“Skrechyar!” Zaxx had no hold over Paxala, however, as the Crimson Red made a small half-jump, challenging the much larger Gold. Paxala was mad–we all were--to challenge him.
The wyrm clawed itself out of the earth, and hissed. “That feels better,” he said, taking time to turn his alligator-like head to snap at offending dregs of dead skin and scales, ripping them off with teeth that were as ancient and yellowed as old bones. Zaxx was showing us how nonchalant he was about our presence, exposing the long wattles and folds of his skin to Paxala
She hissed in frustration and eagerness to challenge him, narrowing her gold-green eyes at the one that had killed her parents.
“My child,” Zaxx said again, lifting his great head to regard us all with apparent amusement. “What a pleasure to see you again. Have you brought what I asked you for?” I could feel Zaxx’s words in my mind, and with every breath came the pulse of fear and anxiety. If I had thought that there was a window in my mind that was a place where Paxala and I intertwined, then now I knew that through that window could also peer this monster, pouring fear and self-doubt into my being.
“No,” I said, as much to Zaxx in my mind as to my fears. “Paxala was right. These doubts and thoughts are not mine – they are yours!” With the revelation came my own flood of confidence. I should be proud at having saved Paxala, and standing up to my father, and turning down Tobin Tar, and how close I and Paxala had bonded. We were fast, and we were young, and we were strong.
“You mean the crown?” I asked, my voice hissing with Paxala’s.
Zaxx blinked slowly, turning his gold-filled gaze to look directly at me, and me alone. It was hard to meet the dragon’s unblinking stare, but I did so.
“Girl. What gives you the impression that I was ever, that I would ever, be talking to you?” Zaxx hissed maliciously, and I recoiled.
“But you called me child,” I said in horror, as the full enormity of what Zaxx was suggesting settled on my shoulders.
“Child. Return to me,” Zaxx hissed once more, his great and heavy tail flopping to one side and cracking rocks. Zaxx wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to Paxala.
CHAPTER 24
REVELATIONS
“You are my child. Come home,” Zaxx hissed at my friend, my dragon-sister, the Crimson Red.
Paxala roared in defiance, unwilling to accept whatever Zaxx had to say, as my mind raced.
Could it be true? Could Zaxx the Golden be Paxala’s father? It made perfect sense in some horrible way. Zaxx was the breeding bull of the crater. Any other male dragon in the Crater had to be subordinate, secondary, to Zaxx’s wishes and whims. Would the Bull Golden dragon allow or even tolerate a male Crimson Red, full grown at half the size of him, to even exist, let alone breed within the crater?
Of course, he wouldn’t. So Paxala had to be child of the only bull with enough authority: Zaxx.
“Yes, Paxala. You are my child, and that is why I have suffered your existence out there by the lake, and the pandering of the humans.” Neill looked at me in consternation and worry. He had already drawn his short sword – which wasn’t even as big as one of the bull’s claws. He would be ripped apart in moments.
“Ssssss…” Paxala’s tail whipped with the sound like snapping twigs.
“Did you believe that you had hidden from me? I, the greatest wyrm left in the world? I – who can see for a hundred leagues, and smell for a hundred more? I – who was young when this crater still belched fire? I – who flew between the Three Mountains of our race at the head of his own clutch?”
Three Mountains? What Three Mountains? I thought.
“Ssss,” Zaxx the Mighty hissed. “You can hear the humans chatter too, can you not, Paxala? There is so much that you and they do not know about our race. So much forgotten. So much that I can teach you.”
Paxala snarled in disgust at her father.
“There used to be many more dragon friends when I was young. It was not so unusual for dragons to share their thoughts with humans, but now, so few dragons can do it – just as so few humans can hear us. That is how you know that you are truly my daughter, Paxala, daughter of Zaxx. You have the gifts that I do. You will make a mighty Brood-Queen, one century…”
“Skreckh! Skrekh!” Paxala spoke in pure dragon-tongue, but still I could discern her meaning easily. She was having none of whatever her father wanted to offer her. And why should she? Zaxx killed her mother, and left her to die as a barely-hatched newt out in the wilds. Only now we had something that Zaxx wanted, was he being ‘nice’ to her.
“The crown belongs to us, my daughter. Yours and mine. It was made from the blood of our kin, and it traps within it the power of our noble blood. Give me the crown, Paxala. Tell your human to return it to us.”
My hands shook as I held the heavy burden, and now Paxala herself had turned her head to look at it, her eyes flaring in anger.
“I didn’t know the secret of the Order, before…” I promised her, suddenly terrified that Paxala would take Zaxx’s side and hate me for the sins of the other, long-dead humans.
“Once we have that crown, all of that power will return to us, my daughter. Think of the generations of dragons you will avenging. Think of your place in the world: at the top of it!” Zaxx had lowered his head to hiss sibilantly at her.
Paxala made a sort of short, clucking noise that I hadn’t heard her make before. Had I judged everything so wrong? Why had I never stopped to ask the Crimson Red what she wanted to do with this crown, and this knowledge?
“Open,” Paxala’s voice echoed in my head, but it was not the warm feminine voice that she usually reserved for our inter-thought communications. It was harsh and strong, and full of fire.
Unwilling or unable to disobey her, I let the wrappings fall away to reveal the double steel and gold crown of the old queen, glittering with its large egg-shaped flame-red ruby, and two flanking blue earthstar gems on either side.
“Char…?” Neill said warningly, but how could I refuse Paxala? This monstrosity of metal that I held in my hands did, after all, belong to her in the end. It contained the blood of so many of her kin – not mine. I held it aloft, not knowing what I should do next.
“Throw me the crown,” the Crimson Red said to me, her voice laden with outrage and hatred.
“Char...?” Neill was crossing the space between us, a look of alarm on his face. But I knew that we were defeated. We had tried to confront Zaxx, but the Gold Bull was far wilier and wiser than any of us here. He had outfoxed us and had laid this trap for us, all the while knowing that Paxala was his child, and knowing that Paxala would be furious over what the humans had done to her family. A part of me wondered how long that Zaxx the Golden had been planning this moment. Had he suffered Paxala to live, just so that she could be the one to fly to my father’s keep, retrieving the accursed Great Crown of the dead Queen Delia? Had Zaxx even somehow planned that it would be me, the child of the Northern Prince who would bond with his daughter? Zaxx the Golden had lived for centuries, if not millennia. I had no idea how complicated and deep some of his plans and schemes might be.
“Pax, please – we cannot let Zaxx take this crown. It is too much bad power…” I pleaded with the Crimson Red, but her tail lashed and thumped on the floor impatiently.
“Throw the crown, Char,” the Crimson Red demanded again.
And so I did.
With a cry of anguish, I threw the Great Crown of the dead queen high into the air between us, and in that moment, I threw all of my frustration, despair, and stubbornness at the cruelty of fate. I did not know what would happen next – only that we were all pawns in a game played by dragons and princes.
All I wished was to have Paxala back at my side, with Neill on the other. I don’t even want this crown. I don’t want anything coming between me and my friends. Maybe now Zaxx will leave us alone--
“Char – no!” Neill reached me, but it was too late. The double-crown arched high over our heads.
Paxala screec
hed and moved as fast as a striking snake, a tremor running up the entire length of her body as the fire-sacs at the sides of her neck filled and bulged. She roared a precise jet of molten dragon fire that engulfed the Great Crown, blasting it into the rocks of the mountain with sizzling, boiling clouds of black, acrid smoke.
Purple and blue sparks were released into the depths of the firestorm, there was the sound of shattering gemstones and the crack of pressure-heated rocks as the ground boiled-
A shockwave lifted me and Neill from our feet, and slammed us backwards, tumbling us head over heels until we finally came to rest, our bodies entangled a few hundred meters away. The world whirled, my head ached, I felt sick as I looked back up the slopes to where Zaxx the Golden and Paxala had managed to stand their ground.
“What have you done! You idiot! You ungrateful, selfish, human-tainted idiot!” Zaxx roared in disbelief, liquid fire falling from his jaws in hissing drops.
But something strange was happening amidst the dark smokes and destruction. Where the smoke wavered clear for a brief moment, I could see a crater as big as a horse cart, black with melted minerals and burnt rock. Small, shinier bits of metal glittered around the crater as the Great Crown bubbled and hissed. And in the steams of the crater, there escaped the hisses and whines of a hundred voices, screeches and chirrups, sharp calls and haunting shrieks of dragon voices. It sounded like a terrible, rising wind, and the clouds overhead started to darken and lower.
“Paxala will never call Zaxx father,” the Crimson Red thundered with her young and noble voice. “Paxala has her family.” With that, the Crimson Red leapt into the air and rode the thermals down the mountain slope straight towards us. I was crying in joy and relief, and Neill shaking himself to his feet as the claws of our friend snatched us from the earth, as fast and as quick as a fishing eagle, as she carried us off, towards the monastery...
CHAPTER 25
CONFRONTATIONS
“Skreayar!” Paxala shouted as we swept over the black rocks, the dark stone walls of the Dragon Monastery rose up to meet us. There ahead, was the tall spire of the Abbot’s tower, matched in height only by the Astrographer’s Tower with its strange collection of brass and gold-looking ornaments. Between them the Great Hall; several stories high, with windows like narrow tombstones (only filled with glass, not stone) – and everywhere on the battlements, monks running.
“They’ve seen us,” Neill stated the obvious, his brow furrowed. I could tell that he was thinking exactly the same as I was. What was going to happen next? Had we misjudged this so badly?
“Pax…” I reached out to the dragon beneath me in my mind, and I felt in return a hot incandescence – a fire like that which I hadn’t felt before. Was she angry with me? With all of us humans for what we had done to her kin? “Paxala, I am so sorry, about everything,” I thought. “I just wanted to keep you safe. I didn’t know that Zaxx was your father…” Even though Zaxx was terrible; a brute, even—I didn’t want to ask Paxala to fight him. How could I ask a daughter to fight her father, when I knew just what turmoil and hurt was in my own heart?
Again, fiery rage, hurtful feelings, and anger from the dragon. But she was flying towards the monastery, and she wasn’t throwing us off of her back (which she could easily do if she wanted, I realized).
Behind us, the ridgeline of the mountain was engulfed in smoke and flame as Zaxx the Golden roared in rage at what his daughter had done. I had never seen the bull fully enraged, and sounds of his thundering calls were booming down the mountain. What will he do now? I was terrified that the Gold would take out his rage against the smaller dragons. He had promised me that if I did not return the crown to him he would take his revenge against the younger dragons, against the students, against everyone.
“I will stop him.” Paxala’s voice in my mind.
How? I thought back at her, but I could feel from the white-hot fury of the Crimson Red that she would brook no argument.
Ahead of us, on the battlement walls, the older black-clad monks of the Draconis Order were assembling, directed by a figure that I recognized even from this distance: the hunched and gangly form of Monk Olan.
“Archers! I need archers!” the little man was baying, as four or five monks raised short bows towards us.
There was a convulsion from inside the dragon beneath us, as once again she poured fire out – but not towards her attackers, but instead, towards the walls below them. With a plume of smoke and steam, the walls were engulfed – we heard shouts, and the monks fell back as Paxala used the rising thermal to catch her wings and land as gracefully as a bird of prey. She suddenly swung her head at the fleeing monks, bellowing her rage and hatred at what they had been complicit in. One of them jumped from the walls, to land on the stacked straw and hay carts below.
“The dragon’s gone mad! It’ll kill us all!” I heard Olan wail in terror (from the far safety of the next section of wall, I saw) and run in the direction of the dragon pipes.
“Don’t worry about Paxala!” Neill shouted angrily, already clambering from her back to leap onto the walls of the monastery. “It’s that dragon up there that you really have to worry about.” He gestured above us all, up to the ridge where Zaxx was thrashing in frenzy and fire. Neill strode towards the nearest monks, his short sword lowered but clearly warning them not to attack.
That’s the dragon that we all have to worry about, I thought, unwilling to get down from Paxala’s neck.
“Leave me, Char. This is something that I have to do.” Paxala’s voice in my mind was sharp, and I felt hurt by her sudden insistence on independence. Immediately, however, I felt bad for thinking this. Hadn’t I been feeling hurt over my own father’s insistence to see me as a tool? Didn’t I want to be the one to confront him, alone?
“But I don’t want you to be hurt,” I thought at her, dismayed. “How can I let you do this alone?”
“Because I am fast. Very fast. I will travel to the crater to tell the other dragons what I have learned. That the Draconis Order of old has been using their eggs for their foul magics. They will need to hear it from me in person, or else they will not believe me. This is dragon business, Char, and I must do this. They will rise up against Zaxx, I am sure,” Paxala said. “It will take too long to introduce you as well, and get the brood mothers to respect you…” She flicked her wings in impatience.
“But what if Zaxx comes for you?” I said.
“When he comes for me,” the Crimson Red corrected. “I will lead him away from the crater. As you said: I am faster than the bull. I can out-fly him.” And then the Crimson Red said something that went straight through me, straight to my heart. “Trust me, sister-Char. Just as I have trusted you to guide me, so you will have to trust me.”
“And if you need me, Paxala? Will you call?” I asked, my heart in my chest.
“That is what friends do.” There was another roar from the mountain top, and a sound like a snap of thunder as a giant shape emerged from the smoke heading downwards towards us. “Now get off me, sister-Char. I must put right what my father has done wrong.”
This time, I did as the Crimson Red had asked of me, and I slid from her neck to her shoulder, elbow, foot-claws and to the stone beneath. A sudden wave of dizziness as my body once again was on solid ground after all of that frantic flying, and then a rush of wind-blast as Paxala leapt from the battlements behind me. She shot as fast as an arrow towards the crater, the smoke rolling around her wings.
“Char!” Neill was calling, pointing back towards the monastery grounds, where a large delegation of Draconis Monks headed towards us across the courtyard, and, at their head was the Abbot Ansall.
“I see him,” I said, wondering what I was going to say, just as the air shook with the sound of the dragon pipes being played from the Astrographer’s Tower.
The pipes were so raucously loud that they even hurt my ears, and several of the monks below us flinched.
“Neill?” I called in alarm, thinking of how the monks us
ed the dragon pipes to try and subdue the dragons in the crater – their ears were so sensitive that the monks had found a way to use the brass pipes to drive them back when it was feeding time. “We need to direct the pipes on Zaxx – but somehow not distract Paxala!” I shouted.
“I got it, Char.” Neill was nodding as he ran down the battlements towards the Astrographer’s Tower. I had no idea how he was going to separate out the pipe blasts, but as I saw him running away from me – I knew that I could trust him. Just as I could trust Paxala to do what she said she would. Once again, I had that brief feeling of connection that I had whilst we were flying together; that I and the Crimson Red were one, and together with Neill we were all a part of one, larger, working unit.
Together, I thought.
“Together,” echoed in my mind from the distant Paxala.
“Char Nefrette!” shouted a voice from below me. Looking down, I saw that it was the Abbot below me. “What have you done? Zaxx the Golden has arisen from his crater! He is marching on the monastery, even now!”
From the sounds of the thundering roars and scraping claws like steel on shields, I knew full well what Zaxx the Golden was about to do. He was climbing down the mountain side towards us like a slow avalanche of muscle, claws, and talons. But he wasn’t flying, I saw, his wings barely more than weakened stubs from centuries of worming his way through the mountain. He can’t fly. The Gold can’t fly. I thought in sudden hope. It would take him a little while to get down here. Not enough time to lay traps or set defenses perhaps, but enough time to raise the warning. I turned back to the Abbot, and as my eyes fell on him I was filled with rage and disgust.
“I know what you are, Abbot. I know what you have done!” I shouted down to him, pointing an accusing figure at the thin leader of the monastery. “The Draconis Order is built on the blood of dead dragons! You used their blood for your terrible rituals and magics – that is the secret of the Draconis Order!”
Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2) Page 23
