“Just rest, boy. Don’t try to talk, or even think right now,” Master Kember spoke soothingly. He saw that the wound on the side of Jenka’s face was already healing, but he paid the unnatural phenomenon no mind.

“We’ll get some hands to haul you up out of this ditch, and a travois to drag you home so that your witchy mother can fill you full of her herbs and her horrible tas ng po ons and whatnot.”

While they waited for help, Master Kember went over the scene again. He saw that something heavy had stepped on and smashed Jenka’s long bow. He decided that maybe he would take the boy down to Three Forks and help him pick out a new bow. He figured Jenka was growing and needed a heavier draw now anyway. He then decided that as soon as Jenka

healed a li le bit he would take him all the way to King’s Island. There he would get an audience with King Blanchard and tell him firsthand of what happened here so that the gossipmongers didn’t get the tale stretched out too far. A knot began to form in his gut telling him it might not be the right thing to do, that he had some heavy decision making to do soon. Jenka’s father probably hadn’t wanted his son to be a mere King’s Ranger. It was a short-lived profession for most, but a well-paid one. Either way, it had always been Jenka’s dream, and Master Kember was sure that Jenka’s father would have wanted him to be happy. He would think on the ma er, and he and Jenka could talk about it later.

“Master Kember!” a distant voice shouted. Jenka figured it was Solman and probably Rikky too. Grondy wouldn’t be with them because of his hand. Jenka knew Grondy would have tried to come look for him with the others, but his ma would have corralled him in the farm house, and then thumped him good for the effort. Jenka started to chuckle because he was certain that he was right. Grondy was probably locked in his room this very moment, rubbing the knots on his head and wondering if Jenka was all right.

Jenka was surprised that it didn’t hurt when he laughed. He poked at his scalp where he had felt hot blood pulsing out of him the night before and was further surprised to feel nearly healed scar ssue where a fresh raw scab should be. His finger ps were healing too. A vague memory of Jade’s eyes flashing crimson and the ngling of his skin under that intense gaze made him wonder. Had Jade magicked him? His mother might know.

Master Kember heaped an armful of green, leafy foliage onto the ashy remains of Jenka’s larger fire. Nothing happened at first, but slowly smoke started rising up and branches began to pop and crackle in the heat.

Soon a billowing pillar of smoke was roiling up and out of the gulch, only to be sheared off by the wind when it rose above the treetops.

“Spo ed!” Rikky’s distant voice called out proudly. Of the small group of hunters that Master Kember looked over, he was the youngest. At thirteen summers old Rikky was probably going to end up being the best of them all.

Jenka and Grondy were born the same year and were the next youngest. Solman was the oldest student, but Lemmy was the oldest of the group save for Master Kember himself. Lemmy was more of an assistant than a pupil, though. He earned a wage, and he tracked as well as anyone in the whole fron er. Every once in a while, the King’s Rangers would come over from the keep and ask Master Kember or Lemmy to help them with something or another. Unlike the village folk, the King’s Rangers favored Lemmy for some reason. They treated him with the utmost respect, which had always piqued Jenka’s curiosity. The King’s Rangers had more or less accepted Lemmy as one of their own, which, in the past, had some mes made Jenka a li le jealous. Even though his father’s picture hung in the keep's main hall, the Rangers were never par al like that to Jenka. They made sure that he and his mother were well fed, but they treated Jenka like any other village boy. He would have asked Lemmy about it, but it embarrassed him watching Lemmy struggle to convey a message without being able to speak.

Things got bad for Jenka for a while. Solman and Rikky were anything but gentle when they half hauled, half dragged him up out of the gully. The long, bumpy ride on the travois was even worse. Though he shouldn’t have felt as confident about it as he did, he decided that he probably could have just ridden one of the horses, but the idea that his friends -- and his

mentor -- might shun him for having been magicked by a dragon caused him to keep his returning strength and vigor to himself.

He felt his head wound again, and he was sure that he was feeling par ally-healed scar ssue now. By the me they finally made it into Crag, Jenka was star ng to think that the dragon really had done something to him. Jenka’s wild, gray-haired mother came hurrying out into the street to greet her son, but was waved off by one of the young rangers gathering around his travois. Without a thought, she shouldered the King’s Ranger who had waved her away to the side and, a er kissing Jenka on the forehead, she poured a vial of foul-smelling liquid down his throat.

“You killed a half dozen trolls, then?” Captain Brody, the head of the King’s Rangers, asked over the worried mother's shoulder.

Two of the other rangers were razzing the one she had just bullied aside, but stopped cold when they heard their captain’s words.

“Here,” Master Kember handed something that was green and shimmering to his former commander. “The boy said it was a black, but I found this. It was dark.”

“Dragon scale,” Captain Brody took it and gave Jenka a dubious look.

He reached out and touched the pink scar under Jenka’s blood-ma ed hairline and, a er glancing down at the discarded vial of ke le-witch po on, he gave a short snort of disbelief. To Master Kember he said: “I’ll send a message by swi er hawk to Commander Corda down in Three Forks. He’ll get a message to King Blanchard that will be on the next boat to King’s Island.” Then in a more commanding and enthusias c tone he said: “Digger, you and Balkir go round up the Rangers. We’ve got us another dragon to hunt!”

Chapter Three

The King’s Rangers combed the area around the carnage, but they never found Jade. They did find another dead troll over the ridge. There was a pinky-sized piece of broken dragon claw stuck in its wound. The young Ranger who had tried to hush Jenka’s mother had it drilled and put on a leather thong for her as an apology. She scoffed at him, but didn’t hesitate to put it in her pocket. It would fetch a pre y penny down in Three Forks in one of the hawker’s lots.

Jenka played the wounded young boy as long as he could fake it, which was only about four days. He limped around and groaned a lot, but since the morning a er they had dragged him home he had been feeling be er than he ever had in his life. Because of his seemingly quick recovery, several of the rangers were buying po ons from his mother now.

One day, Jenka came in from helping the baker chop down a bothersome tree and found the small table he and his mother shared laden with meat and savory smelling vegetables. He thought that she had just decided to splurge un l she turned from her iron pot and started swa ng at him and urging him out to the trough to get cleaned up for dinner. It turned out that they were going to have guests at their table this night.

It was only Master Kember and Lemmy who were going to dine with them, but they were as welcome in the modest, thatch-roofed hut as the king himself would have been. The old hunter had come to ask Amelia De

Swasso’s permission to take Jenka to Three Forks and then on to King’s Island, where they would spend a few weeks in an inn and a end the Sols ce Fes val, and hopefully get an audience with King Blanchard. He explained that Lemmy would be staying behind and would come by and take care of the heavy chores so she wouldn’t be inconvenienced too much by Jenka’s absence. He told her that Solman and Rikky were going with the group to compete in the contests. “We will be travelling in a well-armed group. It will be a safe and informa ve journey for Jenka, I assure you,”

Master Kember finally finished.

“I’ll let him go, Marwick Kember,” Jenka’s mother said harshly. “But don’t you tell me them roads is safe and all that. I know be er. Don’t even try to pull the wool over my eyes or I’ll shrivel your stones with a hex.

Them trolls are ge ng riled up ‘bout something, and there’ll be sneak-thieves and Outland bandits betwixt Three Forks and Outwal, and pirates once you’re out of the harbor at Port. I was born out on Freemans Reach and I spent my middling years on King’s Island brewin’ po ons for a Witch of the Hazel ne. Any fool who thinks a journey across the fron er is going to be safe will pay their price. Now you tell that handy dimwit of yours to keep me stocked in cut wood, meat, and bear scat while Jenka’s away, or when you return I’ll … ”

And so it went un l the table was cleared. Master Kember was happy to be on his way. He wasn’t used to being scolded and harped at, and it showed plainly that his pa ence was worn completely through.

During dinner, Lemmy seemed to fade into his own shadow and did a good job of staying unno ced, but within minutes of the serving dishes being removed from the table, he had the horses ready to go.

To Jenka, the prospect of the journey was more exci ng than anything he could have ever imagined. The group was to leave at the end of the week on horses the King’s Rangers would provide. An escort made up of two green Foresters and one seasoned old Ranger named Herald, who Master Kember always spoke highly of, would ride with them to Three Forks. That would take about four days. From there they would hire a wagon and travel for another day with an armed caravan un l they were on the other side of the Great Wall that separated Port and Mainsted from the wild, mainland fron er. In Port, they would board a ship and sail to King’s Island. Then there was the audience with the king, and the Sols ce Fes val to look forward to. It was all Jenka could do to keep s ll. His only regret was that Grondy wouldn’t get to go with them.

The morning before the group was planning to leave, Jenka walked out to his best friend's farm to tell him goodbye. Grondy’s hand was healing nicely, but his father needed him on the farm. They had go en a contract to grow hay and corn for some ranchers down in Three Forks.

Grondy’s des ny, it turned out, wasn’t with the King’s Rangers. It was behind an ox and a thresher in one of the foothill’s golden valleys. Jenka didn’t want to taunt his friend with what he would be missing, so he held back with his descrip on of the coming journey. Even so, Grondy confessed that he wanted to go more than anything. It was a sad par ng, and Jenka spent a few long moments a er he got down the lane from the growing farm studying the trees and wiping the dust from his eyes.

Later that a ernoon, a group of King’s Rangers came riding into Crag all bloody and raving about a kill. “We got that dragon!” they bragged.

“Felled him way back in Calf Horn Valley.”

They had come to fetch Master Kember and Lemmy, but when they stopped by Jenka’s hut to purchase some healing po ons from his mother, they drew Jenka into it too. He was lucky that Master Kember waved him over and handed him the reigns of the horse intended for Lemmy. Lemmy was nowhere to be seen, and Jenka was too worried that the rangers had just killed Jade to care about anything else. He mounted the offered animal and followed Master Kember and the rangers out of Crag and up into the hills. They rode un l dark, then the rangers lit torches for them to see by, and they rode some more. Jenka figured that they were already deeper into the foothills than he had ever been before.

The group came out from under the sparse trees and topped a ridge overlooking an open, starlit valley. Off to one side of the open space, along what appeared to be a washed-out stream bed, there was a cluster of so ly glowing yellow flowers. The petals were bigger than any Jenka had ever seen before, almost as big as bed sheets. It would have been quite beau ful had there not been the long, broken-winged body of a small dragon lying sprawled across the earth nearby.

Jenka’s heart was thudding in his chest and the lump in his throat was the size of a gourd melon. The dragon was the right size to be Jade, but Jenka wasn’t close enough yet to be able to tell for certain. As they drew nearer, the dragon's scales began to shimmer a deep, greenish color.

Jenka’s chest clenched with sadness, but then Captain Brody stepped up out of nowhere and quickly said, “Hurry! Close your eyes un l a er the flash.”

“Whimza a,” a faint girlish voice spoke with a tongue-tangling inflec on. Suddenly, a sphere of stark, white light the size of a man’s head was hovering in the air a dozen feet above the dragon’s twisted corpse. The

air became full of humming, popping sta c and took on the clean smell of the sky right a er a lightning storm. Several of the rangers shied away from the orb as if it were contagious. The dainty, hooded figure underneath the magical globe seemed to think that was funny.

This was the first me Jenka had ever seen anyone use High Magic, and it was a li le bit disconcer ng. He had never seen one of the secre ve druids that the rangers some mes spoke of either. The Order of Dou supposedly had a monastery or a temple somewhere deep in the mountains. Some folks said they were elvish, but Jenka wasn’t sure he believed that. Due to their common interest of the forest, the druids some mes helped the rangers, but they had no sworn allegiance to King Blanchard or the kingdom.

Jenka cringed when he saw a pale, ta oo-lined feminine face peering out from under the hood directly at him. The druida’s gaze cut right through him, and he felt his scalp ngling as if his hair were standing on end.

“Is that the one?” Master Kember asked. He put his hand on Jenka’s shoulder, breaking the spell he had fallen under. “It’s s ll got both of its eyes.”

Under the bright magical light, Jenka saw that the dead dragon’s scales were the color of a deep, blackish-blue bruise, not green. He knew instantly that it wasn’t Jade. He was surprised at how relieved he felt. He hadn’t expected to be so worried about a creature that he had only spoken to once. Sure they had saved each other’s lives, but the truth of it was they were supposed to be natural enemies. Nevertheless, he was glad that it wasn’t his friend lying dead in the glade.

“Maybe I missed?” he shrugged. “It’s almost black.”

The druida’s magical light suddenly disappeared. In the momentary blindness everyone experienced while their eyes adjusted to the darkness, she moved impossibly fast and slid up close to Jenka’s side.

“Liar,” she almost purred the word into his ear, causing his blood to ngle with both fear and arousal at the same me. Her breath smelled of cinnamon and ginger, and she radiated a so invi ng heat like a woodstove.

“Master Kember, I would like a word with our young troll-slayer if you please.” She gave a respec ul head bow to punctuate her request.

Master Kember’s expression showed the unease he felt at being this close to the eerie -- yet exo cally beau ful -- ta ooed girl. On the islands, and in Port and Mainsted, the prac ce of the arcane was more commonplace. There were witches and charm-makers on every corner, but out here in the fron er it was rare - and some mes shunned. Jenka’s mother used magic of a sort, and he saw how people were afraid of her for it, but it was nothing like the High Magic that this druida had just been using. Master Kember gave Jenka’s shoulder a compassionate squeeze and hurried away, leaving Jenka and the druida alone.

“It’s all right, Jenka De Swasso,” her voice was sweet and liquid, and it dripped into Jenka’s ears and flowed into him like honey. She looked surprisingly young; barely a woman. She had four thin, blue-green lines running diagonally across the bridge of her nose. There was an intricately-decorated circle on her right cheek, a similar square on her le , and on her forehead was a silvery triangle that pointed down at the p of her nose, giving her brow a permanently sinister look. A few tendrils of snow white