I had found my way to the guard’s station, where two of the largest guards I had ever seen stood. Sneaking through the keep had been relatively easy with the scribing apprentice’s disguise – especially as there were so many counsellors and court advisors running back and forth, trying to sort out the diplomatic mess that was my mother’s great hunt. I was just another errand boy, delivering urgent scrolls or proclamations on an already outrageously urgent and busy day, clearly.
But down here, I knew instinctively that my disguise would not hold. I had decided to shuck off my hood and let my pale hair curl and flow around my shoulders – my own badge of office, it seemed, as the guards had recognized me.
“Lady Char!” the largest and baldest one had said, unsure of whether to snap to attention or not. I had remembered what my father would have done in the situation, and waited, motionless. Seeing my apparent impatience, the guards saluted me. I was still a princess of the realm, after all. And one who knew a dragon!
I had told them that I was to see the Son of Torvald, and that my father and their liege lord realized that I will be able to get the most information out of him.
How had they fallen for that? I had silently thought in surprise, waiting for them to shout for my father or Wurgan to come and apprehend me. But of course, they hadn’t. They didn’t know that I was effectively a house-prisoner here at the keep, and they were not privy to my near-treasonous arguments with my father. As far as they were concerned, I was just another member of the ruling family – albeit a side-lined, barely-noble one.
“As you see fit,” the guard said, and pointed me past the ‘nice’ cells, and down towards the next level, where these lightless cells sat. The rock here was older and the stonework ancient, too. I wondered if these cells dated right back to the old queen’s time.
In the darkness down here there were more prisoners, more dark shuffling and groanings. A few muttered curse words, following from barking shouts from the guards above.
“Neill?” I tried again, whispering into the dark.
“Char…?” a shadow moved in the small cell, and the guttering torch from the corridor beyond illuminated a shape coming towards me from the darkness. It was Neill, looking wan and worried – his brow furrowed in despair.
“Neill – thank the stars, look…” I lifted out the set of heavy iron keys and selected Wurgan’s master.
“You talked to your father?” Neill whispered, his wary face transforming into delight. “I never thought that he would see sense…”
“Well, you were right then,” I said with a grumble, straining at the stiff key before, with a click-thunk it hit true, and the mechanism opened. “We have my brother and mother to thank for this, come – we’re leaving.”
“Yes!” Neill said with a grin that was very infectious. “I knew you would come up with something! Even when all the torches had died, I said to myself that Nefrette girl will find a way around this.”
I shushed him, but felt an odd lurch in my heart at the words, all the same. This was turning out to be a very emotional day for me. First Wurgan and mother, and now Neill. There were few people in my life who believed in me unconditionally.
“Char…” the same, faint pressure in my mind that was almost mournful from the ailing dragon above.
“Hold strong, my heart – I am coming!” Of course, Paxala always had believed in me. With friends and family like this, even despite our terrible surroundings – I felt just a little lucky.
“Wait here, in the shadows while I distract the guards,” I whispered to Neill, after giving him the spare cloak that Wurgan had left. The boy nodded silently, and stepped back into blackness.
“Finished, my lady?” said the bald guard to me as I emerged from the lower cells. His fellow was a little younger, and stood to attention much straighter.
“Yes, thank you.” I nodded, doing my best to once again assume the sort of posture and voice that I had seen my father use with servants. “Now, which of you is going to escort me back up to the keep’s halls?” I said.
“Uh…” the larger, balder, and older one looked confused. “The prince has decreed that we should always have two on duty down here, just in case, milady.”
“Do you not have faith in my father’s cells, guard? Am I in danger right now?” I said immediately, raising one eyebrow and waiting for him to answer me.
“No, I mean, yes – of course I believe in them. You are perfectly safe, my lady…” the younger one was the first to speak.
I sighed. “I see. Well, my father has also decreed that I should never travel alone without a guard, as these are trying times. The guard who was meant to escort me down here was ill, so he will be seeing the inside of a stockade I am sure – but which of you will escort me back up?”
The older looked at the younger, both torn in indecision. “But, your father’s orders, miss…” the younger said.
“Which ones?” I demanded angrily. “The orders he gave to you and the ones that have never changed in all your years of guarding down here, or the ones that he gave to me, his daughter?” I was treading on thin ice here, I knew. I hadn’t been at court or in the keep for a few years now; how much power did the newly arrived bastard daughter of the prince have anymore? I just had to hope that my father’s tight rules and regulations would impel them to action…
“Okay, of course. Vargus?” The older one looked at the younger. “You will stay here on duty, while I run the lady up to the courts…” the larger one said, and I nodded as if that pleased me – but inside I was secretly worried.
One fewer guard for Neill to worry about – but now what was I supposed to do with this big one? It might not take long for my father to realize that I was gone from my room – despite my mother’s and brother’s tricks.
“Very well. Let us go then. Now,” I said, walking ahead and expecting the larger guard to follow me. I heard a quick shuffle, then felt the looming presence of the guard at my shoulder as I marched. We went through the antechamber to the stairs, where I made my way quickly upwards with the large guard stamping heavily on the stairs behind me. At the first landing in the complicated array of stairs, I veered away from the main steps that led straight to the main entrance halls for the keep, even though it was the quicker route to the keep proper. Instead, my steps chose the smaller stairwell that ran the opposite direction, through the warren of service halls for the servants, kitchens, and storerooms.
“Miss…” the guard mumbled in concern at my change of direction.
“I have a question to ask of the cook for today’s great hunt!” I demanded, not pausing as I thought I heard a distant, muffled yelp and a thud from behind us. I think that my escort heard the noise, as he suddenly stopped, but I wouldn’t let him investigate.
“Come on, now! Hurry!” I took the steps two at a time, already half a landing space above him.
“Oh, heck,” the guard muttered behind me as I went faster, taking three steps at a time, my brisk stride turning into a jog.
“Miss! Wait up?” I heard the guard gallantly ask behind me, but I was running now, darting into the first doorway and down the short hall filled with wine cellars, their wooden doors fitted with iron bolts. I tugged on the first, to find the bolts stiff and unmoving. The pounding feet of the guard were following closely up the stairs, and I might just have time…
There! The next door gave way a little easier, and I darted into the cellar, to find myself in a low-ceilinged room, where casks and barrels of wine, ale, and mead were stacked in the cool and dry dark, waiting to be rolled out to the halls. Selecting the darkest corner that I could find, I wedged myself between a barrel and a ceiling-high wine rack, and held my breath.
“My lady?” the muffled voice of the guard called outside in the corridor. Had he seen which one I had gone into?
“Miss? Lady Char?” there was a creak and a click as I heard him trying one door, and then another. “Hey – you! Wait!” There was a thud, a scuffle, and the banging of a door, follow
ed by the sounds of scraping and kicking. My heart pounded. What could be happening? Was I about to be discovered? And by whom?
The door to my cellar clicked and then opened, light flooding into the dark.
“Char?” Neill whispered. Behind him came the banging and rattling of a very large guard stuck behind another bolted door.
“I’m here.” I stood up grinning from ear to ear as I followed him through into the little hallway.
“At least the poor guard won’t die of thirst,” Neill said. “The other one is currently sitting in the same cell that he put me in, with a bang on his head and looking very sorry for himself.” Neill grinned a little sheepishly.
“You did well,” I congratulated him, earning a blush from the Son of Torvald before we were back out into the service stairwell once again, to head upwards this time. Even though I had been away for a long time, the layout of the keep hadn’t changed. The service halls were connected to the warren of corridors and stairwells that tunneled their way through all parts of the Queen’s Keep, behind the grander halls, libraries, audience chambers and living quarters. After several turns and many stairs, we had made our way once again to the internal central stairwell that ran straight to the roof, and down to the old queen’s hidden rooms.
“We’ll just have to hope that father hasn’t placed a permanent guard on duty up there,” I said.
“Why would he?” Neill asked. “Paxala is a dragon. No one’s going to steal her, and if she decided that she wasn’t staying, then I don’t think that there is much that even Prince Lander can do to stop her.” He looked at me with concern. “But – do you think Paxala is able to fly?”
It was a thought that had been worrying me as well. I had been trying to hold onto the shadow of awareness that I had of her now, but every now and again – I guess when the dragon dozed off – it would start to fade back into the terrifying dragon-shaped void that I could not penetrate.
“She is stronger now, in some sense,” I said awkwardly as we climbed.
“In some sense…?” Neill didn’t sound too convinced by that. I didn’t blame him, as neither was I.
“She’s much stronger in my mind than when she was last night, I mean, but she’s hungry, and tired. I told her to not eat the food that my father had left out, nor drink any of the water that had been left. Paxala is hungry and thirsty, so she’s sleeping a lot, but her sickness is starting to fade,” I explained.
“You can hear her again? In your mind?” Neill sounded relieved. “That is good news. I was worried that…”
“Yes,” I said, neither of us wanting to entertain the possibility that the connection that I had with Paxala might in any way be permanently damaged. Luckily, however, no matter how stupid my father had been, the mental connection I had with Paxala was returning, but not quick enough for my liking.
“Up ahead,” Neill nodded, indicating that we were nearly at the top. It was a strange, almost lonely dreamy experience climbing up through the center of the Keep, not seeing or hearing any other soul apart from us two. I knew, rationally, that outside of these sturdy walls that there had to be my father and mother and the Lady Odette, and the guards, and Wurgan, the counsellors and all of the servants going about their lives but we were completely insulated from all of that in here. It was almost like the outside world had faded away, and all of my brothers’ urgent talk of the chaos outside had just been a lurid nightmare.
But here we were at last, the last door. “I’ve got this,” Neill said, and I watched as he sighed through his nose, relaxing his body as he crept to the door, waiting and listening on the other side.
“Neill?”
“Shhh. I’ve got this,” he said. “I’m a Son of Torvald, remember? I was trained to be good at this sort of ambush tactics.”
But, of course, we could just ask Paxala. I reached out to the dragon on the other side of the door. “My sister, how are you? We are here.” I greeted the shadow of the dragon in my head warmly. “Are you guarded? Are there other humans with you?”
“Char. No. Just lots of food I am not allowed to eat, and water I am not allowed to drink.” The Crimson Red sounded annoyed. She must be getting better, I thought with a smirk, as Neill carefully opened the door, raising the small short sword that he had managed to steal from the younger guard and rushing out.
“There’s no one here,” he said after a pause.
“I know,” I sighed as I followed him out, crossing the space to where Paxala had lifted her great snout towards me mournfully. All along the side of the roof were different arrays of grilled, uncooked, or roasted fish (now starting to stink to the high stars, I should add) and giant wooden pails of water. How could my father ever think this was a good idea? I shook my head angrily even as I leaned against the snout of my Paxala.
“Can I eat now?” she asked me morosely.
“After we fly far, far away from here,” I said. “Are you strong enough to?”
“Of course Paxala is strong enough to fly!” The Crimson Red snorted suddenly, causing me to fall backwards against her shoulder. The warmth of her dragon body radiated up into my back. She was getting warmer again, her internal fires rekindled, and I knew that she must be on the mend. Even so, as she took to her four legs, I could still detect a wobble in her legs, and a slight cloudiness to her eyes that meant that she took longer to focus on what was around her.
I will have to be more careful how we treat her, I thought in alarm. She was only a young dragonet still, after all – for all of her great size!
“Char?” Neill called from where he was standing on the parapets of the keep. This high up, the wind was strong, pulling at his hair and his stolen scribe’s robe. I joined him to look down onto my father’s town below us.
“What is it?” I asked, and Neill pointed westwards, to where out bird’s eye view afforded us a clear image of the chaos that my brother had been talking about.
Large throngs of people were clustering to the west of the town, and more were heading towards it every moment by the main road and streets that connected the marketplaces to the western mountain gate. In the large assembly square before the gate there were parked wagons and rearing horses, along with throngs and throngs of people; mostly the clans, but also a few kingdomers with their darker hair and generally more somber clothes. The streets were jam-packed with carts and carriages, and there seemed to be something like a rally happening, as people stood before circles of wagons and lectured, preached, or remonstrated.
“Yes, I know,” I told Neill of my mother’s and my brothers plan, to distract our father so that we could escape.
“Well, thank you, Nefrettes,” Neill said awkwardly, “but it wasn’t just the crowds that I was drawing your attention to.” He pointed to the streets leading up to the mountain gate where lines of cavalry horsemen in my father’s guards were pushing their way through the press. I could see one of the riders in the lead – definitely a soldier of some kind – raised his arm, holding a baton, and I saw it strike downwards with great speed.
“No!” I shouted. “What is that captain doing?” I demanded angrily. “Those are our Northern Kingdom people, our people.”
“If I didn’t know better, I would say that soldier and his knights have been told to stop that great hunt of your mother’s from taking place,” Neill surmised, and I could see his eyes darting for clues about the scene. There was something about the look that reminded me of my father; the way that the Sons of Torvald and Prince Lander both examined and understood battlefields. It made my skin shiver. The cavalry was met by jeers and shouts from the clans’ warriors. I saw cups of water or ale chucked in their direction, and I wondered how long before it was going to be fists.
One impressively large clan chief (Ranuld, I think) had stepped out from the crowd of my mothers’ clansmen and something bellowed back at the knights, and beside him formed up his own burly guard of bear-skin wearing sons.
“We have to stop this,” I said quickly, turning back to rush to Paxa
la, who had turned to sniff the water suspiciously.
“No, Pax! Please, I will ask you to trust me – it is the water and the food that made you lose me, and feel so ill,” I said, reaching her leg and looking up at her annoyed eyes. How did Neill get up onto her back? How come he had never taught me the secret to it?
But Paxala sensed what I wanted, kneeling down on her front legs, and allowing both me and Neill to clamber up her leg spurs to her shoulder, and then to settle in the depressions between her spines at the base of her neck.
“Can we go somewhere there is some real food, now?” Paxala turned her large head on its long, long neck to regard me with almost fevered eyes.
“Yes. But first, there is one more favor I have to ask of you, Paxala,” I said quickly, as the sounds of shouts and jeering chants started up from the mountain gate below. “Please….” I added, knowing that the dragon had every right to refuse my request, seeing as I had been the one who had left her behind at the monastery, and that she had been poisoned all because of her connection to me. I wouldn’t blame her if she just flew off to eat and left us there, to be honest (although I knew that Paxala would never do that).
“What is it this time?” Paxala said in my head to a small snort of flame.
“DIVE!” I hollered, as the dragon swooped high over the town.
“Char doesn’t need to scream,” Paxala advised me in my mind, immediately making me feel stupid.
“Of course, not, I’m sorry,” I offered, but the giddiness of the sudden freedom and the feel of the dragon holding me had just been too great. I was flying again! It wasn’t until I had felt that lurch of fear in my stomach as she had jumped from the tops of the keep, the sudden pull of the earth ahead of us and the whoosh of excitement as her giant, leathery wings had opened that I realized how envious I had been of Neill being the first to ride her, and in having the honor to ride her all the way north to find me.
Even though both Paxala and I still felt a little queasy, a little slow, the worries and concerns of my family lessened as soon as we were up in the air. Maybe it was seeing it all from such great height: it put the rest of my problems--my father’s machinations, my stepmother’s plotting-- all in perspective. Why do we humans have to be so cruel and petty to each other? My heart called out. Why see the dragons as nothing more than trainable monsters? If I could get more people to fly like this, and if I could get more dragons to trust to hold human riders, then people would be less worried about borders and wars and struggling for power. Why worry about who controls what patch of river – if you can fly for countless leagues, to new adventures?
Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2) Page 20
