The Dragonslayer's Fate Read online

  Other images from his dream filled his head, this time even more fleeting.

  A shop in the Midlander port city. An alchemist. Sitting on a wooden floor while that alchemist worked magic around him.

  Forget. Mama told the alchemist to make me forget.

  But forget … what?

  Mandulane sneezed the itchy, twitchy scent of straw out of his nose.

  His mother jolted awake.

  “Good morning,” Mandulane said in Northlander.

  Mama kissed the back of his head. “You can forget Northlander. You never need to speak it again.”

  Forget.

  Maybe that’s what Mama told the alchemist she wanted Mandulane to forget. He couldn’t remember.

  Mandulane held onto her arm to keep it draped across his chest. He switched to speak in Midlander. “We live in the Midlands now.”

  “Yes.” His mother’s voice took a curious tone. “We’ve always lived here.”

  Mandulane giggled because he thought it was a jest. “No, we haven’t. If we always lived here, I’d never have learned any Northlander!”

  His mother’s tone became even more peculiar. “Then where do you think we lived?”

  Mandulane opened his mouth to answer, but the images that had swirled in his head when he first woke up began to slip away. He tried to catch them with his mind, but they eluded him.

  Where else could we have lived?

  Mandulane’s voice faltered. “I don’t know.”

  His mother stretched and yawned. She sat up in bed and tousled Mandulane’s head. “It’s time to get up, sleepy boy. Today your father takes us to our new home.”

  Hope and joy swelled in Mandulane’s chest. “Papa’s coming back?”

  Memories of his Northlander father came rushing to the front of his mind. Mandulane remembered pining every time his father had gone absent and longing for attention when his father stayed at home. Wasn’t it just days ago that his father had abandoned them both, leaving his mother to rent this room in the tavern?

  “Coming back?” His mother bustled out of bed and threw a dress on over her nightclothes. “Don’t be silly. How can your father come back when he never left?”

  Mandulane sat up in bed and stared at her. His memories faltered again, making him doubt what he’d been so convinced of knowing mere seconds ago. “But he left us alone. It’s why we’re sleeping above the tavern.”

  His mother pulled Mandulane out of bed and dressed him before he could protest. “You forget, that’s all.” She knelt to face him and held Mandulane firmly by the shoulders. “Your father is a cobbler. His mother died last week, and he has inherited her home, which is in a region that borders the Southlands.”

  “The Southlands?” Mandulane said. “That’s very far away.”

  “Yes, it’s very far away. Your father needed a few days to sell his home here in the city and make arrangements for us to travel. No one could be living in his home while he did all that, so he put us up here.” His mother spoke with conviction and concluded with a big smile.

  “His home,” Mandulane said. “You said his home. Not our home.”

  The conviction on his mother’s face faltered but only for a brief moment. “Did I? Well, of course, I meant our home. It’s where you’ve spent your whole life, my silly boy!”

  Mandulane remembered the sharp scent of sea air, the pitch of a ship in the waves that made it hard to walk across its deck, and a fleeting glimpse of a tall gold tower on an island growing more distant by the moment.

  I haven’t lived my life in one place. I’ve lived in other places. I know it.

  Mandulane liked it better when his mother looked confident. He didn’t like it when his protests made the look on her face change.

  He didn’t know why she was pretending so hard, but Mandulane decided that whatever the reason, it must be important to her.

  He decided to pretend, too.

  “This room isn’t like our home,” Mandulane said. “It doesn’t look anything like the house where we lived.”

  His mother smiled in relief, and that made Mandulane feel calmer. He decided that whatever his mother wanted and wherever she took him, Mandulane would be happy and safe as long as he was with Mama and Papa.

  After straightening up the room to look the same as when they first found it, his mother gathered up their few belongings. She led Mandulane downstairs to the tavern room, where they had a bit of cheese and bread for breakfast. Afterwards, they marched through the streets until they arrived at a simple and small home near the end of the main thoroughfare.

  Mandulane didn’t recognize this part of the city and clung to his mother’s skirts to make sure he wouldn’t lose sight of her.

  The door of the home opened, and a Midlander man not quite as tall as Mama stepped outside. He shut the door and locked it. He grinned at Mandulane and spoke in Midlander.

  “Where are we?” Mandulane frowned and decided he didn’t like this part of the city. “Where’s Papa?”

  His mother grinned so wide that Mandulane believed he could see every tooth in her head. “Your papa’s right here, silly boy!” Still grinning, she cast a furtive glance at the man.

  “I want my papa,” Mandulane said.

  The Midlander man leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees. He looked into Mandulane’s eyes. “I am your Papa. You are my son.”

  Mandulane trembled and pulled his mother’s skirt around him as if hiding under his bed sheets.

  It isn’t true! I never saw that man before. Why does he say he’s my papa?

  And why is Mama pretending that he’s always been my papa?

  Mandulane shivered at the sensation of the man’s hand on his arm. It took all the will Mandulane could muster to keep from whimpering.

  “Change is hard,” the Midlander man said. “Moving to a new home is hard. But we have each other. I will protect you.”

  The stranger’s words startled Mandulane so much that he forgot to be afraid. He eased his mother’s skirt away from his face just enough to look at the strange man’s face.

  Mandulane saw a face weathered by the sun and creased with wrinkles. Like Mandulane, the stranger had dark hair and eyes.

  Mama said, “And as long as we have each other, isn’t that really all we need?”

  She knelt by Mandulane’s side and kissed his cheek. She paused and whispered in his ear. “He’s a good man and will be a good father. He’s the father you should have had. The one you deserve.”

  For the first time today, Mandulane believed her.

  When he strained to remember his Northlander father, Mandulane felt disappointment and sadness wash through him.

  How could it be wrong to let go of that sadness and disappointment?

  Another memory lit up inside Mandulane’s mind. Once more, he remembered the alchemist telling him to forget. But he also remembered the alchemist telling his mother how things had gone wrong.

  Mandulane had gone snooping through the shelves of alchemy ingredients and spilled some by accident. The alchemist had scrambled to contain the damage he’d caused. She’d warned the spell she meant to cast—the one meant to make Mandulane forget—would be contaminated and the results couldn’t be guaranteed.

  There might be unintended consequences.

  Mandulane didn’t want to think about the consequences. He’d made a mistake. A simple mistake while doing something he knew he shouldn’t be doing.

  He realized that if he let go of his memory of his Northlander father and the island with the golden tower that he could forget his mistake and the alchemist’s words about the unintended consequences.

  Mandulane reached out and touched the strange man’s face. “I remember now,” Mandulane said. “When do we go to our new home, Papa?”

  CHAPTER 8

  That same morning, the dragonslayer Seph met with a handful of his fellow dragonslayers in the Red Bird tavern in the Midlander port city. With his son sequestered away safely in a room upstairs, Seph focused
on the task at hand.

  The dragonslayers occupied a small corner of the tavern. Although Seph knew none of them well, he trusted each one.

  I trusted Skallagrim. Look how that turned out. He killed his own brother and then died from the effort.

  For a moment, Seph forgot that all dragonslayers were trained to study people’s faces and read the meaning of the expressions that crossed over them.

  “Forget Skallagrim,” said a dragonslayer with eyes so milky that most people mistook him for being blind when they first encountered him. “What’s done is done.”

  “He’s right,” said a beefy dragonslayer who chewed on a piece of tack as if it were a straw in his mouth. “Skallagrim is dead. Frandulane is dead. Our brethren have sailed to the Northlands to carry on their regular dragon routes, and we’re left behind to search for Frandulane’s boy.”

  “Mandulane,” Seph said. “The boy’s name is Mandulane.”

  The milky-eyed slayer shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be that great of an effort. I say we spend the day asking around. If no one’s seen him, why continue the search?”

  Seph heard the sharpness in his voice too late. “Because Madam Po said we have to help him. If we don’t, the boy will become a demon.”

  Another dragonslayer chuckled. “What? He’ll turn into some kind of monster? Breathing fire and such?”

  “It’s a term,” Seph said. “What Madam Po means is that if we don’t help, the boy’s worst possible nature will rise to the surface. He’ll become a dangerous man.”

  The milky-eyed slayer didn’t appear impressed. “We encounter dangerous men all the time. Brigands and such.”

  “It’s not just about us,” Seph said. “It’s about the damage Mandulane is capable of doing to all of the world if we don’t help him now.”

  The beefy slayer shifted the tack from one side of his mouth to the other. “All of the world? Or just the Far East?”

  Seph felt his jaw tighten with tension. “All the world.”

  A gawky slayer with long limbs spoke up. “Why do anything more than a quick sweep of the city?” His plump and dewy face made him look younger than 20, probably fresh out of dragonslayer training and assigned to cover the Midlands for his first year of duty. “After all, we’re none beholding to a demon queller from the Far East. What has she got to do with the Midlands?”

  Seph’s teeth ground against each other. “Madam Po has plenty to do with us. You’re too young to know. She spent many years at Bellesguard when Benzel of the Wolf taught sword lessons there. Madam Po might as well be one of us.”

  “Maybe in your day,” the young dragonslayer said.

  None of them know Madam Po the way I do. They don’t understand how important her advice is. How do I make it clear to them?

  Staring at the few dragonslayers sitting with him at the table, Seph realized his predicament. Seph chose to stay in the Midlands during dragon season in order to look after his son while Bruni worked her route in the Northlands. They were both seasoned and experienced dragonslayers who were well qualified to handle dragons.

  These men are back-ups. They’re either too young or haven’t yet mastered the skills to walk their own route with success.

  In essence, the men sitting with Seph were the lowest of the lot and didn’t appear to have the wherewithal to recognize it. These dragonslayers seemed to be oblivious to the fact that they were only good enough to be considered as replacements in the rare event of a dragonslayer’s death.

  If they’d had the courage to recognize their own limitations, they would acknowledge Seph’s experience and listen to his opinions instead of rejecting them.

  Seph attempted to spell the situation out for the other dragonslayers. “Madam Po has the power of portents. She can see bits and pieces of the future.”

  “Bits and pieces?” the youngest dragonslayer said. “How can that help? If you can’t see the whole picture, there’s no way to understand it.”

  “What Madam Po sees is enough to understand the whole picture.” Seph worked at being patient. “If she says Mandulane will become a demon if we fail to intervene, then you can be certain the future is dismal.”

  The beefy dragonslayer sucked on the piece of tack in his mouth. “No reason why we can’t find an agreeable answer. Frandulane died in Gott, but I wager his widow and child are somewhere here in the Midlands. No one has seen them in Gott.”

  “We don’t know that,” Seph said. “They came here from Tower Island, but Frandulane could have left them in any port.”

  “It’s possible,” said the milky-eyed dragonslayer. “But that doesn’t mean that’s what happened. The odds are that they all came here, and then Frandulane headed up to Gott.”

  “So, we search the city, like I said before,” the gawky dragonslayer said. He swept his arm across the table. “Between the four of us, it shouldn’t take that long.”

  “Could take a day,” the beefy dragonslayer said. “Two at the most.”

  At times like this, Seph wished he were walking his own route in the Northlands once more. Now he could see why these three dragonslayers were relegated to the Midlands during dragon season, ready to act just in case a stray dragon had missed the annual migration from the Southlands up to the Northlands.

  They have no sense. Not a one of them.

  Stray dragons were rare, but they almost always passed through this port city on their way to the Northlands. For that reason, the dragonslayers who stayed behind often lived here.

  All they want to do is prance around and enjoy the attention that being a dragonslayer brings them. They enjoy the way women look at them and the way men entreat them to tell stories of dragons—stories they’ve heard from others like me but pretend those stories are their own.

  Seph remembered his dragonslayer training, which had taught him how to choose his fights.

  This argument with these bottom-of-the-barrel dragonslayers gained him nothing.

  They’re right about one thing. It’s easy to search the city, so we might as well do it. But then let them stay here in the city. I’ll travel the Midlands myself and take my boy with me.

  “Fine,” Seph said. “Let’s talk about how to split up the city, and we’ll each take a section to search.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “I can’t tell what’s wrong with him,” the alchemist Bee said. She sat on the dock next to Sven’s flattened figure. She palmed his forehead again. “He acted perfectly fine when I talked to him earlier this morning.”

  Grandmama Snip paced around them. Her eyes looked wild and she spoke as if bargaining with the gods. “Let nothing happen to Sven. You let my brother Benzel die. You let our sons die. You let our friend Bruni perish this morning. I’ll do anything if you let Sven live.”

  Drageen didn’t know what to do, other than hold onto his infant sister Astrid and keep her close to his chest.

  I’ll protect Astrid. I won’t let anything happen to her.

  Gloomer led a group of Scaldings onto the dock, where they surrounded Sven. “What happened?” Gloomer demanded.

  Bee’s voice weakened, and her hand trembled when she pulled it away from Sven’s forehead. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen an illness like this before.”

  Gloomer dropped to his knees and stared into Sven’s eyes. “I have.” He looked up at Bee and said, “It’s rare, but I’ve seen it happen to Scaldings before. It’s an illness peculiar to our clan.”

  Bee frowned. “An illness that afflicts only your family? I’ve never heard of such a thing before.”

  Gloomer ignored her and spoke to the Scaldings at his back. “Take Sven to the tower.”

  While the Scaldings gathered around Sven and hoisted him onto their shoulders, Gloomer popped back on his feet.

  Bee stood and took a firmer voice. “Now, see here! I’m the alchemist. I’m the one to look after him.”

  Gloomer paused and stared at her. “Of course, you are. We’ll need your help to make things right.” He shifted his gaze to Sn
ip, who still paced and babbled to the gods. “Before I tell you the kind of potion that will work, bring her, too. But leave the children here.”

  Drageen closed his eyes and pressed his face against his sister, who rested peacefully in his arms despite the commotion surrounding them. He breathed in her distinct baby scent, and it calmed him. He decided that if he could just hold onto Astrid, everything would be fine.

  After all the clumsy footsteps and shouting voices became so distant that he could no longer hear them, Drageen opened his eyes to discover he was alone with Astrid on the dock. He gazed at the Scalding ships tethered there and beyond them at the white-capped waves of the ocean.

  “You and me,” Drageen said to Astrid. “As long as we have each other, the world will be right.”

  * * *

  When they arrived at the tower and stepped inside, Gloomer instructed his kin to carry Sven to the top of its dizzying staircase. “Fresh air,” Gloomer explained. “Sven must have the freshest sea air to have any chance of recovery.” He pointed at Snip. “And he’ll do better with his loving wife at his side.”

  Bee stared at the procession upstairs in bewilderment.

  “Sven could use a potion that clears his senses,” Gloomer said to Bee. “Can you make one for him?”

  Bee’s eyes regained focus. “Of course. It won’t take long.”

  When she set foot on the stairs, Gloomer grasped her arm. “Make the potion first. Then come to the top.”

  Bee eased free of Gloomer’s grip. She pointed at a goiter-like protrusion from the tower wall high above. A short walkway connected it to the winding staircase. “Those are my quarters. All of my ingredients are in that room.”

  “I see,” Gloomer said.

  I’ll have to work quickly before the alchemist is done.

  “Take enough time to make certain the potion is accurate,” Gloomer said. “No need to risk making Sven any sicker.”

  Bee gave him a quick glance and then rushed upstairs toward her quarters.

  Gloomer hurried behind her, watching when she exited onto the walkway and scurried away.

  When he stepped on top of the tower, Gloomer assessed the situation. The Scaldings had laid Sven on the ground, where he moaned and clutched his stomach. The Scaldings huddled around him, while Snip paced the perimeter of the tower, still bargaining with the gods.