Dragon's Mage (An Advent Mage Novel), The - Raconteur, Honor (8 page)

I learned swiftly that regular clothes would not hold up to riding a dragon. I rapidly wore out the inseams of two pairs of pants. Whenever Kaya did any kind of side to side movement, I instinctively gripped tighter with my legs, which in turn wore out my pants.

I arranged with a woman to burn all of the weeds out of her flower bed and garden in order for her to make me a pair of leather riding pants. She was kind enough to make them for me overnight, fortunately, considering I only had one pair of pants left. I had to work out a separate deal to get a much thicker jacket made for me as well. I did little repairs around her house, things that her husband never seemed to have time to get to, and she gladly added a thick fleece lining into the jacket I already had. Her daughter even taught me how to braid hair, which helped significantly with the hair-in-face problem. It didn’t totally solve it, though. In fact, I had to go back to the same woman and charm her into making me a helmet that strapped in under my chin, just to contain my hair.

Remind me. The reason why I had this ridiculously long hair was…oh, for power control. Right.

When we finally had the saddle and harness right, I started to actually train Kaya. This entire time I had been directing her by voice, but that wouldn’t always work. If the wind were strong enough, or if we blundered into a storm, she wouldn’t be able to hear me.

This was where things got a little tricky.

There was one major difference between riding a horse and riding a dragon:
elevation
. I could apply some of the basic commands without a problem. Right, left, and forward were fairly standard. But you couldn’t tell a dragon to fly backwards, like you could reverse a horse. And I had to figure out a way to tell her that I wanted to fly at a particular height. I’d been in the air all of twice when these problems cropped up, and I had no instant solution to them.

Seriously. Where was a Life Mage when I needed one?

The only expert that I had on hand that understood flying was Kaya herself. I spent a full day teaching her the words she would need to know so that I could talk to her about this. After a day of flying and training and learning, we were both beyond tired, so I saved the actual conversation for the next day.

Then, after she came back from hunting her breakfast, we went to the outskirts of town and sat down, facing each other. Kaya lowered her head to where she was more on my level. I sat cross-legged comfortably on the stubby grass and thought about how to start this.

“Kaya. Do dragons fly together?”

She bobbed her head. “Fly together. Most.”

Most of the time, eh? “So how do you know how high to fly? Do you just watch each other?”

Cocking her head slightly, she thought about it for a moment. “Some. One calls out too.”

My forehead wrinkled slightly as I tried to sort that one. “Someone in the group calls out the height?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. In demonstration, she lifted her head and let out a long, sonorous sound that reminded me of wind careening through a cavern. It sounded eerily beautiful.

“Hoooo.” I rubbed at my chin, turning this over in my mind. “I can’t make a sound like that, though. But you see that we need a way for me to tell you which height I want you to fly at?”

She blinked at me, giving me this look that said
of course
.

All right, that last had been a stupid question. I admit that. “How do you measure height?” Judging by that blank expression, I’d lost her. I put my palm flat on the ground, the other drawing a line in illustration. “We measure by hand’s length. See? One hand wide. Or one hand tall.”

Kaya let out a slow breath through her nose, the air warming up considerably for a second. She did that sometimes, when I asked her a question that she had to think about answering. “One flap,” she finally said, nodding in satisfaction of her own answer.

A flap? I hadn’t been in the air long enough to know exactly how much height that meant, but she did seem to be able to gain altitude quickly that way. “So if I say, two flaps, you know how high to go?”

“Do,” she assured me, ears perked.

“So can I tap you on the shoulder? Say, if I want to go up three flaps, I tap your shoulder three times?”

Her tail started thumping in excitement. Finally, we were on the same page. “Tap good,” she answered with keen interest. “Tap understand.”

“So how should I tell you when I want to go
down
a flap?” I couldn’t very well use the same signal for both.

She looked briefly frustrated, as if searching for a word. Finally she put her claws out and pawed the ground. “This.”

“Stroke,” I supplied.

“Yes. Good. Stroke flap.”

Seemed simple enough to me. In theory at least. “You will remember this?”

I got that
of course
look again, the one that made me feel like an idiot for even asking. “Right, of course.” We spent another hour or so going through various possibilities and situations, working out signals for them, and so on. I did jot all of them down, too, afraid I wouldn’t remember them all otherwise. But when I couldn’t think of anything else to plan out, I climbed to my feet.

“Shall we try?”

She stayed very still until as I climbed on and strapped into place. Then, using the same caution she had for the past few takeoffs, she launched slowly into the air. I directed her with just the bar and reigns at first, nonverbally reminding her of the earlier lessons, and only then did I implement the new part of signaling elevation. We went up and down several times, banking and flying circles around the town, never too far away. But my caution in staying nearby proved unnecessary. Kaya had it after those first few demonstrations.

Her incredible memory fastened onto it and she never made a mistake after that.

We had spectators during this whole process, as the entire town was curious as to what we were doing. Everyone had either comments or suggestions to offer, usually over dinner, as that was the only time Kaya and I really sat still. Some of the suggestions weren’t very practical, but some of them were. One woman devised pouches that would attach to the front and back of the saddle that I could put equipment and supplies into. The blacksmith devised a type of ladder that could be incorporated into the side harness that looked decorative but still very functional. Some nights, I had more help than I knew what to do with, but it was all given with good intentions.

It was late into our third week in town, at Beck’s dinner table, when the mirror broach in my pocket started squawking.

“
Krys! Krys, where are you
?”

 I dug it out hastily, recognizing Chatta’s voice. “Here. Something wrong?”

“
Wrong? You were supposed to be home already. What’s going on
?
Where are you
?”

Oh. Whoops. I’d forgotten to call home and update them. “Er…I kind of stopped at the border of Sol…”

“
Why in great magic would you do that
?”

“Well…” I ignored the rest of the people around the table who were unabashedly listening in and told her the story.

“
Ah. Well, we were worried that something had gone wrong, but it sounds like just the opposite happened. Hmm. So Kaya is ready to ride
?”

“Ready isn’t the right word,” I assured her wryly. “Dying to be ridden is a better way to put it.”

“
Then, are you ready to get to work
?”

That didn’t sound like a casual question. I straightened slightly in my chair. “Yes. Why? Did an offer come in?”

“The city of Mellor in Osmar has sent us an urgent request. They have a brush fire that has gone out of control and they need help subduing it. The offer is actually for the whole season, as they are apparently worried that this won’t be an isolated incident. They requested three witches or wizards, but…”

“But I’m more effective,” I finished for her. “Fine, we’re on our way.”

“
They need a response on when you can go.
”

“I don’t really want to fly at night, not until Kaya and I get used to navigating from above. I’m not really sure how fast we can get there. If we leave in the morning, I think we can be there by noon or so.” Judging from the short flying stints I’d taken with Kaya, she traveled much faster than a horse at full speed, and it would take a galloping stallion a good solid day to get to Mellor from here. “Say tomorrow afternoon, just to be safe.”

“
I will. Travel safe, Krys. And keep us updated
!”

“Yes, Mom,” I teased.

I heard a mutter about “
men
” and “
never communicate like they should
” before the connection died. When I looked up at the table’s occupants, Beck gave me an understanding smile.

“Duty calls, eh?”

I nodded, going back to my cooling dinner. “Yes, it seems it does.”

Chapter Five: Mellor

I found it a little hard to leave early the next morning. The townspeople had been good to us, taking us in like a pair of odd siblings, and it felt like we were leaving home. I had all sorts of people running up and stashing this and that into my packs. Kaya had to say goodbye to every single person before being willing to leave.

Beck gave me a letter of recommendation, in case I needed it, and Hortin handed me a small sewing kit in case I needed to make any harness repairs, and both wished us luck. My chest felt a little tight when I finally climbed onto Kaya’s back and strapped in.

With a last wave at everyone, we launched into the air and took to the cool morning skies.

I was grateful for my riding leathers as the air had a definite nip to it. Even through the saddle, Kaya’s heat radiated upwards, keeping the lower half of me warmer. The upper half had only a thick jacket, a scarf and a helmet to combat the wind. My eyes quickly dried out from the air constantly whipping around my face. I definitely needed to invest in some goggles. I fell to squinting or looking down at the ground most of the time to help ease the strain on my eyes. The ride itself felt remarkably smooth. Kaya apparently had a certain speed she used for longer trips, as she didn’t flap her wings a lot, just did so in a steady rhythm that kept us going at a good clip. Every time she pumped her wings, I would rock forward and upward ever so slightly, but it never felt jarring. In fact, it felt like riding a small ocean wave.

I pointed Kaya west, heading for Osmar, and tried to reconcile the landscape I saw to the map in my hands. It all looked so different from up here…sometimes, I wasn’t sure if we were heading in the right direction.

The thick, dark smoke hovering on the horizon proved we were.

I’d never seen a skyline that dirty. Not a trace of white or blue could be seen, just billowing great clouds of dark grey soot, seeming to go on for miles. The smell of it came in long before we ever reached the clouds, too, the sweetly cloying scent of smoke. I saw the fire underneath those dark grey clouds, but had no idea which part we needed to subdue first. Some of this could be farmland, other parts heading for the town. I needed information before we started working.

Mellor was a sizeable town, almost large enough to be considered a city in its own right. It was laid out with military precision, as everything was in Sol. Still, because of the raging fires and the thick smoke, I could barely see it. Only glimpses came through, now and again, barely enough to serve as a landmark.

We came in lower, more toward the city, looking for a clear place to land. Everyone seemed to be out on the streets, running in different directions with children, packages, or buckets of water in hand. The noise from below almost seemed deafening as people called out frantically to each other, shoes and hooves and wagon wheels clattering against the stone roads, all of it accompanied by the snap and crackle of the fire lurking outside of the city. I finally spied a clear area on the dock of a sizeable lake that looked promising. I steered Kaya toward it, keeping an eye on the activity below. Chatta hadn’t told me who had precisely asked for help, or who to contact, which left me uncertain on who to approach. I didn’t want to waste time waiting on some bureaucratic process when I could be out helping.

Busted
buckets
. Down below, I could see guards scurrying about, running toward the area we planned to land in. Hadn’t they gotten the letter explaining…? Obviously not.

Kaya banked a little and then back flapped twice, setting down to earth gently. She’d barely settled before I threw a leg over her neck and dropped to the ground. I had to explain things quickly before some hotshot decided to take a stab at her.

The guard caught up to us within seconds. I focused on the one with the lieutenant’s insignia on his right chest pocket. The green and gold uniform didn’t register with me, so I assumed he was part of some sort of local militia or city guard, as I knew all the major uniforms in Sol. He looked a bit young, probably around my age, and I cursed my luck. An older man would be slower to jump to conclusions.

“Lieutenant, I am Haikrysen, a Fire Mage from Chahir. I am answering a call for help by the City Counsel of Mellor.”

That stopped him. “Fire Mage? Our request was for three witches or wizards.”

“Yes, I know,” I responded dryly. “Perhaps you can explain to me
why
you wanted three magicians? My control over fire is much better than theirs; wouldn’t I be the more logical choice?”

“Er, well, yes,” he agreed, his eyes still darting nervously to Kaya, “but you’re much more expensive.”

I blinked at him, expression blank. “I am?”

He finally focused on me. “Aren’t you?”

“Guardians, no!” I responded in exasperation. “Who gave you that idea? We charge by the scale of the job, not by how much power we have. Actually, I’ll be cheaper in the long run, as it will take me less time to put out the fires and you only have to pay one person instead of three.”

“Oh.” His eyes went nervously to Kaya. “And the dragon is…?”

“My familiar,” I explained as if it were perfectly obvious. “She’s perfectly harmless to humans; you don’t have to worry about her.”