The grin dropped from Paege’s face. “You?”
Trysten nodded. “Me. Only one person could have killed that man.”
“I would have—”
“Paege, listen!” Trysten stepped forward and slammed her palms down upon the table. Paege jumped, startled.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Trysten said. She straightened up and rubbed her fingers over her brow. “I’m tired. And I guess…” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I guess I should stop dancing around it and just tell you. I am a Dragon Lord.”
“A Dragon Lord?”
“You know what—”
“Yes, I… Can you…? Well.” Paege’s face went slack. He shrugged his shoulders, looked to the pendant again, then shook his head. “I guess that explains a few things.”
“Such as?”
Paege leaned back in his chair. A brief smirk crossed his face. “Your connection to Elevera, for starters. By the wilds, you remember that time we met out in the hills in the snow, and you were supposed to help me bond with Elevera?” Paege leaned forward again, placed an elbow on the table and gestured at Trysten with his open hand. “It was like I was riding back-saddle despite being in the seat. I swore up and down to myself that night that Elevera was reading your mind. And it turns out that she was, wasn’t she?”
Trysten paled. Her breath caught in her chest. She’d never had anyone say that to her before. No one had ever suggested that she could communicate with the dragons on the level that she did. Even her parents had yet to come around to understanding the depth of her connection with Elevera.
“You believe me?”
Unable to keep still, Paege sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “How could I not? It’s really quite obvious when you come right down to it. You’re the first female dragoneer in history—”
“Not in history.”
“Not in history?”
Trysten waved a hand in the air. “Not important. Not right now.”
“But… You’re a… and the connection you have to the dragons. And by the wilds, when you took the dragons from the Western hordesmen…” he shook his head. “The Hollin men talked about the Dragoneer who destroyed their village. They said that it was a Dragon Lord who did them in. But the Hollin dragons escaped. So when you took the other horde, me and the men, we thought it was Elevera. That she was a siren dragon, that no dragon could resist her song. But it was you. It was you all the time.”
He stood, circled around behind his chair, and gripped the back of it as he stared at the pendant for a second. “And when the Prince comes, if he finds out that you’re a Dragon Lord, then…”
He looked up at Trysten and raised an eyebrow in curiosity.
Trysten circled around the table and leaned against the edge. “Have you heard the tale of Adalina?”
Paege stood upright, then shook his head.
Trysten sighed. “She is a figure in our lore. A queen who had a connection to the dragons. Some say that she was descended from an Original who took human form. Some say she was just a great queen who had a sort of super-humanity that the dragons responded to. Either way, she commanded a large force of dragons, and she united the lands into a single, prosperous kingdom until the surrounding kingdoms grew envious of her success. They banded together and attacked from all sides. She was unable to resist their combined forces. Her kingdom fell and was split up into the kingdoms that exist today.”
Paege nodded. His eyes widened slightly as if a lantern struck up inside his head. “And so to prevent that situation from ever happening again—”
“Women were forbidden to be dragoneers, and it eventually came to be said that it wasn’t possible for women to bond with dragons. But it is.”
“And so when the Prince arrives—”
“He has a vested interest in making sure that the myth of women being incapable of becoming dragoneers survives. The King must protect his throne. By keeping women from being able to challenge him, he cuts his list of possible insurrectionists in half.”
“Insurrectionists?” Paege lowered his voice. “Would you challenge him?”
“Me? Why? Why would I do that? I’m the Dragoneer. It is my duty to protect the kingdom at all costs.”
Paege examined her a second, then nodded. “I was just checking.”
“Paege!”
“Sorry. I…” He shrugged. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“But it’s more than that,” Trysten continued. “It isn’t just that the Prince is going to arrive and find a female dragoneer, if he finds that I am a Dragon Lord as well, then things look even dimmer. What do you think will happen when the Prince tells the King that there is a female dragoneer at the edge of the kingdom who can magically capture every horde she comes across? What do you think he’ll do when he hears that this is even possible?”
Trysten turned her back to Paege as she stared out the warped glass of the window again.
“I won’t let that happen,” Paege said, his voice breaking.
Trysten’s breath crashed into her breastbone. She reached down and rested the tips of her fingers against the top of the table to steady herself, in imitation of the way Paege had earlier as if it were possible to still the story unwinding around them.
He placed a hand upon her shoulder. Her tension fell away, knocked loose by the warm weight of his palm. Trysten gulped in a big draft of air to stifle the sob that lay deep in her chest.
Paege’s grip on her shoulder tightened slightly. “And whatever it is in the west, whatever is looking for you, whatever sent the Second Horde to find you, it will find nothing in Aerona but strife at the hands of our horde.”
Trysten straightened her shoulders and attempted to collect herself and turned around. As she did, Paege drew her to him and wrapped his arms around her tightly, resting his chin on her shoulder. Without thinking, she pulled him closer, and let the strength of his embrace crush and smother her urge to sob as she felt safe for the first time since the day of the battle. This was Paege, her friend since birth. Her friend for life.
Here, in this sliver of time, she forgot about the pendant, the Second Horde and the Prince, the empty saddles and the Western prisoners. She simply breathed.
Until the warning bell clanged to life overhead.
Chapter 12
Trysten and Paege pushed away from each other in alarm. They glanced at the ceiling for a second as if they could see the sky through the roof.
Wordlessly, they vaulted through the door and down the steps to the weyr. Already, Borsal was standing in the middle of the aisle, near Elevera’s stall. He cupped a hand around his mouth and called out to them.
“Horde spotted in the south.”
As they raced to the dragons, Trysten called back. “Colors?”
Borsal shook his head. “None.”
Hordesmen poured out of the doorway at the back of the weyr and raced for their dragons. Borsal repeated his warning.
An attack from the south was rare, but not unheard of. If it were a friendly horde, it would fly with the horde’s colors trailing from a flag held by a rider. Approaching a village without displaying colors was an act of aggression.
“Paege, make sure you have our colors,” Trysten called to the next stall.
Paege nodded, then picked up a flag from his trunk and strapped it to Sone’s saddle.
Within minutes, Trysten and the horde had their dragons saddled, bows secured and full quivers on their backs. As Trysten mounted Elevera, Kaylar raced into the weyr in her homemade hordesman’s outfit.
“I’m ready! Which dragon?” Kaylar called out.
Despite the tension in the weyr, Trysten grinned. “Next time. I promise.”
“I can ride now. You need all the help you can get.”
“Practice the hand signals. I promise I’ll have you in the air the day after tomorrow.”
Kaylar stepped back as Elevera walked into the aisle.
Trysten whipped her
arm up over her head, spun it around once, and then pointed to the side of the weyr opposite Elevera’s stall as the other hordesman watched.
“Follow you to the south!” Kaylar shouted.
Trysten nodded to Kaylar, then hitched her heels into Elevera’s shoulders. The dragon leaped into the air, and with a push of her great wings, sent straw and dust scattering as she and Trysten vaulted forward, ready to meet the enemy head-on.
Once they gained altitude, a horde of twenty-three dragons became visible along the southern horizon. They were headed for Aerona. It was an odd number. Hordes were usually twenty dragons. But as Trysten felt the presence of her twenty-two dragons fan out behind her in V formation, she knew it wasn’t a set number.
In case it was the Prince, and he needed a reminder of protocol, Trysten motioned for Paege to display the colors of Aerona. She glanced over her shoulder as he unfurled the gold and blue flag.
Trysten studied the horde ahead. No response. No sudden realization that they were breaching protocol and that the Aerona horde was barreling down on them, ready to challenge their intrusion.
She leaned forward a bit, concentrating on the approaching dragons. They were flying a V formation as well, but there were two dragons at the head of the V with one flying directly in front of the other. She could see it in the beat of the wings. Odd. And the dragon at point was white. Not a pale color like a couple of her own, but white as snow.
Royal.
She motioned for Paege to wave the colors again.
Still, there was no response from the approaching horde. Trysten tried to sense the dragons, but she was still too far away. It could be a ruse. Western hordesmen might ride royal white dragons as a trick. The unusual southern approach could be designed to lull her into a false sense of security.
A double-pointed strategy would most likely be an ambush. The first dragon could drop away, cutting off Trysten’s retreat as the hordesman behind took aim with his bow. If she cut to the left or right, she’d be met with either leg of the V formation. As Dragoneer, she would be the prime target of attack. She could not risk a trap.
She ordered her horde into a U formation with herself at the base of the U. Elevera slowed as the other Aerona dragons overtook her and flew into position. She had a feeling that the second dragon in the approaching horde was the alpha, and the royal white dragon was a screen. She ordered her horde to focus their arrows at the rider behind the white dragon. He would be the Dragoneer.
With her hand tipped, the approaching horde dropped back into a solid line to counter her U. Trysten’s mind flashed with the feelings of the oncoming dragons. They were not there to fight. They were concerned, agitated even. They saw the Aerona horde as the aggressors rather than themselves.
No sooner did that realization hit Trysten than she saw two flags unfurl, one on either side of the point dragon. The purple and silver of the Cadwaller kingdom flapped against the gray sky.
Trysten gritted her teeth and grunted in frustration and anger. People could have been killed. She frantically waved off the attack she had ordered and commanded the horde to fall back into the standard V formation. What were those idiots doing? They should have known to fly the colors immediately. They had risked the safety of both hordes. Had one of her hordesmen not looked back in time to see her wave off the attack, blood would have been shed.
Regardless of what they were doing, it appeared that the Prince had arrived. As the two hordes sailed past each other, Trysten watched as the man on the royal white dragon eyed her with a steely gaze. If his dragon and demeanor had not been enough to announce his arrival, the purple cape with white fur trim fluttering back from his shoulders would have done the job.
So it had begun.
Chapter 13
Elevera peeled away from the horde and banked around to draw up next to the Dragoneer of the royal horde. As she straightened out, two royal dragons drew up next to her, each bearing a Cadwaller flag. Both riders emphatically ordered Trysten to the ground immediately as the royal white dragon took up point position before her. The Prince didn’t even bother to look back. He expected his orders to be followed.
The burn of her anger mostly masked the chill of fear that she was about to be deposed and sent away from all that she loved. Yet, at least there was the relief of the waiting being over.
She reached for Elevera’s neck, then paused. Should she go to ground, or should she lead this other horde back to Aerona? It was there, in the village, that she would have what she would need to keep her position. The prisoners were being held there, and the Western dragons waited in the weyr yard, riderless. In the village, the Prince would hear the stories of her heroics, her battle, and how she saved the horde from absconding in the first place.
But defying the Prince was probably not the best way to start off.
Trysten pushed down on the lip of the saddle. The dragon lowered her head slightly, then adjusted her wings. She dipped beneath the riders that flanked her, and together they made slow, wide spirals to the ground with both hordes following like shadows on the thick, gray sky.
The royal white dragon sailed overhead as Elevera threw out her wings and lowered her hindquarters to take the ground. As she settled onto the stones and heather of the plain, the royal white dragon landed a dozen yards away. The rest of the dragons landed around them, all eyes on Trysten and the Prince.
Both dismounted at the same time. Trysten laid a comforting hand upon Elevera’s side as the Prince stormed at her, his cape blowing out in puffs with each step.
He stopped in front of Trysten and glared. She couldn’t help but be a bit surprised to note that they were the same height.
“Are you the one pretending to be Dragoneer of this horde?” The words dripped with agitation.
Trysten lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “I am Trysten of Aerona, Dragoneer of the Aerona weyr.”
“You are no dragoneer,” the Prince said. “No woman is a dragoneer.”
“And who says such things?” Trysten asked.
“King Cadwaller, my father, for starters.”
“And you are?”
“Prince Aymon. I am here to represent the King’s will. I believe you are in possession of an order to step aside and cease acting as the garrison Dragoneer. Do you deny receiving such an order?”
Trysten’s belly quivered. She was thankful she had not stopped for breakfast that morning.
“I received those orders.”
Prince Aymon flinched in surprise. “You do not deny receiving such orders, yet you flew out to greet me? And you flew out in point no less, in defiance of the King’s orders?”
“It is my duty as Dragoneer to protect Aerona, and today I saw a horde approach without friendly colors.”
Prince Aymon smirked and took half a step back. The rain started. Fat drops poured from the sky. The Prince did not break eye contact. He appeared to not notice the rain at all. “And so you were going to lead the horde into battle?” he asked.
Trysten took a deep breath. Her hands clenched into fists at her side.
“Who is the commander of this horde?” Prince Aymon called out as he swung around to look at the rest of the hordesmen. “Who answers to this woman?”
Paege stepped forward. “I am Paege of Aerona. I am Commander of the Aerona weyr.”
Trysten was unable to see the Prince’s face with most of his back to her, but his words conveyed his dismissive tone. “Why, you are hardly more than a boy! Yet you command a weyr?”
“I do, as my father did.”
“Did? Your father is dead?”
“My father died in service to the King.”
The Prince’s posture grew more formal. “There can be no greater honor. Your father’s sacrifice and your own sacrifice are the sacrifices of us all. You are hereby in charge of Aerona weyr until further notice. You will answer directly to me until we have everything here straightened out. You will lead us on—”
“I will n
ot,” Paege said. He straightened his back, lifted his own chin.
Trysten’s raging heart stuttered at the sight of Paege’s defiance. His posture suggested that if challenged, he would answer a duel.
“I… beg your pardon?” Prince Aymon asked. He cupped a hand about his ear. “The wind of riding still rings in my ears. I’m afraid I didn’t catch that.”
“I will not, sir,” Paege said. “I am sworn by duty to serve the Dragoneer of Aerona weyr.” Paege stood several inches taller than Aymon, forcing the Prince to look up slightly to address him. Trysten could see both Paege, and the Prince notice the dynamic.
The Prince took a step forward. “You are sworn by duty to protect the kingdom. I represent the kingdom. I am the very word of the King. You will do as I order you to do!”
Trysten took a step forward as well. Her hands clenched into fists. Elevera stirred, let out a low rumble that sent a wave of nervousness across all the men gathered around them.
Prince Aymon stopped. He looked over his shoulder at the gold dragon towering over him.
“My first duty is to my Dragoneer,” Paege said. His words, alone in the tense silence marred only by the rush of rain, broke the mounting spell.
Prince Aymon returned his attention to the Commander. “You have a lot to learn about duty and allegiance, my young friend. I admire your loyalty, but it is misplaced. Any woman who would ignore the customs and laws of our land is certainly not fit to uphold them.”
Prince Aymon turned back to Trysten.
“Is it also not custom and law to display one’s colors when entering a friendly village?” Paege asked.
Prince Aymon stopped, grinned, and turned around. “Fancy yourself a smart one, do you?”
“He makes a good point,” Trysten said. “You saw that I ordered an attack formation. Yet you did not display your colors until the last minute. You’re lucky that no one got hurt. The fighting season is upon us.”
Prince Aymon turned back. “Lucky? You are the lucky one. Had you not called off your attack, we would not be standing here having this lovely conversation. It is my decision when to show the kingdom’s colors. I wished to see what would greet us, and when I saw your attack formation, I realized how dire the situation in Aerona is. It is bad enough that you have somehow bonded with an alpha, through treachery or sorcery no doubt—”
The Dragoneer Trilogy Page 36
