by LeRoy Clary
To help, I pushed a few boulders over the side and received a grateful look from the animal. At least that’s the story I’d tell in taverns and inns for the rest of my life. In truth, she ignored me as I rolled some rubble to the edge, pushed more over and threw smaller ones as far as possible, for no reason but because I could. I was alive after standing so close to a dragon I saw her pulse under her thick skin. I was elated. Throwing a few rocks was the least I could do.
Kendra moved closer and watched us work but offered no help. She was studying the dragon, trying to figure things out, I guess. A stone bench stood under the layers of rock. On it were several dust-covered blankets. After the long climb up to the cave, it seemed mages who were her keepers slept here, but if they were such great mages, why didn’t they just fly or levitate themselves up and down the stairs?
A curse to me was possessing a mind that asks probing questions like that, but never resolves all the questions it brings up. It insists on asking more and tangling the original question in a net of conflicting views. It is hard for me to live like that, but it had been that way my whole life. The dragon pushed more rocks aside with her nose, shoving them over the side, and again she stood and snorted. The rear wall of what had been the cave contained a series of carved compartments in the solid rock, a few the size of small boxes, others were larger food bins, and a few large enough to hold a sleeping man.
As interesting as those were, when I caught sight of clothing crumpled in the corner of one, the obvious use of the smaller ones was to hang up the long robes mages wore. That said the others were probably for other the personal items of the mages assigned to watch the dragon and nothing nefarious.
But further along, away from the wall by several steps stood a large round stone object, as tall as my chest and big enough to climb into. Instantly, I knew that it had not been placed there. It had been carved away from the solid surrounding stone. The striations and variations in the floor matched the tub perfectly. The only possible method for the tub to exist was if the floor had been meticulously carved away until the raised tub was left standing. That required all the rock on the floor of the former cave to be carved away to a height of my chest, a massive task with a hammer and chisel, even if using magic.
My first thought was that it was a tub for bathing. But, no. The work required to construct it was too immense. No sane person would go to those efforts for a simple tub to bathe in. Another idea came to mind. What if the mages had used their powers to do the work, after all? I felt certain a series of small lightning strikes could rough-out the cave and even the tub—at least over time. The larger question remained, why? Even if magic had helped, the effort exceeded any benefit I could imagine.
The dragon moved too, and nosed the tub. She rumbled deep in her chest again as if offended. She didn’t like it. The dragon raised up on her two hind feet. She was going to destroy it by using her massive weight to come down and crush it. I leaped forward, waving my hands to stop her. Why? It seemed the right thing to do. Before destroying it, we needed to find its purpose.
Kendra beat me to it. She rushed ahead of me and stood between the tub and the dragon. Eventually, the dragon reluctantly backed off, lowered herself to all four feet and positioned her body where she could watch us and the tub at the same time. I had the feeling that if we turned our backs, she would attack the tub.
The stone wall of the tub was thicker than my hand, and chisel marks left by hollowing it out were clearly visible on the inside. On the outside the finish was smooth, and carved into it was a series of icons, five of them in all. All different. They were carved equidistant around the stone side as if explaining its use to one circling the tub. I’d seen something similar but couldn’t remember where. There were no images of men or beasts, only panels containing rows of patterns: slashes, hash marks, angles, and crude lines.
The time and care it took to do the intricate carving again indicated it must have been important, perhaps even sacred. Before I had time to consider the carvings more, Kendra leaned over the edge of the tub to inspect the inside and moaned loudly as she pulled away and covered her stomach with both arms. She collapsed to her knees, then fell to her side, the moans growing louder.
The dragon roared.
I stood and watched them, not knowing what to do.
CHAPTER THREE
W ith Kendra’s painful reaction, I ignored the dragon and raced to her side. She lay curled on the stone floor in a fetal position, eyes wide open and staring at nothing. But she breathed. I went to the tub and peered carefully into it, or the well, or whatever it was, from a short distance. Inside lay a cream-colored, soft, white mass, the surface resembling clay baked for dinner plates. There were no decorations. The rounded mound nearly filled the bottom of the container, as I now thought of it, from side to side—as if constructed for holding the thing. The top of the object was near enough to reach down and touch.
“What is it?” I whispered.
She stood and joined me. “An egg. A dragon’s egg.”
It could be nothing else. She was right, although the egg was so large my arm couldn’t reach around it when stretched out. The entire time we examined the egg, the dragon stood aside and watched us critically, her eyes smoldering and now and then she snorted with irritation when we got too close. When I reached out to touch the egg, the dragon shifted and became angry, so I retracted my hand and waited.
My voiced whispered as if the dragon couldn’t hear me because I didn’t wish to make it angrier, as if that were possible. “What is an egg doing here?”
My sister turned to gaze at the dragon as if that might calm the beast. Her voice was also soft and mellow. “We’ve answered one question. This thing, this vat, was created here to incubate or hold an egg. Have you felt the stone at our feet? It’s warm.”
My feet were warm, as she’d suggested. My hand went to the side of the well, nest, or whatever it was. The bare rock should have been cold, especially since it was still in the shade on a cool spring morning. Instead, it felt as warm as my skin, not hot. About the same as touching a person.
“This isn’t natural,” I said as if suddenly discovering a new thing.
Kendra moved along the rear wall while touching it in several places, as well as bending to touch the floor. “All warm. It’s like the rock here is making heat.”
“Your dragon friend looked like she was going to eat me when I reached for the egg. She is very protective.”
“Why did you do that?” Kendra asked. “It was stupid.”
“It seemed natural to do. What if it’s not an egg? Something else? I guess it was just instinct to touch it, like touching a flower vase or a statue.”
She turned after rolling her eyes at me and walked back to the container under the watchful eyes of the dragon. Without hesitation, she reached her palm out and placed it inside, on the white, rounded object. The dragon went rigid, barely breathing, but didn’t attack. Kendra moved her hand gently along the surface, then pushed. Where she did, a small hollow formed. It wasn’t rigid like a hen’s egg. She watched it return to the original shape before turning to me.
“It’s alive.”
“How can you tell?”
She said, “Inside, there is movement. A beating heart.”
“What does that mean?” I wondered aloud. “Is it going to hatch? If it does, will whatever emerges be hungry and threaten us?”
Her face flashed anger or fear, but not at my insipid words. Her eyes had briefly gone wider, her face stern. She pulled her knife and held it in front of her defensively, although I wasn’t sure she was aware of her actions.
Looking up, where her eyes were fixed, and I pulled my sword. At least five Wyverns were silently approaching, making no noise even while rapidly flapping their immense wings. They made no warning cries and flew higher in the sky than I’d ever seen. However, the dragon had also spotted them, and she had already spread her wings in anticipation. She leaped off the side of the mountain. The wind from her
first few strokes almost knocked us over. The Wyverns knew they’d been discovered and screeched their battle cries, almost as one.
Two of them turned directly at the dragon. Instead of evading, the dragon opened her mouth and roared back at them. As the distance between them closed to nothing, the dragon shifted her weight and reached out with her jaws to grab the nearest Wyvern. Her powerful teeth nearly cut it in half, then she shook it side to side twice and let it go. The dead creature fell near the bank of the river.
The second wyvern hadn’t learned from the misadventure of the first. It swooped in too close, trying to take a bite out of a leg, and the dragon’s head shot out and grasped the tip of one wing in her jaws. She shook it, twisting and turning before ripping off a third of the wing. The second wyvern spiraled down out of control. It was dead when it hit the rocks.
Kendra screamed, “Damon!”
My senses returned, but in my defense, who in the world had ever seen such great beasts fight? Or can blame me for watching? I pulled my attention away from the dragon. A wyvern had separated from the others and flew behind us. It was diving at the vessel with the egg.
That was what the attack above was about. A diversion. The dragon had cleared the rubble from the incubator, and now the Wyverns attacked and tried to kill the egg—no doubt at the urging of a mage controlling them from some safe, comfortable location. I pictured him sitting in an easy chair near a warm fire as he directed the battle.
My sword was light, shorter than most, but sharper. It curved along the leading edge, just a slight curve to give it perfect balance. I’d practiced for days with Kendra and Elizabeth holding a fruit or other object head-high, my sword in its scabbard, my hand on the hilt. They gave no warning before dropping the fruit. My blade sliced it in half every time, and the return stroke sliced a half into quarters.
Well, not at first. The first few times we’d tried to do it at the urging of the Weapons-Master, the fruit usually hit the floor before my blade cleared leather. A year later, some were sliced. After a second year, most were sliced twice.
All those memories flashed through my mind as our practice proved valuable. In a single lunge-step ahead, my sword slashed across the leg of the wyvern as it landed and reached for the egg with its mouth, unmindful of me. The leg was larger than mine, but the blade sliced deep. The return swing of my blade took off two toes, as the snakelike dragon beat its wings to escape my fury and another stroke.
“Damon!” Kendra screamed, again. Her eyes were focused somewhere behind me. I dropped to the floor just as another wyvern attacked from behind me. The slash of the talons missed me, but it landed on the flat surface facing Kendra. Its momentum carried it forward, and there was no time, nor a place for her to escape.
Without hesitation, instead of running away, Kendra darted forward and attacked with her knife, as I charged five steps to reach it before the head at the end of the sinewy neck could reach out and snap at her. Kendra’s action carried her nearly under the wyvern where the mouth couldn’t strike at her. Not yet, as it fought to regain its balance after landing. Despite all my training, always teaching me to slice, never stab, I stabbed deeply into the animal, just above where the long tail met the body because that was the only target I could reach from behind. A slice of a cut might not slow it enough, so I drove the blade in deep.
The sword penetrated to half its length, and I used my legs for leverage to force it the rest of the way, up to the hilt. The wyvern threw its head back, as it swung its whip-like tail at me. The tail struck me hip-high and threw me tumbling across the flat area, dangerously close to the edge where there was no stopping my fall. My sword was still stuck into her as she turned to attack.
I glanced over the side of the mountain and found nothing but air until reaching the bottom a thousand steps below. My eyes returned to the enraged animal. It squatted slightly, in preparation to leap. However, as it turned to attack me, it presented the hilt of my sword to my sister. Kendra leaped, pulled my sword free and slashed at the thigh of the Wyvern. She managed a second and a third cut before leaping back out of its reach when it spun on her.
The wyvern now concentrated on advancing to her. Kendra ducked behind a boulder taller than her head, and darted from the other side, my sword swinging again, this time cutting across the soft meat on the dragon’s breast. Kendra kept running as she made that cut, reaching another pile of boulders before diving under one for temporary safety.
The wounded wyvern had enough as it turned away and started to fly off. It spread its wings and pumped them violently as it looked up into the sky and found the true dragon descending so fast it may have been falling. The much larger dragon landed on top of the Wyvern, twisted and grasped the smaller one in its teeth and threw it to one side, as it looked up and around to find the others it wanted to kill.
They were flying away as fast as possible, only two of them remained. One looked over its shoulder and screamed, but the sound was not a war-cry this time. It was fear.
Heavy, thick wyvern blood from our fight coated everything around us. Walking was slippery. Kendra slumped against the warm stone. The shadows of the morning sun shown on the carved icons bringing the carvings into deep relief with dark shadows. With sudden recognition, I knew where I’d seen them before.
Kendra followed my gaze. She said, “The Waystone.”
She was right. Castle Crestfallen was built on the side of a mountain at the other end of the kingdom, days away, where the foothills grew in height to become the base of the Jawtooths, the impassable mountain range with no mountain pass to cross them. On the very road we’d traveled with Tater, and Princess Elizabeth was a stone monument along the way that we called the Waystone.
It was far taller than the tub in front of us but made of similar granite and looked to me like a giant had baked a loaf of bread as large as a house and stuck it in the ground. It had then turned to stone. Two-thirds of the loaf was left exposed. The stone was smooth, the same color as the one in front of us, not the normal sandy-tan color of the other rocks near Crestfallen.
More than that, there were carvings. I’d examined them more than once, trying to determine what they meant, who made them, or how long ago. There were five cartouches, the same number as here. Intricate but different designs, each surrounded by a frame. All five frames were alike, giving the impression the contents of each cartouche meant something in itself. Three of the five had small figures besides the slashes and hash marks that I thought of as houses. Or, they were an unknown form of writing. Others had decided they were directions, probably because of the name, Waystone.
With the sun shining at a slanting angle on the carvings in front of me, I saw in one frame the same three simplified icons that might represent houses. While I didn’t know anything else, I instantly knew the granite rock was the same color, and so were the carvings. Well, that was not totally true because I couldn’t remember what else was carved on the Waystone at home, but what I did know, was that they were related.
“Are you hurt?” Kendra asked.
“No, I’m fine. Just a few bruises. Remember when we explored the Waystone with Elizabeth? We copied the five drawings and tried to find anyone able to read them?”
She turned from me and to the well and saw it instantly, even though she had been the first to notice the similarities. Now she saw it was more than similarities. They held the same five carvings on the sides as she circled the tub. “I do. They’re the same.”
The dragon still watched the wyvern disappear into the distance and chose that time to move. It lumbered closer and briefly sniffed me, then moved on to Kendra, probably smelling the wyvern blood covering us and not liking it at all. Kendra tossed me my sword, pommel first, and my hand snatched it from the air. The blade was still coated with blood. As I wiped it with a mage’s robe, the material snagged. That shouldn’t have happened with a perfect cutting edge. I turned the blade to examine the edge.
A nick the size of a fingernail trimming was on it. Tea
rs welled. It had been a gift from our king and was more valuable than words can express. Malawian steel, he’d said, as he presented it to me. The only sword like it in the Kingdom of Dire. Malawi hadn’t existed for a hundred years, and the process for making the fine steel was a lost secret. Only a few were skilled enough to make the required repair, none in our kingdom.
Kendra hadn’t seen the damage to my sword, and I didn’t know if she or I had done it during the battle. She said in a solemn manner of discovery, “They were sent here to kill the egg, not us or the dragon.”
“The Wyverns?”
She nodded, “Us, and the dragon were not important. The egg was. They were controlled from afar. I felt in my head as the mental orders told them to fight us first. The attack was not the Wyvern’s fault.”
“Like the mage that controlled the husk of Stata. He tried to kill us along with the men from Kondor at the summit of the pass,” I added. “But not blaming Wyverns will be hard for me. Every time one comes near, from now on, my sword will be drawn.”
Kendra shrugged as if to tell me she agreed and expected no less. She said, “What exactly is a Waystone, I wonder?”
“Big rocks with carvings. That’s all I know.”
“There are two of them. One at home. One here. Made by the same people. Mages can use magic created by the dragon from this place while they are days away from here. It’s all connected, and to right here.”
“Are there any more Waystones?” I asked. Anywhere else in Dire?”
She snapped her fingers and smiled as if my words had impressed her. “You are the smartest man I know.”
