by Alex Sapegin
“What!” the dragon roared. A strong gust of wind from the beating of his gigantic wings knocked Charda to the ground, overturned the chairs and sent grass and leaves flying. The garden was empty, with a third of the trees now broken. The dragons had flown away.
***
Vigrel kicked the corpse of the caravan guard with contempt. Stupid tradesmen didn’t want to surrender and fought as if they were hauling stones for Hel’s balance. No matter. The goddess would weigh their souls anyway. The Rauu rubbed his right cheek where a tattoo had been removed. The outcast didn’t have a clan marker and wiggled the toe of his boot under the lifeless body of the young boy who had shot Mig Three Fingers with a crossbow bolt. The traders had killed four of their men and wounded two; nine people were left standing. It was too big a trade-off for taking a caravan of seven carts and killing ten tradesmen with guards…
While the ringleader went to check the posts of the watchmen on both sides of the road, the caravan had traveled on; five robbers cleaned out the carts and wagons.
“Hey, look at this beauty!” Ming, a big, one-eyed man scarred by a sword’s swipe from his left eye up to his left earlobe, dragged the pretty body of a girl out of the last cart by her feet. She wore a leather jumpsuit like a vampire-ranger. A crossbow bolt with a red feather on the end stuck out of her left breast. Vigrel realized he had work to do.
The dead girl’s face was calm and peaceful. Hel’s cold breath hadn’t touched her, and death hadn’t spoiled her beauty. The elf took a curved knife from the top of his boot and, squatting, ripped up the laces on the dead girl’s chest. He hadn’t yet made the cut that would allow him to retrieve the bolt when a cross-shaped shadow covered him.
“Watch out!” Ming screamed at the top of his lungs. In the next instant, a dragon appeared out of nowhere and with a punch from his front paw, struck the man into the ground, breaking his bones and spine. The last thing Vigrel ever saw was the great, gaping, tooth-lined mouth.
***
“It’s not worth it,” Jagirra held Karegar back by the tip of the wing. “He’s not going to listen to anything now.”
The elf and the dragon, not interfering, observed Kerr, silently laying human bodies on the carts. They had been piled up for a funeral pyre. Lastly, the little dragon laid Polana’s body, wrapped in silk. He held her for a long time and rocked her just like a baby. Setting aside his load, Kerr took several steps back from the carts, opened his mouth, and spat fire lighting the pyre.
The bandits’ dead, mutilated bodies lay as they were, where death had overtaken them. Kerr had singed the guards along with the trees. Jaga and Karegar flew in when it was all over. The old dragon simply couldn’t keep up with his adopted son. The little dragon pulling the wagon was a horrible sight to see; his golden scales faded and turned gray. His paws, chest, and wings were covered in other people’s blood. In a fit of rage, he had killed everyone. Kerr sputtered loudly and showed Karegar his fangs when Karegar silently offered to help pull the carts. He took the reins from his adopted father and chased him away from the place of slaughter. Taking the hint, his adopted parents stepped aside.
“This is bad, very bad,” Jaga whispered, glancing at the Snow Elf’s mangled body on the ground. “I had heard of a band of outcasts headed by a Rauu, but I didn’t think Vig the Handsome would attack this caravan. I’m afraid Kerr may lose his trust in the Snowy race.”
“I’m afraid of something else,” Karegar turned his head toward her. “He might not want to be a dragon anymore.”
“That won’t happen,” she assured him. “Look at him. He’s acting like a dragon and isn’t attempting to change his hypostasis. Kerr doesn’t want to be a human. That worries me more than anything.”
“Why?”
Jaga paused for a long time, collecting her words, but then decided to speak directly, without any delicacy. “We need to send him to the humans as quickly as possible. Kerr needs to study magic. Time is of the essence.”
“What happened, did you fall from a Mellorny?” the dragon’s eyes sparkled.
The elf jumped down from Karegar’s neck, made her way through the furrows left by the wheels of the multitude of wagons, and sat down on a thick oak root sticking out of the ground by the side of the road. Jaga got the letter out of her clothing and, running her eyes over the even lines, glanced at the dragon.
“There will be a war, my honorary husband.” Karegar’s lower jaw fell.
“It’s pointless to deny the obvious. A great war will envelop the entire north, but that’s not the most important thing.”
“What is?” Karegar asked. He had lost his train of thought from the revelation in Jaga’s last words.
“Enira writes that Kerr will be the stone that causes all the stones to fall. I don’t know how he’ll be connected with all this, but the world will once again be full of dragons. That’s how it will be; the old white Larga has never once been wrong.”
“How are you planning to convince him to study?”
“I’ll send him to Orten. In a month and a half, they’ll be recruiting new students in the Orten School of Magic. Tell him that there are ancient books and manuscripts in the school archives on building gates to other worlds. He’ll most probably be interested in that, and he can get to the archives if he’s wearing a school badge.”
Kerr, tearing himself away from the pyre’s fuming flames, approached the pair. They dropped their discussion.
“I want to be alone. Don’t follow me,” he uttered and flew away toward the east.
***
Andy had been flying for a long time. He left sharp-tipped, snow-capped mountain peaks and gorges behind him. Redwoods and cedar forests changed to the deciduous woods of the foothills. He felt quite somber inside. Polana’s death had torn the main waif from his soul, and there was nothing to fill that empty space. When the small star in his chest had suddenly exploded, and his left heart had skipped a beat, he knew. With complete clarity, he understood that his love was no more; Polana had left the world of the living. The foreign pain, as if his chest had taken the bolt, threw him down to the ground. Along with the pain came an awareness of the loss he had incurred. In that moment, Andy had seen the caravan road and the robbers stalking the guards. They had knocked down several trees, cutting off the tradesmen’s path to retreat. Later, he had found all the thieves and made them scream in horror, but he wondered who could make him forget.
Andy suddenly snapped out of his reverie as if someone had called him by name. He looked around and below. It was a familiar place. There, he had been thrown into the world of Ilanta. There was the cliff wall and the ledge he had spent the night on. Further on, he saw the bald hill. The call rang out once again. Certain that the mysterious call wasn’t just in his imagination, he began to circle the hill in wide circles. He heard another call from below. The hill!
A huge opening appeared at the top of the hill, and he could guess how the dragon got inside. Casting aside all his fears and doubts, he laid his wings flat and made a B-line for the inviting open entrance to the ancient structure. In a year and a half, nothing had changed inside. The broken bones and dragon’s skull with its fangs extracted were still laying there. The amulet was sparkling with gold, its ruby shining near the altar. The dark bas-reliefs still told their tale, the cutout images continued to live their life. Changing hypostasis, Andy squatted on all fours before the mutilated skull.
“Forgive me.” Andy carefully touched the arches above the eyebrows and ran his palm over the dead horns. The quiet call of the amulet sounded like the voice that brought forgiveness. “So it was you who called me?” he leaned over the circular object. The ancient structure was filled with the melodious call.
Curiosity got the best of him. Turning back into a dragon, Andy touched the golden chain with the tip of his claw. The chain stuck fast. Andy pulled his paw to no avail. You burned yourself once, didn’t you, and now you’re tempted to do it again? Haven’t you had enough rotten adventures? Isn’t it better to c
over your tail? With the next quick wave of his paw, the medallion swinging on the end of the chain struck his chest and—melting as if made of mercury—it soaked right under Andy’s scales. In the center of his heart, he got the feeling of a happy cat lying on top, purring with bliss.
“What? You’ve found a new master?” Andy knocked at his chest scales. The medallion responded with warmth and satisfaction. The image of Bon appeared before his eyes, licking his chin. It didn’t mess with anything inside. “To heck with you,” the new master of the golden circle said, quickly calming down. “Just don’t bother me, okay?” A new wave of comforting warmth was the answer. “We have a deal then.”
Andy carefully scooped up the broken bones and in a few trips took them up to the surface. He couldn’t leave them lying there as they were, again. Obeying his mental request, the entrance to the interior of the hill closed. Every trace of the fact that a few seconds ago, a dragon could easily enter in, disappeared.
After catching his breath for a few minutes, Andy dug a deep hole and laid the bones of the former hill resident in it. Thoroughly trampling the bit of land, he was about to fly off, when the wind suddenly brought the smell of death and put him on his guard. Pressing his entire body to the ground and turning his head to meet the direction of the wind, he crawled to the wall of the wood.
The thick trees parted and revealed the field he remembered as the place where he had had his fight with the bald guy in black. In the center of the field, there were steaks dug into the ground, and tied to them were the remains of people in torn Watchmen's uniforms. One broad-shouldered guy’s head was cut off. Shooing a few unhappy mrowns off the field, who were clearly not satisfied with this turn of events, Andy went out from under the branches. It was a scary execution; couldn’t be anything else. Apparently, the men had been tied to the stakes several days ago and left to be eaten alive by predators, who didn’t fail to take advantage of the opportunity. Only one of the watchmen was still alive and relatively whole—a yellow-haired female gnome. Gnomes aren’t on hungry predators’ menus. Cutting the ropes with his claws, Andy caught the limp body.
Once he had wanted to kill her, but with time, the thirst for revenge had burned itself up like so much straw. It left behind black memories and the knowledge that the watchman had not sold him all by herself, but in company with her fellows and under order from her commander. Perhaps, she personally had not sold him at all. Carefully taking the woman by the right paw, he carried her to the nearest stream and doused her with cold water. He had two versions of events prepared for her. She could stay on the field, and when Andy flew away, run in all directions, but he highly doubted the weakened, naked woman with no weapons could make it to a human or gnome dwelling from there. Otherwise, she could take a blood oath, and he would carry her to the valley. Glir, who was single, might get a bride….
The gnome woke up and, to her credit, did not writhe in his grip or scream at the sight of a tooth-bearing dragon. Andy made a mental note of this as a positive on her part. When she heard the options offered to her, she chose the latter.
“My name is Dorit,” she told Andy after taking the magical vow. “I am forever in your debt.”
“Call me Kerr. Are you going to ride on my neck or in my paws?”
“In your paws; I won’t be able to hold onto your neck.”
“What did they do that to you for?” Andy indicated the field with his paw.
“The hunters got back at us,” she answered, falling silent.
Over the course of the past few events, his heartache had dulled a bit, but upon reaching the valley, Andy felt despair once again overtaking him. At home, everything reminded him of Polana. Targ, get under his tail, he didn’t want to stay here. Flying to the village and handing over the gnome he had saved to the gnomes’ care, he headed toward the cave. Dad and Jaga were home waiting for him.
“I want to finally start looking for information on building a gate,” he announced from the entryway. “Whether you’re for it or against it, I’m going.”
Jaga and Karegar glanced at one another.
“Okay,” the elf said calmly. “Karegar, is there anything you’d like to add?”
Dad lifted his giant head off the stone floor and shook it.
“Wait a minute,” he said, suddenly stopping. “If you’re going to look somewhere, it should definitely be Orten. There’s a school of magic there where all the ancient archives that weren’t stolen by the Forest Elves were taken 400 years ago. One old Rauu told me about it. The only thing is, Son, you’ll have to put on a student’s badge. No other way.”
“Fine,” Andy responded without hesitation.
***
The entire following week was taken up with preparations for Andy’s trip. As it turned out, he had to run a zillion errands and take a pile of stuff with him that someone messing around with magic simply couldn’t live without. The village ladies sewed him some suits. There were a couple made from a sturdy, practical material something like denim for everyday use and a couple of the most expensive material, for special occasions. Andy moved to the village that week and occupied the guesthouse, as per Jagirra’s request. He was to go out among the people only in human form, but the Mistress’ rule was constantly broken. The elf took Charda in, rightly assuming that after living for several years with Granny, she wouldn’t betray her or play any underhanded dirty tricks. She hadn’t even the slightest magical gift, but Jaga promised to make her the best herbalist in the region.
Dorit’s eyes were a sight to see when Andy flew into her and Glir’s engagement party and changed hypostasis in front of half the village. He no longer needed to take clothes with him wherever he went; Jaga had worked for a long time on a spell on a pair of pants, and now they didn’t rip when he changed hypostasis, but simply disappeared, returning to his waist when he changed back into a human. The gnome’s large eyes got even bigger, her jaw dropped, and she began to tremble.
“It’s you?” she whispered, falling to her knees. She held her dagger out to Andy, the handle toward him, which she took from the sheath on her belt. “My life is in your hands.”
Andy took the dagger and handed it to the clueless Glir. The guests looked on wide-eyed in surprise.
“Your life is now in Glir’s hands. Remember that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take care of her,” he told Glir.
Dad worried the most of everyone. He shut himself in and became anti-social, never left the cave without reason, and flew to Andy in the mornings to take him for an “air walk.”
***
Jaga and Karegar discussed how to take Kerr to Orten for a long time. The future student put an end to any doubt on the issue with one sentence.
“Since I can’t fly, I’ll ride a hass. I don’t know how to ride horses. I’d make a fine horseman, plopped on a horse’s back like a sack of potatoes.”
Once the question of transport was settled, the three of them headed toward Rum-bit’s farm. The hassan, upon finding out the reason for a visit from such honored guests, began talking up his four-legged, toothy transportation and suggested making a gift of one of them, all of which were, according to him, quite stupendous. Andy, not listening to the owner, poked a male hass of a very rare white color.
“Handsome. Can I get this one?”
“You can try, but he’s only used to me. Snowflake probably won’t let anyone else on him.” Rum made a face, sizing up Andy.
“I’ll try.”
Snowflake didn’t have time to show any signs of the vicious temper that Rum had said was part of his personality. Andy changed hypostasis, hissed at the hass, pressed it to the ground with his paw, then quickly changed back again and sat on the jumpy animal’s back. Demoralized by the show of strength, Snowflake feared throwing the rider off him. He still smelled like a dragon. Instead, Snowflake accepted his rider’s authority. Rum bowed his head politely.
***
“Don’t take unnecessary risks and don’t go looking for trou
ble. Don’t be a blabbermouth, and don’t argue with the guards. Your fangs make you look like an orc, and in Tantre they don’t like orcs very much; it’s not worth ending up in prison,” Jagirra added her last instructions. Karegar silently lay beside the road and sighed heavily.
Andy jumped off the hass, kissed Jaga on the cheek and hugged Daddy around the neck.
“Act like a real dragon. Use your conscience; I wouldn’t want to be disgraced by my own son,” the dragon said in his low voice.
“Don’t worry, everything’s going to be excellent,” Andy tried to assure his adoptive parents and jumped back onto the hass. “Let’s go, Snowflake! Gmar, Glir, keep up with me, come on.”
Andy rode to Gornbuld accompanied by the gnome brothers. He had to buy a new bow and sword in the city and deal with the local banks and currency. The rest of the way, he rode by himself. There was just over a month until he would begin at the school.
Andy, as opposed to the gnomes, didn’t look back at the two figures who had become family to him, standing in the distance, watching him get smaller and smaller on the horizon.
***
“Shall we fly?” Karegar asked Jagirra.
“Let’s wait a bit,” the elf answered, barely defining the white speck of the hass in the distance.
“All right,” the dragon lay down on the ground and invited Jagirra to sit down on the curve of his right elbow. “What are you thinking about?”
“I’m worried about Kerr, whether he’ll be able to live with humans. The boy’s continuing to cling to his humanity, but he became a dragon a long time ago and already looks at many issues through the eyes of a Lord of the Skies. It’ll be awful if he starts looking down on others. The future of Ilanta may very well depend on him. Perhaps, we should try to find a nice female dragon for him?”
“Aren’t you overstretching things just a bit? Kerr and the future of the world?”
