Dragon Master Read online

  We sparred eight more times before being released. I won exactly zero times.

  It was time to eat breakfast. At last, something I’d be good at.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Festival

  The Stoneflame festival arrived. In kingdoms like Rægena, the festival was a six-week long celebration that the court minstrels and jesters planned for a year or more. There would be new events every day, exotic foods and exotic animals brought in from across the Realm, old familiar songs would be played and new ones would debut. Rægena could celebrate, we had a Dragon Master; we had Walker Ebondell. When he wasn’t out on a dragon quest or some other official duty, Walker tended to stay in his keep, training tirelessly to stay in shape for the next Dragonbirth, his next dragon quest. But for the festival he and his retinue came out to the various parties, sampled the foreign delicacies, and picked out new women to join the ranks of the Master’s wives.

  I knew I wouldn’t see Kamelia or any of the other wives at the festival. For them, the Stoneflame brought a very different kind of event, the Stoneflame ceremony. They were even now beginning the Watch, each guarded by a team of two veteran Stone Souls trading twelve-hour shifts. As a fourteen-year old Stone Soul, I would only have to spend a single day or evening on the Watch, learning what I’d be expected to do in five years time. Not that there was much to learn: you just sat in a room and made sure you didn’t let your assignment out of your sight. Every day. For six weeks. Well, every day save one. So I was going to enjoy my last Stoneflame festival to its fullest.

  “Let’s try the Fællan Flamespirit steaks next,” Daija said. “We’d better have another glass of starberry juice on hand first. I hear those steaks live up to their namesake.”

  Daija and the rest of Boe’s family had only just arrived late that morning, but I was already getting tired of being told what to do. Boe’s parents had whisked Boe away as soon as they’d arrived, requesting a tour of the grounds. As if anything had changed since they’d been here last, two years ago. That left me with Daija and her demands.

  I looked around desperately for someone else that I could trap into joining us, then it would be two against one. I spotted Bayrd’s golden hair from a distance and guessed that I’d see Gable somewhere following behind him, his own personal human lap dog. Sure enough, there was Gable, and there were two younger girls giggling excitedly at whatever it was Gable was saying. He was gesturing wildly and kept glancing over at Bayrd to make sure he wasn’t missing any of it. I kept searching the crowd until I noticed Irvin at the back of the line for the Fællan foods booth. I motioned for Daija to follow me then took off at a sprint to catch up with him. Daija matched me step for step. Well, sure, I’d spent the past day being tortured mercilessly by Commander Hawk, I wasn’t in the best condition of my life right about now.

  “Hey Irvin,” I said when we caught up with him. I hunched over and put my hands on my knees, taking deep breaths. Irvin greeted me, and then stuck his hand out to introduce himself to Daija.

  “Daija Valora,” she said, shaking Irvin’s hand and then performing a half curtsey, pulling the long ruffles of her ceremonial Stoneflame blouse out from her body in a flourish. Everyone wore silly looking formal clothing throughout the festival, usually in deep shades of red with silver embellishments. Daija’s outfit was particularly fancy and impractical, especially when compared to the relatively drab straightforward ceremonial outfits that Stone Souls were given to wear. I felt a little restricted in my silk vest and fitted dress pants, but at least my ceremonial garb would keep me warm in the chilly breeze.

  “You’re really Boe’s sister?” Irvin’s question was rhetorical, but also mock incredulous, and this caused Daija to blush and turn away shyly. I looked at Daija and could see where Irvin was coming from. Daija was taller than her twin brother by a couple of inches, and filled out her ceremonial Stoneflame blouse while Boe in his outfit had looked more like he was a street cat dressed in a blanket. Daija’s eyes were similarly hazel, but had a sparkle of green in them that had shown for a moment when she’d blushed. And her hair was flowing and brown with reddish highlights in contrast to Boe’s wild red curls. Plus, of course, she was a girl.

  “I hope they have starberry juice at this booth too, I hear the Fællan Flamespirit steak is really hot,” I told Irvin. Daija laughed and rolled her eyes and I realized I was repeating what she’d just told me. Oh well.

  “Right idea,” said Irvin, “but they don’t have any here, they basically only drink muddy water in Fælla. Why don’t you go get three glasses of juice and we’ll meet you back here?”

  I agreed, happy to have an excuse to get away from Daija and be on my own for a few minutes. As I was walking away, I could hear Daija laughing softly at something Irvin whispered to her. Life at the academy could make a guy lonely enough that he’d flirt with anything female, I guess.

  ***

  The evening’s entertainment was the first round of the Realm’s Tournament, an event that other boys my age had spent the past year competing to qualify for. For many, the Tournament offered up a rare chance to travel all around the Realm and see the far-off places that normally only came to your region in small doses during events like the Stoneflame festival. As for me, I knew that I could end up traveling anywhere during a dragon quest, so I wasn’t upset that I wasn’t allowed to participate in the qualifying rounds to enter the Tournament. Besides, it wasn’t as if I’d have stood a chance in them anyway.

  Irvin, Daija, and I met up with Boe and his parents, Verrill and Tahlor, just as everyone was filing into the training grounds. Long rows of benches were set up, and as each filled with people it was lifted into the air by powerful wizards that Rægena brought in for the festival. I felt as though I would be sick as our bench was lifted. We wobbled unsteadily forward before leveling out and lifting to a set height that afforded us an unobstructed view of the training grounds. It was strange seeing my home of the past decade transformed so much, even though it should have been familiar to me since they did the same thing five years ago.

  “This should be good,” I said, trying to start up a conversation with Boe. When he didn’t respond I looked to my right and saw that he was listening to something Daija was telling Irvin at the end of the bench. He hadn’t heard me.

  “Yes, I always do enjoy the Tournament,” Boe’s father responded to me with a wink.

  The fiery-haired hulk of a man was sitting to my left, which was a little unnerving since he had no arm on the right side of his body, only a stump where his arm had once been. He’d been a Stone Soul and lost his arm battling a dragon long ago. He was lucky that he’d survived at all, but another member of his dragon quest had been able to jump in to deliver a killing blow to the dragon. I thought about how terrifying and exhilarating that situation must have been when Verrill had stabbed through the dragon’s heart and the dragon hadn’t fallen. I wondered if he even bothered to continue to fight as the dragon tore off his arm, or if he just dropped to his knees and accepted his fate once he learned that he was not a Dragon Master. It was a question I would certainly never ask him, and while he could be liquored up enough to tell the story of how Master Perceval saved his life, he never got into those more personal details. I couldn’t blame him.

  We watched a half dozen rounds of highly entertaining combat. The Tournament used combat rules similar to the ones we used at the academy in skirmishes, so it was easy to follow the action. There were combatants of all sorts, some relied on well developed strength, others on cunning and quick reflexes, while still others seemed to rely on gimmicks and tricks to score victories in unexpected ways. I found myself cheering for the little guys, though they seemed to have less success than the more muscular combatants.

  When the Tournament reached a halfway point, the benches were lowered so that we could go get drink refills, snacks, and relieve ourselves. I felt queasy again when the bench started to move and feared that the steak kabobs I’d eaten were going
to come out like so much Dragonsfire. Their hot spices hadn’t gone down very well, and I desperately wanted to avoid finding out how well they would come back up. I closed my eyes and held my breath even after I felt the clunk of the bench landing.

  Daija came to ask me whether I wanted to get some spicy pretzel sticks with her and Boe, but I just kept my mouth shut and ignored her until she threw her hands in the air and left me alone. What was it with that girl and fiery foods?

  I looked up and saw Commander Hawk through a break in the crowd. He was walking with Gable and Bayrd, talking with more vigor than I could remember ever seeing before. I decided to make my way through the crowd to see what was happening. When I reached them and understood what was happening, I smiled. Gable was preparing to skirmish with one of the combatants who had won his match earlier in the Tournament. I wished I had some popped corn because this promised to be a good show.

  The first round went slowly, the unfamiliar opponents circling each other, sizing each other up but neither committing to an attack. Finally, the competitor sprang into action, slamming his sword forward so fiercely that he knocked Gable’s sword to the ground. He then brought the blunt wooden tip of his sword to Gable’s throat and laughed out loud as his victory was called. The next round didn’t go much better for Gable, though at least he was able to hold on to his sword throughout the match. They fought two more times, with Commander Hawk and Bayrd getting visibly more agitated each time Gable fell to the challenger. I was starting to feel bad for Gable, and for Commander Hawk, but then I began to notice certain patterns in the combatant’s attacks. He was always most slow and deliberate in his moves immediately before striking out with his winning move, and it was fooling Gable every time. I was sure that Bayrd wouldn’t fall for it if he got a chance to challenge the competitor, and the honor of the Stone Souls would be restored.

  I started to leave to find Boe and Daija when I heard the commander bark out, “Caedan.”

  I stopped in my tracks and slowly looked back at the tableau behind me. Gable was resting on one knee, supporting himself by resting with his weight on his sword which was jabbed into the ground beside him. Bayrd was jogging away toward the barracks. Hawk and the combatant were both staring at me.

  “Caedan, suit up.” Training was supposed to be on hiatus for the festival, but it was unmistakably an order. I spun around and jogged after Bayrd into the barracks to don my armor and retrieve my practice sword. I could not believe this was happening.

  Once we were prepared, Commander Hawk had Bayrd face another challenger, the combatant who had won his match immediately before the intermission. He was much smaller than Bayrd, and shorter even than Boe. Although he was around my age, his hair was a silvery white, marking him as someone from the far west, possibly Waldron or Tiger’s Wharf. I didn’t have a chance to watch the battle though as I was matched up with the combatant who had just humiliated Gable. He was large, with great muscles that gave him strength without slowing his movements. He laughed when he saw me draw my sword, and he threw his own sword up in the air before snapping it by the hilt with a flourish and bringing it to bear. Neat trick.

  The commander told us to begin.

  I circled my opponent, watching and waiting for him to prepare his killing blow. A bead of sweat worked its way into my left eye, stinging and distracting me. Just what I needed. I tried to ignore it and focus on my foe, but my vision was blurring up. It was getting difficult to process what was happening. I lifted my sword to block a strike, then blocked another strike, low. The combatant was teasing me, goading me into committing to an attack. So be it. I jumped into the air and let out a battle cry, then kicked at my opponent’s sword hand on my way down. My kick missed his sword arm, but I brought my wooden blade swinging at that same arm. I felt contact and looked up, surprised, only to see that I’d struck the combatant’s blocking sword. His sword didn’t give on contact as I was expecting, he held it in place solidly; I tried not to think of how many layers on layers of muscle it must take to be able to defend a blow like that. Then, I was lying on my stomach, face against the gravel, as the competitor had reached out with his other hand and thrown me to the ground. I felt wood on the back of my neck and heard Hawk call out for us to go again.

  I got up, blinking, and wiped at my eyes. When my vision cleared, I could see that most of the crowd had retaken their seats and some benches had already been lifted back into the air. I looked to see Boe and his family sitting on our bench, still on the ground but with a clear view of the action. Boe was screaming something at me, and his mother had her hand to her lips. Irvin wasn’t paying attention, thankfully, he was too busy talking earnestly to Daija; but she was watching me. I stretched out my arms and took up a ready position, and Commander Hawk told us this would be the last skirmish. I could see Bayrd and his silver-haired adversary still in combat. The little guy kept moving in close and then darting out of Bayrd’s range instantly, using a strategy similar to what he’d used to win his Tournament match. Bayrd snuck a glance my way and I could tell he was wishing that he was fighting this brute instead of his own opponent. In that moment, his foe darted in and struck, landing a blow to Bayrd’s lightly protected underarm. That battle was over, the Stone Souls had still not won a single match.

  I tried to imagine Kamelia sitting atop the Stoneflame Watch tower, looking down at the training grounds with the aid of a wizard’s clear sight spell. She loved to come visit the Stone Souls and watch us train, and here we were embarrassing her and her kingdom in front of the entire festival crowd. It was unbearable. I wiped my brow one more time as our fight began, then intently watched my opponent as he lunged forward and started with an attack. I dodged, then dodged another attack. I feinted, then drew back and avoided the counterattack I knew was coming. We circled once, twice, and then the competitor charged at me, letting out a savage yell and swinging his sword at my helmet. I ducked and rolled away just in time, then spun back to face him as I regained my footing. He closed the gap between us, and then began to slowly raise his sword with a two handed grip. I realized that this was his move, he was lulling me by moving slowly and his attack would be coming quicker than any I’d faced from him before. Even though I could tell it was coming and was already sprinting sideways to dodge the attack, his sword only barely missed my abdomen and I could hear and even feel the air whoosh past me as my opponent lunged forward. Then, I was clear and he was exposed. I automatically dropped my sword low and then thrust upwards in the competitor’s general direction, not sure where I was aiming exactly. It didn’t matter; the brute was so large that it was impossible to miss.

  I couldn’t even hear the commander call out my victory over the roar of the approving crowd.

  ***

  The next couple weeks of the festival blurred together for me. The Tournament of the Realm packed up and went on to another kingdom, and I remained the only Stone Soul to beat one of the Tournament combatants, even if it was just one exhibition match at the end of an intermission. I was a kind of hero among the Stone Souls. Everyone in my class wanted to congratulate me and talk to me about my victory. I recounted the details of my battle again and again, embellishing and filling in details as I remembered them, or seemed to. At some point, I began telling people that I could see Kamelia on the Stoneflame Watch tower smiling down on me after my victory, even though that would have been impossible. They didn’t care, they ate it up and begged for more. Even a few complete strangers stopped me and congratulated me in the walkways between booths. Best of all, Daija was so sick of hearing me tell the same story over that she stopped trying to hang around with us and began joining her mother to go into the surrounding city on shopping trips.

  As for thoughts of running away from everything, those were well buried. I was having too much fun at the festival to ruin it by worrying about escape.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Stoneflame

  Two days before the Stoneflame, Commander Hawk gathered all the Stone
Souls and gave us our assignments for Watch training. We’d each join in on a full twelve-hour shift on Watch. The commander went on about how anxious the wives tended to be at this point in the ceremony, but none of us were really paying attention. Warley was drunk on the cask of starberry ale that he’d bartered off a trader and snuck into his bunk. Boe looked bored since he’d spent several of the past nights reading up on the ceremony and this was all elementary to him. Irvin just looked restless. As for me, I was mostly daydreaming about what it would be like if I got assigned to Watch Kamelia. Even Commander Hawk seemed to have difficulty paying much attention to what he was saying, despite Bayrd watching him intently and taking his every word to bear. Finally, the commander handed out our assignments on small folded scraps of paper.

  I couldn’t bring myself to look. I tried to go over the list in my head, but most of the wives were just names to me; I didn’t have a face to go along with them. I heard that there wasn’t a less-than-beautiful woman among them, and I believed it, but I didn’t really care. The only name I really cared about was—

  “Kamelia!” Boe’s voice cracked as he practically squealed her name. He ran to me, waving his assignment in my face. “I got Kamelia, first shift.” He spat the words in my face as in a taunt. It worked.

  I tried to snap the parchment out his fingers and we wrestled for it, and he and I both ended up dropping our assignments and then trying desperately to grab at them as they flittered to the floor. The other Stone Souls didn’t pay any attention to us; they were well used to our antics.

  Finally, Boe reached down and picked one of the assignments off the floor. “Wait,” he said, confused, “Actually, I have Kamelia for the second shift.”