things like that had always come to me. They were as natural as taking the next breath. Kendra moved to the other foreleg and checked it carefully. She said to me, “There must be some other reason why they kept her up here. Mages all the way across Dire, even in Crestfallen could use her essence for the power behind their lightning and thunder. Each time, they drew from her soul and caused her pain.”
“For hundreds of years,” I added, just to have something to say. My adjustment to my sister’s position of authority came painfully and slowly. She had always looked up to me, her older brother—the one who could do a little magic. Now the situation had been reversed.
“And more of them before her,” Kendra said solemnly.
“Why keep them way up here?” Besides the secure cave and a city below to provide places for the mage-keepers to live in comfort, was there something special about the location? Inside, I knew there was an answer.
The dragon moved again. When it stood so close to me, just steps away, and moved, I paid attention. One innocent swing of the stubby tail could send me over the edge of the steep mountainside, to fall a thousand steps or more to my death. She shoved more boulders aside with her nose, clearing the flat area by pushing more rubble over the side. It was not that she needed more room, but we all could use some. At least I would feel more comfortable with some. She was trying to expose the rear of what had once been the cave for some unknown reason.
