Dragon Bones (The Dragonwalker Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “That’s what the priest is after?” When Micah nodded, Fes breathed out slowly. Dragon heart. That was the first he’d heard it named. “What is the dragon heart?”

  Micah handed him the stew and Fes sniffed it before tipping it back and starting to drink. It was thick, and the meat was stringy, and any vegetables that were in the bowl were far chewier than he preferred, but it was food. There had been a time when he had first been trying to find a place in Anuhr when he had struggled for even a meal a day. Back then, Fes would have done anything for a meal like this, and now it was handed to him. After what he’d been through, he knew better than to object to the quality of what he was served, even if it did taste better than the jerky he’d been eating.

  “I thought you were traveling with Alison.”

  “I am traveling with Alison, but I didn’t know anything about a dragon heart.”

  “Maybe they called it something else,” Micah said.

  “Maybe,” Fes said, taking another drink of the stew. “What is it?”

  “It’s an artifact of great power. I’m not sure that I would even know what it is, but there are some who do, as long as they are sensitive to it.”

  “And the priest is sensitive to it?”

  “Him and others like him. There are few enough who remain with the necessary sensitivities. That’s why so much effort has been spent on getting him here.”

  “Are we close to the dragon fields?” He could see the mountains in the distance, but that didn’t help him know whether the fields were nearby.

  Micah shook his head. “We still got a ways to go before we reach them, though I’ve never really traveled there myself. We haven’t had the right people with us before to do so.”

  How had Talmund thought to succeed without a fire mage?

  “You seem troubled,” Micah said.

  “Shouldn’t I be?” Fes asked. “I didn’t realize that Alison was working for the rebellion. I didn’t realize that I would get forced to do this.”

  “The dragon heart gives us a chance to push back. That’s about all I know about it. But with it, we won’t have to worry about the emperor sending his mages at us, not if the priests get behind us.”

  “Do you think they will?”

  “For the dragon heart, they will.”

  Fes turned away and stared toward the command tent. Answers would be found in there, as would the person who likely was coordinating all of this. Horus was involved, though maybe only peripherally. Maybe the rebellion had used him, too. And Carter had Talmund and might have attacked Theole and Indra.

  Somehow, the rebellion would have to get Talmund, but that might mean an attack.

  Was that something Fes wanted to be a part of?

  As he sat staring at the tent, he started to smile. Even with all that he’d been offered by Horus, he wasn’t getting paid enough. Not nearly enough.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A hundred or more people traveled with them now. Other smaller groups continued to join the longer they rode. Most rode horses, though a few rode in the wagons, carted along with all of the supplies. They moved slowly, not nearly at the pace that Fes wanted, but there was a particular cadence to it, almost as if they weren’t concerned about how quickly they reached the dragon fields.

  But then, Fes and Alison couldn’t be only interested in arriving at the dragon fields. They needed to rescue Talmund. He was the one who knew how to find the dragon heart.

  “Why aren’t we going any faster?” he asked Micah.

  Micah had stayed with him, and it was either because he had been assigned to keep an eye on Fes or because he knew Fes needed someone to explain the rebellion to him. Alison had remained distant.

  “There’s no way for us to go any faster, not with the wagons.”

  “We could send scouts ahead. Carter will be moving much faster than this and since she has Talmund…”

  Micah shrugged. “We’ve done that, but it leaves the wagons in a difficult spot. They need for us to provide a guard. Without us, the wagons are at greater risk of attack.”

  “The empire?”

  “It’s more than the empire you have to worry about when you get into the outer lands.”

  “Really?” Fes looked around him. With over a hundred soldiers, they would pose at least a challenge to anyone who thought to approach. With the numbers the rebellion had, there would be enough to intimidate almost any attackers other than the empire. “Seems like there’s not a whole lot you’d have to be worried about.”

  Micah shrugged. “You’d be surprised. The rebellion started as nothing more than a way for us to protect each other. We banded together, wanting to offer protections that the empire wouldn’t.”

  Fes didn’t think arguing about how well the empire would protect everyone within its borders would work, not with Micah. He had the sense that he’d been hurt before. “And what do you think the empire owes you?”

  “After what they’ve taken from us? Everything.”

  “And what has the empire taken from you?”

  Micah smiled. “You haven’t been around us long enough to understand. If you had, you wouldn’t need me to explain it to you. Most of us come from the same sort of place. We have ancestors who were pushed out of their homelands, destroyed in attacks.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  Micah arched a brow at him. “Long ago.”

  “You’re talking about attacks that took place over a thousand years ago!”

  “That doesn’t change that they happened. Entire people were destroyed, pushed out of their lands. You don’t think we should try to reclaim what was lost?”

  Fes looked away. It was better not to argue with someone like Micah. This was a man who believed that they needed to counter what the empire had done centuries before. It was better to let go and make a living however you could. That had long been Fes’s plan. Working with Azithan made it easier.

  “You do what you need. If you think you can push the empire away from your ancestral lands…”

  “With enough help, we will. Then we can begin to get the empire to stop enslaving our people.”

  Fes laughed. “I’ll admit that most of my time has been spent in Anuhr, but I haven’t heard of the empire enslaving anyone.”

  Micah eyed him a moment. “You have the look of the Settlers to you. Don’t you know they were the first forced to serve?”

  Fes couldn’t say anything. He didn’t know anything about this look he had, but even Talmund had suggested it. Could that be the secret of his parentage that Azithan had known? Was that the reason Azithan had wanted him to make this trip?

  They continued their steady pace throughout the day, and gradually the details of the mountains looming in the distance became even more evident. The farther north they went, the more that Fes became aware of them. It was a pressure upon him, almost the way he felt when around dragon relics. The mountains were massive, and the snow-capped peaks seemed impossibly far away.

  When they stopped for the night, a group of ten riders streaked off, galloping north.

  “What’s that about?” Fes asked Micah.

  “Probably nothing.”

  “I thought you said they didn’t send scouts out. That it was too dangerous to those who remained behind?”

  “With as many as we have now, I wonder if maybe they decided it was worth the risk.”

  Fes stared after them. If they were making a run at the priest, he wanted to be a part of it, not anything like this where he was held back. That was why he’d left the city in the first place. Not to be pulled into the rebellion. And Alison knew it.

  “Come on. You can help us make camp,” Micah said.

  “That’s exactly what I was hoping you would say,” Fes said sarcastically, but he followed. There wasn’t anything else for him to do. At least they didn’t seem interested in trying to confine him, but he wondered how friendly they would be if he made a run for it. Probably not nearly as friendly as they had been so far.

>   Fes helped set a few tents and worked with Micah to get a fire going near one of them. The same woman who had been roasting meat the night before made her way over to the growing fire and began to roast a clutch of hares. The meat smelled better than it had the night before and Fes found his mouth watering. Two other men prepared a stew, mixing in meats and vegetables, working quickly as they did.

  “How was the ride?”

  Fes glanced over. Alison stood next to him, staring at the fire intently. “About as well as I could expect.”

  “You don’t have to be like that,” she said.

  “No? What would you prefer me to be like? You brought me here, forcing me into the rebellion—”

  “There wasn’t anything forced on you.”

  “I wasn’t given a choice in this, Alison, and you can’t tell me that you weren’t planning this all along.”

  “I wasn’t planning this all along.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head, staring at the fire without any change to the intensity on her face. “I was content with hiring you. The two of us should have been able to move quietly enough to avoid notice. We thought staying with the Bayars would get us free of the city, but we hadn’t expected an attack.”

  “Carter knew everything you were doing. Which meant she knows what you’re after.”

  “She shouldn’t have known,” she said.

  “You don’t know Carter.”

  “We have experience with her.”

  “I doubt it’s the same experience I have. I don’t know who she’s working with—but if what I suspect about the Bayars attack is right, there’s a fire mage involved.” It might not even be that the fire mage employed her. “Regardless, why did you really want me to come? Horus has to have others who would have been more capable of keeping Talmund safe. Is it because of my connection to Azithan?”

  She looked down. “That’s not it.”

  Fes took a step toward her. He was frustrated with how she had used him, but the least she could do was tell him why. “Then what?”

  She sighed and finally turned away from the fire. “It’s about the connection you have to dragon artifacts. That’s the reason that Azithan keeps hiring you, you know. He knows you have a connection, and he probably knows what it is.”

  Fes was surprised that Alison knew about that part of himself. “If I have one, I don’t know what it is.”

  “You can be so oblivious, can’t you? Why else do you think your master wanted you?”

  “He wanted me because I can complete jobs. I stayed with him because he paid what I was worth. Unlike Horus.”

  “I bet you don’t even know there’s a term for your kind.”

  He shot her a hard look, already knowing where she was going. “I’m not a dragonwalker.”

  “Maybe not the way they once were, but you might as well be. When the empire wants an artifact, they call you, don’t they?”

  “Not the empire. Azithan.”

  “And isn’t he the empire?”

  “He’s only one fire mage.”

  “One who serves the emperor in the heart of the palace.”

  Fes tried to open himself to the sense of the mountains that had been bothering him. When he couldn’t do it, he knew Alison was wrong about him. “That’s why you wanted me?”

  “That’s why Talmund wanted you. When you stole the dragon bone from him, he saw it. A connection. When I learned what it was, I knew—knew—that was why you’d been used by Azithan.”

  “He hired me, not used me.”

  “It’s the same. Just because you didn’t know you were used doesn’t mean you weren’t. And now someone needs to retrieve the item.”

  “And by item, you mean the dragon heart.”

  She swore under her breath. “Micah should know better than to share things like that.”

  “He probably thought that I already knew.” Fes smiled at her. “Aren’t you going to tell me what it is?”

  “It doesn’t matter what it is. Not to you.”

  “It matters to me. It matters all the gold he promised to me.”

  “Nice, Fes. That’s all this is to you?”

  “This was a job, and you know it. Don’t use the fact that I took the job to manipulate me into joining the rebellion. I think it’s only fair that you tell me what exactly the dragon heart is.”

  “You already heard what it is.”

  “I heard that it’s a dragon heart. I don’t know what that means. I presume a relic of some kind, and since Carter has decided to risk herself coming north, it tells me the heart must be valuable, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s so much more than a relic,” she said.

  Carter wouldn’t send as many mercenaries out here if it weren’t. That still didn’t tell him what it was. “Like a dragon pearl?”

  “Imagine the largest dragon pearl that was ever found,” she said.

  Fes reached into his pocket, where the dragon pearl remained. It was warm, though not painfully so. Certainly not as warm as it had been when he had found it. “I’m imagining it.”

  Alison held her hands out, stretching them into the size of a small ball. “This is the largest dragon pearl that was ever found. It’s larger than both our fists and that pearl had enough power to enable one fire mage to bring down a dragon on their own. They used the power stored within to destroy. Now, imagine what would happen if they find one ten times that size.”

  “That’s the dragon heart?”

  “That’s the power of the dragon heart. Without that source, any hope that we have of restoring the dragons is gone.”

  Fes shook his head, laughing. “Not you too.”

  “What do you mean, not me too?”

  “I’m just saying that you believe that the dragons will return?”

  “I think it’s possible. And considering how we are responsible for what happened to them, we need to do whatever we can to bring them back in the world.”

  “We’ve been through this before,” he said, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “Haven’t you ever stopped to think that there might be a reason the dragons are gone?”

  “I know what that reason is. It’s because people destroyed them.”

  “It’s because people feared them. And likely for good reason.” Fes looked over at the fire and noticed that it was crackling warmly. There was heat pressing on his back, and it pushed away the chill wind that gusted out of the northern mountains, carrying with it the promise of snow. “Think about that claw Talmund had. If that was a child, little more than a baby, what must a fully grown dragon have been like? How terrifying must they have been?”

  “We don’t have any reason to fear the dragons.”

  “I’ve seen the Issana Forest. I know how powerful the dragons once were. I don’t need to reach the dragon plains to understand. If they could destroy a forest like that, what would happen if they turned on the cities of man?”

  “Those are the stories the empire wants you to believe. The priests tell of a different truth. One where the dragons lived among man, not dangerously.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” He motioned to the people camped. “What if they’re all wrong?”

  “That’s a risk I’m willing to take. At least I feel like I am making a difference. Maybe if you took the time to listen and learn about what we are doing here, you might feel differently.”

  Fes frowned, shaking his head. “Why would I feel differently? You forced me here. You are the reason that I’m here.”

  “But you could be a part of this.”

  Fes stared at Alison, unable to respond. “You can’t force me into your beliefs. I’ve seen the destruction of dragons, and I’ve seen the way the fire mages use their remains to defend the empire.”

  “Which is why you should side with the rebellion.”

  “I don’t want any part of it.”

  “So you would rather just return to the city, return to what you know?”

  “I would rather have the
gold that was promised me. I’d rather the stability I know. You may think otherwise, but Azithan has been good to me, much more than Horus ever was. I’m doing this because of the money Horus promised, nothing more. When it’s over, I’ll return and continue working for Azithan.”

  “You didn’t complete the job.”

  “I’m beginning to think I never was going to be able to complete the job,” Fes said.

  “That’s not fair.”

  “That’s not fair? I think it’s not fair the way that you coerced me into coming here. So whether or not my comments are fair is not really applicable here.”

  “You could return. I doubt anyone would stop you. It would take you the better part of two weeks to return to the city anyway. Longer if they didn’t allow you to bring a horse.”

  Fes shook his head. Turning around meant Carter got what she was after. And it might mean that she harmed Theole and Indra. More than anything, that was the reason he continued to be willing to go along with all of this. “And I’m sure that you would make certain that I didn’t have access to a horse.”

  “I don’t have any control over that, Fezarn.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “Fezarn. Fezarn. Fezarn.”

  Alison was as frustrating now as she ever had been. And, at the same time, seeing her here made so much sense, especially with everything that he had been through with her.

  “Where did the men who rode out of here go?”

  “You know that I can’t answer that.”

  “I don’t know anything about what you can or can’t do, Alison. You made it clear that there isn’t a whole lot about you that I’m aware of.”

  “And you haven’t been the most forthcoming about yourself.”

  “Did they go off thinking that they could find Talmund?”

  “There might be some word that we’ve had about where Carter might have taken him.”

  “Then let me be a part of it.” If nothing else, he could finish this damned job so that he could get paid. “I know Carter and what she’s like. I can help.”