The Dragons' Lair Chapter 3

Chapter Three.

A Bored Prince.

Prince Finn was bored.

He sat slumped on the throne in the Great Hall. He was not supposed to sit there, it was his father’s chair, and as the youngest son he would never become King unless something happened to his elder brothers. He sincerely hoped nothing would. Becoming King looked like nothing but work and no play.

He turned over a bottle of seaweed fertiliser and read the label for the umpteenth time. Since the Kingdom had begun buying the stuff, the poor, thin soil of the mountain region had improved tremendously. His father, King Brinn, was outside now, supervising the spraying of the newly delivered fertiliser on the crops.

Both his brothers, and almost all the men of the Kingdom, were in the fields spraying. It was such important work that even the King took part, getting hot and sweaty and dirty alongside his subjects. Finn ought to have been there too, but he had twisted his knee so badly he could barely hobble.

The label showed a picture of a Dragon flying over a Castle by the sea. Finn sighed. He had never seen the sea, nor a Dragon. One day, he promised himself, he would ride to Sealand, wade in salty water, and see a Dragon with his own eyes. Certainly, none existed in this Kingdom. The oddest thing was that high above the Palace stood a single tower. The old maps named it Dragon’s Lair.

Finn had searched through every old record he could find, but none mentioned why it had that name, or whether Dragons had ever lived there.

The trouble was that, until recently, the Kings of this mountain country had been far more interested in fighting off the outlaws who infested the hills. Most of the rulers could not even read or write, so keeping records had never been high on their list of priorities.

“Too busy stealing cattle from their neighbours,” Finn had once remarked to his father, and received a sharp telling‑off for being impudent.

But one comment, scribbled on one of the oldest scraps of paper, kept him searching. Someone had added a single line to a list of taxes:

‘There are no more Dragons.’

Finn sighed again and went back to staring at the bottle, dreaming of Dragons.

His elder brother strode in.

“You’re going to get in trouble if Father sees you sitting on his throne,” said Glinn.

Finn scrambled to his feet. “Where is he?” He looked around nervously.

Glinn laughed and ruffled his hair. “Don’t worry. He’s too busy with the spraying to come in yet. He sent me for the last bottle, which I see you’ve been mooning over.”

He plucked the bottle from Finn’s hand. “Dreaming about Dragons and the sea again, are you?”

“One day,” muttered Finn.

“Aye,” said Glinn. “One day you might. But not today, and not tomorrow either. You’re not going anywhere until that leg heals.”

He tucked the bottle into his belt. “Back to work. And you never did say how you hurt yourself, did you?”

Finn shook his head. There was no way he was going to admit he had fallen while trying to climb up to Dragon’s Lair, especially as he had been expressly forbidden to go there.

Six weeks later, he tried again.

Early one morning he set out with a rope. This time he managed to reach the tower without injuring himself. There had once been a door, but it had long since rotted away. He stepped inside and explored.

There was very little to see. The tower had three small rooms on the ground floor, a set of stairs leading to two more rooms, and a final staircase up to the top. Every room was empty except for dust, and bat and bird droppings.

“What a waste of time,” he thought. He laughed. “What did I expect? A nest of tiny Dragons? Stupid of me.”

He turned to go. A beam of sunlight fell through the open doorway and lit up the back wall. A panel of tiny drawings appeared. Puzzled, Finn stepped back inside. The sun slipped behind a cloud and the drawings vanished.

“I need a torch,” he thought. “And some paper to copy these.” He sighed. “That means climbing up here again. If Father catches me, he’ll be furious.”

The next day Finn climbed up once more, carrying paper and crayons. The marks had been deeply scratched into the stone. Carefully he placed the paper over them and rubbed with the crayon. The shapes transferred clearly. He rolled up the paper and climbed back down to the Palace.

Unfortunately, his disobedience had been seen. He received a royal scolding and was ordered not to leave the Palace for a month.

In his room, he unrolled the paper.

He had expected drawings of men fighting a Dragon. Instead, to his astonishment, the pictures showed men feeding a Dragon. The next image showed the Dragon flying away, clearly not a prisoner. At the bottom was the same comment he had seen on the tax roll:

‘No more Dragons.’

He paced up and down. So, there had been Dragons at Dragon’s Lair, and they had been friends with men. But for some reason they had left.

“The only place I can find out what happened is where there are still Dragons,” he thought.

Very early the next morning, he prepared to leave. He packed money, clothes, food, and camping gear onto a pack horse. Leading it and his own horse out of the Palace, he mounted up and, without a backward glance, rode away.