The Dragon Mark

There weren't always dragons in the valley. That's how the official history has it, and if everything had ended with the first peace accord, perhaps this untruth wouldn't have mattered. The dragons might have slept on until some other generation of humans awoke them. We would have suffered less, and learned less.

Knowing in my own flesh the price paid, however, I say better us, and better now. Digesting a difficult truth is better than embracing a delusion, no matter the price.

This is why I write. Using carefully preserved quills and sheets of vellum I have carried with me for months now, and ink from whatever pigments I can find, I am making this record in the dim light of the deep caves we have found winter refuge in. Most of the men and women here come, as I do, from the southern towns where the fighting began. Some are wounded, all are exhausted, all are hungry. More than a month has passed however since our last combat with the kings men, and we are confident they won't root us out before spring. With some luck, we will encounter enough small game to supplement our meager supplies and so make it through these freezing months.

I cannot know if these pages will survive what comes next, but I will do everything I can to complete this alternate history of the second war. It may be that our fight will succeed and what I say here will be common knowledge by the time this is read. Or perhaps not.

You might call my words heresy. I say read them, all of them, and make up your own mind.

Begin with this. Jennsen's On the Nature and History of Dragons, authorised by the King and his High Priest the Mentanist Argus Drothe, has become accepted as canon. I can tell you though that while the chapters on telepathy and the mastery of human speech offer some fascinating anecdotes, the historical volumes are nothing but supposition and invention.

Dragons were not 'seeded by the wickedness of men', as Jennsen claims and the church upholds. Dragons were not sent by the gods to punish our misdeeds. The dragons were here before us. Before humans cut down the first tree, or hunted the first elk, this land was theirs.

Otherwise, the anatomical drawings are based almost entirely on studies of dragons in captivity. Captive dragons develop in subtly different ways. Even mature dragons diminish once slaved to a controller. This places strict limits on the usefulness of Jennsen's otherwise excellent sketches.

And who am I? Well, you can call me Alex. My grandfather fought in the first wars and I bear the mark of the wound he took. If you are reading this, you will know what that inherited mark means better than I did at the beginning of my story.

Everything here on these pages recounts my own direct experiences. I have left nothing out.

***

I had my first vision the day my father died.

I lived with my aunt and uncle, Sarah and Geric, and their twin boys, Robert and Darwen. Between their house with its orchard and gardens was the open-sided forge where my older brother Rufus spent his days and nights, at least during the seasons when demand for repairs and new ploughshares was high. We had a sister too, Erwina, but she had married into a family of Innkeepers in Karlstadt, the southern capital, and moved there two years earlier.

My father Elthric, who taught Rufus his trade, lived alone in the burnt-out shell that had been our family home. This stood beyond the forge, separated from Geric and Sarah's garden by the stream that turned the bellows wheel. He set the place alight, perhaps deliberately, I never knew, but in any case drunk, around the time our mother disappeared. Geric had rebuild the roof, and the walls remained standing, but inside was only fire-blackened emptiness.

It was Geric who arranged my apprenticeship as clerk to Master Karl Brant, the Master Stone Mason, five years earlier, when I turned seven. I began my work daily at dawn and often arrived home at dusk. Father was usually frink by that time, but one day, his body could no longer take it.

'I found him like this, just lying on the floor'

The plaintive tone in my brother's voice was unsettling. Five years older than me, my brother was as solidly built as I was slight. Years of toil in the forge under father's harsh instruction had given him thick, corded muscles in his arms and shoulders, and when not working he often exercised obsessively, pulling himself up on a hanging bar and lifting weights he had made himself, giving him the body of a prize bull.

I had just got home when I heard his words. I walked through the house to the kitchen. Rufus stood with my aunt and uncle by the settle against the wall that backed onto the rear garden. My two cousins were rarely home, usually they stayed wherever there was work to do.

There was a sour, dank smell in the room. Walking over I saw my father lying unconscious on the narrow seat. I felt my chest tighten, but I set my jaw and hardened myself against tears.

'Alex...' My aunt said, touching my shoulder.

My father's face was swollen and discoloured with a noisome blend of yellow and puce. Something foul had leaked out of his mouth and spread through the tangles of his unkempt beard. Beneath the stench of alcohol was a darker, more ominous odour, a smell that made me think of the inside of a tomb. His eyes were open the slightest amount, like those of a dead animal, but air still whistled between his cracked lips.

I shrugged off my aunt's hand. Fear and sorrow turned into anger. He did this. To himself, to all of us. I turned and stalked out of the room, intending to hide in the room I shared with Robert and Darwen, when they were home. But after some time sitting with my fists pressed into my forehead, I thought better of it, and came back downstairs. This was my beloved aunt’s brother after all, and my brother's father as well as my own. I returned to the kitchen.

'I sent Sally for the apothecary' Aunt Sarah was saying.

Sally was the girl she retained to help with chores. The apothecary had his shop on a side street, on the far side of the town square, or Peace Square to give it it's official name, the place the first war had officially ended. It was quite a walk and Sally wouldn't be back in a hurry. She would need to find a cart for the apothecary too. In any case I doubted the old man with his powders and jars of leeches would be able to do much.

Rufus picked up our father's limp form and carried him through to the guest bedroom at the front of the house. Aunt Sarah went to heat some water to bathe him, and the rest of us sat in the small room to wait for Sally to return.

'Listen, lad, I've been meaning to speak to you' Uncle Geric addressed me in a quiet voice 'Karl tells me you've been getting out of the offices, learning how to cut stone'.

It was odd to hear my master being referred to by his first name. He and Geric had been friends since childhood.

'Yes, that's right. Most days I only need a morning or afternoon for my clerking duties, so I spend the rest of the day in the quarry'

'He's happy with your work, says you have a quick mind. I hope you're not neglecting your classes?'

I shook my head. Geric had arranged my apprenticeship with the condition that I be allowed to attend classes, privately first at the house of Cabel and his daughter Thérèse along with Marcus the miller's son, the twin daughters of the Mentian priest, and Rennick. The less said about Rennick the better. Once the public school opened, all of us but Thérèse started attending classes there, with about twenty other pupils of different ages. I still visited Thérèse and Cabel when I could. Cabel and his daughter had come here from the south, up across the plain from the coast with many others, as war refugees. Many of the town's inhabitants had arrived here fleeing their burned-out homes in all parts of the kingdom and beyond, but few had done as well for themselves as Cabel. Their home was as full of fascinating things as Cabel was of fascinating tales.

My aunt, half-jokingly perhaps, had suggested Thérèse as a possible future match for me. Thérèse was charming and beautiful, but two years my senior. I was too young to have any interest in the idea of marriage in any case, but it had occurred to me that she might one day marry Rennick instead, and frankly I found that idea unbearable. I didn't know then that southern women often kept several husbands.

'Listen, doing business is getting more and more complicated' Geric was saying, speaking in his usual, booming voice now. 'We're bringing back more and more goods in the produce wagons returning from the markets in Karlstadt and up the north road. Now the brewery wants to buy half the barley crop, starting this year'

He always said 'our' when talking to any of us about the cereals and fruit his arable lands and orchards produced. He had bought the land titles up piecemeal, with the result that the parcels were scattered over a wide area, but he had still turned them into a thriving business. The consistent quality of his produce was well known here in Stamsfeld, or Dragonpax as you may know it, in Karlstadt, and further up the north road too. Transporting produce to market had led to agreements to bring back other goods in the empty wagons, which had led to increased profits, but also led to some conflict with other transport operators.

'Anyway, long story short, a handshake over a beer isn't the way things are done anymore. There are contracts for everything. Well, point is, I need a lawyer, and I'd rather it be someone from the family'

I looked at him blankly. It took me a moment to realize he meant me.

'I do read over some contracts, when they come in, which isn't often' I said, frowning. Master Brant's contracted jobs usually lasted a few years, so new contracts were rare. 'But, um, I don't know the law, just some basics'

Geric waved his arms

'I'm thinking long-term lad. I can hire someone for now, but, well, what would you think about studying the law? They've been training lawyers in the university at Karstadt since I was a boy. What do you think?'

It was hardly a choice. Geric and Sarah had done everything for me. I'd practically grown up in their house, and I'd lived here permanently since my mother vanished. To be honest, I was starting to enjoy working with stone. But if Geric needed a lawyer, he would get a lawyer.

'Of course' I said. 'But what about my apprenticeship? I signed on for twelve years'

'Ach, don't worry about that. I'll speak to Karl. I'll make the arrangements. In any case you'll be here at least another few years. How old are you now?'

'Twelve'

'Well, they won't take you until you're 14 in any case. That's settled then. Good lad!' he finished, putting his hand out for me to shake.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Karlstadt. I'd been there once, accompanying my uncle one market day, and Stamsfeld had seemed smaller when I returned. I knew it would impress Thérèse too. The conversation with Geric almost made me forget where I was.

'He's moving!' Rufus almost yelled, standing up so quickly he knocked his chair over. Father shifted a little, and let out a whimpering wheeze, but nothing more.

For the next few days, by some unspoken agreement none of us left the house. The apothecary burned some foul-smelling powders, and applied leeches, but father never regained full consciousness. His grunts, gasps and withering moans nonetheless shrank the house down to the space occupied by his swollen, discoloured, body. There was nowhere I could go to escape. Each new thread of audible agony wound its way through the whole house, as if sent out to drag back the attention of anyone not following the slow and painful progress of his illness. The sound, the rank stench, the flickering light of candles in the darkened rooms, everything was drawn towards that sweat-soaked mattress on which my father lay. Lapses in the cries and moans of pain were even worse, the anticipation more unbearable than the sounds themselves.

After three days of this I drifted into a kind of twilight, as if hovering on the edge of the underworld along with my father. I stopped sleeping or eating. Geric and Sarah spoke in hushed whispers. Sarah had sent Sally to the quarry to let Master Brant know I would not be in for a few days, the first days of work I had missed in five years.

Rufus rarely left my father's side, the forge stayed cold, and disgruntled but respectful clients were turned away. I was baffled. How could he show such devotion to a man who had brought us all nothing but trouble, who had driven our sister away, and who may well have been behind our mother's disappearance? His seemingly terminal illness was the first thing I remembered that had stopped him drinking for more than half a day.

Later, I came to understand that the legacy of the war lingered in more ways than I knew. The fire that burned a soldier who survived to have children passed on its mark through those children to the next, I knew that well enough. My mark, a great splotch of thickened grey skin across my shoulder, half of my chest and upper arm, was the largest anyone in my family had ever seen.

Some people made their marks public. I chose not to. It was why I had never learned to swim. Outside of my family, only three people knew I had the mark.

The mark had skipped a generation, as it often did, leaving my father with no outward mark of the wound his father suffered. The pain of those wounds had been far worse than the disfiguration, or so people said. Dragon wounds never really healed. The first war spanned several decades, and my grandfather had been in his fifties when the peace was signed. He finally settled down then and had his one son. But his wound tormented him, drove him half mad, my aunt said. People say I have an over-active imagination, but I don't think I was wrong in imagining how this affected my father's life. I think that was what drove him to drink. So his suffering, too, was a legacy of that war.

It is not as if I felt nothing, I felt a terrible sadness for my father, a sadness too great to bear so that I separated it from myself, as if it belonged to someone else, until I believed that it did. You may judge me for saying this, but the end of those days his death seemed like the lifting of a dark cloud.

I didn't even wait for it, which I am sorry for now, but in my defence, no-one had actually told me not to leave, and I don't remember actually deciding to.

I finally managed to fall asleep a few hours before dawn on the fourth day, then, without remembering either waking or getting dressed, I found myself out in the sunlight, walking along the crowded dirt road, dry on this early summer day, wondering absently where so many people had come from. Wagons, carts and people on foot moved at a leisurely pace, and jugglers, musicians and other entertainers had set up on the small common by the inn. Our corner of the town, outside the main walls, was well cared for. Large houses set apart on their own plots of land, with orchards, gardens, pens for pigs and other beasts, and stables, surrounded by low walls. It was a green and pleasant place on such a sunny day, and I walked with the crowds as they moved slowly over the peace bridge and towards the town square. No-one paid any attention to a twelve-year-old boy wandering alone through the crowds. It was the first day of the festival of St Jennifer, which I had forgotten was coming.

Before the Mentanist decrees we had many such festivals, each with its own character. St Jennifer's was always a gentle, harmonious affair, in keeping with the saint's nature. She was known for her care of those blinded by dragonfire. It was said that those who suffered such wounds were tormented by terrible visions, but that detail was waived and the festival was a gay and merry affair. I rubbed at my own mark, well hidden beneath a high collared shirt, as I walked.

I seemed somehow to have shut my father's illness out of my thoughts. If I had not seen what I saw that day, I might have spent the whole day just wandering the town. Or, perhaps, wandered out of the town and never gone home at all. As it was, I made it only far as the main square.

Peace plaza was and is a rather grand square, wider in fact than the plaza at Karlstadt, although other than the Town Hall the buildings that surround it are not quite as imposing as those of the city. Rising up behind the clock tower of the town hall though is a sight no other town can beat, the snowy slopes and craggy twin summits of Fishtail Peak.

Already there were dozens of people milling slowly around the square, all dressed in their best, and mixed aromas of cooking meat and baked goods filled the air.

A murder of crows circled around the clock tower, weighing the risks of swooping down for morsels of dropped food in the square below. They caught my attention with their raucous cawing. I was wondering what might have aggravated them when they scattered, flapping off in all directions. I could see no hawk or eagle that might have alarmed them. Above the triangle of the clock tower only the rocky twin peaks glittered in the sun. The brightness made me squint. There was something up there, moving. I frowned, and put up a hand to shield my eyes from the glare, hoping to see better. Three tiny dots had appeared in the V of the peak. They came through the gap and shot downwards, moving too fast to be birds. These non-birds swept over the white slope in tight formation, the leader larger than the two trailers. As they accelerated downwards and closer, the form of their bodies and wings resolved. My mouth dropped open to release the thump of my heart in my throat, pounding like a hammer on the anvil. Dragons. There was no mistake, I was seeing actual, real dragons. I glanced around. No-one else was looking up.

My eyes were drawn back to the mountain. My body froze, and my throat constricted, unable to cry out in warning. I lost control of everything but my eyes. Each pummelling beat of my heart marked dozens of metres traversed by the speeding creatures. The sounds of the festival faded away entirely.

Down they came, wings angled back in the slipstream, massive and unspeakably fast. Within moments they covered hundreds of metres and disappeared out of sight behind the town hall's gabled roof. I counted the beats of my heart, my eyes wide. I imagined them skimming over the treetops of the forest at the root of the mountain, then over the tilled fields north of the town, then over the walls and.... I realised I had been holding my breath and let it out. The wide sky above me remained empty.

Then they were there, up high, braking in the air with outstretched wings as if reined in. A downrush of air tumbled me backwards, but again, no-one else paid any mind. The dragons appeared to float as much as fly, so deft were their movements. Still looking up, I turned slowly around as they circled once, twice, then spiralled down to land lightly on the cobblestones of the square. Not fifty paces from where I stood alighted three real, live dragons. The head of the largest, at the end of a long, tapering neck rippling with copper scales, reached almost to the town hall roof, three stories up. The reddish scales of its neck blended with the smoother skin across its massive, muscular shoulders where the tremendous wings, now furled, began with muscled joints the size of small houses. I gaped. The remaining two, though less massive, were no less impressive. Closest to me was a being whose matt black skin rippled with muscle under blue-tinged scales that covered its head, neck and body. Jet black glossy black claws as long as my arms jutted out from the second joint of each wing. The final dragon was like fire itself - yellow skinned with streaks, stripes and whirls of orange on skin with a mane of yellow scales, shaped like spear tips and edged with orange and red, that ran across the top of its head, down its shapely neck and on down it's spine between wings tipped with claws at the first joint. This beautiful creature shook out its scales, like a cat shaking off rainwater, and, dipping its neck into U shape, let out a great stuttering cry. What birds had not already fled the square swept up at this and flew in wild circles. It was then, following the birds with my gaze, I noticed that absolutely nothing else had changed. Everyone else in the square was carrying on as if three dragons had not just landed in their midst. Only I, and the birds, were aware of their presence.

I was wondering what this might mean when I heard someone calling my name.

'Master Alex! Master Alex!' I heard Sally's voice over the murmur of the crowd but didn't turn. I couldn't take my eyes off the dragons. She soon reached me, and put her hand on my shoulder.

'Master Alex, you must come... Your father. Master Alex please come...they sent me to get you... Your brother... Oh master Alex, please come!'

I turned to look at her, searching her face for any sign we were seeing the same scene. The poor girl was clearly distraught, but it was equally clear that she had seen no dragons.

'Wait' I said, finding my voice 'Wait'

I turned back to the dragons. Without looking at the others, Red, the largest, began to move off across the square. I sucked in a breath, fully expecting its clawed feet to pulverise townsfolk with every step, but the festive throng somehow elided every step, flowing around the great jagged claws like water. The other two dragons stretched and shook themselves out a little before following red at a leisurely pace. Their gait, more feline than that of the darting lizards I had often seen sunning themselves on rocks, made their whole bodies sway from side to side with each stride. They proceeded in this way diagonally across the square, towards the broad boulevard that led off across the lower slopes to where it joined the north road. Just as it reached the edge of the square, Red's great head swept round in a slow and graceful arc until a single eye looked directly at me. In that moment, my scar burned with sudden intensity. I gasped and my hand went to my chest. Overwhelming as this feeling was, I cannot call it pain. It was as though a thousand beings called out from under my skin in sudden, ecstatic, chorus. I collapsed.

'Alex? Master Alex?'

I came round in a moment and sat up on the cobbles. Sally was leaning over me, her face screwed up in an expression somewhere between concern and anger. The crowd continued to flow around us. I couldn't bring myself to say anything, but simply accompanied her back to the house in a daze. I did not see the dragons in daylight again until I left Stamsfeld.

On arriving home I found my aunt looking out of the kitchen window, just staring into space. I mumbled something or other and walked through to the back of the house. My father was no longer there, only a cold body remained. As I looked at it, I could only think of the dragons.

I found Rufus out in the garden.

'Where were you?"

The muscles of his face twitched as he tried to overcome grief with anger. I said nothing. My brother stood up and hugged me too him as if pressing a compress to a bleeding wound. Sobs wracked his body. We stayed like that for what seemed a long time. I could only think of the dragons. Should I tell my brother? Perhaps not. I might have been twelve, but I was not so young that I didn't know there was something strange about seeing dragons when others didn't. I decided I would speak with aunt Sarah about it, when an opportunity came.

Rufus’s crying stopped, and he let go of me. He looked so much like our father at that moment, his face flushed and his features pinched in towards the centre of his face.

"It's just you and me now, little brother" He said.

***

A hammering at the door woke me from a strange dream that night.

I dreamt a world of fire. Everything, from where I stood to the hazy horizon, was a shifting mass of embers, a smoking, scabrous black crust over a glowing mass. A literal river of fire cut through this, a molten orange liquid spitting up tongues of flame as it flowed, and towards the horizon more of this liquid flame spouted out of the earth in great plumes, scattering flaming rocks in all directions. Except it was not me standing. As the viewpoint shifted, I realised that I was seeing this scene through the eyes of someone, or something, else.

A single, ear-shattering shriek rang out. The creature whose eyes I saw this through turned, and there, perched on a low slab of blackened rock, something like a dragon crouched. I say something like, as it looked something more like a juvenile crow, only with long scales rather than feathers. It sat hunched, with its wings gathered up around it as if sheltering something. As I watched, it parted its wings a little, and, jostling each other in the tiny gap, seven little hatchlings, each as ugly as the parent, emerged. They set off across the rough ground, tumbling in the gaps between pieces of the broken crust but getting up again and continuing on towards the river of fire. When they reached its shore they hopped into the flowing liquid without hesitation, and disappeared from view.

Bam bam bam

And again

Bam bam bam

The sound resolved into a hammering at the door. I lay, my eyes wide open for a moment. I had never had such a dream, so vivid, so real.

It was pitch dark in the room. I swung my legs out of the bed and began feeling around for my breeches. As I stumbled down the hallway to the head of the stairs, a glow of light came up the stairwell, moving across the ceiling. I heard my aunt’s voice speaking through the door to whoever was outside, then the lower rumble of Geric’s voice. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, the door was open, Geric presumably had gone outside and with my aunt was a short, rotund woman, almost as round as she was tall. Sarah was helping her off with a travel shawl so long it was more like a kilt, and tut-tutting at her over travelling so late at night.

‘We had to, Sarah. You have no idea what is happening. They’ll be here next’

‘Who’ll be here next?’ my aunt replied, her voice still gently chiding

‘The soldiers, Sarah. The king’s soldiers – do you know he’s calling himself emperor now? Well, they’ve set up camp on the plain, and they’ve just been taking whatever they want. Girls can’t go our alone. Well, I had to bring Matilde here, before they got round to our village’

I realised then this was Gertie, Geric’s sister, who lived in the village of Thurston. Thurston was a full day's ride away. Matilde, I assumed, was her daughter. I vaguely remember a chubby infant with red hair, the last time Gertie had visited. Years had passed since.

They must have travelled along the forest road, along the upper edge of the valley. The idea sent a chill through me. The north road was the more common haunt of bandits, but everyone knew there were spirits in the forest at night.

Gertie’s face turned towards me, and her round eyes bulged. Her gaze fell to my chest, where the edge of my mark was revealed by the opening of my nightshirt. She rushed over to me with quick steps and grabbed at the collars of my shirt, pulling the two halves together. Her face inches from mine she stared into my eyes.

‘Don’t let anyone see that, boy!’