“No time to worry about that now,” I said, knowing I had to keep Bower’s mind from any thought of failure. A king hid inside him somewhere, but he needed to have faith in himself to realize it.
Just like you need to have faith in yourself, as well. Jaydra’s voice broke suddenly into my mind. But this was not the time to ponder such truths.
“What of the survivors, you said there was a mountain village that had been attacked? Couldn’t we help them?”
“Yes.” Bower nodded. “The rider is being looked after by the Stone Tooth healers, but he told me there’s a stand of golden-leafed king’s trees there.”
“Kingswood? I know of it.” Dol Agur turned to the shelves once more, rummaging until she found a selection of maps. “On the edge of the Dragons Spine Mountains; near the foothills.”
“Bower and I will travel there immediately, if you please, with all the dragons we can muster,” I said, looking at Bower, who nodded in agreement. “Whatever else we can do, we can help those who have been targeted by the king.”
“And the Stone Tooth people,” Bower said, “would be welcome to track south to join us, what is left of us, anyway.”
“Lord Bower, Saffron, I am sure it would be my clan’s pleasure to join you in the fight, but I will have to ask them, which I will do right away,” Dol Agur said formally before turning to me alone, and saying in a slightly lower voice, “and you must remember our lesson today, Saffron; I will bring with me what scrolls and lore that I can of the old Dragon Riders.”
“Thank you, Dol Agur,” I said and joined Bower who was already waiting by the door. He nodded at me and I knew, even without any words passing between us, that he was ready to fly now, as he knew that I would always be ready to fly.
Jaydra? I reached out to her.
I am outside, den-sister.
“Together we must find a place that has been attacked by the king’s forces,” I told her.
Of course, she said. And together we shall battle?
“Perhaps,” I muttered, and stepped out into the freezing cold.
12
Bower, Kingswood
In the end, we didn’t need Dol Agur’s map or directions to find Kingswood. All we had to do was follow the smoke rising above the mountain peaks to find what remained of the ruined village.
Kingswood sat on a gentle slope of a hill at the edge of the mountains, the trees that must have once been its namesake now blackened and smoking.
“Saffron, can you see that?” I said in horrified awe of the destruction we were flying toward. The remains of hut houses were in smoldering ruins, the heat and the blaze still trapped within the stone wall that encircled the village.
“Terrible,” Saffron said, watching as on the nearer side of the village, groups of people were still fleeing the burning village. Flights of Dragon Riders, most of them barely clinging to their spinning wild dragons, were patrolling the skies, looking for any more of Enric’s forces, and below them, several grounded Three Rivers’ riders were tending to warriors who had been wounded in the attack. The scene was a mess.
“We’ve got to help our riders control their dragons,” I said, pointing. Saffron angled Jaydra with a repositioning of her knee, and just as we began slicing through the air towards the others, she gasped.
“Ours aren’t the only dragons here!” she said, nodding towards plumes of smoke and soot, just as the smoke parted and I saw a black leather wing break free and disappear again inside.
“Wild dragons?” I searched the smoke for them but they were quick and elusive. A coil of body here, a sudden flash of scales amidst the soot before they retreated again.
“I don’t know,” Saffron said, and then we were upon our own riders. Some of the nearest managed to look up at us, as they clung for dear life to their own creatures. My heart plummeted—how were we ever going to organize them well enough to fight against the king?
“Bede! Right wing down, easy on your left-hand side!” Saffron called out, as, underneath her Jaydra chirruped and called to the dragons how to handle their human riders. “Olfa, don’t grip so tight! Mind where you’re flying!”
As Saffron and Jaydra worked, I studied the remains of the battle below. There were great blackened craters across the hill where it seemed that the balloon-platforms had fired their deadly arsenal. Arrows from the battle stood stuck in the ground and in the trees at every angle. The ground was churned with melted slush, mud, and ash. The refugees congregated around the wounded Three Rivers warriors, looking worriedly up at their village and at us.
“Saffron?” I asked, when it appeared that she had the majority of the Three Rivers’ riders ready, or at least not in danger of killing themselves. “Can we get down to the refugees? We need to ask them what happened, and assure them that we mean no harm.”
She nodded, and Jaydra flared her wings to slow her flight and beat them steadily making great gusts of wind as she lowered herself to the floor below.
“Lord Bower!” a voice cried out, and Mother Gorlas, strode towards us, her hands full of bandages, her face ashen. She had commandeered some children to carry pots of steaming water and packets of herbs from the hasty campfires being lit on the other side of the battlefield. The Three Rivers entourage had traveled with enough of a camp kitchen that they could feed their warriors, but I knew that it would be a stretch if they had to feed everyone. Even as I unbuckled and slid from Jaydra, I could tell that she was tired and afraid. “It’s bad, sire,” Mother Gorlas said, scowling at the burning village above us, where the truly wild dragons cavorted through the smoke.
“What happened?” I said, clasping her hands as Saffron stayed astride Jaydra, no doubt ready to leap into the air at the first sign of attack.
“Well, I sent the rider to find you when we came to try to save this village.” Mother Gorlas nodded to one of the children, a girl of perhaps ten or eleven, whose face was pale beneath the smears of soot, and in her hands she carried a hide bag stuffed full of dried herbs. “Go on, Taura, tell Lord Bower what you told me.”
The girl looked at me as if I had spouted horns, but I gave her a smile. “It’s okay, Taura. I’m on your side.”
“Ain’t no one on our side. That’s what my father said. Kingswood’s always been alone,” the girl said stubbornly.
No, I thought, my heart breaking. This girl was so young, how could anyone feel like that? How could a whole village feel like that? But I also knew that is exactly what my father would have said were I in her position. My father had always made it clear that I could trust family—but no one else, no one at all in the citadel. If only I had actually believed him. I thought, remembering Vic Cassus, whom I had thought was my only friend, but who had betrayed me in return for the king’s favor.
“Taura, you are not alone, not anymore,” I said, even getting down on one knee. She regarded me gravely. “Tell me what happened, Taura, what happened to your father?”
“Dead,” she said, casting a look at the burning remains of her village above. “We were all working, just as normal, when the scouts said that they saw something in the distance—in the sky.” Taura bit her lip and looked up at the dragons that wheeled and turned above.
“Don’t worry, those ones are our dragons,” I said with an encouraging smile, but Taura didn’t look entirely convinced.
“The shapes in the sky weren’t like that. They were like floating houses,” she said, “only … only out of these houses they fired arrows and dropped exploding barrels on our orchards.” The girl’s voice broke, but she cleared her throat and bravely carried on. “We tried to fight against them, but there was nothing that we could do—until the dragons appeared. They had people on them.”
“The Three Rivers’ riders,” Mother Gorlas supplied.
“And they started fighting the balloons, but as soon as the dragons arrived, metal men appeared, out of the ravines, and they fired these giant spears—”
“The harpoons,” I said, remembering how the Iron Guard fired them
like a normal man might fire an arrow from a bow.
“They attacked the dragons, and set fire to the village, and the dragons couldn’t do anything. They tried, but,” Taura sniffed again. “My father fell, protecting our house.”
“There now, Taura, there now…” Mother Gorlas enfolded the girl in her bony arms, and shot me a look. “We got here as soon as our scouts brought back word of the attack, but the king’s forces didn’t even stay to fight. We think they’re trying to draw us out and exhaust us with these skirmishes.”
“Taura, I know this is hard for you to hear, but I promise to do my best to help you and your village. I’m going to stop the evil King Enric and make him pay for everything he’s done.”
Taura’s eyes lit up and then her face darkened. “How can you do that?”
“Because he’s the real king,” said a voice, and Saffron walked towards us, her thick gloves in her hands and her hair streaming out behind her. Despite the shadows under her tired eyes and her worried look, she looked stronger somehow.
It must be that potion from Dol Agur, I thought. Saffron is supposed to take it every morning, but I hadn’t expected it to work this quickly.
Too many problems, and too little time, I thought, smiling unconvincingly at Taura and saying lightly to Mother Gorlas, “Did anyone follow the king’s forces?”
“No,” Mother Gorlas said steadily as she held the girl. “Lord Bower, that’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about. Chief Vere.” I could tell that the woman was keeping her tone light and neutral, so as not to upset the girl in front of her.
“What has he got to do with any of this?” I asked.
“Well, when our scouts engaged the king’s army, and I dispatched the Dragon Rider to find you, Chief Vere counseled us to hold back the rest of our forces. When it became clear that the king’s balloon-platforms were leaving the area, I said that we should try to track them, but he convinced the other chiefs not to,” she said.
“Why on earth did he counsel that?”
“Chief Vere has been making his qualms about your leadership very clear. He said that,” Mother Gorlas looked down at the child beneath her, “he said that you might not return from the search for the Stone Tooth clan, so why should we…?”
“I understand, Mother Gorlas.” I nodded and realized that of the Three Rivers riders who were trying to defend Kingswood, I hadn’t seen many whom I thought of as ‘Vere’s people’, the heavyset warriors who would congregate around the aging warrior-chief with loud, raucous laughter. Had Vere pulled them out of the battle? I put on what I thought of as my best ‘authoritative’ voice. “Even though we have only been away for a little while, it seems that much indeed has changed. I will summon a meeting. We have news from the Stone Tooth clan to share and I will address any concerns the Three Rivers chiefs might have.”
“If you wait much longer, sir, there might not be any chiefs that answer you, after Vere has managed to speak to them all!” Mother Gorlas warned, and I could feel my heart tremor inside my chest. When will these troubles end? What if I am not strong enough to unify the clans? The only time it was done was a hundred or more years ago!
“Bower,” Saffron said to me in a lower voice, breaking my concentration and gesturing that she wanted to talk to me away from the others. I excused myself from the girl and the old woman and turned to walk towards Jaydra with Saffron at my side.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s those wild dragons up there, the truly wild dragons,” Saffron said. “I thought that they must have been attracted to all of the destruction and bloodshed, but—” She directed my gaze up to the smoke, which billowed, broke, and recombined strangely as the dragons within played in the debris of the town. Every now and again there was a hint of dragon-hide, a flare of wings and claws.
Suddenly, the smoke cleared from one part of the village and I saw a wild dragon standing atop one of the ruined buildings, ramming her armored snout through its roof to get to whatever treats lay inside. I only saw it for a moment, but I recognized the beast.
“It can’t be!” I said.
“It is,” Saffron agreed, and a low, warning growl rumbled from Jaydra beside us.
The large dragon of dark was indeed one that I had seen before. It had a ring of broken and mutated scales about its neck where it once had worn an iron collar, and, as it reared its head to the sky and shrieked in delight at whatever foodstuff it had found, I could see that one of its eyes was completely milky white.
“Queen One-Eye,” I said with a shiver of apprehension. She had been the old brood queen imprisoned in the Three Rivers’ caverns, and had been the den-mother of all the wild dragons that the Three Rivers riders now trained with. She had refused to join us, and submit to Queen Ysix, and instead had taken half of the freed dark dragons with her when she had fled her old prison.
She’s got a score to settle, I thought, feeling as if everything might be suddenly at risk. If our own barely-trained dragons returned to their brood-mother, what chance did we have with the few numbers left?
Queen One-Eye screeched again, and this time I could even feel the ripple of power that passed from her through the air to the other dragons. At our side, Jaydra snorted and shook her head.
“What is it, Saffron?” I said quickly.
Saffron shook her own head as if to clear it of a headache. “It’s the queen. She’s bellowing and calling and cursing at her children.” Saffron gritted her teeth. “I think she’s trying to drive a wedge between what is left of her brood and the island dragons.”
To my horror, some of the newly-trained Three Rivers’ dragons raised their heads and quivered in mid-flight, suddenly anxious and concerned about what it was they were to do. They swung their heads this way and that, first towards me and Saffron, then back to their own mother, and back to us. On their backs, their Riders kicked and strained to pull them back into their flight patterns, but it was no use. They were clearly distracted, and torn over whom to listen to.
“Saffron, I’m the guardian of Dragon Mountain. The one with the king’s ability, I should…” I started forward.
“No! You fool, you’ll get yourself killed!” Saffron hissed at me.
A high-pitched whine became a hiss over our shoulders as suddenly, the sky split by a long blue shape. It was Queen Ysix, much longer and taller than Queen One-Eye, but also much thinner. She landed with heavy claws on the battle-ground slope, and bellowed her rage up at Queen One-Eye above.
Miiiine! Queen Ysix’s voice shook through my head, and I knew that Saffron had heard it too. They are my brood now! My charges! Mine! She spat and snarled at the lower, stockier Queen One-Eye, who looked down the slope at the blue dragon as if Ysix were no more than a cow in a field. Steadily, slowly, Queen One-Eye stalked her slow way down the side of the buildings, her feet smashing apart walls and crushing fences as she waddled her way to the bare slope itself.
“Are they going to fight?” I whispered.
“Queen Ysix has claimed One-Eye’s brood for her own. If One-Eye wants them back, she’ll have to kill her,” Saffron said nervously, her eyes flickering to Jaydra, as the dragon’s sides bellowed as she panted in anger.
The air filled with the other wild dragons hissing their anger, down at Ysix, at the other island dragons, or at their humans.
This is going to cause a rift that will be the end of all of us, unless I do something, I thought.
“Ground them, Saffron,” I said quickly.
“What?” She looked at me in surprise.
“Get all of the dragons grounded that you can. If there’s a fight, there are going to be a lot of our riders up there suddenly on top of some very angry dragons!” I said, and walked up the slope toward Queen One-Eye and Queen Ysix.
13
Saffron, the Eldest
As much as I wanted to, for once I didn’t call Bower back. By now I was starting to believe that no matter what I did, there was next to nothing that I could do that would make him change
his mind. Still, as I stood next to my den-sister watching him walk up the slope towards the burning village, he looked very small indeed compared to Ysix and One-Eye.
Fiend! Fiend! Fiend! Jaydra’s anger blew through me like a summer gale. I flushed with heat and my heartbeat rose as her emotions tore through our mental connection. She was furious at One-Eye, even though the wild dragon of dark was a queen. Ysix was technically Jaydra’s sister, just as I was, and if she was so protective of me, just how protective would she be of her own scale and blood?
“Easy, sister. Ysix is strong,” I murmured, setting a hand to her side, and snatching it away instantly. Jaydra was searing to the touch as she had never been before. I had never seen Jaydra in a true conflict between dragons, as Zenema had always been the strongest of all of the dragons of the archipelago, and had always kept the island dragons under her strict control. I wasn’t too sure even that Jaydra herself knew how to act. Was it best to leave Ysix to sort this out alone? Or should Jaydra make some display against the other wild dragons?
Above us on the slope, Ysix’s tail lashed back and forth like an angry cat as she hissed up at the dark dragon. Her tail tore great gouges in the mud and soil at either side of her. Meanwhile, Queen One-Eye’s body disappeared into the murk of the smoke, and she twisted her head so that her one good, glittering eye regarded Ysix coolly.
How dare she! I thought, not sure if the anger that tore through me was really my own feelings or my sister-dragon’s. My fingers clenched into fists and suddenly my mouth went dry. It was the same prickling, uncomfortable sensation that I got before I cast magic. The power welled up in me, rising through the stones and into my feet and legs.
Dragons of Dark (Upon Dragons Breath Trilogy Book 3) Page 9
