Alyxa - Dragon Charmer

by Linda McNabb

  **

  ‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ a voice called as her brain tried to work out why someone was waking her after only a minute or two of sleep.

  ‘Morning?’ she queried and forced her eyes to open as she twitched aside the curtain. Yes, the sun had just tinged the sky with crimson and the colour reminded her she had to tend the fires.

  ‘Happy birthday, Alyxa,’ her father said as she sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed then paused to let her head adjust to the sudden movement.

  Alyxa frowned as her vision cleared completely and she saw her father holding out a small leather pouch. A present? Alyxa hadn’t received a present for her birthday since her mother had passed away three years ago.

  ‘You’re growing up now, Alyxa. It’s something you should have had a year or two ago.’

  ‘I thought that letting me keep the egg warm was my present,’ Alyxa said, trying to cover the awkwardness of the moment as she reached out to take the soft brown pouch.

  Her father did not reply but stood and watched as she opened the pouch. A large rose-coloured gem on a leather necklace tumbled into her palm.

  ‘Mother’s charming stone,’ Alyxa said with a gasp. She closed her hand around it and clutched it to her chest. ‘Can I use it today?’

  The dragon charmer laughed and smiled at her. ‘There is a lot you need to learn before you charm your first dragon.’

  ‘Can I charm the dragonet that hasn’t hatched?’ Alyxa persisted. She wanted to know when she would get to be a real dragon charmer.

  ‘I suppose you could,’ her father said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. ‘If it hatches soon it will be about three months old by the time you’ve learned the final parts of the craft of dragon charming.’

  Alyxa grinned and slipped the necklace over her head. She tucked the gem under her shirt, and sighed as she realised that she had fallen asleep fully-dressed. ‘I have to go and feed the fires.’

  ‘Breakfast is ready. Eat first and then you can have the day off since it’s your birthday,’ her father said with an indulgent smile. ‘It’s not every day you become an apprentice dragon charmer.’

  It wasn’t long before Alyxa had rebuilt the fires and checked the egg. She tried not to feel too disappointed that it was still white. If anything it seemed an even brighter white than before.

  A sound greeted her as she left the hatchery and she smiled. She loved to hear her father charming dragons. She closed the doors and hurried over to the main exercise yard near the fence. Father was charming a large yellow dragon that Alyxa had cared for since it hatched last year. Now that it was fully-grown it was on its way to a new owner.

  Alyxa’s father held a green stone on a leather necklace out at arm’s length and was rotating it in a slow circle. The dragon crouched down and stared at the stone while listening to the dragon charmer’s song. Alyxa hummed along with the pure and strong notes that weren’t quite words.

  She wished she could join in and help, but she knew her father was right. She had to be trained properly before she was responsible for charming dragons. If a charm were to break the dragon would go feral and fly off and her father would have to replace it.

  It was always made her a little sad to see the dragons leave the dragon farm, but Alyxa had grown up with it and knew that was how it had to be. The dragons went out into the land to serve their new masters and new dragons hatched at the start of summer again. It was the cycle of life at the dragon farm.

  She left the farm as the last of the song died away. A day off wasn’t to be wasted and she knew exactly what she wanted to do. She headed down the main street of the village and stopped outside a small cottage. An elderly man with a long white beard was tending roses next to the path.

  ‘Good morning, Wizard Zared. Is Logan home?’ she asked as the old man looked up.

  ‘Logan… ummm… oh, yes, Logan!’ the elderly wizard said, looking confused for a second then nodded. ‘Logan, your friend… ummm… your friend is here.’

  Alyxa was used to his poor memory and did not mind that he couldn’t remember her name. Tomorrow he would probably have no trouble recognising her or remembering the name of his own apprentice.

  Logan came hurrying out of the cottage with a small bunch of white roses. They looked a little wilted and misshapen, but Alyxa smiled as he handed them to her.

  ‘Happy birthday, Alyxa,’ he said, looking apologetic at the state of the flowers. ‘I made them for you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she replied, sniffing them, but there was no scent at all. ‘Could I leave them here for a while though?’

  ‘Sure,’ Logan said, looking a little crest-fallen and holding his hand out to take them back.

  ‘I thought you might like to come down to the waterhole with me,’ Alyxa said.

  ‘Can I, Zared?’ Logan asked, grinning. The old wizard nodded and Logan almost threw the flowers onto the table inside and came back out. ‘We’ll be back later.’

  They walked off down the road and Alyxa smiled at how Logan gave all the dragons a very wide berth. He was the only person she knew that didn’t like dragons.

  ‘Look what else I got for my birthday,’ Alyxa said, pulling out the stone to show him.

  ‘You’re an apprentice! Just like me,’ Logan said with a crooked grin. ‘You’ll probably make a better one than I ever will.’

  ‘You’ll get the hang of magic one day,’ Alyxa said and punched him in the arm as they carried on to the waterhole.

  There were a dozen other boys and girls swimming there and it was almost high-noon when they stopped to rest. They sat by the trees on the far bank for a few minutes and fell asleep, exhausted by the exercise.

  Alyxa woke to Logan shaking her by the shoulder. He looked worried and glanced around nervously at the shadows that had covered them while they slept.

  ‘We should go,’ Logan said moving out of the shade to stand in the sun. It was far too hot to be in the sun and Alyxa sighed. Her friend was almost as odd as his master for he never sat in the shadows.

  As they swam across the wide, murky waterhole Alyxa felt something move around her neck and she automatically brought her hand up. With a sudden feeling of horror she realised that her necklace had come undone and slipped from her neck.

  ‘My charming stone!’ she cried out, clutching at the water desperately to find it.

  Off in the distance a noise tried to invade her thoughts but all she could think about was her stone. Mother’s stone.

  ‘Red dragons,’ Logan said in a flat voice and his face had gone pale with fear. All around them people were jumping into the water and swimming for the main bank.

  The sound finally resolved in Alyxa’s brain into the loud tolling of a bell.

  Red dragons were coming!

  Alyxa blinked furiously as she tried to decide what was worse at that very moment. The red dragons flew into the village of Shanoria and stole children on a regular basis and that was enough to be worried about. But she only had this moment if she ever wanted to find her necklace. She couldn’t go home and tell her father that she had lost it!

  ‘My charming stone!’ Alyxa repeated. ‘Help me find it.’

  Logan looked like he wanted to swim away as fast as he could but he gulped and nodded. Then he took a deep breath and vanished under the water. Alyxa did the same and dived down, hoping that she would be able to spot the rose-pink stone in the murky water.

  Alyxa held her breath as she dove deeper and deeper, frantically searching for the stone. Up above the sky darkened and shaded the water which made it harder to see. Was it a cloud? It hadn’t looked like rain. Someone above them was kicking and disturbing the water too. She wished they would go away as she was running out of breath.

  Then she saw it. The necklace was drifting slowly down, just out of her reach. She tugged at Logan’s shirt and pointed. He reached out to grab the stone and they both headed for the surface with lungs bursting for air.

  The scene that greeted them on the water’s s
urface made Alyxa blink and stare even as she gasped for breath. Lifting off over the water was a huge red dragon and he was carrying one of the boys from the waterhole. She had grown up running between the legs of immense fully-grown creatures, but she had never felt fear that filled her as it did right then.

  They both swam to the bank and clambered out. Logan was staring at the dragon as it vanished to a tiny dot on the horizon as if he expected it to come back any second. Alyxa knew that the red dragons had never come back on the same day before and they only ever took one child. That child never returned.

  Everyone around them ran off, one of them sobbing loudly about his older brother. Alyxa just watched. She couldn’t do anything. She reached out and took the necklace from Logan then looked at it. If she had known how to use it she might have been able to charm the dragon and save the boy.

  ‘We should go,’ she said to Logan and helped him to his feet. He nodded and appeared incapable of talking just now. She was going to go home and demand to be taught how to charm. Someone had to stop the red dragons.

  Logan was silent the entire way home and Zared was out on the street coming to greet them when they reached the village.

  ‘The red dragons came to the waterhole,’ Alyxa explained.

  Alyxa saw the old man’s eyes glaze over and he began to mutter about shadow dragons. Logan sighed, and waved goodbye to Alyxa as he guided the old man into the cottage.

  She walked slowly back to the dragon farm, feeling weak and more than a little shaken. She retied the knot in her necklace, checking it would not come loose again, and slipped it over her head.

  Her father was nowhere in sight and Alyxa felt her energy fading as she went to stoke the fires under the hatchery. Perhaps she would go and sit with her egg for a while. It always helped her calm down. She slipped on the leather boots and went inside.

  She had taken several steps over the hot sand before she realised something was different. The egg had moved. It was lying on its side and it wasn’t white any longer; it was a dark blue.

  Alyxa hurried over to it and knelt to look closer. Surely someone was playing a trick on her. One of the other charmers must have come in and painted the egg blue. They hadn’t had a blue dragonet in years. As she reached the egg she knew in an instant that it wasn’t paint. The egg was rocking back and forth and she could hear claws scrabbling against the shell.

  She stayed still and watched, ignoring the hot sand that burned her knees. Slowly a hole appeared in the shell and she saw a yellow eye peering out at her. It looked at her for a few seconds before the creature inside resumed its attempts at escaping the shell. In a few minutes the shell broke in half. Alyxa was torn between watching the dragonet emerge and wanting to tell her father.

  A glistening blue dragonet tumbled onto the hot sand and landed on its back. Alyxa reached out and set the dragonet up the right way and retreated a little. The dragonet looked at her, went cross-eyed, and a tiny jet of flame hissed from its nostrils.

  Alyxa had never seen such a beautiful dragon. She smiled as she realised that in three months she was going to be the one to charm it. She picked up the dragonet with the snout, and flames, facing away from her. She patted her new blue dragonet and hurried across the hot sand to go and find her father.

  **

  If you enjoyed this introduction to the world of Shanoria and Alyxa, the Dragon Charmer, check out the rest of the stories in this exciting series!

  Mountains of Fire

  Valley of Silver

  Caverns of Gold

  www.mcnabbnz.com

  **

  Dragon Charmers - Book 1: Mountains of Fire

 

  In a world where they can be sung into submission by dragon charmers – people have forgotten the true power of dragons...

  Logan lives with Zared, an elderly, absent-minded wizard, in Shanoria – the Kingdom of the Dragons. His closest friend is Alyxa, a dragon charmer with the rare gift of soothing and commanding dragons.

  But not all dragons are tame, and when feral Reds kidnap the crown prince, Logan and Alyxa are thrust into a fast-paced adventure and go in search of the heart of a dragon.

  ***

  The Dragon’s Apprentice

  There's something odd about twelve year old Toby, and it's not just his purple eyes or his friendship with Klel, the dragon tied up in the castle courtyard.

  He's been sacked from every job at the castle and being a page to the mysterious Prince Blaise is his last chance to avoid a cold winter in the poorhouse.

  Then Toby learns of a terrible secret that Blaise holds in a stone pendant and the prince's deadly plans for Klel. But Toby finds he has amazing skills that might just be able to help...

  www.mcnabbnz.com

  Also by Linda McNabb

  The Dragon’s Apprentice

  Shadow Hunters

  Dragons’ Bane

  Circle of Dreams: Runeweaver

  Circle of Dreams: Timeweaver

  Circle of Dreams: Starweaver

  Dragon Charmers: Mountains of Fire

  Dragon Charmers: Valley of Silver

  Dragon Charmers: Caverns of Gold

  Seventh Son

  Stonekeeper’s Daughter

  Puppet Master

  Crystal Runners

  Last Star

  Maze Keepers

  (with GJ Kelly)

  Dragons’ Roost