Fledgling (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (2 page)

That stung me. Yes, I was small for my
age. But I hadn’t thought I looked sickly. It made me angry at myself, and at
my inability to grow even a few inches taller. What a difference even two
inches and a few pounds of muscle would have made.

“Where’s his dragon?” A whispering
voice suddenly asked from right beside me.

It scared me out of my wits, making me
scramble away in surprise. I hadn’t heard anyone approach, and was half afraid
it was one of my sisters. But it wasn’t.

Katalina Crookin was probably the only
friend I had in the world. Her father was a very good blacksmith who worked
with Ulric sometimes, helping him craft unique pieces that required a more
skilled metalworker. They only lived about a mile away, so
Katty
and I had found each other inevitably. She was small and skinny, like I was,
with a head full of wild gold curls. She had big dark blue eyes, and just about
every inch of her face was covered in freckles. The other kids in town teased
her and called her ugly. I knew it must have hurt her feelings, but she never
let it show. And when the other kids would come after me, trying to cut my hair
or throw rocks at me, she was always there to defend me . . . and no one could
throw a rock harder or more accurately than
Katty
.
She had blacksmith’s hands.

I shook my head at her, moving back to
the window to peek outside again. The knight was getting on his horse already,
dropping a purse of coins into
Ulric’s
hand before he
rode out of sight.

“I don’t know. I don’t think he
brought it,” I whispered back. Neither of us had ever seen a dragon before.

Katty
puffed a sigh of disappointment while
shaking her head. It made her gold curls swish back and forth. “I saw him
coming up the road. I knew he had to be a dragonrider. Normal soldiers don’t
wear armor like
that
,” she told me.
“Can you come over today?”

I didn’t know. Normally, I could’ve
easily slipped away to visit the
Crookins
without
Ulric or
Serah
even noticing I was gone because
usually, they didn’t care where I was. But Ulric had actually asked me to do
something for him today. Not to mention, he and the knight had been discussing
my future—or lack thereof. I wasn’t so sure I could get away with leaving
without getting caught.

Katty
was watching me waffle between my
desire to go to her house, and the inevitable beating I would get if Ulric ever
caught me over there. She smiled. “Momma’s making sweetbread,” she baited me.
“With wild honey.”

That decided it for me. I grinned back
at her, nodding because we both knew what goodies were sure to go along with
sweetbread. Thoughts of whipped butter with cinnamon and sugar, and warm milk
with a hint of honey, were already swimming happily through my brain as we
climbed down from my
loftroom
. We darted out the back
of
Ulric’s
shop before anyone noticed, and took the
narrow footpath we’d made ourselves through the prickly briars. It was our
secret path, so no one would see us.

The
Crookin’s
house was not as big as ours, but it felt more like a home instead of the
prison I lived in. Smoke came out of the chimney in the house, and out of the
stack for the bellows in Mr.
Crookin’s
forge. Mr.
Crookin didn’t really like me. That’s not to say he hated me as much as
Serah
did, but he didn’t like me coming around his house
too often. He hadn’t minded it so much when I was younger, but now that I was
fifteen, I could tell he was on the verge of telling me not to come back
anymore. He didn’t talk much, and he had a face that was mostly hidden behind a
thick, wiry beard. He wore his long black
smithing
apron every day, and his face and arms were almost always smeared with soot.

Mrs. Crookin, on the other hand, was
one of the few people who didn’t make me feel unwanted. She smiled at me when
we came inside, wiping her hands on her apron before she pulled me in
immediately to kiss my forehead and ruffle my hair. She always hugged me until
I couldn’t breathe, and asked me if I was getting enough to eat.

“What a good boy,” she said, patting
my cheeks until it stung a little. “But still so skinny. Doesn’t
Serah
feed you at all? Sit down, Jae. I’m making your
favorite.”

Katty
plopped down in a chair across from
me at their kitchen table, grinning as she slid a plate and spoon in my
direction. “There was a dragonrider at his house today, momma.” Her eyes were
still sparkling with excitement about it.

“Yeah, but he didn’t bring his
dragon.” I added, sighing and twirling the spoon through my fingers.

Mrs. Crookin brought over a platter of
steaming hot sweetbread, fresh out of the oven. The smell made me dizzy with
hunger, and it was hard to sit and wait while she put out jams, that delicious
cinnamon butter, and mugs of warm milk for us on the table. “Not surprising, is
it dear? It’s nearly springtime.”

I knew what she meant. Every spring,
Ulric packed up his tools and materials onto a wagon, and left for Blybrig
Academy. The new riders started their training just as the weather was getting
hot, and Ulric had to take molds and build brand new saddles for them. It was
when he made most of his money, but it also meant that he’d be gone for a
while. He was always completely exhausted when he came back. In a month, the
snows would melt in the
Stonegap
Pass, and Ulric
would start packing his tools again. If any other knights wanted a saddle from
him, they’d have to get it before he left or wait until after spring.

“I wish papa would let me go with
him,”
Katty
whined while she was smearing a spoonful
of jam onto a large piece of bread. “It’s not fair. Other apprentices get to
go.”

“Soon, dear.” Mrs. Crookin smiled
fondly at her daughter. They had the same gold colored hair, but Mrs.
Crookin’s
was flecked with silver. She was a much older
woman than my stepmother.

Katty
was eager to go to Blybrig, not that
I could blame her. She wanted to see dragons just like I did. Her father had
been teaching her his craft for a long time, and she was already strong enough
to do most of the little tedious jobs for him, even if she was small and
fragile looking. Mr. Crookin went to Blybrig for spring training, just like
Ulric. But he went to make armor, not saddles.

“You’ll have to tell me what they look
like,” I told her. I wasn’t able to keep myself from sounding sad about it.
When she starting working with her father full time, I wasn’t sure where that
would leave me. I’d be on the brink of adulthood with no idea where I should
go, or what I should do. I wouldn’t have a skill to sell, or even a place to
live.

Katty
smiled at me hopefully from across
the table, leaning forward and grabbing my hand at the wrist. “You’ll see them,
too, Jae. Maybe papa would let you be his apprentice with me.”

Mrs. Crookin smiled at us, but I could
still see it in her eyes; she didn’t think her husband would ever allow that.
They were all right with me coming to visit, and with me being friends with
their daughter, but they had to draw the line somewhere. I was still a
halfbreed.

I didn’t let
Katty
see how that hurt me. It wasn’t their fault, really. And it wasn’t my place to
try to weasel my way into their family business like that. “Nah.” I shrugged
and gave her as confident a grin as I could muster. “I’m going to the coast. I
want to work on one of the ships going out of the harbor. I’ll get to see the
ocean, and eat fish every night.”

Katty
looked deflated. I guess she’d wanted
us to work together. Or, she’d at least hoped I would want the same thing as
her. “You’ll smell like a fish, after all that,” she grumbled, wrinkling her
nose.
 

We ate until there were only a few
scraps of the bread left, and Mrs. Crookin wrapped those up for me to take with
me. It was dark outside when I started for home.
Katty
always walked with me as far as the property line, and she had a blanket
wrapped around her so that only her face and some of her curls peeked out.

“Jae,” she started. I could tell by
the tone of her voice she was about to ask me something serious. “Do you really
want to go to the coast?”

I’ve never been a very good liar. When
it came to
Katty
, well, she could smell deception on
me like a hound. I couldn’t lie to her if I wanted to. I quirked my mouth while
I thought about the ocean, about ships, and about eating fish.

“Not really,” I confessed.

“We’d never see each other if you
left,” she reached a hand out from under her blanket to grasp mine, squeezing
my fingers. “After papa retires and I take over the business, I’ll make you an
apprentice myself. Then we can work together and no one will be able to say
anything about it.”

I tried to smile for her. I tried to
show her some optimism. But we’d be in our twenties before her father let her
take on any authority in his
smithing
business, and
even then, I wasn’t sure blacksmithing was my calling. It required physical
strength, which I clearly didn’t have.

“Thanks,
Katty
.”
I squeezed her hand back.

We talked about dragons and knights
all the way to the property line. Then I gave her a hug, and she kissed my
cheek like her mom did, and we parted ways. I walked a few feet into the dark
before I stopped and looked back, watching her disappear into the gloom and
thorny shrubs. She was the best friend I had—my only friend really, and
sooner or later, she’d have to leave me behind. She’d outgrow me. She’d get
tired of having to stick up for me all the time.

With the bundle of leftover bread
still under my arm, I walked back to my room in the loft.
Ulric’s
shop was quiet and dark, like it always was once he’d finished for the day. He
was probably already inside, having dinner with his real family, and talking
about how soon he could get rid of me. Roland was probably just sitting there
at the table, glaring down into his plate without a word. The twins were
probably throwing food at each other like savages. I didn’t expect any of them
to even notice I was gone.

But I was wrong.

two

Ulric
was waiting for me in the dark. I didn’t see him until I had already shut the
shop door and turned around to go up the rickety ladder to the loft. I smacked
right into him, bouncing off his chest like a rubber ball, and landing squarely
on my rump at his feet. I dropped the package of bread scraps, and they scattered
out all over the ground.

           
“Where
have you been?”
Ulric’s
voice boomed in the dark like
thunder.

           
Before
I could even think about answering, much less running, he had me by the hair.
He yanked me to my feet and pushed me up against the wall, kicking the scraps
of bread across the floor all the while.

           
“Stealing
from the neighbors?” He reared back a hand to smack me across the face so hard
it felt like my eyeballs might pop out of their sockets. “Or squeezing on their
daughter?”

           
I
hadn’t been stealing or squeezing, but I knew better than to try to tell him
that. My cheek was burning like it was on fire when he smacked me again on the
other side of my face even harder. As much as I tried not to cry, I couldn’t
keep my eyes from watering up. I was terrified of him already, and now I was
afraid he might just solve his own problem and kill me. No one would ask
questions about where I had gone, except for maybe
Katty
and her mother.

           
“If
I ever catch you running off this property again, I’ll beat your skull inside
out,” he promised, yanking me away from the wall and flinging me toward the
ladder. I hit it before I could catch myself. My head cracked off edge of the
ladder, making me see bright spots of light in my vision.

           
“Get
up there,” he snarled at my back. It made a cold pang of fear shoot through me
like a lightning bolt. “And you better have yourself down here ready to work as
soon as the sun is up tomorrow. Understood?”

           
I
scrambled up the ladder with my ears ringing and my vision swerving. I didn’t
stop to ask any questions. I didn’t even realize what he’d said until I was
curled up underneath my cot, shaking with fear, and anticipating hearing Ulric
scaling the ladder to come after me. Instead, I heard the shop door slam, lock,
and the crunch of his footsteps storming back toward the house.

           
I
was bewildered. It wasn’t the first time Ulric had come after me swinging, but
he’d caught me completely off guard this time. My heart was still drumming in
my ears when I finally dared to crawl out from under my bed. I touched my
cheeks, wincing at how they still stung. I probably had handprints on both
sides of my face.

           
Ulric
had never wanted me anywhere near his work until today. Now he was ordering me
to help him? I couldn’t even begin to guess why, and it made my head
spin
with the possibilities and hopes that seemed too stupid
to say out loud. I wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, he was going to
let me be his apprentice. If he taught me his trade—heck, if he taught me
anything at all—I was prepared to learn as much as I could. I needed this
if I was ever going to get out from under his roof.

           
I
didn’t sleep at all. I lay awake until the sun started to rise, thinking about
what I’d be in for the next day, and whether or not I would able to do whatever
Ulric asked of me. Being willing was one thing, but being physically capable
was another. My heart could be in it all day long, but I couldn’t will myself
into greater strength.

           
When
I heard Ulric unlocking his shop, I was on my feet and in my shoes, waiting for
him down the ladder before he could even swing the door open. He glared down at
me like he’d found a dead mouse in his shoe, brushing past me without a word.

           
I
stood awkwardly by the door with my hands clenched into fists, and my feet ready
to run in case he turned on me again. He started into a routine I knew all too
well. I’d seen him pack up his tools before, and it made my stomach twist into
those painful, hopeful knots all over again.

           
“Sweep
out the mess you made,” he mumbled with his back to me. “Then hitch up the
wagon, and bring it around.”

           
“Yes
sir,” I answered quickly, and went to get the broom. I swept away the dried up
leftovers of Mrs.
Crookin’s
bread that were still
scattered on the floor. I swept the whole shop out, working so quickly that it
had me sweating before I went outside into the cold morning air.

           
The
fog was still thick and heavy, making the steep countryside look ominous and
grim as I went to the barn and brought out the old draft horse Ulric used to
pull his wagon. The giant horse could’ve kicked my head off if he’d had the
mind to, but the sad old thing didn’t act like he had enough energy to trot,
much less kick anyone. I hitched him to the small cart Ulric used every spring
to carry his tools and materials to Blybrig.

           
When
I led the horse and wagon around to the workshop, Ulric was already stacking
crates outside to load onto it. He commanded me to help him, and I tried my
best. My arms weren’t strong enough to lift the heavy wooden crates full of
tools, but I could carry the sawhorses, and I helped pile the rolls of uncut
leather onto the wagon. We covered everything with blankets to offer some
protection from the elements, and tied ropes tautly over the load to keep
anything from falling out during the trip.

By that time my clothes and hair were
absolutely drenched with sweat. I stood back, not looking for any gratitude
from my father, but hoping for at least some acknowledgement that I’d done a
good job. He didn’t even look at me on his way to climb up into the driving
seat of the wagon, grumbling under his breath the whole way.

Serah
came out of the house carrying a big
bag I knew would be packed with plenty of food and changes of clothes to last
him the journey. I knew better than to think there’d be anything for me in that
bag. She handed it up to him, and the two just exchanged a stiff, stern-faced
stare before she backed away and crossed her arms. Her cold eyes flicked to me,
her face looking sharper and angrier than usual. Sometimes I got the feeling she
blamed me for my own existence, or that she was jealous of any attention Ulric
gave me that didn’t involve punishing me for something.

“Just going to stand there like an
idiot?” Ulric barked at me suddenly.

My mouth opened, and no sound came
out. I didn’t know what to say, or what he expected me to do.

He jerked his head, gesturing to the
driver’s seat beside him.

My heart jumped. I still couldn’t
move, much less speak. I was terrified of making the mistake of assuming he
actually wanted me to go with him. I took a few steps, and
Serah’s
venomous glare stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Get over here, you dumb kid.” Ulric
growled in a dangerous tone. “You’re wasting daylight.”

It was a leap of faith, to think I was
invited on this trip. But I took it. I walked quickly past
Serah
with my head bowed low, avoiding meeting her eyes, and climbed up to sit on the
driver’s seat beside my father. He didn’t wait until I was settled or even
balanced to snap the reins. The wagon lurched into motion, and I almost fell
over the seat.

We took off at as fast a trot as the
old horse could manage, leaving
Serah
and the house
in a swirling cloud of dust behind us. It started to sink in, then. I was going
to Blybrig Academy. I was going to learn to make dragon saddles. Either that,
or Ulric was going to drop me off at a prison camp on the way there.

My father waited until we were out of
sight of the house to pull a wad of chewing tobacco from his pocket and cram it
into his mouth.
Serah
hated it when he chewed that
stuff, and even more when he spit it into her gardens. He didn’t say a word to
me as we rattled down the road, and I couldn’t think of a good reason to try to
talk to him, either.

When we passed the
Crookin’s
house, I leaned to look up the twisting dirt path that led to their house. I
craned my neck, hoping to catch a glimpse of
Katty
helping her mother hang laundry, or feeding their chickens, so I could wave
goodbye to her. She’d know just as soon as she saw me sitting in the wagon with
my father that I was going to Blybrig. She’d be so happy, knowing we’d see each
other there eventually. But I didn’t see her or her mother, and it made me
slump back into my seat with disappointment. Maybe she’d figure it out, or
maybe I could write her a letter once I got to Blybrig.

It took a long, exhausting, miserable
week to get from Mithangol to Blybrig Academy. The only thing worse than being
at home with my father was being alone with him. We didn’t talk. He didn’t say
anything to me at all. There was always tension in the air, and it made it hard
for me to feel safe. I was afraid to turn my back to him while we were out
here, alone in the wild.

The road wound away from our little
city, twisting through the high cliffs, and carving a steep path upwards
through the
Stonegap
Mountains. The higher we went,
the thinner the air got. It got dryer, too, and made my throat feel raw. My
lips were chapped and peeling, but Ulric wouldn’t let me have any more than the
small ration of water he’d planned out for us every day.

At night, we ate a little bit of
dinner that consisted of flatbread and some dried meat, and then went straight
to bed. Ulric had a bedroll, and he slept by the fire on the ground. I curled
up with a blanket on the seat of the wagon, looking up at the stars in the cold
night sky. Some nights, it was too cold to sleep at all, and I sat up by the
fire on the ground, my teeth chattering and my toes numb, until morning.

That’s when I thought about my mom.
When I was alone like that at night, when it was quiet, I always thought about
her. I took out the necklace she’d given me when I was little. I kept it hidden
under my tunic. I didn’t want anyone to see it, and no one except for
Katty
even knew that I had it. It was carved from white
bone, engraved with designs and words in
elven
that I
didn’t understand. It hung around my neck on an old leather cord, exactly where
she’d put it the day she gave it to me. I rubbed it with my fingers while I
remembered my mom. The memories I had of her voice, her face, and her smell
were all beginning to fade. I was afraid that eventually I’d forget her
completely.

I felt like I’d been drug behind the
wagon, rather than riding in it, all week when we finally reached Blybrig. I
was tired, sore, hungry, and thirsty. Even Ulric was beginning to look pretty
road-weary and miserable. We didn’t have much left in the way of supplies, and
I was beginning to worry we might run out before we got to the academy.

Then all of a sudden, none of that
mattered. As we crested one final, steep rise in the road through
Stonegap
Pass, I got my first look down into the valley
hidden below.

They called it the Devil’s Cup because
the land in the valley was so arid and dry. It was a small desert nestled into
a crescent of mountains, cut off from the rest of the world except for
Stonegap
Pass—unless you could fly. The only small
portion of the valley that wasn’t guarded by white-peaked mountains bordered
the coastline and looked out to nothing but
blue ocean
.
I could see the water, sparkling in the distance, and stretching out across the
horizon beyond.

I saw it all, spread out before me so
suddenly that it took my breath away. I couldn’t help but stand up to get a
better look, able to see exactly how the road wound down the mountainside into
the valley. It twisted across the parched earth, past thorny shrubs and cacti,
until it stopped before the only standing structure in the whole valley:
Blybrig Academy.

Then I saw them. What I’d mistaken for
a flock of birds circling far overhead weren’t birds at all. The nearer they
came, the more aware I became of their size. They were huge, bigger than any
animal I’d ever seen, with powerful wings stretched to the morning sun. Dragons
were everywhere I looked, flying in V-shaped formations overhead in groups of
two or more. The light danced off the gleaming armor of the knights riding on
their backs. They soared like eagles, majestic and graceful, riding the wind
that blew in from the ocean. They were perched on the high circular ramparts
that enclosed the academy complex, and even from a distance, I could hear their
bellowing calls.

We rattled down the road that led up
to the only gate in and out of Blybrig. The walls were enormous, at least five
stories tall, and made of stacked grey stones that looked like they had been
mined right out of the mountains surrounding the valley. The enormous iron
gates stood wide open, letting us into the world of the dragonriders—a
place only a select few actually got to see.