The Dragoneer Trilogy Read online

  Trysten reached for a piece of meat in the pail.

  “What are you doing?” Mardoc asked.

  Trysten froze, her fingers inches from the food. “I was going to give Elevera—”

  “Paege should feed her.”

  Despite herself, she let out a short breath that betrayed her frustration.

  Mardoc chose another piece of meat and fed it to Aeronwind. “Do you understand? They must bond. They must be ready. The fighting season will be on us soon and … We’ve already discussed this, Trysten.”

  Heat flushed over Trysten, baked off her skin and made her scalp itch. The urge to tell him no crowded at the back of her tongue and reached for her teeth, ready to wrench her mouth open and spill it. To the wilds with it. She would tell him again, then and there, that she would be the next Dragoneer, that she would enter the consideration and take the title and carry on the family tradition even if he didn’t have a son.

  But then her father offered another bite to Aeronwind, and as the dragon gulped it down, he reached up and ran his fingers along the side of her neck. Though turned away from her, Trysten could see enough of his face to know that he felt just as bad as Aeronwind did. He felt as if he had failed her. He should have been stronger. Should have had legs of iron to withstand her weight. Should have leaped off her back, or done a better job of flying. As far as he was concerned, their broken bones were all his fault.

  The declaration dried up on Trysten’s tongue. It could wait. There would be time enough to hash it out again. The fighting season was months off yet. It was Mardoc’s first day out of their cottage since the accident. Surely she could wait until tomorrow.

  As Mardoc took his hand away, the dragon stretched and lowered her neck, prolonging the physical contact between the two as long as possible. “Have you seen Galelin?” Mardoc asked. He glanced back at Trysten as if to assure that it was she to whom he spoke and not the dragon.

  “Yes, a bit ago.”

  “Tell Paege to bring him around. I would have a word with him.”

  Trysten nodded.

  Mardoc gave Aeronwind another bite, then turned back to Trysten once again. “Is there something you need, Little Heart?”

  She blushed at the nickname. She was not Little Heart anymore. She was no longer a little girl. She was ready to be the Dragoneer. Soon. Regardless, she turned and started up the central aisle of the weyr to look for Paege.

  Chapter 2

  Trysten found Paege and Galelin at the opposite end of the weyr, and both showed surprise to hear that Mardoc was there. As much as she liked Paege, she glared a bit at his surprise. The dragons across the weyr all breathed in unison, betraying the fact that the Dragoneer was there, among them. It was obvious to her, and it should have been obvious to Paege as well.

  “Father wants a word with both of you.”

  “How is he?” Galelin asked as he peered off into the gloom between himself and the open doorway. “Is he walking? He’s walking, isn’t he? Surely he didn’t have the weyrmen carry him down on a litter, did he?”

  She shook her head. “He has a staff. He leans on it a good bit, but he’s here under his own power.”

  “By the wilds, that man should be in bed!” Galelin spat, then tottered off on his creaking knees towards the head of the weyr.

  She turned to Paege. “And he told me to tell you to make sure the hopper is stocked, and that he wants you personally to feed Elevera.”

  Paege nodded, then began a slow walk behind Galelin. “The weyrmen are in the pens now with their knives.”

  “I told him as much.”

  Paege’s gaze traveled over her briefly, searching for something, as if he hoped to catch a glimpse of how she wielded a particular trick, a sleight-of-hand. He had begun to let his hair grow out, and he had ceased shaving since her father’s accident. His beard was not coming in well, not nearly as full as her father’s, or even that of the men in the village. It did not suit him. She missed his smooth face, his full smile. Not only for the scraggly beard, but it seemed that the weight of twenty dragons had been placed on his shoulders after the accident.

  “How are things going?” Trysten asked, and then she looked ahead. She knew the answer and she didn’t want him to see that she knew.

  Paege let out a small sigh, one that would not befit a dragoneer. “It’s coming along,” he said after a few seconds. “I’m getting the hang of things. I’m making progress with Elevera.”

  Trysten stifled a grin. Elevera felt differently, but she did not want to delight in the dragon’s indifference to her friend. No one, not even Paege, expected her to become a dragoneer. No one expected that of any woman anywhere. It was the way of things. Or so said her father.

  Ahead, Mardoc and Galelin exchanged a few words. After a moment of tense silence, a moment in which Paege slowed his pace even further, Mardoc glanced at the two of them and then turned away. With the staff at his side and the weight of his broken body hurting more than he cared to let on, he hobbled up a set of stairs and into his den.

  Galelin opened the door to the stall and slipped inside. Trysten and Paege followed.

  Aeronwind lifted her head and watched as the three people entered. Galelin lowered himself to his knees, his joints popping the whole way. He landed in the straw with a soft grunt and began to examine the dragon’s bandaged and splinted foreleg. With shaky, trembling hands, he undid the knots that secured the bandages. Aeronwind let out a low rumble, a groan.

  Across the weyr, the other dragons picked up the sound. They passed it around. They added their own rhythms, their own sounds to it and it swelled into a song that threatened to entrance Trysten. Her own breath began to fall into the rhythm, and her head threatened to spin with dizziness.

  “How does it look?” Paege asked Galelin.

  Trysten straightened her shoulders and grasped her wrist behind her back, shaking her head to clear it of the dragons’ anxious song.

  Galelin shook his head as he began to unwind the cotton bandages. “Not good, young man. Not good.”

  Paege drew in a sharp hiss of breath. Trysten couldn’t tell how much of that was dread for the dragon, and how much was dread for the role that Mardoc wished to thrust upon him. She crouched, careful not to obstruct any of the light falling from the lantern.

  “There’s a good bit of drainage here. And it’s not a healthy color,” Galelin continued. He looked up at the dragon that stared at them with half-lidded eyes. A groaning rumble escaped her, a sound of disgust. Galelin shifted his posture. One puff of flame and Aeronwind could incinerate them both. But staring into the dragon’s gray eyes, Trysten knew it was nothing more than Aeronwind’s disgust at herself, for allowing herself to become injured so severely.

  Galelin returned his attention to the wound before him. “I’d say that our lady’s humors are out of balance.” He leaned forward. His brow and nose hovered over the wound where bone had pierced the scaly skin. He inhaled deeply, squinted his eyes, then sat up again.

  “The humors are definitely out of balance. What we have here is an excess of pustulence.”

  Galelin looked up at Trysten, then Paege. He extended his hand to the young man.

  Paege took the healer’s hand, then hauled him to his feet. Galelin dusted his palms together. “There’s nothing to be done for her but to try and balance the humors. Lay off the meat. Feed her some vegetable matter. Give her lots of water. Keep that bandage clean at all costs, young man.”

  Paege nodded.

  “If you will excuse me, then, Mardoc has asked to see me in his den. If you need anything further…” The healer approached the stall entrance.

  “Wait,” Paege called and took a step towards the man. “Aren’t you going to dress Aeronwind’s wound?”

  Galelin turned back with a raised eyebrow, his lips cocked in half a smile. “Me? Young man, every person in this village knows that Mardoc favors you above all to succeed him.” Galelin nodded as if agreeing with himself. “It will serve you quite well as a
dragoneer to know how to dress a dragon’s wounds. For reasons unbeknownst to me, hordes fly into battle with neither sense nor a healer. You saw me pull that dressing apart. You can put a fresh one together. But if you get into trouble, as I said, I will be in the den.”

  Trysten gritted her teeth and knitted her brow as the healer turned away. His nonchalant attitude towards the severity of Aeronwind’s wounds bothered her. He had essentially said in his own way that there was nothing he could do but offer up the wounds of a doomed dragon for the new master to practice dressing as if Aeronwind were nothing more than a chirurgeon’s ceramic doll. She stepped towards Aeronwind’s head, then reached up to press her palm against the dragon’s muzzle, against the scaly cheek. Aeronwind twisted her head up and away, curled her neck around the other side of her body, leaving Trysten there, her hand outstretched into space, staring up at Elevera in the next stall.

  “She doesn’t have much faith in my ability to dress her wound, does she?” Paege asked.

  Trysten’s hand dropped to her side. The dragons all knew. It was no secret to the them that Aeronwind was not healing. The scales around the wound swelled outward. The exposed flesh was red and angry where the scales had been pushed away by the snapping bones. Greenish-yellow pus oozed from the corners and stained the bandage Galelin had last wrapped around the leg. The balance of humors was too far gone. It could not be corrected with all of the water and fresh vegetables in the kingdom. Aeronwind was dying.

  It seemed impossible that such a beast could ever die, but there it was, a fatal injury. Now did not seem like an appropriate time for her to assert her will. Her father was in pain, and his dragon was mortally wounded, but there had never been a more necessary time. Once Aeronwind passed, Elevera would become the new alpha, and the human bonded with her would become the new Dragoneer.

  Trysten looked up at the gold dragon again. Instead of watching Paege’s every move with interest, Elevera stared directly into Trysten’s own eyes.

  Her fingertips slid down the scales of Aeronwind’s side, over the stiff ridges and the leathery wings past the fold of flesh stretched taut near the foreleg, held out stiff and rigid between the splint.

  Paege pulled the old bandage out and wadded it into a ball. He stood, walked to the back of the stall, and shoved the used bandage into a pail before flipping open the lid of a trunk. He rummaged around inside before bringing back a fresh fold of linen and a clay jar of salve prepared by Galelin.

  “How long do you think she has?” Paege asked as he knelt beside Trysten. His voice was low, hardly more than a whisper.

  “I don’t know.” A second later, Trysten added, “But you’ll be ready,” and it surprised her to hear the words pass her lips.

  Paege snorted. “Ready? By the wilds, I can hardly get Elevera to notice I exist, let alone form any kind of bond with her. Even now, she’s more interested in you and what you’re doing than she is in me. I will never have the bond with her that Aeronwind and your father have.”

  A twinge of guilt sparked through Trysten. But then, why should she feel guilty? It wasn’t her fault that Paege and Elevera hadn’t bonded. Trysten and Paege had grown up together, had often been playmates as children, but Trysten, as the daughter and only child of the Dragoneer, had grown up in the weyr. She had spent more time with the dragons than she had with most people. It would only be natural that she should have more of a bond, more of a connection with them.

  She shook her head. To the wilds with feeling guilty. What was best for the horde was all that mattered. If Paege would be a better dragoneer, then he would be chosen. If Trysten proved to be the better choice, then how could her father tell her no?

  Paege gently lifted the dragon’s foreleg, and Aeronwind let out a long groan. A ripple effect threaded through the horde. The song drew out, became muddied and slowed. The sound of it squeezed Trysten’s heart. The alpha’s suffering was the horde’s suffering.

  She reached under the broken leg and pulled the wad of linen strips through. As Paege began to lower the leg, she told him to hold it in place. He did so without question, and she proceeded to wrap the linen around the leg as she had seen Galelin do for dozens of other battle wounds and accidents.

  “You’re even better at this than I am,” Paege said.

  Words of comfort and encouragement sat on her tongue, but she would not get anywhere acting like the women of the village were supposed to act.

  “Do you want to be the Dragoneer?” she asked.

  Paege did not respond right away. She was prepared to let the question go, to pretend she had never asked.

  “It is my duty,” Paege said.

  “Your duty?” she asked.

  Paege nodded. A lock of dirty blonde hair fell onto his forehead. Most of the hordesmen wore their hair tied back when they flew into battle. Paege’s hair was short enough to single him out, to show anyone from any distance that he had been a weyrman and a stable hand for longer than he had been a hordesman.

  “The horde needs a dragoneer.” He glanced up at Elevera.

  “But why does it have to be you?”

  Paege would have shrugged and jostled his grip on the dragon’s wound, but he had always been kind, considerate. She liked that about him, and so he held his hands and arms steady for Aeronwind’s leg.

  “Who else would it be?”

  A flash of color passed over Trysten’s face. “So that’s it, then? There’s no one better suited, and so it just falls to you, does it?”

  “No, no,” Paege said with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that… Well, since your father doesn’t have any sons, and since your family has nearly adopted me since my own father’s death, then it falls to me. It is my duty. The horde must be kept, and the kingdom’s borders must be secure. So for king, country, and family, I will be the Dragoneer.”

  Trysten pulled a small knife from her pocket and cut the linen from the larger piece. Paege lowered the dragon’s leg gently then tied the bandage in a knot.

  “Besides,” Paege said as he sat back on his heels, “what else would I do? Be the village healer?” He flashed her a lopsided grin.

  “If you don’t want the position, Elevera will know.”

  The grin fell away as he turned his attention to the bandage before them.

  “I know. But I want the position. I really do. It’s only that…” He shrugged, then shook his head. “My father would be proud of me if he could see me now. His son, a dragoneer, leading the horde into battle, into glory and defense of the kingdom. But, to be honest,” and he leaned in towards Trysten as if to whisper, as if anything he told her could be hidden from the dragons, and for a flicker of an instant, she wanted to stop him, to press her fingers against his lips and stop up the words before they came out because he didn’t know about her, about the dragons, about the connection she alone seemed to have. It was unfair, but she dared not tell a soul.

  “Between you and me,” Paege continued, “I want the position more than you can imagine. But, I’m afraid that I just can’t do it. I try… I try hard to do what your father tells me, to form that bond and connection that he talks about. I find myself holding conversations with Elevera in my head.”

  Paege let out an embarrassed chuckle, and his cheeks flushed. He shoved a lock of hair out of his eyes and her heart lightened for him. “To tell the truth, I’ve even been caught muttering to myself out in the market or someplace, trying to believe that she can hear me, or that she even cares to hear me, though I know she can’t. She won’t. But I have to pretend, you know? The fighting season… And everyone is counting on me to be the one who defends the village, the one who keeps the kingdom safe from invasions. Above all that, I know my father would be…” Paege swallowed hard. He bent over, undid the knot on the bandage and tied it again. Aeronwind shifted beneath his attention.

  “I know he would be so proud of me, but he would also be equally disappointed if I failed. And after he gave his life in defense of the vil
lage, how can I turn my back on him? How can I say to his memory that his sacrifice was important, but not important enough for me to honor by following—or even surpassing his footsteps, you know?”

  Trysten took a deep breath. She thought she knew him, but she had no idea. She had assumed he was trying to be Dragoneer only to please her father, who had become like a father to him as well.

  “I didn’t know that it meant so much to you,” Trysten said.

  Paege shrugged again and looked up to Elevera. “It doesn’t matter, does it? Whatever is best for the horde, right? Either Elevera will accept me or she won’t.”

  The words weighed on her in an odd way, feeling both like lead weights and warm winds, pushing her up while pulling her down. She agreed exactly. What was best for the horde was what was best for the village. Yet to see her friend resigned to disappointing his father tore at her. She wished to place a hand upon his shoulder, to comfort him, but when she glanced at Elevera out of the corner of her eye, she felt like a thief, guilty, as if she had stolen the dragon away from him.

  But he knew it. What was best for the horde. And if it were best for the horde that she should be chosen, then she would be. There was no reason to feel guilty for that. No reason at all.

  Chapter 3

  Paege pushed himself to his feet. “Well, I better get back to work. I won’t ever earn Elevera’s respect by moping around here, will I?” he asked as he peered up at the golden dragon.

  Elevera made no movement, no indication at all that she’d heard or understood. Her predator’s eyes had flicked to him when he moved. They flicked back to Trysten when she stood a few seconds later.