I felt a flutter in my chest, it was almost fear – I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know just what this old war dog was going to tell me about my father. Don’t make my heart hurt again, I begged him silently.
Captain Garf ignored my silent plea. “Your father loved you, Neill,” he said, and my heart broke.
“I know that,” I said, although I didn’t.
“No, Neill, you couldn’t,” Garf said as tenderly as the large warrior could. “You couldn’t know it, because he had to keep you at arm’s length all your life. You were not his first-born son, or his second. Your mother was a Gypsy. He had to make sure that the Torvald clanspeople would follow his decisions and his family explicitly, all the time – and he didn’t want to cause a rift within his own clan at such a dangerous time by asking them to follow you – his last son, not even his first.”
I felt as if he ground was shifting under my feet. “What are you trying to tell me here, Captain Garf?” I asked unsteadily.
Garf frowned, but I could see that it wasn’t unkind. “Your father had many faults, don’t get me wrong, but he always put the people first. That was why he sent you off to that Dragon Monastery in the first place…”
“I know that, Garf,” I said, remembering the council that my father had given me and me alone. “He wanted me to steal the secrets of the Draconis Order, for the good of Torvald.” And I hadn’t done it. I had tried, but when I had found out that the dragons themselves were the source of the magic of the Abbot, how could I give up these noble and intelligent creatures? How could I try to persuade the dragons to just become servants and war machines of another clan?
“Yes, but you only got the half of it, Master Torvald,” Garf replied irritably. “I know, because he told me. He told me alone of his plans a long time ago, when we were camped out in some scrap of bog waiting for reinforcements. He knew even back then that the Prince Vincent was no leader for the people. He knew that the entire eastern half of the Middle Kingdom would fall if it wasn’t for your father’s sword arm and Torvald land, and Vincent has never cared about anything other than taxes, tithes, and lining his own vaults!” Garf declared hotly.
Wow, I thought. Things must really have changed out here if Garf and the other Torvald clansmen and women feel so comfortable talking open sedition against Prince Vincent. The prince, as the overall head of the Middle Kingdom was still nominally our liege lord, despite his laxity.
“Your father was preparing for the time when Vincent would push the people too far, or he would start a war with his own brothers,” Garf flickered a glance at Char, “and that it would be us clans who had to do all the dirty work of fighting for him, and then having to rebuild the Middle Kingdom after him.” Garf shook his head at the madness.
“And your father wanted the power of the Draconis Order on his side when that happened…” Char said, reaching the conclusion before I did. I saw a look of awe on her face as she looked hopefully at me. “Don’t you see, Neill – he wasn’t sending you to the monastery as a punishment, or just to further Torvald aims – he wanted to make sure that the people of the Middle Kingdom were going to be looked after. He wanted you to help him do that.”
“You mean…” I said, “he wanted to save the Middle Kingdom from Vincent?” The horror and the hope of what I was being told combined in me, strong enough to make me shake. Why hadn’t my father just told me? I thought in anguish. Because I had been young. Too young to hear such things, maybe? And my father didn’t know what I had eventually found out: That the Abbot had allied himself to Prince Vincent, in return for money and power and the freedom to continue his vile experiments on the dragons. Maybe it had always been like that, because we had discovered at Char’s father’s fort that even the Old Queen Delia had turned to the Draconis Order to unnaturally prolong her life. My father had been an optimist, of sorts – he had wanted the dragons to defend the normal people of the Three Kingdoms, he hadn’t known that the dragons themselves had been prisoners under Zaxx, the Abbot, and even Vincent.
Garf nodded. “So, you didn’t fail your father’s wishes at all. You were doing everything that he could possibly dream of, and more, even though he couldn’t tell you himself – because that would mean that he had to challenge Prince Vincent outright.”
“He was a clever man, your father,” Char said. “He must have been very proud of you, Neill, when you were the first to ride a dragon.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe he had been proud, maybe he hadn’t. I just wish that he could have said it to me in person. Damn all these politics and damn Prince Vincent! All this silence and sneaking around and decades-long plots had stolen any relationship that I was to have with my father away from me.
“So, you see, you shouldn’t be so down on your father, and you shouldn’t throw away your Torvald heritage just yet.” Garf gave me a sad smile, before turning back down the long hallway that led out past the kitchens and storerooms, and to the rear of the town of the Fort beyond.
“No,” I agreed, saying quietly under my breath. “Not just yet.” I thought of my brothers, and their decision to blame me for everything. I could try to make them see reason – but I realized that I didn’t even want to. They had spent their lives tormenting me in some fashion or another, and I didn’t want to play a supporting role to their rule of the Torvald Clan.
“Here we are.” Garf trudged out past the cold mews of small buildings that housed pigs, ducks, and sheep at the back of the Fort. It was noisy with the sounds of the animals, and butting up against the rear palisade wall was the storehouses and the great outer gate: a giant set of wooden doors with two smaller doors set in the middle of them, through which a steady stream of people was passing. I knew where this led, and I didn’t need to Garf to lead me anymore.
The Burial Mounds of Torvald, I thought.
Out from the far side of the Fort, where the ground became rougher, with short, much-cropped grasses and bright heathers, sat the ancient burial mounds of our people. Not everyone got to have an elaborate burial mound, and there were still many who preferred their relatives to be burned in a pyre rather than interred forever into the dark earth. However, it was tradition for great heroes, ladies, and chieftains to be given their own tombs or enclosed in the tombs of their own ancestors.
They rose like semi-circular tumps, overgrown with grass and scattered with wild flowers that wavered in the stiff breeze of the day. The mightiest of them all, the one to which a steady line of mourners snaked fore and back, was almost the size of a house in itself, but low and set into the earth. Its walls were still bare stone, but its top was a curving dome of grass and flowers. The Tomb of Torvald, home to the dead of my forebears for nearly seven generations.
“Neill? Are you okay?” I heard Char whisper at my side, and I nodded. Strangely, now that I was here, and now that I had the stiff breeze blasting the tears from my eyes, and was surrounded by others mourning my father, I knew that I would be okay. It felt peaceful in a way, sad, but peaceful.
There was a slight murmur from the assembled ragged line of clansmen and women as they saw me, but none of the murmurs sounded aggressive or as if I wasn’t welcome here. I started to trudge up the hill towards the large tomb where my father lay, and along the way I started to hear voices murmur at me.
“Sorry,”
“He was a great man,”
“A great chief,”
“We’re so sorry,”
It was like walking through a rainfall of voices, even though none of them ever got louder than a whisper. It made me feel supported, and held as I trudged. Along the way I took out my belt knife and cut from the slopes of the hill one of the many giant thistles that sprang up all over this area, just as everyone else had done before me and were doing behind me, carrying the thistle up to the top of the hill, to lay at the foot of the giant cap stone that stood over the entrance alcove.
I knelt and said a few words under my breath – wondering what a strange thing this was, to be here at
the end of an era and at the start of a new, as far above my head, a Crimson Red dragon soared and whirled, shrieking her defiance and challenge to the world itself, and her lust for life.
I would never see my father again, I thought, looking at the tomb. But, in a strange way that I couldn’t quite explain – my sadness was mingled with hope. Thanks to Garf’s words I had seen a side of my father that I hadn’t before. He had trusted me. He had faith in me. Again, that belly full of regret and sadness threatened to overturn me as I cursed the fate that had driven us apart. I knew that I would carry that sadness for a long time, perhaps forever, and I felt as if I were growing older by the second.
When I came down from the tomb, I felt as if something had lifted from my shoulders – although I couldn’t quiet put a name on what it might be. Fear? Worry? Guilt? Shame? I didn’t hate my brothers anymore – not even Rik. They were just idiots, doing what they thought that they had to do. I wasn’t going to be the one to convince them that they are wrong – the good people of Torvald would do that, but, I thought as I set my eyes back to the western horizon – they had better not stand in my way, either.
It was, I surprised myself by thinking, quite a Torvald thought to have.
Part II
New Troubles
Chapter 8
Char, Troubles & Tidings
We left the Fort, the center of the Torvald Clan lands before evening – we hadn’t even stayed a whole day, but we had made sure that at least Garf knew of the coming refugees from Sheerlake. He had promised us solemnly that they would be looked after, and that it would give the Sons of Torvald a mission to learn some of the ways of chieftainship.
But I was glad to be flying westwards again, returning to the Dragon Monastery, and I could tell that Neill was happy too.
“There – down there!” He pointed at the glint of large shapes, blue and green against the darker sprawl of the forest. It was the dragons of our flight that had come to help defeat the Blood Baron, and, somewhere down there also would be our friends Sigrid on Socolia, Terence and Lila on Morax, and the crowd of prisoners and refugees.
Neill seemed fresher and brighter after having been home, I realized as I watched his face darting at the signs of our friends below. I didn’t think that it was having seen home that had made him more assured and confident, and neither was it merely fact that we were now flying towards our home as well. I remembered how I had felt at being back at my father’s fortress; even in my old chambers once again with their cutesy-princess decoration.
It had made me realize who I was now. That I wasn’t who I had been, and that I had already outgrown the worries and fears of my youth. My father, the Prince Lander’s fortress, had seemed small to me, and confining, and that had only increased my desire to be a Dragon Rider – whatever that would mean! And so, it seemed to me that Neill must have had the same experience as well. He now flew more confidently, he moved more confidently, he was no longer so deeply troubled by the ugly feelings as he had been before going to honor his father’s passing.
But we would still have a lot to do, I was thinking, before Neill poked me in the back. “Ow!” I said.
“Haven’t you been listening to a word that I’ve been saying?” Neill said in exasperation. The wind was low, and Paxala beneath us wasn’t particularly flying very fast so I couldn’t pretend that I just couldn’t hear him. “There’s something wrong down there!” He pointed once more down at the crowd of prisoners, refugees, and dragons.
“Is there?” I looked. The central gaggle of prisoners was trudging alone, the two groups of refugees in front and behind, as well as walking alongside the gaggle. Flying in a circling pattern were the riderless Green and Blue, and, farther away I could see the quick movements of the Sinuous Blue that must be Morax.
“I can’t see what’s wrong…” I began, before I registered what it had to be. Three dragons. There were only three dragons down there. “Where’s Sigrid and Socolia?” I asked.
“I know, right?” Neill was already scanning the horizon and land I joined him in looking for the telltale silhouette of dragon wings against the sky, or the flash of green that could be Socolia… Nothing.
“Pax?” I reached out to Paxala with both my voice and mind, my sudden nervousness giving speed to my thoughts. “Can you sense where Socolia is?”
“Of course. To the west, and south, following the hot currents there,” Paxala said to me, a pleasing feeling accompanying the thought of warmer winds. From my long time spent with Paxala, I knew that the dragons often thought of the airs of the world in currents; rivers of warmer, colder, sharp or slow airs that blew across the world, bringing with them all of the scents and noises of the lands that they crossed.
“What is she doing there?” Neill asked when I told him, as we sped down towards where the Blue Morax was circling. Morax’s flight was erratic, flapping his great wings quickly and awkwardly as he attempted to hover and make turns quickly.
“Socolia is upset,” Paxala said to me, a note of urgency in her voice. “She is unsure of what her rider wants, she is struggling against the girl who rides her, and that is causing more anguish for Morax and his riders.”
Oh no. This was what I had feared could happen. The dragons had only been bonded to their riders (if bonded was even the right word for the tentative friendship that they had with their riders) for such a short time – had Sigrid done something to upset the dragon?
“Can you reach her – Socolia, I mean? Can you talk to her?” I said.
“Dragons can speak with tongues that humans cannot, it is true,” Paxala informed me, and I nodded. This was what I would call speaking with our minds, telepathy, but Paxala thought of it much differently. “But we cannot talk to every dragon, everywhere. It is stronger if we are closer, physically, and closer, by friendship.” Paxala grumbled, making a worried clicking noise in her long throat. “I can sense that Socolia is upset, but her confusion and struggle with her rider makes it difficult for me to reach her…”
“We have to get to her,” I told Paxala, as Neill was waving in alarm to Terence and Lila.
“We heard a roar from this direction, a dragon’s roar – and then Socolia and Sigrid just took off! As fast as an arrow – and we’re trying to find out the reason why!” Terence hollered across the slow-moving winds as we hovered near them. He was pointing southwards, and I saw him trying once again to shift his weight on the neck of the Blue Morax, using his knees and hips to try and encourage the Blue to follow the Green Socolia. But Morax couldn’t – or wouldn’t follow, caught in a moment of indecision, the Blue dragon was turning in circles towards the south, then seemingly getting fritted, and turning back once more.
“What is wrong?” Neill shouted, looking devastated at the haphazard riding and flying of the dragons with whom he wanted to change the world. I knew what he must be thinking: if we cannot even work with the younger dragons effectively – then how could we ever become what we needed to be?
“It’s Socolia, she’s worried about something – and Sigrid cannot control her, I think,” I relayed to him, before it suddenly became abundantly clear what had upset the green dragon so much.
I felt it through my connection to Paxala underneath me: a sudden shake and tenseness in her muscles as the scent of a large, powerful, and terrible dragon hit her.
“Skreayar! Skreyar!” Paxala suddenly bellowed, losing a few feet as she beat her wings quickly in startled fright.
“What is it? What is wrong?” Neill shouted, as I reached towards that place in my mind that connected to Paxala, to feel the shape of the mightiest dragon to fly the skies of the Middle Kingdom heavy in her mind.
“Zaxx the terrible,” Paxala roared again, and I felt an icicle of fear drop down my spine as I shouted it to Neill.
“Where?” both me and Neill behind me were calling, looking this way and that, down below and above us. The thought of encountering the mighty Golden Bull dragon, once the tyrant of the dragon crater itself, out here and with
just our four dragons here was too terrible to contemplate. We had only managed to defeat him and drive him out when all of the dragons of the crater had risen up, flying behind Paxala’s lead to announce their willingness to do battle.
Zaxx the Golden was huge; many times the size of even Paxala here, and he was ancient as well. Some say he was one of the oldest dragons alive – and I knew that he had certainly been ruling the dragon crater for as long as the Draconis Order had been in existence. He was old, canny, and cruel, and was able to perform many strange things that I had no name for.
He was also Paxala’s father.
“I should have killed him,” the Crimson Red beneath me said savagely, in a tone of such animal intensity that it made me shiver. I knew that the enmity Paxala felt for Zaxx wasn’t just due to the many years of abuse, of bullying, attacks, and preferential treatment the Golden Dragon had dispensed in his time as bull of the crater. For Paxala, it was personal. Zaxx had threatened me, and Zaxx had killed her mother when she had sought to hide her eggs from him; for that was the terrible secret at the heart of Zaxx’s bloody reign of terror over the dragons of the crater. He had been helping the Abbot Ansall to cull and select the dragons that the Abbot used for his magics, and Zaxx had used it as an opportunity to do away with any challengers to his authority, such as young males or the eggs of powerful females.
“Yes, you probably should have,” I said, feeling scared at my own echoing ferocity. The world would never be safe with Zaxx in the skies. A monster that ancient and that evil would surely not rest quietly in the hidden places he had wormed his way to. He would be back to wreak vengeance on the dragons and the humans who had dared to defy him.
But then, where was he? I thought in alarm.
“My father is not here,” Paxala said in disgust. “But he has been. What we can sense, what is upsetting Morax, and what is driving Socolia so far away is the scent trail the brute left in his wake.” I suddenly understood. Dragons think as much in terms of sounds and smells as they did in visions, words, and feelings. For them, the world was a vibrant, living place where the recent past and the far away were all just as vivid and present as the ground below them or the trees over which they flew.
Dragon Mage (The First Dragon Rider Book 3) Page 6
