Dragon Talker (19 page)

The earth, though, is patient and smart. It made many creatures to serve. It made plants and bushes to cover the soil so the waters couldn’t wash it away or get inside and break it up by freezing. It made animals to guard the surface. Large animals came, and the ocean laughed, saying, “Look how small they are!”

This is just what the earth wanted. After the large animals, the earth made humans. And he gave us our intelligence. It knew that with our heads, we could and would come up with ways to live in all kinds of lands. The waters, of course, had created rivers to crisscross and watch over the land. The earth countered with the trees to guard the banks of the rivers.

The first people, though, went even farther. They took the trees and made rafts to cross the rivers. Those by the ocean made boats to go out and harvest the ocean creatures for food. The ocean was furious, but the earth had followed the agreements, not making any thing that could live in the water. The ocean, though wasn’t one to follow the rules. It decided to make its own humans, but humans to control all the others.”

Both Hental and Lared yelled, “Mages!”

“That’s right. Mages. They look like us, but have powers and the desire to control the world. The ocean sent them to rule all the other humans. That’s why Mages create cities. A village isn’t enough for them, they want as many people as they can get in one area.

Agardia interrupted, “We were becoming a city when Samora attacked Delento’s Castle.” Both Tadeus and Agardia spit at the mention of Delento. The boys spit a few seconds later and lowered their heads to hide their smiles. Spitting inside the house was not something they would normally do.

“That’s right.”

Hental asked, “So why don’t the dragons kill all the mages?”

“That’s a good question, Henti, but nobody knows how a dragon thinks, or what other deals the earth, sky, and water might have. It is our lot to live out our lives as best we can staying out of their way. This is why we stay small. If we are small, everyone leaves us alone. If we got bigger, tried to become a city, that way lies subjugation.”

“What’s supjugashon?” Hental asked.

“Sub - ju - ga - tion,” answered Agardia, “is a big word your father likes to use to mean ‘get bossed around.’”

Lared raised his voice, “So Hental is sub…subjugations me!”

“I do not,” countered Hental.

Tadeus laughed and Agardia smiled, “Well, Hental,” she said with a smile, “you can be bossy with your little brother, but I don’t think it ranks all the way up there with Mages.”

“See!” Hental punched Lared in the arm.

“On second thought,” Agardia looked at Tadeus, “maybe our boy is doing a little subjugation, after all.”

“Just because you’re bigger, Hental, and can push your brother around, doesn’t mean it’s okay, or right,” Tadeus lectured.

“Well…” Hental was trying to think of a way to justify his actions, “Sometimes he makes me.”

“Hental.” Agardia said his name, emphasizing and elongating the –tal.

He crossed his arms, “He does, he makes me angry.”

“Henti,” his dad chided, “you get angry at the sun for being too bright. Having a younger brother is hard at times, I know, but being older means being more responsible. What does Yuri do when you make him mad?”

“I never make him mad.”

“Hental,” his mother said, exasperated, “you stabbed him with a knife only a month ago!”

“In the arm. Only in the arm and it was a test.”

Tadeus grabbed Hental and pulled him onto his lap. “I love your logic, son,” he said, “but we all get mad at each other at times. It’s okay, but how we handle our anger is what matters. Continue the story?”

Hental smiled, “Yes.”

Agardia winked at Lared, who ran to and jumped up onto her lap.

Tadeus clapped his hands together, saying, “Now, Hental, here’s where we get to death.”

“Finally.” Hental threw up his arms in exaggerated exasperation.

“At first, no one died. The earth, sky, and ocean are forever and always, so they hadn’t even thought of the idea of death, of ending. But they were only three, and everything. As the people began to have more and more babies, they started using more and more of the land, and sea.”

“The earth watched its trees be cut down and its minerals taken from the ground.” Tadeus motioned like he was cutting down a tree, then as if he was digging into the ground.  “The sea watched boats and ships run over it and fish for its creatures.” He mimed fishing. Then raising both his cupped hands, palms downward, into the air, saying “The sky watched smoke from our fires reach up into the air.”

He paused, looking at Hental, Lared, and then Agardia, who winked at him. He smiled at the wink and then made his face stern. “They didn’t like it. The sky and ocean said, ‘you made these things, you need to take care of them!’”

“The earth thought about it and decided that it didn’t want to get rid of people, because their industry gave him influence over the water, but it also realized that people could go too far. In looking for an answer, it thought about the sky, who gave us night and day. He said to the sky, ‘You give limits, a time of light and a time of darkness. That’s what I will do. From now on, they will have their time in the light, but they will have to return to me within 100 years.

“The sky wanted people totally removed, it didn’t like the smoke we produce, but the ocean liked having its mage spies, so it supported the earth. We were made by the earth and we all must return to the earth. We keep things in balance by dying. That’s also why there are no new dragons - they don’t die, so it would mess up the order of things if new ones were born.”

“So what happens to Selma when she dies?”

“Hental,” Agardia felt an overflowing of love for her son at his caring about Selma, “you are a very good boy. When Selma dies, we will prepare a burial fire. The thing that makes Selma who she is, though, will have already returned to the earth. We burn the body at death to speed its return to earth, too.”

“But what happens to her?” he asked.

“We all go back to the earth, Hental, from where we came.”

“But I came from you,” Hental asserted, “and I’ve seen babies born. Babies come from mommies.”

“That’s true, Hental, but what keeps us alive?”

“Food?”

“That’s right.” Agardia continued, “and that food comes from the seeds we plant in the ground. Our huts and the fires we have to keep ourselves warm come from the trees, which also come from seeds in the ground. Everything, except water, comes from the ground, and” she tickled him as she said, “we’re not water, are we?”

Laughing, Hental tried to get out a “no.”

“And that’s right, too,” Tadeus added. “We come from the earth, and we return to the earth.” Tadeus raised his hand to stop Hental, who was ready to ask another question. He asked the question for him, “But what happens under the earth?”

Hental nodded his head.

“What happens at the end of a harvest?”

Both Hental and Lared yelled, “Otaria!”

“That’s right, the harvest celebration. We get together, recognize the work we’ve done, and spend time together as a village. That, I believe, is what it is like when we return.”

That sounded sensible to Hental, yet it didn’t change the way he felt. “But I don’t want Selma to go,” Hental complained.

“I know, son, I know. It’s sad when someone returns because we miss them, and that’s why we should be good to each other and appreciate each other’s company while we are here.”

“There’s something else you can do, too, Henti,” his mom added. “You can spend time with her now, while she is still here. Some people still believe the old ways and are staying away from Selma because they are afraid.”

Hental shook his head. “How can they be afraid of Selma, that’s stupid.”

“Henti, people don’t always act normal around the dying, but…” Tadeus yawned, “it is getting late. I think it’s time for bed.”

Both boys whined, “Noooo.”

Agardia chided them, “Now boys, the sooner you go to sleep, the sooner it’s breakfast.”

Lared wasn’t convinced, but Hental responded, “Biscuits, biscuits.” He kept chanting as he ran around the small bed he and Lared shared, twice, and jumped in.

“That’s our boy,” Tadeus said, smiling.

Lared moped to bed. Agardia add, “and that’s our boy, too. And I want my oldest home, Tadeus.”

“So do I, Agardia, so do I.” Tadeus threw two more logs on the fire. Before falling asleep, Agardia whispered, “I see you left out the black dragon in the end.”

“I want them to sleep, not cower in fear. Besides, he’ll get that in his dragon rites. For now, let him be a boy.”

Chapter 30

No one seemed to care about Xeron, or his dog. The two of them walked around the mountain chateau without guard or much of a reaction from the servants. No doors where blocked, no hallways off limits. Xeron thought out loud, “Isn’t this a curious place?”

Tail Biter, who had been walking ahead in the hallway, looked back at Xeron when he spoke. “This is what I wonder,” Xeron was talking more to himself than Tail Biter, but the dog cocked his head to the side, as if trying to follow the conversation. “To have a place like this. So…peaceful. Not how I see Perante. Where are the signs of his power? His control? Is this some sort of I have so much power I don’t have to show it?”

He shrugged. “Well, we eat, we explore, and then decide what to do.”

Kneeling down by Tail Biter, Xeron put his hand on the top of his head. “Time to put you on a leash, and if you get hoodwinked by a bone this time,” Tail Biter’s ears dropped down at the rebuke, “I’m going to make sure you never have a bone again.” He put his other hand on the middle of his back, saying, “Shantar lanesh.” While previous spells allowed him to have a general idea of where his dog was, this spell allowed him to both see with Tail Biter’s eyes when he wanted to, but it also made it nearly impossible for the dog to disobey a summons to return.

“Books. Let’s look for books. Off you go. Make your way down and I’ll make my way up.” With that, Tail Biter headed down the hallway to the stairs leading to the ground floor. Since they had already covered the floor they were on, Xeron headed to the stairs leading to the third floor.

This doesn’t feel like Perante’s place
, he thought.
It’s too relaxed
. Then it hit him,
it isn’t Perante’s place. He took this from someone, from a mage. Who does this place remind me of?
“Perante,” he said out loud to the empty hallway, “you really are an interesting mage. I will understand you.” Caution crept in. Who knew what Perante had set about the chateau to capture what was said
. And when I do, he thought, you will never have power over me again
.

The connection to Tail Biter also worked in reverse, though no mage truly knew how much information a dog received or what it could do with it. Tail Biter knew Xeron was excited, but he also knew he wasn’t being recalled, so he continued to sniff around the ground floor. New places were great for new smells, and Tail Biter was looking for two kinds of smells: food and magic. The search for food came naturally, but the search for magic was something that took training.

Searching for magic is dangerous. If a mage didn’t care about the animal he was using, he could simply place a spell and send the creature out. The problem was any sort of protective magic could kill or lobotomize the animal. Birds, rats, and mice were often sent out without protections. A dog, on the other hand, usually represented at least some of time and effort in training. If one wanted the animal to survive, nuance was required.

Xeron spent too much time with Tail Biter to lose him to a simple reconnaissance mission.  No, he made sure Tail Biter would find the general area of a magic spell, and his training was backed up with his very own protective spell. If Tail Biter got too close to powerful magic, Xeron’s protective spell would cause the dog to literally “High-Tail” it out of there. The stronger the magic, the stronger the impulse the dog would have to return to Xeron, his tail pointing straight up in the air.

Tail Biter hadn’t found anything Xeron would be interested in on the first floor, but he did find a cat that was worth chasing, if only for a little while. His nose started to twitch as he started down the steps to the basement level of the chateau. By the time he was at the bottom of the steps, his nose and lips were curling up, as if he was sniffing something citrusy.

The basement was almost completely dark. Every eighth stone in the row next to the ceiling was replaced with iron bars, which let in a minuscule amount of light, but it was enough for Tail Biter to go forward. He was more sniffing than seeing anyway, so he did not mind the darkness. The smell though, was getting worse, and not in a good-for-eating kind of way. His tail started to raise before he got to the end of the hall. He sat on his haunches for a moment, not sure what to do, torn between moving forward and exploring and turning tail and finding Xeron.

He took a few more hesitant steps forward before his tail shot straight up into the air and he yelped, spinning in the air. Turned around, Tail Biter raced up the stairs and began looking for Xeron. Xeron felt Tail Biter’s fear through their connection and started heading down.
What have you found, my canine friend
? he wondered.
Secret room, magical object, a mage?
He thought about the deep magic he tapped into back at Perante’s castle and wished he had had time since then to explore that power. His skills would have to be good enough for whatever came, he realized, because that was what he had.

He paused, standing still in the middle of the ground floor entryway.
Do I have to face anything
, he asked?
I just connected with the most powerful magical force I’ve ever experienced and I’m going on like nothing has changed? What’s wrong with me?
Before he could come up with an answer, he felt Tail Biter’s anxiety and started walking towards the feeling. He reached the top of the stairs to the ground floor as Tail Biter reached the bottom.