More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Holt tried to imagine how Ash must look to a smaller animal, large and milk white, with eyes hidden behind a ragged strip of dark cloth. Holt judged that to be the most menacing thing about him, trying to look at it objectively. There was something alien in not seeing another creature’s eyes – in not being able to see their true feelings or intentions. Yet to Holt, Ash would always be the tiny hatchling who had curled up on his lap, who had been frightened and needed him.
Back at the Crag, Master Mirk, Commander Denna, and other senior riders were blunt in pointing out her errors. Alas, the court of the realm was a far cry from the Crag. She had little concept of how she should proceed on such matters with her Ealdors, whom she needed on her side.
For what felt like the hundredth time that night, Holt reached for the handle of Brode’s sword. He had resolved to master wearing and drawing it from his back, as a dragon rider should. Although Holt had been around riders his whole life, he had never stopped to consider why they wore their swords this way, nor the special technique and equipment they used to enable them to do so.
Holt wasn’t surprised. Dragons preferred their meat to be cooked, often in exacting ways. Brode had called them fussy, claiming the dragons in the Order had grown pampered. Yet Holt wondered if there was more to it. If the correct meat helped to pull raw motes toward the core, then surely other ingredients could improve upon this. If so, that would explain why the dragons preferred some tastes to others.
The great doors at the end of the throne room were open, a symbolic gesture that the ceremony was for all. Talia hoped fresh air would run in a through draft from the shattered stained-glass window above the throne and toward the open doors to cool the hall. However, it was an uncommonly hot and still day. With the hall so packed with people, both standing on the floor and squeezed up in the galleries overhead, the usual cool stones seemed to trap the heat. The air stifled.
Magic did not suit him. He’d ever been wary of its use. Chaotic, it always seemed to him, a force of the natural world spawned from primal furies of fire, of bitter winters, of raging storms that battered and broke homes. Humanity’s brittle order seemed ill defended by the very forces which daily sought its destruction.
I’ve seen enough of late to know not all chaos bringers deserve their fate, and not all who uphold order deserve its protection.”
He had never understood why riders knelt to each other. Soldiers did not kneel before their officers. They knelt for kings, empresses, and archons, but it was out of deference to the position, not strictly to the person.
Aberanth scoffed. “Oh, child. If only everyone would listen to logic and not their feelings, we could be a damn sight better off. Fundamentally the blight is a sickness. Sicknesses can be combated if the body has the strength to do so. Riders and dragons can throw the sickness off, even when injured. It’s a simple matter of power levels. Pit a Warden against a hatchling and the outcome is certain. But face two Wardens against each other, ha-har, now we have a real fight on our hands!”
Talia looked at the devastation around her. She had never been under any illusion of the hard choices of rulership. Lesson one from the Order had prepared her well enough for that. Still, it was one thing to know the risk was necessary and another thing to view its aftermath.
if your neighbor’s house catches fire, you help them put it out or else risk it spreading to your own.”
“The Elders seem above everyone and everything, but they’re just living, breathing beings like you and me. And I’ve found that all beings – whether dragon or human – find it impossible to get out of their own way. They have a set of beliefs about the world, about the people or dragons in it, about how things are and how they should be, and anything that counters those beliefs, whether it’s true or whether for good, doesn’t matter – they will resist it with every fiber of their being. Even to their own detriment. To change would be worse. To surrender one’s beliefs is to surrender much more.”
Holt’s mouth turned rather dry. “When you put it like that, it begs the question, what’s the point in trying to change things at all?” Rake leaned forward, his cheerful expression replaced by grave wisdom. “That, my young friend, is the only thing more dangerous. To give in. An easy thing to do. In fact, it’s the easiest thing of all. So, sure, give up all hope in the face of adversity. Yet know that if you surrender yourself to that dark void, you will lose your empathy and disconnect from anyone and anything you once cared about. If the world and those in it are so terrible, then why not
...more
For a moment, Talia considered it would be the most cathartic thing of all if the whole damned Order just ceased to exist. Holt had it right, tossing the rules aside and doing things just as they had to be, not as they ought to be.
If anyone cared to ask him now, he would have admitted that his life as a Cook’s son and future apprentice had been notably easier. There were fewer pressures for one, far fewer expectations, and his life and the life of his dragon were not forever under threat. It had been dull, at times, but safe.
‘Help the others.’ His father’s dying wish. Holt’s wish. Even before Ash, he’d hated seeing suffering he was unable to relieve.
