“We should know the consequences of what will happen if the monastery tries to use the dragons without bonding with them,” I said out loud to the group, having to raise my voice a little over the clang of pots and shouts from the kitchen beyond.
“Zaxx will attack anyone who interferes with his dragons,” Neill said darkly. “And he may attack the dragons who reach out to us as well.”
“Oh no!” Lila said with a gasp. “You mean he might go after my dragon?”
I had to nod, though secretly I was pleased Lila had said ‘my dragon.’ It was time that she knew. “Lila, Sigrid, Dorf… There’s something else you have to hear.” I took a breath, looking at their round and worried faces. “The Abbot is colluding with Zaxx to decide which dragons to kill.”
“What?” Both Dorf and Lila said at once.
“I know, it sounds crazy, but Neill heard it himself, and Monk Feodor as much as told us that was the case. For some reason, the Abbot demands certain dragons to die, and we think Zaxx attacks the dragons he doesn’t like or who resist him--with the Abbot’s help. The Draconis Order isn’t here to protect the Dragons, it’s here to farm them.” Even saying the last sentence felt terrible, and the words threatened to twist in my mouth.
“Farm them for what?” Dorf asked, his face pinched and scared.
“I’m not sure as yet,” I said. It felt like we didn’t have all of the pieces of what was going on here. “But think about it: we know the monks feed them and so they don’t go out and hunt – or only very rarely. That keeps them in the crater. And the monks use the dragon pipes to subdue them when they’re being too rowdy – and decide which healthy dragons should die. That doesn’t sound like they’re celebrating or learning from the dragons at all, does it? It’s what you do to dangerous cattle.” I felt sick.
“That’s awful,” the Raider girl was the first to say, and I found myself smiling grimly. She understood now, just as I and Neill did, that these dragons were in danger, and we were the only ones who could help them.
“We have to do something,” Lila said.
“Yes, we do. We are.” I nodded to Neill, who was giving me a grim smile, before clearing his throat and taking over.
“There are tunnels all the way through Mount Hammal, and I know there is another way into the crater, because just before the battle with my brothers I saw Zaxx and the Abbot in there. We just have to find it. That’s why we need all of you-- next time we’re not going to try and climb down into the crater. We’re going to try and find a way through the tunnels,” Neill said.
“Next time?” Lila asked, and I remembered that we hadn’t managed to invite the Raider girl to come with us on our first abortive attempt to rescue some dragon eggs.
“We snuck into the crater, in the early morning,” I said to the girl, watching as her eyes sparked with enthusiasm for the idea. “We’re going to try and rescue some of those dragon eggs, and get them away from Zaxx and the Abbot’s control.”
“Yes!” Lila said, looking at her hands as she must be remembering the dragon she had met.
“With Zaxx in them as well?” Sigrid said doubtfully.
“Yes.” I nodded. Please don’t let me down now, Sigrid! “I need you,” I said to her a little quieter, and Sigrid pouted in that characteristic scornful Fenn way, before nodding.
“Okay. I’m in. This is much more exciting than studying anyway.” She sighed dramatically.
“And me,” Lila said automatically. “I’m not afraid of Zaxx.”
“You should be,” Neill pointed out before I could hush him.
“Tonight,” I said. “We meet here, and we go out to find the tunnels again. I think I know the way in, but I don’t know how Feodor opened the door.”
“Why don’t we just ask him?” Sigrid said. “He seems the nicest of the teachers so far.”
No way. “Too risky.” I shot down the idea, as the other faces of the students looked at me. “Feodor has been a monk here for a long time, how do we know whether he’ll side with us? And…” I hesitated, remembering the hypnotizing powers the Abbot Ansall had over me. “And I remember what the Abbot made me do.” Like defending the tower from Neill, my friend – even drawing a sword against him! “If Feodor falls under the Abbot’s power, then our plans will be ruined…” I looked up to find Neill giving me a concerned stare. It made me embarrassed for what I had done, and that made me angry. “It won’t happen again,” I said, as much to Neill as to the rest of the students.
“I can look in the libraries for anything,” Dorf spoke up, surprising me. “I can always sneak food from the kitchens later, after we get back, as Nan knows me,” he said with a guilty smile. “And no one here knows the libraries as well as me apart from Maxal.”
Ah, Maxal, I thought. The small spooky kid was another one who we should have invited, despite Neill’s suspicion of him. Maxal had helped me find the Abbot’s secret meeting. And he was also one of the most powerful dragon Mages-in-training in our classes before. He could be a good ally – if we could rely on him. “That’s a point, Dorf – do you think we can trust him to keep his mouth shut?”
“Maxal is my friend,” Dorf said simply. It seemed good enough reason to me, especially combined with the way he’d pointed me to the Abbot’s secret meeting.
“But he’s a Mage-in-training,” Neill said abruptly.
“So am I,” I pointed out. What was wrong with Neill? Why was he suddenly arguing with me? I watched as the boy whom I had thought was my friend looked at his hands and then at his boots, before he finally spoke.
“I know, but after what the Abbot did to you the last time… he hypnotized you,” Neill said through gritted teeth. “It was terrible. You wouldn’t listen to me, you didn’t know that I was your friend… and if he did that to you, he could do it to Maxal.”
“It’s okay, I don’t think the Abbot will do that again,” I said, a little shocked at how hurt Neill had been feeling.
“You don’t think the Abbot can do what again?” A new voice broke into our conversation, and I looked up, over the giant winter kale and the straggling shrub of pea plants to see none other than spooky Maxal Ganna standing there, regarding us seriously and warily.
How long has he been standing there? Has he heard our plans? I thought in alarm.
“Ask us to go back into the dragon crater to harness the dragons,” Neill cut in, standing up from the stone bench. We students weren’t allowed to carry any weapons, but Neill’s relative size and broader shoulders already made it clear that he could overpower the little boy should he want to.
Neill… I wanted to stop him.
“What are you all doing here?” Maxal said, one pale hand picking a pea pod from the nearby plant and carefully opening it with a slit of his thumbnail down the body. Where others might eagerly pop the delicious bright green orbs into their mouth, Maxal only looked at the splayed contents as if it were a creature or a machine whose inner workings he was examining.
“We’re just talking,” I said, standing up and not realizing that I still had the stolen book in my hands.
“Ah, Versi’s Voyage,” Maxal said, his wide eyes looking out at me from the pale, shaved-bald head. “It was my one of my favorites too, for a while. Can I read you the best bit?” He offered a hand, and I heard a low warning cough from Neill beside me, but what could I do? If he decided to keep it or run off with it or tell one of the monks I’d taken it, I was sure that Neill or I could catch him.
“Sure,” I said, handing over the book, and watching as the boy eagerly flipped through the pages skim-reading this and that passage until he found the entry that he wanted.
“Ah yes, here… ‘The lights were low, and the sun had only just gone down when they lit the sacrificial bonfires. I waited with the matrons and elderly folk – annoyed at first that they thought that I, Versi, was either too elderly or too infirm to join in this special ritual, but as the tribe seemed to think that I was a traveling madman then perhaps it was no great shock…. Just as the
last rays of the sun fell, the youths chosen for the coming of age ceremony were led out and told to run down through the avenue of bonfires, holding their own torch aloft, calling out their challenge… We all stood with baited breath, waiting for the moment. In a rush, one of the youths began his race towards manhood, hollering and hooting as he ran, and, in wonder I heard an answering shriek from the dark airs above us, as a shadow detached itself from the cliff and swept over our heads on giant wings. I waited to hear the scream, but there was none. Only a momentary gasp and the torch fell to the floor out there, past the bonfires. The boy was gone. The dragon had taken him.’”
Maxal looked up at me with wonderment in my disturbed face. “I don’t think I understand it,” I said awkwardly, remembering what the Abbot had said, about the Great Dragons of the south eating humans. Is that what Versi had just seen? I couldn’t believe it. Not Paxala. She would never…
“Did that boy just sacrifice himself to the dragon as food?” Sigrid asked with a disgusted look on her face.
Maxal shrugged. “Some people think so. That’s why no one reads Versi anymore. They think that he was glorifying in dragon-worship, and a traitor to his own kind.”
“Some people think so?” I pointed out. “What do the others say?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Some nonsense about humans and dragons flying off into the sunset together,” Maxal said awkwardly, looking embarrassed at the poetic notion. “My father always thought I was a fool for believing as a child that the dragon just picked up the human and they became the best of friends. But it does remind me…” I saw Maxal look thoughtfully at Neill, “What your dragon did to Neill during the battle, she landed, allowing Neill to clamber on, almost as if she were choosing Neill, and not Neill commanding her…”
But that is what they can do… I thought, looking at Maxal with a new light. Maybe he did see dragons in the same way that I did, despite being from a Draconis Order family. That passage gave me an idea… I suddenly had a mental image of all of the good dragons of the crater, flying over the heads of the students, and then, as fast as lightning, one might swoop down, choosing the particular human that it wanted to work with. What if there had been a way in the past to allow the dragons to choose their humans, and for their humans to ride them? Could we replicate what Versi saw – but only using it as a means to bond a dragon and a human together?
“Well, yes, very nice description, if a little creepy,” Neill said, plucking Versi’s Voyage out from Maxal’s un-protesting fingers. “And why are you out here in the Kitchen Gardens, can I ask?”
“I’m here to give a message to Char.” Maxal’s smile collapsed in on itself, and eager, dragon-dreaming boy became once again the spooky, serious, and grim youth once more. “It’s from the Abbot. We’re to have our first Mage’s meditation after dinner tonight but he wants me to bring you to him straight away, Char…” Maxal looked at me with wide eyes, frowning with worry, as if he felt nervous giving me this message. Did he not want to hurt my feelings? Was he scared of what reaction I might have? Or was it just that we were having our first training since before the battle? But small Maxal ducked his head and muttered to his feet.
“Uh… We’d better be going,” he said, casting a look at the collection of students, still sitting in the garden around us. “I’ll wait for you at the garden gate,” he said awkwardly, and left. I felt a momentary flash of sadness for the small boy. He seemed so alone – but I also didn’t know how much I could trust him.
“Char, don’t go…” Neill stiffened at my side.
The temperature in the garden seemed to have suddenly dropped. I was scared. Scared of what Maxal might reveal to the Abbot. Scared of what the Abbot would do to me, and how much worse my punishment might be if he learned I’d taken a library book on top of everything else. If he could make me take leave of my senses before, then what would he do now that he knew that I defied him and had flown a dragon and continued to break his rules?
“Nothing.” I felt the warm buzz of thought in the back of my mind that came from Paxala. I could feel her stretching long muscles and shaking herself from her slumber. “I am here, and I will stand guard tonight. If I feel the Abbot’s dirty little mind anywhere near yours, I will come and tear the tower to pieces, looking for you.”
Well, I could hope that at least she wouldn’t tear the tower down with me inside it, but I guess that there was also little I could do to stop her. For now, I had to obey what the Abbot said, or find a way to refuse, I thought. I had to stay here, to protect Paxala and the other young dragons. I had to learn as much as I could that would help me do that. Or at least keep the Abbot unaware of what I was really up to…
“Neill?” I said, both a request and an apology.
“I’ll feed her,” he said with a sigh, not that it was a chore but because he didn’t want to leave the monastery with me up in the Abbot’s Tower.
“You mean the Crimson Red, the friendly dragon, don’t you? Can I come?” Lila asked excitedly. Her enthusiasm almost swept away any hesitation I felt. It was good to see someone else so happy just at the mere thought of seeing a dragon.
“It’s okay, Neill,” I murmured. “It will do Lila good to have more practice around dragons. Take her with you when you feed Pax.” It was settled, and I turned and walked out of the Kitchen Garden, leaving my scheming and plotting friends to carry on the mission without me.
CHAPTER 8
THE SCROLL
“It’ll be okay,” a voice said at my side as I stood at the foot of the Abbot’s Tower, and I realized that it was Maxal, still standing there after leading me here, despite the fact that he had not been summoned early along with me. He gave me a small, encouraging smile and I realized then that there probably was a lot more to the boy than meets the eye. I remembered him looking so small and alone, walking away from the others before I had caught him up. It made me feel bad.
“Do you…you like the dragons, don’t you?” Something—a hunch, perhaps-- made me ask him outright.
Maxal looked at me with careful eyes, not saying anything at all, but he nodded.
“Then, when this is over – come speak to me,” I whispered, and Maxal nodded seriously back at me, as I made my way inside, alone.
I hadn’t been up here since the battle. That was almost a season ago, and no students had been allowed up here since that night and the tragic ‘accident’ that had claimed the Quartermaster Greer’s life (actually it was Neill trying to defend himself from a homicidal Greer, but no one else knew how the Quartermaster had managed to fall from the heights). I would be the first, and the heavy import of the Abbot’s summons was not lost on me as I spiraled up and up and up the narrow stairs, the window slits revealing the dark mountain and the purpling sky outside so that I felt like I was climbing into the night itself. Finally, my feet hesitated near the top, where the simple wooden door stood ajar, and light and freezing air washed over me.
“You may enter,” said the cold, thin voice of the Abbot from inside, and I stepped around the door to see that the room had changed only in small ways.
The cold and bare stone flags were still there, as was the Abbot’s desk, and the stack of wooden stools upon which we had sometimes been allowed to sit during our Mage classes. The room occupied the very top of the tower, and used to have floor to ceiling high wooden shutters that opened out onto the wild skies beyond, but nothing more. They had gone, replaced with a single metal bar across the window. It wouldn’t stop someone climbing out, but it would stop someone tripping or being thrown out in a brawl.
The Abbot stood beside one of these barred windows, heedless of the cold air. I had the sudden, insane urge to run up behind him and push him, to make all of this stop right now, but by the time I blinked to clear the anger away he had turned, as fast as a snake, and was looking at me with his crystal-sharp eyes. “Nefrette,” he said, not as a greeting or as a question, but instead as an accusation.
“Abbot,” I replied, attempting to keep myself proud a
nd still, though he could probably see my fear. I had seen this man summon black lightning storms out of clear skies (with the help of us magician students, it has to be said), as well as summon and extinguish flame from apparently nowhere.
“Every time there is trouble in this monastery, Nefrette, I look up to see that there is either you or the boy at the bottom of it,” the Abbot said wearily.
What am I supposed to have done now? I bit the inside of my cheek a little nervously. Apart from plotting the liberation of all of the dragons in the crater and stealing library books.
“But now it seems, Nefrette, the trouble that you have caused comes from outside the monastery.” He stared hard at me as I stood in silence. Did he mean Paxala? Had he found out where her lair was?
“Sir?” I asked nervously.
“This,” the Abbot said with a wave of his hand, indicating a roll of paper with multiple ribbons and seals broken across it. “Is a missive from none other than the Royal Prince Vincent, regarding you.”
“Me, sir?” My blood almost went cold. What would the Prince of the Middle Kingdom, my uncle, want with me when he had never once in my life shown any interest in me?
“Yes. You,” the Abbot said with great regret. “It appears that there have been skirmishes in the near highlands, near the town of Faldin’s Bridge, you know it?”
My heart thumped. “I do, your grace. Faldin’s Bridge is the main border between the North and Middle Kingdom.” It was also the place that my father, Prince Lander, said that we must never lose control of if we wanted to survive – it was one of the largest and easiest crossing points of the great river that separated my father’s Northern Kingdom from my uncle’s Middle.
“There is war coming, Nefrette –I’m sure even you can see that. The warlords are jockeying for power, and your father is probing the defenses of our noble Lord Vincent…”
Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2) Page 7
