3430 of the Fifth Age
Mordurel, Easterland Region
Capital City of Culhaven
Raenys Silverstag
Raenys looked out the carriage’s window to see Moonfyre and Icefyre fly freely about. She loved to see them fly it such manner, like free spirits. There was no creature as beautiful and majestic as dragons when they took to the sky. Those ignorant only saw them as mindless beasts of destruction. She fingered her necklace as she looked out. It held the shape of a small golden dragon.
“Have you found a ship yet?” Her dear sister Alyssana inquired.
Raenys continued to look out at her two dragons until they disappeared from her limited window view.
“Aye, White Swan. It’s captained by an old dwarfen adventure. He’s apparently a skilled sailor and I’m told he has experience with corsairs. Meaning he’ll know how to deal with them.”
“Does he know how to keep his mouth shut?” Dawana inquired.
“Given what I’ve promised to pay him, yes. He wouldn’t dare cross his queen though.”
“His?” Rohanna said.
“Yes, his. He was born here in Culhaven a century ago, or something like that. You know dwarfs live a damn long time.” She was silent for a moment. “Aldrich won’t like it but I don’t care. He tends to do whatever he wants despite my reservations. He wants to go hunting, he goes hunting and when he wants to have a royal progression in one of the provinces he does just that.”
“I suppose he thinks two dragons are enough,” Alyssana said as she sat across from Raenys.
“You can’t breed two female drakes,” she lectured her younger sister. “Can’t have any hatchlings without eggs and no eggs without a male and a female. Standard dragon lore.”
Alyssana frowned, “Yes I know how it works. I understand how babies are made, be they drakes or Men.”
She looked down on her daughter, whom she carried in her arms gently. Right now Alys was sleeping but earlier she had cried for half an hour despite her attempts to calm her, warm her and feed her but she was neither hungry for her breast or too cold. In the end she finally fell asleep. Raenys smiled and thought that a few months from then she would be able to place an egg in Alys’ crib. Despite what most thought bonding them and raising them was relatively easy, especially the bonding. When you spoke of taming them, as was common when dragon breeding was the subject, taming them wasn’t truly possible. What you could do was control them but you needed a strong mind and rigorous training from when they were only hatchlings. So she had learned from the royal dragonkeeper she had hired. The most powerful thing of all was a bond between rider and dragon.
“That fire breathing kraken from the Ice Islands should watch out,” Dawana japed. Rohanna and Alyssana snickered. “How did you manage to convince those elven monks to sell you some eggs?”
“She’s paying a lot of coin for them,” the princess Alyssana said simply.
“If coin was all that mattered every king and rich noble and every merchant in all of Mordurel would have a dragon in his courtyard,” Dawana told her.
Alyssana’s face told them that she hadn’t thought of that and she looked at Raenys inquisitively.
“Wasn’t easy.”
It certainty wasn’t. She remembered when she first started communicating by raven with the monks three years ago. On every opportunity she had befriended nobles of Noldor to vouch for her and speak on her behalf. Three years of work and gifts was finally paying off for her. She just had to step carefully until she had the eggs in Whitewall Hall.
The road from Silverhall to Culhaven was ten kilometers and it took two hours for the host of noblemen, knights, men-at-arms and servants to come in range of the walls of Culhaven. They saw the wall themselves surrounded by farmland and the ocean west of the city. Rising high over the walls a handful of structures rose above the others, the Grand Basilica that was the heart of the Westerland’s faith. There was the towers of the Whitewall Hall on the northwestern height and the immensely tall tower of gold of the Mage Circle, the only properly allowed sorcery order in the Westerland Realm. As they passed commonfolk hailed their king and queen. To the dragons that flew about their heads they were struck with awe and wonder of the majestic animals. Raenys knew they were still pups, practically hatchlings. They had grown two three meters length and would keep growing for a good long while more. By the gate’s of Whitewall Hall they were met with Chancellor Greenflood. She saw that his eyes full of grief. She grew worried as something had clearly happened.559Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsKce4jgZwe
