Dragons of Dark (Upon Dragons Breath Trilogy Book 3)

by Ava Richardson

  7

  Saffron, the Third Mountain

  We followed Chief Dol Agur and the people who had survived Enric’s attack until we arrived, exhausted, at the saddle of a mountain, its face sheered to form a steep cliff marked with the same gigantic symbol which had been left at the rock fall, multiple triangles, like teeth champing on the rocks. In the distance, a frozen lake glinted in the moonlight.

  The pace had been annoyingly slow, but not as slow as the procession from Three Rivers. The Stone Tooth people seemed to know how to move over the snows, and we saw their line of torches glittering across the wastes as the small group threaded their way up to whatever encampment they had here. Now we hovered in front of a cliff.

  “How do they even survive up here?” I shook my head in amazement, searching around for any signs of life. But there were none. No huts, no villages, no little pastures for goats and sheep and whatever other hardy animal they could get to live up here. Only the glittering light of the stars and the moon on the snows of the mountainside.

  “Set us down,” Bower said, and I knew that, even despite the positive reaction from that female chieftain down there, he was concerned.

  “What’s wrong? Dol Agur liked you, didn’t she?” I said, a little bewildered.

  “Yes, I know. But I keep wondering how my father must have felt, or what he would think if he could see me now. He helped lead the Salamander network, you know, so this,” Bower stretched out a hand to encompass the mountain tribe below, “this is a bit like stepping into his footsteps.”

  “Bower,” I sighed and said as gently as possible, “you don’t need to be worried about whether you can live up to your father; this is your destiny.”

  “Destiny?” he frowned back at me, but before I could explain, we landed on the soft snows, and Jaydra was complaining of her many aches and pains all over her body. She had been hit by many more crossbow bolts than I had first thought, but none of those horrible little iron cannonballs, thankfully. I felt such extreme distaste just thinking about them. Who on earth came up with such things? Who decides such things are worthy to exist? But of course, I knew. Enric.

  Jaydra my sister-dragon was not seriously wounded, but I was terrified of infection which might blossom from any of the ten ugly little quarrels I had plucked, gouged, and removed from her back, belly, and legs.

  Ha. Saffron worries too much, Jaydra hissed in my mind, her voice a mixture of annoyance and bravado. I could tell she was hiding some of her pain from me, her joints ached from the hours of fighting in the depths of the freezing night, and the wounds she had sustained.

  “Saffron! Saffron—come look!” Bower’s voice, raised in child-like excitement interrupted my fearful thoughts.

  “Jaydra?” I asked my sister as I unclipped my harness and started to climb down.

  I will be fine. Go. I will follow with the other dragons, she said, breathing soot-smelling breath at me to encourage me onward.

  I joined Bower and Dol Agur, watching as she manipulated rocks on the ground. She pressed upon one and there was a ripple of disturbed snow and ice, and a hissing sound as frost snapped and a grinding noise echoed from the cliff walls above us.

  The rocks there began to move, sliding out of place and dispersing steam which smelled of fires, minerals, and hot food. In just a few moments, what I had taken to be merely collapsed boulders on the ground were rather part of a bigger system of weights, levers, and counter-balances that snaked under the ice and snow. The entire side of the wall had opened and swung apart haphazardly to reveal a series of tunnels, some of them ranging from human sized to much larger, with one of them being so large even the gigantic Crimson Red dragon would be allowed entrance.

  “So, the cliffs are hollow?” Bower said.

  “No. The whole mountain is hollow,” Dol Agur answered.

  Just like Home Mountain. I marveled at the similarity as Dol Agur, her people, and their prisoners entered.

  I reached out to Jaydra with my mind.

  Be careful and do not fear, den-sister Saffron. I heeded the wise island dragon and hurried after Bower, into what seemed a different world.

  Dragons! Jaydra informed me, almost as soon as I had stepped foot over the threshold of the tunnel. It was carved with deep grooves in the rock, the sorts of marks made by dragons, but these had been made a very long time ago.

  The tunnel was resonant with the tramping of the villagers’ feet, and as we wearily tramped inwards, the air warmed and soon echoed with other sounds: laughter, shouting, merriment. The whiff of roasted meats rose to greet us, and my stomach grumbled. We had gone all day without food.

  “By the skies, Saffron—look!” Bower turned and laughed as the tunnel grew into a cavern so wide as to fit an entire village in addition to three or four dragons the size of Queen Crimson. We came to a wide shelf of rock with steps downwards to the cavern floor.

  “I know, Bower, I can see it with my own eyes!” Dol Agur had not been joking or exaggerating when she had said the mountain was hollow.

  “This is the plaza,” Dol Agur said, gesturing. The cavern was lit by guttering torches, and at its center a series of stone pools from which rose thick steam and where people splashed, even at this late hour. Holes cut in the rock served as apartments, I realized. This is like the citadel, but instead of living on the outside of Dragon Mountain, they live on the inside…

  “That is why we are called the Stone Tooth people.” She gnashed her teeth and laughed. “We bite through rock.”

  Dol Agur led the way down more steps and through a doorway towards where food was being laid out on stone slabs. The tribespeople serving the meal looked smaller than those we had followed, and I realized they were denuded of their heavy winter cloaks and furs, and wore little more than shifts, tunics, and breeches. I even heard the cawing of birds who lived inside here, as well as the lowing and grunting of cattle and livestock, kept in rough pens.

  But before I could join in the meal, my attention was drawn to the carvings of dragons around the walls, so very similar to the carvings I had once seen a long time ago, far-off on a fallen bit of rock on Home Island itself…

  There were dragons of all sizes, some long like Ysix, others small and hawk-like, or large and vast, bigger than even the Crimson Red dragons were, if the scale could be trusted. The creatures had been carved soaring across the cavern walls.

  I turned around and around on the spot, following the spiral of the carved-stone flight of dragons around us, and saw there were three great triangles. One near the floor, another halfway up the walls, and the farthest being near the cavern top.

  “Dragon Mountain. The Dragon mountain. Sacred mountain.” Dol Agur said with some real reverence in her voice.

  “You mean Torvald? The mountain the citadel is built out of?” Bower said. “The same one which was the home to the Dragon Academy, and Dragon Riders of old?”

  “Yes. Dragon Mountain,” Dol Agur answered. “They used to migrate between the great mountains.” She pointed to the largest and nearest carving of the triangle on the floor. “Here, Stone Tooth. And here, Island Mountain.”

  Home Mountain. My home, and Jaydra’s. Where ancient Zenema still lives. It was good to think it was one of the oldest and original of the dragon clutches in the entire world.

  “And up there…” she gestured at the far-off Torvald near the top, and I saw now what the carving was all about. The entire storm of dragons were flying towards the far-off sacred mountain, as if it drew them like a beacon.

  But if the pull is that strong, why did the dragons ever forget about their sacred home? Why did they ever abandon it? I was about to ask that very question, when Dol Agur once again surprised us all, by asking Bower and me.

  “Torvald. The Dragon Mountain. Ruled now by the evil sorcerer who has brought a curse upon our land. Tell me, Bower and Saffron, why do we not hear from the rest of our friends, the Salamanders of Torvald anymore?”

  “The Salamanders? The hermits?” Bower stammered, as
tonished the Stone Tooth people out here had heard of them.

  The rest? I thought.

  “Dragon-monks,” Dol Agur corrected. “They remember the old ways. They remember the three mountains of the dragons. They used to travel out here, stopping at Three Rivers for supplies, coming here to try and learn how to recover the lost dragons.”

  “Did they? Are there—” Bower shot me a quick look, and my own heart rate sped to share his hope. “Are there any still here?”

  “No.” Dol Agur shook her head as if it were all some joke on our part. “I thought you were Salamanders! You came and saved us with the dragons.”

  Remembering the Hermit who had kept an eye on me from afar for all of those long years, I shook my head. “No, Dol Agur. I am afraid the Salamanders are spread far and wide. The Three-Rivers clan distrusted them, and only a few seem to be left,” I informed her sadly. I remembered how the Hermit had known of who I really was, and who my parents were and had hidden that information from me. It still hurt, but I knew now it was only to try and keep me safe. “If there is anything left of the Salamanders here, Dol Agur, I think I can speak for both Bower and myself that we would dearly love to see what they left behind.”

  “Perhaps they have clues as to what happened between humans and dragons,” Bower muttered to me.

  As well as anything we might use to combat Enric’s magic!

  “Of course,” Dol Agur nodded. “But the Record Keeper was very old. He traveled here when he was but a young man fleeing Torvald. He died here, and was buried in the catacombs below. I had been hoping you might be Salamanders or some of the same order as those old dragon monks, come to tell us the evil king has been overthrown!”

  “In a way.” Bower drew himself up to his full height. “In a way we kind of are. You see, my father was Nev Daris, or, Nev of Torvald-Daris. And my mother was a Flamma.”

  “I see,” Dol Agur nodded as she looked at Bower. “You have the ways of the old blood about you. Why else would you be riding a dragon?” Then she looked at me. “But you, girl. You are the one who is bonded with the dragon, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, sticking my chin out defiantly.

  Dol Agur nodded. “Then it is to you we shall entrust the Record Keeper’s things. In the morning we can talk of how you can use them to help us defeat this mad sorcerous king!”

  8

  Bower, of Dreams & Maddox Magic

  I woke up with an eerie feeling of panic and despair, my chest tight, and my head aching with a bad dream, half-remembered.

  I lay in a surprisingly warm and comfy bed of thick blankets and white pelts. The stone walls of the room flickered with light from a candle stub perched on a stone ledge. In a carved hollow, there were more blankets and folded clothes, my clothes, as well as a stone ewer, filled with water, I supposed. Everything was stone.

  Of course. Stone Tooth Mountain. Saffron and I had each been given one of the small, hollowed-out cave rooms which ran along the walls of the first cavern.

  Was it just night fears? Was that what was wrong? I wondered, groaning as I tried to dispel the dark feelings which had entered my dreams. “Perhaps I am just over-tired, and worried about the fight to come,” I muttered to myself.

  Bower-friend, Jaydra spoke urgently into my mind.

  Jaydra? I reached out to her. It was unusual for the dragon to speak directly to my mind unless there was something terribly wrong. Jaydra? What’s wrong?

  Saffron. She is gone from me again, the dragon said, and I could feel she was deeply worried. I cannot get to her. I cannot find her. There are tunnels everywhere, too narrow…

  I’ll go! I’m going! I gasped, throwing on my clothes as I raced out of the room to the very next room. Saffron’s room should have been exactly like mine, but as soon as I crossed the threshold the air became freezing cold and felt as charged and heavy with threat as the atmosphere before an approaching storm. In the center of it all, there writhed Saffron.

  “No… no!” She was asleep, even as she thrashed. The blankets and hides were thrown back, and she turned back and forth in her simple clothes, sweat glistening on her forehead. I knew at once what it was and reached for her.

  “Don’t touch her!” someone said from the open doorway behind me, and I turned around to see Dol Agur, dressed in a ragged night robe and holding a lantern in one hand.

  “It’s King Enric!” I said, once again reaching for Saffron. “I know how to free her from his clutches!” But Dol Agur’s wrinkled and lined hand grabbed the top of my forearm and yanked me backwards.

  “Don’t touch her. That is how these things work; dream-traps!” Dol Agur hissed angrily and pushed me aside, rifling through her robes and pulling out a small collection of cloth bags that filled the room with a strong, pungent aroma of oranges, and ginger. “As soon as any other touches her with bare skin, trying to wake her up, they are caught too!”

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  “Stand back, Bower,” Dol Agur snapped. “Or, if you want to help, get some hot water from the pools, quickly now!”

  Bower, help her! Help sister-Saffron! Jaydra breathed against my mind, and I was sure I could hear, not just in the back of my mind, but with my own very physical ears, the distant, echoing cry of the island dragon somewhere in the depths of Stone Tooth Mountain.

  “Go now, before that dragon of hers starts breaking down the walls,” Dol Agur said as I ran from the room, across the balcony and down the carved stone steps to where the heated water steamed and bubbled up from below. I didn’t know what time it was. There were lanterns and reflecting crystals shining light as there had been earlier, and people bustling about at daily chores, but there was no way to tell if it was morning, afternoon, or still the middle of the night. A few villagers looked at me in alarm as I ran past, seizing one of the spare ewers by the pools and splashing it into the nearest steaming waters. Couldn’t they feel the emanating waves of dread and terror surrounding us?

  Feet slapping on the warmed stones, and my breath hitching in my chest, I ran back, faster than I had thought I could ever run before. I knew what I was going to do. If this didn’t work, I would push Dol Agur aside and, damn the consequences, join Saffron inside the dream-trap, just as I had before. The thought of Saffron being stuck, and tormented inside some nightmarish fantasy prison was too much to bear.

  I burst back into the room, to find another girl, pale, thin, and wide-eyed had joined Dol Agur. The girl deposited a roll of parchment on a central rod, looked at me once, and tore off again. “Ester brought me the scrolls I need,” Dol Agur said as way of explanation, accepting the ewer of steaming water and consulting the scroll as she started to crumble the herbs into the ewer of water.

  “No!” Saffron moaned, her eyes twitching and moving under their lids. I couldn’t stand to do nothing, and I heard once again Jaydra’s enraged roar from the depths of the mountain beyond. I dreaded to think what it must be like for her, that maybe she could feel a shadow of Saffron’s pain and confusion, leeching through their connection even more intensely through their bond than they did for me. A stab of fear pierced my belly.

  “What is that?” I asked the older woman, as she swirled the herbs and inspected the tincture.

  “It’s a recipe from one of the scrolls the Record Keeper left behind,” Dol Agur said, nodding to herself as the infusion seemed to meet her standards. She pointed to the scroll. I could just about make out thin, spidery writing across the surface, with symbols and small pictograms like triangles, bowls, droplets of water, and the various botanical parts of various plants.

  “Infusion Against Nightmare Magic,” I read, very slowly, and very carefully. The language was in the common tongue, but only just, with lots of spelling and words more common to the Torvald dialect of a few hundred years ago.

  “Nightmare magic?” I said, wonderingly. “I have never heard that phrase.”

  “Well, it seems King Enric has,” Dol Agur said, as she took the ewer up in both hands. “Li
ft her up so I can pour a little into her mouth. But don’t touch her with your bare hands!”

  As Saffron writhed and groaned between us, I gingerly did as I was told, using the thick hides to wrap around my friend’s shoulders and lift her up into a semi-seated position. This had better work, I prayed. I felt out of my depth as the woman of the Stone Tooth clan lifted the ewer and dribbled some of the mixture into Saffron’s mouth. Most of it spilled everywhere, but a few drops got past Saffron’s gnashing teeth.

  Suddenly, Saffron was sputtering and coughing, her eyes flickering open as she pushed Dol Agur and me away from her, panting heavily.

  “Give her some space,” Dol Agur hissed at me. “It can be very disorientating, coming out of a dream-trap.”

  “A… what?” Saffron rubbed her head and frowned at both of us, her skin pale and her face blotchy. Dol Agur offered her more of the drink, but she shook her head slowly. “What is that stuff?”

  “It’s from the old scrolls. The ones that the Record Keeper left behind,” Dol Agur said evenly.

  “Go on Saffron, please,” I said, and her eyes met mine. She nodded, and took another gulp of the strange potion from the woman’s offering hands. With every gulp, it seemed as though the shadows left the room, and we were no longer three people shivering in the dark, but three tired friends. A sense of warmth and companionship filled the space, as did the scent of oranges, ginger, and cloves.

  “Was it the same as before?” I asked and Saffron nodded with a weak smile as she thanked Dol Agur.

  “I was…I was in his presence,” Saffron said, her eyes finding mine.

  “This has happened before?” Dol Agur frowned. I looked at Saffron, who shrugged. There was no sense in continuing to conceal from our allies just how much danger we were in. I just hoped Dol Agur wouldn’t tell the rest of her Stone Tooth clan how hopeless this quest seemed to be. “Yes,” I said.