He walked toward the King’s Road, and moved quickly, before finally disappearing from view.
I shook my head. It was time for me to get back to my work. I looked around again, checking for any more of the wolf prints, but didn’t see anything. As I neared the farm, I decided that perhaps that was for the best. By the time I got back to the house, and started digging another posthole, the day had grown hot. The sun shone down, burning my shoulders. It was slower going now that it was just me, though I couldn’t blame Joran for not returning to help. His family needed him as well.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and I glanced up at the sky.
Could there be another storm moving in?
The sky was clear. There wasn’t even a cloud in it. It had been several days since the last rain, and the strange smoke Joran and I had seen. In that time, I’d continued working on the fence, and had very nearly completed my task. Alison had not spoken again of anything that the two of us had talked about that night. As if the events hadn’t mattered. In the last few days, my mother had been a little off, though she hadn’t said anything either. No one had. Without any sign of lightning, I didn’t have an explanation as to the ongoing rumbling, nothing other than the fact that it came with a steadiness. That wasn’t thunder, then. Thunder wouldn’t be a continuous rumbling like I heard now.
It sounded like a stampede.
Was it coming from Berestal?
They seemed to be moving at a steady pace. Now that we were out of the wet season, it wasn’t uncommon for horses to make their way along the King’s Road, though usually travelers out of Berestal waited until the road became a little more hard-packed. It was dangerous to attempt to travel along the road until it had dried out. More than one traveler had gotten stuck.
It didn’t seem to be coming from Berestal. Which meant that it was going toward Berestal. I turned to stare into the distance, but saw nothing.
First the stranger, and now other travelers? The King’s Road was busier than usual.
“What is that?” Alison asked. She came down from the house, carrying a basket of food and a mug of water for me.
“Probably travelers coming from the east.”
“So early in the season?” She frowned, wrinkling her brow as she stared into the distance. “We don’t get travelers this early in the dry season,” she said.
“Not often, but we get them.”
She joined me where I worked along the fence, watching the road. Neither of us said anything, but we could both feel the ground trembling beneath our feet. It was a steadiness that was almost jarring in how it persisted.
I put the shovel down, dusting my hands on my pants. Alison watched me, saying nothing. She set the water and basket down by the fence and we moved to a small rise in the yard where we could both see easier. It didn’t take long before something appeared in the distance. For a moment, I stared, trying to gather what was out there, but began to realize that it was a wagon caravan.
“So many,” Alison breathed out.
I shook my head. “What are they thinking, coming through here like this?” I asked. “Can you imagine with the rain we’ve been having what would happen if one of their wheels were to get stuck?”
“There has to be a dozen wagons,” Alison said. “They wouldn’t have any trouble getting each other out.” As the wagons neared, the lead wagon became clear, painted in stripes of bright maroon and gold and bearing a standard with the face of a dragon surrounded by flames. Alison sucked in a sharp breath. “The king. .
“There’s no way King Leonald has come all the way out to Berestal.”
“Look at the wagon. Look at the standard waving atop it,” she said.
I studied the wagon. There had only been a handful of times when I had seen King Leonald’s colors. Most of the time, it was atop a standard bearer much like the one seated along the lead wagon. Or, I would see soldiers dressed in the king’s colors. We’d never seen a wagon painted entirely in his colors.
“He wouldn’t be riding up front,” I said.
“He’s the king. Why wouldn’t he?”
I glanced to the sky as the wagons neared. “If that’s the king, then he should have some of his riders with him,” I said. “Dragon mages. All of that.”
Maybe even with the dragon I swore I saw the other day.
Alison looked over to me and chuckled. “You and dragons again.”
When I was younger and still foolish, I had wanted to be one of the king’s dragon riders. I remember the first time that I had seen one flying through the sky. It had been small, little more than an enormous bird from my vantage, yet it banked and swooped, and occasionally streamers of flame would shoot from it, revealing the presence of the dragon.
It hadn’t been until I was nearly ten when I had seen a dragon rider up close. At least, as close as someone like me would ever get to one. The dragon had been perched atop Marshal’s Tower in Berestal, and even from the ground, I could see the dragon’s black-scaled side gleaming in the sunlight. I could practically feel the heat radiating off it.. I remembered wanting to climb the tower to get closer to the dragon, wanting with all of my being to be near it. As if a part of me burned to touch it.
I leaned on the completed section of fence, watching as the wagons passed by. The lead wagon and the standard bearer didn’t turn in our direction. The man simply sat upright, perched on the lead seat, holding on to the flag as they rode past. The driver briefly turned in our direction, before focusing again on the road in front of him. One by one the wagons drove past, each of them marked with the king’s colors. When they were gone, Alison and I stared for a few moments, as they drifted out of view.
“What do you think they came for?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
She stood silently for a while before shaking herself. “We should go into Berestal later.”
“You want to see them?”
“Like you don’t.”
“I have too much work to do.”
Alison looked at me, a pleading note flashing in her deep blue eyes. “ For me?”
I watched her for a moment before nodding slowly. “For you. I’ll always make time. I’m sure Mom has things she needs, and there are a few supplies that I need for the barn.”
Alison forced a smile.
“You know, you don’t need me to go with you. Don’t you go into the city every week for supplies anyways?”
She looked down. “I did.”
I frowned, glancing over to the house. “What do you mean?”
She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Alison looked as if she was choosing the next words carefully. “Lately, Mom has been the one going into the city.”
I looked over to Alison, but she turned away from me. I hadn’t even noticed. I sighed. Alison deserved better.
“I’ll tell her I need your help,” I said , starting to take a step toward her before deciding against it.
“Are you sure she’ll let you?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“You’re probably right. Now that you practically run the farm, she treats you more like Dad.”
“That’s not true,” I said, though I laughed a bit at the thought.
“It is. She still treats me like a little girl. At least, most of the time. But when she wants something from me, suddenly I’m a young woman.”
“You’re seventeen. You are a young woman.”
“Not in her eyes… ”
I said nothing for a moment. That our mother would hold Alison here to keep her working, rather than letting her leave so she could live her life, filled me with something I hadn’t felt before—hopelessness. Alison turned away, heading back toward the house. She paused, turning back toward me. “When can we go?”
“If you want to see if it really is the king, we should go before the wagons depart.”
She nodded. “How long do you think they will stay in the city?”
“I don’t know. A couple days, probably.”
<
br /> “Maybe they’ll head on to the Wilds.”
I smiled. “It’s more likely they’ll head north to some of the other villages before looping back to the King’s Road.”
For them to have navigated the King’s Road, they would not have too many other places within the western reaches for them to travel. Berestal lay at the edge of the kingdom. Unless they planned to travel into the Wilds, though I doubted there would be any way those wagons would be able to travel through the Wilds.
Which meant that this was the end of their travels. It was possible they would head north where there were a few smaller villages that were a part of the kingdom, though no cities nearly as large as Berestal. I doubted they would actually attempt to go beyond. The road stopped at the edge of the Wilds, and the king or his men had not attempted to venture beyond the plains. Maybe the dragons would, but that wasn’t something that I had heard either.
“I still have to get chores done before we go anywhere,” I said. There wasn’t much of the fence left, and as soon as it was finished we could leave the livestock out to graze. “I could use your help here.”
She wrinkled her nose as she frowned. “With the fence?”
I nodded.
“Why don’t you ask Joran to help?”
“Joran already helped. He decided I was asking too much of him.”
“Considering what happened, don’t you think he owes you?”
I closed my eyes and sighed. Why was I the only one who could forgive him for his role in the accident? Joran hadn’t been where he was supposed to be, which is why my father and brother had suffered. “There’s only so much that I can demand of him. Besides, I’m not so sure I want to have him around you too much.”
“Joran?” She frowned again, shaking her head. “I don’t have any interest in him.”
“Not yet, but in time you might.”
“He’s just a sheepherder.”
“There’s nothing wrong with sheepherders,” I said.
“There isn’t,” Alison said, sighing as she leaned on the fence. “I guess I was just hoping that the person I end up with would take me away from the farm life. That is, when I allow myself the chance to dream. I think about the person I might become and who I'll marry.” She smiled. “Most of the time, I see myself in a palace.” She chuckled. “What young woman wouldn’t see herself that way?”
“I suppose most would.”
She glanced back at the house. “I’m going to go see what our mother might tell me to do next. You finish whatever you need to get done, and then we can head into the city.”
“I don’t think that it’s going to happen today,” I said.
“If we wait too long—” she started, but didn’t get to finish.
“Ashan?”
I jerked my head around. The panic in my mother’s voice was almost palpable.
I went running toward the house. “Mom? What happened?”
She glanced over to Alison, strolling over to us. “Have you seen your father?”
I frowned, shaking my head. “I haven’t seen him. I’ve been working.”
“He said that he was going to come out and help you.”
Dad helping out meant he’d wandered off again. It was my turn to find him.
“I’ll go look for him,” I said.
“If he came outside, he should be in the barn.”
I looked over to the barn. The massive doors were closed, and the bar of iron set down to lock it. We had been working along the fence, and if he had come out, he would have seen us.
“I could help,” Alison offered.
Our mother frowned at her. “I’m going to need your help inside. Thenis had another accident, and I think it would be better if the two of us clean him up.”
Stark hopelessness slid across Alison’s face. “Of course, Mother.”
She followed our mom back to the house, and I turned, looking around the farm. There weren’t too many places that our father would be able to hide. The farm wasn’t large enough for him to disappear entirely. Still, the fact that he had gotten outside was troubling . I made a circle around the house, jogging slowly as I called out for him. There was no sign of him.
I darted over to the barn, pulling open the door, wondering if maybe she was right and he had come out here, but there was no sign of him in the barn. The horses all looked up at me, whinnying as if they were trying to tell me it was feeding time. I shook my head, but decided to hurry to Adela. I saddled her quickly and guided her outside.
From there, I climbed into the saddle, and we started off. I sat up tall , looking around, but didn’t see any sign of where my father might have run off to. When I reached the King’s Road, I found the empty, rutted path stretching out in either direction, and no sign of my father. Could he have seen the caravan and decided to follow it?
I turned Adela and set her off at a rapid trot, moving as quickly as she could. She was a workhorse, and wasn’t necessarily the swiftest animal that we had. She was stable, safe, and she was the most reliable , but I wondered if maybe I should have taken one of our other horses. In the distance, a lone figure with a slight limp ambled along the road
Father.
I nudged the horse on her sides, and Adela took off, surging forward. It didn’t take long until we caught up to him.
“What are you doing, Dad?” I asked, pulling up alongside him and climbing out of the saddle.
“Ashan?” His brow wrinkled in confusion. He looked up at the sky, cupping his hand over his brow. “I could’ve sworn I saw something. I came out here to look.”
I grunted. “What do you think you saw?”
“ A dragon.”
I looked to the sky, and for a moment, the dark shadow I’d seen the other day came back to me. I knew better than to entertain those ideas with my father. “There haven’t been any dragons out here,” I said. “I’ve been working outside most of the day, and I would’ve seen one if there was.”
“It’s not so much a matter of seeing them, as it is feeling them. You know how to feel the dragons, don’t you?”
I laughed softly at the idea that I could feel a dragon, though the serious look on my father’s face suggested it wasn’t a joke to him. “I don’t know if I could feel a dragon, either.”
“You have to open yourself to them. It’s a matter of steadying your breathing, and feeling for the heat within you. It feels like your insides are aflame. That’s the only way, Ashan.” He turned to me, as he flicked his gaze over to the horse for a moment, and he smiled. “You brought Adela.”
His tone made him sound like he was having a moment of clarity, but the way he spoke of dragons had the ring of delusions.
“What were you saying about feeling dragons?”
“I was saying that if you get close enough to them, that you can feel them. Dragons are unique animals, you know.”
I tried to turn him, but he pulled against me. There were times when he couldn’t move very well, where his legs didn’t seem as if they functioned the way they should, and he relied upon the braces at his knees to keep him upright. There were other times when it seemed as if his old strength had returned completely.
This was the latter. He pulled away from me as I tried to grab him so I could bring him back to the farmhouse.
“Come on, Dad. I have more work to get done today.” I forced a smile. “You could help. I imagine that it would go a lot faster if the two of us worked on it.”
“If you have chores to do, then you need to get them done by yourself,” he said. “You can’t ask others to do your work for you, Ashan.”
I pushed down my brief irritation. “You’re right. And until I get back, I’m not going to be able to do so. So, if you would be so inclined, I would appreciate it if you would come with me.”
“I can’t. I told you. I need to go after the dragon.”
“What dragon?” The road stretched in either direction, and I thought about the massive pawprint that I had seen. I was concerned that we might
encounter something like that. I tried to keep my father from moving along the road, but he kept pulling. Sunlight shone down; the humidity of the day already unpleasant. Thankfully there was no thunder, no lightning, and no threat of a storm. Not yet, at least.
Exasperation filled me, more than it should. I tried to suppress it as much as I could, but even as I did, I knew that I had shown more than I had intended.
“Can’t you feel it?”
“What am I supposed to feel?” I asked. I moved so that I blocked him from making his way along the road any further. “Can’t you feel the dragon?”
“Tell me what it feels like.”
“It starts like a burning in your stomach. Like I said. You have to start with your breathing. Then it’s like you swallowed a bellyful of hot coals that are just smoldering there.” He closed his eyes, and although the description sounded awful, a serene look crossed his face . “That burning begins to build, and it sweeps out from your belly into your arms and chest, then down into your legs, all the way to your feet.” He opened his eyes. “That’s what I feel.”
“And it’s coming from there?”
“It’s coming from the east. That’s where I’m going, you know.” He lowered his voice, almost as if he were telling me a secret. “You could come with me. I won’t tell your mother. She doesn’t really understand these things, anyway. She never really did.”
“What things?”
He grinned. There was something very childlike in it when he did, and I knew this was one of his bad days. There were far too many of them lately. So many days when he was like this, exacerbating the stubborn man that he had once been.
“Dragons. The forest. The Djarn.”
I stiffened. Of course, what I had seen could have been a face, but when I had told him I hadn’t expected him to get so caught up in it.
I should have been more careful. With my father, it was all too easy for him to get wrapped up in his mind, twisting and turning things into something else. It was difficult to know when his mind was clear and when it wasn’t. If this was a time of clarity, it meant my father was keeping secrets.
Though the Djarn lived in the forest nearby, no one really knew anything about them. They were secretive and selective with who they spoke to and traded with. Some thought they used magic, or had a way of connecting to the dragons, though I’d never seen evidence of that. Having seen the scorched ground near the forest that might have been the Vard, I didn’t think the Djarn worked with the Vard, but didn’t know with certainty.
The Caged Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 1) Page 4
