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  Jade

  A Book of Deacon Sidequest

  Joseph R. Lallo

  Copyright ©2010 Joseph R. Lallo

  Cover By Nick Deligaris

  http://www.deligaris.com

  Discover other titles by Joseph R. Lallo:

  The Book of Deacon Trilogy:

  Book 1: The Book of Deacon

  Book 2: The Great Convergence

  Book 3: The Battle of Verril

  Book of Deacon Side Stories:

  Jade

  The Rise of the Red Shadow

  Science Fiction Titles:

  Bypass Gemini

  Unstable Prototypes

  ###

  A man laid on the forest floor, weak, air dragging in and out of his lungs in fading gasps. Already his vision was growing dim. He was beyond help now. The end was near.

  A dying mind must choose its thoughts carefully. They are too precious to be squandered.

  He thought of his family--his wife, his brothers, his parents, each and every one of them waiting on the other side. He would be with them again soon. He thought of how little he was leaving behind. A tiny home, a failure of a shop, and an indifferent town. He would not miss them. Still a young man, he thought of the years of life that he was losing. Half of a lifetime still lay before him. He would not miss that, either. The world he knew was a bleak one. Disease, hunger, and poverty were everywhere. What he felt most was relief that he would endure it no more.

  Most impressively, not once did his final thoughts touch upon the beast standing over him. Blood pooled around its mighty claws. A cold rain began to pound upon its green scales. Its reptilian head towered above, smoky breath rushing out between stout daggers of teeth. The dragon watched life slip away, just as it had countless times before. Then, in a few bounding strides, it was gone.

  #

  “All out! Everybody out!” cried a scraggly man, as he hammered at a crude bell.

  Far to the southeast, the town of Isintist was a small one, but dense with people. They poured from the houses as quickly as they could. It was the alarm bell, and the smell of smoke left little doubt as to the reason. A fire was raging in a large house toward the edge of town, the site of the Rinton family’s home and farm. Every able body rushed to the scene. It would be nice to say that each had moved so quickly out of a sense of duty, but the truth was far less heroic. The village--indeed, the entire region--was in the midst of a terrible drought. The grass and trees were dry as tinder. Were the fire to spread, it would quickly be out of control and their own homes would be next. Best, then, to do what could be done to stop it before that happened.

  The burning home was already surrounded by onlookers, but there was little anyone could do. The whole of the lower floor was utterly engulfed. Even if a would-be hero were to brave the burning doorway, there was no hope of rescuing anyone inside. With the wells all but dry, neither was there any hope to douse the flames. And so the town was left to helplessly watch as flames worked their way up to the attic. The intensity of the inferno devoured the supports of the building, causing charred lower walls to creak and splinter under what little remained untouched above.

  Finally, in a rush of embers and debris, the foremost section of the attic tumbled forward. An instant before it struck the ground, a form tumbled from its window, colliding viciously with the ground and rolling toward the crowd. The rest of the house, finally having reached its breaking point, collapsed. A scalding hot rush of air erupted from it, filling the surrounding field with smoke, ash, and splintered wood. The assembled townsfolk scattered to beat out the dozens of smaller fires started by the flying embers--but, for some, the sound of cries of anguish and pain drew their attention to the ground in front of the smoldering remains of the attic loft.

  There, just beyond the mound of broken and shattered wood, was a little girl, not more than six years old. The collapse had spared her, and though the fall from the window and the choking smoke hadn’t done her any good, she was alive, the only survivor of the terrible disaster.

  When the flames died away, there were questions to be answered. In an ideal world, there would have been questions about the nature of the disaster. How did the fire start? Why was the whole of the family inside during the day? How could the fire have spread so quickly that not a single one of the five Rinton family members could reach a door?

  Alas, this was a simple time, and curiosity was hardly a common virtue. The fire was never presumed to be anything more than a terrible tragedy. Thus, the only questions left to be answered were what to do with the land, and what to do with the girl. In a community so small and so remote, there was seldom any need for laws more complex than an eye for an eye, so the matter was one with no clear resolution. To address it, a meeting of the town leaders was called. The most influential people in town, and anyone else with any interest, gathered in the church for the informal meeting. When all were ready, it was called to order.

  “Right, so, by now we all heard the terrible news about the Rintons,” announced an old man to a general murmur of acknowledgment.

  The old man's name was Delnick, and he was the unofficial leader of the town largely because he'd managed to stay alive for so long. A lifetime in the sun had made him look as though he'd been stitched together from tanned cowhide, but his mind still seemed sharp, and since no one else wanted the job, no one challenged his authority.

  “So what are we going to do about all that land?” asked a man in the rear of the room.

  The man turned out to be a fellow named Drudder. He was known around town primarily for his bitter attitude and ruinous gambling habit.

  “Little Jade survived the fire, so the land belongs to her,” Delnick proclaimed.

  “What!? She can't tend to that land! That land'll be wasted if you give it to her!” He objected.

  “Look, the girl gets the land. We ain't discussing it. Of course she can't tend to it! She's not even six yet. We need to find her a place to live,” said Delnick. “Now, who can look after her until we can find a family member to take her?”

  There was a low murmur again, but no volunteers. The drought had hit the village hard. Most had difficulty turning up enough food and water for their own families. Supporting another was more than any of the residents could handle.

  “I'll take her,” said Drudder. “I got three boys already, what's one more? And, naturally I'll work the land on her behalf.”

  Delnick sat in silent consideration for a few moments. No one was foolish enough to believe that Drudder had the girl's best interests at heart. He just wanted the Rinton land, which was some of the most fertile in the region. That didn't change the fact that no one else had offered, and the girl needed a home.

  “All right, Drudder. Watch the girl and the land is yours until we find a next of kin,” he said.

  A little girl, eyes still red from smoke and tears, was led by her hand to her new guardian.

  “Th-thank you, Mr. Dru--” she began meekly.

  “Gale! Take the Rinton girl back home and set her up in the boys' room. I've got to head over to the land and make sure the fire didn't do anything to the fence,” Drudder cried to his weary-looking wife.

  And so Jade's new life began. By day, she walked past the charred remains of her former home to work the land that had belonged to her parents. She pulled weeds, planted seeds, and did anything else her new guardian asked of her. She did it well, too. The land she worked sprouted twice as many green shoots as that worked by the others. Work continued until the sun was slipping from the sky. By night, she sat in a sad daze in the corner of a room crowded with three boys at least twice her age.

  To say that the Drudders were cruel to her would be a lie. They never truly mistreated her. Nor could one say that they failed to provide for her. There was a roof over her
head, and even a bed of her own. The drought meant that the food on the table was barely enough, but she always got an equal share. No, her new family gave her everything that they had to give her . . . and that was all. Her “brothers” barely glanced in her direction. Her “father” spoke only in directions regarding this task or that in the fields. She was never called by any name other than “Rinton girl,” or more often simply “you there.” For a girl so young, a girl who had lost her family so horribly and so quickly, the loneliness was pure agony.

  Before long, Jade was reduced to wandering numbly through her day, quietly doing as she was told, eating her meager meals, and sleeping fitfully. She was in just such a daze, weeding the edge of the family land nearest to the trees, when she felt something. For a moment, it cut through the veil of malaise.

  It wasn't that she had seen something, or even heard something. There was simply a sensation . . . like something in the trees was watching her. She squinted into the sparse, dried out woods, but it was no use. The bright sun made the relative shade of the woods a veritable wall of darkness. Still, she could not shake the feeling. Moving slowly, she squeezed through the fence and crept closer to the trees. Her eyes began to adjust, cutting deeper into the shade. There was something there . . .

  In an explosion of motion, a frightened deer burst from the trees and ran off along the fence. Startled, Jade squealed and fell backward. Her eyes, tearing up from the shock of the creature's appearance, first watched it gallop away, then turned to the forest again. There was still something there. She couldn't make out what it was, but it was big, and it was moving.

  For the moment, her curiosity managed to drown out the voices of both reason and fear. Whatever the beast in the forest was, it was moving very quietly. Jade could make out its form, but no details. It just seemed like a mass of green moving deeper into the forest. She crept forward, but with each step she took toward it, the shape retreated faster, until finally it was out of sight. Jade squinted after it, but there was no question, it was gone. She looked around her. Here and there branches and bushes seemed snapped away. Then she looked down. There, on the parched forest floor, was a footprint. It was huge, and looked almost like the sort a rooster might leave behind if it were the size of an elephant. Just as the wheels in her young mind began to turn, and fear began to trickle back into place, a gruff voice rang out.

  “Girl! Where have you run off to?” called Drudder.

  Jade hurried back to the light of the field and spent the rest of the day trying not to think about what she had seen. As is so often the case, those things we wish to forget have a terrible habit of consuming our minds. She tried to work the land. She tried to eat her meal. Every moment, her young mind was churning on the images she’d seen. The conclusion was obvious, but too terrifying to consider. Finally, just as the empty plates were being cleared away, the words that she’d tried so dutifully to keep from her mind found their way to her mouth.

  “I saw a dragon,” she said quietly.

  The silence came slowly. Curious eyes turned in her direction; her adoptive family reacted roughly as they would have if a piece of furniture had made the comment.

  “Did you say a dragon?” asked one of the boys.

  “You didn’t see a dragon,” said Drudder.

  “I did, it was in the forest next to--”

  “You didn’t see a dragon!” he repeated firmly.

  “Dragons live in the mountains; we’re in the plains,” said the youngest brother.

  “Everybody would have seen it if there was a dragon here,” said the middle boy.

  “Everybody would be dead if there was a dragon here,” said the eldest.

  “Don’t make up stories,” Drudder advised.

  “But I--”

  “Don’t,” he repeated firmly.

  Jade sheepishly closed her mouth and lowered her eyes. From that day onward, she did not say a word to anyone about what she had seen, but the edge of the fields nearest to the forest went suspiciously unweeded.

  The days without rain continued to tick by, and one by one the wells began to run dry. The only water that remained came in the trickle of a stream that grew weaker by the day. Despair was steadily turning to desperation as the people fought for every drop of water to keep first their crops, then themselves, from withering away. When finally even the stream was little more than a dry bed, a meeting was once again called of the town leaders.

  “It ain’t natural. It just ain’t natural,” raved Drudder.

  “I’ll agree with you there, Drudder,” said Delnick, “but knowing it ain’t natural doesn’t do us much good, does it?”

  “Well, what could cause a drought this bad?”

  “Any number of things. There could be a witch or a wizard. The Gods could be mad at us. Some sort of mystic beast could be bringing it down on us. We could be cursed . . .” Delnick considered.

  “Hold it . . . hold it . . . Could a dragon do this?” Drudder asked, the little girl's words echoing in his mind.

  “Yeah . . . Yeah, a dragon could. Course a dragon could. Dragons can do damn near anything,” replied Delnick, in the distinctive tone of growing certainty shared by all supposed leaders when confronted with something they are unsure of. “But if there was a dragon about, someone would have seen it.”

  “The Rinton girl saw one, weeks back. I figured she was just imagining things.”

  “Well, we’ve gotta be sure. You boys head home and arm yourselves. We need to find out if there is a dragon around here,” Delnick quickly ordered. There were already plenty of people whispering doubts of the old man's ability to lead. Now that there was a direction, best to start moving immediately. “If there is, at least we know why we’re in such a bad state. Go, now!”

  Hesitantly, the most able men the town had to offer set about the task. Starting with the forest where Jade had first seen the beast, they searched. Slowly but surely, the clues began to arise. Here and there, a half-hidden footprint that no beast in the area should have been able to leave would be found. Then came the partially buried remains of a charred stag. Finally, some distance out of town, a shallow cave leading into the sandy ground bore a smell unmistakable to Kruck, the one and only man in town who had encountered a dragon before. The men gathered again to discuss their findings. The fact that Kruck waved a hook in place of a hand while he spoke added significant weight to his words.

  “You’re dealing with one of the fire-breathing devils, all right. Down in Teller’s Pit. It is a smart one, too, or someone is trying to cover for it. It tries to wipe up its tracks, and it tries to hide its kills. Gods willing we won’t ever see this thing, but I can tell you that it is damn sure here,” Kruck raved.

  “And as long as that thing is here, this drought will continue . . .” Delnick surmised, “What will it take to kill it?”

  “More than we got, that’s for sure,” Kruck replied, “You don’t want to fight the thing, anyway. That’ll just make it angry. We should all just be glad it hasn’t attacked us . . . yet.”

  All eyes turned to Delnick. He stroked his chin.

  “I want all of you to go back to your homes. I’ll think of something . . . and if any of you have an idea, you share it with me . . . Until then, we’ll just hope that whatever has kept that monster from killing us with fire instead of drying us out will keep doing it. Just try to pretend you aren’t living with a dragon breathing down your necks.”

  With that less than sage plan, life in the town of Isintist continued, such as it was. Days passed with no solution, each of the townspeople nervously working in the shadow of the monster. Drudder leaned upon his hoe and peered over the half-tilled field. The land stretched all the way to the trees and, impossibly, it was fruitful. It was anything but a bountiful crop, but scattered patches of land had managed to produce wheat. He looked over the spotty green stretches, vaguely recalling that each had been worked by Jade . . . As a matter of fact, only those worked by Jade seemed to grow. He set the thought aside. It must have
been the land. It was nothing like his own. Last year’s harvest, in a year that had seen plenty of rain, had barely been enough to survive on, let alone cover his gambling debt. That wasn't a problem anymore, though. Once he'd secured this land, he'd been able to sell his own, save the patch that held his home. He shuddered at the thought of what would have happened to him had he not paid on time.

  “Nice bit of dirt you've got here,” came a voice suddenly from behind him.

  Startled, Drudder turned to find a tall, thin man with a smug grin on his unmistakably elfish face. In one hand was a piece of wood, in the other a knife. Intricate designs covered the wooden rod and, as he spoke, he casually traced out another symbol. Drudder knew the man all too well. He was the fellow in charge of placing the bets down at the races, the one who had kindly allowed him to gamble away more than a year's earnings on credit. After a string of losses, he was also the man in charge of collecting. The sight of the knife made him cringe.

  “What are you doing here? You . . . you got the money, right?” Drudder stammered.

  “Oh, yes, yes, my friend. I am here on other business. By the way, I heard about that fire. Terrible tragedy. But, then, it served you fairly well, didn't it?” remarked the visitor.

  After a glance to see that no one else was in earshot, he smiled, “I'll say. Now all of this land is mine.”

  “Well . . . Not quite yours. Technically, it still belongs to the girl.”

  “Yeah, but the girl belongs to me.”

  “For now.”

  “What do you mean 'for now'? You told me that there wasn't any other family to worry about.”

  “Oh, there isn't, there isn't. But little girls grow up, and when she does, the land is hers.”

  “ . . .I could . . . marry her to one of my sons.”

  “You could, you could.” He nodded, carving another well-placed notch. “But then the land would be his, not yours.”

  “ . . .So . . .” the man said slowly, brow furrowed in the unfamiliar activity of deep thought.