by Alan Carr
“I can’t say I have any idea where I’m heading,” I finally admitted. The air was definitely salty, but without any visual cues I’d lost my sense of direction and had begun to worry that I was leading us in circles.
“Do you want to try to set up camp?” Warley asked.
“I think I can get us to Marstyn,” Boe insisted. “I think we’re very close.”
“I hope so,” I said. I was coming to peace with the swamplands, probably because the rain and the mists and fog had served to help calm my nerves and soothe some of my wounds, but that didn’t mean I wanted to spend another night in the place.
“I hope that Marstyn still stands,” Warley put in. A sobering thought.
I tried to figure out how long it had been since I’d seen the dragon back at the village and decided that if he had flown straight to Marstyn then he must still be there now. A city of that size would take some time to destroy, and if any of the city’s citizens had mounted any kind of defense, that would slow it further still. So unless Bayrd and Gable had gotten lost, and that was a very real possibility, then they could have already met the dragon in battle. The dragon could be dead now, or Bayrd and Gable could. Or the dragon could have gone in a totally different direction. There was just no way to know, but thinking through all these possibilities made me feel jumpy again, made me realize that there was no way I could comfortably stop now and set up camp.
“We need to find out, tonight, one way or another,” I said.
Warley agreed, and we let Boe take the lead.
It took only a quarter of an hour or so for Boe to lead us out of the thickest part of the swamplands. As we broke through a heavy swath of overgrowth, the air seemed clearer on the other side. I noticed that there was no canopy overhead, and that as we progressed still further, the level of the fog was lifting until we were clear of it entirely. It was a little like stepping out of a dream world, and then into another.
We were standing on a muddy beach, and Stone glowed brilliantly above. Before us was blackness, but not the blackness of the swamplands through thick fog. This was the blackness of the ocean. The first time I’d ever seen the Northern Oceans. I extinguished my torch in the mud below and focused into the distance, letting my eyes adjust to that blackness. Faint stars appeared on the horizon and in the skies above, shining in their many colors. I scanned the shoreline and saw that we were standing along a cove with the swamplands wrapped around us like the curved embrace of a gentle green giant’s outstretched hand.
Boe had his map out again and was able to find an area that seemed to match the shape of this cove. Marstyn was just on the other side of one sweeping tendril of swamplands. We considered cutting directly through the swamplands, but, wary of getting lost, we decided instead to mount our horses and ride along the coast line. It felt almost unfairly serene, having this incredible view all to ourselves and being out on the shore after such a horrifying day, and with such potentially grave prospects just ahead. Still, it was hard not to relax as we rode. I made a point of taking deep breaths, trying to let the crisp salty air expand my lungs and battle the encrustation of soot and the tenderness within me. As we finally began to round the swamplands, I shifted the flag pole to my left hand and brought my right hand around to rest on my sword’s handle. I was prepared to draw my blade at the first sign of trouble.
Marstyn came into view. The city was much larger than I’d envisioned, especially here at the edge of the swamplands. Two tall spires rose at either end of the city along the water, and a tall church steeple rose from the city’s center. Everything was so well lit that I was sure the city was burning. But there were no signs of a dragon, there were no people spilling out of the city fleeing into the swamplands, there were no indicators of panic or confusion or of a great battle. The city was lit by fire, yes, but it was organized. There were giant mounted torches, I realized, burning bright into the night, illuminating the spires so that they could be seen from a distance, seen by sailors at sea. I could hear the soft strands of music in the night air, the clink of ceramic mugs toasting, and stirrings of laughter. I looked behind me to see Boe with a dazzled expression on his face, and Warley looked like he’d been clenching his teeth for the last hour and had only now let himself breathe easily. I spurred my horse forward and we all galloped into town.
There were shouts as people in the city reported our coming, and I lifted the flagpole proudly into the air. Rægena’s colors had faded and been covered in places by caked mud and may not even be fully visible in the night sky, but I wanted to try to signal that we were friendly. I needn’t have bothered. As we rode past the buildings at the edges of the city and down a wide avenue toward the welcoming fires burning at the city center, I could hear excited voices from within buildings. They seemed at times to be speaking Lævenish, but their accents were so strong that I had trouble making out full sentences. I was starting to imagine that we would be able to find a warm meal to eat here, and possibly a comfortable bed to collapse into.
As we began to pass a large building with stables, a man ran out of the building yelling toward us, so we stopped. He began to speak in an uncertain tone in an unfamiliar tongue.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “we don’t speak your language.”
A wide smile spread across the man’s face. “No, no, it is I who is sorry,” he was speaking Lævenish now, his voice accented by curt hard “r” sounds and the rasp of a man who has spent his long life on or near the ocean. I knew the rasp well, many of my father’s friends were sailors and you could tell how long they’d spent on the sea just from the sound of their voices. “Please, please, allow me to care for your poor steeds.” He got right to the point, “Only twelve silver for the night, a special price for riders on a dragon quest!”
We looked at each other and nodded in agreement, then I remembered that Bayrd was carrying our coin purse.
“There are two more in our party,” I said in my most official voice, “and we must find and confer with them first. Do you happen to know if they arrived in this city?”
His smile grew even wider and the crows feet at his eyes gathered. “Ah, yes, the young dragon slayers.”
Dragon slayers?
“Please, leave your horses with me for now, you can pay later. Go, go,” he made a pushing gesture in the air as he began to gather the reins for the horses, “meet your friends at the tavern on the water.”
We ran down the rest of the avenue and took a left at a great square in the center of the city. I didn’t pause to look up at the towering Stonespirit cathedral that stood there, but I could feel its presence looming over me. I easily picked out the tavern on the water; it was full of life. People laughed and danced, and two musicians played stringed instruments on a small raised stage. And there at the bar, surrounded by city folk and sailors, were Bayrd and Gable.
As we entered the tavern, Gable looked up at us and his eyes lit up in recognition. He grinned enthusiastically and beckoned us over to join them. On seeing us and our armor, filthy and destroyed as it was, the crowd parted to give us a path to the bar.
“We ran at full speed after the beast, and I could see its wings rising and falling through the—” I had never seen Bayrd so animated, so completely open. He stopped when he saw us, his arms raised in the air, mid-gesture. He began to laugh uproariously and Gable joined in, then everyone at the bar was laughing. Warley pushed in front of me and took a seat at the bar, looking up at Bayrd expectantly. Bayrd’s eyes flashed in amusement and he asked me, “Would you like to see the heart of a dragon?”
My heart sunk.
It wasn’t that I was unhappy that the dragon had been slain, or that I even wanted to face it in combat. I just felt so very … left out. Like if I’d just followed my training and went after the dragon when I had the chance, my life would be different now. We had done all this, journeyed through the pass, tracked the dragon all through the swamplands, had a real dragon quest—and then at the end
of it all, I wasn’t even there. We were going to return to Rægena and everyone would want to hear the story a million times, and Bayrd and Gable would be the only ones who could tell it. Bayrd would be crowned Dragon Master and be given a kingdom to rule over, and I would still be just another Stone Soul. It would be as if I had never left the academy. No, no that wasn’t right. There were those people in that swampland village. Without Boe and Warley and me they would have died. I thought of the parents embracing their daughter, the two children caring for their grandmother. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t slaying a dragon. But if we hadn’t come, if we hadn’t stopped to help, then those people would have died. I tried to muster the appropriate enthusiasm for the moment.
Bayrd drew a sack up off the ground and held up his hand. He called for silence and it came in an instant. Boe took a step back, aware, as I was, that the dragon’s blood would still have its toxic paralyzing properties for days, and the stuff would be oozing all over the blackened heart. But I could also see that he was dying to see it. Boe didn’t have to fake his enthusiasm. Warley was suddenly practically drooling all over Bayrd in admiration, but Boe tugged on him and got him to take a step back as well. Warley was acting worse than Gable.
The anticipation in the tavern felt like it had a spirit of its own, building in strength and preparing to unleash a great and powerful spell upon the crowd. And perhaps that was exactly what was happening. Bayrd checked that his sleeve was securely tucked into his glove, and then reached into the bag. His movements were slow and deliberate. He began to lift his hand out again, with great reverence. He was looking right into my eyes.
And then he dropped the bag and threw the heart right at my chest.
I cried out in surprise and fell backward onto the floor, shielding my eyes with crossed arms. As I skidded on my rear, I heard the deafening roar of everyone in the tavern laughing. I saw them pointing down at me, tears coming down their cheeks. I looked up to see Bayrd and Gable huddled together in great racking laughs, throwing their heads back in delight. Warley was staring down at me in horror, and Boe was right there above me. He held out his hand to help me up.
“Really funny guys,” Boe said, loudly, but I was probably the only one who could hear him. As I stood, I looked down and saw the heart on the ground, not black, but brown. It was smallish, and not at all what I’d expected. “It’s a human heart,” Boe explained. He reached down and picked it up, holding it out to Bayrd until he calmed down enough to notice.
“I’m sorry,” Bayrd said, and started laughing again.
Gable raised a tankard of something and took a huge drink from it, then handed it to Bayrd who did the same. Bayrd was still laughing when he offered it to me, and when I refused it, to Boe. He didn’t accept the offered drink either, so Bayrd offered it to Warley who was trying to get into the spirit of things. He, like us, didn’t really understand what that spirit was. Warley accepted the tankard and took a sip, then a larger drink of the stuff before handing it back to Gable.
“Hey, Caedan,” Bayrd tried again, “look, I really am sorry. I had to do it. Have a drink, let me explain.” He wiped at the guts and blood that were clinging to my chest plate.
Reluctantly, I took a seat at the bar, and Boe pulled up a chair from an empty table in the back of the tavern and joined us. Bayrd and Gable burst into another round of laughter, which set the whole tavern into laughing, hollering delight. Some of them picked up pieces of meat off their plates and hurled them at each other, and then the other would fall over dramatically, mimicking me. I was fuming mad, despite Bayrd’s attempt at apology.
This had better be one really good story.
Once they got started, Bayrd and Gable were falling over each other to tell the next part, or to point out a detail they felt the other hadn’t properly built up enough. Neither Boe nor I said a word as they began to relate it, though Warley interjected with many questions, which they gleefully answered. I wasn’t sure if everyone around us even spoke Lævenish fluently, and I knew that some or most of them had already heard the story at least once, but they were cheering and jeering and getting quiet at all the right parts, all the time drinking ales and buying drinks for the rest of us, except Boe who continued to refuse them. By the end, even Boe and I were laughing along, and I’d mostly forgotten about the terrible trick he’d played on me. Though that may have had more to do with the strong drinks.
***
Bayrd was prepared for the dragon to return to finish what he’d started in the small, remote village. He stood in the open, sword in hand, ready to challenge the dragon to battle, but when the dragon approached, he could sense his coming doom and so turned and fled. Bayrd and Gable took off through the swamplands in pursuit, slicing through the greenery, cutting down any trees that stood between them and their prey. (I was pretty sure we would have seen trees that had been lopped in half by a sword strike, but I didn’t voice my protest over this detail.) Through the canopy, they could see the flap of a dragon’s wing here and there, and then they came to a small valley that was entirely on fire. The dragon was trying to hinder their pursuit, but they refused to be slowed. They charged into the flames, letting out war cries so that the dragon knew that they were still close behind. As if in a sign from the Stonespirits (since when was Bayrd remotely religious? But everyone in the tavern nodded knowingly at this part of the story), the skies opened overhead and rain poured from the heavens, allowing them to run through the flames unharmed. They lost sight of the dragon, and came to a split between two paths, north or south. Gable suggested that they split, but Bayrd wisely said they should stay together, for if but one of them was a Dragon Master, better that they double their odds. As if in response, they heard the dragon’s roar to the north and so they began to sprint after the dragon again.
After a time, they found three men pouring some kind of alcohol onto an incredibly long fallen tree trunk. At first they thought that they were trying to set a trap for the dragon, but then they noticed that the dragon’s wings were lying on the ground, folded in half, and the rest of the dragon was nowhere to be found. Bayrd was prepared to ask them what had happened and who had cut off the wings, but when he was spotted the men panicked, setting fire to the giant tree trunk and running. Though wet, the huge log burst into flame instantly, glowing unnaturally blue at first and then consuming the whole of the tree in fire. Gable came to the truth first—there was no dragon! There were just these thieving arsonists, using the fold-up dragon wings to scare away people from small villages and towns and then ransacking them, and using this alcohol to burn everything to the ground as they ran off. They would grab anyone who saw them, and tie them up and leave them in buildings to be burned to the ground.
There was no dragon, but these murderers had to be stopped! Bayrd and Gable found long sticks and used them to vault over the fallen tree (I could guess that between the rain and the wetness of the log it probably wasn’t burning too impressively after the initial flare up). The villainous dragon impersonators were running, but they were weighed down by sacks and pouches that hung from their bodies. Bayrd caught up with the slowest and ran him through with his blade, then the remaining two dropped their ill-gotten treasures and drew their own swords to defend themselves. (Bayrd and Gable each went into great detail here about how they each began to fight a man, and how each of their battles went—obviously they both eventually won.) Bayrd used his sword to cut out the heart of the leader (I didn’t remember hearing how they figured out which one was the leader) and put it in his trophy bag. Then Bayrd and Gable gathered the bodies and the fake dragon wings and all the stolen treasures and used the impersonator’s own alchemic mixtures to cause them to all burn in the false Dragonsfire.
With that, the dragon quest was over.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Impostor
We stayed up late into the night, nursing drinks and bonding over the experiences of the dragon quest that wasn’t. The drinks served to help dull the aches and pa
ins and burns we were all feeling, as well as to calm our minds as we wound down from all the tensions and stress of everything. Boe still refused to drink, and I joined in with the others in trying to persuade him to change his mind, to try one strange brew or another. I knew he wouldn’t give in, he never did, not even when they served spiced ginger wine at special feasts. “I don’t want to have anything less than full control over what I do and say,” he’d explained to me one of those times when I was being especially persistent. But he still joined in the conversation and the reminiscing and the teasing me about the trick they’d pulled on me with the heart. I felt like we were really starting to grow into a solid team and knew that this experience was far more valuable than any training we would have been getting back at the academy.
“I’ve never told anyone this,” Gable said, taking a large swig of his current drink, “but I have a big crush on Kamelia.” Warley let loose with a whooping laugh, and Bayrd chuckled uneasily. I was pretty surprised to find out that Gable felt that way, considering I’d never seen him talk to Kamelia. Of course, aside from the short conversation during my Watch duty, I’d never talked with her either.
Warley said, “You and the whole Stone Soul class, you mean.” Gable looked genuinely surprised by this. Warley added, “She’s always hanging around and watching us, you know?”
