by Dante King
She was just as inscrutable now as she had been when I first met her. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking, which was usually the case with minds that ran so deep and so broad.
General Shiloh, on the other hand, was a woman who wore her emotions plastered all over her honest and hard-working face. As a leading figure in the Mystocean Empire’s armed forces, it went without saying that the General did not suffer fools lightly. She had clawed her way up the ranks to this top spot through a combination of guile, ruthlessness, tactical intelligence, and straight out combat skill.
The General was standing behind her desk now, her arms crossed over her barrel chest. It was fitting that she should be the leading military officer meeting with the Vetruscan bearmancers—whatever it was the meetings might have been about. There was something of the bear about the strong-looking woman. She had her forearms bared so that the short fur that covered them was on display. The fur was the same chestnut color as her hair, albeit without the flecks of gray scattered through her close-cut military style hairdo. At one temple, General Shiloh had one thick streak of white hair.
“Ah, Dragonmancer Noctis,” she growled when I had walked past the two guards outside and pushed my way into the tent. “It’s about damned time.”
I almost replied with a cheerfully acidic, “It’s nice to see you too, General”, but managed to lasso the words back at the last moment. General Shiloh’s keen gray eyes glinted dangerously in the light of the many fairy-filled lamps that hung about her quarters. I got the distinct impression that she was not in the mood for any of my horsing around today.
“Dragonmancer Noctis,” the Overseer said, inclining her beautiful head with all the grace of a bluebell bowing under a slight breeze.
“Overseer,” I said, “it’s a genuine pleasure to see you again.”
The Overseer smiled. “Such a dichotomous character you are, Mike Noctis. The battle reports and soldier’s gossip that I hear paint a picture of a decisive and quite merciless man. They paint it in myriad shades of blood. And yet, when we talk, I find you extremely well-mannered and amiable.”
I shook my head, not quite sure how to respond. “Just because I’m happy to deal with my enemies on the battlefield in an unfaltering and lethal way doesn’t mean that I have to stalk around the encampment, playing the role of brooding badass, you know?”
General Shiloh looked like she was on the verge of reprimanding me for my casual language with the most powerful and important woman in the hierarchy of the Drako Academy.
The Overseer, however, raised a hand, and the General closed her mouth with an audible snap.
“Very true,” said the mysterious head of the Drako Academy.
I glanced over at the General. She was champing at the bit. Clearly, she had something she wished to get off her chest in double time.
“As much as I enjoy our chats, Overseer,” I said, “I assume you brought me here for a reason?”
General Shiloh made an appreciative noise in her throat.
“Good man, dragonmancer,” she said, “cutting to the chase like that. I applaud your keenness.”
“Just want to know what’s going on, General,” I said. “Just keen on knowing what the next step in the exploration of the Subterranean Realms is going to be.”
“You mean, you want to know what we plan to do about the Bronze Citadel?” General Shiloh said shrewdly.
The Bronze Citadel was a kobold mega-stronghold, the likes of which only the shady Lorekeepers knew much about. We had received a little intel from the head of General Shiloh’s scouting network, but that wasn’t much beyond a description.
The Bronze Citadel was a huge and unassailable looking bastion, with a mammoth main keep. A tower was set a little way away from each of the four corners of this central edifice, and on top of each one of these towers, wild dragons perched. What made things even worse was that each of these four towers was, apparently, a temple for a wild dragon. The final cherry on this dogshit sundae was that these wild dragons were not just any wild dragons.
They were Elder Dragons.
The three of us had enjoyed a heavy silence and exchanged significant looks.
I broke the silence. “More than a few conversations between the dragonmancers and their coteries have revolved around this Bronze Citadel.”
Dressed in the all-sable battle gear of the fully qualified dragonmancer, with a silver dragon claw on each of her brawny shoulders, General Shiloh had a supremely commanding presence. At my words, though, a flicker of discomfort shadowed her face. She picked briefly at a roughly stitched cut running down one arm of her well-worn uniform.
“That is not actually why you have been brought before us today, Dragonmancer Noctis,” she said, turning her gray eyes up to regard me.
“No, General?” I said.
“No,” she said.
The Overseer pushed back her traveling hood to reveal her face in all its ageless perfection.
Her features, flawless as they were, were usually impossible to interpret, but on this occasion, she appeared slightly awkward about what she was going to say next.
“It was really I who wished to see you, Mike, not so much the General here,” the Overseer said.
“You don’t have to beat around the bush with me, Overseer,” I said, the disquiet that I couldn’t quite put my finger on growing a little more.
“Very well,” the exotic leader of the Drako Academy said in an even voice. It was the voice of the born diplomat; neither hot nor cold, neither kind nor stern.
She gestured to one of the two seats that sat opposite General Shiloh’s chair on the other side of the desk. Taking her meaning, I sat. The Overseer followed suit, and the General too sat down. The Overseer crossed her slender legs, and I glimpsed the curious tattoos that snaked up out of her suede, ankle-high moccasins and up her calves.
The Overseer’s clear green eyes watched me steadily. “You thought that I—that we—wanted to see you about the Bronze Citadel, or else the conferences between ourselves and the envoys from the Vetruscan Kingdom.”
It was not a question. It was a statement. The woman could read my thoughts as easily as if they were transcribed across my forehead. I did not answer.
“The actual reason that I desired to talk to you, Mike, was to find out how you were faring here. Are you well?”
I blinked. “Ah, yeah,” I said, momentarily taken aback. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You are a father to three dragonlings now,” the Overseer said, her steady green eyes staying fixed on mine. “That carries a lot of weight, a lot of responsibility.”
“I have the heart for it,” I said unthinkingly.
A falcon-fast smile flashed across the Overseer’s face, setting it to glowing. That perfunctory glimpse of true delight set her flesh aflame, bringing out even more radiant beauty within, like a miner’s pick breaking into a subterranean watercourse.
“Oh, I know you have the heart for it,” the Overseer said. “The heart of a father, of any parent, is a showpiece of nature. It has always struck me as a curious thing that the role of any father worth the name is to, first and foremost, try and mold and shape his offspring into beings better than he is. Being their friend should always come in a close second place in the list of priorities.”
It was eloquently put.
“Do you have children, Overseer?” I blurted, before my brain could close my mouth.
General Shiloh’s eyes flashed, but the Overseer simply ignored the question, sidestepping it as neatly as she might have avoided a dropped kebab in the street.
“Yes, the heart of a parent is a masterpiece of a thing, beyond any magic that I have ever encountered,” she mused, her clear emerald eyes still fastened on mine. I was under no apprehension that she was a better reader of personalities, and more in tune with peoples’ reactions, than Dale Carnegie could have ever hoped to have been.
“You have fought to protect and save the lives of your offspring more than
once already,” the Overseer continued. “However, I have something to ask you now that might test you in a wholly different way.”
I thought I could vaguely see what the Overseer was driving at now. I took a stab.
“You’re talking about wanting to know whether I am prepared to give them to another person, to a prospect or warrior of your choosing, so that they might become a dragonmancer, aren’t you?”
The Overseer inclined her head. “It was part of the bargain that we struck with one another, do you recall?” she said evenly.
“I recall,” I said.
“Not that bargains need necessarily come into this,” General Shiloh said in her commanding voice. “The Overseer is making a request of you, Dragonmancer.”
The Overseer did not look at the General. She continued to hold my gaze, and I interpreted this as a sign of respect. This, I realized, was a test of sorts.
“Yeah, I recall the deal that we made, Overseer,” I said. “You let me face the danger of the Subterranean Realms. All so I could be part of the crew that went in search of the Etherstones—the stones that were required to save Wayne.”
“That’s correct,” the Overseer said mildly. “And that bargain was struck because the combined will of the Martial Council desired those stones to save dragons that would, one day, be used to strengthen the waning might of the Mystocean Empire.”
I nodded but did not trust myself to reply just yet. I wasn’t really what you might call over the moon about this—Wayne, Pan, and Garth were the fruit of my loins, my kids—but I had been expecting this to happen.
“And who decided that today is that day, if I may respectfully ask, Overseer?” I said, being careful not to catch General Shiloh’s irate gaze.
“It was the joint decision, the resolution, of the Martial Council,” the Overseer replied.
I scanned the woman’s clear complexion. I did not think that she would be the sort to brazenly lie, but was she choosing her words with more care than she might have done? It was impossible to tell.
“With the utmost respect for you,” I said, wanting to make it clear without actually speaking the words that my respect for the men and women that made up the Martial Council could have been easily decanted into a thimble, “the dragonlings might not be quite experienced yet, not quite ready.”
The Overseer spread her hands. “If so, then it is unfortunate. However, the choice has been voted upon and made.”
“By those who haven’t even laid eyes on two of the three dragonlings that the decision impacts,” I said, with only a slight tremor in my voice betraying my rising anger.
“Well, it is said that one person alone can be capable of performing some extremely unintelligent deeds,” the Overseer replied gravely, “but for true stupidity, you really can’t get past an assembly.”
I grunted with amusement at the accuracy of her words. I wasn’t a political man, never had been, but even I knew enough of what those folks on Capitol Hill got up to, to see the truth in the Overseer’s statement.
“Which of your dragonlings is the strongest at the present time?” the Overseer asked me.
“All of them are strong,” I said before I sighed. “But Garth has been in his adult form for the longest time. He’s had the most battle experience.”
The Overseer pursed her lips, considering. “And would Garth, do you think, be amenable to being paired off with another who is not you?”
The thought of that brought up a soft, vague revulsion in the pit of my stomach. I imagined fathers of daughters felt a similar way when they first discover their daughters are dabbling in the dating pool. There was something distasteful about my progeny, Garth, being bonded to another potential dragonmancer.
“I'd have to ask him,” I said. “He’s not mine to command. At least, only in the way that a father can boss his son around.”
At the mention of his name, Garth’s presence had blossomed in my mind like a pale pink miasma creeping under a door. It was the telepathic equivalent of someone listening at a door, but not wanting to intrude on the conversation of the elders. He could hear well enough that the conversation was about him, but that did not mean that his ten-cent’s worth was required just yet.
Saying that though, Garth had never been one to stand on ceremony. Like any other child or teenager, he had a personality all of his own. A personality, moreover, that he was finding it harder and harder to repress, even when the situation called for him to keep his thoughts and his words to himself.
“I’m not bothered by it, Dad,” said the Pearl Dragon’s sharp, eager voice, echoing through the private passages of my mind.
“You don’t care?” I asked.
“No,” Garth replied. “I’m a dragon and you’re my kin and that won’t ever change. No matter if I’m bonded to another, you and I share something that dragon and rider haven’t shared for ages—at least that is what Noctis has told me.”
Garth, as did Pan and Wayne, hero-worshipped Noctis to some degree. The older dragon continued to regard the three younger dragons with that inimitable aloofness that is so unique to dragons as a race. Still, he was softening somewhat and beginning to teach my dragonlings the lore that would have taken many years to discover on their own.
“You’re sure you’re not going to mind going through the Transfusion Ceremony with someone else?” I pressed. Part of me hoped that the Pearl Dragon would stand his ground and decide to stick with me.
Garth seemed to have picked up on this unspoken wish of mine. His tone was slightly softer when he replied to me.
“It is what dragons were born for, what they were created for, Dad,” he said. “A rider would be nothing without their dragon.”
“And a dragon far less without their rider,” I said.
“Well…” Garth said cheekily.
“Okay, if you’re sure,” I said. “I have faith in your abilities. You’ve proved them many times already.”
“I’m sure,” Garth told me earnestly.
Our conversation had taken all of a few seconds, but the Overseer seemed to comprehend what was going on. She regarded me thoughtfully, her head cocked to one side as if she too was able to hear, as if she too was listening.
“Well?” she asked.
“He says that he is interested,” I said gruffly.
“Excellent,” the Overseer said.
“I’m not going to speculate on how his mother, Saya Scopula, is going to take this,” I said in an aside to General Shiloh.
The General raised a bushy eyebrow at me. It looked like she knew precisely how Saya would react.
I might have noticed something sooner, if I hadn’t entered the tent thinking only that I was about to be given some sort of briefing. As it was, it was only now that I twigged that someone else was within earshot. There was someone else waiting outside the tent. Waiting outside the more surreptitious side flap that I guessed served General Shiloh as a crude emergency exit.
My head snapped around. My dragon enhanced senses quested out.
I caught a whiff of pine needles, cold steel, and blood that had not been entirely cleaned from a blade. Holding my own breath, I could make out the steady breathing of the other person outside the room. The breath came softly through their nose, I think, because there was a soft whistling sound I could just make out on the edge of my dragon augmented hearing.
“That’s speedy work. Who have we got outside door number one, then?” I asked the General and the Overseer. “What with all the excitement of being brought in here, the presence of our mysterious eavesdropper eluded me. I apologize for my lack of preparedness, General Shiloh.”
Just who the hell was this mysterious eavesdropper?
Chapter 5
General Shiloh barked an order, and the small tent flap off to one side was pushed open. The stranger was preceded by a strong resinous scent, of which the smells of pine needles had been a mere precursor.
My immediate impression of this newcomer was that she spent most of her time rangi
ng through the woods and wild places of the Mystocean Empire. She was a dwarf, that much was evident to anyone with eyes, and was built in the dwarven fashion, that is to say: short.
She was squat and well-muscled, but not unattractive. She had a kind face and very watchful eyes, eyes that radiated patience; the eyes of a hunter. They were gray eyes. Eyes as gray as granite, as gray as the sea. The dwarf’s full-lipped mouth was curled up in one corner in a sardonic little grin, which gave the woman an amiable look that I found hard not to like.
All in all, I found myself liking the newcomer, despite the fact that it was she who I presumed would be bonded to Garth. There was something inherently trustworthy about her, something strong and real.
The dwarf ran a hand through a mop of unruly ginger hair and eyed me brazenly. Under her armored breastplate, which looked like it must have weighed all of eighty pounds, she appeared to be packing quite a rack.
“Well met, Dragonmancer Noctis,” she said to me in an accent that was at once gruff and laced with an undeniable intelligence. “And no, I don’t mind you staring.”
General Shiloh grunted a laugh at this.
The dwarf made a crude claw with one index finger and held it over her heart, saluting General Shiloh.
“Good to see you again, Ma’am,” she said to the black clad figure. “And it is a singular honor to meet you, Overseer,” she added, bowing low.
“Dragonmancer Noctis this is Jaghilda, a dwarf from the tail end of the Dragon Rest Ranges,” the Overseer said.
I held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
The dwarf, Jaghilda, held out a hand and took mine in a grip of steel.
“The pleasure is all mine,” she said.
I nodded, turning my attention back to the Overseer.
“So, Overseer,” I said, “how exactly do we go about this? I assumed that for the Transfusion Ceremony we would need Tanila and Dasyr present to work their particular brand of magic? So I guess it’ll be a bit of a wait.”
“That’s enough, Noctis,” General Shiloh snapped.
I closed my mouth. The slight anger I had felt at this whole ambush, although I knew it wasn’t really an ambush, had caused me to get a little out of line and forget myself. The Transfusion Ceremony was the most closely guarded secret in all of the Mystocean Empire. It was the very way that prospective dragonmancers were linked with the dragons that they were paired to be bonded with.
