Secrets of Baen

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

Master Arden, my history tutor, said they became part of the land after the war, when some countries used them as weapons. The ones that survived made their way mostly into the mountains surrounding our kingdom while some of the smaller species stayed in the forests that made up most of Baen Valley. After the amount of brute destruction they brought to the land, the use of dragons as weapons of war was made illegal; it was decreed an act of terror and punishable by death.

Mostly, we left them alone and they left us alone. I’d never seen one in person, but my older brother Jarenn claimed to have seen two brought back in shackles by our mother’s hunting party when he was young. On stormy nights when I was a child he used to tell me stories of how they wandered blindly in the darkness underneath the castle, searching for a way out to gobble me up in my sleep.

Smiling, I rolled over in bed and looked out the large window of my eastern-facing room to the sunrise, reminiscing. Jarenn had been gone for an entire year on a peacekeeping mission across the continent, and I missed him terribly. With him in the party was Roban, my best friend since childhood and Jarenn’s lieutenant.

“Good morning, Princess Tarielle!” chirped the voice of my lady’s maid, Eden, as she pushed open my door. “Your brother comes home today,” she said, setting down the pitcher and fresh towels she held in her hands and coming to help me down from my bed. “I know you must be excited.”

I gently pushed her extended hand away, smiling. “Eden, you don’t need to help me out of bed. I’m not seven anymore.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and slid my feet into silk slippers.

Eden was already bustling around preparing my dressing table. Steam rose from the pitcher, fogging up the mirror.

“Now, come here, it’s too cold for you to be walking around in your night dress, Princess,” Eden slipped my furry robe onto my arms and fastened it in front. “You’ll catch your death and miss the celebration!”

“You know,” I said, sitting at the vanity, “I could warm the room a bit.”

“Oh?” Eden asked. She made a gesture with her hand and the big washtub that sat in the corner of the room slid effortlessly toward the window. “You’ve progressed that far with your lessons?”

“Well…not exactly. But I’ve been reading,” I began, standing and starting to shed my robe and sleepwear.

“Young lady,” Eden poured the steaming water from the pitcher into the tub. “You know as well as I do that you aren’t approved to use magic unsupervised by your Masters until you’ve reached nineteen. Same as your Queen Mother, same as me, same as every woman in this kingdom. You’ve got to be able to control it,” She held her hand over the shallow water in the tub and flexed her palm slightly, causing the water level to rise til she closed her hand, cutting off the faint orange glow of her magic. “See? When I was your age I might have accidentally made the water boiling hot, or frozen it, or evaporated it into the air altogether. Now, get in.”

Twenty minutes later, I was washed and dried and sat at the vanity, eating from a tray of cheese and fruit, while Eden brushed and set my auburn hair into an intricate design of small curls and braids. When she finished, I shook my head in wonder.

“You’ve such an eye for that sort of thing.” Gingerly, I ran my fingers over one of the itty braids that framed my face. “All I can do is let it dry and hope for the best from the goddesses.”

Eden smiled. “Thank you, Princess. Now, her Majesty talked with me yesterday of the dress she wants you in for your brother’s return.”

“The new blue one?” I asked, watching in the mirror as Eden turned to my wardrobe. I took the opportunity to quickly pass my hand in front of my face and upward, covering myself in a very slight glamour magic; my brown eyes glittered just a tad more and there was a slight glow and color to my skin.

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Eden said, taking it out of the wardrobe and laying it on the bed. Together we maneuvered through my late-fall routine of dressing, and Eden turned me to see the final product in my amethyst-gilded mirror.

“You’ve become such a beautiful young lady before my eyes,” she said, lightly smoothing my hair, which had already begun to frizz, with a light sweep of magic. “And don’t think I didn’t notice the glamour you cast,” she leaned down and whispered into my ear. “I’ll let it slide and not tell Master Ryven.”

I laughed quietly. “I don’t have lessons today. I had to practice somehow.”

We both jumped slightly at the sound of the castle watchmen, stationed on the parapet near my window, playing the greeting fanfare on their trumpets. I turned to Eden, childishly excited.

“It’s Jarenn and Roban! They’re back!” Unable to contain myself, I spun toward the door and descended the stairs as quickly as I could, given the weight of my layer cake of a dress.

“Tarielle!” My mother, in full ceremonial dress and flocked by her armed ladies in waiting, stopped me as I hurried through the castle toward the grand hall and front entrance to the castle. “Where in the world are you running to?”

“The horns,” I gestured toward the walls. “Jarenn and Roban are back!”

She pursed her lips and gave me a tight smile. “Yes, Tarielle, we are all excited. However, as both Queen and Princess of Baen, we must be an example of grace to our people. A princess does not scamper, especially one of eighteen.”

I nodded, smoothing my skirts and taking a breath, and walked with my mother to the grand entrance, waiting as the enormous iron doors were pulled open from the outside and fastened against the stone walls.

Blinking against the sudden light, I made out the shapes of the crowd standing outside the walls of the castle from our position on top of the grand entrance’s steps. Striding through the sea of cheering people was a procession led by horns and drums, and behind them were some hundred men and women with my brother and Roban in front, all on horseback.

My mother lifted her hand, glowing a faint turquoise, to her throat, and her magically magnified voice rang out over the village. “Proud people of Baen, we welcome back our soldiers from the deserts of Hayl Bak, where they have been negotiating peace with the people of the sands. Today, with their brave efforts, we have reached an understanding with their chaotic warrior factions and can keep our idyllic way of life.”

She paused, reaching out to take my hand. “We would all do a disservice to those who fought for years in the war that wracked our continent if we forgot their sacrifice. Their efforts must also be remembered, and their memories cherished.”

We all stood in silence for a moment, and then my mother let go of her hands and opened her arms to the crowd, a light blue trail of her magic still linking her right hand to her throat.

“And now, let’s all rejoice in the return of our loved ones, and enjoy today’s festivities!”

The villagers cheered, and my mother turned to me and cupped my cheek with her hand. “Let’s go see our boys,” she said, her voice back to its usual volume.

I followed her back into the castle and to the side of the keep, striding ahead of her to the door. The guard pushed it open and held it as I walked out into the brisk sunlight again and saw Jarenn and Roban following their squires who were leading their horses to the stables.

Jarenn stopped in his tracks, running a hand over his face and through his red hair. I bent at the waist and gathered my skirts into my arms, kicking my low-heeled shoes off my feet and ran full tilt across the uneven yard to him, and he let out a whoop and grabbed me off my feet and swung me around.

“You have grown!” He exclaimed, laughing as he held me at arm’s length. “My little sister, the woman!”

I stepped forward and hugged him again. “And I’ve gotten a hold on my magic! You’ll have to come watch my lessons tomorrow, you can see.”

“My son,” came our mother’s voice from behind us, and I turned to see her standing there with tears in her unshakeable blue eyes. She strode forward and I stepped back, watching her take him into her arms.

“Tari,” said Roban, walking forward. “Look at you, dressed like a lady,” he held his arms out for me and I walked into them, smelling the familiar scent of the tobacco he smoked.

“Hello, Roban,” I looked up at him, making to pull away from the hug but he kept his arms locked around me. I wiggled my shoulders out of his long arms, squinting up into his face. “What’s wrong?”

He gave a small shake of his head, smiling. “Nothing. I’m tired from our journey, that’s all.” He flung an arm around my shoulders and the four of us started walking toward the castle.

Hours later, I was tucked in bed after a gigantic feast, my mind slightly reeling from one too many goblets of wine, and about to drift off when a knock came at my door. I sat up in bed, groaning quietly. “Yes?”

The door cracked open to reveal Jarenn’s candlelit face. “Hello, little sister. May I?”

“Jay,” I pushed myself completely upright, confused. “What are you doing?”

“I need to show you something. Mother went to bed hours ago, and this is the only chance I’ll have. We start training new soldiers tomorrow in the far field.”

“What in the world could possibly be so important right now,” I begrudgingly swung myself out of bed, putting on my robe and slippers. “It’s after midnight, I’m tired and I drank-”

“You need to see this. Come,” he held the door open for me and made sure it closed silently behind us. I followed him and his flickering candle down the winding stairs through the dark, almost missing a few steps trying to keep up with Jarenn’s long legs.

We got to the main floor of the castle, and he kept going through the halls. The guards at the door were in the middle of changing, so the doors we passed were abandonded for a moment and we were unseen as we reached a smaller iron door in a back hallway.

It led to the unused underground keep, which laid empty since we were under siege during the last month of the war. From my childhood memories, it was a dark, damp place full of fear and peppered with screams as the impact from trebuchets made the walls shake up above.

“Jarenn,” I whispered, running forward a few steps to catch up to him. “Where are we going? There’s nothing down there.” I stopped in my tracks as he kept going, slowly pulling a giant key on a silver ribbon from the pocket of his robe and fitting it into the lock. “Why do you have that? Jay, that key is kept in Mother’s bedroom. Why are we going down there?”

“Hush,” he hissed, turning to me and grabbing my shoulders, leaning down slightly so we were directly face to face. “Our mother is not the person you think she is. She isn’t the person I thought she was. She’s not,” he straightened back up. “She’s not the ruler our people think she is, either. Now, I need you to be brave.”

I looked at him with wide eyes, dread building in my gut, but followed him into the pitch-black darkness of another stairwell, gently closing the door behind us.

“Wait,” I said after a few steps, and flexed my right hand in front of me. I felt the power pump through my heart and into the veins in my hand, focusing on drawing light from his candle and the tiny bit of light coming underneath the door from the hall torches. A giant ball of light erupted from my palm and I jumped, frantically pulling back on the energy flowing from my hand, which was slightly glowing a deep emerald.

“Tari,” he said in awe. “You’ve gotten good at that. A bit overzealous, but…hang on, you aren’t allowed to do that outside of your lessons yet.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You stole that key. And we’re down here. I’d say we’re breaking a fair few rules tonight.”

He nodded silently and kept going down the stairs. We descended for what felt like an hour, my ears popping slightly as we wound our way further under the castle, guided by my light. We passed the entrance to the safehold where we’d spent days trapped until the war ended; I remembered Mother resorting to using the very dragons she later decreed illegal.

A few hundred steps later, we arrived in what seemed to be a massive cavern. The walls and ceilings just opened into a giant maw, and it went further than I could see. I stared up and around me in awe. There were dripstone stalactites spiking from the ceiling in places; the stone was hollowed out into this space but had never been finished and smoothed.

“Jarenn…what…”

“Sh,” he reached a hand out behind him. “Stay here.” He began to walk forward, and with an effort I sent a small ball of light to hover in front of him. It was brighter than his candle, which he set on the floor.

As I watched my brother, he stretched his arms above his hand and began snapping his fingers in a slow pattern: left, then right, then left two times, and right again. A low, humming whistle came from his throat, and then he stopped it all at once.

What sounded like massive chains clanked from far ahead of us, and a light flickered in the distance for a second. Slightly louder clanking, followed by a second flicker of what looked like a campfire and a deep, quiet rumble echoed around us.

“Jarenn,” I whispered, my voice cracking from fear. “Come back.”

“Sh,” he gestured at me again. “They won’t hurt us.”

The chains were now being dragged across the cavern floor toward us, and another flame flickered in the air as something breathed in front of us. I looked up, and slowly something came out of the darkness.

My ears started ringing and my vision tunneled with naked fear. I watched as Jarenn stretched his hand out and a giant head lowered toward him, letting him place his hand on its snout.

It was a dragon.