Gloria Oliver

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Hard Shell Word Factory

www.hardshell.com

Copyright ©2008 by Gloria Oliver

First published in 2008, 2008

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Gloria Oliver

This book is dedicated to my husband, John. It was his creativity and vision, which made this wonderful adventure possible.

IT JUST WASN’T fair. Talia scuffed at the soft ground with her foot. A hawk’s cry echoed in the air, resonating with her own inner turmoil.

She sighed. It was just too early. She wasn’t ready to be apprenticed yet.

With a frown, she looked up from where she sat on the front steps of her home and scanned the tilled fields and small buildings comprising the only world she knew. She scuffed angrily at the ground again and then punched the bag at her side for good measure. She was only fifteen—she wasn’t ready!

Only three days ago her parents calmly informed her they’d apprenticed her to the Dragon Knight’s Guild. She’d ranted and raged at them, and they’d listened to her arguments, but they all knew it would change nothing. It was just the way things were done.

Was it so grievous a thing that she didn’t want to leave her home? She would have a better life, more opportunities, by being apprenticed, they told her. But what if she didn’t want those things? She was perfectly happy here!

Though their town was small, in it were several people she could apprentice with rather than go so far away. None of their crafts really were of interest, but she would get to stay here. But her parents told her it was too late for that—money had changed hands.

A soft breeze caressed her cheek as if trying to comfort her troubled face. Talia breathed deeply, calmed a little by the scent of turned earth and evergreens—all pieces of what she thought of as home.

She knew her parents gave up a lot to get her apprenticed, and with the Dragon’s Knight Guild no less.

She would do her duty, because it would make them happy, but she couldn’t pretend to like it.

And they were coming for her today.

Her few possessions didn’t take long to pack. Three sets of clothes and undergarments. The brush and mirror set Uncle Shay brought as a gift from his last visit to the capital two years ago. A dress, a present from her mother, made from fabric bought with the last of their savings. And last, the strange rock she and Lir found in the river when they were little and which she’d kept all these years.

Talia took out the mirror and studied her reflection and that of the whitewashed porch behind her on its surface. She stared at her short, brown, curly hair, her triangular face, and dark brown eyes. How would she look once her apprenticeship was over? Would her parents even recognize her? Would her years away change her until her home meant little to nothing to her anymore?

She put the mirror back in her bag, shying away from such thoughts. All she possessed was in this small bag. She was sure others owned more to show for their lives than she did, but material things weren’t so important to her. Other things she couldn’t take she would miss more—her room in the loft, her mom’s special winter porridge, the smell of fresh tilled fields. Watching the sunsets and the rising stars from the roof. Lir’s teasing and playing tag after school. Helping her father with his wood projects and working the fields. All the things she could only take with her as memories. A pang of coming loss poured through her, and it was all she could do not to cry. She didn’t want to go.

A large shadow crossed the yard. Talia glanced up and used her hand to shade her eyes. She didn’t recognize the strange silhouette. Blinking rapidly, she saw a shape cross before the morning sun. Its wings weren’t in the familiar figure of a falcon’s or a hawk’s; they were more angular, wider. And the tail, it was all wrong. It was long and thin. She doubted it was made of feathers. Then the strange shape twisted in the air and dropped, spiraling down.

“Mom! Dad!” Talia raced out from beneath the porch, trying to keep the odd, falling figure in sight. She heard the door of the house open behind her but didn’t look back as her parents hurried outside to the porch. “Look up there!”

She pointed upwards and watched the shape grow larger and larger as it fell. It twisted and spiraled at reckless speeds. Her breath caught as she made out the creature’s long neck and large head, its huge body colored a dark green with purple flowing from the scaled ridges on its back. Goosebumps flowed up her arms—she was actually seeing a dragon!

Talia’s eyes grew even wider as she spotted something glinting on the dragon’s back and realized it was an armored figure. Someone was on the thing.

The dragon and rider continued to plummet. Talia took a step back, her chest tight as they came closer.

Something was wrong. They were coming down too fast. Just when she thought they would crash to their deaths, the dragon pulled up his body and instead plowed sideways into the ground. Dirt and plants were thrown everywhere. Its large body came to a stop in the middle of the cornfield.

“No!” Talia rushed forward in a half-panic, as she saw the rider go under the dragon’s large bulk. Her hurried breaths filled with the smell of earth and something deeper, foreign. She gave the beast a wide berth as she ran around it looking for signs of the rider. She hesitated as the dragon rocked once against the plowed ground and then righted itself.

She stared in dumbfounded amazement as a moment later the rider who’d been pinned beneath the monstrous mass slowly sat up and staggered to his feet. Seemingly unhurt, he reached up and removed a dirt-covered helmet whose large red plume had seen better days.

“Are you all right?” Talia stared, not sure how he could possibly be standing after what she just saw.

The young man shook out his sweat-matted, sandy-blond hair and glanced over at her. His intense blue eyes locked with her own. A small smile tugged at his lips, brightening his flushed face. “I’m quite all right.

Thank you for asking.” He took off one of his gauntlets and ran a hand through his wet hair.

Talia frowned, for though her mind insisted it should be different, other than looking as if he’d been at work in the fields for hours without rest, the armored man seemed to be just as he claimed.

“Do you have any water?” he asked her softly.

It took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her. “Oh. Yes, we have a well on the other side of the house. I’ll, I’ll get some for you.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll get it.” The young man waved her off and staggered toward the residence.

Talia followed him with her eyes, still not sure whether or not she believed him. It was then she noticed her parents standing on the porch staring at her, their faces filled with fear and shock. She felt a cold shiver travel down her back as she remembered she wasn’t alone. Even as her eyes moved of their own volition to glance to her right, the dragon’s head swiveled on its long neck to take a look at her with one, large, purple eye.

Talia heard her mother gasp, even as she felt her own knees lock, the rest of her going terribly still.

The strange smell she noticed as she approached them earlier was definitely coming from him.

Small, dark green scales with just a touch of purple covered the dragon’s long face. Its eye was a deep purple, almost black, and it stared at her with keen intelligence. It was only when it tilted its head to the side to look at her with both eyes that she realized they were crossed.

Hello.

She heard her own in-drawn breath of surprise echoed by her parents as the soft voice rang in their heads. Was there a touch of amusement in the greeting? Talia didn’t know and at the moment was too terrified to care. “H—hello?”

The massive, scaled body moved and shook the ground as the dragon twisted to take an even better look at her. A long, snake-like tongue darted out of the dragon’s large mouth; she could see sharp, wicked teeth glinting at her. She gulped as it occurred to her the dragon might be hungry.

Before the thought could go much further, the dragon’s rider came back from around the house carrying a filled bucket with water. “Here you go, Clarence.” As if the large creature before him were nothing to fear, he set the water before it.

Talia stared at the bucket. It looked like a thimble compared to the size of the giant snout. The dragon’s tongue reached down, dipped into the water and rapidly flicked it up into the expectant mouth.

“Do you have any other buckets?” the young man asked. “It would really help me out. He’s likely to want to go through at least ten of those.” He gave her a friendly look.

Talia tore her eyes away from the drinking dragon so she could find a voice to answer him with.

“Su—sure. I’ll go get them.” Feeling abruptly free, she took off and headed to the shed at the back of the house. She glanced back behind her once, not totally able to discard the fear the dragon might come after her.

Breathing hard, she quickly searched the shed for the buckets and found three. She grabbed them and rushed to the well where she found the young rider waiting for her. “Here.”

“Thanks!” He took the buckets and quickly dropped the line to bring up more water. “By the way, my name is Kel and my friend over there is Clarence.”

She could only nod, trying hard not to look in the dragon’s direction.

“And your name is Talia, right?”

She could only nod again.

As Kel worked to pull up the water, she studied him carefully for the first time. It wasn’t often she got a chance to meet strangers, and this pair was stranger than most. In these parts, blue eyes were rare, especially bright ones like his. Kel’s features were rounded, not as sharp as those of the people around her village. His hair was also lighter than tended to be the norm. She rather favored it.

She’d also noticed in his voice a slight accent she’d not heard before. She was sure he must be from somewhere truly far away.

“He’ll need to rest for a few minutes before we can start back,” Kel explained. “I hope it’s all right.”

Talia quickly nodded, then looked away as she realized he’d caught her staring. “No, no, that’s fine.”

After the buckets were filled, she volunteered to help him carry them over to where the dragon still lounged in the field, though she made sure not to get too close. Only after three more sets of buckets were brought over did Kel finally sit down and take a long drink for himself. Once he was done, he leaned back on the ground, his armor creaking, and sighed with relief. Talia jumped as Clarence slowly stretched out and laid himself out in the sun as well, his eyes closed.

She stared at them as they lay there and rested, as it slowly dawned on her that this man was a Dragon Knight—that these were the people she was apprenticed to. It made her think of her parents. Glancing behind her, she saw they’d come off the porch, but were sticking quite close to one another. Her mother spotted her looking at them and, after making sure Kel and the dragon weren’t paying them any attention, waved for her to come over.

Talia did, and noticed her father staring sadly at his ruined fields and then with disbelief at the cause of the destruction of some of this year’s crop. She turned to look that way herself.

Almost as if he sensed he was the object of scrutiny, Clarence opened his eyes and swiveled his massive head to stare at them. Talia suddenly found herself hugged hard from behind by her mother, who pulled her a few more steps back.

With a long, rippling movement, the dragon rose to his feet. He shook the dirt off himself as would a dog throwing off water after a swim, then lumbered in a drunken walk to the edge of the fields and squatted.

Before long, a large pile of dark excrement accumulated on the ground. Talia and her parents all curled their noses at the rather pungent smell.

You can take this and sell it to your local alchemist
. The three of them stared at the dragon as his words whispered themselves into their minds.
Dragon refuse always brings in a good price. This will
hopefully make up for the unfortunate mess I’ve made of your fields
.

None of them said anything; they just stared at the dragon in amazement.

After a few minutes, Kel stretched and yawned before he sat up and quickly rubbed his face. Standing up, he brushed off some of the dirt Clarence inadvertently rained on him earlier and approached Talia and her stunned parents. “I almost forgot,” he said, “I’m supposed to give you this.” He took a small pouch from his belt and handed it to her father.

Her father opened the pouch and then looked up, confused. Talia was released from her mother’s hold as she, too, turned to see what was inside. As her father poured the contents out onto his hand, Talia was able to see what Kel had given them. Her eyes grew wide. In her father’s hand, glinting in the sun, were three beautiful rubies. Her father stared at them, his mouth moving but no sound coming out. She’d never seen her father speechless before. “We, we don’t understand…”