"No, I didn't just believe it, and I'm not asking you to just believe me. I'm asking you to check it out for yourself. You've known me all my life; do you really think I want to be the Queen? You know, Rafe and I accidentally met years ago when I was out spying for Mother. He's never told and I've told no one but you. My only desire is to run away so that Rafe and I can be together. But, I'd never do that if it meant risking my family."
Fastarr hung his head, looking totally beaten, then looked up into her eyes before he said, "I will find out the truth of this, Osane, but if I find your story to be true, I don't know what I will do with the information. I am the Queen's Warlord."
~*~
Queen Genette watched with pride as Callus, her third oldest hatchling, executed air maneuvers. His beauty could only be rivaled by his older brother Fastarr; only she could have had the most beautiful children on the planet. His younger sister, Atarah, flew into view taunting her brother with quick darts in and out of his way.
Genette smiled at the two playing together. Atarah was almost as lovely as her mother, far lovelier and larger than her older sister, Osane, heir to her throne. But, if Fastarr or Osane failed her or died, Callus would be next in line to be Warlord and Atarah to be queen. In many ways she thought these two more worthy of the positions and almost wished something would happen to the other two. Oh well, she thought, if the other two became a disappointment, she could always banish them and let Callus and Atarah take their places.
She stepped out onto the balcony where they could see her and waved for them to land beside her.
"Mother," Callus said while landing. "How wonderful to see you. I'm honored that you took time from you duties to visit a lowly second son."
Genette patted his jaw, the most affection she ever gave one of her hatchlings. Of all her subjects, Callus was the most dedicated to ingratiating himself into her favor. He was overly ambitious, like her.
When Atarah landed, Genette said, "I want the two of you to walk with me down to the training area of your younger siblings. I would talk with you awhile."
As the three of them walked the corridors to the training area for the royal hatchlings, little was said because the corridors were too narrow for three abreast, but Genette was aware of the subtle, quiet struggle between them to be the one to get close enough to be the one she could see.
When they reached the large opening into the training area, Genette signaled to the trainer to continue and ignore her presence. She turned to Callus and Atarah and said, "Observe your siblings. Because they are my hatchlings, they are as splendid as both of you, as you are as splendid as Fastarr and Osane. You are the lineage and future of the Blacks. You are already being trained as Fastarr's replacement should anything happen to him, Callus, but I want that training completed soon. Fastarr will soon go to war. We must be prepared for you to step into his place should he be killed."
She watched Callus straighten to full height in excitement at the prospect of his brother's death. Then, she continued, "Therefore, I am giving instructions for your brother, Erinn, to begin his training to be your replacement should you die in the coming war."
"Atarah, Osane has received her training to be Queen, and tradition has it that only one is trained at a time, so ordinarily you would not receive such training until either Osane or myself were dead. But, these are not ordinary times. Either or both Osane and myself could be killed in the coming war. So, tomorrow morning, you begin your training to be queen."
She looked at the two of them and then at the younger eight in the training room, the largest group of siblings among the Blacks. Her subjects were blessed that she had maimed her older sister Freyja in combat training to become heir to the throne. She had been the natural Queen.
Then, she turned and walked away alone.
~*~
Naomi, shoving her damp ringlets of red hair away from her eyes, watched Rafe come soaring downward toward the fence she sat atop. He was magnificent, like flying red flames against the backdrop of blue sky and the wide valley of wheat already turning golden. But she was frightened he was going to hit the ground in front of her, before he suddenly pulled his tail down and his head up to land standing on his huge rear legs.
"Now," he spoke, turning toward her, "did you see how when a human like you is riding a dragon, you need to move your body from a rear leaning position to a forward leaning position as soon as you feel the tail start to lower? We can't have you sliding off down my tail again."
"I'm sorry, Rafe. I know you must lose patience with a pupil as slow as me, but couldn't we just land in a normal fashion all the time."
"For starters, young human, you are not the slowest human a dragon has ever taught, not even this dragon. I happen to be very proud of how well you're learning, not just flying, but our dragon lore. You should be, too."
She thought about that a moment; she was proud of herself for working as hard as she could to be the best student she could be, but she knew she'd never be the best. "Oh, I am proud of how hard I try, and I do try as hard as I can, but even if I'm not the slowest student, I'm certainly not the best. You deserve to have a great student, not some scrawny redheaded girl who'll never be an extraordinary student. But, back to the landing, why can't we just do a normal landing every time?"
"Well, what if I had to make such a maneuver in the air one day and you went sliding off my tail three hundred feet above the ground?"
"Why would you have to do that in the air?" she asked, not able to imagine a single scenario where they would need to stop and turn in such a manner when soaring through the air.
Rafe looked at her very seriously and silently for what felt like five minutes while she stood twirling her hair around her finger. Sometimes dragons could be very slow, but she supposed that was because they lived so incredibly long, or claimed to.
Finally, he spoke very quietly, "The day may come, my little redhaired girl, when both dragons and humans will need to fight in the air a very formidable enemy to prevent the annihilation of your species."
Naomi felt a shiver quivering through the center of her body. Then she asked, "Rafe, I've heard talk that I thought were just stories meant to scare us about working with dragons, stories about how once great black dragons killed humans and burned their villages and crops. Then all the other dragons blues, greens, and reds started fighting the blacks to protect the humans, and they killed all the blacks. Is that a true story? Do you think now the blues or greens will turn on us?" Not the reds, she thought, please not the reds.
Then she stood silent waiting for his answer, watching her teacher and friend, his great red head larger than her body, and nervously smoothing the cloth of her shirt that her mother had woven just for her when she had been selected to become a dragon's pupil.
"Well today, it seems, we're going to have your first history lesson," Rafe said in not more than a minute. "So, let's just get comfortable on the ground here beside your fence."
She watched Rafe lower himself to the ground, laying so that his chin was only about two feet from the ground, and then she sat facing him, her arms around her drawn-up knees, about ten feet away so that she could look into his eyes while he spoke. As soon as she was settled and still, Rafe starting speaking.
"When the dragons first realized that another species on the planet had become sentient, four races of dragons, the Greens, the Blues, the Reds, and the Blacks had made up the only sentient species known. Each race had unique characteristics, then as now. The blues, the smallest in stature, are wanderers, mappers, biologists. We call the Blues the planet lovers. The Greens, the next in size, have always been the scientists, astronomers, doctors, inventors; well, you've met a few of them, so you know what they do. My race always pursued idle things such as writing, keepers of knowledge, historians, and artists, I suppose. In size, the Red are larger than the Blues and Greens, but about thirty percent smaller than the Blacks."
Naomi felt that shiver again as Rafe confirmed that the Blacks were not just sto
ries and that they were even larger than him. She had thought him probably the very largest dragon alive.
"How do I describe the Blacks to someone who has never seen one?" he continued. "They are beautiful beyond compare ...."
"What?" she blurted out. "They are? Does that mean there are still Blacks alive? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. The words just sort of jumped out of my mouth."
"That's alright," he said. "Your reaction is understandable. Yes, the Blacks still live, but let me continue the story chronologically so that you will understand more.
"Now, back to the Blacks. Not only are they the largest of the dragons and, perhaps, the most beautiful, the Blacks are the warriors. In the early ages, other animals as large as us flourished everywhere on the planet and considered dragons fair game for lunch. They were a match for most of us, especially if they attacked in number. But, a Black could often win against any of our predators, and for millenniums the Blacks protected all of us and made armies to begin annihilation of the other large species until, finally, dragons had no predators."
"During those ages, our societal system developed. Each race had their own matriarch, but if any disagreements arose, the Black Queen had final say, because all of us depended on the Blacks for survival. No one seemed to think of changing the way our government was structured when nothing was left to threaten us." Rafe paused and looked somberly in the sky as if he didn't want to tell her more; Naomi waited patiently for him to decide to continue. After a long wait, he did.
"About five centuries ago, things started to change. It all began when one of the Blues, a biologist, became concerned with changes he had noticed in the population growth and enlisted the help of one of the Greens, a well-known scientist in medical research. What they discovered was that dragon population growth was slowing rapidly and estimated that if it continued at that rate in about two thousand years it would begin negative growth and in about three thousand more years our species would be extinct. They each took all their research and findings to their respective queens." Rafe paused again, and Naomi waited again more patiently than she ever had. She could tell that the telling of this hurt Rafe, and she suspected that the end of this tale would leave her afraid.
"For today, I think I'll just give you a very brief telling of the rest of this tale of dragons and wars. We'll go into more detail later. The two queens both told their subjects who brought them the promise of extinction to keep what they had discovered secret until told different, and called the Red and Black queens for a meeting."
"The meeting of the four queens took place in the throne room of Queen Genette. The other three thought the right thing to do was tell their subjects what had been discovered, so that they could plan their time left and teach the humans our lore and knowledge, ensuring that something remained of the greatness of dragons even after we were gone.
"But, Queen Genette was, even then, arrogantly proud and refused to consider that path, so she told them she didn't believe that the two scientists had concrete evidence for the extinction of dragons and, even if they did, there were other scientists who could find a cure for the problem. And, she certainly would not allow humans to be given knowledge that the dragons had spent hundreds of thousands of years accumulating. So, basically, the decision was to do nothing.
"I suppose things would have stayed that way and dragons would still just be ignoring humans, but after that meeting, Queen Genette started to hate your race. I think because humans were new and dragons were old on the planet, and she couldn't stand the thought of a rival species and, probably, couldn't even contemplate others inheriting the planet as the dragons slowly died off. Whatever her reasons, she ordered the Blacks to start killing any humans that came into the Black's territory. When the killing started, the Greens, Blues, and Reds told the humans which lands to stay out of and began patrolling the borders around the Blacks.
"You can imagine how this angered Queen Genette, but still she did the unthinkable, she declared war on the humans and all the other dragons. Then one day, she just took the Blacks and went away, far away. But the war had left less that four thousand adult dragons on the planet and hastened the projected time for our extinction considerably." He paused again, staring off into the sky before turning to her and saying, "Okay, Naomi, that's enough for today."
"Rafe," she said hesitantly, "there seems to be something very personal to you in this story. I can tell you have no anger or hatred for the Blacks; in fact, you seem to love them in some way."
"My tale is personal to all dragons, Naomi, but perhaps for me a little more so. I'll tell you a secret that I have only shared with my mother. Queen Genette has a female hatchling that was still young when the Blacks went away. She and I stumbled upon each other accidentally about five decades ago when we were both out on solitary quests. To make this story particularly short, we secretly mated about four decades ago, and now we have a cave in no dragons' territory where one of us now always stays because we have a new hatchling."
Naomi could hardly believe what she was hearing and was so amazed that Rafe was confiding such a secret to her! "Oh, Rafe," she said, "I think that's the most romantic thing I've ever heard in my whole life!"
"Oh, Naomi, you humans and your romance. I think this tale may become much more sad than romantic," he said and lifted himself in flight.
She watched until he was a tiny speck in the sky.
Later at the village tavern, the smiling face, surrounded by slightly greying hair, of Mickal, the owner, suddenly sprang into her vision. He said, "Here's two bowls of my finest rabbit stew and two tankards of my finest ale for two lovely ladies," placing the food on the table for Naomi and her mother.
Naomi thanked him kindly, while having an inner laugh. She adored Mickal and had been entertained by his clumsy attempts to court her mother, Ester, for the past five years. Her father had been dead for a number of years when Mickal first started paying particular attention to Ester, so Naomi had not resented his attempts for a relationship, and she often wished her mother would respond. After all, Naomi would soon have to leave her mother's house and hoped her mother would not remain living alone.
"Mother," she said when Mickal was back in the kitchen, "don't you like Mickal? I think he really likes you."
"Of course, I like him, Naomi." Ester smiled at her daughter as she spoke, "He is one of the finest people in the village. I don't really know anyone who doesn't like him."
"You know that wasn't what I meant," Naomi said, feeling a little irritated with her mother.
"I know," her mother laughed.
"So, our young dragon rider, what tales of adventure might you have for your old uncle tonight?" said her mother's brother Dominic seating himself at their table.
"Well, the most adventurous thing happened today! Rafe tried to teach me how to stay on his back when he went into a nosedive. I fell off three times, but he caught me with his talons every time, or else I'd be a dead dragon rider instead of just a bruised one. How's that for an adventure Uncle Dommy?"
Uncle Dommy's guffaw drowned out the other tavern noise just as his friend Alden walked through the door and came over to sit with them, and said, "So what am I missing? Except my own bowl of rabbit stew, of course." Naomi grinned at Alden, he and Uncle Dommy were only eight years older than her, and she had always had the secret fantasy that someday when she was fully grown Alden would fall in love with her and they would get married.
Alden grinned back and gave her a wink. Her heart flipped over in her chest. He was so handsome, tall with raven black hair, a strange contrast to the rest of them at the table, all slightly built with red hair.
"My little niece here, the future Captain of the Dragon Riders, has been entertaining me with today's great adventures. Seems a dragon might be a little more difficult than a horse to ride. Don't worry Naomi, you'll get it and be the best dragon rider ever," Uncle Dommy said in mock seriousness.
"Don't make fun of me, Uncle. I'll never be the best dragon rider,
but I'm working hard and doing my best. I'm proud of that, but more importantly, I am learning the dragon lore very well," she said somewhat stung by the joking of her uncle in front of Alden.
"Is it really interesting, what you're learning from the dragons?" Alden asked looking sincerely curious just as Mickal, taking a break, joined them.
"Yes," she answered earnestly, "the dragons are so brilliant and have so much history and knowledge. No single person could ever learn it all."
She paused then, briefly, before she said, "But today I learned something far more frightening than interesting. The stories of the Black Dragons are real. Well, I don't know if all the stories about them made up to frighten children are real, but the Blacks are real. The Blacks still live, and they hate us. Rafe fears someday they will come to destroy us all."
The other four all started speaking at once. She only heard, "Are you in danger...we'll not be standing idle...dragon riders to battle...our horses will take us...."
"Quiet," she shushed them. "I don't know if I was supposed to tell anyone about the Blacks, so don't go around getting others all excited. Besides, I didn't just learn something that scared me today; I learned something sad. I still want to cry; the dragons are slowly dying. Someday there won't be any dragons. I think maybe that's why the Blacks hate us. As our numbers grow, the number of dragons decrease."
This time when she finished speaking, the others sat in silence for a moment until Mickal finally said, "Well, it'll be a sad day for us if we lose the dragons who have protected us and taught us for as long as we have had stories."
Then Alden reached over and took her hand casually, much like a lover would, she thought, and said, "Don't let the thought of the Blacks frighten you. If they come, we'll all be there fighting with you, and they won't find us an easy foe."
The others nodded their heads in solemn agreement.
~*~
Queen Genette saw Fastarr's circular glide downward for a landing beside where she stood on the mountain's frozen summit, towering not only above the caves, but above the clouds. She hated having anyone, even one of her hatchlings, interrupt her when she was on the summit standing above the world she knew she had been born to rule. As always, standing there alone, she sensed her superiority to even the planet itself.
Seven Deadly Sins Page 8
