Dragon God (The First Dragon Rider Book 1)

by Ava Richardson

  Thud-Thud. I jumped as behind us large hessian sacks full of the smell of meat and scraps where dumped by teams of other Draconis Order monks. Finally! It would be our turn, and wondered eagerly what sort of dragon we would get to feed, excited for my first opportunity to be near a dragon—

  “Skree! Skree!” Flying and hopping up from the rocks and trees came creatures barely as big as crows, but a few reached dog or small child size. They were the smallest of all of the dragons, and they couldn’t stop chirruping and whistling as they came up to us.

  “Careful now, these Messenger dragons will give you a nasty nip, though they have no true fire,” The Draconis Monk said, clearly irritated for having just the smallest beasts to tend. I realized now that the Abbot had intentionally given us the smallest of the dragons, that he had organized the groups by some internal definition he—or perhaps Prince Vincent—had of our families’ influence or importance.

  “The rest of the monastery are laughing at us.” Sigrid scowled, as grumpy as the Draconis Monk was, but I could only feel delighted to be near to any of the beasts; no matter how small.

  “Use the goad! The goad!” The Draconis Monk was shouting as he speared hunks of food and flung them out into the crater (where the flights of Messenger dragonets squawked and squabbled to catch them).

  “Why?” Char said distantly, her eyes appearing half-closed as if she were sleepy or concentrating. Instead of using the goad, she picked up a hunk of the meat in her hands and held it up for the smaller dragonets to feast on.

  She is fearless, I thought, watching as three of the Messenger dragons flashed to her arm to settle and begin pulling and nipping at the half-cooked meat, purring contentedly.

  “Nefrette!” the monk was furious, batting away at the clouds of Messenger dragons that were descending all around us. One of them hover-flew right in front of my face, cocking its head first this way and then that as it whistled at me. I laughed, taking a chunk off the bone and flicking it in the air, for it to dive and catch, as fast and as easily as a gull.

  “Back in the crater! Now!” the monk moved quickly, seizing what was left of the food and flinging them over the edge, sacks and all, and with it followed the flights of Messenger dragons.

  “Hey? Why did you do that – they were having fun!” Char demanded.

  “Why? Because of him, that’s why, Nefrette,” the Draconis Monk pointed down to where a great golden head, as large as all of the Messenger dragons put together, was regarding us solemnly from the bottom of the pit. “If Zaxx thinks that we’re favoring any of the other dragons over him, he’ll kill them. And then he might just kill you for insulting him.”

  “But that’s just—” Char started to argue, her face suddenly ashen, but I stepped in quickly.

  “We understand, sir,” I said, interrupting her.

  “You do? Good. Make sure she does as well,” the monk muttered and cursed, aware that our group had made a spectacle of our section of the lesson. Maybe I will match Jodreth’s record of two nights on the mountain, I found myself thinking – feeling once again that wild sort of courage in my heart as I had when I first stepped out onto the mountain this morning. It wasn’t courage though, I reminded myself. It was foolishness. I couldn’t depend on Jodreth or my uncle saving me a second time – and besides which, I didn’t want to see Char or the others get hurt or punished as I had.

  It didn’t take long for the monks to start filing their charges away from the crater, and begin the trek back to the monastery. It seems as though our own personal Draconis Monk was only too happy to abandon us, and probably would have pushed us in the crater himself were it not for the scandal that it would cause in front of the prince.

  “Why did you do that?” Char said, catching up to me.

  “What did I do?” I asked.

  “Stop me from arguing with the monk. He was in the wrong. If Zaxx feels threatened by some of the smallest and most powerless dragons having some attention, then surely that is a problem with the bull, not with us?”

  “Ah…” I shrugged, unsure why dragon politics mattered so much to her, or what there was to do about it. “I guess. But, are you going to tell the Great Golden Zaxx that?” I pointed out. “Do you speak dragonese?” I had thought that Char was fearless, I now revised my earlier assumption to crazy.

  “But they’re in the wrong.” Char insisted. “The monk, even Zaxx. You can’t look after a dragon just by enforcing some weird competition on them,” the prince’s daughter reasoned. “It’s unhealthy, they all share the same den, after all.”

  “Char,” I whispered in alarm, aware that there were other students and fully-ordained monks around us as we hiked. “I don’t ever think it’s a good idea for us to start questioning Zaxx the Golden,” I nodded towards the nearest monk and raised my eyebrows. It was clear to me that half of these monks thought of Zaxx as a cross between a monster and a god – and maybe they were right. Maybe the two were the same thing.

  “Pfft.” Char shook her head, not accepting what I had to say. At least it stopped her rebuke all the same, and we finished our trek down the mountain in silence.

  “Ah, Miss Nefrette, Torvald,” said a smooth voice from the monastery doorway as we got back to the monastery. It was the Quartermaster Greer. “Where’s the others? Fenn, Lesser, Ganna?” He motioned us over, picking us out of the tide of students returning with excited, scared, and awed looks at their near-dragon encounters.

  “I don’t know,” I lied. I had seen them go off just ahead of us, and were probably already inside the monastery by now. I didn’t know what Greer wanted with our group, but I guessed that it wasn’t going to be good news.

  “Well, no matter, as your tutor for the day, Monk Olan has told me of how insolent and disrespectful you were of his orders up on the mountain, in front of the prince and Abbot as well!”

  “Not my prince,” Char muttered at my side.

  “Enough of this backchat, Nefrette. The pair of you are on stable duty until the monastery falls down or I say so – whichever comes closer!”

  “What? We were only asking questions!” Char started to argue, and I groaned. I could see how this was going to go before Greer even said anything.

  “Silence! Go. Muck out the stables. Get fresh straw. Brush down the ponies. Make sure they are fed and watered, every morning, every night.” He turned and marched off.

  “Well, at least it’s not standing around listening to the Abbot lecture at us,” Char grumbled, and I had to bite back a laugh. Char was just as rebellious as I apparently was, in her way. Maybe she could make a good ally in my mission. Could I tell her what I was up to, and why?

  But as we walked deeper into the monastery, its enclosing walls pressed a heavy spirit upon me. If I was going to be busy mucking out the stables – how could I sneak back down to the Library? Or up to the Abbot’s Tower?

  Chapter 16

  The Scroll

  “Torvald?” A voice broke through my morose sulk, and I turned around to see none other than the thin Greer standing at the opening to the stables, wrinkling his nose a little at the smell. It was evening, and already the bells had been rung for dinner – and we were going to be late if we didn’t finish up soon.

  “Yes, sire?” I tried to stand up just a little bit straighter, even though my back was aching. I heard movement from deeper in the stables to see Char warily stepping forward, pitchforking the last of the muck and straw into the wheelbarrow between us.

  “I have a scroll for Torvald—not you, Nefrette. Either get back to work or get going to dinner,” Greer said.

  “A scroll, sire?” I asked, feeling embarrassed at how dirty I was. I had let Char wear the only pair of gloves we could find and my hands were filthy.

  Greer offered me the scroll and I took it gingerly, not wanting to get the paper soiled. He looked pointedly at Char, still standing in the aisle. “Dinner is being eaten, if you want to get to the Main Hall.” The Quartermaster sighed, turning and leaving us alone.

&
nbsp; “Thank you,” I said to his back, with a moment of real elation. Is my father going to tell me that he’s reconsidered, that he never should have sent me away—that he’s pulling me out of this place? Before instantly feeling ashamed. Of course, my father wasn’t going to send for me. He had his two legitimate sons at his side. What did he need me for? I was just his muck-shoveling, stinking illegitimate son. It didn’t require much imagination at all to know what the great Malos Torvald would say if he could see me now, or what my brothers would think of my situation. I held the corner of the rolled-up parchment and tried to find a way to unroll it without sullying the fragile paper.

  “Here, I’ll read it for you if you want,” Char said. She had managed to not fall over several times in the stables, or have the ponies chew her robes as she worked.

  “Uh…” What if it’s private? It might contain secret information about my mission here…

  As if reading my mind, Char just stripped off her gloves, revealing clean and pink hands and gestured for me to give her the scroll. “Oh, don’t be so precious, Torvald, the monks have already read it, you know. I’ll read it to you while you’ve still got dirt all over your hands.”

  “The monks have already read it?” I repeated in horror, looking closer at the scroll sent by my father.

  “Yeah. They read all of our messages, I think,” Char said. “Look at the seal. I noticed it in my first year here.”

  How had I not noticed that red seal of Torvald, which was supposed to be a castle (the mighty stone fort of the Chief Warden) debossed in red wax, had been sliced neatly across the middle? “What? How could they?” I was shocked. “This is a message to me, from my father. He’s the Chief Warden for the Middle Kingdom—how dare they!” I said, offering the scroll up to Char to read while I washed my hands with water from one of the horse’s buckets.

  “Yeah, I know, and listen, my father is a prince who rules his own kingdom, and they do the same to me. It’s scandalous, it really is…” Char shrugged. “But what can we do? We’re here under our parents’ orders, aren’t we?” she said carefully, and I tried to not let her see how nervous I was. Did she know that I had a secret mission here? Had she guessed?

  We had been working together in the stables for the last week now, every morning and every night. Char worked quickly and efficiently around the animals, with a skill that I admired – and, just as importantly, she was kind to them, I saw. I started to wonder if either of us were cut out to be dragon monks at all – or which part of my day I secretly preferred: the dry lessons in the Library with Dorf and Maxal about dragon lore, or the sparring with Terrence and the others, or cleaning up Stamper and the rest of the ponies, the sheep, and goat muck out here with Char!

  “My beloved son,” Char began (pulling a sickly-sweet face as she read that bit, and I growled at her to get on with it).

  “I trust that your studies at the Dragon Monastery are going well, and that you are applying all of your efforts to learning all that there is to know in that place. I can only press upon you how urgent and important your studies are, as we have sore need for a learned scholar and scribe back in Torvald territory.

  “We have been engaged in a border skirmish with the Gull Clan, who have been encroaching upon the Northern Orchard fields. Your brother Rik has managed to get his horse shot out from underneath him by their arrows but is not in any great harm. I, however, managed to catch one in the leg. It is no discomfort, but the Healer Garrett here is treating it and says the infection will subside with rest.

  “Your Uncle Lett has been asking after your welfare, and everyone here misses you. You must redouble your efforts, and come home with all of the benefits of the Dragon Monastery at your disposal! I cannot stress how much hope I have in your success, and expect great news of your successful training by the spring equinox!”

  “Signed, Your Father, Malos.” Char looked up, frowning at me.

  Oh no, I thought, a knot of worry in my chest. My father is injured. He has been shot by the Gulls. Hot anger swept through me. What was I doing here at all, when I should be back home with my brothers, protecting our land? And the bit about expecting great news by the spring equinox – when was that, just a few weeks away? How was I ever going to do that?

  “I’m sorry,” Char said hesitantly, “about your father getting shot. If it were in the Northern Kingdom it would never have happened.”

  “Oh really?” I said, feeling annoyed and powerless. “I don’t see how that could be true. All of the warlords are at each other’s throats across the Three Kingdoms, aren’t they?” I was getting nowhere with uncovering what the secret of the Draconis Order was. The only things I knew now that I hadn’t before I’d come were that Abbot Ansall was potentially three hundred years old—a claim my father would never believe without real evidence—and how to feed dragons in order by size. If only I had spent more time studying as a child, then maybe I could make sense of all of these dry old names and dates that I was reading here. None of it seemed to have anything to do with magic, or being able to move mountains with your mind.

  Once again, I was letting my father down.

  “Not in the Northern Kingdom,” Char said in a quieter tone, still holding my father’s scroll, waiting for me to finish cleaning and disrobing from the heavy leather apron. “Prince Lander, my father, is trying his best to put an end to the skirmishes and squabbles that your father is having to go through. He would send aid.”

  “Unlike—” I started to say, before stopping my mouth. Unlike Prince Vincent. I looked at Char, who made an imperceptible nod.

  “Look. It is what it is. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Char said, handing me my father’s scroll and reaching instead for the wheelbarrow of muck and refuse, the very last one for the night. It was technically my turn to go and deliver it to the Kitchen Gardens, so I was surprised when Char said, “Look, I’ll deliver this. You go eat.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. “I can still do my job.” Only, you’re not doing your job, are you, Neill? I rebuked myself. You’re letting your father die, and not even learning the secrets of the monastery like he asked me to!

  “No,” Char said a little more firmly, taking the wheelbarrow forcefully from my hands, and already pushing it away. “I was going to miss dinner anyway this evening.”

  “Miss dinner? Why?” I asked. My stomach was already starting to grumble.

  “Oh, just mountain ways, you know,” she said as she rounded the door.

  “What mountain ways?” I asked, only to find that I was asking just the ponies, sheep, and goats. If they had an answer for me, then it didn’t look like they were going to share it. I stood in the stables amongst the animals for a moment, aware of how deeply that I was failing my father, my clan – and how mysterious Char Nefrette was being. And then it hit me. She wanted to go to the Kitchen Gardens. Perhaps she was heading off to do whatever it was she was doing the last time I’d followed her there.

  I might not be able to find out the secret of the Draconis Order, but maybe I can find out the secret of Char Nefrette? She was the child of a prince. That has got to impress my father, right?

  I counted to ten, and then counted to ten again, before I followed the route that Char had taken before to the wall door at the back of the old storerooms, and into the Kitchen Gardens beyond.

  There. Just as I thought. I hid behind a stand of long, fat-podded bean plants, peering around their leaves to see that Char had already dumped the wheelbarrow on the compost heap (as tall as a cart) and was hefting a hessian sack, like the ones that we had been using to feed the dragons just a week ago, over her shoulder. Nan must have filled it and left it there for her.

  The Messenger dragons, I thought. She must be secretly feeding them. Maybe that was why they were so happy to land on her arm and eat from her hands. And that would explain why Char had been so angry about the way that the ordained Draconis Monks were treating the dragons, because she thought that she knew better, though how she’d ever deci
ded to start feeding the dragons on her own, I couldn’t fathom

  I heard the gentle thump of the door as it closed, and then decided to follow the half-mountain girl, all thoughts of missing dinner evaporating from my mind.

  Chapter 17

  Char, Interrupted

  I was going to be late. Again. I increased my speed to a jog, crossing over the ridge in fading light. I shouldn’t have wasted time reading the boy’s scroll for him, I thought. Why should I care whether he gets it all mucky and ends up ruining it?

  “Because Char is kind,” Paxala reminded me inside my own mind.

  Well, I’m not so sure about that, I answered her. Maybe I just wanted to see if there was any juicy information in it. I got no response, and in truth, Paxala had been right, all the same. I hated the way that the Quartermaster treated Torvald, and any of the students that he thought weren’t worthy of the Draconis Order. He was always making little snide comments or put-downs on either me, Lila, or Torvald, all for no other reason than we were different.

  Yeah, so that was why I had decided to try and help him out. Poor guy, I thought, remembering what his father had written to him. His father was wounded, his older brother lucky to be alive, and from what I could read between the lines, it sounded like his family was expecting him to learn every trick and power that the Order had to offer and bring that knowledge home to help, and fast, too!