Page 17 of Consorting with Dragons

He looked down at me, not at all unkindly, but it made me nervous, and I started to feel a little panicky. “We’re going home,” he said.

It didn’t feel like home to me, but I decided not to argue. “What if I never remember?” I asked him. “What will I do?”

“Shh…don’t worry about any of that. I’ll take care of you, though of course, your memories will come back.”

“But surely somebody must be looking for me by now.” I began picking at the coverlet on top of my bed nervously, and again, he hugged me tight to distract me.

“Stop. Don’t stress over any of this. The doctor thinks that’s bad for you, and it will only push the memories farther away. Give it time, and it will all come back to you and then we’ll talk.”

“I guess I don’t have any choice.”

“We’ll be landing on Horvath soon. Once we deboard and unload everything, then I promise I’ll concentrate on contacting your family and getting you settled. Is that ‘okay’ with you?” He smiled at me, and it changed his whole face from just handsome to downright gorgeous. It made me tongue tied.

I nodded, and he patted my arm. “Let the doctor know if you need me for anything. I’ll see you after we land.”

I nodded again, and he looked down at me like he wanted to say more but then quickly left instead. I thought about trying to walk around the room a little more, but I was suddenly exhausted and made the mistake of putting back my head and closing my eyes. I didn’t wake up until the doctor came in and told me we were about to land on Horvath. I guess we’d been closer than I’d thought.

It was a smooth landing and before long, the doctor came in with an aide to help me get up and sit in a chair that glidedon air currents underneath it. I told the doctor I could walk, but he shook his head and put me in the chair. We moved down a long corridor to the main hatch, with me trying to straighten the robe they’d put me in and finger-comb my long hair, tucking it back behind my ears. It was a little cold, so the doctor wrapped a blanket around me, but it really wasn’t all that necessary. The temperature outside was cool, but not too bad. I’d wondered about breathing the atmosphere, but I needn’t have worried. There was plenty of oxygen and whatever else I needed. I wasn’t in any distress anyway.

The dock was one of several in the port area where we landed, and the whole place was buzzing with activity. Large ships were being loaded and unloaded, and a few smaller passenger ships were arriving and departing too. The sky overhead was a pale shade of gray with puffy rain clouds, and I could see tall, dark green mountains in the distance. I heard a commotion from behind us and looked back to see the handsome Marshal General coming down the gangway in his long, red cape. He was supervising the movement of a big crate of some kind. It was at least as tall as I was and as wide as it was tall.

Suddenly, one of the men holding the crate lost his grip and slipped on the wet surface of the gangway. He righted himself, and I thought he’d be all right, but the crate suddenly lurched hard to the left, as if something inside the crate shifted its weight. The man lost his balance, and he and the other one carrying the crate called out for help so they wouldn’t drop it. The officer turned to put out a hand to try and catch it, but the crate crashed down on the gangway instead and broke apart. Some of the pieces fell onto the grassy ground below the ramp. I was shocked to see there was an egg inside it—an egg that was now cracked and broken.

And not just any egg. It was huge and a pale blue color with speckles. There was a huge outcry and commotion, as people started running over to help. Even my attendants rushed toward the now smashed open crate, leaving me alone on the side of the ramp. I saw the general’s face lose color, as he shouted commands and everyone scrambled to help.

The soldiers nearest it began picking up pieces of it to reveal the rest of the huge, badly cracked egg. At least it had once had an egg shape, though now it was missing big chunks of its shell, showing a milky white membrane underneath. Everybody began shouting at once and as they watched in various stages of dismay, as what was left of it began to shake violently. The cracks got wider and more pieces of it fell off. Suddenly a little head popped out of the top of the shell. The head was like a lizard’s and covered with golden scales. The little face had a slitted black nose and beady black eyes peeking out at the crowd. It had tufts of pale golden appendages coming out of its head that looked a bit like wet horns. Two of the tufted horns were larger than the rest and they were coming out of the forehead, sloping back toward the rest of the body. The whole head was out by then, and I could see that it was around the size of one of the large colts of the arrizes back at my home.

The little creature began to climb out. It had short arms and legs, and the whole small body was covered in those golden scales with black wings folded tightly over its back. Was I dreaming, or did that look exactly like a little baby dragon?

It stood there, shaking off the last bits of shell sticking to it and looking around curiously. Another sudden memory came back to me. My omak had told me stories about these creatures, because he had been on a moon during the war, and he told me that the moon he lived on had flying dragons of all things. This must be the same place. He told us about how he had flown themand bragged that he was always really good at it. I’d thought he was teasing me and my brothers, but my omak said…

I stiffened in shock as I realized what was going through my mind.My omak! I remembered my omak!

I could suddenly see him in my mind’s eye as plain as day and that terrible yearning came over me again. It was so bad that I bent double and cried out with a sharp pain in my chest and tears literally sprang to my eyes. It wasn’t only because I was missing him either. It was because suddenly everything about the attack a few days before came slamming back into me in a huge rush, and I was overwhelmed, suddenly remembering it all, including how the attackers had slaughtered a crewman who had tried to help me and how badly they’d kept hurting me.

I knew exactly who I was and where I came from too, with no more gaps in my memory at all. I remembered every detail of that day at the Lycan warehouse, my arrest and the terrible attack later on. It was a lot to take in, but the worst by far was the attack and for a split second I was back on that ship, watching in horror as they hacked and stabbed at the crewmen over and over. I had been trying to crawl out from under one of the bodies when rough hands pulled me to my feet, slapped me hard across the face and then hit me on the side of my head with the hilt of a large knife.

The onslaught of those awful memories was too much—I moaned aloud, slipped out of the chair and fell to my knees. Oh gods, I needed to go home. I had to talk to my parents and let them know what had happened to me. They must be so worried about me.

****

Quinn Fortina

It was after we had finally landed on Horvath and were disembarking that everything went to hell. I had finally settled on the first helmsman as the most suitable candidate for a Dragon Rider onboard the ship, should the egg hatch unexpectedly. He was far from ideal, but frankly, he’d been the only one to volunteer. We needed to press someone into service, and if necessary, try to work with them to make them more suitable later on. I’d spoken with his supervisor, and though he was a little dubious about it, he had agreed he might be all right, with a lot of work.

The young helmsman expressed a love for the adventure of being a rider, or at least the idea of it, though he was young and had also expressed a little fear of the commitment too. This job was for his lifetime and was not to be considered lightly. Plus, if he was thinking of doing this for the adventure of it only, then he would be bound to be disappointed at the long hours of training and the reality of dealing with a dragon on an almost daily basis. They could be demanding creatures, although they were also fierce, brave fighters, and they could make wonderful companions and comrades. Or not, depending on the bond they had with their rider.

All things considered, I hoped everything would go well, and the egg wouldn’t hatch until we arrived back at our base of operations, and we could find a more suitable candidate. The vetamis had some definite ideas about their riders and this one might even reject the man I’d chosen and choose his own rider—it had been known to happen before. We did everything we could to encourage them to choose the man we’d approved, but they could be extremely stubborn creatures.

It was cold as we began to disembark—it was always cold on this side of our moon, which was already about to set over the planet below us. I couldn’t help but think of Rylan’s comfort as he came off the ship and hope that the physician had put plentyof blankets over him. He seemed fragile to me, and I was worried because he still didn’t remember things like he should. As soon as the thought came into my head, I firmly pushed it away. He wasn’t a child, and I didn’t need to worry about him constantly—no matter what this damnable mating instinct inside me tried to insist.

I’d been hoping that nothing else would go wrong until we got to our command center, and I could get my other candidates for Dragon Rider ready for when the egg cracked. The dragon could then choose the one he was most attracted to. But as my mother used to say, “If you don’t think that things could possibly go wrong or even get any worse, then you simply aren’t using your imagination.”

The crewmen dropped the crate going down the ramp. I was horrified and ran over to it, hoping the dragon hadn’t been injured, and I peered over into the remains of the box to get a glimpse of the hatchling. I’d have to be careful the dragon didn’t see me and fixate on me accidentally—I already had a dragon, and I didn’t want to confuse the hatchling.

The first thing I noticed was that his scales weregolden. I’d never seen a Golden before, so this was a rare occurrence and hadn’t happened on Horvath for many years. The scales were bright in color and healthy looking, though. And as they caught the last rays of the setting sun, they literally glowed. He was tiny, compared to the size I knew he would eventually be and perfectly formed. Dragons grew at an amazing rate, so he wouldn’t be so small for long, but for now, he came up only just past my knee.

He was beautiful, and a complete unknown. Would he be a fire breather? A fighter like the Reds? Or did his talents lie in his quickness and agility in flight, like a green? Vetamis had a history of bonding very quickly—sometimes almost on sight. And there was usually no way of talking them out of their choice of Riders once they’d made it, so if my helmsman didn’t likethe idea of a new and completely unknown type of dragon, that could be a serious problem.

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