The dagger had a small scabbard made of stiffened leather, but its crosspiece gleamed of a bronze-colored metal, and its handle was wrapped in cord. It ended in a small pommel with a green gem at the end. Tamin watched me as I pulled the dagger from its sheath, revealing a fat blade that gleamed like a mirror, and had been engraved with the curling shape of a dragon.
“It’s still sharp,” I whispered in awe. Was this that woman’s very own dagger? Had this woman once fought alongside a dragon? I thought, as Tamin unfurled the paper.
“This is a map,” Tamin breathed, carefully kneeling on the floor so he could lay it out. “Look, there is the Midmost Lands.” He pointed to a fat shape in the middle like a jagged tear drop. Several lines of mountains scored up through its middle and along its outer edge.
And a little off to the left, near the outer mountain range someone had painted an over-large golden crown over a ‘T’.
“That’s the citadel of Torvald. Once home to the Dragon Riders.” Tamin’s voice was excited.
“I know that, Uncle,” I said in annoyance. Just because I couldn’t read, he had always treated me like I didn’t know anything!
But Tamin either hadn’t heard me or wasn’t worried about upsetting me at the moment, as his hands moved across the map, pointing at various settlements and places. “Scorched Lands. Vala. Queen’s Keep…” He looked up at me, his eyes bright. “This map dates back to the early Kingdom of Torvald. Perhaps even before it was Torvald!”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Tamin could see I had no idea what he was talking about. “Before there were Three Kingdoms in the Midmost Lands, the North, Middle, and South, there was an Empire. Torvald,” he tapped the air over the golden crown, “had expanded to conquer all three, ruled over by an evil wizard-king.”
Children’s stories. I’d heard fragments of this from Mother – but always told as something that happened far away, and not important to us in the Eastern Plains.
“But before that it was Three Kingdoms again, ruled over by three brothers. Each one wanted to control all of the Midmost Lands, just as their mother, the original queen, had done. She was the one who first became friends with dragons!” Tamin said excitedly. “Because there aren’t the large coastal towns of Redport, and Roskilde the island nation isn’t mentioned here, then we can assume that this map is before the people who made it knew much about them!” my surrogate uncle said excitedly. “That makes it very ancient indeed!”
“Wonderful,” I said. I was less impressed with the map than I was with the dagger and the painting. What good was a map that was out of date, anyway?
But in my hands, I still held the heavy book. I flicked it open casually, hearing the pages sigh and crack a little – but they were still good. It revealed lots and lots of cramped text that was completely gibberish to me.
And pictures. These, I paused over each one I found.
They appeared to be sketches, made by whomever had written this book perhaps, of the things that they had seen. There were drawings of mountains as well as different kinds of trees, strange shells with lots of holes in them, bugs and beetles, and the pommel and handle designs of different weapons.
Interesting, I thought, and wished that I could read.
But then my thumb flicked the pages right to the back, where there were still some blank pages, as well as a lot more sketches. No, doodles, really. I made out a large eye, surrounded by the smallest, most delicate of scales. A talon, as well as intricate drawings of a scale from different angles.
“A dragon!” I said out loud, knowing them from what I had seen myself. And something else, too – it was clear that whomever had made these pictures had spent a lot of time on them. The sketches of the dragon were far more detailed and sophisticated than any other drawing in the journal, as if it was something that fascinated and captivated the author.
“May I?” Tamin was at my side, smiling broadly in the weird blue light. I let him take the book from my hands, where he went through the pages just as I had done, gasping and making awed noises, until he came to the start, and stopped.
“What? What is it?” I asked excitedly.
Tamin cleared his throat, and then read from the first few leaves of the book. “This being the journal of Lady Artifex, detailing my attempts to chart and plot the confines of the World, under the rule of High Queen Delia the First, with my faithful companion Maliax.”
“Maliax,” I said out loud, turning to look at the canvas picture on the floor as Tamin flipped the pages and continued to read silently. My eyes sought out the fierce red dragon. “Is that your name?” I asked its frozen form. Maliax.
I thought about the black dragon, far above us. I wondered if he had a name too. Did all dragons have a name? How did they get one? ‘Maliax’ sounded like a dragon’s name to me. It didn’t sound like any sort of Daza or Three Kingdom name that I had ever heard of.
Who named you? I asked the picture. Did they get named by their Riders, or did all dragons already have their own names? I wondered.
And just what did it take to learn one?
“What is going on here!” bellowed a sudden voice. It was Maribet One-Eye, emerging from the small tunnel with a torch in one hand and a stout metal quarterstaff in the other. And coming right up behind her were her two heavyset, frowning guards.
Chapter 7
Abioye
“What are you doing?” One-Eye snarled at the pair of us. And then her eye fell on the knife in my hand. For the briefest moment I could feel the thought rise in me: I was holding a weapon. I could use it—
Tamin moved first, slapping my hand down with a hard smack.
“Ow!” I dropped the knife and it clattered on the floor, as the two guards behind One-Eye converged on us. One kicked the dagger across the floor and pushed me roughly up against the stone wall with a heavy thump, as the other grabbed Tamin by the shoulders.
“Nobody move!” One-Eye was shouting. “This is your little game, is it? Sneak down here and start your own little mutiny?” She was stalking into the room, with her staff waving in the air between us.
“Maribet, that is ridiculous,” I gasped under the guard’s rough hold. Even though that is exactly what I had wanted to do. “Look. How could we make this place? We just found it after the rockfall.”
“This room is hundreds of years old. These documents are antiques!” Tamin said from the other.
“Hmph,” One-Eye growled, kicking the corner of the canvas painting of the Lady Artifex.
“Don’t!” I said instinctively. It seemed a dishonor somehow to have someone like her even touch it.
“What’s it to you?” the overseer said, and I saw the gleam of cruelty in her eyes when she realized how important this was to me. “Maybe you thought you could make some money, huh? Find a guard to sell this to?” She rounded on me. “Well, I have something to tell you, my girl – everything under this mountain belongs to the Lady Inyene. Everything. Every bit of rock, every slave, every forgotten scrap,” she aimed another kick at the painting, and the cloth was thrown to the side of the room, hiding the Lady Artifex’s face.
“Does that mean you, too?” I muttered under my breath. It was loud enough for One-Eye to hear me, as she hissed in anger.