Dragon Trials (Return of the Darkening Book 1) (5 page)

I picked up my staff and gave the edge of the wall a few experimental jabs to try and get the hang of what Thea was telling me. Behind me, she was already rummaging about in the weapons shed, leaving me to try and figure this out.

Just raise it a bit higher…and…
I jabbed the edge of the wall. The shock of impact traveled down my forearms as if the thing was alive, making me drop the staff. It felt a wiggling snake.

“Can’t even win against an inanimate object,” one of the other boys muttered. Stooping, I grabbed the long stick and looked up to see Beris. Next to him, Shakasta was trying to stifle his laughter. The two shook their heads and filed into the keep’s kitchens.

I coughed, standing up with my cheeks burning.

“Maybe they’re right. Maybe I should just give up now,” I muttered to myself, inspecting the grazes on my knuckles and the bruises on my forearms.
What do I know about fighting? Who’d ever heard of a peasant from the streets becoming one of the Dragon Riders of Torvald, famous throughout the realms?
I’d never twirled a fighting staff before I had come here. I could pound a hammer and chop with an axe, but with this staff, I seemed to become nothing but thumbs and wrong moves.

I kicked the dust, scuffing the new, simple leather boots the instructors had given me. All my clothes were new, with a brown tunic and trousers, and a leather jerkin that did nothing to keep the bruises from forming. Even wearing the same clothes I still looked out of place compared to the others who all came from noble families. Somehow they managed to look right in the uniform, but mine just seemed not to fit. I threw down my staff and stared at it.

“You certainly won’t get very far with that attitude.”

I looked up to see a bristling moustache and the rest of Commander Hegarty. He stood in one of the archways of the stone avenue that connected the keep to the towers.

“Commander, sir, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.” I tried to bow, not knowing how far I should go.

“No need to stand on ceremony, Smith. You are here to learn how to be a warrior, and you won’t learn that by throwing down your weapon,” his voice sounded gruff, but I heard a touch of feeling there for me. He fixed me with a measuring, assessing eye. “Tell me Sebastian, have you seen the Map Room up in the observation tower yet? Maybe it will be more to your liking.”

There was still an hour before the horn sounded for dinner—and I was ready to do anything to avoid having to go another round with Thea and a staff. I nodded and tried not to sound too eager. “I’d love to, sir.”

“Come with me, Sebastian,” he turned and started walking quickly along the stone avenue, his boots clipping on the cobbles as he did so.

The observation tower was the tallest tower at the Academy. It stuck out from the side of the mountain like a finger pointing to the sky. From this grand tower, the scribes and scouts could prepare and catalogue their scrolls for the navigators. I’d often looked up at the roof—tiled with dark slate—from the small space outside the smithy many leagues below and wondered what it must be like inside.

Commander Hegarty nudged open a heavy, wooden door, revealing a set of spiraling stone steps and a winch-lift, a wooden platform built like a box with a series of weights attached to a cogwheel. I knew that was used for when the scouts had to get to the top of the tower in very short time—they could rise up on this when the weights were released, shooting up as if they had dragon wings. Thankfully, Commander Hegarty informed me now that we would be taking the more sedate, stairwell route.

The commander went up the many hundreds of steps with a spry step. I followed, my legs starting to ache and my chest heaving. He didn’t even seem out of breath. I wondered just how often he had made this journey and if he even noticed how high it was. As we walked, he talked and I looked out of the narrow windows that we passed on our way up, watching the Academy open space getting ever smaller beneath. The terraced and walled city of Torvald now looked more like an ant nest, it was so small.

“Where are you from, Sebastian?” Hegarty asked. “I can see that you haven’t had any training.”

I stared the steps and his boots and my feet. “I’m from Mongers Lane,” I said, mumbling the words.

“Near Old Bridge, am I right, and the gate where the woodworkers come into the city?”

“That’s right, sir.” I glanced up, amazed that a man in his position had even heard of us.

Hegarty glanced back and his mustache twitched. “You may be surprised to hear this, Sebastian, but a very long time ago, I grew up in Old Bridge myself. My father and mother were woodcutters. We used to spend all our time roaming the woods on the eastern side of Mount Hammal, looking after the forest there. I was all set to join them in their work before my dragon, Heclaxia, chose me.”

I almost stumbled in my steps. “You, you were poor, sir?”

Hegarty chuckled in the way like a bear might when presented with a strange joke or an easy meal. “Do I not look it now?” He looked down at his Dragon Riders’ armor, and then at his breeches and sturdy boots. “I guess these simple things must look like finery. I remember a time when even a pair of shoes was a luxury.”

I hung my head. It seemed a comfort to know the commander knew something of my troubles, but I still felt out of place. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

“And none taken, Sebastian. But you need to have a little more faith in yourself. Your dragon saw something in you. That’s good enough for anyone, or it should be. I heard tell you are a blacksmith’s son, is that right?” Hegarty carried on up the stairs.

“Yes, sir. Worked night and day in the Mongers Lane smithy for my da…” I ran out of words as I remembered just what that work meant. Hours of shifting full barrows of ore, ingots, coal and wood. Not much actual blacksmithing for me, just hard labor. “But, uh, I didn’t get to do a lot. My da said I was too clumsy.”

Not that it stopped him from drinking, shouting and pouring the lead wrong and spilling the ore,
I thought with a flash of anger, my fists balling at my sides.

“Hmm.”

I looked up to see the commander once again looking at me with those sharp eyes of his that seemed to see a lot. He didn’t push me for an answer, but kept his brisk walk up the steps. After a moment, he said, “It can be difficult, being poor. A lot of challenges that some others don’t face.”

I nodded. I knew he would say no more on the subject, and neither would I. It seemed like an unspoken understanding had passed between us. We shared a history of coming up from nothing, and I felt like he was telling me the past was gone now
.
I felt odd about it, and let out a breath.

“Hera- Hecla..?” I tried to say, forming my mouth around the odd word he had said.

“He-clax-ia,” Hegarty said, drawing out the word, his voice losing its hard edge for a moment so it seemed soft and gentle as a breeze. “That was my dragon. Oh, she was a beauty. A red like yours.”

“A red? You rode a red?” My jaw dropped before the thought hit me.
Was.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. She
was
your dragon?”

“Yes.” Hegarty’s step faltered, slowed and stopped. “Poor Heclaxia. She is no longer my dragon, but lives in the enclosure with the others. My navigator—he caught an arrow in the neck right in front of me as we were chasing some pirates along the Coast of Kidjia’an. It was a miracle we even made it back to Torvald at all, but Heclaxia knew what she was doing.” He looked at me with a deep sadness in his eyes. “Dragons only choose once, boy, and when their riders are dead and gone, they return to the enclosure to become brood mothers or stud fathers. Heclaxia has a big cave up on the eastern side of Mount Hammal. I still hike out to see her when I can, but she’s more intent on snapping at the younger dragons and telling them how to raise their eggs.”

I was confused. “I—I’m sorry sir, but you talk about…about your red as if…” I stammered, thinking I was putting my boots into something that could be raw as a burn from the forge.

“As if she can talk? As if they have names?” Hegarty started up the worn steps again and his gruff chuckle came back into his voice. “That’s because they can boy, although I’ve never heard them. The dragon tells the navigator its name. Some navigators can even talk to them.” Hegarty shook his head as if it was all a mystery to him. “I was just a protector, but my navigator told me our red’s name, and after he was gone I was all she had left. That’s why it’s important that you have both navigator and protector on board a dragon. They keep each other safe.” He stopped as we reached a landing. “And here we are. In you go, Sebastian. Tell Merik I sent you and you’ll be free to use this place whenever you have free time.”

He pushed open the door and ushered me inside before turning and without even pausing to catch his breath, he jogged back down the stairs. I could hear his boots clacking and growing fainter as I thought over what he had just shared.

Dragons have names. Dragons can talk. It doesn’t matter where you come from, it’s the dragon that chose you.

“Hey,” said a light voice. I looked up, startled to see another youth in the Map Room. He was older than me by a good few years, maybe even into his twenties. He looked thin and elongated, kind of like a spider or a stalk. His skin was dark and his hair black as coal before it goes into the forge. He wore dull, dusty robes, not armor. On his nose there perched a small pair of optics, making his brown eyes look large as he peered at me.

“Uh…Merik?” I said uncertainly. “My name is Seb, Sebastian.”

“And Merik, Merik is me.” He smiled, his teeth a brilliant white against his dark skin. “I guess you could say I’m the permanent fixture about here. They all thought I had the gift for navigating—even my dragon, but with these.” He tapped his optics. “It made it unlikely to ride where I could not see.” He let out a sigh.

I wanted to ask where his dragon was, but I didn’t dare. I didn’t want to hear his dragon had gotten sick.

Looking up at me suddenly, he grinned. “Luckily, however, I have full access to the telescopes. I can see all I want. I just can’t fly…not yet.”

“Telly-scup?” I said, wondering if we spoke the same tongue.

The round room around me was tall with high, vaulted windows on all sides, some at ground level, others halfway up the walls, each covered with thick wooden shutters. Only a few were opened and in front of them stood strange tripods with long barrels like very thin cannons atop them. But they weren’t the most overwhelming thing about this room.

Papers and tablets seemed to be everywhere. Racks and shelves of scrolls stretched from the floor to the ceiling and lay on tables. Ladders on little caster wheels stood between the shelves, and in the center of the room a large oak, work-scarred table stood. I walked over to star at a map, so beautiful it took my breath.

My ma had taught me to read, insisted on it, saying no child of hers would be dumb to knowing accounts and how to read a bill of sale. It was good business sense, she’d told my da, and he’d never been able to say no to her. But that was before the sickness swept through our lane and took her one hard winter. I’d kept up with the reading of the few papers she’d left behind, but I’d never seen the likes of this.

“Wow.” I traced a finger over the shapes and designs on the map—and the words. Some of the lines looked like a child’s drawing of castles and triangle-mountains. On another map I glimpsed colored blobs with lines radiating across them. The colors were wrong, of course, but something about one of the shapes—a large, almost tear-drop shape with smaller semicircles along one side—stood in my memory.

“Oh, that’s Mount Hammal. And there’s the terraces of Torvald.” I pointed out the different semi-circles and the circle of the crater of the dragon enclosure next to us. It looked like the shape I had seen of the mountain and the city underneath me as I had walked up the steps of the tower.

“Not many people get that first time around,” Merik said approvingly. “But yes, you’re right. You see, these are aerial maps.”

“What’s—air-a-real?” I asked.

“Maps of the air, we’ve got some of those as well. They’re called weather maps, but these are maps of what the ground looks like from the air when you’re flying up above it and looking down from your dragon. Aerial.”

“Oh, I see.”

He gave a nod. “The colors are different so you can identify different ground features easily. White for the highest peaks of the landscape, then down the scale, so yellow next high, reds are like rolling hills, greens for valleys… You get the picture.”

I did, and what was more, I knew I could read these very easily.

Merik walked me through a couple of the basic maps of the city and our nearest territories within the realm. He explained there were always at least three, sometimes four, maps of an area that a good navigator had to keep in mind at all times. The pictorial maps showed what the area looked like from the ground, with pictures of castles and cities and mountains like cracked teeth. The aerial maps detailed how the world looked from above. Current or weather maps would show the navigator what the prevailing winds and the weather was like in a region. Finally, action maps gave the boundaries between realms, marking out towns, cities, and recent battles or troops moving on the ground.

“Action maps are where it gets really exciting,” he grinned. “We get reports from our scouts and riders all the time, and we have to update the maps and let the navigators know just what is happening. You see there?” he pointed up to one of the odd, tripod-shaped telly-scups.