Dragon Speaker

by Mugdan Elana A.

“You gonna let me out?” he asked, glaring over his shoulder at the captain.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Without your blood as collateral, there’s nothing to stop you from revealing our secrets.”

  “Are you trogs serious? Tanthflame gave me his word—”

  “The commander-general promised that if you brought us the dragon, he’d return your blood. He didn’t say anything about letting you live after that.”

  The captain made a sweeping movement with his hand, and a gust of air knocked Cezon against the wall. Fletcher winced, but Cezon sprang right back up and conjured a torrent of water. While the captain deflected his counterattack, Dustrock and the third man were caught full in the face. Cezon pulled something from a hidden pocket of his leggings. He threw it on the floor and it caused a miniature explosion, filling the room with thick smoke.

  It occurred to Fletcher that this might be his only chance to save Thorion. He scampered to the door, but his hands, like Cezon’s, slid past the handle. He couldn’t feel any blockage in the air, but his hand ended up somewhere else every time he reached for the knob. When he concentrated all his might on grabbing it, he met with a pressurized resistance that pushed against him.

  Fletcher abandoned the door. He grabbed a nearby rock, dashed to the window, and heaved it through the pane. It shattered, releasing smoke and screams into the night. Fletcher clambered in, slicing his hands on the broken glass. He dropped to the floor, staying low to avoid the worst of the smoke as he crawled blindly toward where he’d last seen Thorion’s body.

  A crackling noise entered the fray, and the room was filled with the red-orange glow of fire.

  “Ouch!” Fletcher had crawled into Thorion. The drackling wasn’t as heavy as he looked, but Fletcher knew he wouldn’t be able to carry him, and it would be impossible to get him out of the window.

  “Wake up,” he hissed, but Thorion didn’t stir. Fletcher grabbed the poles of the sled and tugged the dragon toward the wall so they’d be out of the way. A wave of water—one of Cezon’s spells, no doubt—washed across the floor, knocking into Fletcher. Spluttering and gasping, he gave one last yank and pulled Thorion to relative safety.

  Fletcher stood and found the door. He tried desperately to work the handle, but whoever was wielding the shield spell was maintaining it with a vengeance. A discarded pocket knife lay nearby. Fletcher snatched it and stabbed at the brass knob. The blade came closer than his hands had, but the shield held firm.

  Cursing under his breath, Fletcher tucked the knife into a pocket of his coat and crawled to the dragon.

  “Come on,” he said, his voice cracking. He shook Thorion. “I need your help!”

  A loud snap indicated the house was about one support beam away from collapsing. Fletcher put his head in his hands, trying to blot out the yells of the men and the howl of the flames.

  Think, Fletcher. Think!

  In Aeria, Erasmus had sometimes used smelling salts to awaken his patients, but this smoke smelled bad enough to wake the dead and Thorion hadn’t stirred. When Fletcher had been young, his mother had sometimes thrown water on his face to get him moving on chilly mornings—but the dragon had just been doused by Cezon’s magic and hadn’t moved a muscle.

  “Please, please wake up!” In his desperation, Fletcher leaned down and whispered into Thorion’s ear, using the draconic phrase he’d overheard from Keriya: “Kemraté a’eos, Thorion!”

  Thorion’s eyelids fluttered open, revealing his brilliant purple irises. Fletcher cried out in relief and sent a silent prayer of gratitude to Shivnath. He stood and motioned for the dragon to do the same. A spark of vitality kindled in Thorion as he rose on unsteady limbs.

  “We’re trapped.” Fletcher led Thorion to the wooden door and banged on it with his fist. Thorion couldn’t understand his words, but it was painfully clear that see they needed to escape.

  The dragon glanced around the outpost, shielding his eyes against the smoke with his semi-transparent secondary lids. Then he opened his mouth and spat lightmagic at the door.

  His spell broke through the shield and burned a hole in the wood. Fletcher kicked at the splintered boards, widening the hole enough to squeeze through. He tumbled into the cool night with Thorion close on his heels.

  The horses were already braying in terror, but the dragon sent them over the edge. The black stallion snapped the lead line that tethered the frightened beasts to the post, and they galloped into the fen.

  An angry shout sounded behind Fletcher. He whirled around and spied a lone figure staggering through the smoke.

  It was Cezon. The two humans froze. Fletcher’s heart hammered in his chest. Cezon had betrayed him to the Imperials and he’d done something terrible to Thorion. Fletcher ought to take the knife he’d found and stab the Allentrian. His hand stirred at his side, yearning to reach for the weapon.

  But even in the face of mortal peril, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to strike against the man who, for one brief moment, had been his friend and confidante.

  Cezon seized on Fletcher’s hesitation. He crashed through the hole in the door and grabbed Fletcher by the arm.

  Stupid! Fletcher screamed internally. He had endangered not only himself, but Thorion. Coming to his senses, he struggled against Cezon’s grip and fumbled in his pocket for the blade.

  “Stop it,” Cezon snarled. He pulled Fletcher around the corner and shoved him away.

  “What are you—?”

  “Run,” said Cezon, pointing to the open fen. “And take him with you,” he added, nodding to Thorion.

  Fletcher gaped at Cezon, unable to comprehend what was happening.

  “Get out of here!” Cezon scuffed at Fletcher and flapped his arms at Thorion, who skittered away from his movements. “I can only hold ’em off for so long. Run!”

  Fletcher raced toward the crossroads. He leapt over the low stone wall that lined the highway, slid down a gully, and landed in a mud puddle. Thorion jumped the wall gracefully, soaring on silent, gossamer wings to join him. In the distance, Fletcher heard the Imperials shouting and Cezon swearing.

  “He saved me,” Fletcher whispered. Someone cried in pain and he flinched. He wanted to help Cezon, who was outnumbered and probably outmatched . . . but that would be foolish on countless levels.

  Besides, Fletcher now had a drackling to care for. He couldn’t risk Thorion’s safety. They had to run.

  He looked to the south. Noryk lay in that direction. They’d have to trek through the fen, but they could reach the city in a few days.

  Then he looked north.

  “Keriya,” he said slowly, pointing. Thorion knew that word. He perked up and made a chirruping noise.

  “I think I’d better get you back to her,” said Fletcher.

  A grave expression settled on the dragon’s face and he said something in his haunting language. The air before him shimmered with the weight of his words. Fletcher had the impression that if Thorion used that language to command the universe to disappear, it would have no choice but to obey.

  “Keriya,” Thorion repeated. He looked meaningfully at Fletcher before loping into the fen.

  Summoning the last of his strength, Fletcher followed. He looked back once, squinting at the outpost. The fire still burned, but there was no movement outside the house.

  An ache of regret tiptoed through Fletcher. He suspected that by now, Cezon Skyriver was dead.

  Thorion hadn’t taken the time to get to know Fletcher before. He’d been so enthralled by Keriya and her emotions that he’d barely had time to consider her companions. Since circumstances had forced them together, he made efforts to focus on the Smarlindian boy.

  Fletcher often spoke of Necrovar as a reminder that Keriya was in danger. Thorion didn’t need to be reminded—he had a brain. He was sure Fletcher also asked how he had been captured. In truth, Thorion couldn’t
recall. The last thing he remembered was his confrontation with the bogspectre, and that was a fuzzy blur. After that, it was one big blank until he’d awoken in that smoke-filled room.

  Fletcher took to the habit of teaching Thorion the Allentrian language. The boy would point at random objects and offer their names, then he would look at Thorion, expecting him to repeat the words. While Thorion had inherited a healthy love of learning from Keriya, he didn’t enjoy adjusting his palate to the odd, tawdry shapes of the human tongue.

  “Water,” Fletcher said on their third night of travel, pointing to a puddle and cupping liquid in his hands.

  “Water,” Thorion parroted, his lips curling in a silent snarl around the ugly word. It was an annoying game, but if he had to learn Allentrian, he might as well start now.

  They made good time, for Thorion set a breakneck pace, guided by an indescribable sixth sense. This, he supposed, was a result of his bond with Keriya. He wasn’t sensing her telepathically, but he was drawn ever onwards like a moth to a light. He had no way of knowing where she was, but he never once doubted his direction.

  It would have been faster to fly, but he couldn’t leave Fletcher behind. He was Keriya’s best friend—so, through the additive property of their bond, that meant on some level he was Thorion’s best friend, too.

  Despite the communication barrier, Fletcher was good company. He had started out shy, but now he chattered incessantly. Thorion started to enjoy the reassuring hum of Fletcher’s voice. He found himself growing fond of the word game—or perhaps fond of Fletcher’s dedication to it—and some of the tension eased in his heart.

  When they stopped on their third night of travel, Thorion hunted a marsh-ghast for his supper and ferreted out a pheasant for Fletcher. He used lightmagic to char it, since he’d learned that humans preferred their meat cooked.

  “Thank you,” said Fletcher, gingerly accepting the pheasant when Thorion offered it to him. Thorion recognized this as an Allentrian phrase of respect or gratitude.

  Fletcher then pointed at Thorion and said, “Now you say, ‘You’re welcome’ in response.”

  Thorion tilted his head and flicked his ears. A faint chirruping noise rippled in his throat—a sound of questioning. He couldn’t always follow full sentences, but he’d gotten a vague idea of what Fletcher had said.

  Fletcher smiled and shrugged. “Don’t worry. If you’re anything like Keriya, you won’t give up until you understand. You’ll be fluent in no time.”

  At the sound of Keriya’s name, Thorion felt his ears droop. Fletcher noticed.

  “I miss her, too,” he whispered, hugging his knees to his chest. “I left because I was afraid that I had no place on this quest and no one needed me. But that’s not true, is it? I’m creating a place for myself, doing the best I can with what I have.”

  He stretched out an arm, offering a hand to Thorion. “Maybe I can’t save the world, but I can still make a difference in it.”

  Thorion traced a glimmer of meaning through the words. He nodded at Fletcher, who smiled softly. He laid his hand on Thorion’s scaly shoulder. Thorion leaned into the touch, settling down beside the human and closing his eyes.

  “To think I was ever frightened of you,” he heard Fletcher murmur before he drifted off to sleep.

  The next day, fenlands came to an end. A wide, swift-flowing river marked its border. Fletcher whined and worried on the southern bank. He pointed at the river, then to himself, and made awkward motions with his arms while shaking his head. Thorion took this to mean that Fletcher couldn’t swim.

  “Hold the spines on my back,” he instructed, arcing his neck toward the boy.

  Fletcher didn’t understand, and in the end, Thorion had to take his hand in his teeth. He twisted his neck to place that hand on one of the pearly bone protrusions marching down his spine.

  Fletcher’s light brown face went pale, but he nodded and pinched his nose shut with his free hand. The two of them waded into the shallows together. Thorion shoved off, kicking against the current with his powerful legs, navigating with his tail and wings.

  Fletcher’s extra weight was unwieldy, but Thorion had grown substantially since his arrival on Selaras. He had no trouble reaching the northern bank with the human in tow.

  “Thank you,” Fletcher gasped, shivering on the dry bank.

  “Yure . . . well-come,” Thorion replied. Fletcher looked at him, his eyes wide. “Yure welcome?” he repeated, with less certainty.

  “Yes,” said Fletcher. “That’s right!” He laughed and smiled, clapping his hands together.

  Something swelled in Thorion’s chest. It was a warm, fluttering sensation that spread from his heart and filled his lungs.

  Happiness.

  And slowly, deliberately, Thorion smiled back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “Do not fear the shadows, fear the monsters that hide in them.”

  ~ Syrionese Proverb

  After procuring what she needed for her adventure, Seba slipped into the servants’ hallway and clambered into the air vents. She’d taken a risk sneaking around to gather provisions and wanted to do her utmost to stay out of sight.

  She crawled until she reached the corridor outside Keriya’s room and sat in the stone airway, hardly daring to breathe, waiting for dawn to break.

  Hours before dawn, however, Max arrived. He whispered to the guards on duty and pressed something into one man’s hand—a bribe, perhaps? Seba put her ear to the thin metal grate of the vent, but couldn’t catch his words. The guards bowed and left.

  Seba watched as Max dug the palace master key out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and entered. A desperate desire to see what he was doing—and to put a stop to it—burned through her. Before she could do anything rash, Max exited the room again.

  Seba watched as he knocked on another door, soft but urgent. The tall peasant girl, Roxanne, opened it. After a few words, she vanished and reappeared with a traveling cloak she had clearly stolen from one of the closets.

  Keriya joined them next, and they exchanged a few words before she stalked to a third door and banged on it. The noise startled a gasp out of Seba—but no one heard her, because Keriya was practically yelling for her other friend.

  “We’re leaving,” she told him when he opened his door.

  “You’re leaving. I’m going to stay a few more days and get some provisions. Then I’m going back to Senteir.”

  Adrenaline swept through Seba. If Max and Keriya were planning to sneak out of the palace, she would lose them while waiting for the ice shuttle.

  As quickly as she could with her bulky travel pack, she crawled through the vent. There was one other exit—the exit she always used to escape undetected—but it was in her father’s chambers. It was a private shuttle, enchanted to respond only to the touch of those of the royal bloodline.

  She dropped into the servants’ hall and took off at a sprint, praying to Zumarra she wouldn’t run into anyone. She reached her father’s chambers and edged through the hidden sliding panel his attendants used to enter.

  His living space was surprisingly modest—smaller than one would imagine for the King of the Galantasa, and furnished with simple icewood fixtures. The grand four-poster bed was the only mark of true luxury, bedecked with silver gauze hangings and outfitted with the finest silk sheets.

  Her father turned beneath the covers, disturbing the soft, steady rhythm of her mother’s breathing. Seba froze, terrified that one of them would hear her. Only the thought of losing Max forced her onward. She inched toward a glass door at the far end of the room, its surface molded into patterns that warped the dim light of the chamber beyond. Grasping the handle with trembling hands, she eased the door open.

  Inside was another icy sphere, identical to the main shuttle. It hovered over the entrance to the lake, sparkling in the light of a lone firelamp stand. Seba placed h
er hand on its surface. A hole irised open and she jumped inside.

  A few minutes later, she arrived in a nondescript hovel at the edge of the Village trade district. She exited the rundown shack and tore east along the streets. The main shuttle square was ahead and the orb was sinking into its watery passage, returning to its home base in the palace.

  They must have just arrived. She could still catch them.

  Seba ran like never before, examining every cross street and canal, squinting in the pre-dawn gloom. She rounded a corner and spotted them: Max, Keriya, Roxanne, and Effrax Nameless were racing along ahead of her. There was no sign of Thorion; perhaps he had flown ahead to scout the way.

  Seba followed at a cautious pace thereafter, keeping her distance. Nameless was an expert tracker, and she didn’t want to risk him spotting her. Why was he with them? And what were they doing, sneaking off like this? Seba didn’t have the energy to guess at their reasons as she ducked from one hiding spot to another, but she was sure they were up to no good.

  The sun had reached its zenith by the time Max and the others crossed the ornate arched bamboo bridge over the West Outlet River. Seba skulked on the eastern banks. She expected them to turn left and head toward the Erastate, but they went straight for the rainforest instead. Right into one of the most dangerous places in Allentria.

  “Helkryvt’s blood,” Seba groaned as she watched the green jungle mists swallow them whole. She’d come too far to go back, so she raced across the bridge and plunged into the trees after them.

  That first night was awful. Seba had never been forced to sleep without a thick mattress and silk sheets. Her traveling cloak served as a poor blanket, and her lumpy pack made for a poorer pillow. Not that she could sleep—every sound made her jump. What if the bogspectre found her? Or her father’s soldiers?

  Seba wasn’t sure which would be worse.

  The next day, she followed the group as closely as she dared. At night, she huddled in the shadows beyond the reach of their campfire’s light. Nameless would sometimes look toward her hiding spot when she shifted her weight or snapped a twig underfoot. Roxanne occasionally lifted her head and smelled the air, as if she were trying to catch Seba’s scent. But neither one came looking for her.