Chronicles of Carnezia (Book 2): Wilderness

Chapter 29: Suspicions

Chapter 29: Suspicions

            Hardly any time at all had passed until he had reached the southern side of the forest and landed. Hopping onto the ground, I took my time with the bags; putting one at a time onto the leather harness that was almost constantly around his shoulders. When they were all in place and my rucksack on my own shoulders, I clambered back to what was now a very familiar place for me these days. Once again, he curled his neck and peered at me with worried eyes (if that was possible for a dragon) and asked me the same question before we had left the river.

            Sighing heavily, I knew he wouldn’t take off unless I told him what I knew... or thought I knew. ‘It appears that what we thought could be another dragon wandering the wild might actually be true. Is there anything you have spotted whilst I’ve been in the town?’ I asked just to see if he was keeping things from me.

            Dragons being mysterious creatures, Frain being no exception, you could never tell what they were thinking. He turned his head up and seemed to be scanning the skies with narrowed eyelids. ‘Before we go home, there is something that I should show you.’ His signal to say he was going to resume his flying was a swift thrust of his wings out from his sides. With a few heavy steps we were back in the sky, spiralling up in a tight circle; the forest seeping into the black sea of the earth.

            It was difficult for me to figure which way we were heading, that was until I saw the faint lights of Fordem clinging onto the horizon over my left shoulder. After five minutes, he wheeled round and almost turned back on himself and the town was now just in front of us (still on the horizon). Frain lifted his tail up and slowly turned his head down; we were coming in to land.

            On the ground, with the wind no longer rushing past our ears, Frain pointed with his head towards the north-west. ‘See that,’ he began. ‘That rise of the earth, you might just see it if you follow the river.’ Unlike his adjustable eyes, I couldn’t make out much for a few minutes. I stared vigorously towards what he insisted was a large hill. To try and sort my eyes out, I looked down at the ground and blinked a few times; that seemed to work as I looked back up and the river was just visible scouring its course out of the ground.

            Following it, I noticed there was a rounded patch of blacker sky; trusting Frain’s word, I took it to be a hill. ‘What is so important about that?’ I asked, leaning against his shoulder.

            ‘That is where I’ve been spending most of my attention while you’ve been in Fordem.’ If it was possible, he sounded as though he was whispering and his body seemed to be tensed up like a compressed spring. ‘I have evidence of my own. It might not mean much to you but there are marks around that hill that have been screaming out at me. It has been annoying me ever since we got here.’

            ‘And why haven’t you told me until now? Uh, never mind. Is this what you wanted to show me?’

            ‘Just watch.’ That was all he said for a good ten minutes. The night was getting colder and I had to reach into one of the bags to get my thickest jacket. There was no movement and even Frain had given in and was lying down nearby. Now and again he would close his eyes and smell at the air with his nostrils and tongue but he didn’t speak to me. Eventually, he did say something. ‘Look, there. Just watch the hill.’

            Turning my head up, I watched as he had told me to. It wasn’t clear to me at first, even with my adjusted eyesight but I did see it. It must have walked its way up the facing side of the hill and was now unfurling its wing. Jumping of the top of the large hill, the dragon flew into the sky, circling around and heading east. If it wasn’t for Frain telling me, I wouldn’t have been any the wiser as there was no glinting light coming off either its scales or spines.

            I was stood up now but had lost sight of it. ‘So there is one living here,’ I said out loud to myself.

            Frain responded as he too rose to his feet. ‘Yes, though it doesn’t return every night by the look of it.’

            ‘How do you know?’ I asked, curious as to how he could come to such a conclusion.

            Swishing his tail, he licked at the air again. ‘Just an assumption after what has happened back in Baedon. And I doubt that he can speak in your tongue. It might be that it has a Tamer but I cannot tell by mere observation.’

            Scanning the heavens still, I stepped over and slotted one foot in the harness. ‘That doesn’t make sense for you to know if you haven’t spoken to it.’

            ‘Hmm, there is something about that dragon which is stopping me from chasing after it even now. We should go, it is heading towards Safi and I do not want to cross its path at this time of day.’ It was either me being weird or he was sounding much older than he was; usually I could talk to Frain as though I were talking to another human but right now he sounded a lot more dragon-like than his normal self.

            We hadn’t made any sort of plans about where we would go after Fordem and leaving there had come around a lot sooner than either of us had expected. Frain flew as he pleased, first heading south-east but finding it hard to even get a long glide in due to windy conditions. At one point, he had to land until they died down since his wings were no longer under his own control. My hands had also started freezing in place and I had to create some makeshift gloves out of rags from a blanket. Our conversations weren’t focused on the secret dragon and most of the time we were sunk too deep in our thoughts.

            I wasn’t all that sure of how to go about this problem, if it was a problem at all. Yes, its fires had killed people but it wasn’t as though it had massacred a whole town. Still, if we were heading home then someone else would have the solution to it and I was certainly not going to try and sort this out on my own.

            The wind had almost disappeared now and we were soon flying again. Just as the sun rose to make a beautiful dawn, its light touching the clouds ahead in the distance, I noticed we were heading in a more northerly direction. I could just make out the small villages below us amid the grassy plains with a few hills here and there and if I squinted and focused very hard, I could see the rising tops of one of the mountain ranges to the south. There were two mountain ranges, from what I could remember off the map, but they weren’t miles apart from each other; their edges mingled a bit from the drawings on the parchment in my rucksack.

            It struck me that I had absolutely no idea where Frain was taking me. We stayed on a north-easterly course until a couple of days later. It was then that we landed just south of the Yok Hills. I took the time on the ground to ask why we were here.

            Swinging his head around, he searched around the skies but I couldn’t anything. ‘I have some questions,’ he told me. ‘I hope you don’t mind. We will head wherever you wish but please, I must do this first.’

            I wasn’t sure why he thought I might be mad or angry. I didn’t mind at all. ‘Do what you like, Frain. Just don’t disappear.’