Dragon Master (12 page)

The little girl that I’d freed from the first burning building was holding her hands out to catch the falling rain, and then rubbing the water in the faces of the man and woman who I’d also helped rescue from her hut. They were awake now, but dazed, not trying to speak or to move. Boe was removing parts of his armor and I could see his skin was red and tender underneath. I removed my own gloves and saw that while they were damaged beyond repair, they’d offered just enough protection that my hands weren’t badly burnt. I removed my helmet which was still very hot to the touch and relished in the feeling of the rain falling onto my head, working through my hair and cooling my scalp. The rain was coming down harder now and it felt great, even though it wasn’t doing anything to the burning buildings except causing them to emit more smoke. But the wind had calmed and the smoke was rising almost straight up now, so it seemed we were clear of danger.

No, I corrected myself. The dragon. We were only just getting ready to face the danger.

Everyone we had managed to rescue from the swamplands village were all conscious now, and it was clear that the three in the hut I’d first gone into were a father, mother, and daughter. The three of them spent a long time holding each other and just watching rain fall on the still-burning remains of their home. I gathered that Boe had rescued two siblings and that the old woman was their grandmother whom they lived with. The siblings tended to the old woman. All of them had thanked us profusely, or I was mostly sure that was what they were doing. They didn’t speak Lævenish like most people of the Realm, and were instead speaking in some dialect of Marshtongue. We couldn’t understand each other’s words, but we used gestures to communicate as best we could manage. The children spread their arms out around them, emulating dragon wings, and then they indicated how they tried to scatter into the swamplands but that strange people, apparently, had stopped them and tied them and placed them in the huts. Dragons and humans working together? It seemed we were truly living in a new world, a world where all the old rules no longer applied.

Boe, Warley, and I compared wounds and decided that we were in good enough shape to chase after Bayrd, Gable, and the dragon. We expressed our sorrow to the survivors at their losses, then bid them farewell and recovered our horses, as well as Bayrd and Gable’s horses which they’d left behind in their pursuit of the dragon. When I saw how poorly we’d tied the horses up in our rush, I was somewhat surprised they hadn’t broken free in panic when the dragon had shown itself: horses were notorious for bucking their rider and fleeing in the presence of a dragon, to the point where some Dragon Masters like Walker had grown to completely mistrust them. But perhaps they hadn’t seen the dragon, or perhaps they were too exhausted to act on their panic. When we began to ride them, they did seem rested, and if it wasn’t for the constant attack of the rain against me I felt like I might have used the opportunity to fall asleep and catch up on some rest myself.

“How will we follow them?” Warley asked. Of the three of us, he was most badly burnt from the fires, but he was putting a brave face on it.

“We head northeast,” I said. That was where I’d seen the dragon’s wings and the direction Bayrd and Gable had run. “We’ll look for any signs we can follow.”

“In this rain?” Boe asked. It was a fair point, I couldn’t even make out the trail we’d made through the mud when we’d returned to our horses. “Maybe the map holds some clue about where we should go next.” Boe withdrew the map and unrolled it, leaning his body forward and holding it close to his waist to try to keep the rain from soaking it.

There was a sizable city named Marstyn marked on the map, and Boe determined that it was likely due west of us. He made a mark on the map where he thought this village had been, continuing an arc of similar markings that he’d been making at each point along the path of destruction. The town wasn’t quite on the arc, but if that was where the dragon had gone, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d changed direction. Something had drawn him away from this village before it had been fully destroyed, and I was fairly sure it wasn’t Bayrd waving his sword around like a mad man. Supposedly dragons could smell human civilization, and the Dragonrage could cause the dragon to rush toward a city if it was as large as the map seemed to indicate.

“So we ride to Marstyn,” I proclaimed, and, lifting the heavy, soaked banner of Rægena, led us westward.

***

We didn’t see any signs of dragons or the path of destruction as we traveled. The going was excruciatingly slow and I thought more than once that it would have been much faster if we’d just abandoned the horses, but I knew we’d need these to have any chance of following the dragon if it cleared the swamplands. The rain lessened until it was a very slight drizzle, and a heavy mist rose and blocked all vision beyond a stone’s toss in any direction. I no longer felt or sensed the bugs, but instead felt an overarching and pervading sense of greenness, of growth and of life. Even the heavy air smelled of the color green. I could also smell salt in the air, and imagined I could judge our distance from the port city of Marstyn from the strength of that smell against the backdrop of green. Evening fell, and we dismounted and lit torches that only seemed to light the fog around us and spook the horses.

“I can’t say I have any idea where I’m heading,” I finally admitted. The air was definitely salty, but without any visual cues I’d lost my sense of direction and had begun to worry that I was leading us in circles.

“Do you want to try to set up camp?” Warley asked.

“I think I can get us to Marstyn,” Boe insisted. “I think we’re very close.”

“I hope so,” I said. I was coming to peace with the swamplands, probably because the rain and the mists and fog had served to help calm my nerves and soothe some of my wounds, but that didn’t mean I wanted to spend another night in the place.

“I hope that Marstyn still stands,” Warley put in. A sobering thought.

I tried to figure out how long it had been since I’d seen the dragon back at the village and decided that if he had flown straight to Marstyn then he must still be there now. A city of that size would take some time to destroy, and if any of the city’s citizens had mounted any kind of defense, that would slow it further still. So unless Bayrd and Gable had gotten lost, and that was a very real possibility, then they could have already met the dragon in battle. The dragon could be dead now, or Bayrd and Gable could. Or the dragon could have gone in a totally different direction. There was just no way to know, but thinking through all these possibilities made me feel jumpy again, made me realize that there was no way I could comfortably stop now and set up camp.

“We need to find out, tonight, one way or another,” I said.

Warley agreed, and we let Boe take the lead.

It took only a quarter of an hour or so for Boe to lead us out of the thickest part of the swamplands. As we broke through a heavy swath of overgrowth, the air seemed clearer on the other side. I noticed that there was no canopy overhead, and that as we progressed still further, the level of the fog was lifting until we were clear of it entirely. It was a little like stepping out of a dream world, and then into another.

We were standing on a muddy beach, and Stone glowed brilliantly above. Before us was blackness, but not the blackness of the swamplands through thick fog. This was the blackness of the ocean. The first time I’d ever seen the Northern Oceans. I extinguished my torch in the mud below and focused into the distance, letting my eyes adjust to that blackness. Faint stars appeared on the horizon and in the skies above, shining in their many colors. I scanned the shoreline and saw that we were standing along a cove with the swamplands wrapped around us like the curved embrace of a gentle green giant’s outstretched hand.

Boe had his map out again and was able to find an area that seemed to match the shape of this cove. Marstyn was just on the other side of one sweeping tendril of swamplands. We considered cutting directly through the swamplands, but, wary of getting lost, we decided instead to mount our horses and ride along the coast line. It felt almost unfairly serene, having this incredible view all to ourselves and being out on the shore after such a horrifying day, and with such potentially grave prospects just ahead. Still, it was hard not to relax as we rode. I made a point of taking deep breaths, trying to let the crisp salty air expand my lungs and battle the encrustation of soot and the tenderness within me. As we finally began to round the swamplands, I shifted the flag pole to my left hand and brought my right hand around to rest on my sword’s handle. I was prepared to draw my blade at the first sign of trouble.

Marstyn came into view. The city was much larger than I’d envisioned, especially here at the edge of the swamplands. Two tall spires rose at either end of the city along the water, and a tall church steeple rose from the city’s center. Everything was so well lit that I was sure the city was burning. But there were no signs of a dragon, there were no people spilling out of the city fleeing into the swamplands, there were no indicators of panic or confusion or of a great battle. The city was lit by fire, yes, but it was organized. There were giant mounted torches, I realized, burning bright into the night, illuminating the spires so that they could be seen from a distance, seen by sailors at sea. I could hear the soft strands of music in the night air, the clink of ceramic mugs toasting, and stirrings of laughter. I looked behind me to see Boe with a dazzled expression on his face, and Warley looked like he’d been clenching his teeth for the last hour and had only now let himself breathe easily. I spurred my horse forward and we all galloped into town.

There were shouts as people in the city reported our coming, and I lifted the flagpole proudly into the air. Rægena’s colors had faded and been covered in places by caked mud and may not even be fully visible in the night sky, but I wanted to try to signal that we were friendly. I needn’t have bothered. As we rode past the buildings at the edges of the city and down a wide avenue toward the welcoming fires burning at the city center, I could hear excited voices from within buildings. They seemed at times to be speaking Lævenish, but their accents were so strong that I had trouble making out full sentences. I was starting to imagine that we would be able to find a warm meal to eat here, and possibly a comfortable bed to collapse into.

As we began to pass a large building with stables, a man ran out of the building yelling toward us, so we stopped. He began to speak in an uncertain tone in an unfamiliar tongue.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “we don’t speak your language.”

A wide smile spread across the man’s face. “No, no, it is I who is sorry,” he was speaking Lævenish now, his voice accented by curt hard “r” sounds and the rasp of a man who has spent his long life on or near the ocean. I knew the rasp well, many of my father’s friends were sailors and you could tell how long they’d spent on the sea just from the sound of their voices. “Please, please, allow me to care for your poor steeds.” He got right to the point, “Only twelve silver for the night, a special price for riders on a dragon quest!”

We looked at each other and nodded in agreement, then I remembered that Bayrd was carrying our coin purse.

“There are two more in our party,” I said in my most official voice, “and we must find and confer with them first. Do you happen to know if they arrived in this city?”

His smile grew even wider and the crows feet at his eyes gathered. “Ah, yes, the young dragon slayers.”

Dragon slayers?

“Please, leave your horses with me for now, you can pay later. Go, go,” he made a pushing gesture in the air as he began to gather the reins for the horses, “meet your friends at the tavern on the water.”

We ran down the rest of the avenue and took a left at a great square in the center of the city. I didn’t pause to look up at the towering Stonespirit cathedral that stood there, but I could feel its presence looming over me. I easily picked out the tavern on the water; it was full of life. People laughed and danced, and two musicians played stringed instruments on a small raised stage. And there at the bar, surrounded by city folk and sailors, were Bayrd and Gable.

As we entered the tavern, Gable looked up at us and his eyes lit up in recognition. He grinned enthusiastically and beckoned us over to join them. On seeing us and our armor, filthy and destroyed as it was, the crowd parted to give us a path to the bar.

“We ran at full speed after the beast, and I could see its wings rising and falling through the—” I had never seen Bayrd so animated, so completely open. He stopped when he saw us, his arms raised in the air, mid-gesture. He began to laugh uproariously and Gable joined in, then everyone at the bar was laughing. Warley pushed in front of me and took a seat at the bar, looking up at Bayrd expectantly. Bayrd’s eyes flashed in amusement and he asked me, “Would you like to see the heart of a dragon?”

My heart sunk.

It wasn’t that I was unhappy that the dragon had been slain, or that I even wanted to face it in combat. I just felt so very … left out. Like if I’d just followed my training and went after the dragon when I had the chance, my life would be different now. We had done all this, journeyed through the pass, tracked the dragon all through the swamplands, had a real dragon quest—and then at the end of it all, I wasn’t even there. We were going to return to Rægena and everyone would want to hear the story a million times, and Bayrd and Gable would be the only ones who could tell it. Bayrd would be crowned Dragon Master and be given a kingdom to rule over, and I would still be just another Stone Soul. It would be as if I had never left the academy. No, no that wasn’t right. There were those people in that swampland village. Without Boe and Warley and me they would have died. I thought of the parents embracing their daughter, the two children caring for their grandmother. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t slaying a dragon. But if we hadn’t come, if we hadn’t stopped to help, then those people would have died. I tried to muster the appropriate enthusiasm for the moment.