Ava Richardson
Dragon Freedom
(The Stone Crown Series Book Three)
Chapter 1
Dark Skies
“Nari? Nari!” I awoke with the screech and scream of dragon voices in my head, and the voice of my god-Uncle Tamin loud in my ears.
“Huh?” It took a few long moments of tired blinking to remember just where I was, and why. I was lying on the haphazard blanket-bed that I had collapsed into at some point yesterday evening, under the fluttering and cracking canvas walls of a Souda tent. I could hear the rising winds of the Soussa winds outside over the Plains, and they sounded like the whispering whistles, clicks, and burrs of dragon-tongue.
“At last! Do you have any idea how long I have been trying to wake you?” The man whom I called Uncle – although he was really no blood relation of mine – looked down at me with eyes that were heavy with concern. Tamin had deep wrinkles about his eyes, a testament to both his years under the scouring winds of the Plains and his recent incarceration as a miner under ‘Queen’ Inyene D’Lia.
Just as I had been for almost a quarter of my life, the thought struck me. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I was so tired and felt as if I had been trudging up and down the subterranean Main Concourse of Inyene’s Mines of Masaka all night, loaded down with her ever-precious iron ore.
“I was just tired,” I yawned, stretching shoulders and arms that felt fizzy with weakness. Was I getting ill? Had I drunk bad water? No, it must be the battle, I considered as I curled my knees up underneath me, pushing myself into a crouch to feel a wave of dizziness and nausea wash upwards through me.
Ugh.
This wasn’t just exhaustion from the battle, was it? I thought.
The previous days battle had been fierce, terrifying, but thankfully short-lived. It was when we had defeated Inyene’s party of mechanical dragons, and released Older Brother – one of the first of dragons from his sandy catacomb.
And it was also where I had won this. My hand reached up to the cool solid rock of the Stone Crown, still encircling my head, as every grease and oil that Tamin had applied or muttered enchantment that Montfre the young mage had attempted to use had failed to remove it. It’s not just stuck, is it? I thought. I was coming to the creepy awareness that it was somehow sealed, magically, to my brow.
But, at least I had the object that the self-styled ‘Queen’ had been so desperate for. It was rumored to be able to call on all dragon-kind, having been fashioned for the first High Queen of the distant Three Kingdoms, High Queen Delia. I had yet to fathom its powers – only that as soon as my hands had touched it in Older Brother’s cavern, I had felt that storm of dragon-song and reptilian voices; an expansion of the bond that I shared with Ymmen, my dragon-friend.
“I think I’m getting ill,” I murmured, as the shape of my god-Uncle moved around the small tent, bundling possessions together before the sound of water being poured.
“Here.” Tamin returned to my side, to crouch with a wooden cup of water that smelled sweet and sharp, like the rare lemons that would sometimes get traded up through the Plains. “Sun-grass and Rock-heather. It’ll help you focus.”
Focus? I thought, as I accepted the cup and took a deep draught. It did taste good, I had to admit – enlivening and fresh – but why does Tamin think I need to focus?
“Nari.” Tamin answered my silent question. He was a wise man, who had been friends with my mother, the Imanu of our Souda tribe of the Daza peoples, for a long time. So wise, in fact, that he had left to go to the Middle Kingdom of Torvald to study as a clerk and justice, in order to better defend the Daza peoples of the Plains against Inyene’s domination.
“Do you know how long you have been asleep?” my uncle asked me.
Of course I did. “One night. We fought the battle yesterday—”
But Tamin’s face was grave as he shook his head slowly. “That was two days ago, Narissea. You’ve been asleep for two days and nights.”
“What!?” I forced myself to my feet, before another wave of dizzy nausea swept through me, almost making me tumble back to the sanded floor before Tamin caught my elbow to steady me.
“Nari – I don’t like this. It’s not…natural,” I heard him say as my vision doubled and trebled. He was right of course – it wasn’t natural, but that still didn’t stop me from feeling a little frustrated at Tamin’s pampering.
“I’m fine!” I said. “It’s just a passing sickness – I was down in the dark for four years, you know!” I said, holding one hand to my temples. My fingers pressed up against the cool solidity of the Stone Crown, and I could feel it’s slightly pocked and pitted surface, where the marks of some ancient stonemason might have worked tirelessly to sand and grind and smooth, again and again—
“Nari, I—” Tamin started to say, but whatever apology or reprimand I half-expected him to give was rudely interrupted, as the flaps to the tent were pulled back.
“Narissea! You’re finally awake!” said the tall young man standing there. It was Abioye D’Lia, my friend and the brother of ‘Queen’ Inyene.
Abioye had changed in the little while that I had come to know him. Was it really less than a year? I thought. As I stood looking at his lean, broad-shouldered form with his ragged, choppy dark hair and eyes that were sharp and piercing – it was hard to not think that I had known him for years, not just a few seasons. But we two had been through a lot together, that much was for sure. Abioye had been there when Inyene’s slavemaster, the cruel and vindictive Dagan Mar, had tried to drag me away. And Abioye had fought to save my life from the equally as aggressive, but less vicious Nol Baggar, Captain of the Red Hound mercenaries sent after the Stone Crown by some mysterious Torvald noble.
Inyene’s younger and saner little brother had lost his apparent flamboyances and frivolities such as ironed shirts with weird ruffle-things at the cuffs. I could see the way that the winds of the Souda had scoured and weathered even him, as we Daza knew it did – bringing with it wisdom and insight.
Right now, however, Inyene’s younger brother was just looking at me from under the fierce, beetled brows of a frown.
“Don’t tell me you’re about to have a go at me for sleeping too now, are you?” I preempted him.
“What?” Abioye blinked. “No – of course not. I came here because there’s something that you really should see—” He stepped backward from the tent, with one of his slender and long-fingered hands (which would once have been constantly hidden behind finely-tooled soft-hide gloves but were now cracked and dusted with dirt) pulled the tent flap wide to show me the outside world.
“Ach.” It was bright, making my eyes wince as I saw the bright hammered-gold of the sands below us, and the rich, opulent blues of the skies above. Ok, maybe I had been asleep for two days, I conceded as the image of the easternmost part of the Plains resolved from the sunny glare. Out here, the savannahs, river-meadows, and wide-open spaces became arid until they met the region that we were traversing now, called the Shifting Sands. The land all around us was a sea of gold and yellow dunes, humped and falling as if the whole place were a frozen (yet warm!) sea.