by Lisa McMann
There was something inside him that was stronger than his memory, though. Something about that ancestor broth was trying to nudge him toward information about his family, and Dev desperately wanted to learn it. It was as if he needed something to grasp. Something to hold on to. Like his entire life had become literal when the Revinir had told him nobody cared about him and then tossed him out the window. Falling, falling, with no purpose and no good end.
He hadn’t realized it until recently. His whole life he’d gone about his daily tasks, working and suffering and hoping for a hot meal and some water once a day or so. There was nothing else to it other than looking on as the princess experienced the good life.
It had seemed like enough. It had been easy, back then, to ignore the tiny thoughts that something wasn’t quite right. That life could be different. Better. That he didn’t deserve what he’d been dealt. But ever since Fifer had said so bluntly that Shanti hadn’t been a good friend to him, Dev had been dying a little inside. He’d denied it over and over, in his dreams and his work and his precious quiet moments before drifting off to sleep. But Fifer’s words pounded louder and louder in his ears, like the sound of an approaching horse that had been spooked.
Dev realized and acknowledged that Fifer’s statement was true. Shanti, the only family Dev had ever known, hadn’t thought of him as a brother. Dev was her slave. The one she called on when she wanted something. The one who was punished for her wrongdoings. The one constantly scrambling to hang on to the security of a terrible life, because the alternative could be worse.
He felt so stupid about it now that the truth about Shanti had been revealed. But how was he to have known? He’d never experienced life differently until meeting the people from Artimé. Fifer and the rescue team had taken him in. And before that, Thisbe in the catacombs. Despite that she’d left him to rot with the Revinir, she’d taught him so much. He’d never felt true kindness from anyone until Thisbe had wrapped her arms around his sobbing shoulders in the catacombs kitchen. And then… he’d never felt comradeship, true brotherly companionship, until Drock the dark purple dragon had told him they were alike. And that he was worth saving.
Now, with the images of the palace and the gray man so present in his mind, Dev felt a connection to this place like he’d never felt anywhere in his life. It was so strong it made him ache. Tears from the pain of it—the pain of being alive yet feeling dead for his entire fourteen years—sprang to his eyes. He felt the ache build and wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to push it away.
Eventually he realized Astrid hadn’t answered his questions. She was continuing to stare at the palace, lost in her memories. “What happened here, Astrid?” he asked again, more gently now that he saw the pain in her eyes. “Will you tell me?”
Astrid glanced at Dev, mildly startled to be reminded that he was there. Then she stood and took a few steps into the covered courtyard, the ceiling of which was the sagging second floor of the palace that connected the four corner towers. “Even the gold is gone,” she said. “I suppose it was only a matter of time.”
She was right. The bulbs at the top of the towers had been stripped of the gold that had plated them. The warm, bright colors had muddied, faded, and peeled off, and heavy mold grew in patches on the stately facade.
“Do you think someone stole the gold?” Dev asked. That made the most sense to a person like him. He might have tried the same thing, had he known about it and possessed the proper tools to extract it.
“Likely. Pirates, I suppose.”
“The Revinir has gold,” said Dev suspiciously. “A lot of it.”
Astrid shook her head. “I doubt it was her. She’s only been around for a short time. I expect this happened sometime after the war. It’s been… many years.”
“Forty, I think. Will you tell me about it, please?” Dev asked for the third time. He could see she was working hard to come up with the details.
Astrid kept walking slowly toward the center turret, like she was trying to identify the different parts of the property that she remembered from long ago. “It’s been so long since we spent any time around here. Since the meteors hit. Forty years wandering around in the cavelands, waiting,” she said. “I almost can’t believe it’s been that long.”
“Waiting… to die?” asked Dev.
“Waiting to die,” Astrid confirmed.
There was silence for a moment. Astrid peeked inside a broken window in the tower and sniffed. Then she began a longer answer to Dev’s question.
“Once upon a time,” she said, “two black-eyed families and a council of dragons ruled this land in peace and abundance, and everything was good.”
Astrid Remembers
The Taveer family ruled in Grimere,” said Astrid. “Maiven Taveer was the queen and commander of the army there, and a smart army they were. Precise and beautiful and full of life—oh, my dear boy, you should have seen them shine with pride as they marched the road to the square. The leading dragons in formation along with them. I can still picture it. And Maiven—I’d forgotten about her until we arrived here. What a noble queen! But I’m afraid she’s been dead for many years. No one has seen her since the uprising.”
“She’s alive,” Dev said breathlessly. He felt a rush of joy to bring such news to the dragon. “She was in the dungeon of the castle all this time! I fed her with my own hand. And now I believe—at least, I think—she has escaped. There was a fire in the castle recently, you see, though I don’t remember it because the Revinir had most of us black-eyed children under her mind control. But Thisbe—she told me a few things about what happened.”
“That’s incredible news about the queen,” said Astrid, though she sounded a little like she didn’t believe it. “If true, perhaps something good will come of it.” She stopped abruptly and turned to look at Dev. “How many of you are there? Enough for an army? And how many dragons in Grimere at present, not counting the ghost variety?”
Dev wasn’t sure. “Seven or eight children, I think, plus Maiven. And Thisbe and Fifer. And, um… there’s one good dragon we can count on.” He frowned. “Probably.”
Astrid turned her head and blew a breath of fire, clearing the fog from the courtyard. “That’s not many,” she said.
“It’s a very small army,” agreed Dev, almost apologetically. “Though—” His face clouded. “The others have left. It’s only me still here in the land of the dragons. So I guess that would be one dragon… and one human.” He dropped his chin. “That’s not really any, when you come to think of it.”
Astrid didn’t answer right away. Instead she started walking again, circling the center tower and looking around. The courtyard appeared to have been an open-air living and dining space with a fireplace and a clay kitchen that had been stripped of everything valuable. The ceiling of the courtyard was the base of the second floor, stretching to all four corner turrets around the center one. There were more floors above it, but they were in terrible shape. Some had collapsed, but the second floor seemed to be holding up all right, other than bowing a bit.
Dev noticed that each tower was its own enormous, tall home with a separate doorless entrance. While Astrid took a break to think some more, Dev looked inside each of them. The metal-and-stone staircases in three of the towers seemed to be the most solid and unharmed parts of the property. But the two towers with bulbs that had split were unclimbable due to the large pieces of debris that had fallen inward and blocked the way.
Dev and Astrid met back in the center of the courtyard and went up to the large tower. The huge, arched doorway had been stripped of its door, and the space was open for anyone to enter. When Astrid ducked her head inside, a family of foxes with young kits skittered out from under the staircase and ran toward the overgrown bushes to the south.
Astrid backed out of the doorway so Dev could see inside. The stone spiral staircase was built off to one side. “I believe Ashguard lived in this one,” Astrid said. Then suddenly she poked her snout through a second-floo
r window to look down at Dev. “It’s not nothing.”
“What isn’t, please?” asked Dev, poised on the first step.
“One dragon and one human. It’s not nothing. It’s something.”
“Oh.” Dev felt his face grow hot. “Well, yes, I suppose so.” He didn’t elaborate on the fact that there was literally nothing he and Drock could do to stop the Revinir. “Thank you,” he added, then chided himself for thanking the dragon for calling him “not nothing.” He knew he was something. It was just hard to remember that sometimes.
Dev climbed a few steps in the dark entryway and peered up the spiral. The tower was lit only by sunshine coming through filthy panes of glass high above him. He could see long cobwebs hanging down, like something had broken through them. “Would you like to tell me what happened forty years ago?” he asked Astrid.
“Oh, yes.” She paused. “The meteors, of course. There were two of them that I saw. Others say more, but they must have landed far away, because I didn’t see or feel them hit. One after another those two came, slamming into the ground between here and Grimere. They formed the crater lake near Dragonsmarche. You’ve seen that, haven’t you? The impact cracked the earth and caused a big leak—water and fire came spurting up around the meteors to form the lake. And that volcano grew quickly.”
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” answered Dev, climbing slowly and stopping at the second floor, finding it in appalling shape. He leaned out the window. “So both meteors hit in the same place? That explains why no one could say where the second one hit. They stacked up.” He’d heard rumors about the meteors when he worked at the palace. People had said the impact caused their world to split off from the world of the Seven Islands, where Thisbe, Fifer, and Seth lived. They had a volcano there, too—perhaps that had come from one of the other meteorites that people had seen.
“Yes,” said Astrid. “The ground rumbled and groaned for hours. And it cracked somewhere beyond the castle, deep down under the sea where the rock was weaker. After a day or two, it gave way and split our world in half.”
Dev nodded. That’s what he’d heard. He went back down the steps, then exited into the courtyard. “But that didn’t cause this, did it? Wasn’t there some fighting? How did this happen?”
Astrid sniffed the air for a few moments, looking puzzled, then sniffed the ground near Dev’s feet. “There was an uprising,” she said when she was done. “A group of rogue soldiers who’d wanted to take charge and oust the black-eyed ruling families. They’d been building their faction for years, I think. Slowly but steadily. They never would have been able to succeed if it hadn’t been for the meteors and the earthquake. People thought it was the end of the world. And the sea… It bottomed out and left that big gaping chasm, with the castle barely on the stable edge of it. The queen’s ships were lost, falling forever.”
The idea of that was unfathomable. “So this group of usurpers saw the people’s panic as an opportunity?” Dev knew full well who’d led them. It was the king, Shanti’s father. And he definitely wouldn’t have called himself a usurper. His version of the story was very different from Astrid’s. And even though the dragon’s memory was faulty, Dev believed her over the king.
“Yes,” said Astrid, who was finally finding momentum in telling the story now. “Immediately after the meteors hit, the rogue soldiers captured several black-eyed children and forced them—by threatening their parents’ lives—to kidnap their friend Nadia, the queen’s daughter. The children obeyed, and the usurpers sold the young princess to pirates for a ridiculously large sum, which sent the black-eyed royalty into a tailspin. We believe the pirates escaped with Nadia to the land of the Seven Islands before that world broke off from ours.”
Dev stopped exploring and faced her, wide-eyed. “Then what happened?”
“After Queen Maiven sent her fleet to stop the pirates, the great split under the sea happened, and she lost most of her ships. The queen’s personal ship hadn’t sailed yet, and she made it to safety when they felt the first ominous shivers. The rogue group saw their chance to seize the castle and capture the queen. I thought they’d killed Maiven. All this time I believed she was dead—everyone else believed it too. That she’s alive, as you say… Well, it’s the best news I’ve heard in a long while, I’ll tell you that.”
Dev smiled but said nothing because he didn’t want to interrupt her story now that it was moving along so swiftly.
Astrid paused a moment to think. “Once they took possession of the castle, they spread the false rumors that the world would end under black-eyed rule, and they blamed the dragons for the natural disasters that had happened. The usurper group’s support grew wildly, but they knew they needed to possess the rest of the land in order to retain power long term. Days later they and their growing military marched the streets, fighting off dragons and steering around the crater lake and over the mountains to this kingdom. Many of the black-eyed people from both families had found safety here until the new king’s army arrived. There was no place for them to run to from here. Ashguard Suresh’s palace was overthrown. The village was torn apart.”
Dev pressed his palms against his temples in shock. He’d had no idea about much of this. “So why is it deserted now, if the rogue group took over?”
“They only wanted to destroy the lines of black-eyed rulers, not take the land. No one wished to be so isolated way out here, far from Grimere. Plus, the formation of the crater lake blocked easy access to this area. The new rulers recklessly killed your grandparents and took their children as slaves. They probably enslaved one or both of your parents, and traded you away soon after you were born. It was a game to them. Trading black-eyed children became a valuable practice.”
Dev was quiet for a long moment as he remembered when Thisbe and Fifer were first captured and sent to be auctioned at Dragonsmarche. He hadn’t seen it happen, but he’d helped Fifer in the aftermath. Had he been auctioned off in that same horrible way? And what had happened to his parents? Dev could hardly handle thinking about them after that news. It was easier to believe he had none than to get his hopes dashed again.
“What of the ghost dragons? How do you fit into the story?”
“At that time my generation of rulers, the elder dragons, were preparing to pass on to the next life. But without our co-ruling humans in control of the land named for us, our chance to transfer power peacefully to the next generation was put in jeopardy. Because of the rumors that the rogue group had started about us, many of the younger dragons were killed or cast out. Hundreds fled to find other lands that weren’t so dangerous to be in.
“To preserve our rightful ownership and ensure a smooth transition, my generation of dragons was forced to live on. Slowly we turned to ghosts, and now we haunt the cavelands while we wait for the proper human rulers to take back the power, and for our dragons to return—physically and mentally. Whenever that happens, we can go peacefully, leaving our bones to be buried alongside the bones of our ancestors. But until it does, we are cursed to the cavelands to wait.”
“Cursed,” said Dev as he crossed the covered courtyard to a different tower and peered inside. “Like the rest of the dragons are now.”
“They are being controlled by the Revinir, which is indeed a curse,” Astrid said. She walked over to the corner of the palace to peer into the turret that Dev was climbing up.
“At least the dragons are here in this land again,” said Dev, hooking his arm outside a window halfway up to the onion bulb. “Isn’t that a good thing? If we can break the Revinir’s curse on them, they can help Drock and me fight to take back our land.” He paused, then added, “Unless they think we’re the enemy when they wake up. I imagine they won’t know where they are if the mind control is broken. Like what happened to me.”
Astrid was silent for a moment. Then she sighed. “Time will tell, I suppose. That’s really all we have.”
Discovery and Longing
Someone has been here recently,” Astrid called out. She returned
to the main turret and sampled the air inside the window now, rather than outside it as she’d done before. “Someone almost… familiar. I’ve been trying, but I can’t quite… Hmm.”
Dev came over from the turret he’d given up on, careful not to trip on the uneven floor. A few stubborn trees had grown inside the courtyard where they ought not be, pushing up between the loose pavers. As he strolled, Dev turned again to the images he’d seen and asked abruptly, “Who is the gray man?”
“What’s that, my boy?” Astrid sniffed again, her face pressed against a window whose glass had been broken out long ago.
“The gray man. All bent over, with a long beard. I have his image in my mind, and I think he lives… lived… here.”
“Ahhh,” said Astrid. “That would be Ashguard Suresh. He was the black-eyed ruler who owned this palace, and the leader of the Suresh line of people. He was a good friend to the dragons, though a bit harsh to the humans around him, especially after the attack stripped him of his family. He survived the usurpers through wits alone, but few others did. Once they left, he hid here for many years after the attack.”
“So he became a curmudgeon after everyone else was killed? He wasn’t always that way?” Somehow this felt important for Dev to know.
“That is how I remember him,” agreed Astrid. “Very kind in his youth. And always good to us dragons. Treated us like royalty in all things, especially when it came to making decisions about our land.” She pulled her snout out of the window. “You should go back up in this one and explore. Someone was here, but they’re not here now.”
“Okay.” Dev thought that pretty much anybody would be a curmudgeon if they lost their entire family and people. And their palace that they’d probably worked really hard on. It made him feel warmer toward the gray man, knowing his kindness never wavered toward the dragons. If Dev were a ruler, that’s how he’d want to be too.
Dev reentered the middle turret that Astrid was looking inside and stopped at the bottom of the staircase to let his eyes adjust. He sniffed the air, like Astrid had done, but his dragon senses weren’t even close to being fully developed, and he didn’t smell anything but the foxes. As he waited, he ran a hand over the scales on his arm, thinking about what it would be like to have all of the dragon senses and abilities, rather than just the scales and the fiery breath and an occasional premonition. Being able to see in the dark would be nice.
