Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir (28 page)

“I've got to...” I murmured, but no one was listening.

I didn't know what I had to do, so I turned and ran. Michael called out, “Hey! Where do you think—” but I shouldered the door open, and his words were lost to the pulse of Kyrindval. Kouris was already out of sight, and it wasn't until I was frantically looking for one pane amongst dozens that it occurred to me that I'd left for her.

She'd said she wasn't there to cause trouble, and she'd been true to her word. I found her outside Kyrindval, through the dragon-bone arch, slumped in the long grass. Her eyes were grey as ash and a pallor had overtaken her, the likes of which I'd only ever seen paired with the cold sweat of a raging fever.

I didn't stop until I was in front of her, stood squarely between her feet. She sat with her legs in front of her, arms folded across her knees, putting us on the same level, and though she looked at me, she didn't react. For days she'd been trying to get me to talk to her, but her ears didn't twitch, and she barely blinked. She looked at me as though she was still Rán, and I didn't want to forgive her.

But I didn't want to hold my tongue for any longer.

“You left her,” I said, unable to tell if I was aching for Kouris or Queen Kidira. “You left her for a really,
really
long time—I haven't been
alive
for that long. What did you think would happen?”

My words didn't wound Kouris. After all that had happened in the great lodge, nothing could. I wanted the answers, I desperately did, and her lips twitched into something that wasn't a smile. I'd no doubt she'd imagined seeing Queen Kidira again, hundreds and thousands of times before, but in her head, it had never played out like that.

“She was young when I met her. Just turned twenty, actually. Three years after that, we were married. Not really something the pane go for or properly understand, but—” Kouris drew in a breath, crinkling her nose. “Three years after that, I was gone. And look at her now! She is grown. She is more of a Queen than ever, and she has a daughter. Her daughter is set to marry. Maybe I never should've been marching back like this.”

I wrapped my arms around myself as she spoke, fingers gripping and twisting the fabric of my sleeves.

“Why? Why did you do it?”

I didn't understand. I wouldn't understand, no matter what Kouris told me. Still, I needed to make sense of Kouris running halfway across Bosma, leaving behind the person she loved the most.

“Because more than anything, Kidira loves Kastelir. Her blood's in the ground, part of the soil. Say I came wandering back here, say everyone knew that I hadn't faced my punishment—what do you reckon would be happening to Kastelir then? Now, it's not exactly the most stable of countries at the moment. You can't imagine what it was like back when it was newly forged, yrval. Before Isin was much more than an idea. The people would've become restless. We would've plunged straight back into war.”

She couldn't have known that. Surely, there had to be another way around it. She could've
told
Queen Kidira she was alive, could've come back not as a Queen, but as just another pane, she could've—I flushed the thoughts from my mind, biting on my lower lip. One look at her told me that if she could've done any of that, she would've.

Shoulders rising to my ears, I fell down into the grass next to her. I sat close enough for my shoulder to bump her elbow, and though I told myself that this was Queen Kouris, the person who'd pried eyes from their sockets, I couldn't force fear to spike in my chest.

“... how old
are
you?” I abruptly asked and Kouris let out a sharp breath through her nose.

Definitely not a few years older than Claire.

“Fifty-eight. Still plenty young, for a pane,” Kouris explained. “You saw Zentha in there, aye? They must be coming up on three-hundred now, and that's hardly pushing it. It'll be a good century before my horns start spiralling back like that.”

I nodded, trying to imagine anyone living that long. Even with the aid of a healer, a human wasn't likely to make it to two hundred; the body just stopped, eventually, in spite of anything pushed into it, anything ripped out.

“And your family? Are they down there?”

I pulled my knees to my chest, chin propped atop them. It felt
right
talking to Kouris, though all that had unfolded in the hall clung to us like grime, and we were both far from smiling.

“My family? Nah, yrval. You need to stop thinking like a human,” she told me. “All this business with parents and siblings and cousins—we don't have anything like that. Don't need it, either. The entire tribe looks after the hatchlings, that's the only way it can work with us. We don't exactly, ah...”

Kouris licked her upper-lip, brow furrowed as she tried to find the words. I perked up, eagerly waiting for her to continue.

“Now, it's my understanding that humans carry on their legacy in—pairs,” she said, clearing her throat, “But the pane, we're needing only ourselves.”

“
Oh
.”

I knew how childbirth worked – I'd watched over a few of the riskier ones, back in the village, and helped birth plenty of lambs and calves – and though I didn't understand everything Kouris was trying to get across, I distinctly didn't want to ask any more questions.

We stared down at Kyrindval, at the life within and the fields around, bustling with crops taller than any we'd ever grown in my village, gentle slopes covered in goats and deer as far as I could see. The buildings were all relatively low, none of them having more than one floor, and from a distance, I could see that the great lodge was shaped like a claw. The cabins closest to it were the oldest, the stone of the street dark and worn, and those around the edge of Kyrindval were still being built, roofless or without walls, floorboards being hammered into place.

I saw Kyrindval for the first time, took in the twists and turns of the streets as though they'd always been there, but when Kouris looked over the tribe, she saw how it, like her, had changed throughout the past thirty years.

“Yrval, listen...” Kouris started in a low rumble.

“Don't,” I said softly.

I expected her to try apologising again, and didn't want to have to tell her it was alright simply because I felt bad about what had happened with Queen Kidira.

Kouris nodded, let the view reclaim her, and after a few minutes spent separating the unfamiliar streets from the ones she'd once wandered down, she said, “Want to see something?”

“See what?”

Kouris wasn't allowed back in the village and I'd taken in all I could get out of the fields already. That alone was enough to pique my interest, prying my gaze away from the great lodge.

“You'll have to be following me,” she said, pushing herself to her feet.

She set off, intending to reach her destination with or without my company. I could only stare at Kyrindval for so long. I hopped to my feet, gave the great lodge one last look, though it was too far to make out the shapes of anyone leaving it, and jogged to catch up with her. Even at a leisurely pace, without crowds to wade through, Kouris was a struggle to keep up with.

“What is it?” I asked, not discerning much from the field we were trundling through. There were goats all around us, tended to by a handful of pane wearing streams of white cloth around their leathers. They waved to me and squinted at Kouris, but otherwise let us pass unnoticed. “... you won't get into trouble, will you?”

“Don't reckon so,” Kouris said, some of the colour returning to her face. “It's only Kyrindval itself I'm not welcome in—the rest of this land, that's belonging to the dragons.”

Dragons
.

I'd climbed a mountain and found where the pane lived, but I'd never spared a thought for any dragons. I'd dismissed the notion of them altogether, along with all the other vicious rumours about the pane, but I saw clearly where Kouris was headed. One of the lower mountain peaks came to a stop a hundred or so feet above us, and Kouris was leading me right to it. An entrance was carved into the rock, an arch covered in dragon-bone, and while I was willing to be a distraction, if a distraction was what Kouris needed, I wasn't prepared to make bait of myself.

“There are... dragons in there?” I asked, slowing to a stop. “You brought me to see
dragons
?”

Kouris looked over her shoulder and gestured for me to hurry to her side.

“Don't be worrying yourself, yrval,” she said, waiting for my feet to work again, “I'm sure they've already eaten today.”

If Kouris was trying to make me feel better, it didn't work. My bones tried rattling their way free as something other than Kouris' grim reassurance drew me towards the cave, through an entrance high enough for any pane.

I expected darkness and was met with fire. The whole of the mountain had been hollowed out by dragon's breath, walls glossy like water frozen mid-stream, ledges left behind to roost on. Fires burnt bright on some, and sunlight streamed in through what had once been the summit. There were no shadows for me to hide in. I saw the dragons and the dragons saw me.

There was no comprehending the size of them. My mind struggled to compare them to a house, a barn, a mountain, but these were living, moving creatures, scales glinting in the light as they breathed in and out, in and out, most of them dozing happily. A few peered down at me, and I saw their fangs without them having to bare them; they could've snapped their teeth and swallowed me whole.

“Kouris...” I breathed, heart spiking. I flailed my arm blindly behind me and she held out a hand, letting me squeeze it.

Dragons
. I was standing inside a mountain, surrounded by dragons, and Claire—she'd
slain
these beasts. They'd ravaged our country, razing entire cities to the ground, and now they were idly blinking eyes bigger than my head at me.

“Easy now,” Kouris murmured, slowly crouching beside me, “When it comes down to it, they're animals, same as any other. Treat them with a little respect and don't go sticking your arm in their mouths and you should be fine. Now, you see the big one up there—?”

Kouris pointed to the largest of the ledges, where a dragon bigger than the others was rested, jaw propped up against its front legs. Its wings spread out around it like a cloak, and it could've flicked any of the other dragons out of the air, no matter how immense they themselves were. Sturdy horns curved back, shaped like a pane's but as white as Claire's armour, and each one of its purple scales could've served as a shield.

“That'd be the fhord. The leader, in a tribe such as this one,” she explained, then gestured over to the other dragons that had begun to stir with curiosity. “As for these, they're the kraau. Whenever you go, they always make up the majority of any tribe. Reckon that's what you humans think of when you think
dragons
.”

Truth be told, when I heard the word
dragons
, I expected something horrific. I'd pictured them as ungainly beasts, jagged teeth jutting out over lipless mouths, red eyes glowing; scales dripping with ooze, a stench that would thicken in my throat, but the kraau were nothing short of remarkable.

They were rich orange in colour, long, thin bodies cloaked in wings that stretched from their shoulders to their tails. Like the fhord, they were neat looking creatures, each scale placed as deliberately as the design of Claire's armour was meticulous. They, too, had long, curved white horns, as well as a spike longer than my arm at the tip of their tail.

There was no shortage of fangs and claws about the cave. Their teeth made Kouris' look blunt, and I thought that if Claire truly could take down creatures that exuded strength in their idle moments, then she was either stronger or faster than a dragon, or something else it was not.

I wondered if I'd ever looked at her properly before.

“And
here
...” Kouris whispered, drawing my attention back towards the ground.

I couldn't see anything other than kraau, at first. Behind a pile of rocks, bones from the dragons' last meal clattered, and I caught a flash of swamp-green. A tail swished out, and Kouris brought a finger to her lips, signalling for me to be very, very quiet.

I knelt down. I don't know why I made myself smaller around the dragons, but I did. Slow enough that I would've mistaken it for a pile of rocks, had I not had my eyes fixed upon it, the dragon came into view. It was small, much smaller than the kraau; if not for its wings, it wouldn't have been any bigger than Charley. Its legs were short, body low to the ground, and it moved like a lizard, twisting its way towards us.

I squeezed Kouris' hand so tightly that I would've broken it, had she been a human, but I wouldn't turn and flee. I didn't want Claire to know that I'd run from a dragon. It crawled closer, scales speckled, and in an instant, it wrapped its long tongue around my wrist.

I started, but I wasn't scared. The creature was so timid that I felt as though I was dealing with a scalier version of the lambs back home. Letting go of Kouris, I carefully placed a hand on the dragon's snout, watching its nostrils flare as it decided whether or not it wanted to panic.

“And this here is a yrval,” Kouris said softly. “They aren't very strong, and you're not going to be seeing them fly all that high, but their flames burn the hottest. They could breathe in the sun, if they wanted to.”

I smiled as I grazed my nails across the yrval's scales, and by some twist of fate, my nerves outlasted a dragon's.

Outside the cave, once my heartbeat was no longer deafening me, I said, “Is living so close to dragons really safe? Aren't they always trying to attack Kyrindval?”

“Not exactly. See, that's a problem you lot are only having in Felheim,” Kouris explained, “Here, the dragons and pane have to get along. We make use of their teeth once they're dead, but we're not about to pry them out of their jaws. So we take care of the dragons, if they ever fall ill, and make sure there's plenty of food around for 'em—it's all about give and take.”

“Use them for
what
?”

“Take a tour of the tribe, some time,” Kouris said, patting me on the shoulder.