The Beginning (48 page)

“Jahrra, you must not lose heart. Things will change, that’s for sure, but you must hold on. Look at this tree here.”

Jahrra looked at her gnarled tree. It wasn’t the prettiest tree in Oescienne, but she loved it anyway. She gazed affectionately at its three trunks, one growing vertically, the other more at an angle, and the third, lying almost flat on the ground. It was this third trunk that Jahrra had always loved to sit on.

Jaax continued in a solemn, respectful tone, “This tree was uprooted and thrown down. It was burdened by the wind, but look at it now. You would have never guessed it was in peril at some point. It has survived, and not only survived, it has thrived. Who would have thought that such a strong tree was at one point fighting for its life? So you see, we all get blown down now and again, but we have to decide whether we want to survive or just lie there and let the elements take us.”

Jahrra couldn’t help but grin despite her sadness. Jaax saw that his analogy had comforted her, and he too gave a genuine smile.

“That sounds like something Master Hroombra would say,” Jahrra commented quietly.

Jaax replied, smiling wryly. “He was my mentor too, you know.”

The unlikely pair let the silence engulf them for just a while longer. The morning song of the winter birds making ready for the coming spring gradually broke the dawn silence and Jahrra knew that they had to get moving. With one last shudder of emotion, and with one last wearied, defeated sigh, Jahrra turned Phrym back towards the road. She tried to look at the bright side; tried to look upon this quest as an adventure, but she couldn’t do so at that moment. Jahrra once thought that she’d had a hard life when she was orphaned, when she was singled out at school, when she had no idea what her past was. Now, she realized, she had been blessed, and now she was regretful that she never truly appreciated it before. She was running headlong into the unknown, with someone she barely knew. True, Jaax had brought her here and checked on her every now and again, but he didn’t know her really, and she didn’t know him. She tried to take comfort in the fact that Hroombra had known him, that Hroombra had trusted him. Jahrra sat back in the saddle and set her mind on that fact.
Master Hroombra trusted Jaax, therefore, so can I.

The girl led her semequin out onto the rain-washed road that trailed down the Sloping Hill. Behind them, Jaax followed silently, battling a flurry of his own thoughts.
It won’t be easy
, the dragon told himself, trying not to be troubled,
but I’ll do my best Hroombra, I’ll do my best.

As Haelionn, the great sun god, showed his face on a new day, the dragon, girl and semequin sunk below the edge of the hill, leaving behind the Castle Guard Ruin, standing reverently in the broken morning light.

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Epilogue
-

The Musings of a Stranger

Much time had passed since the old dragon arrived in the western part of Ethoes, even if it didn’t seem so. When a lifespan lasts for ages, one year can last only a moment. One decade sometimes feels like a day, and a century, well, that is merely a month.

This is how the strange creature hiding in the vast forest felt about the passage of those thousands of days. One year, one hundred years, same difference. Time was time, and it really didn’t matter if nothing important happened between the memorable events of history. That is how it was in the time between the arrival of the old Korli dragon in Oescienne and the winter’s morning when the child Jahrra arrived as an infant, carried from afar by a younger dragon; a descendant of the cursed race.

Time had been flying by, and the instant the mysterious child entered this realm, time stopped abruptly and suddenly started ticking away at a much slower pace. The creature, the tenant of the old forest, had recognized this and paid very close attention to every little detail since.

At the present moment this spy, well wrapped in a ragged cloak disguising both its face and its ancestry, sighed and shook its head as it recalled the past centuries. The spy hadn’t always watched the old dragon in this forgotten province of Oescienne. At one time the creature had been busy witnessing events in the east, terrifying events, dangerous events, long ago before the fall of the Tanaan. It was only after the revelation of the prophecy that this forest dweller paid any attention to the Korli dragon at all. It had always known that the old reptile would return to the castle of his king, but when that time would come, it couldn’t tell for sure.

The spy only knew that one day the fire-breather would return, but not anytime soon. It would be too hard for the dragon to come back to this place right away, right after the loss of his royal Tanaan pet, even if staying in the east meant risking the wrath of the Crimson King. But the old Korli dragon, not so old then, still had a part to play in that horrible war, five centuries ago. He was the one responsible for releasing the Tanaan from the grasp of the Tyrant. Not his beloved Tanaan humans, but the new Tanaan
dragons
.

Oh no
, thought the cloaked being with a twisted smile,
the old reptile would’ve been unwise to return to Oescienne then, and he was not unwise.

So with careful craftiness, the creature followed the dragon Hroombramantu for years across the vast world, always remaining far enough behind so as not to be detected, always fleeing and hiding from friend and foe alike. By the time the old fire-breather finally settled back in the western land near his beloved castle, over one hundred years had passed. The Crimson King had complete power in the east, and many of those loyal to Ethoes had disappeared, been captured, or fled to where they thought they would be safe.

The nameless spy sighed and grinned. It had secrets too; deep, dark secrets that could aid or impede either side of this newly split world. The creature also knew things about Cierryon, the Tyrant of the East, and it knew things about the youngest son of the Tanaan king as well. Rumor had spread that the disgraced prince had escaped among the other newly transformed dragons, but so many were killed in their fumbled escape; who knew which of them escaped with their lives? Nevertheless, the Tyrant King took no chances. Ever since that very day so long ago, his men have searched for the dragon prince. There was only one problem: no one knew how to recognize him, where he had gone, or if he was even still alive.

The wind picked up, a chilly, gentle breeze that often signaled the farewell of a storm. The cloaked figure looked up to the sky, which was blocked out by the many tall trees of the Wreing Florenn. Then it closed its eyes slowly, allowing only thought to take over. The girl and the Tanaan dragon Raejaaxorix had left over two hours ago, just before sunrise. The being searched for the answers it sought and soon it found them. There had been a storm last night, and a fight. The being’s eyes remained closed, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t hard to see what had happened the day before, as if the spy had been there to watch the chaos unfold before its very eyes.

Men, the Tyrant’s men, had finally found the old dragon. They had located Hroombramantu, the one that would lead them to the girl, the girl that was prophesied to save Ethoes and destroy their master, the Crimson King. The being now wondered if these men had actually recognized the girl for who she truly was, but it was clear that the dragon Jaax wasn’t about to take any chances.

“Jaax, Raejaaxorix,” the stranger hissed, its inimitable eyes glowing with some ancient sorcery. “That ambitious Tanaan dragon
would
be involved, and I know
exactly
where his loyalties lie.”

How he would be able to keep the girl safe without the old Korli’s help was another question altogether. He’d had trouble with the girl from the beginning; the creature had seen it all. Jahrra despised him, and the young dragon expected more out of her. It would be interesting to see how he would protect her from the soon-to-be enlightened Tyrant.

“If only I could have had more influence!” the forest dweller rasped, its eyes sparking with rueful frustration.

It had watched the girl arrive here with interest and had wondered why the great dragon had placed her with the Nesnan family. The creature had just assumed then, not yet realizing who the young girl really was, that Hroombra was helping some friends that were dear to him. They wanted a child, and he knew of an orphaned one. Plain and simple. But in the end, it wasn’t so plain and simple after all.

What the being of the old wood couldn’t figure out (in the very beginning at least), was
why
had the Tanaan dragon been there? The creature had known of this dragon, Jaax, before, in another lifetime it seemed, but why
was he here now? What could possibly make him return to this place? These were the questions the spy had asked itself when it first recognized Hroombra’s reptilian visitor that early winter morning seventeen years ago.

Yet, it should have been fairly obvious, the creature thought with rueful humility, after all, the girl’s arrival was one of those stopping points in time. But it was that same space of time that had made the being’s mind grow lazy; the same long passage of time that, although it moved quickly, had a devious way of making a keen memory forget.

Despite its suspicions and eager interest, it wasn’t until years later, when the child had grown older, that the creature finally began to detect what the girl was. One spring day, a peculiar wind had blown over the forest, forcing the spy to leave its hiding place deep within the Wreing Florenn.

“I don’t often like to leave this place,” the forest’s tenant now rasped, pulling its ragged cloak tighter as it conversed with its memories, “but a sensation as strong as that one is not to be ignored.”

The feeling eventually led the creature to the old Castle Ruin, a place not visited by the great dragon since he left to save his prince so many decades before. Safely from behind a grove of trees, the spy had looked on as the dragon and the girl walked about the ruins of the ancient palace. Then, in a wave of astonishment, the crafty spy finally realized who the girl was.
Of course! It all makes sense now! The chosen one is finally in Oescienne, right at my feet!
It had watched enticingly as the girl and her mentor returned to their home. From that moment on, the creature swore an oath that it, too, would somehow play a part in the girl’s fate.

Several branches rattled overhead, the leaves prattling in protest as the storm gusts combed through the canopy. The creature glanced upward, frowning in slight irritation. As the wind died down, the forest dweller got back to its musings.

A few years passed, and the secretive creature kept its silent vigil over the girl. It spied on her from the woods when she went riding with her friends, hoping to approach her when the children dared each other to move closer to the forest, but it was too risky. Later, the creature visited the girl’s young semequin, at the time a fine foal, and bribed him into easy friendship by feeding him some of the rare treats that grew in the deepest part of the Wreing Florenn. But once again, approaching the young child herself was out of the question. It was at that point that the stranger began to think,
Perhaps I shouldn’t be seeking the child at all. I must somehow bring her to me.
And so it developed a way to lure the girl into the forest.

At first it had been difficult. The girl had been warned away from the Wreing Florenn by those she trusted most. But after some time, the creature used its power to manipulate a herd of unicorns to use as bait on the girl. The unicorns had arrived in the forest only a few years before the girl, but they had remained a secret to all in Oescienne. That is, they were unknown to all except the strange occupant of the old wood. Taking advantage of their presence and the girl’s affinity towards wild creatures, the spy used its powers to lead one of the magical animals to the edge of the forest, just as the girl was passing by. Finally, Jahrra’s curiosity got the better of her and she entered the dreaded wood, breaking that first barrier of fear.

Only a year later the girl traveled into the heart of the Wreing Florenn on a dare, finding someone whom she believed she could trust, someone who knew how to influence her.

“The girl could have easily come to harm,” the creature murmured to a nearby tree, its eyes burning with an ancient magic many had forgotten as it thought of all the things that lived in the forest. “But she needed to see and hear certain things; she needed to know about who she was.”

Now Jahrra was on her own, with Raejaaxorix, and hopefully he had finally told her the truth. The intense, topaz eyes of the stranger closed slowly against the filtered morning light. Remembering the events of the past had been quite tiring.

The cloaked being let out a rueful sigh and with a crackling voice said to the damp, still day, “Hopefully Jaax has taken my advice. Hopefully he’ll lead her to where she needs to go, and hopefully I’ll find them again, for I am not finished with either of them.”

The tenant of the old wood threw back its hood, revealing its face at last, the face of an old, haggard woman. With a grunt of effort, she gathered her many skirts and layers of clothing about her, pulling her blood-red traveling cloak securely around it all. She looked back at the dark oaks looming overhead and took a deep breath as she remembered how comfortable she had been in this swamp.

Another cool, late winter breeze rustled through the branches one last time. As the sun fought its way through the unfurling clouds and treetops above, the Mystic Archedenaeh slowly left the Wreing Florenn and headed north toward the coast, the korehv Milihn flying silently after her.