“Food,” she responded with a satisfied sigh.
“Good.” I finished up dinner, thinking of a way to explain the concept of names to her. Putting my plate down, I shifted until I faced her and put a hand on my chest. “Krys.”
“Krys?” She didn’t get it.
“Right, Krys.” I might need to back up a little…I started up another fire on my hand. “Fire. Name of this is fire. Understand?”
She slowly shook her head. “Na?”
“Name,” I repeated slowly. I’d noticed before that ‘n’ words were harder for her. I think it’s because her mouth isn’t quite shaped right to easily pronounce them. “Name. Name is not fire itself, just what we call fire. Name means something.”
That sort of got through but she was still a little bewildered by what I was trying to say. All right, that approach wasn’t working. She didn’t have the right vocabulary. Turning, I scorched a picture into the ground with a high, small burst of flame. I’d learned how to do this, mostly one rainy day when bored out of my mind, and had gotten better over the last few months. I could burn a simple relief of an image into the ground, sort of like a brand. Trev’nor called them charcoal pictures. I was decent enough to where you could tell the scorch mark looked like a dragon. “Dragon.” I did another, equally as quickly. “Human. Human name,” I put my hand on my chest, “Krys.”
I could always tell when things clicked for her. Her eyes brightened, and she leaned her whole body forward as if she were about to jump about in celebration any second.
“You name Krys?”
“Right.” Phew. All right, if she got that, then the rest should be easy. I pointed to her. “You don’t have a name. Want name?”
She considered that for a long moment before nodding eagerly. “Want name.”
I started with some of the obvious choices. “Scarlett. Like?”
“No like,” she said with considerable conviction. “Name?”
“Ruby?”
“No like.”
“Rosie?”
“No like.”
We kept going like that for hours. I lost all track of time. She didn’t like any of my suggestions. I racked my brain, tried every name I could think of, even a few male names. The N names I avoided, as I thought it would be mean to give her a name that she couldn’t pronounce. I finally had to stop. My throat was hoarse from talking so long, my brain felt like it was fried, and I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
“I have to stop. I’m tired. I want sleep.”
“Sleep?”
I wasn’t about to try to explain. “Right, sleep.” Pulling out my bedroll, I fell into it. I didn’t remember my eyes falling shut, only that at some point, the world went black.
~*~
There was a growling, rumbling noise and somehow that noise was connected with my head. Even in my mostly unconscious state that seemed odd.
Huh? I lifted a hand and pried open one eye to see if I could figure out where the noise was coming from. Wait. There was this deep red in front of my eyes…which looked like my dragon…huh? I twisted about some more, getting the other eye open through sheer willpower. Somehow, during the course of the night, I had shifted about until I was snuggled in between her folded legs. No wait, I could see a part of my drawings from the night before. I hadn’t moved, she had. She’d somehow maneuvered around until she had me securely wrapped up, tucked against her like a newborn kitten against its mother. I felt almost smothered by heat, too, as it radiated from her skin in almost visible waves. Her skin didn’t feel terribly hard, more like tough leather, but I still felt like I’d snuggled in next to a brick oven.
Oh yeah, much worse than Night.
All right, obviously, the growling noise was coming from her. Why? I took in a deep breath, partially in an attempt to wake up my brain enough to function. As I did, the scent of sunlight, leather, and musk filled my head. Hmm. Nice scent. No, no, focus. I’m supposed to be waking up. I lifted my head enough to scan the immediate region.
There, not five feet away, was Garth. He sat casually, legs crossed, chin propped on one hand with a sardonic smile on his face.
“About time you woke up, Krys.”
Just how long had he been sitting there…? Probably safer not to ask. “You know I don’t do mornings. Here to check up on me?”
“Yup. I was going to shake you awake, but…” he trailed off and looked significantly at the (still) growling dragon.
“Hang on,” I sighed. I reached up and patted her cheek to get her attention. When she looked down at me I pointed at Garth. “Friend.”
The growling stopped abruptly. “Friend?”
“Friend,” I assured her patiently. “His name is Garth.”
“Garth-friend,” she repeated, as if testing this idea out. Thankfully, she liked it, as she stopped hovering over me so protectively.
“I’d introduce her,” I told Garth as I yawned and sat up, stretching to get the blood flowing, “but we went through hundreds of names last night, and she didn’t like any of them, so she’s still nameless at the moment. I’ll let you know if we can ever agree on one.”
“Ah, I see,” he replied with twinkling eyes. “I’d love to hear the story of how someone who was swearing he didn’t want a, how did you put it, ‘two-ton, fire-breathing creature’ as a familiar got caught by one.”
I gave him a sour look. “She’s persistent.”
“I’ll say.”
“After four days of being stalked, I kind of gave in. In all fairness, though, it’s not going to be as bad as I thought. She’s very intelligent, and very attentive, so I think it’ll be easy to train her. Once I can convince people that she’s not going to go on a rampage and decimate the general population, we should be fine.”
“If you bank on ‘I’m a mage, so of course I have complete control of her,’ you’ll probably get by with it,” Garth told me, expression a bit rueful. “To this day, I still can’t convince people that mages can’t do or know everything.”
I knew precisely what he meant. “In this regard, I’m not going to try to convince them otherwise.” With that out of the way, I had to wonder why he was here. “So, if you’re here, does that mean Shad is all right?”
“Yes and no. Shad sent me a letter telling me generally what he’s up to, but he’s already gone.” Garth ran a tired hand over his head. It was only then that I really noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the rumpled clothes that didn’t match, the slight slump in his shoulders that spoke of exhaustion. His white hair had partially escaped the clasp at his neck and some of it trailed along his temples. He didn’t look to be in his early twenties but thirties because of the lines around his eyes. Had he gotten any sleep last night? “I did manage to track down the Red Hand. Xiaolang couldn’t give me the team, like I wanted, but he did release Aletha. I dropped her off this morning in Chahir. She’s trying to catch up with Shad now.”
Well that was a relief. There wasn’t any situation that the two master sneaks couldn’t handle. “Then they should be fine.”
“I think so too. Well.” Putting his hands on both knees, he pushed himself up to his feet. “Shall we go home?”
That sounded great, but… “Garth, I’m not really sure if she’ll go on the earth path.”
He paused, looking at my dragon in consideration. “A point I had not considered. Pretty lady, do you like being underground?”
She tilted her head at him, eyes blinking. “Un?”
“She doesn’t know underground yet,” I explained to Garth. “Ground,” I said to her, tapping my foot against the dirt, then putting my hand level to act as a sort of metaphor. When she nodded to show she was following, I put my other hand beneath it. “Under.”
Almost instantly she shook her head. “Not like.”
I let out a long sigh. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
Garth let out a low whistle. “I see what you mean by her intelligence. She picks up concepts that fast?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Well, if you can’t go on the earth path, you might want to postpone coming home for a bit.”
I didn’t understand what he was thinking. “Why?”
“Krys, do you really want to wander all the way through Sol without some obvious mark on her that she’s yours? Think about it. People would either panic or try to capture her. At the very least, I think some sort of collar or harness is in order.”
That…was a really good point. “All right. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to go get something like that for me and bring it back?”
“I can, yes. For now, I think the collar will suffice. We need to have her physically present to craft anything more complicated.”
Understandable. I might well be the first person ever to put a harness on a dragon. It was going to take a lot of experimentation to get it right. “All right, well, we’ll keep walking toward Sol, then. It’s going to take another two days to reach the border anyway.”
“You might as well,” he agreed. “It would be a better use of your time and it’s not like you’re difficult to find for me.”
Very true. I lit up like a beacon for Garth.
“Then, I’ll probably come find you at the end of the day,” he said with a casual salute.
It’s always been weird to watch Garth go onto the earth path. It’s like the earth around his feet just melts away, sucking him down. If you didn’t know that he was the one controlling it, you’d think quicksand had suddenly developed. In seconds he disappeared, out of the range of my senses. It’s never ceased to amaze me how fast he can go under the earth.
Once he was gone, my dragon lowered her head enough to poke me in the arm with her nose. “Name?”
Well, at least I wouldn’t be bored on the walk to Sol.
Chapter Three: Friends
In my year of schooling, I hadn’t just learned control over my magic. I’d also done a lot of research as well, trying to find good ways to use my abilities. Some of the things I’d learned about I’d had to dismiss as impractical simply because I couldn’t move fast enough, or have the right vantage, to accomplish. Putting out forest or brush fires, for instance. In theory, suppressing that kind of fire was well within my capabilities. But in order to control fire, I have to be able to see it. You can’t do that with a forest or brush fire, at least not well. The only way I could manage was if I had a very high vantage point, which typically wasn’t possible because of the flat terrain. I’d dismissed it as impossible.
Now, it was suddenly within the realm of possibility again.
If I were on the back of a dragon, I could see everything. Forest fires, brush fires, anything was possible for me to see and control. I knew of several different areas in the Empire of Sol and Hain that hired on witches and wizards during the dry seasons to be on call in case of a fire. Firefighters, I thought they were called.
During the wetter seasons, I could always hire on as an agricultural burner, taking out the weeds and bramble with cool fire. I could even take up smithing on the side, if cash ran a little short. If I planned this right, I might be able to find a prime location where I could handle both types of jobs, flying where I needed to, and that way have a permanent home.
The idea was tempting, but there was one glitch in all of these plans I was making.
I didn’t know if she’d let me on her back.
Yes, she apparently had adopted me, and yes, she was very protective, but none of that guaranteed she wanted me to ride her. Dragons were supposed to be the most fiercely independent species on earth. That she had latched onto me, in and of itself, was amazing. To be willing to be put on a harness might be stretching things too far.
I spent the whole day walking, thinking, and trying out names on her as I thought of them. I admit, I started saying names at random, as they occurred to me, and wasn’t paying much attention to her reaction. I was used to her saying ‘no’ at this point. Did they sell books that listed names? I’d have to look for one.
“Name?” she prompted me, a little impatiently.
“Kaya,” I said at random, naming a well-known character from a fairytale I grew up on.
“Like!”
See? Another name that she didn’t…wait, what? I stopped dead, turning to look up at her. “Wait, you like that one?”
“Like, like!” she responded, head nodding up and down in excitement.
I grinned, nearly as excited as her that we had finally found a name she liked. “Kaya, is it? All right, Kaya, if you like that name, we’ll go with it.”
She put her head flat against my chest and started purring. I grabbed onto her jaw more for balance than affection, as she pushed hard enough to knock me over. “Glad you’re happy, Kaya. Now that we’ve got your name, how about we learn more words?”
“Words!” she agreed, lifting her head again. Kaya, as I’d discovered in the past two days, loved words. I think it was because the more words she knew, the easier it was for her to talk to me. Or maybe it was because she was female and she just liked to talk….
Either way, I had a very attentive student. I went back to teaching her words, occasionally doing a charcoal picture if it proved beyond my ability to explain.
She was trying for short sentences—which was just as likely confusing as not—when Garth showed up at our camp that evening. He held a long chain in his hand, wrapped around his forearm so tightly that I could only see it was made of some sort of black metal.
“Garth-friend!” Kaya greeted enthusiastically. She bounded over to him—yes, bounded, just like an energetic puppy—barely stopping before she bowled him over. “I have name! Kaya!”
Garth had to process that a second to make sense of it. “Your name is Kaya?”
“Kaya, Kaya,” she repeated, tail swishing in a happy rhythm.
“I’m glad you found a name you like,” he said to her. It didn’t take a genius to understand why he was holding back a laugh. In the fairytale, Kaya was a beautiful enchantress that could steal any man’s heart and charm anyone into doing what she wanted. The moral of the story, of course, was to never follow someone you didn’t really know.
That she had chosen that name was a bit ironic, but I wasn’t about to talk her out of it. She was happy, so I was happy.
“Yes, I know it’s funny. She likes it, though.”
“Like!” Kaya agreed.
“I have no room to comment,” Garth admitted easily, unwrapping the chain from around his hand. “After all, Night is short for ‘Nightmare.’”
I hadn’t known that; surprised by the admission, I laughed before I could bite it back. “After hearing all the stories, I can see why.”
He just shrugged; traces of laughter still on his face. “Well, I told Cora and Chatta about my idea, and this is what they concocted.”
In both hands, he held up a very long chain, letting it hang so that we could properly see it. It just grazed the ground, formed with thick, long links. At its point hung a long, tear-shaped disk that had my seal carved into it. I lifted the seal to get a better look at it. The flame with the elaborately curved H was very well done, and someone had put a spell onto it so that it shone white against the black metal, standing out in high contrast. “Nice. It looks very sharp.”
“When I told Chatta that Kaya is a deep red, she insisted that I had to make the chain and seal out of a black metal,” Garth explained, holding the chain up so that Kaya could get a better look at it. She kept inching closer, nostrils flaring as she sniffed at it. “As far as I know, there’s no such thing as black metal, but I know how to make steel black. I thought that steel would be a good choice, anyway. It’s more durable that way.”
“I think you’re both right on target. For a temporary measure, it looks great.” Maybe there was a way to make the harness incorporate the chain? I didn’t really want to take it off and put it in some drawer after the harness was made. Well, I guess I could figure that out later. “Kaya, this is yours.”
She tilted her h
ead to look at me. “Kaya have?”
“Yup, yours. This,” I tapped the seal, “says you’re my friend.”
Oh boy, she liked that. Her eyes lit up. “Like!”
“Thought you would.”
“Kaya, if you lower your head a bit, we’ll put it on,” Garth directed.
“On?” Kaya knew the word, but in the way I’d explained it to her, it didn’t mean the same thing in this context.
I lifted a part of the chain. “It goes around your neck, like this.” Of course, with it wrapped around my shoulders, it was ridiculously huge, but she got the general idea.
“On, please,” she asked, lowering her head so that it was level with my shoulders.
Garth took one side, I the other, and we lifted it carefully over her horns and flared ridges to settle at the base of her neck. The chain didn’t quite hang right, though. Garth frowned slightly, adjusting it, but it was just too long. It dangled so that it hit her thighs when she moved.
“Hm. I think I estimated this wrong. Kaya, hold still and I’ll fix it.”
She froze, tilting her neck around so that she could watch him.
I had no idea what Garth did. All I know was he lifted the seal, focusing intently on the chains. The metal glowed and shifted under his direction, becoming shorter. When he let the seal drop again, it rested right in the center of her chest. “There, that’s better.”
A soft, rumbling purr rolled out of Kaya’s chest. “Pretty.”
Yes, definitely a girl. Figured she liked jewelry.
Kaya nudged her nose against Garth’s cheek. “Garth-friend nice. Give pretty.”
“I think you’re officially a favorite, Garth,” I drawled, fighting a smile as he blushed and tried to find his balance under her nudging.
“Getting that impression,” he responded, chuckling. “I’m glad you like it, Kaya. When you and Krys get home, we’ll make you another pretty. Does that sound good?”
Dragon's Mage (An Advent Mage Novel), The - Raconteur, Honor Page 4
