Dragon Talker (30 page)

“It was blue,” Bernard finished by opening his mouth as wide across as he could, and made half-growl half-hissing noise.

“I could try. I have no idea if it will work, though.” Even as he said it, Yuri had the suspicion that it would. Something inside him, though, warned him against it. He was already half covered in scales, his vision was beyond what he could have imagined, and who knew what other changes were in store for Yuri if their relationship became closer. Yuri worried he might lose himself, becoming something he and his family wouldn’t recognize.

Yuri looked from Samantha to Bernard and Stone. Samantha, he felt, could take care of herself. Stone and Bernard, though, were his charge. He couldn’t risk their lives for fear of his own. “All right. I’ll do it.” Wrapped up in his own thoughts, he missed the worried look that came over Samantha’s face.

“This ought to prove interesting,” she said, as she wondered if it was time to ditch her traveling companions.

Chapter 44

Perante walked to the roof of the main hall. In addition to the typical chimneys and hoists, found on any building that had construction in process, there was a homing pigeon coop on the roof. To get there, thanks to the destruction Xeron caused the building, he had to cross planks crossing large gaps in the roof. Over the temporary bridges and inside the coop, Perante was surrounded as around 50 pigeons fluttered about, waiting for a chance to fly. Perante walked through it to another coop behind it, hidden both from view and by magic. In it, he kept his special birds: Blue Jays, red Cardinals, green Artic Warblers, white McKay’s Buntings, and Black Phoebes.   

These breeds were each associated with a dragon, and Perante derived pleasure from turning them into his own special messengers. It was also excellent cover when he wanted to send messages into hostile territory. No one in a village ruled by a green dragon would think for a second about seeing an Artic Warbler or harming one. He congratulated himself, like he always did when he entered the coop, on his cleverness.

He thought about where Winderall should be by now and picked up an Artic Warbler. The birds were magically induced to trust him and follow his basic commands. Each had a copper band on one of its legs. The bands were blank, but copper was an excellent container for magic, and fair size messages could be imbued in them. This time, though, Perante kept it short: report. He repeated this three times with three birds, sending each of them to a different region along Winderall’s path.

After sending the birds off, Perante reentered the pigeon coop and looked at the birds flying around him. The connection between the birds and dragons made sense. The birds associated with a dragon were protected, so they stayed near. What the dragon got, no one, not even the talker/mage who wrote the books Perante prized so much, knew.
It doesn’t matter
, he thought, and
how sweet to use something so familiar to dragons against them
. He wondered how much smarter he could really get.

***

Winderall patted the horse he had named Badger on the side of the neck and looked down at the dog that had been following them since Drendon. It had put on a few pounds, but he could still see the dog’s ribcage was protruding through its rough coat. All three were looking off the path into a chaos of broken trees. It was as if a giant boulder had flown through the trees, snapping them off like they were toothpicks. Badger neighed.

“We have to check that out,” Winderall said, excitement of the unknown in his voice. He pushed his heels into Badger’s side, but the horse only stepped sideways. “Aw, you little chicken,” he scolded.

He snapped the reigns, but Badger just took another step to the side. “I’ve named you half-right: you are stubborn. You know badgers are fierce, right? And I could make you go, you know?”

Badger turned his head to the side, looking at Winderall.

“It’s not worth the effort,” he said as he dismounted. He wobbled a little when he got both feet on the ground. “No wonder I don’t have a horse,” he said to himself. He took a few short steps as his legs started to feel normal again.

“Stay here,” he commanded as he started walking towards all the destruction. “What about you?” The dog sat down, deciding to stay with the horse. Winderall shook his head, “How did I end up with such timid creatures? I guess I don’t have to worry about you two leading me into any trouble.”

He turned and focused his attention on the woods. The basics of what happened were obvious by where and how the trees fell. Something very large came in from the sky and either crashed or landed hard. Based on the size the damage, a dragon was the only creature large enough to be the source of such destruction.

The wood was dry and the tracks were being reclaimed by the forest, which made him think it had been a few weeks since it happened.  Soon, he was at the dragon’s final landing place. The claw marks in the dirt let Winderall know the dragon was large and also acting strange. It looked as if the dragon dragged its feet into the landing. Dragons don’t drag their feet, and unless they are attacking, dragons do not go crashing through random trees, and he couldn’t imagine there being anything out here worth attacking.

Looking around, he saw a black, tarlike substance both flecked and smeared on leaves and a few small puddles of the substance on the ground. Burning tar had been used in castle defense for as long as Winderall could remember, and he had seen enough of it at Perante’s castle to know that, while looking a lot like it, this material wasn’t it. It didn’t have that same sharp smell, and it was brittle to his touch.

Hearing a rustle behind him, he turned to see the dog carefully, slowly, coming through the woods behind him. The dog shook with each step, one more indicator that a dragon had been in the area, but it kept coming. Winderall kneeled down and praised the dog, “You aren’t so timid, after all. Come here. I think you’ve earned a collar.”

He looked around for some Kudzu or other vines as the dog reached him and sat down. Spotting some, he ordered the shaking dog to stay as he went and broke off a two foot section of vine. He wrapped it around itself, making a hoop just big enough to fit over the dog’s head. Before he put it on, he placed a calming spell on the makeshift collar. He scratched the dog behind the ear and put it over the dog’s head and around its neck, saying, “This ought to help.”

It did. Immediately, the dog stopped shaking. Its tail, which had been between its legs, raised slightly. No simple charm was going to take away all the anxiety a dog felt in the clear presence of a dragon, though. The dog was calm enough to start sniffing around.

“Good,” Winderall approved, “let me know if you find anything.” Winderall began his own investigation. He kept asking himself, why here? As far as he could tell, this was a forest like any other. He looked up at the tree tops but, besides the ones that were missing from the crash, they looked normal. There weren’t any knocked down trees in any other direction, so the dragon must have been able to fly off after crashing.

He felt a presence at his feet and looked down to see the dog sitting in front of him with a boot hanging from its mouth. “That’s interesting,” he said, taking from the dog. “Good job. Keep this up and we’ll have a name for you in no time.”

He turned the boot around in his hands. It was well constructed. The leather was high quality, just like the stitching. It was obviously the boot of someone with some wealth. It felt oddly heavy. He shook it and heard and felt light thuds of something inside bouncing off the sides. He looked down at the dog, “Is that what I think it is?”

The dog didn’t reply. He looked into the top of the boot and saw the top of what he assumed were the remains of a dried up foot, cut off at the ankle. Bit off, he corrected himself. “What was a wealthy person doing out in the woods by himself?”

“Right,” he answered himself, “he wouldn’t be, unless he was a mage. So, what kind of mage would get this close to a dragon?” He ran through his mind, thinking of the stupidest mages he knew, none of which were stupid enough to do that.

If it isn’t stupidity
, he thought,
it must be pride
. He went through that list. Perante, who was first on it, was back at the castle. He shook the boot, “Talk to me, you arrogant fool.” The dog stared at him, looking confused. “What,” he said, “haven’t you ever seen someone talk to a foot in a shoe before?”

There was magic he could use to find out, but he wanted to see if he could reason it through, first. He worked hard to use magic as a tool, not a crutch. Thinking out loud, something he did a lot when he was in the woods, he said, “Perante, but not him. I’d know. I’d feel it if I was holding his foot. Tassaran is a prideful fool, but this is not the boot of a fat man.”

He turned the boot around in his hand, looking for anything that might give him some insight. “Wensala has the pride enough, and that skin tough as iron. Maybe. Marcus, oh Marcus. Prideful stupidity. He’s definitely a top candidate. Who else?”

He had been walking in a small circle as he spoke. Stopping, he said, “or it could be someone I don’t know. A mage keeping a low profile? That’s possible, but a dead end.” He started walking again. “Mubara?” He thought about the few conversations he had had with him, which always inevitably turned to the superiority of mages and the inevitable rise of a mage with god-like powers who would destroy all the dragons and unite every kingdom. And every time he said it, there was that undeniable feel that Mubara thought he might be that one mage. “Definitely has the pride.” Winderall was used to the excessive pride of other mages, but Mubara always irritated him more than most. “I bet it’s Mubara.”

He set the boot down on the ground. He asked the dog, “How are you doing?” Its tail wagged.

“I’m going to do some magic, so I need you to go lay down by that tree and stay out of the way.” He pointed at a tree about fifteen feet away from where he was standing. The dog had the vine collar with a calming spell, but he did not want to stress the dog out if it wasn’t necessary or valuable. Just being in the vicinity of this place was enough testing for the dog today.

While most trees were still clinging to a few of their remaining leaves, the crash covered the area in dried out leaves and branches. Kneeling down by the shoe, he grabbed a handful of leaves. He crumpled them in his hand, turning them into bits and powder. Quietly, he murmured a replicating chant three times before emptying his hand into the top of the boot. He stood up and stepped back as the leaves on the ground started to swirl around the boot.

The dog started to head farther into the woods as the leaves started moving. Winderall called, “Stay. It’s just leaves. I think you can handle it, Chicken.” The dog stopped moving and Winderall knew he had found a name for the dog. The leaves picked up speed, rising from the ground as they did so. The force was strong enough to pick twigs up into the air and move branches on the ground. Soon, leaves, twigs, and branches were circling the boot like a cyclone. The mass rose until it was almost six feet high.

The branches and twigs were the first to move in towards the boot. They took the place of bones, building up a wooden skeleton from the boot up. As soon as the wooden bones began to take shape, vines wrapped around them, simulating muscle, followed by leaves flying in, covering the bones like skin. Winderall watched the calves take leafy shape even as the branches flew in and formed femurs.

Once Chicken realized that everything was moving towards the center of the clearing and not at him, he sat down, helped by the calming effect of his collar. His head cocked to the side as he watched the human shape take form. The complicated shapes of the hips were formed by pieces of bark. Chips of heartwood from the tree formed a beating heart, hovering over an empty space soon filled with tree-built anatomy, all covered with a motley, leafy skin.

The chest, followed by arms, quickly followed. Two stones were pulled from their resting places on the ground to form eyes as the skull took shape. The wooden man stood, swaying slightly, like a tree in the breeze. Its stone eyes seemed to follow Winderall as he moved around the figure. “You are not Mubara, that’s for sure.” Mubara was strong, barrel chested. This man, while not weak, was by no means broad in the chest.

No, he was wrong in his first guess, but he knew who it was now. Before naming the person in front of him, which would end the spell, assuming he had the right name, Winderall marveled at the complexity of the figure before him. In the past, he had only used the spell on clothing left by a person. In those cases, the details were less distinct, giving a general outline of the person and his or her features. This time, using a part of the actual body gave incredible detail. Winderall could even see the outline of the figure’s fingernails.

“Incredible,” he said in wonder of the power of magic. “And the final test,” he said before shouting, “Marcus!” The figure immediately collapsed. The stones were the first to hit the ground, followed by the branches, twigs, and then, finally, the leaves fluttered down in silence, forming a small pile of tree debris.

“That wasn’t a complete failure,” Winderall said to himself. He had hoped that he might be able to get the wooden Marcus to speak, but the fact he attempted it with a leftover foot instead of a complete body made that hope on the extremely optimistic side. He figured he knew most of what the body would have told him: Perante sent him to check out the village and he found a dragon, which subsequently ate him.

As much as Winderall wanted to side with any human eaten by a dragon, he couldn’t muster up much sympathy for Marcus, an arrogant mage in a world of arrogant mages. He wondered if anyone would miss him. “Probably not,” he said, “but, for me…you’d miss me, wouldn’t you, Chicken?”

The dog had been making his way towards Winderall, making a large circle around the pile of sticks and leaves. His tail wagged at the attention.