“And why not? Am I not strong? Am I not impressive?” Paxala crowed in my mind, holding her wings out in a half-fan.
Ugh, I thought. Great, all I needed was a pompous, arrogant show-off for a dragon friend. I would have found the whole situation funny, were it not for the look of delight on my father’s face. He wanted her as some sort of war machine, like a cart or a catapult or a prize stallion. Not for herself.
“She’ll not fight for you, father,” I said quickly, trying to sound as fierce as the dragon was beside us.
“No, but she will fight for you, won’t she, my princess?” my father said, not in a cruel way, but in that calculating tone that I knew meant that he was thinking about maps and tokens and strategies. I snorted in disgust, shaking my head at my father’s ignorance.
“It doesn’t work like that father, it won’t work like that.” I said heavily. Besides, this dragon and I had other things to do, not stay out here in the north – no matter how beautiful it was. My heart thought of Lila and her young Blue dragon, of my friend Sigrid, of little Maxal Ganna and Dorf and all of the other dragons in the crater. It was seeing the Mount Hammal from way up there above the clouds, seeing how it was so close in dragon terms, and also so big in human terms. It was the most important thing in all of this; I had a rare moment of insight.
The Three Kingdoms will rise and fall, but the dragons and the Dragon Mountain will still be there, I knew. We humans and dragons need to learn how to live together. No matter how many wars went on around us…
“We’ll see about that, my daughter,” father was saying, as Paxala sensed my unease and snuffed at the air over my head.
“Shall we fly away home now, Char? I left Neill in a tree not far away,” she asked, and I was sorely tempted to say yes, but in order to do that I would also needed to be able to bring the old queen’s crown to Zaxx. That was the deal that I had struck, and I knew instinctively that to break a contract with a dragon would have dire consequences indeed.
“No,” I shook my head. “Not yet, anyway.”
At that, Paxala leapt into the airs over our head, and, with a victorious squawk, she flapped lazily to the edges of the forests.
“Where is she going? Where is the dragon going?” my father asked, irritation lacing his words.
“Like I said earlier, father. You cannot order a dragon to do anything. No one commands them but themselves.”
“Hm.” My father stood on the roadside and looked calculatingly at the sight of the disappearing Crimson Red, and I didn’t wish to know just what schemes and plans he was hatching, before he ordered the bodies buried and the rest of the caravan of people to assemble and resume our journey. Another day in the north, another skirmish.
CHAPTER 14
THE QUEEN’S KEEP
My father’s keep was one of the great wonders of the Northern Kingdom. No need for gatehouses or guard towers, as the entire building was a dark and imposing tower, with deep crenulations across its top. Its ten stories rose high above the village clustered at its feet like one of those fairy tale giants that my mother used to scare me with stories about. Made from a heavy, pitted sort of black-red granite that was foreign to these hills, there had long been controversy over how the old queen had got the rock here to build the fortress.
It had taken us a day of careful trudging to get this far, with my brother Wurgan and his mounted troops clearing the road ahead of us of any impediments, merchants, wagons, or bandits. Now that we were finally here, it felt strange to be seeing the place of my birth once more.
“Good to be home, is it?” Wurgan said at my side, and I could only shrug in my seat. Actually, I was surprised at how little I reacted to seeing this place again, I thought, but I still nodded and gave him a wan smile.
I guess that it did feel good in a little way, to smell the same old smell of charcoal and roasting meat, with that hint of fresh pine and cedar sap that seemed omnipresent up here in the Northern Kingdom.
But it wasn’t flying, I thought.
In fact, the entire keep seemed the antithesis of that freedom that I had experienced above the clouds. I had to find the old queen’s crown, and once I had ensured the safety of my friends—then I would think about freedom.
I stared at the keep again, wondering if the secret to its construction was the Great Crown. Maybe the queen just conjured the rocks up here with nothing but her mind, I thought, scoffing only slightly. After all, I had seen— had been a part of— the Abbot’s Draconis Mages in-training, and had helped him summon a mighty storm to drive away the Sons of Torvald when they had laid siege to the Order Monastery. If the Abbot could do that, who knows what the old queen could have done?
“Brother?” I asked Wurgan as we rode at a sedate pace (giving the people time to see the triumphant return of the daughter of Prince Lander, I suppose).
“Yes, sister?” he said, his face lowered in thought as we rose up through the gates and the packed-dirt streets beyond.
“Do you know anything about father’s keep? Queen’s Keep?” I asked lightly. “Being away from it has made me kind of look at it again in a new light.”
“Huh? More impressive than the monastery, you mean?” Wurgan chuckled. “Not much. Father doesn’t even use the half of it, but has it locked off.”
“Really, why not use it?” I asked.
“Oh, he claims he doesn’t have the guards, but every boy and girl in the town here would willingly give up anything to work in the keep as a prince’s guard.” Wurgan sighed, as if this matter had long been a bone of contention between the two of them. There was much I didn’t know of what had been happening here in the north, in my home while I had been away.
“So, you mean to say that he just doesn’t want to use parts of the keep?” I asked him. “It just seems a bit odd to me, that’s all.”
“You’re telling me.” Wurgan laughed. “We’re on the verge of war with the Middle Kingdom, and we need every guard and soldier training that we can, and we could store weapons and armor, or stockpile food if we might need it, or run classes for the new recruits. It’s better to be overprepared, as our father used to say.”
I nodded. It was one of the many little sayings and quotes my father had handed out as if they were sweets when I was a child.
Not that they were ever particularly meant for me, I thought, remembering how my father would let me learn horse riding or tracking or hunting along with Wurgan, but whenever I wanted to learn any of the more exciting skills: sword-fighting or archery or close combat, then I would have to sneak off to my mother’s people rather than to him or any of his guards.
Even so, the clans only ever let me learn how to use a bow, in case they angered my father. I sighed.
“Oh,” my brother said gravely.
“What?” I frowned at him as we crossed the main plaza of the town, heading up through streets lined with houses, the old style thatched and wood-chipped long houses of the north, giving way to the stone and white-lime render style of the Middle Kingdom the closer we got to the Queen’s Keep itself. I wondered what father thought of this new ‘comfortable’ trend of the south creeping up here to the north.
“Well, you may have been away to the south, living amongst Middle Kingdomers and learning monkish ways, but I still know when my sister is upset,” Wurgan said. “I know that Father is difficult and that he has always been protective of you. But here’s my advice, if you will hear it: let the past be the past, Char. Try to get on with Father as your own woman now. You will find that he’s changed.”
“He hasn’t seemed it so far,” I said. “Did you know that he was getting Lady Bel and the others to help arrange my marriage?”
“Ah.” My older brother had the decency to look ashamed, at least.
“What? You pig!” I punched, hard, in the shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me? You know that’s never going to happen, right? I won’t be sold off like some prize piece of cattle, just because my father wills it.”
All I wanted was to be b
ack up there, flying on Pax. The memory of that freedom – as terrifying as it was to be in a fight with the wild dragons at the same time – was all that was keeping me civil right now.
How is Paxala doing? Where are they right now? How is Neill? I thought as we moved forward.
Our procession had crossed to the main gates which had been drawn back: a metal portcullis was winched up and locked in place, and double wooden doors had been pulled open to reveal the large cobbled entrance hall. We dismounted before going inside, Wurgan looking worriedly at the others around us.
“Keep your caterwauling to yourself, sister. You don’t want the others thinking that there’s trouble in the family,” he said casually as he patted the horse.
“There bloody well is going to be trouble in his family, if you all expect me to marry some fat chieftain from the village!” I shouted, causing a tut from Lady Bel and a few amused chortles from some of the door guards.
“Sister!” Wurgan hissed in alarm. “Have you even met Tobin Tar yet?”
Tobin. So that was the name of the one they all wanted me to marry, was it? “No,” I said, throwing off my cloak and thumping it into the waiting hands of a gate guard come to help (and to eavesdrop I imagine on what will be some prime gossip back in the mess hall). “And, quite frankly, brother mine? I don’t want to either!” I said in a huff, turning to smartly walk around the guard and towards the doors into the inner rooms of the keep.
“Lady Nefrette!” one of the guards was saying, not one that I recognized, a look of urgent panic on his face. “You still have your weapon belt, lady, your father has planned a feast and a display….”
“I know where my old rooms are, thanks,” I said tartly, ignoring his frantic looks as I ignored his advice and kept my weapons belt and my long boots on. If I was supposed to be a princess of this kingdom – even a bastard one – then I would have to start acting like it, I thought. And that meant that no one got to tell me what to wear – or whom to marry.
I was fuming as I followed my memories through the keep, up the stairs to a different gallery that overlooked an interior hall, past a row of gated-doors that had been sealed off with locks, and past some more guards to the area of the Queen’s Keep where the royal rooms were. The tapestries got finer, the hallways grew a little grander, and even the guards seemed a bit sharper as they nodded, bowed, or saluted me as I stormed past.
“Char...?” said a voice from behind me, as a figure emerged from one of the royal rooms.
My heart did that little tumble that it did whenever I flew on Paxala, and somewhere, either far above me or in the depths of my mind I heard a chirrup of dragon call as Paxala shared my emotion. “Mother?” I said, turning to see my mother, the mountain-wife of Prince Lander; Galette Nefrette.
My mother wasn’t a tall woman like my father’s ‘official’ Northlander wife Odette. She also wasn’t as thin-limbed as the scraped and pinched woman who shared my father’s throne. She was small in the way that many of the mountain folk were, and she had hair that was the lightest blonde so as to be almost white (my platinum white was a little stronger than hers). She had a smattering of freckles across her face, and large, deep brown eyes that regarded me kindly. “Little Hawk,” she murmured her baby name for me, and I found that I had crossed the intervening space and she was enfolding me with her strong arms.
She smelled of mountain heather and a touch of cedar – just like always, and, if her strong limbs, used to climbing and hunting and riding had become a little softer in the two years that I had been away, it only made her the warmer to me.
She wore a deep blue and green gown, which I knew that she must hate, as she had always preferred the sturdy breeches, jerkins and boots of the mountain folk, but she was also always good at fitting into court customs when she needed to.
“I’m so glad to see you,” I said, my heart thumping in my chest. I had been worried that my mother wouldn’t even be here, as she spent half of her time up in the mountains with her own people.
“There, now.” My mother shushed me as we broke our embrace, and we regarded each other in that examining way people do when they haven’t seen each other for a long time. “You’ll have me crying – and we can’t have that, can we?” my mother said, one of her easy smiles appearing over her features. My mother was always easy to get on with, everyone said so – even the more ‘civilized’ Northlanders.
“Mother – there is so much to tell you,” I began, but my mother shook her head quickly. One abrupt nod that cut off my talking.
“We’ll get to that later. Much later,” she said, a hint of gravity to her voice. “I just wanted a moment to greet you as a mother should greet her child, before the court takes over.”
The court. Ah yes, with her words, the thoughts of my impending marriage slammed home, upsetting my previous good mood. My mother must have seen my face drop, as she said quickly, “Now, Char… I know you have a temper on you – as my father said I had the same, if you would believe.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “But at least take this advice: Take no decision, make no judgments of what you see and hear here, not yet. Not until the excitement of your dragon dies down.”
What did she mean by that? I thought. That I shouldn’t marry Tobin Tar, or that I shouldn’t speak out against it? “Mother?” I started to ask, but once again she cut me off.
“These are trying times,” she said. “Trying for everyone. Your father is trying his best to repel your uncle, and there is a lot of unrest. Just try to keep your own counsel, for the moment…” She gave me an encouraging smile, but it made me feel a little upset and annoyed. Was my mother chiding me, straight away, the first time that I saw her? I thought, as there was a sound of shuffling and another figure appeared in the corridor. A guard wearing heavy leathers.
“Greetings, daughter,” my mother said more formally, and inclined her head. “It is so pleasing to have you here at last. Maybe one day soon we will go up into the mountains again.”
“I hope so,” I answered, feeling even more troubled as my mother took her leave, returning to her room and the guard, and leaving me to go the rest of the way to my old rooms.
Let’s just hope that it isn’t my rooms that father decided to block off as well, I thought, angry at my brother and my father both, but not angry enough so that I wasn’t thinking about the mission I had to fulfill.
Father had sealed off parts of the keep. Could they be the same parts of the keep that might hide the Queen’s crown?
My old suite was just as I had left it almost four years ago. The door was stiff, but the guard at the door dutifully unlocked it for me, as I walked into my stone rooms in the rear corner of the keep, with views of the mountains and the wilds beyond. They were three large, separate rooms: a bedroom, a lounge, and a study with all my old furniture and wall hangings. The black bear rug on the floor with its almost cute gawky snarl was still there, as was the old wooden writing desk where I had carefully graffitied arrows, mountains, and dragons. The rooms looked large compared to the tiny stone dormitory I shared with Sigrid at the monastery but they also strangely looked small to my eyes; as if all of the chairs, wardrobes and desks were now a size too small for me. As I looked at the hanging by the side of the small fireplace, a tapestry of a fantastical castle with long towers and with a sky whose clouds were perfect round blobs, it seemed to me childish and stupid. The world wasn’t like that. Princesses might live in castles, but castles were boring places where you were married off to some warrior with a bit of a noble name. The world out there, outside the tapestry, had far better, exciting things like dragons and adventure.
With a kick and a shove I managed to barge open the lounge’s large wooden shutters to reveal the old stone balcony on the far side. The breeze was cold as the high mountain airs washed off the ice plains and ravines above down and into the room – but it felt good at the same time, it reminded me of the air, and of being free as I breathed in deep.
CHAPTER 15
NEILL,
ON THE OUTSIDE
“I know, Pax, I know…” I said wearily, looking down at the black square building that stood in the center of the town below. We were standing on a small escarpment that overlooked the town, with wooded hills on either side, and a thin trickle of a river that meandered towards a river gate below. Beneath us was spread out Queen’s Keep and Lander’s estate-town, with smoke rising from the rooftops, and the distant sounds of people calling and shouting as they went about their daily business.
The Crimson Red chirruped in a huffy sort of way. I didn’t need to be connected to her mind in order to know that she was annoyed at having to be stuck out here with me, when she would much rather be with Char, wherever she was.
“Well, you and me both, Pax.” I sighed wearily, kicking my heels on the dry ground. Paxala had picked me up from my tree perch where she had left me, heaving and huffing with exhilaration, so pleased with herself that it had been almost impossible to be angry with her. Still, I wish she wouldn’t take it upon herself to fly off to Char’s aid like that, without me.
“I know that you are a dragon, Pax, and a very mighty one at that,” I nodded in her direction (and from her perch on the rocks I heard an answering, appreciative purr) “but you really do have to learn how to collaborate if we are ever to beat Zaxx,” I informed her.
“Hsss!” the Crimson red made a rattling, annoyed sound and lashed her tail (breaking a small pine sapling behind her).
“It’s true, Pax, I mean it,” I lectured, knowing that she was probably not even going to spend a blind bit of difference, but that didn’t stop me. “I know you just want to defend Char, but we have to work together,” I said carefully. If there was one thing that I had learned from my father and my older brothers, then it was that you needed allies in order to win a campaign. You couldn’t send one man into a battle alone, and we can’t send one dragon to defeat Zaxx.
Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2) Page 13
