The Wings of Dragons: Book One of the Dragoon Saga (9 page)

Amroth nodded, apparently deciding the
matter resolved. Balear didn’t seem happy about it, but he followed
Amroth’s lead and fell silent once again.

Iren next turned to Rondel, who brought up
the rear and looked rather less chipper than on the previous day. A
stoic glare replaced her earlier smile. One thing about her hadn’t
changed, though. She was still drinking, this time from a large
bottle of Tacumsahen rum.

“
So will you tell me the
truth?” Iren asked.

Rondel finished taking a long gulp before
replying sharply, “The truth?”

“
You used your left hand to
kill that bandit.”

The old woman rolled her eyes. In her high,
airy voice she countered, “If you want to live, I suggest you learn
how to fight with both hands. Also, you should learn more respect
and social graces. Otherwise, you’re bound to upset someone.”

Iren found it ironic that someone like
Rondel would chastise him for lacking manners, but he supposed she
had a point. That said, she still hadn’t answered his question. He
asked her again, but she refused to speak. After pestering her for
over an hour, he finally gave up the matter.

That night they camped just inside a small
thicket. Rondel’s dour mood had lifted a bit, and her usual dumb
smirk had returned. When Amroth asked her to gather firewood, she
responded, “Oh, sure, send a frail old woman like me. I’ll break a
hip hauling logs around. Make one of these strapping young lads do
it.”

Amroth glared, but Iren was simply glad
things had returned to normal. As annoying as he found the
sarcastic, drunken Rondel, the cold, serious Rondel that could make
even Amroth follow her orders just plain scared him. He’d take the
clown any day.

“
Fine, fine,” she grumbled,
“but don’t blame me if I have a heart attack off in the woods.
You’d be in a sore spot then.”

Sighing, Amroth relented. “All right, but I
won’t let you get out of it. Take Iren with you.” Amroth leaned
close so only Iren could hear. “And while you’re out there, for all
our sakes, apologize!”

Iren didn’t feel like fetching wood. He was
already so tired from the battle and two days of riding that he
could barely move. He also had no desire whatsoever to apologize to
Rondel, especially when she called, “Well hurry up, you Left
whippersnapper! The firewood won’t gather itself. Honestly, kids
these days!”

“
Slave-driving witch,” he
grumbled as he forced himself to his feet and followed her into the
thicket.

Other travelers had picked the area around
their campsite clean, so Rondel and Iren had to venture far to find
any downed wood. Soon they passed well out of view and earshot of
the others. All the while, Rondel drank from her latest bottle, a
hip flask she’d concealed under her baggy clothes. After hiking for
about twenty minutes, Rondel stopped abruptly and whipped around.
Her grin was gone. “We’ve come far enough.” Her voice dropped in
pitch to the same cold level as last night during the attack.

Her sudden change unnerved Iren; she was
almost two different people. Her breath still smelled like alcohol
though. “Far enough for what?” he asked.

“
I meant what I said
earlier. You should learn proper manners. For instance, did you
ever think that I might not want to answer your questions with
those two around?” She pointed back in the direction of
camp.

Iren stopped. In truth, no, he hadn’t
thought that at all. He just had a question and wanted it
answered.

Pressing her thumb and forefinger into her
temple, Rondel said, “I guess subtlety isn’t your strength, is it?
All right. Yes, I’m a Left, but humans made up that horrid term.
The real name for us is Maantecs. We’re a different species.”

Iren scrunched up his face.
Maantec . . . finally, he had a name for what
he was.

Rondel continued, “You already know the
discerning feature. Every human, whether from Lodia or Tacumsah, is
right-handed. In the same way, all Maantecs are left-handed. If you
want to hide your Maantec heritage, you’d better learn how to use
your right hand.”

Iren sat on a fallen log, staring blankly at
the ferns on the forest floor. After a long pause he said, “I
thought I was the only Left in the world. How many of us are
there?”

At this, Rondel sighed, took a swig from her
flask, and raised her gaze to the treetops. “No idea. I’ve wandered
over most of Raa, but I’ve hardly ever seen another Maantec in all
my journeys. A thousand years ago, though, no race surpassed our
might, or at least, so we believed. Maantecs have speed, strength,
and reaction times beyond humans. That’s why you easily defeated
those Quodivar despite your total lack of experience. However, our
skills made us arrogant. We began a war to subdue all the other
species, but they rose against us. At the end of that war, the few
Maantecs who remained were defeated and scattered. Our species has
slowly declined ever since.”

“
How?” Iren asked. “If we
get wounded, our bodies heal the injury almost
instantly.”

Rondel shook her head. “No, only your body
will do that, and only because of that sword.”

Iren pulled his father’s blade from its
sheath. “You made me hold this last night after I got injured.
Why?”

Drawing her dagger, Rondel held it before
Iren. “Let’s try an experiment. Sheathe your sword, then slide your
finger along the edge of my dagger.”

Though nervous about the idea of
intentionally wounding himself, Iren did as instructed. The pain
was swift and surprisingly light; the sharp blade carved easily
through flesh. He held up his finger, watching for the healing
power to take effect. A minute passed, but he continued to
bleed.

“
You’re vulnerable, just as
I am,” Rondel explained. “That healing ability has nothing to do
with you. To finish our experiment, touch the hilt of your
sword.”

Iren obeyed, and a few seconds later, his
wound closed. Staring in astonishment first at his healed finger
and then at his weapon, he stammered, “The sword healed me?
How?”

Rondel smiled. “You possess perhaps the most
powerful weapon on the continent of Raa. That sword is a katana, a
weapon style unique to Maantecs. Beyond that though, it bears a
name. Maantecs call it the Muryozaki, literally translated as ‘Holy
Dragon Sword.’”

“
Holy Dragon Sword?” Iren
raised an eyebrow. He had a hard time believing his father’s blade
was some kind of divine weapon.

“
What do you know about
dragons, Iren?”

The young man shook his head. “Dragons don’t
exist; they’re fairy tales.”

“
Partially correct. True,
no physical dragons roam Raa. However, somewhere on this continent
live eight dragons.”

Iren’s brow furrowed. Despite her drinking,
he’d found Rondel remarkably lucid up to this point. Now, he
wondered if everything she had said merely amounted to
alcohol-induced ramblings. “You crazy bird, there can’t be ‘no
dragons’ and ‘eight dragons’ at the same time!”

She smacked him on the back of the head.
“Watch your mouth, brat, and listen when people talk to you! I said
no physical dragons roam Raa, but it does have eight dragons. They
simply no longer have a physical form.” She sighed. “I’d best start
at the beginning. Otherwise, a dunce like you will never
understand. You know that, centuries ago, people worshipped the
dragons as gods. However, they’re more like forces of nature, made
by the Creator, Juusa, to maintain balance in the world. He
intended for them to live in peace, but instead, the dragons warred
among themselves over which had the most power. Ultimately, ten
thousand years ago, their squabbling sank an entire continent,
Teneb, or so Maantec history says.”

Iren shuddered at the thought of creatures
so powerful they could sink continents, but he didn’t see how the
legend could be true. Skeptically, he asked, “What does all that
have to do with my sword?”

Rondel’s sharp reply came immediately, “It
has everything to do with your sword! After Teneb sank, instead of
realizing their folly, the dragons merely shifted their war to the
sole remaining continent on our world: Raa. Two hundred of the
finest sorcerers gathered to address the problem. They couldn’t
convince the dragons to stop feuding, and they couldn’t kill the
dragons without upsetting the balance of nature. Instead, they
combined their might and cast a spell that sealed the dragons into
gemstones, one for each. Though alive, the dragons could no longer
war among themselves. Forever locked in their gems, the dragons
cannot influence the outside world. But the story doesn’t end
there, although it should have.”

Iren gulped as Rondel’s tone darkened.

“
The sealing spell required
so much magic that it killed all two hundred casters. As time
passed, foolish Maantecs forgot why their ancestors willingly died
to seal away the dragons. They began to desire the dragons’ magic
for their own. Five thousand years ago, they developed an
enchantment that, if placed around a dragon’s gem, allowed anyone
who touched it to draw upon that dragon’s power. They inscribed the
sequence on eight weapons, turning them into Ryokaiten, or ‘Dragon
Weapons.’” Rondel motioned at the Muryozaki. “Your sword is one of
them. See the three concentric rings of symbols on its hilt? Those
markings are kanji, the Maantec form of writing. At their center,
just beneath the surface, rests the Holy Diamond, containing the
spirit and magic of the Holy Dragon, Divinion.”

Iren stared at his sword with new
fascination. Divinion, the dragon in the painting, the creature
whose name adorned the tower in which he’d lived most of his life,
resided in his father’s katana. He could hardly believe a simple
farmer would own a weapon that contained one of the mightiest
beasts ever to live on Raa.

Rondel seemed to sense Iren’s thoughts.
After a quick sip from her hip flask, she continued, “Over time,
nearly all of the Ryokaiten have disappeared. Few Maantecs even
know about them anymore; your father probably didn’t understand
what he had. I can say this much for certain though. Throughout
history, those who desire power have coveted the Ryokaiten. It
could explain why someone would murder your parents.”

Two unspoken follow-up questions came
unbidden to Iren’s mind. If the Quodivar leader had killed Iren’s
parents to obtain the Muryozaki, why hadn’t he retrieved it at that
point in time? And second, what would he do once he found out that
Iren had it?

“
You must understand both
the might and the danger inherent in that sword,” Rondel noted
firmly. “It can grant you great power, but it can also destroy you.
Evil will seek you, wanting to claim the Holy Dragon Sword’s power
for its own. No magic surpasses that of a Dragon
Knight.”

Iren grimaced. “A Dragon Knight?”

“
To put it bluntly, a
Dragon Knight is someone who wields a Ryokaiten. The fact that the
Muryozaki healed you proves you’re a Dragon Knight. You drew on
Divinion’s power to do that.”

“
Does that mean Amroth is a
Dragon Knight too?” Iren asked. “He gave me this sword, and he’s
had it in his possession for seventeen years.”

Rondel shook her head. “That isn’t how it
works. The sword chooses one owner and one owner only. That person
becomes the Dragon Knight, and once the bond is made, only the
knight’s death can sever it. As long as you live, neither Amroth,
nor anyone else, can become the Holy Dragon Knight.”

Iren held up the Muryozaki, trembling. “Why
me?” he asked, mostly to himself. “Why would a dragon, especially
the Holy Dragon, want to bond with me? Or for that matter, any
person at all?”

“
One question at a time!”
the old woman called out, laughing momentarily before turning
serious again. “Let’s start with the last one. Imagine for a moment
that you’re a dragon. Originally, you were a creature of nearly
limitless power. Now you spend eternity locked inside the tiniest
space, in utter darkness, unable to move, unable to control what
happens in the world, yet you still feel the flow of time. Sealing
the dragons may have preserved Raa, but it sentenced them to the
most fiendish prisons possible. Bonding with a Dragon Knight,
however, gains them a window to the outside world.

“
As for why Divinion chose
you specifically, I can only say this much. The dragons don’t
choose randomly. When a knight dies, the dragon finds its next
partner by testing any non-Dragon Knight who touches its Ryokaiten.
If the person passes the ordeal, they become the knight, but if
they fail, they die. That means that if you aren’t already a Dragon
Knight, touching a Ryokaiten whose owner has died is extremely
dangerous. You might gain incredible power, but you could just as
easily perish. Each dragon administers a different test. In
Divinion’s case, Maantec lore says that he judges based on purity
of heart. When I helped Amroth seventeen years ago, he gave me his
account of your finding. I suspect that when your mother died, she
dropped you. As you fell, you rubbed against your father’s blade.
As an innocent infant, you easily passed Divinion’s test. You’ve
been the Holy Dragon Knight almost all your life.”

“
But I never healed myself
until last night.”

“
Of course. Holy Dragon
Knight or not, Divinion’s power remains locked within the Holy
Diamond and the Muryozaki. That’s why your finger didn’t heal until
you touched your sword. Specifically, it didn’t heal until you
touched the symbols on the hilt. Those kanji spell out the
enchantment that connects you to Divinion. Unless some part of your
skin touches them, you cannot use his magic.”