Rembrien Chapter 7.

Chapter 7.

The Dragon’s Heart.

 They rode out together at first light. Sophrayni led.

Shade moving with quiet purpose.

Captain Smike followed on a borrowed mount, his posture alert but relaxed. Blossom rode side-saddle, her apron tucked away and her satchel of charms slung across her shoulder.

Just beyond Weedon, they passed a half-dozen stone towers, broken and leaning like forgotten sentinels. Shade stopped and looked back at Sophrayni.

“He wants us to stop here,” she said. “I wonder why.” She turned to Blossom. “You’re from this area. What do you know about these ruins?”

Blossom frowned. “I’ve passed them dozens of times. I’ve never really thought about them.”

“We used to play here when I was little,” said Captain Smike. “There’s nothing here but stones and old leaves.”

“There must be something to make Shade stop,” said Sophrayni.

“We could always ask old Yakob,” Blossom suggested. “He knows all the old stories. His cottage isn’t far; he always says the town is too noisy for him to concentrate on his documents.”

They found Yakob in his usual place: the sunken porch of the old bookbindery, wrapped in shawls and surrounded by scraps of parchment. His beard was a map of years, and his eyes held the weight of stories too old to be written.

Sophrayni bowed her head. “We’ve come about the towers.”

Yakob blinked slowly. “Ah. The Watchers. I have a poem, long as a winter night. Took me years to piece it together. Some of it was written on tree bark, would you believe?” He looked at them eagerly.

Captain Smike folded his arms. “Can you give us the short version?”

Yakob chuckled. “I can give you the bones. The flesh you’ll have to imagine.” He cleared his throat, his voice rasping like wind through reeds.

“The towers were built for dragons, not to bind them, but to house them. Seven in number, seven in service. They were the King’s messengers, and faithfully they did their task for a hundred years. Then, as dragons must, they went to sleep. A hundred years that slumber lasted. When they woke, the world had changed. No feast was laid. No songs remembered. The people saw monsters, not allies. Hungry and ignored, the dragons flew north, seeking the Ice Queen’s herd. She caught them and bound them in frost. There they remained, out of time, until the Witch of the Dark Forest released them.”

Sophrayni nodded excitedly. “I read that in Calizone's diary! Though it was only a very short entry.”

Old Yakob frowned and coughed. “That may be, but I thought you wanted to know the tale.”

“Sorry,” said Sophrayni. “Please go on. We’re very grateful.”

Yakob sniffed and continued. “The eggs weren't found in the towers at first. They lay beneath a dead lizard, just inside the eastern gate. I never did understand that bit... Anyway, a girl found them, young, curious, unafraid. She raised them. She became their keeper, their voice, their mother. But the lizard had a heart of magic. Not life-magic, but something older. She kept it. Hid it. A red, heart-shaped jewel. As she grew old, she feared the heart could fall into the wrong hands. So, she went through the eastern gate.”

Yakob stopped. “The poem keeps going on about gates, but no one seems to know where they are.”

“Never mind the gates,” said Sophrayni impatiently. “Keep going.”

“Where was I? Ah, yes. She went through the gate and brought a box with her, made from the wood of a tree that doesn’t grow in this world. She locked the heart in it and hid the box somewhere in the towers. As time passed, all people remembered was that there was a box of treasure. Many searched, but none found it.”

He finished with a flourish.

They left Yakob with thanks and quiet thoughts. Shade moved ahead, ears twitching, nose low to the ground. They passed through a narrow gap where the land fell away into a deep, shadowed valley.

Sophrayni paused in the gap, her hand resting on the rough stone. The rock was cold with memory. She closed her eyes, and the stone spoke, not in words, but in the rhythm of a sudden, violent flood that had once emptied a great lake, leaving the valley floor bare and the towers stranded like bones.

“This place remembers,” she whispered.

They descended into the boggy valley floor. As they reached the centre, the air changed. Sophrayni stopped abruptly. The magic here was thick, raw, and unfiltered.

“We can’t go further,” Sophrayni said, her voice tight. “The magic is too strong for us to touch.”

“Then I’ll go,” Captain Smike said.

As a non-magic user, he stepped into the fog alone. In a hollow where the reeds parted, he found a wrecked boat and a pale skeleton. Beside it sat an open wooden box. Inside, the red jewel glinted.

Smike reached out carefully and closed the lid.

The moment it clicked, the pressure vanished. The magic recoiled. Smike brought the box back to Sophrayni.

“Whoever that was must have found the box in the towers and tried to escape across the lake,”       Sophrayni mused. “Opening it likely brought down the squall that sank him.”

“Looking at the hoof prints,” Smike noted, “I think a herd of deer kicked it open recently.”

As they climbed out of the valley, Sophrayni felt the fear that had gripped Weedon finally unravelling. The "dark tide" had withdrawn.

“This wasn’t a gate,” she murmured, “but now we know one is near. The poem says she went through the eastern gate. This valley is east of Weedon. My gate is west, Rembrien’s is north. There must be another gate further east.”

They parted company at the ruined towers. Captain Smike took the King’s portraits to his next destination, and Blossom returned to her people.

“You’re the strongest witch there’s ever been,” Blossom said in parting. “You’ll get home.”

Sophrayni watched them go, then mounted Shade, “Choose your road,” she said to him.