Page 156 of Upon Buried Embers
I emerge from the tent into the night, for the first time since their arrival without Rohan near me. I stroll through the tents, hearing others inside, but most are around the smaller campfires.
“Elf, come eat!” Calian calls, and I head that way, taking a seat next to him with Tofa on my other side.
“Here.” Tofa hands me some bread and then a bowl. “Eat while it’s hot.” I do, listening to the conversation around me.
“The Games are said to add more people this year.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Traveling merchant last week. He came from the city.”
“That can’t be good. What’s the king up to?”
“Who knows.” A nudge at my shoulder has me turning my head to Tofa. She smiles, but her eyes are sad.
“We cannot know the outcome of The Games. Best not to dwell on what we can’t change.”
“But why can’t it be changed?” I wonder. “There are dragons.”
Can’t they just threaten to use them?
“We may have dragons, but the king’s army has a concoction we call Nighturn. Once breathed in, it renders dragons useless. They lose consciousness. The same if we’re hit with it.”
The bowl halts halfway to my mouth as I look at Calian in horror. “How is that possible?”
He shrugs. “We don’t know. They put small, glass vials on the end of arrows, and as soon as it makes contact with anything, including a dragon, it shatters and a plume of smoke bursts from it, then the dragon is free-falling to its death.”
“Has that happened?”
He nods grimly. “Seven years ago, we lost five dragons when the Dragonbonds tried to rebel against King Halen, because he wanted to bring the Dragorie under his law. As those five dragons—one from each clan, were about to set the castle on fire, burn him in it, the king’s guards unleashed bolts with Nighturn attached from large crossbows on the castle walls. The dragons barely got their mouths open to unleash fire before they were hit with those bolts, then they were falling to their death.”
I look at my stew and put it down, suddenly not hungry.
“It’s why we have The Games,” Tofa says. “Without the dragons, it would be hard to fight off the king’s army and he would have us all killed if we didn’t bow to him. So, the Dragonbonds’ made a deal, a truce. We go to The Games and he doesn’t unleash Nighturn upon the dragons or take us under his law,” she spits, anger in her tone. “Like we would ever bow to him.”
No they wouldn’t, they’re too prideful, have too much honor. They would rather die.
Like the elves who killed themselves instead of being taken to the king.
“Rohan says The Games kill people.”
“They do,” Tofa says softly.
“We are Dragorie,” Calian says, clearing his throat. “We protect the dragons. It’s our way of life. They keep us warm with their fire, safe with their teeth.”
“But who protects you?”
“Rohan.”
And who protects him?
I sigh at the fire roaring before us. How could I have ever thought these people barbaric? Having been with them for so long now, apart from Darcia, they have never once harmed me.
They’re protective of not only their dragons, but their people. I cannot fault them for the way they treated me at the beginning.
I was an unknown, an outsider and an elf.
But they love their life, love their dragons, so much so that they enter The Games every year, knowing they may not come back out.
