Dragon Master (3 page)

I started to leave to find Boe and Daija when I heard the commander bark out, “Caedan.”

I stopped in my tracks and slowly looked back at the tableau behind me. Gable was resting on one knee, supporting himself by resting with his weight on his sword which was jabbed into the ground beside him. Bayrd was jogging away toward the barracks. Hawk and the combatant were both staring at me.

“Caedan, suit up.” Training was supposed to be on hiatus for the festival, but it was unmistakably an order. I spun around and jogged after Bayrd into the barracks to don my armor and retrieve my practice sword. I could not believe this was happening.

Once we were prepared, Commander Hawk had Bayrd face another challenger, the combatant who had won his match immediately before the intermission. He was much smaller than Bayrd, and shorter even than Boe. Although he was around my age, his hair was a silvery white, marking him as someone from the far west, possibly Waldron or Tiger’s Wharf. I didn’t have a chance to watch the battle though as I was matched up with the combatant who had just humiliated Gable. He was large, with great muscles that gave him strength without slowing his movements. He laughed when he saw me draw my sword, and he threw his own sword up in the air before snapping it by the hilt with a flourish and bringing it to bear. Neat trick.

The commander told us to begin.

I circled my opponent, watching and waiting for him to prepare his killing blow. A bead of sweat worked its way into my left eye, stinging and distracting me. Just what I needed. I tried to ignore it and focus on my foe, but my vision was blurring up. It was getting difficult to process what was happening. I lifted my sword to block a strike, then blocked another strike, low. The combatant was teasing me, goading me into committing to an attack. So be it. I jumped into the air and let out a battle cry, then kicked at my opponent’s sword hand on my way down. My kick missed his sword arm, but I brought my wooden blade swinging at that same arm. I felt contact and looked up, surprised, only to see that I’d struck the combatant’s blocking sword. His sword didn’t give on contact as I was expecting, he held it in place solidly; I tried not to think of how many layers on layers of muscle it must take to be able to defend a blow like that. Then, I was lying on my stomach, face against the gravel, as the competitor had reached out with his other hand and thrown me to the ground. I felt wood on the back of my neck and heard Hawk call out for us to go again.

I got up, blinking, and wiped at my eyes. When my vision cleared, I could see that most of the crowd had retaken their seats and some benches had already been lifted back into the air. I looked to see Boe and his family sitting on our bench, still on the ground but with a clear view of the action. Boe was screaming something at me, and his mother had her hand to her lips. Irvin wasn’t paying attention, thankfully, he was too busy talking earnestly to Daija; but she was watching me. I stretched out my arms and took up a ready position, and Commander Hawk told us this would be the last skirmish. I could see Bayrd and his silver-haired adversary still in combat. The little guy kept moving in close and then darting out of Bayrd’s range instantly, using a strategy similar to what he’d used to win his Tournament match. Bayrd snuck a glance my way and I could tell he was wishing that he was fighting this brute instead of his own opponent. In that moment, his foe darted in and struck, landing a blow to Bayrd’s lightly protected underarm. That battle was over, the Stone Souls had still not won a single match.

I tried to imagine Kamelia sitting atop the Stoneflame Watch tower, looking down at the training grounds with the aid of a wizard’s clear sight spell. She loved to come visit the Stone Souls and watch us train, and here we were embarrassing her and her kingdom in front of the entire festival crowd. It was unbearable. I wiped my brow one more time as our fight began, then intently watched my opponent as he lunged forward and started with an attack. I dodged, then dodged another attack. I feinted, then drew back and avoided the counterattack I knew was coming. We circled once, twice, and then the competitor charged at me, letting out a savage yell and swinging his sword at my helmet. I ducked and rolled away just in time, then spun back to face him as I regained my footing. He closed the gap between us, and then began to slowly raise his sword with a two handed grip. I realized that this was his move, he was lulling me by moving slowly and his attack would be coming quicker than any I’d faced from him before. Even though I could tell it was coming and was already sprinting sideways to dodge the attack, his sword only barely missed my abdomen and I could hear and even feel the air whoosh past me as my opponent lunged forward. Then, I was clear and he was exposed. I automatically dropped my sword low and then thrust upwards in the competitor’s general direction, not sure where I was aiming exactly. It didn’t matter; the brute was so large that it was impossible to miss.

I couldn’t even hear the commander call out my victory over the roar of the approving crowd.

***

The next couple weeks of the festival blurred together for me. The Tournament of the Realm packed up and went on to another kingdom, and I remained the only Stone Soul to beat one of the Tournament combatants, even if it was just one exhibition match at the end of an intermission. I was a kind of hero among the Stone Souls. Everyone in my class wanted to congratulate me and talk to me about my victory. I recounted the details of my battle again and again, embellishing and filling in details as I remembered them, or seemed to. At some point, I began telling people that I could see Kamelia on the Stoneflame Watch tower smiling down on me after my victory, even though that would have been impossible. They didn’t care, they ate it up and begged for more. Even a few complete strangers stopped me and congratulated me in the walkways between booths. Best of all, Daija was so sick of hearing me tell the same story over that she stopped trying to hang around with us and began joining her mother to go into the surrounding city on shopping trips.

As for thoughts of running away from everything, those were well buried. I was having too much fun at the festival to ruin it by worrying about escape.

Two days before the Stoneflame, Commander Hawk gathered all the Stone Souls and gave us our assignments for Watch training. We’d each join in on a full twelve-hour shift on Watch. The commander went on about how anxious the wives tended to be at this point in the ceremony, but none of us were really paying attention. Warley was drunk on the cask of starberry ale that he’d bartered off a trader and snuck into his bunk. Boe looked bored since he’d spent several of the past nights reading up on the ceremony and this was all elementary to him. Irvin just looked restless. As for me, I was mostly daydreaming about what it would be like if I got assigned to Watch Kamelia. Even Commander Hawk seemed to have difficulty paying much attention to what he was saying, despite Bayrd watching him intently and taking his every word to bear. Finally, the commander handed out our assignments on small folded scraps of paper.

I couldn’t bring myself to look. I tried to go over the list in my head, but most of the wives were just names to me; I didn’t have a face to go along with them. I heard that there wasn’t a less-than-beautiful woman among them, and I believed it, but I didn’t really care. The only name I really cared about was—

“Kamelia!” Boe’s voice cracked as he practically squealed her name. He ran to me, waving his assignment in my face. “I got Kamelia, first shift.” He spat the words in my face as in a taunt. It worked.

I tried to snap the parchment out his fingers and we wrestled for it, and he and I both ended up dropping our assignments and then trying desperately to grab at them as they flittered to the floor. The other Stone Souls didn’t pay any attention to us; they were well used to our antics.

Finally, Boe reached down and picked one of the assignments off the floor. “Wait,” he said, confused, “Actually, I have Kamelia for the second shift.”

I picked up the other paper scrap and squinted as I deciphered the messily scrawled block letters. “KAMELIA - FIRST SHIFT.” I showed it to Boe and he laughed out loud and showed me the other scrap. “KAMELIA - SECOND SHIFT.” We’d both been assigned to Kamelia’s Watch, each of us for twelve hours, back to back. This was going to be interesting! We traded our assignments back so that I had the second shift and Boe had the first shift again.

We noticed that Commander Hawk was speaking again, and we tried to stand at attention.

“… Solemn duty. Get your rest tonight so that you are not tempted to fall asleep during your Watch. The consequences would be—” he paused and looked each of us in the eyes before continuing. “Most. Dire.”

***

Back in the bunk, Boe and I couldn’t sleep.

“Do you think she’ll need to bathe? She’ll want to bathe before the ceremony.” I couldn’t help myself, I was daydreaming out loud.

“They do have private chambers with chamber maids to continue the Watch for that sort of thing you know,” Boe corrected me, shattering my latest vision. “The last thing they would want to do is tempt the Stone Soul to break his Watch vow by making him watch his charge bathe!” It made sense, but I didn’t have to like it.

“Well, I don’t think I’ll be able to help myself while I’m in there. You know she wants me,” I said. “After she watched me win my battle I’m sure she’s been dreaming of having me up there for her Watch.” Okay, so I was already off daydreaming out loud again. But so what?

“Oh, sure,” Boe laughed, “she’s been plotting and planning to get some alone time with you so that you can plan to run off together and live as outsiders.”

I laughed too, only a little nervously at the mention of running away. I was too aware that the fun and games of the festival would end in three more weeks and then the stone reality of training and having to go on a dragon quest and probably dying a gory death would still be there. I was slowly starting to consider making that plan to run away, though not with any enthusiasm. I figured the planning could wait at least another week. In the meantime, I’d just enjoy myself. Especially tomorrow night.

If it would just get here.

***

“Oh no, not you too.” I could hear the pout in Kamelia’s voice.

I looked up from staring at my boots to see her looking straight at me with big brown eyes. Her eyelashes were supernaturally long, and curled in a perfect arc. Sure enough, her painted pink lips were twisted into a cutesy pout.

There was no actual rule against talking to your charge as a Watch, though I didn’t imagine that many wives and Stone Souls had much in common to talk about. Still, I’d been in the room for two hours and nobody had said a word to anyone else. Before Kamelia spoke up, I hadn’t heard a human voice except for whatever the two veteran Stone Soul Watchers grunted at each other during the shift change. I hadn’t even said anything to Boe as he left the chambers and I entered, we just walked past each other, each in a daze. This wasn’t what I’d imagined. In truth, until Kamelia spoke I’d failed to work up the nerve to really look at her, and that was the one and only thing I was supposed to be doing.

She was still looking at me, expectantly.

“You know, your friend just stood there for hours, from the moment I woke up right until he left. When you came in,” her pout transformed into a smile and my knees buckled, “I thought things were going to get more interesting.”

I looked to the veteran Stone Soul for moral support, but he didn’t say anything, just stood with his back to the inner door of the Stoneflame Watch tower and stared toward Kamelia blankly. How did he do it? In my peripheral vision, I saw Kamelia coming toward me slowly. I quickly started studying the ornate framework of her four post bed.

Seeing that I was intent on ignoring her, she threw her arms up and dropped into one of the dozens of frilly colorful cushions that dotted the room like windswept fallowblossoms during Late Flame. Something about the scene made me crack a smile and I inadvertently blurted out a small yelp of a giggle, which I immediately tried to conceal by bursting into a coughing fit. Smooth. I glanced back at Kamelia and saw that she wasn’t buying it. I gathered up all my courage, I wanted to say something, anything.

Nothing came out. At least I was looking at her now.

Kamelia tried again. “You do know that you’re allowed to speak, right? This man isn’t going to cut off your head if you just have a conversation with me.” She indicated the other Watcher, and the loose shoulder of her garment shrugged off her with the gesture. She didn’t make any effort to replace it.

If I hadn’t already been blushing, I turned Flame red right then. I was far too embarrassed even to make an effort to look away.

“Why don’t I just come over and sit next to you, would that make you more comfortable?”

No, that certainly would not make me more comfortable. I didn’t answer.

Kamelia got up and walked toward me, pulling her sleeve back up and hiding the smooth, pearl flesh of her shoulder. That helped make me a little more comfortable. Just a little. She walked past me and I noticed that I’d stopped breathing. I forced myself to breathe out, and then breathe in. I inhaled the intoxicating scent of vanilla blossoms. Kamelia dragged two cushions over to me and set them side by side, then lowered herself into one of them. Her eyes were large and round as she looked up at me, expectantly.

“I—” I started, my voice sounding broken and so squeaky. I coughed and tried again, “I think I will be okay to stand here.” I had such a way with words.

She laughed, a genuine, carefree laugh, and I started to laugh too, nervously at first, and then for real. She stopped, and I forced myself to stop laughing as well.

“What’s your name?”

“Caedan, miss. Caedan Jade.”

“Now that’s a name for Stone Soul,” she said. I still couldn’t get over the fact that she was talking. To me.

“Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“No, miss,” I said. I was really getting into this talking thing. Words were just spilling out now.