The Secret of the Zipacna Dragons. Chapter 1
GRADNI TRACED HIS FINGERS along the stone corridor of the orphanage as he made his way to the man by the exit. The fat caretaker grunted as he pushed the door open. “You have three hours,” he said to Gradni with his nose turned away.
“Why the extra hour?” Gradni asked distrustfully.
“It is for you to bathe. Now hurry. Your smell is unbearable.”
Gradni scratched the back of his neck as he purposely stepped right under the caretaker’s nose and into the midday light. His hair that fell around his narrow face and nose was chestnut brown with slivers of green running through it. The green was almost invisible right now. He hadn’t bathed in the lake in weeks, so it was more a mess of maroon tentacles that oddly matched his hazel eyes. Dirt had darkened his skin from its natural pale elf color, and it was becoming tedious trying to find the itchy spots behind his triangular ears. He would bathe today, but only after he did everything else he wanted to with his three hours of freedom.
Two soldiers were training against each other on the practice field when Gradni got there. He hiked up to his usual place on the grassy hill that shadowed the field. His father’s pendant was dangling from his neck. Gradni held it between his palms with his knees huddled in as he studied the two men. It was not often that the soldiers of Scandar took their duty seriously enough to train. It was a hand-to-hand fight, which Gradni enjoyed watching the most—the way they ducked, kicked, leapt, and punched, trying to defeat each otherwith nothing more than their hands and feet. The smaller of the fighters moved faster when he attacked and further when he dodged. Elves had the innate ability to turn the air around their bodies into wind that augmented their movements. It was called wind channeling, and the smaller of the two fighters was clearly better at it. Gradni liked watching fights with practice weapons as well, but the closest he had come to owning a sword of his own was a splintered wooden stick. Maybe tomorrow if he was let out again he would get a proper branch from the forest. He had never been to the forest before, but assumed it wouldn’t be difficult to find a branch there if he looked. His left ear twitched. Heavy footsteps were coming down the hill behind him. Gradni turned to see who it was.
“Hullo,” the younger boy said.
Gradni turned back to the fight. He knew nothing about this nuisance, except that he was fat from his mother’s cooking. He readjusted his knees away from him, but the nuisance spoke anyway.
“We noticed that you spend your time here instead of on the playing grounds. You can join us if you want.”
“I’m fine where I am.”
“Are you sure? We would really like you to join us.”
In the two seasons he had been coming here for, no one had ever invited him to join them. Gradni was suspicious. “Why all of a sudden?”
The boy stuttered. Gradni then noticed that there was more noise coming from behind them on the other side of the hill where the grounds were. He stood up and walked to the top of the hill to see what was happening. The younger kids, friends of the nuisance, were huddled along an edge of the field while the older ones dominated the center. The two groups were trading jeers.
“How long has Ferklen and his friends been pushing you off the field?” Gradni asked.
“It has been almost a week now. We could really use your help. Everyone knows that Ferklen won’t bother you anymore.”
Ferklen and his group were three years older than Gradni. They used to bully him as well by surrounding him and pushing him to and fro like he was a ball. He had been an easy target for them because he had no friends, and his father was never in Scandar to protect him. That all changed when Gradni’s father died, and they mistakenly thought that he would be an even easier victim of their harassment. While two of Ferklen’s friends held him from behind, Gradni struggled viciously against them. He kicked out wildly toward Ferklen and missed his face by a hair. Gradni fell back onto his captors and lashed out like a rabid dog till they scrambled out from under him. They yelled insultsat him as they ran away, but never attacked him again. Gradni had never been satisfied with the way the harassment had ended. Even today, he yearned to do Ferklen damage.
“You want me to help you fight them? That’s really why you came here.”
“Yes, but we’ll play with you if you do, and we won’t stop once they leave us alone either, promise.”
He wanted to say yes. Yes, for all the times Ferklen had embarrassed him, but he was not going to do it for this boy and his friends. Ferklen still yelled insults at him from a distance and others always chimed in, including, Gradni was sure, this boy and his cowering friends.
“Too bad you never helped when he was bullying me. You can deal with them yourselves. He is your problem now.”
“T’nas said you would say that, so she said to offer you something else. Ferklen is afraid of you, so we don’t mind sharing our sweets to make him go away. And you probably don’t get anything nice to eat at the orphanage. Have you ever even had cake before?”
Gradni pushed the boy away. “I don’t want your cake. Leave me alone and don’t bother me with this again!”
The boy stumbled back a couple steps before running down the slope. Gradni watched him huff all the way off the hill before turning back to the soldiers. An hour later the soldiers finished training. Gradni stood up, still angry from being interrupted. His right ear started itching again. He miserably tried to find the troublesome spot before giving in to the fact that there was more than one. He started trekking toward the lake. The market was on the way. Maybe if he hung around long enough, a fruit vendor would toss him an apple for his persistence. He didn’t even know what was in the bland gruel they served at the orphanage, and fruit would serve him better than cake did the out of-breath nuisance.
Halfway to the market, a creaking of heavy wheels caught his attention. The carriage was a fair distance from him, but the insignia on its door was clear—an upside-down drake dragon with its wings spread out, and a spear through its center. Gradni sprinted after it. He had never seen a drake, but he was familiar enough with the emblem that he would have recognized it at twice the distance. It was the insignia of Delthurk—the elven base where his father gave his life three seasons ago. The carriage was parked by the stables when he caught up to it. He circled around a wagon and peered, as elves stepped out of the carriage. Four of them were dressed in plates of steel that marked them as soldiers. The fifth was Mogurn, a senator from Delthurk. Gradni had seen him often enough. He came regularly to recruit for the war against the dragons, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, but never this far from the Scandar Keep. He wondered why they were meeting all the way out here.
Mogurn was dressed in the usual attire of a senator. He had a loose fitting sepia robe that was tightened at the waist by a maroon rope. Today, he had chalk-white hair down to his shoulders that ran parallel to the indented lines in his cheeks. On previous occasions when Gradni saw him, his hair was silver, gray, or white with a bluish hue. Like the thickness of Gradni’s green slivers, and other elves’ hair, its appearance was dependent on the changing seasons and weather. Mogurn sat on a bench and intertwined his fingers in front of his frown. A horse came galloping from across a hill. Gradni’s heartbeat quickened when he saw the rider. Mogurn had come to get S’freed, the Drake Slayer of Scandar.
S’freed had always been one of the biggest men Gradni had ever seen. If there was any elf who looked able to slay the humongous drakes, it was S’freed. But Scandar had never allowed S’freed to join the war against the dragons at Delthurk. They found him too valuable to send away.
Gradni shifted nervously as S’freed got off his horse in front of the senator. The knight had long blond hair down to his shoulder blades. Gradni liked him best in summer when his hair was a lustrous red. Mogurn stood up. He shook S’freed’s large hand with both of his and bowed. Gradni strained to hear them, but even with his elven ears, he was too far away to make out what they were saying. He skipped to a haystack that was closer and poked his face around. “...you are not going to send me to the Zipacna Mountains?” S’freed suddenly yelled. Mogurn was smiling, a contrast to his demeanor a couple minutes ago. S’freed was not returning the gesture with any measure of kindness, and only became more agitated as the conversation drew on. The Drake Slayer said something final to the senator, and stomped into the carriage. Gradni twitched. As wide as the smile on Mogurn’s face was during the conversation with S’freed, it was now as tight a scowl. The senator looked to either side before spitting through his thin lips. He put on his fake smile once again, and climbed into the carriage before it rode away.
It was already past the time Gradni was meant to return to the orphanage by. There was no need for him to rush back. He plodded back, his father’s pendant bobbing up and down with each lazy step. Mogurn’s scowl stuck with him. While trying to figure out what it meant, he didn’t realize that he was cutting through the playgrounds until he was halfway through it. There was a commotion to his left. Whatever was happening earlier had escalated. Gradni kept his eyes in front of him when he heard the raised voices of Ferklen and the nuisance. The words were unclear, but the tone changed as he passed by. Gradni fought down the urge to acknowledge that everyone was staring at him. What had the nuisance told them? Gradni made sure not to change his pace as he walked off the field, to make it seem like he wasn’t aware of them.
It was very late now. Even when the caretaker could see him coming, Gradni continued to walk.
“You missed dinner. And you did not bathe!” the caretaker said as Gradni got to the gate.
“I know.”
“Do you expect me to feed you?”
Gradni’s stomach felt hollow, but he knew the answer.
“You are not special,” the caretaker declared. Gradni raised his head and looked the man straight in the eye. He was a large man with round facial features and a shabby red beard. “We’ll see. At least I will not be a fat pig.”
The caretaker grabbed Gradni by his greasy hair and yanked him across the threshold of the gate. “Get to your room! You are not special! You are like everyone else!” Gradni found his footing and walked along the jagged stone path. He threw his head up so that the caretaker could see it as he sauntered onward into the ugly stone building.
Years ago, before even his late father was born, Scandar built a new prison to deal with the town’s increasing development. Several years later when the growth led to the need for an orphanage, they rebuilt the metal fence around the old prison and put up a sign. It was a hollowed-out rectangular block of black stones. Along the single corridor were torches that were fastened to the wall every four doors. Even though there were no other orphans living here right now, Gradni’s room was at the very end. It was the closest room to the confinement space that was used to punish orphans who became too rowdy. The caretaker figured that he would save himself a lot of trips by placing Gradni as close to the confinement space as possible, and Gradni had little argument to say otherwise.
He stepped into his room and closed the wooden door behind him. He bent his hands against themselves before stretching his arms, legs, and back. The caretaker had lied when he said Gradni was like everyone else. Orphans in Scandar were less than anyone. They were taken care of not out of compassion, but out of reluctant debt. Beyond that, they did not care that he was the son of the heroic Yorn the Dragon Slayer.
Gradni lifted the pendant from his neck. It was the only thing in his entire room that was spotless. Engraved upon the gold disc was a detailed sword upon a background of low mountains. Heavy rain was falling at a diagonal, and a streak of lightning cut everything except the sword in half. The sword signified the warrior’s valor, while the storm represented the furious strength in which elves thrived, because it enhanced their ability to wind channel. The pendant was a medal that was awarded to Yorn for having slain so many dragons on the border of Scandar. It was that achievement that led him to leave several years ago for Delthurk, the elf base that had been built specifically to kill the dragons in that region. It was all that came back from there, and it was given to Gradni minutes before he was moved to the orphanage. Gradni kept it with him always.
He let it fall back around his neck. He wrapped a layer of cloth around his hands, and then threw a fist against the door. He shook the pain off while removing his tunic, then threw his other fist into the wood in exactly the same way. He collected himself and began to assault an imaginary foe, using front kicks and straight punches that he had seen the soldiers using.
When his father was alive and at war with the dragons, Gradni lived under the care of those who served Scandar. That all changed. When the dragons killed his father, Gradni was thrown into the orphanage. Now he was forgotten, in a nation that did not care of the atrocity that the dragons had committed against him. His breath was heavy as he danced around his room. He hadn’t learned to pace himself, nor had he been taught how to wind channel properly. He tried a hook kick but it left him off balance. He had seen a soldier lose a fight for doing the same thing, so Gradni tried it again and again until he did it without staggering.
His father was a great Dragon Slayer. No one ever disrespected him and no one equaled him in battle. Scandar had taken care of Gradni out of fear of what his father would do to them if they did not.
He sidestepped left and right before he bent low, and rammed his knuckles against the wood harder than he intended. He stumbled and fell on his back. He would be Yorn. He would avenge his father and show Scandar and the dragons what they had made, and S’freed would be in awe of him. Gradni imagined the door to be a drake and fiercely elbowed it. The vibrations of the attack rattled through his entire arm. He yelped and fell to the floor again. The light of the corridor went out.
“Enough noise, boy. Go to sleep!”
“Come in here and make me!” Gradni yelled back at the caretaker while crawling onto the stiff straw mattress. He rolled deeper into the bed, wearing a painful grin as he cradled his knuckles and elbow in turn. The caretaker would doubtlessly tell others as always what he had seen and heard. That would keep the other boys afraid of him. He rolled onto his stomach, and continued to toss and turn till he fell asleep.
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