Jenna Elizabeth Johnson
Tales of Oescienne
Volume One
Conquer the Castle
“Master Hroombra!” Jahrra yelled over her shoulder from inside the Castle Guard Ruin as she dug around in an old trunk. “Are these the only old clothes you have lying around?”
It was a stupid question, Jahrra knew that, but she cringed as she held up the old, age-yellowed shirt and leggings. Where on Ethoes did he get these? she wondered. They looked like something a noble would have worn a hundred years ago.
As Jahrra contemplated the antique clothing, her guardian walked through the dragon’s entrance of their home, blocking out the light for a moment as he came to stand over her.
“Your teacher’s note said old, white clothing,” he said blandly when he saw what she was doing.
Jahrra dropped the clothes back into the trunk and scowled at the Korli dragon. “Yes, old,” she emphasized, “not ancient!”
“Well, that is all I have.”
Jahrra sighed heavily and started digging through the trunk again. She could use some of her own clothes, but she didn’t want them to get stained in the game of Conquer the Castle she and her classmates would be participating in the next day. She would have to make do with what she found in the trunk. It held not just the two pieces she had found earlier, but an entire wardrobe of garments, nearly all of them well-tailored and of a high quality. They ranged greatly in size, but none of them were so big that she couldn’t fit into them. She also realized that they were boy’s clothes since there wasn’t a single dress among the lot. Thank goodness, she thought.
She leaned back on her knees and studied the pile from a short distance. Yes, where had her mentor acquired these clothes? At first glance she had assumed they were costumes. Of course, why the dragon Hroombramantu would have costumes was just as puzzling as why he might have a wardrobe more fitting for a Nesnan or Resai elf.
“Ah,” Hroombra said over Jahrra’s shoulder, startling her out of her contemplation, “a fine choice.”
He nodded towards the long white shirt and leggings Jahrra had set aside before he’d come into the room.
“Master Hroombra,” she started, ignoring his observation, “why do you have all these clothes anyway?”
The great dragon was standing behind her, but for a moment, only a moment, she thought she felt him tense up. She turned her head and furrowed her brow at him. He was very still and a dark look seemed to have occupied his face, but in the next breath he brightened up a bit and said, “They belonged to a past student of mine.”
Jahrra’s eyebrows arched at that.
Hroombra merely nodded. “Though the general presence of dragons is frowned upon in this day and age, there was a time when our wisdom was sought out by those wishing to educate their children. I like to currently think of myself as retired.” He gave her an amused look. “But I once had several pupils.”
Jahrra held up a rather gaudy short coat, sewn from dark green velvet and embellished with golden thread and beads.
“And were some of your past pupils royalty?” she teased, flapping the coat about in a haughty way.
The slight twitch of Hroombra’s mouth could have been rather telling, but before Jahrra could decipher whether it was an acknowledgement of her statement or a mere reaction to something he found humorous, a familiar voice called from outside.
“Jahrra! You up?”
Jahrra dropped the coat onto the unkempt pile and raced for the door.
“Yes!” she answered as she met her best friend, Scede, at the door. Gieaun, his sister and her other best friend, was just behind him.
“Did you find anything to wear for tomorrow?” he asked, crossing his arms and trying to peer over her shoulder.
“Ugh,” Jahrra moaned as she rolled her eyes and grabbed his sleeve, pulling him outside to join Gieaun.
“For some strange reason, Master Hroombra has a trunk full of boy’s clothes that belonged to an old student of his. I found something in there.”
Gieaun beamed. “Good! Now we can start looking for the stuff to make our face paint.”
Jahrra returned their grins. “Perfect! Let me go fetch Phrym.”
As the three friends rode their horses in the direction of the Wreing Florenn, the forest that loomed just beyond the old ruin where Jahrra and Hroombra lived, they animatedly discussed the plan for the following day. Professor Tarnik, their stodgy, overbearing boor of a teacher, had decided to test their survival skills this year by pitting them against one another. Conquer the Castle, a competition where the goal was to steal the banner from another team’s camp while trying to protect your own, was his idea of examining how they would fare should they find themselves lost in the wilderness. Jahrra didn’t think it was the best way to test their survival skills, but the anticipation of a good competition kept her silent on the matter.
“Why do we have to wear all white?” Gieaun complained as their horses kicked up dust from the road. “I don’t look that great in white.”
“Obviously so the dye will show up, Gieaun!” Scede said, giving his sister a perturbed look.
They hadn’t been given too many details about the rules of the game yet, but they had been told it would involve crossbows, soft-tipped arrows, dye pouches and white clothing. The class had already been divided into five teams of six, and they knew that they had the entire city of Aldehren as their battle ground, so long as they avoided the townspeople during their game.
“Like Eydeth and Ellysian would even notice a local shop owner if they tripped over him,” Gieaun sniffed.
“They would if it made them easy targets,” Scede countered with a mischievous grin.
That made Jahrra snicker, for there was nothing better, in her opinion, than having a good laugh at the twins’ expense. Eydeth and Ellysian had been tormenting her since she was small and it had become second nature for her and her friends to blanch whenever their names were brought up.
Soon the three companions spotted a tangled bramble growing on the edge of the forest and all talk of the evil Resai twins and their unpleasantness was over. Jahrra climbed down from Phrym as soon as they reached the bramble patch and sighed with glee. The bushes were heavy with a dark purple berry. Archedenaeh, the enigmatic Mystic who lived in the center of the forest, had once shown these berries to Jahrra and her friends.
“They taste terrible,” she had told them, “but they make an excellent dye for face paint if you mix them with white mud.”
Jahrra, Gieaun and Scede had gathered some of the white mud near the creek the day before. Now all they had to do was mix in the right amount of berry juice to make the pasty paint the same violet shade as the banner they were charged to protect in tomorrow’s grand battle.
“What should we paint on our faces?” Gieaun asked, wrinkling her nose at the dollop of purple mud on her fingers.
Jahrra grinned, and then proclaimed, “Dragons!”
By sunup the next morning, Jahrra, her friends, and all their classmates were crowded around the schoolhouse in Aldehren, patiently waiting for their teacher to show up and get the game started.
Kihna, Rhudedth and Pahrdh, the other three members of Jahrra’s team, moved over to the edge of the crowd to join them.
“So, what did we decided to do for the war paint?” Pahrdh asked over his sister’s head.
Rhudedth rolled her eyes at her brother and mouthed the word boys which resulted in a giggle from Gieaun and a snort from Jahrra. They quickly moved a few more feet away when someone from the green team glared at them.