The Dragonsborne

There weren’t always dragons in the valley.

It was a phrase she had trained herself to repeat whenever she crossed the trail. A tool she always carried with her so that in passing through these smoldered ruins she might so suspend her own disbelief. It was a hard thing for any knight, let alone a night of Demores to trust that the smoldered rock, the old edifices which she approaches were once castles that tickled the belly of the sky. Now, as she nears, they appear as gigantic candles, melted and bent, luminous in the moonlight. A city lost to fire, a quiet sanctuary where hordes of refugees once made camp. A decade ago, life had flourished in these hills, but now they lay silent, charred, barely good enough even for the temporary housing she is tasked with prohibiting. The only comfort the relics have to offer is the knowing that if ever again she must take flight, their walls may shield her for a night or two. A possibility which grows more threatening, which teeters on the border of probability with every passing day. All because of the monstrous, winged, fire breathing beasts. No, there weren’t always dragons in the valley, but certainly there are now. And for a young woman who might just as easily be killed in the valley as behind the castle walls, disbelief is not something she can afford.

It was her Gran’s saying. A phrase the matriarch returned to daily. In that time, their crossing had been hopeful and green. Folks from their land were generous, willing, if not eager to help their fellow countrymate. An elderly woman and a young girl might have made easy pickings for predators or thieves, but the stream of Fire Eaters had been as protective of the two as the grandmother was of her own progeny. The refugees had brought with them what clothes and food they could, even the scraps of their culture, salvaged into dance and drink and song which echoed off the mountains of the valley. Now, these hills lay silent. Not even the wind possesses the courage to whistle through the crags.

As she passes, her boots crunch on the cinders and ash. So too do the boots of Sajen behind her. “Maybe we should find another footpath,” he whispers, loud as he dares. One might think a reformer would have more gumption. A year older than she—seventeen passings of the sun, if she remembers correctly—and stuck in her charge. A young peasant who turned with hundreds of others in protest of the bread shortages. He was jailed, but, considering his strength and stature, the kingdom gave him a chance as a knight. Three days along the footpath and already scared gutless by the Valley.

“Do you hear that?” Aeiriea whispers back. He listens, no doubt for the flap of wings, the screech and roar of a Beast. But none sounds. Instead, as they listen, they can hear the faintest echo of their own stepping, reverberating from the old ruin walls. “Sound echoes here. It would be hard, even for a Beast to pinpoint our exact location.”

He breathes.

“Unless, of course, one is already nearby.” She squints at him then. Three days and she can’t quite seem to place this boy. Tall, strong, big. Ashen hair, hazel eyes, the look of a peasant with just enough to eat and not a hope for ascension above the servant’s quarters. Until now. She searches his face. Still timid. Then she smiles. It is a rare phenomenon for Aeiriea, but a necessary one. New soldiers are the most likely to be killed on missions. For whatever reason—clumsiness, fearfulness, defection—they slip up. They draw attention from the Fire Eaters and if not from the Fire Eaters, then from the Beasts. Many die within their first year. She has been a scout for three. This is the first soldier in her charge. She has no intention of dying during her first mission calling the shots. She will put him as far at ease as she is capable of doing.

He isn’t wrong about the sound though. It’s one—just one way of four—to draw in the Breathers. Ways her people guarded once upon a time. Ways all too familiar to the whole of the world today. Sound is among the most well-known. But keeping quiet alone won’t keep you alive. Following directions, and living from experience just might.

She halts. Perhaps she had spoken too soon. One hand reaches back, catches Sajen square in the chest. She prays he doesn’t yelp, doesn’t protest. He doesn’t. He doesn’t make a sound. Without looking back, she points, feels his eyes follow her hand. Then they stop, freezing on the body. Terrified.

The thing no longer smells. On her journey a year ago, it was an unbearable stench for a half-mile radius. But the scavengers have finally picked clean the bones of carrion. It lays undisturbed. No single knight could lift it and no troop would have the will to try to move it. Dragons do not cannibalize their own, but they will wait to pick the gold from the bellies of the fallen. Or so she has been told.

Spanning the length of seven large buildings, the thing lay, somewhere between a canid and a serpent, its wings crumpled beneath its girth, its forelegs tucked above its belly. It had resigned itself to death long before it had collided with the earth. Somehow, a knight had managed to bring it down. If there were refugees or soldiers in the building below, they were long since dead.

They pass the beast, each half-expecting its fossils to rear up, roar its ugly head and bear down upon them. Its mouth alone could swallow a heifer in a single bite. But the dead do not come to life tonight. She can sense Sajen dragging. She turns back, tugs his wrist. “Come on, we’ve got a job to do.”

Her task is simple, if arduous. She is to pace the first forest of the Valley. When she reaches the Quarters, within an hour or two, she will report any suspicious activity, marking on the map if there is anything of note; any sign of the beasts from above or below, and especially if she should encounter any Fire Eaters. Man, woman, elderly, child. It does not matter. They will be reported to the outpost. They will likely be rounded up, will claim that they seek asylum, and will be turned back or driven back. Unless, of course, if they have information.

Aeiriea’s Gran had information. Solid, honest information, which she was smart enough to spill the instant they reached the castle walls. Aeiriea remembers the crowds packed into the holding cells, like cattle, waiting endless hours to have their case heard in the summons court. The packs of deperate, hungry people would watch as many were turned away, forced to march along the adjacent mote, back into the forest. There were rumors of food shortages, of overcrowding. The kingdom wished to extend a helpful hand, but it simply couldn’t be afforded.

Still, they were forced, Aeiriea and her Gran, into a detention center for a month. She remembers, the wrought iron underground, no access to the sun. Packed among a dozen children on the floor. No blankets, no grandmother. Just her stuffed doll for comfort. A moon later, they had been released. Her grandmother’s information turned out to be useful to the king’s army. And so, they were allowed to stay. That was rarely the case for a Fire Eater family.

What information had her grandmother possessed that had allowed her passage into the kingdom? Aeiriea would likely never know.

Before the flames erupted on the Mountain, safe passage had been commonplace through the valley. Whole routes had been carved out for horses and carriages, boats along the rivers. The instant the wings flapped, the flames erupted, the borders had been shut down, the throngs off desperate refuges bottlenecked by chaos, detained, and tossed back like fish into water.

They reach the other end of the hill. The dead Beast is now fully out of sight. She takes a moment to breathe, to rest, to reflect.

“How many of them have we killed?” asks Sajen.

Her fingers slide along the notches at her belt. She closes her eyes. “Six,” she sighs. She had seen six of them go down.

“How many are left?” he seems hopeful.

“At least double that,” she says. Best not to sugarcoat it. “In the area alone.” It was a conservative estimate, but Sajen doesn’t need to know that. She needs him alert, not terrified. So far, the Breathers have not breached the border of the kingdom. There is prey enough out here in the field. Already so many knights have been dispatched. So many have not been returned home, dead or alive, wounded or whole. Her platoon has not lost a soldier in months, and they have embarked on more patrol missions than ever, what with the new surge of Eaters arriving. Still, that doesn’t mean tonight is not within the cards to have them devoured by fanged mouths or lifted off into the dark sky by talons. Or even killed by a stray Fire Eater.

The Eaters. A once-rich nation, the Continent’s greatest entertainers, now a savage pack of fat fools. Real fools; jugglers, dancers…fire-eaters. A prosperous and youthful kingdom that had grown pretty and plump on the riches atop which they had built their magnificent castles. Demores. A large land, overflowing with fruit and jewels beneath the ground. It remains, in some parts, still full of enough infrastructure and international aid that everyone from the powerful to the paupers remain well-fed and reluctant to leave. Foolish, yes, but also desperate enough to attack a troop of soldiers for whatever goods they could salvage and steal.

It’s clear that the thought does not cross her mind alone. Her eyes glance to the side. ¬ Sajen glances back at her. Hazel—the staple color of those who had brought her and her kin in with welcome arms a decade ago. Hands the color of cream. Hands of a people who would just as soon turn a fire eater away without a second thought. Had they truly become such a nuisance? Had they proved themselves such a drag on the kingdom?

Is tonight the night your people come for us? He says with his eyes, silently. Perhaps even kiddingly. Perhaps he has begun to trust her. She looks back at him.

“They are no longer my people.” She says it aloud.

The Fire Eaters had since shown their true colors, out here in the hills. They had robbed, stolen, murdered, even eaten their own. Desperation had rendered their supposed sophistication moot. She will do anything to prove herself as separate from the Fire Eaters as she can. Hadn’t she done already? The knights saw her as an asset, albeit a distasteful one. They didn’t like her kind, but they loved the fact that she knew how the Fire Eaters’ minds operated. Little did they know, she didn’t know much about the Eaters’ minds. You only had to place yourself into the shoes of a desperate, helpless person to know which footpaths they were likely to take, how many of them might try to breach a mote, where they were likely to hide their offspring.

How many had she turned away? None, technically. Not on her own. That wasn’t her job. She merely recorded the numbers, reported the Fire Eaters’ movements. The other knights took over from there, disbursing them, surrounding the encampments. Rounding up the children and the elderly, killing the adults, but only if necessary. Whatever food or goods they had would be confiscated, returned to the kingdom. The living refugees would be interned, turned to the factories if they were useful or transported miles into the valley. The dead would be carted and wheeled away by the Gatherers. And then…and then…

She tries not to think about the and then and so ends up thinking of nothing else. And then. The unthinkable. The dead are gathered, turned into a chum which is catapulted throughout the valley. Another scent which can lead away a dragon. Breathers must eat more than just emeralds and rubies. The scent of human flesh helps to lead them away from the kingdom. The trails of the living, turned away, are always useful in doing the same.

It isn’t preferable. It isn’t ideal. It isn’t even remotely humane. But it’s the only way she can survive in this world. Had her Gran waited as long as their old neighbors had to try to reach the refuge of their neighboring kingdom, she might be interned, forced to labor in a factory. Or turned into chum. The thought consumes her mind so that she becomes hardly aware of anything else, save for her gratitude that the crickets have begun to chirp, that perhaps their sound will cover her stride.

A splash rips through the silence. Aeiriea freezes. Stone cold. A statue. Her eyes turn, frantically, searching about for the source of the noise. And then she feels it; the sodden cold about her boots. She glances down. The splash was her creation. She stands on the edge of a pond. But this pond should not be here. She has traveled this trail a hundred times. There was never water along this footpath. She thinks. There had been rain, recently. Days of it. Enough to stir up the ash and—yes—to fill a pond’s-worth of water, should a stray crater be available.

The moon offers enough light to observe the pond, the foliage enough coverage not to be seen. If she is careful. She glances out over the gently rippling surface. From left to right. The edges curve outward and then turns sharply back, two pronged piers off mud cutting violently through the water.

She starts, nearly slipping in the water again. On the prong nearest her shines a pair of dark eyes. Low to the ground. It’s certainly not a dragon. Not even one of the Breathers’ young would be that small. A stag, perhaps? A canid? Silently, she unsheathes her sword from her leather pouch.

The eyes lift upward. Too tall to be a canid. Too short a stag. Slowly, one eye disappears, then reappears. Then the other parrots its twin. A trick of the trade. Two slow winks on either eye…assuming you still possess both. The owner of the eye is an ally. Or a Breather who has learned to communicate like the knights, though Aeiriea doubts it. A nation of fools would be hard pressed to learn their secrets.

She gestures to Sajen. Follow. They round the edge of the bay.

She was right. The spy is not an Eater. Nor an animal. It is a knight. One from her platoon. Anetku. A tracker, from the plains kingdom. The kingdom of the knights had the foresight to enlist, conscript, and contract young soldiers from other nations, when their own youth were dying at unprecedented rates. Every kingdom, that is, but Demores.

Behind her are two men. One a head-and-a-half taller than Aeiriea, deep midnight skin, a sturdy nose, a serious expression. The other short, curly fire-red hair, stocky. Each man nods. Both are members of her troop, her pack. They lean against a cavalry, each of who’s hooves are padded in cloth. Both with ugly scars across their throats, vocal chords removed. One pulls a dead stag on its back, a string of game. The other a cart on which six or seven bodies—all of Fire Eaters—have been stacked.

Aeiriea, challenging herself not to be sick, nods and twists quickly back to Anetku, who had spent her entire childhood tracking animals which had been shot and returning them to her encampments for meat. Now, she uses her tracking skills to fight the encroaching wall of fire, Breathers, and Eaters. She greets them, using only a nod, but it is friendly enough.

“Who’s the freshling?” asks the hunter, the tall midnight-skinned man. Bountor is his name. He attempts a whisper, though his voice is so deep, it proves difficult for him to muffle.

To compensate, Aeiriea answers in as few words as possible. “Sajen. New recruit. My charge.” Bountor and the redhead look at Sajen, unimpressed. To his credit, he does not flinch. Aeiriea turns to Anetku, who crouches down at the edge of the pond. “What is that?”

She has seen it. Beneath Anetku’s knee is an animal, a beast of some sort. No, not a beast…Aeiriea peers, leaning closer to the dead thing. Anetku shifts and slowly, it comes into focus. Face down, a wide figure, golden locks on indeterminable skin. It isn’t a creature at all, but the large back of a man.

“Help me,” says Anetku, softly. She is soft by nature. “I need to examine him, make sure he isn’t one of us…Aeiriea, you can help me tell if he is an Eater.” Aeiriea is always touched—and a bit surprised—when other knights speak to her with such respect. perhaps it has to do with their being enlisted from other nations. Of course, some knights treat her like Chum no matter where they come from. Very few love a Fire Eater these days.

With some considerable effort, they manage to roll over the young man. Not much older than Aiereia, the man’s face has been mostly untouched by fire or water, having come to rest—recently—in the earth. It’s easy to discern who he once was; handsome from generations of concentrated breeding, plump from a lifetime living in luxury, fresh scratches adorning his hands and arms and face but nothing running deeper. This man likely never labored a day in his life. Light skin, ashen hair. Possibly he grew up among the upper echelons of royalty, but most certainly he was once one of nobility’s sons.

“He’s a fresh one,” says Anetku, as quietly as she can.

Now they examine the scratches and the scars. The long ugly one digging into the generous flesh on his side is not deep enough to be a Breather’s, nor is it accompanied by another scar on either side. Unless it was by the hand of a new miniature and one-taloned creature, his death was not the result of a dragon attack.

Everyone winces as the Bountor strikes a match. The crack is too loud, the spark too bright. But it’s only a matter of seconds before the flame has disappeared behind the special, tinted lantern which diminishes the light to near non-existence.

The firelight catches on the pattern in his face. A radial snowflake of silver and gold, embossed with rubies. There’s no mistaking it now. He is one of her kind. The pattern would be beautiful if not reserved to a corpse’s face, if not so jarring, so jaggedly carved throughout his body. She remembered her own carving. How could she forget? First came the flames in the distance. Then the rush, a pulse like an explosion which knocked her off her little feet. The pain, the blinding pain, as if needles were scratching across her face, her neck. The left side of her body, which had been facing the Western window. There was screaming. It came from her, from her brother, from her father, from her mother. But not her Gran. For whatever reason, the old woman had remained entirely untouched. Some older folks had been so fortunate. Many had not survived the etching.

Aeiriea had been the only one small enough for her Gran to carry. She remembers her warm arms, reaching down to scoop her crumpled, raw body, uneasy from her weight, uneasy from the sight of the child. She had tried to hold her close to comfort her and after proving too painful, forced the girl onto her feet, supported her under her arm. And the two ran. As fast as an old woman and a little girl who had just undergone a whole body tattoo could possibly run. At the door Aieriea afforded herself a glance back at her family. Her mother, her father, her brother. None of them stirred.

The young man in the water does not stir.

Anetku looks to Aeiriea. Sajen asks the unspoken aloud. “Is he yours?”

The look she shoots him must be as piercing as her own etching a decade ago, because Sajen winces as if struck. “Not mine,” she whispers flatly. “But a Fire Eater, yes.”

Without explaining further, Aeiriea reaches back, retrieves the scroll from her pack. She must mark this down, before she turns it in at the outpost. “What happened, Anetku?”

“Someone attacked him. Could have been someone in his group or someone hired to bring him here.” It was not unheard of. Many deals went south this way. Smugglers who had no accountability to make good on their deliveries often murdered in cold blood and took their victims’ riches to another town, applying to escort another wealthy bird in another part of the Valley. She thinks to speak on this, but knowing words should be rationed, especially now, especially here, asks another question.

“The waterbed,” Aeiriea whispers. “Where did it come from?” In answer, Anetku holds up her hand, points to the sky. The Breathers? Then she reaches down, grabs a cindered twig, and begins to draw in the mud. She leans back so that Aeiriea and the others can see. A three-taloned foot. They look back at the pond. The pond, big enough to work as the foundation for a house, was imprinted by a Breather. It’s nearby. And it was here. Recently.

The fire, the footprint, the man. Threats from the kingdom, the Breathers, the refugees. Her mind begins to feel like the pond, sloshed and rippling, flooded with water. She grasps onto anything she can for support. Finally, her eyes rest on the dull little flame.

The image is forever burned into her mind.

The fire erupted first.

She remembered. How could she ever forget? The Breathers were well-feared then as they are now. But distantly, as one might fear a big cat from a far-off land, caged within a menagerie. As one might fear the potential bite of a canid. Everyone in Demores knew the rules. The beasts were far more fearful of them than they were of the Breathers. Once upon a time the beasts had reined across the lands. For a century, they had lay dormant, docile, never lifting from their pit. So long had they rested, some rumored that their existence was mere legend. If not for the riches that ran abundant in Demore, more civilians would have fallen into disbelief over time.

But whether it was fable or fact, whether it was legend or lore, everyone knew the reason the Dragons slept below. Miles beneath the earth, piled as high as mountains, were the riches accumulated over millennium. It was well-known that every time a kingdom fell, the Breathers would search, hoarding every crown, every golden necklace, every glinting stone. For what, no one seemed to know. But it was common knowledge that riches beyond men’s wildest imaginings, beyond women’s most lurid dreams lie miles beneath the soil of Demores.

There had been one rule. Do not disturb the treasure of the Dragons. On the day the mountain erupted in flames and in wing folds, everyone in Demores aseknew. That rule had been broken. And the cursed wrath, the unspoken spell that came as a consequence for disturbing the dragons’ loot left the kingdom tattooed in their own stolen jewels, marked as the criminals they were. The fire had charred another quarter of their populace.

Aeiriea and her Gran ran for four nights. No stopping, save to drink and eat what they could find. The flames followed. They pressed on. News that the Breathers had challenged nearly every border of every neighboring kingdom sent them reeling back. They zigzagged, changed direction. North, east, south, north again, west. Anything to escape the fire wall.

But it was the sight, the vision of the Breathers, silhouetted against the hazy orange sky that remains burned in her mind to this very day.

Perhaps it is from years of being on the run, years of being a refugee, a lifetime of being a Fire Eater. Something snaps her back to the present. She senses it…something. She turns, confused. Furrows her brow, steps into the water, squinting across the pond. For a moment, she thought she had seen her own reflection. Not in the water but poised in the brambles across the pond. A mud-skinned girl, embossed with rubies and gold. A scout.

The girl’s mouth drops in recognition as the two Fire Eaters survey each other in the darkness. Then, in a whip of dark hair, the flash of gold on her skin, the girl vanishes.

Aeiriea does not charge. A girl so young cannot be here alone. If they follow, they may run straight into her clan and five is not enough to take them, no matter how well they are trained. Their jobs are to report, to hunt, to track, to scavenge, and to follow. They are knights, but not soldiers.

Still, she opens her mouth. She must warn them. Quickly.

Instead, her eyes are locked on the sky as the orange of the flame rises, a spark, a pinprick of light that blossoms into an inferno as it nears them. The flame soars high into the sky, then arches downward. It whips straight past her face and disappears into the brush.

The mute horse does not neigh, but she rears her legs into the air, nearly knocking Bountor from his strong legs. Involuntarily he yelps, trying to calm her. Instead, the horse crumples into the water with a splash. To their surprise, the flames consume the whole of the water within a matter of instants. They each back away. It must have been laced with some flame conductor.

Fire, the last way to conjure a Dragon.

Now they can see them. Ten, twenty, perhaps thirty Eaters. Surrounding the footprint. But they do not charge. Instead, many of them, men, women, children, run as fast as they can, dissipating the way the knights came. More arrows follow. The five knights round the horse, the cart, taking shelter from the raining weapons. Only the thwack of arrows and the roar of fire can be heard. But it is enough.

“We have to go!” cries Aeiriea, not caring about the noise. “We need shelter. Now!”

Another voice screams. It’s the voice of the Fire Eater girl, whom she can see crying to one of the assailants. “No! NO! She is one of us!” she waves her hands frantically, trying to dissuade the archers. She is mistaken. But it just might save them.

The girl’s voice, the sound of the arrows, is drown out. The scream from above consumes the air, consumes their minds below. Every head, every single one, snaps back, stares helplessly into the sky. Only the silhouette of the Breather can be seen. It pierces the wind faster than a catapult. A line of flames erupts, scorching the earth. Terror seeps through the knights. Instinctually, Aeiriea throws up her hands as the flames overtake them. In her final moments, she closes her eyes and says a prayer to her grandmother. I will be with you soon.

But the flames do not touch her. No heat comes. Perhaps her Gran spared her the pain. Perhaps the fire so instantly burned her, she couldn’t feel it.

She opens her eyes. All around her is char, smoke, ash. The knights of her troop cower. Unharmed but for a few scratches. A perfect circle has remained around them, untouched. Everyone looks at her, mouths agape, eyes wide.

Aeiriea turns back to look across the pond. She can see the jostling of brush that tells her the Fire Eaters are making their way straight for the kingdom. She sees the face of the girl, who looks, shocked at her before she turns and runs. And she sees the Dragon in the sky, sharply rounding a bend and making her way back to sear the earth below.

Instinctually, Aeiriea says another prayer as her comrades take shelter again. She throws up her hands into the air as another round of flames rain down.