A Keeper’s Tale: The Story of Tomkin and the Dragon Read online

  * * *

  Tomkin's mind slammed into the words and reeled back.

  Lissa of Greentree? He was betrothed to Dragon-Lady Lissa?

  No one had mentioned him marrying anyone, never mind a girl whose temper was legendary.

  * * *

  I agree the escalations from Coastal Baylon are troubling, and a united front on our side would serve to give them pause.

  Lissa is a flame of joy in my life, even more so after our family’s recent tragedy.

  * * *

  Flame of joy? By all accounts, she was a terror. Tomkin had never had the misfortune to meet her, but her reputation was enough. Rumor was her servants were terrified of her, and even Princess Ellona hated her. Tomkin couldn’t remember exactly why, but he was sure it was true. Everyone said so.

  Tomkin had seen Princess Ellona once, from a distance, when he had gone to Queenstown with his mother. She looked the way he’d always imagined an elf might: like a sparkle of light, even amongst the glitter of the court.

  His father needed to find him a bride like the princess. Not Lissa.

  * * *

  I have heard of your son’s quick mind. It is an honor to him, and to yourself, that he is able to carry so much responsibility in your holding.

  As our children are of similar ages, I believe they have as fair a chance at happiness as any of us do. May their marriage be as companionable and fulfilling as yours, and as the one I enjoyed for so many years.

  Yours in hope of a long and beneficial partnership,

  Lord Norton of Greentree

  * * *

  Companionable and fulfilling?

  No.

  No, no, no.

  Marriage to a girl as unpleasant as Lissa of Greentree would be torture.

  The messenger cleared his throat. Tomkin looked up and caught a smirk before the man tucked it away into his weedy face. Villain.

  “Marshwell does not have an answer for Lord Norton today,” Tomkin said curtly.

  The messenger bowed and left. Tomkin glared at his back until the door shut behind him.

  “But we will have an answer.” Tomkin glowered at the door. His voice echoed back, weak and petulant. Tomkin tapped his quill against the letter.

  If his father were set on a match with Greentree, let Elton marry Lissa.

  His father wouldn’t do that, though. The truth was, if the duke was interested in an alliance with a duchy no more important than Marshwell, Tomkin was the obvious choice. Because Tomkin was the least valuable.

  Something in his chest shriveled a little. It was true, of course. Elton had earned fame in battles with Coastal Baylon. Tomkin, younger, smaller and untrained in combat, was left to trade bees for candles. But that was hardly Tomkin’s fault. If his father, brother, or any of the fighting men had been around for most of Tomkin’s life, someone would have taught him to fight and he’d be on the border with the soldiers, claiming victory and glory.

  Still, he had to be worth more than this.

  Tomkin tapped his quill harder on the paper. He’d just prove he was valuable enough to marry anyone—even Princess Ellona herself.

  With a sharp crack, the tip of Tomkin’s favorite quill broke off. A droplet of ink slid out of the jagged end, spreading into a large, black blot. Tomkin let the ruined quill fall onto the letter and dropped his head into his hands.

  Bees and candles weren’t going to win him glory. There was nothing heroic about negotiating. He needed something big, something worthy of a story. He needed something even his fearless brother had never done. He needed something—

  The door burst open and Tomkin’s head snapped up. A huge, wide-eyed man rushed.

  “Dragon!” the man gasped. “Dragon!”

  A claw of fear clamped down on Tomkin’s heart at the man’s stark terror.

  Well…yes, a small voice in his head said, something like a dragon.

  2

  A dragon in Marshwell!

  Tomkin’s heart felt as if it was galloping out of his chest. He shoved his chair back and raced to the window searching for smoke and chaos. He saw nothing but blue sky.

  “Not here, m’lord.” The man grabbed his wool hat off his head and clutched it to his chest. “It was across the river, this very mornin’, just as the sun comed up. A dragon flied down an’ grabbed one of me li’l lambs—right off the grasses where it were grazin’!”

  “A dragon?” Tomkin ran back to his desk and shoved papers aside looking for another quill.

  The man bobbed a fast, twitchy nod. “Throwed the lamb down, blowed fire on it until it was all charred and cooked, then et it up!”

  Tomkin paused. “It…cooked the sheep?”

  The man nodded, wide-eyed.

  Tomkin took a moment to look the man over. He was almost as big as the doorway behind him, with a grimy face and a neatly patched shirt. But if Tomkin set aside the man’s size, it was easier to see he had a soft, simple look about him. Not too old, but not young enough for the innocence in his expression.

  The man’s face was like one of the small children who tumbled about the holding, bringing their tales to Tomkin. Sagas of great battles fought behind the smithy, or the water demon they’d chased from the well. Stories of wildness and whimsy. Stories Tomkin wished were true. He had an entire book dedicated to their tales, a leather-bound volume sitting in a place of honor at the front corner of his desk.

  “I see.” Tomkin sank into his chair while his heart settled back into its usual place in his chest and reined in to a walk. He let his eyes run over the childlike man in front of him. He stifled a sigh that was part relief, part disappointment. There were no dragons in Marshwell.

  Smiling kindly at the man, he reached to the front corner of his desk, picked up the leather-bound book, and flipped to a new page. “What is your name, sir?”

  “Gerrold, m’lord.” He gave a quick, awkward bow, never taking his frightened eyes off Tomkin.

  Tomkin dipped the quill in some ink. “Please tell me everything that happened, Gerrold.”

  With much wringing of his hat, Gerrold repeated, three times, the very short story he had already told. Tomkin wrote it down, word for fantastical word.

  “How big was the dragon?”

  Gerrold spread his arms wide. “Dragon-sized.”

  “As it should be,” Tomkin answered him seriously. “What did it look like?”

  “Bright.” Gerrold swallowed hard. “Bright as death.”

  Tomkin raised an eyebrow and gave the man an approving nod. That was a phrase worth keeping. “And the dragon took a small sheep, cooked it, ate it, and then flew off.”

  “Yes sir…into Colbreth Castle, sir.”

  Tomkin liked Gerrold more every moment.

  Colbreth Castle. The only place in Marshwell that had ever been home to a dragon. Tomkin could think of no better place to imagine such a beast.

  “The hill my sheeps graze on—” Gerrold dropped his gaze to the floor. “—well what’s left o’ my sheeps now, is across the river from the ruins o’ the castle, so I seen it clear. That’s where the dragon went.”

  “It’s a fitting place.”

  “Yessir,” Gerrold nodded. “My granpap was grazin’ sheeps when the last dragon was there. From our hills, he saw the whole battle.”

  Tomkin set his quill down. “I would have loved to have seen that.” He motioned for Gerrold to follow him into the hall. “There’s the sword my Granduncle Horace used to fight that dragon.”

  Above the mantle, Scalebreaker sat on two large pegs, its blade made of plain steel, its ridged hilt unremarkable except for the fire-orange garnet nestled in the pommel. A flash of flame-colored light darted through the gem. There was something defiant in how it hung there.

  Gerrold looked at the sword with the unreserved wonder Tomkin felt the blade deserved. An idea struck Tomkin. He probably shouldn’t, but he couldn’t pin down exactly why not. Another glance at Gerrold’s awed face gave him the courage to do the thing he’d always dreamed of. So
mething he’d seen his father do only once, on a fire-lit night when a bard had filled the hall with words of glory and valor.

  Tomkin stepped onto the hearth, stretched up, and wrapped his hand around Scalebreaker’s hilt. The cold metal was fierce beneath his fingers. He lifted the sword. The blade slid off its peg and the tip plummeted, like a dragon plunging toward a lamb, until it clanked onto the floor. Gerrold’s mouth hung open in astonishment.

  That hadn’t gone as smoothly as he’d imagined. Tomkin gave Gerrold a weak smile. “Would you like to hold it?”

  The shepherd shook his head and clasped his hands behind his back. “No, sir.” He cast a worried look at Tomkin’s hand on the hilt. “Mama says I shouldn’t play with sharp things.”

  “Ah, yes. Very wise.” Tomkin shifted his hand on the hilt. So much for acts of kindness. Deciding he’d rather heave the heavy sword back onto the wall without an audience, Tomkin clinked it into the corner by the mantle.

  He went back to his desk and jotted a note. “Gerrold, I appreciate that you brought this news to us so quickly, even though you must be very upset over the—” He couldn’t say ‘roasting.’ “—the loss of your sheep. As a token of our gratitude, please take this note to the master of the sheep pens. He will help you to pick out a suitable replacement for the lamb that was taken.”

  The shepherd’s face lit up and he bowed again, awkward and bobbing. His smile was too pure for a grown man’s face—which reflected well on Gerrold, and poorly on the rest of the world. Tomkin gave the giant a short bow in return and watched him leave. He turned back to his book. Gerrold’s story was so quirky and foreboding, it didn’t need to be changed at all.

  The only thing that would make it better, was if it were true.

  What had Gerrold seen that had frightened him so much? It wasn’t a dragon, that much was certain. Dragons weren’t known for taking the time to roast their meals. Devouring, shattering, laying waste? Yes. Cooking? No.

  Besides, dragons didn’t come to Marshwell. There had been the one in his grandfather’s time. But, though it had done a fair amount of damage to several villages, the truth was it had been older, with a large scar on its side where it was missing scales. Marshwell’s only dragon had been elderly and defective.

  Gerrold had probably seen a copper eagle. An eagle was large enough to lift a lamb, and in the morning sunlight their coppery feathers would have shone bright enough for childlike Gerrold to have mistaken it for fire. His imagination would have filled in the rest.

  Just seeing Colbreth Castle would be enough to make anyone imagine dragons. Years ago Tomkin’s family had traveled south down the Great River. He could still picture the moment the boat had rounded the bend—there were the crumbling ruins of Colbreth Castle, perched halfway up a white cliff.

  It was a shame Gerrold’s story didn’t need to be investigated.

  Tomkin sighed, setting the story of the dragon aside, frowning at the uneven strokes the new quill had made.

  He had seen a copper eagle quill once, glowing like molten iron in the candlelight. Copper eagles were rare. If there really was one at Colbreth Castle, a quill made from one of those feathers would be…

  Maybe there was a reason to investigate after all.

  Tomkin glanced out the window. There was no one left waiting to see him. With his mother and most of the staff gone there was barely anyone in the holding at all. It would be better than sitting around brooding about his impending marriage sentence.

  Tomkin stepped out of his office into the empty hall and locked the door behind him. A glint of flame from the corner caught his eye, the sunlight flashing in the garnet on Horace’s sword. Tomkin walked to it and wrapped his hands around the hilt, lifting the blade so it caught the light. The heavy sword felt as though it could slice though the stone floor. It felt inexorable.

  “Are you going to fight the dragon?”

  Tomkin spun, pointing the tip at the large form of Gerrold, who stood in the doorway clutching a lamb to his chest. Gerrold gazed at him with such eagerness, such admiration, Tomkin straightened his shoulders. To someone like Gerrold, that was probably what this looked like. Tomkin was wearing his black tunic with the yellow and green shield of Marshwell on the sleeve. It wasn’t too different from the uniforms the soldiers wore under their armor.

  Unfortunately, it was impossible to fight an imaginary dragon. Not that he could say that to Gerrold. “I…I was just about to go check it out.”

  The giant man looked at the sword, speaking in a hushed, awed voice. “You’re takin’ Scalebreaker!”

  Tomkin hesitated. He’d been nervous taking it off the wall. The idea of taking it out of the hall was terrifying. He glanced at the sword. Either terrifying or thrilling.

  Gerrold beamed at him. “I didn’ realize how much of a hero you are, sir.”

  The weight of the word pushed Tomkin’s shoulders back down. “I’m not a hero.”

  The enormous man cocked his head, his face earnest. “How do you know?”

  Tomkin sighed. Let me count the ways. “I’ve read a lot of stories about heroes.”

  “Oh.” Gerrold looked at Tomkin, then glanced at the tiny lamb in his arms. His brow creased. “Maybe your stories don’t talk ‘bout all the kinds of heroes there are.”

  Tomkin looked at the fluff of wooly whiteness engulfed in Gerrold’s arms. If only heroics were as easy as giving away one of many lambs to a simple shepherd.

  Gerrold turned toward the door. “I’ll tell everyone! We’ll have a parade when you return!”

  A parade? After Tomkin had gone to scavenge eagle feathers?

  “Wait!” Tomkin called after the man. Gerrold turned back, puzzled. “I don’t think we should tell anyone what is happening. Don’t want to…spread panic….”

  Gerrold pondered this for a moment, then nodded sagely. “Very clever, sir. May I walk you to the river?”

  Tomkin couldn’t think of a good reason why not, so he nodded. But he couldn’t just carry Scalebreaker out of the hall. He almost put it back, almost explained the truth to Gerrold, but the man was watching him with such admiration, such hope, Tomkin couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  In the far corner, fastened around Granduncle Horace’s armor, was Scalebreaker’s scabbard. Tomkin took it and buckled it around his own waist, trying not to imagine how he was going to explain this to his mother.

  He walked out of the hall, his hand set casually over the glittering garnet. He and Gerrold walked past the page and out into the cobbled streets of the holding. The afternoon was warm and the people they passed were busy at their shops and trades. Tomkin tried to look nondescript as they passed through the outer wall and the village outside it. As though he were just an average soldier with a sword, instead of the duke’s son carrying Scalebreaker. The giant man beside him, shout-whispering encouragements, made it more difficult.

  Still, no one took much notice of them. At the docks, Tomkin tucked the sword into the bottom of a small rowboat and headed downriver toward the ruins of Colbreth Castle. Gerrold waved wildly and hurrahed after him until he was around the first bend.

  A wave nudged the boat and Scalebreaker clunked against the floor.

  “Don’t get too excited.” he told the sword. “You get a day tucked in the bottom of a rowboat, then it’s back on the wall.”

  The garnet glinted at Tomkin like a tongue of flame, and he sighed.

  “I know.” He put his back into the next row and the boat slid downstream. “I wish it was really a dragon too.”

  3

  Tomkin paddled his small rowboat down the Great River. Alone on the quiet water, Gerrold’s story nagged at him. The man was slow, certainly, but would he really mistake a copper eagle for a dragon?

  The white rocks along the western bank were stacked in rough layers, creating all sorts of nooks and shelves for bushes and vines to cling to. The farther south Tomkin went, the higher the rocks grew, until he was paddling along the base of a tall, white cliff.

  Th
e river carried our hero slowly, steadily toward the castle, through an unusually silent morning. That was bad. No hero had ever passed through an unnaturally silent place and then popped out the other side into normality.

  Tomkin paused rowing. The fresh, leafy smell of the river reeds glided past. He could hear birds chirping, but didn’t they sound a little too far away? He held his breath, listening.

  A shrill squawk from the riverbank gave him such a shock he almost dropped an oar. A brown bird in a bush watched him pass. Tomkin splashed a spray of water at it.

  “Fine,” he said to the bird, “it’s an ordinary day with ordinary noises. But that is very boring.”

  With a few more strokes, the boat passed around a long, lazy bend. There, sitting halfway up the cliff face, sat the ruins of Castle Colbreth.

  Tomkin’s breath caught. The ruins were even more perfect than he remembered.

  Made from the same white stone as the cliff, it looked as though rocks had pushed out of the ground, stacking themselves into a small walled castle. It had two towers: one round and mostly intact, the other square and squat and falling apart.

  The towers were separated by enough space for a small courtyard. The outer wall was dotted with arrow-slit windows, except along the front where three arched windows, huge and empty, gazed out over the river. A thin waterfall cascaded over the cliff above the castle, landed somewhere behind it, and reappeared from a small opening in the front before it plunged the rest of the way to the river.

  Tomkin fixed his eyes on the castle, watching for any movement. No wonder Gerrold had thought he’d seen a dragon here. It was the perfect place for one. Now he was here, he almost expected to see a flash of motion in one of the windows.

  Bright as death. The phrase wouldn’t stop tumbling around in Tomkin’s head, feeling less and less like a quirky phrase, and more and more like a warning. This day wasn’t going to end with him being eaten by a dragon, was it?