LeRoy Clary
The Last Dragon: Book Two
CHAPTER ONE
I watched in awe as the last true-dragon in the Kingdom of Dire flew lazily above, high in the pale spring sky. One hadn’t been seen in Dire for generations, but even if they were a daily occurrence, their passing overhead would still draw the attention of everyone on the ground. As it swooped and dived, my breath caught.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” My sister crossed her arms over her chest and said in an accusatory manner as if daring me to disagree with her. Then, in a softer tone, Kendra attempted to console me, “You haven’t really lost any of your magic powers, you know. You just need a new source of dragon essence to draw from.”
Reluctantly and silently, I agreed. However, she didn’t fool me with her kind words, and wouldn’t distract me or quell my frustrations. My anger at remaining in Mercia instead of on the road home to Crestfallen wouldn’t ease. The limited use of what few magic talents I possessed had always been with me, although they were small in nature, which is the name we gave my abilities while we were orphaned children: small-magic. Unlike the gaudy magic of mages and sorceresses, I couldn’t light up the sky with bolts of lightning or create intense rainstorms to end droughts—however neither could they. Not anymore.
Like theirs, my magic abilities had dissipated with Kendra’s release of the dragon a few days earlier. All magic in the kingdom had ceased with that single, but kind action of hers.
“Right,” I replied sarcastically, without looking at her. “All I have to do is search the sky for the only remaining dragon, and if it flies close enough to me, maybe I can perform a quick parlor trick or two.”
Kendra puffed herself up, looking like a strange fish I’d once seen. When it got scared, it puffed up like her, full of spines and a nasty attitude. She said, “Don’t blame me.”
She was right, of course, but she was also my sister and whenever possible, I always blame her when things don’t go well—or my way. It’s more than a tradition for brothers to blame their sisters. It’s required by an ancient family code, I think. It also helps make up for those times when she is at fault and won’t admit it. And other times when I am not at fault but get blamed for her transgressions.
The dragon turned gracefully and flew inland, towards the road that would hopefully soon return the two of us to Crestfallen Castle in the northern corner of Dire, where the king resided. It had also been our home ever since we could remember. Well, that is not exactly true, but it had been our home since Princess Elizabeth took us in as small children and made us her personal servants over ten years ago.
Even the horse I sat upon, Alexis, was a gift from Elizabeth a few years earlier, and it also eyed the dragon nervously, as she always did when Wyverns or dragons flew near. No amount of coaxing or consoling made her relax when they were around, and probably with good reason. The dragon had almost died from starvation while in captivity, and since Kendra had set free, it often ate to regain weight and strength. That required daily meals of two or three sheep, deer, elk, cows, or anything else the supreme predator in history desired. Anything but my horse. The local farmers were going to learn to dislike its sudden appearances too, if we didn’t convince the crown to do something about repaying them for their lost stock. Teaching the dragon to only eat wild animals didn’t seem practical.
Kendra’s upturned face still watched the sky with utter fascination as I calmed Alexis and fought her sidestepping when the dragon returned and twisted its head and peered directly at us. Kendra asked, “Can you feel your magic increase when she is flying near?”
“Can I feel when it is possible to tap into her essence?” I corrected with a sharper tone than necessary. “That’s what you’re really asking, and the answer is, no. If I attempt to use my magic, it either works or doesn’t. If she is near enough, it works, but there’s nothing that tells me so until I try.”
Kendra shrugged, her eyes still on the dragon. “Of course, that’s what I meant to say. My mind can sense her at a distance, even her direction, but I’m trying to figure out how far away you can, if at all.”
After considering her comment, my curiosity got the better of me. The only known dragon had been imprisoned in a cave in Mercia over four hundred years ago, but I had managed to draw miniscule amounts of her essence while we lived in a far-off corner of Dire. Kendra’s curiosity was normal. The royal mages and the two sorceresses who also lived in Crestfallen performed their magic by drawing on the same source, which had been located four days away by horseback if one rode fast.
Now, my magic didn’t work unless the dragon was within sight.
Since Kendra had freed the dragon, she had acquired a few magical powers of her own, when before she had none. Neither of us knew the extent of those new powers or the possibilities to come. Not yet. While the source of magic now quickly dissipated with distance, despite me being physically closer to the dragon, sometimes nothing happened when I tried to use essence. It was as if the dragon couldn’t help but share its powers while it had been held a prisoner, and now she withheld her essence in anger. Or, perhaps her mage captors had concentrated it in some manner that allowed mages and I to use it at a distance. Of course, I had been an accidental and unknown participant.
“Something important has changed,” I told my sister. “Feel it?”
We walked together around the rubble of the destroyed lower portion of what had been the city of Mercia. We avoided the deepest rubble, the remains of grand buildings. The four equidistant waterfalls still flowed. The city had been built between them. The cliffs had once held buildings that clung to the dark gray stone. The low rumbles from them were a constant reminder of their majesty and power. Above, somewhere high up the side of the cliff, was the cave where the dragon had been chained, and where Kendra wished us to climb. Up the same cliff where the dragon had been kept in a cave which was every bit as much destroyed as the lower city.
As we walked, I was reminded of an old children’s game and rhyme about everything falling down. That phrase came to mind and wouldn’t leave. It went round and round inside until I unconsciously hummed the tune and couldn’t make it go away. What was left of a city where a thousand servants worked for five or six powerful mages was now a broken and tumbled pile of rubble. It had fallen down. When my sister had freed the bonds of the dragon, its first task, no matter how weak the beast had become, was to destroy the cave. The second was to destroy the hated city where her captors lived in comfort and luxury.
The dragon was a female, Kendra assured me. We were learning to refer to it as a her, but the task was difficult when the word monster came to my mind quicker. Kendra’s head tilted back again, this time to examine the sheer cliff between the waterfalls, and the crude stone stairs cut along the rock face. “Part of the answers we seek might be right up there. Right in front of us. We have to climb up there, and you know it.”
I didn’t know it. As far as I was concerned, we’d already done far more than required from a pair of personal servants to a minor princess. “That’s a lot of stairs. Even if we climb all the way up, the dragon probably ruined the steps at the very top, making them impassible. We probably can’t even get to where the cave was. We may as well stay down here and wait for Elizabeth to return.” My reasoning was sound on both points. What I told her was true, and I didn’t want to attempt to climb up there. Both were logical. No, there was a third point, too. I didn’t want to find out what might lie up there if it was bad.