Dragon Talker Read Free

“Damn the luck of having both our dragon talker and his mentor killed at the same time. It’s not like we really have this dragon thing down. My father lived when this village was under a mage. Damn the dragon tail.”
    “That’s not luck. Someone wants this land, Mayor, and without a new agreement with our dragon, we are in serious trouble.”
    “Our dragon.” The mayor spit on the ground. “That dragon is no more ours that the sun or the moon. Why we have to pick between them and the magicians, I would like to know. Why can’t they both just leave us alone?”
    “Dragons have to rule, mayor, and magicians have to practice – either way, we are servants for the beasts or test subjects for mages’ damn alchemy. And, at least as servants, we don’t have to worry about being eaten.” He shook his head, clearing the image of being eaten from his mind. “No use spending time on what we can’t change. Let us play some cards. I’ll even let you cheat.”
    “Are you sure there isn’t any chance the fire was an accident?” The mayor asked, already knowing the answer. Lindale let his silence be the answer. “Okay,” the mayor reached for the cards, “anything to take my mind off this waiting.”
    Roughly 50 feet away, Yuri waited, putting his knitted hat on a rock for insulation as he sat down and reviewed the little that he knew about what was to come. One: dragons do not like most people, but the ones that do pick talkers to be their emissaries. If other people try to talk to a dragon, they are just as likely to be eaten as get an answer. Two: dragons give their talker a gift, sometimes more than one. This gift, though, is usually one that benefits the dragon the most. Yuri has heard of talkers being able to sense the approach of dragons, so the dragon would never have to wait for its human. Their village’s talker had incredible hearing and could go for what seemed like forever without eating or drinking, so he could pack light and cover a lot of ground, which their village’s dragon, Samora, required of him maybe once every three years. Legend has it that one talker could communicate with animals, but no one has been able to figure out what benefit that gave the dragon. Three: Mandan Village’s dragon talker and apprentice were dead, and his job was to find out if the dragon would accept him as the new dragon talker. Four: this particular dragon showed up roughly 70 years ago, killing the mage who ruled and destroying the small castle he had made the villagers build. And even now no one really knows why the dragon did that or what it wants. Five: he knew little else, and that lack of knowledge was likely to get him killed.
    The problem with dragons, Yuri thought, the problem that might get him killed, Yuri corrected himself, was that we really don’t know much about them. He touched the scale hanging from his neck. He tried not the think of this same medallion stuck to the charred chest of Uris. It helped that it was cold to his touch, which was no surprise on this cold day in the fall, but he knew it was always frigid to the touch, no matter the temperature. It was the scale of an ice dragon, the rarest of the dragons. All others, of course, were fire-breathers. Fire or ice, though, the only difference was in how a person died. The truth was simple: dragons ate people for food, dragons tore people to pieces for fun, and sometimes, just sometimes, dragons would pick a village and call it their own. That village was safe from attacks from other dragons and mages rarely ventured near them. Apparently, dragons found mages especially tasty.
    Yuri’s butt was getting cold on the stone, even with his hat as a cushion, so he started walking around the two boulders. Boulders, open fields, and dragons – were dragons itchy? Did they pick fields with giant rocks so they could scratch their backs? Would it be impolite to ask when the dragon showed up? Do dragons use words like us? Would I be alive to share this