Dragon Master (4 page)

“So you’re the only hope for your family, then? The Stone Soul boy hoping to become a Dragon Master man.”

Ouch. I winced, even though there was no malice in her voice. Or maybe because there was nothing like malice there. That was how she saw me then? In a few months I’d be on a dragon quest, sent to the front lines to confront the dragon menace. I was expected to lay down my life in defense of the Realm. And yet she still saw me as just a boy? Well why did she keep coming over to watch us train if we were just a bunch of boys to her?

I guess she noticed that I was growing angry.

“You’re the Stone Soul who won his battle with the Tournament combatant.”

She didn’t ask, she knew. She had been watching after all! Yet she still called me a boy.

“Some of my chamber maids saw the whole thing, talked about it for an hour,” she explained, studying my face.

I looked back at my boots. “It was nothing.” Yeah, right. “I got lucky, I guess.”

“Well,” she said, “you get lucky when you face your first dragon, okay?”

She raised a long thin arm and held out her hand for me to help her to her feet. I hesitated for a moment, then took her hand and and pulled her to her feet, maybe a little too roughly. Her skin was soft and warm. I tried to look away from her, but caught her giving me one more smile as she walked away toward her bed.

I melted, my anger forgotten.

***

I slept like a stone the night of the Watch. My shift hadn’t ended until midnight, and the last two hours of the shift had simply involved watching Kamelia sleep. I caught myself almost drifting off to sleep twice, but memories of Commander Hawk’s “most dire” warning snapped me awake each time. I’d rushed back to my bunk after the Watch ended and found Boe already fast asleep.

And then Boe was rousing me awake. I’d expected that thoughts of Kamelia would have kept up all night, but I hadn’t even dreamt of Kamelia, at least not that I remembered. I couldn’t remember having any dreams at all.

“It’s the Stoneflame!” Boe was saying, “C’mon get ready already!” Sure, and how many hours ago did Boe get to sleep? Still, I noticed from the angle of the light streaming through the only window in the bunk that it was already late in the morning. That explained Boe’s panic: the Stoneflame couldn’t be more than an hour away.

The Watch would be stationed outside Kamelia’s doors for the rest of the day, rather than inside. I tried not to think about Master Walker who would be the one inside with Kamelia.

We met Boe’s family at the training grounds, and they quickly waved us over to our seats. There was a new girl sitting with Daija on the end of the bench, and she was talking in a hushed whisper. She kept glancing up at Boe and me as we took our seats, but she suddenly got very still and quiet when the bench started to magically rise. I was used to it by this point, but I watched as the girl made an obvious effort not to get sick. Boe reached over and put a hand over hers and that seemed to relax her. Once we were in place, Boe let go of the girl and introduced her to me as Laciann, from his neighborhood in Chialaa Valley. She smiled and shook my hand, and then went back to telling Daija her story. Daija looked over at me and lifted her hand in greeting with a sheepish smile on her face. I waved and nodded at her. Why not? I was in a good mood.

Everyone was in a good mood. We were excited for the Stoneflame.

The sky began to change color. It was so gradual that at first I wasn’t sure if I was seeing it, but with the change the crowd shifted to hushed tones and then complete silence. It had been a mostly clear blue sky, with only a few huge puffy clouds accenting the horizon. It was definitely more of a purple hue now, and the white clouds were turning orange and then shades of red, as if they were catching fire. From the next bench over, a four-year old Stone Soul recruit cried out with an eep of delight which was followed by a chorus of hushing from the adults around him. The sky continued to darken and shift from purple to a crimson red. People were pointing up toward the sun and I looked up to see that the sun was no longer visible. Where he should have been, Flame loomed, reigning supreme. She was ringed by impressive flares that radiated and curled out from around her. Though she usually glowed like an ember in the night sky, she appeared dark as blackwood at her core in contrast to the brightly lit circle of fire that she was now casting out.

I looked around me. This was my third Stoneflame, and I had some idea what to expect. Still, it had been five years between each one and I was noticing new details this time around. The clouds weren’t a steady red color, but instead kept pulsing and cycling through various fiery hues. The circle of fire around Flame wasn’t uniformly lit, and as I stared up at her I could see subtle shifts in color and brightness. This was far more impressive than any light show a wizard could produce, and even the wild beasts and birds of the forests seemed to fall silent in wonder. I thought again of Kamelia in the Watch tower, hoped that she was seeing this, hoped that Master Walker wasn’t actually in her chambers at this very moment.

The silence was broken by a uniform gasp from the gathered crowd as a shooting star erupted across the maroon sky, its bright green tail brilliantly defying Flame’s attempt to consume everything in the light of her fire. It burned out after a moment. Where the green trail had been my eyes now traced an unnaturally red afterglow in the sky, as if Flame were getting revenge for her stolen spotlight.

Boe released a barely audible gasp that sounded like “woah.”

I just watched inaudibly with my mouth open. The shooting star was something that I’d never experienced before, and from the mutterings of the crowd around me I gathered that they hadn’t been expecting it either. For the next couple minutes as I stared at Flame, I wondered what the shooting star could mean. Slowly and eventually, though, I forgot about it. We were silent again. Flame still had us all rapt in her magnificent dance.

I looked away as the blinding light of the sun suddenly shone out from behind Flame. We had been warned that watching this part of the Stoneflame could leave us permanently blind, and I didn’t want to take that risk. I looked around at the crowd again. Daija was also looking around, though thankfully not in my direction, Laciann was examining her fingernails in the returning light, and Boe was still staring up at Flame. I gave him a jab with my elbow and he tore his gaze away. I looked down at the ground for the first time and noticed that our shadows were unnaturally crisp, as if there were these people made of shadows gathered on the ground beneath us. It was unnerving. For a moment I began to imagine that the shadow people might be connected to the green shooting star, but Boe leaned over to say something to Laciann and his voice broke me out of my trance. I stole one last look at Flame, almost invisible now as the sun retook his rightful place as ruler of the daytime skies.

Boe, Daija, Laciann and I began doing everything together at the festival. We attended most of the shows, challenged each other in the carnival games, and even had an ill-fated competition to see who could eat the most exotic foods and keep them down. I came to decide that Daija wasn’t so bad now that she had her friend with her and so she wasn’t always … looking at me. Laciann was fun to be around, and she obviously had a thing for Boe, but he seemed to be oblivious and I decided not to bring it up if he wasn’t going to bring it up. And anyway, he’d stopped teasing me about Daija and I was afraid that if I brought up Laciann like that then he’d start up with the Caedan and Daija stuff.

Weeks passed far too quickly and it was already the last afternoon of the Stoneflame festival. Tomorrow morning, Boe’s family would have to leave with Laciann, and Boe and I would be thrust into our final months of training. The night of the Stoneflame, Commander Hawk had gathered the Stone Souls and assured us that those would be the most intense months of training and had even encouraged us to get plenty of rest and “to get the fun out of our systems” during the festival. We’d been taking that advice.

“We still haven’t gone for the ride on the magic log,” said Laciann.

We’d spent a good chunk of each of our days arguing over what we should do next. Now that the festival was ending and we’d done everything I’d wanted, I was prepared to agree to anything.

“That’s for the children,” Daija said. Apparently she didn’t feel the same way I did.

“It could be fun,” I offered.

“Actually,” corrected Boe, “they’re changing the ride for the final night of the festival. I hear that once it gets dark out, the ride will be something really scary.”

“So let’s do that tonight after sunset,” I said.

“The line is going to be outrageous then,” protested Daija.

Laciann suggested that we could head to the line now and that we’d take turns waiting there to save our places. After some more discussion, we finally agreed to the plan and strolled over to the line. Word had apparently gotten around about the change to the show because the line was as long as it had been since the first day of the festival. I spotted many of the young men from training class waiting in the line; some were standing with their families, others had girls on their arms. Bayrd and Gable were standing in the front of the line, surrounded by a whole group of girls, most of them obviously from distant parts of the Realm.

We still didn’t have a plan for those who weren’t going to be stuck waiting in line. I asked Boe what he wanted to do.

“I need to take another crack at that shooting gallery. I think I’ve finally figured out the trick to the arrows they’re using,” he said. I could have guessed. We’d been to the shooting gallery twice a day for the past week at Boe’s insistence. Daija had earned the top prize stamp on her second try, and I’d earned mine on our first attempt the next day. Even Laciann had gotten the runner-up prize stamp late yesterday, but Boe was still stuck with the consolation prize stamp and it was obviously gnawing at him.

“That sounds like fun,” Laciann said.

“Well, you two go ahead and do that then,” I offered. Too late I realized that I was suggesting that they leave Daija and I alone together to save our spot in line. I looked at her and blushed.

Laciann didn’t wait for Boe to respond, she just beamed and grabbed his hand, then started skipping away to the games section of the festival. Boe shrugged at us before picking up his pace to avoid being literally dragged away by Laciann.

“So what’s their story, exactly?” I asked Daija before we could get stuck in an awkward silence.

“She’s lived in our town since we were little. She’s always had kind of a crush on Boe, ever since she found out that he was a Stone Soul,” she shook her head, “she’s so sure that he’s going to kill a dragon and then take her as his only bride. Sometimes I think she’s planned her whole life around it.”

“Wow.” I said, and I meant it. That was a conviction I hadn’t had about anything in my whole life, as far as I could remember.

“Tell me about it,” Daija said, rolling her eyes. She seemed like she was about to say something else but cut herself off and just shrugged instead, then ran her fingers through her auburn bangs. I decided that Kamelia should grow out her bangs, that it would make her look younger. Then I thought of Kamelia being still up in the Stoneflame Watch tower, possibly with child. Or possibly with the next dragon growing inside of her. Then I didn’t want to think about Kamelia anymore.

Things were starting to reach that awkward silence stage.

“So what is it like being Boe’s twin sister?”

She raised her eyebrows at me, and I saw the green sparkle in her eyes. It reminded me of the green shooting star from the Stoneflame. “It’s just,” she stammered, “I don’t know.” She shrugged again. “Boe’s just… Boe.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, and I broke out laughing.

She laughed too.

“Have you decided what to spend your prize stamps on?” Daija asked me. “I just need one more grand prize stamp and I’ll have enough for my very own Stoneflame tapestry.”

“Then you can remember this festival forever,” I joked with her.

“Oh yeah,” she said, “the six weeks of my life when I didn’t have to pretend to be swamped with homework to get out of shopping with my mom.” She actually snorted. Then she blushed.

“Don’t like shopping much?” I asked her.

“That’s the truth,” she responded. “So, you haven’t answered my question. What have you decided to get?”

I didn’t want to tell her. There was a carved wooden dragon figure that I was eyeing. It was common enough for Stone Souls to collect similar figures, and then carve out little swords out of metal scraps and stick the dragon full of the swords. I didn’t know if they did it out of superstition or just out of pure hatred of dragons. I just thought the wooden dragon prize they had at the festival looked cool, and I could probably use him to give Boe a nightmare or two. I’d earned grand prize stamps for all the games, so I could go claim the prize at any time. I felt like it would be silly to try to explain any of this though, so I just shrugged my shoulders. Neither of us knew how to respond to that.

Our awkward silence was interrupted by Laciann sprinting over to Daija, waving her prize card in the air.

“I got the grand prize!” she exclaimed. I was impressed, it was only the second grand prize stamp she’d managed to earn at the games. I saw Boe trailing along slowly behind her. He was hanging his head in shame.

“Consolation prize,” he moaned. “I don’t know what it is they do to those arrows.”

The rest of us laughed.

***

The sun set and the line started moving, but only slowly, and only in staggered waves as batches of people were ushered onto the magic log ride. It was clear we’d have at least another hour of waiting before our turn would come. Laciann had sent Daija and I to go fetch flaming cola for everyone and we were all huddled together now holding our mugs close and taking sips of the brew.

I looked up at the starry sky. The twin moons of Stone and Flame were both obscured by the surrounding mountain ridges. While Flame’s red glow dimly illuminated the western horizon, the light wasn’t enough to drown out some of the brighter stars which still shone above Mount Ramses.