A Dream of Fire (The Dragon Queen Book 1) Read online

  A Dream of Fire

  The Dragon Queen — Book 1

  J.R. Rasmussen

  Copyright © 2019 by J.R. Rasmussen

  Cover Design © 2019 by Wicked Good Book Covers

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Map of Cairdarin

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Dear Reader

  Maps also available at http://cairdarin.com/maps/

  1

  A pen moving over paper makes a particular sound, but a pen moving over flesh makes nearly no sound at all. Perhaps that was why Griffin did not immediately notice, among the proper and expected scratching of pens scribbling out sums, the one pen that was not behaving as it should.

  That pen was hovering in the air in the third row, partially blocked from view by the meaty shoulder of a student in the second, scrawling what was no doubt a very rude word across Nack’s rapidly reddening cheek. The pen danced with flair, a swishing blur of ebony and bronze, as if it quite enjoyed the task.

  His flushed skin was the only indication that Nack was aware of it. He didn’t swat at it, or lean aside to avoid it. He didn’t speak or sniff. Yet Griffin could tell the boy was dangerously close to crying. An unforgivable sin among eleven-year-olds.

  Griffin clenched a fist at his side and suppressed, with some difficulty, the urge to take a switch to the hide of the only student in the room who could have obtained that pen. Suppressed it, not only because it would be no kindness to Nack to call more attention to the situation than it was already getting—the snickers were spreading quickly—but because he didn’t think Corin was entirely irredeemable.

  And also, he supposed, because striking Corin would be treason.

  “That’s your time up.” Griffin strolled down the row between the weathered oaken tables and plucked the pen from the air without looking at it. “Leave your sums where they are, and you can go and have your lunch. Except you.” He stopped behind Corin’s chair and leaned over the tall boy’s shoulder to tap his paper. “I’ll need correct answers to these three, please.”

  Though he did nothing to acknowledge the order, Corin stiffened and stayed in his seat. Griffin gave Nack no more than an encouraging nod as the boy fled the room, so as not to embarrass him further. Better to speak with him later.

  When the other students were gone, Corin quietly asked for his pen back.

  “Your pen, is it?” Griffin made a rough noise in his throat. “The archmagister’s pen, I would think.”

  Archmagister Arun was a fine enchanter, and among the many objects he’d spelled was a pen that would float above the paper on its own, and write its wielder’s thoughts. But he hadn’t always been quite so fine as he was now. There had been a few failures on the way to making that pen.

  Griffin had seen this one before. Rather than writing Arun’s current thoughts, it wrote only what he’d been thinking at the time he enchanted it. An event that had apparently occurred at the end of a frustrating day that left the archmagister in a very bad—and profane—mood.

  Corin coughed softly. He still hadn’t turned to face Griffin, or even looked up from his paper. “He lent it to me.”

  “Did he, now.” It wasn’t a question. Griffin turned to lean back against the table, arms crossed, forcing Corin to meet his eye. “You do yourself a disservice, troubling Nack. I don’t think you’ll want to be the man that boys who behave this way tend to become.”

  “He’ll never be my subject. His parents are Dords, and he lives in Tarnarven now, when he isn’t at school.”

  “And you think the only people you need trouble yourself to be courteous and respectful to are your own future subjects?” Griffin asked with a laugh.

  Corin gave his magister a moderately saucy look, but it was tempered by the fear behind it. Griffin was sure the boy was terrified that this transgression would be reported to the archmagister, who had little patience with Corin abusing his position, either as a prince or as Arun’s own nephew.

  When he spoke, Corin’s tone was hearty with false courage. “Perhaps it’s my future subjects who ought to take care to show courtesy and respect to me. You’re an Eyrd.”

  “I am, which makes me your father’s subject, for the moment. And your magister. And I’m telling you I will not tolerate this sort of cruelty. For your sake as much as Nack’s.”

  “I don’t believe it is cruel to make him feel uncomfortable here. Wouldn’t it be kinder all around if Nack just left of his own accord? He can’t stay much longer. Everyone knows it.” Corin shrugged. “Except him, apparently.”

  Griffin’s jaw tightened. “That is hardly for you to say.”

  “But it’s obvious. If he can’t do magic by now, he never will. This is a magistery. What place could someone with no magic have here?” The prince raised a brow. “Unless you intend on retiring when Nack comes of age?”

  That was well past the boundary. Griffin opened his mouth, but the mighty, earsplitting roar that followed didn’t come from him. Perhaps the earth itself had lost its temper with the boy.

  An impression that was supported by the sudden trembling of the entire battlemage hall.

  Griffin hurried to the single window at the back of the classroom, but it showed him only people running toward whatever the source of the disturbance was. He grabbed Corin by the collar and guided (or perhaps propelled would have been a more accurate word) him out of the room, through the already crowded corridor, and out the front door. He intended to deliver the heir to the throne to the keep, where he would be safe if this was some sort of attack.

  Magisters and students alike rushed to and fro across the lawn, boots squelching, shouts lost to the wind and rain that had been sweeping through the valley all morning. Griffin took a quick moment to reassure himself that the keep, and the sprawling, many-turreted manor beyond, stood as solid and stately as ever. The commotion seemed to be coming from the other side of the magistery, past the affinity halls.

  Turning to look in that direction, Griffin unconsciously loosened his grip on Corin. The boy twisted away and ran off with the others. With a muttered curse, Griffin followed.

  He passed several people—mostly magisters dragging students—running away from whatever it was rather than toward it. “The dragon hall’s collapsed!” Magister Duncan shouted as he scurried by, pushing three students in front of him.

  Griffin frowned and quickened his pace, wondering what that could possibly mean. The dragon hall had, after all, already collapsed more than a decade ago. It wasn’t a hall at all, but the ruins of the ancient building that once sat above a cavern where a dragon slept.

  Nobody had known about the dragon, until he burst through the old hall and destroyed it. The pile of rubble that remained became known instead as the dragon hall.

/>   As he approached the northwest corner of the valley, Griffin saw that Duncan was right: the dragon hall had collapsed, well, more. Had in fact fallen entirely into a gaping hole that must have been the dragon’s cavern. Several smaller chasms flared outward from it, like rays from the sun. Water gushed over the grass, churning and pooling as if a great underground river had been let loose.

  Perhaps one had, in a way. Griffin knew there were tunnels, old and flooded, that ran beneath some parts of the grounds, though he never knew they came this far north. Some shift in the earth must have brought down the unstable ruins of the hall, and the resulting tremor had perhaps spread to the tunnels, collapsing them as well. It had been an extremely rainy autumn. Perhaps the flooding had been too much, softening the tunnel walls and leaving them vulnerable.

  Was that the sort of thing that happened? Would it explain this much water? Despite being the magistery’s Mundane Matters instructor and official expert in nonmagical subjects, Griffin’s grasp of geology was loose, at best.

  How this had happened was a question for another time. Of far greater concern than the fissures or the water was the angry abundance of small, rather ridiculous creatures, long-snouted, bug-eyed, and finned. Not to mention fanged.

  Vividrakes. Until now, Griffin had never seen one, nor had he been entirely certain they were more than just a colorful magistery legend. The story went that they’d been created when a rebellious magister broke the law against attempting to enchant animals. Though what animal they’d started out as was unclear. Some sort of lizard, perhaps.

  Most of the frightened drakes were scattering, running up into the hills or diving back underground. A small but determined minority were reacting to their rude ejection from their home by attacking anything and everything that moved. They were no bigger than large rabbits, but appeared to be excellent jumpers. And difficult to throw off if they attached themselves to a leg or an arm.

  “Fire!” The archmagister sprinted (and sometimes slid) across the grass, dark hair blowing around his face. Judging by the number of torches he was carrying awkwardly under his wooden arm, the shouted word was an instruction rather than an announcement. “They’ll run from fire! Get some cages out here and start rounding them up!”

  Griffin turned to help follow this order, and nearly collided with Magister Calys, who let out an abbreviated cry of surprise as a vividrake landed on her back at the same moment. Griffin lunged to yank it off, grasping it by a clammy and surprisingly sturdy tail. The foul thing smelled like rotten apples.

  The drake whipped around, fangs snapping, flaps on either side of its head spread wide. Griffin swung it hard and tossed it before it could bite him. If the vividrakes were real, likely the rumors about their venom, and its horrible effects, were as well. He certainly had no desire to find out.

  The headmagister of battlemagic—and Griffin’s direct superior—did not look especially grateful for the intervention. As usual, Calys’s pretty but cold face showed only disapproval. “Mind how you handle that thing! We want to recapture them, not hurt them. They’re the only creatures of their kind in existence.”

  “And what a pity it would be for the world to be deprived of them,” Griffin muttered, eyeing another of the scurrying beasts. Thankfully, it ran past his foot rather than trying to latch on. He glared around the chaotic lawn, searching for the wayward Prince of Eyrdon. “Have you seen Corin? He was with me when—”

  Just then, he spotted the boy, only a few strides away—and under attack by no less than three drakes, while his young cousin Eleri, the archmagister’s own daughter, cowered half behind, half beneath him.

  Griffin rushed to their aid, throwing one of the vividrakes off easily before it could bite anyone. It thudded to the ground and remained there, dazed for the moment. He supposed Calys would not approve of such rough handling, but the children were more important.

  Corin kicked a second drake, sending it skidding along after the first. That left only the third, much smaller than the others. Before either magister or student could get to it, it leapt past them, straight into Eleri’s mass of wild, unbound curls.

  Trying to extract that one by brute force would be a risky business. Griffin instead opted for distracting the beast to keep its fangs lashing at him, while Corin untangled its short legs from Eleri’s hair.

  The whole thing was a mess, and would likely have been messier still, had Calys not been right behind Griffin. “Out of my way!” she snapped.

  Corin ducked, and Griffin moved aside, trying not to look ashamed while this petite magician stepped in to do what a hulking, strong, and utterly nonmagical man could not. Within seconds, she’d cast a spell to paralyze the drake, then plucked it out of Eleri’s hair as easily as a stray leaf.

  “I suggest you get yourself a torch or two, if you’re going to try to help!” Calys called to Griffin as she trotted off, still holding the vividrake.

  Ignoring the heat spreading across his face, Griffin bent to examine Corin’s arms. “Were you bitten?”

  Corin shook his head. “I only got here a second before you did. I was just trying to keep them off her.” He sounded shaken, and didn’t meet Griffin’s eye. “I should have cast a shield spell around her. I don’t know why I didn’t think to.”

  “You were brave to step between her and the little monsters at all,” Griffin assured him, and because it seemed a bad moment for teaching, did not add that a good deed done now didn’t negate a bad one done half an hour before.

  He turned his attention instead to Eleri, who must have been outside when the ground erupted; she was wearing a thick cloak. A fortunate thing for her. The hood had fallen down, tempting the vividrake with her hair, but protecting her neck and back from its fangs. Though she was nearly hysterical with tears, she hadn’t been bitten either.

  Griffin hadn’t been so lucky. One of his hands was in an agony of burning pain. He hid that one away and took Eleri’s arm with the other.

  “All right, let’s get you inside,” he said, before giving Corin a somewhat less gentle look. “You too, and no running off this time.”

  Pushing Corin in front of him, Griffin moved in the direction of the keep. Once the children were tucked away in the magistery’s most defensible building, he would collect some torches and come back.

  They didn’t get very far before their path was blocked by the archmagister lurching toward them, looking outraged and panicked. “What is she doing out here?”

  Handing off a lit torch to Griffin as he passed, Arun knelt before his daughter. She immediately stopped crying (though her sniffing was audible even above the confusion around them) and submitted to her father’s inspection.

  When Arun was satisfied that she’d suffered no harm beyond some scratches, he gave his nephew an equally thorough examination before rounding on Griffin, his mouth a thin slash across his narrow face. “Why are they out here?”

  “I was just taking them inside,” Griffin said. “I found them surrounded by a few drakes. Corin was defending Eleri, but one of them got caught in her hair.”

  Arun grunted. “Eyrdri knows the monsters can jump.” He glared down at his daughter. “But why were you outside? Either of you?” Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed a torch from a passing magister, and thrust it into Corin’s hand. “Get to your dormitories!”

  Corin put his arm around Eleri as she shrank against her cousin for support. The archmagister’s face hardened another degree. “Your dormitories,” he repeated. “Now.”

  Eleri sniffed again and said, “Yes, sir,” through hitching breaths.

  With a sigh, Arun pulled her into an awkward, one-armed hug. Eleri had arrived at the magistery just two months ago, after seeing her father only sporadically since she was two or three years old. Arun was no longer married to her mother. “On second thought, Corin, take her to the keep for some honey cakes and tea.”

  When the children had gone, the archmagister looked at Griffin. “What about you? Were you hurt? I assume you helped get
the beasts off them.”

  “I did what I could. Calys captured one of them.” Griffin held up his injured hand, already swollen to nearly double its normal size from the wrist downward. The skin around the bite was an ugly shade of purple. “The one in Eleri’s hair got to me before I got to it. It was a very small one, though.”

  “A baby? That’s unfortunate for you.” Arun peered at Griffin’s bite, then, with a weary shake of his head, looked back over the scene they stood at the edge of.

  Water had pooled everywhere around the new cavity in the earth, leaving the ground a muddy swamp. Most of the children, and many of the magisters, had run inside. But more of the latter had remained behind, brandishing torches and casting spells to paralyze or toss the drakes, blow them into cages with conjured wind, or even lure them there with illusions. Thanks to these efforts, the creatures were mostly contained, or scattered. The worst of the danger seemed to have passed.

  “Do you have any idea what caused the collapse?” Griffin asked.

  Arun shook his head again. “I have no idea what happened, much less why. Presumably the water level will go down, and we’ll be able to have a look. Meanwhile I’ve got to send some people up into the hills to hunt the vividrakes. I’d like to catch as many as I can. All of them, if possible. We don’t want them breeding in the wild.”

  “Will the king want you to destroy them now?”

  “The king is not especially fond of them,” the archmagister said with a snort. “But no. As for you, you’d best get to the sage hall. They can heal those of you who’ve been bitten. Somewhat. It’ll help with the physical pain.”