Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 126358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 505(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 505(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
I wanted to start at the very beginning, but Elleena—for that was her name—seemed to have been a very prolific writer. There were pages and pages about her dragon—a Golden Queen named F’reya—including her weights and measurements and how much she ate every day.
All of that would be extremely useful—it would give me a point of reference to refer to as L’eesha grew. But if Ryse told me to look at the back of the journal, I knew he must have a reason.
“We are leaving,” I read aloud, as I looked at the very last page. “Head Master Jorgen says that the Madling threat is no more and so there is no more use for the Golden Queens.”
“What? They kicked them out after she and her dragon helped defeat the Madlings?” I exclaimed, incensed on behalf of the ancient rider.
“Keep reading and you’ll see why,” Ryse said grimly.
“Jorgen says it is a burden to keep feeding the queens, who are far and away the largest of dragonkind,” Elleena had written. “But I believe his true motivation is to gain complete control of the Academy. He does not like it that a single Golden Queen can command all of the Wings at once as a woman rides and guides her. He feels—as do the other Professors and the Heads of the Academy—that it is wrong to let a woman have so much power over men. And so, though I and my fellow Queen Riders have never used our power for anything but directing the Wings to dispel the Madling threat, we are to be exiled for the sin of not being male.”
“That’s awful!” I exclaimed, when I looked up from the journal again. “They were kicked out just for being women!”
“Not just women—women in power,” Ryse corrected me. He frowned. “There have always been men like that Head Master Jorgen who think women are beneath them. I’m not surprised that as soon as they had no more use for the Queen Riders, they sent them away.”
“And then they made rules that women could never be dragon riders,” I said indignantly.
“Well, the joke is on them, isn’t’ it?” He gave me an amused look. “Because here you are.”
“Yes, but you and I both know I can never let anyone know I’m a woman,” I told him, frowning. “If anyone ever found out, I’d be kicked out just like Elleena was. And who knows what would happen to L’eesha?”
The thought made me shiver—I couldn’t lose my dragon! I would rather die.
“You’re right,” Ryse admitted with a sigh. “But it’s too bad the Academy has become so hidebound and set in its ways. There was more to the Golden Queen riders than just directing the Wings in the Madling Wars, you know.”
“There was?” I flipped carefully through the old journal. “What else?”
“Well, supposedly there was healing in the hands of a Queen Rider. There’s even an account of her healing a Madling bite in there.” Ryse nodded at the journal in my hands.
“What? But no one can heal a Madling bite!” I protested. “All the texts agree—once you get bitten, you’ll go mad and eventually die—there’s no way around it. The only question is whether you’ll spread the madness to anyone else before you go.”
The thought of that made me feel cold all over. That was my secret fear—that my father really had been bitten by a Madling, as he had claimed, and had decided to do away with himself before he could infect Auren or me.
If that’s the case, then it’s your fault he died, whispered a little voice in my head that I tried desperately to silence.
“I’m not sure, but it sounded to me like she somehow channeled the power of her dragon to heal the bite.” Ryse sounded thoughtful. “It could be a lie, I guess, but why would she lie in her own journal?”
“And why did she hide it?” I said. “Do you think she wanted to leave a record behind to let people know what had happened? Where the Queens went?”
“Possibly.” He nodded. “The books I found it behind were in the farthest part of the library archives and hadn’t been moved in years. They were covered in dust.” He sighed. “What I was actually looking for was another dictionary. I’m so close to getting this prophesy translated.”
He pointed to the book written in the Root Tongue that had the pictures of the Golden Queens and the Madlings in the margins.
“So that’s what you think it is—a prophecy?” I asked, frowning.
“Possibly. Or a warning. I know it starts with a word that seems to translate to ‘Beware’ and then there’s a part about not forgetting the past lest it cloud the future or something like that.” He shook his head in frustration. “I wish I could figure it out. I feel like it’s important, somehow, but I don’t know why.”