The Ancients

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Before the dragons, a great forgotten civilization – your ancestors – called the Valley their home. Listen well, because we will not speak of this again: Everything you have been told about our history; the Mothers, the Sisters and Brothers of Sorrow, the Citadel – it was all designed ages ago to hide the truth.

Emma's words spun in Roeni's mind. She shook her head and took a deep breath to shake away the memory. A light gray mist hung in clumps between the trees in the pre-dawn light. The morning air smelled sweet and sharp, and all around birds were singing. Roeni pulled one last time on the straps on her pack and then hefted in onto her shoulders with a grunt. She turned to Tal. He was wearing his pack and was pouring water onto the remains of their small breakfast fire. The coals hissed and a small plume of ash and steam rapidly expanded from them.

<Let's go.> Roeni signed with smooth movements of her hands. <We want to reach the Dragon Ring by midday.>

Tal nodded and Roeni watched as he fastened his waterskin to his belt. She turned toward the two oak trees that pointed them north toward the Trail and the Dragon's Ring at heart of the Valley.

Not just the truth of our Valley ancestors, but the truth of the Dragon's themselves, and why they came. We don't know everything, but it's what Ibhan was looking into when he disappeared.

Roeni looked around herself at the forest to pull her back from the memory. Its old growth trees reaching into the air like the pillars of the High Temple itself. As a Valewalker, she had been in this forest scores of times, and never had she seen any evidence of anything like the ruins of a city. If it had been so massive, she would have seen it or Master Ibhan would have pointed it out to them.

A hand gently tapped her shoulder, and she turned to see a Tal's questioning gaze. His familiar dark eyes were reassuring. He nodded in the direction of the spring at the edge of the foothills where they always filled their waterskins, and held out his hand. Roeni unhooked her own waterskin, downed the last of the water, and handed it to him. He took it with a small smile and stepped quickly and quietly through the brush toward the rock outcropping from where the spring flowed.

Roeni looked in the direction they were headed. The light was getting brighter now, and in a few hours the heat of the day would start penetrating even the dense forest. An unease began to creep over her unlike anything she had felt before. The forest that had felt like home began to shift into something strange and foreboding.

Roeni's mind returned again to Emma's words.

I hesitate to send you both, she had said, but something has been changing in the Valley. I fear we don't have much time.

The scent of cinnamon wafted into the air, like one of her grandmother's sweet rolls, but more earthy. It pulled her attention back to the forest. Her eyes widened and she turned her head to scan for movement in all directions. When her eyes came to rest on Tal, she saw him finishing with the waterskins. She stared hard in his direction, willing him to notice her. A moment later, he turned his head toward her, as he often did in these moments. With her right hand she formed a single abrupt gesture. Dragon.