“Uh, I think so…” I said uncertainly.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” the girl shook her head, chuckling as she sorted through the papers. “Greer will no doubt find something wrong with it, whatever I present to him.”
“Sounds like him,” I said under my breath, still smarting from the many small shoves and pinches that he managed to inflict on me almost daily.
“I’m Char Nefrette, and you must be the infamous Neill Torvald.” The girl stuck out a hand. I must’ve made a strange expression because she added, “My dormmate Sigrid told me about you.” I shook it, once, wondering what making friends with this new girl would mean in this world of shifting alliances. Nefrette? I hadn’t heard of that clan before, and it wasn’t one that father had told me to be wary of. Did that mean that she was unimportant to my fathers’ cause, or that she was something entirely new?
“I can see you trying to work out who I am, but you won’t get there,” Char finished, piling the papers and gestured to her long, silver hair. “I have my mother’s looks, just as I presume that you have yours. You don’t look much like the rest of the Torvald Clan, that’s for sure.”
“Oh.” I felt suddenly stupid. “So, you’re a…?” I blushed.
“A bastard?” Char said stubbornly. “Yes. That is what Prince Vincent calls me, but not my father, Prince Lander.”
Prince Lander of the North, the worthiest successor to Queen Delia’s throne. The words of my father almost sprang unbidden from my mouth, before I stopped them. My father had a lot of respect for the rangy, hard-edged ruler of the Northern Kingdom, even though he was ‘officially’ our enemy (as we were beholden to Prince Vincent and the Middle Kingdom, our clan’s home). My father likes him because he’s the only one keeping the Wildman out of Three Kingdom lands, I reminded myself, wondering if I could see a trace of that hard-edged determination here in Char, too.
“So, your mother was a… Wildwoman?” I said awkwardly.
In response, Char just raised an eyebrow over her lake-blue eyes. “Just as your mother was a traveling Gypsy?”
Ouch. I nodded. “The Gypsies of the Far South are an ancient and noble people. We traveled out of the hot lands far, far to the south of here and have spent many generations traveling the world. My uncle is a Headman, like a prince I guess, of his group and his sister, my mother, was a Matriarch.”
Char nodded, accepting the challenge. “As are mine, but the Wild families don’t have titles. As you know, my father’s official wife and princess has never given him any heirs, and so, in the tradition of the Wild North he took a mistress because— well, I don’t suppose I need to explain all the benefits he might’ve seen to the arrangement. His mistress was my mother, a proud shield-maiden of the wilds, who agreed to form a truce between her family and the Northern Kingdom.” She shrugged, picking up her papers. “If there is one thing that we have in common, Neill Torvald, is that we understand, of everyone here, that power and respect is not all about where you come from or how noble your family is!”
I found myself grinning in response.
“Torvald! Nefrette!” A sudden shout from the doorway, and we turned in horror to see the form of the Quartermaster Greer striding towards us both. “What are you doing, dawdling in the corridors while the rest of your brothers and sisters freeze in the morning dew outside? Are you both that selfish?”
He seized me painfully by the ear, but I noticed he didn’t do the same for Char. Was it because her father was a prince with his own kingdom and generals, whereas mine was a lowly Warden?
“I’m sorry, sir, it was my fault.” Char said. “I dropped the papers I was preparing for you.” She offered the stacks to Greer, so that he had to relinquish his hold on my ear to take them.
“Hmm. Well, I see that your skills as a Scribe are apparently getting worse!” Greer leafed through the pages. “I told you to translate and collect them together, but there are mistakes littered through them! Outside, the pair of you!” he barked.
“Scribe?” I whispered to Nefrette, as she shook her head and held a finger to her lips – and then we were out in the freezing cold where all of the students were standing in rows, arm’s length apart, and shivering. Their baleful stares were on us as we joined the back of the collection, and marched out, where Abbot Andros himself stood, atop the wall.
“Brothers and sisters! Students!” the Abbot bellowed. It was still grey in the dawn light, and the air was freezing, but we all stood unconsciously to attention.
“Thank you all, for joining us – even those of you who have been through this process before!” the Abbot said and I realized there were other students here like Char, whom I had never seen before. Like the silver haired northerner, they were all older by a year or so, but still wore the customary black robes.
“You are here to be trained, and to create unity for the much-troubled land of the Three Kingdoms – today is the first part of that process!” the Abbot intoned. “The Quartermaster has informed me that the time is right and that all of the new recruits are sufficiently sound of body and mind for the next stage, which will be this: you will be chosen for one of three roles, suited to your abilities and character. Through these roles you will learn your place in the world.” He paused, and looked around the crowd of youngsters. For an electric moment, his eyes connected with mine as they swept past and my stomach felt suddenly unsettled. How would being chosen for a particular role for the year or two that I’d live here help father, and my brothers, and the people of the Eastern Marches? I already knew my place in the world, as the bastard son of a Chosen Warden. I would be forever overlooked and discounted. No role I took here at the monastery would change that, once I returned home.
I don’t know what is going to happen to me once I return home, I reminded myself, once again feeling the heavy lump of worry and loneliness in my throat. My brothers didn’t look like me. They would be generals and wardens and warlords and whatever else. But for me? Father had always said that I would have a place at his side, at the side of my brothers, that I was a true-born Son of Torvald – but what would his word mean after he, the unstoppable old bear, had passed away? I imagined becoming some lesser clerk or captain in my brother’s employ – if they even suffered to keep me around at all. I don’t know how my brothers will view a trained dragon monk hanging around in their halls, I thought. It’s not as if they have showed any particular love for them before now – so why would it be different when I was the one?
“The Draconis Order are monks, but we each have a purpose. Scribe. Protector. Mage. If you are chosen as a Scribe, it will be your sacred duty to preserve the lore of the Three Kingdoms. As a Protector, it will be to defend the Order, the dragons, and the throne. If you are lucky enough to have the aptitude, to be a Mage, the rarest of all of us, your duty will be to carry the powers and the teachings of the Order itself. You will be tested, recruits, and assessed over the weeks that follow to determine your calling.” His voice rose, as he brought his speech to a glorifying close. “But know this, sons and daughters of the Three Kingdoms – together, we will be creating a new age!”
Chapter 7
Char Nefrette
The new boy was weird, I thought as I got my things ready for yet another day at the grueling Dragon Monastery. I had been idly thinking about that new Torvald boy as I crept down the stone stairs. Sigrid had told me that she had met him, and that he was ‘that bastard son of Torvald, sent here as a punishment’ and that had made me all the more curious about him. He was different from the others. After all, most of the instructors and monks here thought I was some ‘bastard child’ and not worthy of learning about dragons.
Maybe I’m just feeling lonely, I thought to myself with a sigh. Which was crazy, really –I spent most of every waking moment surrounded by people, and for the most part, the other students treated me fairly well. Sigrid could be funny, and I was starting to think of her as a real friend. Why would I be lonely?
Because I want to meet other people
like me. My rebellious thoughts answered me on the cold steps in the greying light of pre-dawn, my bag heavy with meat and cheeses.
“Char? You’re up early, where are you going?” Sigrid said. Drat! I’d been trying to be quiet enough that Sigrid wouldn’t wake and notice me gone. Sharing a room was terribly trying. Back home I was used to coming and going whenever I pleased without disturbing anyone.
“I could ask the same of you!” I nodded, seeing that she, too, was dressed (just not in all of the heavy cloaks and furs that I was). The air was cold, but it wasn’t as freezing as the real deep mountains, where my mother’s family came from. Sigrid, however, was shivering.
“Yeah, just getting some more wood for the fire,” she said, rubbing her hands together. Each of our dormitory rooms were shared between at least two students, and we each had a small hearth which we were expected to tend ourselves.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Sigrid, I should have brought some more logs up,” I said. “I was the first up, after all.”
“Don’t worry about it. You mountain folk have ice in your veins.” Sigrid laughed. “Not like us southerners. You probably think this is just another balmy sunny morning!”
Not quite, I thought, but I laughed all the same.
“You still haven’t answered my question, though.” The girl fixed me with a sharp stare. “Where are you going so early?”
But I had to go now, before true dawn, and why I couldn’t afford to wait around to explain myself to Sigrid. “Oh, it’s a mountain thing,” I said quickly. “An old custom. We go to honor the snow fall.”
“But it’s not snowing out there,” Sigrid wondered, stepping on tiptoes to look out through the bare window into the courtyard of the monastery beyond.
Damn! “No, precisely,” I said a little haughtily, trying to pretend to be the ‘mysterious wise wild woman’ image that my father had teased my mother with. “I go to celebrate the snow fall that might come, and to avert any more snowstorms.”
“You can do that? Stop the snow from falling?” Sigrid looked doubtful.
Of course not, I thought. These lowland people were really gullible when it came to what we did up there in the mountains! “I don’t know, but it is our way,” I said. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must go.”
“Of course, Char, of course,” Sigrid said. “But remember what the Abbot said – we’re going to be tested and sorted into what monk we’re going to be. I hope that I get to be a Protector.”
“I hope you get the opportunity,” I said, a bad mood beginning to settle on my shoulders. I had already been tested of course, as I had been here longer than Sigrid, and it had been the Quartermaster who suggested I would make an excellent Scribe despite my not having any particular proficiency with ink and quill. He must have known that all of this difficult symbols and complicated words of the monastery were nothing like the mountain runes and markings. I think he just had something against me and wanted to keep me from the other more prestigious roles. Anyway. I was going to be late, and Sigrid, although no fault of her own, had reminded me what Greer had told me not so long ago. That he was certain a delicate girl like me was perfect Scribing material because I knew the true impact of impurity and imperfection. It was a nightmare trying to learn how the Abbot wanted things to be said in my hours of transcribing the old scrolls – I would much rather be out there on the mountain with Paxala, or learning to fight with the others.
Paxala. I remembered how late I was already, and my anxiety added speed to my steps as I swept down to the ground floor, pausing as I slipped out of the tower door and into the cold beyond.
Sigrid had been right. It was cold out here before true dawn. I had just a little time to cross the mountain and get down to the cave. My steps took me out, across the courtyard (traveling quickly and quietly, as my mother had taught me well) and out through the Kitchen Gardens. The leather knapsack was heavy on my shoulder as I half-jogged, feeling my tired muscles beginning to wake up.
At least the monastery keeps us fit, I thought, as I jogged up the path through the incline of rock and gorse bushes, seeing the ridge and the dragon crater beyond. There was a lark beginning to trill over the mountain heaths below us, and the grey was giving away to softer, muted colors. I didn’t have much time at all if I was going to get out to Paxala without being seen and back again before lessons started.
The Dragon Monastery was not like anything that I had ever experienced before. When my father, Prince Lander of the North, had suggested to me that he would have to send me away, I had thought that it was a punishment. I had kicked and screamed and would have shouted his little stony fortress down were it not for my older brother, Wurgan. He, too, was an illegitimate princeling just as I was an almost princess. But he had been accepted by my father’s lowland advisers and captains much more than they accepted me. It was because he was a general of our father’s armies, while I was but an illegitimate brat. At least as far as they were concerned.
“Little sister, stop with this. It is unseemly,” I remembered Wurgan had counseled me over his first silver-gold mustache. “You are a prince’s daughter, after all – a princess!”
But I am not, am I? I repeated in my mind what I had said so long ago. I and Wurgan himself were all just more scions in the way of the throne. It was a wonder that Lady Odette, our father’s real wife, hadn’t had us poisoned years ago – but she knew as much as we did that we were Prince Lander of the North’s only offspring.
But still, I had always been made to feel second-class somehow by the suspicious looks and glances of the lowland captains and soldiers. It was my silver hair, wasn’t it? It marked me out, just like my mother and the wild people of our heritage.
Wurgan had explained to me that I was being sent to this Dragon Monastery not because father didn’t love me, or that because I had been bad (although I probably had, I was forever running around the fortress playing, or else bringing in wild creatures I had found from the mountains and trying to tend them there).
“Our father is in trouble; don’t you see, little sister? And all of our fighters are busy, and no matter how good my sword arm is – there is nothing that I can do to avoid the trouble coming. Only you can,” he had said seriously, going down on one knee to straighten my jerkin. Even though the event had been two years ago, I remembered it as clearly as if it had been yesterday.
“You’re good at this,” Wurgan had said seriously. “You’ve always been better at listening to people, and to speaking what needs to be said without starting a fight. As for me?” My brother had grinned and flexed his arm muscles. “All I know how to do is to use my sword to end arguments. But we need allies. The north needs allies. Uncle Vincent is allowing the bandits from the Middle Kingdom to harry and attack our borders, but if we say anything then the Three Kingdoms, and the mountain realms and the wild people will all be plunged into war. Our father thinks that you can help make peace with these strange lowland lords, by going to this dragon-place and making friends.”
But I never wanted to come here.
But I had come to the monastery, and now, after all of that time, I had finally made a friend. No, it wasn’t Neill Torvald, though of everyone I’d ever met here, he seemed like he might actually understand me.
No, my friend was a dragon.
The first rays of the sun were coming over the ridgeline behind me and crossing the horizon, which meant that it wouldn’t be long until the monastery started waking up. I’m late, I chided myself. Did Sigrid suspect anything? Of course, everyone suspects everything in the monastery, I thought a little glumly. But no one will miss me for breakfast, now that I had told Sigrid about my ‘welcoming the snow’ ritual. Poor Sigrid. She was nice enough, really, but she had a habit of being in the exact wrong place and being terribly gullible.
If I skipped breakfast that would give me about an hour with Paxala. I’d been visiting her for a year now, but still, I worried constantly that I might offend her or somehow cause a breech in our friendship. Even more, I wo
rried about what would happen if anyone realized what I was doing—or caught me smuggling such large quantities of cheese and bread.
I scoured the fog hanging low over Hammal Lake and the hazy green tops of the trees, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. I was too late. I’d finally ruined everything.
“SKREAYAR!” The ground rumbled with a sound that I could feel in the very pit of my stomach as one dragon, and then another, and then another in the crater a way behind me started to greet the dawn. The loudest, deepest, and scariest shriek (one that reminded me of avalanches in the deep mountains) was from Zaxx the Mighty himself. I felt suddenly afraid, as if even merely thinking about the monstrous gold dragon was enough to summon him. To the monks and the other students, Zaxx was a thing of reverence: like a god – he was just so clearly powerful. None of us had ever seen anything as impressive as Zaxx.
But if Zaxx was a sort of dragon-god, then he wasn’t the sort that I wanted to pray too. I couldn’t say for sure, but there was something terrifying in the lidless way that he regarded the other dragons, and the humans both. Calculating. Judging. There was nothing like Paxala in those flaring gold eyes. Nothing that I could relate to.
Maybe what Abbot Ansall says is true, and Zaxx is one of the First Dragons, the father of every dragon that came after…
It made me shudder.
“Zaxx - is no father,” a voice said, but it wasn’t one that spoke with words, but with thoughts. I could feel the voice as close as my own, and pressing into my mind. I stopped in my tracks, as a feeling like ice water cascaded over me. I didn’t know how to say this, but I thought, I thought…
Paxala. The voice I had just heard sounded like what I felt Paxala would sound like, if only she could talk.
But that is impossible. I shook my head. It must have been a trick of my mind.
Dragon God (The First Dragon Rider Book 1) Page 5
