TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy) (28 page)

We leant against the rocks and ate bread Morgan had brought with him, courtesy of his good friend Marko in the kitchen. I looked up as the mother dragon shifted her weight, but she didn’t get up and I glanced impatiently at the time on my pendant.

Herd dragons were wide and cumbersome with short, squat legs and leathery wings. The wings were thin, but coated with soft down on the underside, and the dragons could stretch them right out in a similar fashion to a bat. They weren’t made for flying though. The herd dragon’s necks were short with thin, leathery growths that sometimes folded over to either side as they moved. The head was similar in shape to a horse’s head, but the snout on the end was large and the jaws could open wide like a crocodile’s. Dragon eyes were large, and pearly black, and adult dragon eyes glowed green in the dark. The most spectacular thing about herd dragons were their scales. Female dragons were covered in turquoise, luminescent scales that overlapped each other over their whole body. They were particularly luminescent at the moment because, in summer, the clear layer over the top of the scales was shed and a new one grew over the next three seasons. Questers collected the clear scales that littered dragon territories and these scales were then melted down and used for many things, including the small circle of glass which covered the needles in the centre of our pendants.

The sun came out from behind the clouds suddenly and the female dragon’s scales glistened. Male dragons were covered in gold and silver scales, and their wings were smaller.

We waited another clock turn and the female dragon slept. We watched her impatiently and Morgan stood up to stretch his legs. When she woke, the dragon shuffled about in her nest and she moved a few of the branches before she settled down again. Morgan rolled his eyes and I asked him if he thought we should try another nest. He shook his head. Mirren had given him the instructions for choosing a nest and he trusted her. He thought we should stay with this dragon.

“I’m glad you thought to send that message to Mirren,” I whispered, and Morgan nodded.

“It was worth the money it cost me,” he said quietly, as he watched the mother dragon move a few branches around in her nest. I looked at Morgan thoughtfully before I spoke softly.

“Where do you keep all these coins you have and how did you get them in the first place?” I asked him curiously.

“It’s not difficult to bring things you’re not supposed to into the Quest house,” he said softly, deftly avoiding both my questions.

“I know that,” I said quietly, and I grinned. Morgan narrowed his eyes at me suspiciously.

“What did you bring into the house that you weren’t supposed to?” he asked me suddenly, and he grinned as he looked impressed.

“I have a music cartridge. Josh gave it to me,” I said quietly, and Morgan’s smile faded abruptly.

“Josh gave you a music cartridge,” he repeated, and I nodded.

“I listen to the songs at night after lights out,” I confessed, and Morgan frowned.

“Can I hear this music?” he demanded, and I frowned too. If he didn’t keep his voice down the dragon would hear him and then we’d be in trouble.

“If you want to,” I whispered, but I continued to frown.

“I want to,” Morgan muttered quietly and I wondered what that was all about just as our mother dragon finally lifted herself awkwardly from her nest. She moved her thick legs over her eggs and shuffled inelegantly away from them towards the trees. She moved slowly and we leant forward and watched her as she tore a branch from a shredded tree and ate it slowly with her sharp, saw like teeth. It was another half clock turn before she moved out of sight of her nest and we climbed quickly, but cautiously, down the rise.

Morgan held his pack open and I lifted a speckled egg carefully from the nest. It fitted in my arms easily and it wasn’t that heavy. Baby dragons were only small when they were born, although they grew rapidly. The egg had a greenish tinge and brown speckles and it was slightly textured. The shell felt dry and cool rather than warm and I eased it gently into Morgan’s pack. Dragon eggs weren’t kept warm. Only the hatchlings needed warmth. The fluid which was inside the eggs acted as insulation to keep the dragon warm until it was born.

Morgan eased his pack carefully onto his back and I loaded an arrow into my bow as we followed the blue crystal arrows on our pendants back to our marker. It had taken us until well into the afternoon, but we now had the perfect egg to match our perfect hatching plan.

When we arrived back at the marker, we found that scavengers had already completely removed the bodies of the two sabre tooth tigers from the sight. Some dried blood on the ground and some drag marks in the dirt were all that remained. The Ancient Era was a thriving animal world. The earth in its prime was truly a place where nothing went to waste.

“I told Evangeline to take a speckled egg,” I confessed, as we set our pendants to the quest house marker. Morgan grinned.

“You needn’t have bothered, I told Caz to take a speckled egg too,” he confessed, and I smiled as we walked into the centre of the marker to take our precious cargo on the dark and painful journey through time…….

Everything went smoothly when we arrived back at the Quest house. We were last to arrive and Zurina marked our egg with a vegetable dye cross before we placed it in the dining room. We placed it beside two other speckled eggs and one white one. Unfortunately, Imogen and Erin hadn’t taken the right coloured egg and I felt guilty for not sharing our information with them. I felt guilty, that is, until Imogen made a remark at the evening meal about servant questers. When she said she’d heard servant questers were used for the mundane quests while only noble questers were able to join the quests that required any skill, I was almost glad she’d picked up the wrong egg. Dominic and Seth found her comment amusing and I was sorry they hadn’t picked up a white egg too.

After the meal, I took bow practice with Morgan. The practice room was lit a little more brightly than the rest of the house at night, but it was soft lighting. It was good practice to shoot arrows in low light conditions and, as we collected our arrows, Morgan told me we’d have to get branches from the cypress forest behind the house to feed our dragon in the morning. I smiled and reminded him I could do that instead of going for a run. When we went back to the Quest house and climbed the stairs, Morgan glanced back at the house control panel and I tried not to laugh as I entered my dorm room to retire for the night. Our plan was perfect and, when I lay in my bed, I closed my eyes……and dreamt of not having to go for a run…….

CHAPTER 14:

I was woken from a deep sleep by a shrill screech.

It echoed in my ears and goose bumps rose instantly on the back of my neck. I winced and my teeth were set on edge as the shrill pitch of the sound hurt the inside of my ears. I sat up and shook my head as I picked up my pendant and shivered. It was cold in our room. Erin and Evangeline were stirring and the glow from the blue crystal needle in the centre of my pendant was enough light for me to read the time. It was almost a half turn after set eleven. Set eleven? I jumped out of bed and fumbled for my clothes in the dark, but as I pulled on my pants, another grating screech pierced the silence of the house. This screech was joined by another shrill screech and I swore softly as I quickly buttoned my shirt. Why were the eggs hatching now? I pulled on my jacket and wrenched open the bedroom door only to find Morgan was already outside in the hall…..and he wasn’t happy. The hallway was lit dimly by soft cavity lighting and the same lighting glowed downstairs as well.

“I don’t know who touched the house control panel because I set it just before lights out,” Morgan fumed, as we ran down the stairs together. I could already tell it was much too cold down here. Dominic, Seth and Caspian were right behind us and Morgan stopped at the bottom of the stairs to confront them.

“Did you adjust the temperature of this house?” he demanded, and all three of them looked at him blankly. It was obvious they had no idea what he was talking about and Morgan let out his breath and looked up the stairs. Erin, Evangeline and Imogen ran towards us now too but they looked at Morgan just as blankly when he accused them of touching the house control panel. He let out his breath in frustration.

I looked at Morgan and shook my head, and Morgan gritted his teeth.

“Zurina,” we said together, just as another piercing screech grated against our ears. We followed the others into the dining room and, sure enough, three moist, ugly baby dragon heads looked out at us from three cracked and broken eggs. I put my fingers in my ears and winced again as our presence in the room caused more of the shrill, unbearable screeching.

“Go and get a blanket to wrap the thing. I’ll take a sword from the locker room and cut some branches from the forest to feed it.” Morgan spoke to me loudly as one of the babies gave another extra-long screech. I winced and nodded, and when Evangeline followed me upstairs, I knew she and Caspian would do whatever we did. There were extra blankets in the closet in our dorm room and I grabbed one and threw another one to Evangeline.

“Bad luck for you all, I guess,” said Imogen smugly. We met her on the staircase on our way back downstairs, but I ignored her and so did Evangeline. We knew she and Erin were going back to bed, but right now, we didn’t care. They’d have to do this sooner or later when they had to repeat this particular challenge.

By the time I was back in the dining room, the dragons were literally falling out of their broken shells. I picked up the baby that rolled from the shell with our mark and I used the blanket to scoop it out of a mess of egg fluid and speckled shell fragments. Immediately, the warm bundle wriggled in my arms and I looked down into an ugly, little face. Baby herd dragons were known for their unfortunate looks, as well as for their demanding neediness. While the parent dragons were covered in dazzling scales, the babies, in contrast, were covered in course brown hair. The hair protected their scales and warmed their fragile bodies throughout the winter until it finally fell in clumps from their rapidly growing bodies at the beginning of spring. Their eyes were large, and black, and their snout was a mottled grey and pink where it protruded out of the course covering of hair. Baby dragons had no claws or wings. These grew later, but they did have small, yellow teeth and I turned the wriggling dragon away from me as it tried to gnaw on my jacket. Even baby dragon teeth could give you a nasty, jagged bite.

Of course, Dominic and Seth had both gone to collect branches and their dragon lumbered and rolled awkwardly around the dining room as Evangeline and I tried to keep it away from the table legs without much success. Our arms were full of our own wriggling dragons, and when Dominic and Seth’s dragon managed to gnaw on the table leg after almost latching onto my leg, the baby dragon in my arms started its unbearable screeching again. I looked at Evangeline just as her dragon screeched too, and we both gave up on the other little dragon and left it to make itself sick on oak wood while we held our dragons tightly and looked hopefully at the back door instead.

Morgan and Dominic were first through the door and it was lucky for Caspian that he was only a few steps behind them. Evangeline and I couldn’t take the screeching anymore, and when Morgan put a small cypress twig into our dragon’s open mouth, I closed my eyes with relief.

It was almost midnight by the time we were settled for the night. We had set up camp on the tiles and we leant against the walls in the dining room. Our dragons were wrapped tightly in a blanket and we sat on more stacks of the soft, woollen blankets we’d taken from upstairs. We had a stack of small cypress branches beside each of us and Morgan had reset the temperature of the house so we were no longer cold, and neither were our dragons. Baby dragons were kept warm under their mother’s wings out in the wild so, wrapped in their blankets, our dragon’s slept contentedly now as they lay in our laps. Now that they’d eaten, tiny puffs of smoke escaped from their snouts as they breathed, and Morgan had deactivated the smoke alarms on the lower house level. He’d turned on the extraction fans in the kitchen too, to help clear the dragon’s smoke as quickly as possible from the house.

Dominic and Seth’s dragon had thrown up the oak wood as I’d feared it would, and they’d had to clean up the soggy, acidic mess. Dominic had been furious with both Evangeline and myself, of course, and he’d claimed it was our fault. For once, I’d been grateful for Seth’s fascination with my family. He’d told Dominic to leave me alone just as Morgan had felt obliged to get involved.

It was quiet in the dining room now, and although it smelt strongly of smouldering cypress, it was peaceful. I looked at the sleeping dragon that lay in my lap and it was completely relaxed as it breathed evenly. All of a sudden, it didn’t look quite so ugly and I smiled suddenly, and looked at Morgan.

“Forget it. We’re never getting a pet,” he said quietly, and I smiled even wider at his serious expression. Evangeline was asleep with her dragon on her lap and her head had fallen against Caspian’s shoulder. He frowned to himself as he wrote furiously in his book of parchments and I could hear Dominic and Seth speaking together quietly from the other side of the table.

My shoulder was leaning against Morgan’s and I leant my head back against the wall. Morgan picked up his pendant from where it lay against his chest and he held it in his hand as he looked at the time. I glanced at his pendant too.