The Undiscovered Dragon

By Thomas Ecclestone

Yin felt the weight of the basket he was carrying pushing him down hard as he trudged down the halls of the dragon king towards the well where he'd get at least a portion of the water that the Kitchens needed every day. He was supposed to be better than this. He'd worked his way up to team leader so he could send other people to fetch the water. Like Hilo. The kid who should be doing this job-

The kid who had disappeared -

Disappeared just when he was doing this job.

As he walked past the one tunnel he'd never had the courage to go down he saw something new. A tunnel no one had gone down in the thousand years since the Dragon Rebellion. And outside that tunnel a single footprint. Kid sized.

He was going to rescue Hilo. It would beat carrying the water.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turing's Brain
• Release date: Sep 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386170631

Book preview

Part I

He who is and will become

1

The Mountain Of Bones

The grand hall of the dragon king had been carved out of granite long ago in the years that the sky had been on fire. A Servant like Yin spent most of his life in narrow fissures in the rock lit by a few candles and huge numbers of reed lights that cast a dull light and made the air smell like burning fat. Yin could barely remember a time long ago of light, giant redwood trees, and the wind. Instead the narrow tunnels that he spent most of his life in were always kept swelteringly hot and damp so the walls were always covered by mildew and decay. A few places such as the Kitchen's were different: huge edifices that hundreds or thousands worked in full of bustle and noise, people heaving and carrying buckets and pales, and the central fire pits which vented at least some of their exhaust through channels in the rock that made the top of the mountain smoke like a volcano.

Nature might have started the process of building this mountain long ago but Man had spent long years helping nature on its way. Most of the large thoroughfares of the hall had been widened by generations of stone carvers, showing surface nicks from the bronze chisels that were the expert stonemasons pride and joy. Sometimes the fissures widened into caverns with walls which had remained untouched for the moss and lichen to grow on the sides of the walls that were otherwise dyed black by soot from years of open fires and no chimneys.

Often these caverns had been chosen long ago by an Old Family. Those newcomers such as Yin either found an assigned bunk in a dormitory or, after many long years of effort, were fortunate enough to be awarded their own Holding. Yin slept, ate, and worked in the Kitchens. Still considered a stranger even if he had come here more than a decade ago. Long enough ago he had few clear recollections of ever being elsewhere.

He hated the way that the ceilings of the hall seemed to push down on your head and body so you could never stand up straight. Small people did better here than Yin who was too large and who sometimes dreamed of the sun even now.

The First king had chosen this place for the comfort of the dragons and not because any human in the history of the race had ever loved it.

This hall had been carved by nature and man from the carcass of Yeh-tai, as the locals called it, the mountain of bones. Generations of men had lived and died here, serving the King and the Dragons, none of them free or even close to free. The highest honour was death in service to the dragon, your body being eaten its body used to nourish them.

Only the luckiest servants of the King were eaten by the dragons. That was what people said. Aldrin-hur, for example, the white-haired steward who had always been sparing with complements and generous with the rod had served the King for his entire life. Yin remembered the pale look of his skin, the cough, and the two sticks that the man had to use to walk before he was taken.

In his speech the King, Dumas, has bowed his head with reverence. He had served well and long and was to be admired and emulated: his was the highest honour. To be taken to be eaten by the dragons. It had been announced in the Hall while Yin was serving there. All the nobles had clapped and cheered, and celebrated, and then went quickly back to their ordinary scheming and political past-times.

Yin had lived here almost all his life and he had never seen a dragon or met anyone who said that they had seen a Dragon.

In short, he didn't believe Aldrin-hur's fate was any different to the other Servants.

Left to die at the edge where Yeh-tai met the eternal desert.

Yin's father and mother, his brothers, they had lived here their entire life. They had Served and worshiped and obeyed. No one could question their loyalty. But they were small and unimportant folk who the King had barely noticed.

When it was their time to die, when they were too old or ill to serve further the King had sent to the bottom of the mountain. They had lied there alone and unmourned, left to die of exposure on the edge of the desert. Some said that the vultures would pick your flesh off you bones without even waiting for your heart to give out.

Yin didn't want to die there.

And, although he admitted it to no-one, he didn't want to be eaten by dragons either.

It was strange for him to be thinking of these things. He was young, the world was young, and he was as close to happy as he could be. The Priests said to concentrate on today because tomorrow might never come. But it was hard for him to forget and this was almost exactly a year since his mother's death.

She had been a grand woman who had obtained this job for him. He could remember her laughing, singing, playing music for most of his Childhood. She had become more sombre later, more weighed down by the world, but she still loved him well enough to try to find a path for him. She'd found this job for him. It was not a pleasant job.

There were few pleasant jobs for one of his class.

Today's job was unexceptional. No room in the hall had indoors plumbing and so every morning one of the first things that a servant lad needed to do was trundle down the hall a trolly with a huge canister that weighed almost as heavily as a horse. Every step clanged and banged.

People swore at him as he moved the cart, complaining that their night had been rudely cut short.

But they still used his services.

Each door had a small chamber pot in front of it. The rest of the job was self-explanatory. When he was younger he had felt like retching. Now he was used to the filth, the constant smell and even the buzzing flies that followed him as he moved the cart.

Two years of working this job had dulled his dislike to an unhappy acceptance that this was the way that things would be. Forever. Every morning he woke up feeling like the day lay itself in front of him like a tally book full of debt.

Wash the dishes, rotate the spit that the Cook used to make roast beef for the king himself, ever so slowly. If you didn't spin it at just the right speed the Cook would tan your behind for you to help you be better. Or chop the wood.

Or carry water from the spring downstairs to the kitchen. And that last one was the job that Yin hated most of all of them.

The water didn't even taste clean or nice. It had a peculiar metallic taste that meant the Cook would only use it for the most basic purposes. Cleaning surfaces or floor, dishes, washing clothes, washing the body.

Water to drink was collected from the rain that fell on the mountain. It was too rare to waste and so Undrinkable water needed to be carried every day.

Yin had always hated the job and it wasn't because the water was heavy and the spring was warm enough that the water steamed as it left the earth. Sometimes it burned your skin as you pulled the wooden bucket through the water using a thick piece of rope that sucked up water like crazy and went from almost light to extremely heavy in a few tugs of the bucket through the pool that formed under the spring.

No. He didn't hate the work. He could bare the heat although sometimes it felt like his skin was going to burst into fire. He didn't like the way the air smelled of rotten eggs down here in the heart of the mountain but he could cope with it. He experienced worse. This was still his worst job, though, by far.

It was the journey down to the spring that always made him anxious.

The jagged path they had cut through the mountain granite was narrow and often scraped his arms or sides as he crept down into the mountain's heart. Often the air smelled stale. He'd heard of bad air, air that didn't just contain oxygen but also contained substances that would kill you within minutes. Yin wasn't sure that he believed what they were saying. It wasn't claustrophobia or the air or the heat that made him feel fear every time they made him come down this way.

Most of the way down to the spring was only one tunnel.

But just about half way there was another tunnel that he had been forbidden to use since the first time that he had come down here as a lad. That other way was completely dark. A narrow fissure only just wide enough to push your way down. Jagged cuts in the rock that had been made by stonecutters centuries ago but who had never bothered to smooth it down since nobles would never walk that way.

The tunnel always made him shiver in fear. Every instinct said that there was something down there. Down in the depts of the earth that was dangerous, ready to pounce and devour any unwary traveller who came too close to