The Sword and The Mountain (Kathardra book 1)

And so, weeks went by.

Each day was remarkably like the last. Lessa started the day drinking malek, and she ended each day washing in the river. The only marker of time passing was Lessa’s skills in swordplay.

It was weeks before Lessa was able to reliably block most of Zar’s attacks. It was more before she was able to deal with any of her own. The first time she really went on the offensive was as much of a surprise to her as it was to Zar. She saw an opening in his defense as he went into her left and quick as a whip she deflected his stick and rapped his ribs.

Lessa’s practice weapon was blocked milliseconds later as she reflexively went in for another attack. They both froze with their weapons locked together.

“I hit you.” She said in shock.

“Well done, Lessa.” Zar praised.

The next day she almost wished she hadn’t struck him at all. Instead of the wooden sticks, Zar had Lessa use a metal training sword with dulled edges.

They wouldn’t get cut to ribbons, but Lessa found out the hard way that the metal swords were much more dangerous than the wooden ones. She had taken hits from the wooden ones and received many bruises, but as soon as the metal training swords were introduced she learned to avoid being hit at all costs.

“Stars Lessa!” Zar exclaimed after a sharp crack reverberated through their clearing. Lessa gasped in pain and cried out clutching her arm and fell to the ground.

“Let me see it.” Zar insisted urgently, falling to his knees across from her.

Lessa gritted her teeth and clenched her eyes closed, trying to stem the flow of tears. She gasped as Zar pried her good arm out of the way so he could see her wrist.

“Ow ow ow ow” She panted, trying to cooperate, but her body was tensing up, trying to resist the pain. She opened her eyes long enough to see her wrist twisted in a perverse angle.

Dizziness waved through her, nausea turning her stomach.

And quite suddenly the pain was gone. A tingle washed from elbow to fingertip and then her hand jolted into its proper position.

Nausea washed through Lessa once more. No, more than nausea. Lessa twisted away just in time and retched her lunch onto the forest floor.

“Ugh,” she moaned, spitting to clear her mouth of the vomit.

“Gods, Lessa I’m sorry.” Suddenly Zar grabbed her and pulled her against him. “I really didn’t mean to do that.” His fingers snaked into her hair and pulled her head into his chest. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He murmured into the top of her head as he gently rocked her back and forth.

“It’s…. I…” She stammered. As shocked by his sudden display of emotion and this physical touch as she was by everything else. Her heart hammered against her ribs, his heart hammered against her ear. For just a moment she enjoyed his embrace. She enjoyed it too much. He didn’t mean this like it felt. He only felt bad for breaking her wrist. Nevertheless, she melted into him.

“Did you just use magic on me?” she blurted.

Just as suddenly as Zar had grabbed her his hands jerked away from her. He firmly, but gently grabbed her shoulders and set her away from him.

“I’m sorry!” Was it for the hug or the broken wrist?

“Yes. Magical healings can be shocking, especially if you have never had one before. You get used to it though… Maybe we should take a break today.”

It was at this point Zar declared that Lessa had made enough progress to take every fourth day off. She was ecstatic at first. For the first time in months, she didn’t have to start her morning with malek tea, which she could sleep in. That she could relax a little bit.

Only to find that she couldn’t sleep in. She had grown used to waking before dawn. She laid in bed for a little while but realized her body had become so accustomed to exercise first thing. So she rolled out of bed and dressed.

The surprise was clearly written on Zar’s face when he watched her walk into the main room.

“I didn’t think you’d be awake this early.” He said as he stood to pull out a chair for her.

“I couldn’t sleep.” She shrugged.

“I’ve matters to attend to this morning.” He said as he sat back down and pushed a platter of food toward her. “But you’re free to do what you’d like today.”

“Storm has been needing some attention. I’ll probably just be hanging out with her today.”

“As you’d like.” He said with a small incline of his head.

It had been a long while since Lessa had ridden Storm for any distance further than the river. As much as Storm enjoyed flipping through the air alone she enjoyed sharing the experience with Lessa more. She pushed the limits of what Lessa could handle, many times Lessa had to mentally scream at Storm to slow down because the gravitational forces threatened to rip her from the dragon's back.

The scariest moments came when Storm dipped down so fast that Lessa’s legs were pulled free from the dragon’s scaly back just before she could find her seat again. Generally, Storm realized what was happening and pulled out of her dive, slamming Lessa forcefully down into her back.

It was just after one such flying session that Lessa was eating lunch with Storm in the field outside of Zar’s family tent. Lessa sat on the grass against Storm’s neck, an apple to her lips, watching the people of Haven. Business people negotiated deals, deliveries were fulfilled, children played, horses pulled wagons down streets, and one particular donkey was refusing to move forward and its handler was trying to coerce it.

And then an old man separated himself from the streets and walked toward Lessa across the field.

Her hand holding the apple fell to her lap and she stared at the man approaching her. His hand held a rolled-up paper of some kind. His hair was gray, his face wrinkled and he walked with the shuffle of a well-aged man.

“You need a saddle.” He told her with no preamble.

“What?” She asked, confused. She had never so much been talked to by anyone but Zar, Shakara, and rarely Rina.

“You need a saddle for that dragon.” He pointed to Storm with the rolled paper. He then unrolled it for Lessa to see. With great interest, Storm butted against Lessa and made room for her own eyes to study the paper.

"You need to be able to lay flat. You can't sit upright like you do on a horse."

There were rough drawings of Storm, with an indistinct figure on her back. More importantly, there was a saddle the figure was sitting on. Lessa’s eyes widened excitedly.

“There’s two sets of handles, that’s brilliant! You drew all this just watching us in the air?" He nodded, with a small smile both pleased and humble.

With a realization, Lessa’s excitement crashed to the ground. “I-I can’t pay you for this. But I could work!” She up, suddenly needing to prove her worth on her feet.

He held up his hand. “ No need. I want to do this.”

This pained Lessa. It was too much to accept. She knew the costs of saddles back home. She had to work in her father’s stable for months to purchase her own saddle. And this was completely custom and new. There was no way it would come cheap.

“Please,” Lessa spoke with all the sincerity she had ever felt. “That is too much. I can’t-”

He cut her off. “I want to do this.” He said sternly. Brooking no argument. To see my saddle, on a dragon.” this sweet longing in his voice was clear.

With teeth clenched Lessa squirmed, “I-”

He glared at her. She looked back defeated.

“I’ll tell you what.” He said conciliatory. “You can help me.”

Lessa nodded eagerly. “Yes. Anything you need.”

As it turned out, most of what Garret needed was for Lessa to measure Storm. He provided her with measuring strings, marked with equidistant lines, and told her where exactly to wrap the strings.

He initially marked them on his paper and then he had Lessa perform multiple actions with Storm. First off, he watched her climb onto Storm’s back several times. Lessa had struggled with this enough times that she already determined that a series of loops would be entirely helpful for climbing onto Storm's back.

Next, he had Storm take off and land several times and watched how Lessa adjusted during Storm’s landing motions.

As Lessa had already noted Garret had added two sets of handles, one closer to her lap, where her hands naturally rested when sitting up, and another set further down Storm’s neck, where her hands rested when Storm was performing aerial maneuvers. But she requested a handle cover, that would form a small hollow to block wind from freezing her hands each time she was in the air.

For many more weeks, Lessa trained with Zar for three days straight. And on the fourth, she would work with Garret on the saddle.

It was on one of those days Lessa was punching holes in leather that she asked Garret, “Why don’t people here like me?”

His eyes flipped up to her for a brief moment. He then dropped the leather laces he was stitching and settled his attention fully on her. Lessa could not hold his gaze, afraid her vulnerability would be on full display. She had been in Haven for months, and still aside from Zar’s family only Garret ever spoke to her.

If she happened to be walking in the opposite direction of a stranger they would either drop their eyes and walk around her, or seemingly pretend she didn’t exist.

The few times there was another woman at the wash house as Lessa’s late night baths the woman would hurry away without a word.

She had even offered to run errands for Rina. Exchanging a few silver coins for a jar of honey on the outskirts of town. The woman running the beehive was pleasant until she looked into Lessa’s eyes and registered who she was. At that point, her words became terse, and dismissed Lessa as quickly as she could.

“How old are you Lessa?” Garret asked, placing his tools down on his workbench.

“Fif- well I suppose at this point I’ve had a birthday. I’m sixteen.” This realization came as a shock. When she left home her birthday was less than two months away. It had come and gone without her even thinking about it.

“That’s a hard age for girls.” He went back to his work, frowning deeply at it. “Did you know,” he punctuated his words with the long slide of leather through leather, “I have seven daughters?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Seven daughters. My wife wanted to have a son. Just one. Anyway, my youngest just had her second son.”

“Congratulations.” She tried to sound a little happy for him, confused at the turn this conversation had taken.

“The point being, Lessa, I have had more than my fair share of time around young women.”

“Oh.” She replied lamely.

“So, it was plain for me to see that you weren’t here to do anyone any harm.”

“Harm?” That was alarming. “I wouldn’t….” At that moment it dawned on Lessa. Maybe she should have thought of it before now. But she didn’t think of herself like the people of Haven likely did. “They’re afraid of me," he said quietly.

Garret’s silence was confirmation.

A sick, sour feeling started spreading through Lessa, and she felt tears threatening her eyes. She studiously continued hammering the mallet and hole punch before her. She ground her teeth. She would not cry. This baseless rejection would not bother her.

“They don’t understand you, Lessa,” Garret said once again stopping his work. “You walked into town, out of a legend, on a dragon. How else are we supposed to react to that? Just give them time, they will get used to you.”

“I’ve been here for months,” Lessa argued. “How much long-” Their conversation was quite suddenly cut off by a scream combined with a crashing destruction.

With her earned agility Lessa launched herself out of Garret’s workshop, the leatherworker followed with all the speed his aged body would allow.

The scene before Lessa was baffling, a girl, maybe six years old, was stomping her foot and screaming into the sky. A woman before her was climbing out of a broken pile of crates. The scene was quickly gathering attention, two men nearby dropped what they were doing and started approaching the girl. One of them was abruptly thrown backward several feet. The other managed to stay upright and was pushing toward the girl, but there seemed to be a great force opposing him.

“Get Zar at once,” Garret said to Lessa from just behind her back.

Bewildered, Lessa asked “What is-”

“Now!” Garret barked at her, it was rare for him to vocalize so forcefully so Lessa jumped slightly, but then launched herself toward Zar’s tent home in the center of Haven. It wasn’t far, sprinting as much as she could it only took moments to arrive where she hoped she would find him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked at once when she burst through the flaps.

It took her half a moment to realize she didn’t know exactly what was wrong. “There was a girl, screaming, I think she was using magic? Garret told me to get you.” She bit her lip, at that exact second realizing she had clearly interrupted some kind of meeting. There were seven other men, all much older than Zar, sitting around the main table, every set of eyes locked on her.

“She’s Snapped,” Zar mumbled as he jumped from his seat. “Where?” he demanded as he rushed through the tent’s front door.

“Just across from Garret’s…” She said to his back, as he was already launching into full speed.

With hot stinging lungs, Lessa tried to keep up with Zar but struggled due to her previous sprint across town.

She rounded the corner into full view of the screaming girl just as Zar came upon her.

The two men were still here. One tried to reach the girl but he oddly looked like he was being buffeted by heavy wind, the other had extracted the woman from the pile of crate rubble and they both watched the girl in deep alarm and maybe with fear.

Zar did not slow, he hit the ground and slid on his hip until he was just behind the girl. Nimble as a fox he hit his feet, grabbed the girl’s ankles in one hand, and stabilized her body with the other as he lifted her into the air and hung her upside down.

The girl yelped and suddenly the other man was trying to reach her stubbled forward, the force he was battling gone.

The girl looked as shocked as Lessa felt. And she started sobbing. Zar set the girl on her feet and she launched toward the woman who had been thrown into the crates. The woman, who must’ve been the girl’s mother, held out her arms and the wailing girl fell into her. Together, they soothingly rocked back and forth.

“Thank you, Zar,” The man standing by the two said.

“Was anyone hurt?” Zar asked, looking around.

“No, we’re alright. Just shaken up.”

Zar nodded and turned away.

Lessa had made her way to the porch of Garret’s shop where he stood watching. Zar gave the group one more look then came over to where Lessa stood, baffled.

“What the hell just happened?” She demanded.