The Last Dragon: Book Three

CHAPTER NINE

Damon

Kendra said to me, “Damon, the desert sun has turned your skin shades darker already. You look more like one born in Kaon daily.”

While we shivered with cold on the bank of the river through the night, my mind had worked furiously. Without a single coin between us, there were five mouths to feed and proper desert-clothing to buy for protection from the sun, not to mention weapons, transportation, lodging, and a hundred other things. What a difference a few coins rubbing against each other can make—or better put, the lack of those coins and the hardships we’d endure because of it.

The night seemed endless. When the sun finally rose, we were all tired from lack of sleep, cold, hungry, and of course, we were without money to solve those issues. We gathered near the edge of the river where we all drank our fill and allowed the morning sun to beat down and warm us, despite our sunburned skins.

Kendra’s exposed skin was also darker, I noticed. And the girl’s, too. Even Flier was darker, a kinship of birth that bonded us. We darkened with the slightest exposure to the sun. People from Dire with their normally pale skin would turn redder than us, and their skin would have been sore to the touch for days, and probably blisters would have formed if they experienced what we had. For us, I suspected that the passage of a single day would fade even the hints of red in our skin. But that didn’t mean we were free of worry. The sun could easily burn our skin darker, and we’d be sore where it was left exposed.

Flier noticed where my eyes were focused and said, “We need hats for protection.”

“We need a lot of things,” I snapped. His expression of stating the obvious was like me moaning for my lack of coins. It wouldn’t do any good to say the obvious and make everyone feel worse.

“Like food,” Anna said. “I’m hungry. I’d give up a hat for a plate of food.”

I was not sure she agreed with me, but I’d take any help. “Yes, food would be good.”

Emma whispered something in Anna’s ear, and from the frantic antics of her hugging her stomach, it concerned food. Emma’s language skills had advanced at a great pace, but when compared to Anna, she knew nothing. I said to Anna, “Will she ever let me teach her to speak our language with my mind?”

“She’s scared to do it, I think. After what happened to you last time. Scared for you. She’ll come around. But this morning she is angry about everything. If we don’t get some food in her, we’ll all pay the price. When unhappy, Emma makes everyone unhappy.” Anna crossed her arms over her chest as if that ended the matter. Get Emma food, or we’d all suffer the consequences.

The problems with achieving that meal were obvious. We had nothing to hunt with, and nothing in sight to hunt for. We were in a thin strip of vegetation that lined a shallow river flowing down to the sea in the middle of a desert. If I were a fish, I’d want to avoid swimming in that brown water sluggishly flowing beside us. The salty sea had to be better. The river tasted like the dirt of Kondor, as well as looking like a liquid version of it.

Flier patiently let us all have our say, then he continued as if he hadn’t heard any of us, “As I said, we need hats. A hat can protect us from the sun on our faces, necks and more.”

“Why are you so concerned about that instead of food?” I snapped, fighting the rising anger and losing the battle.

He said, “Because it is something we can do something about instead of sitting here and complaining.” He pointed to the edge of the river where reeds grew. “A little weaving of those and we can help ourselves. We have a long walk ahead, and the sun is going to be brutal.”

“What about food?” Kendra asked.

“I don’t know if there are fish, or how to catch them. I see no animals and recognize no edible plants. Be thankful we have muddy water to drink and reeds to make hats. I suggest we all get moving before the sun rises too much higher and cooks us.” Flier had stood while talking and walked to the edge of the river and went into the water up to his knees. He pulled a fistful of reeds, roots and all, and tossed them to the shore. Then another. When he judged he had enough, he joined us and spread a circle of green reeds as spokes after cutting them about as long as my forearm. He deftly tied a reed to one of the spokes and wove it over and under the others in a circle until he ran out of reed. Then he started on the next.

We joined in, copying his efforts. The results varied from round and well-made to oblong and loosely-made, but as each of us threaded the last of our reeds into place, Flier pushed the center of his construction together to form a pointed hat. Reeds tied under our chins held them in place.

The wide hats protected our faces, necks, shoulders, and threw a little shade down our arms, chests, and backs. Emma and Anna bickered the entire time, mostly about who was making the best hat, which of them walked faster, and why Emma was the hungriest. It wasn’t like them, so finally I said, “What is going on?”

They looked guilty of something, but I didn’t know what. I looked to Kendra and Flier’s blank faces, then back to Anna and the oddly pointed hat she now wore. I expected the answer to involve the hats, so I repeated the question, my eyes locked on Anna since she spoke Common, “What is it?”

Anna hung her head and spoke quietly, after receiving a glare from Emma, “She wonders why you treat the princess so badly. And us, too.”

“Princess Elizabeth? She thinks we treat her badly? Why would she think that?”

“The storm when we were on the ship. It felt like it was tearing the ship apart. People got sick we had to turn back to Trager, and now we have to walk all this way over the mountains.” She threw her arms wide to encompass the bleak desert around us. “And now, this. No food.”

Anna was speaking like an adult, trying to explain something she didn’t understand, while trying at the same time to provide Emma’s meaning. She was struggling to get to her point, but we were all interested to hear it.

Kendra said, “The storm almost tore the ship apart, you’re right. People did get ill. We did have to cross all those mountains, and now we face this desert. What should we have done differently?”

Anna lifted her chin and said in a clear voice, “Emma thinks you should all go home to Dire. I disagree.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

She turned to face Kendra. “I think you should have sent the dragon to sink the sink the ships with mages on them instead of smashing the whole city of Trager apart.”

Kendra’s wide eyes and frantic expression matched that of Flier, and probably that of myself. Emma sat, face set in a scowl. Anna waited, determined to take whatever punishment we doled out for her impertinence.

“Kendra?” I questioned softly. “Could you have done that?”

“I think so.” She closed her eyes and tears streamed from the corners. “Now, without using the words to say it, you’re silently asking if I can still send the dragon out to the sea to attack and sink the mage’s ships and probably drown dozens of innocent sailors while doing it?”

I knew she was right, but there was still another side to it. “All sailors can swim. Besides, there will be lots of floating wood men can use as rafts and all ships have lifeboats. Besides, they were more than willing to sink the Gallant in that storm and send us to the bottom. The owners of those ships have agreed to sail with the mages, and they placed the lives of us all in danger. Probably more ships, too, because they are blockading all ships from sailing south. Not just our ship. All ships. Ask yourself how many they are placing in danger—or have already sent to the bottom?”

Kendra sat in the sand right where she had been standing as if her legs would not support her. She sat with crossed legs and back straight, and didn’t answer me, but her eyes were closed. Her brow furrowed as if thinking deeply.

That my sister might be in the process of ordering the dragon to sink two ships finally struck me with almost physical impact. I sat down beside her so hard my butt hurt. One thought kept surfacing: What had I done with my words? Did I have the right? Kendra had always been a pacifist, the last of us to fight, the first to compromise, and the one to attempt a peaceful compromise. She avoided the daily practice with the Weapons-Master at Crestfallen whenever she could, was the first to surrender in our mock battles, and turned her head away when anyone drew blood in practice, which was almost daily.

I had braced myself for her refusal, not acceptance.

It had happened. Without Kendra saying so, I looked at her calm face, trying to understand what was going on in her mind. Anna and Emma remained as silent as Flier, all sensing something important was happening. My sister had changed in the last twenty days; I knew that. I didn’t know how much.