Soar

Chapter 15

The soldier paced briskly up the road, forcing me to alternate between trotting and running to keep up with him. At the door of the castle, he clicked his heels and rapped on the heavy double doors. A moment later they were pulled inward with a groan.

The main room was dark. The long, narrow windows lining the east and west walls, close to the vaulted ceiling, allowed only a little sunlight to enter. A fire burned in the great central pit. Beyond the fire, the king and queen sat on their elegant stone thrones. The gold dragon, Edanyx, sat tall and proud beside the queen while another dragon, colored a cold gray with stunning streaks of silver and blue-black, was beside the king.

"Welcome, Azadryn," the king said. He had a deep voice that echoed in the near-empty hall.

I did my best to curtsy. "Your Majesties." My tone would have been sufficient in a regular room, but in that hall of stone it sounded nearer to a whisper.

"Come closer, child," the queen invited. Her manner was a little warmer than the last time we met. I tiptoed around the fire pit and placed myself halfway between it and the dais.

The king wasted no time. "I am told you were born in the south. Is this true?"

"As near as I know, sir."

"And you know very little about your history?"

"Yes, sir."

For a long moment, the only sounds in the hall were the crackling and snapping of the logs in the pit and the deep, steady breathing of the two dragons. The guards along the walls were as stiff as statues.

Finding oneself under the scrutiny of a man like King Niloth is an experience fit to make anyone shiver. If the queen had seemed cold at first, the king was the heart of an ice storm. He had sharp blue eyes. Around the left was the scar of a fearsome cut. The skin around the scar was tight, causing him to squint.

"You may not appreciate the difficulty of the situation in which we now find ourselves," the king said at last, and I reminded myself to breathe. "When a former slave girl appears out of nowhere astride a dragon which has spent his life in captivity and can barely fly, it causes quite a stir."

I jumped when the gray dragon made a clattering noise I guessed was meant to be a chuckle. The sound was nothing like Runedan's laughter. "Indeed," he drawled in a voice like rocks.

"It is highly unusual," the queen assured me. "And it is a situation which requires careful consideration."

"Please," I found the courage to say. The word sounded muffled, and I realized I would need to practically shout to have any effect. "I don't understand. Have Runedan and I done something wrong?"

"What do you mean, girl?" the queen asked.

"The way people stare at us. It isn't just because we are strangers."

Queen Dunia nodded. "That is the heart of the matter. Your relationship with the dragon is not normal, to say the least."

"We can hardly blame you," Edanyx put in, "but you must understand how things are done here. For a common girl and a dragon of Runedan's nature to have bonded, to fly together, simply is not done."

"Before anything," the queen interrupted, "I believe we must start from the beginning." She looked pointedly at me. "You said you met the dragon when you were purchased by a traveling showman?"

"Yes."

"And after that you became friends?"

"Yes. No. Not immediately. We hated each other at first."