It's the other way around, I wanted to scream at them. It’s the Draconis Order who are farming the dragons, not the dragons farming us!
“So, you see, the boy is a freak,” the Abbot Ansall said. “The boy is confused if he thinks he has any kind of friendship with the dragon. Sooner or later, the dragon will turn around and attack him, and maybe all of us. What will that do to the delicate balance of power inside the crater? What will mighty Zaxx the Golden do? And so, now we have to do as I have always commanded: we totally control the dragons. We feed them. We make them dependent on us. We decide how many there are, and we keep Zaxx the Mighty happy.”
“So that he might shower us with wisdom,” breathed one of the other monks in the plaza, making me feel sick as the other monks repeated it instantly.
“So that he might shower us with wisdom,” they said almost as one, making me feel uneasy. It was almost like the monks were brainwashed to believe Zaxx the Golden was not just a god, but a pet god.
“Indeed. So, we will not be throwing our students into the crater to be eaten,” the Abbot Ansall said genially, sounding for all the world like he was being beneficent and wise. “Instead, we shall choose some of the smaller, weaker dragons – let us start with the Earth Dragons-- and we shall apply harnesses to them. We shall train them to obey our orders, not as friends or as equals, but as beasts. For the dragons are mighty and they are noble, but we must overcome them and wrest their knowledge from them,” the Abbot said. “I know, I know my brethren – this is not a truth that you wish to hear, and yet it is true. You all know as well as I do that the dragons only respect strength. That Zaxx is their leader because he can dominate them. We must dominate them. We must become the ‘bulls’ of the crater for them to give up their secrets. We have here a great store of knowledge about their ancient species, and we shall use it.”
There was a murmur from the group, and I wondered if it was agreement or unease -but it certainly wasn’t outright dissension as the Abbot continued.
“Just think of what we can achieve,” Ansall raised his voice a little, taking on that same theatrical tone that he used when trying to inspire us students. “The new Dragon Age will be glorious! From these walls will pour great beasts with their masters and trainers using them to protect castles and to attack our enemies. Think of what great industries and achievements we could bring into the world, if we had a dragons’ size and strength to shift rock, to dig, to melt metal? Who would ever stand against the Draconis Order, or the Middle Kingdom? We would be the center of the world!”
I shivered where I sat. What the Abbot Ansall was proposing was a nightmare vision of dragon servitude, and a new age of prosperity and wealth for him and Zaxx alone.
But there is hope… I moved back to the peephole between the books, seeing that the monks were agreeing and clapping, shuffling the papers and the books back into their rightful places. Explorer Versi, I tried to follow the movements of the tall monk Rothan as he put the tomes that he had gathered away. The explorer Versi might have seen a way that humans and dragons could bond, even if he didn’t understand what he was looking at…
I desperately wanted to ignore the small worm of doubt in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t. My thoughts kept on pointing out that—according to the Abbot—all those southern tribal kids had ended up as meat for their friends’ bellies. Those dragons were different from Middle Kingdom dragons, I hoped. Didn’t Maxal himself say so just earlier? Middle Kingdom dragons were friendlier. They wouldn’t turn on us just because…
The meeting was breaking up, and I froze as the monks packed away all of their things and shuffled back out into the narrow avenues, whispering and muttering among themselves as they left. I waited, counted to ten, and then waited for a further three breaths before going back to the space between the books.
A shadow moved across the space and I bit my tongue to stop from gasping in fear. Ansall. The Abbot had waited after all the others, standing and looking around the little study-space. I thought for sure that his ice-chip eyes bored into mine as his gaze searched the shelves for something, before shaking his head to himself. Had he heard me? Had I betrayed myself somehow?
“Nihil.” The man growled, snapping his fingers and the flame in the lantern suddenly snapped out, plunging my eyes into darkness. I held my breath and waited, as his footsteps clicked heavily and precisely, heading back to the more commonplace areas of the Library.
I stayed in the dark for a long time, before I could pluck up the courage to sneak around the shelves, and search for the memoirs of the explorer Versi.
CHAPTER 5
GOADING DRAGONS
I was awoken by the deafening sound of the dragon pipes rattling the window shutters. I groaned, it was still dark outside.
“What time is it? What is going on?” Sigrid muttered from her bed across from mine in the cold tower room we shared. She was always unwilling to leave the warmth of her cot, and instead waited for me to get the fire lit.
“I don’t know,” I grumbled, sucking in my breath as my feet hit the cold flagstones. “The pipes are much earlier today than they are usually…” I was cut off when the noise blasted again.
The monks usually only played the pipes to subdue or rouse the dragons in the nearby crater, as the sound hurt their sensitive ears. Did that mean we were under attack? Instantly, my mind reached out to the Crimson Red, my friend - Paxala? I was still unsure if she would even be able to hear my thoughts, thanks to the rousing clanging of the dragon pipes, but in answer I got a warm, fuzzy impression of the cave in which she had made her home in the wilds on the other side of Mount Hammal.
“What is that racket?” The great Crimson Red thought at me, her mind heavy with irritation.
“I don’t know…” I said, half to Paxala, and half to the Fenn girl I shared a room with. I hurried to the window. Outside in the courtyard below there were monks with torches and others pushing handcarts filled with bulky hessian bags and wooden boxes.
“What is going on? Is there an attack? What are they doing?” Uncharacteristically, Sigrid joined me, scowling down at the monks as the dragon pipes in the Astrographer’s Tower above pealed and rang. We watched as one of the black-robed monks hurried to the door of the boy’s tower, torch in one hand and bell in the other.
“I guess those dragon pipes mean we all have to get up,” I groaned, grabbing my clothes from the stool by the side of my bed. Underneath them was a very old leather-bound book, barely bigger than my hand and filled with spidery black writing I could only barely make out. I should probably just hide this for now… I looked at the room, wondering where I could hide it without any of the Draconis Order monks finding it. No, I settled for slipping the slim stolen volume of ‘Versi’s Voyage’ (written by the explorer himself) into my jerkin. I couldn’t risk the Abbot discovering I had checked the book out, let alone that I was studying it.
“Ready?” I asked Sigrid.
“No.” She grumbled, but was pulling on her own leggings and robes by the time that our own monk entered the girl’s tower to roust us.
“Pssst, Neill – what’s going on?” I shuffled next to him through the gaggle of tired students standing in rows in the courtyard, while the monks in front of us unpacked packages and boxes from the equipment sheds, and stacked them in the courtyard. Neill was looking almost as tired as I felt, blinking in the torch light and frowning.
“I don’t know,” he offered. “But I know those are the Protector’s kit boxes.” He pointed to a stack of wooden crates that held the leather cuirasses, the studded arm and leg greaves, the padded helmets, weapons, and bandages that the Protectors needed in their training, or else used on the walls. I nodded, but couldn’t help feeling confused. The monastery was split into three training ‘streams’ one of which were the Protectors (warriors like Neill and Lila), Scribes (like Dorf and Sigrid) and then the Mages (like me and Maxal).
“So, this is going to be a Protector’s Class? But why is it happening so early in the
morning -and why are the rest of us being forced to take part?” I couldn’t help asking, though I knew there was no student who could answer.
“Neill? I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” I muttered, only for it to be confirmed moments later as the Abbot Ansall, little Monk Olan, and the giant-like Monk Feodor marched out from the main house. It was clear to anyone that Monk Feodor was fuming, and trying to keep himself apart from the others as much as possible.
“Students! What a great day this is about to be for you.” The Abbot didn’t have to raise his voice particularly high for it to cut through the cool air. “Today you are going to be led up to the dragon crater by our Chief Dragon Handler and Advanced Trainer for the Protectors, Monk Feodor.” --the Abbot beamed, as there was a sudden cough from Monk Feodor-- “where you will receive your first instruction on the handling and use of dragons.”
“What?” Neill hissed under his breath beside me, and I could only share his apprehension.
No one at the monastery knew how to ‘handle’ and ‘use’ dragons. Not even me, and I had helped raise one from an egg. Certainly not the other students around me, half of whom were punching the air in reckless delight while the other half were looking terrified. I agreed with the second half – especially after our previous morning’s misadventures.
“Neill?” I whispered to him as the monks led us through the rear gates and up to the mountain beyond. “We need to do what we can to keep these students alive.” He nodded, his face ghostly pale. “It’s up to us.”
We trudged through the shale and grit of the mountain path, gorse bushes spiking through our leggings, and students whispering in apprehension or excitement. Behind us the dragon pipes blared, their tones creating a shriek across the dark skies. The Chief Dragon Handler Feodor led us up the way we would take as if we were going to feed the dragons, but then, unexpectedly, he turned at the entrance to the high boulder field, where Feodor did something at the face of one of the rocks, and there was a grating sound as a boulder rolled away from a wide tunnel. He waited at the mouth of the tunnel as we filed past him. I exchanged a look with Neill. Could this be the tunnel entrance he’d told me of, where Abbot Ansall had taken me the night of the battle?
“Students? I want you all to walk through to the larger chamber below and wait there. Do not make a sound, any at all!” he said to us over and again, until it was time for me and Neill to file past him. “Torvald, Nefrette, out of line and with me, now,” he growled. Even though it was dark I could hear the impatience in his tone. We waited by his side as the other students filed past us into the dark, and we three were the only ones out on the dark mountain alone where even still the dragon pipes blaring call reverberated.
“Hmph.” Feodor growled at the sound. “Right now, the pipes are probably the only thing keeping the rest of those students alive, and god knows what will happen at dawn,” he said, and I was shocked by his honesty. “You two, I want you to explain to me right now how you managed to befriend that Crimson Red of yours, or else a whole lot of people are probably going to die today.”
Neill opened and closed his mouth helplessly, before looking at me.
“Nefrette? It was you behind all this, was it?” Monk Feodor stared hard at me.
“I, I don’t know how to befriend a dragon. It just sort of happened with Pax,” I said in a low, urgent whisper.
“Pax?” Feodor’s brows furrowed in confusion, and then, as comprehension dawned on him I saw his eyes widen. “That’s the Crimson Red’s name? She told you her name?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. I still didn’t know why others couldn’t hear Paxala.
Monk Feodor took a step toward me and said, very quickly, “Never, ever share that name with any of the other monks. No one you cannot trust entirely, understand? I have heard in the old legends of dragons sharing their names with humans, but it was only the rarest, bravest humans who became true dragon friends.” Feodor seemed to be thinking quickly. “And that is not something I can hope that every student down there will become.” The light of the torches glinted off of the white tracery of his scars. “The dragons in the crater look to humans for their food, but also as competition. If Zaxx for a second believes that we are entering his domain to compete for the loyalty or mastery of his brood, then he will attack us, and we’re doomed.”
“Char? Can you summon Paxala?” Neill said urgently, before I could protest, however, it was Monk Feodor who squashed the idea.
“That Crimson Red is barely two, maybe three years old, though isn’t she? She hasn’t got the size, skill, or weight on her to even damage the bull dragon. No, Char, I forbid it. If you want to keep that Crimson Red alive, then please don’t call her here.” The trainer growled in frustration. “The Abbot has got it into his head to try and control the dragons in the crater now, to use them as you rode the Red. Neill – but not as a dragon friend but as a dragon tamer.” Feodor cracked his neck and I stared at the scars that scored his body; one entire arm from hand to shoulder, and up over the shoulder to his neck in thick rivers of ridged white scar tissue. He had told us that he had ‘earned’ that scar the last time that the Abbot had some great idea to work closely with the dragons (although I don’t know exactly what it was, much to my annoyance), and I could only imagine how apprehensive the monk must be feeling right now. “I know how dangerous that can be,” Feodor said in a low voice.
“The eggs,” I said quickly. I was taking a gamble whether I could trust Feodor or not, but on Neill’s wary nod, I pressed on. “I think you have to raise the hatchlings from egg, or soon after as I did with Paxala. And the explorer Versi writes about young children bonding with young dragons…”
“So, you think it might only work with the youngest of dragons.” Feodor nodded to himself, before looking up at the greying skies. “Thank you, Char, that gives me something to work with at least, buys us some time. Now get down there with the rest of the students, and do what you can to stop them getting themselves killed!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Neill said quickly, turning to jog down the torch-lit passageway into the mountain.
“And Char?” Feodor caught my arm as I turned to go. “I just wish that you had told me about this young dragonet of yours earlier. I could have helped.”
Could you? I wondered, catching myself on a moment of wistfulness. It would have been nice to have a friend back then, back before Neill showed up and befriended Paxala. In fact, it would have been nice to have any friends in the monastery back then – aside from Nan Barrow. But, looking at the big man I still felt a little apprehensive. Would he have been able to keep the newt a secret? Or would he have told the Abbot on me? I had no way of knowing, now.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I mumbled, before he gestured with a nod that it was too late now, and we hurried after the others.
I made my way through a wide passageway carved in stone, following Neill as we headed at a steep angle down into the rock. Torches lit the way as we passed underground crossroads, these other passages unlit.
“Where do all these tunnels go?” I whispered to Monk Feodor behind.
“Never you mind that, Char,” he said darkly, before the tunnel widened out into a sandy-floored cavern with a thin crack at one end, through which a greying predawn light filtered. It was dry as a bone down here, but it was also as hot as a summer’s day.
“Hear me students, through that crack is one of the entrances to the dragon crater,” Feodor said. “I want you all to suit up in Protector’s gear, and I have instructions from the Abbot that you are to be in groups of three, two students with goads, and one student with these iron harnesses.” Feodor gestured to the hand carts that a group of silent monks were unpacking as he spoke.
From the wooden boxes came heavy leather jerkins, arm and leg greaves, and leather caps that would do nothing to protect our heads from a dragon bite. Finally, the monks laid the eight-foot-long metal goads in two piles on the ground. Terrence immediately picked up a goad experimentally, shoving its wide metal barbs f
orward, as if catching a dragon leg, arm, or neck. Next to them sat piles of heavy, clanking iron chains.
“Char…?” Neill looked at me in alarm.
“I know, this is madness,” I hissed.
“The idea,”--Feodor continued as we dressed ourselves, layering as much scorn and sarcasm into the word ‘idea’ as was possible--“is to use the goad to pin the dragon down, and then one more student uses those heavy iron chains to lock around their necks, like halters for horses.” Feodor looked at the silent, cold-eyed, black-robed monks who had helped push the carts down. Were they all the Abbot’s henchmen? Would they brook any rebellion from us at this madness?
“But,” Feodor continued. “I want every student to be as careful as possible, and if, for one second you think that the dragon will not respond well or I tell you I do not like what you are doing, then instantly drop your tools and make your way as fast as you can back here. Understand me, everyone?” He glared at us all. I think it was then that the sheer insanity of what we were trying began to sink in with the others. Dorf looked pale with fright as did Maxal, but Lila beside me looked fierce.
I have to do something, or else this will be a bloodbath. “Sir?” I struck up my hand and broke the fearful silence. “I want to volunteer to go first.”
Feodor held my gaze for a moment, before nodding. “Very well. Perhaps it is only right that the students with apparently any experience of dragon-riding goes first. Torvald, you’re with her,” he barked at Neill, who nodded.
“And Lila,” I said impetuously. She’s the only one besides Neill I would trust to be able to either run or fight at my side when an angry dragon attacks.
Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2) Page 5
