“Yeah, I do. I’m going to be at the head table, along with Terrence and the prince,” he said with a smarmy smile, jogging ahead, to be early to the festivities, I supposed.
“Wow, he’s just going to love that, isn’t he?” Dorf said. “As son of the Southern Prince, Terrence hates Vincent with a passion, and the Abbot’s going to be spending all night stopping Terrence and his lot from saying something awful!”
“Yeah.” I shook my head wearily. I didn’t care about the internal politics. I had my father to worry about. But… Does that mean that Nefrette will be at the head table too? I wondered. As daughter of the Northern Prince Lander?
I learned the answer just a little while later.
Monks in heavy black robes with gilt red edges started to appear and take their places, and there were monks here that I had never seen before. Almost all of them were men between the ages of about twenty and forty. Some wore beards, while others were clean-shaven, and a very small faction were like Maxal, with shaven tonsure. I wondered if there were factions even within the Draconis Order, and whether that was something that I should tell my father.
No sign of Char though, I noticed, wondering if she had managed to sneak off to visit Paxala on this one evening in the same way that I had to. I hoped for her sake that she had – because she didn’t appear to be here, and I saw Terrence dressed in his own cream tunic and black robe, with also a small silver circlet at his brow, to indicate his noble status. If Terrence, a prince’s child was here in his finery – then why wouldn’t Char be? Some may consider her to be illegitimate – but she was still Prince Lander’s daughter.
“They must have come from all over the Middle Kingdom,” Dorf whispered in awe.
“All over the Three Kingdoms, lad,” said a finely cultured voice that I recognized, one with a touch of the Northern kingdom about it. I turned around to see that there was one Draconis Order new arrival here who still wore his heavy black cloak and looked far shabbier than anyone else. His attire was not the finery that most of the other monks had turned up in. He wore a gray-colored wrap around his hair, an eye-patch, and his face was blotched with the scurf of some kind of skin condition. He looked like an old man, even though I knew that he wasn’t.
“Jodreth?” I said, “Is that you?” I was sure it was, under the disguise.
“What did you say, novitiate?” the one-eyed older monk said in a high pitched and querulous voice. “I am Monk Jocana, Jo-caaa-na. Now be off with you and get out from under my feet, boy. Some of us real monks have work to do!”
It was him, I knew it was under all of that make up and I nodded and tried to hide my grin as I watched him perform an excellent impersonation of a slightly batty, slightly diseased older man, hobbling through the thickest of the monastic gabbles.
The dragon pipes were sounded and the two double doors at the back were thrown open. The retinue of Middle Kingdom knights in full plate armor appeared, and between them strode His Grace the Abbot Ansall, and His Majesty Prince Vincent himself.
“Make way! Make way for the Good Prince!” the knights chanted, driving a wedge through the gatherings.
“The Dark Prince more like!” someone shouted from the crowd, causing a ripple of consternation from the assembled, and beetle-like looks from the Quartermaster, but the heckler could not be isolated.
The Abbot wore his usual minimal finery: that is to say, black robes with a black cloak of a deep, velvety sheen. He wore his simple gold chain of office with the black gemstone, I saw. If that was the source of his magic power, then he definitely had it on him. But no staff. He didn’t have the thin cane with the stylized silver dragon adornment. I remembered seeing it when he had his private audience with me and Char in his tower, leaning against the wall. He didn’t look infirm enough to need a walking cane – and the newly arrived monks around me all carried staffs – but they were much sturdier, heavier things – not the fine walking cane of the Abbot.
Was that it? Was the secret of the monk’s magic really as simple as a magic staff? I wondered. I looked to the grand doors behind me, eager to get away right now – but there were just too many knights and monks in the way just yet.
It took seemingly ages for the Prince and the Abbot to make their way to the head table, as they looked to be spending a long time in emphatic conversation with each other. I wished that I could sneak over to find out what they were talking about – but every time I tried to slip away, it seemed that Dorf was there, moaning about food or about the other monks. I liked Dorf, really, I did – but right now I wish that I had told him about my mission and made him understand what I was doing was important – for my father’s sake, for all our sakes.
Once the prince was finally seated, the Abbot accepted the cheers and claps with a short address. “The Order thanks the Good Prince Vincent for his most gracious visit to our humble halls, may we extend to him every courtesy, and assure him that out there,” the Abbot pointed out beyond the main doors and the front gate of the monastery, “out there his duties may be heavy, but in here, he is with allies – and his worries can be light!”
Someone made a puking noise from the assembled crowd, but the Abbot ignored it. I bet that was Jodreth-- I concealed my smile behind my hand--or Jo-caaa-na or whatever he was calling himself in here.
“Let the First Day Feast begin!” The Abbot clapped his hands, and the dragon pipes roared again.
Now was my chance, while the monks and the important of the Order took their seats at the head of the room, and the younger students milled about and chattered as they looked for seats. I waited for Dorf to start talking excitedly to Sigrid before I slipped to the back of the crowd, ducked into the corridor – and ran.
It was even easier than I’d thought to sneak about tonight of all nights, but I still hurried toward where the Abbot’s Tower stood alone.
One monk, or maybe two, have actually become ordained Mages. I remembered Nan Barrow’s words once again. That was what all of this training that Char was being put through was about, wasn’t it? When would she get to go into the Astrographer’s Tower – and should it be there that I needed to be searching?
Tympani-like music drifted across the darkened courtyard from further inside the building. The Abbot had hired minstrels for the evening, and there was a low murmur in the air from the feast. I wondered how long it had been already – was the first course over? I didn’t have time to dither—I had to be decisive. The Abbot’s Tower then.
I edged across the courtyard, wrapping my cloak around my shoulders from the sudden cold, and trying to avoid the pools of light from the many torches that uncharacteristically burned in their sconces. Absolutely no expense had been spared, it seemed, for the arrival of the ‘Good’ Prince.
Up the stone stairs to the wall, my feet made a slapping noise on the stone – loud in my ears, but no one raised an alarm. Maybe if any guards were watching they would think that I was just another lost student. This unexpected holiday season made us all relax our usual strict regimes and routines a bit, and I hoped that extended to the guards—and to the Abbot.
There. The doorway to the Abbot’s Tower – a stone arch with a wooden door I had been taken through just a few months ago as a fresh-faced new arrival. What if it was locked? I thought in alarm. How could I be so stupid? I got to the edge of the simple wooden door, and breathed carefully, remembering my father’s lessons before battle. ‘Breathe. Focus. Strike!’ he had told me and my brothers, which had helped me so far in my Protector’s lessons. I waited, couldn’t hear anything from the other side, reached out—
And the door swung open on oiled hinges. It wasn’t even locked. Why? The thought flashed through my mind, but I ignored it, eager to believe that perhaps I was just being lucky. It was about time that things went my way, after all!
It was the Abbot’s desk I wanted. Surely there I would find what I was looking for, but as I headed to the spiraling stairs that led to the top, a strange open room with the Abbot’s desk in the center, a
voice called out.
“Halt!” the voice said, breaking my moment of reverie. I looked up the stairs to the final window and landing, to see a figure standing in the shadows, blocking the door.
It was Char.
“Char?” I said in relief. “Thank the stars I found you – I was so worried,” I greeted her as I walked up the final steps.
“Halt,” she said again, this time raising one slender hand to hold in front of me in warning. Her voice sounded curiously flat, devoid of her usual sparkling wit and sarcasm.
“Char?” I said again, daring to take a few more steps. “It’s me, Neill,” I repeated.
“Halt,” she repeated, and this time, her other hand went to the handle of her short sword. There was something wrong here, something seriously wrong. Her voice was different, her eyes were glassy and she looked at me like I was just another piece of furniture, not a friend. There was an air of aggression and anger to her voice, not the warmth that I was used to. What had happened? Had she changed her mind about what we were doing, about Paxala?
A long, drawn out dragon’s shriek came through the open, empty windows, and although it could have been any dragon’s cry from their home, I knew it was Paxala. She must sense the change in her companion somehow.
“Char – why are you acting like this?” I hissed at her. “Let me past – lives are at stake.” I thought of my father, lying on his sick bed many leagues away, being tended—or poisoned—by Healer Garret. “Think of Paxala…” I said desperately. Maybe Char doesn’t want me to learn about magic, maybe she thinks that she can uncover the secrets all by herself. No, my heart rebelled, thinking about how she had touched my arm and asked for my help, asked me to keep her secret with her. She wouldn’t be so selfish all of a sudden. We were friends, I had to believe that. So, what is wrong with her then? I looked at the glassy sort of stare in her eyes, the way she didn’t move, how her attention on me didn’t waiver for a second. Has she been bewitched by the Abbot? I thought in horror.
There was another anguished dragon cry from somewhere outside, this one even louder than the first.
“Pax…?” Char murmured and something flickered in her eyes; an uncertainty – a moment of hesitation.
“Yes, Paxala,” I said. “She needs you. She is pining for you.” I gritted my teeth, feeling a hot ball of doubt and frustration rising in my throat. How could the Abbot do this to her? I didn’t want to have to lie to my friend Char, or fight her, but seeing her stationed as a guard there made me even more certain that the Abbot had concealed information there that I needed. I had to have the secrets of the magic that lay in that room. For my father’s sake. “Char?” I swallowed my doubts. “I need to get into that room behind you. It is important.”
The instant the words left my mouth, all doubt that she might snap out of whatever spell she was under, any thought that she might recognize me vanished. A door slammed on the light in Char’s eyes, as she braced her back foot against the door and drew the steel of her short sword.
“Halt!” she barked.
“Char, don’t do this…” I begged her. How could I fight her? How could I attack a sworn ally? My heart was torn – but how could I let my father down?
The steel of her blade rang as she drew it, and now she stood a step or two above me in a classic fighting stance, sword held low and back, her free hand out front. I could try to disarm her. I could try to get her to lunge at me, and then grab the weapon, I could try to kick at her knees to get her to stumble-
My mouth went dry, and my heart thumped in panic as I raised my hands. No. Char is my friend. I let my hands fall uselessly to my side. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t attack her just for the sake of what my family wanted. She was my partner, she had shared the secret of Paxala with me, and she needed me right now.
Another loud dragon screech echoed from the mountain. This one was even angrier than the previous ones.
“I, I can’t fight you,” I whispered to Char. I’m sorry, father.
Chapter 23
The Way Things Were Meant to Be
Char’s body tensed. She was going to strike me. She wouldn’t let me seek the secrets of her magic.
“I can’t fight you,” I repeated, as if that might stop her. As if there were any reasoning with her in whatever state she was in.
“Domus!” A voice hissed behind me, and hands shoved me out of the way. “Reve, Reve!” Jodreth in his shabby black cloak stood there, still in his camouflage as Jocana the monk, holding a hand up between me and Char. My ears buzzed, like they did with the pressure before a thunderstorm. “Reve, child. Sssh now, Domus-Reve,” he repeated the strange words, and Char’s eyes fluttered as her knees buckled. Her sword clattered to the floor and slid down the steps, where I stamped on it to avoid it clattering any further.
Char slumped against the wall, but Jodreth swept forward to steady her, and lower her gently to the doorway.
“Jodreth?” I gasped, “How did you—”
“Because that young Red dragon of yours is caterwauling and waking half of the crater!” Jodreth said, checking Char’s sleeping eyes and the pulse at her throat. “She will be fine, I think. When she wakes up this will all be a bad dream, but she will be herself again.”
“Herself?” I asked.
“Good lord, Torvald – catch up!” Jodreth sounded annoyed. “The Abbot has been hypnotizing you all. Or trying to, anyway. He tried the same thing with me when I was here, and with the other monks. All of those strange meditation sessions? They don’t mean much on their own, or if you only do the classes once a week or so – but if you are like Char here, and unlucky enough to be doing those exercises every day, then you’ll end up just another fanatic like the rest of them.”
“A fanatic…” I said, my mind racing. “The Abbot is trying to create fanatics?” I thought about the strange symbols he wanted us to memorize and repeat in our heads – the very same ones I could never accurately create because I was so worried about my father and Char and Paxala. The dragon, the sword, the crown… I thought about how tired I felt after the classes, rundown and sluggish as if I were slowly being intoxicated. This is what the Abbot had intended all along. I knew it. That was why he was always telling us about ‘if we were good enough’ or studied hard enough then we could become elites, make the grade, master the ways of the Draconis Order…. No wonder Greer was like he was, with an almost pathological hatred for any of us that he didn’t think was ‘pure’ enough for his Order. The Abbot was trying to make an army of blind followers…
“A religious army.” Jodreth scowled. “But his techniques are so dangerous that I’m the only one to survive the Mage training with my mind intact. If Char kept on being fed all of that mind control stuff then she’d probably flip and go insane before midsummer, and the Abbot would just blame it on her mountain blood.”
I stuttered, my mouth opening as I searched for the word to describe the horror. “But that’s monstrous.”
“Yes, but it’s not exactly as if I can go around broadcasting what’s happening and keep my head,” Jodreth said, looking out of the window. “Now, we haven’t got long. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to notice the dragon noises and we have to get out of here, now.”
But the secret of the dragon magic! I looked at the door.
Thud! There was a noise from downstairs, as the door was slammed. It could have been the wind, but the sudden and steady slap of feet on stone heading up towards us wasn’t. I looked at Jodreth, who was scowling at our terrible bad luck.
“Can we fight?” I mouthed, but Jodreth nodded to the unconscious Char at our feet.
“We cannot,” the monk whispered back. “There are too many monks out there loyal to the Abbot, and Char will get hurt.”
The sound of footsteps grew louder, as if there were more than one or even two people running up the stairs. Maybe it was just an echo? I could only hope.
“Stay calm, Torvald,” Jodreth said, turning to hold me by the shoulders. “You have to trust
me,” he whispered, and I nodded, feeling terrified. “We climb out of the window.”
“What?” I said in alarm. We were fifty or more feet straight up from the ground! “What about Char?”
The footsteps were closer. And it was clear now they weren’t just echoes.
“Please, Torvald, it’s the only way to stay alive,” Jodreth said. “There’s a ledge on each floor under the windows. This isn’t the first time that I have had to do this. Go, now, and I will keep us safe.”
With my heart in my mouth and the approaching footsteps thundering in my ears, I crept to the open, narrow and tall window. I had to turn sideways, but I could manage to squeeze through. I gripped onto the masonry and eased my shoulder and one foot out. I made the mistake of looking down, and saw the walls of the monastery below, far away and very, very solid. I felt my stomach lurch.
“Go!” Jodreth hissed at me, and I turned my head to the stone of the window, feeling for the narrow ledge with my foot. I found I could easily stand on the four or five-inch-wide outcropping on tiptoes, as long as my fingers were gripping between the stones above. Easy if it was three feet from the ground, not fifty. I swung myself out, and started to sidle along the edge to the right of the window, my fingers clinging to the stone mantle of the window’s arch for as long as possible, until I absolutely had to reach out to jam my fingers between stone blocks.
What the hell am I doing? What am I doing? The words went around and around in my head as I inched along the tower wall. I felt as if I was going so slowly, that it would be morning by the time I made it to safety, but nonetheless there were no sudden shouts of discovery. I clung to the side of the Abbot’s Tower, my legs and my back clenched in agony, my cloak whipping in the winds. A moment later and Jodreth was also climbing out, pushing next to me on the ledge. He was much more confident than me, but I could tell from the grimace and the silent snarl on his face that he was in just as much pain as I was.
Dragon God (The First Dragon Rider Book 1) Page 20
