Dragon Dreams

Chapter 29: A Choice (2/2)

Pale moonlight filtered through thin clouds as we touched down in a barren patch of land high up in the mountains. It had not been a long flight. The black dragon shook his wings, making the gold markings on them dance before folding them at his sides.

"Follow me," he said, walking toward a formation in the nearby rock beyond which the mountain loomed in the sky.

My paws made soft crunches as I walked on the gravel-coated ground. Ares led me through the twisting shadows of pointed spires jutting up like a forest, but there was no plant life here. Soon a rock face appeared up ahead, scored with a number of cracks that formed large caves within its mass. In front of the cliff was a flat, open area ringed on the outside in some places by more spires of rock, in others the ground fell away to open air. I followed him up to the mouth of the largest cave, where he stopped.

"I have returned," he called into the darkness. The faint sound of something stirring greeted him from within.

A copper-scaled dragon stepped lithely from the shadows of the cave. She was a stout, muscular female just a bit smaller than me, with ivory horns and claws. Her scutes and wing membranes were a rusty color and did not have the luster of her body scales. Also darker in color were the markings that designated her as a shaman. Although her movements didn't hint at advanced age, the lines of scars across her legs and wings were evidence of many old wounds.

"Ah, we have a new ally," she said in a deep, rough voice, followed by a satisfied snort. "Very nice, very nice indeed."

"Ayreth, this is Grall, my second in command," Ares said. "She's had her own quarrels with humans, as have most of us here."

The copper dragon lowered her head in a greeting, showing the left side of her face. Her mouth curled upward slightly as she saw my reaction. Vicious scars crisscrossed the area where her left eye should have been. "I was sleeping out in the open when men with axes ambushed me. They got some good hits in, and I barely escaped with my life. That was a long time ago, and I don't even miss it that much." She gestured to her missing eye. "But ...the wounds were not just physical. Like Ares said, I have my own quarrels with humans."

I stayed silent as I looked at the new dragon. In the clan, I was used to sensing the athkan of dragons I met, but that was obviously not the case in the Khovn Vrost. There was not a single spirit I could sense in the vicinity. "I wonder why both she and Ares have a shaman's markings?" I thought.

"Gather the others so we can make introductions," Ares instructed the copper dragon, who nodded.

"Two new additions in a week," she said over her shoulder as she headed for a collection of other caves nearby. "Everyone will be pleased."

"I only wish the circumstances were different," he said, a trace of sorrow in his voice. Ares watched her go without another word and went back to being unreadable.

I thought about what Grall had said and asked, "Two in a week? Who is the other?"

The black dragon didn't look at me; his eyes were still fixed on some distant point. "We took in a young dragon whose parents were both killed by humans. He's barely said a word—still recovering from the trauma."

"I see."

"Every one of these stories still gets to me." His voice was heavy, almost weary in a way I hadn't heard before. "No matter how many I hear. Yours, Grall's, mine, they're all the same in some way. Here in the Vrost we collect these stories. It's why we're all here, after all. And I guess it's good that they still hit me hard, so every face around me is a reminder of why I'm doing this."

I didn't say anything. As much as I wanted to believe otherwise, everything Ares had said tonight seemed genuine, maybe even logical. And the memory he had shared, that couldn't have been anything but the absolute truth. Now here I was, among those that could actually understand the pain I felt. The last vestige of hope left inside me was a wish for acceptance. I could only wait and see how the Vrost would react to me.