Dragon Flight (2 page)

“Creel, please stop,” Shardas rumbled. Living with dragons, I had developed a pretty good ear for their great, craggy voices, especially Shardas’s. He was amused, but also firm.

“I haven’t finished this tune,” I replied.

“Oh, that was a tune?” His voice was light with false innocence.

Picking up one of the small grey pebbles from the shore, I lobbed it at him, sticking out my tongue for good measure. He batted it out of the air and lay down by my boulder.

“It’s not that I mind,” Shardas said, “but Velika is trying to sleep.”

“Oh.” Feeling guilty, I slipped the flute back into its satin bag and hung it from my belt. “Sorry.”

“Quite all right,” he said. “She said to tell you that some day you might be a passable musician, and at that time, you may play for her.”

I smiled. “All right.”

“Now, if you would be so kind?” He rolled so that his back was to me, showing off the patchwork of old and new scales along his spine.

“Of course.”

I stood up on my boulder and leaned over his back. The burned scales, black and rough and brittle, were coming off in patches as smooth new scales grew underneath. It was horribly itchy, and dragons, like most humans, cannot scratch the middle of their backs. I was doing my part to help by pulling out the loose burned scales from the places Shardas couldn’t reach. He did the same for Velika, since she couldn’t bear to be touched by a human.

When Shardas dived into the Boiling Sea only seconds after Velika made the plunge with Amalia in her claws, his dive was so forceful that he touched the bottom of the Boiling Sea itself and had felt, in the searing pain of the burning, poisonous water, a touch of blessed cool.

A current of fresh water flowed into the Boiling Sea from an underground river. It soon blended with the poisonous minerals of the sea and heated to boiling
point, but Shardas had come near to its source, and it gave him hope. With only a moment to act before the waters overcame him, he lashed out with his tail and found Velika. Wrapping his long, dexterous tail around her neck, he pulled her down to that cool portal and forced his way through a hole in the rock that seemed barely big enough to fit a creature half his size. Fighting the current and dragging Velika, Shardas made his way through a narrow tunnel and into an underground lake of deliciously cold, clean water.

Racked with pain, melted scales now cooling into stiff armour, he pulled Velika’s head up so that she could breathe, though there was no shore for them to rest on. They dozed in the water for hours before Shardas found the strength to lead Velika up another underground river, where at last they found a cave large enough to allow them to sleep and heal.

By working their way through the caves that riddled the Feravelan countryside, they had eventually made their way here, far to the east, to this beautiful lake and secure hollow hill. To rest. To heal. To hide.

“Over to the left,” Shardas directed me, and I snapped back to attention and moved to loosen the scales where he indicated. “Be as thorough as you can. Feniul will be here soon.”

“I know.”

Luka, Marta, Feniul and I were the only ones in the world who knew that Shardas and Velika had not died in
the Boiling Sea. Unfortunately, we all also had obligations back home. Feniul had his collection of dogs to care for, Marta and I had the shop, and Luka was abroad. This meant that for long weeks, Shardas and Velika were on their own, living off what food Shardas could scavenge, and at the mercy of any humans who might stumble upon them. The poisonous waters of the Boiling Sea had extinguished their fires and they could not fly, for the delicate membrane of their wings had been burned away. It was growing back now, far slower than their scales, and their wings had the look of poorly made lace, but it would be a long while before they would be able to take to the air. This thought hurt me almost as much as seeing their burned, scarred bodies.

“I’ll get these off before Feniul and I have to leave, don’t worry,” I grunted, placing a knee against some of the sturdier new scales on his back so that I had leverage to pull off more of the dead ones.

When I had pulled the last of the loose scales from his back I picked up a metal file. The tall spines that ran along Shardas’s backbone would not fall off and be replaced like his scales; they grew slowly, like fingernails, but I was gradually reshaping them and trimming off the damage with the file. It was like giving a manicure to a giant. I scraped the file across a spine in an upwards motion, gritting my teeth at the sound it made.

“Shall I leave the file, so that you can attend to Velika’s spines?”

“Yes, do,” Shardas said, shaking his head as the grating sound irritated his nerves as well. He stretched out the wing on the side opposite me, gingerly, and I averted my eyes from the sight. “I wish she would come out during the daytime. The sunlight would do her good,” he said, his fretful tone making him sound like Feniul.

“I can understand being afraid of being seen,” I said. I also wondered if her eyes couldn’t stand the light. She had lived in the caves beneath the royal palace for over a century prior to her dive into the Boiling Sea, so it would have surprised me had Velika not been sensitive to sunlight.

“I hoped that the window would cheer her,” Shardas went on, scratching now at the scales under one forearm. “But she is still so apathetic.”

The window had alerted Luka and me to the possibility of Shardas’s being alive. He collected stained glass windows, and one had been stolen from a chapel not far from here a few months ago. The priest reported the theft to the king, in hopes of receiving money to replace the window, and Luka and I had set off in joyous pursuit of the thief.

“Does Velika like windows?” I asked. “Did she collect them as well?”

“Well, no,” he admitted. “She liked – likes – glassware. Vases, goblets, and the like. But I didn’t know how to find any of that for her.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I promised. I gave the spine I
was filing an extra-hard rasp. “You should have told me sooner,” I scolded.

He shuddered. “Yes, yes, I’m sorry. Don’t –”

We were interrupted by yapping.

A tiny white dog came running down the pebbled beach, barking in excitement. She fearlessly ran right up Shardas’s foreleg, her little claws clicking and scrabbling, skittered over his shoulder, and into my arms.

“Hello, Pippin,” I said, and let her lick my chin before putting her down on Shardas’s back.

Pippin half-ran, half-slithered down his haunches and on to the beach again, going to the mouth of the cave to peep inside at Velika before running along the shore in the direction she had just come from. We could now see Feniul, a green dragon, making his way along the pebbles with great care.

Dragon expressions are not easy to read because their faces are not as mobile as a human’s. I had found (and I could say without boasting that I had more experience in this than any other human living) that to gauge their mood, you had to rely more on body language and voice than facial expression. So it was easy, even from a distance, to see that Feniul was displeased with the pebbly state of the beach. He had been here before, of course, and had made his displeasure known then as well. When he had brought me here a week ago, he had proposed that I make use of my time by sweeping up the pebbles, to which I had made polite, noncommittal noises.

“The footing here is so treacherous,” he complained as he reached us. “I thought you were going to sweep the shore.” He levelled an accusing glare at me.

“I haven’t had time,” I said innocently. “It’s good of you to make the journey, Feniul.”

He sniffed. “Well, I did promise to take you back to the King’s Seat.”

“Feniul,” Shardas rumbled. “Creel could not possibly sweep the shore of a lake clear of pebbles. In a week or a month. What would be left if she did?”

“Dirt that wouldn’t turn and skid under my claws,” Feniul retorted.

Shardas made a sort of hooting, snorting sound, and I covered my laugh by ducking my head to continue scraping at his spines.

“I know you’re all laughing at me,” Feniul said in a huff. “And I don’t care! We’ll see who’s laughing when you twist your ankles walking on these pebbles, missy!” He lashed his tail, sending the pebbles in question clattering across the beach.

“Velika is trying to sleep,” I said, shushing him.

“Oh, forgive me.” Feniul stilled his tail, his head lowered in contrition. “I brought some supplies,” he told Shardas in a low voice. “A sheep and some peaches.” He gestured back the way he had come, where I could vaguely see a large bundle, tied up in what looked like a fishing net.

“Thank you, Feniul,” Shardas said.

A single sheep and a bushel of peaches would feed
them for only a day, if that. But still, I was also grateful to Feniul. This lake was isolated: there were no large farms where a few fruits would be missed, there were no forests with boar or deer. Mostly they ate fish, which Shardas caught by dragging a net through the water, and occasionally berries from the bushes in the surrounding countryside. Dragons couldn’t pick berries, so I harvested as many as I could during my visits and put them in the cool, dark cave. I had also brought all the cured ham and sausages that Feniul could carry, along with enough food for myself, so that I wouldn’t burden Shardas with caring for me as well as for Velika.

“I must get back to my dogs,” Feniul said anxiously. “Asta is about to have her puppies.”

“Well,” Shardas said, amused. “Do give the new mother my best.”

“I will,” Feniul said without a trace of irony.

“I’ll just get my things, and pay my respects to Velika,” I said.

Ducking back into the cave, I found my bundle of clothes and made sure the straps were tight. Then I walked quietly to the back of the cave. There, curled up on a pile of dried bracken and grasses, lay the queen of the dragons.

Velika Azure-Wing was blue, or she had been. The rich blue of her scales had dimmed in the years she had been confined to a cave beneath the New Palace by a dead king whose heirs lived obliviously in the stately halls
above. Now those dull blue scales were discoloured and deformed by her burns. Shardas was doing his best to feed her and to help her shed the ruined scales, but she had been exposed to the Boiling Sea longer than him, and she would not go out in the sun to spread her damaged wings and feel its soothing rays.

Thinking she was still asleep, I started to back away again, but her voice stopped me.

“Are you leaving us again, human maid?” Rough and low, even for a dragon, her voice scraped at my ears.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, my knees trembling. She had never spoken directly to me before. “I have to go back to the King’s Seat.” I made a little curtsy. It was not half as awkward as it would have been a year ago: I was used to waiting on royalty now, and could curtsy and bob with the best of them. “But I hope to return soon with supplies.”

“That would be good. I worry about my mate, trying to find food when he is also unwell.” A sigh rasped out of her muzzle.

“I worry about him, too.” Feeling brave, I took a step closer to her. Even injured and curled up like a sleeping cat, the queen of the dragons was an awesome sight. “If Your Majesty would do a small favour, for me and for Shardas?”

She raised her head a few inches. “Yes?”

“Go outside from time to time? Into the sun? Perhaps in the evening, or at dawn, when it is not too bright. I
think it would do Your Majesty good to see the sun and feel its rays. My mother always said that sunlight was the best tonic in the world.” I clutched at the divided skirts of my riding dress, wondering how she would take this advice from a young uppity human.

“I shall think on it,” the queen dragon said after a moment’s pause.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” I said. I curtsied again. “Please excuse me. I shall return as soon as I may.”

“Farewell.” Her large eyes closed and I tiptoed out, shouldering my bundle as I passed it.

“Oh, and Creelisel?”

Velika’s voice stopped me in my tracks. I hadn’t known that she knew my full name.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” I had to squint to see her humped shape in the shadows.

“You may call me Velika.”

“I think something purply down the front,” Lady Isla said, waving her hand vaguely at the front of her skirt. She was standing in front of the full-length mirror in her room at the New Palace, trying on a gown for her bridal tour.

I looked over at Marta, who was crouched in front of the young countess, pinning the hem of the gown in question. Marta looked at me, eyebrows raised. The gown was pale yellow and would have green ribbons on the bodice and sleeves.

Putting down the wax tablet I had been sketching on, I walked over to the countess. Assuming a thoughtful expression, I circled her, tapping my cheek. “Hmmm.”

“Don’t you think that would be lovely?”

Lady Isla was a beautiful young woman of eighteen, with soft brown hair and large brown eyes. Moreover, she was one of those fortunate people who can wear almost any colour. Marta and I were in the process of designing and sewing the gowns for her forthcoming marriage to Crown Prince Milun, which was a great
honour for us, although somewhat stressful. If the future crown princess looked bad on her wedding day, the whole country would find out who had supplied her gown, and we would be ruined.

Lady Isla was from Dranvel, a county in the east of Feravel; she had been the ruling countess since her father’s death just weeks after her twelfth birthday. She had never been to the King’s Seat, preferring to stay on her estates, which she managed with an expert hand. Then when the city had been all but destroyed in the Dragon War the year before, Isla had come to the rescue, bringing men and supplies to aid in the rebuilding.

Dranvelan masons were known throughout the land for their fine work, and Dranvelan sheep were famous for their fine wool. Isla had brought skilled workers, fleece for new clothing, and the crop surplus from her lands, besides paying her taxes in advance to help restore the treasury. The result was that the New Palace was well on its way to being rebuilt, and Prince Miles had fallen madly in love with her.