Dragon Talker (2 page)

“I will do what I can, sir,” Yuri answered meekly. What Yuri wanted to say was more along the lines of, “I don’t know what I am doing and this will probably get me and everyone else in the village killed, but what else am I to do?”

“You will be fine.” This from Lindale, the village elder who always had a way of relaxing Yuri, whatever the situation. “The first time you talk to a dragon, I hear, is incredibly special. It will set the tone for all your future conversations”

The mayor looked at Lindale quizzically, wondering where he learned that.

“Uris didn’t like you, Mayor, he liked me.” All three touched two fingers to their forehead and then their heart at the mention of Uris. After a pause, Lindale continued, “I think we should toast this young man, for the work he is about to do and for his bravery.” With that, Lindale retrieved a small flask from his interior jacket pocket and unscrewed the top. Yuri set the cart at the end of the field and joined the two men.

“To our dragon talker.”

The mayor took the flask and repeated, “To our dragon talker.”

Yuri nodded to both men and took a sip. The sweet wine made him grimace before swallowing. The mayor slapped him on the back. “Sweet wine, my boy, is an acquired taste, but it warms the innards on a cold fall day.”

Yuri tried to hand the flask back to Lindale, but Lindale waved him off. “That flask is yours, Yuri. Check the inscription.” Yuri did, and felt a wave of pride and embarrassment as he read
Yuri, Dragon Talker, Mandan Village 17 Temerant 984
. The pride was for his recognition by a village elder; his embarrassment was over how little he knew about what this title really meant. Added to that was the fact that the engraving could have happened here, but the flask itself was something you could only get in a larger village, one that specialized in metallurgy. Someone from the village had given up a prized possession for him. More than one person, he corrected himself. This would have been a village effort.

“Well,” said the mayor as he eyed the flask, looking thirsty, “now we wait.” Yuri was too lost in thought of all that had happened in the last three days to notice. The mayor, resigned, looked for another way to pass the time. “How about a game of cards?”

“That sounds good to me, Mayor. Let’s use my deck, though, if you don’t mind.”

The mayor puffed up his chest, “If we were in public, I would be insulted.”

“If we were in public,” Lindale replied, “you would be too busy acting important to cheat, my friend.”

Yuri watched the exchange closely. He had never heard the powerful men of the village talk amongst themselves before. He wondered what the mayor would do.

“Lindy, always setting a bad example for the youth.” He nodded towards Yuri. “What is young Yuri, our new dragon talker, to think?”

“Young Yuri should not be paying attention to us, but thinking on the upcoming conversation – am I right, Yuri?”

“Yes sir, absolutely sir…I’m just going to go over by these stones and gather my thoughts.”

“Good boy.”

Yuri walked over to the stone outcropping, where small boulders edged out of the ground as if chasing the two house-sized boulders that stood at a right angle, as if the cornerstone of a giant’s home.

The mayor whispered to Lindale, “Is there any chance this is going to work?”

“Who knows with dragons, Seth? Who knows?”

The mayor shook his head. “Damn the luck of having both our dragon talker and his mentor killed at the same time. It’s not like we really have this dragon thing down. My father lived when this village was under a mage. Damn the dragon tail.”

“That’s not luck. Someone wants this land, Mayor, and without a new agreement with our dragon, we are in serious trouble.”

“Our dragon.” The mayor spit on the ground. “That dragon is no more ours that the sun or the moon. Why we have to pick between them and the magicians, I would like to know. Why can’t they both just leave us alone?”

“Dragons have to rule, mayor, and magicians have to practice – either way, we are servants for the beasts or test subjects for mages’ damn alchemy. And, at least as servants, we don’t have to worry about being eaten.” He shook his head, clearing the image of being eaten from his mind. “No use spending time on what we can’t change. Let us play some cards. I’ll even let you cheat.”

“Are you sure there isn’t any chance the fire was an accident?” The mayor asked, already knowing the answer. Lindale let his silence be the answer. “Okay,” the mayor reached for the cards, “anything to take my mind off this waiting.”

Roughly 50 feet away, Yuri waited, putting his knitted hat on a rock for insulation as he sat down and reviewed the little that he knew about what was to come. One: dragons do not like most people, but the ones that do pick talkers to be their emissaries. If other people try to talk to a dragon, they are just as likely to be eaten as get an answer. Two: dragons give their talker a gift, sometimes more than one. This gift, though, is usually one that benefits the dragon the most. Yuri has heard of talkers being able to sense the approach of dragons, so the dragon would never have to wait for its human. Their village’s talker had incredible hearing and could go for what seemed like forever without eating or drinking, so he could pack light and cover a lot of ground, which their village’s dragon, Samora, required of him maybe once every three years. Legend has it that one talker could communicate with animals, but no one has been able to figure out what benefit that gave the dragon. Three: Mandan Village’s dragon talker and apprentice were dead, and his job was to find out if the dragon would accept him as the new dragon talker. Four: this particular dragon showed up roughly 70 years ago, killing the mage who ruled and destroying the small castle he had made the villagers build. And even now no one really knows why the dragon did that or what it wants. Five: he knew little else, and that lack of knowledge was likely to get him killed.

The problem with dragons, Yuri thought, the problem that might get him killed, Yuri corrected himself, was that we really don’t know much about them. He touched the scale hanging from his neck. He tried not the think of this same medallion stuck to the charred chest of Uris. It helped that it was cold to his touch, which was no surprise on this cold day in the fall, but he knew it was always frigid to the touch, no matter the temperature. It was the scale of an ice dragon, the rarest of the dragons. All others, of course, were fire-breathers. Fire or ice, though, the only difference was in how a person died. The truth was simple: dragons ate people for food, dragons tore people to pieces for fun, and sometimes, just sometimes, dragons would pick a village and call it their own. That village was safe from attacks from other dragons and mages rarely ventured near them. Apparently, dragons found mages especially tasty.

Yuri’s butt was getting cold on the stone, even with his hat as a cushion, so he started walking around the two boulders. Boulders, open fields, and dragons – were dragons itchy? Did they pick fields with giant rocks so they could scratch their backs? Would it be impolite to ask when the dragon showed up? Do dragons use words like us? Would I be alive to share this with my family back at the village? This last thought was the one he kept coming back to. Would I be alive to share it?

All three men looked to the north as they heard a screech that could only come from a dragon. “We are right here with you,” the mayor called over his shoulder as he and Lindale walked quickly to the edge of the field, not quite disappearing into the surrounding trees.

That doesn’t really seem “with” me
, Yuri thought, but quickly forgot about it as he walked away from the boulder and to the center of the field. No matter where they were, he would be alone at the end, face to face with a dragon. Each step seemed to be harder than the last.
Dragon magic
, he wondered,
or just the fact that he didn’t want to die?
“Ah, to stones with it,” he said to the wind. “All right, Elder Dragon, come on and make your decision.” It helped him walk not faster, but a little less timidly.

The dragon must have been flying low, because one minute, Yuri was looking at empty skies, and the next, a huge, blue dragon was flaring its wings out, catching air to slow it down as it landed in front of him. It was so sudden Yuri wondered if it hadn’t just jumped out from behind the trees. The ground trembled at the impact of its landing, and Yuri wobbled but kept his balance. Everything became quiet – birds, insects, animals, pretty much anything with a heartbeat usually hunkers down and tries to be invisible when a dragon is in the area.

Yuri wanted to do the same, but Samora, the name it shared with the last talker, was spreading its wings and scrutinizing Yuri. First, it leaned forward with its left eye, moving its head to within inches of Yuri’s face. Yuri tucked his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. Samora snorted, and Yuri brought his head back up. When, he thought, do you get to see a dragon’s head this close?  As the dragon turned his head to get a look with its other eye, Yuri saw what looked like a small bit of black blood dripping from one of the dragon’s nostrils. 
It couldn’t be, though
, he thought,
because dragons don’t die, so how could one have a nosebleed?
Then Yuri remembered the answer to when you get to see a dragon this close: you get to see a dragon’s head this close right before it eats you. He bent his head back down.

Even with his eyes closed, he could see the dragon in front of him. He knew which sound was the ruffling of the dragon’s wings, which was the shuffling of its feet, and which was it taking a giant sniff of him. The force of that sniff almost pulled Yuri off of his feet. He reached out to keep his balance and found himself placing his hand on the bottom of the dragon’s left nostril. The dragon’s lips pulled back, showing three foot long fangs up front and a row of teeth that looked like a row of miniature mountains. Yuri slowly pulled his hand back, hoping not to find himself pierced by fangs or crunched between upper and lower mountain ranges that were the dragon’s back teeth. His fingers came back wet, covered in a thick black liquid.

The dragon pulled back and rested on its haunches. Still with his head down, Yuri lifted one eye and looked at the dragon. Sitting back like that, Yuri thought it looked almost comical, like a fat cat leaning up against a wall. Instantly, Samora dropped down on all fours. Yuri had the sudden feeling that Samora knew what he was thinking.
Dragon-like
, he corrected in his thoughts,
very dragon-like. Not like a cat at all. Like a massive, blue, scaly, strong, dragon
. All thoughts of the dragon’s nose and the blood on his hand disappeared. He thought about living and whether he would be able to continue doing it.

This not-like-a-cat-at-all dragon leaned forward, bringing its face once again next to Yuri’s. Its breath was ice-cold, like mountaintop wind. At first, Yuri felt his facial skin tighten, burn, and then go numb. Samora stepped back. As it did, he felt his skin return to normal. Actually, he felt warm all over. The cold fall day had, for him, turned into one that felt like a warm, sunny day.

I think this is going to be alright, he thought to himself as the dragon started to turn around. It moved slowly at first, but that was only its body. Yuri felt a pressure in his head, a message. Yuri forgot about the pressure, though, as he saw the blur of the dragon’s tail as it whipped around and caught him in the chest, the force of the blow picking him up and throwing him into the boulders. In the brief moment that existed between being hit by the tail and hitting the large rock 100 feet away, one thought, one warning, started to go through his mind,
Beware the dragon’s…
Yuri hit one of the large boulders and everything went black before he could complete the phrase in his mind.

The mayor and Lindale cringed as they saw and heard Yuri hit the boulder, first with his back and then, sickeningly, with his head as it whiplashed back. Yuri fell to the ground, his body completely limp. He looked like a little doll discarded by a bored child. Lindale started to run towards Yuri as the mayor stayed at the edge of the woods, watching the dragon as it launched itself into the air and began to fly away.

Yuri’s body was in a heap when Lindale approached. “Ah Yuri, I’m sorry,” he whispered as if speaking out loud would do more damage to his crushed body.

“Is he dead?” yelled the mayor.

“Yes, Seth, he is.”

“Damn shame. I liked that boy. I’ll go get a cart.” The mayor walked off, muttering to himself, “What the tail are we supposed to do now?”

Lindale sat down next to Yuri, his back against the boulder that had just killed Yuri and his hand resting gently on his broken body. “You were a brave boy, Yuri, and I will tell everyone that at your funeral.”

Chapter 2

Across the mountains to the east in Perantium, the largest village of the region, five mages gathered inside the citadel, a heavily fortified castle. Averaging five stories tall, with outer walls 20 feet thick, the building was, and was meant to be, intimidating. Each of the seven corners had a high tower on it, and the walls in-between had openings for archers as well as overhangs to pour boiling oil or other generally discouraging materials onto the heads of anyone gathering near the walls. Of course, as impressive the structure and those who defended it were, the real source of power was the keeper of the fortress, Mage Perante. His specialty was changing people’s minds, permanently. More than one critic of his work and power has found himself gladly giving up whatever position he or she may have had to become a willing and happy servant of Perante. His new loyal subjects were often given the chance to even sacrifice their lives for him, which they gladly did, to the shock and horror of their friends and family.

Perante’s lunch guests this day were Falanar, from Ogden, Tassaran from Midlow, Xeron from Hunting, and Winderall, from no one knew quite where. Six dogs were also in attendance in the meeting hall, favored for their ability to sense the approach of dragons. Two were Perante’s, large, black and quiet. Falanar’s, equally large but brown, was already sleeping by the fire. Tassaran’s was sitting at his side, watching attentively and drooling as Tassaran ate.  Xeron had a sleek, gray Annarand, known for their speed. It was also by the fire. They were gathered around a table full of fruits, breads, pastries, and meats; greetings over, Falanar, tall and thin, was the first to speak. “Perante, where is your brother? I thought he was going to report what is going on across the mountains.”