The Dragon’s Waking

The report proved shorter than Ash had expected — and all the more unsettling for it.

Master Allin read it aloud, holding the folded sheet as steadily as his own tension allowed: from the northern watch at the foot of the mountains, beginning that same night the flame had died in Aldenhall's great hall, there had come reports of increasingly frequent tremors underground — faint, barely perceptible at first, but strengthening over the last two days until the old watch-fires, lit by ancestors back when the pact with the mountain had first been struck, had begun going dark one after another — exactly as the hearth's flame had gone dark.

"I'd be willing to call it a coincidence of dates," the king said, "if I had that luxury left to me. But the chronicles note the bond between the castle's hearth and the guardian beneath the mountain too many times to ignore it."

"Guardian?" Ash asked, though she was already beginning to suspect the answer.

"A dragon," Master Allin said shortly, and though Ash had heard the word before — in children's tales, in whispers among the kitchen maids — spoken here, in this study, with this tone, it sounded entirely different. "Orvain, if the oldest records of this pact are to be believed. A guardian set beneath the mountain not to threaten the kingdom, but to watch over the bond itself between the Keepers' line and the flame — or so the chronicles claim, composed too long ago for anyone living to confirm their truth with their own eyes."

"Four hundred years he's shown no sign of life," the king added. "Long enough that most of the court considers him more legend than real threat. Now, it seems, we're forced to revisit that assumption, and quickly."

Ash felt the conversation slowly, inexorably turning toward a direction she'd already begun to sense from the moment she heard the first word about the waking mountain.

"You want to send someone to him," she said.

"I want to send," the king answered, looking at her without any pretense, "whoever's presence might convince an ancient guardian that the bond he watches over hasn't broken, only weakened for a time. If the chronicles are right, the guardian woke because he sensed the flame dying. Perhaps — I stress, perhaps — he'll also sense that the flame has begun to answer again."

Ash wasn't sure which frightened her more: the thought of meeting a creature that had slept beneath a mountain for four centuries, or how easily her own fate, which only a week ago had consisted of scrubbing cauldrons and stolen bread, was now being decided in conversations about chronicles, guardians, and pacts sworn long before her birth.

"With respect, Your Majesty," came Lord Vern's voice — he had, it turned out, been standing quietly against the far wall of the study the whole time, so quietly that Ash hadn't noticed his presence until he spoke — "is it not unwise to send our only confirmed link to the crown straight into the heart of this creature's lair, with no guarantee it will greet her as an ally rather than as prey?"

"It might seem so, my lord," the king answered evenly, and in his tone Ash heard for the first time a firmness that had, no doubt, allowed him to remain king among councilors like Vern. "Which is exactly why she'll be accompanied by Sir Roan, along with a small company of my own personal choosing, rather than the council's recommendation."

Lord Vern said nothing to this — only inclined his head briefly — but Ash caught, for a moment, a change in his expression: not anger, but something more calculating, as if he were already recalculating how to turn even this decision of the king's to his own advantage.

Sir Roan, who had been standing by the door the whole time, looked directly at Ash for the first time in the conversation — not assessing, as before, but with something like a first, not-yet-fully-formed respect.

"When do we leave?" he asked the king, as if the question of his own consent wasn't even up for discussion.

"In two days," Osmund answered. "Any sooner and we can't gather a company I'd trust with this task. Any later — I'm not certain the mountain will wait for our readiness."

Ash looked at her own hands — the same hands that a week ago had scrubbed cauldrons, and that now, apparently, were meant to convince an ancient dragon not to unleash its wrath upon the castle — and thought that readiness, it seemed, meant far less here than she would have liked.