6. Aurora
AURORA
The deep baritone voice belonged to a tall, well-built cadet with broad shoulders and thick, black hair pulled back to the nape of his neck.
There was something strange about his eyes, but I couldn’t tell what it was from this distance.
The sunlight danced across his temples and high cheekbones in a way that made me think he was wearing some kind of jewelry, which was odd since any kind of facial jewelry was strictly forbidden at the Academy.
A cadet couldn’t even have his ear pierced—let alone anything more exotic.
“Oh—that’s Ryse Skoren now,” Jorn-o muttered to me. “Better listen up and do as he says—he’s the North Wing’s Wing Leader. He flies a Midnight Gold-wing, you know,” he added, with a touch of awe in his voice.
I did remember my father talking about the four different formations of dragons, each named for a different point of the compass.
He’d said that once the Academy had housed forty full formations of dragons, but as fewer female dragons were born and fewer eggs were laid, fewer riders were needed.
Now there were only four formations or “Wings” left.
It was a good thing all the Madlings had been killed years ago—the Old Drake didn’t house enough riders to take care of them now.
“The Academy is mostly living on past glory,” my father used to say. “But someday the Madlings will come back, and we’ll rise again—then they’ll need every last rider and drake we have to burn them from the sky and the rest of the kingdom will sit up and take notice!”
“New recruits follow me,” Ryse Skoren called in his deep voice. “You’ll be attending an opening lecture by our Head Master and then you’ll be heading to Level Three for your academic aptitude testing.”
“Aptitude testing?” I muttered to Jorn-o as we all surged forward.
“Oh yeah, the entrance exam.” He nodded.
“The professors need to know where you are in your studies so they can know what classes to place you in.” He brightened.
“You know, if you score really well, you can get placed in the Second-year classes which means you can also stay in the Second-year rooms.”
“Does that mean I could skip the dorm?” I asked anxiously, thinking that it would be much easier to live with only a single roommate rather than twenty boys.
Jorn-o nodded.
“It’s rare, but it does happen. Once they had a boy who skipped all the way up to Third-year, but that’s rare. Apparently his parents had been paying for a private tutor, and he was some kind of genius.”
Well, I didn’t know about being a genius but the tutor my father had hired for Auren had been extremely strict and thorough. Could I possibly make a high enough score to keep myself out of the First-year dorms? I didn’t know, but I was determined to try.
“Of course, we won’t be the only ones taking the tests,” Jorn-o remarked.
We were climbing the polished stone steps by this time, about to enter the vast, cavernous entrance of the Academy which was carved into the side of the mountain.
A blast of warm air hit me, blowing out of the dormant volcano and ruffling my newly shorn hair.
“Who else would be taking them?” I asked curiously. I was glad that Jorn-o had found me. It was useful to know someone who’d lived here for years.
“Oh, mostly Second-years that flunked their finals,” he said. “They have to sit for the entrance exams all over again and if they don’t score high enough, they get booted down to the First-year dorms and they have to take the First-year classes all over again.”
“They don’t get kicked out?” I asked, frowning.
“Oh, no—you can’t kick them out.” Jorn-o looked shocked.
“By the time they’re Second-years, they already have a dragon.
Where’s the dragon going to go if you get rid of his rider?
And how can a rider on his own feed his dragon?
That’s why the meadow lands around the Old Drake are filled with flocks—you can’t have a twelve-ton beast roaming around the countryside hungry. That’s a recipe for disaster.”
“Oh…I hadn’t thought about that,” I confessed.
“Once they bond, the rider and his dragon are one,” Jorn-o lectured.
“You can’t have one without the other. Trying to separate them would drive both of them mad with grief.
Oh, sorry—I don’t mean they would actually go mad,” he added, casting a quick sidelong look at me.
“I just meant, you know, it wouldn’t be good for them. ”
Clearly, he thought he had offended me. I remembered how his father, Jorn, had told me that everyone at the Academy knew what had happened to my father and his dragon—did they all believe the pair of them had gone mad?
I really didn’t know what had happened myself. My father’s claim that he had been bitten by a Madling could certainly be a sign of madness, I supposed. But I hoped not everyone knew about his shameful fate.
“It’s not—” I began but by then we were entering the Academy with a crush of boys around us. I didn’t want to speak about my father and his death in such crowded conditions, so I just shook my head and looked around.
The high, arching entryway was big enough for a full-grown Gold-wing dragon to walk through—if one had wanted to.
The stone walls and the vast, arching ceiling were a warm, reddish brown swirled with burnt umber and black.
They were smooth and shiny—polished by dragon fire, so my father had said.
The many babbling voices of my new roommates filled the space with chatter that sounded twice as loud as it had outside in the Receiving Bowl.
We followed the broad back of the cadet Jorn-o had told me was Ryse Skoren through the entrance of the Academy and into a vast, echoing chamber with a kind of stage or dais at the far end. There were wooden seats lined up in rows and we all sat down facing it.
Unfortunately, the boy in front of me was extremely tall and broad in the shoulders. His hair was cut short and flat against his rather lumpy skull and his ears stuck out on either side in a way that would have been comical if it wasn’t so hard to see around him.
I thought about asking Jorn-o to switch seats with me—the boy in front of him was relatively short. Or at least, shorter than the giant in front of me. But would that be a girly kind of request to make?
As I was hesitating, Jorn-o saw the problem and offered to switch himself.
“Here—you take my chair,” he murmured. “That way you can see the Head Master better.”
“Oh, thank you. But will you be able to see?” I asked doubtfully.
He shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve been here all my life—I know what he looks like.”
In that case, I was more than willing to switch.
“All right, thanks,” I said.
Since everyone was getting seated, I jumped up hurriedly to take him up on the offer, before everyone got situated and the opening speech began. But as I did, my knee knocked against the wooden back of the chair in front of me.
It wasn’t a very hard rap—I didn’t weigh enough to do more than just tap the chair. But the tall, lumpy boy sitting in it spun around immediately, glaring at me.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, newbie?” he snarled, his lips peeling back to reveal yellow, horse-like teeth.
“I…I’m sorry,” I managed to get out. I couldn’t understand why he was so angry when I’d barely touched his chair. “Just trying to switch seats because I can’t see over your head.”
His small, colorless eyes narrowed.
“Something wrong with my head, newbie?”
By now most of the boys in both my row and his were watching us, but I barely noticed them.
“Just that I can’t see through it,” I snapped back. “You make a better door than a window.”
This made the boys on either side of us snicker, which made the blobby boy even more angry.
“You better sit back down or I’m gonna fuck you up, newbie,” he snarled at me. “Gonna fuck you up good.”
He really was remarkably ugly, I thought distractedly.
He had a broad nose but almost no lips to speak of.
His eyes were too small for his large face and set too closely together.
Angry patches of acne were scattered across his forehead and cheeks and some of his pimples looked ready to pop at any moment.
The sight turned my stomach, or it would have if my stomach wasn’t already clenched in fear. Why was this boy so angry with me? His face was turning purple, and his big hands were balling into fists as big as boulders—it was as though he hated me just for existing. But why?
“Be careful, Auren,” Jorn-o muttered to me from the corner of his mouth. It was as though the angry boy in front of me was a ticking bomb he feared might go off at the least provocation.
“Hey, what’s going on down there?” The voice came from the end of the row, and I saw it was Ryse Skoren again. He was frowning at both of us, as though I had decided to anger the lumpish boy on purpose.
“This little fucker kicked my chair,” the boy was seething now. “Keep out of it, Skoren! I’m gonna teach him a lesson.”
“No, you won’t! Stand down, Larson.” The Wing Leader’s voice cracked like a whip in the echoing cavern. “It’s not the boy’s fault you’re spoiling for a fight because you have to retake the entrance exam,” he added.
For the first time I noticed that the lumpish boy whose name was apparently Larson was wearing a cadet’s uniform like the Wing Leader was. Could he be one of the older cadets who had flunked his final exams that Jorn-o had been talking about?
“He kicked my chair and said my head looked like a door!” Larson raged. He was nearly frothing now—I had never seen such rage and it frightened me.
Ryse Skoren seemed to see there was no getting through to him without some kind of de-escalation. He looked at me and I saw his strange eyes flash. What was it about them? I wished I could get a closer look to see the differences Jorn-o had mentioned.
“All right you—whatever your name is—make a formal apology to Larson for kicking his chair,” he snapped at me. “Hurry up about it. The Head Master is about to speak.”
“A…a formal apology?” I asked uncertainly.
“Yes.” The Wing Leader sounded thoroughly exasperated. “Simply state your full name and his full name and say that you formally apologize.”
I was tempted to point out that I hadn’t kicked Larson’s chair on purpose and that it was ridiculous for him to get so angry about such a small thing. But I sensed that would have only caused more problems and I was already drawing a lot more attention to myself than I wanted to.
“I, Auren Lysandra of the Great House of Lysandra make a formal apology to you, uh…” I wasn’t sure of the cadet’s full name. Given the circumstances, I thought I was lucky that I’d remembered my own—or rather, my brother’s.
“Chud Larson,” Jorn-o whispered helpfully.
Chud? Really? It was a name that fit him—as lumpish and ugly as he was, I thought. But I kept that idea to myself.
“I Auren Lysandra make a formal apology to you, Chud Larson, for accidentally kicking your chair,” I said, making sure he knew I hadn’t done it on purpose.
“Good.” Ryse Skoren nodded. “Now, the boy has made a formal apology, Larson. That’s the end of it,” he added, frowning at the still-seething cadet.
“For now,” Larson muttered, giving me one more hard look before turning around in his seat.
“All right.” Ryse Skoren was frowning as though he wasn’t quite sure things really were settled. “You—Lysandra,” he said, pointing at me. “You’d better switch seats with someone. Come on—hurry up.”
“That’s what I was trying to do.” I couldn’t quite keep the exasperation out of my voice.
But I seemed to have said the wrong thing because the Wing Leader’s strange eyes narrowed.
“Cadet,” he said sharply. “Are you taking a tone with me?”
“What? Er, no Sir,” I said quickly. To my horror, I felt my cheeks heating with a blush. I cursed my pale skin that made my embarrassment so obvious.
“Good, because I just saved your ass,” he said. “Now do as I tell you and switch seats. The Head Master will be on stage at any minute.”
“Yes, Sir,” I said humbly. Quickly and quietly, I switched seats with Jorn-o—which was, of course, what we’d been trying to do earlier—and settled down in my new chair where I could mostly see over the head of the boy in front of me.
Jorn-o obviously couldn’t see over Chud Larson’s head any more than I could, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. He settled beside me and looked straight ahead until Ryse Skoren gave a short, sharp jerk of his chin—as though he was finally satisfied—and stalked off.
But though Larson had turned to face the stage again, I could tell by the set of his broad shoulders and the redness of his large ears that he was still fuming.
Looking at him, I had a bad feeling that something had been started which couldn’t easily be ended…and there was nothing I could do about it.