Dragon Master (18 page)

“So why are they called Dragonborn?” I thought this sounded like a smart way to bring the conversation back to that topic.

“Because they’re born from two dragons,” Boe said.

“The prophecy does seem to make a distinction between dragons who are simply born from the Stoneflame and something called a Dragonborn,” Magnilda explained, “Though the prophecy also mentions Dragonwhelps, which could be another classification altogether. Or it could be nothing. What do you think, Caedan?”

I had no idea, and I told her so.

“I suppose you haven’t really focused on that,” Magnilda said, understanding. “Boe and I have spent quite a long time trying to work out the meaning of the prophecy, after all.”

“How much of the prophecy have you figured out?” And for that matter, have you figured out yet why someone knocked me out and stole it? I didn’t ask that last part out loud.

“Just this and that,” Magnilda replied, distractedly, “nothing that will help you in your next dragon quest, I’m sure.” That was her way of closing the topic down to further discussion. Fine, I could still try to find out the answers to some of my other questions.

“So what other unusual Dragon Masters can you tell me about?”

“There was this one guy,” Boe said, “who killed three dragons in one year.”

“Yes, he was killed by the next dragon he faced though,” Magnilda said, “he got too sure of himself. It didn’t help that everyone in the Realm started calling him Master Invincible.” She was looking at a book shelf and it seemed that she was able to recall the contents of each book on it by staring at its spine long enough. “Yes, oh yes, how could I forget,” she started excitedly, “Master Coville.”

“Let me guess,” I said, “he killed a dragon when he was just five years old and then he died?” I was starting to see a kind of pattern to these stories.

“Oh, no, don’t be silly. Well, there was a Dragon Master like that, young Master Karl, but he was eight years old. No, Master Coville was far more interesting.”

Boe sat down beside me, and I could tell this was one he hadn’t heard about before.

“Master Coville was a wizard who didn’t know he was a Stone Soul,” she explained, “his parents kept it a secret from him and raised him up as a powerful fire wizard. They told him his whole life that anyone could kill a dragon, that you didn’t have to be a Stone Soul.”

“But you said that he was one,” I said, confused.

“Yes, his parents were playing a very dangerous game. Got them killed, in the end.”

“Naturally,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“They did get many other people killed first,” she said, “but that’s a digression for another time. So Master Coville spends his life believing anyone can kill a dragon and training to be the one who proves it to the world.”

“Using magic?” I interrupted.

“Yes, you see, he really is a very interesting fellow as these things go. Everyone uses the sword to kill a dragon, but Master Coville did it with a spell.”

“Like the Ice Lance Sterling’s master tried?” Boe asked this question.

“No, though he was actually the inspiration for Sterling’s master, there’s no question about that in my mind. No, you see, he spent his whole life so in tune with Flame magics that he had to develop powerful protection spells to avoid accidentally killing himself. He burned his whole village down, once, on accident of course.” Of course. “So one day he finally hears about a Dragonbirth and rides to confront the dragon, he casts his protection spells and is about to cast another spell to attack the dragon, but he gets eaten instead.”

Some story. “Why did you call him a Master if he just gets eaten by the dragon?”

“That’s what makes him so interesting,” Magnilda scolded, but she was clearly glad that I’d misunderstood, “he was swallowed up but the Dragonsfire didn’t burn him. Didn’t hurt him at all. Still, the toxin was paralyzing him, so he used a dagger to begin trying to cut himself free from inside the dragon.”

“Woah,” Boe said it, but I was also thinking it. I was trying to picture the scene.

“The toxin was working too quickly and he wasn’t able to breathe, you see. So the dragon was thrashing around with this wizard inside of him, and the wizard was slowly dying inside the dragon and trying to get out. When they eventually found the dragon, she was just lying there dead and nobody could tell how she’d died. When they cut her open to investigate, they found the remains of Master Coville there, his hands squeezing the dragon’s black heart.”

That story made me queasy.

“So how do we get those fire protection spells?” Boe asked. His eyes were wide and I could tell that he was thinking of all the possibilities such a spell could afford us.

“Well, you’d have to start by training as a fire wizard from birth,” Magnilda answered, chuckling.

All of this was getting us nowhere.

***

I felt like we were making good progress with our training. The shorter, more intense bursts of training felt more like what we could be likely to expect when we really faced a dragon. After our first dragon quest, I understood how all the long days and nights of running and drills were preparing us for the endurance test of actually keeping up with the dragon and trying to get ahead of its path of destruction. But I felt like this part was important, too, and we hadn’t had enough of it. Plus, it felt great to know that we’d only have to worry about a few hours of training before we could just enjoy supper and relax until the next afternoon.

We were also building some kind of new team identity, now that we were just the four of us. Shortly after the first Dragonbirth, Bayrd and Gable had some kind of falling out that made things uneasy for a couple days. Still, they joined Boe and I most afternoons to participate in the team exercises.

“I think Caedan should take over as team leader,” Gable said unexpectedly on the thirty-fifth day of Flame. Bayrd was trying to get us to master a tricky four person maneuver that seemed too complex to have any chance of coming up, let alone working against a dragon, and the three of us were protesting loudly against the drill.

“Seconded,” Boe stepped in quickly.

Bayrd growled something I couldn’t understand at Gable, but Gable just responded with an exaggerated bow. I realized that was it, that it was two against one. Well, three against one if I included myself. I was our new dragon quest leader. Nice!

“So, time for an early supper?” Gable grinned.

“Time for some two on twos,” I said smiling back at him. I stepped over to Bayrd and shrugged at him, and then we readied our practice swords and charged at the unprepared Boe and Gable, knocking them over. I helped Boe up and then reached out a hand to Gable when Bayrd turned his back on us. “It helps to draw your sword,” I taunted. “Again.”

This was going to be fun.

***

But the fun only lasted one day. Just when we’d started our afternoon training on my birthday, the thirty-sixth day of Flame, a lone Stone Soul rode into the training grounds. One riderless horse trailed behind him. I didn’t see what direction he’d approached from, but I recognized him as Adams, one of Irvin’s team. I felt a hollowness develop in my stomach. Everyone rushed over and surrounded him. He was supposed to report to the keep, but we weren’t going to let him by until we knew what had happened with the dragon, with the rest of his team.

“I failed,” he said, a pained expression on his face. “We all failed. They’re all dead. She killed them all.” It was what we’d all feared. A numbness came over my body. The first real dragon quest in our class, and they’d caught up with the dragon, and four of them had died. Irvin was dead. I tried to picture his face, but it seemed blurry and indistinct. Adams nudged his horse forward and the crowd of gathered Stone Souls let them pass to make their report to the keep. We slowly and quietly dispersed, and I felt like everyone else must be experiencing what I was experiencing. Those were our friends. Those could have been us. We’d all been training for this together for ten years, and it hadn’t been enough.

I cancelled group training for the day and walked with Boe to the mess hall. We didn’t eat anything, we just sat and looked around. There weren’t very many of us present at that early hour but the emptiness of the hall felt deeper than that. And I knew that it was deeper than that, I knew that it would always be more empty now. I knew that there were four of us who would never have a chance to join in song during one of the great feasts, or complain about the chef’s special breakfast pudding. Four of us who would never again laugh, or cry, or love. Or even feel the immense sadness that I now felt.

Warley’s sister, I now knew her name to be Caisi, walked up to our table carrying two mugs of something warm and steaming. She was the only one of Warley’s family I’d seen since the sentencing. I’d heard they’d all been assigned to various rich and noble houses in the area, but Caisi showed up in the mess hall the day after sentencing and it seemed she’d be serving as a servant here in the keep. Thinking about Warley now, considering everything, it seemed completely wrong what we’d done. We should have gone along with him when he said he was joking. He didn’t deserve this fate, most of his family certainly didn’t deserve this fate. We were his team and he’d trusted us, and we’d turned on him. Like rabid wolves. Except for Boe, he was the only one who’d showed any compassion, any sense of understanding at all.

“I’m so sorry,” I said to Caisi as she walked away. She couldn’t know what I was thinking, but she seemed to understand that I was referring to her new lot in life.

She stopped walking and then came back to the table. She put her dainty hand on my shoulder. Like she was the one comforting me. Someone snapped a word at her and she stiffened, then hurriedly left to go fill another tray with mugs.

The drink was what I’d needed right then. It had a sweetness and spice to it that competed in my mouth, forcing me to pay attention to it, forcing me to think about something other than my own sadness. The warmth of it might have seemed strange on such a hot day in Flame, but I found my insides had needed the added warmth. I still felt the hollowness, still felt weighted down by sorrow, but somehow I also felt a tiny bit better. When I saw that Boe wasn’t drinking, I picked up his mug and made him take a sip.

“Apple cider,” he mused, quietly. “Who would have thought to serve warm apple cider on a day like today?”

Before supper was served, one of the ten-year old Stone Souls crashed through the door of the mess hall and announced that there was another Dragonbirth. I looked at Boe and we bolted out the door, just ahead of everyone else who came pushing through behind us.

Master Walker looked tired. He was still dressed in his dragon slayer’s armor, but the shine and glint of it had faded somewhat. He didn’t seem as though he’d taken the news from Adams any better than we had. Still, he sent a new team to replace Irvin’s team, tasked to travel along the same path. I did not envy them. After they’d left, this time without our cheering to spur them on, he told us about the next Dragonbirth.

“The second Dragonbirth was north of Stone Lake, far across the Great River. It happened five days ago, and the path of destruction heads toward the Northern Oceans.” I pictured Stone Lake, far to the northwest, across the Realm it seemed. If it had taken a courier a full five days to bring word to Rægena then it would probably take nearly a full week for a dragon quest team to reach the point where the report had originated. And if the dragon was traveling away from us as reported then it would take even longer to catch up to it. It was entirely possible that the dragon had already been slain before we even received this report, there was no way to know. I was again relieved to know that the dragon didn’t seem to pose a danger to Daija, or to my family. Then again, if the first dragon was still heading along the southeastern coast then she could arrive in Helmsbridge eventually. I tried to take solace knowing that there was still another of our dragon quest teams between the dragon and my parent’s home, but it was hard to imagine them coming away victorious after what little Adams had told us.

“Newell,” he was giving an order to Bayrd, “take your team back through Scribe’s Notch, you’re all familiar with it now. Cross the Great River at Lorrence and then travel along the coast until you find out where the dragon has gone, then catch up with him. If he’s still alive, one of you bring me his heart.”

“Well, sir,” Bayrd said, “Caedan is the new leader of our—”

Master Walker’s cutting stare caused Bayrd to stop mid-sentence.

“We’ll leave right away,” I said.

This was it. No time to think. No time even to eat supper, not that I was feeling at all hungry. We had food in our packs, we had everything ready to go. We collected it all, accepted the reins of our horses, and left once more through Scribe’s Notch on a dragon quest. This time there was no question what lay at the end of the quest. Death. Either for dragon, or for us.

Happy Birthday to me.

“You’re not actually serious are you?” Boe asked me. We were several days into our dragon quest now, and I’d been leading the team to Lorrence, yes, but I also had come up with a crazy plan while we were making the now-familiar trek through Scribe’s Notch. I’d been going back and forth in my head between dread of dying and conviction that the dragon was so far away that we’d never even reach him while he still lived. The two extreme thoughts stretched me so far that I guess I finally snapped.

“I really am serious,” I told Boe with a straight face. I really was. Maybe a little crazy, sure, but definitely serious.

“Who made you our leader, anyway?” Gable asked.

“I believe you did,” I said, smiling at him. “Plus, as I recall, I’m locked in place until the dragon quest ends.”

“Or until you die,” Gable grumbled. Bayrd shot him a look and I knew that if Bayrd had been leading us then such insurrection would probably have ended in bloodshed, right there. But I also knew that Gable didn’t mean it as a threat. Probably. Bayrd would not respect my leadership, but he would respect the chain of command. There would be no insurrection.