The Flame Dragon

by J. R. Castle

  The page shrank back, nodding so hard it looked like his head might fly off. With a kick that sent the page to the flagstones, Goric turned away and strode back out of the hall. The page gathered up the armour, and staggering under its weight, headed out the other end of the hall towards the armoury.

  When they were gone and the hall had settled back into snores, Quinn let out a groan of relief. If it hadn’t been for the blanket, he would be dead.

  ‘Thanks,’ he whispered, pulling off the blanket. ‘That was close …’

  Thea grinned. ‘You saved me, and now I’ve saved you. Fair’s fair, right?’

  Quinn nodded in relief.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued. ‘What were you doing out of bed?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he shrugged. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’

  ‘My necklace,’ Thea whispered. ‘It used to belong to my mother. I wasn’t planning on letting the guards keep it forever. I intend to get it back.’

  The air in the Great Hall still smelled of woodsmoke and cooked meat, but now that the fire was out the air had turned cool.

  Quinn shivered. ‘Is that a good idea? If they catch you …’

  ‘Of course it’s a good idea,’ Thea said. ‘It’s my idea. I’m not letting them keep it. Anyway, if we’re going to survive this, we need to know what we’re dealing with. We need to know this place as well as they do … unless you want to become one of them?’

  ‘Gods, no!’

  ‘Then come on. While everyone’s asleep.’

  Quinn followed Thea as she stepped carefully through the mass of sleeping bodies to a door on the far side of the hall. He knew the dangers, but couldn’t help feeling excited as well; finally, he’d found someone who felt the same way as him about the Guard.

  ‘I saw some guards go through here after the feast,’ she whispered. ‘I reckon it must be where they have their quarters.’

  They slipped through the door into a dark corridor. Only a single torch was burning in a corner near the far end, where the corridor turned abruptly to the right. The doorways on either side were sunk in shadows. Quinn gritted his teeth. If someone came out of one of those doors now, they’d have no chance. But Thea was already striding boldly down the passageway. He hurried after her, stepping as quietly as he could.

  They’d almost reached the end when a sudden, scratching noise made Quinn jump.

  ‘What was that?’ Thea hissed.

  Footsteps echoed along the corridor, just around the corner.

  ‘Someone’s coming!’ he murmured.

  ‘Through here, quick!’ Thea said. She pushed open a small door and Quinn didn’t wait to see if anyone was on the other side before darting in after her.

  They listened as the footsteps disappeared down the corridor.

  Quinn breathed a sigh of relief. ‘That was too close.’

  ‘But exciting!’ Thea laughed.

  Quinn grinned – it was good to have someone fearless on his side.

  ‘Yes, but now what?’ he asked.

  ‘Just watch!’

  Suddenly, a tiny spark crackled into life right between Thea’s hands. As it rose in the air, Quinn saw they were in a passage, which was now illuminated to reveal a spiral staircase.

  Quinn smiled. ‘You might come in handy round here.’

  ‘I do try!’ Thea chuckled. ‘Come on, let’s see what they’re hiding up there.’

  They crept up in the dark. Wooden steps creaked under Quinn’s feet, but thankfully no sound came from below them.

  As they reached the top, the staircase opened out into a dilapidated tower room. Dust lay thick on the floor and broken furniture had been piled against one wall. Boxes upon boxes filled the space on the floor. Faint moonlight filtered in through a couple of high, dirty windows. Quinn stepped up and took it all in. As he looked up at the wall something caught his eye: six enormous shields hanging from the walls around the room.

  As he looked closer he gave a gasp of surprise. The Black Guard had shields, boring, metal shields. But these shields were clearly special. Each one was a different colour, faded now, but impressive for their huge size and ornate decorations. And each one depicted a fierce, fighting dragon.

  ‘Where did those come from?’ Thea gasped.

  Quinn approached the nearest shield. On it, a red dragon curled around a banner on a long pole. The banner didn’t show the black, clenched fist of the Empire. Instead, it showed a blazing sun.

  ‘That’s the flag of the old Emperor,’ Thea whispered, impressed.

  Quinn had seen this dragon before. It was the fiery-red dragon he’d spotted in Aunt Marta’s spell. The next shield showed the blue-scaled wind dragon that had sent freezing air over the attacking Black Guard.

  ‘The Dragon Knights,’ Quinn breathed. ‘They must have carried these in their human form!’

  In the sunlight, when they were new, the shields must have been magnificent, but Emperor Vayn’s Black Guard had used them for target practice till they were scraped and worn, arrows jutting out of them at every angle. Still, the detail painted on them was incredible. Every scale on each dragon’s skin was picked out in tiny brush strokes.

  ‘Look at this,’ Thea said. She pulled an iron box out from beneath a dusty old chair. Quinn peered over her shoulder as she opened it. In the shadows, Quinn made out jewellery and coins stashed inside the box.

  Thea tugged out a thin golden chain with a pendant on the end. ‘My necklace!’

  ‘And look at all this other stuff,’ Quinn said. ‘The guards must have been stealing from the trainees for years.’

  Thea stepped forward and tugged one of the arrows from the flame dragon’s shield. She threw it onto the ground, shaking her head. Quinn remembered what Marta had showed him in the fire vision and what she’d told him about the Dragon Knights.

  ‘Do you think the Dragon Knights were as evil as everyone says?’ he asked.

  ‘As evil as the Black Guard and Emperor Vayn tell us, you mean? Of course not!’ Thea scoffed. ‘They weren’t evil at all.’ She stared up at the shield above her. ‘That was Ignus, the Flame Dragon. Do you know, when pirates raided the villages on the shores of Aya Sur, he flew all the way from the Imperial Castle and drove them away? Can you imagine the Black Guard bothering?’

  She moved on to the next. ‘And this was Kyria the Water Dragon. She used to fly out in storms to help the fishing fleets get home safely.’

  Thea moved around the room, naming Nord the Storm Dragon, Ulric the Shadow Dragon, Noctaris the Night Dragon and Taric the Mirror Dragon. ‘They were all brave, and they kept the kingdom safe, until Vayn betrayed it.’

  Quinn listened hard.

  ‘And that’s not all,’ Thea continued. ‘Apparently the surviving Dragon Knights are still out there, somewhere, roaming the Twelve Islands in their human form.’

  ‘How do you know all that?’ Quinn gasped. ‘Surely that’s forbidden knowledge.’

  Thea shrugged. ‘My mother was a Lady of the Imperial Court.’ Her mouth tugged down, and she turned away quickly so Quinn couldn’t see her face. ‘All I know is that she died shortly after the old Emperor Marek. When I was left in Telemus’s care, he told me the old stories about the dragons. I don’t know if it’s all true, but the dragons can’t have been worse than the Black Guard, can they?’

  Quinn shook his head. ‘My aunt didn’t think so … What about your father?’

  Thea looked down. ‘I have no idea. Telemus never spoke of him. I think he was killed when Vayn took the Imperial Castle. Lots of people were.’ She cleared her throat again.

  Quinn suddenly felt awkward. He knew what it felt like when he had to talk about how his parents had died when he was a baby. It had always made him want to shrink inside his own clothes until he’d completely disappeared. But at least he had a friend in Thea, someone who knew how it felt.

  He turned away and sat cross-legged on the floor to unwrap his package – ready to show Thea.

  ‘Look,’ Quinn said. The emerald-handle
d dagger lay on the cloth. Carefully, Quinn took hold of the handle and pulled the dagger from its leather sheath; the blade glinted in the dim light.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Thea said.

  ‘This is all I have left of my parents,’ he replied. ‘It’s my father’s dagger. I know how you feel.’

  Thea reached out to touch it but suddenly the dagger jerked back, as if moving away from her.

  ‘Huh?’ Quinn jumped up and held on to it as the blade squirmed in his hand.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Thea gasped.

  Bit by bit, the dagger seemed to grow longer. Its blade lengthened and widened. The handle swelled in Quinn’s hand. Within seconds, Quinn was holding a mighty golden sword. Its blade was as long as Quinn’s arm and flashed in the dim light.

  ‘Magic!’ Thea gasped.

  As Quinn looked closer he noticed the fine writing etched across its length. He recognised it as the ancient dragon language, although he couldn’t read it. The handle had changed from the plain, smooth emerald to a dragon’s head, its mouth open in a snarl, teeth and tongue ready to strike.

  Golden light sparkled suddenly in the cloth wrappings and a piece of folded paper appeared where the dagger had lain a moment ago. Carefully, Quinn unfolded it. It was written in Marta’s neat, precise handwriting.

  ‘“This is your father’s sword,”’ Quinn read. ‘“It will guide and protect you. Keep it safe, and do not let the Black Guard see it.”’

  ‘Wow,’ Thea said. She sounded impressed. ‘Your father must have been important.’

  Quinn shook his head. ‘My father was a fisherman. I have no idea why he’d have something like this.’

  ‘Try it out,’ Thea said, eagerly.

  He swung the sword around his head and it sliced easily through the air. It hardly felt like he was swinging a sword at all and the handle fitted perfectly in his palm.

  He brought the sword down then peered at the blade, looking closer at the fine writing etched into it.

  Quinn’s reflection seemed to swirl in the bright metal of the sword and then, just for a second, he saw something.

  With a yell, he dropped the sword. It clattered to the floor and he jumped back. Released from his hands, the sword had shrunk back to a simple dagger again.

  ‘What is it?’ Thea demanded. ‘What happened?’

  Quinn shook his head. ‘Nothing. It was nothing. I just …’

  But Quinn didn’t finish his sentence. When he’d looked into the sword, he hadn’t seen his own face looking back at him. He’d seen a golden dragon.

  And it had been watching him with eyes that were as real as his own.

  CHAPTER 9

  TRAINING DAY

  Quinn woke to the sound of metal crashing on metal.

  He groaned and rolled over. His head was thumping already. At the far end of the Great Hall, one of the guards was hammering his sword against a large pan.

  ‘Get up, you lazy scum!’ he bellowed. ‘Move yourselves!’

  Quinn had barely slept. His mind had been whirring away trying to figure everything out. Thea agreed that the dragons weren’t evil, but there had been one watching him from the sword. Quinn wanted to know why.

  He also couldn’t understand why his father would have a sword like that in the first place. Quinn knew only a lord or a marshall like Stant would have something like that. But his father hadn’t been anyone important.

  A hand grabbed Quinn and hauled him out from under the table. His head bounced off the bottom of the bench as he was dragged past.

  ‘What do you think this is …?’ Jarin shouted into his ear.

  ‘… A holiday?’ Rowena finished.

  She kicked Quinn up the backside. He jumped forward before she could swing for him again. All along the hall, new recruits were being shoved and kicked towards the entrance. As he hurriedly hid the knapsack with his father’s dagger in his bundle of sheets, shoving it into his corner of the hall, he saw Thea scramble out from under the bench and saw her shoved into a separate group. Today he was on his own.

  Out in the courtyard, the recruits were pushed into a ragged line. Goric stalked up in front of them. Quinn stood as still as he could, staring straight ahead, determined not to catch the Captain’s eye.

  ‘Look at you!’ Goric sneered at the trainees. ‘You’re pathetic weaklings, all of you. Not a single one of you deserves to be in the Black Guard. And you stink!’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘At least we can do something about that.’

  Before the trainees could react, several of the guards came up behind them with buckets of icy water – the morning ritual. Quinn let out a cry as freezing water smashed into him. His hair dripped onto his face and his shirt stuck to his skin. He thanked the heavens he’d left his package hidden in his knapsack – if he’d kept it with him it would have shown through his soaking clothes.

  Another guard dropped a pile of black tunics in the dirt.

  ‘You’ve been here long enough,’ Goric roared. ‘Now you owe your loyalty and your life to the Emperor Vayn, you should dress like a Black Guardsman.’

  A couple of days is all it takes to forget Marta? To become loyal to the Black Guard? Quinn wondered. I don’t think so.

  Shivering, he tugged off his soaked shirt and pulled on a plain black tunic and trousers. Around him, the other trainees dressed. Seeing them clothed in black made Quinn feel even colder than the water had. Goric would turn all of these shivering recruits into guards just like him and then let them loose to terrorise the Islands. If the dragon in the sword was trying to contact him, he knew there was a chance to stop the Guard before that happened.

  ‘You!’ Goric spat, stopping in front of Quinn.

  What have I done now? he wondered.

  ‘We all saw you fight Jori,’ Goric said loudly. Laughs came from the guards and some mean hisses from the older recruits. ‘A great warrior like you obviously doesn’t need to train like the other recruits.’

  ‘I —’ Quinn started, but Goric didn’t let him speak.

  ‘This scrawny nobody,’ Goric said, as he stood before the older trainees, ‘thinks he’s a great hero. Who agrees?’

  The trainees curled their lips and jeered. Quinn felt himself rage under their hate-filled eyes.

  ‘And who thinks he is a pathetic, ungrateful, disloyal little worm?’

  The trainees muttered agreement.

  ‘Today,’ Goric said, ‘we will be learning basic sword craft.’ He strode over to Quinn. ‘Imagine this is – I don’t know – let’s say some foolish washer boy who betrayed his loyalty to the Emperor.’

  Quinn fumed. Goric was clearly determined to make his life hell.

  ‘We’d have to teach him a lesson, wouldn’t we?’ Goric drew his weapon and threw a flimsy wooden sword towards Quinn. It felt clumsy and badly balanced.

  ‘Now watch!’ Goric shouted, as he stabbed the point of his sword towards Quinn. Quinn tried to parry, but the wooden sword felt heavy and awkward compared with his father’s golden sword.

  ‘Twist!’ Goric shouted as he thrust the sword. With a shudder, Quinn dashed out of the way, before the sword could rip through his guts. He twisted his own battered sword.

  ‘Overhand, trainees,’ Goric said, and this time he swung his sword up and over, bringing it down like a hammer onto Quinn’s weak sword. Quinn couldn’t help but flinch as the wooden sword shattered in two.

  Goric just laughed and sneered at Quinn. ‘Not so clever now, are we?’

  Anger bubbled up inside Quinn. How was that a fair fight? he raged. If I’d had my father’s sword …

  Goric strode back to the trainees. ‘In the old days, we faced the most evil of foes: dragons! Beasts so fierce they could fry you with a single breath, with talons so long and so sharp they could rip you open like a ripe plum. After three years at Yaross Garrison, you will know how to fight them.’

  Three years, Quinn repeated to himself. He wasn’t planning on staying more than three days.

  ‘The dragons were inhuman and ev
il. They terrorised the land that they were supposed to protect and they killed the Imperial Family. The Emperor Vayn gave people the power to fight back.’ The Captain crashed his gauntlet against his armour. ‘The black armour. No weapon can pierce it.’

  Goric gestured to the guard, Jarin, who was waiting nearby. He ran over, carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows. Goric pulled out an arrow and placed it on the bowstring, then drew it back and spun towards Quinn. The arrow shot past, almost clipping his ear. It flew through the courtyard gate and thumped into a target in a field far beyond. Quinn had never seen an arrow fired so far, but he was about to see something even stranger.

  Goric raised his hand. The arrow quivered in the target, then came loose. It shot back through the gate and across the courtyard. Quinn had to duck as it rushed past again and slapped back into Goric’s hand.

  Magic! Of course. Goric was strutting around, showing off the magical weapons Emperor Vayn had given them.

  ‘Arrows that always return to the man who shot them, so you never run out,’ Goric boasted.

  Jarin handed Goric a sword in a scabbard. When Goric drew it out, it blazed with ice despite the hot sunshine that was now beating down. Rowena staggered over carrying the carcass of a wild boar. Goric stabbed the carcass with the blazing sword. Ice rushed over the boar’s body, and when Goric pulled out the sword, the carcass shattered into a million frozen pieces. He lifted the sword again.

  ‘These are the weapons the Emperor Vayn gave to us to defend ourselves from the evil Dragon Knights … and those who side with the Dragon Knights against the people of this land.’

  He spun around, sweeping the sword up and round, right towards Quinn. Ice glittered in the sunlight. The blade stopped so close to his face he could feel the frost.

  ‘One touch of the blade will freeze a man solid,’ Goric growled.

  Quinn flinched back, away from the icy blade. Goric leaned over him, eyes filled with hate and Quinn knew then there was nothing he could do to stop Goric despising him. The Captain of the Guard would be his enemy for life. If the Dragon Knights were still out there, he had to get out and find them. It was his only hope.