In the light of a rising, full moon, the ruined mountain was now just a scarred hunk of land—it looked as if the top had been wrenched off by a giant hand.
With the giant dragon no longer here—and Kalax told me that dragon had been pulling at everyone’s life force just by being here—riders were now acting like riders again and the dragons all sounded by their calls eager to get into the skies.
I knew we were going to need to be strong for whatever came next. The Darkening and Lord Vincent had all the Dragon Stones—but we had one, thin hope left.
Cold now, I knew I should go in and put on a cloak. We would be in the skies soon. Thea came over to me and slapped my arm. “About time you woke.”
I nodded.
She kept staring at me. “Any dreams?”
I shrugged and lifted a hand. They weren’t anything I would ever tell her. How did you tell someone you knew what it was to soar above clouds—that you longed to have the wind on your face again and the power of huge wings? “I’m hungry.”
She grinned and led me over to friends she had made who shared the fish they’d just caught. It was the only campfire burning, and it was soon put out and the order came to assemble and fly.
We were, I thought, a poor collection of Dragon Riders. Some of the riders had borrowed dead friends’ armor. Others were missing helmets. Some of the dragon harnesses had been mended with ropes. But the faces were all set and the weapons gleamed in the moonlight.
Kalax bellowed a roar and as soon as the order came, she lifted into the air faster than any other dragon. I clung to the saddle and let her do the flying. With all the other dragons, we couldn’t get lost.
But where were we going?
We flew north—or that’s what I started to notice. I couldn’t help it. I was a navigator, and the stars told the story of the direction we set. Glancing around, I saw fewer dragons than I would have wished for—the squadrons had been scattered. I knew that Thea had been looking for her brothers and the king, but we hadn’t seen them. My hope was that they’d gotten away early.
It grew chill as the night deepened, but I welcomed the cold. I was done with desert heat—a faint bit of it lurked in my mind. The huge dragon from the mountain had found a toasty spot in the Southern Realm. I cut off the connection and tried to focus more on the stars.
And then I saw it.
A flash. A faint one on the horizon. It looked like the reflection of light on a pane of glass. I tried to ignore it, thinking it must be one of the roaming bands of Wildmen or bandits setting alight to another village. The Darkening at work in other parts of the kingdom. But the flashes settled into a regular order. My heart lifted and I called out to Thea, “Signals!”
The flashes were the signaling code of the Dragon Riders—the one that every navigator knew by heart. Whoever was signaling had to be up very high for us to see them. And just one word repeated over and over again.
Gather.
No one needed to give the order. All the dragons shifted and headed for that light.
We flew, all of us, in a ragged group. I realized then that I hadn’t seen Commander Hegarty, and I hoped he’d made it out early, too.
We followed the signals to the eastern part of the Leviathan Mountains. In the bright moonlight, I glimpsed a secluded valley edged by deep trees, with a waterfall that gleamed silver and what looked like inky, deep pools on the other side of the falls. And I saw the best thing I could have seen.
The valley opened out, safe and green and sheltered—and there were campfires and dragons.
I saw Feradima first, so I figured Merik and Varla had made it here. That meant his tiny valley sheltered those from Torvald, too—my folks might be here. My heart leaped, but I told myself not to hope too much or too hard.
A dragon swept down at us, both taking a closer look and welcoming us. Jensen and Wil waved and shouted at us from Dellos—they’d been flying patrol.
Kalax landed us down in the valley. We tried to keep some order to our scrappy group, but soon everyone split up in the search for friends and family. I gave a nod to Thea, and she slipped away, no doubt looking for her parents. I went looking for my folks.
It took me longer to find them than I would have wanted—my heart kept jumping at the sight of every small group huddled around a fire. But it was the clang of a hammer on an anvil that pulled me to them.
Da had brought his anvil on a cart—and my stepmother and sister were there, too. They had a tent at the edge of the clearing. A lean-to, really, set up next to the cart. My stepmother gave a cry when she saw me, my sister ran over to hug me and my da just said, “And where have you been?” As if I’d been lazing or day dreaming. I could only grin.
They tried to push dinner on me, but I knew I needed to report back to whoever as in charge.
They let me go with hugs, and my da shook my hand and said, “I’m pounding out swords if you need a new one.” I reached down to my side. I still had my sword on me, but it seemed a tiny thing now compared with a dragon’s claw that could have easily speared a cow.
Heading toward the Dragon Rider tents that were set up near the waterfalls, I came across Merik and Varla. Varla thumped my back, she’d been hanging out too much with Thea, and Merik pulled me aside. “I saved some of the maps, but not all of them. What happened to you?”
I shook my head. “We’ll talk after we eat. Have you seen Thea?”
They had. I found her outside the king’s tent—King Justin had survived. His dragon, with Reynalt, had been one the first off the ground, but once in the air, the dragon wouldn’t go back to face that monster. That was a smart dragon, I thought.
Commander Hegarty was there. I tried to get him alone from the others to tell him of his brother, but when I said I had something to tell him, he shook his head and smoothed his mustache. He had shaved his cheeks, and if his uniform was still a little worn, it had had the dust shaken off and the greaves polished. “We’ll talk of losses later.”
I nodded and my throat thickened. He knew, then, about Jodreth. I wondered if there had been a special tie between them. Would I know if my da died—or my sister? Or did he assume the worst because he’d not heard anything from Jodreth?
I wasn’t sure, but I saw Thea heading back from the other tents. She came to my side, smelling like roses. I pulled back and stared at her. She made a face. “Mother,” she said. “Somehow she managed to trade for a few comforts, including perfume. My father thinks she ought to have held out for a bed.”
“They safe?” I asked. But how safe were any of us.
Thea nodded, and wrapped her arms around herself. “Father took a knock on the head. He’s going to have quite the scar and he’s spitting mad that he had to leave. He’s certain our house didn’t burn, but I’m not so sure. I found Reynalt, too. We’re to sit in at the king’s council, which—by the way—comes after dinner.”
I realized then that I was starving.
Dinner turned out, however, to just be hunks of bread and cheese. Kalax though to me that she would bring me fish in the morning, and I had to grin. The idea of raw fish for breakfast didn’t sound that good—so maybe I was going to be all right after all.
I saw Instructor Mordecai at the council fire, which was held outside the king’s tent—there wasn’t enough room to fit us all inside. He gave me a nod, and for the first time it felt as if he thought of me as a true Dragon Rider.
The council meeting went on most of the night, and it was a good thing there was plenty of wood to keep the fire burning. Those from Torvald told their story first—the flight from the palace and the city—and how they’d been harassed by Wildmen and bandits. Beris and Jensen spoke next for the Dragon Riders from the academy. It was the first time I’d ever heard Beris talk without boasting, about how hard it had been to defend those fleeing the fall of Torvald. Merchants spoke up, asking for help from the king. All the Dragon Riders just swapped looks at that.
Reynalt, Ryan and Commander Hegarty talked about what had happened
with the squadrons. Then Thea was called on to speak.
I noticed she didn’t say anything about the Armor Stone.
A touch of anger stirred in me.
It was past time to stop acting like these old stories had to be held back. That hadn’t done anyone any good. I was tired of the idea that just a few could protect everyone. That wasn’t true. I thought of my father, making swords for anyone who would pick one up. That’s what we needed.
So when Thea sat down, I stood and said, “The Darkening—it knows how to warp a dragon’s mind to its will. I know because I’ve felt it. I can feel a dragon’s thoughts.” A mutter went around the circle. I swept my stare around it, daring anyone to say anything. The muttering died. “We can fight back. However, right now the Darkening thinks it will win. It’s created a monster and will do worse. But we have a chance still.”
Stares were swapped. King Justin looked again more like the young man I had first met. He shook his head and said, “I’m not even sure what happened to us.”
I was tired of him not knowing how to be a king. It was time he learned. Voice strong, I said, “What matters now is that we must find the Dragon Stone, the one that combines all of the powers. It exists. And it can defeat the Darkening.”
A murmur when around the circle again, then Reynalt stood and asked, “But how? Who knows where such a thing could even be now? It’s a thing of legend.”
“I know one person who might have known.” I said, looking northwards, and thinking about a small, ruined stone cottage built into the side of a mountain, and a brave man who’d done more than any of us here. “And he will have left clues for us—to help us.”
“Jodreth?” Thea said, the word very quiet. She pushed up to her feet and stood next to me, bumping my shoulder with hers.
I turned back to the circle of firelight and the worried, grimy faces of my friends. The commander sat here, and the king, and the leaders of Torvald and of the Dragon Riders. But I’d been a dragon. I didn’t fear them—they didn’t know what real power was.
Behind them, the enclosure dragons—Kalax included—had spiraled themselves into knots about each other, taking satisfaction just in being alive and having each other. For tonight, I was sure they had the right idea.
“Tomorrow,” I said with quiet certainty. Amazingly, all the Dragon Riders, the merchants and even the king himself seemed ready to listen to me. But I knew it was because I was talking like a dragon. I knew how to speak with true power now. I smiled. “For tonight, let us just remember the joy of life. Tomorrow we start to take back what has been stolen from us.”
One by one, the faces around me hardened with determination. I saw nodding heads and faces brighten. Thea bumped my shoulder and gave me a grin that was more about her wanting to get back into the fight to give Lord Vincent what he deserved.
In the shadows outside the firelight, I caught her fingers with mine.
Between us, the sparks of the camp fire spiraled up to kiss the star-strewn sky. And I regretted—just a little—my choice to be human and not to be a dragon that could soar into that darkness. But only just a little.
The End
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The Return of the Darkening Series
Book One: Dragon Trials
Book Two: Dragon Legends
Book Three: Dragons of Dark
Excerpt from Dragon Trials (Book One of the Return of the Darkening Series)
Every fifth year, the skies over the city of Torvald darken as large shadows swoop over the city, dark wingbeats blowing open window shutters and their bird-like cries disturbing babes and sleeping animals alike.
The city folk of Torvald are prepared for this ritual however, as the great Dragon Horns—the long brass instruments stationed along the top towers of the dragon enclosure—are blown on those mornings. Farmers and market folk rush to guide their skittish cattle out of sight, whilst children flock to the narrow cobbled streets or crowd atop the flat rooftops.
Choosing Day is a time of great celebration, excitement and anticipation for Torvald. It is the time that the great enclosure is unbarred and the young dragonets are released into the sky to choose their riders from amongst the humans below. It is a day that could forever change your fortunes; if you are brave and lucky enough. It is a day that heroes are made, and the future of the realm is secured.
*
“Dobbett, no! Get down from there right now.” Dobbett was a land-pig, although she looked somewhere between a short-snouted dog and a white fluffy cushion. She grunted nervously as she turned around and around atop the table, whimpering and grunting.
She always got like this. I wasn’t very old the last time that Choosing Day came around; I must have been about thirteen or fourteen or so, but I remember how my little pet ran around my rooms, knocking everything off stands or dismantling shelves. I couldn’t blame her: land-pigs are the natural food of dragons, and if she even caught a whiff of one, she went into a panic.
“No one’s going to eat you, silly,” I said to her in a stern voice, making sure I picked her up gently and set her down on the floor where her tiny claws immediately clacked on the tiles as she scampered under my bed.
Good Grief! I found myself smiling at her antics, despite myself. Dobbett was a welcome relief to the butterflies I was feeling in my stomach.
Today was Choosing Day, and that meant that today would be my last chance. If I wasn’t picked now, then by the time another five years rolled by, Father would probably have married me off to some annoying terribly fat merchant or nobleman.
Memories of the prince’s last Winter Ball flashed through my mind, filling me at once with the most curious mixture of disgust and hopelessness. The prince, and all the royal family, had been there of course, and my older brothers too—Reynalt and Ryan—looking splendid in their dragonscale jerkins.
They managed to do it, I thought. They got their own dragon. My two older brothers were chosen almost as soon as they were old enough to sit on the saddle—even though it is always the dragon itself that does the choosing.
“As close as egg and mother, is a Flamma to a dragon,” I mouthed the well-known Torvald saying desperately hoping it would prove true. I wanted to declare: I am Agathea Flamma, or more properly, Lady Agathea Flamma. Our household had sired Dragon Riders for the last hundred years, and the rooms of Flamma Hall were filled with the statues, busts and paintings of my great-uncles and grandfathers and great-great grandfathers who rode the mighty drakes into battle in defense of the city and the realm.
My brothers were chosen, why not me? Everyone had expected them to be chosen. No one expected me to be.
I am a girl. They say I am better suited to marrying well, running an estate, raising little Dragon Riders all of my own…
“Ugh!” I snorted in disgust, throwing open the patio doors to the balcony of the tower and walking out into the fresh morning air.
The last of the Dragon Horns just finished their mournful cry. I could already hear cries and screams of excitement as the shapes flew out of Hammal, the dragon enclosure far over the mountain from here. They looked so beautiful. Long, sinuous necks, powerful, each one a different color. Today there are green, blue, black—even a red.
They swooped and soared over the city, skimming over its rooftops and around the many terraces to the cheers and cries of the people below. I saw some people trying to entice the dragons to choose them by waving colorful flags or roasting land-pigs right on their rooftops.
Not for these beasts, however. These great ones were reveling in their freedom: performing barrel rolls and turns in the air, one after another. Then some smell would catch their nose and they followed the
scent like a lightning flash to their chosen rider.
No one really knows why or how the great wyrms chose their two riders. Some say it’s magic, others say that dragons can read your soul, so they choose the ones that they know they can live and work with the best. You have to have two riders for every dragon though: a navigator and a protector. The navigator is like the pilot and the guide; some say they can almost sense their dragon’s emotions. The protector is the one who gets to fire arrows, throw lances and use swords to defend both dragon and the navigator when they are on patrols.
Not that Torvald had gotten into any wars over the last hundred years. The fact that we had the dragons—or should that be the other way around?—meant our enemies rapidly sued for peace. We still have trouble with bandits and cattle rustlers of course—last summer all it took for my brothers to scare them off was one low fly-by. There has always been one threat, however—that of the Darkening returning.
My father swore the old stories were true, but my mother did not like to hear him speak of those tales. I have only heard the old legends once. My father’s stories left me with such nightmares—where I dreamed of being claimed by darkness, where I was lost in a deep blackness—that it left me unable to do more than curl into a shivering ball and cry.
I have forgotten most of the old tales, but I still remember the fear they left in my bones. My brothers told me they are just stories to make children behave, but I wonder at times if they are right, for we still have Dragon Riders patrolling against the return of the Darkening.
What would Father think if I was actually chosen to be a rider? I scanned the horizon, searching for the dragons. Where are they? Have all the riders already been chosen? Is my chance over?
Dragon Legends (Return of the Darkening Book 2) Page 23
