Avian (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (24 page)

I nodded. I didn’t see how I had much of a choice. Not sleeping was killing me slowly, and tomorrow was guaranteed to be one of the hardest days of my life. Felix was right about that, at least. I couldn’t afford to get too distracted. But as for the dreams… I didn’t agree. It couldn’t just be a coincidence. I wasn’t that lucky.

Once we landed back at the Roost, I took off Mavrik’s saddle and carried it down to the tack room to be stored with all the others. It was nice to walk in there and know that tomorrow we wouldn’t be on tack detail anymore. Someone else would be cleaning and checking the saddles. Sure, we’d have to take another turn at it eventually, but not for a while.

Felix bumped into me as he came in carrying his gear. “So that was it? You’re worried about some crazy dreams?”

My stomach squirmed nervously. “Not just that. There’s something else I’ve wanted to ask you about. I heard a rumor.”

“About me?” He looked amused, maybe even a little excited.

“No, about Sile.”

Felix’s expression fell. “What about him?”

“Do you know a lot about him? About his past?” I knew Sile liked his privacy. What little I had found out about him was probably more than anyone else knew. But then, dragonriders liked to talk—especially about each other. Someone was bound to know something. Felix prided himself on being involved in as much gossip as possible. Wanting to be involved in everyone else’s business must have been a side effect of being born a noble.

“I know some. He’s been on the battlefront lots of times, and most of the other instructors really respect him. His kill-count is in the hundreds. They say he and Valla were a real terror in combat back in the day.” He put his saddle down next to mine and started staring off into space. “He was supposed to be a crack-shot with a bow. I heard he could take out the eye of a deer from a hundred yards away, while flying. Most riders wouldn’t even bother with a bow, you know. It’s not a good weapon for us because most people can’t make accurate shots in flight. The wind and speed are too much.”

“Have you ever heard about him going into Luntharda?” I asked quickly before I could lose my nerve.

Felix paused. Slowly, he turned around to face me. “No one goes into Luntharda. Not unless they have a death wish. If the gray elves don’t kill you, the forest definitely will.”

I started telling him everything Mr. Crookin had told me about how Sile had supposedly abandoned his men, gone into the forest alone, and come back without a scratch. It sounded unbelievable, even to me. I’d never seen Luntharda for myself. Based on what I had read in my studies as a fledgling, I understood how dangerous it was. There were monsters and vicious beasts at every turn. The idea that anyone could survive it alone was crazy.

“I’ve never heard any of this,” Felix replied. “It sounds made up. Sile may be a little unstable, but he’s not insane. It has to be a lie.”

“It isn’t,” someone interrupted.

We both looked back to see Lyon standing in the doorway of the tack room. He kept his head down, like he was trying to hide the fact that his nose was still basically being held together by gauze. “It’s true,” he mumbled.

Felix puffed up defiantly. “Yeah, right. Like you’d know anything about it.”

“I would,” Lyon snapped. It surprised me. I couldn’t believe he was still willing to stand up to Felix, even after what I had done to him. “You know who my dad was. And my grandfather, too. I’m a third generation dragonrider. And I’ve heard this story before.”

I took an eager step toward him. It was a stupid thing to do. It shouldn’t have surprised me that he flinched and started backing away. He was terrified of me.

Immediately, I stopped and raised my hands to show him that I wasn’t going to hurt him. “I just want to know the story. Do you know what really happened?”

Lyon glanced back and forth between Felix and me, like he was trying to figure out if it was safe to stick around. At last, he started to talk. “It was at the beginning of the war, I think. My dad flew in the same legion as Lieutenant Derrick. They weren’t friends, but you know how it is; everyone knows everyone.” He shrugged and fidgeted nervously. “I heard my dad talking about it once. He was pretty out of it that night. He’d been out till late with some of his old war buddies. They were telling stories. They talked about a skirmish they got into with some shrikes right outside the forest.”

“Shrikes?” I stopped him long enough to ask. Felix had said that word, too, but I didn’t know what it meant.

“Is it a happy place, this private little world you live in? Seriously, get a clue.” Lyon scoffed like I was being intentionally stupid. “Shrikes are our enemy. We aren’t the only ones who fly. The gray elves ride on their own monsters. We call them shrikes.”

“They’re brutal monsters, too,” Felix chimed in. “Small, quick as the devil, and almost impossible to see. Their bite is extra nasty. It’s got some kind of poison in it that rots your skin away. The gray elves tip their arrows and blades in the stuff, too, so that if you get shot… it’s more likely to kill you.”

Both of them were silent, looking at me and waiting for my reaction. I wasn’t sure what to do with that information. I’d never known we would actually be fighting enemies in the air. I didn’t even know what a shrike looked like, let alone that I was going to be fighting them soon.

When I didn’t speak up, Lyon rolled his eyes and continued. “Anyway. The story was that they were mixed up in a skirmish with a few shrikes. Things weren’t going so great. But in the middle of the fight, Sile lands and starts going into the forest. No one could stop him because they were locked in combat. Dad said he strolled into Luntharda like he was out for an afternoon walk. A few days later, he showed up back at the citadel. He didn’t have a scratch on him. No one knew what happened to him, or how he managed to come out of there alive. The captains and colonels interrogated him, but it didn’t make any difference. He never said a word. They said it was like he was under some kind of spell. Like he was in a trance. He wouldn’t talk to anyone about what happened. That’s why they took him off the frontlines and sent him here to be an instructor.”

“It had to be some kind of torture,” Felix said quietly. “Something the gray elves did to him to keep him from talking.”

Chills swept over me. I was trying to process it all. Felix seemed to be doing the same. He was frowning so hard it put lines on his forehead. I was so busy watching him and letting that new information sink in, that I didn’t even notice Lyon was staring at me until he spoke.

“I came to make sure you weren’t late for curfew.” Lyon was already starting to walk away. “So hurry up. It’s already dark, and I’m not running any extra laps tomorrow. And some guy came by our room looking for you, Jaevid. He left something for you. He said you’d be expecting it.”

Felix and I exchanged a look. Since when did Lyon check up on us? I was starting to worry I was hallucinating, but then I saw Felix start to grin. Nope, I was definitely not imagining it. Usually Lyon called me halfbreed. But tonight, he had used my name.

I waited until Lyon and Felix were asleep to unwrap the scimitar. Bren had carefully bundled it up in a soft cloth, and left a note thanking me for saving them again. As I unwrapped it, my hands shook with excitement. I could see the faint glow of the metal in the candlelight. It was the most beautiful weapon I had ever seen.

Bren had fixed everything, even the carvings on the side of the blade that had almost been rubbed completely off. I still couldn’t understand what they said, though. They were written in another language. The blade shimmered. The polished bronze looked like gold. The ivory shone like pearl. The soft leather grip felt comfortable in my hand, and the metal hummed a beautiful note as I drew it from the scabbard.

I ran my thumb over the emblem on the pommel. The head of a stag stared back at me. Bren had said it was the symbol of gray elf royalty. My mind was still processing everything I’d heard that day. It was a lot to take in. But knowing that the rumor about Sile was true, that he had been into Luntharda, made my thoughts churn. He was definitely hiding something. His kidnapping last year, my place here as a dragonrider, the dreams—somehow, it was all connected. I just had to figure out how.

I put the scimitar away. I wrapped it back up in the cloth and tucked it under my bed where I hoped no one else would find it. I had a feeling that if anyone else knew I was carrying around a blade with the gray elf symbol on it, they wouldn’t be as calm about it as Bren was. Now was not the time to be pushing my luck. Now was the time for sleeping.

Felix had already given me a tiny square of folded paper before he went to bed. He called it a sleeping remedy, and told me to pour it into some water and drink it all. If it worked, he promised he could get more. So I went to the washroom and took it. The white powder wrapped inside the paper tasted horrible. It was so bitter it made my eyes water. But I choked it down.

I wasn’t sure the remedy was even working until I got back to our room. While I was changing out of my clothes, the room started to spin. My head got fuzzy. I barely made it to my bed before I collapsed. I was still wearing one of my shoes, but I couldn’t get my arms and legs to cooperate long enough to take it off. And then, I didn’t care.

Sleep overtook me, and the next thing I knew, it was morning. For the first time in a while, there were no dreams or nightmares. That remedy, whatever it was, had definitely worked.

I knew it was morning because a boot hit me in the head. That was the way Felix usually woke me up when I was running behind. He had a good aim.

“Get up, moron!” Felix barked at me.

I pushed myself up from the bed. That’s when I realized my face was cold and sticky. I had been drooling in my sleep.

Lyon and Felix heckled me the whole time while I got dressed. They were already outfitted and ready to go, so I guess I deserved it for lagging behind. It was still dark outside as we hurried out of the dormitory to meet Jace outside the academy walls. He was waiting for us, armed with that bullwhip he liked so much.

We ran until we were all soaked with sweat. We did push-ups and sit-ups until my bones ached. Jace cracked his whip, shouting out the names of different stances, parries, and strikes. If one of us got it wrong, he was right there in two seconds to yell at all of us until our ears were ringing. Then we had to start over and do it all again.

We were the first ones to drag our saddles out of the tack room that morning. We saddled up, strapped on our armor, and took off into the first few breaths of twilight. It was the first time I had ever seen Jace and Lyon’s dragons, but I didn’t have much time to admire them.

Jace’s dragon was a sleek gray male with faint markings that were only visible if you were standing close. The color of his scales looked like smoke in the pale light of dawn. That, Felix told me, was partly what had earned him his name. They called him Ghost not only because of his color, but also because he flew so fast you were likely to be dead, engulfed in dragon flame, before you even realized he had flown over.

It was the first time I had seen a dragon up close who had been in combat recently. It must have been fore Felix, too, because he was full of awe and admiration. He pointed out the intricate striped grooves that looked like they had been engraved onto the horns on Ghost’s head. I’d never seen that on another dragon before. Or at least, I’d never taken the time to notice it.

“It’s his kill count,” Felix announced. His eyes were shining like he could barely contain his excitement. “A notch for every gray elf rider he’s brought down. Look at them all!”

After that, looking at the engraved stripes gave me a strange, nauseous sensation in my stomach. It reminded me that Jace wasn’t just an instructor. He was a soldier. He had killed people—lots of them judging by the amount of notches on his dragon’s horns.

Ghost wasn’t the only one with those marks, though. Lyon’s dragon was a much older male named Demos. He had notches going down every inch of the long horns on his head. He was big dragon, closer to Nova’s size than any of the others, and apparently had a bad temper. It made me wonder if dragons picked up on the bad habits of their riders over time. His scales were a burnt orange color, and he had black stripes like a cat all over his body. According to Felix, Demos had been in combat more times than any of the rest of us. Lyon’s father and grandfather had both ridden him into battle. That explained all the notches.

Jace gave us hand signals in the air, directing us to break off into pairs and fly our usual drills. Felix and Lyon flew together in a pair, with Felix in lead. I took up the position of following Jace. Dragonriders called it being a “wing end” because I was supposed to stay in formation, right behind Ghost’s left wing, as we flew through our drill patterns.

I had already flown these drills before. It wasn’t supposed to be anything new. But right away, I figured out why Jace had paired us together. Ghost was fast—
unbelievably
fast. I doubted Nova or Demos could ever keep up with him. When he poured on the speed, I gave Mavrik a mental nudge to follow.

At first, we could keep pace, but as Jace started whipping through spins and spirals, Mavrik started lagging behind. He was huffing and puffing, beating his wings harder than I’d ever seen him just to keep Ghost in our sight. I heard him growling, and I could sense his frustration. It made me angrier than I expected. We had always been the fastest. Falling so far behind made our drills sloppy and frantic, and each passing second made me more and more aggravated. I was every bit as mad about it as Mavrik was.

By the time we landed, Mavrik was furious that he had been outdone. I was bitter about it, too. Still, I didn’t put on a show about it the way he did. Mavrik bared his teeth, snapping at the air as I dismounted. I could tell he wanted to challenge Ghost again, but the gray dragon ignored him as Jace and the others landed nearby.

I expected Jace to say something to me about how sloppy the drills had been. After all, we’d been scrambling to keep up the whole time. I was braced for the inevitable chewing-out I deserved as he walked past us. But he didn’t even look at me.