Dragon Fate

by J. D. Hallowell

  While he didn’t fully understand why, he pressed the point, “There must be something I can do to help you.” If he happened on a dying beast, he would put it out of its misery. The dragon, however, was not just a beast. “You are obviously an intelligent being with feelings. It would be criminal, or at least immoral, to just leave you to your fate without trying to help.”

  Again the dragon smiled. “If we are not careful, human,” she said, “I might grow to like you. I don’t think there is much that can be done for me now; you should go.”

  Delno stood there unwilling to leave. “If nothing else, you deserve to have someone to comfort you until the end; I will stay if you will permit it.” On impulse he reached out a hand and touched the dragon tenderly on the snout.

  The dragon was moved to tears by his simple kindness. “A rider would do as much, but most humans fear dragons, and it is not uncommon for humans to hate what they fear. Perhaps I can tell you my story, so that someone will remember me and who I was, and I do take some comfort in your presence.” Then, more to herself than to him, she said almost in a whisper, “There is something about you. . . .”

  “Then I will listen and give what comfort I can,” he responded gently.

  “I am a riderless dragon,” she said. “My rider was killed by a Rorack who shot him in the back with a poisoned arrow. I slew the Rorack, and his four companions, but there was nothing I could do to save my Bond-mate.” Seeing his puzzled look, she said, “The Roracks are a foul race of humanoids who pledge themselves to no one. They are vile creatures much like small trolls, but about the size of a large man. Unlike trolls however, who are stupid and only kill to eat, the Roracks are cunning and kill for their own pleasure.”

  “Know this,” she continued, “a dragon will give up her life if her rider dies. The only thing that will stop a dragon from giving herself over to shadow in such an instance is if a stronger urge holds her to this world. The only urge stronger is the urge to bring forth new life.”

  Delno considered her words carefully, then said, “So, you are pregnant.” It was a statement, not a question.

  She nodded and continued her narrative. “I carried two eggs when the Roracks attacked. After slaying them, it was my intention to lay those eggs far away from the Rorack’s territory and then die peacefully.”

  “But why must you die?” asked Delno. Though he had known this dragon/person for only a few minutes, he felt that the world would be a sadder place if she weren’t part of it. “Were you wounded by these Roracks?”

  The dragon smiled. “No, I was not wounded; it is merely the way of things,” she said. “The bond between dragon and rider runs soul deep and the pair are magically linked. When that bond is severed by death, it is as though half your soul is ripped away. The remaining partner’s will to live diminishes to the point that we give ourselves over to death, so that we may be reborn whole again.”

  He began to form a question and she said, “Hush now, I must finish my tale and then perhaps you can help me.”

  Delno said, “Though I fear that you will ask me to end your suffering, which I will find not only difficult but distasteful, I will keep silent and allow you to continue. Know this, however: I will do everything I can to persuade you not to die, for I feel the world is a better place with creatures such as yourself in it.”

  She smiled, and drawing a breath, resumed her narrative. “I flew for many days and nights until I felt the time was near to lay the two eggs I carried. One was male and the other is female.”

  Speaking of the male in the past tense wasn’t lost on Delno, and it must have shown on his face because she said, “You are quick-minded human; as you surmise, the little male is dead.”

  Though the sadness for the loss of the male was apparent on his face, he didn’t interrupt her with questions.

  “Perhaps,” she continued, “I was too old to have mated again, perhaps it was the attack, perhaps it is just the way of things, but his egg was not hard enough to withstand the laying, and it has broken and his half formed body was crushed by the second egg. Unfortunately, while his body slid out easily, the shards from that shell did not, and are hard enough to prevent his sister’s egg from being laid. I am egg bound.”

  Delno could hold his silence no longer, “There must be something we can do!” he nearly shouted at her. “To lose one of you is bad enough, to lose two a tragedy beyond measure; we must prevent the loss of a third.” He didn’t quite understand why, but he was near to tears. Though it had only been a few moments since he had stumbled upon this elegant creature, he was extremely distressed at the prospect of losing one of her kind and felt he must do whatever he could to prevent it.

  The dragon was taken aback. She had felt that this human was compassionate and worth telling her story to, so that her tale would be remembered, but for him to care for her and her kind as he did could only be expected from Riders. She put her snout against his chest. A lesser man might have been terrified by the action, but Delno merely thought the dragon was reaching out for comfort and placed his hands on her face compassionately. She breathed easily for a moment, then she drew a deep breath so hard that he could actually feel it pulling his shirt almost into her nostrils.

  After a moment of consideration she said, “Quickly, time grows short, tell me your lineage.”

  “What?!” he responded. “My lineage, why?”

  “Lineage is very important to dragons. Tell me yours, I must know!”

  “Well, my father’s people settled in the north when men first moved here as far I know. My mother is an orphan and I don’t know who her parents were.”

  “Just the names of your parents will be enough,” she said impatiently.

  “My father’s name is John Okonan. My mother is Laura Okonan,” he replied.

  “Laura,” the dragon drew her head up sharply and looked at him. “What was her name before she took that of your father?”

  “Well, like I said, she was an orphan, but the name she bore was Warden.”

  She looked at him through half closed eyelids for a moment before saying, “Very well, son of Laura Warden. Dragons measure their lineage matrilineally.” She paused for a moment as another spasm made her shudder. “There might be something we can do, but it will be difficult.”

  “I will do what must be done!” He spoke those words with more conviction than any oath he had ever before given.

  The dragon, realizing that fate had stepped in to deal with what she herself could not, smiled and said, “Then prepare yourself, young rider, for the task before you is difficult.”

  It was Delno’s turn to be taken aback. “Why,” he said, “did you call me ‘young rider’?”

  “Because fate has decided that you will help bring my last egg into this world. She will hatch under your care and you will become her rider,” she answered, as if this should be completely obvious and he was being thick headed.

  “But, I, we, you can’t mean. . . .” he stammered.

  “Enough!” her exclamation was close enough to a growl that any difference was a moot point. Seeing that she now had his full attention, she went on as if instructing a young pupil in his math lessons, “The whole egg must be pushed back and the broken shards shifted and removed so that it can then continue through the passage. You will have to reach inside the passage and do this. It won’t be easily accomplished, but you look strong and capable.”

  Chapter 3

  Delno moved back along the length of the dragon toward the rear legs, assuming that the egg duct was in that direction. As he moved rearward, she shifted over on her right side and exposed her underside to him. Between her back legs he found an opening that looked like a slit about four feet long.

  “All right,” he said, “what now?”

  “You will have to reach inside of the opening and then further into the egg passage,” she told him.

  As he reached into the slit, she continued, “You will find two openings. The rearmost is for the elimination of waste, t
he foremost is the egg passage.”

  It was so warm inside of the dragon as to be almost uncomfortable. Delno quickly found the foremost passage. “Good,” she said “now reach inside that opening with both hands. Good, keep pressing your hands in until you feel the shards and the whole egg.”

  He quickly found the remains of the male’s egg, and there, pressed tightly up against the debris, he felt the unharmed egg. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Now,” she said, “you must push the egg back with one hand and pull the shards free with the other. As you work, I will try to relax enough to allow you to complete the task.”

  Partly to instruct him and partly to distract herself from the urge to push down, and therefore allow the unharmed shell to be moved away from the now restricted sphincter of the egg duct, she began telling him about dragons. “Only female dragons choose to accept riders” she began. “Males are solitary and don’t even commune with other dragons except to mate. That is the way it has always been and that is the way it shall remain.”

  While she was talking, Delno pushed with all of his strength on the egg. At first nothing happened, but then, as she relaxed, it inched backwards. It took several moments to move it far enough that he could feel the tension release on one of the shards. He took hold of the first shard and realized that it had been driven into the tissue by the pressure bearing down on it. “I’ll have to work this free,” he said, “it might hurt.”

  “Of course it will hurt,” she said, sounding a bit irritated. She then continued to talk. “A female dragon reaches mating age somewhere in her third to fourth year. The mating urge may be ignored for the first several years, but eventually she will have to answer the call. When that happens, she must fly to the east and find the territory of a male and court him. When they reach the territory of a likely male, her rider must wait on the edge of that territory, otherwise the male will reject her outright and there could be violence: she will not be the only female present courting the drake. The courtship could last several days and sometimes as long as several weeks. Once the courtship is successful, the mating flight itself is brief, lasting only a few hours. After that, the male returns to his dwellings and the females leave the territory.” The pain of moving the shard was only slightly apparent in her voice.

  The shard came out and Delno threw it aside and reached in for another. “You don’t have to remove every piece,” she said, “only the ones blocking the egg.”

  “You said you may have been too old to mate,” he said. “How old are you?” While he was curious about the answer, he also wanted to continue to distract her, because the next piece he found was larger and sharper.

  “I am old for a bonded dragon” she said, “but not really beyond the age that many other bonded dragons have attained.” “I was over half a millennium old when these lands were settled by the exiled nobility of the south.”

  Delno almost forgot his task as he considered this. There were legends of “the Exiled Kings” who had founded the kingdoms of the north, but for her to have seen the exodus. . . . “This kingdom was founded a little over two thousand years ago,” he stated. “That would make you over two thousand six hundred years old.” As he was pondering this, the large shard came loose and he pulled it free.

  “Yes,” she said, “I am older than that. You sound surprised. Don’t be: it is not that unusual for a bonded female dragon to watch this world change for three millennia before passing to shadow.”

  He reached back into the opening and found one last shard barring the passage. “This last piece should do it,” he said. “There is something I don’t understand then. . . .” An exclamation escaped him as a sharp pain lanced through his right hand and he realized he had cut himself on the shard.

  “How can we choose a rider if we live so long and humans don’t?” she asked, anticipating his question. “That’s easily answered. When a human and dragon become linked, they each receive certain side effects. One of the side effects is an alteration to their life spans. The human’s life is extended, while the dragon’s normal life span is shortened by about half.”

  “That sounds very well for the human,” he said trying to distract himself from the pain in his hand, “however, the benefit sounds a bit one-sided.”

  “Yes,” she sighed, whether in exasperation or pain he wasn’t sure, “we die younger than we would otherwise, but all things die eventually. We, however, become much stronger magically, and we are no longer alone.”

  She grimaced in pain and was unable to continue while Delno pulled the shard free. As he pulled the shard out of the dragon’s body, he could see that he had cut himself much more extensively than he had at first thought. The cut ran from the base of his index finger diagonally across his palm all the way to his wrist, and he had apparently bled quite a bit. He told the dragon that the last shard was free, and at her instruction, he pulled his other hand out and allowed the egg to proceed. After being constrained for so long, the egg came quickly.

  Chapter 4

  Everything happened so fast there was no time to react. The egg, for all intents and purposes, popped out so rapidly that Delno was hit in the chest by it and knocked down. As he fell, there was a brief but blinding flash of light during which he seemed to lose his hold on reality for a few seconds. When he came to himself again, he had the strangest sensation of having been in two places at once, and a flash of memory of being confined in a small dark place. He felt as though had been burned in the hollow of his right shoulder just below his collarbone. As he surveyed his surroundings, he realized he had landed on his backside, and the egg, nearly as big as himself, was lying in his lap.

  “Well,” gasped the dragon, “it is done.”

  He was suddenly afraid she would leave him with the egg and no further instructions. “I don’t know how to care for a dragon,” he said. “What do I do?” The question was more a plea for help than a query for more information.

  Though still in some discomfort, she chuckled. “Don’t worry, I won’t simply die and leave you to raise a young dragon without first giving you the basics you will need. Though my time is short, now that I am no longer egg bound, the immediate mortal danger has passed, and my daughter needs the best start in life she can get. After all, she will be my namesake and therefore will be the one to continue my family’s honor.”

  “Your namesake?” he said.

  “Yes, my namesake. It is the custom of female dragons to entrust their own name to their last female offspring,” she said.

  “What is her name to be then?” he asked.

  “I’ll get to that,” she said, “in my own time.” Her tone was that of a teacher who had heard enough questions and wanted to continue on to the rest of the lesson.

  “First, you are hurt.” He started to protest that he was fine, but she continued without allowing him to give voice to his objections. “Show me your injury.”

  He held his hand out, palm up for her to examine. “The cut is deep, but no tendons were severed,” she said.

  “I’ve had worse,” he said, “it should heal all right.”

  “Of course it will heal all right,” again she sounded a bit annoyed, “but it will heal much faster if you stop interrupting and allow me to work.”

  Saying that, she then concentrated for a moment on the cut before she breathed a word that Delno didn’t quite hear directly onto his outstretched palm. There was an odd sensation in his hand, and as he drew it back and looked, he realized that the flesh was healing so fast that he could actually watch the process. Within a moment, the wound was completely closed, and only the faintest line of a scar remained. He scratched his hand, more from reflex than from any itch, and thought about what he had just witnessed. In this part of the world, magic was mostly feared. Though Delno had never really held such beliefs himself, even those who could do the simplest healings were suspect, if not outright shunned.

  “That’s amazing,” he said, “are all dragons able to work such magic?”

 
; Again she was amused by his question. “That,” she said, “is some of the simpler magic of which bonded dragons are capable. All dragons, and their riders, can work magic to varying degrees.”

  “But, but. . . .” he stammered. “You have named me dragon rider, and I can’t work any magic.”

  “Hmmmph,” the dragon snorted, “did I not tell you that there are advantages to being a rider? All riders gain magical powers through their bond with their draconic partner.” Then, after a moment’s consideration, she asked, “Are you quite certain, though, that you possess no magical abilities? All riders have some connection to magic or they would have no connection to dragons. The two, dragons and magic, are inseparable entities.”

  “I have never worked magic in my life, that I know of. Magic isn’t something one pursues in these parts,” he stated.

  “That you know of . . . ?” she queried. “Perhaps there is something of which you aren’t fully aware?”

  “Well . . . ,” he said thoughtfully.

  “There is something then. . . .”

  “Well, I’m not sure it qualifies as magic,” he said. When he hesitated she prompted him to continue. “I can find things. It isn’t much, but when something has been lost and I concentrate on it, I just seem to know where to look for it. It’s not something I use too often, though. As I’ve said, people who have some type of magical talent aren’t exactly looked on favorably around here.”

  “Well, I would say that that does qualify as magic. So, I suppose that it’s a good thing you won’t be staying around here for much longer, isn’t it?”

  “What?!” Delno was a bit shocked by the dragon’s matter-of-fact observation. “Why would I leave my home? Everyone and everything I know is here.”

  “You can’t very well raise a dragon in the city below us, can you?” she asked.