Dimwater's Dragon (19 page)

Kyra turned, hiding her smile as she walked away from the wizard toward the bookshelf. Her mother had been right, the appearance of submission would give her the opportunity she needed to make her own choices. She hungrily pulled the book down from the shelf and took it to the nearest desk. She flipped through the pages until she found the section she was instructed to read. Glancing at where the section began and ended, she noted that there were nearly one hundred pages about this creature. She flipped through from the back of the section toward the front to get an idea of what she would be reading. She stopped when she saw a page with a subtitle that read ‘Companions’ and had a very strange picture sketched next to it. It wasn’t exactly the same, but then again she wasn’t sure that any pencil rendering could provide an accurate depiction of the creature it purported to show. There on the page before her, she saw the ethereal creature she had fought in the dragon’s nest. Now she was more certain than ever that it had not come for the egg, it had come for her. It was called a Bibkin Wraith and was said to be a servant of the creature known as a Shade.

“Read it from the beginning,” Cyrus chastised as he moved toward his desk. “You can’t just start a subject in the middle.”

Kyra nodded and flipped the pages to the beginning of the section, not wanting to give the old wizard any reason to question her curiosity about the strange wraith.

In the late afternoon after she finished her reading assignments that Cyrus had given her, Kyra snuck back to the classroom to take the book she had been reading from earlier. She slipped it into her satchel between the other books that she normally took to read to Leatherback. She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to deal with Njar just yet. If Cyrus wasn’t of the opinion that Kyra was ready for the Shade, then Njar would be three times more defensive about the idea. Kyra wasn’t sure how she would escape the satyr’s scrutiny, but she knew she would think of something.

She closed the satchel and opened the portal. She could see the satyr chief sitting near Leatherback on the ground and playing his panpipes. She moved through the portal, arriving just a few feet away from Leatherback.

The dragon rose to stand, towering over her now as he stood nearly twenty feet at the shoulder. His horns had grown tremendously, and had she not known him from the time he had hatched, she might have mistaken him for a fearsome beast.  But she knew better. The dragon lowered its head down toward her and allowed her to pet him between the eyes. It softly nuzzled its snout against her body and then dropped back down to the ground with a
tha-WUMP!
The entire glade shook and the aspen trees vibrated as the massive creature flopped onto the ground. Kyra nearly lost her balance, but was able to reach out and study herself on one of Leatherback’s horns.

The satyr chief rose to his feet and moved around the large head to address Kyra. “He has received the magic well,” the satyr said. “He is roughly a third of the size he will be when he is fully mature.”

Kyra looked at Leatherback in astonishment. If he was only a third as big as he would be eventually, then he would be nearly one hundred and forty feet long. He would tower over the trees in the glade, and be a veritable moving fortress of teeth and fire. Now, for the first time she understood Njar’s apprehension. Any creature of that size could destroy entire settlements and be nearly unstoppable. Of course, from her books Kyra knew how large dragons could become, but it was another thing entirely to see his sheer size in person and try to picture him three times larger than what she saw in front of her. As it was now, he could swallow her in one bite if he wanted to, just as he used to do to the squirrels they had hunted together.

Leatherback must have sensed her wonderment, for he cocked his head so that his eye could look at her more directly and he smiled at her with his slightly parted lips and kind eyes. As Kyra looked upon him she knew that he would never hurt her, or anyone else. She patted his head again and then turned to speak with Njar.

“I will need to stop accelerating his growth for a short while,” the satyr said.

“I thought you said it was better for him if he grew as fast as possible?”

The satyr chief nodded his head and shrugged sheepishly. “The truth is I’m tired. To sustain that kind of magic, even here in this grove of sacred aspens, a tremendous effort is required. For now I need to scale back my efforts. I can of course continue to augment the grove to ensure that the curse does not come within this area, but it will be a few weeks before I can return to help him grow faster. Still, as it is, I believe he has made tremendous progress. He shows no sign of the taint, and he is able to hunt with you for extended periods of time outside the grove. Truly it is a wonder.”

Kyra had a question she wanted to ask, but she did not want the satyr to catch any hint of why she was asking it. She had to be careful to hide her excitement. She took a couple of slow breaths to calm her nerves and slow her beating pulse. Then she turned to Njar and smiled. “You will stay here with him, right?” She figured phrasing it that way rather than asking if he was leaving out right was the safer route.

The satyr shook his head. “I will stay until nightfall. After you leave, I’ll return to my village. It’s just for one night, he will be safe here in the grove until I return in the morning.” He smiled reassuringly and patted her on the shoulder. “He has already hunted today. I guess he couldn’t wait to sate his hunger, so I rode him and we found three elk. It likely won’t hold him for very long, but he’ll probably last through the night on that.”

Kyra’s mouth fell open and she grabbed the satyr’s hand in hers and nearly jumped with excitement. “You rode him?” The satyr opened his mouth to speak, but Kyra did not give him the chance to answer. “He flew? I mean, he actually flew and you could ride him?”

Njar smiled and gestured toward Leatherback. “How about you go and see for yourself.” The satyr smiled and gently pushed her toward Leatherback.

Kyra turned around annd Leatherback was smiling and purring softly. “When were you going to tell me you could fly?”

Leatherback emitted that soft, high-pitched squeak that Kyra had once categorized as a growl. He still couldn’t talk, but she could tell he was excited to share this with her.

“If you sit on his neck just behind his horns, you can hold them for support,” Njar advised.

Kyra didn’t need to be told twice. She ran over and jumped onto Leatherback’s neck. She reached up and grabbed the two horns closest to her and a moment later the large dragon leapt into the air climbing high into the sky above the grove.

Kyra looked down and watched the world fall away from her. The satyr shrank to the size of a bottle and then the grove became the size of a rock. A few moments later he disappeared entirely as Leatherback took her high into the clouds where the air was thin and cold. She laughed and smiled, screaming his name and shouting for joy. Leatherback stretched his great wings, soaring through the air, obviously every bit as delighted as she was given his loud and reverberating purr. The two of them circled around in the sky over above the clouds.  The thick blanket of clouds that shrouded them from the ground below silenced any fears of being discovered. How far they flew, she had no way of knowing. All she knew was that she was having the time of her life. She looked off to the north and saw the far horizon there. She wondered how far Leatherback could fly now.

Was he capable of taking her to the northern lands, escaping both his curse and her prearranged fate?

For a moment she seriously considered instructing him to do just that, but her mother’s memory was forefront in her mind and overrode even her desire for freedom. First, she would hunt the shade. Once it was dead, they would fly north.

For the moment she pushed the thoughts of revenge out of her mind, and went back to enjoying the cold breeze enveloping her and the exhilarating sensation of gliding through the clouds. She and Leatherback flew for a long time before the dragon finally glided gently back down to the glade and set her on the grass. He roared triumphantly and blew a great column of blue fire into the air while she and the satyr both clapped for him and his achievement.

“I should note,” the satyr began, “that it is normally years before a dragon can learn to fly.” Kyra nodded her head silently as tears of happiness for her friend fell down her face. “I would say his achievement has earned him a double portion of reading today, wouldn’t you?”

Kyra smiled wide and pulled the book out of her satchel. “I believe it does. With the double portion of reading today, that is four chapters. That means we will finish this book today and know what has become of our dear dragon friend, Gorliad. Shall we get to it then?”

Leatherback let out a high-pitched screech and curled into a ball on the ground. Kyra stepped over the edge of his tail and nestled into his body as he craned his head around and set it next to her on the ground, for it was now far too large to ever lay on her lap again.

“All right, let us see what has become of our friend Gorliad,” she said as she opened the book. They spent the rest of the afternoon reading together in the grove. Kyra managed to finish reading the book just a few minutes after the sun dipped below the western horizon and the first stars appeared in the sky. As she closed the book, Kyra turned and leaned down next to Leatherback’s right ear and whispered into it, then she rose to her feet and opened the portal back to Kuldiga Academy.

Njar motioned for her to wait for a moment. “What did you say to him?”

Kyra looked up to the sky and pointed to where the moon should be. “I was just reminding him that on moonless nights both Aiden and Boba play together.” She felt bad for lying to the satyr, but she knew she had to if she was to have any chance of coming back tonight without him knowing.

“That was a good story too,” Njar said. “Not as good as this book that we just finished today, but good nonetheless. I think the story of the Moon-Dragon has a lot of parallels with you and your dragon. I don’t want to jinx anything, but I do believe we have a real chance of getting him out of here before the curse can take him. You are a good friend to him.” Kyra saw just the hint of a tear before the satyr turned away and opened his own portal. “I will see you tomorrow,” he said calling out over his shoulder as he walked away. Kyra nodded and walked through her own portal back to her room.

Kyra wasted no time gathering the last of the things that she figured she needed in order to hunt the shade. She slipped into leather trousers, somewhat similar to what the Apprentices of the Sword wore during their training. They were padded along the front with little studs of metal that both held the padding in place and provided a little extra protection from attacks as they had larger flat pieces of iron just under the fabric to help absorb the shock of battle. Now that she knew Leatherback was capable of flying, she had to find some measure of rope so she could fashion a bridal, or at least something that she could use as reins to hold on in the night. She grabbed a large backpack and took it to the center of the room.

She wove a spell that her mother had taught her as a little girl, shrinking the outside of the bag so that it was no larger than the size of a coin purse, while still magically holding the same amount of volume within the bag. This way she could hang it from her waist while still in Kuldiga Academy, and no one would be the wiser. She moved toward her wardrobe and grabbed a long set blue robes. She slipped into them, concealing her armored pants.

The young apprentice stole into the hallway, checking for any sign of activity. When she was certain the coast was clear, she made her way down the long, straight hall and turned left at the first intersection. She passed two stairways and then went up the third, heading toward the training room where the Apprentices of the Sword often sparred. She went to the door and gave a gentle twist on the knob. It was locked.

Kyra bent down and removed her lock pick set from a small pouch in the back of her waist band. She glanced up and down the hall, straining her eyes and ears to ensure no one was nearby. Then she went to work. She slid the pins in, studying the bumps and ridges as she inserted her tools. She moved them effortlessly, as she had done countless times before while breaking into her father’s study. Unlike many other things Kyra was able to do, lockpicking was not a skill that her mother had taught her. This was one she had learned all on her own, and she was good at it. The tumblers inside the lock clicked into place in less than a minute, allowing the door to open and giving her access to the equipment inside. She moved quickly, knowing that it would be easier to change in her room than risk being caught in the training chamber, she hustled and grabbed what she needed, stuffing it into her bag.

She grabbed a long shirt made of feather mail, a hybrid metal of extremely light weight that was often used during training practices for Apprentices of the Sword. It was nowhere near as strong as mithril, but it was the strongest armor she could find in Kuldiga Academy. More than that, it was by far the lightest. Next she moved and grabbed a padded tunic that looked much like the padded leather pants she was wearing. She stuffed it into her bag and then looked around for rope. She was unable to find any rope, so she left the room in a hurry, careful to lock the door behind her so that no one would suspect anything was missing.

The young apprentice knew where she might find some rope, though she had hoped not to have to go there as it might delay her for quite some time, for Janik was likely still awake. He often worked late into the night before retiring to his own bedchamber, and his office is where the rope was kept.

Kyra wandered through the halls, ducking behind a set of armor on display when she saw two masters walking together across the hall at an intersection in front of her. She held her breath and ducked low behind the metal, watching around from the back to see whether the masters spotted her. Luckily they were too busy talking to even glance in her direction. After they passed, she waited for a few additional moments to ensure that they were far enough away before she left her hiding spot and continued down the hall. As she moved into a hallway on her left she saw a row of several paintings lining the hall.

She paused when she saw a great depiction of a sorcerer battling winged demons on a mountain. The colors were striking overall and the painting was masterfully done. In the painting there was a second man who held an axe and shield and was covered in blood. At the warrior’s feet lay four slain demons. She knew this scene very well without even looking down to the brass placard with the title upon it. The man with the battle axe was Janik, and the sorcerer was Cyrus.

This painting, though slightly different from the one hanging in her father’s study, was a representation of the time Cyrus and Janik had saved her mother. Kyra’s eyes flicked down to the brass plate on the bottom of the frame and read the words etched there on in a voice barely above a whisper. “The rescue of Lady Caspen, wife of Lord Caspen.” Kyra felt her stomach churn reading the words aloud. Never before had she been so bothered by the fact that her father had not gone to save her mother than she was at this time reading the placard on the painting. The one man who had pledged his life to her mother had left her there to suffer at the hands of a vampire. If her father had been imbued with a single speck of honor, it would be him in the painting. Even if he had to hire help to get the job done, he should have been there leading the charge.