Dragon Dreams (The First Dragon Rider Book 2) Read online

  DRAGON DREAMS

  The First Dragon Rider Book Two

  AVA RICHARDSON

  CONTENTS

  The First Dragon Rider Trilogy

  Dragon Dreams

  Blurb

  Mailing List

  I. The Monastery

  1. Char Nefrette, Thief!

  2. Princess of the Northern Lands

  3. Neill, a Son of Torvald

  4. Char’s Mission

  5. Goading Dragons

  6. Neill, and Zaxx’s Message

  7. Versi’s Voyage

  8. The Scroll

  9. The Crown

  II. The North

  10. Faldin’s Bridge

  11. Neill, Grounded

  12. Wild

  13. Mine

  14. The Queen’s Keep

  15. Neill, on the Outside

  16. Obligations

  17. Blood and Bones

  III. The Return

  18. A Dragon-Shaped Hole

  19. Neill, Just Another Warlord’s Son

  20. The Trials of Wurgan Nefrette

  21. The Escape

  22. Neill, what we Torvalds do

  23. The Crown

  24. Revelations

  25. Confrontations

  26. Neill, Choices

  27. Destruction, Judgement

  28. End, Beginning

  End of Dragon Dreams

  Thank you!

  Sneak Peak

  THE FIRST DRAGON RIDER TRILOGY

  Dragon God

  Dragon Dreams

  Dragon Mage

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  RELAY PUBLISHING EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2017

  Copyright © 2017 Relay Publishing Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United Kingdom by Relay Publishing. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design by Joemel Requeza

  www.relaypub.com

  BLURB

  Sometimes, the past is best left behind…

  Char longs for peace and escape, preferring her dreams to the ugly realities of an uncertain age. As an illegitimate daughter of the North Prince, Char has always felt deep insecurity, but she must put that aside when Zaxx gives her the task of retrieving an ancient crown from her family’s palace. If she brings him this crown, he says, he will allow the dragon hoard to choose their riders.

  When her father sends for her to return home, fearing war, she senses an opportunity. But Char’s dragon Paxala has grander ideas—she wants to become the greatest of all dragons and defeat the ancient Zaxx. But she can’t do it without Char’s guidance and aid. Employing patience and skill, Char will have to learn the secrets of dragon lore hidden away in her father's archives before Zaxx’s suspicions turn aggressive.

  With the help of her love, Neill, Char discovers the secret of the old queen’s crown in her father’s castle, learning a tale of dark magic steeped in blood. But when her father wishes to marry her off to the leader of the Wildmen, the fate of Torvald will depend on her difficult choice: accept the role she has always played, or learn to trust her own power.

  MAILING LIST

  Thank you for purchasing ‘Dragon Dreams’

  (The First Dragon Rider Book Two)

  I would like to thank you for purchasing this book. If you would like to hear more about what I am up to, or continue to follow the stories set in this world with these characters—then please take a look at:

  AvaRichardsonBooks.com

  You can also find me on me on Facebook and my Homepage.

  Or sign up to my mailing list:

  SIGN UP HERE

  PART I

  THE MONASTERY

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAR NEFRETTE, THIEF!

  The sweat trickled down my brow where I hung, clutching the rock walls of the cliff, and I could hear my heart thudding in my ears. Just calm down, Char, you can do this, I told myself, opening my mouth to try and breathe a little quieter. It wasn’t just the fall that would kill me if I got this wrong, but I knew that if I made any noise at all, then I would probably get killed as well.

  We would all get killed, I corrected. I was hanging from the sides of the sheer cliff, and clinging to the rocks by my fingers and toes. There was the narrowest of rocky ledges under my soft shoes, but it wasn’t wide enough to walk along. Beneath me the stone walls descended to the broken rocks of the dragon crater below, and I don’t know why I had thought that this was a good idea.

  “Pssst! Char, tell us what’s happening out there,” Neill’s voice came from behind me, and I managed to turn my face against the rock to see he was looking worried from where he and the others sat, huddled against the outcrop of broken rock behind me. Above the heads of Neill, Dorf, and Sigrid, the grey clouds started to fragment and rise as the dawn approached. That meant that we didn’t have long.

  “I’m clinging to a rock, Neill. What do you think is happening?” I hissed back. From my hip, there extended a thin line of rope all the way back to the rock that my three friends were hiding beside, and then to their hands. I had shown them how I wanted the rope to be held, and how they could loop it around their bodies or around a foot in case I fell.

  At least my mother’s mountain family had taught me that much, anyway, I thought. I reached out with my hand for a second time, my fingers prising at the nearest stub of woody truck of the gorse-type bush that clung to the rock wall.

  Almost, almost… There! I gripped the sturdy wood with one hand, then moving my foot out along the thin ledge, and sliding my other hand and foot a few feet farther along the difficult transverse.

  It was slow going, and the muscles in my back and legs burned with the effort, but I was nearly there. Nearly across. We’d been at this since the dark watch before dawn, when at first even Dorf and Sigrid’s eyes had glittered with excitement at the prospect of sneaking into the dragon crater. This had been my idea: a chance to sneak in and try to rescue some of the dragon eggs from Zaxx. We now knew that Zaxx was actively helping the Abbot Ansall to cull the herd, and, in the scant few months since the battle against the Sons of Torvald, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dangers that those eggs – and all of the young dragons in there – were in.

  “Yeah, not so excited now I bet,” I grumbled to myself, as I reached out from the scrubby tree trunk to the next outcrop of rock.

  Crack. There was a sudden sensation of movement beneath my foot as the rock ledge I had thought was solid slab rock was in fact layers of compressed flakes. Oh no, I had time to think as my foot disappeared, and I lurched forward along the cliff wall.

  “She’s falling,” I heard Dorf’s terrified squeak of alarm.

  “Skreayar!” There was a screech of dragon call from somewhere far above us—no doubt Paxala even though I had made it clear to her to leave us alone this morning, that the dragon crater was too dangerous for her. But I had no time to let my fears about her get in the way – I pushed out with my back foot, reaching with my hand towards the nearest rock—

  “Ugh!” my gloved hands caught a rocky outcrop the moment before my body slammed into it, and I hugged my arms and legs around it like I could cling to it like a spider. Please don’t splinter and crack, please… I begged the rock itself, but it held.

  “Char? Char!” Neill was calling, standing from his position.

  “No
– don’t move,” I called back, scrabbling with my hands until I could force my fingers between cracks and into the dirt behind my saving rock, hauling myself out to the much wider ledge I had been trying to get to. The rope I was attached to was tighter than before, but slack enough to let me flop over onto my back, groaning in exhaustion. I lay there for a moment, looking up at the lightening skies. The cold air felt chill in my lungs.

  “Char is hurt? I can fly to her?” A reptilian voice said in my mind. Paxala’s mind felt tense and skittish, and I could feel the concern seeping through her.

  “No, don’t,” I murmured, knowing that the dragon would be able to hear my thought. “I told you to stay by the lake this morning.” I frowned as I pushed myself up into a sitting position, pulling once on the rope for some more slack. There was an answering single tug at the rope, and then, when I pulled on it I found that there was much more give. I had told Neill how we had done such things in the mountains. One tug on the rope was ‘okay, keep going’ and two was ‘halt!’

  “How can Paxala sit by the lake while you go in there? Would you for me?” the young dragon chided me.

  “Well, I guess that you are right. Just stay out of sight of the other dragons please,” I murmured as I wound the rope several times around the large outcrop of rock, and then a couple more around another. That should hold, I hoped.

  “Pssst!” I hissed back across the cliff, waving my hand over my head. In response, I saw the now-distant shape of Neill wave his arms, and start to progress along the way I had just come, but now with a guide rope to follow. I knelt by the rope, steadying it as much as I could with my hands as I watched him.

  Neill was almost all healed from his scrapes and bruises of the last few months at the Draconis Monastery, but he still moved a little stiffly on his left foot. It made him cautious as he climbed, but that wasn’t a bad thing. When he was halfway across he paused and recovered his breath, his face serious and grave as he carried on.

  He has changed, I thought, watching him. Not only physically; growing a little taller and broader shouldered (but still nowhere near as tall as Sigrid) but he was also quieter as well. It had been almost a full season since the Sons of Torvald, Neill’s very own older brothers, had attacked the Draconis Order in greed for their apparent power and rising popularity with Prince Vincent. Ever since then Torvald has seemed a little withdrawn and reserved, as if he was worried that something terrible was going to happen. That was part of the reason why I insisted that we do this now, rather than waiting any longer.

  One of the Vicious Greens dragons had recently had a clutch of eggs, and we were heading into the dragon crater before break of day to steal them.

  “Oof!” Neill crawled onto the ledge and collapsed just as I had against the stone wall.

  “Congratulations.” I gave him a moment to get his breath back, waving to the next person in line, Sigrid.

  “That was tough,” Neill groaned, rolling his shoulders with an audible crack.

  “You should try it without a rope to hold onto,” I teased, watching the long Sigrid cover the cliff much quicker than either of us had. “Still, you’re right. We have to return with the eggs, yet. If only there was an easier way—”

  “The tunnels?” Neill said as he stood to steady the rope on the other side of me.

  “Have we got time to explore them?” I asked dubiously. Neill had told me about the tunnels, of course. He had told me that, during the battle for the monastery I had been dragged down beneath the monastery, to an opening on the mountainside connected to the dragon tunnels that had allowed Zaxx the mighty Gold bull dragon (and leader of the crater) to worm his way to meet with the Abbot Ansall. That was when Jodreth the outcast Draconis Order monk had confronted the Abbot and challenged him to a magical duel. He had lost, and Paxala had carried him to safety.

  The strange thing was neither Neill, Paxala, nor anyone else could remember where this cave and the tunnels were. I had asked to be taken back to them, to see if there might be a secret passage we could use to spy on Abbot Ansall–but all that had happened was that we had spent hours wandering aimlessly over the mountainside, finding nothing. It was odd, as if the sort of enchantment from those old folk tales and nursery rhymes had been placed upon it.

  “Probably not,” Neill agreed with a sigh. Whatever the answer to the mystery was, we did know that the Dragon Crater was riddled with tunnels and natural cave systems hollowed out for use by the dragons over centuries and millennia. That was how we knew one of the Vicious Greens had a clutch of eggs; she was seen making her way to the deeper, warmer, and soft-sanded caverns where brood mothers went to lay.

  “Don’t worry, Neill, next on the list after saving the eggs will be exploring the tunnels,” I started to say, just as there was a scrape and a shout.

  “Sigrid!” I couldn’t stop myself from crying out, grabbing the rope and leaning my full weight into it to make it as taut as possible.

  Sigrid Fenn, a daughter of the Fenn Clan of the Middle Kingdom had slipped at the same place on the ledge where I had, and was now clutching with both hands onto the rope as her feet dangled and kicked at the cliff walls. Bits of rock were chipping and flaking away, falling down the walls in a shower.

  “Try to get a hold with your feet!” I hissed out, aware that somewhere below us the crater full of dragons was no doubt beginning to wake from their slumbers. We both held our breath, waiting for Sigrid to get her tiptoes onto the rocks, easing herself backwards towards the ledge they had come from.

  Dammit, I thought. “Without that ledge there, it is going to make this journey a whole lot harder,” I said tersely.

  “A whole lot impossible for Dorf.” Neill was frowning in worry, as Sigrid and Dorf exchanged hurried whispers. I could tell from their hand gestures and shaking heads that neither of them wanted to attempt to cross over now.

  “That’s okay,” I said as loud as I dared, flapping with my hands and pointing at the floor where they stood. “Just. Wait,” I said slowly and clearly, unsure if they even heard me over the distance.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me then,” Neill said, as Dorf and Sigrid hunkered down by the rope bridge that we had rigged up.

  “Yep, and this time we don’t even have a dragon to ride…” I pointed out, leading the way down to the crater floor between the broken boulders.

  There were dragon claw marks everywhere down here, deep scores clawed across the soft rocks, and smooth surfaces where dragons came to slough off their old scales. Tough, almost tropical little plants and shrubs dotted the ground which was noticeably warmer down here. One of the nearby pools bubbled and I was grateful the sound masked our crunching steps.

  “There, up ahead.” I pointed to the birthing cave that the green had chosen. It had a low entrance like the others beside it, although still higher than our heads, but much lower than most of the other greater caverns that the dragons used for their dens.

  “Wait, I thought I heard something.” Neill froze and I ducked to a crouch instinctively. What would happen if we were caught in the crater by Zaxx or any of the others? We had seen the way that the dragons tore apart the carcasses that the monks threw down to them every day. I was sure that we wouldn’t last three breaths down here.

  Why did I ever think this was a good idea?

  “Because of the hatchlings,” Paxala reminded me.

  “Yes,” I muttered under my breath. “Because of the hatchlings.” If we managed to get to the eggs before they hatched, then there was a chance that we could free the young dragons from their captivity here, under the awful rule of Zaxx the Golden, and the Abbot. The Abbot chooses which dragons are going to die, that was what Neill had told me. Torvald had overheard the Abbot bargaining with Zaxx over dragons’ lives. How could I leave a whole new generation of baby dragons in here, farmed as villagers might raise chickens or piglets?

  “What did you say?” Neill whispered.

  “Oh nothing.” I shook my head. “Just talking to Paxala.”
>
  “Ah.” He nodded, and a brief shadow flickered through his eyes. He wished that he could hear her the way that I could, in my mind. But it was like this magic that the Abbot thought that some of us had. It was something that was natural and instinctive – and not something that I could control at all.

  “Come on.” I nodded, stepping towards the cavern, and walking inside so Neill wouldn’t see my face.

  It’s not like he had anything to feel jealous about, though, I thought, a little annoyed. I guess that I was tired and scared because of where we were – it was making me irritable. Neill was the one whom Paxala had urged to get on her back, like a steed. It was Neill to whom most of the Draconis Order looked at in awe, fear, or surprise most days. He had been the first to do something that no one else had ever done in the entire history of the Draconis Order here at Mount Hammal. He had ridden a dragon.