Dragonslayer

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “I know I will,” he said. “I am the prince of the Indestructible City. But you will almost certainly be dead in a year.”

  “Thaaaaaaaaat’s cheerful,” she said, trying not to let on that she was startled by this news. A prince! No wonder he was so weird. Wait, did that mean the Invincible Lord was his father? I bet that’s a fun family to be part of … although I guess they can’t actually be worse than mine. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “I don’t like waiting,” he called after her, stamping his foot as she walked away. “This is extremely aggravating!”

  “Saddest story ever told,” she called back with a wave.

  Wren couldn’t go directly to the forest and her valley, not with Undauntable’s eyes following her. She headed south instead, following the river until the Indestructible City and its porcupine soldiers and all its alarming people were out of sight.

  And then she swam to the other side, veered back toward the trees, and ran all the way home to her dragon.

  It was funny — or perhaps terrible — how you could spend your entire life training for one purpose, only to have everyone around you suddenly decide you were destined for something else.

  Of course, Leaf’s parents had been hoping that “dragonmancer” would be Leaf’s destiny from probably the day he was born. But Leaf had never wanted that, never hoped for it, never even thought about it. He’d barely paid attention during the dragonmancer exams. He’d only taken them to keep up the pretense that Rowan had been studying with him all these years.

  He thought sometimes that it was odd how nobody had guessed. Didn’t anyone wonder how he’d gone from a scrawny ten-year-old to the strongest, fastest person in the village? Did anyone think it was strange that someone who supposedly had his nose in his books all day could also walk on his hands, scale any cliff face, swim upriver against the current, and lift boulders twice his size?

  But none of that mattered. He’d spent all that time and worked so hard to become someone who could slay the dragons that had killed Wren, and then all at once he was someone else: age fourteen, stuck with an official dragonmancer’s apprentice invitation, parents who were over the moons with joy, and an older sister who was entirely too amused about the whole thing.

  Saying no was not an option. Even Grove wanted him to do it; he said, “Whatever the dragonmancers are hiding, this is our chance to find it.” Rowan’s group of friends who were obsessed with fighting dragons all thought this was a fantastic development.

  But they weren’t the ones who had to milk the goats, chip the candle wax off the floors, and sprint into the hills about once every three days to ring the warning bells. They weren’t the ones sleeping on a thin straw pallet in a cramped room with another apprentice, who spent all his time either snoring or talking about the last two apprentices and how gruesomely they’d been eaten.

  Leaf had been assigned to the leader of the dragonmancers, Master Trout, who seemed nearly as displeased about having a new apprentice as Leaf was to be there, even though it had been Trout’s idea in the first place.

  That’s because he hates everything, Wren’s voice whispered in Leaf’s mind. He was supposed to be born as a tarantula and instead he came out more or less human, so now he has to talk to people instead of biting them and that means he’s always frustrated and hungry.

  The worst part about being around Master Trout all the time was that Leaf couldn’t stop remembering all the jokes Wren had made about him: the way his receding chin made him look like a smug turtle; the way he spoke with maddening slowness, as though nobody else could possibly keep up with his brain; the way he would be casually cruel to small children or people begging for help, and then he’d chuckle quietly to himself for the rest of the day, thinking he was the only one who’d noticed.

  Leaf wondered what Wren would think of how he now scurried around doing Trout’s bidding day and night. The dragonmancer never stopped talking, but Leaf couldn’t tune him out, because Trout would switch from a boring lecture to imperious orders midsentence, in the same disdainful tone of voice, and if Leaf missed an instruction, he’d lose a meal, or he’d be sent to the alarm bell three days in a row.

  He wished Wren were there to puncture the gloating bubble around Master Trout’s head. She would have pointed out how small and mean the dragonmancer was, the icy pebble where his heart should be, and she could have made him laugh about it, instead of feeling smothered by it all the time. Leaf could imagine Wren setting him free, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it himself.

  Maybe that was why he started having conversations with her in his head.

  Do you think I should run away? he thought at night when the snoring kept him awake. Maybe I can go be a dragonslayer right now.

  You absolutely should do that, said the Wren in his mind. Running straight into dragon fire sounds way more fun than this boring place.

  Where would I go, though? he asked. To the mountain dragon palace? By myself? And after I kill a dragon there, then what?

  First you should go to the Indestructible City, she said. Ask them to send you on a quest! Then when you come back covered in the blood of dragons, they’ll probably give you gold and a house and ooh, maybe a PARADE, and then you can demand that they build a statue of me for everyone to remember me and weep for me forever.

  The Indestructible City is way in the opposite direction from the dragon palace, he said. Maybe I could find a village closer to here. A place where everyone is living in terror, and then I could free them from the dragon that hunts them.

  One tiny problem, Wren pointed out. You’re fourteen. When you offer to slay a dragon, the villagers will one hundred percent laugh at you.

  They will not! OK, they might. But I know I’m ready.

  Eh, said imaginary Wren. Your left-handed swordfighting needs work. I bet you could kill a dragon with the smell of your armpits, though.

  Thanks, Wren. These pep talks are so helpful. Go away and let me sleep.

  He dreamed of fighting dragons every night.

  The only thing getting him through the apprenticeship, apart from his imaginary sister, was his free day once a week, when he would go into the forest to train with Rowan and her friends. Rowan and Grove had gathered a few more people their age who believed the dragons could be fought and the world could be different.

  One was Cranberry, Rowan’s best friend. Her hair was twisted into lots of tiny braids, with the tips dyed dark red to match her name, and she had the most perfect teeth Leaf had ever seen. She had been part of a traveling entertainment troupe before they’d been attacked by dragons and she’d been separated from them. She’d turned up in Talisman when Leaf was twelve, and she was still hoping the rest of her troupe would find her there. In the meanwhile, she’d taught Leaf all her acrobatic moves; together they’d practice cartwheels and handsprings and backflips.

  There was also a pair of brothers, Mushroom and Thyme, who were clearly there because everyone liked Thyme and so they were stuck with Mushroom. Thyme was short and charming and didn’t take training seriously, but he loved talking about what the dragon palace must be like and all the many kinds of treasure they would find there.

  His twin brother was more square-jawed, a little taller, a lot gloomier, and tended to complain whenever he was tired, or it was raining, or when his brother did something better than he did, which was often. Leaf had seen him glaring at Thyme behind his back more than once, especially whenever Thyme had Cranberry’s full attention.

  But Leaf didn’t really care about all their drama, or the treasure they spent so much time talking about. They made him laugh and helped him train, but most important, they kept him focused on his goal. He was going to be a dragonslayer. Together they would find the dragons and start getting rid of them. Even if Thyme or Mushroom or Cranberry were only doing this for treasure, the result would be a safer village and a safer world.

  “Have you found anything in old Trout’s house yet?” Grove asked him one day, after Leaf ha
d been an apprentice for half a year. “Any secrets?”

  He asked casually, with a grin, as though this was a joke. But there was a layer of intensity under his smile. Two days earlier, the dragonmancers had had a vision that Grove’s father had expanded his small farm too far, enough to attract the dragons’ attention. They’d ordered him to cut down his sunflowers, pull up half his vegetables, and give all of that plus two goats to “the village,” which, according to Grove, meant it would all be going into the dragonmancers’ pockets.

  Grove had argued with Master Trout at the village meeting, in front of everyone. He’d asked to at least have a vote on how the food would be redistributed; there were families who actually needed it. But Master Trout refused to call a vote; he pointed out that he was the one in charge, and Grove was an outsider who should sit down and listen to his elders.

  None of the other landholders had stood up for Grove or his father. They all avoided his eyes and stayed out of their way, afraid of attracting the dragonmancers’ wrath.

  So Leaf knew there was more to Grove’s question than usual.

  “He locks his study and we’re not allowed in,” Leaf said. “Sometimes he brings out a book and gives us a lecture on dragon kings or how much they eat, and then he takes it back inside and locks the door again.” He tossed his knife high into the air and caught it neatly as it spun back down. “If there are any secrets, they must be in there. But I doubt we’ll find anything like you’re hoping for, Grove. I can’t see Trout leaving himself notes like: ‘Excellent lie about the visions today! More sunflowers for us, mwa ha ha!’”

  “Maybe not,” Grove said, stealing the knife out of the air as Leaf threw it again. “But there must be something we can use, or why would he lock it?”

  “It’s not all lies,” Cranberry said from her perch in a nearby tree. “I’ve been keeping track: their visions about dragons flying overhead are right more than half the time. I want to know the secret to that.”

  “Lucky guesses,” Grove said dismissively. Leaf snagged the knife out of his grasp again, but Grove was so worked up he didn’t even notice. “Dragons are always flying overhead; there’s nothing amazing about predicting that. I think everything they say is a lie, and we need some kind of proof. You’ll have to break into the study next time he’s out, Leaf.”

  “It’s too dangerous to ask Leaf to do that,” Rowan chimed in. “He practically belongs to Master Trout right now. The dragonmancers could do all kinds of terrible things to him if they catch him spying on them.” She gave Grove a significant look that didn’t mean anything to Leaf.

  “You’re right. I’ll do it,” Grove said. “Just tell me the next time he’ll be gone for a while, and I’ll find a way in.”

  The opportunity came six days later, when Master Trout went to a vision session with the other two dragonmancers and Leaf’s fellow apprentice had the day off, so Leaf was alone in the house. Grove crawled through the garden and ducked past the goats, and Leaf let him in the back door.

  “His study is up here,” Leaf said, leading the way upstairs. His heart was pounding, but more with excitement than fear. If Master Trout returned and caught them … Leaf guessed he would probably be banished from the village, but at least he wouldn’t have to be an apprentice anymore.

  Grove tinkered with the lock for a while — a long while, long enough to tip Leaf a bit toward nervous. But finally something clicked in the mechanism and the door swung open.

  “His secret lair,” Grove whispered, and Leaf thought of tarantulas again. “You don’t have to come in,” Grove added. “Go for a walk, make sure someone sees you. Give yourself an alibi.”

  Leaf shook his head. “I want to see what he’s hiding, too.”

  The room was dark and shadowy; the only window was covered with a thick curtain, and all the lamps were out. It smelled like cinnamon-dusted mold, one sharp, pleasant scent scattered over a deeper, wetter, more rotten odor. A movement on the desk made Leaf’s heart leap out of his chest, until he realized it was a small cage with a coiled snake inside.

  “Creepy,” Grove said, pointing to the snake. He strode over to the desk and studied the papers on it for a moment without touching them.

  Leaf headed toward the bookshelves instead. They lined two walls, but were only about a quarter full of books. The rest of the shelf space was taken up by weird oversized artifacts, most of them gleaming with gems. A diamond-studded hourglass as tall as Leaf was. A loop of metal that he thought at first might be a belt, but with a ruby embedded in it like a ring. A copper cup that Leaf could have climbed into, etched with flames.

  “These are dragons’ things,” Leaf realized. There had been a rumor a few years ago that someone found a dragon-sized silver spoon in the woods, but the dragonmancers had spirited it away and hushed up the story. They must collect any objects dropped or lost by the dragons. Or at least, Trout does.

  There’s so much here, though. Have the dragons really just casually dropped all this treasure? He supposed the dragonmancers had been here since the founding of the village, thirty or forty years ago. Maybe over that much time, it was possible.

  But it made him wonder what was in the large, triple-padlocked safe behind the desk.

  He took a step back from a heavy gold paperweight shaped like an eye and felt something in the wooden floor below his bare feet. When he crouched to look closer, he discovered a deep scratch arcing out from the bookshelf. As if the shelf had been dragged back and forth several times. Leaf hooked his fingers in the shelf, and it slid easily forward along the groove.

  An enormous piece of paper was nailed to the wall behind the bookshelf, taller than Leaf. The edges were crinkled as though they wanted to roll in, and the drawing on it was part map, part blueprint.

  “Grove?” Leaf whispered. “What am I looking at?”

  Grove came to stand beside him and they stared at it for a long time.

  “I think,” Grove said finally, “it looks like … a palace.”

  “A dragon’s palace,” Leaf agreed. “In the mountains. This is the home of the mountain dragon queen, isn’t it?” That’s where I need to go. That’s where Wren’s killer is.

  But … why does Master Trout have this?

  The blueprint was covered in little notes and details — good spot for climbing and heavily patrolled and frequently set on fire; do not go this way. Some of them were in a language with letters Leaf didn’t recognize, but many of them were legible, and some of those were in Master Trout’s own handwriting. Leaf knew it well by now.

  “Has Trout been to the dragon’s palace?” Leaf wondered. “How would he know any of this?”

  “And where did he get this drawing in the first place?” Grove asked. “Did he draw it himself?”

  “No,” Leaf said. “He can’t even draw a straight line. His sketch for the garden plot was a mess.” He reached up and gently ran one finger over the strange symbols that were inked over every room.

  “Did … dragons draw this?” Grove said in a hushed voice. “Is that dragon language?”

  “That’s not possible,” Leaf whispered back. “Dragons don’t have a written language, do they?” And surely they couldn’t make art or detailed blueprints like this. He glanced sideways at the flames carved into the giant copper cup. That was a kind of art, he supposed. And now that he looked closer, there were little etchings around the rim that matched some of the symbols on the map.

  He felt a strange creeping unease crawl along his skin. He’d always thought of slaying dragons as akin to wiping out a plague of deadly insects, or fighting a bloodthirsty shark. If they could draw maps and write, that made them something else again. Not human, but not as mindlessly animal as he’d thought either.

  Hey, Wren interrupted his train of thought, if they’re so smart and literate and talented, maybe they should know better than to eat equally smart, literate, talented seven-year-olds!

  “I think that’s it,” Grove said. “This is the dragons’ map of their own palace. Trou
t must have stolen it from the dragons — a long time ago, judging from how many notes he’s added since then.”

  Leaf couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t imagine Master Trout sneaking into a dragon’s palace, or escaping uneaten, or even walking as far as the palace in the first place.

  “Maybe he sent someone else.” Leaf traced the yellowing edges of the map. “That seems more like him. This looks so old — maybe he sent an apprentice a long time ago, before we were even born.”

  “Maybe that’s why Talisman is here in the first place,” Grove said thoughtfully. “I’ve always thought it was weird that someone built a village this close to the mountain dragons. Maybe it started as a treasure smugglers’ den, and then the smugglers got old and became dragonmancers instead. Different kind of thieves, but still stealing.”

  “Do you think that’s their big secret?” Leaf asked Grove. “That they used to steal dragon treasure?”

  Grove rubbed his head. “I feel like there must be something else. Something bigger.”

  Leaf stared at the spires of the dragon palace, trying to picture Trout and Crow and Gorge as young treasure smugglers. Or as young anything, ever.

  If Grove’s theory was right, that made it even more hypocritical that the dragonmancers had forbidden anyone to go to the mountain palace.

  Now that sounds like Trout, Wren grumbled in his head. Stealing treasure for himself, then stopping anyone else from getting any.

  Well, I’m going, Leaf told her, no matter what they do to stop me.

  “We need this,” Leaf said, tapping the map. “This is exactly what we need.”

  “But we can’t take something this enormous,” Grove said. “Can you copy it?”

  “If I had a year, maybe,” Leaf said.

  “Start now, then,” Grove said. He grabbed a piece of paper from one of the messy piles on the floor; on one side, Master Trout had written the first few lines of a lecture and then crossed them out. The other side was blank. Grove shoved it and a charcoal pencil into Leaf’s hands.