The Dragon Burned
1488 Words
How long he had been unconscious, Jaede did not know.
When he woke, he found himself inside a strange tent.
Dim light filtered through the coarse canvas.
Every bone in his body felt as though it had been shattered, inch by inch, with a blacksmith's hammer.
A blinding ache, wedded to an unbearable thirst and a gnawing hunger, washed over his flesh like a black tide.
"When Belthar died, the crown came down"
"To Axerion true, to wear the crown."
The sweet, piping voice of a child drifted from beyond the tent, drawing slowly nearer.
"Yucras rose up in his brother's name,"
"Marched with steel and roaring flame."
Jaede knew this song.
In his memories, Goram only ever hummed it on those rare days when his dark moods lifted, and his gruff, grating voice always made the tune harsh to the ear.
"Axerion locked the palace gate,"
"Sealed it tight and sealed their fate."
"Fire roared and the dragon cried."
The singing drew closer, until it seemed to linger just beyond the tent flap.
Jaede's heart quickened.
His fingers instinctively clutched at the rough wool of his blanket ,the terror of waking in an unknown place seized him tightly.
"The dragon burned, the dragon died!"
"Oh, the dragon burned to ..."
The heavy tent flap was suddenly thrown back, letting in a blinding shaft of daylight.
A little girl with brown hair stepped inside, carrying a wooden basin.
Jaede parted his cracked lips, but before he could force a sound from his throat, the girl bolted like a startled hare.
She dropped the basin with a clatter, spun on her heel, and fled.
"Ector! He's awake!"
her shrill cry echoed across the camp.
The basin lay overturned, water spilling into the dirt.
Jaede's dry eyes locked onto the ground—there lay a battered leather waterskin and a scattering of green apples.
Hunger and thirst gnawed at him like fire in a dry belly.
He was starving. Struggling, he pushed up on trembling arms, desperate to drag himself from the cot.
"Do not move."
The deep, gravelly voice of a man cleaved through the silence of the tent.
Jaede looked toward the sound.
The flap was held half-open, and a man of perhaps fifty years stood there, staring down at him coldly.
He had a wild mane of brown hair, heavily frosted with grey in his thick beard.
But it was his eyes that chilled the blood—a pair of cold, vigilant, emerald-green eyes, like those of a serpent.
He wore plain, roughspun clothes that spoke of hard travel and dust.
At his feet crouched a massive black hound.
The beast fixed its gaze on the stranger in the bed, its muscles coiled tight, ready to spring and tear flesh at the slightest provocation.
A sudden, inexplicable dread washed over Jaede.
the black hound possessed the same eerie, green eyes as its master.
The little girl who had fled was now cowering timidly behind the man's broad back, peeking out with half her face to spy on him.
"My lord,I ... water..."
Jaede's voice was as rasping as sandpaper on wood.
"I`m not a lord.Who are you?"
There was not a shred of pity in the man's voice, only a guard as hard as cold iron.
"I am Jaede... a slave belonging to Ser Hillliam of Blackrock."
Jaede swallowed hard, the slave's instinct for survival making him answer quickly.
The man gave a slight, expressionless nod.
As if answering an unspoken command, the black hound padded forward, caught the leather skin in its jaws, brought it to the cot, and dropped it with a dull thud at Jaede's feet.
Jaede scrambled to snatch up the skin.
Forgetting even to mutter a word of thanks, he pulled the stopper and tipped it, gulping the tepid water greedily down his parched throat.
"Agh... cough... cough..."
He drank too fast.
The water went down the wrong way, and Jaede fell into a violent fit of coughing, his face flushing crimson as if his lungs were about to burst.
"What happened before you passed out?"
The man paid his distress no mind, pressing his cold interrogation.
It took a long while before Jaede finally caught his breath.
"It was the outriders from Aurantia... The war has begun. They slaughtered our people. Muddy told me to run deep into the mines..."
The words died on his lips.
He froze.
Memory rushed back into his mind like a dark, freezing tide.
Muddy is dead...
His chest felt stuffed with dry straw.
He wanted to weep, but his eyes were too dry to shed a single tear.
He had never known his father.
His mother had died when he was but three name-days old.
All he remembered of her was the faint scent of rosemary that always lingered on her fingers.
Muddy had told him that his mother had been leased by Lord Bearman to a wretched inn at Widow Hall, and later given as a gift to Hillliam when he was knighted.
Muddy, the man he had depended on since he was three, had taught him how to speak, taught him the rules a slave needed to survive in this cruel world, yet always tried to plant some small, fragile seed of hope in his heart.
This green-eyed man clearly cared nothing for whether a slave named Muddy lived or died.
"Why did you survive?" the man asked again.
The iron book!?
Jaede's heart seized. Was the iron book gone?
Fragments of the moments before his faint flashed through his mind—a bizarre fever dream, and that massive, soul-shattering dragon's eye.
It was the dragon's legacy.
A cold sweat drenched his back.
He dared not look around to search for it.
What if this man had found the iron book?
Would he silence him with steel?
Should he lie?
"What a lucky bastard!"
A flippant, mocking voice suddenly came from the tent entrance, shattering Jaede's tense thoughts.
A man in battered leather armor strode in, looking down from his height to appraise Jaede from head to toe.
"Thought we might press our luck at Blackrock, but all we dug out of the ruins was you."
The newcomer looked to be near thirty, with golden hair and blue eyes, and a beard plaited vainly into a small braid at his chin.
At his hip hung a longsword so worn that even a slave like Jaede found it wretched.
As he moved, rough leather chafed against rough leather.
"We could smell the thick stench of burning coal tar from a league away,"
the golden-haired man said, walking to the cot and slapping Jaede's bony back.
"But the strangest thing is, the fire put itself out for no godly reason."
"Maybe it was the mercy of Morph."
He paused, an unsettling, amused glint in his eye.
"Do you know, boy? Every other man inside burned alive. The whole mine smelled of roasting meat."
At that, he even reached up to run a thumb across his lips.
"Cavan. I am still questioning him."
The brown-haired man's face darkened, his tone thick with displeasure.
So the golden-haired man is named Cavan.
"Ector,you always wear that same sour face,"
Cavan said, waving a dismissive hand and pointing at Jaede.
"Look at him. Plain as day he's a slave. See there on his neck? He still bears the slave's mark."
Where he pointed, an ugly scar sat just above Jaede's throat.
It was the slave's mark he had borne since childhood.
As he grew, the scarred flesh had stretched and warped out of shape.
The green-eyed man called Ector kept his stony face, fixing a hard stare on Cavan.
"The war has begun," he warned."best you mind your tongue."
With that, he turned sharply, threw open the flap, and strode out.
The black hound followed close at his heels, pausing only to cast one last, threatening glare at Cavan with its ghostly green eyes.
"He's always like that."
"Thinks being a Ryder lets him order the whole bloody world."
Cavan sneered, rolling his eyes at the swaying tent flap.
He bent down, scooped up one of the green apples from the dirt, rubbed it carelessly against his greasy leather armor, and took a massive bite.
A loud crunch echoed in the tent as clear juice ran down the corner of his mouth, catching in his golden, braided beard.
"Do you want one?"
Cavan asked around a mouthful of apple, tossing another one toward the boy.
Jaede fumbled to catch it. Hunger conquering all else, he brought it to his mouth without hesitation and bit down hard.
An instant later, a piercingly sour tartness exploded in his mouth, flooding his teeth until they ached.
Jaede's face instantly screwed up in misery.
"Hahahaha!"
Seeing his comical expression, Cavan erupted into a fit of roaring laughter, laughing so hard he clutched his belly.
"Can't have me eating the only sour apple alone."
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