22. Myrval.
Myrval.
HARLOW
T here is a dragon, famous above all others for her existence has shaped the political and geological landscape of Hargos. She is a legend and a cautionary tale, told to children at night. She is the oldest dragon ever known to humanity.
Myrval was an enormous dragon with scales like onyx, darker than night, who had her lair in the Fangs, the mountain range southeast of Dragonest. Over three-hundred years ago, when the city was rising around the crater like rot on a bruised apple, the local farmers complained to the king about their missing cattle, for Myrval had an appetite.
King Edward the Third was stuck in a dispute with another branch of the royal family, and in a fit of ego and pride, he wanted to show his strength by sending men to slay Myrval.
He announced he would make a throne out of her skull.
The attack, of course, failed miserably.
He sent soldiers after soldiers to their death—with bows and arrows, catapults, lances…
—and Myrval’s rage grew. She stopped seeing humans as small creatures below her notice, but as a threat instead.
She set the fields around Dragonest on fire, then the buildings.
Thus began the Reign of Fire, a dreadful time that lasted a decade. The efforts to fell Myrval were no match for her thick hide and fury.
The people nicknamed King Edward the Third ‘ the King of Ashes ’, for under his rule, Dragonest would burn to the ground. The nobles he sought to impress to keep his power ultimately assassinated him after a year.
But the damage had been done, and Myrval was out for blood.
She kept attacking Dragonest for nine more years, until she stopped feeling threatened, and her rage cooled down.
They etched the dragon law in stone on the palace walls, hoping that rulers, even as they rose and fell, would not repeat the King of Ashes’ mistake.
Myrval lived to be over four hundred years old.
But then the day came when she no longer flew over the Fangs, and the people of Dragonest stopped fearing the sky. It was said that she died of old age in her lair, as her carcass was never discovered.
For over a century, dragoners and adventurers have been climbing the Fangs, looking for Myrval’s gigantic bones.
We all expect her to be bone dust by now. But Lord Darrington and Clarence seem to think otherwise.
“You can’t be serious,” I say.
Clarence smiles from his chair by the door. It’s the third time he’s visited me in two days. He dropped hints about our next destination, helping me come to my conclusion in the solitude of my closet-turned-cell.
“I’m always serious, I’m afraid,” he says. “It comes with the whole dying package.” And yet, he’s still smiling.
I shake my head. “Myrval would have been seen. A dragon this size can’t hide for over a century.”
“She can hide in her lair.”
I scoff. “Then she starved.”
At the peak of her life, she ate three cows a day.
“Not if someone has fed her.”
My eyes widen. “How?”
“There’s a tribe in the Fangs. The Shanans. Mountain climbers. They prefer to live secluded in their villages carved in the rocks—they’re the ones adventurers hire when they want to brave the Fangs. They raise mountain goats for meat.”
“You can’t be serious,” I repeat.
Clarence’s eyes twinkle. He looks worse today, barely hanging on to his chair. Two crew members had to help him get to my cell.
“You know I am. Since the invention of airships two decades ago, the Shanans have gotten more visits from the outside world. Some of their younger tribe members are craving another life, and so the cat is out of the bag—or should I say the dragon out of her lair?” He chuckles at his own terrible joke.
“If our intel is right—and we’re pretty sure it is—Myrval still lives deep in the mountains, in her lair, and the local tribe has been feeding her for a century, sending goats to their death in hope to keep the beast appeased. ”
I shake my head in disbelief. Feeding dragons is not unheard of. They did it to bait Alduin, hoping to get her out of the Forsaken Mines. She ate ghoulishly, but they could never stop her from returning to her lair.
“And you want me to find the lair of five-century-old, human-hating dragon to steal her egg while she’s guarding it? You’re out of your godsdamn mind,” I say. “And who says she has an egg? A dragon this old…”
“They’ve been feeling the heat rise out of her lair for months. She’s been nesting.”
I sigh, dropping my head onto the wall behind me. “You’ve got to be kidding me…”
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime for a dragoner. You’ll be the first one to see Myrval in over a century. You could write a book about it…”
I scoff. “Only if you let me live.”
“If we get the egg, and it saves me—or even just gives me more time—I’ll make sure Hunter spares you. He’ll be grateful for your help. So, it’s in your best interest to cooperate.”
“And if we find the egg, what then? Do you really want to enrage the dragon responsible of the Reign of Fire?”
Clarence shrugs, his bony shoulders barely lifting. “She’s an old dragon who hasn’t come out of her lair for over a century. I doubt she will now. She might be crippled or too old to move.”
I’m trying to picture the dragon of legend, dark scales melting in the shadows deep under the mountain, and I shiver.
But again, what choice do I have?
They’ll find her lair eventually, with or without my help. With me on the adventure, I can at least try to do some damage control. And I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intrigued by the idea of seeing a dragon of legend.
I sigh. “Bring me a map of the Fangs.”
Clarence nods. “I’ll do better. You’ll leave this cell, and we’ll give you a desk to work at in the daylight. How does that sound?”
It sounds like I made a deal with the devil.
The Fangs are a range of jagged peaks, most of them too steep to ascend by even the most skilled climbers.
The tribe member who sold the secret of his people died before he could reveal where to find Myrval’s lair, and the tribe has since become more closed off.
So, it falls on me to narrow down its location.
Dragoners usually rely heavily on scorched marks to locate a lair, but Myrval hasn’t come out in decades, and I doubt there are any traces left.
I study the map in the late afternoon light. The air is chilly at this altitude, and snow hasn’t melted entirely on the mountainsides hidden from the sun. Clarence is lounging on a settee on my right, heavy-lidded eyes on me.
The entrance to the lair must be gigantic to admit a dragon that size, and hidden somewhere like the bottom of a canyon, if adventurers haven’t found it. But the biggest clue is the fact that Myrval hasn’t come out for a century, which means she must have fresh water in her cave.
I trace the paths of the many rivers on the map with my finger, then circle the locations with my pen. Then, I compare it with a map of the known Shanan villages.
“We’ll start south, and make our way north,” I announce. “Our best strategy is to visit as many places as we can.”
Clarence gestures, and Lord Darrington appears from the shadows behind a sail. He’s always watching us. He grabs my map without a word and takes it to his crew members.
Dread pools in my belly. What am I doing?
They let me sleep for a few hours on the upper deck, the icy wind ruffling my hair—I’m exhausted by the events of the last days—before a crew member wakes me by kicking my legs.
I glare at him. “When we get into the dragon’s lair, I’ll make sure you find yourself on the opposite end of her wrath.”
The man looks at me with anger and unease before walking away. It’s an empty threat. I can’t control what a centuries-old dragon does. But I’ll take all the victories I can get, even one as simple as making my captors worried for their lives.
I stand up and stretch my sore limbs.
“We’ve arrived at the first location,” Lord Darrington says as I make my way to the bow. “Do your thing.”
“ My thing …” I mumble angrily.
We’re hovering above a deep canyon carved into the mountain by the river. My eyes follow its path to where it emerges from the rocks and the glacier above.
I shake my head. “This one is too narrow to allow a dragon the size of Myrval. Let’s move to the next location.”
Lord Darrington’s lips thin with displeasure. “We’re pressed for time, Mr. Prince.”
“I know,” I retort. “But we’re looking for a lair that no one has found in centuries. Do you expect to just find it on the first try?”
“That’s why you’re here, dragoner.”
The threat is clear: find it for us, or we’ll throw you overboard.
But I’m not cowed. “Be my guest and try finding it without me.”
“Please… stop arguing…” says Clarence from his settee. His eyes are closed, and a sheen of sweat covers his forehead. He’s been suffering.
All anger disappears from Lord Darrington’s face as he sits by his lover’s side. He trails a gentle hand over his face and kisses him on the forehead. I have to turn away from the sheer misery reflected in his eyes. I hate the man, but his pain is contagious.
The next location we fly to is promising, but the Shanan villages are too far away, so we move on to the next.
It’s at the fifth location, with the sun setting behind the Fangs, that I point toward a slope near a canyon where a large herd of mountain goats is grazing.
“That’s a lot of goats,” I say as Lord Darrington walks to the bow. “We need to check this area thoroughly.”
He gives orders, and his crew readies the rope ladders.
It’s deep in the canyon that we find the entrance to Myrval’s lair a few hours later.
It’s hidden behind a giant waterfall pouring icy water from the glacier above.
No wonder adventurers never found it. We only did because I had a nagging hunch, and Lord Darrington sent his men swinging under the waterfall.
The climb alone would be impossible, but the Shanans dug a walkway along the cliff itself, hidden from above, to walk the goats to their end. A crew member reported giant claw marks in the rocks, almost erased by time.
“This is it,” Lord Darrington says, eyes bright from the liquid-fire lamps on the upper deck. “Ready to descend!”
“Now?” I ask, incredulous.
“Clarence’s sickness waits for no man. You’ll be going with the crew, Mr. Prince.”
“Of course I am.” I chuckle. “And you’ll be staying safely on the ship as we brave a murderous dragon for you.”
But Lord Darrington has already turned his back on me, uncaring about what I have to say.
A woman leads me below decks to a room full of equipment with four other crew members. They help me put on a kind of dragonhide suit, with a visor made of thick glass.
Ingenious , I think.
Blacksmiths have been using dragonhide aprons for over a decade to protect their bodies from the heat of their work, and this is the next step. A full-body armor to withstand the heat; with boots and gloves.
So, this is how they enter the lair of a nesting dragon.
The attire is cumbersome, but I’m certain I’ll be glad for it when we enter the lair. Although I wonder how we’ll climb the rope ladders like this.
I shouldn’t have wondered.
Moments later, they lead me to the center of the room, and it separates from the airship and drops slowly with thick cables, like an elevator with no walls.
I hold on to the railing, fear roiling in my belly and my fingers sweaty inside my gloves as we descend into the enormous gap.
The waterfall is loud enough to drown out even the sound of my breathing under the dragonhide helmet.
Droplets obscure my vision through the glass visor, and the darkness in the canyon is terrifying.
The basket stops a few meters from the cliff, and the crew members push a ramp toward the pathway dug into the rock by the Shanans.
I’m urged to follow them, panic gripping my entrails as I remember how the Blunder ’s previous dragoner met his end.
But a heartbeat later, I’ve crossed to solid ground.
I wipe the water from my visor with a clumsy gesture before following the glow of the liquid-fire lantern onward.
We walk for a minute to reach the waterfall, and even from the side where the flow is diminished, the water feels heavy enough to push me to my knees as I cross. For a moment, I fear the current will sweep me away and I’ll drown in the canyon below, but then I’m through.
The cave beyond is massive. Wide enough to allow three airships like the Blunder to enter at once.
We all freeze, caught in awe and fear of what lives within.
The glow from the liquid-fire lanterns can’t reach far.
But nothing stirs in the dark. Most dragons have their lairs deep in the mountains, to protect them from other dragons’ invasions. Fights are common for a prime spot.
My visor fogs for a moment, and I can’t see a thing, but then the water dries. They were right; heat is rising from the cave. Myrval is nesting.
“Damn it…” I whisper inside my helmet as we walk deeper into the dragon’s lair.