by Alan Carr
“Sir, we should not waste our time on a fool’s errand.” This was Bayrd. My heart sank. I thought Bayrd would be excited at the prospect of facing a dragon, but of course he knew as I did that there wasn’t truly a dragon setting fire to buildings in the swamplands. Whatever the courier had seen had probably been a shadow or a large bird or the rustling of leaves in a tree.
Walker’s impatience was threatening to boil over now. “Newell, Wagner, Jade, Valora, Elias, swords down. Step forward.” We dropped our swords and stepped ahead of the rest of our class. “Decide now. Will you abandon your training to chase this baseless rumor?”
Gee, thanks for phrasing it that way. Still, this would be an adventure, surely the idea of getting away from the academy for a few weeks appealed to more than just Boe and me. I looked to Warley for support.
“No, sir,” Warley said, “We’re training to slay real dragons in the coming Dragonbirths. Our purpose is not to chase after imaginary dragons.”
Before Gable could agree with Bayrd and end my chances of getting to ride off on a quest that would probably take me to see Daija, I looked directly at him and challenged him. “They may be right. Gable will need many years training before he’s ready to face a dragon.”
Gable’s expression was a strange mixture of embarrassment and fury. “I’ll slay the dragon that eats you alive before you can even figure out how to draw your sword.”
Now to reel in the line.
“You mean you’ll hide behind Bayrd and let him do it for you.” So maybe I wasn’t being smart, but I could see that it was working. For Gable to back down now would be an admission that he wasn’t ready to face a dragon.
Bayrd tried to intercede, “We can all use all the training we can get. Once the real dragons are born, we’ll need to be as prepared as we can be.”
This didn’t have the effect on Gable that Bayrd was expecting. “Bring ‘em on now. I hope there is a dragon in the swamplands. I’ll kill him myself and you can all watch me be crowned Dragon Master.” He turned to Walker. “I vote that we investigate, sir.”
Walker waved his hand, glad the whole thing was over. “Go then, be prepared to leave in an hour. Assign a recorder and make sure not to forget to take everything you need. We will not be sending a search party after you. And get back here as soon as you deal with the matter—if you’re not back by the first of Flame, you’d be better off having never come to Rægena in the first place.” He did not wait for us to collect our swords and leave the group before starting to describe the next drill to the remaining Stone Souls.
With that, we were going to the swamplands! This was going to be a seriously fun adventure.
***
I was seriously not having fun on this adventure.
Bayrd had self appointed himself as leader of our dragon quest, and when I protested Warley and Gable seconded and confirmed him. Then Bayrd told me that I could “lead” by taking on the role as flag bearer. Ugh. Boe was assigned as recorder, but I figured that was probably for the best. Recorders wrote down daily logs of our activities and Boe definitely had better penmanship than the rest of us. Plus he actually cared about all that record keeping for some reason.
We travelled slowly, only a few hours every day, and then Bayrd made us set up camp and do team drills until sundown. Boe protested loudly every time we stopped traveling, but I kept my own protests to myself: I was learning that crossing Bayrd led to being given the worst duty assignments. My constant reminder of that fact was the large wooden pole I had to carry when we traveled. I rode in front of the group, holding up the pole on which was tied the flag of Rægena and another smaller banner marking us as Stone Souls on a dragon quest. We rarely met with other travelers and there were no settlements in Scribe’s Notch, but Bayrd insisted that we fly the colors at all times. Boe rode up front with me, but he wasn’t much company. With everyone else around us, he didn’t seem interested in trying to talk, which left me to wonder about all the things Magnilda had said on my own. Even at night, we didn’t have any chance to talk. Each of the five of us was assigned half a night of watch duty every two to three nights and between that duty and the packing up camp, traveling, setting up camp, and the team drills we were never very well rested.
We’d spent four uneventful days and nights, and were still deep in Scribe’s Notch. I tried to imagine Daija and her family as they had traveled through the pass two months ago. Their journey would have been much faster, and they would have had some company from other families that had traveled to Rægena from various northern and western towns and villages. I saw an outcropping of rock and pictured Daija and Laciann perched on it, whispering and laughing with each other as they’d done at the festival. As I tried to make a stew of dried berries and preserved meats, I wondered if Daija helped her mother prepare meals. Or maybe her mother helped her. Maybe Daija was a great cook, experimenting to find new and delicious combinations of flavors that made her family look forward to suppertime every evening. I didn’t know. I thought of all the fiery foods we’d eaten and decided that if she did like to cook, she’d definitely have a flair for the spicy. I tried adding extra spices to the stew I made that night, but it came out terrible. We all ended up on watch duty that night because none of us could sleep for more than a half hour before waking and needing to run off to use the cat holes. We’d need to remember to dig those a little closer to camp next time.
On the fifth day as light was breaking over the tall mountaintops around us, we saw another courier rush past us in a display of speed I hadn’t ever seen a horse reach before. I paused in my cleanup duties and just watched the man leaning forward to create as little wind resistance as possible to help his sleek gray horse in its gallop. It was only moments before they turned around a bend and were gone, off to deliver an urgent message, most likely to Rægena. After we packed up, and just as I had taken my place at the front of our little procession, I heard and then saw another rider heading toward us, also heading in the direction of Rægena. He was traveling nearly as quickly as the last rider, but this courier slowed down as he passed us and then made his horse circle around to approach us from our rear. Bayrd went to greet him, and they spoke quickly in low, serious tones. I tried to urge my horse to get closer to them, but he seemed to want nothing to do with the courier’s huge dark chestnut mount. That horse seemed to be on the verge of breathing fire judging from the swirling tendons of visible breath that shot out of his impatient nostrils. After a moment, the courier spurred his horse back on their original path and they were gone.
“We ride until sundown,” Bayrd told us, “there are many more reports now of a path of destruction.” He sounded as determined as I felt scared. How could this be? Could there really be a dragon? Now? It wasn’t even Early Flame and never had a Dragonbirth happened before the month of Flame fully began, at least so far as I knew. It seemed that our little adventure would be a true dragon quest after all. I began to feel very bad about goading Gable into voting to take this journey; I hadn’t truly believed we’d be doing anything more than quelling some false rumors. I’d hoped we’d have an excuse to work our way far enough west to visit Boe’s family, but not in pursuit of an actual dragon.
“Is that path still heading west?” I tried not to sound too panicked.
“Yes,” Bayrd looked everywhere but at Boe. “It seems to be heading straight toward Chialaa Valley.” Oh no.
“Daija!” I yelled her name out and heard Boe’s voice at the same time.
“We have to help them. My family is there!” Boe pleaded with Bayrd, but he didn’t have to.
Bayrd dropped off his horse and went between each of ours, making sure that our packs were fully secured for a full sprint through the rest of Scribe’s Notch. He finished this quickly, mounted up, and then we took off, letting our mounts gallop at their full speeds for the first time on our journey.
I felt the heat inside me as my heart pounded. I feared for Daija’s safety, for Bo
e’s family. I worried about dragons so early in the year. I felt the thrill of traveling at these wild speeds.
I held on to the flag pole with a tight grip, struggling as the wind whipped the flags into a frenzy and the pole pushed and pulled against me. I ended up holding it out front and beside me, like a jousting lance, and that seemed to help.
The ground rushed beneath and the mountains seemed to come to life and begin to weave in and out of each other like slowly marching giants.
***
We did not stop riding until after nightfall, not until after we finally reached a glen denoting the end of the pass. By then the horses were completely exhausted and greedily drank from a flowing stream that ran past. We lit torches and struggled to set up camp in the dark, stone tired from the day’s ride. Bayrd hadn’t even assigned anyone to watch duty before he disappeared into his tent and almost immediately started snoring loudly. Warley and Gable were out, too, and while I knew I needed sleep and that I wanted badly just to lie down and let my aching muscles get some rest, I was also feeling restless and helpless.
I’d never traveled so quickly in my life, but it didn’t feel like enough. I knew this what was a dragon quest was like, days of travel and chasing reports to finally head off the dragon and try to end his path of destruction, but I had never imagined it being so personal. I never imagined being in a rush to save someone I personally cared about. I guess I had known that every day it took to reach the dragon was a day when the dragon was free to continue to destroy and to kill, but I’d never stopped to think about those days of travel. I never thought of those people who knew that the dragon was coming, who would flee their homes in terror but not really having a place to seek refuge. When a dragon was coming, nowhere was safe. I tried to take comfort in the fact that Boe’s family was surely to the Great River by now, or perhaps traveling along the less populated communities along the foothills of Mount Ramses. They were surely as far out of the path of destruction as they could get. Surely safe.
“Magnilda was worried about this, you know.”
Boe’s voice startled me so much that I jumped to my feet and had my sword drawn before I realized who had spoken. My hands were shaking too badly for me to guide my sword back into its scabbard so I just laid it on the ground at my feet. “I don’t understand. Why would there be a dragon already?”
“The question is how many dragons are there, and why have they come out now?” That sounded ominous. And why was this the first I was hearing about it?
“Look,” I said, my fear being overcome with anger, “I don’t know why you’re keeping all these secrets from me. All this stuff with Magnilda and who knows what else,” I stuck my finger out and jabbed it into Boe’s chest, “but I’m getting really sick of it. I thought I knew you, I thought I knew who you were. I trusted you, I thought you trusted me too.”
Boe stepped away from me to rub his hands above our dwindling campfire. “Magnilda asked me not to tell anyone about her and Sterling.” If there was an apology in there, I didn’t catch it.
“Well, that doesn’t include me!” I struggled not to yell, not to wake Bayrd or Warley or Gable, or anything else that might be sleeping in the black of the steep, rocky hills around us. “You tell me about stuff like that. I’m your best friend.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “you’re my only friend. You deserve better.” That was a start.
“Yes! I do!”
“Magnilda thinks there are two dragons who were never killed. One was born in the mountains or something and never fell into the Dragonrage.” The fear was coming back to me now, strong. “She thinks that maybe they’ve been living in secret. Maybe even breeding.”
Breeding?
“But only two dragons are born!” I protested. “Even the prophecy says that. It doesn’t say anything about more dragons.”
“Actually, it does. Look, I don’t fully understand it, but Magnilda says that the line that talks about the Stonedragon Flame is talking about some kind of power that can be used to shackle or somehow enslave all of Lævena. And she says that it’s something that can be used by what she calls the Dragonborn. That is, dragons that are bred outside of the Stoneflame ceremonies, beyond those two dragons.”
This was huge. This was impossible. Why didn’t everyone know about this? Why were we all in training if there were these dragons out there, making more dragons? How many more? Hundreds? Thousands? A dragon army? “Why isn’t Master Walker out there trying to find and kill these dragons? Why aren’t the other Dragon Masters out there?”
“Magnilda says she has no proof, that nobody would listen to her. She isn’t even sure if her interpretation of the prophecy is correct. I guess she’s planning to ask some other Dragon Scholars about it and they would figure out how to approach the Dragon Masters.”
“And now, because of all these secrets, Daija and your family, everyone in Chialaa Valley, everyone in the Realm is in danger!”
Boe squeezed his eyes shut and breathed heavily, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t try to defend himself.
“We have to tell Bayrd.”
“Tell him what?” Boe shot at me. “Yes, look, I should have told you. I should have told you everything. I shouldn’t keep—” he choked up and then sighed, slowing, “I shouldn’t keep secrets from you. I’m sorry. But telling Bayrd right now isn’t going to help anything. He’ll want to go back to Rægena and then there won’t be anyone heading to help at Chialaa Valley. They need us.”
“Well, the world needs to know too,” I said. “Magnilda will tell everyone, won’t she? When she hears about the dragon in the swamplands, she’ll tell everyone what you told me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” I said, “we need to kill that dragon. And then we need to get back to Rægena and we need to make sure she tells everyone.”
“I agree.”
“Good.”
“I’m sorry,” Boe said after a pause. He seemed sincere.
“You should be.”
“Yeah.”
I was starting to calm down, just a little. We had a plan. I understood what needed to happen. Right? The important thing was to do it all as quickly as possible. Save Daija, then worry about saving the world. We stood around the dying fire for several minutes, Boe’s occasional soft sniffles and the rare pop or crackle from the fire pit were the only noises in the night air.
“It’ll be okay.” It had to be.
“Okay.”
“Lets try to sleep,” I said.
“Okay.”
“And then we save the Realm.”
Boe looked up to see me smiling at him as I said this last. I gave him a brief hug to calm him, and to calm me, and then we dumped canisters of water and stirred the embers from the remains of the fire before retreating into our tents. We’d need to get some rest if we were going to save the Realm.
CHAPTER NINE
Path of Destruction
There had once been a village here.
Looking around me, it was difficult to imagine. Blackened patches where Dragonsfire had burned away everything it touched suggested the layout of a village, and in one place I could see the remains of what once must have been a gigantic stone fireplace. The fireplace had spilled out and fused into a rolling wave of stone, a monument to the destructive power of the dragon. There were no survivors, or if there had been then they’d scattered into the nearby swamplands or else just as far away as they could get. We didn’t need survivors to point us in the direction of the dragon, the toppled trees were clear enough indication about where the path of destruction led from here.
We looked at each other but didn’t have anything to say. Bayrd started riding along the path of destruction. I spurred my horse ahead, flying the colors of Rægena high above us to provide some measure of hope to any survivors who may be in hiding, who needed to know that we were here to avenge their lost loved ones. We were here to prevent furth
er death and destruction. Or at least to try our best.
After an hour of riding on the outskirts of the swamplands, we came to the remains of another settlement. I spotted a couple of hooded figures as they scattered into the swamplands, and I called out to them that we were friends, but the sound of my voice only seemed to spook them.
“Looters,” Bayrd spat out, disgusted.
“What is there for them to loot?” Gable asked. I looked around, wondering the same thing myself.
This had obviously been a larger town, probably the one that had been labeled Harper’s Fork on the crude map Boe carried with him. As recorder, he would not only create a written record of the dragon quest, he would also be responsible for plotting the path of destruction and figuring out likely next targets. The Dragonrage caused dragons to be attracted to larger settlements and more entrenched human populations which helped make their paths somewhat predictable, especially once they discovered the Great River. Few dragons had been known to cross the Great River. They usually spent time hitting each of the cities and towns along the shore until they could be stopped. With luck, the Dragon Master from Val Cala would be riding up the Great River right now to cut off the dragon’s path from the south, but he would likely be too late to stop the dragon before he hit Chialaa Valley. Before he reached Daija. That was up to us.
Bayrd wasn’t feeling the same sense of urgency that I felt. He walked over to the blackened area where the looters had been and picked up a single sparkling orange gemstone off the ground. After some searching, he found a hatchway set into what had once been the floor of a great bank or storehouse of some kind. The fused stone that had sealed it shut when the dragon had come was recently chipped away, allowing the hatch to be opened. We gathered as he opened the hatch and I was astonished to see a perfectly intact cellar, strewn with precious minerals, jewelry, parchment paper. Nothing had been touched by the Dragonsfire, though the looters had clearly been inside, picking through, trying to find the most valuable treasures to haul away first.
