Realm of Dragons

Bright yellow eyes blinked up at her, with a forked tongue that flicked out to scent the air and eyes that blinked half closed the way a cat’s might have, as if testing out the world. Its scales were the blue of a cloudless sky, with the shine of other colors running through them here and there. It was small, because how else would it fit into an egg like that, but nowhere near as small as Nerra might have thought it was. It looked up at her, the expression strangely intelligent for something that had just been born.

It leapt up, and Nerra flinched, certain that it was attacking. Those claws caught hold of her, clinging to her, and she tumbled to the ground with the dragon, its weight atop her. Then its tongue flicked out to lick her face.

“That tickles,” Nerra said with a laugh.

The dragon lay there on her chest, making a rumbling sound that Nerra assumed was one of pleasure. It turned to one side and gave a kind of hiccup. A small burst of flame came forth from its mouth, the heat of it palpable. The dragon looked almost as surprised as Nerra was.

She lay there and looked at it.

“You’re beautiful,” she said. She couldn’t imagine now how she’d been about to break the egg that contained something so wonderful, couldn’t imagine even contemplating it. The dragon curled up against her.

Nerra wasn’t sure how long she lay there like that with the creature. At some point, she got up and went out into the forest, gathering what plants she could to feed the dragon. It looked at them, blinked, and then leapt out of the cave, wings flapping. Nerra saw it chomp down on something, and it came back to her with what looked like a whole pigeon clamped in its mouth.

“All right,” Nerra said.

It chomped down on the pigeon, and while it ate, Nerra went to her horse. She had a little roasted venison, stolen from the feast so that she wouldn’t get hungry on her journey. She threw that toward the dragon and its sinuous neck snaked up.

Flame crackled out over the venison, scorching and burning until the meat was almost black. Finally, the baby dragon seemed happy with it, and it chomped down on the meat. When it was done, it sat there, staring at Nerra expectantly.

“I don’t have anything else,” she said. The best she could do was go to it and hug it tight. The dragon made the rumbling sound that seemed to indicate pleasure. A worrying realization crept over Nerra.

“I have to go back.”

The dragon made a sound of protest.

“I have to,” Nerra said. “And you have to go back in the cave.”

The dragon made a whining sound.

“You have to. I can’t take you with me, because people will be scared. They haven’t seen dragons.”

She could imagine all the ways people might react. None of them were kind. No, the dragon was safest here. Nerra lifted it, putting it back in the cave and moving the rocks back into position even though it broke her heart to do it. The dragon mewled, and Nerra wished she could take it with her.

“Soon,” she promised. “I’ll be back soon.”

***

She saw the dragon, and now it wasn’t small. It was the size of a tower, a ship, a hill. It soared through clouds so vast that the world below was lost through them. When it opened its mouth, it didn’t just breathe fire; grown like this, it could manipulate its breath to be many more manifestations of the power within it: lightning and frost, shadow and rippling force.

Nerra saw it swoop down, and there was an army below, of men, and things that had never been men. The dragon’s breath swept out across the army, scything down creatures there. It landed among them, claws rending, teeth crushing. Its tail whipped around, scattering more foes, then it roared, and the sound seemed to fill the world, shifting and changing, becoming something else, becoming her name…

“Nerra!” Lenore said, shaking her awake.

Nerra’s eyes snapped open, and she stared at her sister. She was breathing hard, sweating with the force of the dream, or maybe with something else.

“You were crying out in your sleep,” Lenore said. “I came to see you, but you were… like this.”

“Just a dream,” Nerra said, sitting up.

“Obviously a bad one,” Lenore said.

Nerra wanted to tell her about the dragon. Her sister was kind, and good, and probably one of the closest things to a friend she had. Yet instinctively, Nerra knew that it was a secret she shouldn’t talk about. Dragons were… well, impossible, but more than that. They were large and dangerous, and if Lenore mentioned hers to anyone, wouldn’t it be in danger?

“I don’t remember it,” Nerra lied, hating that she had to. “But my dreams don’t matter. I guess that in the middle of your wedding preparations, you didn’t just come to see me.”

“I do want to see how you are,” Lenore said. “I’ve barely seen you in days.”

Of course she did. Her sister had always been there when she was younger, trying to look after her. It was just that they had lived such different lives.

“You’ve been busy,” Nerra said. “That’s normal, when you’re so close to being married. And I’ve been…”

“How have you been?” Lenore asked, looking concerned. “You’ve been stuck in your room a lot.”

“Afraid I won’t be able to make the wedding?” Nerra asked. She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of so many people around her; people who were noisy, and often cruel; people might see all that was wrong with her.

“I’d like you to be there,” Lenore said. “I’d like you to be by my side. Erin is… well, no one knows where she is, even though Father has men looking. One of my sisters should be there. I know you’re sick sometimes, but—”

“Not sometimes,” Nerra corrected her. “All the time.”

“I know,” Lenore said. “But you’ve been living with the scale mark for a long time now.”

The sudden urge to be honest gripped Nerra. She couldn’t tell Lenore about the dragon, but at least she could tell her about this. She would understand then; it would show her why Nerra couldn’t be around people, couldn’t be a part of her wedding.

“It’s not that simple,” Nerra said. She rolled up her sleeve to show the dark, spreading lines beneath. She heard her sister’s intake of breath. “It’s getting worse.”

“That’s…” Lenore stared at her arms. “I thought it was under control.”

“Something like this, you can’t control,” Nerra said. “I’m dying, Lenore.”

Or worse, but she couldn’t talk about the worse things.

Lenore threw her arms around Nerra. “Oh, Nerra, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No one can know,” Nerra reminded her.

“Does Father know about this?” Lenore asked. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll talk to Master Grey, force them to work harder to find a cure.”

“Don’t,” Nerra said. “There’s nothing to be done, Lenore.”

She didn’t tell her sister about the dragon’s egg, and what it could have done for her. She wouldn’t be able to explain it. Lenore would assume that she’d done the wrong thing, would want to know why she’d thrown her life away like that.

Nerra wouldn’t be able to explain it, but she knew that the world was better with the dragon in it… even if it cost her life.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Bern sat with people around him laughing and buying him drinks, the way they always did when he set himself down in the middle of a tavern. It wasn’t that they liked him, Bern had no time for such things, but they knew what was good for them. One man who hadn’t lay on the floor, several of his teeth spilled out across the dirty straw of it.

His “friends” stood around him, although they weren’t really friends, just men who were smaller and less violent than him, but who had worked out that being on his side was safer than not being. To be fair, most men were smaller and less violent than Bern; he was a mountain of a man who could crush a skull in his bare hands if it came to it, and had tattoos across both shoulders that wove their way down his arms as if to pick out the muscles. There were a lot to pick out. He kept his head shaved so there would be nothing for a man to grab onto to head butt him, while his face was pinched and roughened by the blows he had taken over the years.