Dragons of Summer Tide (The Dragons of Hwandor) (27 page)

Cyerant noticed that Drace had moved over to stand behind Veer with his tail and head down. “And she is?”

Shira answered. “Vara, she is Vara. She is a midwife and she is here taking care of Partonius.”

“Midwife?” Cyerant asked. “Did a spell go so badly wrong that he needs a midwife?”

“No,” Jolss answered. “He was hurt when he was putting out the fire… and Prin is gone… and I have to go find her.” The boy began to sound panicky.

Cyerant held up his hand. “Stop, and take a deep breath. Come outside with me to put Corth in the stables and start from the beginning. Now you were coming back with the mage and…” Cyerant led the way back outside.

Dinmael rode on far into the night with his little draconian prisoner safely tucked away in a sack and hanging from his saddle.  The man with his two horses and his mule moved quickly along the road to the west – toward home and fame. Shortly after midnight he stopped to rest the animals and to stretch his own legs and he made a quick meal of some dried meat and cheese from his supplies. He then switched his saddle to the fresher horse and continued on for about three more hours. He led the horses off of the road and into the trees for about ten minuets until he found a small clearing where the horses and mule could find a bit of the end of summer grass. He removed the saddle and packs and hobbled each animal in a different area of the clearing with enough rope that the animal could move around to eat. He then made a cold camp and just ate more dried meat and cheese, and then he opened the sack and dumped out the dragonet and offered it some meat and water. The dragon drank some of the offered water but didn’t seem to have the strength to eat.  The man returned the dragon to the sack and rolled up in his own blankets and went to sleep.

Shortly after dawn the man awakened to the loud angry cawing of a crow in the trees just above him. He blinked against the morning sunlight and he reached out for a nearby stone and hurled it at the noisy bird. The stone missed and the bird became that much angrier. The man quickly ate something and dumped the dragon out of the sack in order to once again try to feed the poor animal. As he watched a bird tumble out onto the ground he had a moment of panic that perhaps it had all been a nasty dream. Then he remembered the potion or tea or whatever that nasty stuff was. If possible the crow became even angrier up in the trees. The man fumbled around in his things for a moment and found his little leather flask bag with the tea in it and he took a small sip and waited until the bird in front of him, on the ground, transformed, before his eyes, into a dragon. As he saw the transformation take place with his captured dragon he heard the cawing of the crow change into the shrieking on an angry small dragonet. The man looked up and saw that the crow was another dragon – a dragon with green eyes. The man decided that if the green eyed dragonet kept following he would figure out a way to capture it also. The man reached and checked that he actually had another small net in his pocket as he had remembered.

He was still very tired but he already knew that this trip would involve very little sleep and lots of moving. He would move as many hours in a day as was possible. Always west – always homeward. Every day and late into every night just stopping to eat and rest the beasts when they needed food and water and sleep only the last few hours of each night. Dinmael wanted to cover as much ground as he could before the first snows fell and slowed his progress. He also new that he should skirt through the southern edge of the Dragon Mountains in order to avoid the worst of the snows, which would eventually make the northern passes almost impenetrable. He was a trained soldier, and could sustain this pace indefinitely. This would be his life for the next few months until he returned home to the
empire and to a heroic welcome.

The man returned the dragonet to the sack. Then he repacked the mule and saddled a horse and shortly he was on his way for a long day of travelling quickly. A few times that day he noticed a company approaching that might be soldiers of the
empire so each time he took to the woods to let them pass. In this way he knew that he could safely cover a great distance each day.

*****

The door was repaired, the fire in the library had been started and Corth was back in the stable and the companions were all together in the front hall of the tower talking things over. “We have to go now,” Jolss pleaded.

“No,” said Cyerant. We will get supplies in the morning at first light and then we will see if we can figure out where Prin is.”

“But I can feel her moving farther and farther away.” Jolss said.

“I know,” said Cyerant. “I know, but we have to make sure that we can catch up to whoever has her. That means that we need extra horses for everyone and some supplies. Besides we are not even sure which way she was taken.”

“I can feel which way she was taken.’ Jolss pointed to the west. ‘She is that way, I can feel it and she is being taken away.”

“We are going to get her back,” Cyerant assured his little brother. “But we can’t go riding off into the night with no plan and no supplies. Now let’s all try to get some sleep because tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

“I can’t sleep,” Jolss angrily declared.

Shira said. “Jolss, if you can’t sleep why don’t you do what the healer asked and see if there is anything in any of these books that can help Partonius.”

Jolss said. “Alright I’ll look.” The boy already had a suspicion of which book would explain this all to him. So he retrieved his magic book and opened it to look at the first blank page and there he watched letters start to take shape and the page then filled with the information which he needed. He looked angrily at the others as they went off to find places to sleep. He then took his book to find Vara and read to her what the book said about this sleep that had settled on the master mage. He found the woman as she sat quietly singing over the old man. For such a gruff woman she had a beautiful singing voice. She stopped and looked up at the boy and he just sat down in a chair and started to read and as he finished he nodded off to sleep. He felt someone tuck a blanket in around him in the chair where he was sitting and he heard the distant sound of a sweet voice singing as a deep darkness took him into a restless sleep. He dreamed that he was searching for something – something that he could never find. Something hidden far away in the dark and each time he would reach for it, the distance seemed to expand and the thing moved farther away.

The boy came awake sitting in a chair in the library and after a moment of confusion from his troubling dreams he remembered the events of the previous day and night. He noticed that Vara was sleeping in another chair and that the old mage still seemed to be in a near-death like sleep. He quietly took off the blanket that someone had tucked around him the night before and left it in the chair. He spied his magic book on the desk where someone had placed it. His time living alone on the streets of small villages had taught him to sneak very quietly and he put that experience to good use.

A short time later the boy had gathered his few things in his sack and he was quietly moving through the kitchen and out of the back door to the garden and then the stables. Soon he was standing inside the door to the stables listening to the sound of sleeping horses. He found his horse and he began to try and saddle it. Though he had learned how it was done he was still physically quite small and so getting a saddle on something as tall as his horse was a challenge. But he knew that he was only a few minutes away from being on his way to find his dragonet and help her.

“Good morning,” said Cyerant. “Nice to see that you are up so early.”

“How did you know I was out here?”

“Because I know myself, and my father and my little brothers. You are doing what any of our family would do at your age – something stupid. I knew last night that you would come out here and try and leave.”

“I have to find her,” the boy said as his voice cracked from tears.

“We have to find her Daralce. We have to find her together. Family and friends – companions. You can’t do it by yourself.”

“But I have to go now.”

“I understand, but the sky is starting to lighten for morning. In a short while we can all go together. Come on.” Cyerant turned to go back into the tower with a reluctant younger brother in tow.

As the two brothers walked into the kitchen of the tower they could see that Shira and Veer were now awake. Shira looked up and said. “There you are. We were starting to wonder. So you were right last night; he did try.”

Jolss looked frustrated and just stood silently until Cyerant turned and asked him. “Are you sure that you can feel her to the west?”

“Yes, she is that way,” the boy said pointing westward.

“Cyool?” Cyerant looked at the Shira. She just nodded and moved over to the door and opened it. Cyool followed her to the opened door and then went outside and a moment later the sound of her wings driving her into the sky came back through the door.

A short time later the companions were leaving the gates of the city and heading west. This time there were no puppies with them, the non-bonded dragonets having been left at the stables with instruction to the orphan from the inn to feed them meat each day and enough gold to cover the expense.  The company that started on the westward road was made up of two young men, a young woman and a boy who looked about eleven years old. Each was riding a horse and there was one pack horse, a yearling looking colt and a big guard dog. And they were moving quickly.

“I hope that the old man is going to be alright,” said Veer.

“He is,” said Jolss. “I found a passage about what happened to him. He almost killed himself with that spell. But if it were going to kill him he would have died right then. He could have burnt himself out and been unable to ever do magic again but if that would have happened he most likely would have died soon after. So he is definitely going to live and will probably still be able to do magic. But he is going to sleep for a few days and he will be weak for at least a sevenday or maybe a couple of sevendays.

“I think Cyool has found something,” said Shira. “There are a lot of travellers on the road but most are coming toward Deelt because the ferry got burned out. But there is a single man headed west and he has two horses and a pack animal. And he is moving really quickly. To get that far ahead he must have rode most of the night.”

“Why do you think that it is him?” Asked Veer.

“Because Green Eyes is following him.”

Cyerant said. “That’s right, I haven’t seen Green Eyes around.”

“Not since yesterday before I got attacked. She followed Partonius and me around the city,” said Jolss.

Veer said. “If Green Eyes is there I wonder why she doesn’t just bite him. She seems to want to bite everyone else.”

“Poison ropes,” said Shira. Cyool can smell them on the air. He must have Prin tied up with one in order to keep her from escaping. And that would explain why Green Eyes is keeping her distance.”

“How far ahead is he?”  Asked Cyerant.

“He is already at least a day ahead,” said Shira. “There is something in the woods.”

Veer pulled his sword and turned toward the forest beside the road as Drace started to dart off toward the nearby trees. “Where?” Demanded Veer.

“Not Here,” said Shira. “There where the man is riding. The road I still following the river on one side but in the trees on the right side of the road there are people, or something. Cyool can’t quite make them out but there are several of them and they seem to be moving along through the tress keeping pace with the man.”

“Great, now someone else knows that he has a dragon and wants it too,” said Veer.

Jolss urged his horse into run along the road dodging the occasional traveller here and there.

“Daralce, “Cyerant called as he pushed his own horse into a run.

Shira and Veer just urged their horses into a gallop knowing that Cyerant would catch Jolss soon enough and they would catch up before long.

A few minutes later Cyerant, being a much more experienced rider, rode up along side of Jolss and then he urged his horse a little ahead so that he could lean over and grab the bridle of the horse on which Jolss was riding. Cyerant then slowed both horses down and brought them to a stop.

“Let me go Cyerant.”

“No, you can’t run the horse all the way there, you would kill the animal and then be on foot and never catch the man. We all go together – we stay together.” Said Cyerant. “Now we will wait here for the others to catch up and let these two horses rest.”

A short time later the companions were once again riding together when Veer spoke. “What are we going to do about those foreigners who are around trying to catch dragons? We are bound to meet some soon enough. I’m all for fighting them.”

“Fighting the foreigners isn’t our goal, getting the dragon back is.” Answered Cyerant.

Veer sighed in frustration and continued. “So do we have Cyool come back and warn us to go into the woods when the foreigners are near?”

“Cyerant shaking his head said. “No, that would slow us down. Cyool should keep an eye on the man that we are following. We will keep riding on the road as quickly as we can and Corth and Drace can stay in the woods and shadow us travelling along beside us. That way if we see any foreigners the dragons can still move through in the trees hidden from view.” Cyerant glanced at Corth and gave a mental direction and the dragon bounded happily toward the trees and disappeared into the undergrowth of the forest.

“Alright,” said Veer. Drace quickly joined Corth in the trees.

“The party rode on as quickly as they could without harming the horses. Shira could feel her dragon far ahead and occasionally caught glimpses of what the dragon was seeing. Jolss could feel Prin as she was growing weaker somewhere ahead of him. Cyerant and Veer could feel their dragons moving along through the forest keeping just out of sight and pacing the companions.