“Bah!” The Abbot snarled back, raising one hand like a claw towards me. “The magic that you yourself have been trained in? The very same magic that courses through your veins?” His face flushed an angry pinkish-red, and his eyes glittered in fury. “How dare you stand there and defy me. After all that I have taught you?”
“I will never use your tainted magic, old man,” I spat back, looking at his fellow monks who stood around him. “Do the rest of you know where his power comes from? Newts. Hatchlings. Dragon’s blood. Don’t any of you care for the dragons in that crater?”
I saw the ripple of unease spread through the other black-clad Dragon Monks as my words hit home. After all, they had only ever seen the Abbot actually use his magic. And they had been taught to believe that the dragons were nearly godlike, and noble. They knew the truth of what I was saying, they had to!
“Shut up, child. You have no idea of what you speak,” the Abbot snapped at me, and he flexed his hand in the air as his lips curled around the strange words. “Draco Hamba Silencio…”
Something hit me like a cold wave. A feeling of having a heavy blanket thrown over my face as I staggered back from the edge of the parapet, opening and closing my mouth like a landed, gasping fish.
When I tried to call out to the monks, to Neill, no sound escaped my mouth except a brief wheeze of air. I could still breathe, but it was as if my voice became caught in a net any time that I tried to talk. I gasped, panted, and tried again but to no avail.
“There. Now no one has to listen to your treason,” the Abbot said triumphantly, as the sounds of Zaxx’s thunder and roaring only drew closer.
“Monks – get up there and get her, now!”
I had failed again, failed everyone – the students, the monastery—just as I had feared. Everyone was going to die here because of me.
But then, hope kindled as I heard one of the monks say, “What did the student mean, that we’ve been using dragon blood?”
One of the black-robed monks had stopped in front of the Abbot, refusing to follow the others that were even now running up the stone steps towards me.
“I never signed up to butcher dragons,” the monk, a tall, broad man with a long nose said. No one I recognized, but one who clearly knew his right from wrong.
“Idiot!” the Abbot snarled, making another gesture with his crooked-finger hands, and uttering a short, sharp curse. “Flamos!”
I watched in horror as a ball of fiery energy flew from the Abbot’s seemingly empty hands, engulfing the questioning monk’s head as he screamed and staggered back, on fire. There were gasps around him, but the Abbot didn’t stop his tirade. “Obey me!” Ansall shouted. “You will obey me! Do you think that it is easy to control dragons? Do you think that there would not be a price?”
There were gasps and murmurs from around the Abbot, as many more of the elder Draconis Monks arrived in the courtyard, and with them, the students. I saw Dorf and Sigrid standing there, Lila, Maxal – even Terrence. The older Dragon Monks who were running towards me paused, suddenly shocked by what their master had done below. Unable to speak, I drew my knife and crouched, ready to face them if I had to.
“What the girl says is true,” a voice shouted – it was the rich, deep baritone of Monk Feodor, the dragon ‘handler’, striding from the crowd of onlookers as the sky filled with Zaxx’s smoke. “You all know me. And I was there, as well as a number of you, on the last time that the Abbot ordered one of the young taken to the caves beneath the monastery.” I could see the large dragon handler monk slowly raise his arm, for all there to see the white rivers of scars that ran down it like thick cords of rope.
“He did what?” Terrence said, looking in horrified awe at Feodor and Ansall.
“The Abbot had negotiated with Zaxx for the young ones to be taken away for his experiments. I was stupid, and I followed his orders…” Feodor hung his head in shame. The tension between Feodor and the Abbot crackled, as I could see Ansall carefully judging the mood of the gathering crowd around him.
“But Zaxx sought to break the deal. He charged at the Abbot, and I got in the way, seeking to defend him – although I wish I hadn’t now. Zaxx almost gutted me and left me for dead, and if it wasn’t for the Abbot’s magic and the dragon pipes, I would be dead,” the chief handler said gravely.
“Aha! So you see?” the Abbot Ansall crowed. “You have to admit that what I did was right. I saved you, you ungrateful wretch. I am the only one standing between those monsters out there and all of your deaths!”
But the growling and howling of the fierce and angered Zaxx was close now, so close that I felt the stone of the walls under my feet shake and tremble. In the face of such a terrible beast, I could see the older monks and even some of the students starting to side nervously with the Abbot. The Abbot might have questionable tactics – but they were all going to be obliterated any moment by an angry bull dragon if they didn’t support him, and use his magic.
“They are not monsters,” Feodor said solemnly, lowering his hand slowly as he faced off against the Abbot. “Even Zaxx is no monster. They are creatures, and they are angry at what you have done to them, sir Abbot.” The larger monk stalked towards the Abbot, rolling his shoulders as he did so. Feodor was a far larger man that the Abbot, and it was like watching a mountain decide to snap a sapling.
“Traitor!” Ansall screeched, once again extending his claw-like hands, this time towards Feodor himself. “Flamos!” the Abbot shouted as I opened my mouth to shout, to tell the kinder monk to duck, to jump, to get out of the way. “Flamos! Flamos!” Ansall repeated, firing from out of nowhere wave after wave of rolling fire, engulfing the larger man.
I watched helplessly as Feodor screamed, stumbled, his entire body one pillar of fire, before he took a mighty, staggering step forward towards the Abbot, and then another.
Oh my god. He’s still alive, I thought, as we all--students and ordained monks-- watched in silence. The flaming man staggered another step, and then another towards the Abbot, until the black smoke swirled around both men – was he going to make it? Was he going to kill the Abbot with his own magic?
But with a small sound like a sigh amidst the flaming roar, Feodor collapsed to his knees, and then to the ground, dead. We all stood, watching at what the Abbot had done, fear spreading through the crowd. The dragon handler Feodor might have been brusque, he might not have suffered fools – but everyone knew him as an honest and hardworking man. Loyal. He would die for his brothers and sisters here at the monastery. And, I guess he had. I was sure that everyone who stood in the courtyard of the Dragon Monastery was thinking the same thing: Who was the real monster now?
CHAPTER 26
NEILL, CHOICES
The dragon pipes were deafening at this close range, as I hurled myself through the door of the Astrographer’s Tower and up the stone stairs beyond. I felt a pop and my hearing was replaced with a high pitched, tinny whine that I guess was my ears screaming in pain from the reverberations of the pipes.
How on earth did the monks ever operate them? I thought, as I rounded the set of spiral stairs onto the first landing, to see a stone archway and the stairs continuing upwards once more.
What was that? Through the stone archway I could see long, floor to ceiling cylinders of brass-colored metal, filling the room entirely. They had to be some part of the pipe mechanism – but there were no monks here ‘playing it.’ In fact, I couldn’t even see any way for the monks to ‘play’ them here, as I stuck my head in to see that the room was entirely comprised of pipes, as well as canvas-and-wood bellow systems. Pipes made of more metal disappeared up into the floors above.
They’d turned the entire tower into a musical weapon. No wonder the dragons were so hurt by it!
I ran farther up the stairs as the tower wobbled and shook. Was it Zaxx? Was the Gold bull here already? I had no time to waste – although I still had no idea what I was going to do once I got there. Another floor landing passed, and another room full of the pip
es and bellows equipment. My legs burned, and I wished that I could be out there in the courtyard, facing off the Abbot as Char was surely doing, when I smelled smoke and fire coming from somewhere. No time! No time!
Past another floor, until finally the stairs widened out and I burst into the center of a wide, circular room with more of the strange, fluting apparatus clogging the walls and floor. Bronze pipes ran everywhere, coiling back upon themselves like serpents, rattling and hissing as the alarm calls were broadcast.
Up here though, the sound wasn’t so intense, and I could see the three people who worked the machinery each wore a tight-fitting leather cap over their skulls and ears. They were working something like a bellows, with one person sitting in a chair and pulling on sticks and levers, whilst another pulled on large cogs to pump the bellows. My mind registered that seemed to even be different settings for the bellows, and the person in the ‘chair’ could turn the pipes on the outer walls to direct at various parts of the mountain or sky.
“You!” cried a voice-- muffled to my poor ears, but still audible. It was none other than Monk Olan – the younger, cruel sidekick to the old Quartermaster Greer. Olan sneered, dropped the wheel that he had been pulling, and took up his staff for the charge towards me.
Olan was a young monk, but still a lot older than me. However, I was already taller and broader than he was. I squared my shoulders and drew my short sword, ready to meet his attack.
“Fool!” Olan sneered, hesitating before he attacked (I think that it was seeing my sword being held casually and ready, while he only had a stick). Behind him the two other monks – one in the chair, one at the bellows – looked terrified.
“It’s over. Your little rebellion has been crushed just like all the others. You are nothing, Torvald. A bastard child of greater men. The Abbot has discovered your treachery, and he will come and cleanse you both with fire!” Olan said savagely, echoing almost exactly the same sentiments as his mentor, Greer, and I snarled at him.
“No, Olan, it is you who are the fool here. Zaxx is coming, and he will put an end to all of this, all of you – all because of what the Draconis Order has been up to. Sacrificing baby dragons! Ripping them from their brood mother’s clutches!” I shouted, hearing the gasp of horror from the two other working monks.
“Enough of your lies and treachery!” Olan said, his voice pitched toward desperation. “You riled Zaxx up, that is what happened – you and that Crimson Red of yours riled him up and now he’s come looking for you!”
“Really?” I said, feeling strangely calm as I started to circle around him. “You really think that Char, another dragon and I would make the mighty Zaxx seek to go to war with the entire monastery? A relationship that he has been cultivating for generations?” I laughed, finding the idea ridiculous. This time when I spoke, I did not bother to argue with the fanatical Olan. Instead, I glanced over to the other two working monks. “When have Char or I ever been known to hurt a dragon? Why would we enrage Zaxx? Why would Zaxx care so much about us?”
The other two worker-monks were scared, looking back and forth between Olan and me. I seized upon their indecision. “You know that I speak truth. You must have seen hints, rumors, had suspicions. Why does the Abbot have so much power? Where does it come from? Why does Zaxx even bother to listen to him? Because the Abbot has found a way to make magic from dragon blood!”
The two other monks startled and shivered at the dread of it, and well I could understand why. Every monk brought or sent here as a recruit did so because they were in love with dragons, not because they wanted to farm them like cattle.
The monk at the bellows took a small step away from his mechanism.
“Get back to your post! Or we’ll all be killed!” Olan screamed at him, and looked appalled as the other monk got up from the harness-chair and stood awkwardly next to his friend. “No. I cannot condone this either, Olan,” he said warily.
“Uch. Cowards.” Olan swung his stick around in a wide arc, destined to catch the nearest of his fellow workers in a stunning blow that would probably have killed him, but I was already moving, leaping forward to bring up my short sword in an arc that caught the stave square in the middle of its length.
The staff collapsed into a shower of splinters as the dragon pipes continued to sound around us, and Olan fell back, defenseless. He looked at me in fear as I held up my short sword level with his eyes.
“I won’t kill you without a weapon in your hands,” I said, remembering what my father would have said: there’s no honor in killing weaklings. “Get yourself a blade, or get out of this tower, and this monastery as well. If I ever see you again…” I said, but Olan didn’t wait around to hear what would inevitably happen. Screeching and whimpering, he turned and ran back down the steps, as I slumped, taking a deep breath.
From outside, Zaxx’s roar was very close now, his voice even louder than the screeching of the pipes above. The tower was starting to wobble with the thunder of his charging claws.
“Quickly,” I said to the other two monks as I sheathed my blade. “You have nothing to fear from me. Is there a way to use the pipes only against one dragon? Not against others?”
“They’re designed to subdue every dragon nearby, but sometimes we’ve had to concentrate on particular rogues in the past,” the original detractor said. “There are baffles that we can install, we can change the tone and the frequency” --I had no idea what he was talking about at this point-- “and we can also direct the pipes towards one area – but it won’t completely protect the others…”
“Okay.” I nodded. “Just so long as we can give Zaxx a much harder time than our friends out there…” We set to work, the monks telling me which pipes to stuff with rags, with wheels to freeze in place on wooden wedges, and which lever to pull which would swing the pipes on the outer side of the Astrographer’s Tower straight at the coming bull dragon.
CHAPTER 27
DESTRUCTION, JUDGEMENT
He had killed Monk Feodor. The Abbot just killed Feodor and another monk for doing nothing other than questioning him – right there in front of all of us! That was what I was thinking, and, as I looked up at my would-be monk attackers silently, I could tell that was what they were thinking as well.
They were wide-eyed in fear, and the crowd around the Abbot looked half fearful, half furious.
“He killed him for no reason,” I heard someone shout from the crowd.
“No reason at all!” another monk called.
“Feodor was right!” shouted none other than Dorf Lesser, my friend, standing proud of the others.
“Dorf – be careful!” I gasped instinctively, suddenly aware that my voice had come back. It must have been that as the Abbot concentrated his magic on killing Feodor, he had no time to maintain his enchantment of me as well.
“The Abbot is a tyrant!” I shouted, and there was a ragged, angry yell from below as the crowd started to close in around the thin, evil little man…
“Stand back, you fools.” There was another glimmer of fire, as the Abbot held aloft a ball of burning flame as he stood over the smoking and blackened bodies of two of his most loyal monks. “You’re all going to die without me, you know that, don’t you?”
“You took baby dragons from their nests, and sacrificed them for your magic,” I accused him. “And you dare call us stupid? You killed two monks who sought to question you. What sort of future will you give us? Will you give the Order? The dragons out there?”
Much to my surprise, there was a cheer from the other monks down below as they heard my words. I felt inspired to push on.
“Get out,” I demanded. “Get out of the monastery and never return… You, and your wicked ways…”
The Abbot raised the flaming ball above his head, ready to hurl it at me, but there was a sudden rush of air from behind me, like a giant intake of breath – and then the world turned orange. Flames roared up the sides of the walls and the air behind me.
Monks screamed and fled—we al
l did. The air smelt of soot and acrid, burning smoke. My eyes stung and watered. But as I stumbled back from the edge I caught an image of a vast, worm-like body humping over the rocks at the base of the walls, a vast alligator-like head hissing and clicking with reptilian malevolence. Zaxx was here. Zaxx the Golden, the greatest dragon left in existence had arrived.
In the terrified commotion as the monks sought to run for cover or run to the armory, I lost track of the Abbot. His fire had winked out, and his form disappeared into the throng. Where was he going? Was he fleeing, as I had told him too?
“Zaxx is here! Zaxx is here!” the monks were shouting, as flames once more soared up the sides of the battlements, and claws the size of swords scratched at mortar and stone.
Thud-thud-thud-thud, came a sound like successive lightning strikes, as I realized that the grounded lizard was digging at the roots of the walls, tunneling as fast and as ferociously as a mole through damp earth. Gouts of pulverized rock dust and smoke billowed outside the walls as the battlements that I stood on shook, and started to crack.
“Get back! Get off of the walls!” I shouted at the older Dragon Monks who had, until so recently, been the exact same ones ordered to capture me by the Abbot. In their fear and shock at everything that they had witnessed and heard this evening, they did so, clattering to the courtyard below just as the first building blocks cracked and crumbled below me.
Whump! Whump! The bull golden dragon hurled his tail and shoulders against the cracked outer wall of the Dragon Monastery, causing it to surge and buckle.
Oh no – how am I going to get down? I thought for a moment, as the entire walkway wobbled and wavered in the air.
Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2) Page 24
