Dragon Tamer

by J. A. Culican

  Someone filled my plate with food. I thanked them then found a newly vacated place to sit. I noted that Slayers and Wolvren were also enjoying breakfast among the dragons. Overnight, things had changed. The air of hostility that had been with us throughout the mission had seemingly disappeared. Just like my father, the other Slayers also appeared more relaxed. I saw Xander enjoying breakfast with one of the Wolvren, and even Jasper was chatting with a young dragon girl.

  It was amazing what a good night’s sleep and a delicious breakfast could do.

  I’d almost finished eating when Spear spoke up.

  “Good morning all,” he began loudly, getting everyone’s attention. “I’d like to begin by offering a welcome to our guests and thank you to those of you that gave them a bed for the night. For those of you that weren’t here when we got back last night, having Slayers and Wolvren here may seem unusual, but I can see that everyone is making an attempt to get on. For that, I thank you.”

  I tried not to laugh at him. He’d hardly made much of an attempt to be friendly. I remembered all the arguments I’d been forced to listen to over the past few days. Still, he was being friendly now.

  “I’m afraid our mission to find more swords was a failure,” he continued. “To say the Goblins were unhelpful is an understatement. The king of the Goblins essentially sent us on a wild goose chase and we didn’t retrieve a single sword. Unfortunately, we are no closer than when we set off.”

  There was a collective round of whispers and mutterings around the fire pit. The disappointment of the dragons that remained was obvious, and I could understand why. It had taken a great deal of faith to take us in, and now to hear that nothing had come of it must have felt like a kick in the face. No one shouted or complained, however. Instead, everyone remained silent to let Spear continue his speech.

  “We need to decide the next course of action if we want to free our people. The Slayers of Dronias have agreed to give us their swords, but it isn’t enough. There are more out there. All this time, we assumed it was just the one village that was taking us, but we have found out that there was another village on the other side of the mountain. Another village with swords, another group of people slaying dragons.”

  “Why can’t we go to this other village and talk to them, too?” someone shouted from the back.

  Spear looked over the crowd. “We did. That’s where we came from last night. Unfortunately, the Slayers who lived there have gone. The village is abandoned and the Slayers have taken their swords with them.”

  The collective mutterings became louder now as everyone processed this new information. For some of them, it meant that seeing their loved ones again was now further away in the future. I could already sense their disappointment.

  “The question is, where do we go from here? Does anyone have any suggestions? I welcome ideas from everyone.”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” asked Fiere. “We need to find the swords.”

  “That’s not going to be easy,” replied Spear. “The Slayer village had been abandoned some time ago. We have no idea where they went, or even why they decided to leave.”

  “I don’t know why they left,” I piped up, “but I have an idea where they are headed.”

  All eyes turned to me.

  “How could you know that?” asked Spear. “They left no clues that I could see.”

  “I’m only guessing, but it seems to me that there was only one possible direction they could go. Behind the village, the mountains were too high to climb. Maybe some people could have scaled them, but I find it hard to believe that an entire village could manage it, especially with all their furniture. The same for the way we took to get back here. The hill was hard enough to climb without bringing all our worldly belongings with us. That leaves either upriver or downriver. If it was you, which direction would you choose to go in? Downriver seems to me to be the only logical direction they’d go. They probably loaded up some boats with their furniture and set off together.”

  Spear looked thoughtful then nodded. “I agree. However, that doesn’t tell us how far they traveled. They could have stopped at the next town or village, or carried on until they reached the ocean. We have no way of knowing.”

  “I say we go back and pay another visit to that lying toerag, Krikor,” chimed in my father. “It doesn’t matter about the swords if we can’t find a way to get the dragons out of them.”

  “We do have a way to get the dragons out. Julianna.”

  I closed my eyes. I could already see that this line of talk was going to descend into another argument.

  I was surprised to hear my father keep his voice level. “The Goblin king told us that the swords were in that abandoned village, right?”

  Spear nodded his head in acknowledgment.

  “But they weren’t,” he continued. “So, who’s to say that he was telling us the truth about them being Slayers too? For all we know, they were living peacefully and the Goblins made them leave.”

  Spear’s eyes narrowed. “What possible reason would the Goblins have for making them leave? According to Krikor, the other Slayer village bought swords from the Goblins. They would be pretty stupid to chase their customers away.”

  “Chasing people is not the Goblins’ way,” a man by the fire said. I recognized him as Coal, one of the dragons who had come with us to the Goblins’ home the first time we went up. I remembered that he didn’t trust the Goblins then, and it seemed that nothing had changed. “They don’t chase people, they don’t fight people, they manipulate people. They lie and they cheat. No matter what anyone tells you about how Goblins always stick to their word, it is just a myth. The wretched creatures wouldn’t know honesty if it hit them in the face.”

  There was a thud in the distance as though someone had dropped something heavy. I tried to see what it was but there were too many people in the way.

  “Be that as it may, Coal, and I see your point, too, Rocco, but he was right when he said there were more dragons than swords. It stands to reason that there are more swords out there.”

  “No, no, no.” My father’s voice grew louder. “It doesn’t stand to reason at all. You know yourself that each sword can contain more than one dragon soul. Souls are not like people’s bodies. They are almost infinitesimal in size. You can’t even see them. We only know they are trapped in there because they return to the dragons when they escape. One sword could hold ten dragons’ souls, twenty, a hundred, even. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a sword could hold a million souls.”

  Spear considered this.

  “You’ve not speared a million dragons though, have you?” asked Ash in a quiet voice. “You told me that you were the greatest Slayer in the village and you didn’t really capture that many. I saw how many dragon bodies were in your dragon keep. How many of those did you pick up on hunting trips and how many did you just happen to find up the mountain, already laid out as if dead?”

  “What are you implying? That I’m not brave enough to kill a dragon myself and I only picked them up when they fell out of the sky?”

  I closed my eyes and groaned. “Father!” I cautioned.

  He looked around him at the glaring dragons. “Sorry, but I did use my sword on your people. You know I did. Why else would I be here?”

  “But could it be that sometimes you found the body of a dragon and took it back to Dronias pretending that you had slain it? I would imagine that would bring you a lot of admiration in your village, right?”

  My father glared but then nodded slowly. “Ay, there might have been the odd occasion that we brought the fallen body of a dragon down the hill, and I might have said it was me that killed it. It was only to solidify my reputation as the best Slayer. I still killed more than anyone else.”

  I groaned again. If he kept talking, someone was going to throw him in the fire pit and I wouldn’t blame them. “What do you think we should do?” I asked Alpha in an attempt to take the focus away from my father.

  “We do not
belong here,” Alpha said. “We appreciate the hospitality of both Slayers and dragons, and we also acknowledge the struggle that you are all faced with, but our time is up. We have been away from our home for too long.”

  I looked at Morganna, hoping she would jump in and change his mind, but she looked resigned. Losing the Wolvren would be a massive blow. They were fearless and I had the feeling we’d need them in the future.

  There was another thud as Spear began to speak again. “I’m sorry to hear that Alpha. On behalf of all of us, I want to thank you for...”

  An ear piercing scream cut him off. Lucy shoved through the crowd. By the time she got to the middle, she was frantic, tears rolling down her face.

  “What is it, Lucy?” Spear asked her.

  “Come with me. You have to come with me now!”

  Chapter Nine

  It was evident from her tone of voice that she was distressed about something. People around the campfire began to get up, ready to follow her. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to be good. I wondered if whatever had distressed Lucy was something to do with the noises I’d heard. Before I’d even had the chance to ponder the question, a large, green object fell out of the sky, landing with a crash in the center of the fire pit and thankfully missing everyone around it.

  The ground reverberated beneath my feet like an earthquake as my brain processed what I was seeing in front of me. A huge dragon was now laid out in front of me with flames from the pit lapping around it.

  “Someone do something!” Lucy screamed as another thud sounded about a hundred feet away. The dragons were literally falling out of the sky.

  I pulled off my sweater and tried dousing the flames lapping at the green dragon in front of me. A number of the others followed suit until the flames were snuffed out completely. Thanks to his thick scaly skin, he’d not suffered much in the way of fire damage, but he looked unwell from whatever it was that made him fall in the first place. His eyes fluttered open and closed, his chest heaving with each labored breath. Now that the fire around him was out, I could see his skin was pale and clammy.

  I looked up to the sky. Most of the dragons still left up there had begun to come into land, more than likely fearful of succumbing to the same fate.

  Edeline ran up to the fallen dragon and stroked its head. “Can you change back?”

  The dragon didn’t open its eyes but managed a small shake of its head. It didn’t have the energy required to shift forms.

  “This is Bolt. He was one of the older dragons,” announced Edeline to the shocked group. “His soul was taken so long ago that no one remembered him when he woke up. He’s been spending the time since his soul came back catching up on everything in Frokontas.”

  A number of the group that had followed Lucy came running back.

  “How are the other dragons?” I asked. “Are they as ill as this one?”

  “Same,” shouted one of them. “There are five dragons down and a few more that are still conscious, but barely. None of them have the energy to turn back in their human forms.”

  I turned back to the green dragon. He was still breathing, but only just.

  “Ede...”

  My attention was taken from the green dragon to Fiere, who had just cried out for his wife. As I looked over, he fell to the floor clutching his head. Edeline ran from the dragon to her husband. Even from the other side of the pit, I watched him lose consciousness.

  Whatever was happening to the dragons was happening to them in both dragon and human form. They were getting sick.

  A chatter of fear went around the group as more and more of the human-formed dragons fell. Spear raised his voice once again to get everyone’s attention.

  “I’m going to need everyone’s help. We need to get everyone to my house. It’s the only place in the village big enough to accommodate all those who are sick. Lucy, can you head to the village center and ring the village bell? When everyone comes out, tell them to come here to help.”

  Lucy nodded and ran off as quick as her little feet could carry her.

  When the panic had died down, it became apparent just how much of an emergency it was. Dragons were huge creatures and not easy to carry. I joined Ash and about twenty others, and we slung the green dragon between us. Even with so many of us helping, it was still not an easy task to get him all the way across town. If only we had a cart or something, but we didn’t. Instead, we each held part of him and moved slowly down the dirt track toward Spear’s house.

  Bodies littered the landscape. Those dragons that had not been affected helped carry their kin to Spear’s mansion, and yet it still took over an hour to collect them all. Those in human form had been taken inside and placed on beds and sofas. The unfortunate ones who had become ill in their dragon form were now laid outside next to each other. It reminded me of the dragon keep in Dronias, where the Slayers kept the dragons without souls.

  “Do you think their souls have gone back into the swords?” I asked, seeing them all sleeping soundly. Every so often, one of them would snort in their sleep. I recognized one of the dragons as Mary, the first dragon we’d freed. She looked so peaceful.

  “No,” replied Edeline, coming outside. “Fiere is unconscious, but some of those inside are still awake. They are sick but they still have their souls. This is something else.”

  “It’s something to do with the swords though, right?” Jasper asked.

  Edeline nodded. “I think so. The only dragons that have become ill are the ones whose souls were taken from them. It seems that the longer the dragons’ souls were apart from their bodies, the sicker they are. I’m sorry to say, those of you still feeling okay will likely succumb to this sickness, too. It is only a guess, but I think you should go inside and rest. Spear is still trying to organize care for everyone, but the truth is, beyond putting them comfortably down on a bed, there is not much we can do until we figure out what exactly this is.”

  A number of the dragons took her advice and went inside just as Spear was heading out.

  “I was just telling everyone that this is only affecting the dragons who have been separated from their souls,” Edeline told him.

  Spear nodded and then turned to the assembled crowd. I’d never seen the whole village out before. There were hundreds of people filling Spear’s garden. Spear had to stand at the top of his steps so everyone could see him.

  “I know everyone is scared right now” he began. “We thought we had gotten our friends and family back, but as you can see, they are getting ill. Edeline is right. It seems that the ones that have been separated from their souls the longest are the sickest. I have the best caregivers and first aid providers in town looking after everyone. Once they have gotten everyone comfortable inside, they will come out here to take care of the dragons in the garden. At this point, no one knows if this illness is a temporary thing. We can only wait and see.”

  “What about the other dragons?” one of the villagers asked. “Those that are still without a soul. Won’t they get sick too?”

  Spear nodded his head. “I assume that will be the case. The longer they have been asleep in the Slayers’ keep, the sicker they will get. With some luck, those that have only had their souls taken from them recently will stay well, but I cannot know for sure. I’ve asked the medics to keep an eye on those that are not sick yet. I promise to keep everyone updated.”

  “Don’t we still have some swords with dragon souls in them?” the same villager asked.

  I could already feel people’s eyes begin to turn to me.

  Spear took a few seconds to answer. He knew the only person that could release them was me and I could tell he was weighing up whether he could burden me with it. “To free the dragon souls, it requires blood and with that blood comes pain.” He didn’t mention my name which I was grateful for, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide from my responsibility.

  “This is their fault!” shouted a dragon. “Why are they even here?”

  “Do you see what you’ve
done to us?” shouted another. “You are nothing but monsters.”

  It was plain to see that the tide was turning against us. The dragons in the village had been friendly up until now. I couldn’t let everything descend into chaos.

  “Spear,” I interrupted, “please bring me the swords.”

  “No!” shouted my father. “You don’t have to do this. We don’t know if freeing them now will save them from whatever this is. We don’t even know which dragons are in which swords.”

  “There is only one way to find out,” I replied steadfastly.

  Spear headed into his house, I assumed to retrieve the swords.

  “What if you free an elder dragon?” Ash asked, gripping my hand tightly. “One that has had its soul in there for a long time. Freeing it will only condemn it to this disease. It might be kinder to keep it where it is.”

  I thought about it and he was right, but at the same time, if I could save one or more of the dragons whose souls had been taken within the last year, I might be saving their lives. “I have to do this,” I insisted.

  “No, you don’t!” My father glared down at me.

  “Yes, I do. It is because of the people in our village that this is happening in the first place. Neither of you can talk me out of it. I’ll bleed for a bit and then heal. I’ll be fine in a few days, but will the sick dragons be? I need to do this. I need to atone for the Slayers’ sins.”

  My father’s glare turned into an expression of remorse. “I hate that it is you that has to do this. If I could take this from you, I would.”

  I patted him on the shoulder. “I know, Father. Actually, there is something you can do to help.”

  “Anything!”

  Spear brought the swords that still held dragon souls and laid them out in front of us. “Father. You know which sword belonged to which Slayer, right?”

  “Of course. I know every sword in Dronias.”

  “Then tell me, which sword is the newest? Which one has been used the most recently?”