Realm of Dragons

“What about you, brother?” Rodry joked, turning to Vars. “Come to join us on our dangerous mission?”

“I’m sure you’re capable of hitting things stupidly with a sword by yourself,” Vars replied.

“At least I’m willing to walk into danger when it’s needed,” Rodry shot back. “Whereas you just walk to the next wine bottle or woman.”

His brother ignored him with a sneer, turning back toward the castle’s interior. Lenore caught Rodry’s arm.

“Do you have to be cruel to Vars?” she asked. “Maybe if you were kinder to him, he would do better.”

Rodry shook his head. “He’s… he’s a coward, Lenore. If someone poked me like that, I’d be goaded into action. Instead, he slinks away.”

“And maybe he wouldn’t if you just encouraged him,” Lenore suggested. “Stay safe,” she added.

“I will,” Rodry replied. He glanced to Devin again, and now Devin was starting to understand why the sword was so important to the prince. “And I will bring you back the finest gift that I can.”

***

Devin rode with the others from the castle, feeling very much like the odd one out among the others. Prince Rodry and the knights were all armored in plate and chain, all sitting comfortably on their horses, joking with one another as they rode. Next to them, Devin felt useless, not used to riding long distances, dressed in a blacksmith’s leathers and with only the sword he’d forged by his side.

“So, Twell,” the knight with two swords rather than a shield called out. “Got the whole trip planned out?”

“We just follow the prince,” Twell said. “And I’ve told you, Lars, I don’t plan everything.”

“Don’t believe him,” the last knight said, nudging Devin. “He plans for the possibility of enemies on the way down to dinner.”

“I do not!”

“I’m Halfin,” the knight said. “Who are you?”

“I’m Devin… my lord,” Devin said, overwhelmed for a moment by the sudden friendliness by the knight. He’d heard stories of these men and their deeds: Twell, who could think his way out of anything. Lars, who had once dueled with three brothers at once over the hand of a maiden. Halfin, who had run a hundred miles with no horse over two days to warn of a coming battle ogres.

“Lord,” Lars said. “He’s no one’s lord. Don’t go giving him ideas.”

They rode on, down through the city and out into the countryside. The sun rose higher, and in its heat, Devin was glad he wasn’t wearing the armor that the knights were. Prince Rodry rode at the front, and Devin found himself watching the way the men looked to him with clear respect. Devin could understand that; he’d found the prince to be honorable and just in a way that his brother wasn’t.

They rode for hours, and Devin found himself wondering at the fact that he was a part of this, brought along on a journey with a prince and three knights out of stories. He wondered most at how normal they all were, and how willing they were to talk to him like an equal, even when he wasn’t.

Slowly, the ground started to drop away, walls of rock rearing up on either side of them to form a canyon. A stream of perfect, clear water ran through it, and Devin saw Halfin drop down, ready to fill his water bottle.

“Don’t,” Twell said. “The water in Clearwater Deep is contaminated. Drink it and you risk death.”

“Then what am I supposed to drink?” Halfin asked.

Twell took a spare water skin out of his pack, tossing it over, as if he’d anticipated this. As if he’d planned for it, Devin thought with a smile.

“There’s no time to stop,” Rodry said. “I want to get to the spot my father told me about before it gets too late for us to get back.”

“I brought a tent, just in case,” Twell said.

Lars snorted. “Of course you did.”

They kept going, and Devin found himself looking around, taking in the trees and the plants that were starting to grow up around the side of the river. Most of them were misshapen, twisted by the contents of the water. There were trees that were turned in on themselves like snakes biting their tails, and dark flowers that bloomed with nauseating scents. Away from the stream, there were bushes that clung to the walls of the canyon, and because Devin was looking that way, he was the first one to spot the movement there. Creatures sprang forward, mouths open wide, teeth bared as they snarled.

“Wolves!”

They weren’t wolves, though, or weren’t anything like normal ones. These were huge, muscled things that shambled on their hind legs, leaving the knifelike claws of their front legs free to swipe. There were at least a dozen of them, and one leapt at Devin’s horse even as he called out the warning.

The impact knocked him from his saddle while his horse screamed. Devin came up, drawing the sword that he’d forged, and struck at the beast as it lunged at him. It moved back with a wound across its snout, but circled, watching for openings.

Around him, Devin heard the sound of battle, and he could feel the fear of the violence rising in him. He saw Sir Lars striking out with two swords, Twell moving carefully, picking his cuts, Halfin striking out with lightning speed. Rodry was there too, hacking at the wolf-things, showing the skill with a sword that Devin had suspected he possessed.

Devin struck out at another of the things. This was nothing like striking a training post, because the beast didn’t come at him in a predictable way, seemed almost to ignore his sword stroke to lash out with wickedly sharp claws. Devin had to throw himself aside to avoid them, rolled up, and managed to thrust his sword through the thing’s arm as it came at him again.

Around him, the others seemed to have had similar success, in the face of the initial rush, but Devin could see that Lars was wounded too, blood dripping from his shoulder. Worse, none of the creatures seemed to be down, and they definitely weren’t retreating. Instead, they circled, snarling and growling, clearly looking for any opening.

Devin held the sword he’d made in two hands, but he knew it wasn’t going to be enough. Twelve of these things against the five of them was too many. If these had been men, it would have been easy, but these were far more dangerous than men, faster and stronger, able to withstand what Devin had felt were clean blows of the sword.

Fear rose in him, along with the urge to run, but there was nowhere to run to, and these creatures would be faster than any man. Better to stand and fight, but they couldn’t fight. Devin looked around, hoping that one of the others would have a plan, but even Rodry was standing there in obvious fear. They knew just as well as Devin what was about to happen:

They were going to die.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Nerra crept out of the castle, leaving the doors to her rooms closed so that no one would come looking for her. One advantage of people knowing how often she was ill was that they didn’t question her not being there at the heart of things.

She slipped out, picking her route carefully, so that if anyone saw her they would probably assume she was going out into the gardens. She needn’t have worried. All the attention was on Lenore, and on the growing array of guests in the castle. Almost no one paid attention to the slender, almost gaunt figure drifting through it all. Maybe if she’d cared about the attention, Nerra might have worried about that, but she was grateful. It made it possible for her to slip out to the forest, taking her horse and making the ride down to the cave that sat there.

She clung to the saddle as she rode, feeling the weakness that came from her illness. Here, away from people, she felt isolated enough to lift her sleeve, checking on the creeping tracery of black lines on her arm. Nerra quickly yanked her sleeve down again. She needed to focus on the cave and what lay within. It wasn’t far.

Carefully, Nerra levered away the rocks in front of the entrance, slipping inside. The egg sat there, in the nest that Nerra had made for it. It looked as impossible as ever, blue and gold, as if someone had pieced together a fractured thing with molten metal. Nerra knelt beside it, staring at it and running her hands over the surface to feel the warmth of it.

“All I have to do is break you,” she whispered to it. “If I crack you open, I’m cured. I can have a life.”

Nerra could barely imagine it. What would it be like to be well; to be the same as everyone else? She could go out into the world and be the healer that she’d always wanted to be. She could help people; she could have a family. There would be no more fainting fits, no more black lines growing darker and darker on her arms, threatening to change her into something she had never wanted to be.

All of it could be done, she could be cured, and all she had to do was break the egg, destroy the burgeoning life within.

Nerra wasn’t sure she could do that. She wasn’t sure that she could end anything, especially not something so unique, so rare, so special. Dragons were things that almost no one had seen before, and their eggs… Nerra had never even heard of such things until she saw them. Could she really destroy something like this… even to save her life?

She didn’t want to die. Carefully, precisely, Nerra took out her eating knife. She held it to the edge of the shell. She stood perfectly still, willing herself to do it, knowing that this was the only choice…

…She tossed the knife to one side.

“I can’t do it,” she said. “I won’t. I won’t kill you, even for this.”

She set her hand against the shell again, feeling the warmth there. She felt something else too: movement, sharp and sudden against the interior of the shell. Nerra jerked her hand back and saw the shell distend as something pushed at it from the inside. She saw a faint tracery of cracks spread across the surface of the egg, cutting across those golden lines.

A tiny segment of it fell away first, forming a hole, letting a small, scaled snout poke through. The hole widened, and claws followed, a small, reptilian body slinking through the space as the egg continued to fall apart. It split in too, letting the creature’s form roll out onto the floor.