Realm of Dragons

It wasn’t a question, but Nerra nodded her agreement anyway. She had heard of them, the things that were not even close to being human. Yet if what the physicker was saying was true…

“Was everything to the west once human?” she asked. Fear was already running through her at the thought. Would she become something… else? Something not human, not kind, not able to do as she wished?

“That is a question that is better saved for Master Grey,” Physicker Jarran said. “He knows more of the truth of these things than I.”

Nerra could only admit that he had a point. Master Grey knew as much as anyone alive about the strange and the unseen, yet she didn’t want to talk to him about this, couldn’t risk it.

“I must ask again,” Physicker Jarran said. “Why are you asking about things like dragons, Nerra?”

“I…” Nerra thought about telling him, she honestly did, but she couldn’t bring herself to, not yet. “I just wanted to know more about them.”

“Ah, I thought that you had heard one of the old stories,” the physicker said.

“What old stories?” Nerra asked.

“That of all the attempts to halt the scale sickness, only one cure has proved certain: cracking a dragon’s egg and consuming the yolk within.”

He watched Nerra as he said it, so Nerra kept her shock off her face. Even so, it ran through her like a jolt of lightning, seeming to spread through every part of her at once.

“A…cure?” she said, afraid to ask.

“A rumor of one, a note in the books,” Physicker Jarran said. “But there are no real dragon eggs. It is the only reason I have not told you this before. I would not want you hoping for an impossible thing.”

Except that it wasn’t impossible.

She could be cured. Cured.

She could live a normal life, not as a freak, but as a regular girl. Instead of counting down the days to her death, she could count the days of her life before her.

She jumped up, knocking over a table, and ran for the door.

A cure lay just beyond the castle walls. And she knew exactly where to find it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Erin rode for the Spur, pushing her horse, wanting to get there before her father realized she wasn’t coming back and sent men after her. Because she wasn’t going back; not after what she’d heard.

“They think they can just sell me like some cheap whore!” Erin complained to her horse.

Well, not cheap. Probably, her parents would want to get a whole dukedom’s loyalty for her, the way they’d done with Lenore.

“They’ll have to change their minds when I make it into the Spur,” she said. She could see the fortress out in the distance, its multiple rings of walls sitting atop an outcrop of glassy rock at odds with the rest of the landscape, forged by the heat of long-forgotten dragon-fire. In the far north of the kingdom, practically the whole land was said to be like that, with volcanoes everywhere one looked. Here, it was an incongruous black mark against the farmland around it.

There was a stone bridge leading up to the fortress that looked almost like a natural thing, rather than anything humans could have constructed. Erin rode her horse up to it, then leapt down to lead him across.

A figure in full armor barred her way.

“Hold,” he said. “Who are you, and why have you come to the Spur?”

“I am…” Erin hesitated. If they knew the truth of who she was, then they might send her back. Still, there had to be more than one girl with her name in the kingdom, right? “Erin. I’m Erin. I’m here to join your number. I want to be a knight.”

The man stood there for a moment. “You?” he said. “But you’re—”

“If you say ‘a girl,’” Erin said, “I will push you off this bridge.”

“No,” the man said. “You will not. And I was going to say that you’re young and inexperienced.”

“I’ve fought men,” Erin shot back. “I’ve killed men. Bandits who were hurting folk. Isn’t that what the Knights of the Spur do? Help people?”

“We serve the king,” the knight said. “But yes, we fight the evils of the world. You still cannot enter.”

Erin had prepared for this part. She knew the stories, and what to say.

“They say that anyone may seek to join the knights. Anyone, man or woman, high or low born. They say that you turn no one away.”

The knight on the bridge stood, if anything, even stiller than he had. “That… is true. Any may ask to join our number, at least, if they can get inside.”

“Then step aside and let me pass,” Erin said. Was this a test? Was she supposed to fight this man?

He stood there in his armor, blocking her path. He didn’t draw a blade, and Erin wasn’t sure what to do. She had her stick in her hand, but she couldn’t just strike this man down, especially not now she knew what it was like.

“How do I get past you?” Erin asked.

“You convince me that you’re sincere,” he said. “You tell me why you’re here, and you’re honest about it. I know there’s plenty you’re hiding, girl.”

“I’ve told you,” Erin said, not understanding. “I want to join the knights.”

“Do you?” he asked. “Why?”

“I…”

“Kneel there, on the rock, and wait. When you tell me the truth, I’ll decide.”

Erin wanted to snap at him, wanted to order him aside in the name of her father, but something told her that it wouldn’t work. She wanted to strike at the man, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that, either. So she did the only thing she could think of, and knelt, and waited.

The rock was hard underneath her, cutting into her legs and eventually numbing them. She knelt, and because there was no sign that the watchman wanted to talk, all she could do was stare ahead.

“How long do I have to stay here?” she demanded.

“You can leave any time you want,” the guard said. “You can go past any time, too, if you’re honest.”

“I’m being honest.”

“Not to yourself.”

Erin waited. She waited until her body ached with the stillness, and her mind ached with it too. All her life, she’d been someone who wanted to move, to do, to act. Her mother had tried to get her to sit still and be ladylike, but Erin had always been ready to run off, to train, and to fight.

“Why do you want to be here?” the knight demanded, after what had to be more than an hour. “Why don’t you just get up and go back?”