Dragon Sight Chapter 1

     I just realized I haven't posted any chapters from my first two books.  When I was writing them, I had an open blog and just posted everything, but now that's a private blog.  So, I decided to share the first chapter of book 1.  Book 1 and book 1 run in a congruent timeline, so either can be first.  Most people seem to like Dragon Sight being first, so here's chapter 1.

Chapter 1

The cool air moved uneasily as the first drops began to fall.  I could hear the rain plinking softly on the tin stable roof a hundred feet above my head for several seconds before the drizzle finally found its way to the ground. A few seconds more, and the light spring air had turned into a heavy downpour. I paused at my work and leaned on my shovel to enjoy the refreshing shower.  The stable was a large “U” shape, and I stood in the center of the “U” exposed to the cool drops.  The water washed away the thick smell of dragon excrement, which always hung heavily in the air around the stables.  Hot steam radiated from my overworked body as the cool water rinsed the accumulated filth from my tattered clothes. I had to smile to myself.

Dressed in only a tattered shirt and a pair of paints which had more holes than fabric, I felt the pelting rain all over my mostly exposed skin.  I loved the rain.  The animals hated it. They danced nervously in their stalls, grunting their disapproval.

With each drop came a sound.  Those sounds gave me a chance to “see”, a rare occurrence, indeed.  Water pelted long necks swaying back and forth, gigantic heads looking this way and that.  The raindrops hit the dragons’ thick hides, sending sound reverberations to my sensitive ears.  Part of my job was to wash those dragons, so I was familiar with their bodies.  I knew every scale, every horn, every scar, but it was nice to hear the rain hitting them and confirming what my hands had felt.

I wasn’t born blind.  I was a toddler, not quite two years of age, when the Dark Clan attacked and I lost my eyes.  It was a raid.  The Dark Clan’s riders appeared out of the pitch black sky, and wreaked havoc on our kingdom only to disappear into the nothingness from which they emerged.  Raids weren’t all that uncommon in the boarder villages, but we lived in the King’s city, right in the middle of Gogaloth, where we had only suffered one other raid in history. Mother tells me that the fire was too thick for her to rescue me from my crib. Such thick, black, choking smoke… It was a miracle that I didn’t suffocate.  My young eyes were burnt by the ashes, and forever closed.  At Seventeen, and having delt with it all my life, I have become accustomed to my world of darkness.  I still wish I had, at least, one memory of sight; a color or face… Alas, there is nothing but darkness.

I shook my head at the bad memory.  I wanted to enjoy the rain, not wallow in self pity.  After all, on a night like this I could “see” better than anyone.  I don’t know exactly when it happened, but at some point sound became my world of sight.  Each noise tells me how far away things are, and the echoes give me a feel for dimensions.  I count steps everywhere I go to judge distances and memorize paths, and I feel the faces of the people I meet so that I get an idea of what they look like.  With the downpour, there’s a chorus of sound describing the world around me in a way that I can understand.  

Leaning on my shovel, and still panting from the heavy work of mucking out the dragon stables, I begin to daydream.  I’m the Rider of Acaba, the prophesied hero of the people.  I’m soaring through the air atop one of the king dragons, a dragon rider army behind me. The Dark Clan has us surrounded.  Someone calls out a battle cry and we rush to attack…

“Calitharious!”

I almost fall off my shovel.  I quickly caught myself, and turn to face my screaming father with my head hanging low.  He’d caught me in another daydream.  My cheeks burned with embarrassment.

“I’ve been calling for you for the last twenty minutes.  Is this how you spend your time at the stables?  It’s no wonder Lycons has been complaining about having a blind boy for a stable hand.”

The burning in my cheeks spread to my gut.  I felt my bottom lip start to quiver against my greatest efforts to suppress it.  I turned away to hide my embarrassment.

“Cal, I’m sorry, son.  I didn’t mean that.”

I felt his calloused hand on my shoulder. I pulled away.  I was once again just the blind stable-boy, good for nothing more than to keep the stables from overflowing with dragon dung.  I could never become the Rider of Acaba.  I could never be anything worthwhile.

With all the indignation I could muster, I yelled, “I’d like to see you get around ten-thousand pound monsters with your eyes closed without getting trampled!”

Too embarrassed to even wait for my father’s response, I turned and ran.

The heavy rain pounded on my head and shoulders as I ran across the field beyond the stables.  Father’s faint voice called from behind me, but the thunderous rain on my head deafened my ears from any distinguishable words.  At one hundred and forty-seven paces, I reached the forest.

I didn’t often enter the woods because the forest floor was always changing, and I hated the scrapes and bruises I’d get from trips and falls, but I pressed forward.

The trees shielded me from the rain as I pushed deeper into their oppressive embrace.  This forest was old.  The new moisture made the air thick with the aroma of rotting deadwood and fungus.  I sprinted onward.  I was gasping air with some difficulty by this point, but my tormented mind made my body seem numb.  It was dangerous to be running at break-neck speeds through such thick woods…  Just as the thought hit me, I felt a sharp piercing blow from a broken branch on my right temple which sent me sprawling to the ground where I was met with another blow to my forehead.  The world spun to oblivion.

When I awoke, I heard birds greeting the warm morning sun.  I sat up, but the world started turning too fast for my liking.  I had to brace myself against the ground to keep from falling over.  My entire face felt dry and sticky. Still a little confused, I touched my cheek; it was caked in a syrup-like substance.  Memory of the injuries came flooding back into my muddled mind.

“My father was right,” I mumbled to myself.  “I am a useless blind boy.”

I felt around and found the rock which had struck my forehead.  It had a long sharp ridge across the top.  I tenderly felt around the pulsating painful spot on my forehead only to find what I already knew to be there; a two-inch gash from eyebrow to hairline, another scar to mar my already hashed face.

The sound of the rushing river nearby told me that I had run farther into the woods than I originally thought.

“A whole quarter mile,” I said out loud, just to hear it.  I began to smile.   “Most boys couldn’t do that with both eyes wide open in these woods.”

“I’d be impressed too, cept I can see da bloody mess dat ya are,” came a response.

My stomach turned.

“Who’s there,” I asked tentatively, trying to back away from the voice.

“Relax, lad.  I mean ya no harm,” the gruff voice responded.

Still trying to scoot away from him, I asked, “Who are you?”

My mind started racing.  Gogaloth was full of dangerous people, and I didn’t know how to defend myself, even if I had the use of my eyes.  He didn’t sound treacherous, but his accent was foreign.  I could recognize the heavy tongues of the other two kingdoms, but his wasn’t from either.

I heard the man stand up.  The gravel crunched under his feet as he approached me.  “Let’s just say a friend, fer now.”

I made a sour face at his obtuse answer, but he kept shuffling towards me.  Without warning, a meaty hand prodded the open wound on my forehead.

“Ouch! Don’t touch it!  It hurts,” I shouted, trying to scoot farther away from him on my bottom. The roughness of his hands led me to believe they were dirty, too.  He was probably just some beggar hoping to get a handout for helping me.

“Now, lad, ya gonna bleed ta death if’n ya don’a treat dem holes,” the strange man said.

“I have a doctor to treat me.  I don’t need your help,” I grumbled, as I stopped trying to scoot away.  I wasn’t in any mood to put up with more people helping the poor blind kid, especially some beggar.

The old man seemed undeterred.  “Now, ya listen good; I didn’a sit up here all night fer nottin.  Hold still an’ I’ll fix ya up real nice-like, den ya can go ta dat palace o’yer’s an’ let dat no-good doctor mess up da fine work dat I’ll do on ya.”

Now I knew the old man was deluded.  I was obviously not royalty.  Even an entire night’s worth of rain couldn’t wash the stench of dragon dung off me.

Unless he knew…

It wasn’t exactly a secret that mother had been stripped of her title when she married Father, but he’d have to be a Gogalothian to know Mother, and his accent was not from anywhere in Gogaloth.  And, he’d have to know me personally to recognize me for my mother’s son.  Perhaps gossip of the crowned princess of Gogaloth being disinherited had reached beyond the three free kingdoms.

I pushed his prodding hands away again.  “I didn’t ask for you to sit up all night waiting to mend me.  I can take care of myself.  I don’t need your help.”

The man cursed under his breath, and stood up.  I heard shuffling which sounded as if he were stuffing things into a bag.  He grumbled some inaudible phrases to himself as he worked.  The only words I could decipher were curse words.

“Look,” I said.  “I’m sure that my parents are looking for me.  I’m not trying to be rude, I just need to get going.”  There was no answer, just more shuffling.  “I do appreciate your kindness for watching over me…”

Just then, I felt the powerful swoosh of air from a dragon’s wings as it took off.  A dragon!  How in the world did he have a dragon?  Only royals and riders had dragons.  Maybe he wasn’t a beggar.  I was left alone to wonder about him.

A fresh stream of blood was trickling from the wound because of the old man’s rough touch.  I had to put off thoughts of the strange encounter for the time and treat my injuries.  I stood on unsteady legs and made my way towards the sound of the river.  My head was spinning, adding to the difficulty of navigating in the unfamiliar terrain.

“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight…”

As I bumbled my way across the rocky ground towards the sound of flowing water, it occurred to me how small my world had been.  I knew every cobblestone, rock, hill, bump, and smooth spot within a quarter mile of my home… but little else.  I was unerring in my little world, but here my feet didn’t know their way.

I finally reached the river at fourty-seven paces.  It was a small accomplishment, but it lifted my spirits a bit.  I knelt at the bank, scooped water up with cupped palms, and gently poured it across my face.  It burned as it ran across the gaping holes in my head.  Being early spring, the stream was still icy cold.  After five or ten minutes I couldn’t stand to dip my hands in the freezing water anymore, so I tore what was left of my raggedy old shirt and made a crude bandage to wrap my head.  I didn’t remember crossing the river, so I figured I was still on the east side of it.  All I had to do was follow the warmth of the rising sun until I was out of the woods and back on familiar ground.

The journey back was not as smooth, or lucky, as my flight into the woods had been.  Every few seconds I felt a sharp branch drag across my now exposed arms and chest, and I must have bloodied my shins half a dozen times on rock outcroppings before I made it out of the thick trees.  Following the sun proved to be a trying task as well because the trees were so thick that light only dashed intermittently through small openings in the forest canopy.  At times I had to wander around in little circles in the shade of the great oaks and cedars.

If I wasn’t so distraught I might have stopped to enjoy the sweet musky smell of the cedars, but the pleasant aroma only served as a distraction as my nose frantically tried to sniff out the pungent smell of the stables.  After about an hour, I finally broke through the tree line.  I had lost track of how many paces I’d taken twenty minutes prior, so I wasn’t sure, exactly, where I emerged from the wood.  The dank smell of the forest was replaced with the familiar smell of dragon.  I followed the stink in a stupor, abandoning my habitual counting.

Feeling more at ease on familiar ground, my mind slowly wandered to my father.  I felt bad for not hearing him out, and started thinking about how I would apologize.  Once I reached a road, my feet took over walking as I fell into the familiar path to my home.  The counting started again, but it was just background noise to my thoughts.  Before I knew it, I was home.

I leaned against the old wooden door to my house.  It gave way with a familiar creak, welcoming me home.  Mother gasped from the other side of the room as I entered the Main Room.

“Oh, my son,” she exclaimed.

I must have been a sight to see; bashed, bleeding all over, and dirty to the bone.

Before I could take a step into the house, Mother was there.  She seemed to scoop me up into her arms, though I was a good foot taller than her.  I guessed I would always be her baby.  I felt her tears on my naked shoulder.  The salt burned as they ran across the small scrapes I had sustained from the pine trees.

“I’m okay,” I said as I managed to free my arms enough to hug her back.  “I just ran into a tree branch, and I think I hit my head on a rock.”  She started to sob even louder.  “Are you okay, Mother?”

“Son, there was an attack…”

My senses suddenly came alive for the first time since my return.  The ashes from the fires hung heavily on the air.  The smell of burnt sulfur only dragon’s fire could produce, was burning my nostrils.  Why hadn’t I notice it sooner?

“But it was raining last night,” I said pleadingly.  “There couldn’t have been an attack last night.  It was raining!  It had to have been too dark for riders.”

“It was just like the night when you lost your eyes, Cal.  There were no warnings,” she spluttered between sobs.  “We couldn’t even see where the fire balls were coming from to defend ourselves.”

My stomach turned and tightened.  I managed to choke out the words, “What’s happened?  Where’s dad?”  My mother sobbed even louder.  “Mom…Is he…?”

“I don’t know,” she said, composing herself and releasing me from her vice-like grip.  “The town is a mess…  He never came home… You never came home… I didn’t know what to do!”

She let out a deep calming breath, and then started again, “We heard the first blasts, and he ran to the stables to get you.  We thought it was a dragon in training gone mad.  No one expected an attack on a night like last night.”  Her voice trailed off.

I had to calm myself to think.  How could I have not heard a blast of dragon breath?  Dragons whelp as the fire ignites on their tongues, and the boom as the flame is blown out of their mouths is deafening.  I couldn’t imagine how it could have eluded my finely tuned ears.  It must have been the rain on the stable roof.  I must have been completely in another world with my daydreaming.  I must have…  Why did I let myself go to my silly daydreams?  I should have heard them.  I should have known.

“He came to the stables, and was yelling at me,” I said in a stupor.  “He called me a blind stable hand.  I got mad at him and yelled something back then ran to the woods.  I think he tried to follow me, but I’m not sure.  I yelled at him, Mother… he can’t be gone.  I have to tell him I’m sorry.  I have to apologize, I have to…”  My mother threw her arms around me, and the tears got the better of me.  Together, we sobbed for what seemed like an eternity.

Tears spent, we decided to go looking for Father.  Mother suggested that he might be in the woods looking for me, but something inside me told me that wasn’t so.  She quickly gathered three family friends to help search the woods for him, and then she and I started asking around town if anyone had seen him.

The town guards were busy taking care of the injured and organizing people to rebuild the walls.  We couldn’t rally any more help in our search.  Mother was asking everyone we knew, everyone except the person I felt we should ask the most: The King.  The King would have an army to find him.  At the very least if he asked townspeople to help they’d listen to him.

The King was my grandfather, but he disinherited my mother when she married Father, so I had never met him.  Mother always said I would never be safe around any royalty because of the prophecy.  The King resented that my birth had almost caused a war between Gogaloth and the other two kingdoms.

That prophecy… I might have been a normal kid without it.

Dangerous or not, I had to see the King.  We needed his help. While my mother was busy talking to some of the guards, I slipped away.  I pushed through the crowd towards the palace.

The main cobble stone path to the castle was unfamiliar to my feet, and the bustle of the town made my commute impossible.

“One hundred and fourty-five, one hundred and fourty… Ouch!”

People were bumping into me, and pushing me around until I could no longer tell which way I was supposed to go.  Finally, someone took hold of my hand, and pulled me off the street to a less crowded alleyway.

“Are you crazy Cal,” she said.  I recognized the voice immediately as my mother’s dearest friend Eliza.  I reached up to feel her face, just to be sure.  “You’re going to get yourself killed in this mob.  The town’s hoppin’ with movement from last night’s fireworks.  You best be getting yourself home before you get trampled.”

“Eliza, my father disappeared last night,” I explained. “I think he was looking for me.  We had a fight, and I ran into the woods.”

“So that’s how you banged yourself up so bad.”

I had forgotten about my blood-soaked shirt.  She took my head in her hands, and carefully peeled back the tattered material to inspect my cuts.

“You need stitches,” she announced.  Then she took my hand again, and started pulling me deeper into the ally.  “Afterward, I can help you go lookin’ for him.  Let’s get you inside and look at those wounds.”

I dug in my heels.  “No,” I yelled.  “I need to make it to the King.  He can help.  Three people aren’t going to find one man in all this mess, especially if one of them is blind!”

Eliza gasped in shock.  It was the one advantage to my disability, I could always count on people feeling sorry for me and doing what I wanted when I brought it up.

There was a long silence.  I finally added, “Are you going to help me through the town, or do I have to do it on my own?”

Eliza was silent for a moment longer before replying, in her kindly manner, “Well, I don’t think it’ll help, but I love your father and mother too much not to try.” We switched directions, and she pulled me hurriedly through the crowded street.

“Three hundred and eighty-seven, three hundred and eighty-eight…”

We walked for what seemed like hours, but really couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty minutes.  The whole way, the last conversation I’d had with my father was playing over and over in my head.  I wished I had at least heard him out.  I wished I had heard the attack.  I wished so many things, but wishing didn’t change what happened.

The closer we got to the palace, the fewer people were bumping into me.  My aching toes were grateful when we finally reached a point where they were no longer being stomped on by clumsy passersby.  Occasionally, we had to check in at guard posts as we passed through walled off layers of the king’s city.  I’d restart counting at each checkpoint.  After passing a final guards’ checkpoint at the palace’s outer wall, I could hear only Eliza’s soft-soled shoes briskly scraping against the cobblestone in rhythm with her stride.  I, of course, walked silently after years of practicing the art.  It made it easier to tell where others were if my own footsteps weren’t confusing me.  The courtyard was immense, and it took some traversing before I felt the tall edifice block out the warmth from sun above us.

“One thousand seven hundred and ninety-six…”

We stopped abruptly, and Eliza announced, “Cal is here to see his grandfather, the King, on most urgent business.”

A deep voice from one of the door guards answered, “No one can have audience with the King at a time like this, not even his grandson.”

“He will see me,” I exclaimed.  The power in my voice surprised me.  I took a step in the direction of the guard’s voice, hoping that he hadn’t moved.  “And I would hate to be in your shoes if he found out that you tried to deny me audience with him!”

The guard stuttered a bit as he replied, “But I… he…”  He thought a moment then continued, “I’ll announce you at once, Your Highness.”

It took me a minute to realize he was addressing me.  Once, a small boy had called me ‘sir’ when he was asking for directions, but ‘Your Highness’.  I couldn’t help but raise my head and stick out my chest a bit.  The guard’s metal armor clanked as he turned and walked three paces.  I heard a loud creak as some great doors opened.  I followed quickly after the guard when I heard the clinking of his armored boots as he entered into the palace’s greeting hall.

The hall was enormous.  Sounds were lost as they traversed the vast opening, and returned as muffled echoes.  It was disorienting.  The ground was a smooth stone, probably marble.  After a five brisk paces, we reached a soft carpet, and I tripped on some stairs.  The guard must not have realized I was blind.  He stumbled about, trying to help me to my feet.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness.  I had heard rumors, but I didn’t know for sure.  Please forgive me,” he begged, as I finally found my feet.

What little dignity I had felt seconds earlier was replaced by the humiliation I was so accustomed to.  “It’s okay; just get me to my grandfather, please.”

We traversed through hallways ranging from twenty to thrity paces, formal rooms, fourty paces long, less formal rooms, twenty paces long, and all sorts of other rooms before the guard came to a halt.  He announced me to another set of door guards, and after some worried whispers back-and-forth the large doors to what they called “the War Room” were opened.  It was only then that I realized Eliza was not permitted in with me.  I would have to face the man my mother and father had taught me to fear, all alone.