Flight of the Dragon Knight

by D. C. Clemens

  Chapter Eighteen

  Fuzzy sunlight nuzzled the horizon on the morning my repose ended. As I ate a piece of a bitter watermelon, everyone walked over and gathered at the eastern pillar. The sages had never been so silent and yet so excited before. I separated from the main group as they anticipated witnessing the first unassisted dragon summoning in five hundred years.

  Out of earshot from the others, I asked, “Any last second advice?”

  “Unsheathe the sword.” I did. “This blade gives you an advantage over most Veknu Milaris of the past. Without it acting as a conduit for my power, you would still be a year away from this chance.” His words were underlined by the sword rattling in my hand. “Do you remember summoning me in Alslana? How it felt?”

  “Every muscle twitch.” I looked down at the long, faint scar on my left palm, which had been joined by a shorter, newer scar. “I’m not going to have to cut myself again, am I?”

  “No. The blood seal only need be made once. What you need to do this time is pour your prana into the sword. Reach its very core. I will help provide the spark. And don’t plant your hand on the ground. Aim with your eyes instead. Veknu Milaris do not stoop. Gather as much prana as you can in your hand, and when I say so, release it all at once into the blade. If you cannot summon me after this first attempt, then another chance will have to wait until more training is completed.”

  “Sorry, but fuck that. Brace yourself!”

  The prana in my hand was shoved into the sword by an extra surge of prana amassed in my right arm. That characteristic airburst of something new and large appearing out of nowhere fluttered my cloak and hair. My brain suddenly shrank by half and my vision blurred, but I somehow kept upright.

  The ground rumbled as the dragon did. It outright shook as the curved claws on Aranath’s folded wings crudely gripped the flat stone to lift his upper frame a little higher. The fire breathing beast stood twenty feet tall like this. If his head lowered back down, then he would be less than ten feet in front of me. The black slits in his burnt orange eyes fell on me.

  As in Alslana, the dragon’s voice stayed telepathic when he said, “Calm your prana, boy. Let’s see how long we can hold me here.”

  I saw him look behind me. I turned to see Clarissa and then Ghevont stepping up to me.

  The vampire said, “Uh, nice to see you again, Aranath.”

  Finally expressing himself outside of my head, the dragon said, “And it’s agreeable to see you with my own eyes for once.” His growling undertone sounded more distinct when he spoke out loud.

  “How does it feel when converting to a human’s sight?” asked Ghevont. “A dragon’s true sight is much keener, I understand.”

  “Yes, scholar, it is quite a contrast. I can comprehend more colors than a human, for instance, and perceive details three times as far. Night is also less of an obstacle for me.”

  “You okay, Mercer?” asked Clarissa, seeing me waver in the breeze.

  “I’m fine. It’s just a lot of prana draining out of me.”

  “Come forth, Master Hermoon,” called Aranath.

  Stepping up, the sage asked, “What do you ask of me, Sky Lord?”

  Aranath brought the front of his long tail forward. The tail’s tip was wrapped around a big ball of dirt, which was dropped near the dragon’s head. “Within the soil are several dozen of my scales. I assume the knowledge to forge armor from these has been passed down.”

  “It has.”

  “And dragon saddles?”

  “We only hold withered antiques, but one can be made swiftly once we gain the proper materials.”

  “Then gain them.”

  “Aye.”

  “Can I pet you?” asked Clarissa.

  A grunt. “Not if you insist on describing it as ‘petting.’”

  “Oh, sorry. Can I, uh, touch your head?”

  As he lowered his skull, Aranath said, “Quickly, before the spell breaks.”

  “Well, in that case, Mercer should get to pe- I mean, feel you first.”

  I pushed her forward. “Go ahead, Clarissa. I’m just trying to not fall on my face right now.”

  “Um, okay.”

  In a pace that was both timid and fast, the vampire headed toward a mouth that could gobble her up with little trouble. Aranath turned his head so that only one of his eyes tracked her. With his mouth shut, I noticed that the tips of his white upper teeth could be spotted. Watching Clarissa’s fingers caress behind the dragon’s snout briefly made me forget that I was casting a spell, which also helped me forget I was about to teeter over.

  “Oh, you’re warmer than you look.” Clarissa next garnered the courage to tiptoe in order to knock on one of Aranath’s horns.

  “Step back,” I said. “I’m close to losing the connection.”

  Startled, Clarissa step away, then spun back to give a little bow to the dragon, and sprinted back beside me. At that instant, all eighty-something feet of dragon vanished and was replaced by a strong suction of wind. My brain’s size exploded back to its regular size.

  Knowing he had kept count, I asked Ghevont, “How long?”

  “One minute and three seconds, give or take two seconds of awed discrepancy.”

  “Is that good, Aranath?”

  “About what I expected.”

  “I still don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”

  “Respectable for your age, but you are no prodigy. Allow your prana to recover and resume training in the afternoon.”

  I sighed. “Are all dragons as pragmatic as you?”

  “Only the most cunning ones.”

  In the background I heard Quandell ask two sages to take the ball of dirt to the temple. As the sages lifted the earth sphere with an earthen spell, Quandell asked, “Are you well, Master Eberwolf?”

  “Dandy.”

  “Good. Please follow me. I think it’s time you see what lies beneath, eh?”

  “I hope you mean the basement.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing. I’m still a little lightheaded. Let’s go.”

  The head sage shook his head. He turned around and mumbled something that sounded like, “The consequence of youth.” Then, on noticing Ghevont and Clarissa following us, he said, “Ah, I apologize, but only sages and Veknu Milaris can witness what’s to come. Please, follow the others for a heartier breakfast or wait outside the temple when we reach it. I hope you understand.”

  “Of course, Master Hermoon,” said Clarissa. “I know you already made an exception to having Ghevont and I up here. Come on, Ghevont, let’s go mingle with Dashay and the others.”

  My companions thus trailed the larger group of sages ambling to the southern pillar while the two sages carrying the ball, Quandell, Eloise, and I headed for the western one.

  As soon as Quandell closed the temple doors behind us, he asked Eloise to extinguish the appropriate candles. Using her dominion over fire to do so, she started to snuff out flames in seemingly random order, but it became obvious that this had a purposeful pattern to it. Once half of the light in the room had been quelled, a round, six inch thick section of the floor unhurriedly slid open to reveal only another portion of the stone floor.

  When a moment passed, I asked, “Now what?”

  “We’re waiting for Everson to do his part,” said Quandell. “A second spell needs to be cast outside to remove the second trapdoor. Give him a minute.”

  The reward for giving a minute of our lives was a thicker trapdoor rasping open to expose a stairway.

  “We don’t have to descend to the center of the world, do we?”

  “No, Master Eberwolf. As your friend surmised earlier, the hollow is near. Come.”

  We walked down the twenty foot deep staircase to enter the beginning of a large basement. Small runes emitting a soft white light lined the ceiling. In total, eight hefty bookcases of tanned stone had been carved into the wall to my left and the wall opposite the entry. The divisions were stuffed with scrolls, books, vials filled
with colored liquid or pieces of minerals, a few fine jewels, and other related trinkets. Broad tables of stone in the center of the room displayed more literature as well as pieces of armor in all its varieties.

  Alongside the right wall stood weapon racks containing well preserved spears, swords, axes, and the like. Hanging above them were shields and bows. Almost every single weapon and shield looked far too ornate to be practical, though I would have said the same for Eudon’s longbow. Two rock mannequins near the racks wore mismatching pieces of armor. Quandell and I walked toward the mannequin with a glass-gilded helmet and wrapped in a thick purple mantle.

  Quandell pulled back part of the mantle to show the gray dragon scale armor underneath. Each scale looked to be as long as my hand, though their exact size was tough to estimate since they overlapped one another. The two sages carrying the dirt ball set it down behind us.

  To the sages, Quandell said, “Find the instructions to make the dragon armor and saddle. They should be in the first shelf on the left.” To me, he said, “It’s customary for a Veknu Milaris to wear armor made from their partner’s skin. Once enchanted, a suit of dragon scales will be able to protect you from all but the most powerful and direct blows another warrior can deliver. Only an enchanted cuirass of steel could offer similar protection, but at the cost of more weight and less flexibility. We can also make bracers and greaves.”

  “Make only one bracer. A, uh, grievance on my left arm prevents anything but cloth from wrapping around it.”

  “As you wish, we’ll only make one of those. It’s worth mentioning that the downside to dragon scale armor is its short lifespan. Even with an enchantment the scales will lose its effectiveness over time, especially after taking damage. Without the blood of a dragon to keep it firm and healthy, a scale will become dry and brittle after a few years. Of course, an unsound dragon scale can be easily replaced by a freshly fallen one, so return to us and we can mend the armor.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Something else…”

  Quandell and I walked over to the section of wall next to the stairs. He waved his hand over a smooth patch of rock, loosening a square piece of stone the size and thickness of my palm. Quandell pulled out the stone block and reached in to grab two red prana crystals.

  “As you saw, we use nine dragon crystals to power the summoning rune. Every time a dragon accepts the summoning, they are generous enough to replace the prana expended in the spell. We do, however, keep a few spares in case we lose or break one. I am willing to part with two so that you may sustain a summoning for longer than a minute.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Dragon prana is dense, and based on your training, I estimate you can draw out a week’s worth of summoning power from each crystal. Possibly more if Aranath can help refine the prana through your sword. A dragon is said to be able to fly half a day without stopping, allowing it to cross upwards of three hundred miles in a single ride, so these two crystals alone should take you far.”

  “So if I can get you more vlimphite crystals, can we get Iterra to fill them with her prana?”

  “I believe we could. Still, using another’s prana to fuel any spell will not replace the benefits of continuing your training. Indeed, restricting yourself to the crystals will reverse the progress you’ve made. I only suggest this method because of what’s at stake, but you must not neglect your training. I recommend continuing to hone your prana here until next spring.”

  “Er, sorry, but that sounds far too long to allow a nismerdon to regain its power. I might be able to stay until the end of summer, but even that sounds shaky to me. Besides, what’s training for another season or two going to do? It’ll take me three, five seasons before I can hold a summon longer than a few hours, right? I can’t afford to take the standard route now. Very little of what I’ve done has been standard, anyway.”

  The sage sighed. “We’ll have to wait and see what the gods choose to do. For now, I’ll get the crystals on a chain for you, and the materials will be collected to create the armor and saddle.”

  I looked around the basement a bit longer before going back up to eat. It was then a matter of getting back to my training.

  As for the sages, they made several trips to Sokomasi to buy supplies or order them from a bigger town. Sokomasi blacksmiths and craftsmen also made parts of the saddle for the sages. The first finished items were the dragon crystals. They hung to a thin silver chain by way of a thinner silver wire coiled around their top. My body’s proportions were next measured to get the size of my armor right. The saddle would be able to adjust the tightness of the fastenings, so getting Aranath’s exact size didn’t turn out to be necessary.

  Six days after summoning Aranath, a group of sages that included Ghevont and Dashay returned from picking up the latest components. I thought nothing of it at the time, but shortly after dinner, Clarissa told me we had to talk about Ghevont’s latest trip in my room. I thus waited for her in my chamber, which was furnished with a single person bed, a little wooden desk, a stool, a candle, and… no, that was everything. Thanks to the thick stone walls and heavy wooden door, no external sound had a chance to intrude on the space.

  I wondered in the lull what could force Clarissa to seek a secret conversation from me in this pleasant place, but nothing had come to me by the time the vampire herself came in. I rose from my bed as she sat on the stool.

  “What’s going on? Why the secrecy?”

  “It’s Ghevont. He came up to me after coming back from Sokomasi to talk about something he heard. He wanted to tell you himself, but Dashay and the other sages made him promise not to tell you anything. I’ve never seen him so conflicted with himself, or about anything, really.”

  “But he told you.”

  “After a little coaxing. You see, he wants to tell you without betraying the promise he made to the sages, particularly to Dashay, of course. Quandell knows what the sages learned, so you have to make it seem as though he told you out of his own free will, not from me or him.”

  “And what do you and everyone else but me know?”

  A sigh. “Alslana is at war with Voreen. Oclor is apparently going at it with Brey Stor, too.”

  I nodded. “Ah, and so the sages are afraid I’ll cut short my training to go help.”

  “Yeah… Uh, are you?”

  “Of course. After all, it could be my kingdom someday.”

  “That’s not why.”

  “I know. Regardless, I was planning on getting more prana crystals there, anyway. Once we get a handful filled with dragon prana, a worldwide search will be considerably easier.”

  “So you promise to talk to Quandell first, right?”

  “Yes, yes, I promise. I wouldn’t want to hurt the greatest romance ever witnessed by mortals.”

  “You shouldn’t make fun. I think they’re adorable together.”

  “So do I, hence the jest. I’ll talk to Quandell the first chance I get.”

  “Thank you for treating this delicately, Mercer. I know you must want to hop on Aranath right this second.”

  “Sure, but I’ve been wanting to do that since getting out the first mountain I was in. Anyway, I’ve been bracing for the news ever since Eudon left the kingdom. Doubly so since the Advent promised to instigate it. Beyond all that, even if I could fly off right now, I couldn’t until the saddle is finished. There’s also the armor to wait for.”

  “That’s right. And you’ll want to get a little flying practice on Aranath… Oh gods, we’ll be flying for hours at a time, won’t we?”

  “Good night, Clarissa.”

  I had memorized Quandell’s schedule after my first few days here, so I knew he would awaken well before dawn on this night. I therefore kept my sleep brief—not that they were long to begin with. Using mediocre stealth moves, I followed the sage leader until he stood alone on the eastern pillar. Actually, “alone” wasn’t the right word. He was feeding his thelki bunches of grapes from a bowl. I stopped being s
tealthy so that Quandell heard my incoming presence.

  He turned his head and asked, “Ah, Master Eberwolf. Heading for your spot under the tree?”

  “No, Master Hermoon. I’m here to ask you for a favor.”

  “Oh? How can I help?”

  “I need you to promise me something.”

  Quandell turned all the way around, keeping a patting hand on the thelki’s head. “A promise? What’s this about?”

  “I need you to promise that you’ll tell me any news on Alslana the first chance you get.” His shoulders slumped. “Promise me, Master Hermoon, and in this way you won’t be lying to the sages when you tell them you were obligated to tell me the news. You can even say you were waiting for the right time to tell me, such as when my armor and saddle are ready.”

  He nodded. “This is to protect your friend’s reputation, isn’t it?”

  “As a favor to another, yes.”

  “Eh, as you wish, then. I don’t like keeping secrets at my age, anyway. Not good for the heart. Very well, I promise to tell you any news of Alslana. Alslana is at war, Master Eberwolf. There, it is done. Let’s keep this between us until your items are prepared.”

  “When will that be, exactly?”

  “The saddle will be done within the next two days. The cuirass a day or two afterward. Your bracer and greaves are already done.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  “And thank you for taking the time to spare the honor of your allies and friends.”

  “Thank a vampire for that.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  With the exception of its length and higher cantles, the completed saddle ended up looking a lot like a horse’s. The cantles and size implied four people could ride safely on the dragon’s back, but there was room for a fifth person if I wanted to risk it. To fasten the saddle and practice using the crystal’s power, I summoned Aranath again. I still summoned the dragon using my own prana, thus sparing the crystals from having to contribute to the most wasteful part of the spell. Disregarding the crystal as a fallback option, simply knowing what to expect helped me handle the drop in energy I experienced.