The Last Dragon: Book Two

CHAPTER ONE

I watched in awe as the last true-dragon in the Kingdom of Dire flew lazily above, high in the pale spring sky. One hadn’t been seen in Dire for generations, but even if they were a daily occurrence, their passing overhead would still draw the attention of everyone on the ground. As it swooped and dived, my breath caught.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” My sister crossed her arms over her chest and said in an accusatory manner as if daring me to disagree with her. Then, in a softer tone, Kendra attempted to console me, “You haven’t really lost any of your magic powers, you know. You just need a new source of dragon essence to draw from.”

Reluctantly and silently, I agreed. However, she didn’t fool me with her kind words, and wouldn’t distract me or quell my frustrations. My anger at remaining in Mercia instead of on the road home to Crestfallen wouldn’t ease. The limited use of what few magic talents I possessed had always been with me, although they were small in nature, which is the name we gave my abilities while we were orphaned children: small-magic. Unlike the gaudy magic of mages and sorceresses, I couldn’t light up the sky with bolts of lightning or create intense rainstorms to end droughts—however neither could they. Not anymore.

Like theirs, my magic abilities had dissipated with Kendra’s release of the dragon a few days earlier. All magic in the kingdom had ceased with that single, but kind action of hers.

“Right,” I replied sarcastically, without looking at her. “All I have to do is search the sky for the only remaining dragon, and if it flies close enough to me, maybe I can perform a quick parlor trick or two.”

Kendra puffed herself up, looking like a strange fish I’d once seen. When it got scared, it puffed up like her, full of spines and a nasty attitude. She said, “Don’t blame me.”

She was right, of course, but she was also my sister and whenever possible, I always blame her when things don’t go well—or my way. It’s more than a tradition for brothers to blame their sisters. It’s required by an ancient family code, I think. It also helps make up for those times when she is at fault and won’t admit it. And other times when I am not at fault but get blamed for her transgressions.

The dragon turned gracefully and flew inland, towards the road that would hopefully soon return the two of us to Crestfallen Castle in the northern corner of Dire, where the king resided. It had also been our home ever since we could remember. Well, that is not exactly true, but it had been our home since Princess Elizabeth took us in as small children and made us her personal servants over ten years ago.

Even the horse I sat upon, Alexis, was a gift from Elizabeth a few years earlier, and it also eyed the dragon nervously, as she always did when Wyverns or dragons flew near. No amount of coaxing or consoling made her relax when they were around, and probably with good reason. The dragon had almost died from starvation while in captivity, and since Kendra had set free, it often ate to regain weight and strength. That required daily meals of two or three sheep, deer, elk, cows, or anything else the supreme predator in history desired. Anything but my horse. The local farmers were going to learn to dislike its sudden appearances too, if we didn’t convince the crown to do something about repaying them for their lost stock. Teaching the dragon to only eat wild animals didn’t seem practical.

Kendra’s upturned face still watched the sky with utter fascination as I calmed Alexis and fought her sidestepping when the dragon returned and twisted its head and peered directly at us. Kendra asked, “Can you feel your magic increase when she is flying near?”

“Can I feel when it is possible to tap into her essence?” I corrected with a sharper tone than necessary. “That’s what you’re really asking, and the answer is, no. If I attempt to use my magic, it either works or doesn’t. If she is near enough, it works, but there’s nothing that tells me so until I try.”

Kendra shrugged, her eyes still on the dragon. “Of course, that’s what I meant to say. My mind can sense her at a distance, even her direction, but I’m trying to figure out how far away you can, if at all.”

After considering her comment, my curiosity got the better of me. The only known dragon had been imprisoned in a cave in Mercia over four hundred years ago, but I had managed to draw miniscule amounts of her essence while we lived in a far-off corner of Dire. Kendra’s curiosity was normal. The royal mages and the two sorceresses who also lived in Crestfallen performed their magic by drawing on the same source, which had been located four days away by horseback if one rode fast.

Now, my magic didn’t work unless the dragon was within sight.

Since Kendra had freed the dragon, she had acquired a few magical powers of her own, when before she had none. Neither of us knew the extent of those new powers or the possibilities to come. Not yet. While the source of magic now quickly dissipated with distance, despite me being physically closer to the dragon, sometimes nothing happened when I tried to use essence. It was as if the dragon couldn’t help but share its powers while it had been held a prisoner, and now she withheld her essence in anger. Or, perhaps her mage captors had concentrated it in some manner that allowed mages and I to use it at a distance. Of course, I had been an accidental and unknown participant.

“Something important has changed,” I told my sister. “Feel it?”

We walked together around the rubble of the destroyed lower portion of what had been the city of Mercia. We avoided the deepest rubble, the remains of grand buildings. The four equidistant waterfalls still flowed. The city had been built between them. The cliffs had once held buildings that clung to the dark gray stone. The low rumbles from them were a constant reminder of their majesty and power. Above, somewhere high up the side of the cliff, was the cave where the dragon had been chained, and where Kendra wished us to climb. Up the same cliff where the dragon had been kept in a cave which was every bit as much destroyed as the lower city.

As we walked, I was reminded of an old children’s game and rhyme about everything falling down. That phrase came to mind and wouldn’t leave. It went round and round inside until I unconsciously hummed the tune and couldn’t make it go away. What was left of a city where a thousand servants worked for five or six powerful mages was now a broken and tumbled pile of rubble. It had fallen down. When my sister had freed the bonds of the dragon, its first task, no matter how weak the beast had become, was to destroy the cave. The second was to destroy the hated city where her captors lived in comfort and luxury.

The dragon was a female, Kendra assured me. We were learning to refer to it as a her, but the task was difficult when the word monster came to my mind quicker. Kendra’s head tilted back again, this time to examine the sheer cliff between the waterfalls, and the crude stone stairs cut along the rock face. “Part of the answers we seek might be right up there. Right in front of us. We have to climb up there, and you know it.”

I didn’t know it. As far as I was concerned, we’d already done far more than required from a pair of personal servants to a minor princess. “That’s a lot of stairs. Even if we climb all the way up, the dragon probably ruined the steps at the very top, making them impassible. We probably can’t even get to where the cave was. We may as well stay down here and wait for Elizabeth to return.” My reasoning was sound on both points. What I told her was true, and I didn’t want to attempt to climb up there. Both were logical. No, there was a third point, too. I didn’t want to find out what might lie up there if it was bad.

She relented, just a little. “Tomorrow, not today. We’ll start early so we won’t have to climb down them in the dark.”

“We can’t sleep here. This place is haunted—and you’re the cause. It is a dead city.”

Her eyes narrowed at my accusation and lowered from the side of the mountain until they found me—where they seized me as firmly as if she had wrapped her arms around my body and squeezed. “The Blue Woman, the local residents, the mages, and even the spirits have departed. Stata, the husk of a man who attacked us is also dead and turned to dust. The mages have all fled to other lands. There is nothing left here to fear unless we trip over a loose stone or brick.”

“The mage who used Stata’s body isn’t dead, only the husk is. He might come after us in another dead man’s body. Or woman. Or bear. And who knows what the Blue Woman’s spirit will do?”

She scowled but said nothing more. It became clear we were going to climb up there, no matter if I wished to or not. Her jaw was set, her lips were thin lines. I met her gaze. “We’d better find a place to spend the night, hopefully so far away you won’t wish to travel back here tomorrow.”

I turned Alexis with a jab of my knee and rode away at a fast gallop as if my words spurred her on instead of my heels digging into her belly. To our left, the dragon had knocked down the City Gate of Mercia that had stood at the edge of the raging white river. It had also knocked down the arched stone bridge beyond that had crossed the river. That left us no choice but to travel back along the old road following this side of the river, back to the Port of Mercia. The port city was located on the main branch of the river, inland a half-day’s sail from the salty ocean, like all great seaports. They were built on freshwater rivers because the ravenous salt-water worms ate the ship’s hulls. The worms didn’t survive in fresh water. Besides, fresh water also killed the weeds and barnacles that attached themselves to the hulls and slowed the ship’s speed.

Sleeping in the barren and rocky open, an area with no trees and few plants of any sort, that was exposed to the harsh, cold and wet winds that swept in off the sea didn’t appeal to me. Our choices were to travel all the way to the inland city of Andover, a large place filled with intrigue and enemies, or the nearer Port of Mercia. The port was a collection of small ramshackle collection of houses built with boards weathered as gray as the rocky land. It was occupied nightly by hundreds of rowdy sailors, loose women, crooked gambling houses, cheap taverns, dangerous bars, and other businesses that existed primarily to fleece the sailors of their wages and the ships of their profits. I liked it there.

While we had been in the Port of Mercia a day earlier, tracking down a couple of rogue mages who fled the city, there had been one little woman with untamed wild hair the color of a hot fire standing at the entrance of an inn. She had looked at me in a way that demanded my return. That was my wish, too.

However, my sister and Princess Elizabeth had recently taken to doing the opposite of anything and everything I suggested. But I knew Kendra had an aversion to sleeping on a single blanket in the damp and exposed landscape where the tallest bush rose only to my knees. It wouldn’t appeal to her. And even those nearby places that offered minimal shelter were few, so I slyly turned to her and said in a false resigned and defeated voice, “We might as well sleep out here on the bare rocks so we can get an early start up those stairs in the morning. It’s going to take us all day.”

She rode on in silence. But I knew she would soon contradict me and insist we sleep in the comfort of an inn at the port. Perhaps, without my obvious intervention, she could be convinced to stay at the one where that redheaded slip of a girl worked. The trick was to be patient and allow my sister to correct me and thus allow me to have my way.

Instead, she said, “Well, you know best, Damon. A bed and a hot meal at a warm, friendly inn sounded good to me, but if you insist, this is where we’ll stay.”

Damn. She had turned it back on me. My horse Alexis would have liked a bucket of grain to eat instead of the thorny plants we rode by, but my foolhardy attempt to outwit my sister had utterly failed, and now we’d both go hungry. Alexis turned her head to look at me with one accusing eye as if the horse understood what had just happened.

The reasons to remain nearby Mercia and the stairs for the night made good sense and going all the way back to town didn’t. The return ride in the morning would give us a later start on the stairs.

She said, just as slyly as my remark and without a hint of humor, “Too bad that little girl with the big smile and all that hair won’t have another chance to grab your attention. Oh, I’m sure you didn’t notice her when we rode through town, but she sure noticed you.”

“The one with the red hair?” I couldn’t keep the eagerness out of my voice and knew the instant her laughter sounded that she’d outwitted me again.

“That would be her,” Kendra laughed again, a merry tinkling of triumph as she spoke in a too-sad voice that was as phony as the voices in a puppet show. “Listen, we’ve been sleeping outside for what seems like weeks. I can do with a bath, soft pallet, and a bowl of hot food. Would you mind terribly if we return to the port and stay at an inn for just tonight? I know it’s a lot to ask, but please?”

I kept Alexis moving and proudly refused to turn and look at the grin that was surely plastered on my sister’s face. The port town came into view after a ride of silence, the low gray wood buildings almost the same color as the fog, and the gray river beyond. In denser fog, it would be invisible. Only the masts of a few ships stood above the roofs of the few two-story buildings. Most of them were only one story, clustered along one main street.

One of them had no stories. It had been destroyed by Kendra’s angry dragon the day before. Inside had been four people, all working in concert against the King of Dire, our king. They had planned to supplant him with a double to impersonate him, to switch places and while ruling he would appoint their friends and cohorts to important positions. They had used the dragon’s essence for the magic they turned against the king. When released, the dragon had taken out centuries of pent-up anger and frustrations on them, and on the building where they hid. When last seen, the pile of rubble that had been a large two-story building stood no higher than my thigh.

The dragon flew over us again as if keeping a wary eye on Kendra, which was probably true. At the elaborate City Gate of the port, a familiar figure lounged against one stanchion and waited for us, arms crossed over his chest in careless disregard. He appeared totally at ease, almost part of the landscape as he stood unmoving, only his eyes followed us. It was a man known as Avery, the head servant for the Heir Apparent, the next King of Dire, and a rival of mine for years. He was sent here on an unknown mission by his master.

I pulled up next to him and waited to see if he greeted me in a friendly manner or the snide way that was normal in our relationship at Crestfallen Castle. Kendra stopped beside me before he spoke, addressing both of us in his superior manner, yet he seemed to allow grudging respect to enter his manner.

“I heard the two of you were returning this way.”

“So, you came out in the damp and chill just to greet us? How thoughtful,” I said pleasantly.

“Ah, Damon. If nothing else, we know you are loyal to the crown, and that will be remembered long after you depart this foul place and return to your shared apartment. Loyal to a fault, some might say.”

“Loyal to my princess.” After a glance at Kendra to make sure it was okay to continue sniping at him, I said, “Have you heard any good rumors or even a few true facts we should know about? Or, did you travel to this miserable city to stand in the cold and damp for pleasure?”

My barbs missed as he casually brushed them aside with a tilt of his chin. “Do you have specific rumors in mind that you wish to know? There are so many juicy rumors floating around this port that the largest of the ships in the harbor could sail upon them if they were water.” His smirk at his choice of colorful words usually enchanted both of us. In truth, he always had a way to turn and twist words to his advantage.

In our past encounters, Avery had always been busy with palace intrigue and politics, and he was perhaps the best at it of all the servants. Even when the palace was located several days away, he searched for advantages he could use in the future. Still, there was certainly news he would know of Mercia that we didn’t, and that could help us. His greatest ability was to ferret out tiny threads of rumor and truth and weave them into a tapestry of interest or fact. While rivals, we served the same crown.

In my most pleasant voice, I said, “No doubt you’ve heard about the Mage War we’re engaged in, and how they kept the last dragon penned in a cave and drew on its strength for their personal benefit and the source of their magic. What you may not have yet heard is that we believe they used that same magic to make our king ill, on his deathbed some say, and four people in this city intended to replace him with a double who now lies dead in the rubble of an inn here in the port. Kendra has freed the dragon and prevented the future misuse of magic, and we think our king may have healed with the release of the dragon but have not yet heard if that is true.”

There was a lag as Avery processed obviously new information. He shifted, so his body faced me, instead of only his head and eyes. “Meaning the king may rule for many more years, and you believe me disappointed?”

“Are you?” My question was pointed, direct, and honest. He was the head servant to the Heir Apparent, the son who would be the next king.

He thought about that for the space of a few breaths, and that action of consideration made me like him more than at any time since we’d first met. It told me he was thinking about the answer instead of stating the obvious first thought that entered his mind. If the king died, his position would be instantly elevated. He would serve the new king, a position more powerful than all but a few in Crestfallen. Few would dare cross him. Yet, he was also loyal to the old king—in his own manner.

He said, sounding sincere for a change, “That would be wonderful news if he lives. Have you dispatched messengers to know for sure?”

“Princess Elizabeth rode to Crestfallen and is returning here as fast as possible, and if there is any change in his health, she will know.”

He sighed, “That will take days. Too bad you couldn’t have kept one of the damn mages alive or in captivity, so he could use his magic powers and ask the mage we left alive at Crestfallen about it.”

I felt Kendra’s eyes boring into the back of my head. She said coldly, “Two questions, Avery. Without convoluted answers. Are mages able to speak to one another over long distances? And is Twin, the young mage we left at the palace able to do it?”

Avery placed one foot on a raised wooden sidewalk and leaned closer, his hands braced on his knee. “I thought you already knew the first, and the second is, yes. While Twin lacks many of the flamboyant abilities of the other three mages at Crestfallen, he is excellent in passing messages over a distance.”

Kendra said, almost as a dismissal, “We are staying at the Blue Bear Inn if there is a room available for us. Would you care to join Damon and me for dinner and open, friendly conversation?”

“Open?” Avery asked, pretending puzzlement. “Friendly?”

She continued, “Conditions in the kingdom have changed in the past few days, and I suspect there will be more in the coming days that will touch us. All of us. It would be nice to know that all we do in the future supports your Heir Apparent—and also our present king. Together, we can perhaps identify and stand unified against the usurpers.”

Again, he hesitated, and again, I understood and appreciated his reluctance to make snap decisions. We had been bitter political opponents of a sort for ten years. Things like that do not change overnight. He had little reason to trust us, other than that we may now work towards a common goal that may help him in his efforts on his unknown quest.

He said, “If you cannot find accommodations at the Blue Bear, leave a word with the innkeeper, and I will find you for dinner. In the meantime, there are several interesting rumors for me to sniff out.”

He turned theatrically, and his cloak swirled out in a manner that told me he must have spent many afternoons in front of a mirror practicing the spin to get the perfect effect. He threw us a wide self-satisfied smile over his shoulder as he walked purposefully away.

“That went well,” Kendra said.

“Better than we had a right to expect. Avery may not support us, but it seems he understands we are on his side—or at least, we are on the side of the crown, no matter who wears it,” I agreed.

“He’ll make a better friend than an enemy.” She spurred her horse in the direction of the inn, and hopefully the redheaded girl waiting for me. The people moving about their business on the street in front of us moved apart as if we were a snowplow pulled by four sturdy oxen. They stood aside and silently watched us pass with undisguised interest and more than a few whispers. None cheered, jeered, or changed expressions at all. They all knew from rumors who we were, they knew some of what we’d accomplished with destroying Mercia, and they didn’t know if their lives would change for the better or worse because of us. They were wary.

Oh, there were a few who flashed tentative smiles our way, here and there a hand waved slightly, and more than one attractive young woman tried to catch my eye. Young men tried to get Kendra to notice them, but her focus remained fixed directly ahead until her eyes flicked in the direction of a tall, thin young man with a neatly trimmed beard. She had a type.

At the inn, we turned our horses over to a pleasant stable boy of eight or nine. He promised to put them in clean stalls next to each other for company. He would provide all the feed and water they wished for a single small copper coin and brush them for another. We left the horses in his good hands and made our way to the front door.

We quickly found the innkeeper. He was short, round, and his cheeks were as red as the morning sun in summer. He was the sort of man who never settled down to rest. His hands moved constantly. His eyes darted from place to place searching for small things to be done for his customers, and often his motions silently directed his employees to needed tasks. His toe tapped to a silent tune that was probably playing endlessly inside his head.

“We’re full up with the overflow of refugees from that dragon flattening Mercia. But, I got myself an idea,” He told us with his accented good humor.

With that, the innkeeper hustled across the room and talked to a man sitting by himself at one of the smaller tables. The man shook his head vigorously at the innkeeper and tried to go back to his meal. The innkeeper moved closer, spoke again, and the man’s head shook a second time. The innkeeper didn’t stop. He leaned even closer, and his voice rose. The third time, the man slowly nodded. A large copper coin quickly changed hands, and the innkeeper returned.

He said with a lopsided grin, “The fine gentleman at that table over there has graciously agreed to share a room with another. That means I have a single room the two of you can have.”

Kendra said, “How much?”

“Two meals a day, your choice of which. It will cost a full copper a day for each of you.”

Kendra said, “I meant, how much did you pay him to clear out of that room for us? From here, it looked like a full Chamberlain Coin, far more than you’re asking us to pay for the room, which is bad business. That makes me wonder.”

His cheeks turned even redder. He said, “It was indeed a full Chamberlain, but he wouldn’t accept less. But there are no more rooms in the city for you, so you should be thankful.”

“But why did you do it?” she persisted. “Or maybe I should ask if you will you do the same for the next person who wishes to stay here?”

He shrugged innocently as if excusing the action. “Just good business for me, not a bad thing, as you suggest. You see, after you’re gone, I’ll tell the tale of how the woman who released the dragon from Mercia insisted on staying only here at my fine establishment, and nowhere else. Your fame will draw in more clients to my humble inn. I will say that you loved the good food and the clean room, and I may even suggest this is the only place you ever stay when in the Port of Mercia. With that true story to spread along the waterfront, I can raise my rates, serve a better clientele, and make more money.”

Long before he’d finished, both Kendra and I were laughing. He would earn back ten times what he paid to vacate the room in the first month. It was as he said, just doing business. The cost of advertising. Kendra placed her hand on his shoulder and pulled him closer. She took his hand in hers and gave him a few coins, one of which was a Chamberlain to replace his cost, as she said, “We pay our own way in full. You can tell your tales before we leave as well as after, and we will even agree to support them—only if the cleanliness is as you say, and the food is as good.”

He showed us the room, a space no larger than my smallest clothes closet in the palace. It was barely wide enough for two to sleep on the floor side by side, and then only if nobody opened the door. On the positive side, nobody would sneak into our room while we slept, and he was correct about the cleanliness. The straw was yellow and fresh, the blankets, three of them, were aged, but clean and without signs of insects.

“The food?” Kendra asked him after inspecting the room. “We are hungry.”

“As much ‘endless stew’ from the pot you can hold, or chicken soup with rice and whatever vegetables my cook could get her hands on. There is also hard-bread.” The innkeeper smiled. “And wine or ale, but you pay for them by the mug.”

“Hard-bread?” I asked, having only heard the term once before.

“Baked just for me, right down the street to my specifications. You’ll break teeth trying to gnaw it, unless you let it soak in the stew or soup, first.”

I grinned at him. “I think I may have had the same bread at an inn near Crestfallen.”

“A nasty sort of an innkeeper up there, was he? Bad temper and dirty hands?”

“He was.”

“That would be my younger brother. Is he doing well?”

“He sold me four tired horses while I paid for royal stallions, if that answers your question. Then he claimed to the other patrons that I’d beaten him on the haggling so badly his children would go hungry.”

The chubby innkeeper laughed, slapped his knee and waddled off to serve his other customers while we found a table in a corner. I watched the eyes in the room watching us. More specifically, I watched for eyes not watching us. We were celebrities. Everyone knew us, or about us, and we were strangers. They were curious. So, any not looking our way were suspect—and trying to hide from me. None were, and I relaxed as much as a body can with all eyes in a room full of watching people.

Kendra said, “How much of that story you told the innkeeper was true?”

“Half.”

She flashed me one of the smiles most men in the kingdom would die for. We both asked for white wine when the barmaid came our way. She was maybe thirty, dark-haired and pretty in an ordinary sort of way. That means, she was not the redheaded girl I was searching for, so she was ordinary in comparison. The one I sought, I’d seen for only a fleeting moment, but knew we’d get along like the best of friends. Nearly any of the other women in the port would pale in comparison.

Asking about the redhead was not something proper to do, especially not with Kendra sitting with me. However, if Kendra knew of my quandary, she would take it upon herself and ask, then devise a reason to leave the two of us together. That would be great, until tomorrow when we intended to climb that mountain of stairs, giving my sister all the time in the world to remind me of what a favor she had done for me, and how I owed it to her to share all the details.

There are some things better done alone. We had asked for the chicken soup with rice, and of course hard-bread. It arrived, and the soup was as good as the innkeeper said, not considering we hadn’t had a full meal in four or five days. A few fried meat pies and whatever apples and such we carried had been our meals while sitting in the cold night air, and even in the snow at the top of the mountain pass.

Now we sat in a warm, smoke-filled inn with a warm fire, at a table with steaming hot soup and hard-bread and wine in front of us. He might have served last week’s stew with nothing else, and we would have eaten like a pair of sows. The white wine was actually very good, a rare occurrence outside of the palace. Here, it was sweet and strong. The effects took hold after only a few sips. I motioned for a refill.

Kendra tried to eat the small round loaf of bread the size of her fist, to my amusement. She couldn’t bite into it and tried pounding it on the edge of the table to break the crust open. More than one person smiled at her failing efforts.

I placed mine in the bowl, at the edge where I could still scoop out spoons full of soup as it soaked. She eyed me and watched. After allowing her to wait and watch long enough, I lifted my hard-bread and took a massive bite that caused soup and wet bread to drip down my chin to my chest.

It tasted wonderful, warm and full of unknown spices. What was even more wonderful was the stealthy approach from behind of a young woman. She leaned over my shoulder and used a white napkin to wipe the excess soup away. Her wild red hair tickled my nose, as strands stuck out every which way, refusing to be contained.

My tongue refused to cooperate and speak, my mind went blank, and I knew I had to say something impressive, words that would make her wish to spend unlimited time with me that evening.

I stammered, “H-hi.”