Sheilah tossed and turned all night.
Dragonling blood was intoxicating, invigorating, what would the blood of an adult dragon be like?
Where should she shoot? Under the jaw, in the tender place between the jaw and the neck? In the eye? Behind the jaw? There was a weak point where the hide was flexible behind the forearm, where it joined the body. Should she fire there, and risk a shot to the heart?
What were the Ashlands truly like? Was the air truly poison? Was it a land filled with demons and monsters? Were there really giants? There were many totems, but there was no Totem of the Giant.
There would be plenty of time to sleep on the trip to the Ashlands, she supposed. Once the tension wore off on the trip, she’d be able to sleep. Who would be coming along with her? Likely Fialla, they were nearly the same age. Kellia and Sellia weren’t quite old enough, and they hadn’t filled their necklaces, either. There might be others from other tribes; she wasn’t sure. The important part was that each hunt was done alone.
A man (or woman) lived and died by their own strength. That was life in the Redstone, and that’s how it was in the Trial as well.
There were hundreds of stories from successful hunts. Some used spears, some used swords, some used the natural advantages of the Ashlands to lure dragons into opportune spots, but the results were the same: You killed a dragon, you drank some of its blood, you ate its heart, you cut out one of its mighty fangs and took a bone from the body as well as some of the hide so that you could craft your own weapon.
If you died, whatever was left of you was eventually brought home to the Valley. Dragon tooth weapons were impossible to break; they were forged from a dragon’s teeth, teeth that devoured unknowable beasts, teeth that crushed boulders, teeth that had been flame-tempered and forged in the fury of a dragon’s breath. Eventually, the weapons found their way home back to the Valley.
When she came back from the hunt, she would be considered an adult. No more leniencies would be allowed. She would be treated as an adult, with an adult’s responsibilities. She would be ready to choose a husband, mother children, and teach them the stories and songs, send them to trap whelplings.
She wasn’t ready at all to be an adult. She wasn’t ready to be an adult, but she’d outgrown the role of a child. It fit her like too-tight clothing.
She tossed aside the blankets and moved to the central fire, and nursed the coals into a small flame.
Eventually her father Davian joined her. He didn’t say anything, simply put a small pot over the firepit and brewed tea.
“When I was your age, Adlan and Lonato taught me, together, what it meant to be a child of the Dragon Clan. What it meant. The responsibilities, the stories, the rituals, the ancient ways and what they meant to us. They taught me what it meant to be of the Clan of the Tyrant.”
He paused. “My father didn’t like it. He ...” he let out a sigh. “Father believed in the men from Stormheim. He worked in the stables. He made horseshoes for the Stormheim horses that the Stormheim men rode through our valleys.” He let out another sigh. “I believed in my grandfather and great-grandfather more than I did my father. Everyone treated him like a traitor. Worse, they looked at him as less than a man. He didn’t hunt; he’d never even been to the Ashlands.”
He spoke in a low voice, and prodded the fire with a stick.
Sheilah’s eyes were wide at this. Nobody spoke of Rawls, her grandfather. Not by name, not by mention. He wasn’t in their songs and stories.
“My grandfather and great-grandfather had an argument with my father. He was a disgrace. A humiliation in the eyes of the Tyrant. He was leading us down the path of ruin.”
The fire cast flickering light on the face of her father, he was irritable and moody.
“I couldn’t take it. I took my grandfather’s knife, my great-grandfather’s sword, and I headed for the Burning Wastes on my own. I was impatient, angry, frustrated, upset.”
He let out a breath. “There, I found my dragon. I bested my dragon. I came home in triumph, a song of valor on my lips and a dragon tooth on my back. I thought... I thought it might... mean something to my father. Show him what it meant to me, what it meant to all of us.”
His face twisted.
“He was there when I was sold as a slave to the Stormheim men. The Clans are savages, with no understanding of the culture of men. It was perfectly fine to buy and sell the Clansmen because we weren’t human.”
He spat into the fire.
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“The Tyrant will judge me for this, but he... wasn’t completely wrong, you know.”
She gave him a puzzled look.
“The men of Stormheim were once clansmen like us, though from a different land. They’d come together and put aside their differences. They stopped living in huts and caves and tents and built homes from wood and stone. Taught themselves how to do it, generation after generation.” He sighed again.
“In a hundred years- or a thousand, our clans will do the same. We’ll set aside differences. Rites and rituals and stories and songs will be forgotten. We’ll build our own cities. That’s what people do. In a way, the men of Stormheim just wanted to hurry us along.” He paused. “What they did was wholeheartedly wrong in every way you can describe it... but it will eventually happen to us in the way it happened to Stormheim.”
“I can’t accept that.” Sheilah spat.
He gave her a sardonic chuckle. “I wonder if you’ll feel that way two years from now. Ten. Fifty.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “I’ll wait for you long after my bones are dust and ash, and when you die, I’ll ask you again, soul to soul.”
He poured tea for the both of them.
“If you can’t wait to leave for your hunt, your things are just outside. I was young and impatient too.” He paused. “I still am, in some ways. Ladria accuses me of it from time to time.”
“I can... leave? Just like that?” She asked.
He nodded. “You’re absolutely free. If you want to go, you’ll go with my blessing. Fialla might yell at you when she catches up, however.”
He took a drink of his tea and eyed her over the cup.
“And when I come back, we’ll have a conversation, right?” She asked.
He nodded. “No secrets.”
She swallowed her tea. “I ... think I’ll go.”
He nodded. “I was impatient, too. There’s value to be found in patience, though. Remember that.” He levered himself to his feet. “Before you go, though...”
He disappeared into the area he shared with his two wives, and came back with a bundle that he indifferently tossed at her. He moved into the kitchen and selected meat, several wheels of goat cheese, a bottle of water, and some bread.
She opened the bundle and discovered a change of clothing, and some of the absorbent strips of cloth that were used to deal with the feminine condition.
He came back from the kitchen, and then sat down opposite the fire from her again.
“I’ll give you some advice, first: Don’t go into the Ashlands if you’re... if your monthly visitor has arrived. They’ll smell the blood.”
“The dragons?” She asked.
He shook his head. “Everything.” He replied.
She nodded.
“Secondly, take my sword. It doesn’t have a storied history of legend and lore.” She frowned at that, but took it anyway. It didn’t quite feel as alien and strange as the other weapons her family carried, but it wasn’t her weapon.
“Finally...” there was a great deal of reluctance in his posture in his voice. Whatever he was going to do, he didn’t want to do it.
He pulled out a very slim steel dagger, with a blade as thin as her two fingers and a bit longer than his hand. The handle was some carved yellow ...thing that didn’t seem to be stone or bone. An iridescent stone glimmered between pommel and blade. The blade was very fine and sharp, the sheath was steel as well, with some sort of leather padding inside to keep the blade from slipping out.
“You should take this with you when you face the Tyrant.”
She eyed him narrowly across the fire. The people of the Clan used dragonbone, dragon teeth, and dragon metal. Only the people from Stormheim used steel.
“Why?”
“I’ll answer that when you come back. For now, know that you should take it with you into the Ashlands.”
“This-”
“-Has a story that goes with it, one that I can only tell you when you come back.” He cut her off.
She finished her tea, took the bundles, and stepped out of the tent.
The nights in the Valley were freezing. She dressed in her leathers, which had been waiting outside, in the cold. She knew they’d eventually warm with her body heat, but it wasn’t doing her any favors now. The leather was cold and stiff and difficult to move in. She belted on her father’s sword and tucked the sheathed dagger into her boot. She settled her quiver on her hip, took up her bow, and began walking out of camp with a determined stride.
The passes to the Ashlands called to her with a siren song she didn’t hear, only felt in her bones and blood, and she hurried towards them as quickly as she could. The mazes of twisting canyons, hills and steppes was vast and stretched for miles in every direction that brought confusion to those that didn’t call it home. Even the Clans that called it home didn’t know the whole of it, if what Sheilah had heard of the land from the Clan leaders was true.
It was possible that they were lying; you kept your territory secret, after all. The Clans were one, but your clan came before the others. The Clan was everything, but the Tribe came first. The Tribe was everything, but your family came first.
Your family was everything, but before that, you lived and died by your own strength.
If you completed the preparations, then you were sent into the Burning Lands to hunt your Totem, subjugate it, make it yours. By making it yours, you joined the line of your ancestors that reached all the way back to the Beginning. The Trial. The rite of passage that made adults of children.
Sheilah had been preparing for it for as long as she could remember. Her little sisters were still preparing. Her friend Fialla had been preparing. Sheilah had no doubt that Fialla would be right behind her.
By the time she hit the valley floor, she was running.