“Uncle – you have to come see it!” Aldan said excitedly. “It arrived just this morning, and Master Johannes is working on it right now—” the youth said, before his voice faltered as he was looking at his uncle’s scowl, and then blinked as he looked at the rest of us for the first time. “Oh, I mean Lord – sir Captain…” Aldan muttered, bowing to his own uncle as his eyes widened at our strange appearance.
And then the youth’s eyes fell on me, and this time his eyes positively goggled as he looked at the Stone Crown, attached to where it would always sit, encircling my head. “It’s true,” I heard him whisper. “The Stone Crown has been found…”
“Brother Aldan!” Captain Haval barked, “What on earth are you talking about, ‘it arrived last night?’ Why is the Master of the House not here himself? Is he lost in his cups once again?”
I watched as the boy stammered, before a thinner, much older voice came from somewhere beyond the doorway.
“Lord-Captain Haval?” said the voice. “You must see this! I was just about to send a messenger bird to the palace!”
The boy stepped back out of the way, allowing Haval and the rest of us and the palace guards to file into the Dragon Academy, to find myself standing in the grounds of a very wide courtyard, with what looked to be wooden storehouses or equipment sheds against the walls, and the giant house in front.
There was Aldan in front of us, shifting nervously from one foot to another, and there, approaching us was another man in black robes and cloaks. He was much older than anyone here, and his head was bald but he had the wisps of a wiry and white beard. The man limped and shuffled against a stout wooden staff as he stopped and beckoned us towards the discovery in question.
There, on the ground in front of the great house, was the broken-open body of a dragon.
But it was no real dragon. It was one of Inyene’s mechanical monstrosities.
“You see! We told you!” I heard myself say, feeling strangely elated that we finally had proof to show the king that it was not the wild dragons tormenting his kingdom. Instead, it was these things made of brass and steel and iron and clockwork and steam furnaces, inside a shell of stolen dragon scales.
“Hsss!” I heard a hiss of disgust from the dragon in my mind, and I could well understand why. The broken-open thing in front of us looked terrible, in a way. Clearly not, and having never been alive, it was still so very lifelike in its own way.
“It was brought in by Mandax, the Stocky Green,” said the much older gentleman that the captain called Master Johannes. He stepped uneasily around the ruined thing before prodding it with his staff warily.
“I can see how the cogs work to allow the limbs to move – but what gave it life?” murmured the younger Aldan, clearly fascinated. There was a pained cough from behind me, as Montfre stepped forward, his eyes dancing over the form through a heavy-browed frown.
“Earth Lights,” he muttered, and I could see how embarrassed he was at admitting this. The mechanical dragons had, after all, been his creation – Inyene had styled them on his metal toys that he had created, using the magical Earth Lights and magics. “You see there? There needs to be a Collecting Prism and a Cantrip of Movement…”
“You know a lot about them, Mage,” murmured the heavy voice of Captain Haval, suspiciously.
“We’ve been fighting them for an entire season,” Abioye interjected, stepping forward to stand by his friend. The captain regarded him seriously for a long moment, before making a considering grunt and turning to the others.
“Master Johannes? Where are the Flights? Why isn’t anyone here!” he barked.
The older master – some kind of elder or captain here at the Academy, I could see – looked upwards to the walls and scowled. “There was an attack on the city of Rampart just this morning. I sent all three Flights to go help and see what they could do.”
“All three!?” the captain spluttered. “But who is protecting Torvald? The Western Marches? The Southern Field-lands?”
The Master Johannes just looked at him glumly. “It was a big attack, Lord-Captain. They say that the entire city was destroyed!”
Haval let out a low groan of despair, turning on his heel to go, and then pulling himself up short immediately, and rounding on us. “There are Torvald citizens out there that need my help, and instead I am standing here nursemaiding you!”
Believe me, you’re free to go whenever you want, I thought. “Now you know,” I said instead, seriously. “It couldn’t be us or my dragon attacking your lands. We were in your custody at the time that this city of yours was attacked. Now please, the quicker that we find information about the Stone Crown, the quicker we might be able to find a way to stop this madness…”
“I’ll put my faith in steel and dragon claw, thank you very much,” Haval muttered darkly, and I saw that his eyes had moved to regard Abioye once again. The old man squinted, as if searching for a memory.
Oh no! I suddenly thought. Did Haval suspect Abioye was Inyene’s brother? It was a very real fear, I thought – as Inyene had flaunted her rising position when she had been here in Torvald, and I imagine that word of the charming, brilliant Inyene D’Lia and her quiet brother must have spread through the citadel…
“Master Johannes?” I said suddenly. “Do you know a way to get this thing off of me?” I reached for the Stone Crown, lightly touching it with my fingertips to feel the echo of the buzzing noise and the Crown’s malevolent presence.
“This thing…?” The older man squinted at me, and I suddenly realized that he was nearly blind. The only reason that he could move so easily around the courtyard was thanks to his stick, the boy, and presumably his long experience here. “Oh. Some kind of hat I see you have there, let me see…”
The older man shuffled towards me, and I once again felt the flutter in my heart as one quivering hand reached up to brush my brow—
Ach! A feeling like a spider bite sang through me, and there was an aggrieved hiss from the master ahead of me.
“By the Stars – it’s the Stone Crown! It is, isn’t it – it’s returned to Torvald!”
Well, not quite, old man, I thought. But old Master Johannes of the Dragon Academy was sucking his fingers as if he had been burned. “It truly is – the magic coming from it is phenomenal…” I saw a darker frown cross the man’s features. “And…unkind.”
“But can you get it off her head?” Haval asked impatiently, moving back and forth on the balls of his feet. It was clear that he wanted to be away from here while his kingdom was at risk.
Old Master Johannes squinted speculatively at me. “I can try. But I will need to study the accounts of the Stone Crown. It is a dangerous business to interfere with these deep magics and to not be prepared!”
“Then do it, Master Johannes,” Captain Haval said seriously, casting a look back to the guards around us and the mechanical dragon. “And do it quickly.”
With another dark look and a muttered grumble, the master gestured for me and the others to follow him and led us into the halls of the Dragon Academy itself.
Chapter 15
The Library of The Dragon Riders
The ancient Academy of the Dragon Riders of Torvald felt like a strange place in which to study these noble beasts. I was surrounded by sturdy, functional gray stone, with the scuff marks and gouges from its many centuries of use. The corridors and hallways were dark save for the occasional guttering lantern light, and the halls that we passed were mostly cold, with only a few having the embers of half-dead fires in their gigantic fireplaces.